Beth pushed the strange elves from her mind as she stalked down the tunnel. She felt a surprising sense of relief after Dutcha confirmed that Bel was okay. It didn’t fully relieve Beth’s sense of guilt at letting her little sister go off on her own, but it did make her feel a tiny bit better.

Beth sighed smoothed some of her hair away from her face. In retrospect, she was probably more stressed out about Bel’s well being than she wanted to admit. She’d justified staying in the Golden Plains by saying that she would be the one to organize an attack on Technis’ people, but it seemed like Hanti’s thirst for conquest was more than sufficient.

“I’ve gotta be a big girl and admit that I was wrong about a couple of things,” she whispered to herself.

She still wanted to make the trip worthwhile, so she was either going to convince the king to stop sending people to the Golden Plains or she would stab him in the face.

Or, she admitted to herself, she would discover that he was too tough and run away. She clenched her jaw. She wouldn’t like that outcome, but this wasn’t where she wanted to die. Not while Technis was still ruining lives back in Satrap.

Beth set her jaw and strode forward, filled with purpose and resolve.

Finding the king wound up being less complicated than she had expected: she simply followed the sound of his shouting. At first she thought the sounds were from a crowd, but then she realized that there was only a single voice. She went through several branching tunnels, pausing at the intersections to listen for the loudest direction, before finally ending up in a large cavern lit from above by multiple skylights. A quick glance told her that the sun would be setting soon, which redoubled her resolve to wrap things up quickly.

In the middle of the wide cavern, the large-hatted king was berating a group of young elves sitting in what looked like indoor sculpture garden. There were statues of trees and mountains and of creatures in a wide variety of poses, and there were even a few statues of elves. Vines wove their way through the stones, filling the space with greenery that complemented the dark stone. With the light filtering in from above it would have been a breathtaking sight – if the king wasn’t ruining it.

Beth took a quick inventory of the statues and noticed that there were none of the supposed king. I guess that’s what he’s trying to fix. I wonder if Technis was like this when he first started getting regular people to make statues of him?

The elf waved a small, very poorly done figurine of himself under the faces of his fellow elves, desperate for their attention. Most of them ignored him and continued working on their own projects, clearly uninterested in him and his tall hat. When Beth was halfway across the cavern he began to throw a fit and smashed one of the statues, an exquisitely carved block of stone twice Beth’s height that was being shaped into a waterfall, complete with little stone fish jumping from the water. The maker frowned and held out her hands, summoning the pieces back together.

When the king smashed it a second time, the artist threw up her hands and stalked out of the room. Several of her colleagues followed afterwards, clearly unable to work under those conditions. The king yelled after them with such incredible volume that Beth used a bit of consuming darkness in her ears to dampen the noise.

“Hey,” Beth shouted back, “I’m here to talk to you.”

The king continued to rant in the elven tongue, his petulant cries of ‘elf elf elf’ echoing throughout the chamber.

“Hey,” Beth screamed into his face. “Listen to me.”

The elf took a step back and waved his hand in front of his nose.

“Are you saying my breath stinks?”

The elf sniffed at her with disdain. He pulled a leaf from his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “How can you not notice?”

He stared up his nose at her for a few moments as Beth took deep, calming breaths.

“Well?” he asked eagerly. “Has Technis sent more gifts?”

Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me?”

“I’m doing my part,” he said excitedly. “I’ve convinced many of my fellow youth to leave for the desert, just as your messengers begged of me.”

Well, that explains why they seem so unprepared. They probably left just to get away from him. I wonder what he told them about the Golden Plains?

The king tilted his chin upwards and grinned smugly. “Of course they’re not the best I could offer, but I’m sure they’re dealing untold destruction to the disgusting desert people.”

Beth blinked back at him, waiting to see if he would offer up more details. He didn’t disappoint. He leaned forward with a feral grin.

“I could do more,” he said, hunger in his voice. “If you made me powerful enough to challenge the elders I could force the adults to invade. The long-ears won’t take me seriously now, but we don’t need to wait another fifty years for me to be an adult. Give me the strength to strike down a member of the council–”

“But we’ve already given you so much,” Beth interrupted hesitantly.

“So much? So much!” he screamed.

He touched his hat a summoned a familiar blue barrier around his body. “This is only useful when someone tries to challenge me! Now they just walk away!”

He kicked at another half-finished sculpture. The masterfully carved stone raptor tipped over, shattering into a hundred pieces. Its open mouth, filled with carefully carved teeth, rolled past Beth.

The elf king walked up to Beth and hissed into her face. “I need what your people promised. Give me the power to reshape my body.”

He reached up and rubbed one of his short ears between his fingers. “Make me an adult and I will conquer the Golden Plains.”

Beth nodded. “Of course, of course. Can I see the hat for a moment?”

The elf pulled off his hat and clutched it to his chest.

“What do you want with it?” he asked suspiciously.

Beth laughed lightly. “Oh, don’t worry. We put more than just the barrier into it. I’m just going to unlock more features.”

“Really? Here!” The elf eagerly thrust the hat at her.

Beth smiled as she took it from him. She turned it over so she could look inside. Most of the interior was filled with a giant, dead bug. A wasp of some kind.

Makes as much sense as anything else I suppose.

Beth put the hat on the ground and knelt over it. “I’m just going to make some adjustments,” she said, smiling.

Then she drew her favorite dagger and repeatedly plunged the dark blade into the hat, not stopping until the material was more hole than hat and the elf king had kicked her off.

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Beth rolled once and pushed herself back to her feet.

“What are you doing?” he screamed accusingly. He held his ruined headpiece like a mother mourning a dead child.

“Um, I’m here to kill you kid,” she replied with a shrug. “You’re pretty slow.”

The elf’s mouth opened wide enough to swallow a fist and he screamed.

Beth had guessed that he had some type of sonic powers so her ears were already stopped up with consuming darkness. What she didn’t expect was a force powerful enough to blow her off her feet. She slammed into the opposite wall of the room and fell, but she managed to land on her feet. Dazed, but not down.

A swipe of her dagger across her arm coated it with blood-turned-venom from heart of revenge. Hoping to finish things quickly, she rushed at the elf while he was busy drawing in an enormous breath. Before she could get the dagger to his throat though, he stomped his foot into the ground and worked another ability. A tangled pillar of roots and leaves rose up underneath him, lifting him well above Beth’s height. Beth cast a quick glance to the ground and saw that one of the vines that crossed the floor had been kick-started into furious growth.

He screamed at her again, but Beth ducked around the pillar, staying just ahead of the spray of debris that marked the cone of violence from his vociferous shout. The moment his power ebbed she stabbed her dagger into the viney pillar, forcing gnaw like loathing into the stems. One attack wasn’t enough – she was forced to dodge around another one of his outbursts before plunging her dagger into it a second time.

The tangle of stems finally dessicated and shattered, toppling the pillar. Before he fell, the elf jumped from the top of the pillar to put more distance between himself and Beth. Her shadow clones leaped from her while an obscuring cloak of darkness clung to her real body. Beth and her two clones charged at him before his feet even touched the ground. Beth stayed to the left to best use her right arm, guessing that the king would be too frustrated to notice. She was lucky that her guess was right.

The king held up a hand and the air in front of him shrieked like it was being tortured. The center shadow clone dissipated in a wave of force that sent Beth’s braid whipping into her face even though she was several strides away from the attack. She grit her teeth and continued her charge – she was too committed to turn back now.

Beth reached the king slightly before the right clone but then telegraphed a hopelessly awkward stab. The king took the bait; he mistook her for the clone and spun towards the second clone instead. He obliterated it with the same needlessly overpowered ability, leaving his side exposed to her attack. Beth’s lips skimmed back in anticipation as her dagger stabbed upwards towards his kidneys.

The dark blade of her pointed misericorde struck with a heavy, hollow thud rather than a wet squelch. A shock travelled up her arm as the blade was stopped early and Beth knew that she had made a mistake.

The elf turned and pointed his hand in her direction, his face twisted with anger and contempt. Beth tried her unseen hand immediately, attempting to deliver a core punch to the elf king’s midsection, but it met the same wooden resistance as her knife. The air around the elf’s hand thickened as he readied his attack.

Then her shadow copied the action, delivering a weak punch to the elf’s leg. The strength of it was completely ineffective, but the unexpected strike caught the elf off-guard. He stumbled from the unseen blow and Beth exploited his imbalance to duck under his arm.

Thanks Dutcha, she thought as she hit the ground and came face to face with subtle shadow spirit.

The air above her screamed as the elf’s powerful ability was unleashed. Before he could redirect it, Beth kicked his legs out from under him. The elf’s eyes widened as he found himself toppling through the air. He hit the ground with a heavy sound and Beth hit him with a stab enhanced with cut like hatred.

He screamed in outrage as the dagger penetrated his midsection, but it caught fast in his bark-like skin. When he reached for her Beth pushed herself backwards, slipping out of his grasp but leaving her favorite dagger behind.

She quickly drew her second favorite dagger as she retreated to a safe distance. The heft of the stiletto’s solid metal construction was reassuring in her hand. The blue gems on its cross guard twinkled in the fading light as she circled around the elf, attempting to discern flaws in his protection. Probably just his eyes, she grumbled as she inspected his bark-like protection.

The elf awkwardly rose and Beth carefully watched his movements to glean his current health. His skin had turned dark and cracked, like the bark of a thick tree, and slowed his movements slightly. It was nice to see that the defensive ability had a drawback, but the protection it offered was impressive. Landing a lethal blow through the heavy bark would be next to impossible without the full force of her abilities.

Her poison usually meant that a close hit was close enough, but this time it didn’t seem to be having its usual effects. She could see a bit of discoloration in the exposed bark around her embedded weapon, but his elven healing seemed to be stronger than her toxins. Gonna have to complain to Durak about that later, she thought.

Beth chewed on her lip as she considered her options. Running…she hadn’t ruled it out yet, but the thought of being struck from behind by his air-shrieking attack made the idea seem unpleasant. She had also seen the elf moving incredibly quickly and she had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be able to cancel his bark skin and regain his mobility.

Beth stopped her circling and clenched the stiletto in her hand. I’d rather finish this anyway.

The elf took her momentary pause as an invitation to attack and began inhaling for another shouting attack. Beth relaxed slightly, relieved that it was something she already recognized. She crouched and prepared to outrun his attack.

Before he shouted though, the elf held his arms wide. When he swung them together, Beth was alarmed to see two large masses of leaves and vines swinging towards her. She took a step away from the elf and his plants, but before she could go far he opened his mouth and screamed.

Lempo’s tits, Beth cursed. She moved like fury, angrily tossing her body into one of the oncoming masses of vegetation. She sank into it for a moment before being stopped by the thick growth, but by then she had successfully trapped herself into the tangled mass. When the king’s scream struck, it first had to burrow through a thick mass of protective plants.

Leaves turned into green mush as the sonic attack struck, quickly chewing through the plants. The remaining force struck Beth like an old blacksmith and his team of strikers beating her against an anvil. Beth coughed up blood after the repeated hammer blows, slumping against the ropey vines in exhaustion. From her half-lidded eyes she could see the elf closing the distance between them with a tremendous leap.

I don’t know how I would explain things to Bel if I die now.

Beth pushed her body forward, slipping free of the entangling vines with a violent jerk. She held her stiletto in a death grip and awkwardly stabbed at the elf’s face. He easily caught the attack on his arm, trapping a second one of her weapons.

His other arm lifted and his fingers pointed forward. Beth could feel the air pulling towards his hand in preparation for this powerful attack. He grinned; he knew that he’d won.

Then Beth’s third favorite dagger – a plain parrying dagger with a short, practical blade that she’d taken from her first kill – stabbed into the elf’s eye, propelled by her unseen hand. The elf staggered backwards, but to Beth’s frustration he didn’t immediately die. She fixed that by yanking her stiletto free of his arm and plunging it through his other eye. Then she reached out with her senses and grasped onto his core. She could feel it pulsing in turmoil as his body passed mortal injury, but the elf was still somehow hanging on. Beth put an end to that: with a mighty metaphysical yank she cracked his core open and ripped the essence free.

Beth could feel a large, satisfying influx of essence accumulating into her own core from the elf’s death. A small amount went towards Durak, as was usual, but Beth felt it turned back at the last moment.

I’m being rewarded, huh? That’s nice.

Beth slumped to the ground exhausted. It took her nearly a minute to wrest her favorite dagger free of the supposed elf king’s wooden body and another minute to wipe her weapons clean. By the time she was done she could barely muster the strength to slide herself away from the body and collapse against the wall.

When she heard footsteps entering the large cavern Beth managed to pull out her dagger and stare suspiciously at the interloper. She tried to put on a tough front, but in reality she could barely keep her eyes open.

The elf who entered the room was none other than the artist who the king had chased away. She looked around at the destruction in the room and frowned. Beth could even imagine her ears drooping slightly with disappointment at the mess.

Then the elf girl saw Beth. Her brows knit together in confusion until she saw the body of the elf king nearby. Her eyebrows went up in surprise and she walked over to the him with small, rapid steps.

She looked down at the body for a few long moments and then clapped her hands with delight. With a smile as broad as the open sky, she rushed back to her work in progress. A quick wave of her hand recalled all the pieces back together and she immediately resumed her work. She hummed a cheerful melody as she focused on adding a few tiny turtles to the scene and the notes of her song reverberated throughout the now peaceful space.

I guess these elves aren’t so bad after all, Beth though tiredly. Maybe I’ll even check some stuff out before I meet up with Seth.

She drifted for a moment before popping awake with a sudden thought. Should I find souvenirs? I bet that James would like that. Bel would go crazy for something cute.