Mythas' Return: The Lost Princess

Chapter Twenty: Fiel's Dream

Chapter Twenty: Fiel's Dream

The she-elf cried softly to herself once Iliran carefully laid her down in their bedroll, far off into the woods again - in the pending safety of the Okapi Wilds. Pelleas' colorless face flashed again and again in her mind, his loose wavy hair rolling over her knees as she cradled her childhood friend in her arms. She could feel him still, his warmth, his weight on her - but it was like that of a phantom, just a residual sense of his presence. Memories of their youth flooded into Fiel's head, she could see a toothless Pelleas encouraging her to climb the pixie plum tree in his family's garden, or a teenage version of him running to catch up with her on their way to the Academy of Elven Learning, where they spent much of their adolescence together before Fiel moved on to the Elven College of Sorcery, and he met Iliran in the Archery Society.

She could feel the pangs of missing his company during her years of harnessing magicka, how she would write scroll after scroll and send them to Pelleas before his response letters had even arrived, for she had so much to tell him. Fiel felt her heart twist betwixt her lungs as she recalled attending his final assessment, how she and Iliran sat together nervously on the wooden benches of the capital's colosseum; she gripped Iliran's hand for the first time, out of pure excitement, as she watched Pelleas shoot live flying hares out of the sky. Iliran kissed her right on the mouth as their best friend was given his official title, Pelleas the Sunshot. How they screamed that afternoon, hollering with joy as Pelleas graduated his training and was made a sworn hunter of Polaveris, alongside Iliran the Cardinal Arrow.

A few yards away, her husband and the others sat idly beside a small fire - now that they felt no worry of being seen, for Yagrivan had been invaded before their arrival. Pelleas lay wrapped in his sleeping sack, covered further with Mythas' purple knitted blanket that they gently placed over him - for they could not decide what to do next. Callan appeared to stand guard over the elf's body, though he was not tied to the tree nearby - he refused to move very far from where Pelleas rested.

"Pelleas..." Iliran sighed, closing his sapphire eyes and wiping his black eyelashes dry. "This was not the journey we were promised." The elf held Pelleas' empty pipe in his hand, twisting its cherry stem betwixt his trembling fingers.

"Mythas promised us nothing, Iliran." Davret shook her head. "She warned us plenty."

"Why did we not listen?" the archer grumbled, squeezing the pipe.

"We cannot go back, brother." Lokvaar told him. "Mythas is our family, just as Pelleas was."

"He will never stop being my family." Iliran coldly responded.

"You know that is not what I meant." Lokvaar grimaced.

"Why did you not help us sooner?" the dark featured elf turned to face the newcomer, Tiam. "Why did you stand around with our horse, not a word from your stone lips?"

The Glittering Prince sat in silence, his silver eyes set aglow by the firelight - like a freshly smithed sword that had yet to be cooled by the blacksmith's water trough.

"I am to blame." Nhymrin interrupted the elf. "I should have made sure Reape was dead...but I let myself get distracted by that mage..." The vampire sat above them in the birch tree, huddled against the trunk whilst hugging her knees to her chest.

"You helped me, there...I was failing to protect Fiel and you aided me." Iliran disagreed wholeheartedly.

"I called for him to shoot..." Lokvaar buried his face into his hands. "T'was my doing."

"Pelleas' death was the fault of none other than Deacon." Davret reminded them. "Not any of us."

"That oracle..." Iliran said, ignoring the halfling, steadying his eyes over the floral carvings on the pipe's shank and bowl - Pelleas had whittled them himself. "She foresaw this loss...she has yet to lie."