“You're a bigot is what you are! You hate dwarves and humans, huh? Won't let us into your exclusive secret base!?”
Gwendolyn felt kind of sick playing the race card but it was certainly buying Clarke time. She'd just get louder and louder every time Telowe tried to explain that letting strangers, thieving adventurers no less, into the most secure prison and vault in all of the elven lands was against the rules.
“Thieving!?”
“Father just let them-Gwendolyn, no put that-”
She'd picked up a couple of books from a shelf and hid them under her arms, exaggeratedly shrugging her shoulders.
“I guess I just can't help myself! Hey, where's your silverware? I'm an adventurer, guess I've just gotta go loot your kitchen for it.”
Wade excused himself from the whole mess to ostensibly get their weaponry from the wagon.
If she'd known the spell for it, the evil eye Alouella was giving would have killed Gwen. Gwen felt bad especially since she hated the type of person she was portraying more than anything but she'd make it up to Alouella any way she could later. Right now she just wanted Clarke to have a chance.
It became clear after the third interruption that a calm answer was not her goal and he stopped responding and bore down on her with a glare, Gwen getting quieter and quieter as he let her talk herself into the ground.
He turned and headed for the door, Wade sliding aside as Telowe power walked by him. He stopped outside as Wade handed out the weaponry.
“Alouella, the kind of company you keep reflects on you personally and we're going to have a talk about who those people should be. I could trap them here but it would be a waste of time and of the few seconds it would take. You're in charge of your friends if they insist on coming.”
At least we're going in to the Roots. We can probably have their minds wiped while we're there.
He comforted himself with that thought and it calmed him as they took no time in racing to the gardens. A fellow member of the palace infrastructure hierarchy had come to him with a plan about 'mass transit' that could move ordinary citizens around the city quickly.
He wished he hadn't told him that, “Elves walk everywhere and always have. Such dwarven ideas would lead to laziness in a proudly athletic people.”
The madd of staring and pointing and cat calling people around the gardens, crowding the doors and forcing Wade to take the lead shoving people aside, were the first sign of trouble.
The second was the massive orgy that guards were trying to break up, wrenching bodies from bodies that would then latch onto the guards in a flurry of kisses.
Telowe made a disgusted face and muttered to himself. Gwen and Wade kept their eyes on the group as they walked past.
“And they say elves are uptight.”
Wade whistled as he watched.
“That ones not. Not any more. Who knew elven men were so hu-”
Alouella coughed loudly at them to get their thoughts back on the matter of life or death at hand and not just on the creation of life. Wade whispered to Gwen as though he hadn't just been ogling as well.
“This is serious Gwendolyn. Put your game face on.”
“Roll your tongue up and say that again.”
Though Alouella had visited her fathers now alleged office before she was the first whose face soured at the smell. It didn't seem to have any effect on the other three, one who worked there, one who had grown up around sulfur and another who often worked in the stables.
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“Now that I know you're not the head of waste management, why do you insist on having an office here? Mom and I always hated visiting you here.”
Telowe pushed open his office door.
“I actually am head of waste management but it's also to keep people out. Nobody stays long if they can help it and it keeps some of our dryad officers happy.”
He glared at the end of the room immediately, the gate to The Roots wide open.
“That's not supposed to be unguarded or left open, ever.”
“And I found someone napping in your office.”
Wade called, holding up the unconscious lady elf he'd found. Telowe quickly rifled through her pockets, checked her clothes, took any weaponry which amounted to a dozen throwing knives.
“But where are the others? And where is the gate guardian for that matter? The entrance can't be opened except by her or if they took the time to cut through the branch and there's no sign of force.”
He stepped half into his office and grabbed a small rope attached to a bell, the length of the rope traveling along the ceiling and out into the message room. A specific series of jingles sent the message he wanted.
“That should bring in the guards from the regular palace rotation who are cleared for work in The Roots. If intruders fought with the dryad here there should be some sign of a battle, a struggle, or she would be here with them. I don't like this. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Weatherworn brought in some absurdly powerful artifact and a score of fanatics dedicated to his vision of elven superiority. The man is a lunatic. I'd shudder to imagine what he'd do with someone like the Script User at his beck and call.”
He led them into the tree, everyone cautious as they began down the descent. Gwendolyn didn't let the need for caution keep her mouth closed.
“You're right, he might use it to clean up shady dealings when they don't go right for him like restoring a destroyed research lab or maybe altering the memories of people or making people not exist any more. The person controlling someone like that could do a lot of bad things without getting caught.”
Alouella spoke up before her father, smug anger in her voice.
“Oh yes, like restoring a town that had been completely destroyed and bringing the townspeople back to life without them ever knowing they'd died. Monstrous.”
Telowe smiled with pride at her response.
“Exactly. If we wanted the world would be under practical, calm elven control but we're not monsters. The elves may have done bad things in the past, like anyone, but we have been cleaning up the mistakes we've made, turning over a new leaf as it were. The most dangerous one of all isn't even Weatherworn. The script user herself, before we captured her, was a dangerous fugitive responsible for the destruction of an entire elven city. The strange powers she tried to harness turned the elves into something monstrous and outright killed non-elves. We're just lucky that we found her before anyone...else.”
They smelled the smoke before they saw it, felt the warmth and saw the wafting smoke coming up along the tunnel which had Telowe running ahead of them to the main entrance hall of the true Roots.
His face opened up in a bloom of horrified emotion that he couldn't hide, eyes flitting from fire to fire as it consumed the tree. Small groups of tree sprites were flocking here and there, drawing water out of the tree and trying to quell what fires they could but shards of exploded rock turned it to steam before ever touching it.
Alouella held a hand to her mouth. She'd been raised in reverence of the tree her whole life and seeing it in such a state stabbed at her heart.
Wubwa preserve it, Clarke, did you do this?
A single shape moved in the flames, a weak arm raised from a depression in the floor, a partial covering of splintered wood half shielding her.
“...siiiirrr...”
Telowe dropped down beside the rasping figure and through the blackened bark alight with glowing embers he could see none of the usual guardian dryad of the tree but the voice was familiar. A whole side of her was missing, ragged embers where one of the sisters had been.
“...my sister...I can't hear her...sir, what's wrong with my sister...?”
The sprites floated around her, cooling her body as best they could but it shook and the exposed underbark steamed. None of them could look directly at her.
Telowe pushed his coat under her head.
“Shh, everything is fine...”
“I can't feel the tree around us...I can't...”
Telowe shushed her.
“Rest, let the sprites take care of you. Who did this?”
“One...one man...he killed six others that I saw...chased the guard I sent to warn...sister, are you there!?”
She reached for her other side, the ashen bark crumbling at her touch. She screamed, rasping sobs that shrieked for her over and over, the sprites rinsing her down as she went into hysterics, screams rising with the incalculable pain of having her bark stripped off and everything exposed.
Several soldiers hustled down the path they'd come through, shocked gasps from all of them.
“Some of you get her to the physician, she needs immediate help. Move her carefully if you can. The rest of you, with us.”
The guards crowded them and Alouella pulled her two companions close, quietly talking to them in a sympathetic tone.
“We're the only ones who won't kill Clarke on sight now. You see now we have to stop him.”
Wade nodded.
“I believe your dad. If the elves were up to anything we'd all be under their thumb right now.”
It was hard for Gwen to deny what she'd heard and seen with those big golden eyes looking at her. She made a noise that sounded vaguely agreeable.