Hand Over Fist

Chapter 1: Gideon

The wind, bitter and cold, roared out of the western mountains to slash across the frontier of the last human stronghold on Earth.  Such was its power that it cut through the thick forests along the western boundaries straight into the heart of human territory, the nation known only as Gideon.

Brin av Nethal narrowed her eyes as she watched the flames in her hearth flicker wildly as the wind hissed down the flue to dance amongst the glowing embers, sprites of mischief and chaos here, in the midst of humankind's greatest surviving fortress.  She glanced at the window, still covered with a thick layer of frost.

By all accounts, and by the old calendars, spring should've been well upon the land.  But the cold and brutal winter was one of humanity's lasting legacies, the result of the Great Burn that forever changed the face of this world.  It clung to the land with claws of ice, snarling winds screaming their defiance at a sun that seemed to lack the strength to push the snows aside.

'Yet the winters are shorter than they've ever been in recent memory,' Brin mused thoughtfully, turning her gaze once more to the flickering fire in the massive stone fireplace.  'The Long Night is finally drawing to a close!  Or so the clerics would have us believe.'  With a sigh, she turned back to the parchments in front of her which detailed reports of food stores, weapon status and troop strengths from all over the province.

Born to the powerful family of Seth Nethal in the capital at Nerun Drell, Brin was the eldest of six children, all girls.  It fell on the eldest female to take up her family's traditional rule of the fortified outpost at Tor Raphael.  And so Brin had come to Raphael, a fresh-faced woman of eighteen summers to take her place at the top of Raphael's command structure.

That had been almost twenty seasons ago.  'And still I sit here behind my desk, mired in reports, summaries and speculations.'  She frowned, pulling one report aside that caught her eye and interrupted her maudlin thoughts.  'What's this?  The elves have finally ended their siege of Bekkis Down and have taken the Tigris outpost?  Now that's going to change the balance of power along the Southern Ridge.'  And with that, Brin pondered the elves' success for a brief moment.

The elves, according to the old records still buried deep beneath Nerun Drell in the vast archive known as the Vault, weren't the pointy eared creatures of woodland legend.  They were nothing less than the result of a series of experiments made with Humanity's own genetic make-up.  An attempt to craft the perfect soldier as URNA had begun rebuilding a dismantled war machine in preparation to truly begin exploring space.

Why they would need soldiers to explore had always puzzled Brin.  As had their name: elves.  It was derived from the original acronym for Elite Light Infantry Force, or E.L.I.F..  The nickname 'elf' quickly evolved from that and stuck, making its way into the sacred records.  A name the Conclave had immediately decided to use.

Of course none of that made any sense to the middle-aged commander of the Raphael outpost.  She, like many of her contemporaries, had made the pilgrimage to the Vault to gaze upon the holy relics of the Deep Dark, the time before Humanity was allowed to return to the Earth's surface.  But she had made no attempt to either read the sacred records kept during the Deep Dark, or learn the archaic language of the time.  Something called 'English'.

What she did care about was that ever since the elves were awakened from their hibernation by explorers from the Kanid Imperium, the powerful warriors had quickly gobbled up territory and consolidated power all throughout the island continent of Noranda.  Gideon's ruling body, the Conclave of Elders, had hoped that encountering the Tigris would be enough to slow the elves' march northward.

"So much for another lost hope!" Brin muttered darkly before a light tap at her office door interrupted her grim line of thought and took her attention off her reports.