Suddenly it seemed as if the world they knew had come to an end, all they could do was to try to hide from the devastation that was happening all round them, the earth beneath their feet shaking violently, throwing the villagers around as if they were rag dolls, some, screaming in terror tried to run from broken body to broken body, looking for wives, husbands, sons, daughters, lovers, friends but as the violent shaking of the earth continued fewer and fewer souls remained alive, the houses and village walls collapsing around their ears.
As suddenly as it started – it stopped, the stillness and silence that followed was of just as great a terror.
For the few survivors that were left, all that remained for them, was the ruins of their world as they knew it and a future that they could not see. Those that survived the destruction of their lives and world searched the ruins and finding no one else still alive, they started to bury their dead, family members that they could recognize and others from the village that were both known and unknown and to offer prayers to the gods that they still believed in, although they could not understand why the gods had chosen to create such misery for them, they still offered their thanks to them for their survival.
Counting those few of the villagers that were left, the oldest elder of the village, Dalmac, realised that there was only the four of them remaining, from a total of some four hundred souls, old and young, none were spared, all except for the four elders, the soul keepers, those that through the generations had never grown old and had been the hosts of the islands most special beings – The Sprites of Montraghar – earth, wind, fire and water, the four elements of life itself.
In their hearts the elders knew that as they were all male, there was no chance of them recreating a whole village. Having completed the onerous task of burying the dead, the elders gathered some wood and to keep themselves warm created a fire, the sadness that overcame them was almost too hard to bear. Dalmac, being the eldest of them and although only equal to the others asked for their opinions as to what the future held, Radnan, Olsecian and Zarac, the other three elders, it is so simple they said, without the people, there was no future. To try to go to the nearest land, which they only knew as Shavaldhania and had never ventured to, was, they thought not possible, after hours and hours of thought, meditation and discussion, the four elders who were also the bodily hosts of the four sprites agreed that it was time to release the sprites from their bodies and give them the freedom to act as they desired.
They called on the sprites to leave their bodies so that they could see and talk to them for one last time, for as the sprites left the earthly bodies of the elders, in the remaining few hours that were left to them, they began to slowly wither and die. Dalmac speaking for the four elders told the sprites the reasons for them being freed and begged them to protect Montraghar from the evils that may befall it now that there were no people to care for and preserve their island.
Although the sprites did not have the emotions and feelings that the people had, they did themselves see changes in one another's aura as the elders spoke to them, as Dalmac finished talking, the four sprites seemed to become one, the four elders heard one voice that they had never heard before, all it said was, 'Your wishes will be honoured', the single entity once more became the 'four sprites' and after a moment of total stillness they broke away from each other, one into the stream, one into the earth, one into the fire with the last moving off into the sky, once again, water, earth, fire and wind.
The four elders then wound their way slowly through the village as if saying a final farewell, following the stream they found themselves on the small sandy beach where they sat in a group, saying their final farewells to each other, they then started to slowly fade away, as there was now no need for their earthly bodies they allowed them to become dust on the beach and once more become part of the sand and the sea.
