16 - Departure

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The morning started as usual with Elise waking up to the sound of heavy footsteps climbing the stairs of the tower to her room. It was her personal maid, Jona, come to give her her daily bath. Although Elise did like being clean, the bath was frankly one of her least favorite parts of the day. Being bathed by someone else was an uncomfortable experience that Elise somehow still hadn’t gotten used to, and even worse, the only soap the dwarves had was mushroom-scented.

Actually, that was one of her biggest gripes with the kingdom of the dwarves in general. If there was anything in the city that wasn’t stone, it was probably a mushroom. All the gardens in the entire city had nothing but moss and mushrooms, and all she ever got to eat was mushrooms. She knew meat existed, since she had seen the dwarves eating it, but she couldn’t have meat, and the dwarves never thought to bring back any plants from wherever they got the meat. She had asked them to bring some back a few times, but they had always either forgotten, or ended up bringing inedible sticks or tree bark, so she just decided to give up on that thought. Mushrooms were fine.

She held breakfast that morning with the king, as she did every third and fifth day of the week. Since she was eating with the king, rather than her usual breakfast of half-bland, brown mushrooms, she could enjoy a wide array of slightly different mushrooms that tasted largely the same. She ate until she wasn’t hungry anymore, and not a bite more.

Hallbjorn was not a morning person. He had decided to have regular breakfasts with her because he wanted to talk to her, but he was so out of it that he always spent the first half hour of their time in silence, eating slowly and sipping on a steaming cup of something that smelled like–you guessed it– mushrooms. As far as Elise could tell, it was the dwarves’ substitute for coffee. She had tried it once and thought it was atrocious, but the king didn’t seem to mind. Either that, or he was too tired to notice how foul it tasted. She had never seen anyone else drinking it.

Although Prince Johann was invited to these gatherings as well, he almost never attended. He was both shy, and highly resentful of the Drow and Fey for what they did to his mother. She greeted him every time she saw him, he never responded with more than a glare and a grunt.

“Did you have a good night?” asked the king once he was fully awake.

“Yes,” said Elise.

“No nightmares?”

“No,” she lied.

“That’s good,” he said. 

“How have the Council meetings been?” asked Elise.

“That old geezer Josef has been a pain in my royal arse lately,” growled Hallbjorn. “Won’t shut up about the damn ghouls. More people are falling ill by the day and all he can talk about is the damned ghouls! He says they’ve been too quiet lately, and that it’s getting suspicious. Of course it’s suspicious! They’re always suspicious! We’ll deal with them when they show their ugly faces again. We have more important things to worry about!”

“I noticed there was more coughing than before when I was on my way back from Greta’s.”

“Aye, and you don’t know the half of it. It’s even worse on the north side of the city. More than half the citizens in that area are sick, and none of them are recovering on their own. No deaths yet, but at this rate, it’s only a matter of time. And the doctors still have no idea how to stop it. They cure a patient, and a day later, they’re back in bed, coughing up a lung. The only good thing is that they’re at least leveling. Once we overcome this, we won’t have to worry about disease for a while.”

“Silver lining, I guess,” said Elise in English.

“Pardon me?”

“Oh, I was just saying that’s good. High leveled doctors and healers are always a good thing.”

“That they are. That they are.” He sat back and finished the last of his cup of mushroom coffee and sighed. “So, you’re heading to Greta’s again today?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Her doctor didn’t want her moving around too much with the epidemic going around, so until the problem is solved, I’ll be going to her house for my lessons.”

“Right, right. I remember.” He poked at a mushroom with his fork. “How is she, by the way? I’m always asking about your lessons, but never about her. It’s been a while since I’ve had a real talk with her.”

“She’s healthy. And she seems to be doing fine. She has… a relationship with her neighbors, so she’s not lonely.”

“A ‘relationship’, eh?” said the king with a grin. “And by that you mean she scolds them and they insult her back.”

“Usually. The other day, Emil, the man across the street, came out to call me a filthy rodent and a ghoul-lover, and she told him he was a terrible parent and that it was good his kids never talked to him anymore, because if they did, they’d probably end up killing him.”

“Ha! Sounds like she’s doing as well as ever, then. That reminds me of this one time when I was younger…”

They spend the next ten minutes or so trading stories of Greta. The old woman had been the king’s teacher when he was younger too, so he had plenty of tales of his own. From the way he told it, she was just as irritable and uncensored back then as she was now, if not more so. 

Once they were done, Hallbjorn's face turned serious, and he leaned in, looking her in the eye. Elise had been slouching a bit while they laughed and joked about Greta, but seeing the king’s demeanor shift, she knew what he was about to say was important, so she sat up a bit higher and straightened her ears so that he knew she was listening.

“I almost have the council convinced to try the surface,” he said. “Or more accurately, I almost have Sindri convinced. Once he turns, Atli and Sigmundur will follow him, and with that we’ll have a supermajority. Even if Josef and his lackeys keep protesting, we’ll be able to move forward with the planning. The trip to the surface won’t happen immediately, of course, since we still need to plan it out, and that will probably take another month, and before that, it will still take another week or two to convince Sindri, but I just thought you should know.”

“Hallbjorn, I’ll keep saying it until you believe me, but I don’t think I’m the Fated One you think I am,” protested Elise. “I don’t want you making such a huge decision because of me. I can’t help you if things go badly.”

“Bah!” said the king. “This is something that we need to do anyway. You’re just a useful catalyst. I’m sure you’ve heard it from Greta, but dwarves weren’t made to live their whole lives underground like this. Our lifespans are getting shorter. My father barely made it to a hundred fifty. I’m only sixty, and my joints are starting to ache. Birth rates are in decline, and with the ghouls constantly picking us off, we can’t expand underground safely. We need to go back to the surface. Whether we have you or not, I will take my people up.”

“I understand, but I can’t help but feel like there’s a lot of pressure on me for this,” argued Elise. “Even if you are doing it for practical reasons, a lot of people believe I am the Fated One. I heard some are even building shrines and praying to me.”

“A bunch of looneys. Ignore them.”

“I can’t. Even if I try not to think about them, they exist. They’ll follow you to the surface because of me, and if it goes wrong…”

“It won’t go wrong,” assured Hallbjorn. “And if it does, I will take full responsibility. I don’t care if I go down in history as Hallbjorn the Half-wit, or if I’m forgotten entirely. I’m sick and tired of these caves. I want to see the sun. I want to see real trees, not those cave-dwelling monstrosities. I want to know what wind feels like.”

“If I-” started Elise. “If I disappeared, would that interfere with your plans?”

“Disappeared? What do you mean?”

“If you woke up tomorrow, and I was gone, would that affect your plans?”

“Why? Are you planning on disappearing?”

“No,” she lied.

Hallbjorn narrowed his eyes, clearly doubtful. “Well, if you disappeared tomorrow, it would probably set me back a month. Maybe two. But I don’t think losing you would really affect the vote. At this point, you are only a small part. Most of the council members have come to my side, believing in the benefits. A few will get doubtful if you disappear, but a few more might take my position more seriously if you weren’t there. I think that some of them are only in opposition because I leaned so heavily on your Rune in the beginning.”

Elise took in his words in silence. 

“If you want to leave, you can tell me,” he said. “We can work something out. You’re not a prisoner here. It might be difficult, but it won’t be impossible.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“If you say so.”

He was still obviously doubting her, but he didn’t press it any further. She was fully aware that he probably knew she was lying, but she also knew that his words just before had been a tacit agreement that he would be alright if she left. 

She knew his political position almost as well as he did. He was being intentionally optimistic about his prospects. A good half of the dwarves who were on his side about moving to the surface were there mainly because of Elise and her Rune of Fate. If she vanished, he would have to go through the trouble of re-convincing them, using more practical arguments. However, he wasn’t wrong about it only being a setback. 

The topic of returning to the surface had been relatively taboo among the dwarves until she arrived. Some of the eldest dwarves still had memories of their great grandparents telling them the horrors they had suffered at the hands of the humans. It would have been another fifty years before any real discussion would have happened organically. Now though, as the dwarves analyzed their situation, they had begun to realize that a return to the surface was not out of the question.

If Elise vanished, Hallbjorn would lose the support of those dwarves temporarily, but she was confident he could gain it back eventually. She was totally in agreement with his position that the dwarves couldn’t stay in the caves, but she didn’t want to have any part in the decision. Her mere presence had implications for the city and its people that she didn’t want on her conscience. She needed to leave before anything could be decided for certain, which is why she needed to carry out her escape plan right then.

The conversation didn’t last much longer, and after a polite farewell, the king went to his office, and Elise went to meet her guards near the side door of the castle. 

They took a slightly different route to get to Greta’s house than they had the day before. Hallbjorn wanted them to switch it up semi-regularly to prevent any ambushes from extremists. There weren’t many of those, especially not in that part of the city, but he insisted that they take all possible precautions. Elise appreciated his concern, and doubly appreciated being allowed to get intimately familiar with that area of the city. By this time, she knew every street in the area as well as she had known the streets near her home on Earth.

“Hurry up, slowpoke,” said Greta from the door when they arrived. “I don’t have all day.”

She did have all day, actually. The only thing on her schedule was tutoring Elise. She just liked to say that to maintain her grumpy image. 

Elise hopped inside, then leapt up into her usual spot on the dining room table. Unlike at the Gray’s cabin, she did not need to use {Leap} to get up, since it was a Dwarven table, and was much lower. There was a shallow dish filled with water set out for her, and she took a few sips while Greta closed the door and hobbled over to join her.

“I’ll bet you’ve forgotten half of what I taught you yesterday already,” said Greta.

“Of course not, Teacher.”

“Tell me everything you know about Asbjorn the Unwise.”

Elise narrated back everything they had discussed the previous day, from Asbjorn’s birth as the second oldest of nine to the death of his father and elder brother and his ascension to the throne at age twenty nine, which was considered by dwarves to be far too young to rule effectively. His age combined with a few misguided decisions had earned him the ‘Unwise’ moniker from his detractors long before the incident with the dragon, but he had not been an especially bad king, according to Greta. Not bad enough to deal irreparable damage to the kingdom at least.

Elise told as much as she knew, and Greta filled in whatever small details she forgot until they arrived back where they had left off, with the evicted dwarves encountering the human nation of Albionia.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the stories from those no-good rumormongers who call themselves the Council,” said Greta. “Fools, the lot of them. No respect for history. Even young Hallbjorn is starting to act like he’s got mushrooms in his ears. They all think that the humans saw the defenseless dwarves and decided to mercilessly and unjustly subjugate and enslave them. Even the ones that know what actually happened choose to ignore it to further the worthless propaganda.

“What really happened was a much longer process that took a century to get to the point where the dwarves were truly enslaved. The humans actually welcomed us, at least officially, and allowed us to stay on their land as long as we paid our taxes. And we did that. We sold our goods and forged weapons as they requested, and generally enjoyed a harmonious relationship with them for half a century. It was only when Benedikt the Braindead came into power that things started to go downhill…”

Elise listened for an hour or so as Greta told of how Benedict the Braindead almost single-handedly brought the dwarves to ruin. He unilaterally decided that the humans were oppressing them by making them pay taxes, and declared war to gain their independence. But it had only been 50 years, which meant only one generation of dwarves had been born, and while it had nearly doubled their population, it had nothing on the two and a half generations of humans that had been born in that same timespan. 

The war for independence was an abject failure, and the dwarves went from a taxed, but relatively independent race, to a group living under near martial law, and the taxes were quadrupled. Benedikt the Braindead somehow managed to not only survive, but retain some measure of influence over his son who succeeded him, and soon, the dwarves were selling off their own kind to pay their debt.

When they reached that point, Greta decided it was time for a short break, and went to make herself some tea. Of course, it was not real tea. There were no tea leaves underground. What she made was instead mushroom tea that she made from scratch by steeping dried mushroom she had grown in her garden in boiling water. She had given Elise a taste once, and while it was better than the king’s mushroom coffee abomination, it still did not taste very good. But, it was all she ever saw Greta drink, so Elise figured it must have been an acquired taste.

This tea break was exactly what Elise had been waiting for though. Whenever Greta got her tea, she always set it down on the table for it to cool, and then sat in silence for ten minutes or so. Once or twice, she had dozed off while waiting, and that was exactly what Elise was going to ensure would happen this time.

I’ll just close my eyes for a moment, she thought using {Suggest} once Greta was settled into her chair.

The old woman didn’t notice anything, and took the thought as if it were her own, and closed her eyes. A minute later, she was snoring softly. Elise felt a little bad, but she was also mildly amused at how easy it was to put her to sleep. She turned on her wings, and held the right one over the woman’s lap and used {Fairy Dust} with deep sleep and happy dreams in mind.

At first, she wasn’t sure if it had worked, but a few seconds later, Greta’s snoring grew louder, and Elise breathed a sigh of relief. She hopped down from the table, disabling her wings as she made her way to the window by the side door. There was only one guard on this side, and he was the most oblivious of the bunch, just as she planned. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense where he was with {Mana Sense}, and was therefore able to target him with {Suggest}.

What was that? She thought to him.

She heard the sound of metal scraping against metal as he turned to his left to look at the nothing that Elise made him think he had seen. There was no sound for a few seconds, so Elise used {Suggest} again.

Down at the end of the alley.

The dwarf started taking cautious steps down the alleyway, and Elise took the opportunity to hop up to the windowsill. He stopped when he reached the corner of the house, at which point, Elise used {Suggest} one final time.

I should ask Jonas if he’s seen anything.

“Hey Jonas, did you see something over here?” called the dwarf.

“What was that?” responded another voice from the backyard. 

“I was just asking if you had seen anything heading this way. I could have sworn I saw something moving over here.”

“It was probably just a cat, Baldur. Go back to your post.”

“Are you sure? I swear there was something else.”

“If you see it again, let me know. For now, just get back to your post.”

“Yes, sir.”

By the time Baldur returned to his spot, Elise had already left the house. She used the sound of his voice to mask the opening and closing of the window, and rounded the corner before he had a chance to turn around and see her. 

With that, step one of her plan was complete. She walked one house over, then entered the alley between them and started to make her way to her destination. 

This part was actually fairly easy, though very nerve-wracking. She had planned out her route very carefully, and kept multiple detours in mind, in case something unpredictable happened and her chosen route was unavailable, but she still hadn’t expected it to go as smoothly as it did. She was highly visible, and easily recognizable so anyone who spotted her would know who she was, but at this time of day, most of the dwarves were at work, and the rest were asleep, so there was no one out to see her. And her ears were good enough that she was able to avoid the few weirdos who were out and not working for whatever reason. 

After making it to the edge of the cave, it was time for step three of her plan, which she considered to be the most difficult, and that was making it to the main entrance. As far as she could tell from the maps, the place she had entered was the only reliable way to get anywhere helpful. There were a few other tunnels marked as exits on the map, but since she had no idea where they actually led, she figured it was best to go with what she already knew. 

Making it there though was not an easy task. She had to wrap around a significant portion of the city without getting spotted, and had to make it past many relatively major streets to get there. Around the edges of the main Dwarven city, there were various offshoot tunnels leading either to mines, underground rivers and lakes, underground mushroom farms, or even experience farms, which, as far as she could tell, were just caves full of monsters. All of these types of caves saw regular traffic throughout the day, so crossing the streets that led into them was no easy task, and she couldn’t just fly over them because that was a surefire way to get spotted by half the city.

The first three tunnels and streets turned out to be relatively easy to get past. There were few enough people that as long as she waited for the right moment, she only had to {Suggest} one person to make them look the wrong way as she darted past. The fourth street though, was different. It led to one of the dwarves' two public use experience farms, and with all the talk of going to the surface lately, they were being used more than ever. 

There was never a time that less than three people were looking at any one possible crossing point she had, and she could only target two people with {Suggest} at a time. She had foreseen something like this happening, and knew that she just had to be patient and wait for it to clear up, but every minute that passed that she couldn’t go any further made her more anxious. She had no way of knowing when Greta would wake up, or when one of the guards would notice her snoring or lack of lecturing. Once they noticed her missing, they would report back to the castle, and while she knew the king wouldn’t do anything too bad, there was no chance none of the elders did anything, and once word got out that she had disappeared from the castle, the whole city would be on high alert. 

After about an hour of waiting, to no avail, Elise started to reconsider her options. Maybe she should try a different route. The further she went toward the city, the busier it got, typically, but maybe there was a sweet spot halfway between this experience farm and the city square that would be low enough on activity for her to slip past. Before she could move though, there was an angry hissing behind her.

She turned her head slightly to see a scarred, black cat stalking toward her.

Dang it! She actived {Suggest}. I shouldn’t mess with that thing.

The cat paused for a second, but continued moving toward her, crouching low as if ready to pounce. {Inspect} showed it was only a level 8 Cave Cat, something that even without magic, Elise could now handle with no problem, but she couldn’t do it silently, and making any noise would be bad. Hopefully, no one would take notice of the cat making sound, since alley cat fights weren’t exactly unusual, but when cat pounced and she swatted it away, its squeal did not go unnoticed.

“Scram!” said an angry voice from a window above her. “You mangy beast, get out of here!” 

A bearded head poked out the window, and the cat turned and fled. Elise huddled beneath the window, praying she would go unnoticed, but the head turned down, and locked eyes with her.

“Hey, wait a second, you’re-!”

Just then, alarm bells rang out through the city, and Elise heard the sounds of panicked dwarves jumping to their feet and standing at attention all around her.

“It’s the ghoul spy!” shouted the dwarf above her. “It’s trying to escape!”