The Villain Professor's Second Chance-Chapter 709: The Elven War Prep (2)

The shift of language felt physical; consonants rang like hammered bronze, vowels curved with the hush of unfurling petals. The chamber's root membranes dimmed in reverence, recognizing ancestral cadence even if many present had never mastered it. Quills stilled. The half-elves dared not breathe.

"Elarith Quor marches not to conquer—but to reclaim," Draven intoned. His voice was low, measured, as though reading from stone tablets older than the hall itself. "Their king lies beneath broken crowns, yet priests remember. They knot rite to root, will to wound. What birthright once slipped between their fingers, they now seek to grasp by breaking bonds."

His pronunciation held flawless lilt: that precise glottal stop after rith, the soft fade of will into wound. Elders leaned forward unconsciously, some lips moving in quiet echo as if desperate to taste forgotten syllables. A single tear tracked down Lievalan's weathered cheek—nostalgia or awe, Sylvanna could not tell.

The silence that followed was not absence but saturation. Even the living floor appeared to hush, blue luminescence subduing into gentle grays, as though the wood itself bowed.

Vaelira broke the spell. She stepped from her place on the outer ring, bootheels striking each membrane tile with muted drumbeats. Her presence cut a clear path; elders shifted to give her orbit space.

"His words are sound." Her Elharn carried the crisp edge of battlefield orders, yet ringed with respect. "The forest stirs not for comfort—but for action. He speaks in storm. And storm is what we face."

A ripple of reluctant assent followed her declaration. The warwarden's vine-threaded chestplate tightened as he inhaled, then eased. He offered Draven the barest incline of his head—warriors' recognition, nothing more.

Scribes resumed scratching, but quicker now, as though afraid to miss the next thunderbolt.

Draven reclaimed the map. His fingertips brushed the crystal; the lattice surged into sharper relief, red motes jerking in response to an unseen directive. He spoke again—soft, crisp, deadly efficient. "We strike their supply route. Whispergrove Chasm." Sap-lines rearranged at his command, revealing a shadowed gorge hidden beneath overlapping branches. "Old path. Off-warded. Vulnerable."

He moved markers. Quick, clean strokes.

"Ambush point here—" Draven's fingertip landed on the cobalt-outlined gorge like a spear tip, "—tight entrance, blind bend, rock wall on the lee side. Light units in the treetops, heavier fighters mask their approach under root overhangs. Raiding vines were seeded last season for soil retention; we tap their sinew, guide the coils, and pull the first supply wagons off the path before the rear scouts even smell sap-burn."

He paused long enough for every elder eye to track the tiny knot of blue he'd nudged forward—an icon no bigger than a blink-moth. A pulse of pale light blossomed around it, projecting faint latticework that showed elevation change and density of ancient cedar trunks. The clarity of the model left no room to argue; one could almost hear the creak of wagon wheels and the hiss of tensioned vine whips ready to snap.

"If we don't cut their warfeeds now," he added, voice calm as iced steel, "we bleed later—slow, certain, like bark stripped section by section."

A younger captain—barely past her first century, braid pins still bright with undeclared honors—shifted her weight. "And the scouts? Blink-stags are ghost-fast. We clip one patrol, three more scatter beyond net range."

The moment her words touched air, every head in the circle pivoted back to Draven. He did not sigh, but the set of his shoulders suggested he wanted to. Instead he glanced at the Warden—a silent communion that took half a breath.

"I asked for cavalry scouts from Verenthal," Draven said, fingers tapping once on a marginalia corner of the map. "Windriders could have mirrored the blink-stags' acceleration over rough ground. Request"—he flicked an eyelid toward the warwarden—"denied."

Leather plates creaked as the Warden bristled. His vine-thread harness twitched, thorns glinting. "This," he rumbled, each consonant like bark tearing from trunk, "is an elven war."

Draven's reply came in a smile stripped of warmth or mockery. A mathematical expression satisfied to balance itself. "Then elven blood will have to sprint."

A hush settled—dense enough Sylvanna heard her own pulse echo at the back of her throat. The map's faint hum became audible, as if the magic itself waited for permission to keep breathing.

Draven lifted two pale stones, each engraved with sinuous sigils. He placed them north and south of the ambush mark, then rotated them until their etched runes aligned. Tiny light-bridges arced, indicating projected lines of retreat and reinforcement. "We'll compensate by installing echo obelisks here and here—" he tapped—"to smear their scout-calls. Sound will refract in loops. They'll think their fellows already engaged on another front."

An elder with moon-silver robes raised a cautionary hand. "Sound-masks risk disrupting our own horns."

"Correct," Draven said. "Signal will default to pulse-flash—three beats azure, one beat void. Any unit blind to that code is a liability you should not mourn."

Murky exhalations rippled around the circle—shock or admiration, hard to parse. Sylvanna read it as a mix: fear of the ruthlessness, awe at the precision.

The army…

She pictured it while Draven spoke: Vine Vanguard formations marching in verdant cloaks, Ashleaf Guard with bark-steel shields wide as doors, Moonflame Sentries in robes spattered with alchemical embers. All pureblood lineages. All bearing twenty-generation sigils. Formidable, yes—but brittle in their shared tradition.

The half-elves were already invisible. They lined the chamber edges in mouse-quiet rows—recording, polishing weapon grips, ferrying pitcher water no elder touched. Not one voice invited their tactication; not one sapphire gaze acknowledged the shortness of their ears unless to measure discrepancy.

Sylvanna's chest tightened. She'd worn that brand of silence once—favored it, even, when anonymity let her buy contraband organs in back-alley markets. But anonymity chosen was not the same as anonymity enforced. These half-elves lived on the thin rung of grudging tolerance: accepted labor, forgettable sacrifice.

Even the exiles who'd trickled into her provisional unit carried that look—shoulders rounded inward, eyes hopeful for a redemption they doubted. They followed her because her rune-lit forearms meant council attention; if they fell within her radius, maybe their names would echo once before fading.

The moment the council dismissed, conversations fractured into cliques of lineage. Sylvanna slipped free and threaded through hushed knots of commanders until the outer treeflame's glow kissed her cheeks. Sparks from the ceremonial brazier drifted upward, catching on her lashes like fiery gnats.

Near the trunk's base a cluster of supply recruits checked harness buckles. One girl—scarcely older than sixteen summers—struggled with a strap knot. Her ears curved only a finger-length, no House braiding, armor borrowed and ill-fitted. Sylvanna knelt.

"Here," she murmured, fingers deft. She tightened the strap, knotted it twice, trimmed the excess leather with a belt blade. Close work let her see the mottled bruise at the girl's collar—training accident or prejudice, Sylvanna couldn't know.

The half-elf started when she realized who helped her. Green eyes widened, then fell. "I—I didn't mean to call—"

"You volunteered for my unit?" Sylvanna kept her voice low, float-soft to avoid spooking.

A shaky nod. Then the girl's shoulders slumped, armour clanking. "If I die under you," she whispered, voice splintering, "maybe they'll write me into the scrolls."

A cold, brittle silence filled Sylvanna's lungs. Words jammed behind her teeth—anger, promise, sorrow—but Raëdrithar's heartbeat brushed her mind, slow and steady, dropping like water on smoldered coal. Calm. Purpose. Storm-held.

She inhaled that rhythm, let it hold her rage steady. "You won't die as ink," she said finally. "Stay at my shadow, watch my shoulders. The forest will remember your breath, not your absence."

The girl stared—half disbelief, half hunger for conviction—then nodded and melted back to her tasks.

Sylvanna spun away, fists clenching. "If I must earn their place by deed," she muttered to herself, "then I will burn the forest with proof."

Night draped its velvet mantle. The chamber lights flickered out one by one until only root-veins glowed beneath platforms like buried constellations. Sylvanna's feet carried her along familiar threads, guided more by bond-tug than memory, until the walkway opened onto the Guardian roost.

Raëdrithar stood before she reached him, vast shoulders breaking starlight. Thunder flickered beneath his pelt, outlining muscle ridges in faint cerulean. His breath fogged the chill night as tiny pinwheels of white sparks spiraled upward, drawn to an unseen orbit around branched antlers.

A newborn glyph ringed those antlers—intricate loops of azure that pulsed in time with Sylvanna's rune. Storm of Choice. The sight pinned her breath.

She raised one trembling hand. Blue fire curled along her nails but did not burn. The glyph brightened as her fingertips brushed the lowest arc.

Her vision shattered— then rebuilt around a realm awash in crimson.

Roots writhed overhead like veins starved of oxygen, strangling trunks until bark split and bled sap the color of dried blood. Trees that once reached for moonlight now bowed inward, forming a cage of grieving limbs. The ground pulsed, sickness traveling in shuddering waves.

Across a clearing slick with black resin stood a Guardian. Its frame mirrored Raëdrithar's height, but where his fur shifted in calm stormlight, this creature's hide was gnarled bark fused with molten iron. Razored runes carved along each rib glowed sick orange. Sparks—no, embers—leaked from joints like slow tears.

On its back: a rider. Elven ears tapered elegantly, braids coiled in patterns of high nobility. Armor of scorched boneplate hugged a lean frame. She sat tall, one hand resting on a hilt carved of blightwood, the other holding a chain threaded directly into her Guardian's flesh. No strain marred her posture; she wore parasitic dominance as easily as breath.

The rider raised her face to the dream sky. And Sylvanna saw herself.

Not a mirror image—features shifted by bloodlines perhaps shared three or four generations back—but unmistakably kin. High cheekbones, wide mouth kept stern, eyes the same pale amber gone feral under emberlight.

The revelation punched air from Sylvanna's lungs. She tasted copper—fear, maybe, or memory.

A name rose, unbidden, as though spelled by the throb of corrupted earth:

Virellionn.

Breaker of Oaths.