Ten years later...

"But I don't wanna go!" Amy cried.

"I'm sorry, angel," I said, taking a knee and hugging her. "If you really, well and truly do not want to go, then you don't have to. But... If you can be brave for me for just thirty minutes, half an hour and it's over and you can go back inside, then I'll let you ask me for anything. So. What does my sweet little girl want for her birthday?"

"...I wanna stay with Aunt Faith tonight," Amy said.

"Oh, honey, of course you can," I said, nodding. "You know what? You can have that anyways. What else do you want to go with that?"

"...A puppy?" Amy asked, hopefully.

"Hrm... Well, the traditional age for that is seven, but..." I made a show of thinking it over, even though my mind was already made up. "...Well, why not? Sure, my little princess can have her puppy a year early."

"Traditional?" Amy asked.

"Mhm," I said, nodding. "I was gonna tell you soon anyways, but traditionally, when an elf turns seven, they're given a pet. They're taught how to take care of it, how to train it and socialize it, and in return, the pet becomes their friend and companion through the rest of their childhood."

"Ooooh," Amy said, nodding slowly.

"It also teaches you responsibility, and perseverance," I added. "There's going to be parts of taking care of a puppy that aren't very fun, but they have to be done anyways. I'm going to help you do it, and you won't have to do too many of those not-so-fun parts, but you have to do some of them, okay?"

"Okay," Amy said, far too seriously for such an adorable little five year old.

"So... When you're ready, I'm going to set this timer for thirty minutes," I said, pulling out a little egg timer. "I'm gonna put it in your pocket, and after it rings, you can find me or Momma Talia or Momma Volex and we'll bring you back inside."

"When do I get my puppy?" Amy asked.

"We'll go talk to some people about it tomorrow," I said. "Picking the right puppy takes time, and it's important you make sure you get the right one for you. And for that, you need to be well-rested, especially after a big day like today."

"Okay," Amy said. "I'm ready."

I twisted the timer to thirty minutes, and put it into her pocket. "Wanna ride on my shoulders?"

"Yaaaay!"

---

"Robert! Congratulations on the Healer's License!" I said, pulling him into a tight hug. "God, it's good to see you again! It feels like you were in prison or something, you were gone so long!"

"Nah, just medical school," Healer Robert Thorn said, smirking. "I understand the confusion, though- I felt like I was in prison too."

We shared a laugh, and I turned my attention to his mother and hearth-sister.

"Emily, Amelie, it's good to see you two," I said, accepting hugs from the both of them- I clung a little longer to Emily, unable to resist the siren call of her plush, well-padded figure. "Thanks for coming. I know you're busy, so..."

"We wouldn't miss this for anything," Amelie said. When we'd first met a decade ago, she'd been gaunt and jaundiced, slowly dying of liver cancer, and living off a diet of marijuana-infused butter and sugar water. Today, though, she was a textbook image of a perfectly healthy elven woman, with fair, smooth, unwrinkled skin and fine blonde hair like strands of gold, her figure more 'slender' than 'skeletal.'

She hadn't gone back to Redwater Manor after her recovery, and these days, she operated a little bakery that dispensed all manner of sugary treats to the young and young-at-heart, alongside beautiful, flower-shaped loaves of most wonderfully fluffy bread I've ever had.

"How's Mom doing?" Emily asked.

"Well, she kept the household staff in the divorce, and she now lives right next door to a Druid," I said dryly. "So I'm pretty sure she's doing just fine. In fact, if you wanna go see her yourself, I'm sure you could just go knock on her door right now- she's just not here because she doesn't care for parties any more than Amy here does."

"Thank you for naming your daughter after me and Amelie," Emily said. "It really does mean a lot to me."

"Of course," I said, happily accepting another one of her soft, warm hugs.

Oh, if only I wasn't already fucking her mother. Elves didn't have that many taboos when it came to sex, but as a Drama Prevention Mechanism, we heavily discouraged having ongoing relationships with multiple people who were in the same family- which had a slightly different definition than humans gave it, but basically amounted to Amelie being in Emily's family but Patricia Whatsherfuck, Emily's hypothetical second cousin who lives on the other side of the continent who I made up just now, did not.

"Alright, well, I really need to talk to you more often, and get more of your hugs," I said, still holding onto Emily tightly. "But, alas, with Napoleon out on the frontier working with the unicorns and the Wood Elves, I've gotta be the local Big Man, so I have to go mingle some more. I hope I see you again soon!"

"Bye, Joseph," Emily said. "Take care."

---

As I was the current head-of-house of House Ironheart, that meant everyone wanted to talk to me at least a little- put in appearances, make sure they're still in our good graces, and offer small favors to build up social capital- and by the end of my first big circuit, barely fifteen minutes after Amy had gotten overwhelmed and gone back inside, I was already well and truly sick of it. So, I told Volex where I was going, and stealthily slipped back inside my house, heading upstairs to the rooftop.

It wasn't just that space was always tight in a city, and High Elves were accustomed to using it as efficiently as possible. It was also that High Elves fucking loved sitting on top of tall buildings and looking at the surrounding landscape. So when Ariel Silver took it upon herself to rebuild Napoleon Ironheart's quaint little wooden shack, she made sure to give it a proper High Elven rooftop patio to sit on.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Humans are dumb," I said, adjusting myself in my seat and sighing. "I'll take a canvas sling over a pillow nailed to solid wood any day- these things are comfy."

I'd had these chairs for nearly a decade at this point- I'd made them myself from cheap aluminum tubing and canvas, plus a pair of hinge pins I'd lazily made out of a pair of nails. They folded up flat when not in use, and when unfolded, produced a low, reclined seat, perfect for relaxing by a campfire with a cold bottle of beer.

I eyed the bottle in my hand. While beer wasn't the preferred alcoholic beverage of High Elves, it wasn't completely absent from our booze-making traditions, and I'd learned how to make my own while I was in college- at first just so I didn't have to keep buying it from the damnably expensive Adventurer's General Supply store, and then I started getting really into the craft of it, making it taste good, and Talia ended up getting into it too. These days, one of our more unique contributions to the community was the Ironheart Brewery, which made beer good enough that even dwarves would drink it without complaining.

I sighed happily.

Life was good.

The door behind me creaked open, and I sighed less happily.

"I'm impressed, kid," an old elf with a long, shaggy, blood-red beard said, walking past me and taking one of the chairs. "Mmh. Yep. You would've been a good King."

"Do I know you?" I asked, as another pair of elves- a man and a woman, both with green hair- walked past, grabbing the last two chairs, and turning them to face me before sitting down.

"You've never met any of us in your life," the green-haired man said. "We're family, though."

"Yeah?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow as a human woman walked past me, humming a little tune to herself, and sat in the green-haired man's lap. She was... Wait.

Hang the fuck on.

"...Terpsichore Ironheart?" I asked, looking straight at a woman who was identical to the funerary effigy still in my living room, save for her hair being black and her skin being a light brown, or perhaps a dark tan, instead of the uniform grey stone.

"You would not believe how much I had to fight Art here on that damn statue," Terpsichore said, her voice like smoky honey. "See, he wanted me to be remembered as the ninety year old I was when I died, but I wanted to be remembered as the thirty year old I was when my tits didn't sag and my knees didn't hurt."

"What is- that-" I blinked. "Wait. You're Artorias Wind-Caller? And you're Elana Blackthorn?"

"They are," the red-bearded elf said. "And I'm your great grandfather, High King Lysander Rosewood."

"But... But, all of you are dead!"

"So are you, Joseph," Elana said.

"...Oh," I whispered. "When... When did that happen?"

"Before you started vividly seeing your imagined daughter and her sixth birthday party," Elana said. "You've been dead this entire time."

"Now now, Elana, don't scare the poor lad," Lysander chided her. "Now, Joseph, you are not completely dead. You are mostly, and more importantly only temporarily, dead. You were shot in the back by the cultists of Demon King Paimon- they needed the innocent, virginal daughter of a powerful man to summon their King into this world, and they took the other two girls as a bonus. Paimon has no use for captive men, though, so..."

"...What happened to not scaring me?" I asked.

"You have a gun, a motorcycle, a Rosewood's talent for the Arcane, and also Volex the Succubus who has already participated in the destruction of Demon King Paimon's earthly cult," Artorias said dryly. "They took you by surprise last time, but this time, you'll be ready for them."

"But-"

"You're my grandson," Artorias said. "I know what it takes to do this, and I fully believe that you've got it."

"And, well..." Elana shrugged. "...What else are you to do?"

I sighed.

"Well," I said, slowly standing up. "If I'm only here for a little while..."

"That regeneration amulet your father gave you is putting you back together, even now," Lysander volunteered. "And as it so happens, I do have something I want to share with you."

"Oh?" I asked.

"First," Lysander said. "I'm proud of you, Joseph. You're a good man, and I fully believe that you'll continue being one, and help a great many people. And second... I know where the Dark Elves are."

"I thought nobody knew that," I said. "Since that was the whole point of the Dark Elves."

"It certainly isn't common knowledge, no, but it took a few centuries after we escaped Annwn for the Dark Elves to make their exodus. And before they left, I spoke to a few of their leaders, and they agreed that, while they didn't want just anyone tracking mud into their new homes, they didn't want to completely close off the possibility of future contact with the outside world either, in the event there was an all-hands-on-deck emergency."

"Then why the hell didn't they help with the War of the Roses?" Artorias demanded.

"Because the war didn't get truly bad until I was dead, and I was also the only living person who knew how to contact the Dark Elves," Lysander said. "But, Joseph... There's a cavern, deep underneath where the capital used to be. The entrances are sealed off, so you have to scry for it and then teleport down there. It's about a kilometer below the palace's ground floor, and it is almost intolerably hot down there- there's a reason dwarves made their homes in mountains. There is also a locked chest where I stashed some enchanted weapons, but I really hope you never have to use them."

"...Duly noted," I said quietly. "Well, I can feel myself slowly waking up, so... Goodbye, everyone. Don't take this the wrong way, but I hope I never see you again."

"Good luck," Terpsichore said.

"When you see Helen, tell her to grow up and apologize to Ariel already!" Lysander added, even as everything was slowly fading out.

---

I woke up gasping, which was a bad idea, because I had also been buried in a very shallow grave. I jerked upright, dirt sliding off of my chest, and hacked my lungs out, coughing up dirt, reddish phlegm, and a few chunks of something I tried to pretend I didn't know were pieces of my own flesh.

"Okay," I wheezed out, once I was able to somewhat breathe again. "Let's... Let's get out of this grave, yeah?"

I staggered up to my feet, still not exactly a hundred percent after having been perforated, and took a look around at the remains of our campsite. The sun was rising right now, and while that was legitimately quite beautiful, I was a bit more interested in the fact that my van was gone, leaving only tire tracks, along with those cheap tin buckets we'd been using for stools.

I reached for my magicka, called it into the shape of a spell Mom had drilled into me for situations just like this, and my coat, which had been hanging up in my room, settled onto my shoulders, giving me its magical protections, along with all of the very, very useful stuff in the pockets.

Such as my motorcycle.

"Alright, old friend," I began, climbing into the saddle. "Just you and me again. Let's ride."