Kiss of the Dark Elf's Blade

Chapter 1

Brielle

     Should have brought a torch, I think to myself as I walk down the main street of Lowtown. It’s dark this time of day. In the distance, smoke rises from the mills and factories that keep Pyrthos running.

     I can’t quite make out the smoke through the dim light of pre-dawn, but I know it’s there. There hasn’t been one day that I’ve lived in Lowtown that smoke hasn’t risen from those buildings.

     It might be a dark, frigid, early morning, but every human in Lowtown is already up and awake.

     Many of them are preparing to start their shifts at the mills and factories, but many of them are also coming home from the night shift. Someone must keep the fires burning to produce smoke at all hours of the day and night.

     “Brielle!” a voice calls behind me, and I turn to see one of my neighbors calling my name and waving excitedly.

     “Sarah,” I reply with a wan smile as she comes running up to me.

     “We’ve got new humans moving into those abandoned houses at the end of the street,” Sarah tells me. Her animated face is red from the cold, and clouds form whenever she speaks.

     “Well, I’m sure you can deal with the welcome party,” I tell her tiredly.

     Yesterday was a hard day. I spent my time doing backbreaking work at the factory I work in. The owner of the factory isn’t one of those dark elves who treats their human ‘employees’ nicely.

     Employees? That’s a nice word for a glorified slave. I snort to myself as I turn away from Sarah and continue to walk down the street.

     Another one of my neighbors, Colson, who I work with and actually like talking to, waves me down, and I pause to talk to him.

     He doesn't bother to greet me and speaks impatiently. “Those humans that Sarah was telling you about! They’re nothing more than children. They must be fifteen or sixteen years old. The owner of the silk mill bought them and let them make their way here on their own.”

     My blood goes cold in my body, and my throat goes dry. I haven’t bothered to really consider who those humans were that Sarah was talking about – we’re all slaves here.

     How could they do this to literal children? My rage is quiet and unseeming. Colson nods as a flurry of emotions crosses my face.

     I close my eyes and inhale deeply. But my hands are already balled into fists, and blood is welling up from the cuts on my palms.

     “I hate them,” I whisper furiously.

Colson nods again sagely and sighs.

     “We all do. I don’t know how much longer any of us can go on. Katherine, from the next street, lost her baby after a beating from the dark elves. Jennifer was raped so many times by her owner that she’s lost all feeling in her lower body.”

     I leave Colson then, sick to my stomach and unable to hear more bad news. I am so, so exhausted, and I know that feeling more rage will only tire me out further.

     But as I walk down the street towards the back of the Lowtown settlement, I hear the same sentiments over and over again.

     More and more of the humans in Lowtown are tired of their treatment by dark elves. More horror stories crop up every day as the dark elves become more merciless.

     They own us in every way, shape, and form now. We are no longer autonomous beings.

     We have lost all of our agency, and it seems that there is nothing we can do about it except wait for the next whipping.

     You’re lucky that you haven’t been hurt too much yet, I think to myself and uncurl my hands when they finally start to ache more than I can bear. But I know that I have only been lucky so far. I also know that the time will come when it is my turn to be hurt.

     I suppose the only thing that has saved me so far is that I make far too easy of a target. I am too thin, too bony, too unattractive to torture.

     I have noticed a trend among the dark elves who own us and who own the factories and mills. They pick on the beautiful women first and then work their way through the rest of the population.

     I hear the flutter of wings then, and I become unsteady when my messenger bird, Skye, takes a heavy seat on my shoulder. I reach up to pet her, and she crows softly as she sways from side to side as I walk.

     I turn down the street, which is nothing more than a dirt road, onto another dirt road that widens and curves downwards. It leads to the forests behind Lowtown. The sun is rising, and the sky is a milky pink that could almost be pretty.

     But nothing is pretty any longer.

         I used to find things beautiful when I was younger. But that ability to see the beauty in things vanished after my first six months in the factories.

     The sun might be rising, but it is still dark in the forests of Pyrthos. I struggle through the undergrowth and get snagged on several bushes and low-hanging tree branches as I make my way to the center of the forest.

     Skye takes flight, only because she doesn’t want to get snagged on anything herself, but when I get to a small clearing, she settles on the ground next to me.

     I forage for whatever vegetables and fruit I can find. We mostly grow our own things, but we have just come through a long winter, and the gardens are still bare.

     Skye crows and coos then, and hops up and down on the spot before she starts to root around on the ground. I see what she has spotted quickly. A glimpse of silver shimmers at me from the ground.

     I stoop to pick it up and groan slightly as cold pain sparks up my spine from moving heavy boxes yesterday.

     The necklace is beautiful, though it is plain. It is silver and thin and looks as though it would fit nicely around my neck.

     I have never had jewelry in my life. I can remember very little of my parents, who died when I was five, but I do remember my mother having a beautiful gold ring. I loved that ring. I idolized its beauty, and I idolized my mother’s beauty.

     But my parents had to sell it for food just before they both died.

     I cough softly as the cold morning air seeps into my lungs and swallow the phlegm that builds in my throat almost every morning.

     The faint, pink sunlight has not reached this deep place in the forest. It is dark, gloomy, and I know here the trees become sapient beings.

     No other human in Lowtown would believe me if I said that I have heard the trees talking. They’d call me crazy. But we have all seen the dark elves performing magic, and no one questions that.

     I don’t pretend to myself that I have any magic abilities, but I am quite sure that the trees do. I listen to them whisper and gossip, though that could just be the wind, as I examine the necklace.

     I do not know why I am so enamored by it when it is so plain.

     “How did this even get here?” I ask Skye, who is hopping around and picking at the ground.

     Skye takes care of herself fairly well – I have never had to provide food for her – and I know she must have spotted a small yillese.

     Someone must have walked through the forest, and it must have fallen off. Maybe a dark elf? No human would have kept this when they could have sold it.

     A sudden sense of forbidden pleasure overtakes me as I realize that I am probably holding an item belonging to a dark elf.

     “I shouldn’t do this,” I mutter to myself, and Skye crows in agreement as she struggles to pull the yillese from its nest.

     But then I put the necklace on.

     Who could have left this here? Is my first thought when the necklace lightly touches the skin on my neck.

     Suddenly, the weak morning sunlight manages to penetrate the thick, tightly intertwined tree branches above my head. The sunlight reaches downwards as if reaching for the necklace, like pale yellow fingers fighting through the branches.

     I step away from the sunlight, and shudder with sudden anxiety as I really start to think about how this necklace got here.

     “Does this really belong to a dark elf? Won’t I make a target of myself if I continue wearing it?”

     My voice sounds almost frantic as I consider taking the necklace off.

     I shiver again and again as the sunlight still reaches for the necklace, the light as alive as the trees that whisper more and more loudly.

     Wearing the necklace gives me a sense of pleasure. But it also feels very, very wrong.

     “I foraged here yesterday morning and last night,” I speak to myself so that I can think this through. “So it must have been dropped here this morning.”

     I stiffen as I listen to the forest, sorting through the sounds of the whispering trees and the needy, creaking sunlight to find signs that anyone is in the forest with me.

     But there is no sign of anyone.

   I am alone.

I think.