The old elf's free hand tugged the knit shawl tighter about his shoulders. The sun was a pale orb hidden in a far grey sky, and a chill wind blew down across the moor, twisting through the half-overgrown standing stones propped up around him. Stones ancient even by his standards. With a few limps and the aid of his trusty shillelagh, the elf maneuvered into the lee of a leaning stone. With his back against the rock, bone of his bone to the bone of the earth, the elf felt the faint tingle of power moving around him, through him. Almost absently, he began to roll a cigarette. The cold excited his arthritis, and it took him longer than it should have.

"Hello Karl" said a shadow that stepped around the megalith "and a fair Samhain to you." It would be wrong to say the man had an accent, because he didn't. He had many, each word and inflection borrowing from another language or dialect, a strong voice moving from baritone to tenor, lilting here and there as needs be. Karl-Heinz Zessler doubted he had ever heard the voice speak the same word the same way twice. Finished rolling the paper around the tobacco, the old elf fished for a box of wooden matches.

It was Ambrose, of course, dressed in tweed with a heavy overcoat and a sensible, if badly faded, scrap of tartan wrapped around his face for a scarf. Bushy black hair speckled with silver ran wild around his shoulders. The pointed tips of his ears peaked out from his make-do scarf and looked a touch frostbit. Karl took in the faint crows-feet around the other elf's deep eyes, the creases across the generous expanse of brow. Although a touch thin, Ambrose looked like man in middle years. You'd hardly guess we were of an age...or at least, thought Karl, I thought we were.

"Ambrose. It has been some time. Have you come for the álfablót?" The spark that lit his tobacco illuminated Ambrose face for just a moment, and the old elf saw the other's surprise.

"You cannot be serious. Why?" Ambrose took off a glove-kidskin, from Mortimer's of London-to rub some life back into his ears and nose.

"Why? Because I am dying." the old elf said with a laugh "And I want to die. Better a proper ending than the stagnation of a hospital bed, the thousand indignities of losing all control." Karl nearly choked on that. "It's already started. I've almost no control of my bowels anymore. Almost before I know I need to go, I've gone. I had to resort to bloody adult diapers to get me this far today."

"Karl...come to Caerleon with me. There are new techniques. Less invasive. You can have another fifty years, easily. I don't like to see you like this, you're not yourself."

"You can keep your gene-butchers. I made that decision long ago." With a thought, he held the cigarette out in front of him, the blazing coal starting to dim "Do you remember, Ambrose? Twenty years ago, and the fire. I burned the hive down, every one of them, and they could not touch me. Queen Mabd-" he spit on the frozen earth "-I've never met another druid so stupid as to confuse a Celtic goddess with the thing she called down-that was the only one." Karl turned to keep Ambrose from seeing the ghost of an ancient pain.

"I remember" Ambrose said quietly "You almost died in banishing it. That was when Merlin...where is Merlin?"

"I sent him on an errand. There's a street druid who went to the Carhenge in America, testing a theory on aspecting a site toward shared domains." he took a puff of his dying cigarette "It's a legitimate task. Nothing else would have done. If it works, then the ley lines can be shared by everyone, regardless of tradition."

"I never thought you would be so bloody stupid." Ambrose replied after a long pause "All that would do it open up a new front, a new faction. After all the bloodshed and destruction, all the corruption, is that your solution? To send the orders and circles of druids back to the trenches?"

"No. No, that is not what I want. But it isn't the point, either. I won't live to see the end of this. I'm going to make what difference I can here and now." With one last drag, the old elf dropped the cigarette and ground it into the grass. Ambrose, watching him, said nothing.

"Do you know how long I've watched this place? Too many of my four hundred years, and for nought. The zodiac has never Awakened, no ever threat emerged. I've never profited from my stewardship."

"As I recall, you once told me on Lughnasa '34 a rainbow touched the slaughter-stone and buried beneath it you found a black crochan full of orichalcum coins." Ambrose said, one cynical eyebrow raised.

"I lied. The pot was buried under the doorstep to my cottage, which my research shows was probably carved from these stones." Karl checked the ruddy display of his antique digital watch.

"You're not telling me everything, Karl. This death wish isn't like you."

"It's very much like me. It is very much a part of me. I was told I would do this."

"Is it geas?"

The old elf did not answer that.

"Who told you, Karl?"

"The street druid. Three years ago. I knew him from before. He found a gateway to the Court in the London Underground crafted by the Unseelie, and brought back a geas for me." the old elf looked Ambrose in the eye "I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill them both. The Pendragon. The Lord Protector. I knew what it would cost me...I wanted the cycle to be broken. But not like this."

"Do you really think one sacrifice will tilt the scales, Karl?" Ambrose said softly "Come with me to Caerleon. They'll fill you with fire again, and when we're better you can visit the Courts and we'll celebrate Imbolc together at Lyonesse. You've been caretaker of this forgotten place too long."

At that, the old elf smiled. "No Ambrose. You see, I finally figured it out. I know what this place is, and what it can do, and how to do it. That's why I need to be here today."

Limping a little, the old elf made his way to the center of the circle, to the fallen arch called the slaughter-stone, and looked around him with his true eyes. Not so desolate was the land in his vision now, the subtle glow of the living earth and the streams of power flowing in lines as straight as a rule to this place, eddying around and through the broken stones. Ambrose was cloaked to him, showing nothing but the aura of power he chose to present for himself.

Karl-Heinz Zessler laid down on the slaughter-stone, his weary bones to the bones of the earth. Somewhere, his last breaths shaped the words, cold-stiffened fingers made the signs and drew the elf-cross, but those were simply the motions of the ritual. As he had learned to do, the old elf turned his sight inward, to reflect on the flame of his power burning within him. A flame stoked by four hundred years of learning, living, and trial. An unwanted child born an age too soon. He should have been young...he should have been young...

The flame burned brighter for a moment, more focused, like the last ray of light from the sun on the solstice stone, and the lines caught the flame like dry kindling. From the frozen circles of Skye to the hermetic brotherhoods in London, in the great henge of the Salisbury plain to the Dragon Lands, a ghostly flame burned along all the dragon lines. Minor leys, lost and forgotten beneath the sea brought the flame to the Isle of Wight, and to Brittany, to the Orkneys and the Tir.

"Enough, Karl." Ambrose was there, standing over him, a golden sickle in one hand, a chain of spells about him. "I'm not going to let you die here, Karl. Not like this. There is too much yet to be done." Reaching down, Ambrose and lifted his friend in both hands, surprised at how little he weighed. "I'll see you walk down the faery roads once more, cirolletish."

When the sun set on Samhain, the ghost flames blazed once more and then faded.

Here I was expecting lesbian porn spam...

I can't let the only response be a frown. Very nice ... and quite strange, Ancient History.

Why not?

In fact ... who better?

Doesn't eveyone have a little lesbian porn tucked away somewhere?

Well, I do have that link for elf porn from a couple years back...

I've always liked my girls with a bit more meat. Definetely not one for the Mariah Carey types:

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids
all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love
to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and
death and stuff."
Popular Pop Singer
Mariah Carey

This is why we can't have nice things.

The story was quite well written and interesting, leaving me wanting more. Why must I always be left unsatisfied?! When.... oh dear lord when will I find a literary lover who can keep up with me and sate my cravings? My needs?!


Anyway, no chance you are an actual author with full size books I can purchase somewhere is there?

Chris

Closest you'll get is Runner Havens, Street Magic, Emergence, Arsenal, or Corporate Enclaves.

Auntie AH, can you read us another story of the elder days?

as a fan of the ancient history channel i salute you *g*
write some more of that . . heck, why not make a complete adventure/run out of it?
poor old guy, about to make his last stand because it is better to burn out brightly thant to be a slowly dieing flame

just to show that even elves GET OLD! i hope ^^
alternately: why the frag not? O.o
it happens to most people . . sudden spurts of creativity, inspiration and enough boredom/time to write the results down *g*

It ties together some lingering plot threads. Y'all might remember Zessler from the novel Black Madonna and the much bemoaned Prime Runners; Ambrose is from VR2.0. Couple of references to recent developments in Shadows of Europe.

Zessler, as a Spike Baby, is literally an old elf, and an elf that's showing their age is near the end of their natural lifespan, so yeah the idea of how that would effect him appealed to me.

The irony...

I wish to go out in a blaze of glory! Here I go! Oh no, now I am so weak and powerless as I perform this last sacrifice you can take me away and do what you want! Oops.

AH, does this story imply that the Lord Protector is dead? Or at least Lord Marchmant?

I must admit I'd always thought Ambrose was Zessler...

Many questions, particularly as this would be interesting stuff for my British campaign.

Thanks wasn't sure.

Interesting story, AH. Bravo. *applause*