The Search for the Lucky One

With my free hand I gripped my dagger. I was half tempted to use it, but it was an incredibly dangerous weapon. Once it broke the skin it would continue to spread the wound until there was nothing left but ash. No attack was worth that barbaric-ness even if it was a goblin. Instead I grabbed a handful of grass with my toes and transferred it to my hand while I was being dragged away. I willed the grass to become blades and I was surprised that it worked. I rammed the shards into the leg of the goblin and soon found myself released. I ran back towards the burning shelters of my guards when another goblin caught me and pulled me back.

I was about to call out to them to wake up when Kairoh leapt through the top of his dome sending bits of burning vine everywhere. He placed his hand on the ground and the earth split apart causing some of the goblins nearest to him to fall slightly into the hole. Immediately he closed it up trapping them in the ground like rooted trees. Not long after Jethreigh burst through his shelter and charged at the goblins. I felt quite secure knowing Jethreigh was on my side, the goblins were probably pretty petrified at seeing such a massive warrior elf run towards them.

They screamed out curses to kill me if they were harmed anymore. I wasn’t so useless that I couldn’t fight back. I watched as Kairoh waved his hands brilliantly in the air causing mounds of vines to sprout from the grass and completely engulf the six goblins who were currently stuck in the ground. I had never seen such a feat performed without touching the grass before but if it was possible I wanted to try. I felt the ground through my feet and flicked my wrist. Below us the ground vibrated and a rush of vines crawled up the goblin and squeezed him tight. I fell from his grip unharmed.

“Get the prince!” The goblin who was suffering from my attack yelled in his rockish language. I dashed away from both of my guards not wanting to be caught up or hinder their attacks. There were a few very small flowers around. They wouldn’t do much damage but if I collected enough of them it would be good defense. It seemed like we had been ambushed by a clan of goblins. They were known to travel in groups of no less than twenty. I hid in the shadows away from the flames to hide. Goblins had poor eye sight where elves could see clearly in the light and dark. I kept a look out as I grabbed flowers and immediately turned them into blades. I had nearly a dozen ready when there was something thrown over my head and I found myself wrapped in a sack. I whacked at it with my flower blades but the material was tough, tougher than my amateur blades could pierce.

I found myself slung over the broad shoulder of a goblin and I was upside down. Blood rushed to my head as I continued to at least try and whack away at the armoured sack.

Battle cries became dimmer as the goblin began to run. I could tell we were getting quite far away from camp. My hacking away finally created a small incision in the sack but when I tried to push my fingers through and rip it open it was still too tough. Of course it would be if a goblin was carrying it. They were known for stealing things and they needed to keep their stolen goods in sacks that would be able to withstand plenty of ware and tear. However, they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I was the elf prince! I wasn’t going to be kidnapped like some unlucky Jynx. I stabbed at the hole, sawing it with my petal blades. I sliced as quickly as I could and the hole was growing bigger. I heard the rocky language of goblins getting closer. It seemed half of the clan went to fetch me and remain a decoy while the other half could sneak me off here. Just as I cut through the bag I fell onto the ground and found myself surrounded by roughly thirteen goblins.

“Oi, he is the elf prince!” one of them said.

“He’ll fetch a pretty price if we bring him in now.”

“What about the others?”

“They might survive somehow.”

“I will not go quietly.” I grumbled in the goblin dialect. It wasn’t the easiest of languages to speak and it certainly wasn’t one of the basic languages to learn. That was why I understood why they looked so surprised to hear me speak like them.

“As long as you’re alive it doesn’t matter-“ one of them said.

“He’d be useless if he’s dead. Knock him out!” The one that had carried me demanded. Just as they rushed at me I drew my engraved dagger.

“I’m useless if I’m dead, huh?” I asked. Swiftly I raised my glistening dagger and before they could even hope to advise me not to I stabbed it quickly into my chest and collased as they shrieked.

I closed my eyes and felt them shake me violently. One removed the blade from my grip and yelled out.

“Why would he do this?”

“Do you know what will become of us if this is found out?”

“Who’s idea was it to bring him here in the first place?”

“We thought it would be a good way to get ransom.”

“I should have known this would be trouble!”

“Who knew he’d go so far to keep from being captured?”

“Well, we’ve never successfully captured an elf before- who knew it would end up this way?”

Their voices became more frantic as some pressed against my chest to stop the bleeding. I could hear others run away in fright. It was highly against goblin code to abandon any goblin tribe, so my dying must have been quite a shock to them all. Their voices became more frantic and shrill as they tried their best to revive me, but it was too late.

A battle cry that I could only recognize as Jethreigh’s reverberated around. It struck fear even into my chest. Soon the goblins dropped me and took off. I was left alone in the grass and I listened to Jethreigh run after them. It wasn’t long before Kairoh came around and found me.

“Oh no!” He yelled and fell to his knees beside me. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. I could feel his colour saturating my skin. It wasn’t long before Jethreigh came back and noticed the situation.

“Jethreigh- we- we’ve failed.” I felt him lay his head against mine. Jethreigh fell to the ground o his knees next to me and placed his hand on my head.

“Never again will I show mercy to goblins.” He said under his breath. I winced as I heard those words. No matter what beast I fought or what predicament I found myself in, I would always show mercy. It went against all Elvin instincts to do otherwise.

When I was finally unable to breath from Kairoh’s tight grip on me I asked, “Are they gone?”

Suddenly Kairoh released me and I could breathe again. I took a deep breath but then pushed myself away from him and stood, brushing my legs free of dirt.

“You’re alive?” Kairoh nearly yelled, “You’re alive!” he celebrated and before he could embrace me again Jethreigh beat me to the punch. I felt his colour crawl across my arms as I tried to push away.

“It felt like I had lost another son.” He whispered into my ear. Instantly I regretted waiting so long to reveal my trick. When he let me go I took a giant step away from both of them and picked up my blade.

“How are you alive? You should be dead after a savage wound like that.” Kairoh pointed to the blood on my clothes. Indeed it looked gruesome but I was completely intact.

“It’s the blade.” I said and opened my shirt to reveal that not even a scratch was on me. They both stared at my chest in awe as though it wasn’t possible. “My faerie sword master gave it to me as a gift. If you attack someone with it, it will keep attacking until there is nothing left but ash, however if you injure your own self with it, it doesn’t leave a mark but seems like you have been wounded.”

Relief washed over both of their faces as I relayed this information to them. After they had a chance to recover from the fright of my death we headed back to camp. I noticed Jethreigh had been injured on both arms and Kairoh looked like he was burned from the flames. As we go to camp I was tempted to reach out to both and offer some healing help. I had only ever healed myself, and for the first time I had healed someone else this morning. I wasn’t sure if I was capable of taking on a larger task other than a broken wing. I would also have the reprimands to deal with if I even offered. For the first time in my young life I felt that one of our Elvin laws was undeniably foolish. I swallowed my fear of being reprimanded and was about to reach out to Jethreigh when Kairoh came over.

“Alright, let’s fix your battle wounds.” He joked. Jethreigh didn’t look pleased. I had forgotten that Kairoh could heal, though he wasn’t renowned for his abilities. In fact, he had refused to take the classes instead saying he wanted to be a warrior. I had heard stories of bribes he had to take. Apparently if he went to learn about healing they would train him as a warrior so he could heal on the battle field.

Form the way Jethreigh began to wince at Kairoh’s touch it didn’t seem like he had paid too much attention in the classes. While they were healing I turned to my own predicament. My entire body was two different colours. The thing about changing colours was, you didn’t just change your appearance, but you also collected the feelings the of the person giving the colour as well as a feeling of being them. I felt the relieved feelings of Jethreigh as well as his personal being feeling which was mixed with a slight feeling of the panic from Kairoh. These feelings weren’t strong enough to inhibit my own mind, it was more or less a feeling in the back of my mind.

The older an elf usually got the less and less they felt the feelings of the other elves or beings that touched them and instead just felt the colour change. I was young, and I disliked having people touch me to I wasn’t accustomed to ignoring the feeling their colours gave me. I stood and walked towards the woods so I could go look for water to return to my own colour.

“Oi, Prince Asher, where are you going?” Jethreigh asked as I wandered into the silently humming trees.

“To find some water.” I announced. Jethreigh leapt towards me and was at my side in an instant. He seemed like he was willing to do anything to get away from Kairoh’s healing.

“Don’t wander off alone. It is more dangerous than we had thought.”

“You can come if you want.” I answered and gripped onto the bark of the closest tree. I climbed up towards its branches and closed my eyes when I was high enough. The creaking of the tree branches reverberating off each other in the distance would allow me to hear them tell of locations of water. Listening and talking to trees was one of my favourite things to do. The trees rustling leaves and creaking branches as well as moans and sighs from the wind allowed elves and any other creature that was willing to listen to hear them speak. I listened for the recognizable song of the trees that were near water. There was a small river it seemed off to the left.

I was soon joined by Jethreigh in the canopy of branches. By the time he had gotten to the top I had already located the water. I started leaping from branch to branch towards the source of the tree’s songs as Jethreigh closed his eyes to listen.

“Doesn’t take you long to listen does it?” Jethreigh commented a few trees behind me. Thanks to my size I was a bit more nimble than the tall muscular guard following me. I rushed through the glowing branches and leaves until I heard the river slowly slithering about in the distance. I accidentally disturbed a few nests of the sleeping night insects and they flew along side me lighting up the veins of the leaves and shining like drops of dew.

I finally made it to the coppice of trees at the edge of the river and climbed down the rough bark. Without hesitation I jumped into the cool water and submerged myself. It wrapped around me and soothed my skin back to it’s original colour and feeling. By the time I had returned to normal Jethreigh finally arrived.

“If I didn’t know any better I thought you’d been trying to lose me.” he joked and waded into the shallow river. He had some of my blue across his chest as well as some of the green I transferred to him after Kairoh’s embrace. I didn’t try to lose him, but I always felt it disrespectful to look so eager to get someone else’s colour off as quickly as possible. When I was back to normal I sat on the bank of the river and waited for Jethreigh to finish. Normally elves would just wait for their own colour to come back to normal gradually. Changing colour was such a natural thing that it didn’t seem important to turn back. I just had a preference of staying blue.

Kairoh didn’t have the need to come wash off the colour. He was one of the rare elves that stayed one colour no matter what touched him. I assumed he stayed to fix the rest of the camp while Jethreigh came to watch over me.

When we were back to normal we climbed back through the tree branches and ran once more among the glowing leaves back to camp. Kairoh offered the plan of staying up the rest of the night to watch for any more attacks. Jethreigh only agreed if I slept under the same dome as him for protection. I agreed and it wasn’t long before I was dreaming once more.