Dyrhildr: The Calm Before the Storm

We sit in the camp, massively arrayed, waiting for the final hour to approach. The humans act like they have been preparing for this moment all of their lives, but I know the elves know better. There is the unmistakeable smell of death here, and I will be surprised if one in ten--from either side--leaves this battle alive.

While the last time this darkness rose is so many generations gone for the humans that it has faded from even myth, heard of only by the most specialized of scholars, the myths remain among our kind. Diluted and told as children's stories, meant to frighten or to teach, but as we have all learned--some to our detriment--these stories were not just true in the abstract, but as real as the ground beneath our feet.

We remember, but that doesn't mean that we are ready for what comes tomorrow morning.

Those stories--once I sit down to analyze them--tell me that the last army that threw themselves against the Aboleth ended up shattered even as the staff was used. That power coaxes power--calls to it--and so nothing as significantly powerful as this thing can exist without having drawn other things along with it. What's more, I know that this Aboleth--despite its apparent weakness compared to the last time they rose--has one key advantage.

It knows everything about the last war, where we are only grasping at fragments and analyzing children's stories. It knows in vivid detail how they were brought down last time, and it has known this for thousands of years.

It will be ready. I can only hope that we are the same.