The ice-eyed young man had been frequenting the tavern as of late, which probably had something to do with the fact that the patrons would not remember how much money they had spent come the morrow. A few missing coins were unlikely to be noticed. It was a particularly elaborate ruse; he came to the tavern every day, dressed and disguised as his everyday self (this month, unless something else suited his purpose, a tall, thin man with auburn hair who had nearly lost his head to the father of his fiancée), and simply chatted. Then, when a particularly wealthy looking patron got a little too drunk to walk in a straight line, he walked him home, and took a few coins as payment. He was sure they didn't mind too much.

That was almost what he was doing now, except with much less chatting and much more ducking for his life. It wasn't so much that Coriel was stealing, oh no--he was simply collecting what was dropped in the ensuing scuffle, slinking between one assailant and the next and occasionally ducking to avoid a punch here and there. It wasn't a particularly good haul, but one took what one could get, and the few coins that he'd scraped up from the floor would buy him a night at a decent inn, though he would have been hard pressed to afford a decent dinner on top of it. Oh well, one took what he could get when they were in his situation, eh?

Not that he had any good reason to be particularly destitute. There was plenty of work in the city, especially for nymphs like himself. That wasn't to say, however, that any of it was work he was interested in; there was nothing worse than being a street-walker when everyone knew you could change your gender and appearance, not to mention the fact that it was horribly unsanitary. No, no, he was quite happy to scrape by until something far more palatable came up.

Perhaps he would become a kite-maker in a few years.

For now, though, he had to focus on the work at hand, and the work at hand consisted both of collecting dropped coins and coin purses (which was the easy part) and not getting killed in the process (which was the hard part). To make the latter easier, he had decided to simply forego stealing from the drow, a decision which he considered very wise.


Outside of the tavern, the Sylvani ambassador bristled, adjusting his sleeves for the seventh time since leaving the house (a nervous habit of his). Well! he thought sourly, a look of disdain painted on his face--not that he wasn't always disdainful of everything, this look was just harder to miss. I had been hoping to stop for a drink before my departure, but I see that these ruffians have better plans than that. Peering into the bar, he took note of the participants. Whoever had decided to pick a fight with a drow woman was certainly none the brightest; he had heard stories whispered of them in the trees, whose ancient roots reached the tops of their underground cities, and they had not been pleasant.

There was simply no cause for entering now, Niall decided, adjusting his sleeves for yet an eighth time. The king would be expecting his Lady's envoy, and while he would likely not be given an audience until tomorrow afternoon, Niall was always punctual. He would simply arrive their early and thus, in his mind, effectively avoid any more commotion.

That was the plan, at least.

---

"Ye call thes craftsmanship?" Sigrid ran her calloused hands over the thick of the axe, her disapproving glare making the poor human blacksmith sweat. "Loon, it has bin twintie years since Ah lest took tae th' forge, an' Ah coods smith a better axe than thes!" Disgraceful! How a man could expect any member of the Greyfist clan to purchase such a sub-par weapon was beyond her, especially when the craftsmanship of the axe strapped to her back was quite apparent. "Yoo'll be askin' me tae buy yer tin-can armur next, Ah suppose. A guid price, if yoo're lookin' fur cannin' material."

The man stood silent and took the criticism, well aware that a dwarf, even a dwarf woman, would know what she was talking about, at least when it came down to weapons. "Now thes," she said, presenting the axe her uncle had crafted, "Thes is a guid weapon, thick an' strang. Ye've got tae watch yer metal, lad. Temper it, else it'll suffer."" She flicked the brittle steel again. "Steel. Ye Manfolk..." Sigrid mumbled under her breath, clearly disapproving.

---

Johanna had pleaded with her aging father for nearly an hour before storming off to her room in a snit. Their kingdom--her kingdom, for all intents and purposes, what with the old man so near to the end of his life and all--was under attack, and he expected her to sit there in the regal splendor of the palace and do nothing? Preposterous! Her mother never would have stood for this, which she had been keen to remind her father. Her father had been keen to remind her that perhaps that had been the cause of the woman's death the winter previous. Johanna, of course, had ignored him, as girls her age are wont to do.

Now she was fuming, and had reminded at least six of her chambermaids that she was perfectly capable of doing something about their present situation. Thinking it harmless, the chambermaids each agreed with her, going about their daily duties in an attempt to quell their unsettled princess. Little did they know, however, that Johanna was getting ideas in her head, qand they were not the sort of ideas her father would have approved of.

When her chambermaids had completed their tasks and left her to her own devices, Johanna put her plan into action. She would leave town tomorrow with the band of adventurers, and if she had her way, her father would be none the wiser--at least not for a handful of days. She packed fairly light--no large skirts, nothing too heavy, only some plain frocks. She would grab her father's old hunting bow on the way out--it wouldn't be the first time she had borrowed it without asking, though it might have been the first time she hadn't had it returned by morning.

Though normally graceful (sort of), the nymph had not been expecting the shaking of the ground beneath him, and was knocked flat on his behind. He jingled just a little bit. "Uhm," he said, in an attempt to divert attention from his loaded pockets, "I don't know if anyone else will agree, but in my opinion, that was really cool." And with that, he hopped to his feet, far more anxious to get away from the patrons he'd stolen from than the drow had been to get away from the ones she had beaten the tar out of.

Coriel was funny that way, and maybe just a little nervous.

It had become a standard reaction when approaching women out in the middle of nowhere to become one first, though the change came mostly in the sound of the nymph's voice. She made a point to muss her short auburn hair, and then, certain that she was feminine enough that her gender would not be questioned, she took off after the drow. "That," she said plainly, catching up to the armored woman, "was impressive. D'you do that for a living? I bet you do. Well, not beat the crap out of bar patrons or anything--" Someone talked a lot, and we'll give you a hint: it wasn't the drow. Still, she'd realized that she was probably safest around the drow, which meant that she had to give a good impression.

Sure that talking incessantly wasn't helping to give her that impression, she added, "I have problems with humans sometimes too," and then fell silent.


The distant rumbling from the direction of the tavern disconcerted Niall slightly, though his human traveling companion insisted that it was simply the rumble of his stomach. "There is no point in investigating," the old man insisted when he saw that the Sylvan did not believe him. "If you stopped for every interesting thing, we would never arrive at the palace, and while you could, perhaps, afford to be late, my king would have my head for my mistake." Despite the apparent danger, the old man had a pleasant disposition, something that, while he would never admit it, drove the ambassador up the wall. He kept trying to make conversation, his linguistic abilities as poor as a Sylvan child's, and though Niall tried to avoid the obvious sneer of disdain, the fact of the matter was, he simply wasn't fond of humans.

He grumbled. "I see," he said blandly, adjusting his sleeves yet again.

Lady be kind to me and please, in the future, give me more intelligent traveling companions, he thought, his silent prayer lost on everyone but himself (and, if he was lucky, his nameless goddess). He had never been a particularly religious individual--most Sylvani were not--but despite his distance from the Lady of his people, he was acutely aware of her (ironically, a mirror of recent relationship with the Lady of his court). It was not often that he prayed, but when he did, it was undoubtably earnest. And perhaps ones that I like better, he added as an afterthought.

Oh, how disappointed he would be to find that part of his prayer answered. But that's breaking the fourth wall.

They reached the palace soon after, and Niall was pulled from his prayers of discontent by the bustle and extravagance of the place. Humans were so strange.


The dwarf smiled, pleased with herself and the fact that the human man could recognize craftsmanship when he saw it. It was rare that a man, especially one as young as he was, could see the advantage of a weapon of dwarven make; it took a keen eye for detail to notice the subtle but important differences between dwarven smithing and that of a human smith.

"Och aye, I've heard ay ye, laddie.," Sigrid said, extending a hand (1) in greeting. "Sigrid Kazagrim, Th' only remainin' dochter ay clan Greyfist, th' guid Kin' Ein's finest blacksmiths. Pleasure tae make yer acquaintance, m'lad--I can only assume 'at yoo're haur fur th' sam reason as meself." She had heard the rumors, and had seen the other folks who were here to answer to the same call as herself. Some of them were clothed in their armor, obviously to surprised to have arrived in Emeralia as early as they had. Others had the faint smell of magic on them, a smell that the daughter of a dwarven smith knew well after years of dealing with enchanted weaponry.

1. It is a little known fact that dwarves actually invented handshakes.

"He doesnae expect us tae return, is whit Ah hink," the dwarf said conspiratorially, eyeing the weapons that Arrow had pointed out on his person with vague interest. Though they were not the weapons she woluld have used, he was not trying to convince her to do so, so Sigrid saw no reason to give him the same kind of tongue lashing she had just given the blacksmith.

"Do you forge weapons here?"

For some unknown reason, probably something to do with either pride or temper, Sigrid felt the need to answer this question for the human smithy, effectively putting her conversation with Arrow on hold. "Och aye, if ye want tae caa those decrepit huntin' kni'es weapons!" she called out, her expression a cross between her obvious disdain for the man's craft and the pleasure she got from pointing out his flaws. "Ye'd be better aff fightin' bare-handed, unless yoo're skinnin' rats!"

With that, she returned to the previous conversation, regarding the little outburst as though it had never happened. "Ah hink his highness doesnae want tae waste his valuable trained soldiers, but he doesnae want tae be seen as a coward by his fowk. We're cannon fodder, sae he can shaw 'at he's makin' an effort withit losin' anythin' valuable. Or at leest, that's hoo he sees it." The dwarf shrugged her shoulders, a knowing smile on her face. "Way Ah see it, there's naethin' special abit a glaikit dragon, except he has puckle tricks up his sleeve 'at we're nae privy tae. We've got waur in th' lands belaw than ye topsiders gie us credit fur, eh'd wager, an' mair ay 'em besides."

Sigrid had only heard tales of Shard so far, had not seen anything of his handiwork, and as such, she had no idea whether or not he was truly an opponent to be feared. What she did know, however, was that a pair of dwarves could take a scouting company of drow without a problem, and that with the right fighters on the front line, even their matron mothers, high priestesses to the Spider Queen, bent and broke under the might of a dwarven axe. Surely a dragon could not be so much worse than that.


"Oh, that's nothing," Coriel said, excited to be coming along, no matter how brief her conversation with the drow turned out to be. "I mean, at least or--Err, Southerners are supposed to have a vague grasp on language. I saw a talking horse the other day--didn't stop and chat or anything, but you run into just about everybody in this city if you live here long enough, loquacious quadrupeds included. Did you know, there are absolutely know laws written for sentient non-humanoids?" Coriel was feeling talkative--after all, she had just made a new friend!

It had been a long time since she'd had a new friend, she recalled, thinking back on the boy with fond memories. Alright, so he hadn't really been what one could have called a friend, although he probably referred to himself as such. Coriel had been rather close to him, though he had never been a lover or anything like that--he'd been far too weirded out by the nymph's tendency to switch gender without notice, and even with notice, it had a tendency to bother him.

She had decided shortly after his death that love was a fantastic thing, when it happened to someone else. That had been a few years, though, and it was at least time to start making friends again. It was terribly hard to make friends when you were stealing from them, after all, and that had been Coriel's most recent roadblock on the matter.

Or perhaps that was her talking. But if that was the case, she hadn't noticed yet.