Land of the Elves
Land of the Elves
"Why'd you come to our house?"
"To play, of course!"
"Are you going to play with us?"
The elves chattered brightly as they approached. The party met the tiny creatures with a range of reactions.
Tiyamal and Richard, neither of them particularly comfortable with children, looked lost. Tiyamal shot Aslan a bewildered glance, silently pleading for help as the elves clung to his legs. Richard, mobbed by small bodies demanding play, was forced to mumble placating words, urging them to calm down.
Angie and Rumel, on the other hand, had clearly dealt with children before.
"What do you want to play?"
"I dunno!"
"If you dunno, how about a horsey ride?"
"Yeah!"
Angie hoisted an elf onto each shoulder and kept walking. Rumel, sensitive as she was, bent down to meet the elves at eye level, speaking and listening on their terms.
Fay was an elf by birth, and perhaps because of that, the others didn't swarm her quite as much. Ereta received a different kind of attention entirely.
"Why are you frowning?"
A single elf approached and tilted its head at the mass of divinity that wore a girl's shape. Ereta carefully masked her visible displeasure.
"My stomach hurts a little."
"Your stomach? Want me to rub it?"
"No, I'm fine. You really don't have to..."
"Are you sure? You have to tell me if it hurts!"
The scowl threatened to surface. She pushed it down with effort.
Ereta was weak against elves who offered pure goodwill without the faintest shadow of malice. She was starving for kindness, for gentleness, for warmth freely given — a hunger that hadn't faded even now, when she was practically a demigod. The fact that she had no idea how to deflect that kindness didn't help.
Aslan watched the woman wrestle a complicated expression onto her face while elves clung to her, then turned and followed his own guides toward the God of Nature and Creation.
Elves were that kind of species. Benevolent toward all living things, ignorant of strife, utterly devoid of wariness or hostility. Watching them, it wasn't hard to understand what their creator must have been like.
The closer he drew, the stronger the presence became — gentle, subdued, yet impossibly potent. A divinity so fierce it refused to leave its flesh even in death, the very distillation of nature itself. Dead yet undying, it saturated everything around it without ever flaunting its strength. A divinity that evoked the raw, relentless vitality of the wild. Aslan found himself quietly awed by how much power still lingered.
If Nature and Creation had been a god capable of fighting, the King of Gods would have been this one. He was sure of it.
The remains matched the presence — immense. A tree that speared the sky. A trunk as thick as a modest mountain peak. Its faint divinity wrapped the surroundings in warmth.
It looked exactly like nature given form.
This was the place where that overwhelming divinity ceaselessly gave birth to a species that knew nothing but goodwill.
Aslan approached, mind already working. Divinity had been the point of this visit from the start. The main quest still boiled down to collecting divinity. Which made the Land of the Elves a mandatory stop — this was where you came to receive what Nature and Creation offered, what the god had arranged for Purity. Whatever it was, it would likely give him a way to address — or at least mitigate — his shattered lifespan.
He was running on borrowed life, and he still had every evil god to destroy. He needed a path forward.
Standing before the tree, he was prepared to face any trial.
The vast trunk rose beyond the reach of his upturned gaze. Around him, the elves babbled and chirped. He listened for a moment, then spoke.
"If Nature and Creation left something prepared for me, tell me."
He'd been looking at the tree as he said it. The elves blinked.
"Something prepared?"
They exchanged glances. Innocent eyes met in silent confusion, then dissolved into giggles.
"I'll give you a hug!"
The reply felt like it had skipped several logical steps.
Aslan looked down, bemused, then saw the elves rushing in to wrap their arms around him. The bemused expression edged into consternation.
"No, not... not that."
They didn't listen. They clung to his legs, pressed cheeks against a torso far too tall for them to reach his chest, latched onto his back and laughed. He was still trying to figure out how to ask for the trial instead when his vision began to warp. He snapped his head up in confusion.
"...What?"
Light spilled from his teal eyes. Something that shouldn't have been visible bloomed into sight — a vast current, some fragment of the divinity that dwelt within the tree. The breath of nature itself. Visibly manifest — life and creation and nature all at once.
Aslan's eyes went wide at the alien spectacle. Behind him, Angie, who had been observing the anomaly in silence, frowned. She could feel it — a massive flow of divinity. She'd witnessed this before. When Aslan faced his past in the Sanctuary of Sorrow. When he fought the Dragon-king alone. When he and Ereta plunged into Olpasbet and clashed with the Artist. Divinity seeping into Aslan. And into her.
She folded her arms and glared at the current. The immense divinity swirled around Aslan, hovering as if waiting — a swarm anticipating prey.
Aslan stared into the flow, then something clicked.
"Ah."
Almost in a trance, he brushed his hand over the Wings of Stymphalos and plucked a single feather. The current spun around him. Elves still pressed against his body. He murmured:
"Purity."
Fighting spirit built on a foundation of divinity too vast for any single will. In the moment the arrangement the ancient gods had woven — surrendering their strife — flared to life in his hand, a greatsword materialized in the empty space.
White, blazing with pure light. A blade so translucent you might see through it, with a crossguard shaped like a set of scales. Divinity saturated the stub of a hilt that extended beyond the guard — unfinished, barely long enough for a one-handed grip.
Crrrk. Crrrack.
Something grew from within the hilt. Untreated wood, gleaming deep brown, as if it bled light. It lengthened inch by inch, and Aslan watched. By the time it stopped, the grip had stretched to the length of a short spear.
A system window flickered into existence above it.
[Effects of Purity]
[Can sever the bond between a god and their priests.]
[Will not extinguish so long as the wielder's fighting spirit remains.]
[Heart of Sorrow — Can cut through divinity and spirit bodies.]
[Sword of Fire — Can cut anything the wielder intends to cut, and will never break.]
[Scales of Order — Can endure any attack that is blocked.]
[▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯▯]
[Grows stronger the more it resonates with the divinity of the ancient gods.]
A familiar window. Text laid down by an ancient god to describe the arrangement Aslan now held. The corruption slowly faded, the way nature reclaims the traces people leave behind.
[Pillar of Creation — As long as breath remains, grants a recuperative power akin to nature itself.]
A gentle arrangement, surfacing at last. A kind phrase that encompassed creative regeneration. Softly metaphorical — so unlike the terse sorrow and order, the brash confidence of fire.
No trial at all. It had simply been placed in his hands.
Aslan stared down at it, dazed, until the elves spoke.
"Mommy said, 'When the kind friend comes, give him a big hug'!"
The words tumbled out among the crowd of small bodies. Aslan blinked back to awareness, glanced down at the elves, then at Purity in his grip.
So the trial wasn't required after all.
He'd assumed the arrangement had to be earned through some ordeal. That wasn't how it worked. The trial only happened when the ancient god granting the arrangement wanted one. Or perhaps he'd already been tested, long ago. Either way, he could feel the gentleness in it. Nature and Creation had given freely, whether because the test was already over or because none had ever been needed.
Law and Order, he decided, was definitely an old fossil.
A single irreverent thought. Aslan shelved it, chalked the difference up to the personality of the god involved, and returned Purity to feather form, letting it settle back into his cloak.
"Aslan, you all right?"
"Uh, did something just happen? You drew Purity out, so I figured something was going on, but..."
Tiyamal had clearly sensed something. Rumel had not. Aslan glanced back at them and shrugged lightly.
"It's nothing. I'm fine."
"If you say so. Still..." Tiyamal rubbed his jaw, golden reptilian eyes fixed on Aslan with lingering concern.
Aslan gave him a sheepish grin, then looked down at the elves still clinging to him.
"Thank you. It's over now, so you can go play."
He'd expected them to think it wasn't over. Instead, the elves blinked and beamed up at him.
"Huh? It felt warm, so we were hugging! Can't we hug longer?"
"Yeah, it's warm!"
"Is it really over already?"
Little voices overlapping. Aslan smiled without meaning to and gently ruffled each small head, carefully prying them off one by one.
Once the last elf was detached, he turned toward Angie. She stood with her arms folded under her generously grown chest — a scarlet-haired woman with golden eyes that still called to mind a beast, though she had long since left girlhood behind. Their eyes met. She acknowledged him with a slight nod. He asked:
"Feel anything different?"
Purity had gone to Aslan, but the divinity had passed through Angie too. In the game, divinity had been little more than a flag — a qualification. Here, he wasn't sure. He asked anyway.
"...Eh, not really? Maybe I feel something. Maybe I don't."
Ambiguous. But closer to "maybe I do." Aslan considered that sufficient and let out a breath, nodding. One objective down. One more to go.
He turned to an elf nuzzling into the hand that was petting it.
"Hey."
"Hmm? What?"
"Can I have one seed? Something your mother left behind."
The Seed of Elf Transformation. Also called the Mother's Seed. A sub-quest reward. The quest itself had never been hard — simple, peaceful chores helping to tend Nature and Creation's domain. Because of that, nobody had ever minded that the reward was essentially a trap.
Aslan had been one of those players. He was ready to complete whatever sub-quest triggered.
"Okay!"
"Huh?"
The elf's cheerful answer was immediate. A seed was produced and offered up in both hands, leaving Aslan so thrown that a stupid noise escaped him.
The elf took it as a question and held the seed out farther, delivering an astonishing explanation.
"Mommy said to give anything the kind friend wants!"
It sounded like a message Nature and Creation had left behind. Aslan couldn't tell if the god had seen through him and made arrangements, or if it was mere coincidence. Either way, he had no reason to refuse. He reached out and took the seed.
A massive system window flooded his vision. He looked up without much expression — then froze.
[Main Quest in Progress]
[ ! Hunt the High Priest k▯▯▯ra and Defend the Land of the Elves]
[ ! Or Flee to a Safe Distance and Withdraw]
His eyes widened. High priest. The main quest he was supposed to face here. The event he'd thought he'd bypassed. He didn't fully process the situation. He didn't catch the anomaly. But his body moved before his mind could finish forming the thought.
"Battle stations!"
The sudden shout made the elves recoil, eyes wide. The party's hands went to their weapons on reflex —
And from overhead came the sound.
Crraaack... crrr-unch.
Something splintering, something shattering. Before the noise could be placed, a roar of destruction followed.
Ka-ga-ga-gang!
Fragments of the barrier rained down from the sky, mixed with snow. Chunks that resembled pieces of space itself pattered down alongside fist-sized snowflakes, dusting the ground white. A wave of frigid air swept across the earth, and Aslan felt the cold scrape down his spine.
Nobody had time to grasp the situation before something revealed itself above them.
It resembled a knight. A knight that flew. Legs studded with nozzle-like protrusions were encased in armor — a fused design of sabatons and greaves — leaking threads of something that looked like plasma. A thin, sleek upper chassis connected to a head, flanked by two arms. Arms wrapped in gauntlets. In each hand it held plasma, the same substance that bled from the lower nozzles, shaped into spears. The plasma rings hovered above its head like a halo. It looked like an angel, if angels were built in a world that had never existed.
The being raised its spears, head snapping downward, and screamed.
"Aaaaa... Slaaaaan...!"
A mechanical voice soaked in hatred and obsession. Aslan heard it and knew.
Predator's priest. The first high-priest enemy from the game. The one that always appeared during the main quest and burned the Land of the Elves. The one Aslan had killed — core pierced dead-center. The first opponent who'd forced him to use Equalization.
Wildly transformed now, but still shrieking his name.
Predator's High Priest. Chimera.
Chimera's roar ended. It hurled the plasma spear.