Chapter 301: Your blood is calling you home, but there’s a home in your heart too
When Eruha taught me about the Realm of Nature, he used a mountain drawing as a helper.
At the base of the mountain, deep within underground cities and tunnels, were the drows, the night children. They were the smiths, the explorers, and the Nightwatch of the realm. Due to the nature of the terrains where they lived, they were agile and deft, and had higher physical ability than the other races. They were the ones who supplied weapons and tools to the rest of the realm, and the ones people would find the most roaming other realms without hesitation. When the night came, they would climb to the surface and patrol the realm to keep it safe.
In the middle were my kin, the druids. They were tasked with purifying the land, and this was blessed with the power of elemental magic. Their life, as well as mine, was tied to the mana, and we’d die without them. Because they needed to go around where the corrupted mana was, the druids formed tribes all over the realms, and each tribe had jurisdiction over the land they had to watch and purify.
The elves, blessed with the power of the sun, of light and fire, resided in places that allowed them to receive the most sunlight; the plateaus and mountains. Mother gave them the bows because they lived in wide areas, and had to hunt from afar. I had thought that their proud nature stemmed from this--because of the blessing from something ’up’ there, but that wasn’t the case.
Izzi told me that the Realm of Nature could also be explained in a religious sense, seeing it as one big Temple. The elves were the ones in charge of the Temple’s management. That was why all diplomatic matters went through the elves--or rather, the Sarteriel Elvendom. The kingdom where Izzi came from, Etherziel, was the one handling trade.
Because of their ’role’, the elves were the ones in contact with the other realms’ high society the most; the diplomats, the nobles, the Lords--prompting them to be well versed in many arts, including the arts of making them look elegant and superior. They were proud because their role shaped them into it.
The druids, in this case, was the ’priest’ of the Temple. Not only their role was to purify the filth, but they also had the High Priestess who was the medium for Mother to descend or talk to Her children.
That was Amarein.
The drows, of course, had the role of the Templar; the guards, the knights. They weren’t before, but apparently, after my kingdom fell, they started to patrol the border too, and had put several outposts along the line.
And these drows were the ones we encountered first the moment we entered the Realm of Nature’s aerial space.
Technically, we could just bypass it since we didn’t take the land route. But I didn’t want someone to mistakenly shoot Vrida, so we descended to one of those sentry boxes and asked them to tell the other that the very pretty green wyvern in the air was not a shooting target.