114 Chapter 114 Elven King (1/2)
After climbing an unholy number of stairs, which he unfortunately did count, 648, they finally arrived at the palace itself.
The room Joseph found himself in couldn't be called a throne room. There was no proper throne. Instead an ornate bird bath stood in the middle of the clearing before the elven king. He said something to an elf next to him, but Joseph couldn't catch it. His understanding of elven was just too poor. The queen was nowhere to be seen, but the edges of the room were filled with elves that were probably n.o.bles or important officials, a.s.suming they had those in this kingdom.
”I presume you are the one known as Joseph?” asked the king, turning towards him as they stopped before him.
”Yes, your…actually n.o.body has told me how I'm supposed to address you.” Joseph tilted his head to the side.
He looked at him quizzically. ”Are you really eight?”
”I am small for my age. And I may have accidentally made myself younger, during practice.” He glanced at Stella as she looked off into the distance innocently. ”Stella is almost nine. She is the right height for her age.”
”Yes, she would be that tall for one of her kind, at almost nine.”
”No, I meant that is the right height for a human at…never mind.”
”Tell me, Joseph, are the stories I have heard about you true? The tales seem exaggerated.”
”It would be difficult to exaggerate my tales too much.” Joseph smiled wryly, spying Stella with the same expression. ”Elves often understate the achievements of humans.”
”What did you do then?”
”I'm sure your battalion of guests, have already reported that to you.”
”They have, but I wish to hear it from you.”
Joseph saw several elves frowning around him, but ignored them.
”I led a spell, with over a thousand people, and created a portal to bring 50,000 people from the north of the continent to the edge of the wastelands. We killed an avatar of an evil lesser G.o.d of ice and death. In the future it's only supposed to get more absurd.”
”Like what?” the king asked, looking rather amused.
”According to the prophets among the barbarians, I am supposed to befriend at least one dragon and bring water to the central kingdom.”
The king nodded. ”Follow me.”
Without another word, he turned and left. Joseph glanced at Stella, who shrugged, and they followed him. The elves that they left in the court, were talking loudly amongst themselves in elven.
The king led them down several hallways, with a small number of well-dressed elves bowing to the king. He paused outside a small door, and turned back to them.
”Is it true, that the forest is blocked from the mana of the rest of the world?”
”Just outside of the forest, all of the mana from the world swirls and moves. Even if the wasteland is completely dead and didn't produce any mana of its own, mana still flows through it. I cannot see what is blocking the mana, but it comes up to the forest and refuses to go any farther. The mana in the forest barely trickles into the runes activating the barrier and the rest comes here.”
”And you wish access to the library.”
”The rune META is kept in your library. It is the rune that governs the nature of magic itself. I can duplicate some of its effects with skills I have, but it is the rune I need to remove curses or even strip another mage of their powers. It can also affect how spells behave, allowing spells to be thrown, when they shouldn't be, and counter-spelled, or maintained, when they shouldn't be.”
”How do you know it is in our library?”
”It is in your library and the ruins lost to the wasteland. I cannot tell you what it cost me, or to whom I had to pay a price, to learn what I needed.”
”What do you intend to do with the knowledge you gain here?”
”I intend to cleanse the wasteland. I need to discover whatever has already been done by your people to investigate it. Also, I think you are idiots to hole up here, instead of sneaking around to learn to use mana properly. Even if you restore your forest, all the mages you have, will need centuries to retrain themselves to use mana. How can you stand the losses when it is so hard to have children to begin with?”
”You criticize us very strongly for one so young.”
”I am young, but I have seen terrible things. Instead of building your power here, you hide and hope that the ones responsible for creating the wasteland, and attempting to kill the world tree, will go away. All they will do is kill everyone else first. Unless they can wipe out all life at once, and then you won't even outlive the humans.
”I've seen thousands of people who ducked their head and prayed every night that the terror would befall their neighbor instead of their own house. Bullies, rapists, s.a.d.i.s.ts, psychopaths; ignoring them doesn't fix them. If I hadn't stopped the monster in the north, you certainly wouldn't have. By the time it reached here, it would be too late, and too few of you even study mana to know how to have stopped it. Life would have ended on the continent trapped in an eternal ice age, while you quietly hid down here awaiting death. Your whole city feels barely lived in, as if your people exist as a candle that could be snuffed out at any moment, and they know it.”
The king looked at him. He didn't refute him, as if he silently agreed but couldn't say it. ”If you can restore the mana in the forest, and remove the barrier that blocks mana from entering, I will give you access to the royal archives. Still, I'm surprised a human child can stand up to me like you have. The aura I possess, when in the palace, makes even elves almost cower before me.”