"Ah, you rembered my na?" she playfully said.
She spun once, fast, and the air around her tasted briefly of rain and clean stone.
"I’m surprised you recognized ," Ludwig said.
He felt the odd twist of ti that happens when a past life steps back into the day, a feeling like putting on a coat one had put away and then almost forgotten. The boy peered around his arm to stare, eyes wide, the fear in them interrupted by wonder.
Everyone around him seed surprised, after all, Lipsi was Lorina Ulesse’s contracted wind spirit. And she got respect from everyone of the elven tribe mbers.
Bows lowered by degrees where chains allowed. Even the archer on the branch dipped her head in a small motion that might have been a bow if she had not still held an arrow.
"Why wouldn’t I recognize you? You look the sa like five years ago, and also sll the sa. Like the Dead. Divine one of course!" she said in a chirp.
Her laughter rustled leaves that were not moving. The last words drew a soft intake from a few throats in the canopy, not fear. After all fairies tend to be mischievous who knows where the young man in front of them had been for him to sll like the dead.
Ludwig laughed, "I thought the heart got rid of that stench."
The sound ca out lower than he expected, scraped by recent fights, yet genuine. He let it be. The boy’s shoulders loosened a little at the sound.
"I prefer that sll over the one produced by that wicked heart, still, good to see you," she said and imdiately jumped on Ludwig’s hair. "Lorina wanted to see you. She talked a lot about your adventures in the Empire, and how you fought the Wrathful Death. She’ll be more surprised to see that you now have its heart." She kept pulling on Ludwig’s hair playfully, and he didn’t seem to mind.
Although her words were playful, they were also a warning to everyone around them. If they had tried sothing with Ludwig to annoy him, he would have obliterated them without any effort.
The fairy’s feet sank into the strands as if hair were adow-grass, and she tugged like a child steering a tall friend. In the trees a few eyes widened at the casual ntion, and the caution that had replaced hostility deepened into the wary respect one gives a storm that has already passed once overhead.
When everyone saw that, they cald down a bit.
Chains that did not truly loosen felt looser anyway. The archer’s arrow dipped until it aid at the ground near Ludwig’s feet. A breath seed to flow through the bound ranks, a quieting of intentions rather than a surrender of them.
"Follow please," the maid said as she walked through the forest.
She turned with the grace of soone who had never in her life needed to check a path twice. The new-grown trunk watched her pass and the opening held, patient as a held curtain.
Just as Ludwig was about to release the binding on the elves, as if nature itself seed to be a step above him, all mana that was fueling those bounds were simply cutoff. The elves regained their mobility, but they all lost any and all sort of hostility toward Ludwig, not their prudence. A few elves rubbed wrists out of reflex, then stopped themselves. Their eyes did not harden again toward him; they set, cool and assessing, as if he were weather that could be read and navigated rather than a threat to be broken.
Etiquette arranged itself without words. The guest first, then the guards. The boy stepped when Ludwig did, heel always barely brushing the leather of his boot. Lipsi’s light weight tugged his hair whenever he slowed as if to nudge him forward, humming under her breath in a tune that sounded like wind over bottle rims.
The first step felt like crossing cold water that did not wet him. The second lifted the color of the world by several shades. The canopy dropped away as if rolled back by invisible hands, and the sky opened a clean blue he had not seen since leaving the military camp. Light fell without the green sift of leaves, honest and full. The sound changed too; the tight, close forest-hush loosened into the broad, living murmur of a city breathing. In the middle of that vastness rose a tree that was not a tree so much as a statent. Trunk thicker than a keep, bark patterned in whorls so large a dozen hos could sit in the grooves, branches that did not reach for light so much as cradle it.
A tree unlike any, massive in size and great in length, a tree that shouldn’t be here. After all, the humans have already burnt it down to a crisp back in the fight between them and the elves.
Seeing it stand whole put a small wrongness in the center of his chest, the way a healed bone aches before a storm.
But now it stood in front of Ludwig. A tree that had its roots in the earth, and its branches carried the heavens. Yet... sothing felt strange.
The light was perfect. Perhaps too perfect. The breeze on his face did not match the visible shiver of leaves two tiers up. The reflections in the water at the base of the platforms lagged by a heartbeat, then caught up. None of it was crude. All of it was careful. The boy breathed in with a small sound that was not disbelief, only aching relief.
Ludwig frowned, then looked at the maid who seed to be waiting for his reaction for so reason.
Her hands were folded at her apron, posture impeccable, attention on him with the polite intensity of a host asuring a guest’s palate after the first sip of wine.
"That... that’s fake isn’t it?" Ludwig said.
He did not load the words with accusation. He asked them the way a craftsman asks another where a joint has been hidden. Lipsi tugged his hair twice in quick succession and then went still, as if sharing a secret that was not hers to tell.
When Ludwig looked back, the tree they had stepped through was only a tree, bark plain, girth modest, no seam to be seen. Ahead stretched a bridge wide enough for carts, rails wound with flowering vines, the blossoms stirring without wind. Hos climbed the great trunk in rings, walkways laced between limbs, banners of leaf and cloth both dropping color into air. Voices carried, children’s high notes, the cadence of market speech, the lower, steady hum of work done with care.
The Elven Kingdom was a massive city that seed to be surrounded with water. Which was a strange sight after all, here in Aspen, the closest body of salt water was all the way down to the south, at going past the Kingdom of Lotostra and into the Kingdom of Lamar. Where Ludwig had went to the Dawn Islands. Here, it was aspen of the west, Letonia of the north and the dark continent beyond Letonia’s mountains of Solania. While further west of Aspen was the Kingdom of the Sand.
The air tasted faintly of salt, the kind that leaves a trace on lips after a long walk along a true shore. That detail refused to sit quietly next to his maps. He set those maps out in his head anyway, The water’s color here held the green of depth, not the brown of river, the roll of a slow tide under its quiet surface. His mind tried to fit it into what he knew and only frayed the edges further.
So how did they find so much salt water...
He did not realize he had murmured the thought until Lipsi patted the crown of his head with tiny, unhelpful comfort.
The more Ludwig tried to rationalize the more confused he got.
He stopped the effort before it soured into frustration. The trick of such places was to accept the rules written upon entry and argue with them later, if at all. He let the city present itself without pushing at its seams.
So he simply waked ahead and waited to et Lorina Ulesse who should have more information for him.
He matched the maid’s pace and kept the boy close at his side, hand settled lightly on the child’s shoulder to steady him when the bridge swayed. The distant trunk threw a cool shadow across the path as a cloud crossed the sun above, and in that brief shade Ludwig rolled his shoulders, released the last of the fight from his muscles, and prepared his questions for the woman whose na had steadied a forest full of bows.
"The Dark Guards can disperse," the maid said.
"Is it wise?" the leader said.
"Yes, do you think you can handle our guest if he becos unhinged anyway?"
"I can stall him, in case..." the guard replied.
"Mantis and cart, it won’t help. Regardless it was lady Lorina who asked for his presence. It would be nothing but rudeness to further antagonize him."
The guards looked at each other, nodded, then simply disappeared as they jumped in different directions mixing with the city and its dwellers. Leaving Ludwig alone with the maid who began leading him toward the tree of life.
"Interesting magic you guys have here..." Ludwig said.
"As in?" the maid asked while she walked forward. The people, or Elves, in this scenario were all giving Ludwig strange looks, he after all didn’t have the pointy ears. And as a human moving in an Elven City, that brought him a lot of unwanted attention.
"It was much more, before. But for now, we’re managing. Let’s hurry up. Her ladyship has waited a long ti."
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