Chapter 11: Forest Elves

The forest elves came up to handcuff us with what looked like magical strands of grass. The grass sparkled slightly with blue energy. They wrapped a single strand of grass around my wrist and tapped the section where the two layers of the grass made contact. Then, the two intersecting parts melted into each other, securing my arms behind my back. I attempted to snap it but I did no more than making my wrists sore.

Forest elves looked similar to mystic elves but were taller, more handsome, and more regal. I realised the forest surrounding us was actually a city. Homes were constructed by hollowing out large evergreens and digging burrows in the ground.

“Go away!” Winter roared when one soldier attempted to handcuff her.

Winter’s scream led to a creation of a pulse of red energy around her. The red Aura radiated outwards and expanded in diameter. Once the red Aura touched an elf, the elf immediately collapsed as if hit by a battering ram. The red pulse somehow also weakened the magic in our handcuffs so that they became mere strands of grass. Taking that moment of our enemy’s weakness to our advantage, I immediately signaled my four teammates to sprint towards our horses and immediately straddled on top of them. Our horses quickly turned around with our guidance and galloped past the mossy streets. Arrows whizzed after us, several ricocheting of our armor.

“We need to split up!” I screamed over the noise and chaos.

“Oh my god! What about Winter and Oliver? We’ve left them behind. They didn’t have their horses!” Urf exclaimed.

As if on cue, Oliver and Winter overtook us with… OMG unicorns! I raised my eyebrow. I had never seen a unicorn used as transport before. The unicorns in the ADMI Academy were only summoned to guard the Academy from mystic threats.

Winter’s unicorn was a jet-black mare which matched her blood-red robe to create a vampirish theme. The horn of her unicorn was white and had occasional red magic spark around it. Oliver’s unicorn was a stallion that looked fairly similar to James Jr, my horse, except for an occasional blue spot which had the exact same shade as Oliver’s robe: ocean blue. Blue sparks popped up around the unicorn’s horn similar to the red sparks on Winter’s unicorn.

I looked around and noticed that Imbeseel seemed to be missing.

“T’is no time to drunken beer…” came a familiar voice from out of what appeared to be a neighborhood bar inside a large tree trunk. Imbeseel emerged from the bar while riding a seemingly drunk horse with beer foam on its lips. Three arrows zoomed passed him and only missed just because his horse was not walking in a straight line.

“Imbeseel, you follow me. Everyone else scatter!” I ordered. I wanted to make sure Imbeseel would not do anything stupid that may endanger our lives.

Everyone nodded in agreement. Up ahead, the road dissected into three separate paths. Oliver, Winter and Urf galloped to the left while Grubby and Stump decided to go right. Imbeseel and I headed straight on through the path in the middle.

After everyone else disappeared into the forest, I turned around to confirm that Imbeseel was indeed following right behind me instead of allowing his horse to visit another bar for a shot of vodka. His horse was still walking in drunken zigzags and bumping into trees ever so often. I also noticed as we made a sharp turn left into a narrow alleyway between two hills that we were followed by three elves, two were armed with bows and arrows, one was armed with a lance with some unidentified red liquid which looked suspiciously like dry blood.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw flashes of red and blue Aura seeping through the trees to my left. I deduced that Oliver and Winter must have resorted to violence.

I commanded my horse to gallop onto a very slippery, moss-covered road, hoping to shake our pursuers off. Imbeseel and his horse slipped and slided behind us. Unfortunately, the horses of the forest elves were adept at galloping on moss-covered roads, while our horses were barely able to control their footwork. Also, they were wearing light leather armor, while Imbeseel, our horses and I wore heavy metal plates. It was clearly a wrong move.

I knew, based on the circumstances, that they could easily catch up with us so I did the one option I was left with: I turned my horse around to attack head on. When my horse turned around, Imbeseel’s horse rammed into mine, sending Imbeseel and I flying. Conveniently, a branch snagged me on the shoulder before I could land painfully on the ground. Imbeseel was not quite as fortunate. He had tumbled into our pursuers, knocking them down like bowling pins.

“Well, that didn’t go smoothly,” I muttered to myself.

After I caught my breath, I noticed that we were surrounded by dozens of elves on horseback. I raised my sword, ready to go down fighting, even though I felt and looked foolish hanging on a tree branch with my sword in front of me.

Though, instead of attacking, the lead elf stepped forwards and took out a scroll. “Your companions have surrendered to the great Kingdom of Moenire, the land of the forest elves.” the lead elf announced, “you will come with us or choose to be disposed of.”

I reluctantly allowed myself to be handcuffed once again after they pulled me roughly off the tree branch. The elves pushed me forward by poking me in the back with their spears.

We walked through the forest path and gradually approached a clearing. The first thing we spotted was a humiliated Grubby holding up his underpants in the air as a white flag. The boxers were white with pink hearts on it. Everyone else was clearly trying to force down the urge to laugh, even the elves.

“Not a word.” Grubby grumbled when he saw us.

I tried my hardest not to snicker after seeing his childish undergarment. I looked around and realized that Winter, Oliver, Urf, and Stump were also under confinement.

“You will be brought in front of King Regnavius. He will decide your fate. You should be honored. Not many human or mystic elves have even gazed upon our gracious king. The last non-forest elf to do so has gone insane upon our king's decision to throw him into our dungeons. And that was twenty years ago.” the lead elf reported.

I heard Stump gulp loudly from hearing this fact.

The elves frisked us for weapons and disarmed us. They threw us into a pilgrim cart and bound us together onto a pole on the side.

We finally arrived at the forest elves palace. The main entrance was a tunnel through a hill covered by a wooden drawbridge. I guessed that a majority of the palace was underground as the hill was definitely not large enough for a castle. The entrance was surrounded by a moat which I imagined would possibly hold crocodiles. In the center of the drawbridge, the elves had on-purposely shaved the moss on it so that it would display the symbol of the elves. The symbol had an oak tree on top of a lake with two hands reaching out of it. One hand held Excalibur, the famous Arthurian weapon and the very sword we were here for. The other hand held Clarent, Excalibur’s evil twin used to kill King Arthur in the original folklore. Both swords were created by Frey, the Shadowlord of elves.

“If Alyximeme were to be dead,

The one who shall kill will have much to learn,

Men who strive to sleep better in bed

Then Alyximeme’s death must be well earned,

Excalibur will eat the Dark Mage’s bled.”

Based on this prophecy, the only weapon which destined to kill Alyximeme was Excalibur. We knew this mythical blade was in King Regnavius' possession. We were delighted that Grand Sorcerer Qeer had kindly dropped us off at this venue to extract this important weapon. It was just not ideal that the forest elves decided not to regard us as guests but captured us as prisoners instead.

The inside of the hill we arrived at was a vast cavern. The cavern was a cylinder that had stairs spiraled up to access many rooms. In the middle of the circular chamber was a huge tree. At the foot of the tree, the roots configured themselves into a throne. An elf with elegant green silk robes with leaf patterns sown on top, blond straight hair, icy blue eyes, and a golden crown shaped to look like stag horns sat on top of it. There was something authoritative about him that made it clear that he was a monarch even if he was on the streets and dressed like a beggar.

“I bet you five dollars that that’s King Regnavius,” Urf whispered to me.

“No way I’m taking that bet,” I whispered in reply.

A herald blasted his bugle and took out a scroll. “Welcome to Moenire, the home of our valiant king, King Regnavius.”

“Knew it,” I whispered to Urf.

“You stand before the center of the cosmos itself, the magnificent tree Yggdrasil. Our patron, Frey, created this tree to organize and balance the cosmos. If this tree is destroyed, oh heavens forbid such a disaster, the cosmos will wither along with it.” The herald continued, speaking dramatically.

“May the glorious king decide the fate of these treacherous human and mystic elves!” the herald finished.

“Let me hear the story of the human,” said King Regnavius.

On command, I told the King our story truthfully, seeing that there was no point in lying. Urf helped to filled in details in between times when I had to take breaths.

After hearing our story, King Regnavius and seven other high-ranking officers dressed similarly but lacking his stag horn crown, discussed our fate in whispers. We were then sent to the dungeons.

Mercifully, the dungeons happened to be quite pleasant. The only thing that made it seem like a dungeon was that there was a caged door made out of unvarnished pinewood and a lumpy bed. There was even an ensuite bathroom with a nice shower in my cabin. There was boiled cabbage and loafs of bread on my bedside table.

We all took showers and refreshed ourselves for either death or continuation of our mission which would probably equal death. Black dirt seemed to ooze out of my skin from the dirt and grime after sweating profusely without showering for several days in my armor. After cleaning up, I quickly ate some boiled cabbage and structured my mustache to a perfect state.

Just as I was planning to relief my bowels, a couple of forest elves came into the dungeons and led us back to the throne room. It was time for King Regnavius to announce our fates.

“The great King Regnavius has decided your fate, miserable prisoners.” The herald announced. I resisted my overwhelming urge to punch the herald in his face. He reminded me of Ivan.

“We have decided that we will allow you to finish your quest and we will lend you Excalibur, but under one condition,” King Regnavius said, pausing for effect, “that you return a sharpened Excalibur to its proper owners, us, once you finish the quest. Do you agree to our term, prisoners?”

“Yes. Of course!” We all agreed.

“Bring in Excalibur!” King Regnavius ordered.

Two elves brought in a beautiful gleaming sword. The leather grip shone despite years without action. The cross-guard, the bar of metal which bordered the grip and the blade, was forged with two miniature dragons on each end. The blade was engraved with ‘Excalibur’ written in a very majestic font.

“The blade has lost its edge after years in our grasp. We have attempted to sharpen the sword to no avail. The blade is made from the iron in men’s blood, heated with the breath of a dragon and cooled with the saliva of Shadowlords.” King Regnavius said.

“Ewww!” Grubby whispered. It was fortunate that King Regnavius had not heard Grubby’s offensive gesture.

“The only place were it could be sharpened is the forges of Myrkheim, the land of the dwarves. We are not on steady political ground with the dwarves but I hope that your story, if true, will convince them to help.” King Regnavius continued. “If you can have it sharpened and eventually returned to us, we will be very much obliged.”

That night, King Regnavius treated us to a grand banquet with dancing performances by female forest elves. I loved the food and wine but hated the dull performance. I actually fell asleep during the grand finale and ended up planting my face on top of a half-eaten carrot cake for the rest of the night.

The next morning I woke up to the smell of pancakes. I cleaned the frosty residual from my nostrils and mustache, and inhaled the hearty breakfast. After breakfast, my teammates, our mystic elf assistants and I collected our weapons and armor, double-checked our food, water and other supplies, and then began heading off for Myrkheim. I was very excited. Not only because our quest is seeing some potential light behind a long dark tunnel, but also because Myrkheim is fabled to have harbored the secrets to the perfect mustache!