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Chapter 759: Chapter 780 The Raven Queen
"...You should have guessed by now." Tanya said with a complex expression, looking at Alamir, "After all, you are a true elf, and also a priest."
"Don’t get me wrong, I hold no prejudice against you, nor your patron. After all, the Lady of Fire I worship is not a member of the elf divine system." Alamir shook his head, "Although you are a half-elf, some traits are quite obvious, such as your white hair, but clearly not of Zoel bloodline..."
"What are you guys talking about?" Bruto finally couldn’t help it, "Please stop speaking in riddles, explain it..."
"For those who understand the situation, knowing my heritage would not make it difficult to deduce the identity of my mentor. We were not familiar enough before, so I didn’t reveal too much to you, but after everything we’ve been through, I think I indeed owe you a clear explanation..." 𝑛𝘰𝑣𝘱𝑢𝑏.𝘤𝑜𝘮
The half-elf gathered her white hair that draped over her shoulders, revealing her pointed ears adorned with seven or eight earrings. Lancelot also noticed that her skin had wrinkled a bit and was no longer as lustrous as before, as if she had aged over a decade in an instant; of course, this did not detract from her beauty, if anything, it made the half-elf even more charming than before.
"The elven part of my blood belongs to the Shado-Kai, also known as the shadow elves. They worship the Raven Queen, the listener of death, who is also my patron and mentor."
"The Raven Queen?" Lancelot furrowed his brows in confusion, "I don’t think I’ve heard of this deity before... Why does Alamir seem to be so wary of Her?"
"That’s something you’ll have to ask the elf himself." Tanya shrugged her shoulders, "I’m only half Shado-Kai and was brought up in human society since childhood. I’ve only come to know a few other shadow elves. For a long time, the Raven Queen was just a mysterious mentor to me, and it was only after I left my homeland that I heard of Her title, and much later, connected the two."
"The Raven Queen is involved in the earliest tragedy of our elf race, and indeed, the tales concerning Her are very much taboo." Alamir spoke in a melancholic tone, "First of all, let me emphasize, what I’m about to recount is but a legend circulating among surface elves, inherently full of contradictions. If there is any part that seems incorrect, please feel free to point it out, I mean no offense to the Madam..."
"It’s fine." Tanya waved her hand dismissively, "You surely know more than I do."
"Then I’ll begin." Alamir leaned back against a large stone, looking up at the gray sky of this plane, "You must have all heard of Eilistraee, later known as Rose, who betrayed the chief god Corellon. The myth does not provide much detail, as if Corellon simply waved His hand and the once beautiful consort of the elf deities became an ugly spider demon, and those Zoel elves were thus exiled to the dark depths... However, history is much more complex than the legends, and I won’t try to hypnotize you with a long sermon. Simply put, Rose’s fall came long before the exile of the dark elves, and she later successfully instigated a civil war among the elves known as the Crown War. This terrible civil war lasted nearly three thousand years and ultimately led to the exile of the dark elves."
"As for the Raven Queen, she was the queen of one of the many Elf Kingdoms on the land during that time, and her original name had long been forgotten in the river of time. Legend had it that she was a wise and kind queen, her subjects adored her more than the Elven deities. When the Elf Race fell into discord due to the fierce disagreements between father Corellon and mother Eilistraee, the once Raven Queen hoped to use the souls and Magic Power of her people to become a deity herself, so she could meet with Corellon and Eilistraee and implore them to regain their senses and stop the senseless conflict that brought countless disasters to the Elf Race."
"This plot sounds somewhat familiar..." Lancelot Morassa stroked his chin, "Let me guess, something terrible went wrong at some point?"
"Yes. Because of the queen’s prestige, a vast number of Elves abandoned their original faith and started to worship her instead. These Elves, who called themselves the Shadar-Kai, believed that after the queen’s ascension, she could unify the Elf Race and end the civil war. However, some evil wizards found loopholes in the ascension ritual. They discovered a method to siphon the power from the ritual. When the ritual was halfway through, the queen realized the wizards’ conspiracy, and her anger poured out onto the thieves. By that time, she was already a Demigod, and her supernatural wrath corrupted the ritual itself, turning it into something even worse."
"When the queen realized the mistake she had made, the twisted Magic Power had already tightly bound her, and she lacked the strength to break free. In her panic, the queen called to the souls of the Shadar-Kai for more power, but the vortex of Magic Power created by the ritual had become unstoppable. It dragged the queen and all the Shadar-Kai into the Shadow Realm, and the queen herself perished in a catastrophic explosion. Afterwards, in the ruins of her body and mind, the Raven Queen we know today was born, and those Shadar-Kai were transformed into what we now recognize as shadow wraiths."
"Legend has it that the energy from that ritual continues to tear at the Raven Queen, preventing Her from forming any tangible body. To prevent herself from completely dissolving into nothingness, the queen used the last of Her remaining energy to gather all the memories of the dead about Her in the Shadow Realm to maintain Her existence. To this day, the shadow wraiths still collect memories of the dead from the Multiverse, especially those associated with strong emotions at the time of death, and bring them back to the fortress of memories of the Raven Queen. It seems the Madam has an obsessive desire to collect emotions and memories. By the way she acts, the Raven Queen doesn’t seem like a deity, for She doesn’t have a special Divine office or teachings She wishes to spread, yet She possesses many attributes of deities, such as granting Divine Arts to Priests and being wholeheartedly served by the shadow wraiths. Perhaps out of respect for the Elven deities, other gods maintain respect and distance from the Raven Queen, while the Elven deities themselves remain deeply secretive about Her, never mentioning Her."
"That is all I know about the story of the Raven Queen... Tanya, what’s wrong with you?"
"I just heard a burst of laughter in my head," the Half-Elf Cursed Swordmaster’s expression was like she’d seen a ghost. "This has never happened before..."
"Really?" Alamir raised an eyebrow, "Maybe She enjoys the story I’m telling?"
"The Madam has other ways to show pleasure or satisfaction, but never like this," Tanya shook her head vigorously. "She has never revealed anything so clearly."
(Note: The above settings are from the 5th edition and might conflict with settings from a nonexistent version, please disregard that nonexistent version)
