Her sharp elven chin rested on her slender legs. “I caused more harm to her house, living and eating food, than I would have in perishing, so I was permitted to persist.”
I still couldn’t comprehend a parent doing that to her child. She had bound her as… well, a sex slave, and threw her intentionally at a man. And by the way, Amura had acted, the hope had been I would violently and aggressively rape her until she found a way to murder me. That was unconscionable to me.
“And now… as a slave… I shall be made to bear all that will be of my people.” She murmured, hugging her legs close.
“That’s not necessarily true.” I tried to interject. “If we can defeat your mother, and the rest of your people surrender, we can rebuild-”
“No.” Amura cut me off. “You still do not believe. Every she-elf, elf, and child in El’Muth’Ran will die before they surrender. Ya’av will see to that. Every slave will be thrown on your sword, and every captive sacrificed and still surrender would only be a tactic… a tool to find a way to kill you and every other who lives in this world before they would surrender.”
“But you changed.” I insisted.
“Maybe… I’m not sure.” She muttered. “If my mother commanded me, and you continued to naively refuse the power of my Slave Sigil… would I turn on you? I can’t be sure.”
“I am.” I insisted. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”
“But would I kill you?” She demanded. “I could make it painless. Then I could return to my mother and all would be as it should. Mother would win the war, all these weak lineages would be uprooted and burned like death roots among flesh-shrooms…”
“But you’d know.” I refuted. “You know that everything you were taught is a lie. Ya’av wasn’t betrayed, she was the betrayer. The other Goddesses aren’t slaves, and they aren’t the ones starving your people. And the lies, violence, and betrayal… it’s no way to live.”
“I would know…” Amura stated, her voice dead. “And a part of me hates you for that knowledge. I could have lived, endured, and died a slave, content to not know. To believe as I was told and served… believing my sentence justified by my uselessness… No more. And for that… part of me hates you. One who has never been warm does not hate the cold, but once warmth has been known, the cruelty of cold is made manifest.”
She looked at me again. “But now I know… you will take me. The gods have declared it. Why do you hesitate? Why do you not command me to do as has been dictated?”
I shook my head. “Because that wasn’t what they said.”
“No. Their meaning was clear. I will bear your seed and restore my lineage. Even were you to take me in this moment and force a child upon me, either end will come, for my people or for the rest. If my people fall, I would then be restoring the lineage, and if you fall, then for being sullied, my mother will cut my throat and rip out my heart as a sacrifice to Ya’av.” Amura stated bluntly. “The words of the gods could have no other meaning.”
“Well, you’re half right,” I admitted. “Maybe more than half. I bet you know what your people will do better than I do. And if you did get pregnant, this would all happen before you had a chance to give birth…”
Even as a human, with nine months of pregnancy, she would still have over three months left, and elven pregnancies took over two years, they said.
“But what they didn’t say was that I had to command you.” I corrected her.
“What else is there?” She snapped.
“You’ll have to choose,” I told her. “When you are ready, and you want me to… and make the choice with no coercion, or compulsion, then we’ll work on restoring your people. But I’m never going to force you into it. That’s not who or what I am. And if you decide that the right time is never, I’d rather that it never happen.”
She stared, “You would allow the lineage of the Shadow Elves perish, rather than command me to bear your progeny?”
“Well, as I understand it, I hope the lineage of the Shadow Elves ends either way… but yes, I would sacrifice the entire Night Elf lineage if it meant you had the choice.” I insisted.
I was no rapist. No matter how complex the situation and how serious the consequences, it wasn’t happening. I didn’t care if she was going to be the last of her people, I was not going to force her.
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s not fair.”
I blinked, “What?”
She glared at me and rubbed the glowing mark that danced and slid over her skin. “When this mark was placed upon me, I knew… my one relief was I’d never have to make hard decisions again… now you make me choose one more… though at least my decision is merely a ‘when’.”
Seeing my look of confusion she sniffed, “Allow my lineage to end? You mock my resolve… though now my conflict is tenfold.”
She let her legs slip further from her chest as she leaned back onto the headboard. “Now I must choose the manner in which I accept what has been given…”
Her lips turned into a frown. “I cannot tell whether to feel blessed I am to be the mother of a lineage, or whether to curse the gods for reducing me to a womb to salvage a fallen people in their game of betrayal and conflict.”
My brain understood to some degree how frustrating that must be. From what I understood, in Shadow Elf society, women ruled with an iron fist and men were their tools of reproduction. Being turned into a tool of reproduction must feel like a gut punch.
My dick just understood that she was gonna get fucked one of these days. Trying to will away an erection was like trying to fly by pulling up on your shoes. It wasn’t going to accomplish anything and would just make you tired and cranky. Luckily, my pants were sitting right so my erection didn’t show.
I mean, all my matrons were beautiful, and Amura was no exception. The fact that prior to coming here, the closest I’d gotten to seeing a woman with blue skin was that one chick in the Star Wars movies that the slug guy killed, made all the Shadow Elves strange and exotic. I mean, no human’s face was nearly the same as an elf’s. Their cheekbones angled more sharply, as did their chins, and everything about them was smooth and graceful. They seemed impervious to age and it seemed that a healthy female elf had barely a scrap of fat on her, with sculpted wiry limbs, chiseled features, and incredible flexibility.
But as far as shadow elves went, when they had all come out in their gaudy parade of power, before tossing Amura naked at my feet, I could honestly say I didn’t find a single one attractive. What should have been sex icons, barely wearing enough fabric to scrape together a speedo and that was distributed over tits, ass, and pussy, were instead statuesque monuments to the ugliness of their souls.
Not so with Amura. Even before I’d taken her to talk with the gods, she had been beautiful to me. Though I’d done my best not to take advantage of the fact she was literally thrown naked at my feet. She hadn’t been shy or terribly stingy about showing off her body either, and shit, was it a gorgeous body.
Now she’d as much as told me she planned on letting me have at it one of these days, and that was something to look forward to, but still, I wasn’t going to rush her. This was something she had to do at her own time and her own pace.
“Was that all you came to speak to me about, Master?” Amura snipped and I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be respectful or insulting with the title.
“Uh, no. A few of the others want to go with me to watch the Shipwrights and see if we can figure out when the ship will be done to travel to the clouds.” I explained.
“Oh! May I come?” She asked, springing from the bed, seemingly glad for the distraction. “Flight has always intrigued me.”
And she sauntered past me into the hall, like she hadn’t just been trying to cope with soul-crushing emotions. I seriously hoped that she was actually coping well, not just shoving her emotions into the darkest recesses of her mind.
I’d let the others decide who would come with us, so a short while later, Amura, Tavorwen, Nauveir, and Sevrina accompanied me as we walked through Ealphamir. Tavorwen led the way, which was good because we were going into parts of the city I hadn’t even known existed. Maidens were starting repairs on the cords holding long neglected pathways in the air, as we walked by vine overgrown trees.
I had thought the Gold Leaf district was neglected and abandoned when we had first set up residence there… Now I realized how bad one hundred and fifty years of neglect could really be. Multiple times, we came upon collapsed bridges and walkways with more planks missing than remaining.
“I didn’t realize the city was so big or… had places like this,” I admitted.
“The Massacre took more than half our battle maidens,” Tavorwen admitted. “Maidens who, in times of peace, had other paths they walked.”
I was reminded of what Amura had said about there being no civilians among the Shadow Elves… but it was starting to sound like the only civilians among the Wood Elves were the Matrons and Masters.
Finally, we reached an ancient tree, its upper limbs still green, but many of the lower ones gray and lifeless.
Tavorwen led us into a small opening in the bark, and after about ten feet of solid wood, a massive hollow opened up. A water-filled basin dominated the hollow, and it seemed one side of the tree was, in fact, an enormous door that could be opened. I saw no cranes or any other means of transporting the ship.