The Pale Elf

Crash Landed

What I feel first is not what I expect. A wriggling in my head, the pain not wholeheartedly affecting my every nerve. I blink several times to get used to the bright sun overhead, and I can feel the sand beneath me, in between my fingers and in my hair. I struggle to even sit up, but I need to figure out where I am, what happened. I can't remember anything. My head feels strange as I take in my surroundings, the sound of the crashing waves washing over me. I look down, checking myself over. Rags? The loose clothes hang on me like they were pulled out of a random chest in a random home. 

"Stand up" a woman's voice. Jolting, as if I have been electrocuted or shocked, pain slithers through my head as I am bombarded by memories that do not belong to me. A woman with a long black braid and a stern frown stared into the metal of her armor. The statue of what I suddenly recognize as the Goddess Shar. I see a ship in her memory, an alien looking room with unfamiliar walls that look as if they are breathing. She pounded on the glass window of the strange fleshy pod. A flash of white. A wiggling worm with a round mouth of sharp teeth jumps for her eye and disappears behind it. Another flash, there is screaming all around as she falls through the air. Smoke and fire envelopes her as everything fades to dark. My vision starts to clear as I look up into the same face of the woman with the feral scowl. "You have a tadpole." she says simply.

I shake my head to clear it, my silver hair falls into my face sending sand all over my dirty clothes. I touch my fingers to my temples, as if trying to feel for the worm. "It connects us." She says, her tone cautious. She study's me with green, suspicious eyes. I open my mouth to speak, but she is quick to interrupt me. "Don't bother. I know as much as you. We need a healer." she says, then surveys the area itself. She does not offer me a hand as I get to my feet and pat off as best as I can, my bare feet sink into the soft warm ground beneath. There are mountains in the distance, quite beautiful if you can look past the smoke and fire from the wreckage of the ship. 

"Do you know where we are?" I ask. She looks taken aback at first and then narrows her gaze at me. Her bangs cover the tops of her eyebrows and the chainmail of her armor clinks and tinks as she shuffles uncomfortably.

"We are in Faerune." she replies, but her answer sparks nothing in my own memory. "That must explain why your memories were so..." she trails off, considering for a moment, "hazy." she says. "No matter," she continues and turns towards the mountain on the island we are currently occupying. Up in the distance, I can see a stone wall on top of the cliff. "I need to get to Baulder's Gate." she says without looking at me. "You can come along. You might be useful." She doesn't wait for my reply, and instead starts to walk off into the spoiled broken remains of the ship. A broken pod from her memory fills with salty water on the shore. The same thing that had happened to her, happened to me. I chase after her. 

We walk in silence as I take everything in. The ship where I had been infected with this tadpole burns around us, the smoke starting to clear as we make our way up a path leading to the stone building. The ground grows harder against my calloused feet. Up and up, I can feel my knees protesting, and my stomach growls with the same reverence.  As we near, the woman holds her hand behind her, gesturing for me to stop. She crouches low behind a thicket and points forward. I kneel close and look at where she is directing. Ahead there are two people standing watch at the entrance to the fallen ruins of a what was once possibly a grand castle. Rock and splintered wood litters the area around us. "Probably scouting the crash." She says and looks around. I notice for the first time the shield and mace strapped to her. 

Her rigid posture watches as someone else walks up the path from the opposite direction. I follow her stare to see a pale elf dressed in a red and white padded outfit crouch low to the ground. He looks to the two standing on the edge of the cliff, and a devilish smile pulls across his lips. Longer pointed ears stick out of silver curls as he pulls the bow strapped to his back and aims. Neither of us make a noise as he releases the arrow and it strikes true into the chest of the smaller dwarf, sending him off the mountain and down into the ocean below. The taller man scurries, pulling his weapon, looking for the man who shot the arrow, but I look back, the elf is gone. I almost stand, but the woman's hand grabs hold of my wrist as she places a finger over her lips. She points up and I follow her finger to the top of the rock wall.