#he also wore a helmet and a neck brace and refused to take either one off

[trazskil]

Siharath

“Siharath!” 

Nine days was all it took for King Girru’lm to reach Tü. Well, not him personally, but his influence was undoubtedly present. Nine days from his coronation to the time his army arrived there to terrorize our King and leave the city in shambles. 

“Siharath, where are you?” 

My mother shrieking my name in the background as I sat in the dirt in shock. My pointed ears heard perfectly, but my brain not registering all that was happening. I was about twelve back then. Helped my mother all around the home, especially when father was away at work. Just like he was then when King Girru’lm decided to introduce himself. When he got back, if he ever got back, he would have been left wondering what had happened to his home, where his family had gone. 

“Siharath! Please, please! I need you.” 

My brain finally decided to register what was happening. My head jerked in the direction of my mother’s screams and I saw just the last bit of her hair dragged into the darkness of a home that was not her own. My heart thudding against my chest and I lurched out of my sitting position and ran to my mother. I listened to her shout and slap at something metal then, as I approached the doorway, there was a loud thud, whether it was of my heart pounding in my ears or my mothers head, I was not sure. After the thud, there was a silence that seemed to last an eternity before cold laughter and the words, “I’ve always wanted to try it with an elvish woman.” spilled out of a deep voice and laughter from two others followed. 

I turned the corner to see three men, heavily armored and tinted black, leaned over my unconscious mother who lay on the dining table. The middle guard grunted while his hips gyrated in a way I’d heard about, but never actually seen. 

Hot anger filled my chest, made my heart beat so loud I was sure one of the soldiers was going to hear it. Hatred replaced wrath and I snuck inside the house and picked up a kitchen knife I found there. 

Nervous about being caught, but confident they were too busy to care, or too arrogant to think that someone like me would even try anything. I used the abilities my father taught me when we went out to hunt. I crept up on them and waited until the moment was just right, then I lept from the ground, knife in a reverse grip in my palm, and drove it into the neck of the soldier in the middle and pulled it back out. 

He stopped moving and slowly began to fall backward as I pulled on his armor. His friends, perplexed by what happened seemed to have forgotten where they were and stammered to draw their weapons. I bounded from the dead man’s body and sliced the hand of the soldier on the left and he let out a yelp as he grabbed his bleeding hand with his other and brought his head down to look at it. I took this opportunity to ram the blade into the soldier’s eye. He screamed, but not for long as I used his downward motion to bring his head to the floor and ram the knife into his brain. 

The third and final soldier stared at me, his mouth gaping and his eyes just as wide. He had his war hammer in his right hand got ready to swing before I let out a horrible scream. Something so wild and terrifying, it made every hair on my body stand straight up. The soldier dropped his weapon and ran out of the room, shouting for help. 

I let him leave and ran over to my mother who lay there, blood seeping from her temple from where the first soldier had struck her. I shook her gently, asking her to wake up. To wake up because we needed to move, we needed to get out of there while we had the chance. There was no reaction, so I began shouting at her, I poured cold water on her face, even slapped her soft cheek, something I would have never done in any other circumstance. But still, there was no response. 

I felt under her nose and above her mouth, if there was any sign of breath, it was shallow and so uneven, I wasn’t sure if there was any at all. For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. Was my mother dead? That couldn’t be, the thud I heard couldn’t have been any harder than when I fell on my face while running and I was okay. Besides, I had come to her aid. I had saved her from those awful men in black armor who were… who were they anyway? Great Mother, who were those horrible people?

Answers to that could come later. Right then, I needed to wake up my mother and help her leave. I was strong for my age, but not that strong. But what else could I do? I tried and tried to lift her, to roll her over. I tried waking her up again, pleading with her this time, pleading as she plead with me not ten minutes before. Great Mother, had it only been that long? It seemed like hours had passed since I killed the two soldiers. 

“Mother, please!” my voice sounded strained as I shouted, fighting back tears that already welled in my eyes. 

“Mother, please!” came a mocking echo from a now darkened doorway. “You’re mother’s dead, boy.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes to be able to see who was standing there. It was another soldier, but this one was different. This one wore no helmet and his armor was decorated in red strips, accenting the different places where it bent and molded to his body. His hair was blacker than the night and his voice was nasally and sharp. 

“Pick up the boy,” the soldier said to someone, most likely behind him. “Leave the bodies and burn them with the house. Last thing we need is some wendigo or vampiric infestation in our King’s new city.”

New city? What was he talking about? Tü was hundreds of years old and besides, it already had a ruler, Queen Piera. The finest in the land. The most gracious in the Land Between Worlds. Everyone knew of her, or at least that’s what father had said. I had to act fast, though, there was no way they were taking me and leaving my mother here to burn with those bastards. I picked up the war hammer the third soldier left behind and the soldier in the doorway laughed nasally before he turned to leave, shoving a thumb behind his shoulder at me. 

“Bind him,” he snarled as five armored men with different weapons filed in the small two-room house. “He’ll make for a fine slave, once he’s tamed.”

At that moment, I knew defeat was inevitable, but I wasn’t just going to stand there and just let them take me. My father, if he were still alive, if they allowed him to live in the city again, would know of my bravery. He would see that I did my best, just like he always taught me. I moved carefully toward them, my hands half up in a surrendering posture. I stepped, one foot after the other, moving closer and closer to the quiver of arrows that the man who fell on the knife in his eye had strapped to his back. I was so close now, just a couple of steps more.

In one deft movement, I had two arrows, one for each hand the heads sticking out of the bottoms of my palms. I pounced and brought my fists down onto the middle guard’s neck when they stopped no more than an inch from his flesh. Something was blocking me. Before I could even process what had happened, I was flat on my back with an armored boot in my side. Crying out in pain, I reached for the fallen arrowheads, but before my fingers were in reach, I was turned around on my belly and bound quicker than I could count to three. 

The five men laughed at me while I struggled to break free, but no amount of thrashing worked. Suddenly I was being lifted by my restraints and I yelped as they dug into the skin around my wrists and ankles and braced when I was thrown out the door and onto the thin layer of bloody mud just outside. I looked up, trying to wipe the residue from my face with my shoulder as the commander of the soldiers knelt over me. He took my face in his large hand as a smug smirk grew on his lips.

“You’re nothing but a slave now, boy. Do you hear me?” he asked.

I did not answer. I refused to look him in the eye.

“Your story,” the commander continued, “is no more than a period in the great book that will one day be scribed about King Girru’lm and his benevolent rule. Slaves are only a part of the economy, perhaps one day you will learn this truth and perhaps you will not. The truth is that I do not care either way, but you do care about your life, that is more than clear. If not your mortal body, then at least your image, your soul.” The commander paused to suck on his teeth, then stood as if to walk away.

“Your king is not mine,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of to say. “Nor will he ever be.”

The commander chuckled and turned away from me, but before he left, he said. “Perhaps not today, boy. But one day, we will all bow before his greatness.” He then signaled to his men and before I could say another word against him, a gag forced in my mouth and I was knocked unconscious. 

The next thing I remember, I woke up in a mobile in a cage toddling down a dusty road somewhere in the Tahgettah desert. They branded me a slave and sold me to Baron Rehd Eir, where I spent the next nine years acting as his puppy to beat and order around, often for the most menial of tasks. 

I realized what money does to people, especially when it is given instead of earned. The Baron and his family were all supporters of King Girru’lm and his rise to power and he showered them with gifts because of it. It showed not only on the inside of that horrible place that I can only loosely call a home but outside as well in Glosvee.

I prayed to the Great Mother daily, begged her to help me to leave that place. When no help came, she helped me realize that I needed to take matters into my own hands. Just as she does with the trees, and the rivers, and the stones of the earth; I needed to do the same in that mansion. 

So little by little, I gathered information. I paid more attention to the Baron’s habits and those of his family, who also all treated me like vermin. The Baron ate dinner by himself every night except Credling when he would go out into the city and whore around. His wife drank herself to sleep almost every night and their children, each one more dreadful than the last, would all take turns having parties and orgies in the house which I was always setting up and taking down. 

I stole just enough money to be able to pay for things that no slave should ever have. I paid for the whore that murdered Baron Rehd Eirs. I paid for the most potent alcohol to serve Lady Rehd Eirs only to drag her into such a drunken stupor that the only explanation for her fall off the balcony was accidental. And I paid for so much poison to lace every single cake and biscuit in the siblings next party that by the time I left no one ever knew what was happening. 

I walked out of that prison a free elf. Not by earning what the “generous” Baron called wages to buy my freedom, but by taking destiny into my own hands. By planting seeds where there needed to be shade and showering them in rain until they sprung up and provided solace from the heat of a beating sun. 

And now, I come to the Lighters to end what Girru’lm did to my family and so many others it is immeasurable. They will help me, as I will help them, to find the justice that has been buried so deep that no one could ever hope to find it. King Girru’lm will fall and the Barriers with him.