Burned

Chapter Seven

     Traveling through the Elven Lands was like traveling through the various levels of Hell. It was an awful, awful experience that I hated doing—and I had the unfortunate luck of coming here often for my father.

     Back when all of the lands were on the verge of war, my father decided it would be smart to try and involve the Elven Clans. Even I knew that was a bad idea but my father wouldn’t listen for the life of him—and I had been sent multiple times to try and convince them to join the Firen Lands in the war.

     That flew about at far at a five thousand foot mountain—meaning that it didn’t at all. And I had been left drunk in women’s rooms more than I cared to.

     I was ignorant but I was not stupid. After the first taste of an offered drink, I knew better than to take anything else the Elven Clans offered—or, at least, I knew that I shouldn’t eat it. The damn stuff always got me completely drunk or extremely high to the point that I didn’t remember anything the next morning.

     The Elven Clans lived deep within the forests that they called Adirh. It meant something like “strong tree,” or so the women had told me. I’d managed to find out a few things about their people from the time I was there.

     All I could say when I reported to my father was like were like Earth’s Native Americans to the normal people. And that was really how it was. They were very in depth with nature and believed in a different cycle than us. Then again, there were many Clans that all believed in different things.

     You had us, the fey, who believed in the eight directions and the respective goddesses—Hell, I had seen them—and then you would have another set of people who would believe in something different. The Elves prayed and worshiped the “Great Mother” who I guessed was a tree of some sort that gave them life. Vampire’s worshiped whoever sired them. Faeries worshiped their two court’s Queens.

     We had all found our own sort of balance. I was still trying to figure out how the Hell the humans hadn’t settled on one God or Goddess or belief. Seventeen billion people couldn’t possibly argue that much.

     Of course, after I visited Earth the first time, I knew how completely wrong I was about all of my thoughts on their religion. Humans were definitely the most difficult to handle.

     I pushed through the thick forest, the trees stretching upwards of a hundred miles and vanishing into the misty clouds overhead. Every now and then, a few leaves would fall down, signaling an animal had passed by a good few minutes ago.

     My hand touched the soft bark and I recoiled in disgust to realize it was a slimy animal of sorts that was slowly crawling its way up the tree trunk. It was clear and looked more like mucus that met a stretched out frog.

     I shuddered and tried to ignore all of the creatures.

     The animals and people that lived here were not like the others. Sure the Firen, Icen, Airen, Earthen and Spiriten Lands all had their differences, but this was a whole different level of weird. Hell, if not for the lack of magic, the mortals would have more in common with the fey than the Elves.

     Light drizzled through the holes in the canopy far above and I treaded lightly along the dirt path. It was worn which meant it had often been traveled. The Elven Clans moved so much that it wasn’t even positive the Clan would still be where I last saw them.

     And I was not in the mood do go hunting through the whole damned country side.

     “What is it?” a voice came. “It looks…sort of like them. But its hair is so…so…bright!”