Mount Telei Sacrifice

A quiet darkness can calm a soul, with the soft noises of birds settling down to rest and the feel of peace that can be found inside the serenity of the woods during this time of sunset. A calm wind swirled its dance through and around the trees, as well as through the hair and clothing of five muscle toned swordsmen who were almost dragging a young adult with them on their path. The men felt absolutely fine, this path they travel so often almost becoming like taking a trip to a friend's home.

Though while darkness can calm, it can also set the terrors alive for one who is being dragged to his certain death. An owl gives its sudden shrieking cry, causing the boy to jerk out of step and glance around nervously. How he wished to be back home...the wind now blowing seemed to be pressing him forward and the forms of the trees themselves in the depth of the dark still refused to hide him...

Well, that's just nothing to think about at the moment. What is to think of is the thinning forest that leaves the path marked clearly by the moon to a mountain, as magelights lead the path toward the king's castle. The way Nature can do these things just almost as a last minute thought brings wonder to all who see it.
The young one hesitates again, staring up at this mountain. It starts with a small littering of rocks, though some kids found it amusing to just play and dig around. As sight continues, the smaller rocks gracefully become varying other sizes.

Looking farther up the mountain unveils the shadows and moonlight that battled for control of what to reveal to mortal sight and what to keep hidden. It looks a place of scars and battles, healing and destruction...and all by nature's games! Nothing completely serious, oh no. This is just nature showing off to the world what it still is capable of accomplishing.

The young one snaps to his own circumstances and curses himself silently. What in the world was he doing, exactly? Admiring the very thing that would give him his end in just a few short minutes?
As he is marched up to the mountain, he grimaces a bit. Whatever the beauty far away tries to show, it is hot as hell around this thing. Though completely natural for a volcano--which is what this royal mountain's appearance hid to those afar--it is uncomfortable to a mortal who had lived his life in the city of Cha'rik!

The boy's well groomed hair is suddenly grabbed, his head yanked back with a dull pop that the whole five heard. Understandably, after noticing that his neck isn't broken, he cries out and almost snaps,
"Let go of my head! What do you think you're doing, you're just supposed to leave me!"

A low voice near the boy's pointed ear brings almost scalding hot breath to the boy's pale white flesh,
"I think, whelp, that you speak to the wrong person..." the voice becomes louder, more authoritarian, "...and that all of you are liable to be burnt into the ashes from which all of you came, on the foolish error of trespass!"

Four of the five swordsmen whirl around to look over the boy's head, and they all draw weapons. One finally brought forth the courage to speak,
"There is no need to threaten us, we come to deliver the sacrifice to this holy place," he gestures toward the boy, "Erreis here, he is of the finest family in Cha'rik, well educated and well groomed for this day. He will bring this moun--"

"This child is supposed to be a sacrifice?" scoffs the owner of the voice, slinging the boy forward as if aiming for the very rock that Erries cracks his head against. As every movement from the boy became slack, the ivory haired elf who had shoved him narrows eyes that burn with the fury of Mount Telei, "You would sacrifice a whelp which could not even protect himself from an inanimate stone!?"

It was then that a universal "oh shoot" look passed between the swordsmen. There was only one thought needed between them--"oh zepf, we angered it"--before they brought forth their shields. With a dark laugh, the white headed one steps forward towards them; his moonlit hair the only way that they could tell since his clothing was near impossible to make out from the shadows upon the rocks.

"Do you truthfully think," he began in a disarming tone, as he continued his all too steady pace forward, "that if I weren't in for a little game about right now, those shields are going to do you any good?"

Erries regained his consciousness in enough time to watch as the white haired one, without another word, stretch his arm toward the group palm forward and leisurely release a small burst of magma and flame at them. The boy's jaw dropped as he watched one of the swordsmen melt, unable to avoid the magma burst that had landed at his feet or avoid a melting death.


Not sticking around to watch one of their own practically melt until nothing remained, the other four swordsmen turned tail and fled.
"Y...you killed him! You killed him!! I know you're a volcano spirit, but y--"

"Shut it, brat."

"But you k--"

Again the volcano elemental cut Erreis off, replying boredly,
"I'd be much more pitying if he hadn't been an illusion I placed about midway through your trip. You can't tell me you didn't see the green haired elf with cat eyes can you?" he turns and frowns at Erries, his red eyes glowing brightly in this darkness again, "You can stay here for the rest of the night. If I don't find you gone before then..."

"B-but why didn't you..?"

With a smirk, the volcano spirit answers almost as if supplying the punchline to a joke,
"Sacrificing people inside the crater here makes everything smell. Leave before noon tomorrow." After a brief flicker of red, Erreis finds himself alone on the rocks in the blackness of night.