BECMI Chapter 305 – Edge Heading Homedeep
“Hello, mother,” I said to the Shadow-Elven Wizardess Keffe Nangeode as she padded quietly into the dining area adjacent to the small kitchen of my birth home.
The slender and graceful white-haired figure tensed up, her fingers rising instantly and mana sparkling around them as she instinctively prepared a spell, startled at finding an intruder in her house, even seated at her own table!
Not the wisest house to invade, an elven wizardess whose daughter had gone missing and was believed to be dead. As an elf, she could be grieving for years, and woe to anyone who crossed her in that time!
Then she blinked as the light crossed me and lit me up, and our eyes met.
I watched quietly as her stricken jaw slowly dropped. She looked me up and down in astonishment and disbelief, her rage giving way to awkward confusion, and I remained silent while she inspected me.
Actually, I rose to my feet, lifted my hands like a dancer, and pirouetted so she could get a better look at all of me.
I was a couple inches taller than she was, had more curves to me, and was in much better physical condition. I moved with a grace alien and dangerous even to other elves, and of course my whiter-than-milk skin contrasted with her grayish natural hue, my black hair ending in crimson tips (regardless of length) was quite singular among the generally platinum or tow-headed Shaden, and my eyes of black sclera and ruby pupils were a completely unnatural and singular characteristic.
My preference for red and black attire, in absolute total contrast to the slightly threadbare whites, grays, and pale blues she was wearing, was also completely in keeping with my nature.
“Ed, Edgina?” she whispered in shock, staring at me and trying to process this. “What, what happened to you?” she managed to get out, stepping closer, her hands reaching up to touch my face. I was fully an adult by elven standards now, actually less than a century behind her… and, given how I timeskipped, catching up to her. “You’ve been missing for over three months, none of my spells could find any trace of you anywhere… How is this possible?”
The brittleness in her voice was unfeigned. Elves tended to have children many years apart, and I was indeed her first-born. Losing me while I was still a child and having so much to show me of the world was indeed hard on her, but now-!
“Yes, mother, it is me,” I stated, reaching up to grasp her hands, pulsing the heat through them as I had when a child, our own little intimate way of identifying one another by touch. Her fingers grasped my own tightly in automatic recognition. “My apologies for making you worry. There have been… extenuating circumstances why I could not come back sooner.”
Killing Avatars, starting a new timeline, founding a new kingdom, starting a religion. Minor stuff and all.
She stepped back to look me up and down again in disbelief. “How old are you, Edgina?” she asked, trying to digest this, seesawing between wary disbelief and joy that her baby was alive.
“I am nearly one hundred and twenty years old, Mother,” I reported to her calmly. She looked at me, and found herself putting her hand to her cheek in disbelief once again. “I have literally been traveling through time, and it took, ah, many years to get back to my proper time. I could not do so while I still existed here, so I had to wait until the whole cycle began to come back.”
Which was totally true, it had just happened several years ago, not three months ago.
“Traveling through time,” she repeated, her wizard training asserting itself with such a fantastic notion. “How? Where?”
“I think you will agree that such would best remain a secret, lest it attract others with even less common sense than I had at the time. The location is under my control and is effectively my personal estate now,” I replied firmly to that question. “I know that it has not been long since I vanished from here, mother, but a great deal has happened to me since then.”
Something in my tone made her take a half-step back, a look of concern upon her face, realizing that I was now a fully-grown elven adult who she barely knew. The realization instantly made this quite awkward for her, as she did not know how to relate to me.
She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “Then… I suppose you have a great deal to tell me,” she ventured, fighting to remain calm.
I nodded back to her kindly. “Yes. For starters, tell no one of me as yet, because there are some dire surprises in store which may well get you killed if you speak of them to the wrong party.”
She inhaled sharply, her eyes narrowing, the old agent of the Shaden king surfacing once more. “What has happened?” she asked promptly, somehow back on familiar ground.
“Well,” I eyed her considerately, “I have found out that Gaebrel has been lying to our people for thousands of years, and the king has been lying to everyone for hundreds of years. Which of the lies would you like to learn the truth of first, mother?”
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Her expression wavered, torn between disbelief and the voice of her own daughter, delivered in such a calm, forceful tone. She considered me, my very calm expression, and could only hesitate. “I was an agent of the king on the surface world, my Edgina. That… is what led to your birth,” she pointed out carefully.
“You would find that I am very, very well known in Zanzyr if you were to return there, mother,” I answered that with an arched eyebrow, making her blink. “I am known as the Lady Edge there, one of the primary advisors to Princess Brittabelle of Erendyl, and a Cryptomancer of great ability and renown. I top the list for the single highest graduating score from the Great School of Magic of Zanzyr, as a matter of fact.”
She blinked at me in puzzlement, started to say something, and then blinked again rapidly as she processed all of that. “You are… not joking?” she asked faintly. “You… are a traitor to the Shaden?” she probed even more hesitantly.
“Oh, not at all, although I am definitely not loyal to the king, nor to Gaebrel. I do not appreciate being lied to at all, especially blatantly and to my face.” I eyed her and her wavering loyalty. “Do you know the purpose for which you were sent to the surface, mother?” I asked her gravely.
“My job was to locate any allies of Sidheduiche, identify them, and distance them from the surface elves of the Relarin forest there in preparation for our eventual return to the surface,” she said primly. “The Erendyl elves are prominent allies of the Sidheduiche!” she pointed out to me, distinctly not pleased with finding out I had a high standing among them.
“Would it alarm you to know that in the great meeting between the Sidhe and the Shaden two hundred and more years ago, the Sidhe agreed immediately to allow two hundred families of Shaden to emigrate to the surface a year?”
She stared at me in disbelief. “That, that must be a lie!” she managed to get out, suddenly flustered.
“No. I had an agent at the meeting who observed it all,” I informed her calmly, making her flinch. “Knowing it was going to happen, and how far back in time it was, it was not difficult to plan matters out so that I could learn the truth.
“The Sidhe were eagerly ready to help Shaden start returning to the surface. As you know, it takes time and energy to acclimate to the surface world, and the Sidhe do not practice farming and live in tight spaces like humans and dwarves do. The Sidhe were ready to help our people return to the surface, and if they did not wish to live in the forest, help them emigrate to other elven kingdoms or lands, as they desired.
“The two hundred families was a reasonable opening limitation, allowing them to test their resources. If acclimation was quick and easy, the number most certainly would have been raised.
“The Sidhe were happy to receive the Shaden ambassadors, mother. They embraced them like long-lost kin and were ready and willing to help them.” I let that truth sink into her as she frowned more deeply than I had ever seen her.
“Ambassador Kloumialle, acting on direct orders from the king, insisted that the entire population of the Shaden be allowed to emigrate immediately.” Her eyes popped wide open at my words. Any sensible person knew that a mass migration of that level would have ruinous consequences. “Furthermore, they also insisted that the Shaden immediately be granted royal status and take total control over the forest, and that the worship of Gaebrel and customs of the Shaden be made law over all the tribes of Sidheduiche.”
My mother’s eyebrows climbed towards her hairline, stunned at such idiocy. “That… that is not what we are told, Edgina,” she finally managed to say, staring at me. “I can still remember the day the ambassadors returned with the news they had been forced out of the surface by our rude and dismissive cousins there, violating all codes of diplomacy and safe-conduct.” She took a very deep breath. “It was indeed hlosh, a very bad day, that our own kin would deny us the surface...”
“Our representatives were the first to draw blood, once the Sidhe would not submit. It was only courtesy towards fellow elves that allowed them to survive to retreat to the deeps here once more. If the Sidhe had been Shaden… they would have exterminated such a callous, arrogant, and rude people immediately, there would have been no question about it.” My scorn was clear, and my gaze on her stern. “The king had also been placing agents among the Sidhe before he even sent forth his envoys. One of them was already a friend of the elven king, and even present in his court at the time of the meeting! Naturally he did not bother to identify himself as Shaden, either, since he was tasked as the head spymaster of the Shaden infiltration of the Sidhe!”
She swallowed as she stared at me, working through the implications quickly. “King Ershultaen never wanted to get our people to the surface at all, did he?” she whispered in shock.
“No. There are a dozen surface lands he could have started a movement to immigrate to, lands where there would be no elves to fight.
“Instead, he chose an Elven Homeland, and other elves, because he wants his children to reign over a kingdom where the priests of Gaebrel cannot outrank them. He wants war and conquest over a forest kingdom and Elven Homeland, not realizing he will lose both even if he were to invade, fight, and win the resulting clash, the first elven monarch to declare war on another elven kingdom in the history of the world… and for no reason but his own ego!” I grit my teeth, the scorn and contempt in my voice hot and icy at the same time.
“We, we would lose the forest? Even if we won?” my mother asked in shock, stunned at the fruitlessness of what the Shaden were doing.
I favored her with a teacher’s stare. “Mother. You are a wizard. The Relarin was raised by elven magic, with the explicit aid of their Immortals, centered around their mighty Lumina Trees.
“The elves of the surface hold no reverence for Gaebrel, as we hold no reverence for Corellin.
“The magic of the Trees ensures that there is rain every night in the Relarin. That magic grants the forest the vitality and power to sustain the elven population, and allows the trees to grow with supernatural speed to impossible heights.
“It is an Elven Homeland, made by the Sidhe, mother. It was not made by the Shaden.” I paused for emphasis. “Remove the Sidhe, remove the power of the Lumina Trees, and the rains stop, the trees begin to wither, and the magic goes swiftly away, mother. In very little time, the all-conquering Shaden would be inhabiting a firetrap of dying trees which can no longer sustain themselves, growing in a harsh, cold, and dry land that cannot support them!”