and Aydrian hates you.
Powerful enemies." "Jilseponie is wounded and disappointed, but she is no enemy," Juraviel insisted.
"And Aydrian?"
"He is angry, and he is misguided - more so than I ever would have believed possible."
"They will not leave," Cazzira observed. "We will be forced to fight them."
That did not seem like a welcome option to Belli'mar Juraviel.
Cazzira shuddered then, suddenly, her dark eyes going wide as she glanced all about.
"What is it?" Juraviel asked, coming on his guard.
"A coldness," the Doc'alfar female replied. "I do not know. Something passed us, much like the sensation of the spirit departing the human bodies when we offer them to the bog."
Juraviel, too, glanced all around nervously, trusting Cazzira's senses, though he knew not what she meant. A moment later, they locked stares.
"I know not," Cazzira said again.
They marched in hard toward the copse, with Aydrian out front and leading the way, and with Sadye right beside him, playing a rousing song on her lute, the music lifting the spirits of the men all about their king.
"Touel'alfar!" Aydrian cried. "I will see your Lady Dasslerond!"
When no answer came forth, the young king lifted his hand toward the left side of the small and fairly contained grouping of trees and sent forth a burst of brilliant, stinging lightning. He shifted right immediately and fired again, singeing the trees and lighting several boughs.
He brought his free hand up behind him and waved left and right, and his disciplined force broke both ways, rushing to encircle the trees around both sides.
Aydrian strode forward powerfully. "Now, I demand!" he shouted. "Or I shall tear your precious valley down around you!"
A score of small arrows whistled out of the trees, every one slashing unerringly toward the young King. Aydrian didn't flinch, other than to grab Sadye and pull her defensively behind him. He knew the designs of the Touel'alfar and understood that all of those arrows would be tipped with silverel. He reached into the magical gemstones set in the chest plate of his magnificent armor and brought forth a wave of magnetic energy that turned the bolts as surely as any shield.
And then he reached out again with his graphite and loosed a series of devastating lightning strokes that cut searing lines through the trees.
And then he shouted out for a charge, and his soldiers rushed the copse, waving swords and spears.
Arrows reached out at the charging soldiers, and several fell clutching devastating wounds.
In front of the trees, Aydrian watched closely, marking the source of an arrow and responding with a lightning blast that threw the poor elf out the other side, dropping her charred form to the ground.
"By god," Sadye whispered, her mouth agape. "Aydrian... this is..."
He wasn't even listening. He charged straight in behind that last blast of sizzling energy, bringing forth his magnetic lodestone shield and a second, bluish white glowing energy about his body.
He heard a cry, and recognized Juraviel's voice, the elf telling his kin to run away.
Under the trees went Aydrian, reaching into a third stone, the ruby set on the pommel of Tempest, his wondrous sword. The fireball engulfed the central area of the copse and had most of the elves running, and had a few others tumbling from the boughs, their bodies aflame.
Aydrian scrambled out to the right, to see an elf faced off against one of his soldiers. The poor lumbering Kingsman strode forward and took a roundhouse swing that never came close to hitting. The elf skittered back out of reach, then came forward with sudden and devastating efficiency, driving his slender sword in through a seam in the man's armor.
As the man fell away, clutching a brutal wound, a smiling Aydrian took his place.
"And so we meet, traitor," said the elf, whom Aydrian recognized as Tes'ten Duv眉. "For years, I have desired my chance at laying low the errant son of Elbryan the Nightbird!" With that, the elf came forward, but in a measured way, the thrust of his sword more to measure Aydrian's response than any honest attempt to hit.
Aydrian didn't have time to play. He leveled Tempest at his enemy and sent a surge of energy through the graphite he had set in the pommel, and a bolt of lightning struck Tes'ten full force, lifting him from the ground and hurtling him backward to smash into a tree. Aydrian's lightning held the poor elf there for a long moment and charred the tree behind him.
"And so you had your chance," the young king taunted, though the