by Edward Brody
“Normally, we would banish such a traitor, let them bask in shame as an exiled elf. But perhaps I’m getting soft…” The Queen sighed.
“You’re not getting soft, my love,” the King said. “It’s the right thing to do. Technically, all elves are still our children. Hard as it may be, we must remember that.”
The Queen frowned and snorted. “If this goes wrong, remember that it was your idea.”
The King nodded. “I accept the possibility.”
“The dark elf in question is currently being jailed in Galien,” the Queen said. “I’d like you to retrieve him, escort him to Edgewood, and keep a close eye on him. Since the dark elves have been living peacefully—according to your reports—we’d like to see if there is any chance of rehabilitation of a traitor dark elf.” She rolled her eyes and looked at the King in her periphery.
“We do not yet fully understand the curse that causes our skin to turn,” the King explained. “But it’s inevitable that more will turn in time, as it’s unavoidable that we must leave the forest on occasion. We must look at alternatives to banishment or one day there may be no more elves left.”
The Queen snorted. “No more elves left?”
“If we continue taking their limbs and casting them aside, yes,” the King said. “It’s not like we breed as the Scourge do.”
“It’s called justice. If he had managed to harm me, I would’ve killed him instead,” the Queen said spitefully.
The King took a deep breath. “You’re proving my point, my love. If there’s a chance we can spare lives and let them live peacefully in Edgewood, we must explore that option.”
The Queen wrinkled her nose and sighed. “Yes, of course.” She turned to me. “Are you up for the task? Once he arrives in Edgewood, we’ll give you…” She turned to the King. “It’s quite a long distance…”
“20?” the King questioned.
“How about 10?” the Queen asked, swinging her head to me. “10,000 gold.”
You’ve received a quest offer: Escort the Turncoat
The High Elves would like to escort a maddened dark elf from Galien to Edgewood, to see if he can be assimilated into living with the other dark elves there.
Reward: 10,000 gold, 20,000 XP
Do you accept this quest? Accept/Decline
I would’ve taken the task at 10,000 gold, but after hearing the King mention a higher price, I thought I’d push my luck.
“The King’s offer sounds more appropriate,” I said.
The Queen leaned back slowly and was silent for a moment before saying. “Okay, then. 15,000 gold if you get him to Edgewood. No worries if you fail. If he becomes too much to handle on the road back, you have my permission to kill him. Dead or alive, 15,000 gold.”
“My Queen,” the King said, seemingly alarmed by the last part of her proposal.
The Queen held up her palm. “My King,” she said pointedly. “Transporting a dark elf who’s already proven himself to be a traitor is a treacherous endeavor. Our Ambassador must have freedom to do what’s necessary to protect himself.”
The King sighed and glanced away.
You’ve received a quest offer: Escort the Turncoat
The High Elves would like to escort a maddened dark elf from Galien to Edgewood, to see if he can be assimilated into living with the other dark elves there. Alternatively, you may kill the target and send proof to the Queen.
Reward: 15,000 gold, 15,000 XP
Do you accept this quest? Accept/Decline
“I’ll retrieve him soon as I have an opportunity,” I said. I wasn’t sure why the XP being offered had lowered from the first offer to the second, but the gold was the most important.
You have accepted the quest: Escort the Turncoat!
“Let’s hope that’s very soon,” the Queen said. “And Razza Jen. If you can find him and bring him to Mist Vale to meet with us, we’ll give you 100,000 gold.”
I almost fell out of my chair. One hundred thousand? Holy cow!
“It may be difficult to find him, but it might be even harder to convince him to meet us here,” the King explained. “Perhaps 150,000 gold will make it even more worthwhile?”
You’ve received a quest offer: Razza Jen
The High Elves of Mist Vale would like you to find the Beastslayer Razza Jen and bring him to them.
Reward: 150,000 gold, 30,000 XP
Do you accept this quest? Accept/Decline
“I can agree with that,” the Queen said. “This is a monumentally important task. But you’ll only receive such an amount if he actually comes here and meets with us. If he refuses, you get nothing.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “150,000 gold?” I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “Yeah, I’ll definitely do whatever I need to do to find him.”
You have accepted the quest: Razza Jen!
“Great,” the King said.
“We’re putting our hope in you once again, Reborn,” the Queen said with a smile. “Let’s finish up our dinner. I’m sure there’s much for you to do in Edgewood.”
I picked up my fork and nodded. “Yeah, there’s a lot to do. I’m thinking about colon—”
“Oh yes,” the King interrupted, his voice a bit colder than normal. “There’s one more thing that I’d like to address with you.”
I smiled widely, still feeling a bit drunk with excitement at the prospect of earning 150,000 gold. There was so much I could do with that kind of payout, so much I could do to help our village. “Yeah, I’m all ears.”
“Adeelee.” The King’s gazed turned to his daughter, and his eyes burned daggers into her.
Adeelee had food in her mouth, but furiously chewed the last bit, swallowed, and looked to the King with worried eyes. “Yes, father?”
“What is your station?” the King asked.
Adeelee’s brow wrinkled. “My station?”
“What is your role? Your title?” the King clarified.
She looked confused. “I’m… the Princess of Mist Vale.”
“Right,” the King said. “Adeelee Vost, the honorable Princess of Mist Vale. And as Princess, you will one day fill your mother’s role as the Queen of Mist Vale.”
Adeelee swallowed again and turned to her mother, who was staring at her intently.
“And as our future Queen, you will need a future King.” The King paused and glanced to me briefly before crossing his arms and saying, “An elf King. You do understand that, right?”
Adeelee’s mouth hung open and what little color her skin had seemed to drain from her face. It was clear she was fearful of her father’s bane. “Y… yes, father.”
“Good,” the King said. He relaxed his arms and seemed to go back to his usual calm, collective self immediately. “I take it both you and Gunnar understand my line of questioning, and I’ll not need to make any further comments on this matter.”
“Listen to your father, Adeelee,” the Queen said quietly as she scooted closer to the table and resumed eating.
Adeelee’s eyes darted around, and she went back to worriedly eating her food without saying another word or making eye contact with me.
Had they somehow known what had happened in Adeelee’s room or did they simply pick up on the connection that was growing between the Princess and me? Maybe they had seen our kiss on the hill.
I didn’t stay much longer, and the rest of the meal was a bit awkward and quiet. The King and Queen mostly chatted amongst themselves, while Adeelee and I exchanged quick, occasional glances. It felt like we needed to talk, but I knew if there was something to say, it needed to be said later.
When the meal was over, I said my goodbyes to the King and Queen and gave Adeelee a quick parting hug with only one arm, so as to not set off the King anymore.
As I recalled away, I felt a mix of emotions. I was excited about the prospect of earning 150,000 gold and relieved that the High Elves were going to actively work towards killing the Ancient Beasts before they’d be released onto the world. But I was equally
hit with a flood of negative thoughts. I couldn’t believe I had gotten so close to making love with Adeelee but couldn’t execute. And now that the King was onto us, it may have ruined any chance I had of being with her in the future—a double whammy.
It seemed the Eden’s Gate algorithms were working correctly by not letting me screw Adeelee with her parents nearby. After our talk at the dinner table, I was pretty sure I would’ve really gotten myself killed. But… that didn’t mean I wouldn’t want to try again somewhere else, at another time, a safer time. It would be risky as hell, and even if I didn’t die, I could lose my standing and friendship with the High Elves.
But it was fucking Adeelee.
Maybe my real quest wasn’t to slay Ancient Beasts, but to ‘slay’ an elven Princess and somehow overcome racial boundaries to become King of Mist Vale, aka the Reborn King of the High Elves.
The thought made me laugh.
But when a guy sees a girl like that… a girl who’s got it all—brain, brawn, and beauty—it feels like it’s worth the risk. Back home they called girls like Adeelee ‘to die for’.
On Earth, men did stupid shit when it came to women all the time. Why should it be any different in Eden’s Gate?
Chapter Eleven
2/18/0001
After recalling to Edgewood, I risked walking back towards our village rather than summoning Sora. Although there were Scourge camps in the Freelands, there was no indication that they had set up any in our forest, so going on foot felt relatively safe.
I saw a few dead kobolds and disemboweled animals on the way back, perhaps killed by the Scourge, but I didn’t encounter any orcs or goblins.
Upon return, things were exactly how I left them. Large tents for the dark elves were set up in the designated area a comfortable distance behind our castle wall, close enough to our main village that the elves could access us quickly and we could guard them, but far enough out of the way that they weren’t noticeable unless we were really looking.
Most of the elves were huddling in the tents, but several were sitting outside, chatting amongst each other. A few were cooking on a small campfire they had set up. Some of them smiled and gave me a slight nod but otherwise no one paid me any attention as I passed.
Back in the center of our village, Jeremy, Sung, Jax, and Ozzy were having a four-way sparring match, where Ozzy seemed to be getting a slight upper hand. Aaron had climbed up on top of my roof and was removing sooty, burned pieces from it, and Keysia and Rina were having a chat by our fire pit, ignoring the bangs and clangs from the boys. Most of the rubbish that had accrued from the Scourge attacks had been cleared away, leaving a dark, yet more comfortable ground to walk on; The guild had made nice progress on the cleanup while I was gone.
There was no sign that there had been any further attacks in my absence. If anything, some sense of normalcy was starting to be restored.
“Need any help?!” I yelled out to Aaron as I approached my home.
“Nah, I’m good!” Aaron yelled back. He threw a chunk of burnt wood on the ground and focused back on his work.
I needed to update everyone on the situation in the Freelands—that the Scourge had set up camps and sort of dug themselves in. It didn’t look like the situation would be resolved right away, so hopefully everyone’s work wouldn’t be for nothing.
“Hey Gunnar!” Gerard called out. When I looked up, he was hanging out of the shop’s doorway, waving his hand for me to join him. “Come here for a second, will ya?”
I stepped away from my home and sauntered his way.
“Come inside,” Gerard said.
“I was just about to talk to you, actually,” I said as I stepped through the door of the shop.
Inside was a horde of low-level swords, bucklers, axes, crude armor and other goods that had obviously come from the Scourge. It was a bit of a mess, more from the general overflow of stock than lack of tidiness.
“Oh, you were?” Gerard questioned. “What about?”
I reached in my satchel and retrieved all the gold I was still carrying—a mere 395 pieces after my elven pie and other purchases. I had done little looting during our defense against the Scourge—though most of the goblins and orcs carried nothing but what they were wearing—and every odd coin or item of value I found had already gone straight into the guild coffers. “I need some gold to pay back a debt.” I placed my remaining coins on the counter. “Can you top this up to 5,000?”
“Um…” Gerard picked up the coins and gave them a long, hard stare. His jaw shifted, and his eyes looked a bit worried. “That was actually what I called you in here about.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Surely we have the gold.”
“Oh yes, we have the gold,” Gerard said. He sat the money I gave him down and fetched the shop log from behind the counter. After flipping it open, he rubbed his finger down the page and tapped it once. “We have exactly 6270 gold. With your gold, that brings us to 6665.”
“Okay, that sounds a little low—quite low actually—but what’s there to talk about?”
“Well, I just wanted to bring to your attention that we’re now operating at a loss.” Gerard took a deep breath. “We stopped buying voporite ore from the elves, which brought everything somewhat back in line, but since the Scourge attacks, business has almost halted. We’re not getting outside visitors, and since the dark elves lost their homes, most of them have just come here to sell off cheap loot they’ve found rather than buying anything. The shop has only brought in around 100 gold per day the last few days, and after we buy items, that puts our shop at a daily gold loss. Soon we’ll not have gold to buy anything, and we already have an overabundance of stock.”
I sighed loudly. “That’s tough, but we’ll get out of this rough patch eventually. If we need to, stop buying items altogether, so we don’t bleed ourselves to death.”
“Well, I’m not finished, Gunnar. Now that our guard costs have gone up to 750 per day, we’re actually losing about 650 gold every day.” Gerard cleared his throat. “I wanted to give you a warning that we might go bankrupt within a couple of weeks if we don’t bring in more gold, and if you’re taking 5,000 gold from our treasury, that means we only have a couple days left before we can no longer afford to pay the guards.”
“Oh fuck,” I groaned. “I thought you meant 100 per day after the guards. You’ve got to be kidding me…”
I pulled up the guild manifest to get a confirmation of Gerard’s numbers. I trusted him, but I was hoping there was something he wasn’t accounting for.
Unfortunately, the numbers on the manifest matched his quote, and I felt a sinking sensation in my chest.
I patted my unburdening bag instinctively. “I know I was walking around with 5,000 gold a few days ago. I can’t remember what I did with it. Maybe I put it somewhere in my room.”
“5,000?” Gerard questioned as if remembering something. He flipped a page on his log and tapped his finger on a line item. “You dropped off 5,011 gold in the morning after the Scourge first attacked. Said you didn’t want to lose it in battle.”
“Ahhh, yeah,” I said. “I remember now.” My eyes narrowed. “What happened to that?”
“Added to the treasury and used to purchase many of the items in here. I mean, technically we had enough to make the purchases already, but the 5,000 extra gave me enough padding that I was comfortable with the buys. I wouldn’t have done so if I knew you needed it back so quickly.”
“The other gold I deposited?”
“We burned through that fast.”
My shoulders slumped, and I scanned all the junk piled in our shop. “We looted gems and jewelry from the Scourge too, right? We could sell those.”
“Quite a few,” Gerard said. “Perhaps we could arrange a small caravan to Thorpes or Newich once we’re certain things are safe. We can sell the jewels and all these surplus weapons and armor we have to give us a gold boost.”
“Newich is gone… Or rather it’s been taken over by the Scourge
.”
“Whoa what?!” Gerard cried, his eyes widening. “You’re joking, right?”
“No,” I confirmed, shaking my head. “They’ve set up camps all along the Freelands as well, so it’s probably not a great idea to send a caravan to Thorpes anytime soon—too dangerous. Maybe a single fast rider carrying only gems and small items will be fine. Nothing big.”
Gerard shook his head. “What a mess all of this has caused.”
“We’ll get through this rut. I’m sure it’s only temporary,” I said. “The guild can’t just sit around Edgewood forever either. Once we get out there and start adventuring again, we’ll be bringing more gold back to the village.”
Gerard raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s got to happen soon. The guards won’t stick around long if we fail to pay them—especially those High Elves, who seem particularly annoyed at being here.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’ll still need 5,000 gold though, so don’t use it. Don’t buy any more items until we get our funds back up.”
“What do you need it for?” Gerard asked.
“I know a particularly powerful mage who’ll turn me to stone if I don’t pay him back the gold he loaned me.” I shook my head. “I don’t have much of a choice.”
Gerard sighed. “Very well…” He leaned down and under the counter to fetch the gold.
“Wait. Just hold on to it for now. I’ll pick it up in the morning.” I shook my head and sighed. “We can’t lose our guards while the Scourge is still out there, so I’ll try to earn the gold back fast. Is everything else going well in here? Shopwise?”
