Christopher Kellen - Elegy

When finally he reached the manna font that stood in the graveyard, complete with the wall of force that he'd erected to keep unwitting passerby from passing through the deadly light of the energy, he collapsed to the ground with a cry. The girl's body struck with force that he'd not intended, but he no longer had the strength to keep himself upright, much less her dead weight as well. He weakly lifted one hand towards the font and dropped the energy he'd been silently expending to keep the protecting wall in place, and it vanished.

Refreshing, warm azure light spilled forth from the entrance almost joyfully, suddenly released from its prison. It fell across both of them, and instantly D'Arden felt his strength begin to return to him. His aching body was soothed by the warm, regenerative light of the font, and the exhaustion that ran through the very core of his being began to abate as the manna fed him, replenished him and once more lent strength to its servant. He breathed in deeply, taking in as much of the energy as he could muster in a single breath, feeling the warming relief flood through his veins and his body. Sanity began to slowly return to him, and his gasps for air slowly became instead sighs of relief.

Once his breathing had returned to normal, D'Arden dared to force his body into a sitting position. There was pain, to be sure, and it was sharp, but it was nothing like he'd imagined it could be. Already the exhaustion was fleeing him as he was buoyed once again by the power of the land that he'd been trained to accept in place of his own energy. His body no longer would regenerate on his own; wounds would not heal and fatigue would not leave, not since the balance of power in his body had tipped from his soul to the manna itself. The miles-long walk had been terrifying to him, knowing that if he had not reached the font in time, he would have been powerless to stop his own death.

Strength returned to him more rapidly as he was able to control his breathing, taking in the energy from the manna and centering himself, beginning to replenish his stores so that he might once again have the strength to fight evil. He would need to trance for several hours to make sure he was properly strengthened to go back in and face whatever waited for him beneath the old Calessan fort, but he no longer felt that it was an impossible task.

He lurched to his feet once again, after only a few minutes had passed. Once more he took up Elisa's body and approached the font. With the greatest of care, he laid her form across the crystalline structure of the land's energy vent, all the while feeling more and more of his strength return to him. Once he was satisfied with how she was situated there and ensured that her body would not fall to the ground, he turned away and stepped outside the font, letting the radiance warm his back and allowing the manna to take its time returning the girl's body to the land.

A piercing shriek from behind him caused him to spin around rapidly. His eyes fell upon her just in time to see her leap up from the font and back away towards him, breathing desperately and in a full-blown panic. He was stunned; how could a pure font have raised this child's body from the dead and reanimated it. His hand immediately went to his sword, ready to strike the creature down where it stood, no matter how much it might pain him to do so.

She turned around rapidly, and just as D'Arden was about to draw the sword and cleave her head from her shoulders, he got a full look into her frightened green eyes. No pinpoint of corruption lay there, no hint that she was nothing but a reanimated corpse. Full emotion – fear – was present on her face and she looked at him as a wild, cornered animal looks at its aggressor, her blond locks plastered against her face and her skin pale, but no longer the white of death.

Elisa screamed again before collapsing on the ground before him, unconscious but clearly breathing.

D’Arden could do nothing but stare.

The Arbiter's mind spun uncontrollably. How could something like this have happened? Elisa had been dead for hours, he had felt her body stiffen as the soul had fled after the heartblade had failed to save her…

The heartblade. Could its power have had something to do with this?

The artifact that was the very continuation of an Arbiter's existence, that piece of utmost importance had been created centuries ago by the greatest sorcerers of the time. It was the key to the creation of an Arbiter, and it was the key to their survival. They could bathe in manna to replenish their strength, but in order to continue living and continue their resistance to the power of the manna's energy, the heart itself needed to be regularly exposed to the power of the energy, something that was impossible from the outside. The tapered pinpoint blade was the only way to do that without risking severe injury to the flesh and stopping the heart cold.

Despite this knowledge, however, the true power of the heartblade remained something of a mystery. The design specifications, the method of creation were all known by the Arbiters and they could be created at the Arbiter's Tower, but exactly what the depths of the concentrated power could achieve was beyond comprehension. The heartblade was not to be used on any except a fully ordained Arbiter, and yet he had broken that rule, and achieved… what?

Could this now have brought the girl back from the dead?

Still the light from the manna font fell upon her unconscious form, and yet still she lay there, unmoving but breathing steadily, unchanged by the power of the radiant energy that should have been twisting her form to suit what lay within, and robbing her of any life that remained in it.

He knelt down beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered open, and slowly she turned herself to look at him. The fear had mostly gone from her now, but still she looked uncertain, a small amount of the previous panic still remaining in her gaze.

"I was… I was trapped in there!" she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I could hear, I could feel, but I couldn't see once you… once you closed my eyes! I heard everything that the townsfolk said to you, but it was like I was frozen, and I couldn't move or tell them that I was okay…"

His brow creased in a slight frown. "How do you feel now?"

"Warm…" was all she answered.

D'Arden looked to the blue light from the font that radiated down upon them, and he felt the same. He felt the warmth that the land offered to its servant, the light that infused him and made him feel both loved and as though he belonged perfectly, as though nothing could ever be wrong or separate him from that power.

Had he unintentionally created an Arbiter?

"Elisa," he said softly, brushing the hair from her eyes. "I need you to do something for me. Can you stand?"

She slowly nodded, and began to push herself to her feet. A few seconds later she stood facing away from the font, looking only slightly unstable, and quickly adjusted her awkward stance so that she was standing more comfortably upon the uneven ground. She looked down at herself, noting that a majority of her clothes and her armor was gone, and immediately flushed with shame and embarrassment.

"Elisa," he said again. She looked at him, and there was still a bit of the wild uncertainty in her gaze. "I need you to turn around."

"I'm afraid to," she whispered.

"Turn around," he urged.

He could see her tense, unwilling to move for a moment, and then she turned, the blue light of the manna font illuminating her face fully. She stood there, and D'Arden waited expectantly, still with the thought that this could all end in a moment, and she would be gone again as quickly as she'd returned.