When Destiny Burns, Ep. 2 A Halo and Inheritance Cycle Crossover [Discontinued]

Chapter 13.3 Under my skin

Half a kilometer later, the forest thinned and breaks started to appear within the canopy. Just like that the forest made way for a large clearing, where a very curious sight lay hidden. Everything pointed at a civilization: there were paths hidden among the brush and trees, soft warm light where normally there would be shadows, an odd pattern in the shapes of the twigs and branches and other subtle signs that this was Ellesméra. The trees were in fact graceful buildings that grew directly out of the pines. One tree bulged at the base to form a two-story house before sinking its roots into the earth, with both stories being hexagonal. The houses were tiered.

The roofs and walls were made of webbed sheets of wood draped over six thick ridges. It was an impressive sight to behold, Maine had to admit that. There were lots of those buildings, all of them enhancing and complicating its surroundings. It was a good camouflage, as it was hard to tell where artifice ended and nature started.

'The strongest willow will break in a storm, but the flexible ones will survive,' he told Aeraleth. He felt apprehensive and threatened; the elves had to be more advanced than he had realized. That made them an even larger threat.

'Agreed,' Aeraleth said, 'the elves have adapted instead of engaged. They have taken their environment without a fight.'

She got the picture –and he got the inhabitants. Flickers of movements all over the place revealed the position of all elves to the trained eyes of the Spartan; he spotted hands, faces, fingers and feet and in some cases he even saw dark hair among the foliage. The elves were revealing themselves as one by one, they stepped into view. The almond eyes of the wary creatures were fixed upon the two dragons and their riders. The woman wore their hair unbound, letting it flow down their back like a waterfall. All of them possessed that delicate, alien beauty that was completely misguiding to their strength. Even the males were pretty-faced, as they had high cheekbones, subtle noses and heavy eyelids. Most of them were garbed in rustic tunics of green and brown, combined with dark colors of orange, auburn and gold.

The Spartan fully understood why they were called the Fair Folk and he fully saw them as hostile. If he even lifted his rifle in their direction, all of them would attack him. He had stepped into a hornet's nest and he had no way of getting out again.

'Be at ease little soldier,' Aeraleth told him, 'for you are not alone.'

He wanted to show them the diplomatic gesture for peace, but he couldn't remember it. He didn't know what to do; in front of him was this large group of people that were as agile and fast as elites were and all of them were proficient in magic. The only things he could think of were tactics and maneuvers that he could utilize to kill as many of them as possible and even if he didn't think about violent ways of resolving the situation, his mind automatically pointed out superior positions with good cover. He wasn't thinking like a civilian, but like a Spartan. And that would only cause more problems.

A woman started singing from their midst, but Maine didn't even understand what she was singing about. He saw Eragon clasping his hands over his ears and he automatically linked the gesture to magic, but Arya shook her head and lifted his hands in a rather close movement. "It's not magic," she told him and then spoke a different word to the horses, telling them to go.

The elves continued to sing and Arya proceeded along a cobblestone path covered with bits of green stone, looping among the houses and the trees before crossing a small stream. The Spartan watched as the elves danced around the part, swooping down here and there while laughing and singing. Eragon, Lifaen and Celdin seemed to be happy with their presence, but Maine felt more threatened than when he was surrounded by sword-wielding Elites. Every fiber in his body yearned for him to lash out and the nerves grew so bad that Aeraleth eventually commented on it.