The Illness

As Arne's eyes follow the white glowing lines he is interrupted by the compassionate voice of his mother.

"Good morning honey," she says, standing up from her modest garden before awkwardly shifting in her shoes. She takes off her gloves.

"I'm sorry. I should have told you about your heritage before you fused with your status card. I hope it wasn't too much of a shock for you."

Arne stares at her blankly for a moment pondering a response in his head. 'She had the best in mind for me, so there's nothing to be done now,' he smiles. Arne hugs his mother and in the embrace he tells her:

"Nothing has changed Mom. After all you are still my mother, and Roger and Lily are my siblings no matter what anyone says."

Rena wipes the growing tears from her eyes and laughs shakily before replying:

"Thank you for understanding my sweet boy. I only wanted to protect you." She steps away from the hug before ruffling Arne's hair.

"Gods know how many people you would have told with that loose tongue of yours."

"Mom!"

"Oh, you know it's true! Might've told the king himself if he came through town, gods forbid."

Arne's cheeks puffed and his eyebrows turned downwards. Despite being slightly upset, he only ended up looking goofy.

"Don't look at me like that Arne, I didn't want to take any risks at all what with the war and all. After losing James to the war, I didn't want to loose you as well. Our king was at war with the Wand Kingdom, and he wanted the "blight of magic" removed from his kingdom. He saw all elves as cancerous, he sent his soldiers to-"

Arne snapped out of his play-anger and quickly pulled her into another embrace to ease her shaking.

"It's fine now Mom. The war was over before I even went to school, I remember Granny coming over to celebrate." Arne patted her back as she wept.

Within a few moments, Rena broke away had regained her composure. "You sweet naïve boy. I've kept you waiting long enough, I'm sure Eli and Thea are worried about you."

"Alright Mom, I'll be back for dinner." Arne took off to meet with Eli and Thea, running backwards and waving towards his Mom until she was almost out of sight.

"Love you!" he shouted, just before dropping out of her vision. She smiled, wiped her eyes, put on her gloves and returned to work on her plants while humming a soft tune.

Arne's legs pounded the dirt with youthful vigor as he ran towards the town to meet up with Eli and Thea. Over the past few years, they have become thick as thieves and have gotten into all sorts of mischief. The have been bonded by the pain of Roger's training, and have become almost inseparable. Granny calls them the "Troublesome Trio" because they always come into her clinic battered and bruised expecting her to just go out of her way to help them heal (she still puts everything down to help them every time though).

Due to Arne and his mother's interaction at home, the matter of the white lines slipped his mind, and in a short time, like a memory, they faded.

The town eventually rose into Arne's view, the markets bustling with the morning crowd as townspeople buy their bread and fruits and farmers bring in their harvest to be sold. Medieval buildings are stacked together within organized patterns and mesh to form simple streets and complex alleyways, where unsavory business may occur. Along the roads, morning patrols march and training guards jog. Earlier that morning, hunting parties departed into the woods in order to gather fresh meat and pelts for the townspeople and the inhabitants of the barracks to be well fed. Down the road, a tall building, almost twice the size of the surrounding ones stood, and in front of it stood a large crowd of various peoples. The crowd was composed largely of human townspeople, but the odd short dwarf or hairy beastman or woman was not an unnatural sight.

Arne jogged up towards the crowd and stopped by the edges. He looked around the crowd but the only thing he could see was a dense wave of shoulders. Arne looked down at the less populated 'leg area' and came up with a clever plan. He got down to the ground and prepared to slither between the legs like a snake in the grass. As he lay prone, a handsome dark-haired and pale youth quietly walked up behind him.

"Have you no shame Arne? Get up and let's go get Thea before you embarrass me even more."

Arne shoots up to his feet to face him, only to be met with Eli's mocking smile.

"Shut up Eli" he says jokingly before continuing:

"I thought you'd be inside with Philip, you have never been a fan of the sunlight."

The blow did not go unrequited as Eli looked at him like he was stupid.

"It doesn't take much brainpower to tell my dad is busy right now Arne," he said before gesturing towards the large crowd.

"Right... Let's just get Thea and get to training."

Eli laughed as they started walking.

"Lily was going to show us some tricks she learned from Granny for magic training today wasn't she?" asked Eli.

"Yeah, Roger has been working at the lumber mill a lot more recently. So he doesn't have as much time to spend training with us anymore."

As Arne and Eli approached the corner where Thea normally would wait for them, they saw something that surprised them greatly. Nothing. Thea wasn't there. Arne and Eli looked to each other and decided to split up and look for her as they ran around the area, looking along the streets, in shops, and down alleyways. All they found were a few white rats.

After scouring the town, Arne and Eli ended up at the same place, the last place. The blacksmith's shop. Thea hated being here. As Thea opened up to Arne and Eli, they learned how much she hated the pounding of metal, and the metallic taste that the air had here. If it were up to her, she said, she would like to live in a spot like Arne's not too far from everything, but just isolated enough to have the crisp feeling of wilderness.

As Arne and Eli entered Thea's father's shop, they immediately noticed something incredibly strange. The was a stark lack of heat in the air. Arne ran into the back room only to find that the furnace was cold. Thea's father would normally be hammering steel at this hour, and the furnace wasn't even on? Strange couldn't describe what the shop felt like. It was grey. The orange heat and embers that used to float were absent, and all that remained were the cold steel weapons and armor laid out for customers to view, and treasured armors and weapons covered the walls, on display to show the skill of the smith.

"Thea?" shouted Eli, his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the sound.

No response. They stepped back into the main entrance, where the front desk sat, normally Thea's mother would be organizing papers or counting coins

"Thea!" Arne yelled.

No response.

Just as confusion had taken hold of the two even further, a sound was heard from above them. The door behind the front counter opened. Arne and Eli's heads whipped towards the door, and out stepped Thea's father. He walked around the counter and faced the two boys.

He was a hulking man, with arms as large as Arne or Eli's torso. In fact, he almost had trouble fitting through the doorway. He appeared to have enough strength to smith with his bare hands rather than using any hammer, but those massive arms provided an almost comical contrast to the size of his legs. Despite his legs being quite muscular they didn't look like legs that could hold up such an incredible upper body.

All of Arne and Eli's inner ridicule stopped immediately when they saw the face of Thea's father. It was a scarred, and a normally quite handsome one, but right now, it appeared as contorted and ugly. His face was scrunched and his eyes bloodshot. In fact, there was more red in his eyes than white. A torrent of tears exploded down his face and he collapsed into broken sobs into a puddle of his salty tears.

Arne and Eli stood in front of him shocked. They were completely still. Their minds were blank, until a torrent of questions as strong as the torrent of tears from the man's face began pouring into their minds. What happened? Is Thea's father alright? Where is Thea? Why is the shop closed? Why is Thea's father broken down? Their racing thoughts were cut short by the sound of a loud slap.

Thea's father had slapped himself. His face was redder than before, and his shaking had calmed somewhat, at least enough to speak.

A hoarse and gravelly voice rung out from Thea's father:

"Go get the old woman from the clinic. I'm in no state to do so. Tell her that my wife has fallen ill."

As he finished his sentence, he picked himself up, and he forced his face to return to normal. Albeit some redness still remained. His teeth were clenched hard enough for Arne and Eli to hear them grinding together. He slowly lumbered back upstairs.

Arne and Eli glanced at each other with pale faces, before they took off towards the clinic. As they arrived, they saw several people laid out on the ground outside the clinic, and as they entered, every cot was filled with someone with similar symptoms.

Arne and Eli sped around the clinic checking every room for Granny, and finally they found a small old woman applying some ointment to a patient's leg. Before she could even turn to see the disturbance Arne spoke up.

"Granny!" Arne cried, "the blacksmith's wife has fallen ill! By the looks of things we need to hurry!"

As soon as Granny heard Arne's voice she turned and set everything down. Faster than one would imagine from an old woman, she grabbed an armful of medicine and various medical tools and handed them to Arne, and then did the same for Eli.

"Carry those, I can't be sure of what she is sick with until I arrive, but if it is what I imagine," she glances towards the full cots of the clinic, "then we will need to hurry. Let's go!"

Granny, Eli, and Arne, took off towards the blacksmith's shop. As Arne left the clinic, he noticed a strange white aura around some of the patients' ankles.