"We will get nowhere like this." Randolf frowned.

"I will not yield." Stated Faeldin firmly and both of them understood they had to agree on some solution.

"Fine, you do not trust The Guild and I in turn do not trust that all is well in the land of the elves. Meaning there is only one option left, to trust a third party that we both consider trustworthy."

"Who do you have in mind?" To Randolf's great joy, Faeldin had not refused him right away. It was a disgrace for The Guild to show an outsider its internal struggles and Randolf preferred to deal with someone who was willing to compromise.

"Randolf, that dungeon is able to make Liches, we will keep it. Deal with the elf." A voice said in Randolf's head in a matter of fact way and it was not someone who could be refused judged by how stiff Randolf's muscles turned.

"Damn it, why do I always get all the impossible negotiations?" Randolf wanted to complain, but there was not many people he could complain to, as most of his operations were top secret. Rondolf was playing out numerous scenarios in his head and could not figure out how to separate Faeldin peacefully from his niece. Naturally, many of his operations were brutal and he had even considered getting rid of the elf, but it would cause too much instability in the region. In short, the disturbance caused by letting the elf leave with the dungeon would be smaller than if he actually killed him here.

He needed some third party that he could influence, a party that seemed to be perfectly legit and neutral from the outside.

"King Valrin of Durkan, what about him?" Randolf asked, he knew it was by a hair's length that Valrin had escaped execution and kept his position, but that was something only organizations comparable to The Guild knew.

"A failed dog of the empire? He does not seem like a competent custodian cosidering what have happened to his city. He failed to protect his people, why should I trust him with my niece?"

Randolf let out a dry laugh.

"Trust me, you would have failed to protect your people as well, if you were to become a target of Archibald and Artorias. You can propose a candidate more to your liking." Randolf asked, but the elf was silent. It was a trick question, Randolf knew that elves had only a few friends outside of their territory and the dungeon was not that weak, no ordinary people could guarantee to contain it.

In turn Faeldin was aware of the brewing intrigue, coming from the mouth of his opponent, but the problem was he could not win a direct confrontation and The Guild held back only because he was a convenient hinderance for the demonic influence in the region.

"Alright, but I want one of my people to be with her constantly." Faeldin bit his lip and agreed, because he knew the other alternatives would only be more radical. The Guild always got what it wanted, only the truly powerful could deny them.

"Then king Valrin it is." Randolf smiled and looked at the nearby dungeon core that was in the form of a necklace with a big purple gem.

Toby felt a shiver running through him when Randolf's gaze landed upon him. It was a gaze of an alpha predator that could not be denied.

* * * *

After what had to be a lifetime of horrors, humiliation and depravity, Irwen finally saw the end, when numerous blades tore her body apart. She began to feel the all encompassing peace of death, but quickly found out that she was quite unable to fully reach it, she was like stuck half way in its door unable to proceed.

And then she experienced the sensation of her body being restored, but it felt different, her emotions were damped to a certain extent and most importantly, there was a complete absence of pain. A thin smile spread on her lips when she somehow reached the understanding that no one was able to cause her pain anymore and on the top of that she saw her uncle! Could it be that her life had finally took a turn for the better?

After her uncle argued about something with another man, he turned to her and gently took her head into his hands.

"Listen Irwen, everything will be alright. You will be one of the elven leaders some day and I have decided to send you abroad to gain experience and make more friends. Be at ease, do you remember Sivian? She will go with you to keep you company. You will finally get to experience the big city you have always wanted to visit."

"That is great! What about the forest?" She was happy to hear the news shutting out all the bad things she did not want to be aware off, but she was still a little bit worried knowing the not so well situation in her homeland.

"Do now worry, uncle will take care of it." Faeldin reassured her and went to talk again to the other man.

* * * *

Toby was hanging around the neck of his [Champion], but he felt more like her pet. At least he had managed to dodge a bullet after he had exterminated that crowd. Yes, he was quite selfish, the main thing that mattered to him was that he got out of it alive, even though the guilt was still bottled up inside him. He was heading along with his supposed subordinate mistress to some place Randolf had chosen, but he dreamed of escaping somewhere far away from civilization to build a grand dungeon for himself, with no one disturbing him. It would be great to watch all his minions move about, following them as they would construct vast halls and long tunnels, great walls and huge stone columns, weaving everything into palaces of stone intertwined with greenery and flowing water. That would be great, to simply build and build some more.

Was the dungeon part of himself whispering to him again? Possibly. But he liked this part, the part that focused on creative urges. Well, first he had to get some distance from people, because people tended to possess things. People possessed land, possessed nature, even other people, they vere obsesssed with possessing, the urge to divide who possessed what. There was no place for him in such a redistributed world with assigned values and owners to every little thing. How could one create among all the throngs of those who yearned to possess?

Or should he try to just hang around the neck of his new heroine? Building nothing, just observing.

He decided on that for now, watching as they went out of a huge lazurite tower, ridding in a carriage pulled by slender insect-like animals. He looked at the other elf who was sitting next to Irwen, the one addressed as Sivian. She was nothing special, having the same hair color as Irwen, because they were of the same bloodline.

Suddenly the scenery changed, the abrupt change inducing panic in both girls.

Another teleportation? He was fed up with those already! Still, he was forced to watch the situation in front of him, as one of the two giant figures that suddenly appeared was vaguely familiar, but he could not tell from where. He was probably mistaken. Nonetheless, their words were quite world-shattering.

"See you stupid lump of dead flesh? SEE?! I CAN do it! I CAN." Nothing could prepare Toby for a three meter tall demon roaring at another abomination that might be even worse than a demon. The other one was also three meters high and wore full plate armor with white hair and piercingly blue eyes.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"Fine, but it took you ages." The armored giant with immense frost aura about him grumbled.

"But I did it!" The demon answered and Toby realized from where he remembered the figure. It was him! The one he had seen from high above when he had been stuck in the Durkan's central tower!

* * * *

"Just face it Archibald, you are lame and incompetent, you cannot even find a little insect that have managed to escape your weak barrier and you call yourself a great demon lord? So lame!." A tall and robust armored figure teased a huge demon who stared into some magical instrument while grinding his teeth.

"I will find him! I will!" This had been going on for some time. Actually, something similar kept going on throughout centuries and centuries, never stopping.

"No, you are simply too weak, you have . . "

"Now, I will shut your trap Artorias, I have found him!" Archibald beamed with glee and waved his big, clawed hand. Two female elves appeared in front of him in a flash, their bottoms hitting the ground, as they appeared to be sitting on something just recently. Archibald pointed at the one who had a necklace with a purple gem around his neck.

"That is him!" He laughed in a good mood. In fact, they both could not care less about what they achieved with their games. The reason was Archibald and Artorias had first met many, many centuries ago. Wanting to kill each other, they had found that they were evenly matched and from then on, they competed with each other. At first there had been only hatred and it was a race to kill one another, but it had transformed into rivalry and as they both were strong to begin with, this rivalry had reforged them into two powerful entities, a famous duo notorious in the demon world.

They competed in everything and everywhere and tried to outdo each other giving headaches to demons and other races alike across many different worlds.

"See?! I can find even a small insect that makes it through my barrier and I am simply much better in deception than you will ever be, which is what can be expected of a hardware store like you. Some have loose screws, but only a few can use a wrench to really tighten them." Archibald fired off a monologue that overflowed with pride and ridicule for the other entity. When he mentioned the hardware store, there were numerous clanking noises from Arthorias and the fact that making them was verifying Archibald's words angered the other entity tremendously.

Arthorias stood up abruptly, his voice thundering.

"What have you just called me?! I will fuck you up!" This was the usual cycle, Archibald was better with words and tricks, angering Artorias with his finer set of skills like tracking and magic research, all usually ending in a big challenge when Artorias had enough of Archibald winning.

"Let's solve it like grown ups, not with petty tricks! Whoever gets more strands of hair from the head of Secundus Marius Thane wins!" Marius Thane, nicknamed The Djinn was naturally a bigshot of The Guild, their second strongest battlemage specializing in space magic.

"You are far behind me already!" Shouted the other entity in response and vanished into thin air, with the second entity following shortly after.

* * * *

"No way, god really works damn quick sometimes!" Toby watched in awe when they had been left behind by the two entities who had not troubled themselves to return them back to their carriage that was on its way to Durkan, just without its passengers now.

He guessed they were in the demon world somewhere. Luckily, there did not seem to be anyone around, just the insides of a big cave that seemed to be lit fairly well, meaning they had to be close to the surface.

The one most unnerved by the sudden situation seemed to be Sivian, who was the only one of them with basic needs. Irwen was probably not acting up only because she was an undead now and there was certainly a slight character shift, similar to himself when he had become a demon or a dungeon. He wondered what the characteristics of undead psychology were though. Judging from her turning her head round and round, spectating the cave in detail, it could be. . . idiocy? No, she looked still sharp, it was more like taking it slower.

"Ah, living with a pretty girl forever, one that liked slow life. . .god is really merciful." Toby thought when he observed her.

"Who were those two? Where are we?" Sivian was similar to Irwen, but she was taller and was apparently some ranger, she should be some childhood friend of Irwen. Her questions did not seem to stop. Irwen just shrugged her shoulders in response and continued her observation.

"I can see in the dark really well." Toby glanced up at her chin, when he heard her speak and wondered if his guardian angel had not overdone it with the slow attitude of hers.

"All the time I have hated night hunts, not able to see well, but it seems that now there will be no dark nights for me anymore." She kept a light smile on her face despite the situation, it seemed to be freaking out her friend a little, as she had to have a hard time getting used to her altered behaviour after the change.

"Where are we? What are we going to do?" They did not know that a part of the reason Sivian was worried was the absence of additional agents that should be keeping the ruthless dungeon in check, but . . they had been left behind after the teleportation and Sivian had been informed of Toby's recent actions.

"I do not know, we might be in the demon world." Irwen said, turning her head to the entrance, this cave seemed to be huge, but shallow with a short path leading to the surface. She knew one of the entities from before was a powerful demon, but she was not sure where had he moved them to.

"The demon world?! We are going to die in the demon world! A-And, and . .the thing is free now! It will kill us!" Sivian began backing away from Irwen who had the necklace hanging around her neck, the exact spot Sivian was watching fearfully.

"Toby, will you?"

"Wh, eh, W-What?" Toby had embraced the role of an observer and was thrown off immensely by Irwen when she directly asked him a question, it was like a movie actor stepping out of the screen, asking you something. Why she knew his name? Was it because he was her master?

"Are you going to kill us like the others?" She looked down at the purple stone that contained him.

"No, of course not." Toby answered a bit more sharply than he had intended and saw that Sivian was about to ran away, she must have thought it was irony and he really was about to butcher them any second now.

"Ehm, wait, I am sorry. I am actually sorry for doing what I have done to those people and to you, Irwen. I hope we can work together in the future." He tried to mend his mistake. If they were to be here for longer, he should tell them more to prevent any future misunderstandings.

"I do not want you to accept what I have done, but you should understand, at least you Irwen, that the whole identity change is a drastic one and it is not easy to reign down the urges that come with it all the time, I mean . ." Toby tried to ease the mood, but realized that he had basically just said that he was constantly suppressing the urge to kill them and he would probably not manage to do it all the time. Was he stupid?

And of course there she went, Sivian was already running for the entrance.

"You should stop her." Toby mentioned when Irwen just stood there like being dead.

"Right." She said and a ray of black light shot out of her fingers, hitting Sivian sqarely on her back, making her tumble to the ground motionless.

"Fuck! I am stupid!" Toby had just remembered a phrase from his skill's description.

. . . For every ten levels you can have one [Champion] who is bound by your orders and retains the original soul . . .

"I hope that I have not just killed her!" Toby panicked a little, because an order to stop her certainly could be executed that way.

"No, It was a stun spell." Irwen answered and Toby felt an immense boulder lifting from his chest.

* * * *

"What do you mean failed?! You have infiltrated the tower, your agent should have taken care of it! She should be dead! Dead!!" An ancient voice raged, while talking with one of her own kind.

"Anshalla, you should pipe down, it was not my idea to make an elaborate plan to destabilize Faeldin's thinking or whatnot. . the demon not only have not killed her, he led her directly under the nose of The Guild and when I try and salvage the situation with my hidden agents, you are not satisfied? I say you bitch go and do it yourself then!" The other voice was not backing down at all, answering fiercely.

For a time there were just noises of crackling bark, until Anshalla managed to calm down and think of a solution.

"To hell with deception, I will dispatch some of my suicide bombers, the girl must die!" Anshalla arrived to a decision. The problem was they were not confident to try anything agains Faeldin himself, because they had already tried numerous times and he was a tough nut to crack. He was too strong and no ordinary tricks and traps worked against him.

"We better hurry, he seems to be closer than ever to sealing the mural for good. My last contact reported he saw two elves with white hair leaving in a carriage. You can target it with your crazy fanatics, but it won't be pretty acting openly."

For an outside observer, there would have seemed to be almost a dog-like obedience and awe directed to the demon lords. Those turned into demonwood trees were almost irrational in their belief that they would bring them freedom. The notion might be fed by the fact that the Great Trees had distanced themselves from the ordinary elves. They no longer dinned or lived with them nor shared their joys and sorrows with ordinary folk, they had lived for too long separated from them and no longer considered them their kind, but almost parasites that suffocated them, forcing them to play the roles they no longer wanted.

* * * *

A crowd of elven rangers stood in a large circle around a pile of debris, with two animal corpses of insect-like creatures inside. Among the debris walked a man with long white hair that sharply contrasted with his unnaturally red face. Many of the elves fought to suppress laughter, but they all managed to do so, because their lives would have been in danger otherwise.

The man was Faeldin and he was furious.

"Where are they?!" He mumbled while looking around, but there were no additional corpses. Irwen and Sivian were simply gone. He had already spoken with the spies that had been following them, but they had reported that no one left the carriage that exploded some distance away form its destination.

"They have kidnapped them! Anshalla you fucking bitch, I will kill you!" Faeldin finally lost it after ages of suppressing his anger. For how long had he maneuvered? How hard he tried to keep his race tagether to avoid a civil war! But no, they were always coming at him, plotting , scheming, sabotaging, corrupting his people and rising fanatics out of them. Yes, he had seen the only corpses left on the crime scene, the corpses of the suicide bombers, this was Anshalla's handiwork.

"From this day forth, Anshalla, the Tree of Ages is no longer a Great Tree. She will be know for what she truly is, a demon and a traitor of our race." Faeldin shouted and all the elves around him froze. Some had seen this coming, some were oblivious to the truth, some had waited for this day to come and some were appalled by Faeldin's words, questioning their leader's sanity.

"Henceforth all Great Trees are our enemies and supporting them is a treason, the only true leaders of elves are those of flesh and blood, for the demonic trees had been plotting to release the demon lords and are their servants, their faithful dogs!"

Not long after those words, first drops of blood fell into undergrowth and a civil war in the lands of the elves began.