Another dwarf head poked around the corner from the street, and Elise knew she needed to move. Since her stealth had already been blown, she saw no reason to remain landbound anymore, and summoned her wings and flew upward. The dwarf in the window grabbed at her as she ascended, but she was already out of his reach.

She floated in the air for a moment, trying to figure out what was happening. The alarm wasn’t for her, was it? It couldn’t be. First of all, they wouldn’t sound an alarm for her escape. Hallbjorn already knew it was happening, and would prevent anyone from making a big deal about it. It would have had to be Josef, or someone working under him.

Second, the timeline didn’t make sense if it was. The guards or Greta would have had to notice her escape almost immediately, and then gone all the way back to the castle, notified other guards who would notify Josef, who would then sound the alarm bells.

That meant that there must be an actual emergency happening somewhere else, and she just had unfortunate timing. She flew up a bit higher, and her suspicions were confirmed. Over near the castle, dozens of guards were in formation between the gates and the door, and more were spreading out throughout the city. She saw multiple groups heading toward every exit to the cavern.

Elise didn’t know what had happened, but she cursed its timing. The only thing that would warrant this type of response would be drow, and a drow attack on Dokkalfheimr was exactly what she was leaving the city to avoid. Now, not only had she failed to avoid it, but with the guards heading to every exit, she wouldn’t be able to leave either.

She flew down behind some houses, out of sight of the small mob and then made her way back to Greta’s house. If they hadn’t noticed her disappearance yet, they certainly would soon. They had probably burst in when the alarm sounded, only to find Greta asleep and Elise nowhere to be found. She needed to get back quickly before she caused a panic.

She was almost too late. When she made it back to the old woman’s house, the guards were huddled outside it, and the youngest of the bunch, Baldur, was standing on the edge with his toes pointed outward, as if he was about to take off running.

“Wait!” she called. “I’m here.”

The dwarves looked up at her, first in awe, then in anger.

“Where were you?” said Jonas, who had been chosen as the leader of her small squadron of guards. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” said Elise. “I just went out for a walk, and then suddenly the alarms went off.”

“How did you get out without us noticing?”

“That’s not important right now. We need to get back to the castle.”

“No, tell us how-!” started Jonas.

“She’s right,” said the second in command, a woman named Sandra. “It’s more important to get back to the castle right now. We can worry about the details later.”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

They did not bother with the usual detour, instead running straight for the front gate, which was already flung wide open as soldiers and messengers filed in and out. A servant rushed to give word to the king when they returned, and a few minutes later, they returned with a message from the king telling Elise to come to the Council chambers.

The room was small compared to the throne room or the banquet hall, but it was much bigger than her own bedroom. The majority of the room was taken up by a large circular table with a magical map in the center. Currently, it was showing a map of the entire city with a lot of glowing blue dots representing what she assumed to be allies, and a few red dots in the middle of them all.

Only about half the Council was present. Most of the members were old, and did not live in the castle, so getting there in the midst of a crisis was not always a quick process. Hallbjorn was there though, sitting at the back side of the table, staring down at the map.

“Elise!” he said. “Did anything happen in your area?”

“No. What’s going on?”

“What’s that thing doing here?” said Josef.

“Not now, Josef,” said Hallbjorn.

“Your Majesty, this is the Council chambers! We can be having vermin-”

“I said not now, Josef,” said the king in a commanding tone. “We can discuss this later. We have more important things to worry about.

“To answer your question,” he continued, turning to Elise. “Ghouls. They tried to break into the castle. I think they were looking for you.”

“Was anyone hurt?” asked Elise.

“A few minor injuries, but all treatable. Nothing serious.”

“That’s good.”

“Yes, it could have been much worse,” he agreed. “There were 4 drow, and they escaped the castle, but we’ve caught two of them already near the edge of the city. We’re still searching for the others, but I’m worried they got away already. Fortunately, none of them were especially dangerous, and it looked like their primary goal was to get to your bedroom, not to do any harm.”

“So they were definitely here for me?”

“Most likely,” he said. “But they’ll never tell us. They’re very good at keeping their mouths shut. However, I’ve thought of a way you can help with that.”

“Me? How?”

“Yes, I would like to know as well,” said Josef.

“You are a fey, and the ghouls practically worship the fey.”

“Yes,” replied Elise. “And?”

“How good are you at acting?”

***

An hour later, Elise found herself chained up in the castle dungeon, awaiting the next part of the plan. According to Hallbjorn, it was nearly impossible to interrogate the Drow. The first few times they captured them, they simply bit down on poison capsules in their mouths, killing themselves before they could give away any answers. Once the dwarves figured out how to prevent that, the Drow changed tactics, and instead fed their scouts a poison before sending them out. Only upon their return would they be able to receive the antidote, and the poison was too potent for any of the Dwarven healers to cure. That meant that no matter what the dwarves did, the Drow would die before they could get any answers.

It might be different, however, if instead of a dwarf, they had Elise asking the questions. There was the problem that if they saw Elise working with the dwarves, they would be understandably suspicious, but Hallbjorn had concocted a plan to avoid that. She would instead pretend to be a captive, and she would be left alone with the Drow in order to talk with them and get answers.

Elise had had a few reservations about the plan. The first was that she did not speak Drow. Hallbjorn said that would not be a problem, since all the Drow scouts had learned Dwarvish to better spy on their targets. Elise pointed out that it would still be suspicious if a fey spoke Dwarvish and not Drow, but she was assured that she appeared young enough that they would not find it odd. If they had captured her shortly after her spawning, it would make sense.

Her second was that every story she had heard painted the Drow as mindless killers who hunted dwarves for sport, and that they sacrificed fey to Titania. She was reassured though when even Josef said they wouldn’t hurt her. The sacrifices were done ritualistically, not wantonly, and even if they did want to hurt her, they would be chained up and separated from her by a rune-enchanted jail cell.

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Her third main concern was that she was not, in fact, good at acting. She had done a couple school plays in elementary and middle school, but she had always played the characters who had as few lines as possible, and by no metrics could her delivery of those lines be considered good.

However, her curiosity won out. She had spent a month hearing about how horrible the drow were, and now that she had an opportunity to see them up close, she would regret it if she turned it down. Plus, they had most likely been there for her. She felt a little guilty that the situation happened at all.

And therefore, she was chained up in a cage in a dark dungeon. The chains were loose enough she could slip out of them, and the cage wasn’t actually locked, but it still looked plenty real. They had even smeared dirt on her gorgeous fur to sell it more. It was a bit uncomfortable, but they had assured her that the prisoners would be in shortly, or at least the first batch of them would, so she wouldn’t have to maintain her guise for long.

They arrived a few minutes later, and Elise was so shocked that it was a good thing the character she was playing was supposed to be scared of dwarves, or else her awed silence would have given her away. The Drow were not at all like the dwarves described them. She had been expecting hideous, goblin-like creatures with claws on their fingers and anglerfish-like teeth, but what she saw was just gray-skinned elves.

There was nothing monstrous about their outer appearance at all. In fact, she would go as far as to call them beautiful. The two captured scouts were both women, and while they were not as tall as humans, they were taller than the dwarves, and far more slender and lithe. They wore heavy manacles around their wrists and ankles, but even so, they held their heads high and looked down their noses at their captors.

The one in front had her black hair cropped short like a boy’s and green eyes, and the other had shoulder-length white hair and blue eyes, so she mentally dubbed them Black Hair and White Hair to keep them mentally distinct. Both showed as [Shadow Scout, lvl 9] when she used {Inspect}.

“Pda Bau!” exclaimed Black when she saw Elise. “You monsters! What have you done?”

“Silence, ghoul,” said the dwarf guard, punching her in the stomach with a gauntleted fist.

The Drow woman doubled over in pain, while the other strained against her restraints, trying to attack the guard. A second punch knocked the wind out of her as well, and the two were tossed into the cell across from Elise’s, just as planned.

“Be quiet and wait for your deaths, ghoul scum,” said the guard dwarf before exiting the dungeon and slamming the door behind him.

As soon as he was gone, the Drow straightened themselves out, as if they had never been punched, and crawled up to their bars, staring straight at Elise.

“Kd cnawp bau, sdwp dwra pdau zkja pk ukq?” cried White.

“Pdau sehh lwu bkn pdaen ejokhajya!” said Black.

“I-I’m sorry,” said Elise, doing her best to sound scared. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

Both Drow made simultaneous sounds of incredulousness and anger.

“Zis is unforgivable!” said White. “What ‘ave zey done to you, O Great Fey? For ‘ow long ‘ave you been imprisoned here?”

As she spoke, Elise noticed that their accent was odd and oddly familiar. The dwarves had described it as a horrid, guttural sound when they spoke, but what Elise heard sounded far more elegant. It was only on their r’s that it ever sounded strange, and even then, they only sounded like French r’s. In fact, their whole accent sounded French.

“I-I’m not sure,” said Elise.

“Ze invaders will pay for zeir insolence!” exclaimed Black. “Zey ‘ave gone too far! O Great Fey, zis insignificant one is called Marie, and my companion is Claudia. May we know your name?”

“My name is Elise.”

“What a beautiful name,” said Claudia. “A name befitting of your status. Ze invaders may ‘ave marred your fur, but zey cannot mar ze beauty and grace zat is innate.”

If Elise could, she probably would have blushed right then. She had not known it until that moment, but she was weak to flattery. It wasn’t something she got much of back on Earth, so she wasn’t sure how to handle it, especially when it was as sincere as theirs seemed. It was almost enough to distract her from her mission, but she managed to pull herself together before she could say something stupid.

“Thank you,” she said meekly. “How did you get here?”

“Ze Envahis–pardon me, ze Invaders–captured us,” said Marie. “It was our own mistake. We were sloppy and overconfident. Now not only ‘ave we failed to rescue you, but we ‘ave lost our own lives as well.”

That confirmed their goal, which was the main point of the whole charade, but Elise wasn’t done. Clearly, the drow were not mindless killers like the dwarves believed. How did the enmity between the two races reach this point?

“Ze- the Invaders?” asked Elise.

“Zey call zemselves ze Dwarves,” spat Claudia. “Zey arrived one day many years ago and killed our people and stole our homes. Zis cave we are in used to be the home of our princess, but zey came and turned it into zis- zis-”

“Zis abomination!” finished Marie. “You cannot even tell zat zis was once our home. Zey ‘ave destroyed everything, and turned it into zis hideous affront to Nature! Zey even killed ze Sister Tree!”

“And as if zat wasn’t enough, they ‘ave the nerve to call us ze monsters, and get angry at us for retaliating,” said Claudia. “What little suffering we ‘ave managed to inflict on zem is nothing compared to ze pain zey ‘ave inflicted on our people.”

“How horrible!” said Elise.

She did not even have to act that much on that. The fear and apprehension she had initially felt toward the Drow had all but vanished, and was replaced by disgust for herself. The Drow may not be perfect, but they were not the mindless monsters she had been imagining them as. And the dwarves were not as innocent as they had portrayed themselves. She was disappointed in herself for believing them so blindly.

“Horrible does not even begin to describe it!” said Claudia. “The invaders are monsters without consciences, and soon they will cease to exist in our lands!”

“What do you mean?” asked Elise.

“Zeir days are numbered,” said Marie. “It ‘as been prophesied. Within one year, zere will not be a single living dwarf left in these caves. We ‘ave prayed to Titania, the Seelie goddess, and she ‘as ‘eard and answered our prayers. Salvation for our people will come.”

“The drow are going to kill the dwarves?”

“Maybe,” said Marie. “Or maybe the Envahi will kill themselves. Either way, the Invaders’ time soiling our caves is coming to an end. Soon, zey will be gone.”

“Are you sure?” asked Elise.

Claudia glanced around. “Completely. Titania herself bestowed zis prophecy upon our queen.”

That complicated Elise’s situation quite a bit. Unlike the dwarves’ prophecy, theirs didn’t mention her, but she couldn’t help but feel that she was involved somehow.

“Did the prophecy say specifically that the dwarves would die?” Elise asked.

“It said zey would not be in ze cave after ze year ended,” said Marie.

“But did it say they would die?”

“I don’t believe so.”

Elise thought in silence for a few moments. The prophecy could easily be fulfilled if the dwarves just left like they were planning to. It almost seemed too simple to be true. If the drow just agreed not to attack the dwarves while they dug their way out of the cave, the dwarves would be gone, and the drow would have their home back. There would be no conflict, and nobody would die.

She could already tell that would be nearly impossible though. The drow and dwarves were far from speaking terms. There was no chance they would be able to negotiate such a treaty. It would only maybe work if there was some neutral party hated by neither side who could help broker the treaty…

Elise almost groaned audibly. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get out of the cave. But if she left the dwarves knowing that she might be the only person alive in a position to create peace and save lives, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

“If there was a way to resolve the whole situation, and fulfill Titania’s prophecy, without shedding a drop of blood, would you take it?” she asked the drow.

“Of course!” said Claudia. “If we could eradicate ze-”

“No blood on either side,” clarified Elise.

The drow were silent for a few seconds before Marie spoke.

“I do not know,” she said. “Ze invaders have oppressed us for centuries, but… Queen Salome would likely choose to let zem live if it would save more of our people.”

“I see,” said Elise. “I’ll be back.”

“What?” asked Marie

“Bragi!” she called.

“Bragi?”

The door to the dungeon opened and Bragi, the guard who had delivered the drow appeared. He seemed confused, but he was under strict orders to retrieve Elise when she called, and he was not the type to disobey.

“Elise, what’s happening?” asked Claudia as Bragi freed Elise from her cage.

“I’m sorry,” said Elise. “I’ll be back.”

“Where are you going? What’s going on? Are they threatening you?”

Elise wanted to respond, but held her tongue. She could not say anything more without Bragi getting suspicious. She did her best to look away from the Drow as they watched her leave with eyes full of confusion and a hint of betrayal.

“What happened?” asked Bragi once they were out of the Dungeon. “Couldn’t you have got more?”

“I got enough,” said Elise. “Take me to the king. I need to speak with him.”