When Elves Die : Episode One by Richard Poche

CHAPTER 1
     
    His black horse seized up the moment they came upon
the orange flames which flickered against the snowfall. Three tents
stood beyond the chromatic hues of the fire, the largest one in the
center covered a stage.
    He snapped on the reins and trotted across the
desolate landscape. His horse moved with his body, the longer they
rode together the more the animal became an extension of his mind.
The horse knew instinctively when his rider wanted to turn right or
left. When to speed up or slow down.
    Tholan stood shorter than most other barbarians. He
grew his hair long while most other fighters in the region shaved
their heads bald. Tholan made up for his lack of size with
tenacity. He always overwhelmed his foes with unmatched speed and
expert swordsmanship.
    The fire started to die down and he dismounted. One
of the tent poles fell over and the tattered tarp revealed several
dead bodies. He recognized the deceased as elves with their pointed
ears and diminutive bodies. But some had their ears either ripped
or bitten off. All had their throats torn open, with a circle of
blood in the snow as their final resting place.
    Crude stigmata signs were scratched into some of
their foreheads. Pentagram symbols with the letter “K” cut into the
center. With dead corpses everywhere he stepped, his boots crunched
down on the charred remains of an elf whose tongue dangled from his
mouth. Another lay with a broken off spear stuck in his chest.
    With the grace of a lion, he threaded his way to the
stage platform. Four bodies were sprawled out, like a child's
forgotten toys. One of the elves clutched a strum guitar. Another
hunched backward over a drum set with wooden sticks impaled in both
eyes. A singer with her throat ripped open lay on the stage front.
Her skin a translucent white, she had been drained of blood.
Sobbing sounds turned him around. About twenty feet away, a woman
nested her head on the chest of a dead girl. Her cries rose and
then lowered in intensity as he approached. He thought her too tall
to be an elf. As he got closer, his eyes turned to the source of
her grief. The dead girl's skin had the same pale, blood-drained
look as the others.
    “What happened?” he asked.
    The woman turned around slowly. She gazed at him
with unblinking eyes that shined with tears. After a few moments of
silence, she returned her attention back to the dead girl.
    “We were having a service,” she said finally. “They
came upon us so fast. The Killtooths.”
    He always thought the Killtooths were a mythical
creation. Supposedly they were a breed of elves that fed on the
blood of other elves.
    “We thought we had killed them all last year. They
stayed in the caves up in Shaian. You have to kill them in the
summer when they go into hibernation. There must have been another
group. Another colony that we missed. I had no idea they could make
it this far out.”
    “Your daughter?”
    She nodded her head.
    “She was my heart. That's what she was.”
    The woman kissed the girl on the forehead.
    “Come back to me,” she whispered.
    “The rest of you. You're from the same church?”
    “My husband is...Was Diorman,” she pointed to an elf
on the ground who had bloodied stumps for arms.
    He had heard of Diorman. One of the leaders of the
church that worshiped the God Pegasin.

“ Come back to me, Iriedove” she
whispered to the girl again.
    “How did you survive?”
    “I went to the woods,” she pointed back at the vast
expanse of trees. “I had to pee. I heard screaming and when I came
back it was pure chaos. I tried to find my daughter but I couldn't
with all the elves running and screaming and...the Killtooths
attacking. So I played dead. I laid down next to a group of dead
elves. They found me anyway but...They don't drink human
blood...They can't.”
    Looking back down at her daughter, she started to
clean the blood off the girl's face.
    “She was always teased for being a half-breed. But
she was the most beautiful