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Eshwlyn spurred.

“Wait.”

The command seized her like the clamp of an iron fist, rendering her unmoving, glaring; bare fingertips grazing the handle of the carriage door, and an ephemeral wave of unbridled hatred jetted out from her cold stare.

Wilvur merely blew a breath, amused. He sprung his arm forward, and a ripple of deep dark red suddenly fell over her eyes.

“Forgetting something, aren’t you?” She heard him say with an infuriating air. Eshwlyn pulled away the coat with enough force to echo a distinct sharp rip, and she saw him already rising from his seat, wearing that malicious smile once more. “Why break tradition, hm? Let me get the door again.”

An almost deafening blast of rainfall bombarded her senses as a raging gale flung the carriage door wide open. Undaunted, Wilvur disembarked with a muddy splash, immediately his lavish clothing turned a damp gray and dripping, and his usual white, flowing mane of hair becoming sodden and flat, yet still, as much as the dimming skies poured, it could not drown his cold, almost icy presence he exuded with every step, every breath.

.....

Desperate and frantic, Eshwlyn threw the cloak over her shoulders, flip the hood over her stiffening ears-veiling the raw terror stirring within her green eyes-and bolted after Wilvur’s calm, almost leisurely pace.

Questions each more urgent than the last lined the very tip of her tongue, but before she could even draw breath, the answer stared at her, across a rapidly shortening stretch of dirt and stone-manifesting in the form of another human creation.

Isolated far from anything and everything, rooted deep in a remote expanse of shriveled trees and dead earth, loomed a great number of large tents sprawled across the rotting foundation, the fissuring imprints of heavy carriage wheels permanently etched into the dirt, and then there were the cages, cramped, empty, and bloody left outside to simply rust away in the cleansing rain... forming an oozing pool of blood and mud from where they sat.

“Outside my impertinent yet highly important obligations as Duke, people far and wide recognize me with another, more laudable title: The Collector,” Wilvur said, with all the cadence of describing to her another trivial landmark in the township prior. “Now, would you care to guess what I am a collector of exactly? Or perhaps, by the look on her face, you already know?”

Eshwlyn was speechless, sensationless. Everywhere she looked, scoured, wanting to veer her eyes away from the horrors, there was only red, everywhere red, familiar cloaked, hooded figures filling the vicinity to the absolute brim.

“My sister...” She whispered, then finding her strength again, spoke fiercer. “Lenora! Where had you taken her?! What did you do to her?! How do you know about her?!”

“All will be answered in due time,” Wilvur answered calmly. “But first, rather than soaking ourselves more in the midst of another petty squabble-wouldn’t you like to see her instead?”

Growling, seething, and left with a burning rage she could not act upon, Eshwlyn could only comply, letting him lead her into one of the bigger encampments, greeted and paid high reverence by two fellow cloaked figures standing guard on either end of the tent’s partition.

Once inside, Eshwlyn stifled a gasp, the paralyzing horror she felt rising to seemingly impossible heights. It felt as if she was a formless specter peering out at herself, into a grisly scene all too familiar.

The haggard, emaciated bodies of her kind, of her kin. Elves, staining bloody the cold, hard surfaces of even more cramped metal cages, their breaths feeble, limbs mangled, baring wounds still afresh, overpowered, hopelessly so, with most of them laying unconscious... or perhaps, already in a state even worse so.

Rows and rows, brimming the entire interior, like a vast meadow of death in a desolate field. And she tried to count them, tried to swallow the entirety of the grimly visage, but found that, to her infinitely stretching horror, she couldn’t.

There was just simply too much.

The rancid smell of waste and rot followed them as they strolled through a narrow corridor of rattling cages, with weak moans, and droning wails going mostly unheard by the constant storming.

Eshwlyn’s eyes darted fast and frantic-somewhere, anywhere, a bubbling sensation within her as she pictured the notion, Lenora lay among the dying and damned that surrounded them in every possible direction.

“The House of Hendrick, and its descendants, bear a vital duty, you see,” Wilvur suddenly started, his casual tone an unsettling disparity amidst the many that struggled to even take breath. “My ancestor, Dilactus, as you may very well know, was the individual that first successfully produced a batch of Elf-Knights to adhere to his every command... thus ensuring victory the resounding defeat of the Elven Lord, Malvish... through the ingenious means of turning his own race against him.”

She didn’t care to hear him, she didn’t care to know any more of what he had to say. But knowing better than to start a delaying retort, she held her bitter tongue, and simply bore the increasingly grating sound of his voice.

“And through the ages, we, his descendants, have carried on this tried and true practice. Producing skilled Elf-Knights to guard our cities, our public figures, our kings, queens, and even our very nations. To fight our wars, our battles... living only to dutifully serve, and then dying... just as dutifully... just as we demand it.”

“You’re disgusting,” She hissed before she could help herself.

But he only gave her a brief glance, taking her remark in literal stride.

“Perhaps in your eyes, in your position, indeed,” He said. “I have collected and sold many, many of your kind, and I will continue to collect and sell many, many more to come. But it is you, Eshwlyn, given the rarest privilege- it is you that I shall keep only to myself.”

“Enough of your trite prattling!” She demand, patience already lost long ago. “Where is Lenora?! Where is my sister?!”

“Ah, yes, her-you’ve asked me before how is it I knew about her, did you not?” Wilvur asked, deliberately turning a blind eye to her demands, to her wants in favor of his own. “Well, to keep a dull story brief-after spending countless days hearing only of your continued insubordination, I turned to Tilina for aid. As she was the first to sense you, the first to spot you, and the first to meet you, perhaps she could suggest a solution to the conundrum you have made.”

Fleetingly, Eshwlyn’s mind flung back into the past, into bitter memories not worth remembering. And there, on that one particular day, she remembered seeing those unfeeling golden eyes, how they flickered, quivered, a crack of emotion slipping within its shimmer. What she told her, what she pleaded with her...

<> sounded a distant echo in her head. <>

Was this what she meant?

“At first, Tilina stated she knew of no method, suggesting only perhaps that I give up hope on you,” Wilvur continued to drawl. “I was impressed. Frankly, stunned. See, I personally have taught her many of the things she now knows. But not once, not one instance do I ever recall teaching her how to lie. Perhaps that’s why the deceit in her words rang so obvious. And then came the wonder-why would she cover for you? A stranger, albeit of shared blood, but a stranger nonetheless. I mean, what could there possibly be to hide from me?”

Children, it seems... your younglings... I was not aware your kind considered the health of your young ones of great significance. Truly, it is almost admirable... almost... human of you.”

Then, like a cold frost blowing, Wilvur formed his signature smile.

“Anyway, after much careful ‘persuasion’ over days, I managed to convince Tilina of the contrary. She confessed. She told me about your sister... how a little one dashed off into the cold winter night as you brutally and quite impressively took the lives of five of my men.”

“So you went to search for her?! Capture her?! Is that why you’ve been away all this time?!” Eshwlyn shouted, the pounding of her heart beating with only hate and revulsion.

“If it was necessary, I would have,” He replied. “But it wasn’t.”

“Meaning?!”

“Think about it, Eshwlyn. Really think here,” Wilvur said. “You were willing to give up your life, your freedom, for the meager chance that your darling little sister may live, correct?”

“Yes!” She snapped at him. “And?!”

“And so, I thought, and guessed right, that surely if you were willing to do all that... then obviously, inversely, the opposite should ring true as well, shouldn’t it?”

Eshwlyn almost stumbled, almost fell... feeling a weight in her legs that previously was not there. Realizing the truth at once, and almost immediately, denying it altogether.

“No... no...” She shook her head, denying his words, denying the twisted reality. “It can’t... she couldn’t have... she didn’t...!”

“Oh, but she did!” Wilvur cheerily affirmed, his smile breaking wide and large. “I continue to marvel at the prospect myself, I mean-traversing mountains, rivers, boundless plains in order to find you, the dangers she would have to brave, the months of fruitless search, and yet she-seriously, the bond of sisterly love between you too... it is truly admirable, inspiring... and almost too human, maybe...”

Then, he trailed away, both in his words and his march. Before them, at a fair distance, sat a cage set apart from others, and inside, faintly stirring, faintly breathing, pale as the silky strands that laid sprawled over the metal surface, was a tiny, crumpled figure.... with a hazy glow of green staring out at the both of them from between the bars.

Eshwlyn took a step back... denying once again.

“But that’s a given, isn’t it so?” Wilvur suddenly then asked, throwing his scarlet eyes over forward. “Acting like us humans... that’s exactly that you inspire to do... isn’t that right, Lenora?