Deus Necros

Chapter 526: Elven Nobless

Ludwig was led ahead by the maid, and soon they reached the base of the world tree. Impressive as it may be, Ludwig felt that something was wrong with it. As if it wasn’t there, though it felt physical, as he stood on one of its massive roots, it didn’t feel… right. The bark under his boots gave the clean resistance of living wood, yet a thin numbness crept up through the soles, as if pressure passed into a surface that refused to answer back. He let his weight shift, testing the grain with the quiet attention a swordsman gives a floor before a duel. The scent was true to a tree of such age, resin and rain and cool shade braided together. The light on the trunk was true as well, dappled and soft. It was the feeling beneath all of it that made the hairs along his arms rise, that empty whisper of a space wrapped inside a skin of reality.

“From here,” the maid said as she led Ludwig toward a large fallen leaf, the leaf itself looked green and fresh, as if it had just fallen from the tree itself. Several elven guards who were stationed around the leaf were looking wary of Ludwig, their hands on their thin curved swords, and their looks not so friendly. The leaf was no simple bedding of green; its central vein rose like a polished spar, and narrower veins fanned outward in a lattice that could carry a dozen armored elves without bending. Dew beaded along the edges although no mist hung in the air. The guards had polished their blades until they wore the light like glass, and their posture said they belonged to this place as much as the carved roots and planked walkways. None of them blinked as he approached. None of them needed to. The trust between humans and elves had been broken for a long time now.

“Who is this man, lady Cathia,” one of the female guards asked as she approached the two. The woman’s gaze measured him with the calm of a butcher weighing cuts, not cruel, simply exact. Fine lines of tattooed leafwork climbed the underside of her forearms and vanished under her bracers. Her fingers flexed once on the hilt to test the bite of sweat on leather.

“This is her majesty’s guest, is the elevator operational?” she asked, not giving a chance for the guard to question some more. The maid’s tone did not sharpen and did not sweeten. It moved forward the way water moves downhill, steady and sure of where it will end.

“Yes, it is. I’ll send a couple guards with you.” The guard’s eyes flicked from Ludwig’s stance to his hands, then to the boy at his flank, who refused to keep from glancing up at the impossible trunk.

“No need, unless you think I need protection, you can take the child with you to the healers, he’s been through a lot” the maid, Cathia said. The faintest curl of a smile touched one corner of her mouth as if at a private joke.

“I don’t think you need protection mam, and yes I’ll handle the child,” the guard backed away and ordered her companions to move away from the fallen leaf. They ushered the child with them who let out a nod for Ludwig, “Thank you,” the words spoken softly.

A soft chorus of footfalls withdrew to a controlled distance. Bows shifted to rests. There was no less attention in the clearing after they stepped back, only more air around it.

Ludwig followed the maid as they stood on top of the leaf which soon began rising up. The veins brightened from within, a deep spring green that rolled outward like breath filling a chest. The leaf’s ribs stiffened, and a small ring of wind rose to cradle them. The ground sank rather than the leaf lifting, a trick of depth and light that turned ascent into the sensation of the world drifting down and away.

Looking at the whole elven city from high above, Ludwig got impressed with how tightly packed. It felt like an island, aloof and separated from the world itself. Platforms blossomed from the trunk like petals from a hidden core. Walkways braided between limbs with the certainty of bridges that had been repaired and improved for multiple generations. Cloth awnings in greens and creams threw ovals of shade over market circles. Rainpipes grown from living wood cupped and tipped water into cisterns banded with ivory fungus. The higher they went the more he could see of the land, and when he gazed on the horizon he finally noticed something he couldn’t see when he was on the ground. The world gathered itself into a bowl, and the bowl’s inner curve caught light wrong.

“Huh, spatial lock.” Ludwig said as he saw refractions in the distance. “This whole place is in an isolated space isn’t it.” A chain of bright points trembled where sky met water as if glass had been set gently over a flame. The air there rippled like heat over a road, and every ripple repeated the line of the horizon a heartbeat late.

“Took you long enough to realize.” She said. Cathia did not turn to admire the boundary with him. She watched the leaf’s motion instead, the way a pilot watches the angle of a sail.

“I’ve only seen something like this once before,” Ludwig replied. The taste of that memory sat metallic in his mouth, the aftertaste of old magic worked to exhaustion.

The maid frowned, “I’d be impressed to so something like that outside the elven kingdom. Still, we’ve been isolated for a long time, so the world must have changed a lot.” She said. The faint emphasis on must hung there, not quite a question and not quite resignation. Wind pressed the robe at her calves close to her shins and then let it fall again as the leaf slowed.

The leaf rapidly reached one of the lower branches of the tree of life, and even though this was one of the lowest, it was in fact almost a mountain high. The branch should have been smooth, but centuries of footsteps had pressed a shallow sheen into the grain like oil into a well-loved tool. From this height, the sounds of the city braided into a single living rope, voices and water and the occasional rattle of a wooden cart over knotted bark.

Ludwig followed the maid under the scrutiny of guards and their blatant hostility for mankind. The path’s edges wore a low guardrail grown from the branch itself.

The guards posted at intervals did not relax as he passed; they moved their eyes in measured arcs and took him in as another part of the day’s work that could become the day’s trouble.

Once they arrived to the inside of the tree, it opened up into a hollowed palace like structure. This mist be where the woman leading this people lived in. A palace inside the Tree of life itself. Though it wasn’t decorated with gold and silver and ancient pottery. But with flowers and roses and even saplings of rare looking trees. The smell itself was a mix of olive, lime and an earthly smell, that Ludwig couldn’t quite identify. The interior caught light and bent it along pale wood ribs. The walls breathed coolness the way caves do, yet there was nothing of stone here. Vines had been trained to braid across empty spans in precise patterns that suggested tapestries. Bowls of soil sat in recessed shelves with seedlings that cupped their own droplets of water. A narrow stream moved through the hall as a silver line no wider than a palm, its bed set with flat stones like pages, each etched with names lost to him. The unknown earth-smell lurked beneath and around him, pleasant and mind opening.

Guards were present almost everywhere, but here, there were none. The absence read as intention. Beyond a threshold marked by a pair of carved saplings. This was the domain of royalty. Even the thin hum of insects softened, as if the hall itself insisted on a quieter kind of attention.

Suddenly a group of fairies charged in at Ludwig. Their arrival was a bright scatter of wings and laughter that tripped over its own speed. They traced small spirals through the air like leaves lifted by a playful gust. The light shifted around them as if their passing tugged at it.

“Who is this?” one of the new fairies asked the one on top of Ludwig’s head. She hovered with her toes almost skimming his hair, hands held behind her back the way a child feigns innocence that fools no one.

Lipsi replied, “This is the man Lorina talked about.” Pride touched her voice. She sank onto his crown as if staking a claim on a favored hill.

“Very handsome!” one of them said, “But he smells…” another one said as she placed her hand on her nose. The last word stretched into a giggle that made two more spin in place until they wobbled.

They jubilantly laughed and played around Ludwig, like cubs playing around a lion’s tail, not caring for how sharp its fangs were or how easy to anger he was. Though Ludwig wasn’t interested in doing any harm to the innocent fairies. They are mischievous at times but never vile or evil.

He stood as still as a tree bears birds. A pair tugged at his hair with the dauntless curiosity of creatures who had not yet learned that some things are not for tugging; Ludwig however did not indulge them, and they lost interest quickly, distracted by the glimmer of water in a basin. One pantomimed swooning when she got a nose full of him, collapsed theatrically on another’s lap, then sprang up to peer into his eyes with the frank intensity of a cat.

A few of them even fought for a spot over his hair which Lipsi denied anyone who tried. She thumped a heel smartly on his head with each attempted landing by a rival, a rhythm of small reprimands accompanied by proud little huffs.

The maid stifled a laugh and a smile and went up ahead where there was a large staircase that bled from two sides of the wooden interior of the tree. The steps flowed downward like poured ribbon, left and right, meeting at a broad landing where planters of white blossoms sent up a breath of honey and cool shade. Cathia paused at the base of the stairs, smoothed her apron with a palm, and looked upward as if listening for a cue only she could hear.

From one side of the stairs, Lorina walked down, donning a white and golden robe, and a tiara of flowers above her head. Seeing Ludwig in the flesh, she smiled, “Good to see you here Ludwig Heart.”