Lynch Mob

In the Clearing of the Ages, the Faesidhe people react to the destruction of the great Faesidhe Tree.

30.

Lynch Mob

 

“Why shouldn’t we blame the lot of you?!”   A Faesidhe woman yelled from the mob that had slowly surrounded them as soon as they had teleported into the Clearing of the Ages.    The flames from the burning Faesidhe tree gave an orange glow to the nighttime sky.  

They had only enough time to briefly see the sad spectacle of the fallen tree, before the whole community knew they were there.  

They were all distraught, for their whole existence as a separate race of Elves centered around the gigantic Faesidhe Tree with its healing fruit.    But especially it was the millennium fruit - the white fruit that gave immortality to the very few who ate of it- that gave the Faesidhe Tree the air of mystery and awe.

 

Now that was gone forever and their way of life was radically altered.    It was simple for them to look upon those who teleported into the Clearing as malefactors and agents of the tree’s destruction.

They would see them through the eyes of the proud race, with seething rage.   There was the Drow Matron -a vampire too! - one of the very Dark Elves who had invaded the Clearing and who had eaten the sacred fruit over a century and a half ago.   There was her albino descendant - who now was the Queen of the Sylvan Elves- and who was married to a half-blood royal prince.     She represented the years of occupation under the thumb of Westmark, which was also controlled by the Drow.  

Her brother, an aloof Paladin of Yesh, along with several half-Elves who were loyal cronies of the Dullerms were bothersome to them.   Then there were the other Sylvan Elves - a race who shared the love of the forests with the Faesidhe.   Yet the relationship between the two races was very stormy at best.   

Finally, there was one of this group - a Goblin, which would have been killed immediately upon entering the forest, before the Drow took control from the Faesidhe.   This miserable little creature walked about unhindered and unworried in the most sacred part of the Faesidhe forest, the Clearing of the Ages.

So though they had submitted to the benign rule of the Dullerms, the fall of their proud tree brought out in them their pride in who they were and what they had lost.    The Faesidhe of the Clearing of the Ages were angry.   Very angry.

 

“We did not cause harm to the Great Tree!”  Aedric yelled over the shouts from the crowd.

“You’ve returned to admire your handiwork!”  A Faesidhe man shouted, waving his fists at them.

“Why would we destroy the Great Tree?”   Snoe tried to reason with them, but her voice was drowned out by ugly comments about her race and the paleness of her skin.

As if by a command, the mob abruptly grew violent.    Rocks sailed at them, but before they could even respond to this, suddenly someone in the crowd shouted something and they rushed forward, yelling with a bloodthirsty rage.

 

Aedric burned with anger at their hateful words aimed at Snoe, but he held his temper, yelling for those with him to pack more tightly together as the mob surged forward.

“Don’t kill them unless absolutely necessary, but defend yourselves against them!”   The Sylvan King yelled, and they all drew their weapons before the mob swarmed over them.

 

It was a very rough mess; they were very hard-pressed to protect themselves without seriously injuring the enraged people attacking them.

“Alleania!”  Aedric yelled to the Vampire lady, as he slammed the wide part of his sword blade into the head of an Elf who was slashing at him with a knife, “The Passage down - where is it from here?!”

The Drow Matron tossed an attacking Elf into the air as if the man was a rag-doll, and replied, “We will have to fight to get to it.”

“We’ll get killed here if we don’t!”   He replied, parrying a long dagger thrust from a Faesidhe woman and punching her in the face to push her back.    Behind him, the others were holding their own against the mob, but were clearly in danger of being overwhelmed or worn down soon.

“Follow me!”   Alleania suddenly shouted, as she grabbed two attackers by their throats and flung them to either side, knocking down a handful of the enraged Elves.   She ran forward, through the gap, and was stabbed savagely in the lower back by one of the Faesidhe left standing.    But the Undead Matron did not even flinch at the wound.   If she had been alive, it would have been fatal.

Aedric tried to protect the others as they rushed after Alleania, using his shield and his body to absorb the blows.  

As she ran past the Faesidhe who had stabbed Alleania, Snoe’s swords flashed out and cut the Elf’s legs, sending him falling to the ground in agony.   Her attack caused the Faesidhe Elves around her to back away which gave the rest of them a chance to rush past them.

Aedric brought up the rear, but Snoe’s aggression had caused the crowd to hesitate.

By the time they felt bold enough to try to overwhelm them; Alleania had located the trash chute.    But many years before, the Elves had strongly sealed the old chute with a solid steel plate set with rivets.

Alleania had the typical superhuman strength of a vampire, but she struggled with pulling the hatch free.    Mattleos, Mutt, Gamel and Aaron all rushed to aid her, but it wasn’t until Aedric joined in that they began to pop the rivets loose.

Snoe stood protectively between her companions and the cautiously approaching mob.   The Faesidhe Elves were beginning to take up weapons now and a few were quickly stringing bows.   This worried the young Queen greatly, and she turned to her cousin Allea, who was quickly looking through Helios’ spellbook.

The rivets were giving way, but not quickly enough.   A few arrows started to zip through the air.

Snoe was about to yell out something in warning, when Allea began chanting a spell.

The albino Drow feared for the vulnerability of her cousin and was moving over close to her, but before Snoe reached her, Allea completed her spell.

There was a buzzing sound and a flicker of red light.   Around Allea and her companions there appeared a semi-sphere.   It was a shimmering bubble of energy and it kept away not only the arrows but also the enraged Elves.   The field of energy popped and crackled, changing colors from red to blue, to yellow, then green.

“A Prismatic Sphere!”   Alleania exclaimed from near the hatch, “A brilliant choice, child!   It is an advanced spell; how did you know it?”

“I just found it in Helios’ spellbook, and then recited it.”   Allea replied, “I don’t know how long it will last.”

“Hopefully, long enough.”   The Vampire said, and a moment later the last of the rivets were pulled free by the five men, revealing a dark tube, the opening of which was about three feet in diameter.

“You went down through that?” Mattleos asked as he looked down into the hole, “It smells horrible.”

“It used to be their trash chute.” Alleania explained, “It goes down about 90 feet to the floor of the cavern.   There used to be a creature there that would eat the trash, but he is most likely long dead.”

“How are you going to get all of us down there?”   Gamel asked his grandmother.

“I have the spell to do that, child.”   She motioned for all of them to come in closer together and immediately began chanting the spell.

The spell manifested as a silver disc, which the Matron had crafted over the hatch hole.

“Climb onto the disc; it will support about four at a time.   We’ll have to make two trips.”

“Snoe and Allea, both of you, Mutt and Mattleos; you go first, we’ll follow second.”   Aedric commanded, “Alleania, can you keep the disc working when you are on it?”

“No, but don’t worry child, I can fly down there as a bat.”

“Oh.” Aedric replied, “Alright, then.    Come on everyone, before Allea’s spell ends.”

Snoe hesitated, but a look from Aedric sent her on.   Soon she and the others were descending at a maddeningly slow rate.

 

There were pops and hisses coming from the sphere, where the mob attempted to puncture it, but it held, for now.

Aedric, Aaron and Gamel took up defensive stances around the Vampire lady.    The three knights kept their eyes nervously on the sphere.    They could tell the Faesidhe were really trying to push through the magical wall of energy.

Peering down into the trash chute, Alleania could barely see through the haze of smoke, but at least the burning Faesidhe tree made the air cleaner than the fire from the Dragon’s destruction.    

The Matron was able to make out those on the magic disc, and they wisely jumped off the disc a few feet from the floor of the cavern.    Immediately, Alleania brought it back up.  

It seemed to Aedric as if it took hours for the disc to reach the top, and all the while, the magic sphere was hammered and beaten by the angry mob of Faesidhe Elves.

“Hurry!”  Alleania urged them, her own apprehension showing as she began to lower them.     She disappeared from their view as they descended into the hole in the ground.

It opened up into a rather large cavern and Aedric and the other two Knights were nearly overcome by the smoke.    But it wasn’t the usual smell of burning things.    It was mixed with a rather strong coffee smell that made his head hurt before they were halfway down.

“What is that?”   He asked Aaron and Gamel, holding his cloak over his face.

“I’d say it was the Faesidhe tree burning.    It is near this Cavern.”

They were maybe 20 feet from the bottom when suddenly the disc disappeared.   With shouts, the three Elven knights fell the rest of the distance, preparing themselves for a rough landing on rock.

Instead they landed in a huge mound of partially decayed trash and debris that had been cast here from above over the years.

Though the Faesidhe Elves had sealed the chute following the Drow raid, more than 150 years had not been nearly enough to dissolve the debris.

They landed on it hard, but without breaking anything.    Their companions who had gone before them now beckoned them to slide down the side of the mound and join them where they stood on the actual floor, which was an additional ten feet below.

“What happened to Alleania?” Gamel asked, staring up at the chute high above.

There were some distorted sounds coming from the surface, then just as their eyes were getting used to the dark, they saw a bat fluttering down rather quickly, to land on top of the pile.    A moment later, Alleania slid down the side, covered with slashes.

“Yesh, have mercy!”   Snoe gasped as she beheld the wounds.   Running over to her grandmother, she knelt down and reached for her to wipe the blood away.

Suddenly Alleania’s hand shot out and tightly grabbed Snoe’s wrist.  

“No!”   She hissed, her fangs shining in the darkness and her eyes burning like red coals, “I’ll be alright; I will regenerate. But to do so, I need blood, very, very soon.   Stay here, all of you; I must go hunting!”

“Alleania, no!”   Gamel protested, but she was already on her feet and she turned toward him with a wild look of someone half-crazed with hunger.

“If I don’t go, I will feed on one of you.”   

She raised her hands into the air and reassumed the form of a bat, then quickly flew out of the chamber, leaving them more than a little uncomfortable at the thought of what she was seeking to do.

“I guess we’ll have to wait.”   Allea said as she sat down at the bottom of the rubbish pile, “So this is the Underdark.”

“I guess so.    It is different than what I expected.”   Snoe responded, “I thought it would be very damp and clammy.   This cavern seems very dry and even the air is bone dry.    It doesn’t smell bad, though.   In fact, it smells very pleasant, I think.”

The girl took a deep breath, unbothered by the smoke in the air.

“I wouldn’t do that.”   Allea warned her cousin.

“Why?”

“You smell Dart’loxinchu - or rather the burning of the Faesidhe Tree.    The smoke is addictive for women and causes headaches for men.”

“It certainly does that.”   Aaron commented, rubbing his eyes, “It smells strong and pleasant, but since we came in here I’ve had a horrible headache and my stomach feels sick.”

The other men murmured in agreement, except for Mutt, who was too busy throwing up a short distance away.

“That is how Dart’loxinchu affects men and women - differently.”

“Well, we need to get out of this tainted air then, “Aedric said, though he doubted there would be any place they could go where the air was cleaner.

“We don’t dare leave this passage, Aedric.”   Gamel warned, “We don’t have a clue where we are or where we are going.   My father told me that there are hundreds of miles of passages in the Underdark.   We’ll have to wait for Alleania to return.”

“Wonderful.”   Aedric grumbled as he held his mouth against the side of his cloak.

Reviews

[Elina]

"...teleported into the Clearing, as malefactors..." You can probably omit the comma.
"There was her albino descendant " who now was the Queen of the Sylvan Elves"and who was married to a half-blood royal prince." Perhaps, instead, "...descendant -- the new Queen of the Sylvan Elves -- who was married to..." ?
"...which also was controlled by the Drow." You may want to switch "also" and "was."
"Her brother, an aloof Paladin of Yesh, along with several half-Elves who were loyal cronies of the Dullerms." This is an incomplete sentence.
"The albino Drow feared for the vulnerability of her cousin and was moving over close to her, but before she reached her, she completed her spell." This sentence is full of she's and her's and it could be confusing for your readers which she/her is meant for Snoe and which she/her is meant for Allea.
"Their companions who had went before them..." You will want to change "went" to "gone."
"There was some distorted sounds..." The "was" ought to be "were," due to the plurality of "sounds."
"I’ll be alright, I will regenerate, but to do so, I need blood, very, very soon. Stay here, all of you; I must go hunting for blood!" A few ideas...change the first comma into a semi-colon and the second comma into a period. Also, you can probably take out "for blood" in the final sentence as it is slightly redundant. "I'll be alright; I will regenerate. But to do so, I need blood very, very soon. Stay here, all of you; I must go hunting." ?

[Eddie Davis]

Thanks, Elina, this chapter was a mess, huh? I even found a spelling error that everyone has missed: maddingly should be maddeningly.