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You know what will occur to you if you get captured by the Blighted. The Children of Yggdrasil, the fallen fruits of the World Tree, are both their greatest enemy and most viciously coveted prize. Even a humble maiden like you, caught in the spring of her youth instead of ripened and wizened over several centuries, would make a grand prize. For though the Blight covets the elders' wisdom, it is the connection to Yggdrasil and its thousand blossoms that it truly desires. Every Blight Elf is a new vector for the Blight to spread along the World Tree's roots, to disrupt and consume the flow of mana throughout the world.
That is why the Children kill every Blight Elf on sight, without question.
That is why the Blighted will oft abandon their other goals if they think they have a sure bet in capturing one of the Children.
You've read the texts on the Blight like every other Child of Yggdrasil, and they spoke of the process of creating a Blight Elf. They will violate you in ways you cannot imagine. It will bring with it none of the intimacy or relief of tension your most sacred of rites ought confer. To compare what the Blighted inflict upon their victims to the sort of lover who pounds away at his partner with rough desperation, unconcerned for her pleasure, does that man an injustice. There is pleasure to be found in the knowledge that a man finds you so horrifically desirable that your bare skin reduces him to a desperate, rutting beast. You understand this on a practical level, having found such pleasure yourself several times throughout your education.
The Blighted are not desperate, rutting beasts when they seek to create a Blight Elf, no matter how it might look at first glance. They are cruel and they are torturous, and they will seek to shatter your psyche with horrific pain even as they fill your every orifice with thick ropes of tar-colored ejaculate. When your mind finally shatters, that black seed will blossom inside you, consuming the last shreds of your soul and leaving your corpse a puppet to the Blight's will.
You need not say it, but you refuse that fate.
An arrow blossoms from the head of the Blighted at the front of the pack now scouring the forest for your position, carrying with it the same blessings that you cast upon the band of knights. Its fellows recoil as it bursts into flames, Holy Fire searing away the presence of the foul fungus and reducing the corpse to ash. By the time they recover their wits, another arrow has blossomed from one of their number, this one emerging from the chest of the burliest looking Blighted and setting him aflame.
"Tch..." you click your tongue in irritation. Of all the weapons in which you've dabbled, you are least adept with a bow. The second arrow naturally missed its mark, piercing the large one's lung instead of his heart as you intended. At a mere one hundred and fifty meters, with only a few branches blocking your sight. "I need more practice, even a novice wouldn't have missed that."
