My fingers open and close as I slowly stretch every inch of my body before opening my eyes. 'Fingers, toes, arms, legs...' The controlled pulling and stretching of my ripped skin gives me some more flexibility while also strengthening me against the pain. My back is the hardest to endure, however, with so little skin left I feel like all I am is blood and sinew and magic.

Stretches complete I swing my legs off the bed and stand. Surveying the bed behind me I smile, my magic seems to be growing. It's what had let me weave strands of air into a suitable cushion for my body. Sighing, I let the magic go and the cushion promptly disappears. A heavy load immediately falls onto my shoulder, the cost for keeping up such advanced magic through the night.

I walk into the small alcove to find a marble bowl filled with ice cold water and a hammered sheet of bronze, meant to act as a rudimentary mirror. Ignoring the bronze, I wave my hand over the water and survey my reflection in the now frozen liquid.

The elf in the reflection looks wild. Her hair is matted with dirt and leaves, the visible parts of her arms and torso covered in dried blood, and her clothes ripped to tatters. Worst of all is the look in her eyes. They're eyes filled with the desire to kill, to maim, to burn.

Frightened, I avert my eyes from the feral being in the reflection. With a deep, exhausted sigh, I set to cleaning myself up.

⍋ ⊹ ❂ ⊹ ⍋

I stride into the king's hall a new elf. Relishing the feeling of cool water on my burning skin, I had enjoyed every second of my bath. Now, hair shiny and smooth, wounds dressed, and clad in the clothes I'd found at my door, I'm ready to face the king.

His stare has hardened this morning and his movements stiff. I realize with a shock that he's nervous. But nervous about what? "Could it because of me?" As I stand before the king pondering his odd behavior, he begins to speak:

"Ravien, you must understand that you have placed me in a kind of predicament. My people have not seen an elf for nearly half a millennium and yet, here you are. My advisors have all told me that I should kill you where you stand. But I am not my advisors and I have decided that you, the first elf we've seen since Fia'lon, must be in possession of the most information we've heard about the elves in just as long."

After his spiel, the king sits, rigid-backed, on his throne of stone. Spurred on by his own interest and blatant honesty, I begin. I tell him of the naive and carefree childhood I had, unaware that the elves were anything but the most perfect race of Elsinore. Unaware that once I passed my 300th year I would learn what the elven race truly was: a race of liars, a race of maiming, and a race of murderers. I told him about the ceremony that left me crippled. I told him about how my magic used to flow freer than the most powerful rivers. How I could do things some adult elves could only dream of. Then I told him how it felt to be so weak that even conjuring a bed was enough to make me feel as if I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders.

As the words fall from my lips, a silence falls. The king looks shocked, his eyes cast far away and his hands gripping the arms of his throne so tightly I can see the strain in his arms. As if sensing my stare he turns his head back in my direction, eyes locked onto mine.

"Ravien... how would you like to be my spy?"

"What?!" I exclaim, staggering back a few steps at his unexpected question.

"The elves have always been elusive but now that I have you, Elsinore can finally peer into that impenetrable forest. You would have to return to the elves as if nothing was amok. Can you do this for me?"

"G-go back... to the elves? Back... to those monsters?" I can't believe it. "I'm never going back!" I think furiously. "They've abused me, lied to me, harmed me and now he wants me to go back?!"

I can feel my anger rising, my blood boiling, ready to spew. Then another thought comes to me. A devious, murderous thought. "If I was spying on the elves, I'd know exactly who caused Fia'lon. I could kill them... I could end the entire elven regime right then and there. The time spent with those demons would be nothing compared to the freedom of the mindless. The ones I was once a part of."

"I'll do it."

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Thank you for reading!

Whew! That was a tough patch of writer's block but now I'm back and ready to go.

I hope you enjoyed this newest event in the life of Ravien.

Tell me what you think. :)

Till next time.