The sky-fallen one slept. Deeply. His breathing, which had been shallow and ragged when I brought him here, had evened out, the harsh lines of pain around his mouth softening in the dim glow of the moss-light. He lay curled on the guest furs, his unfamiliar form a stark contrast to the organic curves and textures of my dwelling. His clothes, what remained of them, were strange – thin, flimsy fabric, utterly unsuited for the Weirdwood, or any true wilderness. I had cleaned the worst of the mud and blood from them while he slept, but they were beyond repair. I would need to find him something more suitable if he was to venture out again.
His name, Alex Maxwell, echoed strangely in my mind. It was a harsh, angular sound, like the clanking of Lowlander metal, so different from the flowing, melodic names of my people. And yet, the forest had whispered it to me clearly, plucked from the chaotic torrent of his thoughts as I'd carried him from the Stalker's kill-site. His mind was… loud. Unshielded. A raw, open wound of fear, confusion, and a bewildering array of images from a world I could scarcely comprehend – towering structures of cold stone and gleaming metal, horseless chariots that moved with impossible speed, small, flat boxes that glowed with captured light and spoke with many voices. A world so far removed from the rhythms of the Weirdwood, it felt like a fever dream.
And the power. That was the greatest enigma.
I had watched him from the high branches as he'd blundered into the Stalker's territory. My initial intent had been only to observe this new anomaly, this… sky-fallen, as the elders sometimes called those who appeared as if from nowhere, torn from other realities by the thinning veils or the unpredictable surges of raw magic that sometimes swept through the deeper parts of the forest. They were rare, and often did not survive long. This one, though… this one was different.
His first encounters with the Stalker had been clumsy, almost comical in their desperation. He moved like a newborn fawn, all flailing limbs and panicked energy. But then, those jumps. One moment he was there, the next, elsewhere, with no discernible passage through the intervening space. It wasn't the Blink-Step of the Shadow Dancers, nor the Phase-Shift of the Rift Mages. It was something else. Rawer. More primal. And when he'd finally made that impossible leap into the high branches of the Ironwood, a feat that should have been beyond any unaugmented being, I knew this was no ordinary lost traveler.
The energy he exuded when he performed these feats was… unique. It felt like a crackle in the very air, a scent of ozone and something else, something wild and untamed, like the heart of a storm barely contained. It was not a magic I recognized from the Weave of the forest, nor the cold, sterile energies of the Technocrats, nor the blood-fueled sorceries of the Iron Hordes. It was his own. And it was potent. Terribly so. Yet, he wielded it like a child playing with a sunstone – with no understanding of its true nature, its dangers, or its cost. Each jump seemed to tear at him, leaving him disoriented and weakened.
I had not intended to intervene directly. The laws of the Weirdwood are harsh but simple: the strong survive, the weak perish, and the forest endures. But when the Stalker began to dig, its patience wearing thin, and I saw the utter despair in the sky-fallen's eyes, the resignation to a slow, agonizing death… something shifted within me. The forest, too, seemed to hold its breath. His thread, as I had told him, was not yet meant to be cut. It was a strong feeling, a clear note in the symphony of the Weave, and one I could not ignore. An arrow, loosed with the skill of generations, had been a simple thing.
Bringing him here, to Tel'Syth, my home-tree, had been more complicated. He was heavier than he looked, and his unconsciousness made him a dead weight. But the Silvanesti are strong, our lives spent in the high canopy, and the paths through the Weirdwood are as familiar to me as the lines on my own hand. I avoided the patrols of both Lowlander factions – their presence an ever-increasing blight on the edges of our domain – and the more… esoteric dangers that lurked in the deeper shadows.
Cleaning his wounds had been an intimate, unsettling task. The gashes from the Stalker's claws were deep, ragged. His skin, pale compared to my own, was surprisingly resilient, yet it had torn easily. The scent of his blood was different too – sharper, more metallic than elven blood. As I applied the poultice of Moonpetal and Sun-Moss, I could feel the faint, residual thrum of his strange energy, even in its depleted state. It was like touching a dormant volcano, a sense of immense power held in abeyance. The bioluminescent patterns on my own skin had prickled and glowed brighter in response, a rare occurrence, usually only happening when I was deep in the Weave or near a place of significant power.
What was he? Where had he truly come from? His jumbled thoughts spoke of a world called 'Earth', of lightning, of a sudden, violent end that was not an end. Reincarnation? A soul torn from its path and thrust into a new vessel in a new world? Such things were spoken of in the oldest legends, but I had never encountered proof. Until now, perhaps.
He called himself a "photographer." The concept was alien. Capturing moments? Freezing time in a small, flat box? It sounded like a strange, trivial sort of magic. Yet, his memories of it were filled with a passion that was almost… reverent. He chased storms, he said in his mind. He sought beauty in chaos. An odd pursuit for one who seemed so ill-equipped to handle the true chaos of this world.
His fear was palpable, a raw, acrid scent in the air of my dwelling. But beneath it, I sensed something else. A stubborn resilience. A flicker of that same storm-chasing spirit. He had faced death, a battlefield, and a Gloom Stalker, and he was still here. Broken, terrified, but alive. That counted for something.
My people, the Silvanesti, have always been wary of outsiders. The Lowlanders, with their endless wars and their disregard for the balance of the forest, have taught us caution. The Iron Hordes, with their brutal strength and their dark, consuming magics, are a constant threat. The Sunstone Technocrats, with their cold logic and their machines that scar the earth and choke the air, are perhaps even more insidious in their own way. We have remained hidden, a whisper in the heart of the Weirdwood, for centuries, guarding the ancient places, tending the Weave.
But this sky-fallen… he was not like them. He was lost, adrift. And he possessed a power that could, if understood, if harnessed, be a significant weight on the scales of fate. Or, if left untamed, could consume him and cause untold damage.
The Elders would need to be informed. They would not be pleased. Another outsider, another unknown variable in a world already teetering on the brink. Some would call for his immediate expulsion, or worse. The Silvanesti valued balance above all, and this Alex Maxwell was a profound imbalance.
I looked at his sleeping face. The lines of stress were still there, etched deep, but there was a vulnerability too, a childlike quality in the way his hand was curled near his cheek. He was so… human. Fragile, in his own way, despite the power that churned within him. His lifespan, I knew from the echoes of his thoughts, would be a fleeting thing compared to my own, a bright, brief spark.
What was my role in this? Huntress, guardian, yes. But rescuer? Mentor? The thought was unsettling. I was used to solitude, to the silent companionship of the forest. This… this was different. There was a pull, a curiosity that went beyond mere assessment of a potential threat or asset. That moment when our eyes had met, when he had asked who I was, his voice raw with fear and a dawning awareness – I had felt a connection, a strange resonance. As if two disparate threads in the Great Tapestry had suddenly, unexpectedly, brushed against each other.
He stirred in his sleep, a soft murmur escaping his lips, a word in his own harsh tongue. His brow furrowed, and for a moment, the fear returned to his face. I reached out, instinctively, and gently brushed a stray lock of his dark hair from his forehead. My fingers, with their faint bioluminescent tracings, lingered for a moment on his skin. It was warm, alive. The contact sent a faint, unfamiliar tingle up my arm.
I withdrew my hand quickly, a strange heat rising in my own cheeks. Such a gesture was… uncharacteristic. I was a warrior, a sentinel of the Weirdwood, not a nursemaid to lost sky-fallen. Yet…
The forest had whispered that his thread was not yet meant to be cut. And the forest was rarely wrong. My path, it seemed, was now intertwined with his, at least for a time. I would tend his wounds, offer him what sustenance and shelter I could. And I would watch. I would learn. The sky had sent a storm-chaser into our midst. I wondered what tempests he would unleash, and whether the Weirdwood, and my people, would be ready for them.
For now, he needed rest. And I needed to prepare. The sun would soon touch the highest leaves of the canopy. A new day was coming to the Weirdwood. And with it, new uncertainties. I picked up my leatherwork again, my fingers moving with their accustomed skill, but my thoughts, like the swirling patterns in the wood of my home, were far from settled. The sky-fallen one was a puzzle, a danger, and perhaps… something more. Only time, and the wisdom of the forest, would tell.