Champion of Elves

It was chaos

'How the heck are we supposed to do this' Shiro muttered to himself as he dodged another burst of crab claw and leg

Though he was glad the flying beasts were also trying to steer clear of the crab, after it had torn three apart when they got between it and Shiro the rest of the flock got the message and sought less…occupied targets.

Lily and Ezma were apparently such targets.

He was not sure what happened but it had taken Lily some precious time to throw up a barrier and Ezma was frantically playing a tune, which based on the swirls and flows of the magic in the air she was pushing energy into Lily and the barrier.

All this left Shiro no closer to a way to resolve the current situation. The Commander's reaction had been the last straw in breaking Shiro's willingness to assist the Holy Kingdom in anyway, and that meant he could not use a lethal or permanently disable her.

This Elven Champion however, was bent on using her beast to murder and shred them to kibble.

Shiro let the crab back him into one of the alcoves to buy himself a moment to breath as the crustacean hacked the wood around him to splinters.

He took a gamble and tried to center himself, letting the world fall away, he had not tried using this skill since before Dawnwall since he kinda felt like it would be cheating to use it on the clearly in love Lily, and also they had been in the wilderness or busy.

Shiro's inner eye opened, four figures stood out with the brilliant radiance of intense emotion.

A man with shimmering steel of resolve dashed through the flock of beast before grabbing something… cold…alien… then both disappeared.

Ezma, wreathed in calm calm granite whites mixed with stubborn reds as she sought the spell that would save them.

Lily, smothered in noxious cloudy purples with a narrow beam of clear focus barely keeping the cloud from consuming her completely.

Finally the Champion, brighter than all, dripping in corrupted purples and blood red pain with a web of toxic greens pulsing towards every beast in sight and beyond. Yet hidden under the web of pain, around her head swirled sickly yellows and browns of confusion and fear.

As Shiro peered at the aura around her head he gasped and the world around him fell away.

Blurred images flashed by

He… she watches as humans slaughter hatchlings and helpless famliy members with strange and corrupting magics

Shiro struggles to sort the dark nightmare of war and violence against innocents from the living nightmare of the vicious arthropod. With great effort he separates his identity from the Champion, but not enough to sever the connection.

The nightmare plays on

I, she, tries to stop the carnage, tried to summon the greatest of beasts that she can reach, but she is no longer champion and cannot even command a poor creature away from stomping hooves.

She has failed her duty, she has failed her people.

A monster in mortal flesh with glowing purple eyes bears down upon her and with the slash of a cruel glowing sword.

The scene repeats.

As Shiro fights the despair of being stuck in the mental loop with the Champion he realizes that the commands that do not save her in the nightmare are highly effective in the waking world and with the attack of the cruel and evil glowing creature at the end of the sequence the shard of crystal still affixed to her skin surge with unholy light and expand.

"Ezma' Shiro yells 'the crystal shards on the Champion!"

Shiro could not afford the time to make sure she heard him as the crab widened the alcove entrance enough to reach in.

Instead of going low Shiro ramped up the claw coming for him, charging up the armored carapace before leaping off the top of the shell towards the champion.

Beneath him the crab turned while energy blasts emanated from Lily and Ezma's direction, shattering crystals that had taken the place of clothes on the Champion's torso and arms, leaving a patch of crystal sweeping up from behind her ear to wrap around the Champions hair like a nasty hair scrunchy of evil.

With a slight shift Shiro aims for this last obvious target.

His sight swims as the connection through the mind link strengthens as he makes eye contact with the Champion.

He sees her as he hurtles through the air

He see his own image through her eyes falling out of the sky in an unavoidable blow,

He sees himself warp into the corrupted rider bearing down

Shiro's spear lances the last crystal with a ringing note

The Champion falls as the energy releases her, and the nightmare ends,
her hair drapes modestly around her as she falls into Shiro's arms.

Before she passes into her first dreamless sleep in centuries, she looks deeply into the kind eyes of the human who released her.

Shiro gently lowers the sleeping Champion to the ground before sitting exhausted on the ground beside her as Ezma and Lily stagger towards the pair.

With a wry grin Shiro quips "We have to do this six more times?"

Ezma's laugh rings out as the flying beasts scatter into the sky as Elves flood the sanctuary.

***

Hours later

Shiro laid on his back nursing bruises and thanking his lucky stars that was all he had to nurse.

As the Elven champion fell asleep and the killer flock had dissipated the giant crab had lowered itself back into the pool from which it had emerged

Leaving the strained party to surrender without a fuss to the elven guards that came flooding in to divest them of their weapons, though many gave them wary looks and whispers when it was realized that the Champion had been freed.

The party was frog marched into the upper boughs of the trees and parked in separate holding cells. Only for Shiro to be marched back out within ten minutes for questions in a dark hollow where the interrogator's voice was the only indication that he was not alone.

Then being roughly shoved back into this…holding room? Shiro looked around at an empty bookcase and desk, getting the sense that this was not normally a place for prisoners but guests.

Right as he made this observation elf guard opened the door again taking him for more questions. This time in an office of a religious looking fellow with an unruffled seeming disposition.

This process repeated maybe a dozen iterations, each with more time between being put back in the room and being escorted out again. Each time it was a different questioner, some were clearly religious figures, others military, and yet others bore the look of bureaucrats or nobles. Sometimes in groups, sometimes one on one.

Eventually the lull in questioning grew long enough that Shiro drifted off to sleep.

It was a strange sleep, full of people and places Shiro had never seen before.

Meadows full of grazing animals the size of houses, loving faces belonging to elves and other demi humans.

Yet every scene was full of comfort and healing.