A dozen elves, each no more than five feet tall, surrounded Elijah. None looked particularly aggressive, but they were all armed with bows, spears, or wide-bladed scimitars with curved hilts. Though, as peaceful as they seemed at first glance, Elijah was very aware that they were clearly waiting for him. And given that they’d surrounded him, he didn’t think they were there on a social call.

“Whoa, guys,” he said, raising one hand toward the beautiful elf who’d tried to speak to him before he’d teleported back to his grove. She was just as striking as ever, with wide eyes, a perky nose, and full lips. Framing her face was a curtain of glossy, white hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore an earth-toned tunic fastened at the waist with a wide, leather belt and a pair of voluminous pants that were tucked into her knee-high boots. A matching scarf encircled her neck, and she had some sort of symbol Elijah didn’t recognize tattooed between her eyes. “You don’t want to mess with me. I’m very dangerous.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You are a Healer, yes?”

“Uh…sure. But a dangerous Healer,” Elijah said. “Wait. That didn’t come out right. Makes me seem like I’m kind of bad at my job. I’m not. But I am dangerous. My point is that you should definitely not attack me. For your own good.”

“We have no intention of attacking you, Healer.”

Not for the first time, Elijah wished he had never acquired his Ring of Anonymity. It had caused nothing but trouble so far, and right then and there, he decided to do something about that the moment he figured out what the elves wanted.

“Then what do you want? You tried to kill the deer, right? Who’s to say you won’t try to do the same to me?”

“The perpetrators of that heinous act were desperate youths who made a terrible choice,” the elven woman said. Belatedly, Elijah noticed that she, too, carried a staff. However, hers looked like it was made of frosted glass, reminding him of the ogre staff he’d looted in the Reaver’s Citadel. The one she carried was engraved with myriad symbols, though. “What followed was a tragedy, and on both sides. However, it does not represent our values. We revere guardians.”

“And yet your people tried to kill them.”

“As I said, a mistake born of desperation.”

“Why were they desperate?” Elijah asked. “And can you guys not surround me like this? I really don’t like people being behind me like that.”

“Do you pledge not to flee?”

“Definitely not. I’ll run if I think it’s necessary.”

She sighed. “Very well.” Then, she gestured, and the elves backed away before circling around to join the elven woman. Like that, they looked even more intimidating, but at least they were all in his line of sight. More importantly, without a gaggle of elves behind him, Elijah felt certain that he could escape at a moment’s notice. He was experienced enough with moving through the forest that he felt confident that if it came to that, they would never catch him.

Moreover, he saw that each of the elves was dressed almost identically to the woman. However, none of the others had a tattoo in the center of their foreheads.

“Are you pleased?” came the elven woman’s voice. It was high-pitched, but slightly raspy, and with an accent that Elijah couldn’t quite place.

“What do you want from me?” he asked. “And what’s your name? I’m Elijah, by the way.”

“K’hana Tamira.”

“Kala?”

“K’hana.”

“That’s literally what I just said.”

For the first time, there was a crack in her placid expression. It only lasted a moment, but Elijah was glad to see that she wasn’t as robotic as she seemed. Still, he wasn’t precisely happy with drawing her annoyance, so before she could say anything else, he asked, “You waited here for three days, right? You didn’t do that unless there’s something you want from me.”

“On behalf of the elves of Arvandor, I wish to offer you a bargain.”

“Arvandor? Is that your home world? Or is that a town?”

“It is our city,” she stated. “Do you wish to hear the terms of our bargain?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Shoot you?”

“What? No. It’s an expression,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn my overreliance on idioms,” he said, dramatically shaking his fist toward the sky. The elves didn’t like that, and they looked like they were on the verge of responding with all the sharp things in their possession. Elijah sighed. “Just tell me the terms.”

“Curious,” K’hana responded. “Your ways are strange. You mean to travel north and east, do you not?”

“Maybe.”

“Have you scouted the route?”

“Nope. I usually just wing it,” Elijah admitted. After all, it couldn’t be that difficult if other people had managed it. And he knew they had. Ray had said that Valosta had played host to many traders over the years.

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“Without our help, you will perish in the Twilight Clefts.”

“That sounds ominous. What are the Twilight Clefts?”

K’hana then proceeded to explain that the region directly to the north was a maze of canyons and ravines populated by a host of deadly predators. More importantly, it was nearly impossible to find a route through without the elves as guides. She claimed that anyone who refused their help – which they normally offered for a price – died in the canyons.

“We wish to guide you through.”

“Okay? How much?”

“We do not want your ethereum,” K’hana said. “Instead, we wish your services as a Healer.”

“You don’t have any of your own?”

“We…recently went to war with a tribe of rock gnolls. Though we were victorious, the war was not without cost. Treacherous creatures. They knew to target our Healers, first. Many perished,” she explained. “We work to replenish our numbers, but for now, we are vulnerable.”

“Sure,” Elijah said. “I don’t mind healing a little.”

Indeed, he quite enjoyed it. Curiously, he found quite a lot of joy in using every facet of his power set. He loved the freedom and power inherent in his draconic bestial forms, the utility of his spells, and the sheer satisfaction of healing people. So, he had no trouble committing to the latter, especially if it got him to Seattle a little more quickly.

Because he was certain that he could traverse the Twilight Clefts without the elves’ help. If he could get through the Primordial Maze, a few canyons and ravines didn’t scare him. Yet, from the way K’hana spoke, doing so would be quite difficult. More, it would almost assuredly be time-consuming. So, healing a few elves was a nice exchange if it saved him a little time.

Besides, he’d be kicking himself for weeks if he refused to heal people who needed it.

“I believe you misunderstand. While we will accept any healing you wish to give, the bargain is contingent on you accompanying us in our efforts to conquer a tower,” she stated.

“What?” Elijah asked. He had no intention of heading into another tower. Doing so would be another delay he had no interest in enduring. “I mean, that’s…uh…I’m not really doing towers. Thanks for the offer, though? I’ll just make my own way.”

“Please,” she said, bowing her head. “If we cannot do this, we will be forced to flee. There is nowhere else for us to go. The tower already overflows and –”

Elijah sighed. “Do you know anything about this tower?” he asked. “How long does it take to conquer? Have you run it before?”

“We have not,” she admitted. Then she explained that, until recently, there was a human settlement that had taken responsibility for the tower. However, the gnolls had grown bold enough to attack the town, killing most of the residents. The ones that had survived chose to retreat to Seattle. Since then, the tower had been building ethera until, at last, it had burst, surging with Voxx. “We hold our own against the Voxxian monsters. Yet, we do not have the Healers to attempt to conquer the tower. If we go in there as we are, we will all perish.”

Elijah ran his fingers through his hair. “Jesus. No pressure, right?” he muttered. He truly did not want to get involved in another tower. Yet, could he really live with himself if he chose not to help them, then came back at some later date to find that their town had been overrun by Voxx?

No.

That was the answer he didn’t want to admit to himself.

Elijah was a lot of things – a murderer, among others – but he couldn’t rightly stand to the side while innocent people suffered. Did that make him a naïve white knight? Maybe. Probably. But he didn’t want to know the sort of person who could see other people in trouble and turn his back. And certainly, he couldn’t stomach the idea of becoming that person. The very notion was revolting.

So, he said, “Fine. I’ll help.”

“Thank you,” K’hana said, bowing at the waist.

“But I need more than just a guide through the Twilight Clefts,” he said. “I want one extra reward. I get to pick, too.”

“Any but the last,” K’hana said without hesitation. Clearly, she’d expected such a caveat.

“Fine,” Elijah said, slapping his hands together. “So – where is this tower, anyway? Let’s get this thing done.”

As it turned out, the tower was on the other side of the Twilight Clefts. However, K’hana had no issues with setting out right then. Soon enough, they were trekking across the wilderness, and to Elijah’s surprise, it only took half a day for the terrain to change. The first thing he noticed was the dropping humidity, but it wasn’t long before the forest gave way to scrubby bushes and otherwise barren and rocky soil. It reminded Elijah quite a bit of the American southwest, with mesas, buttes, and twisted, scraggly trees.

As they went on, traveling through the night, the terrain grew rockier until, by morning, Elijah found himself overlooking a series of canyons that stretched on for miles in every direction. At first, he thought he could simply leap across them, remaining on top, but K’hana quickly disabused him of that notion by revealing that, in a lot of places, the canyons were nearly a quarter of a mile wide and twice as deep.

From a geological perspective, none of it made sense. There was nothing to have carved such a wide variety of ravines. But there they were, all the same, reminding Elijah that the transformed Earth did not follow the same rules it once had.

The elves led him forward, sure of their route as they took one turn or the next, and gradually, they made their way through the canyons. As they did, Elijah discovered that the elves who’d attempted to kill the deer were youths who’d been led astray by a human traveler’s stories of powerful beasts and natural treasures. By the time K’hana and the others had discovered they were gone, it was too late to save them.

It was a difficult story to hear, and one that visibly saddened K’hana. Yet, Elijah had difficulty sympathizing with the dead elves. After all, they’d set out to kill the deer. He’d vowed not to punish people for hunting powerful guardians and looting natural treasures, but that did nothing for the way he felt about those who would choose that route.

Eventually, they turned a corner, and Arvandor was laid bare before him. The elvish city was unlike any Elijah had ever seen. From the canyon floor, all that was visible were a series of rope bridges stretching from one side of the ravine to the other. However, further inspection revealed more than a hundred caves on either side.

Elijah followed K’hana and the other elves to a nearby earthen ramp that led to one such cave, and once he was inside, Elijah was shocked to find that all the caves were connected. More, there were hundreds of chambers inside, each with walls carved with some script Elijah couldn’t read. Some of the chambers were large and served as communal spaces where elves congregated for mercantile or social reasons, while others were small and were clearly intended as sleeping quarters.

He was not afforded the opportunity to explore, because K’hana led him to one of the sleeping chambers, where she insisted that he get some rest. After all, they were going to attempt to conquer a tower in the morning, and they all needed to be as fresh as possible.

Elijah wholeheartedly agreed, and he was happy to find that the chamber, while small, seemed to be equipped with all the necessary amenities. It even had a small bathroom, though there was no shower.

Not surprising, given the scarcity of water in the surrounding desert.

Still, Elijah stripped down in the bathroom and summoned Healing Rain, which served the same purpose as any shower. Once that was done, he finally lay down in the room’s hammock, where he quickly fell asleep.