Sineater

I knew it was elves without turning around.

Worse, I knew what the elves looked like. Brown skin, yellow hair, and white eyes. That was a pure earth elf, better known as an Ager. It amazed me that with twelve subspecies, the elves had managed to start purifying, as they called it, the bloodlines. After the Camadt War, over a thousand years ago, the Congress had decided that the only way for the elves to survive was for each of the subspecies of elves to start mixing to become a singular race. While that might have had a great effect out there in the universe, on Tefira, the Elves had tried to separate themselves back into their ‘pure’ forms. A simple rule that only pureblood elves could serve on their respective senates and anyone with political ambitions got on board. In my opinion all that had done was make a lot of pompous and useless families, but no one asked my opinion.

The reason why I knew who the elves were was because a few weeks ago when Starna and I had stopped the wedding of Alessa to Regent Arkun, the Ager representative had decided to back the regent and been killed. The Agate Senate was the most vocal about reparations and the only ones who had demanded that Starna be handed over to be tried for treason. Which didn’t make any sense because by her looks, she was a mix of High Elf and Sylph, without any trace that she had any Ager blood in her.

I slowly turned around and saw the three Ager glaring at us. While the two in the back had white eyes, the one in front had golden ones. I couldn’t stop the smile from splitting my face. They’d sent a mage.

With elves, the color of one's eyes proclaimed what powers one had. Silver, red, blue, and brown were for the elementalist abilities of air, fire, water, and earth. White eyes were powerless, while gold eyes were for magic. There were also black eyes, which denoted demonic magic, but those practitioners were usually killed on sight. Starna did have gold rings in the middle of her eyes, but with them being almost completely blue, her ability to manipulate water should be much stronger than her capacity for magic.

Which is the first thing that made a mage being here funny. As a Veneficus, someone with both water elementalist ability and magic, Starna would be able to easily counter another mage since water had a wonderful ability to disrupt magic. If the Agate Senate had done their research, then they wouldn’t have sent a mage to try to intimidate us.

And if Starna wasn’t up to the task of putting this mage in his place, we had Vin. And that was after I finished with them.

“Excuse me?” I touched the hilt of the sword on my hip as I pushed off the wall.

The mage took his staff off his belt and extended it. “By the authority of the Agate Senate, Starna Shellock you are under arrest!”

I touched her arm to guide her behind me. “I asked you a question and you ignored me.” I clicked my tongue. “That’s very rude.”

“Out of the way, human.” The elf sneered as the staff pointed at me. “This is ELF business.”

“Really?” I started walking towards him. I could feel the buzz of magic in front of me, but I could tell that he hadn’t started building up any for a spell. I might not be able to cast anything at the moment, but being able to feel it was a nice advantage. “I didn’t realize that the Agate City had occupied Hepool.”

“Last warning.” The golden eyed elf nodded at his companions, who drew their weapons.

The guards at the gate were watching the scene play out. I shook my head as the captain shot me a questioning look. I didn’t remember his name, but he’d been at the senate when I’d killed my uncle, so he knew what I was capable of and even better, he knew how much authority I had.

“You’re openly threatening a civilian in front of city guards.” I nodded at the captain. “And they aren’t doing anything. What does that tell you?”

“That they recognize who is in charge.” The elf sneered.

He wasn’t wrong about that. He was just wrong about who was actually in charge.

“Now…”

I felt the magic start to build inside the elf, but before I could move, I felt a void behind me on the rooftops and moving my way fast. I dropped my hand from my sword. As much as I would enjoy putting the elf in his place, this would be more entertaining.

“... die.” The elf was smiling as I spoke the last word. Confidence was all over his face as he took my backing down as surrender.

I wasn’t surrendering. I just didn’t want to get in my brother’s way.

The magic hardened into a spike of dirt, which shot across the distance between the two of us. It was so slow and weak that I wondered why the Agate Senate would think that someone who was weaker than the mage who’d died would be able to intimidate us.

My brother landed on top of the spike, crushing it to dust. In two steps, he was in front of the mage. He pulled the staff out of the elf’s hands, then grabbed the poor mage with both of his lower arms. The two other elves were foolish enough to pull their swords and charge.

Vin snapped the staff in half and smacked them both on top of the head with each part. They dropped to the ground, allowing him to turn his full attention to the mage. He opened his mouth and slowly began to move the elf’s face towards his teeth.

There was a rumor that a Camadt’s bite was lethal to a mage. That after a single bite, a mage would no longer be able to use magic. I guessed it was possible, but I’d seen Vin bite a couple mages when we were younger, well Talia and Rosa mainly, but both of them could still use magic and hadn’t died.

“Vin…” I touched my brother on the shoulder. “I think he’s done.”

My brother glared at me, but dropped the elf without biting him. Not that the elf would have felt it, he’d passed out the moment Vin had opened his mouth.

“You were going to have fun without me.” Vin looked down at the three unconscious elves.

I shook my head as I motioned for the captain to come over. “If you’d been here on time, then you wouldn’t have missed anything.”

“I came here first thing in the morning!” Vin yawned as if to emphasize that he was still tired. “I haven’t even eaten breakfast and you won’t even let me take a small nibble out of one of them.”

“You don’t even like elf.” I realized that admission carried the implication that Vin had eaten elf in the past. Which was sort of true. While he hadn’t sat down and dined on them, we had been attacked by a lot of pirates and Vin’s teeth were great weapons. He’d bitten chunks out of most of the races on the planet at one time or another.

“I like elves!” Vin looked around like he was trying to find an example. His eyes landed on Starna, then moved to me as he shrugged. “I can’t think of any, but I know they exist!”

I chuckled as I heard Starna growl behind me. She may not have realized it yet, but that was Vin’s way of accepting her. Before she had a chance to retaliate, I turned my attention to the captain. The faster we got this out of the way, the faster we could leave.