Ten months had passed. Amid immediate problems, they felt like mere days. The battles continued. The threat to the Dark Forest was not new; even some of the inhabitants began to adjust their lives to it. Every sortie of enemies, of mercenaries who felt entitled to annihilate people or beasts from our forest, entered. Some heavily armed, others just testing their luck. But the forest was very strong these days. There was no more enmity. Some orcs still sought to gain special favors, but they were placed near the goblins to prevent the rapes that humans had suffered in the past. Perhaps without noticing, they had become quite effective scouts and assassins. But the rest of the forest contained magical creatures that had escaped the exhaustive extermination their species had been subjected to—rewards for claws, skin, plumage, bones, viscera. It seemed that for every part of any bug that could defend itself, there was some value in the Blood Elves' houses. The Whitecaps offered missions more aligned with improving life. There was hunting, yes, but only of animals that had become a threat to people outside their habitat. Searches for books about elven evil from past eras. In short, the plan on that side was working. I was worried about this side—my knowledge, my heart. They betrayed me.
I had seen Lilith. I had been under her protection for a year. All this time, she had avoided death, torture—everything I always thought would be typical of such a dark leader. Yet... yet she only limited herself to helping anyone who asked. Within her great web of information, she ensured the weakest could escape, could recruit mercenaries, could maintain agriculture in this forest, could reconcile the various magical beings to avoid conflicts. Yet she still had enough time to learn whatever magic she could—which she still did not know. But I knew nothing of her past. From what an elf commented, she was once human. I thought I could still see some traces of it. When exhausted, she retired after pushing her magical field to its limit. When she practiced enchantments that no sane person would undertake days apart, let alone years. That was not counting several of the magics I knew I had seen migrate into the version of her spells. She was so different from everyone, so painfully similar to a woman.
The strategy of staying to watch her was causing me problems. Not of knowledge—never that. What the legends of the Dark Elves did not tell me, I learned from the gnolls who rarely came, but some considered it a good resting place. I translated the first steps of the Deathbringer—a dwarf who lived what everyone did, but faced adversity. One of the first things he did, overwhelmed by hatred and pain, was to help a group of subhumans, which were considered a new species—the goblins. They arrived as soon as the Overlord left—another great unknown of reality—and placed themselves in the service of great Lilith. They spoke of that dwarf as if he were their master, not their savior. Here, no one considered the three dark ones as masters—leaders perhaps, but always with a separation between them and their leaders. These history books—true history—I wrote in such a way that all the information I poured into the parchment would never appear on the parchment. It was written in some books I had hidden and prepared for that purpose in the study hall in Stormhammer. If someday something happened to me, let the true work of these beings be recorded.
I left the pen suspended in the air. My field was as large as Lilith's but without the same density. I only felt things. Here, I just felt many things—many small flames, going out. Many lives. My heart felt fear. Were the elves invading us? No, they were still gathering and preparing their forces. They were humans—I knew that. Much magic, small portions of it. They were mages quite inept at hiding their field; it was like a small light in the night. I went out in search of Lilith—she must know what was happening. I found her at the top of the battlements, watching the distance with furious eyes. I did not have her power; I could not speak to her—I would die! So I invoked some water bubbles, which I placed one apart from another, concave—my own magic, an instant telescope. There, I saw them. They were mages, attacking goblins, exterminating creatures that never had a chance. The lady of the castle began giving orders—to pull back the survivors, to take precautions against the Blackcaps... So these were the famous Blackcaps. Well, I could say in advance that they were deficient to a high degree. They wasted magic as if they had it in abundance. Each of their enchantments was uncontrolled—devastating attacks, but they did not seem focused on any enemy. They only sought to kill. Since the trunks were immune to magic, they only incinerated living beings within range of their powers. But there was no one on that side of the forest who could face them. Only the orcs remained. As if reading my mind—which I suspected she did—she opened a communication sphere, spoke with the tribe's shaman. He said many of the orcs were not there; they had gone to pursue some mercenaries who attacked their village. So he sent all the young after them as exercise. Although she was furious—visible from the black halo surrounding her—she calmly asked that some of their warriors go to assist the goblins.
Just as I wanted to return to watch the goblins, the battle cry of some orcs was heard outside. The shaman went out to see, and we accompanied him in that strange eye-viewer she used. Outside the camp, I saw a pigsty—not even goblins were this dirty. But that was not what frightened me. An orc celebrated with a goblin's body in his arm. The little one struggled—I was sure he was an adult, but he writhed in the brute's claws. Suddenly, he stopped—a one-handed machete had cut off his head. Horrified—the shaman, Lilith, and I—we watched the goblins arrive fleeing and being received by the brute orcs with weapons in hand, as if it were rabbit hunting after a crop burn. I shouted at them, asked the shaman to stop this. He tried—he really tried. He cast restriction enchantments on the youngest, the least strong. But over a hundred orcs remained free. In the end, the shaman apologized and went out to seek more help. Too late. A mountain of greenish beings already lay at the village's center. The orcs celebrated, sang songs about happiness in others' pain, the happiness of the light fading in the enemy's eyes, the sensual beauty of an unparalleled victory. I knew what awaited them. But I knew that if Lilith acted, she would be condemned. I had to stop her.
Field magic was difficult—it meant mixing another property into the magical field, as the Whitecaps had done with pollution, which was trapped. It took us months to perfect it. Considering that the magics that had taken me years to study, she learned in days, all present understood the difficulty of that ability. But a spell of that range was meant to punish those who killed for pleasure—not in defense of themselves or their people. I turned to shout at her, but it was impossible to prevent. All her magic concentrated. It was horrible. I saw all the hatred in a single instant—a personification of fury and vengeance at the same time, so beautiful and lethal. I only heard her whisper above my shouts of warning, above the screams of alarm, above the approaching footsteps seeking comfort, salvation: Bloodlust.
The spell spread. It had been designed as a measure of savagery—for warriors, giving them pleasure in killing, so much that they avoided thinking of anything else, felt no pain, and kept fighting even while dying. But she gave it another conception. I saw it—all contemplated the image. Elven and human generals watched their leader become enveloped in a cocoon of crystallized magic. It was necessary—the spell's range was smaller, so she devised a way to transport herself within the effect of her own field, to be protected while invoking it. Once crystallized into a gem, I watched helplessly as she shot into the night. In seconds, she landed in the orc field. With all my strength, I maintained her vision magic—it was incredibly complicated, but I did not relent. Like a moth caught by light, I saw her there, and I saw her field spread so much that I could observe even in the night, far away. Red—every single area where the orcs had the blood of the murdered goblins intensified in color. The howls began. But I forced my legs to run downstairs. The eye followed me, and everyone went with me not to miss any detail. The screams were the orcs'. They saw Lilith's cocoon and attacked it, but it was designed to resist. While the blood of the innocents turned to acid, it marked them. Once done, the wounds would remain open. They would hurt as if freshly made. They would hurt until they left the Dark Forest. That was the spell's nature. She called it Bloodlust so that all who saw it would know the fate of those who attacked a comrade. I dismissed the viewer—I had no strength to maintain it, and there were more pressing matters. Before me were representatives of the refugee races. I had to explain to them. We had to go for her—to prevent massacres among our ranks, she had just been left defenseless before the Blackcaps! I had to save her!