Bloodsword: War of the Leaf

Pursuit

Meanwhile, in the East Meridian, the twin moons Ralos and Ranur hung unblinking in the black velvet dome of the heavens, attended by their court of stars to wash the restless waves of the great inner sea silver, transforming it into a vast mirror by which they admired their dianian beauty. Bathing in the moon light, three great sailing vessels, their rigging and the cut of their sails marking them as Solavar, rode uneasily at their anchor in the shadow of the greatest of the Kardell Islands, Kuosh.

“Well?” Rasped the taller of two shadows leaning over the starboard rail of the biggest of the three vessels, a massive galleon that easily matched any cruiser that the Solavar navy now floated on the Meridian’s waters.

“Have they found anything yet?” He continued in cold and cutting Tranalo. The shorter consulted a strange crystalline ball, glowing with a faint purplish light, peering into it’s depths at several lights that danced erratically inside.

“We’ll know soon enough. They’re about to surface!” He answered, his Solavar accent no less sharp than the first’s.

‘PLOP!’ A large bubble of strange gas sudden emerged from the inky depths to burst loudly on the surface as the two elves looked on in silence. It was quickly followed by a host of such bubbles, rising with such speed and force that they churned the heaving surface to froth. Out of the midst of this foaming chaos a light became visible; clean and bright, shining out of the depths like an ascending god rising into its glory past the chains the sea had sought to hold it with. But these chains, forged by Nature’s might, cold and hard, could not keep the light in the bosom of the Meridian and, with a silent explosion like the dawn of a new day, it burst through the bubbles and onto the surface.

Instantly the darkness of night was swept away by a noon-time brilliance which sundered shadows from surface and almost physically pushed the curtains of invisibility back to engulf the three vessels in a bubble of light that encompassed them so wholly that every detail was thrown into sharp relief.

Unblinking in the face of the blinding light, the two Solavar gazed expectantly out at its source, a great globe of alabaster white, its surface etched with fine engravings of strange patterns and symbols. The globe was 10 paces across and seemed undisturbed by the writhing seas all around it, not even surrendering to the sea’s swell and held its place as if it were being held up by a pole that reached from the sea floor to its ceiling.

The light flickered and the elves leaned forward with interest, as a small hatch appeared at the globe’s apex by rising slightly out of a seamless seat before flipping up and back. The resulting opening was a barely perceptible lessening of the sun-bright light and a strange, glittering head quickly filled it. At its negative shake, the two elves turned away from the railing with frowns on their lean faces.

“Baz?” The short one asked curtly and a stooped elf, blessed with long, white hair, wrinkled skin, watery eyes and a drooping goatee, shuffled forward, his movements further slowed by his thick, voluminous robe in the same creamy alabaster as the globe. It too, like the globe, was almost encrusted with embroidered symbols and patterns in a strangely intricate repeating pattern. Two withered hands, almost bird-like in their frailty, slipped out of the robe’s heavy sleeves and sharply clapped together once, twice, and then a third time.

Upon the third clap, the hands drew apart to yield a small, black marble floating exactly in the center between the two palms. A soft, blue-green light scintillated out of the marble at random intervals even as it hung there, unmoving. Craning his head forward, the elderly elf breathed lightly on the marble and, pushed forward by the force of the gentle puff of air, the marble glided several handspans towards the two at the railing before it slowed and stopped, all in ultimate silence. At the taller elf’s nod, the robed Solavar clapped his hands sharply once again.