Babs
The hardest part is starting.
I’ve always thought that. I’ve always lived my life by that handy little factoid. Therefore, if you think about it, this is the easy part. This is what I keep repeating to myself, over and over. The repetition might make my legs burn less and go further. Yes, alright, I might at this moment be running full speed for my life over loose rocks, but if the hardest part is starting, this is actually way easier than living my village was. So even though I technically think this hurts and I’m about to die, continuing to run is way easier than starting to run. The logic is flawless. No one can tell me it’s not.
This isn’t even my first time running for my life. It’s actually something of a personal hobby. A passion, you could even call it. I’m really into it. Naga mating season? Gonna run real fast. Spiderkin with a gleam in his eye? I’m already gone actually. Of course, the trick is to know when to start running. If I started running too soon, I’d never see anything. If I start running too late, well, things get pretty dicey. I’m really good at knowing when to start running, generally. The other key part in this equation is running in the correct direction. That one, I’m still working on. For instance, if one were running full tilt away from an enraged, insane waspkin on the edges of an active battlefield, it really is key to not run headlong into a group of invading dark elves.
For a minute, I almost think it’s going to work to my advantage. One of the dark elves grabs me, but the waspkin chasing me absolutely smashes into them, caught off-guard as they are thanks to my brilliant distraction. I’m hopeful that maybe I can just escape both. This is before I realized the reality of using a living being as a distraction in order to escape; don’t worry, I realize that one real quick here in a second.
There’s something wrong with the waspkin; I can tell. It looks all fucked up and its mouth is all wrong and full of sharp, sharklike teeth. That is not what waspkin look like. I haven’t seen a lot, but I’d seen enough to know that. Your average waspkin is vaguely humanoid in shape, like pretty much all the monsterkin. They were insectoid, not arachnid, and maybe because of that lacked the extra back-limbs possessed by spiderkin and scorpionkin. Some of them have wings, and I think they can probably fly, but probably not naturally like harpies do, because their wings are translucent and seem thin and not at all large enough to reasonably carry their weight. What they don’t have is big mouths full of terror-teeth and blood-red eyes. They’re soldiers, not snarling, feral monsters, generally speaking. So this is not right at all.
And the thing is, waspkin are scary enough on their own, what with the soldiers and the habit of empirical conquering of nearby lands and all. But I’d been dodging them for the last few days without too much trouble. This thing though? It’s like a damn bloodhound, more than half insane, and it’s tearing through the dark elves to the tune of screams and the sound of flesh and bone being rent from its natural location.
You might think, given my penchant for needing to run for my life, that I would have seen this kind of thing all the time, and take advantage of the chaos to escape. That would be awesome! Unfortunately, that is incorrect. I’ve absolutely never seen anything this gory, so instead of knowing how to handle it, I can feel nausea rising up alongside the horror. I make the mistake of looking back as I try to scramble away, and see a full arm fly up into the air. It’s almost so over-the-top that it strikes me as comical rather than horrific. Who tears off an arm? Who throws it into the air? There’s a joke in there somewhere about a high five, but the screaming that’s overlaying all my thoughts drowns it out.
This is all wrong. This is all messed up. I just wanted to see the fucking red rocks. I’d known there were waspkin here, and had been ready for it. But no amount of preparation could have clued me in to the idea that fucking dark elves were planning an incursion, or whatever it was that was happening here. I hadn’t even known there were dark elves in this area! The guy who’d sold me the map hadn’t said anything, and he had warned me about the wasps.
You’d think that kind of shit would happen underground. Who even ever heard of dark elves on the surface, anyway? It’s bullshit. They should be underground, being weird, like they do. They shouldn’t be up here, staining my red rocks redder, soaking blood into the sand. It’s surreal. It’s fucked up. It’s improbably bad luck, which makes sense because I kind of think all humans might be cursed by the gods actually. And despite my currently pointed ears, I am human to the bone.
At least, I think they’re still pointed. I might have dropped the illusion in my panic. It’s kind of second nature to me, but I think I’m about to puke. The air reeks and there’s blood everywhere. The fucked-up waspkin is tearing the dark elves apart, and I am surrounded by the sound of screams, scrambling in an attempt to find the edge of the melee I’m engulfed in, ducking under weapons and crawling between legs. Something wet pours over my back as I do, like a popped water balloon. I’m not thinking about it. I feel something wet run down my cheek from the back.
Okay yes I am going to puke. I am going to add vomit to the list of unholy liquids on this battlefield. As I vomit, I mentally apologize to whatever future soldier is going to fall into it, just because that seems like an unnecessarily gross addition to a death. I might be going a little insane.
Something grabs me from behind, by my hair, and yanks me backwards, and I feel something sharp against my neck and unfortunately I guess this is how I die.
There’s a flash of light, which I guess is dying, and then, in front of me, appears what I guess must be a spirit or a messenger of the gods or maybe an angel, depending on what theology is real. It’s tall, taller than any elf or monster I’ve seen before, head-and-shoulders taller than the crowd of dark elves, bronze-skinned with the longest hair I’ve ever seen in stark, colorless white. The color of bleached bones, I think, as if I’ve ever seen bleached bones.
Are angels supposed to have really huge scythes?
It kind of looks like equipment for farming rice. It would make sense if this was some kind of spirit from my village, here to escort my soul into the afterlife, or something. It’s scary enough looking. Even though it really does just look kind of like a taller, hotter wood elf, there’s something ethereal about it, and I keep saying it because I don’t think it’s a person and I also can’t tell if it’s supposed to have a gender.
I have a lot of these senseless thoughts in the one second it takes for me to die, I think, because it must only be a second, if it was any longer than it wouldn’t make sense why the thing grabbing me has frozen but the battlefield behind the spirit is still moving. I must actually already be dead.
If I’m dead why do I still feel gross, sticky, and wet? That seems unfair.
This is the last thought I have time for before the massive scythe is swung just above my head, and I am suddenly much, much grosser, stickier, and wetter. The arms holding me go slack and fall backwards, which by the way cuts my neck even more, which HURTS, which is how I realize I’m not dead and the thing in front of me is real.
Clutching my neck, more out of the fear that I will bleed out than the pain, I fall forward, collapsing into a heap with the chunks of the waspkin, which must have been what grabbed me. I dry heave, my stomach already empty, its contents not five feet away where I puked earlier. War is not only scary, I think, it’s also extremely, extremely gross.
I see in hazy, blurry, double vision as the dark elves stumble back away from the figure with the scythe, creating a circle around of just dead bodies, dark elves torn apart by the enraged waspkin that now lays in pieces on the ground behind and beside me.
The thing—spirit? guy? hot lady?—with the scythe squats down, reaches out, and grabs the hair of the waspkin, lifting its head-and-shoulders chunk up off the ground. It wrinkles its nose, a very human-seeming expression.
“Disgustin’. Who taught ‘em how to do this? What a pain…” It has a weird accent I’ve never heard before, but is speaking Common, which is something of a relief. It stands back up, still holding the chunk of waspkin as if it’s carrying a handbag. “Oi, you guys summon me?”
Silence reigns over our little section of battlefield; just our section. The sound of clashing weapons and bloody screams still fills the air, just at more of a distance.
“Come to think of it, how did you summon me? Do waspkin even have princes?” it muses. “Or maybe the waspkin… Hey. Who’s rebellin’ against who, here? I can’t fuckin’ tell, this is like clash of the empires here.”
More silence.
The spirit sighs. “If you keep being quiet and pointin’ swords at me, I’m gonna make assumptions.”
“We definitely summoned you on purpose to help us,” comes a voice from the crowd.
“Shut up!” another voice snaps. “Are you insane?”
The spirit sighs, which isn’t very spirit-like. It turns, unfortunately, to look at me, collapsed on my hands and knees on the ground, clutching my neck, covered in gods only know what.
“You’re not a wasp or a dark elf. Tell me what’s goin’ on.”
I gurgle.
“Oh. Hmm.”
It drops the scythe. Instead of falling, it floats in the air precisely where it was released. All signs pointing to spirit, as if the whole ‘super tall bronze skinned goddess with magic hair and armor with arrows sticking out of it’ vibes weren’t enough to go off of. The spirit kneels down—I note with detached hilarity, like a madman about to cackle, the way the dark elves start backing away slowly, quietly, the second the spirit’s back is turned to them—and tears off a piece of its… skirt? Is it wearing a skirt under that armor? It pulls my hands away from my throat with worrying force and wraps it around my neck. I gurgle again, unhappy with everything to do with the state of affairs.
“It didn’t even get your jugular, you massive baby…” it grumbles. The pain in my neck leaves almost as soon as the makeshift bandages is tightened, not so tight as to squeeze, not so loose as to shift, almost like it’s bonded to my skin. “There. Now. Tell me the situation.”
“IdunnoIdon’tevengohere,” I exhale.
“Not helpful.”
“I knew there were wasps in the area but the dark elves are new?”
“Only slightly more helpful.” It sighs, turns to say something to the dark elves, and realizes they have scattered. “Fucking… Alright. Fine.”
Harpe
This happens from time to time. Accidental summons.
All you actually need to summon me is a knife, some leaves or sticks, desperation, a rebellion, and the blood of a noble. The blood of a noble is really the hardest part, and generally keeps accidental summoning from happening, because you don’t tend to accidentally get a hold of noble blood. But nonetheless, every once in a while I’ll get summoned on accident when some rebel army is in the middle of things. Everything just so happens to fall into place correctly, and voila. It doesn’t happen a lot. But the presence of the noble blood normally tells me pretty fast whose side I’m on. Like. Really think about it; it’s never hard to tell.
But the problem here is that dark elves and waspkin are both conquerors, empires. Without exception, when I’m summoned and they’re around, it’s to kill them. If dark elves are summoning me, which has happened a time or two, it’s a bunch of men or slaves rebelling against the local government. Dark elves are far-flung due to the nature of cave systems, and yet somehow they all seem to have managed to bring ‘being assholes’ with them to new places. Waspkin, however, don’t really rebel against themselves, and don’t keep enough slaves to incite armed rebellion. Generally when waspkin conquer an area, everyone else just leaves and finds somewhere without waspkin to live.
Dark elves versus waspkin? Sounds more like it’d be a territory dispute than a rebellion. And yet it must be, because here I am. One must have been enslaving the other, and it’s really anyone’s guess which one.
The human in front of me oozes noble blood into bandages I made for them, which at least explains one part of this baffling equation. Someone cut them, and that combined with the scattering of sticks and rocks in a rough pile right over there, plus a rebellion… I guess would be enough to do it. I’d say I’ve had weirder, but I haven’t. But now I really have to figure out whose side I’m on. Whose territory this is and who’s fighting for their freedom. It could really go either way. I’m leaning towards the dark elves; it just feels more likely. But maybe I’m just thinking that because I really don’t want to help waspkin out. They’ve never rebelled before, and I don’t want to be bothered helping them out just to be summoned back in five, ten years when they start spreading and driving things out of their homes like they always fucking do.
Of course, same would happen with the dark elves, I bet.
I wonder if I’m allowed to leave. It doesn’t feel like I ought to be allowed to leave, but it’s only been a few hundred years and to be honest I’m still figuring this shit out.
Am I allowed to kill both sides? That feels way more right. Is that an option? …Anything’s an option if Inari doesn’t find out about it. He finds out about everything, though, someone will tell him for sure. Or maybe not, if I’m like, really far out. Or if there aren’t any survivors.
I eye the human noble, who unfortunately has “survivor” written all over them, especially now that I’ve gone and bandaged their neck. And it’s a human. Humans love Inari and Inari loves humans; all it would take is one “thank you Lord Inari for protecting me in that fuckin’ crazy murderfest situation” and bam, I’ve been ratted out.
I must look irritated, because the human looks extra terrified. It takes me a moment to realize their gaze of terror isn’t aimed at me, but behind me. The dark elves ran when I turned my focus onto the human, and now there are waspkin, a lot of waspkin, beginning to surround us.
Oh, good. If they attack, it really simplifies things for me.
I glance back to the human, who’s already been stabbed once and looks about ready to shit themselves, something I would genuinely prefer to avoid. They have noble blood, but all that tells me is where they’re from, since there’s exactly one human settlement I know of with enough people and a long enough surviving history to have something that would count. It’s not like being a dark elf princess or a high elf earl, hell, it’s not even like being a centaur. Humans don’t have kings. Humans have like, mud huts. It’s not the same. I still don’t love the concept; it’s pathetic that having been brought so low, there’s already squabbling to have nobility on top of the shit heap that is the condition most humans are in. But Inari loves humans so much, and loves the village this particular human is from so much, that there’s no possible way I could bring myself to do anything but save its stupid ass under any circumstances, least of all these, where they’re just an innocent (probably) bystander in a fucked up monster civil war.
“How good are you at runnin’?” I ask the human, considering the waspkin.
“It’s literally like my number one skill,” the human rasps, which is promising.
“Good. I’m going to carve a path through these wasps, and you’re gonna run through it. Run until you find a place to hide. A good one, ideally.”
The human nods, winces, and then says, “Yeah. Okay. Are you gonna be… never mind, stupid question.”
Babs
I really am a very good runner. I wasn’t kidding when I said it was my number one skill, although to be fair that might actually be magic. Illusions in particular. But I don’t actually know how good I am at that, like, objectively? I’ve never met anyone else who can do it. My family always said there was a spark of ancestral magic in us—that’s why we’d been selected to be the leaders of the village way, way back, blah blah—but it was really more of a weak splort. Grandma could talk to birds, which like, don’t get me wrong, that’s cool as hell, but it’s definitely not high magic. It’s not nearly as good as being able to cast illusions.
I’d kept my magic secret from everyone but my best friend—okay, only friend, shut up. It just seemed like the thing to do; I hadn’t wanted my family to know because it would make me even more appealing as heir apparent, and I had been doing everything in my power to make my little brother seem like a better pick for the job basically since he’d been born.
This was all before I ran, obviously.
Running had fixed all of my problems, and what that taught me was that running fast enough can fix anything. For instance, if you run fast enough away from a magical scythe-wielding spirit fighting a literal swarm of waspkin soldiers, the problem ceases to be yours anymore.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely grateful to the spirit-thing for showing up when it did and pulling my ass out of the metaphorical fire, but I also would like for it to handle the situation, like, on its own. Not like I could do anything to help, anyway. My illusions aren’t good enough yet to make the spirit invisible or summon an illusory dragon to scare away the waspkin or whatever. It’s mostly limited to making myself not look like a human, or a few minor illusions. I haven’t even figured out how to make auditory and visual illusions at the same time.
So, yeah. Running? Primary skill. Another great one I’m fine-tuning is hiding. I got great at hiding in my village, because like, it’s one village surrounded by mountains. There’s only so many places you can hide unless you intend to go into the mountains, which no one is allowed to do unless they’re in a group for hunting, gathering, or trading with the nearby (as these things go) wood elves. People can’t just wander into the forest, because there’s dangerous things in there like harpies and wolves and dryads and blah blah blah blah. It’s all bullshit anyway, the wood elves live in the woods and manage just fine without dropping dead of scary monsterkin. If there were sooooo many, they’d for sure raid our village, because we have farms and food and shit, but they basically never do. We sure post guards like they might at any time, but it’s a cushy job.
I’m getting sidetracked. The point is, I’m good at hiding, because there was always someone in my family worth hiding from at any given time, normally my grandparents, and they’d spent their whole damn lives learning every inch of that village, good hiding spots included. Sometimes I think I developed illusion magic just out of a pure-hearted desire to be invisible. So I was feeling pretty good—well no, bad, but good about the spot I’d picked to hide in—when I wedged myself in between some rocks. You couldn’t see me from anywhere but directly next to the crack, and I figured most races would have to bend over to notice me, at that. Definitely a pretty good spot to hide from waspkin and dark elves.
I would have actually preferred to keep going, but the spirit-thing had told me to hide, and I just sort of did, I guess? It seemed like it knew what it was doing, and also might have been some kind of avenging spirit that would be cross with me if I just ran off into the metaphorical sunset. As time ticked on by, though, I was wondering if maybe I hadn’t thought things through, and hiding just because a stranger with a big scythe had told me to was stupid actually? But by now, I wasn’t sure where the dark elves and waspkin might be. If I’d kept running at the beginning, I could have been pretty sure they were behind me, which was all that mattered, but now that I’d stopped, they could be anywhere.
By the time the spirit-thing shows up, I’m just relieved I can stop hiding in these freaking rocks. I’m tired and sore from curling up and it’s not that I’m forgetting to be scared, exactly. I think it was more that my gauge has been thrown off by all the horrors? Like, I should definitely be horrified by the sheer amount of blood on the spirit—it’s so much—but I’m not exactly blood-free myself. And it helps me out of the little hole I’m in, which is nice of it.
“Good news,” the spirit says in that weird accent it has. “Everyone’s dead.”
“Everyone?” I ask, which is probably not the thing to ask.
“Well, probably not everyone everyone,” the spirit admits. “Which is why you shouldn’t be hangin’ around in this area. Waspkin or dark elves is bad enough, let alone both. What are you even doin’ here, anyway? How’d you get caught up in a monster civil war? This is pretty damn far from your village.”
I freeze in momentary panic. My village? How would it know about my village?! No, no, that’s stupid, it must just means… the nearest human village. There must be a human village near-ish to here that it thinks I wandered off from. There’s no way it could mean my village, specifically.
“Um,” I say, because despite everything, lying is not my strong suit. “I’m like, not even from a village. I’m a. Wild human. From the wild.”
The spirit snorts, which is a very un-spirit-like thing to do. “All humans are from villages. If you leave two humans alone for longer than twenty minutes, they form a village. Huts and everything. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re known for. It’s their point. Also, I know your village.”
“No you don’t!” I squawk. “Because I’m not from one! I’m from like, the woods!”
“You’re from Dalree.”
“Nope definitely not from there never even heard of it!”
The spirit rolls its eyes, which, again, not spirity. I think maybe it’s bad at its job, the thought of which makes me feel slightly better amongst all the raw panic. I might be considering running away real fast again, soreness be damned.
“You’re from Dalree,” it repeats. “Because you have noble blood.”
“Excuse you?” It sounds like an insult.
“You have noble blood,” it says again, gesturing to the bandage wrapped around my neck.
“What makes you think that?”
“I can tell,” it says flatly.
“What, like, you can smell it? Are you some kind of weird nobles-only vampire?” I ask, taking a nervous step backwards. It would be just my luck.
“Nah, more like I can sense it. And just when it’s spilled, mostly. Stop lookin’ at me like I’m about to bite you.”
“I mean. You might be?”
“Not even if you asked.”
“Okay, so, even if I agree that I have noble blood, which I’m not saying I do by the way, why would that mean I was from this weird ‘Dalree’ place I’ve never heard of before.”
“Fuck’s sake, you’re bad at lyin’…” it mutters. “It means you’re from Dalree because it’s the only damn human settlement in the whole plane that’s been around long enough to actually have a noble family. Nobility is normally an elven thing. Occasionally a few monsterkin stick it out together long enough to form nobility, but it ain’t common. Humans probably had a shitton of nobility back in the day, given how you all act, but there’s just not enough of you for that shit anymore. Noble. Human. Ergo, Dalree.”
Huh. Damn. I’d like to not believe the spirit, out of stubbornness, and also because that’s depressing. But it did correctly guess that I’m from Dalree, which I hadn’t expected anyone to even know about, given how secretive we are. I don’t think anything else would explain that. It’d be a weird thing to lie about. It did also technically correctly guess that I have ‘noble blood’ which I guess is actually a thing and not just bullshit my family likes to yammer on about. I hadn’t known I had some of the only noble blood in the species, though. I don’t think my family knew either, because if they had, they never would have shut up about it. They’re already insufferable about us being the last noble family of Dalree, which apparently used to be part of a much bigger human kingdom or something, waaaaaaay back in the day before the God War. If they knew we were the last human nobles period? Yeah, I would have heard about it. Over and over and over again.
It’s still depressing to think about, though, and makes me feel guilty in a weird way that I don’t like.
“Given how keen you are to suspiciously and loudly maintain you’re not from there, I’m assumin’ you ran away?” the spirit suggests.
“Nope, definitely not, that’s crazy, also I’m an adult person and adult people don’t ‘run away from home,’ that is something kids do. I am adult, ergo, I couldn’t possibly have run away from home.” This is a foolproof argument.
“Anyone can run away from home. If your mom suddenly left in the middle of the night, no warning, maybe a note sayin’ ‘Farewell Family!’ if you’re lucky, would you say she just wandered off, or would you say she ran the fuck away from home?”
“I would say that’s her, uh, right as a strong independent woman?”
“Uh-huh. Well, as an ‘adult person,’ it’s your right to run away from home if you want. I don’t give a shit, other than it means now I’ve got a baby human princeling running around.”
“I’m not a prince,” I say, indignantly. Although if my family could get away with calling themselves royalty…
The spirit waves its hand carelessly in the air, as if to say it couldn’t matter less. “Whatever you lot call yourselves these days. The actual problem is that you’re out here. Couldn’t you try to die less? It’s kind of a hassle.”
“This is me trying to die less, actually. And, you’ll note, I’m succeeding! I haven’t died even once.”
“You were about a minute away from breakin’ that streak, if I hadn’t shown up.”
“I would have been fine,” I lie. “For way more than a minute.”
“I mean if you’re a slow bleeder, maybe, but that’s a shitty way to go,” the spirit says dryly. “Runnin’ around in known waspkin territory, that’s you tryin’ not to die? Nothin’ on you for self-defense except a half-baked illusion? And what good did you think this would do, exactly?” It reaches down and flicks near my ear. I realize abruptly that it flicked a finger through where the tips of my ears would be, if they were real. I bat its hand away.
“It keeps people from knowing I’m a human,” I say grumpily. “Well, normal things,” I add, glaring at the spirit, which is looking less ethereal and more annoying by the minute.
“You haven’t disguised your scent at all,” the spirit says dryly.
“Why are you smelling me?” I demand, appalled.
“I’m not! I’m saying most of the things that would care that you’re human, they operate based on smell. Addin’ little ears like that is only foolin’ visual predators like harpies, and proly elves.” The spirit seemed to consider. “Actually, given where you are, elves are probably a significant risk, actually.”
“I didn’t know there were dark elves!”
“That’s because you’re stupidly wandering around in the wilderness without even knowin’ what all’s around you.”
“Did you come here just to lecture me? Is that your thing? Are you some kind of summoned spirit of dad energy that shows up to tell those finally free of their parental figures that they’re a disappointment?”
The spirit snorts. “I came here to make sure you weren’t dead or dyin’; that’s just startin’ to look like a task. You’re wanderin’ around in waspkin territory without a care in the world.”
“I am in possession of multiple cares! I was being careful. I just didn’t think there’d be a fucking war while I was here.”
“There’s always a war somewhere.”
“I mean maybe, but not normally where I am, generally speaking!”
“If it wasn’t wartime sight-seein’, why were you here, in the territory you apparently knew was full of wasps?”
“I… wanted to see the rocks.”
It sounds kind of lame when I say it out loud, but it’s a fully justifiable reason. I wanted to see it, so I went! What else are you supposed to do when you want to see something? Just think about it really hard?
“You wanted to. See. The rocks?” The spirit sounds like it suspects it’s missing an important key here, which you think it might be. Maybe.
“It’s a good reason!” I say, not at all super defensively. “And I heard about a really cool vista-place-thing near here. I was planning on hiking up to it. Some tigerkin told me about it.”
“And you trusted them?”
“Don’t be racist.”
The spirit laughed. “Right, right, of course. So you risked your life to see some rocks from a vista.”
“Yes,” I say stubbornly. “What else are you supposed to do with a life?”
“Live it?”
“I am trying, but some snooty spirit-thing is nagging me!”
The spirit laughs again. “I’m not a spirit. I’m a high elf.”
I squint up at it. I can’t see its horns from here, but it’s kind of a weird angle, with it being like a full foot and change taller than me.
“High elves have horns and gender,” I tell it, skeptical of its claim. Every picture I’d seen looked pretty different than what was standing in front of me. But I couldn’t prove they didn’t just appear out of nowhere. High elves are pretty famous for being, like, made of magic. They could probably magically appear somewhere if they wanted and were like, super powerful and clearly good at murdering a ton of people.
“I decided I didn’t want either. So this vista, what is it exactly that makes it so worth riskin’ your hide over?”
I sigh, since apparently this thing—which I’m still not sure I buy is a high elf but I’ve literally only seen them in books so who knows—has decided I’m its business. I pull my bag off and open it up, pulling out a map laying on top of everything else.
“Here,” I show it, unrolling the map. “We’re… okay I’m not one hundred perfect sure where because I was mostly focused on running, but there’s landmarks on here so I can get my bearing. Here is the start of a safe hiking trail up to here, which is a hella cool plateau thing where you can see super far. This area is too dangerous for me to just wander around forever, so I thought it’d be a good way to see as many cool rocks as possible with a lower chance of dying.”
“You thought it through, slightly.” The maybe-high-elf sounds a bit pleased by this, or maybe surprised, or maybe both. I don’t have any reaction at all to the concept of maybe making it proud or happy, because I have no daddy/mommy issues whatsoever.
“I’m trying to see the world, not commit suicide,” I say casually and not super snippy at all.
“To that end,” the spirit-high-elf thing seems to decide, “I’ll accompany you.”
“You’ll what?”
“To the vista,” it clarifies, like that’s the thing I’d be confused by.
“Uh. Why?”
“I also like tall places with good views,” it says with a shrug. “And you’re still wanderin’ around a war zone filled with angry wasps and scared dark elves. Odds of dyin’: super high.”
“Why would you care, though? What’s your problem with me?” I demand with a frown. “It’s my own business where I want to go and what I want to do. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
The maybe-elf looks a little contemplative, and I don’t like it. I don’t like looking at it in general, in part because I’ve got to crane my neck back and it’s going to get stiff.
“I’ve got a friend who really likes humans. In a normal way, don’t make that face,” it adds.
“Does anyone like humans in a normal way?”
“Plenty of people, or you’d all be dead by now,” it says. “And he really has a soft spot for Dalree specifically.”
“Seriously? Why?”
The maybe-elf shrugs. “It’s charmin’, with its traditions. So old that none of the villagers even seem to know why they’re still doin’ them, but they are. He likes Dalree, so he likes the people in Dalree, and you.” It pointed at me. “Are a people in Dalree. From Dalree, at least. I don’t think he cares much about nobility, but he’d be a sulky mess if he knew any of ‘em died.” The elf-thing frowns, as if considering that, and shakes its head. “So as a favor for him, and ‘cuz I hate seein’ him sulk, I’m just gonna keep you alive for a bit.” It shrugged. “Plus, I really don’t got anythin’ better to do.”
I search for a reason to argue against the Incredibly Tall High Elf (Maybe) Covered In Blood coming with me. However, I am also covered in blood, and there are still waspkin and probably dark elves in the area, and it has a very large scythe. Or had. It’s not here now, but I saw it float so I’m not overly confused by that. High elves, like I said, are basically made of magic. Plus, maybe if it comes with me, I can get a better look at it? It’s not like I’m not curious. I’ve never met a high elf—or whatever this is—before. Humans are objectively rare, but up until I left, they were the only thing I’d ever seen. It’s been one big culture shock after another since I left, and that’s been kind of great, not gonna lie. On top of everything else, it’s obviously been to Dalree, or at least knows someone who’s been to Dalree, and that’s super fucking weird actually because we don’t get visitors. If a high elf had showed up, it would have been a big deal. On the other hand, it might have been centuries ago. High elves live for like, forever. Maybe if I stick around, I can get the story out of it. It’d be cool if it was friends with my great-grandma or some shit like that.
“I mean, I guess,” I say finally. “You’re at least better company than the waspkin.”
“Such a high bar,” it says with a snort. “And yet, not one I can reliably clear, so I’ll take it.”
Harpe
I’d say that it’s weird for me to spend my free time babysitting a human for Inari, but it actually doesn’t even register on the scale of weird things I do on my time off. Being summoned into war zones means that I wind up just wandering around some pretty random places. I traded my ability to teleport—something pretty much every god other than me can do—for the summoning ritual that puts my presence in the hands of the people. It was like the first thing I figured out how to do upon obtaining godhood, actually. A lot of my peers think maybe I didn’t think that through, but I haven’t regretted it yet. Sure, it’s inconvenient, but on the other hand, I have a great excuse to fuck off into the sunset between gigs.
If I could teleport, for instance, Inari would be all, ‘Harpe, why did you not return the human to a safe location’ and I’d tell him that the human didn’t want to be returned to a safe location, and he’d still pout about it. Without the power to instantly snap the kid back home, I am also free from being nagged about it by people who need to take a deep breath and stop being omnisciently aware of precisely how many humans are alive at any given moment.
As it stands, I’m blissfully unable to deprive the kid of his personal freedoms, so that means instead I get to spend some time watching him waddle around like a toddler—a comparison which gets really apt when you keep in mind that I also cleaned him off. With magic, I mean, I didn’t bathe him. He might be a baby in some ways, but he’s at least old enough to bathe himself, for pity’s sake. I just didn’t really like our odds of finding unguarded fresh water to clean up in, but also didn’t feel like making the traumatized human wander around soaked in corrupted waspkin blood.
It was actually a bit fun, or maybe funny, to watch him. Humans bounce around like really excited dogs—or dogkin to be honest—sometimes. You kind of get a sense for why Inari loves them so damn much when you watch them for a while. There’s a lot more to be affectionate towards than my people… at least if you count my people as high elves, which I don’t think high elves actually would under any circumstances. But he’s very short with tiny legs and we’re hiking, so what I’m actually doing is spending a lot of time casually strolling and pretending to be really interested in random trees and rocks so the human can catch up.
To his credit, though, it is a hikable trail, and when we do (finally) get to the top, the view is spectacular. We can see, stretched out in front of us, the maze of red rock canyons, contrasting with the deep green of trees and bushes alongside carving rivers. It’s the exact kind of thing I like to see between jobs, and this required a lot less wandering around lost compared to my normal glorious vista visits. It’s actually nice for a while. Until the human starts setting up camp. Or I guess I should say “setting” “up” “camp” because he’s not really meeting the criteria for any of those words. It’s amusing for a bit, then sad, then kind of concerning.
He’s obtained a wood-elf-style sleep sack, and a hide tent he clearly has no idea how to set up. Other things he doesn’t know include setting a fire (how to) (to do it at all), food storage (don’t just leave it out), setting down cover in case of rain (there is no drainage here we would flood)… I’m starting to wonder how long the little princeling has actually been away from home. It has to have been some considerable amount of time just based on how far away he is from Dalree, and yet…
“This is just sad,” I say at last. “I guess I’m continuin’ my quest to keep you from dyin’.”
The kid huffs irritably. “What now?”
“Survival skills. You don’t have them.”
To my surprise, he perks up a little. “What, like, starting a fire and stuff?”
“Oh, so you know it’s bad you can’t do that?”
He rubs his neck sheepishly. “Well, I mean, yeah, but they didn’t really teach me that stuff when I was a kid. I’ve been trying to pick things up from everyone friendly I run into, but not everyone is friendly. Not even like, most people?”
“Well, you’re on probably the least populated continent. This is where the wild things are. Honestly, I think the lack of major elf populations is why humans have been able to thrive here,” I say absentmindedly. The high elf empire discovered the continent was here only recently, and myself and a few others have been keeping a very close eye on how that progresses. The high elves—and those with access to their ships—might be the only ones who can reliably get here right now, but that’s enough to be a problem. Most problems come from high elves, in my totally unbiased opinion.
I’m wandering in circles around our would-be campsite, gathering promising looking sticks, tinder, and rocks to make a fire pit with. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. Like, a really long time. As a squire, I learned all this survival stuff, but that was centuries ago now. I didn’t need it as a powerful battlemage, and I certainly don’t need it as a god.
“I didn’t know any of those things, but that makes sense,” the human says. “So, uh, what are you?”
“A high elf,” I say again.
“So, do high elves normally magically appear in the middle of battlefields to kill everyone? Do they all have a weird thing about noble blood?”
“Yes.”
“See, I don’t think that’s true, but I don’t actually know enough about high elves to dispute it.”
Lucky me. It’s not that I’m being obtuse just to be an asshole, or it’s some great secret or anything, but mortals freak out when they realize you’re a god. It’s just what they do, and it happens to me all the time and it’s annoying. I don’t really look like your typical high elf. I mean, I never did, but these days it’s not just because I’m off-color, with white hair instead of the blue-green jewel tones that high elves are supposed to have. There’s also the armor, and the scythe, and the red flowers growing in my hair. People can generally tell I’m not just a high elf. Hell, this human can tell I’m not just a high elf, and I think I’m the first one they’ve ever seen. But like most people, he’s not going to just right to ‘god’ because who would?
“Okay, totally-a-normal-high-elf, do you have a name?”
I hesitate. What are the odds he would have heard of me? Basically zero, right? They don’t know me in Dalree. There’s not really a need for a god of rebellion in human-only human populations. The trouble for them only crops up when other species get involved. Any other species, really.
“Harpe,” I say, opting for honesty.
“I’m Babs,” he volunteers.
“Short for anything?”
“Babitha.”
I snort. “It is not.”
“You caught me. It’s actually Babner.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Babraham?”
“No, you’re more of a ‘Babble’, I think.”
“You’ve got me there. Short for Babbles. Can’t you just light that fire with magic?” He’s pointing at the fire pit I’m in the middle of building.
“Of course I can. Can you?”
The human points his finger at the sticks, which burst into see-through flames without any heat that appear to be just sort of existing on top of the twigs.
“Your illusion dropped,” I advise, and the human’s hands go straight to their now-flat ears. They also, I note, became distinctly less typically masculine, but I’m not going to be rude enough to ask about that. I don’t need illusion magic to present the way I want, but it’s not like I never glamoured my hair when I was a kid. I know a thing or two about wanting people to see your body—see you—differently than it actually is.
“Goddamnit,” they swear. The illusory fire disappears, and when they pull their hands away, their ears are back to wood elf pointy, although their body changes less dramatically and more into vaguely androgynous by way of waif.
“You don’t have to keep it up if you want to take a break,” I point out. “I already know you’re human; it’s not like I’m going to judge.”
“I’m trying to get used to having it up all the time,” Babs says with a sigh, collapsing back onto the dirt, which throws up a cloud of red dust. “If I can make it second nature, shit like that won’t happen.”
“Sit up and watch me start this fire,” I instruct, and the human bounces back up to observe. At least they’re enthusiastic to learn. “Why are you wandering around in the wilderness if you don’t even know how to set up a tent or light a fire?” I mean, we already established they’re being stupid in general, but the combination of bad decisions on display here is approaching ‘active suicide attempt.’
“Look, if I could have learned that stuff before I left, I would have, but no one was lining up to teach me useful survival skills.” They roll their eyes. “And if what you’re really asking is why I left the comfortable village full of humans where I was guaranteed a cushy life… look. You’re a high elf, right? Those live for like hundreds of years if no one kills them. You might not get it. But I’m human, and we only live for like eighty years maximum. The world is huge and absolutely jam-packed with stuff in like every inch of it, and if I had to spend all eighty years of my very short life seeing nothing other than the same village with the same trees and the same people in it… Like, it’s a waste. It’s just a waste of life.”
And, well, what could I say to that? It was their life, and they were right that I wouldn’t understand. I didn’t know shit about what it was like to confront your mortality at age fifty. At age fifty I was still a squire, and if I was confronting my mortality it was because I had reached the part of the job where I might get killed by a rampaging hippogriff if I wasn’t careful. Humans grow fast, but we all have the same number of hours in the day. I couldn’t blame them, looking around at a world full of elves and ancient history, for not wanting to spend the time they’d been given doing the same things other humans were content to do.
Everyone wants different things in life. It was my personal opinion everyone should be as free to chase after those things as was reasonable—please note, most of the things high elves want are not reasonable. If this human died from extended stupidity, Inari was just going to have to deal.
Babs
I really don’t understand why this supposed high elf is still here. Not really. I mean I get the explanation about having a friend who likes Dalree, but I’m still more than a little suspicious about the whole thing. They just pop in from nowhere and stick around? But they showed me how to set up my tent and make a fire pit. There’s currently a rabbit roasting over the fire, which is disturbing and I’m trying not to make eye contact—metaphorical eye contact, the head was cut off and buried along with the guts and hide and other gross bits that made it look like an animal and not meat. But despite being a little disturbing, it smells very good, and the idea of something other than dry travel rations is making my stomach try climbing up my throat to get to it faster.
After I finally managed to successfully make sparks through the method they showed me, they told me I could keep the flint and steel—and by the way, why does an entirely magical creature have that for? Just, on them?—and now they’re distracted poking at the rabbit, probably divining how cooked it is through a method I can’t understand. The fact they’re squatting down and holding still means I’m able to get a better look at them.
They’re tall, stupid tall, like maybe seven feet tall or something. Way taller than anyone I’ve ever seen, and maybe that’s why they have this aura like they’re larger than life or not of this world. It was the vibe that made me think they were a spirit for so long. I’m not sure if high elves are just like that, if their magic and almost-immortality makes them seem apart from the rest of the world. Like they’re an overlay on top of it, or maybe like the rest of the world is bending in place around them. I dunno. But what I am sure of is that this is not a normal high elf, and it’s because of what I can see now that the high elf—Harpe, they said—is more at eye level with me.
Their horns are broken.
And I don’t mean cracked, I mean fully broken off. Harpe’s horns—what’s left of them—are half hidden by their hair, or I would have noticed sooner. But now I can see the jagged ends, and looking from behind, I can tell that the flowers weaving in between strands of hair seem to be sprouting from there. I don’t know a lot about high elves, but I had a pretty good education as these things go. Like, for an isolated human village, I mean. My family considered it really important that I know about the dangers of the world, and high elves were apparently up there. They were an empire that liked enslaving people and conquering lands. The books we had were old and had come a long way, but to most people from my village, high elves would be as much of a fairy tale as the gods themselves, if not moreso. At least I knew they were real, flesh and blood and horns and magic.
And I had read every book I could get my hands on that even mentioned magic the second I realized I’d inherited a spark of magic from my family, after all. I knew where high elf magic was stored, and it was in the horns. The book I had read claimed that shattering their horns killed them, the magic that kept them alive leaving their body. This guy, however, was not only alive, but still very obviously doing magic. Harpe could teleport, for one; they’d appeared out of nowhere on that battlefield and seemed to not know exactly what was going on. They had that big-ass scythe that they seemed to be able to summon and dismiss. They were capable of starting fires and I really don’t think they’d caught that rabbit via the snare trap they showed me and that I am now attempting—badly—to duplicate.
The problem is, it could be that there’s something weird going on with them, or that they’re not a high elf, or it could just be that the books I read were shit. I haven’t run into too many inaccuracies yet, but I’ve only been out here for like three months and this is not only my first time meeting a high elf, but also my second time meeting a race I’d never met before. Unless you count running from things as “meeting,” which I don’t. I’d met wood elves before as a kid; they don’t come to the village super often, but it’s not unheard of, just an Event. Other than them, the only thing—er, person—I’d run into that was friendly was a traveling tigerkin merchant, who had been the one to sell me the maps I’d been going off of. I could absolutely just be totally, one hundred percent wrong about high elves.
“So, uh,” I say, before realizing I should have decided what I wanted to say before starting to speak. “Are you… sticking around here?”
“I’m doing whatever the hell I want until my next job,” Harpe says, turning the stick over the fire onto which the rabbit is tied. Cooking it evenly, I guess. I should probably be paying more attention to that and my poor excuse for a snare, and less attention to their jaggedly broken horns and weird flower hair. It’s not like other people have been lining up to show me actually useful skills.
“What is your job, anyway? Teleporting into battlefields and killing everyone?”
Harpe snorts. “In a sense, I guess. You could think of me as like… a mercenary.”
“What, like a sword-for-hire? Or scythe-for-hire I guess?”
“Sure.”
Sure was not a yes, but being oblique was probably slightly better than lying outright. Presuming they aren’t. What I can’t figure out is why they’re being oblique in the first place, what the hell they could be hiding that they think they need to hide around some random human. Do they think I’m going to tell someone? Well, you know what, actually, I totally am. The very first person I meet next is probably going to get an earful about the freaky high elf with the flower-hair and the magic scythe. It’s a good story! People love good stories, you get discounts on stuff when you warm people up with good stories. And I haven’t been traveling long enough to have a lot of them yet.
“So, you just wander around until someone hires you?” I had meant to sound derisive but actually saying it out loud, it sounds kind of awesome. I want to just wander around! Maybe this is a career I should look into. It would be kind of what I’m doing now, except with the ability to gain money, which I’m learning is actually a pretty great thing to have. I took some valuables when I left home, but I’ve learned since I left that people trade with coins made of various metals, as well as with actual useful things. A way to get coins would be nice. The tigerkin had offered me a job, but it sounded maybe a little bit too much like he was offering to buy me, and I know the culture around that sort of thing can be real weird with the monster races.
Of course, to be a mercenary, I would need to be good at something other than running away, so maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.
“It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. When people want me around, they have ways of letting me know. And there’s places I can go in between. Normally I just head towards the ocean and figure things out from there.”
“The ocean? Why the ocean?”
“I know some guys with boats.”
I perk up immediately. “You do? Ones that come around here?”
“Yeah, they go just about everywhere.”
I shoot up, unable to contain my excitement while merely sitting. “Can you introduce me to them? I really want to get off this continent.”
Harpe eyes me up and down. I know I’m a twig vibrating excitedly but I don’t care. I’ve been heading away from Dalree and not really thinking about it much beyond that, but as far as long term goals went, ‘getting onto a boat’ has been pretty much at the top. I just hadn’t thought it would be easy, or possible. I don’t even know of any port towns, because Dalree doesn’t exactly explore. All of the books with maps of the world that I’ve seen didn’t even include this continent. I didn’t even know where I was in comparison to the rest of the world.
“This is a pretty big continent,” Harpe points out. “With a lot to see. And it’s a lot more dangerous to be a human anywhere else. Are you sure you want to leave already?”
I nod vigorously. “Yeah! I can always come back.”
“You can’t always come back,” they say seriously. “And even if you can, it’s never the same.”
“There’s a whole world out there, and there’s a whole lot of ocean between me and it,” I counter. “I didn’t think I was going to get lucky enough to run into someone with a boat. I wasn’t even sure if boats come here that often. Or ever.” Arguably they had to, because of the books we had, but… still. “Let me come with you until you find your boat guy,” I beg.
The probably-maybe-a-high-elf sighs. “Alright. Two conditions.”
I nod eagerly, having expected some sort of catch.
“If you’re actually intent on going out there exploring, you have to be able to protect yourself. Even around my friends. Especially around my friends, actually.”
“What, are they like, pirates?” I laugh. Harpe ignores me and keeps going.
“So I’m going to teach you how to defend yourself, and I’m not recommending you to them if I’m not satisfied in your ability to handle a weapon without dying.”
I worry at my lip. I’m totally down to learn weapon-stuff; I’d grown up watching the guards back in the village doing drills and stuff, so I’m familiar with the concept. I’m just not sure I’ll be any good, is the thing. It’s not like I never tried before. My friend, back in Dalree, had been training to be in the guard, and obviously I’d asked him show me the ropes. The guards used spears and I had been absolutely fucking useless at it. It was just really boring and wanted a kind of upper arm strength that I was not in possession of at the time. Or, um, now. I’m still not in possession of arm strength. Or body strength. I have the musculature of overcooked rice noodles, kind of.
Still, there’s nothing to do but my best. I nod in agreement. “Okay. What else?”
“We’ll need to work on your magic. You don’t actually have to worry about them knowing you’re human, but if it’s something you want to keep up, it would help to not suck at it. And if you have some magic, it would do you a lot of good to know more.”
“I’m only good at illusion magic,” I warn him. “Remember, I’m human, not some high elf. I can’t cast fireball. I can’t even cast ‘tiny spark.’”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I suppose that can happen. Someone back in your line probably fucked a fairy or whatever,” Harpe says casually. My jaw goes a little slack at the rudeness of it, and I can’t help flushing a bit.
“They did not! Probably! Magic runs in my family, but it’s not always illusion magic. That’s just all I can do.”
Harpe hums, which isn’t a response. “Well, in any case, there’s a lot of room for improvement there.”
“So those are your requirements? I have to ‘let’ you teach me stabbing and magic?”
“Self-defense and magic,” they correct firmly. “And you have to try. And succeed, this isn’t some feel-good frost elf school where you get points just for trying.”
Okay, well, succeeding might be hard, but I can at least do the first part. I nod firmly. “Alright. You’ve got yourself a deal. Now first, show me how to eat a rabbit.”