“Didn’t mean nothin’ by it, o’ course,” The headman of the woodman’s camp, one Luca Vallejo, told me nervously some time later. His wife, who was currently pouring me a cup of very muddy-looking tea, shot him a distinctly sharp look. The grey-haired Dwarf winced. “Er…that is, we didn’t mean nothin’ by it, me lord.”

  I hid a wince of my own at the headman’s words, picking up the teacup before me to do so. After tempers had cooled and the Dwarves had finally realized that we weren’t there to cause problems for them, they had actually started to listen to us. Upon learning that I was the Marshall of one of the famed Herztalian Martial Orders, nothing I or anyone could say could convince the Dwarves of the camp that I wasn’t a noble.

  Their demeanor had distinctly changed afterward.

  I and my command staff had all been invited to Vallejo’s home, the largest one in the camp. Which…wasn’t really saying much, of course. It may have a whole two stories, but it was still the rough-hewn home of a woodcutter. Not, as it happened, a carpenter.

  Pretty sure I was going to have to dig some splinters out of my ass after this, from the chair I was sitting in.

  I had Gustave managing the troops and the post-battle cleanup, while Maria, Sylvia, Bella, and Renauld had joined me in the home. Accompanying Vallejo were his wife, a few of his trusted workers, and…

  The Elf that was apparently a scout for the forces of one Alveron of Sancthaven.

  Well.

  To business, then. I took an actual sip from the cup of tea and was pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t bad, actually. Somewhat…gingery. I gave a brief appreciative nod to the Dwarven woman who had prepared it, and then fixed my gaze on Vallejo. I was trying to be gentle with him, but he still winced under my regard. “Thank you for your hospitality, goodman Vallejo,” I said with a small, practised smile. “As I told you, we are perfectly prepared to assist you in getting your camp back in order. We just have a few…questions, first.”

  The Dwarf exchanged glances with his fellows before looking back at me. “Er…we’ll be happy ta answer ‘em, me lord. But, beggin’ me pardon…we have a few ourselves. Like, uh…what are a bunch of humies-I mean, men doing this far north? Can’t imagine the High Houses invited ye.”

  Time to test the waters.

  I smiled once more. “Why, we’re here to bring an end to the grave phenomenon that has stolen the sky from us, my good Dwarf,” I said smoothly. Pointedly, I shifted my gaze ever so slightly to the right, to where ‘Kierla’ was sitting inhumanely still in a similarly rough-cut chair. My smile widened slightly. “We have good intelligence that this is the fault of the Elven Mad God, and we mean to slay him.”

  As the Dwarves blinked rapidly at my words, Kierla had a different reaction. She cocked her head to the side in a distinctly avian manner, and a small smile crossed her lips. She didn’t speak, though.

  I don’t think she needed to.

  Hmm.

  Maybe she was one of Alveron’s. From my brief experience with the crazed Elves under the sway of the Mad God, I had trouble imagining them reacting with anything but blind rage at the idea of killing their tormentor/object of worship.

  I shifted my eyes back to Vallejo and was unsurprised once more to see him and his fellows gaping at me. Amusingly, his wife had paused mid-tea pour to do so as well, and her own husband’s cup was now overflowing. Vallejo snapped out of his astonishment long enough to pick it up and hurriedly sip from the edge before it spilled. When he was done, he took a deep breath. “Are ye…talkin’ about the sky and the poison?” He asked hesitantly, but with a note of deep, deep hunger in his voice. “Ye know what’s goin’ on?”

  Maria leaned forward with a compassionate look on her face. “Do you not know, goodman?” She asked kindly. “Have none of the Principality forces contacted you with an explanation?”

  As Vallejoy began a halting, grief-filled explanation of his own, as to how he and his camp had been getting along in the past few months, I looked over and met Sylvia’s eyes. My lover had a mildly disapproving look on her Mithril features, which I’m pretty sure only people who knew and loved her could distinguish. We both knew what was going on here, and while she might disapprove…I was fine with it.

  Maria, as the far more personable-

  (And non-mutated.)

  -one, was subtly pumping Vallejo for information. Every piece of intelligence we could gather on the current state of the Principality was indescribably useful. There was only so much information that Captain Bronzle had been able to squeal to me about the state of Velancia as a whole. After all, the Dwarf had been out at sea for months when he happened upon us, only receiving orders from his superiors via messenger bird.

  Anything Vallejo could tell us was good, and as an untrained civilian…

  Well, he just didn’t know what not to tell us.

  According to him, he and his people had had no idea just what was going on when the Skyfall had occurred. Haltingly, with tears in his eyes, he told us that they had actually lost half of their number to the initial pressure wave. Which was…an unfortunately common story, from what we had discovered on our journey. It had been hard on them to discover that the outside world was also fatal, but it hadn’t actually been a death sentence itself. They had already begun stockpiling supplies from their hunting and foraging for the coming winter.

  The implication I caught from Vallejo’s stubbornly set jaw, and the downcast eyes of his wife and friends, though, was that they might just be running through those supplies. Pointedly, Maria was now looking at me, with an expectant look on her face.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  I stifled a sigh.

  Yes, yes. I get it. I’ll ask them, but I need to get to another point first.

  I cleared my throat, drawing the attention of the Dwarves before us. “Goodman Vallejo, my condolences for your losses. But there is something I’m curious about. How did the...girl come to be among you?” I deliberately let my eyes shift back over to the spindly Elven teenager, watching the exchange with wide, curious eyes. At the room’s regard, she blinked slowly, not unlike a cat.

  The headman jerked out his grim determination long enough to look over at her, and then back at me. He scratched his chin. “Oh, our forest gel? Ah…she showed up a week or so ago. At first, we was mighty wary of the knife ear that were lurkin’ at the borders o’ our wards. We couldn’t go out there and actually talk to the gel, on account o’ the poison, so we just watched each other fer a long while. But, she didn’t try and do nothin’ but watch us with those big ol’ eyes o’ hers, so we invited her in. She’s been hangin’ around since then, and wouldn’t say a word about whatever she was doin’. But we don’t mind overmuch. She helped with chores when we took her in, and she even fought wit’ us when the beasties showed up.”

  Interesting. Very interesting.

  “To be clear, here…” Renauld said slowly, cupping his chin. “She was traveling outside the wards and wasn’t hurt by the corruption?”

  When Vallejo nodded in response, the eyes of everyone in the room that was part of the expedition shifted back over to Kierla with interest. I in particular met her eyes, and cocked my own head to match her own.

  She had some method in which to survive the corrupted Aether of the Skyfall, in much the same way our own APDs did for us.

  Hmm…

  I looked back over at Maria, and subtly signed a few things to her in the old hand language of the Nocturne Division. She immediately understood my intentions and cleared her throat, catching the attention of the Dwarves.

  “Goodman Vallejo, we of the Order of the Polaris Reach are sympathetic to your plight,” She said smoothly, standing up. Almost instinctively, the Dwarves stood as well. “If you’ll follow me, I would be happy to tell you just what our expedition can do to assist you and your people.”

  Vallejo immediately lit up in surprised relief but tried to hide it with little success. His wife and friends didn’t even bother trying to hide their own, though. His wife, in particular, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Aye, we ain’t so proud we’ll turn away a helpin’ hand!” He said eagerly, following after Maria as she approached the door. However, he paused for a moment in the doorway, looking back at me and the others who had not gotten up to leave. “Is…somethin’ amiss?”

  Maria set her hand on his shoulder and smiled kindly down at the Dwarf. “No, no, of course not,” She said soothingly. “The Marshall simply needs to speak privately to young Miss Kierla.”

  The last thing I heard from the mildly worried form of Vallejo as Maria led the Dwarves out the door was a fading. “He ain’t gonna hurt her, is he…?”

  And then the door closed behind them, and it was just me, my Captains, and the mysterious elf in the corner.

  We studied each other in silence for a moment before I gestured towards the now-empty chair across from me, here in the headman’s house. “Please, join us. We have…things to discuss.”

  Slowly, the Elf’s hauntingly familiar emerald green eyes followed where I pointed and rested on the chair. For some reason, she studied it thoughtfully for several seconds before she stood and languidly approached the chair. I had to hide a twitch at the nearly animalistic manner in which she moved. It called to mind extremely unpleasant memories of the week in which I had spent confined to the back of a stolen Herztalian wagon by Elven raiders, just after I’d appeared on Vereden. I would never forget how they treated me and those other captured Human refugees they were intent on selling into slavery.

  But this girl wasn’t one of them. She was one of Alveron’s rescues, freed from the grip of the Mad God.

  I had to remember that.

  When she finally sat down in the chair, perched on the edge of it in a bizarre fashion, she cocked her head at me once more. “You…want to kill. Progenitor?”

  I nodded slowly, parsing her words. I’m guessing ‘Progenitor’ was what the Elves who had once been enthralled by Fynneas called him. “Yes, we intend to kill him. I’ve been informed by a…reliable source-

  (Thanks, Anima.)

  “-that he’s the source of the pall that has been thrown over the world. The sky, the corrupted Aether, the dimmed elements…all of it can, presumably, be traced back to him, correct?” I finished leadingly.

  Kierla made a vague, affirming noise. “Yes. Him…source. Elder confirms.”

  Well, that was a mild weight off my shoulders. It was one thing to be told something by a trusted source, and entirely another to get a second confirmation.

  But damn was it hard to parse the teen’s halting speech.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.

  Bella made an unsatisfied noise from her place, leaning against the wall behind me. “Is that all, girl? Speak up, will ya? I can barely understand ye.”

  I shot the pirate Captain a sharp look at that, but she was unfazed in the face of it. When I looked back at Kierla once more, I found her head bowed in apparent shame. “Your words…hard for me. Us.” She muttered in frustration and then shook her head. “We are…sinners, in eye of System. Limited Status, do not get language-” Here she said a word I couldn’t understand, and Language Adaptation wouldn’t translate. Kierla outright scowled then, visibly struggling to find the words. “Ability?”

  “Skill,” Sylvia corrected her gently.

  The Elf girl mouthed the word and then nodded. “Do not get language Skill. We all are…unworthy. Tainted. Elder saving us…does not balance bow in eyes of System. Still punished. All have to learn languages on own.”

  I see. That was…something I hadn’t known about, or even thought to ask. Had Fynneas in particular done something to the System that essentially cursed his entire race to be linguistically isolated from the rest of Vereden?

  You know, besides stealing something vitally important to it, which caused it to start degenerating over the course of millennia.

  I still felt a sudden, and almost unwelcome pang of sympathy for the Elves.

  I shook my head to clear it of unwanted thoughts and spoke once again. “What are you doing here, Kierla? Is Alveron close by?”

  The girl perked up, seemingly forgetting her malaise. “Elder east,” Kierla said excitedly. “He cast Spell, protect us from poison. Then, send us out to scout Old Growth. Ah…Barren…Forest?” She shrugged and nodded. “Yes, that your name for it. We scout while Spell lasts, then return. He doing something, needs to know things to help topple Progenitor. Also, told to keep eye out for you.”

  I jerked back at those words. “He…knew I was coming?”

  Kierla was totally unfazed by the astonishment in my voice and just shook her head. “Not know. Guessed. You…Precursor, supposed to kill Progenitor. I come with.” She said abruptly, nodding in a decisive manner. “You, I follow, lead to Elder. Then, you two kill Progenitor, free all. Happy Day!”

  I wanted to gape at the very blunt way she had delivered that, but…

  I mean, she wasn’t wrong. If I could keep Fynneas once and for all, it would be a happy day.

  “I…alright?” I said, mildly baffled. “You can come with us, I suppose. It’s…probably a good idea to meet up with Alveron. We’re heading in that direction in the first place.”

  Sylvia stood up from her chair and approached the young Elven girl. When the Sculpted woman reached her, she set one Mithril hand on Kierla’s slim shoulder and smiled at her. “Welcome to the expedition, Miss Kierla.”

  The young Elf just beamed up at Sylvia in response.