Soul Between Lives

Falar steadied himself by grabbing his attendant's shoulder as he learned of the beast army and Leilatha's evacuation orders. "This can not be." He mumbled, his eyes losing their focus as he stared at the messenger. "What about our glory?" He continued in a barely audible whisper.

Urifir stood tall with a stony face as he listened to the sounds of men hollering in the heat of battle and the sound of rampaging fiends bellowing their fury further down the street. [If only this news had reached us before the battle. We're already too committed. It's going to be nearly impossible to get everyone out now.]

Urifir turned his attention to the messenger, "Do the other Elders know of this yet?"

The messenger bowed his head, "Elder Qinam has sent word to each of them and will use a communication crystal to send word to the other settlements."

Urifir nodded, his composure as solid as ever, "Good. Do you know if civilians are still escaping the city? Are the gates clear?"

The messenger shook his head, "I have no news on that my Lord."

"Return to your post and have the other messengers relay my orders. News on the other gates is priority. Second, relay orders to begin pulling back to the southern gate."

Their forces were too spread out to efficiently connect with his power, he could probably still accomplish it, but it would cost him a great deal of time and power to do so.

Urifir closed his eyes and inwardly admonished himself for not setting up a system of signals using sound ahead of time. He figured the storm would drown out feeble flutes and whistles and so didn't bother taking the time. Instead, they had set up a system of messenger relays, which the wind runner sent to warn Urifir and Falar, used to get his news to the Elders.

Falar couldn't keep quiet as Urifir thought out his next steps, "Will this be the end of our Kingdom?" Some of the surrounding elves looked at the ground, others shuffled their feet restlessly without answering. "All our hard work. Our homes. Is this really...?" He left the rest unsaid as he covered his eyes with his hand.

It wasn't much longer before Urifir learned of the fires sweeping across the city even as the rain fell. He realized what the enemy intended and sent out orders to hasten their retreat to the city gates. He and Falar began actively participating in the fights as the army became more disorganized the faster they fell back. Eventually, the fiends stopped attacking and turned their efforts to spreading the fire faster. As the situation became more dire, the elven army routed for real as they attempted to evacuate to the nearest gate.

As Urifir and Falar turned onto the main road south, One of Falar's officers ran to reach them while shouting, "My Lords, a force of powerful fiends holds the gate! We aren't strong enough to break through!"

The Elders rushed to see the situation for themselves, pushing through their men. When they arrived they saw fiends shooting fire at any soldier that got too close. Burned corpses filled the space between the nearest buildings and the gate making it hard to push forward.

Viram sat on a pile of rubble beneath the ruined portcullis of the gate and evaluated the elves arrayed before him. His smile showed more of his sharp teeth than usual. He had sent his elite forces to block off other escape routes by starting fires at the other gates ahead of time. He judged that his plan succeeded by the growing number of bedraggled elves trying to leave in his direction.

The fourth flames commander stood further down the rubble hollering at regular intervals, "Who among you can negotiate!?" Casting a blast of fire at the elves every time they answered with silence.

"Who among you can negotiate!?" Silence again answered back. The fiend raised his fire cloaked arm ready to cast his flames once more when Urifir's commanding voice rang out.

"I can speak for our people!" the fiend nearly lost its balance in surprise as Urifir continued, "What do you offer and why have you attacked us!?"

The fourth flames commander lowered its arm and turned to Viram bowing his head in deference. Viram sat up, resting his arm on a jutting piece of stone as if he sat on a throne. "Submit to me," Viram cast his gaze over all the elves in the crowd, "and you may live on as my slaves!" He grabbed a stone and crushed it in his hand, "Fight on and I will crush you! I will tear off your limbs and scorch your stumps!" Viram emphasized his words by incinerating a broken wooden beam near him, "In the end, you will still be slaves."

Urifir and the elves were silent as they absorbed his words. Viram took advantage of their silence to drive a final nail into their coffins. "Those that die will only be food!"

Urifir took a moment to listen to his men murmur before he responded, "I will speak with my peers and return with our answer! By your leave!"

Viram indifferently signaled permission with his hand, watching Urifir return deeper into the crowd and turn down an alley.

Urifir waited until reports made it certain that the other gates and paths out of the city were beyond their reach. He gathered the top commanders and held a council with Falar.

Urifir made eye contact with each of them, "You've heard the options he gave us. What are your thoughts?"

Falar was the first to speak, his deflated voice mirroring the expressions of many around him, "We're trapped with no other way out and that fiend is too strong." Falar released a resigned sigh, "We underestimated them too much."

One of the commanders spoke up in defiance, "This is our home! We should fight to the death to keep it no matter how strong our enemy is!"

A few of the other commanders voiced their agreement and Urifir nodded at their sentiments before speaking, "I had wanted to do as much damage to the invaders as we could before escaping in this situation." He looked down at the light shining off his sword's pommel as his thumb polished the blue inlaid gem, "If we could have forced them to retreat, it would have been great, but our goal hasn't changed."

Falar stopped slouching as Urifir made meaningful eye contact with everyone present while he spoke, "As long as we tie them up here, they can't chase after the civilians and if we can hurt them more." The leather of his glove squeaked as he tightened his grip, "If we can do as much damage as we can before we fall, we'd be giving our countrymen and our families that much more of a chance to get out and live on."

Most of the commanders were nodding with resolute expressions. Falar goggled at Urifir in obvious dismay, "We've become the sacrifice to hold the enemy?"

Urifir fixed Falar with his fatigued yet resolute gaze, "You wanted to win glory did you not? Every man woman and child that lives on in freedom thanks to us will learn of our glory from the soldiers that escaped. They will come to know how we stood in the enemy's way and faced down the overpowering invaders and they will sing songs about our bravery."

Urifir saw Falar wavering and continued before his peer could blurt out doubting words, "We will be remembered in history for as long as our people survive." Urifir held up his sword by the scabbard and kissed its hilt, "We will stall and buy time while we prepare. We will fight to the bitter end and take as many of those fiends with us as we can!"

"Here! Here!" Nearly all of the commanders cheered. They would fight and die that night but a strange excitement fueled by camaraderie permeated through all those around. The determination in their eyes rekindled some of Falar's vigor and he found that in his heart, he would be content with such an ending.

...

Xinghai bent down to retrieve his walking stick from the scattering of the others and began marching in the direction it pointed. His close companions surrounded him as he led the way through the dense forest.

He glanced at his friend walking beside him, "It's been quiet."

His friend nodded and gave a hushed, "Yeah"

"Figured we'd run into trouble by now." Xinghai glanced about at all the dark shadows among the gnarled trees.

"Me too."

Monsters filled the forest but were too shy of such large numbers of intruders and any especially dangerous monsters were too few to cause serious damage to the refugees. Instead, they eagerly ambushed the scouting parties other groups sent out. As long as enough people held the watch together, the camps were reasonably safe. The monsters had given up testing their defenses after a few days. Now they lurked just beyond the light, waiting for their chance to snatch up solitary passerby.

Xinghai used random lot drawings to pick their travel and camping times. He also used various methods to exploit his luck to choose safer paths. The most common method was to have at least ten other people drop their walking sticks at the same time he did. He would then pick the direction his stick pointed. His luck would always be better than those around him.

He tried to be secretive about it, but the representatives and messengers the other refugee groups sent to aid or accompany him eventually discovered his odd behavior and reported back. He was evasive and refused to answer questions that arose, and only went as far as saying that it was a custom of his since before his godhood. He knew the other gods would ridicule him for still praying to his old gods, but he hoped the lie was enough to distract them from the truth.

It was near midnight when a commotion could be heard coming from further back among his people.