Rex was woken by the smell of an absolutely delicious smell of what could only be some freshly made sweet buns. He was slowly blinking himself awake but didn't bother to move until the grogginess had left his eyes. He turned his head to the side and found a plate with three sweet buns still steaming as if they'd just been taken out of the oven. With a sigh he sat up letting the wool blanket that was covering him fall to his waist before his hand came up to his throat. As his fingers glided over the soft flesh he felt the roughness of a freshly gained scar run beneath his finger tips.
He paused for a moment before his hand traveled down to his bare chest where again he felt smooth flesh for the most part, until his hand reached a a diagonal scar that ran from just underneath his collar bone all the way down to his right hip. His began to close until he was looking through his grey eyelashes at the blue blanket that covered his mostly naked body. They must've had to operate immediately, he thought to himself as he thought about the last thing he remembered.
He was going at Oda with one of his spare swords after having his favorite blade taken from him. He wasn't in any condition to try beating anybody in a quick drawing contest, let alone someone as skilled as Oda had been. Again he sighed as his hand left the scar on his torso, going up to his hair brushing his back before he turned to look at the sweet buns. When he was younger sweet buns were Rex's favorite treat. He and Hanzo would often rush to the kitchens after a days sparring to see if they could convince Yuri the cook to make them some as a reward for a job well done.
Now when he looked at them he couldn't bring himself to contemplate taking one, even though his knew that those must've been placed there for him to eat. "Treats are for someone who's earned them." He thought out loud before he threw the blanket off of himself revealing that he was only wearing some underclothes. The absence of the blanket covering his legs sent a chill over him but who wouldn't allow himself to be bothered by that. He had something to do, and there wasn't anyone alive who could keep him from doing it.
Getting out of the small cot he went over to the equally small cabinet which stored fresh clothes for any patrols that came through this safe house. They were a pair of black loose fitting silk pants, and an equally loose fitting silk shirt. Pulling them on he quickly made sure that both of his bracelets were intact before he hurried out the back door in case someone tried to stop him from leaving. This wasn't the kind of task that he could ask for help on, because it was something that only he could accomplish. He had to find Oda, and take back his sword from the bastard.
~*~*~*~
Lance, Issac, and Eve were all watching Jake as he lay shivering on the ground where the dark elves had thrown him. He hadn't moved from that single spot for several hours, he just lie there with his hand over the angry red, and sickeningly burnt shoulder of his. Issac could see that his shoulder was right with blisters, in fact he didn't think it would've been wrong to say that his entire shoulder had become just one gigantic blister. The area where the hot ink had touched was all bright red and looked like it was swollen. The mark on his shoulder looked like it was already becoming infected.
It was ringed in dark red and it honestly looked like the veins around it were turning dark, almost black. How anyone could do that to another human being and not feel anything was beyond Issac, and over something so small as asking for help! That was the biggest thing that made Issac so angry about it. Jake had asked the Saint Shields for help in dealing with these vampires, most definitely saving the lives of countless dark elves in the process. Yet he got carved up with a blade so hot that it was glowing white, and than had that wound filled with ink to ensure that it would always be there.
His hands were balled up so tightly that his nails were threatening to break the skin of his palms. And judging from the amount of bristling that Lance had been doing told Issac that he was equally as pissed about this situation as he was. Why shouldn't he be? Lance had been brought up to view Jake as a brother but more than that he, like Issac, knew what it was like to have ink literally burned into his skin. The both of them had gone through the process of having the mark of the Saint Shield's burned into their shoulders, and since their bodies healed on a much faster pace than that of a humans this was a process that could take a while. It wasn't something that should be done to a human, let alone one who had just saved you and your entire faction of Shinobi!
"I'm going to kill her." Lance said breaking the long silence that had been building between the three of them. "I don't care if I go down doing it, but mark my words I'm going to tear that bitch's throat out."
"Lance-" Eve began sounding like she was going to tell him to stop but there was no calming a werewolf that had just witnessed a member of his 'pack' being brutally handled the way Jake had just been handled.
"No Eve, I don't care what oaths he swore. You can't just do something like this to someone who was only trying to help!" Shouted Lance and Issac's eyes darted to the side at the sight of a slight bit of movement. Lance took notice of it as well and turned his attention in the direction of the movement. "Yeah run off and tell her! Tell her that it doesn't matter how many guards she has, or how good they think they are, they won't be enough to keep that bitch safe from me!"
"That's hardly a way to improve our situation." Came a feminine voice from behind them. Issac only slightly turned his head as Rayne approached them all. There were dark rings under her eyes and she looked more than a little tired. Then again she had used an excessive amount of her power to transport these Saints here from Aeria, and on top of that Eve had told them that she used even more to incinerate a lot of Strigoi that were moving in on Jake. The witch crossed her arms as she looked down at Jake on the ground before she spoke again. "He's lucky that mark was all they did to him."
"What part about what they did to him is lucky!" Lance exclaimed which earned him a very cold glare from Rayne but Lance in his fury didn't seem too bothered by it.
"Jake knew there would be consequences to his actions when he made the call to have us come here." Rayne said harshly. "Dokkalfur Law states that no knowledgeable outsiders be permitted within their region without express consent of the Empress. Jake broke that law, twice! He's lucky they let him keep his tongue. The dark elves are like no other faction Lance, mind your tongue while we're here, lest you wake up tomorrow and find it being carved from your mouth and fed to the dogs."
"Rayne, it just doesn't make sense!" Eve said before Lance could retaliate. "Jake was just trying to save lives. Does it matter who it comes from?"
"It does..." Rayne said turning her dark blue eyes from her apprentice and looking sympathetically down at Jake. "You three- you don't know who dark elves work. You don't know why they are the way they are- It's not a tale many outside of their ranks know."
Issac turned slightly to the witch, now interested to learn more of their hosts, but Lance on the other hand expressed very clearly his disinterest in the subject. Rayne though ignored his outburst and went on as if she hadn't even heard him tell her that the dark elves could all go have intimate relations with themselves.
"Dark elves are a branch of Elves that have never had an easy life. The way I was told the tale was that long ago the elves that make up the Elven Knights were the first humans to walk the earth. They were the first Beings, having several if not all of the best traits of all those to follow. They had the longevity of the vampires, the endurance of werewolves, the nature of man, and even the magic of witches."
"It was through this magic that the elves made the first of their creations. They wanted to make something similar to themselves, using their own power, something that would revere them as gods. This is when the first of the dark elves were born. A race of elves made only to satiate their curiosity of whether or not they could in fact create life without procreation. The existence of the dark elves is testament enough as to whether they were right.
"But they were unhappy with their new creations. The dark elves were crafted in the image of their elven makers, but they were strange, they were grey of skin and pale in the eyes like the eyes of a blind person. They were monsters to the elves and as such were treated like the failures that they viewed them to be. Dark elves were treated like dirt, being beaten to the brink of death should one ever show their face to an elf. Despite this the dark elves still viewed their creators as gods and would worship them, some even say that to be killed by one was to gain the greatest of honors.
"For years it went on like this, with dark elves being treated like monsters and driven off to the wilds while the first elves continued to work on creating life. They couldn't get it right and so they tried something horrible. They tried to bring back the dead... that's where everything went bad.
"The first elves succeeded in bringing a corpse to life by sharing the blood of another with a corpse. But the magic used twisted the corpse in a horrible fashion. This is how the first vampire was born, however it's also how the first Strigoi was born."
"The grey vampire killed those who had given it life, its need to feed being the only thing to drive it on as it fed on its creators the first horde of Strigoi began. For three days the city of the elves was under siege as the vampire plague wiped out almost all the life in the city. Those that had survived were fleeing the walls that guarded the city and fled into the wilds risking death to the animals outside to those within the city walls.
"Of course the Strigoi gave chase. Leaving the boarders of the city and finding new creatures to feed on. Although the vampire virus can only be transferred to a host of a similar makeup as the carrier, the number of animals that were being slaughtered was beyond counting. But it was hear that the first use for the dark elves was discovered. The first elves assumed them all to be dead, yet they had found the dark elves had established a society mirroring their own though it was far more advanced.
"One of the first elves came upon one such 'city' of dark elves and begged them for help. One of their gods had just come to them asking for help, how could they refuse. Without any need to ask questions the dark elves welcomed them into their society, they fed and housed him asking what had happened. That's when the first of the Strigoi found its way to their city. The first elf was terrified, it had followed the light trail of blood he'd left behind and followed him 20 odd miles from the first elven city. However the dark elves were not shaken by this monster that had arrived. In order to protect one of their creators, they all took up arms and after a moments struggle managed to remove the head of the creature turning it to ash.
"Seeing this the first elf had come up with the idea of using the dark elves as soldiers to take back their city. Finally having a purpose and way to serve their creators, the dark elves were all to happy to accept. Within two days the Strigoi had either been driven off or wiped out by the dark elf warriors who used the shadows even better than these monsters that they had created. And so came the era in which the dark elves served as the loyal protectors of their creators.
"For many years it remained this way, the first elves lived lavish lives while the dark elves lived in the darkest and worst parts of the city. In truth they were little more than slaves, in fact its said that it wasn't uncommon at all for a dark elf to sell themselves to an elven family in exchange they'd be allowed to come to the lavish parts of the city during the day only to return to the slums at night.
"It wasn't to last however, as the first elves grew tired of looking at the faces of their creations and sought to make a replacement. That is how the first humans were born, looking similar enough to the elves in comparison to the dark elves, yet different enough that they would never forget their place below their creators.
"They bred the humans until their number eclipsed even that of the dark elves, and once that was done the dark elves were banished to the farthest corners of the earth. We would know it now as Asia and Australia. Not all of them were willing to leave however and so the first elves sicced their newest creations on the dark elves, igniting a blood war between human and dark elf that lasted for decades with the dark elves finally being driven as far east as east goes.
"This is when the distrust began to instill itself within the dark elves' very being, they'd been betrayed and driven away by their creators not once but twice. And so the first elves lived very much as they always had on the backs of their new slaves. What they never counted on however was that their human slaves would rise against them and nearly wipe out the elves altogether. In a last ditch effort to save themselves one of the first elves that'd been there during the creation of the first vampire infected a human corpse with the same magic. That is how our modern vampires came to be in this world.
"The first elves didn't count on this though, they had expected the vampire to be much like a Strigoi, when it wasn't they instead turned to a new form of curse. One that filled the humans with their fear of wolves. They created the first of the werewolves in an effort to drive the humans off to the east as well. But now this left the first elves defenseless with the modern variants of the Beings we hunt to this day.
"As for the humans, they indeed traveled east going as far east as east goes. It was only a matter of time before the humans and dark elves clashed again. No one knows just how long the fighting went on, only that the dark elves like their counterparts were hunted to near extinction. It was after this that the dark elves would never again trust another that was not a part of them. Thus the complicated Dokkalfur Law began to take shape which forbade the interaction with those of another race. The fighting had stopped and the humans had all but forgotten the very real wars that were waged with the 'demons' in the night."
"Fast forward several centuries and humans began to travel back west and even farther east into the Americas. The first elves had all but been wiped out by the monsters they'd made to drive the humans away, this however drastically decreased the number of vampires and werewolves as well. By the time humans had reestablished themselves in the west and the east all memories of monsters, elves and the like had long since faded. Interactions still occurred with both elven races of course, ending in violence more often than not, but their existence had now been chalked up to superstition.
"Travel forward several more decades and humans began to become aware of Beings again after coming across both the first and dark elven cities. The first elves though had become far more excepting of humans than their darker counterparts even interbreeding with them. This is believed to be how witches were created, with the intermingling of humans and the first elves. The dark elves however would always do away with who ever had seen them, giving birth to legends of spirits that would drag victims off into the forest should one be unlucky enough to come across them.
"Not even the most versed of historians could tell you why the dark elves chose to help the humans of modern day Asia when the Beings began to migrate in order to find more humans to prey upon. Maybe it was because they were protecting their own lands, or maybe it was to satiate some dormant purpose that had been bred into them to serve protect others from Beings. No one can say why, only that it was without a doubt at this point when the idea of bringing them into the fold of factions meant to protect came about."
Rayne took a deep breath before letting it out in a sigh. "The dark elves reluctantly accepted, though they made it clear that they would never again welcome outsiders with open arms for fear being being betrayed yet again." All eyes went towards Jake as Rayne said the next part. "As strong and fierce as the dark elves are, they are terrified by those whom they don't understand. Jacob, has thrown the doors of trust open whether they wanted it or not. He may have done it in order to help them, but the dark elves can't bring themselves to trust outsiders after the years- the decades, possibly centuries of torment inflicted upon them by the other human races."
"I know what you must be thinking. That still doesn't excuse what they did to Jacob, and you're right it doesn't. All I can say is that the dark elves are terrified by outsiders. For the first time in centuries they've come across an enemy that they cannot defeat on their own, and they don't believe that they have anyone to turn to for aid. You can't just remove centuries of fear of night like Jacob is trying to do, like he's done with Rex. Empress Yoko fears him, fears us all because she fears that we will be the cause of her people's extinction. And after our failure to kill Stark Constantine back in America, a man who was brought up among the Saint Shields...is she wrong to assume so?"
A/N: Sorry to cut it off there, but I just feel like this is as good a place as any to stop. So what are your thoughts on the origins of the dark elves, and the abuse they've suffered at the hands of outsiders? Think you can sympathize a little more with their outlook on the whole 'no outsiders' thing?
Next chapter with still delve deeper into the history of the dark elves, but more specifically the history of Empress Yoko and just how she came to be the way she is.
Hope you're all enjoying the story so far!