Her brother was there, looking not quite as royal as he usually did. Like the other Lords and Ladies, he had travelled swiftly. His ginger hair was unruly, his red and gold armour unpolished. They did not catch each other's eyes. They did not look at each other at all. They had both made their choices: her brother had chosen honour and peace over her and she chose her anger over forgiveness. It was done now, and they had more important things on their minds: the last hope of Asriel. The last hope of their people.
She knew, too, that Julian Corinth was some-where amongst the Lords and Ladies, but she took care to avoid him, taking charge of the Second Army. If the other city-states had second armies of their own, they had neglected to mention them, much less bring them along. And if the valkyries had back-up forces, then those would probably be on the battlefield and battle-sky already.
A few took care to avoid her and Talia wasn't surprised. MindWeavers creeped out the most powerful of the elves. They had been relieved that the bloodline Silverian, the most powerful to carry that magic, was wiped out. A few of the Lords and Ladies' relatives (unlike the Charlize and Swallow lines, others descended from the elfin queen had many sisters and cousins and nephews) avoided her as well.
She didn't blame them.
The elves started far away from the Kallian Army so they would avoid notice. If the Empress were to find out about this, then their hopes might be dashed entirely. They summoned the EarthBreathers to dig the tunnel. Talia and the others stood and watched as they carved right through solid earth to form a gradually descending tunnel.
Talia hated it immediately. The elves belonged in the sky, scraping the clouds and feeling the wind rush through their hair. To be trapped deep underground...it went against every instinct.
"The AirWhisperers like myself can make sure we don't run out of oxygen," Zara, her second-in-command, reassured the contingent of elves who stood at the entrance. She was one of the first to go in, sliding through the dirt to watch as the tunnel rapidly expanded, leading them through the earth.
They were deep underground now, the passageway lit by FireBreathers. Maybe her brother was amongst them.
"What if we open the tunnel and the soldiers just fall through and crush us?" Talia wondered.
"That's what my kind are for. Holding them in the air and sweeping them out of the way." Zara replied.
"How do we know when we're there?" Her second questioned, a couple of minutes later.
"That's what my kind are for. Sense their minds." Zara nodded absently and backed away from her a bit. The jolt of hurt was easily hidden and numbed after so long.
It was a surprisingly long walk through the tunnel. To hide their digging, they had begun the tunnel behind the hill, a kilometre away from the true battle. Talia was lost in others' thought, flicking through minds to check if they were human or valkyrie.
Thousands of elves trekked through the wide tunnels, further back than she could see with the tunnel's twists and turns. She was beginning to tire and so were they, with the odd jobs that they had to do to keep the place habitable.
Even if the tunnel was wide, it would also have to be long. There had to be eleven thousand of them here. This was why elves with the gift of assessing magic stayed away from armies: too much power in a small space caused them to overload, like the assessors they had taken Layla to. One of them had gone mad; the other had just died.
It took hours, but at last they had spread themselves through the area of the tunnel directly beneath the Kallian Army. Everyone was waiting, but not yet ready. They had exhausted themselves with the travel and the magic required to help them survive in the tunnels. They ate everything they had brought, hungrily gulping it all down. She and others like her sent everyone to a long, slumbering sleep in seconds.
If only there weren't other MindWeavers watching. She would have climbed over the resting elves and checked each of their faces, looking for Julian's. And when she found him, deep asleep, she would have destroyed him entirely, and taking a long, long time doing it.
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The MindWeavers had taken watches. All of them knew sleeping was a foolish endeavour, so they did what they could for the rest of the elves, and would then put themselves to sleep, except for one.
When they woke, food and water was stuffed down their throats. To add to all that, the valkyrie warrior novices and Keeper volunteers brought coffee and made them all gulp it down, even when they had had enough.In the end they all had so much energy that she wondered if someone might start breathing fire or shooting ice by accident.Only then did the Earth-Weavers slowly began to erode at the earth above them.
Short chapter, I know. What do you think about the different lengths? Do you prefer long or short, or a mixture?
YOU ARE READING
Three Broken Kingdoms-Book 1 of the Lost Continent (Completed)
Fantasy'Medea Crimson took a deep breath, walked into the abyss and died. It wasn't for the first time.' Completed, first in the Lost Continent Series. Three Kingdoms on the brink. A war on the horizon. The peoples of the Lost Continent are forever divided...
