Dawn of Dusk
Chapter 1: Arborlea

King Landif looked at his counselors. All of them were older than him. A few of the new ones were about his same age but, there were in fact, no advisors who were younger than him. Most of the younger ones were actually in training for the years ahead when Landif was expected to ascend to the throne.

The entire elven race was fair of skin. Days in the sunshine did not turn their skin darker as it did most Men; neither did their skin burn. Like plants, they were able to turn sunlight directly into energy, but they still had to eat as other humans did. Their hair varied from white to yellowish blonde; but no elf had dark hair. Even those elves that chose to marry among Men and had children; the children always had fair skin and light hair. Most adult elves were two meters tall both male and female; and there never was an Elf that was not considered thin by the standards of Men. Most elves’ eyes ranged from white, to blue, to gray, to green, to violet. Most but not all Elves had larger ears that came to a point on top. The features of all elves were considered by Men as beautiful. The eyes, nose, and mouth were always symmetrical. High cheek bones graced the faces of the females. Male elves had wide prominent chins and female Elves had small chins that came to a point. Men who spent little time with Elves said they all looked the same.

Landif had risen to the throne sooner than he normally would have because of the untimely death of his father, Hilldif in the battle of Cryarlac almost two hundred years earlier. Landif had not had his first child yet as most Elves did not have their first child until they were between four hundred to five hundred years old.

Landif was young for an Elven leader, the youngest to ever ascend the throne by almost one hundred-fifty years. Even though he was young, he was wise for his years and listened to the senior counselors in all things before making his decisions.

Many of his counselors had recently been pushing for increased isolationism. Many of the senior counselors were even leaning this way. Landif was wisely rejecting that argument and was keeping the Elves involved in the politics of humankind.

It wasn’t that he had any desire to deal with the “friendly” races of humans much more than he did the hostile races. Men, Dwarves, Giants, and Elves consisted of the friendly, or civilized races, and the Goblins, Rock Trolls, Gnomes, and Mountain Trolls, made up the hostile or barbaric races.

All of the races had evolved from humans. The holocaust that had caused the mutations into the different races was so long ago that even the Elves cannot remember what happened. The destruction was so complete that the records made at that time had been destroyed, lost or decayed to the point that they were illegible.

In addition, for centuries after the destruction, mankind had reverted to barbarism and there was no written language. This coupled with the isolation of the races, for such a long time caused the languages to change. When the Men started exploring and began to discover the other races, the languages were still close enough that communication was possible A humankind standard dialect was developed and used between the now civilized races; even the barbaric races still needed to communicate and used the standard dialect for diplomacy.

The Trolls, Gnomes, and Goblins rejected human as their standard language along with everything else civilized. Gnomes, like Dwarves, had retreated underground. They had been at war with the Dwarves for as long as anyone could remember. Their war had reached the intensity of a blood feud and their choice of allies had set the alignment of the current world.

Elves and Dwarves had begun trading with Men and had founded a loose economic alignment until the first war of the races. Gnomes aligning with Goblins attacked the Dwarves. Men had joined with the Dwarves to help fight against the invaders. Trolls, looking for warmer and lusher lands went south into the lands of the Men. Elves seeing the destruction of the lands and (more specifically) the forests, joined with the Men and the Dwarves. The Giants, a mostly seafaring race, decided that the barbaric actions of the invading hordes could not be tolerated and joined in at a crucial time helping the other civilized races to throw back the invaders and keep them out of their lands.

Since that time, fortifications were set up and surveillance was conducted by the Men, Dwarves, and Elves to watch and prepare for another invasion.

When the next invasion came, it came in a from much more fearsome and destructive than before, three hundred years later. The goblins had developed a type of magic that allowed them to re-animate the dead. The mindless destruction that the dead created was too much for the defenders to stand against and again the invaders pushed deep into the southern lands.

At the end of each day the Dwarves, Men, and Elves would have to venture out onto the battlefield, and gather the bodies of the dead to burn them so they could not be used as evil soldiers against them the following day. Sometimes the goblins would leave bands of still living soldiers lying as dead on the battlefield and at some signal would jump up and begin fighting those trying to burn the bodies of the dead.

The one benefit to the civilized races was that the dead could only be re-animated once. The sheer numbers that had initially been sent into the south lands had been overwhelming.

At last, some of the Elves had managed to capture some of the Goblin Necromancers, learned the magic that the Goblins were using and managed to create a canceling spell that could be used on a corpse either before or after it had been reanimated.

The Civilized forces had allowed the attacking armies to engage them after spying out their forces and determining that the invaders consisted of two-thirds reanimated corpses. The army of dead rolled forward and just as they were about to engage the Men, Dwarves, Giants and Elves, the Elven Magicians cast their spells and all of the reanimated fighters in the advancing army fell dead. The remaining soldiers were so afraid that another spell might cause them to fall dead that they fled in terror, ending the second war of the races.

Magic among the races flourished for centuries. Many said that magic was always on the earth, but there were periods when Men didn’t use magic and times when they did. Elves were very adept at natural magic, using the magic of the elements or elemental magic. Dwarves developed their magical skills to work in metallurgy and reckoning ability underground, although they had some spells that they could cast.

Many of the Men had little or no magical potential but the greatest of the magicians were Men. Men developed two types of magic, physical magic and Spiritual magic. Some men could perform both types of magic but all men were stronger in one type of magic or another.

Most men with a strong aptitude for spiritual magic became priests. The men who were stronger in physical magic usually went into the military, became independent wizards, or went into the service of the nobility as court sorcerers.

Landif sat at his daily briefing meeting and listened to the constant bickering of his counselors. He could not understand why a body that in the past had almost always agreed on everything, in the last year, and more importantly in the last few months, was almost constantly at odds. This was more than just disagreements. On more than one occasion, Canthree, his personal guard had been needed to separate members of his High Council; to keep them from doing bodily harm to one or the other.

Elves were stable, dependable, calm, and for the most part peace loving people. In his lifetime prior to this year, Landif could not remember an Elf speaking in anger at another, now his own counselors, the wisest and most controlled of all the elves were accosting each other in the council chambers.

The subject of the argument was an Elven Police Force. Until recently, no Elven dwelling had a lock on their doors. In the last few months Elves were doing things that until recently only Men did in the civilized races. Thefts, beatings, muggings, had been unheard of. There was an Elf being held right now for murdering his former best friend and assaulting the man’s wife. The Elven tongue had no word for murder, theft, or assault so when these acts took place, a shock-wave had gone through the Elven community. Landif himself had gone to talk to the Elf named Brancil that had done the atrocities, and questioned him carefully. He was convinced that Brancil had done them; there were numerous eye witnesses who had seen him. Brancil could neither remember doing them, nor could he even hear about the acts without becoming sick.

Brancil still could be provoked to anger easily, but he could not remember even a few minutes later what had made him angry, or even that he had gotten angry. Landif had noticed that the same thing happened to some of his counselors. They would argue and almost come to blows, and in a few minutes, could not remember anything except a slight disagreement.

His counselors were also becoming more and more unreliable in their positions. One day Leavara, one of the oldest and wisest counselors, argued passionately for a police force and the next day she argued just as passionately against it. When Landif asked her what caused her to change her position, she denied ever having supported the police force.

Landif waited until the noise abated and then rose to address the room. He paused a moment for affect and then lifted his head in his royal state and began to speak.

“Esteemed advisors and counselors, Members of the Council of Twelve I choose to speak to you today because I perceive a larger problem within the Elven community; a problem of survival. I tell you today, that the continued existence of Elves themselves hangs in the balance.”

The room exploded with sound as outraged advisors and counselors demanded to know what their king was talking about. Landif raised both of his hands in a request for quiet and then waited for the din to subside. He held up a parchment that was very old and brittle.

“This parchment tells of the last time the Elves lost their self control. The carnage and bloodshed that took place is horrible to read about. There is a warning that this could happen again if we become too dependent on our magic. It says that those who depend on the magic will be dominated by it.

The parchment goes on to say that our strength in magic is also our weakness. We control the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. Male Elves are stronger in earth and fire and female Elves have their strongest magic in wind and water.

It is said that a husband and a wife working together could use all four of the elements at the same time. This is known as the wholeness. For some reason most males and females do not successfully attain wholeness. In recent decades, examples of couples attaining wholeness have been almost nonexistent. It is assumed that wholeness has never been attained by two single Elves because they could not work together well enough to coordinate all four of the elements.

Even though the male controls most of the earth and fire, and the female controls most of the wind and water; each must give up some of their control over their dominant elements. Then both of them together, it is said, could master all four of the elements while wholeness is attained, giving the pair twice the magic that they possess separately.

There were a few documentations of wholeness being reached in the past. In each case both husband and wife were relatively weak in magic potential and development. One documentation, if you can call it that, claims that a King centuries ago named Hillsofar and his Queen named Pondelilly attained wholeness when their kingdom was being torn apart by an army of Trolls who were aided by Giants attacking from the sea.

Their combined strength allowed them to blow the Giants’ ships out to sea beyond the known limits; never to be seen or heard from again. They burned the siege engines and the land behind the Troll army, drowned thousands of Trolls in a flood that did no damage to the land or Elven property and buried a whole army of Rock Trolls as they approached Arborlea from the north in what was then called, the Valley of Death, under what is now called the Glasimian Mountains. Prior to that war when the mountains were created, the Valley of Death caused any who went through it to die later of mysterious diseases. It was said that the death remained there from the times when the holocaust destroyed the known world and caused humankind to mutate into the many races of humans that now existed in the world.

What was even more impressive was a shimmering aura that appeared around each Elven soldier. The aura made them invincible. No one had documented even one Elven death during the battle it is said that their strength increased beyond belief.

The giants were so humbled that they signed a treaty of peace and cooperation that has never been broken. If the giants had not signed that treaty, during the last war of the races the barbarians might well have won.

Pondelilly’s ability with magic was much greater than Hillsofar’s as he had spent his life developing skills in Diplomacy and the Law and spent little time working with magic. The need was great however; and they were united in purpose. The work to save the race of Elves had been done. There was a high cost, however, Hillsofar’s magical powers were Gone, he’d use a much magic to his ability to use magic had been burned out of him. They had been burned out of him because he had wielded more magic than he was able to control. Now an Elf cannot stay sane for long without his or her magic. When it became apparent that Hillsofar’s magic would not return, Hillsofar conferred his rule over to his son and left Arborlea never to be heard from again. Pondelilly, left with him and they went looking for a Wizard of Men (since Men deal in spiritual Magic) who could restore enough magic into Hillsofar, to keep him from losing his mind.”

A member of the High Council, Glade, interrupted. “Surely you cannot expect us to believe this myth. My mother told me this story at least once per week until I was about eighty years old. We have all heard the romantic tragedy of Hillsofar and Pondelilly. We all know that a man supposedly found a way to repair the rent in Hillsofar’s magic. Because his magic was repaired by spiritual magic, and they used Pondelilly’s magic to repair it they were both infused with a large amount of spiritual magic. This change in their magical auras made them able to have children almost as often as humans. They decided to head off into the Bermaldine Wastelands to start a community of Elves that would be able to have children every twenty or thirty years.

We all know that while part of the story might, just might have some validity, we also know that the last of it is about as far-fetched as peaceful, law abiding, benevolent Men. Anyone who believes that nonsense deserves to be put into a cell along with Brancil.”

Landif signaled to his personal guards. Canthree quickly left the room and the other moved closer to Landif himself.

“I am asking you to believe this myth as you call it Councilor Glade, but I am not asking you to believe on blind faith alone.” To his guard he said, “Show my guests in, please.”

Canthree returned with four male Elves and four female Elves, none of whom were familiar with the councilors. These were not elves from Arborlea. They were Elves, there was no mistaking that, but they were different as well.

King Landif expected pandemonium and he was not disappointed. Rather than fight the chaos that ensued and lose, he chose to use patience for a few minutes while all the councilors got over their shock.

As the excitement and surprise died down Landif spoke again. This time he was sure that all the Elves in the room were listening to him.

“I would like to introduce each of you to Prince Rockledge, his wife, Princess Briancha, His man-at-arms, Arborly and his wife, Graslina, the President of the Quorum of Twelve, Medoline and her husband, also a member of the Quorum of Twelve, Brooker.

“I am a young king! Many of you feel too young. I read the parchment and sent a small party into the Wastelands, after a sixteen week absence the party returned with word that another group of Elves had been found, and invited here. Two weeks later, Canthree here returned with our six guests. I could not present them to this body unless I was first convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were exactly what they claimed to be.”

Surprisingly, none of the councilors had said a word. They were waiting for the information to come from their king.

Landif continued. “Councilors Leavara and Lakewell of the High Council and I, have inquired and tested them to every extent we know. I speak for all of us when I tell you that we are convinced that they are, who they say they are, our lost cousins.”

Leavara and Lakewell nodded and came forward to stand with their newly found Elven cousins. Leavara and Lakewell were well respected and their confirmation removed any doubt of the king’s word. Landif spoke again, “we will hear their story from the beginning tomorrow, but in the mean time I want to discuss the developing problem of lawlessness among us Elves. I think I know what has caused it, and how we might be able to avoid the insanity that the Elves faced thousands of years ago.”

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