Chapter 644: An Elf’s Tale, Part 5
It was like the moment was frozen in an eternity-perceiving seconds in what felt like centuries. Lenora’s cries kept resounding, filling up every recess in her mind, a droning endless limbo of pain that refused to ever cease.
The pure agony in her wide, soulless eyes. Her tears streaming, her body writhing. The suffering persisted.
Seconds in centuries.
“Please stop this!” Eshwlyn screamed again.
Then suddenly a dozen rattling, a dozen slamming, windows and doors shutting, patches of grass violently ripped from the earth as the wind turned feral, vicious, a concentrated blast of air that carried both red-hooded men into the air, blown back into large pillars of stone before landing to the ground, pelleted by a heavy rain of debris, and moved no longer.
At once, Lenora fell quiet, the torture stopping... falling back limp and breathing only feebly.
“Wilvur, cease this at once!” Terra had suddenly vaulted from the balcony railings, landing in a strong dissipating gust of wind, the sleeves of her robes disintegrated with the surviving tattered strands rippling uncontrollably, as she extended a visible swirl of air from her hands, directing it towards the ring in the center. “Enough. This is enough, do you hear me? You’re taking things too far now, Wilvur!”
.....
Eshwlyn could only focus on Lenora’s barely stirring figure, and what little strength returning to her, she tried to expend it already... trying to move, trying to crawl... little by little, if only she could...
“You stay right there!” Wlivur ordered her, a warning glint flashing in his harsh red eyes, before quickly veering his sights back to the intruder across the courtyard. “Terra explain this, explain yourself. Just what exactly do you think you are doing here?”
“Putting a stop to this clear disaster before you make it any worse!” Terra shouted.
“So you’re opposing this? Opposing humanity?”
“I’m opposing you!” She said, her anger flaring in the form of greater swirling winds. “Girian, surely you’re against this too! If this Elf is the best we’ve ever found, then this idiot is on his way to killing her! He’s already put her through two failed attempts at Conversion, it’s a miracle she’s even still alive! You force her through a third-what good is she to us dead?!”
“And suddenly you care?” Wilvur sneered at her. “Suddenly the Magus, always so reluctant to get involved in my business-Terra, now you choose to act? What is this? What exactly spurred this outrage? Would you care to indulge us?”
“Girian, please,” She heaved, looking towards the old Magus in a calm silence. “Make this fool of a man see to reason. “If you don’t do anything, then her death will also be-”
“And why exactly would the life or death of a mere Elf concern me so greatly?” Girian replied. “I am only present here at His Majesty’s behest. To perform the process of Conversion, successful or otherwise-that is all I am here for. Anything more is beyond my regard.”
Terra looked even more agitated. “So you would let this happen?! This meaningless death of a great asset to humanity, you would deliberately-”
“I am not letting anything happen,” The Magus interjected, flicking an apathetic gaze towards Wilvur. “It’s his Elf, his choice, its life in his hands. However way he wishes to proceed and do as he pleases, the best I can do is advise. And just look at him, Terra, in his eyes, take a moment... does he truly look like a man that would heed any advice at the moment?”
Even more fiercer arguments then erupted, a chaotic tirade of rebuttals and insults in even harsher yells, but Eshwlyn was not listening to a single one of them. Just a few meager steps away, so close and yet so far, Lenora was rousing.
Frail excruciating movements, the little Elf managed to turn her head to the side, and in there within her vacant, glazed look, her green eyes began to glimmer with a faint glow of familiarity. Her breathing deepened, her lips quivered-Lenora moved again, and reached out a trembling arm forward.
“Sa... tur...” amidst the shouting, the fighting, the dissonance all around, Eshwlyn heard her little sister speak. “Sa...tur...”
Not begging for help. Not wanting for the torture to stop. Lenora kept saying, her mutters gradually weakening. The pain, the agony, not a word she spoke of it.
“Sa’tur.”
She asked.
“Sa’tur.”
She pleaded.
“I’m sorry.”
She repeated.
“I HAD ENOUGH!” Wilvur’s voice boomed like clapping thunder, no longer hiding the anger flushing red in his scowl. “Enough Terra! I will not let anyone, especially not you, stop this Conversion from happening! Not when I am so close!”
“Wilvur, you-!” Terra took a single step forward, the concentrated white gale in her hands growing shriller, but then halted at once-as Wilvur rose a single finger towards her, wide, demented crimson eyes string back.
“If you harm me in any way, you even take one more step forward, I will personally see it through that you and your entire family will be branded as traitors to humanity! I will make sure myself you will be hunted to the ends of the earth if you run. To impede the coming glory of mankind, to even think it! What would your father say?! Tell me, Terra, what would your brother think of you?”
There was the most murderous look rippling past Terra’s expression. Her hands were shaking, her eyes trembling... but her boldness wavered, her winds dwindled... and welling tears forming in the bright blue of her eyes, she hung her head towards the ground... and did no longer.
Wilvur nodded at her begrudging compliance, before whirling around again towards Eshwlyn. They locked eyes, and she very nearly cowered away from him. He looked like a different man now.
A dangerous man.
“Now,” He heaved, keeping his gaze tethered to hers, as he threw an arm out towards Lenora. An imposing sensation manifesting, growing, a single flex in his fingertips, his hand forming into a claw-and Lenora’s screams began to fill the once more, louder, shriller than ever-her body contorting into all horrific manners unsightly. “One last time, your hand, Eshwlyn...”
Then he extended his other arm out towards her, asking, demanding-the circle around them shifting and glowing the brightest blue. Eshwlyn felt panic smothering her thoughts, the lingering pain paralyzing her.
Then Lenora screamed again, spurring her.
She lifted a hand.
“ESHWLYN, NO!” Terra screamed, too late her words echoing in the air.
Like fate embracing, like death seizing, her life fading, Eshwlyn felt a sudden cold shooting through her, grasping at her...
As her hand, her life, fell upon his.
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