Age of Adventure

Eric sighed a bit when speaking about Alfhaim

’Alfhaim also wanted the Holy City of Duvar. Their desire for the city is more practical. They wanted it to expand their power. These Elves rarely fought wars but they have learned that humans could not be trusted. They do not believe in the Gods of Olympus instead their Gods is said to reside in a place called the Aesir. I myself do not quite understand their culture and their Gods.’ Eric said

Zeus nodded

He once read a report given to him by one of the officials about the history of the Elves in the Alfhaim Forest.

After all, Alfhaim was one of the kingdoms that Veva also wanted to conquer. It is better to know about the enemy than not knowing anything about them

Their history is quite hard to trace since they rarely share their stories with outsiders.

They respected the Olympians Gods but they themselves did not worship them.

They seem to come from a foreign land. No one knows when the first elves appeared in the Vilajeri Continent.

They seem to just appeared there and created their own kingdoms and the Fabled Forest is where the Elders of the Elven congregate.

What he does know about the elves is that there are two types of Elves. There is the Dökkálfar and the Ljósálfar.

The Dökkálfar is the Dark Elves and Ljósálfar is the Light Elves.

The Dark Elves is more militaristic and have powerful physical body and powerful destructive magic with dark complexion and the capacity for extraordinary physical feats

The Light Elves is the master of mana, possessing ability to control the elements easily and possess all kinds of light magic and powerful regeneration ability

Both of them are beautiful, possessing none of the flaws of appearance or the flaws of the body, said to be blessed by their Holy Tree

And each of the two types of Elves have their own charms that made them the muse for many songs that bards sing in their journey and poets to compose their art.

The Dark Elves possess a more exotic look while the Light Elves are said to be fairer than the Sun to look at.

Alfhaim is the way people called the kingdom of the Elves.

But the Elves themselves did not call their kingdom Alfhaim. They called it Álfheimr. Maybe because the sound seems the same, the spelling and the name of Alfhaim stuck.

Álfheimr means the Elf world or the Elf home.

Other than the Goddess Sunna which they pay tribute to, there were many other Gods in the Pantheon of the Elves.

Zeus himself acknowledge there is not many kingdoms that know much about the Elves, Veva included.

Even the adventurers rarely met them when solving their quest. They are secretive, rarely come out from their forest and despise outsiders and humans

One of the derogatory words they called human is Lifebane.

They believe humans are a cancerous race to the world, capable of great destruction and the destroyer of many lives.

It is said one of the Elders of the Elves once travel the world of men.

They saw how humans would torture their own race with all kinds of punishment, they saw how men differentiated each other based on many things and the Elders could not understand such cruelty.

When the Elders return to the Fabled Forest and relay his experience to the Elves, they believe that humans are vile and barbaric creature.

While they believe that not all humans were like that, the majority of rulers of humans that they have seen and encountered were all greedy, cruel and cunning.

This did not help at all in making them trusting humans. And the humans did try to invade their forest which only deepen the rift between humans and elves

The humans however rarely succeeded in winning against the elves. Of course this is the matter of the past and the study of magi were not yet mastered by humans

These elves might not expand their rule but they are very powerful and quiet good at defending. Probably their weakness is their reproduction ability.

Some lives hundreds of years without ever having children and they could not compare their reproduction ability to that of human native of this world.

But one thing is obvious.

The elves did not view humans in a positive light.

As for their Gods, it is even more foreign.

But some of the Gods of the Elves seems to correspond their power to that of Olympus like of Thor the Son of Odin.

But for some reason, the Elves even though they recognize Thor as one of the Gods in the Pantheon, they did not like that God very much.

Thor is said to have the ability to control lighting and thunder like Zeus, the King of the Gods of the Olympus.

But he is also the patron gods of humanity and so the Elves did not like him very much but still respected his power.

The Gods is always something mysterious even to Zeus. He had seen how powerful they are but they also seem constrained in their act.

There are certain things that they could not interfere with especially that of those in mortal world.

But at least, for Zeus, he had seen the Olympians. He had seen Apollo and Artemis and Zeus, the King of the Gods had visited him in dreams before

But unlike the Olympians, this foreign Gods that lives in some mystical place called Aesir had never shown their faces.

Zeus would not be surprised of Gods since he had seen a few of them. But to him, the Gods that the Elves worshipped is not the real threat for him even if they were real.

Since they have never shown their face.

Zeus then sighed. Alfhaim is really a kingdom that bring him headache each time he thinks about it.

He continues listening to Eric words.

’Alfhaim kingdom could instead be called Alfhaim forest. Because of their large size of the forest and because they have a king people always referred the area as Alfhaim kingdom and they rarely come out from their territory.’

Zeus nodded in agreement and Eric continues.

’They never coveted the Holy City before because they were content spending time inside their forest. Since Elves lives a long live they did not care that much about the rising and falling of kingdoms’

’But now, everything is different with the emergence of the Holy Church. This Holy Church wanted to destroy their Gods and cut off their Holy Tree and so they become militants. They were forced to by the situation’

’People force them to not believe in their Gods. They have to see their Gods insulted by the Church. The peaceful Elves had no choice but to rise up to protect their faith. If the Church had not done so many atrocious things inside the forest of Alfhaim, the elves might not have reacted like this. But there is no use crying over spilt milk’

Eric halted for a moment and look at the darkness in the distance

’It is this factor that have created an irreconcilable feud with the Elves. To the elves, their enemies is the Church. If we attack them, they would attack us. It is not worth it to add more enemies in our list. At least not until we could pacify the internal problems’

Zeus nodded

’If not for Aero stoking the hatred of humans and elves, how could they so easily be wary of us? Even if they hated humans, if they were not wary of us, we could have joined hands with them and attack Holy Zun.

’They could not be persuaded to ally with humans’ Zeus reminded and Eric nodded

’That is not necessarily true’

Sighing, he walks again. Zeus smiles bitterly and walk beside him. They both enjoying the breezy air of the night.

There is a moon shining brightly in the sky and every once in a while as they pass through the night guard, they would bow looking at the King and the Prime Minister before scurrying away, fearing to listen to anything that these two great men is talking about.

The wisdom of the court is to not hear anything, to not see anything g and to not known anything especially regarding things that have nothing to do with them

Eric then said

’The Elves had changed. They are in a foreign land with foreign gods. Their Gods did not answer their prayers and their livelihood is threatened. While they will not convert to the other faith, they would also not be stubborn until the end to protect their people. Aero plan is quite foolproof. But if we think of it as foolproof, then there is nothing we could do. I am unresigned’ Eric said

Then smirking he said

’Whatever the cased, we need to break this deadlock’ And then pausing for a second he then said

’We need to break the deadlock without throwing the entire western region to chaos. The more chaotic it become for the western kingdoms, the more advantageous Vanheim position to swallow the whole world. And that is something we both don’t want to see’

’The question is how to break it?’ Zeus ask.

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