Whill of Agora: Book 1 - Michael Ploof (e book reader for pc .TXT) 📗

asking, “Tarren! Have you seen Tarren?”

“Whill!”

The voice rose over the crowd and reached his ears like sweet music. Tarren came running, arms wide. Whill caught him in a tight embrace and then held him at arm’s length.

“I thought you were dead,” he said with a sigh of relief.

“So did I!” said Tarren, wide eyed.

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Rhunis lay broken. He had been slashed viciously in the gut and dropped some twenty feet. Abram nursed a nasty spear injury to his hip. Roakore bled from his side, though he insisted it was nothing more than a flesh wound. Whill also showed signs of the great battle, with half a dozen deep cuts on his body, including several claw gashes upon his shoulders. But they had won the day—they had defeated the Draggard army and, to each of them, that was all that mattered.

Abram limped over to Whill, who was busy tending to Rhunis. “How is he?”

Whill replaced the blood-stained cloth upon Rhunis’s gut with a grimace, and spoke under his breath. “Not good, Abram. His body is broken. He has lost too much blood.”

Abram nodded, but his face showed no sign of sorrow. “It will all be over soon.” He stepped aside and bowed slightly as the elf maiden stepped past and looked upon Rhunis.

Whill moved back as the elf bent over the broken man and unsheathed her sword. Thinking she was about to put an end to his misery, he stepped forward and began to object, but Abram grabbed him. “Wait!”

She raised her sword slightly and put her other hand upon Rhunis’s chest and began to chant. Whill’s eyes widened as tendrils of blue light emanated from her extended hand and encircled Rhunis. She focused her attention upon the dying man’s stomach, and the wound began to heal before Whill’s eyes. Then she ran her hand over the entirety of his body, chanting all the while, as the blue light encircled him. She remained that way for nearly twenty minutes before finally slumping down tired.

With a flash the light was gone, and the elf maiden stood with a sweat-covered brow. She gave Whill an encouraging smile said and in Elvish, “He will be alright.”

It was the same melodic voice he remembered from his dreams. Abram bowed slightly and said, “Whill, I give to you the elf princess, the daughter of Verelas and Araveal, the lady Avriel.”

Whill could not find his voice. A part of him knew he should make some profound statement, some lasting impression. But all that came to his mind—the only word that found his lips—was “Hi.”

Avriel nodded with an amused smile and glanced at Rhunis, who had sat up and was gazing around with a quizzical expression.

Avriel laid a gentle hand upon Abram’s shoulder and said, “Once I tend to those near death, I will help with your hip, Abram,” Her gaze found Whill once more as she turned to walk away.

“That was her, Abram, the woman from my dreams!”

Abram patted him on the shoulder. “I know, Whill. I know.” He gestured to the confused-looking Rhunis. “Good thing she and her brother Zerafin found us when they did.”

Rhunis looked utterly confused. “What happened? I remember falling and then...” His face twisted as he tried to recall the events that had led to his current state.

Whill helped the man to his feet. “You have just been revived from mortal wounds by the elf lady Avriel. We have won. The Draggard have been destroyed.”

Rhunis gave Whill an odd smile. “The gods be damned! That’s the second time an elf has brought me back from death. Looks like I owe them twice over!”

The three men shared a much-needed laugh—but it was cut short by a gruff voice.

“Bah! Elves and their magic. All he really needs be some good dwarf mead an’ a big-breasted dwarf women to look after ’im,” said Roakore before passing out.

Whill and Abram rushed to his side. Rolling the dazed and mumbling dwarf over, they noticed a very deep wound on his side. His shirt was soaked with blood, and it still bled freely.

“Abram, call Lady Avriel, quickly!” said Whill.

Roakore mumbled something about “Elves and their damned magics.”

Some hours later, night fell on the ruined town. Whill walked among the many wounded within the town hall. Those with mortal wounds had been healed by the two elves, but dozens more lay on makeshift cots, bruised and bloody. Whill had been working without rest for hours, tending to the many wounded, and it frustrated him that the elves would not lend their powers of healing to these men. He had not seen Avriel or her brother in hours and assumed they must need a rest as badly as he did. They had, after all, healed more than a dozen dying men.

He exited the stuffy hall and stepped out into the cool night air. Most of the fires had burned out, but dozens of torches cut through the black night. One fire burned brighter than all the rest; it was to the east and a few hundred feet from the town. Hundreds of Draggard corpses were thrown unceremoniously into the great pyre; wagon after wagon carried the bloody beasts to be destroyed.

Abram and Roakore had been helping gather the human dead, but now the work was all but done. Whill walked over and took a seat on the grass next to Roakore.

The dwarf nodded at the hall. “How they be?”

“As well as can be expected.”

Abram looked tired, and older than his fifty years. His clothes were blood-stained and his hands dirty, but he regarded Whill with the same optimism he had always shown.

“Why is it that the elves do not heal the wounded men within the town hall? Surely it is within their abilities,” Whill said.

Abram glanced to his left. “I don’t know, Whill. Why don’t you ask them?”

He followed Abram’s gaze and saw Avriel sitting alone under the shadow of the tree line. “I will,” he said with a determined nod.

He walked at first with purpose, his steps sure, his facade stern, however, the closer he got to the seated elf, the more his determination wavered. Soon he was standing before her, silently staring. She sat cross-legged with her eyes closed and her sword in both hands, the center of the blade resting upon her brow. Whill was once again struck by her beauty. He meant to speak but could not find his voice.

Avriel’s right eye opened slowly and she peered at him with a raised brow. The two stared at each other for many moments. Finally she spoke in Elvish, letting her blade fall to the side.

“Will you join me?”

He took up the spot next to her without a word, sitting cross-legged as she did. Her eyes traveled from his sheathed sword to his eyes. She smirked. “The way you first stormed over here, I assumed you had pressing business.”

Whill was taken aback. “Um, well, yes, but...what were you doing just now?”

She eyed Whill for a moment, and the scrutiny made him slightly uncomfortable.

“I was just resting, a form of what you would call sleep. We elves have different ways of recuperating.”

“Were you using the energy within your sword?”

She seemed to ponder this. “Not in the way you would imagine. You see, I am not injured, and so I did not call upon the stored energy of my blade. Rather I was sensing how much energy I had used in the fight and the healing that followed.”

Whill frowned. “You can tell how much is left?”

She sheathed her sword and turned slightly to regard him. “There is much you do not know, and you have many questions, no doubt. But for now I need to ask you a few things, if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged, wondering what in the world an elf such as Avriel would need to ask someone like himself. “Go ahead.”

She took a much more serious demeanor. “Do you know what you were doing when you fought the Draggard today?”

“What do you mean?”

“You did not fight as a mere man—pardon the expression—but rather, you were using a technique of...certain elves?”

Whill was at a loss. He remembered the fighting vividly, but he did not know what she meant.

Avriel looked frustrated. “You are a mortal man endowed with the powers of elves. You should not have been able to use those powers until you were rightly taught. But you healed the boy on the ship, you saved the infant child from death, and you healed yourself within the dwarf mountain with your father’s sword.” She held him firm in her gaze. “Whill, did you not notice that your blade felled the Draggard a bit too easily? I watched you from afar, as did my brother. You cut through their scales as if they were cloth, does that not seem strange to you?”

Whill let his gaze fall to the ground as he contemplated her question. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he had killed the Draggard with comparative ease.

“Did I used the energy within my father’s blade, as the elves do?”

She shook her head. “No. What you did is forbidden by the Elves of the Sun. What you did today is a practice of the Dark elves.”

He regarded Avriel with disbelief. “I couldn’t have, I—”

“With your first kill you stole the life energy of the slain beast, and then so with each after; each came easier; each of your enemies’ deaths gave you more strength—or rather, gave your father’s blade more strength. You did not let that power lie idle, but used it to devastating effect. You killed well over twenty Draggard today, and still your father’s blade holds their life force within.”

Whill was at a loss. “I didn’t mean to.”

Avriel eyed him for a moment and finally smiled. “I understand, but please remember: it is the way of the Elves of the Sun to only use our own energy, or that which is rightly given. To take from another in such a way is not our practice. It is a path that can only lead to evil.”

Chapter 18 Unlikely Companions

The collection of the dead continued throughout the night and into the morning. No one slept, even those who could have. For demons newly born see dreams as a playground, and with sleep comes the remembrance of screams, blood, death.

The morning sun shed light upon a village in ruin. Nearly every building had been burned to the ground, save the town hall. The ground was so red with blood in some places it looked as though the earth itself were bleeding. The bodies of men, women, and a few unlucky children littered the village, all covered with shrouds and awaiting the pyre.

So with the rising and settling of the sun upon its midday perch came the burning of the deceased. Hagus the barkeep was among them, along with more than a hundred Eldalonian soldiers, and hundreds of villagers. The survivors—hundreds of widows and children, and a few lucky men—made a wide circle around the great pyre. Some hung their heads, while others looked to the heavens proudly—but all wept. A woman took up the Eldalonian funeral song as the