Aldir skidded to a halt, shocked by the scene before him. Undead clashed with elves. Spells were everywhere.
He had been healed and taken to the Council’s chambers, within the Royal Quarter. There, Delarthen and the others had questioned him, trying to get to the bottom of why he had defied them. He had told them the truth, saying he was tired of the Council’s methods, and didn’t agree with them. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to agree or disagree. He was meant only to follow orders. They had kept him up all night, questioning him, battering aside his logic, until even he wasn’t sure why he had attacked the Asdelarcen last night.
They had showed no sign of letting up, but the terrible sound of the main gate being demolished had brought a swift end to the questions. They had all run, Aldir included, to the middle of Eld’rin, to see what had happened. And there they now stood, viewing a scene of complete destruction.
It wasn’t just the undead, though they seemed to be plenty sufficient. Aldir looked to where the main gate had been, and saw a large group of Asdelarcen there, raining spells down on the elves. The Asdelarcen. They had been part of this all along. They were never going to leave Eld’rin, like they promised the Council last night. They just wanted to get Dilmir out of the way so that the undead could attack unimpeded. It all made sense now.
“You let this happen,” he said, turning angrily to the Council member standing beside him. It was Delarthen. “You let the Asdelarcen take Ilrin, and lure Dilmir away. Now look what they’ve brought us as a result.”
Delarthen did not reply. He seemed incapable of speech, staring in horror at the undead instead.
Aldir turned away in disgust. He couldn’t exactly join in the fight. He still had his sword, but there was a large group of tightly packed elves between him and the enemy. Maybe he could edge around it eventually, but judging from what he was seeing, attacking the undead was pointless anyway. Every spell disintegrated before striking them, every blade was turned aside or shattered.
As he watched though, he saw an undead burst into ash. Another disintegrated soon after. He looked, and saw Dilmir, darting between the undead, somehow getting through their shields. He seemed to have a shield of his own, for every blow the zombies rained down on him was turned aside.
Dilmir. Defending the elves. Despite everything the Council had done, despite everything the elves themselves had believed, here he was, fighting for them. In that moment, Aldir finally made up his mind: Dilmir was powerful as the Council had said, yes, but he was not a threat. Not to them. He was not dangerous.
“Look,” he said, turning to Delarthen. He pointed to Dilmir. “Look!”
Delarthen followed his finger mutely, seeing Dilmir, but seeming unable to register anything other than shock.
Aldir didn’t care. “All this time you’ve done your best to banish Dilmir,” he said, “to stop him, to kill him even. And now look: he fights for you, for Eld’rin, for all elves.” He dropped his hand, disgust building within him. “You sought to be rid of Dilmir, and you made deals with the Asdelarcen. You’ve become blinded by your fear of power; blinded until you can no longer tell friend from foe!”
“What’s done is done,” a nearby Council mage said. “I admit we made a mistake in trusting the Asdelarcen, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”
Aldir stepped away, looking at them all with disgust and hate. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. And then he drew his sword, turned, and plunged into the struggling mass of elves, working his way through them. Too long had he stood with the Council, too long had he been blinded by their desires and fears. But no longer. Today, he would do what he should have done years ago, and fight against the true enemies of the elves.
Dilmir’s shield was holding. Every time he slew an undead, he took the magic from its shield and added it to his own. As a result, he was immune to both their blows, and the spells being cast by the Asdelarcen.
The same couldn’t be said for the other elves. They fought heroically, but nothing they did mattered against the undead. The zombies plowed into them, flailing their arms every which way, felling elves with every blow.
Dilmir had killed at least seven undead so far, but he had to do something to protect the elves. They were getting slaughtered. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot he could do. He had already cast shields on some elves, but they didn’t last long. The blows from the undead were too powerful. Dilmir kept pouring magic into his shield from the undead he slew, but the other elves couldn’t do that, meaning that the shields he supplied them only lasted for a few hits.
The only thing he could do was kill the zombies faster. So he did, trying to stay between them and the elves, using his shield to block their blows, and disintegrating them once they got close enough. It was effective, but he was only one elf. Where he stood, the elves were safe, but around him, the undead pressed forward, leaving corpses in their wake.
At some point during the battle, he looked up, and saw the Asdelarcen where the main gate had been, firing spells into the struggling mass of elves. He would have done something about them, but fighting the undead required all of his concentration. However, as he looked, two figures appeared, ambushing the Asdelarcen from the side, and cutting into their ranks. One was Felnir, seemingly immune to their spells, somehow felling them just by touching them. Eltuthar’s magic. The other was Aldir. He had a shield also, likely one supplied by Alfimir, and together, he and Felnir began cutting their way through the Asdelarcen. The Asdelarcen drew their swords to defend themselves, but then the tide of undead shifted, and Dilmir lost sight of them.
Despite his worry of the past day, the battle was going well. The undead continued to strike down elves, but the elves were catching on, and were dodging the undead’s blows rather than fighting. Many had escaped to the right or left, and many more had poured into the Royal Quarter, leaving Dilmir mostly by himself.
He continued to blast apart every undead within reach, and given that they simply kept coming, there was no shortage of targets. But he was tired. He had been up all night, running from the Asdelarcen, and his muscles were spent. It was a struggle just to stand, let alone fight. His shield took more and more hits as he no longer had the energy to dodge the undead, and he feared that if something didn’t change soon, it would crumple entirely, and the undead would be able to reach him at last.
Something did eventually change, but it wasn’t the change Dilmir had hoped for: Cyprien joined in the fight.
Probably finally realizing just how many of his undead Dilmir had slain, Cyprien dropped to the ground, drew his swords, and marched through the mass of zombies. Dilmir saw him coming, and his heart sank. He couldn’t fight a vampire, much less Cyprien. Especially not now, when he could barely stand. The vampires had dark magic, power the elves knew nothing about. It didn’t follow the same rules, and seemed more powerful than Elven magic in every way.
But Dilmir had no choice. He was hemmed in, elves behind him, undead on both sides and in front. He slew the undead around him, bolstering his shield, and got a better grip on his sword, hoping by some miracle he could survive this.
Cyprien arrived a moment later, swinging his blades powerfully against Dilmir. Dilmir blocked the blow, but was immediately thrown to the ground by the impact. Of course. Vampires were far stronger than elves. But still, he dared not let his shield take a hit like that. It would probably evaporate on the spot.
He scrambled to his feet as Cyprien approached. The undead seemed to be streaming around him and Cyprien, steering clear of them both to get to the elves behind. Dilmir hastily brushed the shields of three behind him, disintegrating them and bolstering the magic around him.
Cyprien advanced, a snarl on his face. He attacked, swinging his swords down, but Dilmir dodged to his side, avoiding the blow. Cyprien’s blades bit deep into the earth, but he wrenched them free a moment later, and swung them at Dilmir.
With nowhere to go, Dilmir was forced to block the blow again with his sword, and was again thrown to the ground. His body cried out in protest as he struck the packed earth, and for a moment, his legs refused to support him. He wasn’t going to win this.
Cyprien seemed to know he was winning. He advanced on Dilmir even as he struggled to get up, and swung his swords at him while he was down. Dilmir was forced to block the blow again, with the result that he was slammed back against the ground. Cyprien followed up with a strike from the side, and Dilmir, still recovering from the last blow, wasn’t fast enough to block it.
Cyprien’s blade hit Dilmir’s shield, and as he had known it would, it shattered, exploding in a shower of sparks. He was defenseless now. He scrambled backwards, pulling himself along the ground with feet and elbows, trying to find an undead whose shield he could absorb. But Cyprien saw what he was doing, and the undead shied away from Dilmir, controlled by Cyprien’s dark magic.
The vampire advanced, an evil smile now flickering across his face. Dilmir continued to back up, but soon felt wood at his back. He had come up against a root. There was nowhere else to go. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs didn’t seem to want to work. Even his sword felt thick and heavy, held limply in his hand.
But then the elves arrived. The undead had been streaming around Cyprien and Dilmir, reaching the elves from the sides, but that meant that where Cyprien and Dilmir fought, there was a gap, an open space. Elves, choosing Cyprien over the undead, now flooded into this area, all swinging their swords at Cyprien.
Whatever forced protected Cyprien from spells didn’t seem to work against swords. He swung in wide arcs, felling many, but he still received many blows. They were bloodless, and he seemed not to feel them. Only a sword through the heart could kill a vampire. However, he was still forced to retreat, leaping to the air and landing behind his undead army. The zombies surged forward then, the elves suddenly finding themselves surrounded.
But their attack had given Dilmir the time he needed to recover. He stood on shaky legs, recast his shield around him, and charged into the undead, felling all he met. As the undead crumpled before him, a cheer went up from the elves, and Dilmir realized that between him and those willing to fight Cyprien, they might possibly survive this.
It was at that point that a small figure, another vampire, appeared over the walls of Eld’rin, flew over the city, and landed before Dilmir.
It was Ilrin.
Or, rather, it was her body. Her hair was red now, her skin pallid. She wore a dark suit of armor, and a red cape billowed behind her. Her eyes burned red. But at the same time, it was still Ilrin. The way she stood, the way she moved, it was all her.
Dilmir just stood there and looked at her, completely devoid of anything. He couldn’t process what he was seeing. Ilrin… a vampire. No. Just… no. That couldn’t be.
“Cower!” Ilrin shouted at the mass of elves behind Dilmir. “I am Iskra, daughter of Cyprien. Your hour has come!” She turned red eyes on Dilmir. “And you,” she hissed, “I know you. You will be the first to die.” She drew from her cloak two daggers, and flew at Dilmir without a second’s hesitation.