Cronica Acadia Page 21

  Ashlyn walked toward the magnificent she-elf. She had a friendly smile and looked young, but something told Ashlyn she had an ancient soul. She was dressed in a white fur bikini with white leather knee-high boots and straps around her neck and, wrists and one on her thigh holding a dagger. She wore her dark hair up, which gave her an aristocratic look despite the bawdy outfit. Her eyes were as green as leaf, and she stood with hands on hips looking like a mighty Amazon.

  “I am Ciar,” said the she-elf. “I am the druid principal of Templa Taur. You seek training?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it shall be my pleasure to train you.”

  “Thank you,” said Ashlyn.

  Ciar walked around Ashlyn. “You will need to lose that metal dagger. And silk is too fine for our purposes. You will need to lose your clothing.”

  “Right now?”

  “No,” said Ciar with a smile. “Not right now.”

  “Where are we?”

  “We are in my home.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Ashlyn was in her chair, and sitting across from her was Ciar. “This is the room that your body occupies,” said Ciar. “Now close your eyes again.” And then both were back in the cavernous, dark chamber. “And this area exists in the joining of our minds. It is where you will begin your training.” Then they were on a frozen mountainside. They were in a deep gurgling swamp. They bobbed up and down in the cold waters of a vast ocean. They stood in a great fire-belching desert. Each venue contained all the sensations of reality. Hot, cold, motion, the smell of brimstone. They were back in the black chamber.

  “When you have proven yourself in the realm of our joined minds, you will be tested in the field,” continued Ciar. She took Ashlyn’s face. “You are quite beautiful.” Ashlyn could only blink in response. “You must use this advantage on the battlefield. Your enemies will give you quarter, even if it is slight and unconscious. Your allies will protect and aid you more than they would their own brothers.

  “I will teach you naturalism. More than the innate elven naturalism but the perfectly attuned naturalism of the druid. I will teach you the healing ways. You came here with three friends. Had you given any thought to what choice you would make if you could only save one?” The question chilled Ashlyn. “Or which one you would let die so that you and the other two may live?

  “No,” said Ashlyn somberly.

  “Hesitation may cost all of you your lives. You will learn the Hierarchy of Life. From the righteous sapiens at the top down through the sacred animals through the expendable animals and the plants to the malicious animals and finally to the unrighteous sapiens unworthy of life at all. And I will teach you metamorphosis. But I can tell already that that will not be difficult for you. You look ready to pounce even now. First you will learn some defensive skills. All other training is useless if you are killed. There is still time for a test today if you are ready.”

  “I am.”

  “There is no chance of you dying during this stage of training, but if you are careless, you will suffer pain equivalent to natural conditions.” And on Ashlyn’s look of apprehension, she added, “Try not to be distressed. You are very strong in mind and body, and I have every faith in you. Shall we begin?”

  “Yes,” said Ashlyn, forcing a smile. They stood deep in a cold, darkened cave. An ogre skinned a dead tyger. Ashlyn backed up, clattering some bones, and found her back against the rock wall. The ogre noticed her and grunted his displeasure. He stood to his full ten feet and picked up a spiked mace as large as Ashlyn. He charged her. “You cannot defeat such a monster,” said Ciar. “You must evade him and escape his dwelling.” The ogre raised his mace to strike her.

  LVII

  Dangalf and Nerdraaage smoked and drank on the inn’s balcony. A few other tables were occupied by quiet elves who drank and laughed. One strummed a lute during lulls in his table’s conversation. “This place is pretty cool for an elf town,” said Nerdraaage. “I could live here,” he said belching.

  “The elves might have something to say about that,” said Dangalf.

  “Everyone burps.”

  “That one had reverb.”

  They were both quite buzzed when Ainnir approached and set a small clear bowl on the table with a large insect in it. “Did she just put a bug on the table?” asked Nerdraaage. Dangalf was certain it was the funniest rhetorical question he had ever heard.

  Ainnir just smiled and put a leaf in the bowl. As it munched on its leaf, the insect gave off a warm, glowing light. Dangalf picked up the bowl and studied the hungry insect through the glass. “No fire in Templa Taur,” said Dangalf. “Not even for candles.”

  “I was asked to give you a message,” said Ainnir.

  “Yes, my dear,” said a flirty Dangalf.

  “Well, I was asked to tell you that your friend is coming, and she wanted you to know that if you laughed at her, she was going to push you both from the balcony.”

  “Thank you,” said Dangalf. And then to Nerdraaage, “Well this should be interesting.”

  Ainnir departed and they saw her nod to someone out of sight. That someone was Ashlyn, who now approached them with a wry smile on her face. They immediately understood what she meant by her admonishment. The tanner had prepared her a fur bikini from the dead wolf complete with ears tied onto her head like a bonnet and a wolf’s tail swinging from the bikini bottom. Nerdraaage turned red with drunkenness and his heroic efforts not to laugh. “So what are we not supposed to laugh at?” Dangalf asked, and Nerdraaage burst out laughing.

  “Did my warning mean nothing to you?” Ashlyn asked. “What are you drinking?” She took Dangalf’s goblet and drank from it. “It’s good. What is it?”

  “Mead,” said Dangalf as he motioned to Ainnir to return.

  “It’s delicious,” she said. “Elves just do everything better.”

  Meanwhile Dymphna straddled Doppelganger on her bed and they kissed enthusiastically. “Never could I have imagined it would be like that,” sighed Dymphna.

  “It was great,” said a mellow Doppelganger, happy not only for his brain’s recent release of endorphins but happy that all of his anatomy was proportional to his large frame.

  “It was like, like,” she was confounded to compare it to any of her previous life events.

  “Like running across water,” suggested Doppelganger.

  “It was even better than that,” she said before kissing him again. She only broke the kiss off when another important thought came to her. “I know I will see you again,” she smiled.

  “How about tomorrow?”

  She stopped smiling. “But the royal guards will be here soon. My time being like my unfettered sister Ashlyn will come to an end.”

  “How can they stop us? You’re the princess.”

  “You would think so. I could defy them, but that would be reported to my father.”

  “The king?”

  “Yes. I do not wish to defy my family any more than I already have,” she said. She began to cry and lay on the bed next to him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, turning toward her.

  “I have betrayed my people. The only reason I am alive is because my Templar sacrificed himself for a tradition I have betrayed for lust.”

  “I don’t believe it was just lust,” he said.

  “There is no reason for what we did but lust or love.”

  “There’s your answer. It was not because of lust.”

  She looked up at him. “Yes,” she said. “I do love you.” And she kissed him.

  “And your vision that we would see each other again? You are not worried that you will undo this prophecy by telling me?”

  “It was not a vision,” she said with glistening eyes. “It was my heart that told me.”

  LVIII

  Dangalf, Ashlyn, and Nerdraaage returned to their room for the night. Dangalf collapsed on his bed, and Ashlyn watched Nerdraaage empty his rucksack on his bed. She
snatched a small picture from his bed.

  “Who is this man, and why do you have his picture?” she asked.

  “It’s Icil. I liked it and he gave it to me. And it’s not a picture, it’s an aspect.”

  Nerdraaage took back the aspect and tilted it before Ashlyn. The ingeniously carved image looked as if Icil were turning his head as Nerdraaage tilted it.

  “This is Icil?” she said taking the aspect back from Nerdraaage. “He’s gorgeous!”

  “He is?” said Dangalf suddenly.

  “I guess,” she said. “For a dude.” And she tossed the aspect back onto Nerdraaage’s pile.

  “Too bad you didn’t know he used to be good looking or maybe you would have been nicer to him,” said Nerdraaage.

  “I was nice to him,” she defended. “It’s just that he was creepy.”

  “Creepy?” asked Nerdraaage. “Because of what he did or because he has a messed-up face?

  “The second one,” she said now lying in her bed.

  Dangalf stood and took the aspect. It was a photorealistic image of an unscarred Icil made by a dwarven craftsmen. Photography would not be allowed in this world. He knew that from reading about the Schism and its restrictions on invention.

  LIX

  The Sundering not only destroyed the world as it was known but destroyed the parity and friendship that had existed between the Red, White, and Blue Schools.

  The Red School is always the most celebrated of schools because it was the first and most important school. If there were no Red School, then there would not have been civilization, and the preeminence of sapien life in this world would be in doubt. Though there is talk of the White School or the Blue School surpassing the Red School, it has always been the Red School that defends civilization from the periodic darkness that inflicts this world. And should it ever come to pass that the White School or the Blue School should ever permanently displace the Red School, it must always be remembered that it is only because they stand upon the shoulders of the Red School heroes who have come before. Nay, it is not a question that the Red School came first, only which of their ancient traditions is older, the hunter or the warrior? And though boasts abound on both sides over which noble occupation first set sapien life on the path to civilization, it is likely that the first Red School heroes were both hunter and warrior before specialization of classes became what it is today.

  Ten thousand years ago, it was the Red School that held off the forces of darkness that existed in those first three hundred days after the Sundering. And they did so at great cost. It is said nine sapiens died for every one that lived during this time.

  And when the darkness lifted, it was the Blue School that built homes and towns and bridges and ports and wagons and axes and plows. It was craftsmen of that bluest race that finished the excavation of that wonder we now know as Bran Keep.

  And the White School underwent the most startling transformation during this same period, when many of the priests of the now-departed gods turned to learning the secrets of their powers. And the most heretical of these ancient priests suggested that the gods were not of a superior nature but simply “those who had come before.” And their powers were not manifest, only learnt by sapiens who had the advantage to exist before human, dwarf, and elf did.

  And it so happens that in time the Blue School and White School did work together to create the great portal. And it also happens that Blue and White School sapiens of the otherworld Europa did also build a portal, and that when completed there became a doorway between the worlds. And there were crossings by both from one world to the other and back. But this doorway had remained open for only a short time when the Schism began over which school might become preeminent.

  The seers of Acadia envisioned the unchecked progression of the Blue School as being the path to a world befouled of smoke and noise and blinding light even in the darkest night and eventually machina begetting machina leading to the purposelessness of life that comes from lack of struggle and perhaps even enslavement of sapiens by their own creations.

  And the seers of Europa saw the unchecked progression of the White School as being the path to mortals unlocking the powers of the gods, and those destructive powers being wielded by those who still contained the sapien weaknesses of pettiness, jealousy, anger, and vanity, and those imperfect sapiens possessing knowledge that could kill an army in the tapping of a staff.

  And the most belligerent of the White and Blue School supremacists tried to sway the Red School to their cause, each warning that if the other school were to gain supremacy, it would lead to the eventual demise of the other schools and perhaps sapien life itself. The Red School members, gifted above all else in instantly and fanatically taking sides in conflict, wisely and surprisingly remained neutral on the subject.

  And so each sapien chose to live in a world dominated by the White School or the Blue School, and those who favored the Blue School chose Europa, and those who preferred the White School chose Acadia. And some who preferred the Blue School stayed in Acadia with the understanding that they would not be able to pursue machina that threatened the sapien role as Master of This World. And now the Blue School in Acadia is greatly restricted in their creations. And they are forbidden building even that for which plans already exist, and they craft with many restrictions as set forth in the Prohibitions on Invention and Reproduction. And that voluminous listing is sometimes simply abbreviated as: Wheels not Gears. Fire not Steam. Catapults not Cannons.

  And there were those who preferred the White School who did choose to stay in Europa, and they did so with the understanding that they would always be viewed with suspicion and hatred and would forever be persecuted and killed when they would practice to steal magic from that world’s gods. And so great was Europa’s fear of the White School that it was seen that they did destroy their portal to Acadia, forever ending corporeal transport between the two worlds.

  Cronica Acadia

  LX

  Doppelganger entered the room, and Dangalf and Nerdraaage cheered their conquering roommate. He dropped his armor and weapons and sat facing his friends. “Back so soon?” said Dangalf.

  “The royal guards are coming,” said Doppelganger. “So I left by the front door before I had to slip out a bedroom window a hundred feet in the air.”

  “So you hit that?” asked Nerdraaage excitedly.

  Doppelganger opened his mouth to answer but stopped when he saw Ashlyn looking at him. “I’ll tell you later,” said Doppelganger. “What are you wearing, Ashlyn?”

  “Go ahead and laugh,” she said.

  “Laugh? You look great.”

  “Thank you,” she smiled. “At least I have one nice friend.”

  “Didn’t I say you looked great?” asked Dangalf.

  “No.”

  “We were too busy laughing at her,” said Nerdraaage.

  “You’re not princess material,” said Ashlyn to Doppelganger. “You should go out with my trainer. She’s hot and she kicks ass.”

  “He’s got an elf,” said Nerdraaage. “Why don’t you fix me up with her?”

  “You’re married, and that’s not even my best reason.”

  “I’m only married once.”

  Doppelganger picked up the lamp and looked closely at it. “How do you turn off the bug?”

  “Drape that cloth over it,” said Dangalf. Doppelganger dropped his boots on the floor and settled into his own bed. Dangalf leaned toward Doppelganger. “So? What happened?”

  Doppelganger leaned toward Dangalf’s bed. “You wouldn’t believe it,” said Doppelganger. Nerdraaage lay in his bed between them and listened wide eyed. “She takes me to the royal house and kicks the maid out. And then she pulls me upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and we sit on the bed next to each other. She said ever since she was a schoolgirl and saw a schoolbook with humans in it, she’d always wondered what it would be like to kiss one. So, perfect opportunity, I lean over and start making out with her. Then she says, ‘Why don’t
we take a bath together?’ and pulls me into the bathroom and she takes off all of my clothes. And we’re still making out, and we get into the tub, and she starts rubbing me down with oils and these spices…”

  Ashlyn burst out laughing. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I wasn’t trying to listen. Elf ears.”

  “And what was so amusing?” asked Doppelganger.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’ll be quiet.”

  “No, please,” insisted Doppelganger.

  “It’s just that, something I’ve noticed, and it’s just that in the time we’ve been in this world I’ve grown increasingly sensitive to it…”

  “Yes?”

  “Elves don’t like the way humans smell,” she said. Dangalf reflexively smelled his own armpit.

  “What are you saying?” asked Doppelganger. “We smell like animals?”

  “No,” she said. “We like the way animals smell.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” said Nerdraaage. “Elves think their shite don’t stink.”

  Lying down in his bed, Doppelganger was glad he had been interrupted. He decided he would not tell them any more than he had. He did not want to cheapen what he had shared with Dymphna by describing it in a way that demeaned her to his friends, and that is the only way men can describe such things to other men. He was also self-conscious about telling the story in front of Ashlyn even though the Ashlyn of the old universe had more ribald stories and jokes than the other Keepers combined. Doppelganger did not have Dangalf’s perfect recollection, but his memory of Dymphna was pristine, and he relived it happily as he drifted off to sleep.

  LXI

  Someone knocked on the room door much too early and continued to knock until Dangalf got up. “So much for elf ears,” he complained.

  “I hear it,” said Ashlyn. “I’m just ignoring it.”

  Dangalf opened the door to the sight of a spiffy soldier in the oak tree tabard of the elven royal house. Suddenly Dangalf felt wretched in his slept-in clothes and bed hair. “Her Highness summons those who escorted her,” said the soldier. The others were rising quickly behind Dangalf.