The End of Eternity

The Elven Village

"It seems we have lost another three."

"Bodies?"

"None, they are lost or eaten by something." The two elves looked at each other. They both knew the first option was in the realm of dreams. They had been a big elven village, a hub boasting with many riches and now? Their numbers were dwindling, many of them had fallen victims to wild beasts, spiders being the most annoying among them.

"I do not know how are we going to survive. Each day we lose someone and the occasional enemy raids does not help our situation." Tig Aethras MoonShadow did not know either, but as a prophet and the village elder, he was expected to know what to do and it would have caused an uproar, if the villagers knew, he did not know a thing about what was going on. He had told them his powers diminished greately, but that was not the whole truth. He had no visions anymore, none.

"The balance will be restored in the end." Tig said. Well, not everything was going in the wrong direction. The idiotic arrogant emisary of The Immortal Emperor had been killed in an accident and it seemed the emperor had no longer the ability to send troops to these lands and the communitacion with him had been severed. "This is a new test for our people, we will prevail, as we have always had." Tig smiled. His supplies of cheap, soothing words were running low lately. Especially after the day his daughter, Elienor, had not returned from the forest.

How long has it been, since she has left me to face the destiny of our people alone? A month? Two?

". . .and with your wisdom, prevail we shall." The elf bowed slowly and left Tig's hut, a lightweight structure, which had been the centre of the village since the first day of the village's existence.

"Prophet, " A man entered his hut and bowed. "We bring news from the forest, we may have found yet another dangerous creature."

"Again?" Tig sighed. How many hideous beasts would they be forced to slay? "How does it look? How dangerous it is?" The elves had to go into the forest, they had farms near the village, but hunt was still a vital source of their food.

"Well. . . we have not seen it yet, but we have found signs of its activity." Tig feared his hunters were paranoid.

"We went through the forest and found a giant spider, two halves of it, The peculiar thing was, it was a singl cut. We double checked it. There is something in the forest capable to cut a giant spider in half in a single cut regardless of its shell."

"How far away from the village have you found the carcass?"

"Half a day maybe closer. Being only a small party of a few, we did not dare to investigate."

"Take the most experienced hunters in the village and go investigate it tomorrow."

The next day a group of fourty hunters set off from the elven village. Leaded by Haim-El-Falun LightFeather, the best hunter, everyone expected a success.. The village was not small and these kind of missions were common. After a few months everyone was familiar with the new strange skill system and Haim had one of the most valuable skills – [Appraisal]. It enabled him to flee from battles which could not be won.

"I am honored to be led by famous Haim-El-Falun. Have you hear the latest rumours?" One of the hunters asked Haim.

"I heard thunderbirds are more active now, you can hardly see a single spider in the forest these days." The others nodded, everyone was happy the ugly beasts got what they deserved. Giant spiders were an annoying and dangerous pray, many hunters had been killed by them. After a few hours of walk with smiles on their faces, they encountered a carcass. Several of them kneeled down to investigate it.