Burden

"You are a coward!"

"A what!?"

"You, all of you. Eldar or whatever you freaks call yourselves. Ha! I've met a smattering of you, and in human terms let me tell you that's a lot, each and every one is Corruption-bent. 'Do not suffer the orc to live,' is the proverb, isn't it? But you run at the first sign of-"

"Be silent!" The order boomed across the clearing, rattling leaves from their trees. It had the weight of ages in it, burdened by centuries of training and command. Arrogance radiated from the Eldar so strongly that it all but knocked his companion to his knees.

"There, again! You don't answer, I've accused you! I have called you out, answer me! Or will you be a coward in this, as you have been in all battles that have not involved orc children?"

"Speak on of things you comprehend not," quieter now, the words laced through the air as though on silver wings. Distractingly accent-less, it rang like a chorus of bells. "A gnat's wing against my attention is all to which your words compare. But call us not cowards, human, it does you few favours."

"Favours? Yes, yes, of course. What, oh what, would I know about any of this? It's not as if I've known you for most of my life, Ousel. And it's not as if this is the first time you've run away from something important. Not the first time you've... murdered-"

"You persist, then, in this misunderstanding? Very well, there is little I can do to change your mind, as has there ever been, Chion. However, I must insist that you cease referring to it as murder. It can be difficult to understand that-"

"Difficult to understand!? Fucking Hell, Ousel! You murder children! Orc children, sure, I grant you that since I know you'll fucking parrot it same as always. But still! Children! You are every part the monster their elders-"

Chion stumbled to a halt, feeling the weight of the Eldar's gaze on him. It was a rare thing, he realized, for the full attention of the other to be on him. Usually, Ousel could be relied upon to be taking relatively little notice in what went forward around him.

Always before, Chion had assumed that this came from a sense of entitlement. A belief that his company was beneath him. Always before, now that the Eldar's eyes were locked steadily on him, he fought back the urge to back away and wondered how he had ever forgotten the feeling.

It was not entitlement that caused the Eldar’s attention to wander. It was not a boredom with lofty sense of self-importance. It was not even a wandering of attention, there was a weight to the look. One that landed hard on Chion’s shoulders, as heavy as if it were a plow’s yoke.

Lights glimmered in the Eldar's eyes. A thousand pinpricks of light, miniscule stars in midnight-black sky. They were barely visible in the day, when his eyes were blue, but Chion's favourite had always been twilight; the stars in his mentor's eyes shone best then, against an oil paint smear of orange blending through salmon into a thin band of blue before the night overtook it.

That had been before his master looked at him like this. That had been before the accusation. Now, like no other time before, there was a viciousness in his mater's eyes. And the stars, in their tiny constellations, seemed to glow with anger.

"Do. Not. Speak. Of. That. Human. I. Am. Not. Like. Them." He controlled himself, barely. Magic rippled through the clearing, and leaves cascaded around them. Power singed the air as the Eldar fought for reins that anger had wrenched from his fingers. Wind howled, twisting the leaves into a writing dome over the two old friends - the space between them left a barren void.

Ousel took hold of the magic again, his trembling arms hidden under the folds of his cloak, and the wind settled. Still the leaves danced around them, thousands of fluttering pennants in the autumn’s colours whipped off the ground and spun into an intricate dance.

A damaged oil painting Chion had seen in a noble's manor sprang to mind, but his oldest friend's glare chilled the memory.

"You accuse me. You accuse all of us, of cruelty and cowardice? Of the former, I can assure you we are guilty. Though, if you'll grant," his voice hardened again, sharp and brittle as shattered glass, "me the freedom to speak. Then perhaps I can explain somewhat of why-"

Unable to contain himself, Chion surged to his feet.

"Fuck you and your damned reason! Corruption-bent, that's all you are. Some petty feud happened between you lot a thousand thousand years ago and now you just run around trying to maintain-"

Laughter seemed to emerge from the air around the human.

The Eldar staggered, actually bringing one of his trembling hands out of his cloak to clutch at his face. The laughter was sharp, and the hoarse sound of its thundering passage through the clearing, shattering the dome of swirling leaves, sounded ragged. Painful.

It went on for too long. And magic pulsed through the ground, thin lines of faintest blue and gold traced their way out from Ousel's feet. Kinstugi lines forming as the world around him broke.

"You," the Eldar put both hands on his knees, still laughing. The terrible, thrumming force of it against Chion's eardrums growing with every spasmodic resurgence. "You think that we are merely holding a grudge? You think that we are, as do your own petty 'nobility,'" venom dripped from the word, "continue a conflict so ancient even the rocks have forgotten its roots for no reason other than pride?"

As soon as it appeared, the laughter cut off and overhead the dome of leaves returned to their frantic, chaotic dance.

"You don't even try another solution! You simply kill, and as soon as they are dead you look at them with disgust. You NEVER EVEN TRY! to help them! You never look at them and see something like yourself. You've lived for-"

Chion's words petered out, his eyes locking on the Eldar's infinitely deep ones where unknowable stars glittered with a hurt deeper than Chion had words for.

"You think I... You think we have not tried?"

Stumbling now, the wind howling through the clearing as waves of multi-coloured leaves crashed against their unseen dome, Chion shouted over the wind. "This tantrum won't save you, coward! You rant and you storm but you never change. No! The great Eldar, live forever and never fucking ch-ack!"

Ousel's fingers tightened around Chion's throat. A grip that might have shattered stone sealing the air in his lungs where it slowly began to burn. Pain blossomed beneath the Eldar's fingers and tears leapt into Chion's eyes. The human had not seen the Eldar move, until his fingers locked around his neck.

"I said that your ignorance was a gnat's wing against my attention," the fingers tightened still further. "Clearly I underestimated the force of your arrogance. There was a philosopher, millennia ago, a friend of mine, who stated that the further one is from knowledge, the wiser he thinks himself."

Leaning closer, Ousel's next words were cold, the white-hot fury that had propelled him across the clearing burned to ash. The constellations of his eyes glowed red, the stars that comprised them swirling, a moving kaleidoscope of enraged colour.

"And the weight of your confident delusions has grown heavy. The gnat’s wing has become a mosquito's whine and so deserving of being stamped out. In honour, however, of our many years together I shall once again endeavour to explain."

Chion choked down gasping lungfuls of air as the Eldar allowed his knees to buckle and released him. The pulsing magic that laced through the very air of the clearing faded as the Eldar struggled for control of himself.

"Falsely you claim that we have,"

Again, Chion interrupted, choking out one tortured word, "murderer."

Wind rose in the clearing, a steady, building howl that drowned out all but the next terrible words from Ousel. "You dare set yourself above me, you untested fly? You dare make comment," in the half-light of his near-strangulation, Chion saw a torrent of wind once gain shatter the dome of swirling leaves.

They exploded behind Ousel, a roiling wave of yellow and red and gold breaking against him like a rock at sea.

"I was there! I stood by and watched as the first of their kind crawled from their stinking holes and boiled onto the Field of Bengloryan. I watched the host we sent against them fall under sheer weight of numbers and saw the ruin of their rampage.

"I marched with the alliance that drove them back behind their borders and sealed it. And I marched again when their armies gathered to challenge us.

"In the centuries that followed, we entered an age of prosperity," tears filled the Eldar's eyes, gleaming drops of silver like starlight captured in water. "We were fair and open and free. Our people lived in peace, and we sought to expand that peace to those who had once been our enemies.

"Thus why we describe all but you humans as the elder races. We all came before, and our histories are longer in the telling than many of your lifetimes combined. So, I, as one who had lived to see the rise and fall of the Dark not once but twice in my life, was chosen to be among that mission.

"And I spent. hundreds. of. years. working on it! Hundreds of years and hundreds of generations of the stinking swine and do you know what happened? Do you know what the end result was? Do you know how I and my fellows were repaid for that effort?

"Mayhap you've not heard of the massacre of Swallowbrooke. Mayhap you've not listened when the storytellers share tragedies from the Third Darkness. Mayhap you believe the Lay of Aelith or the Fall of Horkos merely fanciful stories.

"Human lives and memories are short. I could extend forgiveness were these alone the extent of your ignorance. However, a lesson must be taught."

Chion snarled from the ground, terrified faces flashing through his mind. In their guttural, unknowable language they begged for his aid. Final screams fixing on their features as the wrath of the Eldar engulfed them. A thousand endless pinpoints of suffering.

"Listen well, then, human. Listen as I - no," Ousel's voice was softer now. Kinder, though with an edge that scraped across his student's skin to show that even gentle things can cut. As always, the Eldar stood immobile even as fractures continued spreading outward in the ground from where he stood.

Spider's web cracks of blue and gold that pulsed as though in time with Ousel's heart.

"No," he said again, eyes losing somewhat of their rage and the wind around their bubble of passivity slowly dying. "No. I shall not debase myself with appeals to your intelligence. Nor to the many years we have spent together. Rather, I shall simply inform you of what happened when we released them. What, after centuries of education and social establishment was our reward."

"Excuses," gasped Chion, voice still raw from the force of his master's clutch. "No matter what you say, there is nothing that can justify this hatred."

"A story that has long been forgotten, for few lived through the turning of its pages and fewer still wished to relive the horror, is that of the Siege of Terrasen. Despite our efforts, the Orcs behind their mountains squabbled incessantly. More blood was spilled between their clans than has ever been seen on the combined battlefields of man's hubris. Even with our councilors and advisors, they could not be kept from one-an-other's throats.

"So be it, we thought. Let them bicker and squabble, let them spend their sons and daughters as they see fit. No more could we hold back the tide than could we restrain their instinct to kill. In that way they are like you, and so too like us in the Eldar Epochs. And among them we found those who could be taught, and those who could teach. Artisans and poets after their own fashion and in their own language we cultivated in vain hopes of brighter days.

"In our arrogance, we constructed for them the city of Terrasen in shining glory. Their architects we employed and divided the city between the clashing expressions of humans Eldar and Orc." Tears gathered again in his eyes and the Eldar dashed them away. "The single greatest achievement of an Age of the world, and it stood barely a century."

Chion did not move, nor did he speak. Of course, the name of the city meant nothing to him. Few of the names spoken by his master ever did. The lives of heroes and epoch-shaping disasters are forgotten as newer legends take their place.

There was pain, though. Pain in his words and his eyes, pain in the very way he stood. So Chion waited.

"We arrived too late, and the survivors numbered barely one hundred out of the human and Eldar living there. So few... so very few. Do you know what had happened? Of course not. No songs were written to mourn the dead, no statues in honour of the city's defenders. No eye-witness accounts recorded in epics to entertain and hearten mud-spattered peasants.

"Orcs poured out of their homeland. A host arrayed for war on a scale not seen since they first martialed their forces against us. Though not nearly so many or so dreadful as that. They marched on Terrasen, the evidence of their passage leaving a scar across the land that was decades in healing. And when they arrived, banners flying, they did not treat with the city. They did not offer surrender or parlay.

"Towers and engines flowered on that field, and within the walls, as citizens flocked to the defence, the Orc population waited. For the first two days of bitter contest, they held themselves in reserve and waited until the garrison was exhausted. Then they opened the gates. And none of the survivors to whom I spoke could bear to describe what was then visited on the people."

As the Eldar's words died, their unnatural echoing fading in time with the lessening wind, Chion spoke, "Ousel... this doesn't explain-"

"My charge, a brilliant and enlightened Orc named Kirkorak Flame Hand lead the assault. He had taken the land which I along with his ancestors had forged, and he turned it into a machine of war. I was less than five years away, having relinquished my final powers in that land and turned it loose to join the rest of us in what was a Golden Age.

"Less than five years, Student. Less than five and every artisan, farmer, merchant, and trader that I left behind me marched and slaughtered. Such slaughter... It lasted for months, the butchering of Terrasen. And the horrors we found when at last we recaptured the city are beyond the power of words to convey.

"Would you like to hear what Kirkorak Flame Hand said to me when, finally, he was captured? Would you like to know how he justified himself?"

Chion nodded.

"He, who had known only the society of Orcs that we helped them to craft, claimed that he had done nothing wrong. That he was living, for the first time in generations, according to the nature of the Orc.

"You claim that I am heartless. That I and all of my kind destroy the Orc for imagined slights and petty bigotry as your kind does to itself. But the Orc is not like us. They were created of fire and hate, made in mockery of the Eldar and all other Elder Races. Crafted for no other purpose than conquest and destruction.

"We gave them music beyond the beating of battle drums. Art without blood as its only paint. Machines of the world, crafted and interlaced with magic beyond your imagining. And they returned to their slavery, to their cruelty. Despite centuries of education and training and development, in less than five years a warlord controlled them and targeted their violence outwards."

"Master, I didn't know. But-"

Ousel's words were gentle as he laid his hand on Chion's shoulder, strangling his words on the vine.

"Goblins from beneath the mountains took eagerly to tools and crafts. They embraced governance of their own design. They fought alongside us to reclaim the Blasted Land where once Terrasen stood. They are of the same stock, though lost long before their corruption was complete. Corruption-bent, you call me and all of us. Yes, Corruption bent us into something monstrous.

"Yet, mark these words, you do not know the world as it would be if we did not maintain this bend. Our soft-heartedness towards the spawn of Shadow has claimed too many lives and ruined too many more.

"You have not seen what I have seen. You do not, and can never, know the weight of my sins. The years that have laid them on my shoulders would have seen you rendered to dust long before they first rose to challenge us.

"You. Do. Not. Know. Of what you speak. So, I would bid you, remain silent on this matter."

Chion did not answer. And the Eldar turned away, the angry light in the stars of his eyes gone out. He seemed, for the first time, ancient. His back bent and head down, as though labouring under the weight of mountains.

No. Chion could never know the regret of his master. His life was finite, and he had neither seen an Age begin, nor had he seen one end. But he remained certain that there could be no possible justification to exterminate the Orc. Though, to continue his training, to learn enough to maybe try his own way.

The Eldar, in all their wisdom, forgot the minds of mortals in their endless years. Forgot how quickly change can come, and from the least likely of places. Early in their time together Ousel had mentioned such a thing, envying the shortness of Chion's years if only for the incredible change that must occur. Lamenting his frozen life, watching the world age and die around him.

Perhaps a mortal mage could, if he studied close and learned everything his master would teach him, make those changes. Perhaps...

"You tried to be their gods, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And they rejected you?"

"No. In a monolith of iron and stone, stained by the blood of sacrifices uncounted, Kirkorak Flame Hand erected my likeness. He did not understand why his god would reject him, despite the abuses and deviations from my teachings. And he died smiling, believing that I was false and the Ousel he worshiped would welcome him to eternal bliss. Surrounded by slaves made of his victim's souls.

"I did not demand worship. Did not visit shrines or temples. But I did become their god. And I lorded over them for centuries, carefully constructing a system that would welcome them into the world. That would drive out the Corruption which infested their very souls from birth. That burden was on me, and all others who shared my task with other Orcish kingdoms. And our failure is felt deeply, even now.

"Even if I'm the only one left to bear it."

-0-

Author's Note:

I want to give a huge shout out to my wonderful sibling Rocket for their cover art! It turned out perfectly and I couldn't be happier with it :)