Pinay: Remains

[King Ghidorah]

Pinay knelt beneath the hide awning of a lean-to, ensconced beneath the shade of a hoary old oak near the edge of her people's latest encampment. Sweat glistened in her emerald dreadlocks, shining upon the beads and bangles woven within. It trickled down the golden expanse of her forehead, furrowed in concentration as she moved her delicate hands carefully along the length of a damaged blade. The short, curved sword, its edge notched and blunted by vicious abuse, lay upon a flat slab of polished granite. 

She was stuck doing the mending again. 

Pinay didn't mind the work, exactly. There were no longer any Primes among the Oskinder wood-elves, so damaged weapons and equipment had to be repaired either by hand or by spell; the maid was talented with both. Her people rarely forged weapons using heat, preferring to shape metal with magic, coaxing it to find its function in the same way that a sculptor might find the shape within a stone. She'd been studying the process for nearly a century before her tribe was summoned to the Omniverse, and for all that it was taxing, Pinay also found it calming. There was, however, a fine line between 'calm' and 'bored', and there were other things she'd rather be doing; She was a watcher before she was a mender, and after seven hours spent re-weaving frayed plant fibers into wearable garments and reshaping sundered blades, the elf was getting restless.

The metal flowed beneath her fingers, softening and congealing, smoothing over cracks and fissures on the surface, soothing the symptoms of brutal stress that lay deeper within the blade. On the next pass, it began to form an edge.

Pinay sat back and sighed, breathing the cool scents of soil and stone and wiping her brow. The next part of the process was the hardest, and could be done almost as well using a whetstone - and in either case, she simply didn't have the mental energy for it right now. She stood up, brushing the dirt from the knotted grasses of her sleeveless smock, and retrieved the charms and bracelets that made up her Legend from the low table in the back of the hut. The accustomed weight of them was a small comfort that she missed while working, and it felt good to have them back.


Behind her, a familiar voice chimed in, friendly and half-teasing.

"I feel like there's something clever I should say about dull blades and you doing the mending again, but it's just not coming to me." 

Pinay turned, her mouth half-open for a retort, expecting that the next several minutes would be filled by flirting with Jushap, who was kinder than he seemed, and pretty enough to make up for his other shortcomings. 

Instead, she witnessed the end of the world.   

There was Jushap, standing tall and proud of himself, silver-haired, muscular, and dressed for a patrol with his spear resting jauntily against one shoulder - and backlit by an eruption of bright orange-white flames. A wall of sound washed over them both, riveting their attention as the burning cyclone expanded, grew, and solidified into the largest living creature either of them had ever seen. 

Three golden heads, wedge-shaped like those of snakes, each with a fan of ivory horns behind its jawline gazed joy and madness from atop long, sinuous necks. Bone spurs ran down the length of its multiple spines to a massive, muscular, armless torso graced by a pair of glorious, leathery golden wings. Powerful thighs flexed as it shifted its weight atop a set of catlike hind-legs, and two long tails thrashed.The entire beast was covered in scales of gold and bronze, shimmering, even in the overcast gloom. 

It was taller than the trees, much taller. For a moment, it filled Pinay's entire world.

She grabbed Jushap's hand and ran, nearly pulling the larger elf off his feet as she dragged him behind her. The mender didn't know where she was going, and in the back of her mind part of her knew she was panicking, that she should be ashamed for not doing something productive - anything - to help,  but every instinct she had was screaming: 'Escape! ' As she plunged into the forest, one among a veritable tide fleeing the three-headed beast, she heard a mighty crack:  the sound of enormous wingbeats, followed closely by explosions, screaming, and a warbling cackle, like the titanic laughter of a cruel child.

A sudden gust of gale-force wind knocked the fleeing elves off their feet, bringing with it an oppressive miasma of ozone and rot. It sent the pair sprawling hard atop a knot of tree-roots. The last thing Pinay saw before the heat and force of a golden gout of cosmic lightning hammered the awareness from her body was Jushap, pushing himself dazedly to his knees with the palms of his hands. He was illuminated so brilliantly by the monster's fire that she could clearly make out the shape of his skeleton; It shone black behind the halo of his burning skin. 

When she finally woke up, it took her almost an hour to stop screaming.

[King Ghidorah]

The elf's entire body hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could, terrified beyond reason or hope by what she'd see if she opened them; Pinay thought that she was dead - doomed to burn for her cowardice, trapped forever in a moment of senseless immolation. It wasn't until the pain, panic and confusion began to fade that she realized the hoarse, choking wails which seemed to come from all around her originated in her own beleaguered throat. 

Her screams trailed off into a long, rattling cough, and wisps of reason began to waft gingerly through her fevered brain. She opened her eyes, but her vision swam; All she saw was shifting colors, brown and green and white and grey. 

A thin-fingered hand touched her chest, just over her heart, a gentle-yet-firm pressure which encouraged her to lie back. Some far-off part of her recognized the textured sensation upon her recumbent back as a bed of fresh-cut grasses. A foreign presence whispered in the elf's mind, a distinctly female voice that breathed feelings of serenity, safety and friendship. It had, she realized, been there all along: exerting a benevolent influence, slowly calming her down.  

"Shhhhhh. Relax." 

Pinay opened her mouth to speak, but another coughing fit overtook her the moment she made the attempt - her larynx was still raw. A tingling warmth spread from the hand upon her sternum, soothing and bright, and the cough subsided. The voice in her head continued: 

"Don't try to speak: only thoughts - I'll hear you just fine. You've been through a lot, Pinay." 

Am I dead? 

The voice was silent for a moment, but the elf got the impression its owner was smiling. 

"No. Your injuries were appalling, almost beyond my power to heal, but you're out of danger now. You've been asleep for three days." 

What happened? 

The glad sensation vanished, replaced by a somber aura. Pictures stirred in Pinay's mind - the source of her pain, the impetus for the terrible conviction that had so recently consumed her. 

"Your people were attacked by King Ghidorah – the golden ravager of worlds."  

The three-headed dragon. I remember - We ran...Oh gods, Jushap!

She tried to sit up, but dizzinesss overtook her, and the attempt ended in black-spotted failure. She shut her eyes again. A quiet sob escaped her lips. 

“Rest for now. You'll be stronger tomorrow – then we'll talk.”

Pinay started to protest, but her thoughts were already growing fuzzy, gently coaxed by the comforting presence of the stranger in her head. Sleep reclaimed her. 

She dreamed of moths.

[King Ghidorah]

The next time Pinay awoke, her mind was calm and her eyes were clear. Her body still ached, but the pain had faded to a dull and distant throb. 

The hollow foundations of an enormous fallen tree loomed above her, which some enterprising person had converted into a passable sort of hut. A tangled, broken root-system, woven with sticks and reeds and sealed with clay arched overhead, sunlight streaming in through a single chimney-hole, providing shelter from the elements. A sort of hardened mud cement had been formed around a framework of sturdy wooden boughs and tightly braided vines to make a pair of curved, sturdy walls.  The builder had even taken the time to pack flat stones into the earthen floor, surrounding a firepit. A blanket was stretched across the door, trapping the the hut's damp, earthy scents of ash and decomposing wood. 

Beneath her was a bed of woven grasses, and she was naked except for a stained linen blanket. 

Pinay sat up, fighting down a wave of dizziness as the blood rushed to her head and spots swam before her eyes. She blinked hard to reset her focus, and vague memories of the previous night's wordless conversation flickered brightly in her mind. As far as she could tell, she was alone. She reached for the blanket, which had tumbled from around her slim shoulders when she stirred - and inhaled sharply at the sight of her arms. 

The elf's golden skin hosted a web of pale yellow scars, starkly visible even in the dimly sunlit hut. She was alternately wrinkled and smooth, a patchwork of textures and fractal-branching ridges telling a gripping story of hideous damage repaired. Suddenly frantic, Pinay kicked the blanket off herself, trying very hard to keep her breathing under control as she examined her body. Cautiously, horrified at what she might find, she touched her face with trembling hands; her brows, the top of her head. The damage was everywhere. She was as bald as a mountaintop stone: From head to toe the ridges and plains of leathery scarring covered every inch of her lithe, angular form save for the bottoms of her feet and her back. 

Her thoughts tumbled down into a pit of nauseating realization: the monster's breath had torn her flesh apart.

Pinay's breath quickened beyond her control, and her stomach clenched as though she'd been struck with a club. She curled into a ball, shaking and sweating as Jushap's final moments flashed in her minds eye, the heat and the smell so vividly real that she cried aloud. The former mender began to gasp for air, unable to relax her throat as a static born of senseless animalistic fear jammed her psyche.

Abruptly, she was no longer alone. A breath of cool air wafted through the elf's brain, cutting through the fires of panic. 

"Your're fine. You're safe. Breathe deeply, and slowly. I'm nearby, dear, and I'll be with you soon..." 

The helpful stranger's voice continued, calm and confident, but Pinay wasn't listening to the words. It was the presence that was important; The input made her brain move, allowed her act. She didn't even wonder that the words were inside her mind - telepathy wasn't unheard of among her people, and it just didn't seem important. 

Pinay focused on her diaphragm, forcing herself to take deep, shuddering breaths, and to hold them without gasping. Slowly, ever so slowly, her body began to relax. 

By the time the door to the hut was pushed aside, she'd put herself together enough to be desperately curious.

[King Ghidorah]

The elegant creature which floated into the hut wasn't at all what the beleaguered survivor had expected. She'd had only a vague picture in her mind of who her savior would turn out to be, but when that comforting presence had appeared her mind Pinay had imagined another elf.

She didn't know what it was that stood before her now.

It bore a strong resemblance to a human woman from the duchy of Sendai. It's body was tall and fit, with a round face, skin the color of sandstone at night, and a pile of shiny black hair pulled up in a bun, secured tightly with lacquered sticks. It even dressed like them, in a white robe with elaborate sleeves, each decorated with a large red circle, and a black strip of silken cloth wrapped around its midsection. There were other features, however, that made the creature impossible to mistake for human, in spite of its small, round ears.    

Just above its hairline, there was a pair of feathery antennae as long as Pinay's forearms. Two wide circles of green pigment, either tattoos or some sort of highly symmetrical birth-marks, surrounded a pair of compound-eyes like those of an insect; Resting within the sockets of an otherwise-humanoid face, they shimmered and pulsed with prismatic light, never blinking. Most noticeable of all, however, was the fact that its bare, dainty feet didn't quite touch the hut's earth-and-flagstone floor. The creature simply hovered, radiating comfort and alien sympathy, smiling quizzically.

Sitting on the ground wrapped in nothing but a blanket, Pinay suddenly felt very small. The two earthen walls and the guts of the fallen tree seemed less like a shelter and more like a trap. It occurred to her that she really didn't know anything about where she was, or the what this being wanted. 

For several minutes, neither of them said anything. The scarred elf fidgeted and squirmed, and eventually stood, although it took her three attempts. She fought down the black spots that swam before her eyes, making the room spin, and faced the stranger squarely. 

"Who are you?" the elf rasped, her larynx as scarred as the rest of her. 

"I'm called Mothra," the creature said. Out loud its voice was husky, lyrical and bright, humming pleasantly in its throat - though its face remained strangely impassive when it spoke. "I'm a prime, and a traveling healer - but that's not terribly important right now. Is there anything you need? Clothes? Food? You nearly died  - I'd imagine you're very hungry."

[King Ghidorah]

Now that the prospect of food had been presented to her Pinay realized she was absolutely ravenous. Her suspicious evaporated instantly in the face of a very basic need. 

"Yes," she said. "Please."

Mothra summoned a set of polished wooden bowls filled with seasoned meat and vegetables. Pinay watched the process intently, suffering a newfound awareness of the difference between the vacant ache in her stomach and the pulsing fatigue in her bones. The very moment the prismatic glow of active Omnilium faded the elf fell upon the rations as though she hadn't had a meal in years, crouching on the floor of the hut and eating with trembling hands.      

The healer descended, its pale feet finally touching the floor, but otherwise barely moved. Only its strange little smile twitched as it summoned its guest a set of bright red robes. 

"Take your time," Mothra said. "I'll be right here when you're ready to talk." 

When Pinay finished her meal, she put on the clothes without hesitation. The robes fit her well, hanging loosely around the arms and ending just below her knees. Finally fed and clothed, her ravaged body warmed by the circle of sunlight that poured in through the chimney-hole in the roof,  Pinay regained the power to think like more than a frightened animal. What, exactly, had happened? She remembered the monster, the attack, the flight from the Oskinders' camp and its horrible conclusion. But where was she now? And what had happened to the rest of her people? She'd only seen the beginning of Ghidorah's assault, and even that brief impression was overwhelming. She realized now that she'd actually been very lucky; It made her feel sick to imagine how many must have died, and she dreaded learning the names.  

Pinay turned to the mysterious healer, standing patiently beside the entrance to the little hut with its hands folded inside the sleeves of its robe. It had begun to hover again, only its toes remaining in contact with the floor as some unknown power bouyed it upward. 

"Thank you," the elf rasped, "For tending my wounds, and for the food, and the clothes. You've been very kind. But...  I'd like to rejoin my people. The survivors will have fled East, around the valley, towards the gate to the Nexus. I'm sure that they'll also need your help."  

Mothra's multifaceted eyes sparkled intently. Her heels returned to the floor, and her odd little smile evaporated. Pinay suddenly felt shaky and cold again, as though she were walking a rope over a very deep chasm beset by howling wind. Reflexively, she pulled her robe tighter around her shoulders.

"If you could take me to them..." 

She trailed off. The prime's almost-human face now wore a tiny, sad frown. The chasm yawned wider.

"They're here," the healer said. All of the brightness had left its voice. Then it said something else - Something that buzzed and burned. It was nonsense - impossible - turning the chasm to a caldera. A roar filled Pinay's mind, hot and wet behind her eyes. There was a thought that was trying to come, something that she had just been told, but every part of her was rejecting it. The feeling was different from the psychological static of panic, or the ephemeral pangs of fear and hunger - it was bigger, unimaginably so, and the weight of it was grinding her soul. 

The elf stood completely still for several minutes, staring at nothing. Then in a sudden burst of manic urgency, she shouldered past Mothra, tearing aside the curtain, and stumbled out into the sunlight. 

***

Outside, the reek of scorched earth and the sour stench of ashes was overpowering. The ground was hot, and covered in a thick layer of fine soot, shining off-white in the midday sun. The hut stood at the edge of a broad clearing in the middle of a desolate forest - a tangled expanse of dead trees, uprooted, shattered, and charred black. A single enormous mass of charcoal lay half-sunken among the drifts of ash and cinder, the trunk of a much larger plant, long fallen but only recently burned, casting half the clearing into shadow. The only indication that anything living remained in the world was a line of green on the horizon, separating the cloudless blue sky from this scorched waste.

Pinay walked as though in a trance, a single point of brilliant red and tarnished gold upon an ocean of lifeless gray. Ashes whispered like sand around her scarred ankles as, unseeing, she circled around a depression in the blanket of soot which outlined a three-toed footprint the size of a covered wagon. 

Over the course of unknown hours, the elf's aimless feet carried her the length and breadth of the clearing, all around it and back again. Slowly, she began to see what was around her, details swept up and added to the white-hot clamor of this horrible living dream. Here there was a broken spear, resting in the ashes, still clutched in a charred golden hand. There was a lean-too, fallen and coated with ash, but miraculously unburned. And here she tripped over a rock, which upon closer inspection was a skull, too delicate to be human and too small to belong to an adult.

As the sun sank lower, she began to see faces in the ashes, hands and feet - some she was sure she was imagining, but too many, far too many, were real. Clutching weapons. Staring at nothing. Reaching out for help that would never come.

The last Oskinder wood-elf choked, stumbling to her knees, as a tiny notion of what this place was and what it meant finally penetrated through to her core. She almost laughed at the absurdity of it. All of her people, everyone she knew, children, parents, friends, lovers, just objects now: Broken props in a mad pantomime put on by a demented, evil god. The only thing that kept her from giving in to the urge was some distant echo of a woman who had been happy. It whispered from within a mental furnace that swirled ever faster, told her that if she even began to chuckle, if she pursued that brimming tide of hideous clarity, she'd become irretrievably insane. 

Pinay felt a hand on her shoulder, and a comforting presence at her back. 

"I'm sorry," said Mothra.

[King Ghidorah]

Pinay didn't respond, at first. A wind kicked up, kissing her scarred face with flakes of charcoal and sending wavy wisps of gray dust skittering across the ashen dunes. The healer began to speak again, but its patient interrupted. 


"Please," she wheezed, barely whispering through the lump in her throat. "Don't."  

Hovering behind her, Mothra stared, looking down at the elf with her mutifaceted rainbow eyes. Reluctantly, the hybrid prime pulled its hand away. Its white robes and feathery antennae fluttered in the breeze.

"... I understand.  I have business in the valley anyway - things I need to attend to in order to prevent Ghidorah from doing this again." 

It began to drift away, floating backwards across the fields of ruin, its billowing robes evoking ancestral tales of diaphanous spirits. "I'll leave food and water in the hut, and my servants will arrive here soon. If you need anything at all, just call for them - they'll hear you. I'll return soon, Pinay." 

Pinay absorbed her savior's words without comment. Several minutes later there was a distant rustling sound, and a sudden sense of vacancy overtook the clearing once more. The elf was alone again. 

She rose to her feet. Her legs and the hems of her crimson robe were caked with ash, but she didn't care. The firestorm consuming her thoughts had begun to contract, growing hotter as it shrank, forming sharp, icy, mechanical edges in the mental spaces it left behind. Slowly they whirred into measured, painful, motion.

She was the only survivor. That meant there were things she had to do.   

***

Pinay didn't gather the bodies. 

Leaving aside the impracticality of digging through mounds of ashes and fallen trees in futile search for hundreds of corpses, she would just have to bury them again anyway. In time this forest would heal, and her people would be a part of it. Besides, Oskinder death-rituals were tribal events. They were times for the various clans to come together, to remember the one who had passed, and celebrate their return to the earth - but there was nobody left for Pinay to grieve with, and what few ceremonies and remembrances there were which could be performed by just one elf were woefully inadequate.

A jangling selection of alternative options rattled and clicked through the rudimentary machinery of her trauma-forged mind - but only one of them felt right.  

She wandered until dusk, picking and digging through the ashes and debris for representatives from each of her tribe's four clans: the Dalren, who kept secrets; The Peshti, who knew woodcraft better than anyone else; The Oskine, who were insufferable, but also clever - and Pinay's clan, the Uln, known for their mastery of nature-magic and skill in battle. There had been five clans once, before Diablo's war, supporting each other, like the fingers of a hand...

All gone now. All five, gone....  

She was careful not to dwell on the faces, friends, family, rivals and enemies wearing the masks of sleeping strangers. The elf checked their legends, their personal jewelry denoting their various relationships and skills instead, until she had gathered a complete set of Oskinder clan bracelets - circlets of obsidian or jade, amber or malachite interwoven with blue glass beads. As the sun dipped below the horizon, she sat down among the ashes and carefully unraveled the bracelets, removing the blue beads from each, then re-wove them and put them on, two on each arm, in no particular order. 

Under more normal circumstances there was only one reason for an Oskinder to wear the jewelry of the dead - it was a sign that somebody close to them had unfinished business, and they had been elected, as a valued friend or family-member, to see it concluded. In those cases it was typically more specific parts of the dead elf's legend that were assumed by the surviving party - earings, or talismans from the deceased's hair, with certain beads removed to indicate that the owner was no longer among the living. When the business was finished, the elf would remove the excess jewelry and burn it in a small stone bowl, then sprinkle the ashes upon the owner's grave.

Pinay didn't ever intend to take these bracelets off. They bore the stolen futures of her entire tribe, and they felt lighter than she thought they should - especially because by donning them, she'd taken on a terrible responsibility:
In the case of murder, wearing the victims jewelry carried the burden of seeing justice done.

[King Ghidorah]

***

Following a brief search - she'd used the burned remains of the fallen forest titan that had once sheltered her people's campgrounds as a landmark - the Oskinder located the remains of her clan's district beneath the mounds of silken ash that filled the clearing. Several hours of mechanically persistent excavation later,  she unearthed what was left of their armory. Most of it was destroyed beyond repair, but after half a night spent rooting around Pinay managed to scavenge a serviceable glaive, and a near-complete set of leather armor. 

When Mothra returned, it found its erstwhile patient kneeling on the floor of the hut with a cold, manic glint in her eye, covered from head to toe in soot as she ran her hands over a ruined leather cuirass; The boiled and molded plates of hardened hide were gray and brittle from their long soak in the hot ashes. Pinay worked by the moonlight streaming in through the chimney-hole in the stick-and-adobe ceiling, aided by her naturally-excellent night-vision as she coaxed the armor back to soundness through subtle acts of sorcery.

The prime's compound eyes glittered, taking in the blackened polearm propped in the corner and the half-repaired assembly of leather mail: greaves and boots, gauntlets, pauldrons and breastplate laid out upon the floor. Struck by curiosity and foreboding, it reached out with its mind and brushed the surface of the elf's thoughts.

Pinay felt the contact, a rush of comfort and concern. She finished with the cuirass and looked up at her benefactor. 

"No," said Mothra, urgency coloring her lyrical tones.

Pinay's eyes blazed. "What else," she croaked. "Could I possibly do?" 

The diaphanous healer shook it's head. Moonlight glittered off the lacquered sticks pinning back its sable hair. "He'll kill you, Pinay. Think about what happened. King Ghidorah is a Prime and a Monster, in the purest and most terrible sense of the word. How do you intend to fight him?"

Pinay looked at her gathered armaments and frowned. The truth was, she didn't really have any plan - just a horrible sense of desperate need. If she tried to leave this heinous crime behind, if she didn't find some way to act, she would die, that much she knew for certain. Something with her face might continue on for a while, but nothing could hate itself as much as that pitiable creature would and still survive for long. And then Ghidorah's work would be complete. 

"I'll get stronger," she said.

Mothra knelt beside her and put a dainty hand on her scarred, ash-caked face. Pinay felt the insectoid hybrid's presence waft through her brain, like silk curtains drifting on a warm autumn breeze. 

"There's nothing I can do to change your mind," it said, breaking the contact and frowning sadly. Its antennae drooped. 

"No," the elf agreed, and returned to her work. Mothra watched in silence, thinking. Half an hour went by disturbed only by the creaks and groans of mending leather and the whisper of the wind outside.  

The peace was finally broken when Mothra came to a decision. It stood up and sighed - a low, breathy chittering reminiscent of a snoring songbird. "I'd hoped you'd be able to grieve, and move on - but I suppose if that's not to be, I'll just have to give you what help I can." 

Pinay put down the gauntlet she'd been cajoling and looked her benefactor in its prismatic eyes. Two-dozen reflections looked back at her. 

"I can't leave this area," Mothra continued. "Ghidorah has made the eastern valley his territory for the time being, and the inhabitants are... shortsighted. I'm going to be needed. However, I can offer you some advice: go to the floating city of Dalaran. If there's a place in the Omniverse with a higher density of clever people looking for shortcuts to tremendous power, I don't think I want to know about it. If you're careful, and you meet the right people, it may be your best hope."

The elf didn't say anything, but a tiny smile flickered across her lips.

***

The next morning, Pinay made a bizarre discovery: During the night, while she'd knelt over her labors, someone had, for lack of a better term, tidied up the clearing. 

It was still a charred ruin, covered in drifts of steaming ashes, but the horrific tableau of bent limbs, blackened bones and agonized faces poking almost comically from beneath the strata of burned debris had been replaced by row upon dignified row of charcoal cairns, each one crowned by a cluster of delicate green saplings.

There was only one person who could have done it, though Pinay couldn't imagine how, and she was too overcome with gratitude to ask; Mothra must have summoned the infant trees, but omnilium wouldn't have helped it gather the bodies and pile the charcoal. For the first time, it occurred to the elf that her benefactor might be more than just a healer. 

She stayed with Mothra for a week, recovering, and preparing herself for her journey, and trying to find a way to grieve. As the days passed and the immediate trauma began to fade, the elf's mind became clearer - but the white-hot core of disbelief, sadness and apocalyptic anger still floated like a miniature sun, undiminished in her brain, flaring brighter every time she went outside. The Oskinder's every thought bent around it now, illuminated by its sickly glow; In the vulnerable moments of repose, when she initiated the restorative meditations which served her kind in lieu of sleep, it would whisper an endless litany of faces and names, half-drowned by lightning and monstrous, childish laughter. For the first four days it was only with her benefactor's assistance that she was able to achieve any rest at all. 

On the evening of the seventh day, beneath the gray light of an overcast sky, Mothra drifted into the clearing following one of its mysterious errands. It found Pinay standing among the graves. She was dressed in her ash-stained leather armor, glaive nestled against her shoulder.  Flashes of padded green cloth were visible beneath the plates: a gambeson, gloves and leggings summoned by the Prime at Pinay's request. She wore a satchel over one shoulder, filled with various supplies - another product of the mysterious creature's kindness.  

Mothra descended, hovering before its now-former patient. Its robes rippled in a breeze which carried the scent of distant rain.

"You're leaving," the healer said. 

Pinay nodded. "I can't stay here anymore, Mothra. You've been helpful beyond reason, but I have to go."

Mothra's antennae drooped. "I'd thought that maybe you'd change your mind after all - that perhaps you'd choose to go to Yggdrasil, to join your cousins in the Green. You're not a Prime, Pinay. The chances you'll succeed - that you'll even survive - are very small."

The elf was silent for a moment. She reached beneath her gauntlet and touched the bracelets nestled there. 

"I have to try," she said, and the ache in her voice made it clear that she meant it.

The healer's lips twitched, the briefest suggestion of a sad little smile crossing its otherwise largely-immobile features. The green circles around its eyes seemed to darken. 

"I understand. Follow me, then - if I still can't dissuade you, I can at least help you find your way. There's a path through this wreckage, but you'll have to watch your step."

[King Ghidorah]

***

Mothra led Pinay along a winding path, under fallen, broken trees, past polluted mires overflowing from the debris-choked river, and around drifted dunes of ash until eventually the wasteland gave way to moist, black soil and growing wood. For the first time in days, the sour tang of bygone fires left the elf's nose, replaced by the sweeter scents of a living forest. Shouldering her glaive, she turned to face the healer. 

"Thank you," she said. "For all that you've done for me. I hope we meet again." 

Her benefactor smiled sadly. "I hope so too. Good luck, Pinay. I wish you a happier future than the one you expect." 

The last Oskinder didn't know what to say to that, so she turned, and disappeared into the forest.

Mothra remained in that spot until it could no longer sense the thoughts of the traumatized elf, then turned back towards Harnburg valley and began to float away. It wondered what would become of its patient: Saving her life and seeing to her needs had been the least it could do after failing to arrive in time to save her people, but it was wise enough to know that the kind of help she needed now wasn't help it was qualified to give.

The healer's smile brightened. At least it had been able to point her away from Ghidorah, for the time being. With any luck at all, by the time Pinay felt ready to confront him the problem would already have been solved.