All-Flag Rangers: Part XVIII, Outskirts
.
.
.
.
Valenwood, 4E 97
"That," Aurelius said, his neck craned back, "is a tree."
The rangers stood on the outskirts of Adamor near a nameless bosmer treehold populated by a few dozen wood elves.
"I have seen better," Dagot-Ei scoffed.
"Come," said Faylin, the wood elf who had led them here, "inside you can find people to talk with. You can tell them you're going into Adamor, they can tell you how stupid you are, and I can sit back somewhere and feel superior."
"Which way is Adamor itself?" Furioso asked, not unpleasantly.
"Ask the locals." Faylin yawned, "I helped you plan your suicide enough." She walked away, vanishing into the foliage like any other tree.
Aurelius rolled his eyes, which was something he hadn't done in the eleven years he'd served with the legion.
“It is wise for us to speak with locals anyways,” Iszir said as ze approached, Furioso in tow. The old moth priest nodded his head in agreement,
“Yes, particularly if what Iszir tells me is true. Every village we passed through, abandoned or in ruins?”
“Usually both,” Aurelius murmured, “I think the wood elf led us around Adamor rather than into it, to make us see those villages,” he scratched the back of his head, “And to be honest it worked, to a degree. We definitely need more information before we head in there."
"You do know what Adamor means, right?" came Dram's voice from behind them. Furioso scowled at the dark elf but Dram continued anyways, "Ada-Mora, the Spirit Wood. You don't call a place in 'the Spirit Wood' without good reason."
"Names are just names," said Aurelius, "It doesn't matter."
From somewhere behind him came Lagerta's call, and he could imagine her rolling her eyes.
"Idiot."
The captain drew a deep, calming breath.
.
.
* *
.
.
"Aye, I could tell you about Adamor. Most anyone round here could."
"Nobody would though," Aurelius replied.
The fat old elf nodded his head sighing, dreadlocks shaking with the motion, and for a moment the rangers could see the sharpened stakes that were his teeth. "They're squeamish. Don't like to talk, even think, bout it. But you don't become a kineater by being squeamish." The old elf settled into a hammock-like chair made of a long leaf that grew out of the wall and was held to the other side by a vine that luckily had happened to curl around the leaf in the perfect way to set up a piece of furniture. It looked to never have been touched by mortal hands.
"I seen, and I have done, things that most wouldn't. It's my role in life, and I play it well. Noone wants to talk about Adamor cause it scares them, but also cause they don't want to feel like they killed you by helping you go in there. But I look at you all, and I know your gonna go in anyways. If I don't help you, only then will I feel the guilt," the elf leaned back, steepling his fingers over his bare belly, "but I do highly suggest you rethink your course."
Aurelius nodded, "Tell us about Adamor."
"Right," the kineater said, "that's what I mean, no regard. Anyways...
There's a lot of ways you could go with the story, cause they change over time. Bits are lost, or changed. Like acorns, stories crack sometimes, and sometimes they grow into new stories unlike the ones they were before. Other times they are buried and forgotten. There's one person who could tell it perfectly, but that don't matter cause they aren't here. So I'll tell you what I know, what I seen, and what I've learned over the course of my meals.
Like most of Valenwoods stories over the last seventy-odd years, it concerns the Dominion, and those bastards leading them, the Thalmor. This was, I think, twenty years ago? Auriel could tell you, but we're closer to Y'ffre so we're not so clear on any whens besides the now.
Anyways, just under twenty years ago, that's like fiftyish years after they took over. The Thalmor I mean. They took over, and just under twenty years ago almost nobody was left who could remember how they'd done it, or least not anyone who'd do anything bout. The Thalmor ruled, for the first time, unchallenged in Valenwood. Nobody would oppose them, nobody would challenge their dominion. Least, that's what they liked to believe.
A hundred feet above the dark detritus of the forest, two bosmer lived in a hollow in the old grahts. They were crazy those two, brilliant and singular in their nature. They were loners, hermits really, and they were philosophers and what they philosophized bout was freedom. And that isn't something that's 'llowed in the Thalmor's society, but they were gonna change that see? set Valenwood free. In the night they would work at it, in the night when the spies weren't watching. They did rituals, they made weapons, prayed to Y'ffre and the Silvenar and the Green Lady and, some say, even to the Ooze, whoever would listen. And they made love, and they had a child and they raised that child, and everything they did they poured into that kid. Fifteen years they worked, give or take (I really don't pay much mind to the passage of time to tell ya the truth), until the child was ready. A perfect bosmer, undefeatable in combat, unmatchable in magic, unerring in aim, and hell-bent on murdering every damned thalmor standing between Valenwood and freedom.
Then they went to war. Sabotaged deliviries and caravans, assassinated whole squads and patrols. The three alone brought the Thalmor in Valenwood to their knees. Eventually they sent a Dominion army up here to scour northern Valenwood and destroy the rebels. The two knew they couldn't take on the whole army in a fair fight, so they led them here, to Adamor, where the terrain was in their favor, and on the way they rallied at every village, town, city and treehold they passed. Rallied for Valenwood to raise up and throw off their oppressors, to run out the Dominion, and the people answered. With cheers, and warcrys and the snapping of bows being strung and the rasp of bone-knives leaving their sheaths, and the people fasted and the people followed.
So the two rebels led them to Adamor, but somehow, along the way, they lost people. As they grew nearer the haunted wood they just trailed off, running back home, and then they heard the cries of the Thalmor warband's march, their shouting, and the rest dropped their weapons and fell back in fear.
The two rebels went in anyways, and they attacked from the trees while ghosts haunted the army at every corner. Thousands of ghosts, the dead and lost from the Oblivion Crisis poured in to slaughter the invaders, and the two bosmer walked among them, ghosting like ghosts, killing every altmer in their midst, dealing death without remorse or hesitation but there were too many. They say the violence was surreal, moonstone against ectoplasm, the screeching of the spirits and the wailing of the dying deafened every treehold for miles around, and those cowards who stayed at the edges watched, and listened, but they did not enter, for they had given up hope, and now Valenwood's hope was in Adamor, dying for them. And the rest of 'em just hung back, and waited to die. And the child was nowhere to be seen.
The two rebels finally fell, and the ghosts lost their fervor and melted back into the darkness, and the ragged remains of the Dominion army cheered among the gold-skinned corpses stained with their life's red that gleamed in the setting sun. They had done it, and now Valenwood was broken. They cheered as cowards watched, until someone's cry was cut short. Then another, and another. Altmer began falling like pebbles, foretelling the landslide of death to come. And when it came, it came hard.
A creature like no other was moving through the broken ranks of the Aldmer, thrashing them like the wolf upon the garit, and the mer died in droves. Some fought, most fled, and the creature followed, and the cowards who had waited and watched broke and ran alongside their oppressors, and the beast like no other followed screaming curses and threats and ghastly promises, until all the living were run from Adamor.
Those cowards were touched, by the ghosts and the creature and the dead thalmor, and by their own cowardice and betrayal, so they settled in the woods around Adamor. They couldn't go back and face their families, so they started new ones. And that's who we are, the next generation, most of us. A few of us are old, from way back.
I came here bout ten years past. I trained as a kineater far south, near Elsweyr, and came up here at the Silvenar's direction cause there wasn't no kineater for this region and the people don't really stick to the cannibal part of the Meat Mandate no more. And I walked into Adamor cause I'm just that damn stupid. I found the corpses of the two rebels - the beast had ravaged every Dominion soldier till nothing remained, but it had left the two alone, and their bones lay there in a patch of flowers, moss overgrowing them, hands intertwined. There was a scrap of meat left on the she, so I got down and peeled it off, took it home. I took me mortar and I ground up all the guts and bones and parts, made the concoction, then dusted the meat with it before chewing down. It was old, real old, so her memories were real hazy, but I could see a fair bit. Their child was there, watching. She was scared. And after everyone else was dead, the creature saw her, and took her, and that was the last thing the bosmer rebel saw, and in that moment she had recognized the beast, and it wasn't no creature. It was bosmer. The bosmer. Must be almost a hundred years old now, but that thing, she thought anyways, was the last remnant of the bosmer population that lived here a century ago, before the Crisis. They were desperate, surrounded by Oblivion Gates. They pulled a Wild Hunt, every man woman and child all round these parts gathering to do it, and they went mad shifting and oozing in every way, killing daedra left and right before turning on themselves, eating eachother to death till only one remained, and the rest were left as mad ghosts. That last, monstrous survivor is the beast that haunts the Spirit Wood.
So that's Adamor.
Ya'll don't look happy. You didn't enjoy my story?"
The rangers did not.
.
.
.
.
.