Of the six of us, only Veralar was seriously wounded, with three broken ribs and lacerations all over her body. Rennin and Orland were cut and bruised and battered and would look more like sausages than men for some time, and would be well served by several days of rest, but they were able to help Elana carry Veralar to camp and to tend her wounds and their own. Derrek and I were bloody, as well, and weak with blood loss, but our wounds were almost entirely self-inflicted, and had mostly healed in the manner of wizardry.
Somehow, Derrek still had the strength to magically erect our tents – once again eliciting a glow and sympathetic hum from the pillars – just past the tree line, but he left Elana to light the cook fire and distribute dinner. As the only uninjured member of our party, she did so without hesitation or complaint. Shadow was nowhere to be seen.
The waters of the creek were as sweet and restorative as any since we had come close to the Eastern Veil. That they did little more than take the edge off of our pain and exhaustion spoke volumes about how hurt and spent we really were. For myself, I could barely stand, and when I sat to rest, I lost consciousness altogether.
I awoke with dinner in my lap and Derrek sitting next to me, slowly eating his own. Full dark had fallen, and the fire had been extinguished, probably partly in the hopes that if Lynqxaemass or some other guardian returned, they would not immediately detect our presence.
“Thank you,” I said to him.
He shook his head.
“Elana,” he said, gesturing toward her with his head. “She tried to wake you.”
“Oh,” I said. I turned to look, but she was occupied with Rennin.
I ate as much as I could, but my stomach was delicate, and my hands were shaky. I soon fell back to sleep.
I woke some time later to the sounds of heavy breathing, gasps, and soft cries coming from one of the tents. Elana, I thought. And probably Rennin. I imagined Veralar as quieter, I supposed, and Orland as louder. And I was embarrassed to realize that I had thought about it so much. Six weeks without seeing Rrii`aa was longer than it used to be, it seemed.
The remains of my dinner had been taken and a blanket had been thrown over me. The night was probably objectively hot, given the season, but I felt chill even with the blanket. I was still exhausted and lightheaded, but not so much so that I wanted to sit and listen to the lovesongs of someone who I did not want to ask me to join them.
Sighing, I threw off my blanket and struggled to my feet. I wanted to get lost in the woods even less than I wanted to stay here. Fortunately there was a clear path in the form of the creek that ran past the clearing. Downstream seemed easier than up, so I walked in that direction until I could no longer hear Elana getting railed.
Walking, however unsteadily, seemed to feel better than laying still. So I kept going. The night was dark and quiet. The sound of the water over the rocks was soothing.
I don’t know how long I walked before I found the second sandbar, where Derrek lay naked in the night air. Travelling together for months, now, I had seen him in every state of dress and undress, but I was not sure that I had ever seen him in such complete repose. His tanned ruddy skin seemed to glow in the moonlight, lighting up the winged serpent tattooed on his breast. Staring up at the sky his eyes, too, seemed to glow.
“Do you mind,” I asked quietly, “if I join you?”
“Please,” he said. “I would appreciate the company.”
I sat down beside him.
“Can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“Elana and Rennin woke me,” I said.
He chuckled.
“I was wondering how long they would take,” he said. “I guess now is as good a time as any to give in.”
“It was a hard battle. It is no surprise that they wish to celebrate their lives.” I sighed and leaned back beside him. The thick foliage parted just enough over the stream to give us a glimpse of the stars. “The gods must have blessed us. I am astounded that none of us died.”
He muttered something to himself, so softly I almost didn’t catch it, in a language I didn’t understand. An oath, I imagined.
“I have never used so much magic in a passing of the moon,” I said after a while. “Let alone the passing of a day. My blood still boils in my veins.”
“It is one of the great risks of wizardry. A lesser power would have died of the strain, and you may yet be ill,” he reminded me. “Put your feet in the water and your back to the earth, let your skin breathe the air. It will help.”
I stood and stripped, piling my clothes next to his, and waded into the stream to wash away the day. The shock of the water was incredible. I could barely stand the cold past my calves. I might indeed be sick tomorrow, I realized as I lay down beside him again and turned my own eyes to the stars.
The fine sand was soft and coarse against my back. I think I had fallen back asleep, briefly, when he spoke again. Certainly, there was something dreamlike about his voice.
“I have almost no blood left in my body.”
“Will you be able to open the gate tomorrow?” I asked. “Better to wait than to risk your life.”
“It’s not my life I risk, but my mortality. I think that I will be all the more powerful when the last of my human blood is spent.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Wizardry requires power that we provide in blood… life. Aemil … the Usurper and I sought to amplify our power by amplifying our lives. We found another source.”
“Another source?”
“Yes, like the Illustrians did. He, in fact, tapped into the Shadow Realm.”
I knew that was what others said of them, but I had never been entirely certain if it were true. And, if it were true, how exactly that worked.
“But is that not what ultimately destroyed them and rent the Veil?”
“That took the weight of an entire empire. One wizard cannot draw so much, even one as powerful as he.”
Was that true? It seemed likely. It also seemed like a reason – if not, perhaps, the reason – why neither of them had taught anyone their arts.
“And you?” I asked. “What did you tap?”
The pause was long enough that I did not think that he would answer. But he did.
“The Holy Land,” he said, whispering like it was a confession.
Of course. That was why the gate resonated whenever he cast a spell. Why he had been so confident that he could open the gate even without the aid of the guardian. Perhaps even why he was so certain of what he would find beyond the Veil.
It was also very likely the source of the glow that I had seen around him from the very beginning. The light of the holy land bleeding into him and emanating into the world.
Astounding. Terrifying. Fascinating.
Our hands touched, then, and the next thing I knew, I was astride him. His skin, like mine, was hot to the touch. His slender waist fit well between my thighs. His eyes, still glowing faintly, widened – bright and green as enchanted emeralds. His lips parted in a soft gasp as I ran my nails up his abs to his ribs. Shocked, yes, but also delighted.
Good.
I kept going, tracing my fingertips along the outer edges of his small breasts, along his collar bone, up his neck, and into his soft, thick hair. He arched his back and moaned. I smiled and bent down to kiss him on the mouth. He returned the kiss with fervor and took my ass in both hands. I arched into that pressure and shook my head so that my hair fell down around our faces.
I wished that I had had the foresight to let out my braids, but I hadn’t planned this. I had never even considered it. But it was off to such a good start that I might as well finish it.
I took the time to explore his body with my hands and my mouth. The breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his arms, the thickness of his fingers. The sounds he made when I licked his nipples, and drug my teeth along his ribs. The delightful curve of his waist and the hourglass swell of his hips and thighs. The trail of darkening hair that ran down from his navel to his cunt, and the delightful musky wetness that I found between his legs. Hair there was an unusual experience, but not an unpleasant one, and I quite enjoyed the way he grabbed my braids as I brought him to trembling, moaning climax.
It took him a little while to catch his breath. I just lay between his legs, my head on his belly, while he recovered.
His breathing was still a little ragged when he gently hooked his finger under my chin and whispered, “Come back up here, please.”
I did, and he kissed me with passion and tenderness. His hands began exploring my body as I had, his, just a few minutes ago. I liked the strength and the calloused coarseness of them, and the precise movements of even the most casual caress. He guided my body up and down his as he kissed and caressed my face and shoulders and breasts, paying particular attention to my clavicles and the hollows behind my ears.
Eventually, finally, his hands returned to my ass and my thighs, brushing against my cleft and stroking my lips, slipping inside and stroking, swirling, squeezing … I shook and gasped and rocked into his touch. His human hands were so large and so strong. I had never had anyone so strong inside me – an astounding statement, given that the majority of my lovers had been masseuses. That combination of size and strength undid me more quickly than I ever could have imagined. I let go. I shuddered and cried and collapsed, heaving, onto his chest.
===
I never thought that I would be so desperate for companionship that I would seek it outside my own species. And in a sense, that proved to be true. It was not desperation that had driven me to fuck Derrek Rowan. Nor, in all truth, was it fair to characterize djuunan as a wholly different species than llamenan. I knew, and he knew, where his people came from.
They came from us. From us and the rrotran. And from the desperate grief and loneliness that each of our peoples had known in those first years after the Withering Plague.
The sao`ashan had enslaved us together, we and the dwarves. Together we had toiled for generations, serving in their factories and their houses, doing all those things that the stone giants and the one-eyed could not do at the appropriate scale. Together we had risen up. Together we had fled south, descending the Great Ice Wall and following the River Venn to the river valley at the foot of Mount Kashrin, where the god of the mountain promised to shelter us from the Children of Tal Thannuu.
We were different peoples, then, we and the rrotran. We were weary and wounded from our enslavement and our escape. We could barely remember who and what we had been before the sao`ashan. Our father gods had not yet sent their prophets to us. Nor had we yet committed our great follies.
The first of those follies belonged to the dwarves. They dug deep into the roots of Mount Kashrin. Even they could not say, precisely, what it was that they sought. But all elves and all dwarves know what they found: a great doorway, buried entirely and impossibly in igneous rock. The door and its frame and lentils seemed to be made of stone, but were no more vulnerable to pick or axe than it had been to the volcanic flow by which it had been swallowed.
The second folly we shared jointly. The dwarves could not open the door by themselves, so they came to the sorcerers of the elves. Together, we pried open those impossible double-doors. Together, we released the Withering Plague.
The Plague struck each of our peoples differently. It made the rrotran angry and paranoid, and it withered the bodies of their women away until they were nothing but dead and dry skin and bones. It made the llamenan listless and despondent, and withered the hearts and lungs of our men until they could not sustain their own lives. Children of both our species were born weak, or not at all.
To our mutual credit, we did not blame each other. It was a tragedy, not a crime. Our peoples grew closer, living together on the slopes of Mount Kashrin, tended by the mountain god Senvarus and his oreads. It took decades, but … the Prophets of Es and Dal came, and with their aid we sealed the door. The plague diminished, and our peoples survived.
In the time between the opening of the Plague Gate, though, and the coming of the prophets, many of us had been desperate, lonely, and grief-stricken. Dwarven widowers and elven widows, young dwarven men and elven women with no prospects of marriage or family, came together and comforted each other. And, to our great surprise, interspecies pairings seemed to be more fertile than conventional ones. These hybrid miracle children we named djuunan.
By the time the prophets came, there were as many djuunan children as there were rrotran and llamenan combined. With the Plague Gate closed, and the aid of the prophets, the effects of the Withering Plague were diminished. More children were born to all parents. Dwarven girl-children were still born fewer and weaker, as were elven boy-children, but the djuunan seemed stronger than rrotran or llamenan had ever been, with the best talents of each: tall like elves, broad and hairy like dwarves, with sorcerous power greater than either. But they grew up fast, too fast. The first generation of djuunan gave birth to the second even as their llamenan and rrotran peers were just beginning to explore their infertile pubescent bodies. A third generation of djuunan was born just as their grandparents’ peers were beginning to wed and have children of their own. And then, at a hundred and fifty years, half the age to which most elves or dwarves expect to live, the first generation of djuunan began to grow old and die.
Elves, by now, were ruled by the first Queen and Sorceresses’ Council. Dwarves had their first King, and the clans and trades were beginning to solidify. The prophets were still with us. We could have shown wisdom and compassion. Instead, both our peoples panicked, and the unity we had known since we were slaves together under the sao`ashan was sundered. Marriages between rrotran and llamenan were forbidden, as were marriages with the djuunan.
Hurt and alienated, the majority of the djuunan left our cities and formed their own communities. We traded with them. Some families tried to coax them back. But each generation of djuunan was matured faster and died sooner than the last, with less magical talent and fewer connections to either their elven or dwarven progenitors. So, when the ogre hordes came, most djuunan fled south or west. Down the River Venn to the Sacred Desert, where they met the Prophet of Althaeruh and became the nation of a’Rasyr. West, until they reached the rivers Ilus and Gyyr, and grew to be the Illustrians. And southwest, where they sheltered in the highlands and became the Namorans. And, generation by generation, over nearly two thousand years, they forgot where they came from.
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