True Nature
From Spiritwood Wiki
25 January 2003
Once-long shadows slowly drained into their hosts as moonlight bathed the forgotten glade. There was an unusual serenity about this place... which was most likely why Ilshandar loved it so much. Deep in the forest, with only the symphony of trees played by the wind to keep her company, this was where she came to meditate...to search her soul...to feed.
Most Sylvans these days find the old ways to be rather crude, preferring to ingest their food in imitation of the other bipedal races in a bid to seem more civilized...more "normal" by the majority's standards, inviting acceptance. But no matter what race or culture, one thing none of them can seem to avoid...is rebellious youth. ;)
Ilshandar glided between the trees into the glade without making so much as a leaf rustle, and lit upon a large, flat stone, polished smooth by age. Carefully, she rested her scythe in a "V" created by her pirch and an adjacent rock...and leaning back, inhaled a deep breath of moonlight. Kicking off her boots in an unconscious motion, she sighed blissfully as she slowly sank her feet into the soft, rich earth and drank deeply. Those elder Sylvans sure as sunlight did not know what they were missing...but at the moment, Ilshandar did not care much about that or anything else. She was in heaven...and let her thoughts drift.
Change was something the Sylvan race was not accustomed to...and sudden change was even more alien than a peace-loving troll. But in recent months, it seemed there was nothing but sudden changes happening in every corner of the land...a dark shadow had fallen over the forest of late, and brought with it all manner of twisted magiks...including the Fomorian Plague...and it was beyond unsettling. Like most of her people, Ilshandar felt like a dry leaf in a hurricane...powerless to do anything but ride the wind as she was swept into chaos. What she had envisioned her life would be like had faded...as if the memory had lingered too long in the sun. Now all that remained was uncertainty...doubt...and fear.
But not in this place. This was the one place where none of it could touch her...where she could come for sanctuary...where she could focus her thoughts in silence...where she could be completely al...
A bark-chilling chuckle off to her left startled Ilshandar out of her reverie.
"What stray co...hkKKH?!" she called out as she tried to sit up and grab for her weapon, only to be slammed back down by the pain of what felt like a billion tiny flames surging through the lower half of her body. Ilshandar had a quick mind for a Sylvan, and in the span of an Elven heartbeat, she understood that the mistakes she had just made would cost her her life. Letting her guard down was the first. She'd been too exhausted, too distracted, and too complacent to notice what she was now painfully aware of. The glade felt wrong...the surrounding forest was too quiet...there was a hint of a acrid stench in the air...the groundwater in the soil tasted funny...and there was a presence...
She knew it was a Sylvanshade even before it melted out of the shadows, grinning wickedly. It was dragging something...a body...an Elven woman's body, bleeding profusely from a nasty cut in her chest. Ilshandar hissed in pain as she reached and took up her blade as the Sylvanshade casually dropped its burden in a heap and stode closer with an almost dancing gait.
"Having trouble standing, are we?" it mocked as it drew a blood-stained, corroded rapier, "You tree-reapers really should watch what you eat."
Ilshandar looked down to her feet still planted in the soil and grimaced, knowing for certain now that it was the ground itself that had been poisoned...and like a fool she'd taken it in...she'd been the instrument of her own demise. How delightfully ironic, since this was the place she came to try and figure out where in life she wanted to go.
Her gaze returned to her murderer. Strength of the Defender...the most powerful Sylvan lifedrain spell she knew escaped her lips, and caused the Sylvanshade to reel slightly...but its smile returned a moment later. She could feel the life energy rush into her...only to be swept away again by the poison...a merely delaying the inevitable. She cast it four more time anyway...out of spite. Her opponent looked barely winded...it probably knew she didn't have enough magic power to effect the outcome here.
The searing sensation had now crept up to her chest...infusing every inch from that point down...there was no stopping the flow once it started...such was the digestive system of her race. The Sylvanshade knew this...it had counted on it. But it would not simply stand by and watch her die. No...that was hardly fun at all. It had to finish her with its own two hands...give her a few moments of hope, and then take them away again. It grinned in pleasure at her screams as she pulled her feet from the ground...wondering delightedly just how unbearable its poison compound felt. An old family recipe, it was...made with the bile of an Elf's gall bladder, the venom of a corruptor, and the juice of the wild bitterberries that were so abundant this time of year. "Especially potent against Sylvan anatomy," it whispered loudly.
Every swing of her scythe brought new heights of pain...which weakened her attack and fouled her aim. Her blade arced wildly and chaoticly as the Sylvanshade laughed and danced out of the way...so wildly, in fact, that the tip embedded itself into a tree on her third swing. Howling in glee, the Sylvanshade pranced closer to Ilshandar to get a better look at her horror-stricken face.
She had injured a tree.
The Sylvanshade slipped closer.
She had brought harm to the very forest she lived to protect.
Closer.
Death would be a light sentence for what she'd done.
With an orgasmic sigh, the Sylvanshade slid its rapier into Ilshandar's abdomen.
Lady Animist Wyllowyn had often spoke in defense of the Sylvans who had been twisted by the evil power that now tainted HyBrasil...and Ilshandar greatly admired her for that. It took great courage not to give in to hate, and live instead in hope that such transformations were reversible. But looking this Sylvanshade in the eye...such optimism was not something that could exist in Ilshandar's world. It enjoyed the evil that had taken its soul...it revelled in it...and was now no more a Sylvan than the Siabra were Elves. There was no turning back, she knew...and so they had to be purged from the forest and beyond with all the rest of the foul beings that had given themselves to the shadow. If only she had the power...if only. But no. There was no more time. The poison had spread up to her neck now...and she was run through.
The Sylvanshade withdrew its blade, danced over to the Elven body, and began to poke at it lightly...leaving little bleeding holes with each thrust.
Ilshandar looked down to the hole in her abdomen...it was like she was someone else, looking on in fascination at this small hole that oozed a sickly-green sap which hissed a little as each drop hit the grass below. It was almost amusing...she had drunk so much from the ground that she was literally saturated with poison. The Sylvanshade must've gotten it all over its...
The body of the Elf twitched and softly groaned.
She was still alive. Ilshandar's wandering thoughts whirled into focus. Each movement she made was an eternity of agony...death was moments away...but there was enough time. There had to be. This evil could not be allowed to claim any more lives this night...or any night. Whispering a prayer for forgiveness, she pulled her scythe from the tree with a slight tearing sound that would've made her wince in empathy were her mind not so overwhelmed with the pain of moving.
"You..." Ilshandar hissed.
The Sylvanshade looked up in surprise.
"...may not have..."
It brought its rapier up in a defensive position.
"...a Sylvan soul..."
Shan gasped as she plunged the head of her scythe deep into the wound in her abdomen, drew it forth now dripping with the greehish ichor, and continued through clenched teeth.
"...BUT YOU..."
The Sylvanshade's eyes widened.
"...DO HAVE..."
She swung with every last bit of strength she could draw. The Sylvanshade regained enough of its wits to attempt to step out of the way...but at that moment the Elven lass grabbed its foot and held it in place.
"...A SYLVAN BODY!"
'SSKLERTCH'
The upper and lower halves of the Sylvanshade writhed on the ground as the poison went to work.
"Especially potent for Sylvan ananntomm..." Ilshandar's speech slurred as she fell onto her scythe, the blood and poison leaking from her body slowly began to pool around her.
As her life force began to fade like fog trapped under a hot sun, her thoughts began to drift once more.
A valewalker recruiter had pressed a scythe into her bewildered hands, and a trainer had taught her how to swing it...they both talked so fast and so passionately that it was easy to get swept along...there was something undeniably romantic about defending the forest against her enemies. And for a time, Ilshandar actually believed that she was following her true path...one that began at the edge of a blade. But as she reaped life from the minions of shadow, she slowly began to notice herself growing more and more unfulfilled...more restless...further off-balance.
The problem wasn't the fighting...she truly loved representing the force of nature in the battlefield. It was the way in which they'd taught her to fight...using a blade that could harm a tree...that simply was not...was not...
"Not both!" urged the Elven lass in a pained whisper, "The shadow will not claim us both!" she insisted, bringing Ilshandar's thoughts groggily back to the present. She just wanted to sleep...but the Elven voice continued annoyingly over a scraping sound, "It yet lives...I am too weak to fight...we can save one of us...your magic...my body...your spirit..."
Shan thought she was dreaming when the Elven lass drew forth a channelstone...for what fate or fantasy could bring such a rare and wonderous relic to the moment of her death. It seemed somehow appropriate, though. It had a nice feel of closure to her life...for she had always envied the Elven race and its long magical history. The Elf was chanting now...clearly struggling for breath as her own life ebbed onto the ground...it was a soothing chant...Shan was happy to have it be the last thing her ears heard. That...and a scraping sound.
She closed her eyes...and suddely felt as if she were falling...not "down" so much as "through"...and when she opened her eyes, she was staring at herself. Another scraping sound...closer, this time.
Pained lanced through her as she tried to move...but it was a much different sort of pain than before...it was localized in her chest...but she felt herself growing weaker still...in a different way...she didn't feel the poison anymore...nothing made sense. "Am I dead?" she croaked at no one in particular in a voice that was not her own.
"OH YESSSSS!" spat the dessicated upper half of the Sylvanshade. Frothy green ichor oozed out of its mouth as it pulled itself into Ilshandar's view, its torst scraping on the ground, and wrapped its hands around her throat.
She did not understand how her body, saturated with poison, had suddenly become free of it...but if she truly was free...then...
Strength of the Defender!
The Sylvanshade husk crumbled and fell away as healing energy rushed into Ilshandar's chest and her lungs filled with air. Lungs??!? She glanced down...and beheld not her own body, but that of the Elven lass. Panic gripped her as her mind reeled! This was simply not possible!! And then she spied the channelstone, laying broken in four pieces, each glowing ghostly white in the moonlight...and it all made sense. The Elf knew that the Sylvanshade would claim them both before it died if she did nothing...so she acted...taking the only course of action that could give one of them a chance to survive.
Ilshandar groaned in pain as she tried to stand. The lifedrain spell had healed her enough to stay death's hand...but she was still far from okay. Still...it was a more bearable discomfort than being consumed by poison...so it was only a few moments before she gained her feet. Taking a deep breath, she surveyed the moonlit scene...and weeped.
The morning sun spilled is first rays into the glade just as Ilshandar finished burning her former body. It was an unsettling experience to say the least...but she, like any of her kind, rode the winds of the hurricane because it was the only thing to do. The was no sense in agonizing over what might be...one had to simply deal with what was. She stepped back into the glade and was set upon by sorrow that the warm sun seemed infinitely less nourishing than it had always been. She offered a prayer for the Elf's soul, and said her goodbye. The rain would purify the soil here in time, and she knew she would never return.
It would be a long journey through the forest to the nearest healer...and there were many predators along the way who would surely have the courage to prey upon a wounded traveller. She would need a weapon.
Striding to where her body had fallen, she wrapped her hands with a torn bit of the dead Sylvanshade's cloak and retrieved the scythe from the pool of poisonous sap...pulling it away from the syrupy mess until all the sticky strings had fallen away. She wiped it off as best she could...but she could tell that the wood had soaked the poison in just as readily as her old body had done. She would have to take care to wear gloves whenever she wielded it. The scythe's blade glinted in the sunlight, and it suddenly, unexpectedly filled Ilshandar with anger. No...she would NEVER be put in the position to hurt a tree ever again!!
With a scream of defiance, she aimed the blade into the "V" between the rocks and wedged it in with as forceful a swing as she could muster...and then pulled to the side with all her weight. There was a mighty crack...and Ilshandar was left holding her new weapon...a quarterstaff saturated with deadly poison. Yes, she decided, this was the path she was meant to walk...and this staff would always remind her of what had happened here so she would never falter...every last servant of this evil had to be destroyed...and the skills of a Valewalker were not enough to do it. The Sylvanshade taught her that much. Strike from the shadows...that was the way...
Her stomach grumbled.
Ilshandar grimaced and set off into the forest.
This was going to take some getting used to.
