5 minutes earlier.
It had been centuries since Emilia had found herself in such a dire situation. In fact, as she flew away from her attackers toward the exit by the Mother Tree, she realized that she couldn’t remember ever taking so much damage in her entire life. Her leg had so much wood in it, that it was essentially useless, and she didn’t have any {Fairy Dust} left after healing her other wounds. She still had enough mana for a few more attacks, and she might have been able to kill the rabbit with it, but she would have almost certainly been killed by the others if she stuck around that long.
It was all her fault, really. She let Naomi get too strong. She should have killed the paranoid drow years ago, right when she reached 6th tier. If she had done that properly, the rabbit’s deception wouldn’t have been anywhere near as fatal as it had been.
How did Elise even still remember Ostra? How did she get around the contract? She watched as Jerry wiped her memories. Freddy had confirmed that she never signed the contract. So how did she know about it?
There were only two answers: either she somehow nullified it, or Freddy and Jerry were lying. The former was impossible. Elise was abnormal, but she couldn’t resist a memory spell from someone at Jerry’s level. That meant that Jerry and Freddy were lying to her.
But why would they do that?
She had spent decades with them, learning their habits and desires, and doing her best to earn their trust. They only knew the rabbit for a couple days. What did she tell Freddy that convinced him to let her go with her memories and no contract? Or was her presence in the caves all a ploy in the first place? Even knowing that Elise was once human, some of the events surrounding her didn’t make sense. It reeked of interference.
Did they plant her in the cave system specifically to keep an eye on Emilia? That must have been it. How else would she have survived living with the dwarves? That Rune of Fate thing that the dwarves all loved so much was probably something planted by one of them. It was probably the same with whatever miracle medicine was used to save Naomi.
But why would they do that? Did they somehow catch wind of what she was doing? Was she being too careless when she told them she was going to move away soon? No, that couldn’t have been it. The fact that she was farming the war for experience points was a surprise to Elise, so they wouldn’t have known about it. Unless they purposefully kept the young fey in the dark about it to lure Emilia out.
In that case, was Freddy acting alone? Was it a decision of the Board? Or was she just being paranoid? It could have been a completely independent party, the issue of the contract and the memories was a separate matter that Freddy wasn’t aware of. As far as she knew, the only person on the outside who knew exactly where she lived was Freddy, but she wasn’t arrogant enough to think she couldn’t have slipped up on one of her excursions. They would have to be very strong, but someone could have been keeping an eye on her without her knowledge.
Whatever the case, she would figure it out eventually. There was always a cause for every effect. A butterfly for every tornado. Once she got to safety, she would find out what had happened and why, and she would resolve the situation to make sure it never happened again.
But to do that, she had to get to safety first, and that was proving difficult. Her speed normally was much faster than anyone in the tribe, but the 40% penalty to her Agility that she had incurred from the broken deals slowed her down enough that Naomi was actually faster than her now. And her damned eyes didn’t seem the least bit affected by Emilia’s invisibility.
She commanded the rest of the tribe to try to block their way, but she knew it would only buy her a few seconds at most. Naomi was too fast, and Emilia’s reduced stats also reduced her hold on the drow. Those few seconds would need to be enough. She would have another few seconds while Naomi tried to find the exit cave, and a few more while she tried to climb it, and in those seconds, she would need to get far enough away that the drow wouldn’t be able to see her anymore.
When she reached the trunk of the Spirit Tree, she looked down to see Naomi just a few steps away. She cursed and continued up into the tunnel toward the surface.
Why did I have to make this path so convoluted? She thought.
The twists and turns were designed to confuse and trap anything that managed to find either side and wander in, but that wouldn’t matter here. She was dripping too much blood, and Naomi was an expert tracker. If anything, she had only made it easier to be followed, since so many of the turns were on flat ground. If only she had just made it a vertical shaft…
The night was clear and young, which was the worst possible case for her. If she flew straight up, Naomi would be able to see her perfectly well, and there was plenty of time for her to keep pursuing. Their mana would both replenish, but without anyone to manipulate, Emilia didn’t stand a chance in a fight. Even worse, the blood loss would get to her before she got anywhere useful, and {Fairy Dust} only replenished while resting. She needed to find somewhere safe to rest and recover. If she could just buy half an hour, she’d be able to at least stop the blood flow, and from there, she'd get high enough in the air that Naomi wouldn’t be able to touch her before sunrise.
She flew forward in the direction she was facing, making it only a hundred feet before she ended up in a clearing with no cover whatsoever. Even worse, there was something else waiting for her. It was almost as big as Jerry, and had snow-white fur and blood red eyes and fangs the size of her arm. It was Freddy’s new pet, the warg.
She didn’t even have time to curse before an icicle formed in the air above the beast and rocketed toward her. At that point, she knew it was over. The stat penalties were too large for her to be able to dodge, and she didn’t have enough mana to block it. Even if she could block or dodge, the warg probably wouldn’t give up, and the delay would be enough for Naomi to catch up to her.
The icicle hit her straight in the chest, putting a hole straight through her from sternum to spine.
At least my leg doesn’t hurt anymore, she thought with a morbid smile as the sensation from her lower body disappeared.
If she had all her mana and all her {Fairy Dust}, she might have been able to recover from that wound. Maybe. It would have been close. She would not, however, have been able to recover from that and the tree branch that impaled her lower back a few seconds later. She didn’t feel the wound herself, but she felt her body jolt forward when it hit her.
She drifted slowly to the ground, her wings doing their best to keep her afloat and failing. The warg watched her fall with a snarl that looked a lot like an arrogant smile. There was no sign of his master, but she knew the golden man wouldn’t be far away. At least she knew who had betrayed her now.
A fitting reversal, she thought as the world faded away. Getting betrayed by my teacher. I guess that’s what I get for trusting a demon.
----------------------------------------
A hundred feet away from the tunnel’s exit, Naomi stood on the edge of a clearing. Emilia’s corpse was in the middle of the clearing with a root piercing through her back, and an icicle through her chest. On the other side of the clearing was the warg.
Naomi and the warg faced off against each other, neither moving a muscle. Elise knew this was a bad situation for Naomi. She had already used a significant portion of her mana fighting Emilia. Her physical abilities were also good, but without her mana, she was half-crippled. On top of that, the warg was in top condition. Even if Naomi fled, the warg would probably be able to catch her before she made it to safety.
Elise needed to go and help, but she found herself struggling to move. That monster there was the one that had killed Sylvanna and Corwin, and almost killed her twice. She knew she was no match for it, and even with Naomi, they would probably both die. Even so, she needed to at least make an attempt. But she couldn’t move. It was as if her body was rejecting her commands.
The warg glanced up at her, and her fur stood on end. Now she had done it. She was too far away from Naomi to help. It would run through the drow and then kill her. Her only hope was to run away back down the tunnel, but she was reluctant to do that too. She was tired of running away from danger, leaving the people with her for dead. This time would be different.
She steeled her resolve, and started flying forward. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting alongside Naomi. Not running away again like the coward she hated herself for being.
When she reached Naomi’s position, she stopped again. Neither of the other two had moved an inch since her arrival, and the warg’s eyes never left her.
“It’s strong,” said Naomi.
“I- I know,” said Elise.
“We’re probably going to die.”
“I know.”
“But we won’t know for sure until we try. On the count of three, you go left, I’ll go right. Ready? 1. 2-”
She never made it to 3.
The warg huffed once, seeming almost disappointed, then turned around and walked away. Elise and Naomi stood still for a few minutes until they were sure it wasn’t coming back, then they took a simultaneous deep breath as their muscles unclenched.
With the adrenaline gone, Elise was suddenly much more aware of the pain in what was left of her rear legs. She had managed to mostly staunch the blood flow with her {Fairy Dust}, but she had already lost a lot, and that combined with the pain was making it difficult to stay awake. She slowly drifted downward, fighting unconsciousness as she tried to steer her fall toward Naomi.
The drow woman was paying close enough attention to catch her thankfully. Elise was awake just long enough to see her bend down and make something grow out of the ground before her vision went dark.
She dreamt she was back in the cavern. The Mother Tree was healthy again, and the fruits were shining brightly from above. Below her, there was a herd of Omnivorous Cyclops cows caught in an all-out brawl. A brawl she had caused.
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She looked to her left to see Emilia, whole and uninjured, and smiling and nodding in approval.
“You have potential,” she said. “Look what you managed to do already.”
Elise watched as the cows tore each other apart, and suddenly felt sick. She could hear the System dings indicating her level-ups, but was it really worth it? Was all that carnage necessary? Moments ago, those cows had been a cohesive group dedicated to surviving together and eradicating outside threats. Now…
“You have potential.” Elise looked back up at Emilia, who was still smiling. “Look what we could be doing.”
Elise looked back down at the cows, but they weren’t cows anymore. They were dwarves and drow. She saw Naomi slumped against a tree, hurt even worse than she had been in the tunnel. Both eyes were gouged out, her bottom jaw was gone, her right arm was hanging by a single tendon, and there was a gaping hole in her abdomen. Next to her lay Hallbjorn, an arrow sprouting from his chest and black veins spreading across his body.
All around, there was carnage. Nicole was pinned to a tree by a spear held by an armored dwarf with so many arrows in his back he looked like a porcupine. Jens the wizard’s head was buried halfway in a bush, his beard tangled in the branches and his body was nowhere to be found.
On the edges, she saw innocents. She wanted to look away, but it was like someone was holding her by the head and forcing her to look at the scene. There was Greta and Kristoffer, and Carol and Benoit, and Osanne and Johann, all staring at her with lifeless eyes.
“You have potential,” came Emilia’s voice again. “So why aren’t you using it?”
She woke up hyperventilating, unable to get the images from the dream out of her head.
It’s over, she thought to herself. Emilia is dead.
It took her a few seconds to gather her wits again and take in her surroundings. She was back in the drow cave, laying on the flower in the Center of the Mother Tree next to Salome.
Not quite over, she thought, looking around.
The mana in the air was still stale and stagnant. Beside her, Salome looked pale and gaunt, and the petals of the flower were starting to shrivel around the edges. The poison was still affecting the Mother Tree, which meant there was still work to do. But Emilia was dead. She remembered that clearly, at least. The biggest obstacle was out of the way.
She tried to stand up, and suddenly remembered her own injury. She looked at her hind legs and saw that, while her feet were still gone, her wounds had completely healed over. There was even short fur growing on the ends of the stumps.
How long has it been? she wondered.
She activated her wings and lifted herself off the flower before flying out of the center. The fruits were glowing, but only a little. It seemed like dusk, but with the poison, she couldn’t be sure what time it actually was. The drow were out though, and when they saw her arrive, a small crowd started to form around her. They all started asking questions ranging from how she was feeling to what had happened with Emilia. She tried to be as polite as possible while also answering as few questions as possible. Where were the decision makers? Where were Osanne and Naomi?
One of those questions was answered when she saw Naomi in the distance jogging in her direction.
“You’re awake!” she said.
“How long was I asleep?”
“A day and a half, give or take. You feelin’ alright?”
“I’m missing my back feet, but otherwise, I feel fine.”
“Ah yeah, about that, we went back to find them so we could try to reattach them, but while we were gone, a snake made off with them. We cut it open to get them out, but they were unsalvageable.”
“It’s fine,” said Elise. “I’ll recover next time I evolve. Did anything happen while I was asleep?”
Naomi scoffed. “Just a little bit of everything. We got Emilia, but the damage was already done. The dwarves are gearin’ for war. So are we. It’s only a matter of who makes the first move at this point.”
“Dangit,” said Elise. “Have you tried telling them about Emilia?”
“They rejected all our requests to talk.”
“Hmmmmm.”
Elise racked her brains for a solution, but couldn’t come up with anything. Were the dwarves really rejecting their requests to talk? Hallbjorn wouldn’t do that. Especially not after the failed assassination attempt. That must have meant the messages weren’t making it to him. Someone was intercepting and blocking them. It was probably Josef.
But knowing that didn’t help. They still had no way of getting the message past Josef. The tunnel to the king’s bedchambers was collapsed, so she couldn’t get in and talk to him directly, and if Josef was in control of whichever dwarves were in charge of communicating with the drow, going there in person wouldn’t do any good either.
How else could she prevent the war though? There was no longer any chance of Emilia doing anything to trigger the conflict, but there was still a very distinct possibility of one of either race doing something stupid. She needed to act fast, but how could she make it clear to the dwarves that the whole war was planned by someone, and that the perpetrator was now dead?
“What did you do with Emilia’s body?” she asked.
If they could show the fey’s body to the dwarves, maybe it would at least make them start to question what was happening. They knew that the drow would never kill a fey, so if the drow presented them with a dead fey, they would at the very least be confused.
“Let’s take this somewhere else,” said Naomi, glancing at the growing crowd.
“Okay.”
A few minutes later, they were back in Naomi’s hut. A few of the more ambitious drow had tried to follow behind them, but Naomi had some of the scouts block their way so that they could have their conversation uninterrupted. When they got inside, Naomi repeated the trick from a few days prior, growing out the walls to make them soundproof, and when she was satisfied, she knelt down on the ground and closed her eyes.
The dirt started to rumble, then crack and something started to rise from below. Although it was wrapped in an airtight cocoon of roots, Elise knew what it was immediately.
Once it had fully emerged, the roots started to unravel, revealing Emilia’s corpse. It looked surprisingly well-preserved, and didn’t even smell bad like Elise was worried about. Her face looked exactly like she remembered it, though it was paler now, and if not for the two giant holes through her torso, it almost looked like she was asleep.
“When I brought it back, at first, some people tried to kill me,” said Naomi. “It took a lot of explaining before people started to accept it. After that, they all wanted to burn the corpse. I had to hide it here to keep it safe. Not that I don’t want to burn it, but I knew this might be useful, so I restrained myself.”
“Good,” said Elise. “That’s good. We can use this to stop the war. Hopefully. If we show it to the dwarves, it will at least confuse them right?”
“Maybe,” said Naomi. “Or it might backfire. They’ve somehow got it in their heads that we sacrifice fey. They might think we’re showing them our sacrifice to pray to Titania to give us victory in battle.”
“Oh,” said Elise. “Well, there goes that idea.”
“Yeah, I’m stumped too,” said Naomi. “I didn’t want drow to die before, but now I really don’t want them to die. Now that I know what that bitch did… I’ve been working non-stop to come up with a way to create peace. Been talking to some of the village elders– at least the ones who believe me– and they haven’t been able to come up with anything either. We talked about your idea, but decided it was too risky.”
“Maybe I could go talk to Hallbjorn again?” suggested Elise. “I saved his life. That has to count for something.”
“Maybe,” said Naomi. “But how are you going to get to him? He’s been locked up in the castle ever since the assassination attempt, recovering from the poison. And a lot of rumors have spread, including one about you being there in his chambers at the time of the assassination. Unfortunately, the rumor conveniently leaves out the part where you saved his life, so you’ll be killed on sight.”
“I could sneak in with one of the scouts with an invisibility skill.”
“That won’t work either,” said Naomi. “They did a deep, deep sweep of the entire cavern for our tunnels. They didn’t find them all, but they did find our only other one into the castle. We could get you into the city, but they’ve upped the defenses around the castle. You wouldn’t make it without being spotted. Nicole’s our best at stealth and infiltration, and even she didn’t dare go near the castle walls.”
Elise furrowed her brow and thought for a few seconds.
“And the dwarves are refusing to even talk?” she asked eventually.
“Yep,” confirmed Naomi. “We sent them multiple messages, and they ignored them all.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Elise. “I know Hallbjorn. He would hear us out. Especially after the assassination attempt.”
“Maybe he’s not the one making that decision. No one’s seen him since the assassination attempt. They say he’s alive, but my girls have heard some rumors flying around that the assassination was a success, and the Council is just trying to hide it.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Yes, but he still hasn’t been seen. That means at best, he’s recovering, and hasn’t been getting personally involved. At worst though-”
“A coup,” finished Elise. “And even if he was on his deathbed, he would still be getting involved, which means he’s either being kept in the dark, or he’s been overthrown.”
“Right,” said Naomi, nodding. “And there’s the real trouble. I believe what you said when you told me that he was a reasonable man, but if he’s not making the decisions anymore…”
“Shit,” muttered Elise.
“If you’ve got any other ideas, I’d be happy to hear them, but right now, it’s looking like there’s nothing we can do. Hell of a parting gift she left for us.”
She kicked Emilia’s left antler, making the whole body contort oddly.
Elise didn’t have any other ideas. If Hallbjorn wasn’t in power any more, what could they do? At best, it would be Magnus and Sindri in charge, and they might be able to be reasoned with, but it was much more likely that Josef had taken over, in which case, the two races might be doomed to war. In fact, Emilia might have planned exactly that. She could have been manipulating Josef from the start.
Did that mean that Hallbjorn was really dead? Did Josef kill him? She hoped not. Even if Josef was a greedy, ambitious, spiteful old fart, he wouldn’t go that far. He would probably just keep Hallbjorn locked up until the war was either over, or too far along to be stopped. Unless he didn’t.
If Hallbjorn was dead, that meant that Johann would be the new king. Except Johann would be too young to be fully in power, so he would need a regent, who in this hypothetical scenario would most definitely be Josef. The old man would effectively become king without actually disrupting the line of succession.
Elise shook her head. With every new theory, the future looked grimmer and grimmer. It was bringing down her mood, and also wasting precious time that she should have been using to think of a solution. Whoever was in charge, the war would be hard to stop. The entire dwarven population was riled up, and even if Hallbjorn was in charge, there was no guarantee that he could actually stop it. If he tried and the order didn’t go over well, there might be an open coup, which would be even worse.
Rather than worrying about who was in charge and convincing them to agree to a ceasefire, it would be more useful to think of a way to make the entire dwarven population think that the war would be bad. But how?
She and Naomi sat in silence for a quarter of an hour, trying to come up with a way to resolve the whole situation. At some point, Elise found herself staring into Emilia’s cold, dead eyes. If they could just convince the dwarves that the whole conflict had been started by Emilia, the issue would be resolved. Cooperation might be beyond them, since so much bad blood had formed in the past few centuries, but a peace treaty would be possible.
Suddenly, Naomi, looked up, and started staring at one of the walls.
“What is it?” asked Elise.
“Something is happening,” she said.
Without elaborating any further, she waved her hand, opening a way out of the hut and dashed outside with Elise hot on her heels. She almost lost sight of Naomi until the drow woman suddenly came to a stop, and Elise stopped right over her shoulder, trying to find out what she was looking at. It only took her a moment to spot it. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide.
From the direction of the Mother Tree, a man with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a blinding smile was floating toward them. It was Freddy.
“Who are you?” demanded Naomi. “What are you doing here?”
“Naomi!” hissed Elise in warning.
“My name is Freddy, and I’m here to investigate a recent murder.”