It turned out that Naomi was not the person to ask about clothes. She had exactly 3 sets of them and wore each for two months at a time before changing. Although she claimed they had magical cleaning abilities to keep them from getting too dirty, it still made Elise cringe a bit. Fortunately, Nicole overheard their conversation and volunteered to bring Elise to someone who did know about clothes.

The Elder Marielle was the tribe’s head seamstress and leatherworker, and most of the clothes worn by the tribe’s higher-ups were made by her. She lived at the base of the Mother Tree in one of the largest alcoves. There was a leather curtain covering the entire area, with an almost airtight seal around the edge. There was a group of younger drow gathered outside it, practicing their own sewing when Elise and Nicole arrived.

“Lady Elise?”

The speaker was one of the older drow in the area. She was a bit past middle aged, but still looked hale and hearty. She was working on what looked like another curtain, but set it aside immediately and stood up as she spoke.

“My name is Monica,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“Nice to meet you, Monica,” said Elise. “We’re here to see Marielle?”

“Me?” said another voice.

A moment later, the curtain was pulled back and an old woman shuffled outside. She was not the oldest of the Elders, but she had at least 20 years on Monica, and walked with a slight hunch. Elise had only seen her twice before, once around when she first arrived, and again just a few days prior while negotiating the treaty.

“It’s good to see you again, Lady Elise,” she said. “You look different. Did you evolve?”

“I did.”

“Congratulations!” said the old woman with a smile. “Is that related to what you needed me for?”

“Yes,” confirmed Elise. “I’m a Changeling now, so I need some clothes.”

“Clothes? And you want me to make them?”

“You don’t have to if-”

“It would be an honor!” said Marielle, looking excited. “Come inside! I’ll get you sorted out.”

She held the curtain open wider, and Elise flew inside. The interior was a lot cozier than she imagined. She had only ever stayed in empty alcoves away from all the drow, so she didn’t fully realize what it meant to live in one. The room was split in two by a wooden wall that seemed to have grown naturally. On the left, there was a bed, and a small wooden plateau where a few random items like a lantern and some stone tools sat. On the right, there was a table, also growing straight from the ground, with more tools and leather on it. There were rolls and rolls of material piled up around the edges, and there were completed clothing articles hanging from small, root-like hooks sprouting from the ceiling.

How does that work? Thought Elise.

Did she have some nature mage come in and make those for her, or did the tree do it on its own? Were all the drow cubbies like this, or was this just the luxury afforded an Elder?

Marielle shuffled over to the right side, and dug through the pile of rolled up material until she finally emerged with one that, to Elise, looked identical to the others. It was the same purple leather as the rest, and the only difference she could maybe spot was that it was thinner. She also grabbed a roll of some kind of fabric that was the same shade of blue as the grass outside. How that got made into fabric, Elise had no idea.

“Come here,” said Marielle. “Can you transform right now?”

“I can,” said Elise. “Should I?”

“Yes, if you would. I need to take your measurements.”

Elise hesitated for a second, checking the curtain behind her before obliging. She wasn’t that embarrassed about undressing in front of the old woman, but there were some men outside. Even if there weren’t any men, she still wouldn’t have felt comfortable exposing herself to so many people.

“Hmm,” said Marielle. “Shorter than I thought. That’s good. Won’t need as much material. Alright, I’ve got what I needed. If you want, you can turn back now.”

Elise did so immediately. She mostly trusted the drow, but there was always the chance that someone like Jean would appear to accidentally do something foolish out of ignorance.

“It’s been years since I made anything for a fey. What do you want? Something fancy? Something for hunting? Nightclothes?”

“Just something comfortable,” said Elise. “For general use. Nothing fancy.”

“Got it.”

Marielle turned to her desk and stared blankly for a few seconds, then waved her hand, and the mana around them started moving. First, the blue fabric unrolled in midair, and started cutting itself. Elise watched in fascination as the fabric spun and sliced and twisted in midair, until suddenly, it was a set of underwear. She had no idea how that happened, as it hadn’t looked anything like underwear until that moment, but she didn’t have time to process it before it was set down and the same process began with the leather.

Two minutes after it started, Mariell had created a full outfit, almost identical to the skirt and tube top combination most of the other drow women wore. There were a few small differences, mostly in the edges of the fabric, which were sewn in patterns noticeably more intricate than anything else Elise had seen, but it wasn’t anything over the top.

“Try it on,” suggested Marielle.

Elise looked back at the curtain, then transformed again. She put her new clothes on as quickly as possible without looking like she was in a rush. They were surprisingly comfortable. She hadn’t been expecting that they would be bad, but she still wasn’t prepared for how well they fit, and how soft the leather and blue fabric felt.

She was starting to think that it was a shame there wasn’t a mirror so she could see how she looked when Marielle waved her hand and one appeared. It wasn’t a true mirror, since Elise could sense that it was made entirely out of mana, but it functioned the same. She turned and looked at the outfit from all angles. She looked every bit like a normal drow girl, aside from her eyes. If she managed to explain that properly, she would have no trouble fitting in as a drow. As long as she didn’t stay longer than 4 hours.

“I’m going to transform back now,” said Elise. “I don’t fully know how this skill works, but I think that the clothes will probably fall off.”

“They can handle a bit of dirt,” said Marielle. “It’s nothing powerful, but they have a bit of self-cleaning and self-repair magic.”

Elise focused with {Mana Sense} and noticed that there was indeed some mana within the clothes. She took one final look in the mana mirror, then deactivated {Lesser Transformation}. To her surprise, when her drow form vanished, so too did the clothes.

“Oh!” she said. “It worked!”

“Will they come back if you turn back into a drow?” asked Marielle.

“I hope so,” said Elise. “But the skill is on cooldown now. It will be 10 minutes before I can turn back.”

“Ah, cooldowns,” said Marielle. “That’s a shame.”

“Yeah…”

There was awkward silence for a few moments before Marielle spoke again.

“So, I hear you’re leaving us soon.”

“...Yeah,” said Elise. “I have some things I need to do.”

“Do you mind if I ask what they are?”

“There are some people that I need to see. Before I got down here, they took care of me. Then we were separated. I need to make sure they’re safe. And also… nevermind.”

Elise almost mentioned getting revenge on the warg, but decided against it.

“Will you come back when you’re done?” asked Marielle.

“Well…” started Elise.

“I see,” said Marielle. “Well, we’ll miss you.”

“I’ll come back to visit,” said Elise quickly. “But I won’t stay.”

“Don’t want to be tied down?”

“Not really.”

“Fair enough,” said Marielle. “I heard that in the past, the fey didn’t stay with us long. I thought it was a blessing from Titania that Emilia stayed as long as she did… Well, at least now things will return to how they’re supposed to be. Maybe we’ll reveal ourselves to the world. We’ll get a few more fey visitors that way. With Emilia dead, and you and Jean leaving, we’ll be a feyless tribe, and no drow tribe should ever be feyless.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Wait, Jean is leaving?”

“He already left,” said Marielle. “He almost did it quietly, but he stopped to say goodbye to Carol this morning, and word’s gotten around since then.”

“Oh,” said Elise.

“He said he was going to join some group. He said that the golden man invited him to join when he was there.”

“I see,” said Elise.

I have a bad feeling about this.

Inherently, there wasn’t anything too wrong with what had happened. Logically, it made sense that Freddy would try to recruit Jean to Ostra. But with what she knew about Ostra, and what she didn’t know about Freddy, there was a lot of potential for disaster there. Jean would at least be safe though, assuming he made it. If he didn’t, there wasn’t anything Elise could do about it.

She was still half-tempted to try to chase after him and stop him, but there were too many ways that could go badly. Freddy could have arranged an escort for the young pixie, and Elise might end up in a dangerous confrontation, or she might catch up and fail to change his mind, or she might run into Freddy himself. Or, more likely, she wouldn’t be able to find him at all, and she would just be wasting her time.

“Do you know anything about that group?” asked Marielle.

“No,” Elise lied.

“Ah, that’s a shame. I’m worried about him. He is a Great Fey, but he’s younger than my granddaughter. I’m worried he’s getting involved in something he’s not prepared for.”

“Yeah, probably,” said Elise.

“I hope he’ll come back someday though,” she said. “But I’m also afraid that he won’t. He was too close to Emilia. He doesn’t understand what happened. The golden man said he believed our side, but… He’s suspicious. I don’t trust him. He may have ended the war, but he definitely didn’t do it for altruistic reasons. I wish I knew what he wanted.”

“I wish I knew too,” said Elise.

Marielle talked for a bit longer about various drow happenings until {Lesser Transformation} came back off cooldown. The skill worked exactly as they hoped it would, and Elise’s clothes were still present in her drow form.

“Oh, it worked again!” said Marielle.

“Perfect!” said Elise. “Hold on…”

She doubted it would work, but now that she knew her transformations maintained her clothes, she had to see if it could maintain them across forms. She was about to turn back into her base form so she could switch to an elf next, when a thought occurred to her. Nowhere in the skill description did it say that she had to go back to her base form before transforming again. She tried transforming into an elf, and she was surprised again when it actually worked. Unfortunately, her clothes did not transfer over.

“Oh!” said Marielle. “Do you need another set? I’ll whip one right up for you.”

“Ye- wait, actually, no,” she said.

“No?”

“Not for this form,” said Elise.

Her clothes worked well on her drow form, but if she walked into Jelor wearing that, she would be turning heads, and not for good reasons. It would look extremely out of place. It might have been fine for dealing with other drow, but she would not fit in at all in other humanoid societies. She could go to the dwarves for clothes like that. Their fashion was dated compared to what she had seen on her brief trip to the big city, but it was much closer to normal than the drows’ clothes.

“Are you sure?” asked Marielle, looking disappointed.

“Yes,” replied Elise. “Thank you for the offer though.” She turned back into her base form. “And thank you for the clothes.”

“Anything for a Great Fey,” said Marielle. “Are you leaving now?”

“Not for good yet,” said Elise. “I just have someone else I need to go see."

“Well, have a good time,” said the old woman, shuffling forward to open the curtain for her.

As soon as she flew outside every single drow in the area snapped their attention to her. Their number had almost tripled since she entered too. When they saw her still looking like a rabbit, many of them looked disappointed. Elise considered just flying away anyway, but instead, she slowly drifted to the ground as her cooldown ticked away, then turned back into a drow.

She stayed for a few minutes, basking in the oohs and ahs, then thanked Marielle again before turning back to her rabbit form and flying away. She stopped by the center of the Mother Tree to see if Salome was awake (she wasn’t), stopped by Naomi’s hut to show Naomi her new drow form, then made her way to the dwarves.

Hallbjorn’s message to let her through had evidently been heard loud and clear. When she reached what used to be the wall, the guards nodded her direction, but otherwise ignored her. The damage Freddy had done to the city had now been mostly cleaned up. All the debris from the wall was piled up along the edges of the cave, but since the dwarves were planning on leaving within the next couple weeks, it wasn’t worth moving it anywhere else.

The sounds of the city had returned as well, with dwarves on the streets, talking and laughing and working hard to take care of whatever business remained before they left their homes forever. Elise was a bit surprised at how quickly the people seemed to be recovering from the near war they had, but she supposed the almost complete lack of casualties helped with that.

When they saw her flying overhead, many of them pointed at her, and said things that she didn’t try to hear. Most of it didn’t sound angry, but she knew that listening to whatever it was would only hurt her if she heard the wrong thing, so she tuned it out while she made her way to the main castle.

The guards at the gate gave her even less trouble than the ones at the city entrance, even going as far as to summon an escort for her into the king’s office. It was mid-morning by that time, so the king was well into his administrative work, but as soon as she entered, he smiled and set down his pen.

“Elise, welcome,” he said.

He looked much better than he had the last time they spoke. He was not quite back to usual, but he didn’t look like he was about to keel over at any moment anymore. His healer was still there, but he looked more relaxed as well, no longer hovering over the king’s shoulder as if expecting him to almost die if he looked the wrong way.

“Hallbjorn,” said Elise. “I have a small favor to ask.”

“Of course!” he said. “Anything. Also, did you evolve? You’re bigger now. Also, your accent is gone.”

“Yes I did,” she replied. “I’m a changeling now. And that brings me to my request. Do you know any seamstresses or tailors? I can transform now, but I need clothes.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I have someone in mind. By the way, did you think about my request from last time?”

“A bit,” said Elise.

“And? Will you attend?”

“I-” she hesitated. “I will. But I might not stay long.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “If you’re uncomfortable, you can leave whenever you’d like. But I’ve figured out the perfect reward for you, and I wanted to present it at the feast. Now, I’ll get to do that!”

He grinned, and Elise suddenly became curious. What could it be? He had picked it out before he knew she could transform, so he would have picked something that even a rabbit could use. That meant it was probably a necklace or something similar that she didn’t need hands to hold or use. And if it was a rune-enchanted artifact of the dwarves, it was bound to be something powerful.

Maybe it was something that would enhance her magic abilities. Something like Sindri’s axes to let her absorb mana from the air more easily. Or maybe it would be a protection amulet. Maybe they had something that would let her cast other spells. Her evolution route was unfortunately taking her down a path that seemed inclined toward non-magical means of problem-solving. A new spell from an amulet would be nice.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise,” he said. “But I’m sure you’ll find it very convenient and useful.”

“...Can you give me a hint?”

“No,” he said, still smiling. “Unless you really really want the hint. If you did, I would give it to you, but I would like it to be a surprise.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m expecting something incredible now.”

“You won’t be disappointed. Anyway, clothes. We can probably get that sorted out right now. Our seamstresses are working hard to prepare clothing that can handle the weathers of the surface, but I know a tailor who would be able to squeeze in a quick outfit for you.”

“Uh, I was hoping for more than one.”

“How many?”

“One for my human, dwarf, elf, and half elf forms. And maybe a couple others.”

“One, four, ten. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“Perfect.”

Hallbjorn pushed aside whatever paper he was working on and grabbed a blank one and scribbled something on it. He stared at the paper for a few seconds, then scribbled something else before pushing it aside. Elise sensed a bit of mana from the paper while he wrote and while he waited, so she assumed that he had sent a message somewhere.

“The tailor should be ready soon, and I’ll have an escort show you the way. Now, I hate to keep doing this, but I have a lot to do, so…”

“No worries,” said Elise. “Thanks for everything.”

“No problem at all. I’ll see you tomorrow night at sunset.”

“See you then.”

The dwarven tailor that Hallbjorn had in mind was an older woman named Selma. Selma was nowhere near as enthusiastic as Marielle was, but if she was displeased about her orders, she didn’t show it. She did get exasperated when Elise asked for clothes for her giant form though. In the end, it was just as Hallbjorn said, and all the clothes took no more than an hour to make, leaving Elise with the rest of her day wide open.

She went back to the castle briefly, but Greta was asleep, and the healer said it was better to let her remain that way, so Elise went back to the drow cave. There was no more danger left in the dwarven cave, but there was still nowhere near as much to do. Anything she could do there, she could do in the Mother Tree cave, and that atmosphere was much more pleasant.

Elise spent the rest of the day with the drow. She greeted Salome when she woke up, did some mana meditation with Naomi, spent a bit of time playing with the drow children in her drow form, and when she was all socialled out, she went out hunting again.

She was starting to outgrow the cave. By this point, the Lessers gave almost no experience, and the normal ones didn’t give much more. The Greaters were still viable targets, but after her evolution, even they didn’t provide too much of a challenge. Their lone eye was too great a weakness, and the extra hundred points in her mana stats made exploiting that weakness trivial. Still, they were a tier above her, so they didn’t give nothing. After killing two of them, and a dozen of the smaller ones, she finally earned another level.

However, this hunting strategy wasn’t something she could continue. For one, the diminishing returns would reach the point where doing so would provide no benefits. For two, the drow could only eat so much meat. She might have even overdone it just right then. More than a dozen cows was a lot of meat. If they feasted every day for the next week or two, maybe they could finish it all off, but if Elise did the same again the next day, or the day after, she would overload their stores.

She used {Telekinesis} to help them bring the meat back to the Mother Tree, and by then, it was night time, so she found an empty alcove and curled up. She half-hoped that Titania would visit her in her sleep again so she could ask more about Fate, but the goddess did not appear, nor did anything else of import.

The next day, Elise spent most of her time with the drow. She spent a few hours in her drow form again, turning back into her regular form in time that the cooldown would wear off by the time the dwarf feast started. She didn’t know if she wanted to attend as a dwarf or as herself, but she wanted to at least have the option.

When the time of the feast finally arrived, she found herself getting nervous. Would it really be fine if she went? Logically, the dwarves had no reason to hate her anymore. However, centuries of mistrust and hatred for fey couldn’t be washed away in a few days, no matter how significant of an event had occurred. Whatever Hallbjorn did to reward her at the feast would probably help her case a little bit, but even so, it most likely wouldn’t be comfortable for her.

However, she had already promised she would go, and she wasn’t one to go back on her word. Ten minutes before dwarven sunset, she emerged from the tunnel and entered Dokkalfheimr.