The Saga of Hawn Ambrosius by Jeff Standish -- 9/18/6067 -- The light dream-filled sleep that was the sleep of elves faded quickly as Hawn's mind shifted abruptly from sleeping to waking. He opened his eyes in the darkness, his elven darksight showing him someone standing over his sleeping couch. To Hawn, the warmth of the figure appeared as an orangish-yellow to his heat-sensitive eyes. But the object it held in its hand was a cold grey. The object descended and the stillness of the bedchamber was filled with the sound of tearing cloth. The knife sank to the hilt in the soft down couch as Hawn rolled away from the blow and the figure. The unknown assailant pulled the weapon from the bed and leapt towards Hawn. Hawn, meanwhile, had grabbed up his sword from the chair where, hours before, he had lain it upon his return from the hunt. With a practiced flick of his wrist, Hawn sent the scabbard sliding off of his blade. He stepped away from a swing of the knife, taking advantage of the greater reach of his sword to deal a deep slash to his assailant's forearm. The knife dropped from weakened fingers, but this becloaked stranger unsheathed a short sword with his other hand. Using the moment it took his opponent to draw the sword, Hawn charged and grappled with his opponent. Grasping his assailant's swordarm with his own free hand, Hawn thrust his blade deep into the cloaked figure, feeling metal grind against bone. Strangely scented breath burst in Hawn's face as his assailant cursed him with his final breath, an act which chilled the grey elf to the bone, not for the curse itself, but for the fact that it was voiced in perfectly fluent, if lilted, elven. Dead, his opponent dropped to the floor, sliding from the sword clutched in Hawn's unfeeling fingers. His mind was completely numbed by the fact that another elf had attempted to take his life. Hawn merely stood there, gazing down upon the dead elf laying before him. He knew not what to think. Though he had slain wild creatures and on several occasions been forced to kill a fellow sentient being, if only lesser humanoids, never before had he slain an elf. Such a thing was unheard of. Not for many a century had one elf attacked another in such a manner as this. Elves held a great reverence for life, and would kill only for food or to defend themselves. But for one elf to assault another was unspeakable. Not since the Kinslayer Wars had such occurred. And yet here on the floor before Hawn lay the corpse of an elf who had tried to take the life of another elf. Hawn knelt down next to the remains of this unknown elf, unable to believe that this was not some cruel and twisted night mare come to torment his sleep. But as he cast his eyes over this elf, trying to convince himself that this was naught more that a bad dream, Hawn's eyes alighted upon a peculiar weapon hanging from the dead elf's belt. There, slung from the dead elf's belt, was a miniature, hand-sized crossbow. Though he had seen such crossbows before, in the museum of House Ambrosius, never before had Hawn seen such an item carried upon someone's person. There was only one race which actually used such weapons as these. The drow. Of them all, only the dark elves used crossbows small enough to be held and fired with only one hand. That explained everything. Only the dark elves would attack other elves in such a manner as this. But Hawn could not believe that the drow would have returned from their age-old exile in the caves of the underrealm. Of this he had to be certain. Voicing fluid words of magic, Hawn held his hand near the face of his assailant. Dim white light danced from his palm, casting away all shadows of doubt. By the light of his spell, Hawn could clearly see that this dead elf had the jet black skin and bone white hair of a dark elf. A shudder ran through Hawn's body and the magic light faded away. His doubt of this being a dark elf having been abolished, Hawn's disbelief was now only arrayed in one direction. How came his drow to be in his bedchamber? Millennia before, there had been a bloody civil war amongst the various races of elvenkind. It had been the last time elves had waged open warfare with their own kind. This war had only ended when all evil elves had been cast into the barren underworld, shut forever away from the light of day. There ever after, dark elves, or drow as they were known in the language of elvenkind, had never again been seen under the sky of the world. Many thought the drow to have perished ages ago, for elves cannot long tolerate confinement, as they are creatures of the wild, open spaces of the world. However, the drow had sworn eternal vengeance, sworn that some day they would return to exact their retribution against those who had cast them from the light of day. If they had returned, there would be great remorse for all elves. A sudden thought chilled Hawn to the bone. Where there was one drow, there could be many. If he had been attacked by this one dark elf, then the rest of the House was in danger. Hawn removed a pendant from the drow's neck, a pendant which would bear the seal of the drow's House. Picking up his sword and the crossbow, Hawn went in search of his father, the Elflord of House Ambrosius, to show him what evils now besieged their blessed abode. The House would have to be warned. There was no telling how great was the threat marshalled against them all. However, he did not get far. Looking down the hallway, Hawn spied a pair of pale-haired, black-skinned elves. They stood at a cross-corridor with their backs to Hawn, as if their were waiting for someone. Perchance the very drow Hawn had just slain. Another chill passed through Hawn's bones as he observed how casually they stood there -- as if there was nothing to threaten them here in this House of grey elves. The chill disappeared from Hawn, replaced by the heat of rage. How many more of these cursed elves were in his House? How many others in House Ambrosius had been subjected to their nefarious plans? The anger that now filled the grey elf's heart blotted out his reason. He gripped his sword tighter. Earlier this day he had run silently through the woods, filled with the spirit of the hunter. Now he charged silently up the corridor, once again possessed by the spirit of the hunter. Neither drow was even aware of the wild beast that flew at them until Hawn's blade plunged into the back of one of the foul fiends. The silvered sword pierced the drow's black heart and erupted from his chest, slaying the dark elf instantly. The second drow wheeled about to face this maddened grey elf, thrusting his own sword and cutting Hawn's arm. Hawn took no notice of the wound, intent only upon sending these accursed elves to join all of their brethren in the darkest pits of Hades. Hawn pulled his sword free from the first drow, blocking the next blow from the second elf with the bright ringing of blade on blade, turning the stroke to his advantage and scoring a slash across the dark elf's shoulder. Hawn quickly followed up with a full swing of his own, smiting the drow a wicked blow to the side of the head, the magically hardened edge of his sword shattering bone and splattering blood and grey matter upon the walls and himself. The second drow joined the first on the floor as cooling corpses. Hawn removed the silver House pendants from the drow, seeing by an ensconced torch that these pendants were similar to those worn by all other elves. Perhaps the dark elves still retained an iota of the elven ways after all. Hawn had taken the pendant of the drow who had attempted to assassinate him as proof to his father that the drow were returned, but now he recalled the ancient tradition from ages before when elves had warred against elves. Then it had been the accepted way to take the pendant of a slain elf as a token of those one had vanquished in battle. Seeing that the drow were now returned, Hawn saw that the olden times were once more upon them. With the drow returned, then the Kinslayer wars would start once again. Turning from the bloodied corpses, Hawn headed towards the nearest bedchamber, that of his sister Ni'aleen. Light from the torch which Hawn now held in his hand filled Ni'aleen's bedchamber. The young elf maiden's lithe body lay twisted and sprawled upon her couch. Bright scarlet blood stained Ni'aleen's nightdress and the couch. Kneeling beside the mortal remains of his sister, Hawn took her in his arms and cried, lost in the anguish for one who had been a part of himself, the anguish of an elf who has lost a loved one. After a timeless age, Hawn stood up and went to search the other bed chambers. Each held the same image: that of a loved one lying dead in a pool of cooling blood. At each such scene, Hawn felt a part of his past cruelly wrenched away. Due to their exceptional life-spans, elves seldom have to deal with the death of a loved one. But when they do, it is a painful experience which drives deep into the heart of their being, and with each successive scene, the cold spear of loss was thrust deeper into Hawn's breast. When finally Hawn came to his father's lifeless form, he cast the torch at the far wall. The force of the impact sent flaming fragments scattering in all directions, extinguished the flame as the life of every other member of House Ambrosius had been extinguished. Hawn felt his will to live similarly extinguished, for everyone he had ever loved was now dead, coldly murdered in the space of a few hours, compressing more grief than an elf would ever experience into the time it took Hawn to drift numbly from one corpse to the next. A tumult of emotions engulfed Hawn's being as he crouched over his father's lifeless form. Eventually a drow stepped through the door. Hawn's head snapped up at this intrusion upon his mourning. Then his mind focus upon a single emotion: that of rage. Vengeance. He felt nothing else. Indeed, there was nothing else left to him but vengeance. The drow had cruelly stripped all else from him. The drow paused a moment, perhaps surprised at seeing Hawn, or perhaps because he thought Hawn a fellow drow in the darkness. In any case, he paused long enough to allow Hawn to raise the hand-held crossbow and pull the trigger. The dark elf clawed at the shaft of the quarrel protruding from his throat, then collapsed in a heap on the floor. Hawn removed the drow's pendant, holding it in his hand and wondering how many more of these he would collect. How many more drow would die at his hand? The flame of vengeance burned brighter in him, urging him to slay every dark elf who dared to offend the world by its mere existence. As every fire needs fuel, so would he fuel this flame with the bloodied remains of every dark elf upon whom Hawn could lay sword or spell. Retrieving a quiver of miniature bolts from the drow's belt, Hawn reloaded the crossbow. Though he had not expertise with such a weapon as this, it somehow pleased him to kill a drow with one of their own favored weapons. Realizing that there was nothing left for him here, Hawn returned to his own room and there he packed what he would need to survive in the wild, for the drow would certainly take over the House and destroy it before the arrival of dawn. Now was not the time to throw away his life with useless heroics. He would follow the drow into the underworld and there do to their House what they had done to his. Life for life, he would exact vengeance for every grey elf who had died here this night. Hawn would never rest until the drow as a race were extinct. Once finished, Hawn headed towards a gate near the rear of the house. Looking around a corner at the gate, he saw a pair of dark elves with bared blades guarding the portal. Forcing himself to relax, Hawn nocked an arrow in his longbow and drew back. Spinning around the corner, he let fly an arrow that hit one drow in the leg. A second shot took the surprised drow high in the shoulder, piercing the black mesh armor he wore. Hawn dropped his bow and drew his sword and dagger. Avoiding the second drow's weapon, he struck with both blades. Each left a nasty wound in the dark elf, who fell back out of Hawn's reach. Hawn pressed the attack and dealt the drow a mortal wound to the side of the neck. An abrupt, searing pain shot up Hawn's side, sending him reeling into the wall. The first drow was still on his feet somehow, even with two arrows in him, and had stabbed Hawn in the side. Now the drow was coming at Hawn with his sword upraised, prepared to finish off this hated grey elf. Speaking in the liquid words of magic, Hawn cast a bolt of sorcerous energy at the drow. The glowing arrow faded an instant before it struck the dark elf. An incredulous Hawn barely rolled out from under the blow aimed at his skull. But of course, Hawn recalled, the natural resistance to magic which the drow possessed would render any of his simple magicks ineffectual. Before the dark elf could recover from his swing, Hawn thrust his own blade upwards into the adversary's chest. The dark elf fell forwards onto Hawn, forcing the sword even deeper. Once he was able, Hawn rolled the dark elf off of him and pulled his sword free. He recovered his pack and bow, as well as the House pendants of the drow, knowing there were not enough of them to weigh down his lust for the blood of the drow. Clutching at the wound in his side, Hawn staggered off into the night, with one last look up at the beauty of the elven mansion which had always been his home.