The Dark Elf War

Chapter Two

Dark Tidings

The torches in Fabul had been burning all night as Yang’s wife sat up looking out the window for the third night in a row. Yang had been due back five days ago. At first she didn’t worry but he had never been late to anything in his life. She hadn’t slept at all for two days at least and wouldn’t until her husband was home. Suddenly a shout went up from the guards at the front gate, someone was coming. She ran down the stairs to the front gate. When she got there the gate guards were letting in a group of about ten or eleven guards, she immediately recognized them as part of the group Yang had taken. Was this all that was left, one hundred men had gone with Yang. It was then she realized that Yang was not among them.

“Where is Yang,” she asked the closest one.

He slowly nodded his head towards the four men furthest back. She then noticed the stretcher they were carrying. Yang was laying on it. She ran to his side hopping he was not dead; she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw he was breathing.

“What happened?” she asked one of the soldiers.

“We were ambushed your highness,” was his reply.

“By whom,” she asked.

“We…we don’t know, they weren’t human but they weren’t monsters either…that’s all we know about them,” the soldier replied weakly.

They took Yang to the infirmary and put him in a bed then they called the healers.

“What am I supposed to do?” the queen thought to herself. “Yang was always good at making leadership decisions, but until he’s awake…if he awakes…NO I can’t think like that. The healers may not be powerful enough to save him. Asura could heal him but Rydia is the only one who could summon her and she’s been missing for over two years. Perhaps…yes…if anyone else could it would be the most powerful human white wizard on the planet and the queen knew that the queen of Baron would come if she sent for her.”

The queen grabbed one of the guards, “Go tell the ship master to make ready the fastest ship in the fleet to go to Baron.”

“Yes your majesty,” the guard said before running of to carry out the command.

“Your Highness you really must pick a bride,” the chamberlain said. They had been arguing for almost an hour

Edge sat on his throne trying to look anywhere but at the chamberlain, “Chamberlain I don’t have time for this…there are important matters of state…”

The chamberlain interrupted raising his voice, “This matter of state is important! Edge you are trying to avoid this.”

“So what if I am,” Edge retorted. “Anyway I haven’t liked any of the girls you’ve found, the only reason they want to marry me is because I’m a king.”

“Of course they want to marry you because you are king,” the chamberlain said loosing his temper.

About this time a woman walked into the throne room followed by two angry looking guards. “Your Majesty” the guards began “we are sorry for this intrusion but she demanded to see you at once.”

Edge took a look at her and said, “Don’t worry about it men just return to your posts. And who might you be?” he said turning to the woman.

“My name is Adrelea,” she said.

“What a beautiful name,” Edge said.

“I have come to be your bride,” Adrelea said.

“In that case let’s get to know each other,” Edge said.

“Well I’ll leave you to alone” the Chamberlain said as he walked out of the throne room hoping that Edge would like her better than the others. He was rather surprised when two hours later Edge announced that he would wed Adrelea, Surprised but happy, to happy it seems to question what had caused the sudden change in Edge, or to wonder who Adrelea was or where she had come from.

All Edge new is that he was happy, happier than he had been since the destruction of Eblan. When he was with Adrelea everything seemed to fade away, even his fears of inadequacy.

Cecil and Rosa were sitting on his throne dealing with some affairs of state when a guard entered carrying a message.

“Your Highness a message has just arrived from Fabul by ship,” the guard said.

Cecil smiled, “What message has Yang sent us.”

The guard faltered a second, “The…the message does not come from the king it comes from the queen.”

This gave Cecil pause, “Ayan, what message does she send us.”

“The queen of Fabul has requested Queen Harvey’s assistance as a healer, it seems the king of Fabul was badly injured in a battle on mount Hobbs and the healers in Fabul are unable to heal his wounds.”

Cecil and Rosa were both shocked.

“Cecil, I must go and try to help him,” Rosa said.

“Yes, you must,” said Cecil. “Guard, go and find Cid and tell him he is to make ready an airship for fight in one hour.” The guard left immediately to carry out the order.

Cecil turned to Rosa, “Go help him…but be careful. Something stinks about this, why was Yang on mount Hobbs anyway…he’s almost sixty.”

Rosa looked thoughtful, “What bothers me is who would attack Fabul anyway; we have had nothing but peace for almost three years.”

“One hour to prep and air ship,” Cid’s voice boomed thought the door. He walked up to Cecil. “You know it takes more time than that to get an airship ready, at least three or four hours.”

“Cid…Yang’s been injured in some kind of battle and Rosa is going to Fabul to try to heal him.” Cecil said

Cid turned pale, “Yang was injured…I’ll have the enterprise prepped for flight in forty-five minuets and I’ll fly Rosa down there myself, I wouldn’t trust her safety to any other pilot.” Cid said.

“But who will take over your duties while your gone Cid?” Cecil asked.

“Actually I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

“What do you mean?” asked Cecil.

“Well I ain’t gettin any younger and…well I’ve been training a replacement.” Cid said. “She’s just about ready to take over from me too”

“She?” Cecil asked.

“My daughter, Lorien, she can take care of things for me no problem,” Cid said.

“If you say she can handle it I trust you,” Cecil said.

“Course she can,” Cid said as he left to take care of things.

Rosa looked at Cecil, “I’ll return as soon as possible.” Then she got up and followed Cid out the door.

Cecil went to his study and sat in thought a bit, He couldn’t feel anything definite but something evil was working in the midst of this. He had to figure out what was going on before it was too late.

Kain and Ryanna had about one day left to reach Mysidia. At the moment they were resting by a fire they had built. Kain had really begun to like Ryanna; they were kindred spirits alike in many ways Kain had not guessed. “No, I can’t allow myself to care about her,” he thought suddenly. “I betrayed everyone I cared for back then. I can’t take the chance that it might happen again.”

“What are you thinking about?” Ryanna snapped Kain out of his thoughts.

“Just reflecting on how weird life is,” Kain said trying to hide his thoughts.

“Well if you’d like to get some sleep I can take first watch,” Ryanna said.

“No, you sleep, I’ll watch,” Kain said.

“Okay,” Ryanna rolled over on her side. “Kain, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure what is it?” Kain asked.

“Why don’t you ever talk about yourself?” Ryanna asked.

Kain gave pause, he hadn’t seen this coming at all, “Why do you ask?”

“Well you me and…Duncan, well we talked to you all the time, but you always avoided talking about you past,” Ryanna said.

“My past is…complicated,” Kain answered making it clear that he did not wish to discuss it.

“Oh…I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked,” Ryanna started to apologize.

“No it’s alright, don’t worry about it…you should get some sleep,” Kain said.

Ryanna was awakened by Kain three hours later. Kain was shaking her awake and then he said three words, “They’ve found us.”

Ryanna bolted upright, “Where are they.”

Kain pointed into the woods behind them, “a few hundred yards that way.” Then he added, “It looks like it will start raining soon that will cover our tracks. If they don’t know we are going to Mysidia we could lose them, if we leave now and ride hard.”

They quickly mounted the chocobos and rode of towards Mysidia and the first drops of rain began to fall.

Rosa had arrived at castle Fabul quickly and she and Cid were taken to the queen. Rosa gave Ayan a hug.

“I came as soon as we heard. What happened?” Rosa asked.

Yang’s wife filled them in on what had happened to Yang.

“How is he now?” Rosa asked.

“He has not changed,” Yang’s wife replied. “The healers of Fabul cannot heal him…I fear that the attackers had poisoned their weapons somehow.”

“Let me try to help him,” Rosa said.

She went to Yang’s side and took his hand and began chanting slowly.

“It’s not working,” she frowned after several minutes. “I need something more powerful than conventional magic.”

She leaned over Yang and placed her hands on his shoulders; she began chanting and quickly fell into a trance. Several of the healers who were still there let out a gasp as they saw what she was doing. 

“What is she doing,” Ayan asked one of the healers?

“It’s very powerful…far beyond my abilities…I did read about it in book once though. Basically if a person is affected by some dark magic that cannot be healed externally the wizard can heal it from the inside,” the healer replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Cid.

“Well some weapons are poisoned, but a regular poison is easy to heal because its inter-workings are simple, so we create a simple spell to that can be easily mastered to heal most regular poisons. However poisons can be made with the aid of dark magic, the darker and more powerful the magic the more difficult it can be to heal because it is not simply a physical poison, the magic attacks the mind and to heal the person one must unravel the spell and counteract it. This, we suspected, is why we could heal the physical wounds but he still did not awake. Our magic is simple…we can heal physical wounds but wounds of the mind are much harder. Queen Harvey has left her body for the time being so she can get inside the spell and unravel it. It requires a great deal of control, because if one is not careful they could become trapped in the spell as well.”

“It sounds dangerous,” Cid said.

“If any one can heal the king she can,” the healer replied. “My guess is she will be here all night if the spell is very complicated.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this spell earlier,” the queen asked angrily.

“Your majesty…we have limited skills we didn’t know for sure until just now…” the healer began.

“And you wanted to spare and old woman pain,” Ayan said.

The healer was about to deny such a claim but the queen waved him off.

 “What I want to know is why?” asked Ayan. “None of the others troops were attacked with such a powerful magic.”

Cid broke in, “If I might be so bold your majesty from what I have heard my experience tells me they planed this to get at Yang. They were counting on the first attack bringing Yang out in the open. Tell me have your scouts reported any strange activity in this area.”

Ayan looked worried, “One report did say that something was off in the mountains to the north but they couldn’t figure out why.”

Cid looked grim, “I would advise that you double the guard tonight.”

They were interrupted by sounds from out side the hall. One of the guards burst in. “Soldiers are marching towards the castle,” the guard said breathlessly.

“What?” Ayan asked.

“Damn, it’s to late,” Cid swore.

“Don’t just stand there,” Ayan yelled at the guard. “go wake every soldier in the castle and get them to the wall.”

The guard ran in the direction of the barracks.

“We need to see these soldiers that are bearing down on the castle,” Ayan said.

Cid followed after her amazed that she was handling all of this so well. They left the room and went to the battlements to see the force marching towards them. It was easy to see that they were out numbered.

“What should we do first?” Ayan asked Cid.

“Well you’ve tightened defenses, that’s a good thing; I need to get word to Cecil to send help, I hate to leave Rosa here by herself but I’ll leave the contingent of Baronian Dragoons that came with us to help you in the fight,” Cid asked.

“Fine I hope you can get word fast enough.”

Cid went to see to go see the Dragoons first. He found them in the main courtyard.

“Where’s the captain?” Cid asked.

“Captain Farrell reporting Sir,” one of the men said stepping forward.

“Good, I suppose you’ve noticed the large army coming this way,” Cid said.

“Yes Sir”

“I’m going to Baron to get reinforcements you stay here and assist in the protection of Fabul”

“Yes Sir”

Cid walked off in the direction of the airship but as he was walking down to the ship he suddenly felt that something was wrong. He saw somebody slip in to the shadows a little ways ahead. Cid pulled his war hammer lose and slipped around the corner where the shadow had gone. He rounded the corner and saw a small person trying to hide in the shadows.

“Come out from there,” Cid said.

Suddenly the figure leapt out of the shadow swinging two small swords. Cid easily parried the first sword but the second caught his arm and gave him a deep cut. However the second swing had over extended the figure and before it could move back Cid brought his hammer down on its head. He inspected his kill and realized it was a Goblin. “What would a goblin be doing here,” Cid thought to himself. He then remembered the cut he had received and began to inspect it. It was wide but it was bleeding quiet a bit. He ripped part of the goblin’s tunic off to wrap his arm. He then went to inspect what the goblin had been doing. He discovered several packets of explosives in a pack in the shadows the goblin leapt from. Cid turned to go warn the guards of the attempted sabotage but before he took three steps he heard an explosion and turned to see the Enterprise in flames. Cid rushed to the ship to try to put out the flames. The rest of the crew were already working hard bringing water from Fabul’s well, but by the time the fire was out a lot of damage had been done. Cid looked over the engines to see how long it would take to repair, and then went to tell Ayan the bad news.

“The engines were damaged badly in the explosion,” Cid told Ayan.

“Can the ship still fly?”

“I can do some makeshift repairs that would make the ship flyable, the control propellers weren’t damaged to badly, but the main engine, that’s another story, long distance flights are out of the question.” Cid said.

“What do you mean?” asked Ayan.

“Flying for long distances require the main engine to run extremely fast to reach enough height and speed, There is no way I can use the ship to get word to anyone. Though I can probably use it in the fight.”

“It can’t be fixed?” Ayan asked.

“I didn’t bring replacement parts or the right tools for such a large repair. Is there another way out of the castle besides the gates?” Cid suddenly asked.

“Yes we built a tunnel after the last siege.”

“Send some soldiers to get word to Damcyan, they don’t have a large army but at least Edward could send word to baron.”

“Will they be able to get word in time?” Ayan asked.

“They’ll have to, it’s our only chance,” Cid replied.

Kain and Ryanna rode hard for the entire night and most of the next day but three miles out of Mysidia the chocobos collapsed from exhaustion. They tried to running but the mounted knights reached them quickly and surrounded them.

The leader spoke up while brandishing one of their wicked looking swords, “give us the tablets or die.”

“How bout I just kill all of you instead,” Kain replied.

The knights laughed. “You’re skilled,” said the leader, “you might even take a few of us with you but there are thirty of us and two of you, you’ll lose and you know it.”

“But you’ll kill us if we give you the tablets anyway so I think I’ll take my chances,” Kain replied.

Kain leapt at the closest one impaling him with the holy spear. Ryanna struck one with her bow then dropped it and drew her sword. She cut the neck of a chocobo knocking the rider off. At the same time Kain jumped down on another with his spear. A knight lashed out and pierced Kain’s armor and cut his arm another struck him on his head his helmet deflected it but he could feel blood run down his face anyway. Ryanna had killed two others as Kain managed to fend of three attackers. He and Ryanna backed up against each other. She was bleeding in several places as well. The knights had them surrounded. The twenty or so knights were closing in on them they could not defeat so many at the same time. Before the knights could kill them, however, something unexpected happened. “Fire two” a voice shouted and suddenly the four knights closest to Kain burst into flame. As the knights tried to put there comrades out another voice shouted out “Cure two” and suddenly Kain’s and Ryanna’s felt the power of magical healing. Kain jumped over the four knights that had been hit by the fire spell and drove the holy spear into another knight just as several other knights turned to face their new attackers. Palom and Porom, the two young twin magicians of Mysidia appeared on the hill. A bunch of knights rode towards them but before they could close on them Palom and Porom both started chanting TWIN. A bunch of small meteors fell on the knights. Six or seven were killed instantly. The other knights were burned badly and tried to organize themselves to make another attack. Kain’s spear went through the breast plate of the first. Several broke into a run and quickly found Ryanna’s arrows in their backs. Within a few more minute they had killed the rest.

Kain turned towards the twins, “It’s lucky you found us.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it, strange things have been going on lately so Elder has been scouting the areas around Mysidia with magic sight. He saw you being chased and sent us as aid.” Porom said.

“Elder sent you? But you couldn’t be more than…” Kain began.

We’re twelve; we’re also two of the few wizards in Mysidia to have been in actual battles, most of them are a bunch of book worms.” Palom said.

“Well my name is Kain and this is Ryanna, what are you names?” Kain asked.

“I am Porom…” began Porom.

“And I’m the Mysidian genius Palom,” Palom said.

“Excuse my brother; he has a vaulted opinion of his intellect,” Porom said.

Palom flustered and tried to come up with a come back, “I’ll…vault…your…opinion.”

“Are you talking?” Porom asked.

“Shut up Porom,” was all Palom managed to come up with.

Kain interrupted them, “We need to go see the Elder. Can you take us to him?”

Porom spoke up, “Sure thing Kain…wait you’re a dragoon…are you…”

“I am the Kain who traveled to the moon with Cecil if that’s what you’re after.”

“Oh…well come on we’ll take you to see Elder.”

The Elder of Mysidia had been looking over the tablets for several hours when Kain was becoming to restless to wait any longer. “Have you made any progress Elder,” Kain asked him? 

“This language is very old it will take some time to translate, and I’ll never make progress with you interrupting me.” Elder responded.

“I wish to return to Baron…I…have not been there is some time.” Kain was somewhat amazed at himself, he had not wanted to return home yet but Cecil had to be warned about these knights and he had to see them again.

His thoughts were interrupted by the Elder, “I understand Kain…go see Cecil…you can use serpent road”

“I hope he will welcome me,” Kain said.

Elder looked back at Kain, “Cecil will accept you…I know it.”

On Kain’s way to the serpent road Ryanna stopped him, “I’m going with you.”

“Why,” Kain asked?

“Well I’ve got nothing to do here, I might as well go with you,” Ryanna replied.

“Well come on then,” Kain said.

“Where are we going anyway?” Ryanna asked.

“Baron, to see the king.”

“You know the king of Baron?”

“We were once best friends.” Kain answered.

“Oh. So what…”

“No” Kain said.

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask,” Ryanna began.

“But I already know that I won’t answer it.” Kain ignored Ryanna’s annoyed facial expression and said “Come on let’s go.”