The silence of the stones is deafening.
I bite down hard on my lip. I’m half tempted to start up a conversation with myself or sing a song, but I also don’t want to disrespect the memory of the lost. My eyes move over the small stone pillars lining this otherwise empty hall. The first several pillars are finely crafted, the perfect size and height for a memorial pillar.
You can see the exact place we lost the mason and how the stones afterward are placed to mimic his work, but not quite coming close. The last two are just rocks placed down beside the others, our best attempt at honoring the lost even with so few resources available.
From stone we came and to stone we return. That is what the revered herald of Azern taught me, back before she also became one of these stone memorials.
So many of my people are raised never seeing the inside of a mountain, she said. I’m blessed to have been raised like our ancestors before the great collapse. That I could be raised in a mountain and follow our nearly forgotten traditions, worshiping our own demigoddess instead of the gods of man.
Once I believed her, but that was when there were others. Now this mountain seems so lonely and the stone is so silent.
I glance down at the stone in my hand. Sellabel was supposed to have returned by now.
I’ve lived through this experience enough to know that when they don’t come back when they say that they will then they aren’t returning. And yet I can’t seem to bring myself to put down the rock.
Perhaps she is just late.
I turn on my heel, the sole of my boot making a crunching sound against the hard stone floors. I’ll put down the stone tomorrow. For tonight I can hold out hope.
“We aren’t meant for the world,” Laellina says. “It rejects us, tries to destroy us and cast us out. That’s why the others don’t return. It is too dangerous for us out there.”
My knowledge of the outside world is scant, I have never known anything save for the halls of this mountain. I was brought to this refuge as a baby and raised by the priests of Azern. Named after the very demigod I was raised to worship.
But I do know that outside these halls it is dangerous to serve a demigod, even a benevolent one like our Lady Dawn. If only we could remain cloistered away from the rest of the world like I have all my life, but unfortunately we cannot survive off the food produced by our scraggly garden alone. And so, every year one of the priests of Azern would go out and work for the outside world, saving up enough to buy all the supplies we would need to get through the winter.
We used to determine who would go by lots, back when there enough people to choose between. Sellabel left because she was the oldest of us remaining.
Hunger and disease have each claimed their number of the devoted, but none have taken so many of us as the outside world.
I like to hope that perhaps a few of the devoted found a different life out there, one where they didn’t want to give up on to come back. But more than likely they were imprisoned or even killed for illegal sorcery.
Why else would they choose not to return, knowing full well that people relied on them to survive?
I find Laellina in the storeroom with a worried frown causing lines to mar her otherwise serene face. With Saellina gone, it’s only Laellina and me left. She’s only a few decades older than me and my closest friend.
Now that I think of it, I suppose she’s my only friend.
She pushes to her feet, resting her hands on her hips. “If we tighten our belts we might just have enough to get us through the winter, but only barely.”
The unspoken thought hangs in the air. And after that…?
She turns, her eyes flicking over me. “I think we should leave.”
I jolt at her words, in all my life I never imagined hearing that. Despite the lots I never actually considered ever leaving. I was the youngest, raised by the other priests. They never would have sent me out on a dangerous mission they could do themselves. But now they’re all gone…
“But this is our home,” I whisper hoarsely.
“It will become our tomb,” she says, gesturing toward the storeroom.
“You always said that the outside world was too dangerous for us.”
Laellina steps toward me, grasping my arms and forcing me to look into her luminescent eyes. “There are only two of us left. We cannot keep this temple running on our own. We will take our devotion to the Lady of Dawn with us and guard each other.”
I press my lips together to keep them from trembling and step back. I tilt my head back looking at the intricately engraved stone arches overhead. This temple is my home, it’s the only world I have ever known.
But Laellina also isn’t wrong.
Without food and supplies we will not survive in the mountains. Besides, what if someone finds us out here? These ruins of Higher Elf cities are often used by other sorcerer cults or even bandits. We are two elves; we cannot defend ourselves and our home.
Still, even though I know this in my heart I can’t seem to bring myself to agree with Laellina. Instead, I find myself saying, “Let’s wait just a little longer. I don’t think we should give up hope on Saellina just yet.”
Laellina nods, but in her eyes, I see that the hope has already died.