“Took you long enough to get free. Thought that young elf was going to offer to sleep in your room.”

Mathyx chuckled as Marithra faded back into existence, leaning against the wall of the room that the elves had given him to rest in. “Yeah, that one seemed just a bit eager to please. I wonder if that’s a personality trait or if they train them that way. He didn’t seem to have the same level of zealotry that the others were portraying though.”

Walking over the wash basin set on a small table, he started scrubbing the blood from his hands. At least the soup appeared useful and wasn’t as abrasive as he had feared, given the apparent level of technology. Maybe some things were going to be more advanced than expected.

Glancing over his shoulder, he asked, “How much of those conversations were you able to overhear?”

Marithra scowled. “Not much, unfortunately. I couldn’t get into the room past the guard. I did get to explore the castle a bit before you got here though.”

Mathyx dried his hands on the small table. “Did you get the same Nazi vibes I’m getting?”

At her nod, he sighed. “Don’t suppose you managed to get me some gear?” At her look he raised his hands in surrender. “Right. Dumb question.”

He took the bow she handed him, checking it over with , then chuckled.

A sturdy wooden bow, created with basic carpentry skills.

“So no magic weapons, eh?”

Marithra shook her head. “It’s all basic stuff here. Everything I was able to looked to be made here. No loot drops. No advanced craftings. From what I overheard, these elves haven’t been in this world long enough to build the tools to build the tools. Not to mention collecting the materials needed to make more advanced items.”

Reaching into her pockets, she pulled out something before tossing it to him. “Speaking of which, here are some basic harvesting and crafting tools for carpentry. As well as an actual iron skinning knife. Maybe you’ll finally be able to make some dinner when we hit the road.”

Staring at him, she asked, “We are hitting the road, right?”

Stuffing the gifts into his inventory, Mathyx nodded. “Yeah, we’re hitting the road. I just hope we’ll be able to free some of the poor slaves. I just don’t feel right with them all trapped like that.”

A wide grin spread across Marithra’s lips. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that.” She spun a ring of keys on one finger. “Those slaves should be making their bid for freedom any moment now.”

“Wha? How? When?”

“It wasn’t all looting and pilfering, you know?”

“I will never understand how you are able to do a dozen things in the time it takes me to complete a simple task like meeting the leadership of a group of nazi elves.”

“I’m just amazing like that. You should have realized that after all these years.”

“Yeah, that’s true enough.” Grinning, he shouldered the bow. “Don’t suppose you…” He trailed off as she handed him some arrows and a quiver. “Right. Don’t know why I thought I needed to ask. When do you suppose…” He trailed off again as shouts could be vaguely heard through the door.

“Looks like somethings going on out there. Shall we take advantage of the slave revolt to get out of here?”

Marithra responded with a flourish of daggers through her fingers until they slapped her palms. The grin on her face was the last thing he saw before she faded away again.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“And they say I’m the dramatic one.”

***

Stepping aside to let a group of elves rush past him, Mathyx paused his journey through the castle. There was a lot of chaos from a people he had thought to be cool and composed. Then again, that might have just been his preconceived notions of what elves should be like imposing themselves on his new reality. And wasn’t that a strange thing to accept, that this fantasy world was his reality. Unless this was some wildly creative expansion to Fantasy Quest Online and he’d somehow been trapped inside it.

Shaking his head, he resumed his journey, backtracking his way through the castle towards the gates that had let him in. He spotted the last of those rushing elves pass through the gates just as he turned the final corner. Huh. They really just left the gates undefended?

Stepping through the gates, he looked around for any sign of the gates. Catching the sound of combat off to the side, he saw several of the guards involved in attacking escapees. He had to clamp down on the desire to join in the fight. It was only the two of them and he was pretty sure there weren’t enough escaped slaves to win the fight.

Silently saluting the humans, he turned and ran into the forest, opposite of the way he had arrived. He vaguely recalled seeing what could have been a river in the distance when he was on the hill looking towards the castle.

After several minutes running through the forest Marithra faded into existence at his side. The two ran on for a bit more in companionable silence. After what seemed like hours they finally reached the shore of a wide river.

“Well, I don’t think they followed us, but I definitely don’t want to stay this close. What do you think? Follow the river for a couple days and see where it leads us?”

Marithra nodded and grinned. “If they wanted to track us, it wouldn’t be hard to follow the trail you blazed through the forest, especially considering that they have a bunch of Scouts, apparently.”

Mathyx was cut off from reply by something bursting from the waters. It was short, scaly, and full of teeth, like a piranha on legs! Scrambling to get the bow from his shoulder, he nearly fell over when Marithra stepped in and slammed her daggers into the back of the flying fishman.

“What the hell is that?”

Infesting many waterways on Mindoria, Piranha folk are a swiftly propagating carnivorous race that prefer to swarm their prey.

“Oh that’s not good…” He trailed off as more flying fishfolk sprang from the waters. At least he’d managed to unlimber his bow and draw an arrow from the quiver. He sent a at one of the Piranha Folk, smashing the thing from the air. Another arrow was already in the air before the corpse hit the ground, slamming into another fishman.

Marithra meanwhile flowed through the flying and snapping swarm, her daggers dancing and stabbing with a precious he’d long admired. She probably wasn’t even using her skills, just pure damage and dagger placement.

One piranha folk managed to get close before he could get off a shot and he instead stabbed the arrow into the creature’s eye.

Panting, he looked around at the various corpses spread around. Ignoring the System messages, he took stock of himself and Marithra before going around and collecting his expended arrows, inspecting them carefully, discarding those that couldn’t be saved.

“Great. Now my hands are covered in blood again.”

“At least there is that lovely stream for you to clean up in. Although, before you do that, maybe you can try out that new skinning knife and butcher some of these. I was glancing through the System files and it mentions that these guys make for good eating.”

“Fried piranha folk? Sure why not.”