The road to wherever the caravan was heading was long and spent in darkness. The mobile cell she was confined to had no windows or openings. A perfectly sealed box 'for her own safety' or so was she told while exchanging words with a kinder Magister on the other side.
The stops were few and far between, so the elf had little more to do than to lie down on the uncomfortable bench and reminisce of times long past, of the oppressing dark of elven forests and a world vicious and cruel
The blood-freezing whizzing of arrows was seared into my memory for as long as I could remember. We were fugitives, for some reason, my mother and I desperately tried to leave the Elven Lands. But we were being hunted. I do not know whether it was a cruel elven pastime, or did my birth mother do something to deserve such treatment. I cannot phantom a sin that would justify turning one's life into a living hell of hide and seek, where losing equalled death. It felt as if we were escaping for months, never getting closer to our destination - the human settlements. 'Town, town. We must get to some town' was the only thing my mother ever said to me, not even bothered to come up with a name for me. And so that cluster of words soon became the only thing I could articulate on my own. But even that neglectful upbringing of mine soon ended. Despite mother's best efforts, one day the forest demons got to us. She was the first to learn that, as an arrow shot through her calf, then another one pierced the spine. She pushed me forward as she fell, screaming for me to run, to get away. And so, terrified, I ran. It didn't take three leaps when I felt something hitting my back, forcing the air out of my lungs. Then came the searing pain, the first real pain I knew.
I collapsed, holding the tip of the arrow impaling me tight, groaning. The demons were approaching. They spoke, but I could not understand a word. Blood was seeping from the wound. I gathered what strength I had left to stand up and ran again. They followed. I ran until I felt a sharp push piercing my skull. Then a gust of wind and nothingness. When I opened my eyes again, the setting around me changed and the hunters were gone. Two arrows laid nearby, not a drop of blood on them and not a jolt of pain in me. I got to my feet and picked up the arrows, my first weapons. I continued forward…
"Halt!" a sharp, masculine voice woke Elane up from her slumber. She sat up, dizzy and confused, as countless seagulls roared somewhere above her cell. The door opened and she was blinded by the morning light. Wincing from the stinging sun, she wobbled outside, feeling additional restrains fastened to her collar and shackles. When she finally regained her vision, she realised with alarming precision that they were in Arx. She saw the capital's port more than once now. Looking down at the stone piers, she could see shackled Sourceres being rounded up and boarding a ship, an impressive full sea frigate bearing the order's markings on its front sails.
But her jailers didn't take her down to the port to join the rest. She was taken into an adjacent building and ordered to strip from her belongings, donning a prisoner garb instead. Parting with clothes came easily, but the elf made quite a scene the moment a woman pointed expectantly at the golden ornaments she wore in her sizable updo. A gift from her parents. The elf persuaded and pleaded until they let her go to join the rest with her most prized possessions intact, tucked safely in her raven black hair.
She joined the grim crowd, chained to the other prisoners in the line, soon she was just another link in the procession. Someone fell behind her, pulling several other prisoners down with them and nearly toppling the elf over as well. Someone begged for mercy, someone uttered a litany of curses. Soon her foot was set over the wooden ramp, she accepted the fact with bitter indifferentness.
She fell unconscious after being handed a muddy drink smelling like tea and something sour. When she woke up, she found herself confined to a strange contraption and unable to move. She wiggled lazily against the metal bars that coiled around her body until a woman's face came into her blurry view. She had a motherly face, with black hair woven into thick braids.
"My, you woke up rather soon. Perhaps I wasn't generous enough with the sedative." She spoke, an amused thrill in her voice.
Elane tried to glance around and saw several more restraints placed around her, all filled with lump Sourcerers.
"A-are they dead?" The elf rasped, a sinking feeling in her chest.
"No," answered the same voice as earlier. "Merely sleeping, and you should be as well."
Something rang beyond the elf's vision, like a glass tube tapped with fingernail. The Magister woman came into view again, holding Elane's arm steady with one hand.
"Sorry we have to do it like this, elves already get a bigger dose but you are quite resilient…"
Something stung her forearm, pushing itself deep into her muscles. The noble groaned and trashed within the ability that the metal loops gave her, but soon the reality became heavy, crushing even. She felt nauseous, her muscles leaden and soon after that she slipped into drug-induced unconsciousness again.
A female voice woke her, saying something about reporting upstairs. Then the platform she was resting on snapped to a different position, the metal rims restraining her body opening and the elf slid down and landed butt-first on the floor. Her head felt dizzy and her vision blurred.
"Now, isn't it a wonderful way to start a day?" A male voice asked, somewhere to the right.
Elane shook her head, closing her eyes for a second then glanced in that direction.
A figure that could belong to a human leaned against one of the tables that held them captive a few minutes ago. He, too, looked dazzled, yet with a few shakes of his head he managed to straighten himself and walk a few paces. Elane had a much worse time getting her senses to work. She couldn't recall where she was and why she was. Trying to get up only led her to another clumsy fall.
"So it was not a dream after all..." She mumbled, trying to pull herself back up.
"Whoa!" the same voice warned, "Easy there..."
She felt someone pulling her up, allowing her to lean on the blurry figure.
"They gave you the whole barrel of this stuff or what?" The man huffed with effort, as the elf forced most of her weight on him.
"S-sory." Talking came to her with great difficulty, her tongue feeling swollen and her saliva turned to glue.
"Come, one step at a time. There's gotta be a place to lay down here somewhere."
"T-thanks," she muttered.
"Vermil," the figure answered.
Elane, as confused as she was, could only hum a quiet "Huh?"
"The name, my name, it's Vermil."
She shook her head violently, trying to clear the clouds from her vision.
"Elane, Elane Ravenloft, pleasure to meet- chu!"
She sneezed, turning her head to the side, bloody particles specking her hand. Her eyelids turned so heavy she felt as if she dozed off standing for a moment.
A stifled laugh reached her ears and she fought to open the eyes again to finally see to whom the voice belonged. The fight, although taking a while, was successful.
"Sorry, great execution though. Wait…is that blood on your face?"
A man of an average height, with black, slick hair and a fancy moustache appeared from the blur looking rather concerned. The elf managed to straighten herself and whisper a few apologies. He sat her down on a wooden step and began scouring the empty surroundings. She, too, glanced at the strange devices in the room.
"I do not even remember them dragging me down here," she breathed to herself, taking a quick look around just to recognize the surroundings.
Everything was made out of wood, the walls being of a strange, curved shape. A ship, she remembered, they boarded a ship. Elane cradled her head, whatever was injected into her arm still addling her brain, the rocking of the vessel did little to ease the swimming feeling in her head.
"The only way out is up, it seems," the man stated, offering the woman a hand. "Can you climb?"
Elane nodded, getting back to her feet.
The two emerged from a hatch in the floor of the upper deck. The interiors were less bare than what they had woken up to, sporting a sofa and a pair of upholstered chairs mounted to the floor, not to mention the bookshelves and cabinets cluttering the room. The Magister woman who administered them the sedative was leaning against a wooden rail, marking a platform rising at the opposite end of the chamber. Two sets of stairs on the opposite sides led onto the elevation. This was also where the entrance further into the ship was located.
"Good gods, you two took your sweet time to gather your bearings." The dark haired woman tutted from her spot turning to the newcomers, she held a hefty book in one hand. "Not too tight? The collars I mean."
Elane traced the circular device fashioned onto her neck, it was unlike the other she was forced into earlier. This felt somewhat more…sophisticated, hovering right above the skin via magical means. Vermil tried his luck tugging at the metal, then relented.
"Now, now," The Magister returned to her book, flipping a page as she continued in a sweet but mocking voice. "Every dog has to get used to its leash. It's for your and everyone's around safety."
"The collar quells Source, did I get that right?" Vermil inquired, none too happy about this revelation.
That had the woman close her book shut with a loud smack of the pages, and descend the stairs to look the man in his eyes.
"Smart, are we?" She smiled triumphantly. "Yes it does, but you don't have to take my word for it, go on, see for yourself. I won't hold it against you."
Vermil smirked, curling his lip as he glanced at the electric wand buzzing on the woman's hip.
"And get tased as I try? No, thank you."
The jailer pressed two fingers to her lips in bemused manner. "Such a meek little lamb you are, maybe I shouldn't have collared you at all. But it looks dashing on you, even if I say so myself."
Turning towards the elf, the amused expression dropped from the woman's face. "My word, she seems a bit befuddled still, doesn't she? Perhaps I was too generous with the sedative... All you need to know though, is that we're on the route to Fort Joy. We should be docking there in less than a tenday. Aplenty time to recover."
Elane said nothing at this, just stared blankly at the adjacent wall, too tired to entertain the woman.
"In the meantime, your next stop will be Magister William. He'll have you registered in the ship's manifest. Be so kind and answer his questions without fussing, would you?"
"Understood," Vermil barked under his nose as he made way for the stairs, pulling the elf behind him.
"She'll gather her wits soon. Most likely. Eventually." The Magister hummed behind them.
The door opened to a short corridor, with two other doorways on opposite sides of the wooden wall. One was guarded and the Magisters stationed there hurried the Sourcerers through the passageway. Elane didn't have to glance over the guards' shoulders to realise something was afoot. The metallic scent of blood was unmistakable.
They entered the main hold, a big chamber filled with chatter, dim light and hot, stale air. No one batted an eye at the newcomers. The noble felt overwhelmed just by looking at the crowded space while Vermil seemed more than happy to jump into conversation with a red-headed woman, who was surrounded by an entourage of kids. Elane clung to the opposite wall and started making her way through the hold, passing another elven woman rolling dice in a dark corner. Something stirred inside of her at the sight. She couldn't explain why but she wanted to be as far from this person as possible, and quick.
The noble's only desire at the moment was a nook to sit down and sulk unseen for the rest of the journey. She glued her back away from the arched hull and made her way to a gloom corner, right under the nose of another Magister sentry and another doorway.
She squeezed herself between one of the wooden ribs, protruding from the wall, and stacked crates and she came face to face with another elf, sprawled on a shaky stool next to an equally feeble table, with a single candle to light up the space. At first, he didn't notice her intrusion, lost in some worn-out book and muttering to himself. She found herself quite puzzled by the sight, elves she knew rarely wanted to learn common speech properly, let alone to read it. And whilst she greatly disliked the elves who refused to assimilate, kept their weird manner of speech and deemed leaves and flowers far superior in terms of clothing than cotton, wool and leather, she held a modicum of respect for those who were the opposite. She coughed politely, to get the older elf's attention.
He indeed looked up from his lecture, his bushy brows furrowing. He leaned forward and without any ceremony tugged at the woman's ears, prodded on her nose and then moved her lip aside with his thumb to look at her teeth, pondering the row of canines that marked the elven physique.
"Fascinating," he breathed before returning to his book as if nothing ever happened.
Elane stood dumbfounded, wondering whether this was another of the elven antics she just couldn't humanly comprehend.
"Excuse me?" She growled, initial shock giving way to indignation.
Unbothered if somehow annoyed, the elf's gaze stayed fixated on the book.
She slammed her hand on the table with a loud snap, something within the furniture's construction giving way to her rage.
"What do you think you're doing ?" Her voice struck like a barbed whip.
"I am reading… Is it not evident?" He answered calmly. "My book is in my hands, my face turned away from you… Perhaps my eyes not on the page? Damnable things…"
He put the book down for a moment and, grabbing the woman by her hips, unceremoniously moved her aside to grab a metal plate that laid forgotten on the crates behind her. Losing her balance from the shove, she voluntarily plopped on another stool, standing on the other side of the now-crooked table, while the sharp-eyed idiot was busy watching his reflection in the dulled surface. He moved one eye independently of the other, as if they were glass prosthetics, and Elane shuddered at the sight.
"No, they are working quite adequately." He summed up, all smug.
"Your hands also obey your mind to a tee?" She sneered in retort.
"Oh…?" The smugness of Elane's interlocutor turned into a genuine surprise. "Oh! I see… I crossed a cultural taboo. How…difficult. You have my apologies, fellow elf."
He offered a stiff nod of his head and returned to sticking his nose in the book.
'Cultural taboo' and 'fellow elf' echoed in the woman's mind, piling atop the general feeling of bewilderment. She even came to suspect he was not mentally stable, or, at least as awkward in being an elf as her.
She leaned back in her seat, getting a closer look at the weirdo she came across. Age marks creased his face, but his eyes looked youthful. His hair was also dark, straight, and kept at shoulder's length. The neutral expression he wore, corners of the lips facing down, gave him a grumpy old man's look.
He caught her judging glare, and, turning around to only see the pillar behind him, put down his book again.
"I beg your pardon? Are you perhaps trying to initiate a conversation?"
The woman wholeheartedly agreed with herself that this man was even more clueless at social cues than her. That thought made her smirk.
"Being groped is usually followed with a flirty remark, you know. Or did you just expect me to leave afterward?"
"I assure you I had nothing lascivious on my mind. It was merely…clinical."
"You have not seen many elves in your life?"
"Your… Uh, my kin is a rather new sight for me indeed."
Elane raised one eyebrow, curious. "Were you some sort of hermit before the Magisters scooped you here?"
"Ah yes, I believe the 'niceties' are due. My name is Fane and I am a scholar from-...well, I am a seeker of knowledge. That is enough. It is pleasurable to meet you," he recited more than he said.
"You do seem rather lost for a scholar. Is that lecture of yours so drawing in?" She pointed to the book he was holding.
"I do not believe I have been drawn anywhere. It is a quaint little read, but it has its faults," he muttered.
"Maybe try writing your own?" The woman joked.
"I indeed have started doing so, but that paper you use for recording knowledge is painfully frail. Speaking of which-" He pulled out a notebook, bound in blue-dyed leather, from his bag.
Such things were rare and costed a good sum and it posed new questions the woman had about the scholar's origin. He pulled a pencil out of the spine and looked at her questioningly.
"Tell me, what do you know of your-" He quickly corrected himself, "-Our world's history?"
A chuckle escaped Elane's lips as she was reminded of her homeschooling sessions.
"What do you want to know? The war where Lucian died? The unification of Ferol? You would have much more luck scouring Hubwert's works than asking me."
"No, no, no" he shook his head, "I want to know about the celestial. I want to know about your Gods." He smacked the cover of the book he was reading, that now rested before him." This text tells me they created all creatures, but nothing of what came before. Where did these Gods come from? Who are their people? Where are the others of their kind?"
The noble found herself perplexed by the questions and spent a minute pondering an answer. She came with nothing concrete.
"I have never thought about it like you. Most people consider Gods a force of nature…" she paused, soon breaking the silence with a whisper. " I wonder, what led you to these questions?"
The man's face froze for just a second before he waved his hand dismissively.
"Oh it is just one of my idle curiosities. We mortals do like to consider these things, do we not?
Elane breathed in to answer, but a call stopped her before she could say anything.
"Ravenloft, Elane! It's your turn to register!" the sentry near the door shouted.
She sighed and crawled out of Fane's nook. When she glanced back at the elf, he was already glued to his book. She made her way to the nearby door.
The wooden panel swung open with a creak and all hell was set loose.