Chapter 632: An Elf’s Tale, Part 3
The wind was picking, carrying, and blowing the sails into large, fluttering swells that sent the ship hurtling faster into rougher tides.
To and fro, the deck rocked and buckled, sending anything that wasn’t tethered securely plunging into the rapid depths below, and it was as if the heavens themself were screaming down at them, the tumultuous clap of thunder enough to overpower every other deafening noise that brimmed within the chaos of what was once a rather peaceful night.
But inside her, an even fiercer dissonance was brewing. Eshwlyn just couldn’t... fathom it. There was just simply no means to comprehend it, that word, that emotion-love She understood loyalty, obedience, concern, and as well as respect even to some certain exceptions... but love?
An Elf in love with something so abhorrent, so despicable... so... so... human... that just can’t be... the most foolish, foulest thing she’s ever heard... foolish... so utterly foolish...
Eshwlyn yelled, charged forward, but she had no actual reason to. It was anger, pure and bitter vitriolic rage fueling her movements, the swings of her sword unrelenting, wild, and TIlina could do nothing but repel and evade, the large splatters of rain and ocean puddles formed across the deck sounding her slow retreat against the sudden terrifying shower of strikes.
A flash of lightning briefly illuminated the scene, the harsh growls and grunts of the blinding night finally given form, and Eshwlyn’s expression was greatly distorted, ferocious, her clothes soaked to the bone, with strands of white hair splattered across her face, offering only slitted glimpses of the deranged look in her startling green eyes.
It was a wave of confusing anger that not even she herself could fully understand. But this mention of love, and the sincerity that Tilina spoke with it... it felt like a betrayal, a complete blasphemy to the ways of the world.
.....
To be this hopefully infatuated, obsessed with something as abhorrent as a human? And furthermore... to be this deeply and utterly in love with somebody... someone such as him?
“You are a complete fool!” Eshwlyn felt her wrath guide her sword, missing Tilina by mere inches above, slicing the empty air with enough force and speed to produce a momentary gap in the pouring rain. She forge forward, attack after attack with each blow only continuing to be narrowly evaded. “Your life, your very freedom rendered null! And you give this as your reason?! A delusion! An idiocratic fantasy!”
“I don’t expect you to understand!” Tilina shouted as a high, hefty wave fell over them both. “I don’t need your convincing, your understanding! My reasons are solely my own, and I will not allow you to make light of them!”
“Why not?! How can I not think you a fool! After everything he has done to us, to our kind! Have you blinded yourself to it? Or have you deluded yourself into rendering this notion non-existent? Just as you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you even harbor any semblance of endearment to such a despicable-!”
“DO NOT CALL HIM THAT!”
Suddenly, with a plummeting blow completely repelled, Eshwlyn felt her feet lift the ground, grazed sharply by the piercing force of the wind, before colliding the back of her head hard into one of the masts with a splintering thud, a large patch of its timbered surface indented and cracked into large wooden fissures.
Such force, such durability to withstand such an impact and remain standing. The entire ship had to be carved out of Valenia wood. It had to be.
There was the sound of sloshing, of running, and Eshwlyn lunged away in time, narrowly avoiding the blast of an explosion, a cloud of droplets of splintered wood fell away, revealing a large crater of ruptured flooring from where she once stood, and Tilina bent down at its gouged center, her blades embedded deep, missing its intended kill.
“Just what is it do you know about Master, hm? Or about me? Do you’ve any idea? Any at all, Eshwlyn... aside from what you only see at a surface glance?
Eshwlyn could only hear in faded echoes, only see in smudged, blurry sights. Tilina was slowly rising up again, the deluge of rainfall clattering incessantly on her plated silver armor, her hair like wisps and splatters of flowing blood.
“You don’t, do you? Nothing! You know nothing! You understand nothing! So do not dare come to me spouting your presumptions, your ignorance-as if I had not thought the same as you before! Do you not think I know of his cruelty? Or his vile savagery? Who was it that had warned you before? Who was it do you think that had attempted to spare your sister from this fate?! Do you think I had allowed her a chance to run that night because of mere complacency?! I know more of Master’s ruthlessness than you ever will!”
Tilina spurred forward once again and forcing through the throbbing agony all over, Eshwlyn raised her blade, refastening her grip on the hilt that was slowly being loosened by rain and fatigue, and met her charge with a slash that locked the both of them in another battle of attrition.
“And yet at the same time, I know more of Master’s kindness than you deliberately refuse to see!” Tilina told her, her breath steady over Eshwlyn’s heavy grunts and heaves. “You only revile him because we are made to want to! In your eyes, you see a man, the embodiment of all you despise in humanity.”
“He is!”
“But what is he to humanity, exactly? Do they see him as a monster the same as you? Do they glower at him? Curse his existence at the very sight of him? Would he be made a rule over a domain if he was? Would he bother counting the bodies of the many that died under his name? Grief alongside the families of his fallen soldiers if he was? Plead reason with an escaped Knight at risk of his own life? When in conquest, does he not offer the chance of surrender first? Were the battles he sent us in of no meaning other than in the name of mindless cruelty?”
“That does not absolve him of the cruelty he does exhibit!” Eshwlyn retorted, breaking free, swiping twice, before colliding again in another locked stance. “His treatment of Elves, the many he has abducted for his collection, where is the kindness in that?!”
“How are we any different, I ask you?! We kill indiscriminately! It is ingrained in our very being. Or are you yourself clean? Are your hands alone not sullied by undeserving deaths? Tell me then, lie to me! Plead your innocence to this fact!”
For a fleeting second, an image flashed inside Eshwlyn’s head, a grisly visage of skin and bones, of a voice, a desperate cry for help... and the life leaving
from his eyes, as she granted him only the embrace of death.
She thought of Cale.
“I thought not,” Tilina said when she did not speak. “And yet, unlike us depraved beings, Master inflicts his cruelty not without purpose! It is not mindless, spontaneous, or a form to attain a sort of morbid satisfaction! He breaks us, molds us, converts us for the sole betterment of his kind! When we kill, when we lash our brutality upon others, can we truly say the same?
“Are you saying we deserve this kind of treatment?!”
“I am saying that we must be grateful that it is not any worse when it so easily could be, Eshwlyn!” The ship gave the most violent tug so far, stumbling them both away from one another, struggling to maintain their balance against the wet floorings. “At least this way, as servants, as Knights, even without the privilege of freedom and free will, we still have a purpose-true purpose! Not this stagnant cycle of killing and breeding for centuries as we do now.”
Eshwlyn then finally noticed the swarm of beady eyes lurking from above the open hatches. The Hermelian crew had awoken from all the ruckus and was timidly watching their violent spat, and amidst the crashing waves and storms, was filling the air with a harsh cacophony of their melodies. She ignored them steadying herself, veering her gaze back to the only pair of eyes that mattered... gleaming gold and furious at a distance.
“You have convinced yourself of this?” Eshwlyn asked, the edge of her lips dripping droplets. “Rooted in your delusion, your justifications... you will not see to any other reason?”
“Do you still really believe I’ve always thought like this?!” Tilina blared, outraged, then instantly charged, scattering torrents of water into the air, her every attack echoing with her words. “That I was not once like you?! Disloyal and disobeying?! It took years of watching! of learning! convincing! to even alter my outlook in the slightest. And it was only together at Master’s side that I finally learned to see otherwise!”
Her strength was rapidly succumbing to exhaustion throughout their brawl, until finally, it happened-a mistake, a lapse in judgment-and with a thrown grip, Eshwlyn’s sword flew far beyond her reach. Now vulnerable, she was forced on the defensive, evading and withdrawing back against the Knight’s forward march.
“For my misconduct, he was cruel. When I would not obey him, he would be merciless! The pain he would inflict! But it was not without purpose, I realize that now,” Tilina doubled her efforts, her attacks faster, stronger, tearing fabric and even slicing skin. “So easily, he could make my suffering unbearable, but he instead chose otherwise. Master was patient with me, more patient than most. When others would have disposed of me, it was only he that persisted.”
Eshwlyn’s sword lay scattered and tossed askew on the other end of the ship, and in a desperate break for it, Eshwlyn threw herself between her blades, sliding the slippery wet floorings and avoiding her slices, impeded on every step by Tilina’s advancement, all the while, still spouting her words into the thunder and light.
“One day, he admitted to me that he wishes to cultivate a Knight unlike any other. A great Knight, one without a single equal, that he can keep at his side forever. He told me he had expressed this same desire to every other Elf he had taken under his fold, and they all could not satisfy his great ambition. That I was a hundred out of a thousand more that would surely fail him too. I spent my whole life prior to killing and eating without aim, and before it was all I knew to do. But then, hearing his words, enduring the punishments that I had... I suddenly realized that for the first time... I was being given a purpose for my existence.”
“Enslavement!” Eshwlyn snarled, flung back to the ship’s railings, and felt the breeze of the waves below her as she teetered between the edge, weaving through blows. “That is the purpose he has given you!”
“A purpose, nonetheless!” Tilina barked back, following a twirl of her swords with a kick that sent Eshwlyn careening back to the center deck. “Better than running! Better than fighting and killing and living meaninglessly my whole life! Slowly, I vowed to myself to prove him wrong! That I was better, that I am better than any other! And I had!”
Eshwlyn tried scrambling back to her feet, but with another disorienting blow to the gut, was instead sent crashing in an explosion of water and wood on the other end of the ship.
“I improved myself, I learned, I fought, I was not aided, I did not receive help as you had! And one day he took notice of my efforts. I did not know what it was like to be praised prior to that day. In the encampment, no one batted an eye at me, nobody even dared acknowledge me. But he did, he was the only one that noticed me, that saw me... that praised me... and when he left, he told me that he would be expecting more from me... and that perhaps... he might have been wrong, after all.”
From above, Eshwlyn heard the watery ripples of her march, saw in the flash of the skies, the glint of both swords ready to plummet, and in an act of desperation flung both her hands forward, feeling the sharp searing slice as she caught both blades within trembling, bleeding fists.
“That is your reasoning?” She said, catching a flicker of surprise in Tilina’s expression, and slowly rose back up to her feet, both blade’s edges still tight in her grip. “You sought approval? affirmation? That has become your sole reason for being?!”
“Approval from a human!” The Knight bellowed back, struggling to tug her swords back. “Have you heard of such a thing? I suppose not. It is only he that sees! Only he that believes! With time, I had come to earn his trust. With time, I had grown closer to his side! Just as you have done now! And it was at his side, that I learned more of the many sides to him! The many sleepless nights spent for the betterment of his people! That if for his own kind, he must be an abhorrent monster to others in spite of his earnest nature, then so be it! He will bear the worst vices of humanity upon his own shoulder if it meant his people’s continued prosperity! That is who he is! That is who you refused to see!”
“No, that is only what you want to see!”
“So be it, then!” her roar followed thunder, and with a surge of strength, Tilina reclaimed her blades, dripping and glimmering with deep red. Eshwlyn only had seconds to react, seizing both her wrists and halting the plunge of both swords by mere inches. “I believe in what I see! And I see a man, representing both the worst and the best that mankind has to offer! Compared to him, what are you?! what am I?! Does it seem really that strange to you, that over time, I would grow invested in his cause?! That with kindness, praises, and offering me newfound purpose... I would not grow wanting to care for him more beyond just the loyalty of a mere Servant?!”
“Then you are a fool!” Eshwlyn screamed again. “An Elf cannot love a Human! It is inconceivable!”
Then, stricken again with the same rage as before, she threw both their arms into the air, the Knight’s grip failing, and as both swords plummeted, she barely caught the end of one by the hilt, while Tilina took hold of the other.
All hopes for a peaceful resolution had diminished, and the sky and sea only affirmed it so, continuing to pelt and crash all manners of disarray, as both Elves lost all sense of restraint. Their attacks powerful, their cries rippling, the ship buckling and bending under the overpowering heft of their blows.
“It was me! I, that was meant to be forever at his side!” Tilina yelled, all composure lost and scattered in her wild, frantic strikes. “Then you came along! You took him from me! His attention, his praises, his smiles! You stole it all!”
“You are deluded!” Eshwlyn repeated again, falling upon deaf ears, subdued by an even fiercer shout.
“He told me I was to be his greatest! His best! The only one he ever needed! And it was all I ever wanted! The reason I bore the agony of conversion, I wanted it, if for him, if to grant his one ambition-I would do anything! And you uprooted it! My one wish, my one desire, my one purpose, and you-!”
Something happened that Tilina never expected.
A charge forward, Eshwlyn deliberately taking the brunt of a strike, the skewer of a blade deep through her, spurred by desperation, exhaustion, and using that brief moment’s confusion to yell, to shout, seizing Tilina by the throat, and with brute strength alone, sent her crashing straight into the flooring.
There was a shockwave that echoed far, and as the reverberating of the ship’s foundations slowly waned to a standstill, there was a bigger, deeper crater on top of the deck, and in its fissured center... was the barely stirring, unmoving body of Tilina.
Eshwlyn collapsed, in relief, exhaustion, and agony... keeling over in front of the gaping crater, pulling the blade out of her waist and throwing its bloodied edge over to the hole where its other pair lay limp beneath slowly rousing fingers.
“You cannot love... a human...” She muttered again, speaking to no one, maybe speaking solely to herself. “A human... cannot love you...”
Her consciousness was starting to fade.
She might have already been dreaming, might have already been asleep, or perhaps even already dead... hearing that voice... hearing those words...
“The greatest Knight was all I ever wanted to be...” came a feeble whisper so nearly subdued by the crying skies. “To attain his approval, to have him see me as more than what I am now... to maybe have him care for me, as I have him... to have him love me... my one and only purpose for living...”
A faltering breath, signalling a winner, a loser... and as well as the end of the fight.
Eshwlyn didn’t know whose.
“And you took that from me...”
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