Chapter 216: The Elven Divergence
Shailen looked nothing like his usual, unkempt self today. He still didn't quite match the other elves for handsomeness, but he stood ramrod straight, more than a thousand elves arrayed behind him, all dressed in heavy wool. The elder Reed stood just behind him, while at Ladriel's side, Indria's eyes still burned with fury.
Watching Shailen stand there so upright, his face set with solemnity, Ladriel felt a swell of conflicting emotion. She spoke quietly. "Shailen. You've finally gotten what you wanted. The World Tree has given you leave to go. I wish you well — the world beyond is a hard one, and these elves are placing their trust in you. I hope you'll care for every last one of them."
Shailen answered gravely. "Esteemed Your Majesty, they are our companions, our comrades in arms. I will care for them as I would my own children, whatever circumstances we face."
A weight hung over the elven kingdom like a bank of lead-gray cloud. Ladriel let a faint smile show through it and raised her voice. "My people — this is the choice your own free will has made. And should the day ever come when the world outside proves too hard to bear, the elven kingdom will always open its arms to welcome you home..."
"Long live the Queen!" The cheer rose up like a landslide, like a tide crashing against the shore. Evan, Shuang, and the rest of the visiting delegation watched from the side, none of them having expected this — the elven kingdom splitting apart, and doing it in perfect peace. Shailen had become the leader of an entirely new faction, more than a thousand elves rallying behind him, every one of them bright-eyed and full of vigor, utterly unlike ordinary elves, as though they could already see some brighter future ahead. Even the elder Reed stood among them.
Elves were elves, in the end — an ancient, graceful people who loved peace above all else. What would have torn any other race apart seemed, among the elves, to unfold as naturally as breathing.
They set out. This splinter branch of the elven people turned their backs, with resolve, on the World Tree's protection, and walked out of the warm valley into a biting, bitter wind. Even the elves' handsome faces couldn't help but shiver against it. They'd already struck a deal with Heathermere — who, to her own surprise, had landed a substantial contract while visiting the elven kingdom — to escort these elves to a set of frozen islands northeast of the Elven Forest, an uninhabited stretch of land. The Ice Isles were an archipelago of dozens of islands, large and small; their summers ran short but the plant life still grew lush, wild flora and fauna abundant, though the winters turned bitterly cold. Hot springs on the islands, though, spilled down into the sea and kept one harbor from ever freezing over — a place well beyond Nabos's reach.
Calling the islands uninhabited wasn't quite accurate. A band of pirates made their home there, though with winter upon them, the pirates had all returned to their nests for the season. It was only once Evan arrived that he learned the truth — Heathermere and Roland's visit to the Elven Forest hadn't only come at the Elf Queen's invitation. They'd also come at the express request of the Kingdom of Nabos, tasked with wiping out that very band of pirates.
Evan hadn't known. Emma and Jessica hadn't known either — neither of them held the standing for it. Only Heathermere and Roland had been in on it from the start. That pirate band called itself pirates in name, but in truth it was a privateer fleet flying under the Kingdom of Hispan. Though officially the islands belonged to no one, Nabos's own naval and merchant vessels had been raided by them time and time again.
In this age of great voyages, plenty of the pirate fleets roaming the seas were, in truth, privateers sailing under the flags of one nation or another — claiming to belong to no country at all, while quietly serving the interests of the very nations that funded them, and hauling in vast fortunes for their sponsors in the process.
Nabos hated that pirate fleet with a passion, but with a navy weaker than Hispan's, the kingdom had had no choice but to swallow its anger. Then Hollingburton's Sky City had taken to the air, and King Tesh had seen his opportunity. Since the Ice Isles sat on Nabos's side of the sea, the King had quietly struck a deal with Hollingburton, offering a hefty sum to have the job done for him — if Hispan wouldn't admit those ships belonged to it, then Nabos would play the same game and simply destroy the base itself.
The original plan had been to raze the base and slip away without a trace. Now there was an even better idea on the table. The elves had already set their sights on this stretch of land, and that suited everyone perfectly — one less headache for Nabos to deal with.
The deal struck with the elves gave them seventy percent of whatever treasure lay buried on the islands, in exchange for the elves handling the ground assault while Sky City provided aerial support from above. If Sky City suffered any losses in the process, the elves would cover the cost.
Shipload after shipload of elves were ferried up to Sky City. Only then did Evan finally understand the full scope of the plan. So that's why Sky City decided to visit the forest elves, he thought — there'd been this whole arrangement running underneath it the entire time. He felt a little foolish for not seeing it sooner. Sky City was, at its core, a fortress in the sky — how could anyone have expected it to remain nothing more than a city of peace? Hollingburton might present itself as above worldly affairs, but no group of mages, in the end, could ever truly stand apart from the world.
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Sky City carried the elves northeast. Below them, a blanket of white stretched out in every direction, an occasional eagle drifting through the pale, snow-dusted air. The elves settled in with perfect order, pitching their tents across the wide-open ground. Tents went up in front of Evan's house as well, and Shailen and Reed moved between them, checking in on their people.
Shailen spotted Evan and walked over with a smile. "Esteemed Wang. I didn't expect you'd have a house like this aboard Sky City — quite the good fortune. Won't you invite me in for a seat?"
Shuang, still holding a grudge, let out a snort and flew inside without a word. Evan smiled. "Esteemed Commander Shailen, please, come in."
The two of them sat down. Shuang refused to pour any tea, so Evan gave a small wave of his hand, and a cup filled itself with coffee on its own. "Commander Shailen, you finally got what you wanted. Honestly, there was never any need to pressure Shuang and me into helping you — the World Tree already knew everything about you better than anyone. And look — a bug's flown in here again. My apologies, I must have left the window open."
As he spoke, Evan pointed a finger, and a small insect fluttering through the air dissolved into a wisp of smoke at once. Shailen's expression froze for a moment before breaking into an awkward smile. "That business the other day was my mistake. I apologize for it. Let's leave my insects out of this from here on."
At that, Shuang poked her head down from her little room up above. "Old man, an apology's not something you just say with your mouth. Hand over eight or ten gems and I'll consider forgiving you."
Shailen froze solid for a moment, then let out a pained laugh. "I don't have any gems."
"You're that poor? Fine, this fairy will be generous. What do you have?" Shuang started shaking him down anyway.
"Everything I have, I've given to my people. Aside from my own skills, I have nothing," Shailen said.
Shuang started to fret — how had she ended up trying to squeeze a broke old man dry? For all her talk of shaking people down, her heart was soft underneath it, and now she was stuck. Evan spoke up. "That bug-controlling magic of yours is rather good, though."
It turned out he'd had his eye on the man's actual skill this whole time. The moment he said it, Shuang piped up. "What's so great about playing with bugs? Old man, what else can you do?" She still despised the whole business — the thought of insects, soft and squirming, turned her stomach sour just thinking about it.
"Elder Shuang, perhaps I could trade this Bug Sorcery to the two of you instead?" Shailen wasn't a man to come out on the losing end of a deal either.
"Trade for what?" Shuang asked, offhand. Evan realized at once he'd made a mistake — he'd been the one interested in the so-called Bug Sorcery, and now Shuang had turned it into an actual negotiation.
"I'll trade you a necromancer's method of cultivation," Shailen said, jumping straight in on Shuang's question before Evan had any chance to back out.
"Don't your people despise necromancers?" Evan asked.
"Despising something is a matter of feeling — it doesn't mean elves can't practice necromancy. We've left the World Tree's protection now. We have to rely entirely on ourselves from here on. I've studied human warfare, and a necromancer's contribution is often irreplaceable on the battlefield. So I intend to take up necromancy myself," Shailen said.
"Necromancy isn't exactly a secret among humans. Why haven't the elves collected any of it themselves?" Evan asked.
"Elves consider ourselves children of nature. Why would we ever collect necromantic magic? Honestly, elves don't think much of human magic in general — we'll keep the prettier spells now and then, but necromancy is something no elf would even touch," Shailen said.
Evan thought it over for a moment, then nodded his agreement. Even if he didn't hand over necromantic magic himself, Shailen could likely find it through some other channel eventually — but Bug Sorcery seemed to be one of a kind. The name of it brought to mind, from his past life, the gu-sorcery practiced in the Miao borderlands, though he had no way of knowing whether the two were actually the same.
The two of them began exchanging what they knew. What Evan offered was only common, garden-variety necromancy — nothing of his own personal insight went into it, and he suspected Shailen was doing much the same on his end. Evan wanted Bug Sorcery precisely because it belonged to no elemental school of magic at all — it stood a good chance he could cultivate it himself, and even if he couldn't, he intended to mine it for anything useful regardless. Nearly everything he'd encountered until now had been elemental magic of one kind or another; so far, only Jessica's own approach had struck him as genuinely different.
The two of them talked the day away as they traded techniques, and evening had already fallen by the time they finished. Bug Sorcery turned out to be genuinely remarkable — its cultivation ran primarily through the mind, building abstract insects within one's own consciousness, then fusing them with real insects through a process of ritual refinement and control, the insects themselves undergoing subtle changes in the process. Evan had never come across a method like it, and it left him with a new thought entirely — perhaps he could learn to command other kinds of creatures this way too.
Once the exchange was finished, Shailen spoke to Evan. "Wang, do you know why I did all this?"
Evan shook his head, though he had a vague sense that Shailen had already thought this all through carefully — and a growing feeling that a new and formidable power might be taking shape among the elves.
"Do you know why the dark elves are said to be so promiscuous — something proper elves find utterly unforgivable?" Shailen asked next.
Evan shook his head again, knowing full well Shailen intended to answer his own question. Sure enough, he continued. "Elves revere nature, but the world isn't the world our ideals imagine it to be. They say the elven gods stopped concerning themselves with worldly matters long ago, while humanity's own gods have already passed through several generations. The world runs on nothing but naked survival of the fittest. The dark elves aren't promiscuous out of depravity — an elf's low fertility means the only way to raise their numbers is to breed more often, and over enough generations, the dark elves simply grew used to it. That's how they earned their reputation for depravity."
"And you intend to do the same?" Evan asked.
"How to put it... I'll encourage childbirth. Before long there'll be laws passed — the more children, the greater the reward. Population has always been the elves' weakness. And I'll accept half-elves too. I intend to build an entirely new elven nation," Shailen said, his voice distant.