Yes...It is kind of short.Chapter 1
A maze. Everlasting stone walls painted black by death. Paths riddled with the skeletons of creatures who, long ago, desperately tried to escape their predictable passing. There was no way they could have survived. The executioners here were exceptionally unique. The walls thrummed with their power, their greed for souls. It was extremely disturbing to Ava. But, she believed she could get out. She wasn’t like other creatures. She was a half-elf, the first one in centuries.
She ran down the pathways, having no idea where she was headed. She was in a huge, mysterious cavern. A blood red sun hung in the right corner of the humongous cave, splashing everything with an unsettling deep crimson. Glittering blue crystals dangled from the ceiling; the sun only reached its bloody fingers to touch the ends of the crystals allowing them to shine their facets on the stone walls like a disco ball. Every foot of the cave--other than the maze--was covered in a gloomy city. The atmosphere felt eerie and malicious. There was no doubt in her mind that something was coming for her in the maze. Soon.
Her mind was screaming at her to get out. So that’s what she was doing; Ava usually trusted her instincts.
She twisted down halls that had no significant meaning to her. Mainly whichever was closest and heading west. She was trying her luck with another one of her intuitions. Usually in a maze they assumed you would head the way that would be open on the outside which was never the way out in this kind of predicament. She was in a labyrinth full of skeletons in a cavern that enclosed a metropolis and a blood red sun. This was no common garden maze behind a harmonious castle; the rules would be different. She was sprinting for the wall. As she progressed through the maze, she indicated her route by getting small bones and carving an “A” into them with her knife--it was an irreplaceable switchblade created by the leader of Terek. He had given it to her when she fulfilled her first quest. She found adhesive slime inside a fissure in the rock and stuck the bones to the opening of each passage she took. Always heading west, she soon made it to the periphery.
There was no door, no hallway, not even a crawlspace; it was just a wall with pictures on it. She barely even paid attention to the weird drawings. The only thought in her mind was that, for once, her intuitions had been wrong. Ava stepped forward, looking more closely at her supposed escape route.
The etching in the walls was clearly identifiable as cavemen sketches. The only difference was the content of the pictures. They were very descriptive; most were drawings of people boiling in cauldrons and some hanging from the gallows. Others were being enveloped in flames, submerged in endless lakes, or devoured by massive beasts in body armor. The tension and panic of the condemned people rolled off of the walls in waves, enfolding Ava in their worries. She recoiled, horrified. Somehow she knew these deaths had actually happened.
Ava continued to recede until her back was pressed against the sinister blood-spattered stone. Then the voices came; thousands of tortured souls shrieking for help clouded her already distraught mind. She cowered into the dirt; shielding her ears to stop the screams, though she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Memories flooded through her of the deaths. She felt their exact emotions through each one; it felt like she was dying over and over again. Their thoughts also came with the fatality package.
Ava was crying, her tears sliding down her cheeks and splashing onto the earth. She clutched her stomach as she sank onto her side. The sensible part of her mind was still working, though. Don’t scream.
“Happens every time,” someone laughed heartily. “Still never gets old.”
The souls stopped their tormenting pleas as soon as she heard his voice. Wiping salty tears from her face and forcing the memories out of her mind, she struggled to her feet.
“Uhh. As a heads up, don’t look at the wall again.” The thing advised when Ava was beginning to turn and confront the speaker.
She immediately stopped and stood staring at the cold stones of the wall opposite the gruesome pictures. “It would help if I could see you.” She was shivering.
“How would that help?”
“You know. Ease my suspicions of who you are.” Her eyes traced the patterns of blood.
“What do you mean ‘who I am’?”
“For all I know, you could be here to kill me.” Ava said warily, cringing at the thought of joining the wall of souls.
He laughed. “Nah, why would I be here to kill you?”
“Do you not even notice this place? There are things trapped in that wall. It seems suspicious that you would just show up like this.”
“None of those are elves, Miss,” he assured, reading her thoughts.
Ava said nothing, just stood thinking about all the gruesome ways she could die.
Her curiosity was growing and she could stand it no longer. She had to see what this thing was.
Whirling around, she froze in awe and fear of his appearance.
The creature before her was tall and wore black armor that covered everything but his head. Chains wrapped around him in the shape of an X on his torso. He had a steel helmet with horns sticking up from each side and his face was like a bulldog; two teeth twisted out and up from his mouth. Also like a bulldog, he had fur. His eyes were big and beady. But his pupils were white and his irises were a bright red. In his left hand was a scythe covered in blood stains.
The creature grinned when he saw Ava’s shocked expression. Then her gaze shifted, without thinking, to the wall.
There weren’t any pictures. They were gone.
“Where did they go?” She asked, taken aback.
He glanced over his shoulder at the picture-less wall then twisted his head around to face Ava, mimicking her look. Except it looked unusually out of place on a dog’s face.
“Whoa. You are her. I had a feeling.”
“I’m who?”
“Doesn’t matter now.” He said quickly.
His bulldog face became very serious and his red eyes stared off into space. A voice spoke an introduction, but it wasn’t the creatures’. “I am the spirit of Death.”—Ava flinched—“You are here to take The Five Tests of Knowledge and Fortitude. If you pass each of them, you will acquire an object. If you fail, you shall never know of the power you possess.”
Power I possess? Ava thought. What power?
The deity’s eyes refocused and he returned to his amused self. Ava observed as he tapped the base of the scythe on the soil and a large portion of the wall behind him slid up revealing a staircase that led down into enigmatic darkness. Her intuition had been right after all. But this didn’t look like a way out.
“So, Ava Namir, are you ready to take your first test?” He grinned.
Ava woke up, shaking. The bulldog man’s face still reverberated in her mind as did his words. Tests?
I should talk to Noretta about this.
Contemplating, Ava headed out of her tree house after sliding into her pants and blue sweater. Ava threw on her coat and scarf; she walked out of the herbalists’ home. She lived with two sisters--her guardians--who were in the herb department. Karina was already gone to her shop and, obviously, Noretta had hurried to her lab for some odd reason. Usually she slept in.
The community of Terek was made in the trees; trees for houses, bridges for streets.
Shops were constructed of wooden platforms suspended from thick green vines with intricately designed cloths surrounding them, usually with the name of the shop woven into the front. A rectangle was cut out under the name and used for a doorway. A selected elf came out and cut small holes above the doorway and weaved strands of beads through them, letting the beads form a door that shimmered from all the various colors. The shops were usually positioned about ten feet from the main bridge; they built side bridges heading to the shops. On those ropes, they hung lanterns and colored lights so they were not hard to miss; the form and color of the lights generally coincided with the shop type and were turned on during night hours. Around the vines in Terek they twirled more colored lights that were left on all the time, showing up in daytime as brilliant as beacons at nighttime.
The town was protectively shrouded in thick canopies, making anything outside of their little haven unable to sense their existence. Each elf owned their own tree in Terek and their homes were carved into them; using the whole tree, the average quantity of rooms was between twenty and twenty-eight. Most of these rooms were used for guest rooms, studies, libraries, garden areas, and further. Stairs wound down through the tree with exit areas on each floor.
At the base of every tree lay a door leading out onto a huge farm that produced everything from peppers to strawberries and had a diversity of cattle, sheep, and species never even dreamed of in the human world, though the animals were never eaten. Herbalists used them for their blood and other liquids to form remedies. These fields were tended by elves every day and kept healthy. Artificial lights hung from vines stretched between the trees, shining luminously down onto the ranch from every angle; not one inch was unlit. At night the lights over the animals were switched off, allowing them to sleep. Docile wolves patrolled the perimeter due to the lack of walls; anything could come between the trees.
Terek was formed in rings. The outside ring was made up of shops and less important buildings; the second inner ring was made of the homes of elves; the inner ring was composed of the town hall, where all the government affairs were faced, and the more important elves.
Ava walked briskly through the magnificent town, heading to the school. The scarf blew wildly around her in the cold wind, signifying that Fall was coming to an end and Winter was beginning its reign over the land.
Surprisingly she didn’t see any elves as she passed through the sturdy bridge-streets. That was odd since, usually, there were many elves out-and-about this time of day. Another odd thought hit her: it was market day.
Something must be wrong, she thought.
Suddenly Ava was afraid. But she had grown up here; so there was no reason to be frightened. Even if she didn’t remember all of her life.
Ava asked the same question every day: What really happened when I was little? She knew she was different. Ava remembered nothing from when she was very little; she only knew about her baby years from stories that her guardian told her. These stories had filled the empty spaces of her memory and they were left unquestioned while she was left open-minded.
She tried to think of reasonable explanations for there to be no elves on the streets. But only one of them could be fitted to this description.
Maybe there was a town meeting.
Quickening her pace, Ava rounded the corners and flew across bridges. She had to find her guardian. Now.
Her guardian, Noretta, used the old school as her study/laboratory. She was a herbalist who loved coming up with ingenious recipes for every sickness known. Right now she was working on a foreign illness from Serbania--an island to the south of their island, Catela--called Hopkin’s Disease.
Reaching the tree to Outside, she unlocked the door with a key Noretta had given her and tackled the staircase. What was neat about this specific tree was that every floor had a different theme, from the sea king’s magnificent Hall of Remembrance to Inferno the Dragon’s lair. Ava passed the rooms, catching brief glimpses of each theme. She arrived at the door that led out into Unknown Forest. The dent in the wall--made specifically for a certain type of stone--drew her attention as she pulled the purple gem from her coat pocket. She inserted it into the cavity until she heard a very faint click. Then many clicks and sounds like deadbolts sliding across played their symphony on the other side of the door.
After a few minutes and one last pop, the door slid aside, revealing overgrown bushes. She crept through until she reached open space. She peeked from the bushes, seeing if there were any intruders. Then, seeing none, she stood up and brushed off her clothes. Tall trees loomed above her, shading the ground with their mighty branches. Only few shafts of sunlight poked through. She heard the rustle of leaves as critters crawled to-and-fro in their habitat. Leaves cluttered the ground and she could only try not to trip over the humongous dead limbs.
The school came into view, after much walking (and tripping); one detail struck her the most. Not the fading planks of the walls, nor the spider webs peeping out from every aperture and corner. The doors were wide open.
