I wasted no time. I used the secret passage behind the desk to go to the teleportation circle, then traveled immediately to the elf village.

When I got there, I discovered one of Petal’s soldiers waiting for me. It was Phlox, who’d come with her to collect me at the bonfire. That seemed so long ago, but it had only been a few days.

Pretty much the moment I stepped out of the circle, Jane and Sigrid appeared in it, fully decked out in their adventuring gear.

“Finally, Jane said. “I was wondering if it was ever going to work."

"Yeah," Sirid said. "I was starting to feel a little silly there.”

Jane stretched her arms over her head. "You know, I wish I could’ve seen the looks on their faces when we disappeared.”

Sigrid chuckled. “I think you’re right, nobody else knows about the circles yet.”

“Hi guys,” I said, and only then did they notice me there.

Jane flashed me a trademark killer smile. “Oh hey, Daniel. How’d you know we were coming to visit you?”

“I didn’t, I just got here myself,” I said.

The smile vanished. “So you weren’t waiting here for us?”

“Uhhhh...”

Sigrid saved me. “Ohh, that’s probably why the circle in the city wasn’t working. We had to wait until you cleared out of this one first.”

“That makes sense,” Jane said, frowning at me.

“Whose faces were you talking about just now?” I said, concerned it might have to do with the Players attacking the village.

“There were these other Players watching us standing in that gazebo trying to teleport here,” Sigrid said. “I bet they were pretty surprised when we just vanished.”

“Everybody else thinks the circles are just where you respoon,” Jane said.

Respoon. As funny as that was, this was no time to try to tease Jane back.

“Listen, thanks for coming, but you should probably head on back to the city now,” I said.

“Rude!” Jane said.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy you came to see me, but this is a bad time. There’s a troop of Players on their way through the forest right now.”

“So?”

“So we’re pretty sure they’re coming to attack the village. You should go somewhere safe.”

“Like hell,” Sigrid said. “We’re gonna stay and help.”

“Damn straight,” Jane said. “What kind of friends of the elves would we be if we ran away in their time of need?”

“You sure? These are other Players coming.”

“Pfffft,” Sigrid said, dismissing my concerns with a wave of her hand. “We’ve fought against other Players in quests before, it’s fine.”

Phlox took us to Petal, who was calmly issuing orders to her people. She saw us coming and acknowledged us with a curt nod, then went back to giving instructions. We waited patiently, marveling at the coolness of the elves despite the impending invasion, grim determination on all of their faces.

While we waited for her, Phlox informed us that it didn’t seem to be a coordinated invasion, but judging by their behavior looked more like a random attack by a few errant malcontents.

Stupid, stupid Players.

Then we heard it. Shouts of pain and surprise when the first volley of arrows flew from the elves hidden in the tree into the Players’ ranks well before they reached the village. Then the sound of battle as the two sides clashed.

Petal, Phlox, and I pulled out our twin knives at the same time, and together, along with Jane and Sigrid, we sprinted to join the melee.

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Honestly, I pitied the fools who tried to attack the elves.

Jane was right when she's said it wouldn't be long before I would see the elves in battle, I even got to fight alongside them. I’d been training with them and I thought I knew what it would be like, but it was completely different when there was a live target.

Before, when I pictured a fantasy elf in my mind, I would imagine something like samurai, proud and noble warriors of great prowess, but my elves were more like ninjas. Their fighting style relied on speed, stealth, coordination, and surprise, and was not above sneak attacks, traps, and assassination from afar using their powerful and deadly-accurate bows. Whatever it took to get the job done quickly and as painlessly as possible. Well, painless for them, not so much for whomever they were fighting. They were utterly ruthless.

They had no qualms about using guerilla tactics. Their defense consisted of sniping away at their foes from the trees’ shadows, then rolling through their ranks in coordinated units like acrobatic waves of death, twin blades flashing, painting the trees red with splashes of their enemies’ blood before disappearing into them again. An elegant ballet of devastation.

The Players had not anticipated this kind of defense and been taken completely by surprise. What minimal coordination they’d prepared fell apart almost instantly when the first arrows from snipers in the trees started taking them down. Did they realize then that all the arrows that Players had been struck with before, when trying to get past the wall of thorns, had only been warning shots? Nobody had been killed by those arrows back then, but the Players soon learned how easily they could have been, had the elves wanted to.

Now, one by one, Players were hit by volleys of arrows coming from all directions, shot by invisible archers high in the trees. A Player would suddenly find the person beside them sprouting a half dozen arrow shafts sticking out all over before falling down dead. Then the next person. Then the next. Their hastily planned formations crumbled. Chaos took over.

Players started blasting ranged attacks into the treetops, firing weapons and powers blindly toward their hidden attackers. When they were all looking up, waiting for the next volley of arrows, the elven foot soldiers appeared, me among them. Melting from the trees, we flipped and dove and rolled, twin blades slicing down anyone in their path.

Sigrid remained among the elves stationed as a defensive line to keep the attackers in the corridor of death, using ranged attacks from behind a protective barricade. Jane didn’t like fighting like that, but didn’t have the elven fighting skill to fight with the rest of us. Instead, she used her teleportation power to enable her own hit-and-run tactics, blinking around in the battle from foe to foe. Honestly, she was lucky the elves were such good shots so she didn’t get pincushioned by their arrows when she appeared among the Player’s ranks.

I think Sigrid, Jane, and I made a good showing for ourselves. Once, Jane and I met in the battle. I was with Petal’s unit and we’d just emerged from the trees. Phlox and I had taken down an opponent when Jane blinked beside us. We were both a hair’s breadth away from jabbing or slicing one another when we recognized each other and held back.

I would have expected her to give me one of her smiles, but instead I saw an expression on her face I’d never seen before. Her lips pursed tight, eyes narrowed, body tense. She looked pained. I immediately checked her over to see if she was hurt, ready to cast healing on her.

“Jane, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, then teleported away.

The bloodbath was almost over by then. It hadn’t lasted long. I recognized some of the Players as we fought. Some were on teams, others were unaffiliated. I wondered who’d taken the initiative to organize this fruitless invasion.

Not a single invading Player was left alive. Well, none of the dim ones, anyway. Some had enough brains to turn tail and flee once they saw what they were up against. The elves could’ve taken them down too, but Petal had instructed them to let those who fled keep their lives.

Although several were injured, somehow not a single elf died in the battle.

An unnamed observer is getting used to your brutality but is still impressed

Once it was over, I healed the elves who'd been hurt. Then I went through the ranks of Players lying on the ground. It would take some time for the creepy NPCs to come collect all the bodies.

I know what you're thinking. I went to loot them. You're wrong. I didn't take a single item from any Players. I'd been tempted to take their gold as compensation for the trouble they'd put the elves through, but I decided to take the moral high ground.

I was looking for any Players who might still be alive. There weren't many -- the elves did not fight to injure, but to slay -- but the ones I did find I healed back to full health then told them to piss off and never come back.

As for the dead ones, I suppose my moral ground wasn't that high after all. I tucked a small piece of paper inside a pocket of some of them, the ones I got to before the creepy corpse grabbers did. I wasn't sure it would still be there when they respawned, but it was worth a try. Written on each piece of paper was the same petty message: You're better than this.

Let them stew on that.

I had fought many different types of opponents in my time on Crucible so far, and killed a lot of them. But this was my first time fighting other Players with murderous intent since Kiki and her crew tried to kill me. The second time. When they succeeded.

Maybe all the monsters who’d died by my hands had inured me to the act of killing, or maybe I’d just grown callous, or maybe I was too pissed off that Players were attacking my elves, but it had been easier than I would have thought to slice my knives through the soft flesh of another Player.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Word of the attack quickly spread in the city. It became known that attacking the elves was A Very Bad Idea. Not only would you get your butt kicked, but you could die. Four of the Players who were killed during the battle did not respawn, and were never seen again. It was the first time so many people had become dead-dead at the same time, and it hit hard.

Getting killed was bad enough even when you respawned because it cost you a level of mastery in some if not all of your abilities, but death-death was another thing entirely.

I couldn’t be completely sure, but I didn’t think any of the Players who died-died in the attack had been the ones who’d fallen to my blades.