Premonitions

Premonitions

The night was silent. Gray shadows trickled about tree branches and dense foliage like dark figures prowling for mischievous and profane activity. The intangible and tangible entwined and contorted to make an eerie and serpentine ballet within the forest. The night creatures crept about, not idle in their evening routines, while the chorus of the wilderness teemed with wordless songs and medleys to pay homage to the pale moon, which glowed gentle rays of white melancholic quiet over the treetops.

Within those wandering shadows, perched as still as silence, a different whimsical shadow listened, meditated. It was eccentric, but strangely unified with its surroundings nonetheless.

Something was beginning to fester. Something crimson, something thick. Something tremulous, but rising like a phoenix from burning conviction.

Yes, war was coming. The War of the Phoenix.

Expressive gold eyes shimmered in the dimness, alive and energetic while narrowed in sharp attentive focus. White hair as pure as snow was grayed currently in the lack of light and wisped wildly around a delicate doll-like face, the childish features of which were blankly settled in almost a stupefied manner while those totally contrasting eyes, intelligent but frazzled, searched and centered in on an unseen point of interest. The tendrils of white hair were like the branches of a twisted old tree that still held mysterious beauty even as it continued to twist against nature and sensible mentality towards a hopelessly entangled mess.

But this was a perfect metaphor for Rifka Niskin Sa Dreva, because that%u2019s exactly what she was. One big matted jumble of a soul that was only writhing itself into larger, sloppier, and much more elaborate knots with every passing year.

Six centuries earlier she had been the essence of grace and elegance. The beautifully mystic witchdoctor of the Drow race who seemed to nearly float upon the very air she was so magical. Then the claws of madness sunk in, instigated by the selfish evil of a new matriarch, a serpent demon they simply called the Mistress. It was evil that Rifka could not handle and so it proceeded to distort her.

Now she was lost forever to sense and the lucidity accompanying proper functioning. She was the shaman priestess gone insane.

Rifka%u2019s eyes flickered and then began to glow. Yes, it was inevitable indeed. The phoenix was finally ascending to take his stance among the elite. The firebird was finally forming his strategy, gathering his powers for battle, a battle of revenge and justice long put off on his part.

She wondered. Would his tears heal all the wounds and sinfulness that had been inflicted upon the land and the history of their kind? Did he have the strength to right what had been wronged? Most importantly, did he see the aids around him that weren%u2019t conspicuous allies? And would he realize their importance in time
for them to be useful?

The Drow woman pivoted on her branch and began to observe the line splitting the land and sky into two realms %u2013 the horizon. To the east it was light. The sun would rise again this dawn and would shine with the splendor and vigor of life whilst her people slumbered during the day. There was nothing but hope on that line, so far away and yet so familiar. Then she pivoted to the west and shot up into the trees to break through the canopy of the forest, her white hair meeting the moon%u2019s light and shining in blinding purity from the sheen as it hit her unkempt mane. The atmosphere was heavy to the west. Her eyes solidified, sanity wavered within her golden irises for a moment, spinning unsteadily in the pool of her sight%u2019s depth. The vision unfolded and she trusted it, trusted her fragmented mind. Madness gave way to the most comprehensible answers sometimes, just as truth was often stranger than fiction. Patience was the simple magic ingredient.

The vision opened. She saw the crimson color again. It signified tribal markings. The tribal marking which looked like a tiny campfire on the forehead of a fire elemental appeared. Burning flames blazed into view next and then, against a black backdrop like the most opaque of nights, this inferno roared, elevated from a pile of ashes and within that hot molten core, turned blue from vengeance and fervency, was the silhouette of a tall lean man. He had high and narrow pointed ears, the ears of a Lementha, an Elemental.

And so the passion was growing. The tempest of the phoenix would move from the west and the south. He would brandish an enigmatic power as well, a weapon aside from the inner heat which came natural. His fury, his wave of retribution, it would sweep down upon the northern and eastern lands and break like the waves of a hurricane on a single isolated ship at sea. The Drow would be the crew of that vessel.

And hark! What was this? A leviathan would join him? A lost leviathan not even the phoenix knew of? Yes! Omitted from the radar of all creatures capable of reading an aura he was, and cloaked now until the proper time for his unveiling arrived.

So this was the prophecy. A leviathan and a phoenix would reform the bloodied past of the elves, reshape the warped mountain of their history and restore camaraderie between the four species again.

Rifka's startled eyes shimmered at this. The sanity faded from her eyes as they snapped shut and then open again, blank and wide. Her body twisted on her perch, her tiny black chin shooting towards the sky as unintelligible broken chanting erupted from her mouth, rapid broken Elvish spewing forth as spasms overtook her, a trance kicked in to keep the Drow woman in tact.

The magic of Rifka's body had developed immunity to the landslides and traps of insanity, designed to burrow a person further into its jagged domain, lure them deeper into lunacy's house of mirrors. Any sudden surprises in daily life normally gave Rifka%u2019s ailment room to only confuse her more. However, her body could now physically slip into a trancelike state, cutting off conscious thought to keep the crazed shaman priestess afloat on her current mental plain and not send her plummeting any further towards oblivion.

In a minute it was over. Clarity returned to her eyes and she rolled her neck around to remove the crick that had developed.

Funny little dream. And look at how clear the stars were%u2026

%u201CLady Rrrifka?%u201D

The gruff voice caught her off guard. But it was one she knew like her own.

She turned around daintily to face its owner, rather perplexed. Why was Rifka in a tree? Why not sleeping? Then she remembered. Nighttime was when the humans slept, silly, though not so much in their smoky metal cities anymore. Lights shined so brilliantly that streets were washed in a rainbow day.

%u201CHello Nik,%u201D she murmured in vacant bemusement.

The Drow before Rifka was more formally known as Nikavar Panas Sa Dreva, the former patriarch of their Drow village turned head general of the Mistress's army. His arms were crossed and his stance was professional, but his face held worry and slowly spreading relief. Relief he had found his shaman priestess, atleast physically, intact. %u201CLady Rrrifka, please rreturn to camp-eh. Ve need to be gettink settled for mornink. I do not like eet ven you rrun off.%u201D

Rifka was still trying to recall why she was up in the very top of a tree in the middle of the night. %u201CSilly Nik,%u201D she replied meanwhile, absently whispering in her quiet almost singsong voice. %u201CRrrifka is big girl. She be fine vithout babysitter.%u201D

Then it returned, though slowly and in faded pieces. A leviathan skittered through her mind. And then a boat being tossed like a toy in stormy waters. And then the tall and charming firebird. The phoenix oh so rare that the Mistress lustfully desired for her collection.

Nikavar%u2019s face had gained a look of embarrassment meanwhile. Rifka was the only Drow capable of bringing him to that level of softness and kindness anymore. As the head general and all around puppet of the Mistress who they had served for the past six hundred years, he had lost almost everything that had made him the dignified leader he%u2019d been chosen to be so long ago. He had turned into a ruthless and callous killer. That is, except when he was interacting with Rifka. Then he reverted. The old Nikavar came back.

The simple fact remained. The shaman priestess of their village was too special, too sacred a lady to be disrespected. And she was too frighteningly mystifying to want to anger or upset, especially now that she walked on a stringed web of insanity, able any day at anytime to slip away forever. Nikavar couldn't to risk losing her to oblivion. It would be the end of their path to the past. Their history would be gone, as only Rifka remembered it now. After the Mistress took over as the reigning ruler, became their Sertia Pentra, or Serpent Princess, all memories were lost mysteriously, except for those of Rifka. She held on to them in honor of their Drow forefathers.

"Please vill you come back vith me?" he requested, holding out a hand to her as he balanced himself on his own branch.

Rifka gave him a contemplative glance before smiling serenely, with almost more luminescence than the moon, and nodded. "Forr my patriarch, my Nikavar, I follow anyvere."

He returned her smile weakly, and took her hand. "I not deh patriarch, anymore, my Lady. Rrremember, it is deh Mistress who ve follow now."

Rifka paused, as if confused, and then let her shoulders fall as she nodded. "Ah yes. Deh Mistress. Madam Sertia."

Nikavar picked her up then, as it would be easier to travel through the forest and she was only two inches over five feet while he was a strapping 6'3".

Holding her against him, he sped back through the trees and then began across the snow covered fields and up the rolling hill to the ice castle that had become the home of the two hundred plus village of Drow and their serpent queen.