This story has been written in accordance with PG-13 guidelines. However, please be aware that it still contains strong adult themes, ideas and perils.


Part One :


        For it is written that a great time of bloody madness shalt
   descend upon the land,  and there shall be a period of
   great slaughter and blood-letting the like of which has ne’er
   been known before.
   During the Time of this Madness there will be killing without
   end,  without rhyme or reason,  each killing begetting yet
   more killing until the original reasons and motives behind
   the first killing are long forgotten,  or understood.
   And also during the Time of Madness it shalt come to pass
   that the innocent will be chastised,  and have punishments
   without number heaped upon them so that they will cry out
   with loud voices,  and grind their bones and nash their teeth;
   whilst the guilty shalt be rewarded and set free.

 

          Tales of Cul-Tinka atrocities never filtered down South,  across the Brogan Passage and The Sea of Fallen Stars to the land of Grmm’wab.  They didn’t have to,  for the two human-dominated Kingdoms that inhabited that region,  the Throne of Grmm and the House of Wab,  were too busy fighting one another with disturbing ferocity and savagery.   The reasons for this conflict were long-lost in the mists of time,  for the current protagonists certainly had no clear reason or rhyme as to its’ origins,  but it may have had something to do with a strip of disputed lands and territories that lay between both kingdoms.  Others such as cynics and commentators on the endless dispute muttered and sniggered into their cups that it was over the appellation of the Domain,  and nothing more.
         Whatever the real reason,  the conflict had been waged for many decades with savage fury,  and many a ne’er-do-well,  ‘adventurer’ and would-be mercenary out for quick coin were drawn to the lands,  spurred on by tales of good wages and plunder that could be earned fighting for either side,  for both kingdoms were blessed with natural riches and mines bursting with gold and silver.  In fact,  as the cynical commentators noted,  these days both rival armies had been so swelled with the influx of foreign mercenaries and ‘volunteers’ that this new fresh blood,  eager to gather in the spoils of war,  vastly outnumbered the original inhabitants,  who had now more or less gone back to their more mundane and everyday lives of eking out a precious living tilling the land for food,  or else burrowing ever deeper into the mines and roots of mountains in search of precious metal,  which could be turned into hard coin to pay their ever bulging,  ever restless,  mercenary armies.   Some observers even went so far to note that fighting one another and prolonging the endless conflict was now just about the only useful thing the otherwise easily-bored and potentially troublesome warriors could do,  all spoiling for a fight and eager to reap rewards and plunder for the survivors.
        The origins of the conflict,  and the vast numbers of greed and lust-driven mercenaries swelling the ranks meant nothing to the High Elven community who lived down by Whitewater Lake, bordering it and maintaining a peaceful co-existence with nature and the vast timber and fir forest of Goeth’with,  which banded the huge oval spread of water mainly to the north and west.  For centuries they had maintained their own traditions and way of life, marveling at the beauty of the natural world,  paying great homage to the beauty and tranquility of their lives,  singing beautiful haunting songs under the starlit skies and in the woodland groves and glens,  and above all staying aloof from the affairs and politics of Humans.  For the Elders of the Community ruled with great wisdom and sagacity that to be drawn into the conflict would mean nothing but woe and disaster to their own Lands,  which anyway were to the south of the main area of strife,  and had little agricultural interest or strategic importance in the affairs of Men.  So the Elves stayed aloof from the struggle, watching with amazement and disgust at the bloody atrocities that were committed over the decades by either side,  and how the fortunes of each Kingdom waxed and waned as often and as regularly as the passing seasons.  Most Humans at any rate believed the Goeth’with Forest which bordered their southern lands with equal measure to be haunted with woodland spirits,  or else protected with dire Elvish spells,  for most had never seen an Elf and knew of them only by reputation,  and in stories handed down by mothers to young children.  A few Humans skilled in woodcraft and forestry,  such as Rangers and other ‘scavengers’ that lived and meandered about the Goeth foothills,  met with and knew the Elves and their customs;  and as they treated the Elves and their Forest and Lake with respect and reverence,  likewise receiving the same from their Elvish friends and called one another ‘a’Waeerynlle’,  meaning ‘True Friends’ in the Elvish Tongue of Halar.
         Only one Elf,  C’ryll the Crazy,  had dared to be different.  He had approached the ruling High Council of Elder’s on many an occasion,  imploring it to remain aloof from the conflict no longer.  For,  he had warned the Council,  “If you do not chose a side,  then it will chose you.”   But the learned High Council met,  and conferred,  and shook their heads,  and every time they rejected C’ryll’s counsel,  for they did not fully understand nor believe his words.  “You can not maintain your policy of Isolation any longer!”  C’ryll had cried out in a great voice before one annual Meet or Gathering.  “You’re all doomed,  do you hear me,  you ‘stupid wise fools’!  Do you hear me,  doomed!”  Some Elves did not understand his words,  and shook their heads;  but others were alarmed,  and took great fear and disquiet from them.
          Then the High Council of Elder’s met again in secret, and this time they did not debate C’ryll’s words and warnings,  but rather C’ryll himself and what they should do with him. And so it came to pass that a few Elder members approached their great Oracle J’cwwbbr,  who sat aloof and immobile at the ruins of the Fountain of the Sun,  an hours walk due south of Isembard Rock,  and beseeched him in all his infinite wisdom,  what should they do about C’ryll and his omens.  But the Oracle J’cwwbbr took great fury at them that they had not already dealt with C’ryll,  and warned the Elders that even now he might be plotting a secret alliance with either one Human Kingdom or the other,  and in so doing to plunge the Elvish Peoples into a conflict which they could not hope to understand, and which would in all probability consume them,  and from which they had survived so long purely because they had remained outside of it,  not favouring one side over the other.
          Thus the High Council had C’ryll arrested,  and brought before them.  He cried out in a terrible voice,  asking them why they had done this,  for he had committed no crime,  done nothing wrong other than to speak his mind.  And the High Council countered him in their great wisdom by telling him that sometimes,  for the good of the many,  it was necessary to punish the one,  even if he were innocent of any charge.
          So on the Eve of Midsummer’s’ Day,  at the time the Elves call ‘Ll’y’ll’  which roughly translates as a time of love and peace,  the High Council bound up C’ryll and took him to the dreaded Ruins of Aramini,  where they handed him over to the demons that abided there,  machinations of hate,  creatures of pure evil that were the secret of the images beheld in the mirrors.  And these creatures,  as in accordance with the custom,  took C’ryll and marched him along the woodland trail called ‘Myggyniyym’,  meaning the Trail of Grey Tears for a full night and a full day,  until they came to the clearing in the woodland known as ‘Klyddabor’, ‘The Glen of Skulls’;  and there they exterminated him.   

   C’ryll’s counsel had fallen on deaf ears,  and some muttered to themselves if it might have been better had his words never been uttered,  or heard,  but in the fullness of time events played themselves out to prove with horrific bluntness the veracity of his admonitions.