Chapter 1

Introduction

This book depicts, in a narrative form, the events know as the second coming of the gods of the Dark Elves, according to human chroniclers.

The information contained herein has been provided to us by our ancestors, the creators of Dark Elves, and is available in the Great Library at Liverad.

Chapter 1

It was night in Anluz. Soldiers were doing the night patrol. On the top of the high wall that protects the residential area, a shadow was watching, motionless. Rus, an elf with long white hair and a pallid purple skin, was observing the street below, where a soldier was passing. His keen senses allow him to see in the dark.

In the stone street was walking Azzan, a humanoid lizard with bluish skin. He walks slow with his arms outstretched and asking in a hissing voice:

“Anybody is there? Can you help me?”

The soldier who was coming in the opposite direction moved closer, worried.

“What is the problem, sir?”

Azzan, moving his hands trying to touch him, answered:

“Does the doctor can attend me?”

Meanwhile, a small shadow stopped at the door of one house, using the wide doorway to lurk from the light of the lamps. She pulled a long metal rod from the leather bracelet and began to pick the lock.

Rus kept quiet, observing. And then he saw, in the wall at the end of the street, the shadow of the other soldier approaching. Looking for a way to warn the woman, he found some little rocks loose. He took one and threw it.

The rock hits the head of the woman, that looked around. And then she saw the shadow, and hurried away from the door, walking slow in the street. The soldier passed by her without noticing anything wrong.

Azzan was still talking with the soldier, that asked him:

“I think he can. What’s your problem?”

“I cant see anything since I left the tavern.“

The soldier then decided that its better to guide Azzan to the doctor’s house. He took the lizard man by the arm.

The woman with red hair, whose name is Thora, come back to the door lock that she is trying to unlock.

Then Rus felt the wall begin to tremble, and saw the sky light up as the day was born. Azzan and the soldier stopped, looking up.

“But where is that light coming from?”, asked the other soldier, standing next to both.

Rus raised his hand to protect his eyes. The light become more intense, until it turned into a white ball, like a small sun.

Seconds later the ball exploded. The thundering noise makes the ground shake, and the remaining of the ball was a light halo that was disapearing slowly.

And this light was enough to illuminate the city for some minutes. It was then that one of the soldiers saw Rus on the wall and, looking around, he saw too Thora next to the door.

Azzan was between the two soldiers, who looked at him in a suspicious way.

“Wait a moment”, shouted one of the soldiers.

Azzan threw up his hands and shrugged, with an expression of fake innocence. Seconds later he ducked and knocked down both soldiers with strokes of his tail. Then he ran to the gate.

The soldiers stood up. One followed Azzan, yelling:

“Thieves! Sound the alarm!”

The other tried to Stop Thora. But the woman was climbing the wall with the help of the rope that Rus was holding. The soldier goes to the gate while the elf and the woman were leaving in the outside of the wall.

When Rus reached the ground, he looked around and saw the barn in the distance.

“Thora, try to get the horses”.

The woman nodded and ran in the direction pointed by Rus. Meanwhile, Azzan goes out through the open gate, dodging of the arrows fired at him.

“Next time remember to close the gates, fouls!”, shouted the lizard men, laughing.

A group of soldiers came through the gate. Three of them followed Azzan, the other two saw Rus running toward the barn, and they began to chase him.

When Rus realized that the soldiers were following him, he took the gun hidden inside his coat. At first it seemed a little bow, no more than forty inches long, but when Rus pressed a button on the handle, the weapon has increased in size until become a long bow.

Turning around to face the soldiers, Rus stopped and puled the bowstring. A bluish light formed in the string, and in seconds an arrow, made of energy, had formed. Rus released the string, and the arrow cut through the air like a lightning, hit the ground and spread out, knocking down the soldiers with and electrical discharge.

At that moment Azzan reached the river, diving into the calm, dark waters. The soldiers who followed him more closely, stopped and signaled to the others:

“Forget him, those lizards can breath underwater.”

Then, looking around, he saw what was happening near the barn.

“They are stealing the horses!”

He started running, followed by the others, to try to stop the robbery. But Thora was already knocked down the two guards of the barn and released the horses, sending some of them to the meadows, and holding two.

Rus stopped again and, with his singular quickness , fired other three arrows, shooting down the soldiers. The he mounted in one of the horses.

Thora was going to the bridge, the horse at full speed. Rus examined the surroundings one last time, and saw the soldiers standing, stunned. In the other side of the barn, more soldiers were approaching. After shooting at them, he followed Thora.

Azzan slowly put his head out of the water, to see what was happening. On the bridge illuminated by torches were Rus and Thora. He saw the elf pointing to the forest. Shortly after he understood what the sign meant.

“Oh yes, the trail”, he mumbled, while diving again.

Several yards beyond the bridge, where the darkness imposed by the forest begins, Rus reined his horse and dismounted. Thora do the same. As she disappeared into the forest, Rus did the horses come back alone, and then followed her in the trail he could see very well.

Minutes later some soldiers found the horses moving forward slowly across the bridge.

“We lost them!”, exclaimed one of the soldiers, angrily.

“They are trying to break into the house of the captain of the guard and…”, reminded another.

“I know! Send a message to Menara’s Guild Warriors. Maybe they can help us to catch them”.

Rus and Thora were walking along the trail, which started to follow the riverbank. Azzan was waiting sitting on a rock.

“I miss something?”, asked him, as he got to his feet following the other two. Seconds later, he continued: “Boss will pull out our scalps.”

“That explosion messed everything. If it hadn’t happened, we would be with those papers now”, Thora replied.

“And what explosion was that? I never saw something like that”.

“I would like to know”, said Rus.

- x -

That same night, at the Imperial City, the number of guards was redoubled. The Emperor had called his advisers, the goal of the meeting was to draw up plans to find the source of the explosion.

While the meeting proceeded peacefully in the main hall, two guards were guarding the hall way that led to an adjacent room. Every hour one of them entered this room, conferring its contents, and then returning to his rounds.

But at that night one of them noticed something was wrong when he saw the pedestal in the center of the room. Running, he entered the main hall, interrupting the meeting. What he had to report was too important to waste time with etiquette.

“The amulet! It’s gone!”

The Emperor stood up, his face was pale. The others who were sitting down at the table started to whispering, shocked.

“Close the city. Nobody gets in or out. I want you to inspect all people that was here at the moment of the explosion, including the guards.”

The guard take a measurement and left the room, with a stranger smile.