Lost in the Crossroads

Twelve - Ruins (Abelone)

“I now understand your hobby of climbing trees when stressed. And I totally approved it.” Alex said, pushing herself up on the sturdy branches of the really tall tree they climbed to have better view of the destruction that laid waste on the Elven Village. “It was stress-relieving. Very healthy. I feel strong, young, wild and free.”

“What happened now?” Abelone frowned. She was seven meters higher than Alex’s position, her front leaning heavily on an extended branch from another tall tree as her feet balanced on another. Even with their distance, she could easily recognize the frustration with a mixture of deep exasperation in her friend’s voice.

Alex groaned, pushing up herself one more time on another sturdy branch and proceeded to sit on it, dangling her legs. Then the gates flooded, “I saw them flirt before. Really, I do! A lot of times, actually. But seeing them flirt with an oblivious God-knows-how-old Elf was…I don’t know! Weird? Crazy? Disgusting? Don’t get me wrong. Kael was handsome for someone with a pointy ear. Still, seeing your friends looked like desperate teenagers…Ugh!”

“That bad, huh?” Abel said in sympathy. Those two have a reputation in the base and Abel liked not think about it much. Especially those times when she has to break up fights over them every damn time in the Infirmary of all things.

“You don’t understand, Abe. You weren’t there.” Alex moaned in what Abel could easily recognized as despair. She looked down from her perch and saw her friend pulling out her hair. “They won’t stop staring at him. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination but I swear Dein was giving him the googly eyes. God, the image! And Kara won’t stop bitching about it. She perfectly made it clear that she didn’t like him. I believe Geneva was at end of her rope with Kara’s complaining and will choke her with it. Tabby and Hailey keeps snickering from time to time. I don’t even want to know. Blake and Fen were behaving. Bless their souls.”

Abel sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Living in the same apartment made her sort of immune to their shenanigans—not to mention she survived fighting in the front lines and that was hell— but somehow this sounded more chaotic than before. She understood the reason why.

“You know, it’s their way of coping. Our situation was bizarre. You got to admit to this was no ordinary camping. We almost died, Lex. There are many strange things in this world. They were just trying to find any sense of normality.” She said as gently as possible, taking pity to her friend.

She heard Alex take in a pretty deep breath before speaking. “I’m trying to be patient and understanding. I really do but…”

“Everything has its own limitation, Lex.” Sensing her hesitation, Abel said. Her friend was actually a nerve-wracking woman under the doctor’s robe and her tendency to throw things at people when stressed proved it. A part of her wondered how her friend managed to stay employed with her violent tendencies, certainly it wasn’t her good looks.

“Yes. Yes, they do.” Alex let out a loud sigh, her shoulders drooping in relaxation.

“Come with me whenever I went for a climb.” She offered sympathetically.

“Thanks.”

“I guess I should talk to Kael, too. A warning or some sort.”

Alex let out another sigh, this one brimming with relief. “Oh good. Your touch-my-friend-and-I-slit-your-throat speech will surely make him wary to do anything inappropriate. The kid’s scared of you, you know. And Geneva.”

Abel rolled her eyes. She’s not going to threatened the kid no matter how effective it was in their world. He was taller than her for God’s sake, reaching only his chin. How was she going to threatened someone she had to tilted her head up?

“His fear of me, aside. He’s smart to be wary around Geneva. And personally, I think he’s not the one we should worry about. It’s those two. They can be pretty persuasive when they wanted to.”

She doesn’t even want to think what would they be able to convince him to do. Hopefully, the kid was smart to ignore them. Abel swear those two were like freaking sirens. A little swish of their hips, a flip of their hair and a couple batting of eyelashes had three of her men at each other’s throats. She was shocked to say the least.

“Yeah.” Alex agreed morosely. “Can’t you threaten them, instead?” Her tone was light that indicated she was teasing.

Lightening the gloomy atmosphere that cling onto them from burying the dead. Abel could still smell the charred flesh combined with soil and dirt in the air and that coppery scent that made her bristled. Thankfully, no one threw up while they were burying the bodies.

“I doubt it will work.” Abel snorted, grateful with the sudden change of topic. She really didn’t climb up on this particular tall tree to talk about Dein and Drishti’s advances on the Elf.

She came here to view the destruction better than on the ground. The tree was tall and outside of the village borders, it held the perfect view of it.

Drawing a mental map in her head, Abel theorized that the bandits came from the west for the bloodshed and wreckage were much more prominent in that direction. The training grounds were on the northern part of the village while the burial grounds were on the east and the farming grounds in the south, closest to the river. The village entrance on the west was like a path of destruction, marked by overturned and scorched earth, uprooted trees, long, thick drag marks, dried splatter of blood, rubble of houses and some other things not worth mentioning.

The direction of the attack was easy to noticed but as she stared and examined the wreckage in front of her, a sense of foreboding traveled up in her spine. Her instincts screamed danger inside her head, ringing like goddamn fire alarm.

Abel get the killing part but destroying the houses, uprooting trees and scorching the ground?

This was definitely not an ordinary looting or kidnapping.

It was a show of power.

“This is terrible. I wished you brought a sniper rifle or a tank. I would love to have Tabby and Hailey in it, pulverizing those assholes.” She heard Alex growled under her. Abel took a peek and saw her friend standing from her branch with a ferocious look on her face, a hand curled on the bark.

She bit the remark that it was her friend’s stupid vacations rules that prevented her from bringing a rifle or maybe some grenades for safety precaution, perfectly aware that Alex won’t appreciate it. It was excessive but Abel liked being prepared. Though, Alex found it as being paranoid. She also suppressed to voice out the thought of Tabitha and Hailey in a tank might have been a sign of this world’s apocalypse. They would not only destroy the bandits but also everything in sight with that metal vehicle of destruction.

“What did the elves do to them exactly?” Alex demanded, her limbs shaking and tears were gathering in her eyes.

Abel’s eyes flickered to the ruined village and back to her friend, attuned to Alex’s emotions. Her friend was despairing over a village they never been before and a race they never met. It bothered her. This was not really their problem but she agreed to accept the Elf’s request, they all wanted to. The point though, they might get caught in something bigger than a kidnapping and robbery of a whole village. Abel doesn’t want that. She read a lot of books to know that Medieval Age was nasty.

“They’re bandits. Who knows what they have in mind.” She answered coolly, fixating her gazed back to the village. If only she didn’t know that this land has magic, she might have thought the village was hit by a nuke. And with that thought, another worrisome thing flashed in her mind. Magic. She had not yet able to tackle it with the Elf but she was curious as to how this whole magic thing work in this world. And if it was used in their warfare.

“They destroyed the village! What do they gain from that?”

Abel didn’t bother to answer. She dismissed her worries for a moment and thought back of the things that happened since they found the elf. Memories, information and theories swirled in a frenzy inside her head. There was an important file inside her head, something she was suspicious about but have no enough information to prove it even with her instincts singing on the back of her mind. Kael shows sign of it but she chalked it up for his wariness in the situation at hand.

“Abel?” Alex asked tentatively.

Slowly, Abel slid her silver gaze away from the ruined village and focused on Alex. She seemed to have cooled off from her anger.

“What’s on your mind?”

Abel shrugged, very slightly. “A lot of things.”

“Planning, already?”

“Not really. More like suspicions.”

“Doesn’t sounds good to me.”

“It’s not.”

Alex bit her lip in consternation. “This is troublesome.”

“Indeed.” She wholeheartedly agreed.

A slightly heavy atmosphere fell between them, both aware of the problem they were able to partake in. Actually, they were already in it. Abel was aware there was an escape route through this but no one would take the path. None of them regret helping the elf. Trouble was kind of occupational hazard.

The light of the sun setting that managed to pass through the cacophony of trees painted a sad hue on the ruined village. Abel felt a stab of disappointment to her own people for destroying such magnificent settlement. She could imagine how beautiful and enchanting the village was in its all standing glory.

The elves were surprisingly skilled in building and stone craft. At first, she expected them to be living inside a huge-ass tree not in stone houses build in trees. She had expectations and seeing the village kind of throw her off guard. They were not as primitive as she thought them to be.

It was a shocking revelation albeit interesting.

Ever since she was young, Abel had always been fascinated in myths and legends. Her father indulged her with the stories of mystical creatures, of gods and goddesses, heroes and damsels in distress. It was ironic how she could still remember him, coming home with a brand-new story for her from his duties and responsibilities as a Marine Officer when he was long dead.

What would he think now she was surveying a ruined Elven Village? Abel thought, repressing the familiar, painful hitch in her chest. Her father would laugh at her luck, she was sure of.

A sharp whistle cutting through the air like a signal snapped her at attention.

“Was that a rape whistle?” Alex asked the moment her gaze met hers, both stunned.

“It came from the camp!” Abel answered, already moving and swinging down back to the ground. She felt her hands scraped from the speed she was going down but hardly think about it. There was only a two-meter drop when she leap, tucked into a roll and came up undamaged except for her scraped palms and moss-covered nails.

She waited for Alex, not as fast as her but steadily swinging down the branches. Abel strained her ears for any more suspicious sounds like a scream or something but nothing came. She grew more suspicious. Her gun already in her hand.

To her right there was a thud and the clicking of a gun’s safety clip, Alex was slightly panting but her face already morphed into a determined and hell-hath no fury a woman be scorned look. Without saying anything, they both sprinted back to their friends. Entering back to the village, the scent of bloodshed assaulted her again. It stirred unwanted memories but she pushed it away. The rubble of the ruined village passed them both like a blur, she doesn’t find anything amiss but she doesn’t want to be complacent. Stretching out her senses, her ears caught something like a whinny somewhere.

“Oh wow! They’re beautiful!” It was Fenella’s voice and she sounded awed.

Abel skidded to a stop when she reached the training grounds, Kael was already facing her with wide wary golden eyes, dainty elf hands holding onto a large black horse mane. She thought he would take some time mourning but she guessed there wasn’t much to mourn when half of your people was captured.

“Oh.” She said, casually taking in a number of horses trotting out of the northern woods and her friend’s odd clothing—they changed— like she wasn’t a mess of protective urges and homicidal tendencies.

“Is everyone alright? We heard the rape whistle.” Alex said, panting heavily by her side. The girls turned their eyes on Kael, twinkling with combined amusement.

“The whistle was for the horses.” Kael answered innocently, sending wary glances at her. Abel knew she came in too strong when they first met—she damped it down when Alex asked her to—but they kid needed to stop looking at her like she was going to kill him every damn second.

“Yup.” Drishti chimed in. “No one was raping someone here.”

Abel was painfully reminded of their man problem. It was on her priority list. The Elf looked horrified for a moment and shot her a perfect I-didn’t-do-anything look. She felt a surged of hope. Maybe his fear for her was helpful in this kind of endeavor.

“Yeah, right.” Kara snorted, glancing subtly on Kael. “He was the one who whistled.”

“I apologize for the misunderstanding if I caused one.” The Elf wondered tentatively, smoothing a hand over the horse head like a nervous tic.

“Shush. They were just being overprotective.” Blake said, waving his apology dismissively.

“Yup. It was their fault for overacting.” Dein happily agreed, flashing him a grin.

“We can take care of ourselves, you know.” Geneva huffed though her eyes were smiling.

“Good to know.” Abel commented coolly, nodding her head and tucking her gun where it belongs while Alex took her time to breathe properly and extinguished her embarrassment for overacting.

These idiots, of course they had the right for overacting. They were perfectly in an uncharted and possibly enemy territory. Kael’s allegiance was obviously to his people and hopefully once they were done helping won’t turn on them. The idiots.

Though, he was a convenient companion. Abel settled not to reprimand the Elf for the noises since he brought horses to them. They're useful in chasing after a bunch of bandits.