The 9 Elven Heroes

I managed to be 52 years old without kill anyone. In ever was involved in a fight that ended with more than a bleeding nose and hurt feelings. I never spanked anyone, women or man, adult or child, wasn’t particularly found of dogs but I never kicked one. I did server the army, one year, nothing like cutting edge of special forces.

Don’t believe that makes me a coward. Few time when I was robbed, I lost my watch or my wallet instead of fight for those things. That was the normal, socially acceptable thing, in my circumstances back them.

From a certain perspective, perhaps I was a coward; Because I was more emotionally distant from people than the average human being. Specially past my 20’s and more so as I aged. That count as cowardice, again, from a certain perspective. Is also and habit, and a choice that was my right to make. Besides, in the end, there are much worse things for a person to be.

All men at least have fantasies about living a violent life, details aside. Comes with the territory. Given a chance, most of us choose not to. Or, maybe, that depends of the chance.

What the chances, and the rewards are. In a given time and place.

The more this year advanced, clearer was becoming to me that this question: “will I choose to live a violent life in this world or not?” had entered the field of academic questions. It was going straight into that field without look back.

Those orcs back in the mountains, that was only the first clue. Actually, perhaps the second. However, you could still think the incident with the magic-assassins was like an **** in a big city of Earth. The situation you usually hope to get away by cooperating with the person holding the weapon. Accept the loss of a material property of minor importance, and forget the incident.

I saw those orcs killing people, casually and for no other reason than their satisfaction in doing so. More important, more shocking perhaps, no one above 15 years old in that merchant caravan was surprised, shocked or revolted by that. It was a fact of life.

Humans kill orcs just as casually. This is a world where this is the norm. Exceptions are surrounded by explanations and rules about how to deal with them. What is normal, is not.

The normal civilized standards gradually turned into war mentality. As people realized that was not a mere conflict about borders anymore. All signs indicated a large war growing under the surface of institutional normality and fatalist humour.

My first 9 years in this world had being blessed by peace, for the most part. I had enjoyed a loving family. Sane and responsible parents who did their absolute best to protect and guide me and my siblings. The village where we lived was small and rural, close to a border, but was comfortable, clean, organized. There was some poverty, certainly families doing worse than ours, but nothing I could by any stretch of the definition call “misery”.

A look to Hydra Cross confirmed to me what I had been guessing for the best part of that journey. There was misery in this land.

Somewhere to the South, in this Continent, a war had being burning for decades. Involving couple dozen nations. This war was not at the border of our nation but was close enough to affect us. National borders are never perfect isolation measure, on Eaeth. Here, they are not even build with the intention to be. All vigilance is intended to stop enemy armies, deal with bandits and barbarian invaders. Mostly by killing those they happen to caught by luck.

People moving around don’t get any help, necessarily, from authorities. Outsiders by default cannot expect any kindness, much less claim rights, in principle. The other side of that coin is that there is no intentional effort to control movement of small number of people, in and out nations.

Local authorities deal with strangers as they feel like. Non-humans, in this nation, they may feel like killing without asking questions. If there is no obvious reason to not do so.

Normal people, even barbarians and miserable peasants displaced by war. Usually, get a little more compassion. As a matter of common sense, not even considering treaties, rules of hospitality, religious bonds, guilds bonds, and other exceptional circumstances.

Hydra Cross is a merchant hub. A point of encounter for caravans that cross the Continent, large Merchant Houses do have special permissions and rights that came with them. They also, pay specific taxes direct to the Royal Treasure that make them theoretically untouchable as far as regional authorities are concerned. The chaotic nature of places like that, with a lot of people passing through all the time, mean those places attract and concentrate the miserable and the homeless, those who came from far away and have nothing particularly legal to do here.

Slavery is legal in our nation, but strictly regulated. Takes a Magistrate Sentence or one from the local Lord to make someone ****. Legally speaking. You can kill people and expect less attention from authorities than what you get if you put then in chains and **** them to work to you illegally. Of course, Royal Authorities, like the Black Knights can sentence people to slavery as well.

All this control is not only to preserve the right of freedom of innocent individuals. It is actually, first and foremost, to preserve the harmony of society. Economic balance, offer, demand, that sort of thing.

In practice, people tend to look in the other way when those reduced to slavery illegally are few, have no bonds in our nation, speak the idiom poorly. And, specially, if they are non-humans from some particularly unpopular race. Realistically, I believe is good for the nations in this world not to allow outsiders to feel too safe in their countryside. Freedom of movement brings some good things, but it also has costs and creates some danger for the national populations.

Letting the locals decide how friendly or unfriendly they want to be with outsiders from other nations allow the best possible accommodation of local and national interests. I was safe, relatively speaking, as a national. Travelling in my own country. Well, “save” being a relative term, mind you.

For those who had taken refuge in this country, with no money and little to offer in exchange for shelter, Crosses like that are the safest accessible places to be.

There is an unwritten rule that people can sleep in the streets in places like that. Not worry about being arrested without cause or slaved without a sentence. Crime, ****, desperation, all that is common and visible enough at first glance. Still, this is the place to be if you don’t have the right to be somewhere else in this nation. At least here, no authority is likely to ask you who you are or what is your business in this place.

I followed indications from people I met in the caravan and got myself a room in a sort of pension. Was not fancy, but was supposed to be a place where a 10 years old boy could sleep, eat, and keep its things for two or three weeks.

Building was beautiful, there was a fountain with drinkable water in the middle an hexagonal garden right in the middle of the building. External walls where thick and there was no windows to the street in the first or second floors. Only in the third floor, and those happened to be narrow.

A common architectural choice in this region possibly to balance the absence of walls around the Crossing itself.

As soon as I got myself a verbal contract, paid my room for two weeks, and got my father’s letter to his mentor sent. My next stop was the statue on the hearth of the Crossing.

You see the thing from far away, in a otherwise flat land. Long before you see any building. It is huge.

Looks like a dragon, what you would expect a dragon to look, in a medieval fantasy videogame. Western Dragon, four legs, big tail. This one used to have nine heads, lost two and most of the next that used to hold one of them. It is some light grey stone, you can imagine the details must have been much more rich and clear some time ago.

A very long time ago, according to a priest I met in the pension during diner the night before.

“There was a city here one day, capital of a large nation of Beast People, snake-people, specifically. That was long before the Demon Wars. They worshiped this High Dragon, this hydra of nine heads.

Low Dragons are mindless beasts, no intelligence. However, for all kinds of dragon there are Low and High lineages. High Dragons are ageless like their bestial cousins, but extremely intelligent, devious, and gifted in magic. Hydras are among the worse of their race.

The High Hydra represented by that statue was probably not that big in real life. She must have been still very scary and tyrannical.

There was a terrible long winter, and her cultists all fell sleep everywhere in the nation, except here. Where magic fires kept the ice and the snow away for thousands of years. Isolated, the city didn’t resisted the attacks from other nations and their powerful immortal rulers. The Hydra Queen was killed in combat by a titan and 27 heroic elven warriors.

However, that titan was connected to the powers of winter, and soon after that victory the long winter ended.

The Ice Elves stayed behind when their false god abandoned them. The snake people recovered, with the raising temperatures. In larger numbers they fought and despite being individually weaker than the elves they managed to reconquer their nation.

This statue was raised then, to honour the false deity they had lost. Instead of recognize their new freedom they cursed the snow elves for killing the tyrant.

In any case, this forgotten real endured for another ten thousand years, possibly longer. Still, they felt eventually, still some dozen thousand years before the Demon Horde arrive to our world.”

Father Cleric Eieyeie was a nice guy to share meals with. Full elf, was impossible to guess his age. He admitted to have some Ice Elf blood, that wat the origin of those ice white iris of him, decorated like stow crystals. His skin was like snow too, but his nails were light brow and his hair deep dark green, speaking of Forest Elf heritage. The less noble and most tolerated sort of elf, actually.

He came to our nation to study this legend, in the library of a monastery here in Hydra Cross. His great dream was to find the tombs of 9 of those Ice Elf heroes supposedly hidden somewhere under the Passing, in caves of temples buried long time ago.

I asked if he was looking for treasures, he said the treasure would be to find a piece of Elven History. Any gold or other valuable items was plundered by the Snake People themselves, probably.

Since I didn’t had anything better to do, he offered me a job. Help him to carry his books, fetch ink and oil for his lamp. Maybe carry the lamp for him while he explores de make of tunnels bellow the city. There was an entrance for those tunnels in the Monastery and the monks had finally granted him permission to go inside.

I asked if that would be dangerous, by any chance. Considering the popular trope of underground scenarios for adventures. However, dungeons are a trope from fiction, Earthling fiction. He guaranteed to me that there was nothing dangerous about this investigation.

Was all boring, scholar, hard work.

On the bright side, he would share stories about his previous adventures and researches with me. He liked to talk as much as the next cleric. However, this would still be mostly tedious walking through dark tunnels.

Still, I had nothing better to do, and he would be paying me a more than fair salary for that small, unqualified, job.

I promptly accepted.

With no suspicious shadow in my hearth. What was out of character for me, not that I am thinking about. Also, less wise than it looks like at face value. Considering the matter in retrospective.