The elf dignitary reached us, wearing light green clothing embroidered with silver branch-like patterns that accentuated his fair white skin. Two sharp, pointed ears poked through his straight, equally-fair blonde hair that completed his image as a pretty standard elf, all things considered. He smiled at us, particularly Rose, who had shifted to stand marginally in front of us.

"It is good to see you here, honorable paladin. We received word of your arrival, and have been on the lookout for your coming since. Know that you are welcome in the fine city of Koh'rin," he said. Didn't really sound like a racist if you asked me, but what did I know?

"Thank you for your welcome," Rose replied formally. "We come with an important message from the Kingdom of Pendrack, as mentioned in the letter, and would like an audience with the Council of Three."

"Of course, of course. Unfortunately," the elf looked up a bit at the sky, "you have arrived just at luncheon. The Council of Three will soon be occupied with their meal. If you would like, you can settle into one of our fine inns and spend the afternoon touring the city. An audience can be arranged tomorrow; most of the formalities were taken care of upon receiving your letter."

"That is acceptable."

"Perfect." The elf smiled. "My name is Leh'hah, and I shall be your guide. Let us get you all to an inn."

And so we left, with Rose having done all of the talking. As expected, my quote-unquote identity hadn't been mentioned in the letter, and Rose had apparently written it as a paladin, rather than a princess. I wasn't entirely sure how Hilda and I came off to this fine elf, but my guess was bodyguards, given my armor and the fact Hilda was clearly a mage. Who knew, though.

We walked along wide roads made of wood as we ventured into the city, our horses trailing behind us. Despite being highly populated, most of the foot travel done by residents occurred high in the air, and so the ground floor of the city managed to maintain a healthy layer of grass. I didn't know exactly how scandalous it would have been for me to jump off the wooden paths and frolic directly on the grass, but I could imagine it would earn some withering looks.

The bottom of the city was far from empty, though. The base of trees had doors and signs sticking out of them, with plenty of elves striding along the wooden roads. I seemed to recall some exposition about the ground-dwellers being lower in status, but all elves seemed to have pride, and everyone was well dressed. And looked amazing. Elves were seriously gorgeous, with even the men having faces I wouldn't be hard-pressed to describe as handsome. Most high elves seemed to be wearing those green outfits made of silk, but surprisingly enough tree elves wore outfits of bark with what looked like leaf lining on the inside. I got the impression it wasn't natural bark, and while I didn't know much about tree-singing, I got the impression they might have sung the bark into wearable shapes. Was that comfortable? I strongly doubted it, but for this many of them to be wearing it, it couldn't have been that bad.

Dark elves distinguished themselves with metallic armor, which made sense considering dark elves were something of a progressive faction in elf politics. I got the impression their internal politics went like so: tree elves were the omega-conservatives who wanted things to stay exactly the same (worshipping trees, protecting wildlife, never branching out, etc). High elves were moderates who on the surface supported conservative elf values while really focusing most of their efforts on pushing the species into a more war-like state, hoping to eradicate outsiders (namely humans) with the philosophy that the best defense was a good offense—we humans couldn't destroy trees if we were all dead. Dark elves were progressive in that in their lust for battle and hunting they had no qualms with adopting all manner of technology to strengthen themselves. In this case, "technology" meant "metal armor" and "magic other than natural magic," apparently. Despite this, they didn't actually seek out war, and were more interested in self-defense due perhaps to their long history of being ostracized as demonic. You may fuck with a weak elf for looking different, but you wouldn't fuck with a deadly badass violating the traditions of your species for the express purpose of being better killing machines. Their actual policies were more about adopting this technology in wide-scale use and moving elf culture forward.

In conclusion: Blah, blah, blah, politics.

Okay, okay, I'll stop absorbing the beautiful scenery of the idyllist tree city and mention the autosave. That was a game changer, literally. All throughout the roadtrip I had been doubting that a death would have sent me back to the border skirmish, if only because that would have been extremely lame and I would have lost my fucking mind if I had to solo the entire world in a single life or risk repeating multiple months, but it was good to have confirmation. The problem, then, was solving the mystery of why it autosaved there, and what my approach moving forward would be.

Obviously, with a confirmed save feature, it was a completely reasonable option for me to gut Leh'hah from behind and begin an EXP-rich murder spree. One might even say the most rational thing for me to do was to enact a campaign of genocide upon Koh'rin until I maxed out my skills and boosted my level tenfold, starting immediately. The thing was, I just didn't want to think like that. I might have described myself as being dead inside when I came here, but I wasn't addicted to sucking the cock of my own despair. Rose's dedication to securing victory at any odds was a bit inspiring to me, honestly, and it had actually paid off in the border skirmish. Dropping the doomer mindset and going in with the mindset of winning first try, even if you're bound to fail, appealed a lot to me. It wasn't how I viewed things, but I liked it more than my own views, and it stood to reason that I should then try to be a better person.

It was idealism, in short, and following an ideal meant not behaving optimally or rationally if the "optimal" thing to do violated my would-be ideals. I couldn't forget Jeffrey. He died because I didn't care about things enough and treated the people within loops as expendable, and for that I had paid the price of having a mob-shaped albatross across my neck for the rest of time. His shadow—God bless his soul—was a reminder to be better, to do better. And that meant not genociding the capital city of elves on a loop until I was max level.

The thought of Jeffrey guiding me even beyond death, on top of all that he had done for me in life, brought a tear to my eye.

Not to mention that, like, to be honest, it was hard to even say if level grinding was optional. If this was a video game world, it might have level scaling, which meant harder monsters the more I leveled up. Maybe the Goddess herself would punish me for trying to game the system. Maybe the people/monsters in this area would stop giving EXP if I got too high level. There were basically infinite possibilities and, knowing nothing else, it felt best to me to just treat each loop seriously and accept any leveling up as incidental. If the time came where I encountered an impossible to defeat superboss, I would set some time aside to grind up. That would be the game slash possible alternate reality telling me to boost up. Okay? Okay.

"We are here," announced Leh'hah, interrupting my exorbitant and severely protracted mental rant. "This is the Evergreen Inn. Your rooms have been booked ahead of time; simply speak your name to the innkeep. I will wait here until you are acclimated."

It struck me that this Leh'hah guy was not important at all. Going in, I had some bias that all high elves would be arrogant and important, but this guy was clearly just a lackey. A messenger. A guy with nothing better to do than wait outside the inn for the realdeal characters to finish their business. It kind of threw me off for a second, but thinking about it, not every member of an entire race could be important. Someone had to be the lackey. And that was Leh'hah.

We stepped into the inn, with our horses being taken to a stable elsewhere. Rose scanned the room, Hilda scanned the floor, and I just generally looked around.

It was wooden, as you would expect from the inside of a tree. The counter was wood, and seemed to be conjoined perfectly with the rest of the inside of the tree, as were the various wooden benches and the like. Flowers in earthy-looking pots were everywhere. A kindly-looking tree elf in a tightly fitting bark blouse and skirt smiled at us. I could see little dots and flashes of green through the bark blouse; it was tightly fitting, but not exactly comprehensive in coverage. I got the impression that it was in fashion to emphasize the chaos of nature by not having the bark be uniform and comprehensive in its coverage.

"Paladin Rose," Rose said, and the innkeep guided us to our destination without another word.

We had two rooms, both with two beds. (I got the impression they would have given us as many rooms as necessary to fit our party). There might have been a dilemma with who would stay where, but Hilda was extremely adamant about getting a room to herself. I got slightly flushed thinking about why that was, I'll admit. Hopefully the walls were thick, for everyone's sake.

The room Rose and I got was not what I expected. Everything here was wood and seemed built into the tree too. There were mattresses and such on the wooden beds, to be sure, but everything else felt like it was designed to look like a natural part of a tree despite clearly not being natural. Tree-singing was a hell of a thing, it seemed.

I turned to Rose while we set our things down. "So, honorable paladin. What's the plan?"

She shrugged. "We tour the city and visit the council tomorrow. I imagine there will be some degree of disaster, given the nature of our holy quest, but there is not much we can do to soften the blow."

"Do you really think there's a reality in which they let us take her? Like, I juggle some Fireballs and Darkness Balls, and all the councilmen just go like 'O shit it's the Heir, take our revered princess and whisk her away out of sight to foreign lands'? I don't really see it."

"I imagine the tree will play a part in this. The elven queen is able to commune with the tree, and through it, supposedly the Goddess herself. There is a reason the high elves consider elves the chosen people, and it is their stranglehold on this direct line of communication with the Goddess."

"And you think the Goddess will speak out and confirm me as the Heir?"

"I am unsure, but whatever happens, I am sure it will be informative. "

"That doesn't seem like a reliable plan."

She shrugged again. "I may or may not have contingency plans I am keeping to myself. Either way, there are too many variables to say anything for sure before we see the council. Their reaction determines everything here."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but uh, do you think that maybe, uh, that we should have... maybe pulled strings with a princess of Pendrack and brought an army here to give me legitimacy and influence as the Heir of the World?"

Rose arched an eyebrow. "Do you know a princess of Pendrack?"

"I... Why do you do this? Why do you make me do this?"

She laughed; a lovely tinkle that sounded like cheery bells. "If, theoretically speaking, you had a princess of Pendrack on your side, that would have been a possible course of action. However, recall that one of the three elven factions wants humanity wiped out, one of them is highly guarded against humanity, and one of them is filled with deadly warriors and assassins. We were only let into the city due to the perceived urgency of our visit and our small numbers, as described in the letter. If we came with any sort of military presence whatsoever we would have sparked an international incident."

I raised my hands in defeat. "Alright, alright, you win. I once again bow beneath your intellectual might. You're right."

"Oh, shut up," she said with another laugh. A moment passed, and a small smile flashed across her face.

Love Point Gained! Rosalyn +1

"Question," I said.

"Yes?"

"Sorry for the random psychoanalysis, but could it be that you're used to your advice being ignored and your judgment questioned?" I asked, thinking back to the very beginning, when the captains had been ignoring her advice (and died for it).

Her eyebrow rose. "Am I really that transparent?" She felt her face, as if wondering if her slight smile had actually been a broad ear-splitting grin.

"You're like an open book to me, Madame Paladin. All your secrets are as clear as day."

"So it seems," she said, turning around to get back to unpacking. She was still feeling her face.

There was a nugget of wisdom I saw in a video game about diving into the minds of others before. Video games were the source of much of my wisdom, and this was no exception. In it, the protagonist was essentially diving into the minds of his friends to help them work through their problems, and he kept finding that he was a really big existence in their mind despite not feeling like he was a good friend at all. He eventually just asked, flat-out: Why is this working? Why am I so important to you? I've never done anything.

And his friends would say, but you did. The things you've done meant a lot to me. You just didn't know it. People rarely realize just how big of an impact they have on the people around them, how little things can have a big effect, how small gestures can mean the world. We're all so stuck in our own heads, we think about everything from our own perspective, not other people's.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

And that was the protagonist's problem, naturally, he was stuck in his own head, and not even realizing how important he was to his friends. But that was beside the point. The point was, the same wisdom could be applied here, maybe. I didn't feel like I had done much. I just listened to her and then agreed, said I had misjudged the situation and that she was right. But to her, maybe that was everything. Something little to me was something big to her. Given the time period this world seemed to be in, maybe women were used to being ignored and belittled, even paladins, and someone actually listening to her meant a lot.

Or not. I was extrapolating quite a lot from "Am I really that transparent?". That was a bad habit of mine. The urge to psychoanalyze, treat people like puzzles to work out and solve. In my defense, though, if there was any time to treat people like puzzles, it was when trying to solve why a numerical representation of their love was going up without telling them that there existed a numerical representation of their love.

Once all our things were set down, we left our rooms, locked them with gaudy wooden keys, met up with Hilda, and out the door we went.

Leh'hah welcomed us; if he had moved an inch from where we left him, I wouldn't have noticed it.

"Greetings again. I take it you are satisfied with your rooms, but would nonetheless like to spend the afternoon sightseeing?"

"Quite," Rose said.

"Perfect. Where would you like to go first? I recommend making a pilgrimage to the base of the Eternal Tree, of course, but the skybridges are their own attraction, if you are fine with heights. There's the hunting lounges of the dark elves, treesingers to sing you bark outfits of your own if you'd like, the high elvish library, and, if you're feeling risqué, we can even visit one of the tree elves' sunbathing parlors. They welcome all visitors with the courage to enter and self-restraint to emerge without having broken any rules," he said with a slight smile. I was a bit surprised he volunteered that last location as an option. If I wanted to read too much into it, he was implying humans were horny fucks that would beeline to seeing naked elves if possible, and while that might have been the case for some... I had two sets of eyes watching me.

Rose glanced towards Hilda and I. "Any preferences?" she asked.

"Actually, yeah, though it wasn't anything just listed. Are there any magic emporiums here or anything?" I asked.

"That's not sightseeing," Hilda said, poking me in the side. Huh. She hadn't let on before now, but it seemed like she was excited to tour an elvish city... Actually, wait, what the fuck was I thinking? Of course she was. This place looked amazing, and while I was largely unmoved simply by virtue of being a stone cold motherfucker, any normal person would be excited to walk around. She wanted to go to the Eternal Tree, to the treesingers, to the— "I want to go to the sunbathing parlor."

So much for not looking like horny monkeys in front of the racist elf. I turned to look at Leh'hah, and felt the ghost of a sneer behind his smile. Mother fucker.

"Just out of curiosity, do human guests participate in the sunbathing?" I asked.

"Yes. It is non-sexual in nature, however, hence the bit about having self-restraint. Not that I would ever accuse any honorable guest of lacking any."

I waved a hand. "Then no. Maybe, uh, maybe tomorrow or something. I want to use this free day to learn more about the Natural Arcana before plunging into the council," I said. Elves had all but a complete stranglehold on the Natural Arcana, and who knew how foolish I would look if I went into a high-level political discussion knowing nothing of it.

Leh'hah gave a small frown. "The Natural Arcana is not something taught lightly to outsiders, even those born with the gift for it. I imagine the academy has the answers you seek, but I cannot recall the last time a human was allowed to step foot into its halls. As for emporiums, however, there are a number of magical shops run by dark elves. They do love their magic, but you will find naught but the other four Arcanas there. Dark elves have no talent for natural magic," he said, and I didn't miss the slight amount of revulsion in his voice, as if an elf not being able to cast Natural magic was equivalent to spitting on the name of every proper elf who ever lived.

"I guess that will have to do."

"Malcador," Rose began, "I fail to see what we stand to gain from visiting a miscellaneous magic emporium. Surely there are better things we could be doing."

"Agreed," Hilda said. "We stand much more to gain from visiting a sunbathing parlor. Think of all we could learn about photosynthesis."

"Wouldn't direct sunlight burn your skin or something anyway? Do you really think you'll be in your element, visiting a sunbathing parlor?"

She shrugged. "Maybe I could reinvent myself."

"Well, you can do that tomorrow." I turned to Rose. "I got a lot better at sword fighting and dodging on the way here, but my magic's really lagging behind." (Except Curse Magic, but if I specified that the jig would be up.) "Given how tense this situation is, I don't know if I want to spend time sightseeing when I have an obvious weak point to patch up. Plus, maybe the emporium will have a tree elf chained up in the basement or something. She could teach us about Natural magic and photosynthesis at the same time."

She looked me in the eyes for a bit, expression stern, then nodded. "Fair enough. Far be it from me to force a man with a mission to rest."

"Thanks," I replied, ignoring Hilda's whining and distinct call of "Traitor!"

And off we went. Or I went, rather, since Rose and Hilda elected to stay in the inn rather than waste time going to a magic emporium they wouldn't benefit from. Fair enough. (What happened to not splitting the party? Well, I wasn't going to force them to go somewhere they didn't want to, and Rose always smirked when I tried explaining why you should never split the party. She thought the concepts of "flags" and "tempting fate" were a total joke not worth considering. The only argument that would sway her would (probably) be me saying I felt scared to be in a city alone without her, and my pride won out over my fear of tempting fate.

Leh'hah took winding roads off to the side of the city rather than further deep. It was clear we were going off the beaten path a bit, the restrained bustle of the main street soon faded away to almost nothing. That was less a testament to the obscurity of the location, though, and more to how most of the actual elves were traveling the bridges far above.

Soon enough we reached a sizable tree with a wand-looking sign hanging above the door. "This is the place," Leh'hah said. "Can you find your way back to the inn?" I nodded, and with that he left me to my own devices. What else he had going on in his life was anybody's guess.

I stepped through the door, and just as he had warned me, the actual store was higher up on the tree. This was something of a back entrance, with nobody around to greet me and just a spiral stairway up. I climbed, skipping shut doors along the way, until the stairway opened up into an actual shop floor. There were stands with all manner of things, from herbs I couldn't recognize to wands I didn't understand the value of. What I did understand, though, was the shopkeep standing behind the counter.

"Welcome," she said. She had silver hair, as expected, and wore black plate armor that stood out surprisingly well against her creamy brown skin. Her torso-hugging chest plate lacked a top, revealing firm-looking boobs resting in the bottom half of the plate, and her getup seemed to lack greaves, resulting in her thighs being completely exposed from the bottom of her chestplate to the top of her armored boots. All things considered, it wasn't all that revealing. She was basically wearing a nun outfit compared to some of the literal bikini armor I had seen on the way here.

It was tempting to call the outfit unnecessarily lewd, and dark elves slutty in general, but you know what? That was cultural prejudice. Recall the tree elves. They sunbathed in the nude and wore clothes of bark that flashed their skin, but there was no lewd intent whatsoever behind that. Elves were chaste creatures, who, to my knowledge, had sex only a single time in their entire lives, exclusively for the purpose of procreation. Their skimpy armor only looked perverted and lewd to us because we were the perverts and sluts. To them, showing off cleavage and the like was no more lewd or sexual than showing off our bare hands was to us. They wore what they thought looked good and felt the most comfortable, everything else be damned. Who gave a shit if some prudish human from an entirely different culture wanted to project their values onto them? They sure didn't give a shit. And, in honor of them being true to their culture, I would respect their choices. Elves were a proud and noble race. They were not lewd.

(Incidentally, since dark elves all but exclusively wore armor, they had many different sets at home. They had full plate armor to wear when going to actual battles, or something. As for where the metal comes from, Rose didn't include that in her lectures on the way here. I'm sure the answer is fascinating. I will be sure to ask her later.)

"Hi," I replied, having thought all of the above in a split second. "Just wondering, do you have a tree elf tied up in your basement that can teach me Natural magic?"

The dark elf barked a laugh. "If I did, I wouldn't tell you. The academy keeps Natural magic locked up tight. You try to teach an outsider, and you'll be facing down their enforcers the second they catch wind of it."

"Don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to keep something called 'Natural magic' locked up and tightly controlled?"

"Congratulations, little human, you understand a modicum of the tension that pervades modern elf culture. What can I do for you? The name's Dak'muc, but you can call me Dakka."

"Honestly, I was kind of banking on you having a tied up tree elf prisoner. I'm just here to fill up holes in my knowledge of magic, and the Natural Arcana's the big one."

"Duh. You don't need to tell me that twice. Natural magic is half the reason you humans visit this city at all. The other half is the sunbathing tree elves." She grinned. "Does that include you?"

"No, I'm married to magic, as you can see. What else you got? What's your specialty?"

She muttered some words, and a marble suddenly lifted into the air and launched towards my forehead.

I tilted my head to the side, dodging it. Not even half as fast as one of Rose's thrusts. "Neat, a Mystic. The Mystic Arcana is actually one of the biggest holes in my knowledge, and—" Something hit the back of my head, kinda hard. I stumbled a bit and looked behind me. The fucking marble.

I turned back around to more laughter. "Hah! A hole in your knowledge indeed. First lesson about Mystic magic: if a telekinetic launches something at you, expect it to come back. Everything is a boomerang."

"Everything is a boomerang, got it. Thanks. What's your second lesson?"

"Let me get you an introductory textbook to buy. That'll save you a lot of time, and headaches." She turned to go get a book from somewhere, and instantly I balked. Her armor left her ass completely exposed. The slender crotch of her plate armor, like, slid between her asscheeks, which were more than large enough to consume it entirely. The outfit had been obviously skimpy from the front, what with a similarly slender part covering the front of her crotch, but at least that had full coverage. It wasn't consumed by gigantic vagina lips or anything. Here, she looked basically naked from behind.

Maybe elves were not a noble and proud race after all... No! No, no. That was just my human prejudice rearing its ugly, ugly head. There was nothing inherently sexual about asses. Another elf would not look at Dakka's ass and think about bouncing a quarter off it like me. An elf would simply see the exposed rear like we see exposed ankles, or palms. The elves were NOT putting on a show for us humans. They dressed for themselves. I couldn't let myself be tricked by my biases. Elves were pure! NOBLE AND PURE!

Dakka returned with the book, blissfully unaware of my emotional crisis. "Here you go. I suppose you have some standard issue gold coins to pay for it?"

I nodded. The value of gold was one constant among species, and Rose had given me a fair amount in preparation for my little shopping trip. I paid for the book, said no when Dakka asked if I needed anything else, and then began my trek down. Realistically speaking, I probably could have bought a lot more just to have it, but literally none of the wandy-things or herb-things looked compelling to me. I really should have brought Hilda or someone to explain this stuff to me. What a blunder.

I read the book while walking back. It had a list of generally common spells: some subspace storage spells, detect creatures, soul sight, lie detection, telepathy, going ethereal, etc. The more I read, the more I wanted to learn the spells. Some of them, like magic absorption, could be enchanted onto rings and stuff so the effect would be passive. Perfect for not being killed by an Elemental mage launching a rock at the back of your head (which worked since things created by Elemental magic were mana constructs that faded over time.) Unfortunately, most of the best stuff was Proficient and above, which was many levels away from me. I would be stuck grinding for quite a while. Hopefully I could find like 20 mages to take turns blasting my Mana Barrier until I maxed out my level.

I made it back to the inn safe and sound. It was late now; the afternoon had died beneath all the travel time to and from the store. I wandered into my room and found Rose alone. She was sitting on her bed, meditating, and wearing largely nothing but the fantasy equivalent of hot pants and a tank top.

"How was it?" she asked, cracking open an eye.

I shrugged. "A dark elf hit me with a marble, then sold me a book on Mysticism. Want to check it out?"

"Oh, I don't think I would get much from it. Any advanced spells that caught your interest?"

"Yeah. The ones that create subspace for item storage seem pretty essential to pretty much any adventure. Lie detection is probably generically good, and Soul Sight seems compelling, if because it kind of bothers me to know there's something right in front of me that I arbitrarily can't see."

"Good eye. Those are convenient spells indeed."

"Right. So, I'm thinking... I'm... Why is my bed damp?"

Rose opened her eyes and scooted so she was facing my bed instead of the door. "That would be because Hilda wanted to mark your bed with her scent before you slept in it."

"Why... Why didn't you stop her? What even is this?"

"Not the worst thing it could be, and because you didn't tell me to stop Hilda from marking your bed. Far be it from me to intrude upon your affairs."

"Oh my god. Please. Just assume I don't want Hilda marking my bed. That should be a safe assumption."

Rose shrugged. "Who can say? Maybe you will change your mind by the end of tonight. She really put her heart into it."

"I'm not going to ask for elaboration. I'm just..." I looked down at my bed sadly. It was all damp, and indeed, smelled strongly of Hilda. Whether that was a good or bad thing, I didn't want to look inside of myself to find out. Some questions were best left unanswered, for your own sake.

"You can sleep in my bed, if you want."

I shot my head to the side. Rose was patting her dry, comfy-looking bed casually. It was hard to ignore how her fantasy hotpants left her long, tanned legs bare, and how her tank top emphasized her alluring, perfectly-shaped bust. Those were her standard bed clothes, and I would probably have lost my mind trying to sleep next to her without doing anything.

"Are you messing with me?" I asked.

"That depends on your answer," she said coolly. Obviously, if I said "yes," she was joking, and if I said "no," she would act like she had been serious. This was all part of Rose's ploy, the one I had figured out at the pool. Why she felt the need to play these games was anybody's guess.

"Then no. You can jokingly act like you were serious now."

"Drat, you've figured out my master plan," she said with a faux-pout. She scooted back around and fell back onto her pillow. "I must now cry myself to sleep, if you'll excuse me."

"Yeah, yeah." I waved a hand airily. "And if you'll excuse me, I need to go ask the inn keep for a change of bedsheets, which will probably kill me with embarrassment, but it'll be better than sleeping in Hilda's... juices."

"She will be very sad to hear you did that. It took her a very long time. Was my suffering, too, for nothing?"

"I'm the victim here! You could have left!"

"But then I couldn't have looked over her shoulder as she Soul Spied you."

"In that case, you have only yourself to blame, for violating my privacy along with her."

I left, ignoring Rose's call that she didn't blame me for staring at the dark elf's ass. The urge to shoot myself in the head and redo the day was overwhelming, but I stayed strong and got the change of bedsheets.

Hours passed. It was late at night, and I was staring at the ceiling aimlessly. Tomorrow was the big day, and I was having a little trouble sleeping. The elf city was, in a word, overwhelming. It felt like there was a truckload of lore I had to memorize, and a fairly complex political web that I easily ran the risk of fucking up when meeting the councilmen tomorrow. I hadn't even had a proper conversation with a tree elf yet, and soon I would be face to face with the tree elf councilman.

Bugs chirped outside. Cool moonlight shone through the windows. Rose breathed steadily. Wood creaked a floor above. My own breathing calmed, and I found myself drifting off into the void, ready to sleep.

Sadly, I was interrupted at the last second.

With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.