Ashyn camped that night near a bed of wildflowers in a small clearing of the woods. Jenhiro offered a rare bit of conversation. “Many winters ago, drought struck this land,” he gestured about the woods within they were making ready. “It went on for weeks. Finally, a storm came, but it offered no rain, only terrible lightning.” He paused to adjust a strap. “It struck the dried underbrush, which started a forest fire that burned down nearly a dozen massive sequoias before the druids got it under control.” He pointed to the flowers. “Now, these have taken over.” He squatted down, signaling out a cluster. “These are Fireweed.”
Ashyn marveled at their long red stems and four magenta petals. “For the color of the stem itself?”
“Appropriate as that is, no. They always bloom in the wake of burn sites. They are pioneers, leading the way for other flowers to safely grow in the future.”
While Jenhiro returned to the task at hand, Ashyn’s attention was drawn by what most think of as pests. There were so many insects crawling through the area or buzzing around the flowers. He wished he could capture each one and chronicle them in a tome of some kind. It had been so long since he could study them. Too long.
It amazed the wizard at how beautiful the forest seemed at times. At how tranquil and accepting the forest was. Even with the threats and dangers that he knew lurked within, he felt at home.
He looked over to his partner. The elf was a quiet sentinel amongst the legion of flowers, his spear ready at his side. Jenhiro always took the first watch. He wanted to be ready for its return. Ashyn reluctantly agreed, uncomfortable with the closeness of the Ferhym, but knowing that this clearing was their best defense against the shade. The overwhelming amount of colors would give itself away. The elf’s explanation of its camouflage was logical. It couldn’t keep up with so many changes in such quick succession.
It was a perfect reason to camp here. It wasn’t the impending attack from their pursuer that bothered him, it was Jenhiro himself. This close, and not moving, gave the elf a long time to study Ashyn in detail. He knew it wouldn’t be long before his chin hair was truly noticeable. He had maybe a single day if he were lucky. Aside of that, he feared that being this close. If he rolled over and his hood came off even a little bit, it would be disastrous. The elf would see the truth: Ashyn was no Lefhym, at least not a full-blooded one. That made him an abomination in the Ferhym’s eyes, just like the creature they had defeated today.
That word, along with the elf’s rage over it doing something similar to what Ashyn saw elven druids do, rankled him deeply. It seemed so hypocritical, what was allowed in their eyes, and what skewed the balance. He knew he was teetering on thin ice, staying with the Wild Elf. He was risking exposure every minute he lingered, and yet what else could he do?
Since the moment he decided to step foot into the Shalis-Fey, it had been with the intention of locating Feydras’ Anula. It seemed a simple matter at the time. How large could the forest really be? Now the reality of it encompassed him. The only way he was going to find Feydras’ Anula was by stumbling into it or having a guide.
Now he had a guide, but would the Wild Elf lead him? He humored the idea of simply interrogating Jenhiro, but he knew it was a foolhardy thought. The Wild Elf would never talk. There was too much strength in his character, too much resolve. Ashyn would never crack the elf’s shell, and honestly he didn’t think he had it in him to try.
More than once now his ability to do what it took to get to his sister had been hampered by his own moral compass. His own code and personal integrity stopped him. If it came to torture, to causing real lasting pain, could he twist that knife? He didn’t think he could.
Did that made him weak? He knew if Jenhiro found out the truth, the Wild Elf wouldn’t have the slightest compunction about running him through with his spear. And yet, in spite of these very real dangers, in spite of the reality of his situation, he found himself laying there in inaction.
He could hear it now, Xexial chastising him. Telling him he was a damn fool boy. But was he a coward? He didn’t think so. Ashyn had stood his ground since Gregiry Bibs had struck his sister when he had been but a little child. He stood up to all adversaries, fought until the end sometimes, and even found himself reveling in the maelstrom of violence on more than one occasion.
Yet now he lay here, a wraith-like beast seeking his death on the horizon, and he was afraid. He wasn’t afraid of the shade though or of the elf in front of him. He was afraid that he lacked what it took to measure up to the task before him. He was afraid he was going to fail. Afraid he would never see Julietta to safety.
“You are troubled,” Jenhiro said, surprising Ashyn.
The wizard looked up at the elf who was still looking out on the horizon, searching for their adversary.
“How can you tell?” Ashyn asked, his curiosity piqued by a person he knew would probably kill him when he found out Ashyn’s ears were round.
“Breathing,” the Wild Elf answered.
Ashyn reached out and pulled at a fireweed quietly. The red stem broke yet the petals remained firm and strong in his hands. He studied it for a long time, weighing if he should even ask a question of the Ferhym. If it would only bring him one step closer to his own oblivion by blowing his cover.
Finally, he just let himself speak, “What guides you Jenhiro?”
The Wild Elf stopped staring at the horizon and looked to the wizard, curiosity etched across his chiseled features. “The Spirits, of course.”
Ashyn nodded, “Yes, I understand that. But what drives you? You have said yourself that this skewer has killed many hym. Why do we face it alone?”
He watched as Jenhiro looked back out to the horizon and stared. “Have you ever lost somebody, Lefhym? Have you ever made a bad call that you wish you could change?”
Ashyn found himself nodding. “I’ve lost many people, and have made many decisions that I wished were different.”
Jenhiro prodded the butt of his spear into the ground without really looking at it. “Then you know what it means to fail and have others pay the price for it.”
Images of Ashyn’s house surrounded by orcs flashed before his eyes. “I do.”
“Then you have your answer for what drives me.”
Ashyn pinched the magenta petals between his fingertips feeling their silky texture across his flesh. “I think I understand. You do not want any more of your people to suffer in this hunt.”
Jenhiro’s silence was enough of an answer. Ashyn thought that was the end of it, when Jenhiro asked, “Will you now tell me what it is that troubles you?”
Ashyn tried to find the right words, find something to explain himself to Jenhiro, and his fears to this person, but he didn’t trust the Wild Elf. He knew what the hunter would do to him as soon as he found out that he wasn’t an elf. Yet that was almost secondary to the pit growing in his stomach, a well of worry that was expanding by the day threatened to consume him. “I am afraid I will fail.”
Once more Ashyn watched the back of the Wild Elf’s head as it looked down briefly, and he moved the soil with the end of his spear. “You are on a quest then?”
“I suppose,” Ashyn answered not really giving it much thought as to what it was. “I am looking for someone very dear to me. But the choice that I made to look for her has cost me everything: my master, my apprenticeship,” he laughed bitterly before finishing, “probably my life.”
“She must be dear indeed,” Jenhiro replied.
Ashyn nodded, realizing the foolishness of the notion since Jenhiro was facing away from him. “She is, and that’s what makes it so hard. I feel as if I didn’t have a choice to begin with!” he said to the Elf, before looking back at the ground. “Not really anyways.”
“Then in that, tree-brother, we are the same. I cannot rest, will not rest, until the skewer is balanced, or I am killed.”
Ashyn sighed. ‘Balanced,’ Jenhiro said. As if changing the word made it anything less than what it was: murder.
Jenhiro acknowledged his sigh. “You do not agree?” the elf asked, curious now. “You have seen firsthand how it hunts you. How merciless it is.”
“I have.” He looked around. “I am just confounded as to why the Ferhym believe all balancing of nature must be in the annihilation of another species?”
Ashyn was surprised to find Jenhiro nodding. “Not all believe it. I have questioned at times. Questioned the decisions of the Council. Questioned the balancing of races. Of magic. There are creatures that I have felt did not deserve such aggressiveness. It is why I have given my allegiance to the druids over that of the Council.” He turned to look into Ashyn’s eyes. “But there are just some things that are wrong. Creatures that are twisted, or broken, deep within, you know. You know they must be purged for the betterment of the world.
“This creature now is such a thing. It may not have started that way. I might even be responsible for making it so, but what it is now is a skewer.”
“It is alarming to hear you admit to such a thing,” Ashyn replied. “Though I feel my interactions with Ferhym previous to you have been tatterdemalion at best, every one of them has always flawlessly stuck to their ideals. Even with potential facts placed before them.”
Jenhiro shrugged. “I may be young, but I am not naïve enough not to see that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Faith is nothing more than adhering to your beliefs even while the facts slap you blindly in the face.
“I believe whole-heartedly in the ideals of my people. I believe in what the Council of Elm stands for. What it is symbolic of. But at the same time, it is too easy to call what we can’t comprehend a skewer of balance or unnatural. I am definitely guilty of such a thing. More recently than most in fact.” He looked to the ground briefly, in what Ashyn thought for a moment might be shame. Quickly the elf looked back to the horizon, constantly scouting the horizon for threats Ashyn couldn’t see.
The Wild Elf continued, “It is harder to admit that sometimes we are simply ignorant. The Spirits have given my people a mission, a responsibility to defend the natural world from the perversions and abstractions that seek to unravel it. Sometimes what we see is not really what should be seen. No one likes being wrong. We Ferhym are no different. I am no different.”
“So you admit to mistakes?”
Once more, he rammed the butt of his spear into the ground. “I think we both know what hunts you now, and if we are correct then it is of my own making. I recognize that now. I am responsible for its behavior just as much as it is,” Jenhiro answered. “That does not mean I shall not balance it any less. It is a threat now.”
Ashyn nodded once more. Though he didn’t completely agree with Jenhiro’s reasoning, he had a better idea of what was going on in the Wild Elf’s mind. The why of it, the rage in combat, the reluctance of the use of his kind in hunting it. Jenhiro felt responsible for everything. Whatever happened to his branch and the shadow beast that stalked them now, Jenhiro felt he was to blame for it all. “We are all victims of our own creations,” Ashyn said quietly.
To this, Jenhiro nodded.
“If you believe your council has made a bad call in the past, then do you think that your people could be wrong about other things as well?” Ashyn asked.
“Such as?”
Immediately Ashyn wanted to say wizards, but he couldn’t. Too many people despised wizards, so he opted for why he had really come to begin with. “The dui Nuchada?” After he said it, Ashyn wondered if maybe he was beginning to press the extremes of his luck.
“You know of the term?” the Wild Elf questioned with a raised eyebrow.
“It means something akin to ‘spirit eyes,’ right? What makes them skewers?”
Jenhiro blurted a momentary laugh, before looking back to the horizon. “I’m afraid whoever taught you our language translated incorrectly.”
“Then perhaps you could clarify,” Ashyn prompted, though what he really wanted to question why Wild Elves want to kill him. Why they blinded his sister.
“It means the spirits within thine eyes. It is an older word in our dialect, and so I could understand the miscommunication from any teacher other than a Ferhym. But the key is that it is plural. Spirits.
“And most of the time the only recourse is death, yes?”
“Why?” Ashyn queried.
“Because no one should have more than one soul.”
The wizard was taken aback, “Ex… Excuse me?”
Jenhiro looked back towards him. “It is a true abomination of everything natural in this world. One vessel, one spirit within. The dui Nuchada carry more. Two spirits at their core, perhaps even more. Aside from the spirit that we all have, they also contain a beast within them. A creature of immeasurable power.”
Ashyn could only stare at Jenhiro in shock as the elf continued. “Their numbers are small. A very select few in this world are left. So few in fact, that the last was sighted over a decade ago. Their numbers have become so insignificant that even my own branch began to use the words ‘dui Nuchada’ more as myth than anything that exists in our time. Amusingly fickle when you think about how long we live. A decade is not so long a time to fade into obscurity. But before that one, it had to have been almost a century between.”
“Why is it so hard to stop one?”
“The creatures look like humans, walk as humans, and talk as humans, but they carry something else within them. Something terrible, that if unleashed…” Jenhiro said, his voice fading.
Ashyn’s mind reeled. A monster. A freak. After all these winters, it all came reeling back on him. His childhood, the ostracization. The name-calling, the threatening scowls, and malicious looks he used to receive. Could Bremingham have had the right of it all along? That something malign really lurked within him?
Ashyn always knew he was different. His vast knowledge, his love of reading and learning, his ability to adapt to new languages. Xexial said he was a prodigy. That his keen intelligence was a gift. Ashyn was readily accepted within the Jasian Enclave for a time for his literacy, but he knew that wouldn’t have lasted once his anger was unleashed.
This was different though. This was like Bremingham again only stronger. People like the Bibs, or Old Tom Gregy, they only wanted to drive him away. They wanted him gone. The Ferhym wanted him dead. The very thought of that brought a tremor of anger to his guts.
He focused on that anger. On the times that it fulminated into something tangible. His anger was a weapon that he had used frequently. How it consumed him so fully that his world was basked in an ocherous light.
He always thought that the unexplainable phenomenon was magic. It had made sense growing up with a wizard of Xexial’s caliber. And maybe it still was. But magic never answered the questions of some of his other needs and abilities. His innate sense of danger. His ability to feel the presence of something near. His lust for conflict, his need for the same aggression he accused the Ferhym of minutes before. How his desire to fight at times was so extreme that he longed to shed blood. Ashyn never liked to flee from combat. He had to be driven back.
That Xexial never could explain. Nor did he ever find any tome in the Onyx Tower that answered his questions. The closest feeling he ever had to an answer was when he had sat before the statue of Rheynnaus Craëgolshien questioning what to do about his sister. That led to another thought.
Almost in a whisper he asked, “How do you know this though? How can you tell and not risk making a costly mistake? You could say anyone is a dui Nuchada.”
“The Voïre dui Ceremeia can see,” he replied tapping the corner of his eye with his finger. “With their pureness of nature and their special gifts they can see into us. See to our spirit within.
“The best time is when they are children. They are at their most pure, devoid of the societal burdens and jaded teachings that bring all cultures down. When their power lashes out and attaches to you like a tick, it can dig deeply very quickly and reveal the truth of your nature. When the Voïre get older and wiser, their gifts become tempered, and controllable, the moment to peer deep within the spirit becomes veiled, more obscure, but far from impossible. It is why we respect them and do not look into their eyes. For sometimes what they see within us can be troubling to them. Or worse, us. For we see the truth of ourselves reflected in their eyes, like mirrors to our spirit. Sometimes what we see in ourselves isn’t pretty.”
Jenhiro chuckled to himself, “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’m sure since your kin have them as well, you already know about that part,” he nodded down to Ashyn’s bracer where the platinum braid hung, “seeing as you’ve been marked by one.”
Ashyn reached down and touched the braid, looking at the earth. “It happened a long time ago.”
“You carry a great honor.”
Ashyn wasn’t thinking about the Exemplar, but further into his past, before his encounters with the Ferhym, before his time with Xexial, of when he was a small child. His whole world revolved singularly around one woman: his mother.
Xexial once told him that she was the true focal point to the secret of his heritage. So little he knew of her. Who was the woman that gave birth to him? Who was the woman that showered him in her love and educated him in ways that many did not understand? Adept at so many languages, with an intellect that was probably vastly superior to his own. But now he did know. She was dui Nuchada.
This was why she had run. This was why she left The Shemma or wherever she had been from, why she had hidden from the elves in a small human community. She had been a dui Nuchada. It all made sense now.
Words from thirteen winters earlier rang in his ears as if they were presently spoken. “I am well educated,” Stormwind had told Ashyn’s mother, “by a people who have been around for generations upon generations. I have heard the stories told. I have seen some of the signs that are in those stories.”
Stormwind had connected the dots. He had formed a true picture. The intelligent High Elf figured it out long before Ashyn even knew that he was truly different from those around him. The elf had known what his mother was, what he was, and what his sister was. He had known, and he had said nothing!
Anger flushed through Ashyn’s body reddening his olive skin. He had looked up to the elf, idolized the vagabond as a hero, and the whole time Stormwind had let him live his life in a lie, knowing what lurked beneath the surface!
They both knew! His mother had lied and fled to keep others from knowing what she was. They discovered her anyhow. How many more knew the truth of the Runes?
Did his sister know as well? That something lurked within them both, like a thief in the shadows?
Ashyn didn’t even try to deny it now. Didn’t try to push away the idea as another deranged belief of the Wild Elves. This was something he knew it to be true. Or at least close to true. There were too many facts, too many consistencies. His mother and her mysterious past, the elves and their hunt, the powers he had, the anger he always felt bubbling beneath the surface, and the desires for conflict.
He might not be a half-elf or a part-elf at all. Or at least not to the degree like Xexial had thought. There was more to his lineage then the possibility of mixed blood. Something absolute.
It was for this reason that he was hunted. It was the reason he was hated. Old Tom Gregy and his drunken rants hadn’t been far off. In fact, they might have been truer to the mark than Ashyn could have known. There was something inside of him. Whether it was something natural, an affliction or disease, or a spirit didn’t matter. If it was a spirit, the fact that it may or may not be malignant was irrelevant. What was relevant was that it made him different. It made him dangerous. And to everyone around him, it made him a monster.