Unspeakable Oaths

(The massacre)

The stretch of calm barren land. The sandy ground was grey in color, akin to the white bones that were dispersed beneath the dead tree shadows. There were small moments of life, the occasional croaking of an animal, but most times it was just zilch.

"I found one!!!"

My keen eyesight helped me find a sandtosser, a small drunken crab attempts to scitter away. But there's no life here that has ever escaped the claws of mine.

Crack

I'm alarmed. The crab's beautiful shell was popped open by a club, the wood creaks, it has been used many times by Ryalde.

"Quit jerking around, blubberface."

Ryalde grabs the dead crab with intent, the sand falling through his long elderly fingers as it falls into a woven basket of obsidian.

"You eat food, not play with it."

I look at Ryalde. He doesn't look a day over three thousand years of age. If he wasn't so black, I'd be able to see his droopy eyes.

"Watch your jagged mouth!"

The sand blows under Ryalde's feet as he walks past me.

"I know what I am doing, Ugas taught me well!"

Ryalde's brown sleevless tunic reeks the same looks of age in the barren wind as he stops, looking down at scattering crabs.

"Ugas is your father."

My sinewy, cracked hand falls over my inky mouth.

"Gah! I keep forgetting..."

Crack. Thud.

Two dead crabs, one on rock, and another on dead sand.

"You forget a lot... Help me snaggle the sandtosser lads."

I huffed, moving my thin legs after a momentary respite.

"Alright... Maybe if I just call you uncle from now on, and Ugas as dad... I could remember."

Ryalde turns a shoulder, the substance in his arms were close to seeing meat rolling around in an elderly humans arms.

"Right... Let me just help."

Usually I never have this good of a sleep....It felt eery.

The first I thing did as I climbed down from the vines where would sleep behind their snatches, was to spot the hole of water.

"Ugas- Dad..."

The smell of smoke hurts my sensitive nose.

"That smell..."

I smash down into the floor, quickly scrambling, the vines on the floor snaggle at my spindly feet, as if doing so on purpose.

"UGAS!!!!"

My heart sank... Was there a reason for me to go out there with optimism?

*Erk.*

It feels like there is a hole scratching around in my hollow chest. I keep my head glued to the wall of the hardened sand, nothing could have prepared me for this.

"Fret not."

An unfamiliar voice... are they my neighbors?

FWIP

Ryalde quickly latches onto the edges of a door frame, his thin lanky and week appendages feel as though they take a millenia to work.

"No, stop! You are intruding, predators!"

I can see him. He's right in view from my room, I've never seen my uncle so afraid.

"We have every right to this here land."

A gentlemen clad with mystic high elf armor stretches upon the illuminated home walls, the fire running ablaze outside. His eyes are zoomed, soulless, filled to the brim with knowledge, less for sympathy.

"You know this, now we do what we are told."

My stomach drops deeper, I see Ryalde's defiance.

"Vermin! This is our land!"

Thud. Thud. Thud.

"Rua, don't waste time."

The home walls seem to echo with the heaviest steps of them all. An northern elf so large, she immediately demands silence upon her arrival.

Her sharp helmet scratches against the ceiling, shoulders set like stone, and her armor is carved with war and elegant stories. Finally, for her eyes... They were dilated and abyssmal.

"They are weak and akin to that of elven trash."

Crash.

Ryalde's body goes limp, inky liquid squirts out of his brittle cranium and hurdles down to the very steps down to the room.

*They'll find me.*

Screech.

The mace attacks the ground with it's ancient elven material. Cairo treads down the weak stone, grabbing the top of the rocky doorway in order to train her keen eyesight on the figure she assumed to have saw.

"We pity you."

Cairo's voice is certain, cold and calculated. An elven captain always retains calm.

"Creatures like you deserve a place."

It's almost as if she hates to admit it, her tone changes were so subtle.

A gauntlet slowly seeps into my vision, each lengthy finger falls silently onto the cracked stone.

"Creatures like you deserve a place."

She echoed herself, the conviction in her voice made my thin limbs contract, trying to slither away and deeper into the rock slit.

"Come out, vermin, or you will be torched in there."

Eyes fall gracefully into the opening of the slit, no sign of discomfort as they crouch, no sign of uncertainty in their movements. No, I was not going to be like Ryalde, I wanted to live.