15 - Preparation

It took two and a half months for Elise to finally convince the king to let her outside the castle. Of course, technically, she could leave whenever she wanted. She wasn’t a prisoner or anything. She was there due to a mutually beneficial agreement that she could terminate at any time. Technically. 

However, while the Council was split down the middle on what to do with her, a majority of the city was against her. The Rune of Fate– which apparently the dwarves perceived as a glowing symbol on her chest– had only been seen by a small portion of the crowd on her way in. To the rest, it was but a rumor, and a rumor that was at odds with the other rumor that she was a filthy Fey spy sent by the Drow to destabilize the city.

If that was her goal, she was doing a hell of a job of it. Law enforcement had been working overtime stopping fights at bars and in the streets between the dwarves that believed in her Rune of Fate, and the ones that wanted to put her to death for being a ghoul lackey. She was too noticeable to slip out of the city, and the king was worried that if he tried giving her an escort out, there would be open conflict between the two factions. 

So, for two and a half months, she was stuck in glorified house arrest in the admittedly luxurious castle. It was only with the help of her tutor, and a little bit of {Charm} that she was finally allowed brief, heavily supervised outings to her tutor’s house for her lessons.

Her tutor was a wonderful, cranky old [Loremaster] named Greta who said kind things in mean ways. She was a pain in Elise’s tail and her favorite person in the city. 

“What are you looking at?” snapped Greta.

“You,” said Elise.

It was half true. One of her eyes was pointed at the old woman. The other was looking out the window toward the far wall of the cavern. The old woman lived in a small stone cottage with a front door, a back door, a side door, and five windows, two each on the front and back of the house, and one on the side. The front door led out to a relatively quiet street, where the neighbors were all old like Greta and loved to gossip. The back door led to a small mushroom garden where Greta liked to sit on a bench and talk at her neighbors. The side door led to a dark alleyway that a family of cave cats liked to roam.

Elise knew these things because finding all the ways to get out of the house was one of the first things she did when she got there. Getting permission to visit Greta’s house had only been the first step in her master plan to escape the city. Greta never locked her windows, and they were lightweight, because Greta was too old to lift anything heavy. That meant that even without {Prehensile Vines}, with a bit of careful maneuvering, Elise could open them too. 

From there, she had to get past the guards at each entrance to the house, but she thought that wouldn’t pose too much of an issue. She hadn’t been able to level up herself, but she had been able to level up her skills, and after perhaps a few too many pranks, she had gotten {Suggest} high enough that she was confident she could at least distract the guards long enough to slip past.

“Don’t give me that!” said Greta. “Pay attention!”

“I am, Teacher”

“Then tell me, where is the old kingdom of Dokkalfheimr?”

The lessons took place on Greta’s kitchen table. The old woman was hunched over in a raised chair, pointing to a map that Elise sat at the foot of. Elise hopped over to the northern regions and pointed her paw at a small valley in the middle of a mountain range.

“Good!” said Greta, holding out a piece of dried mushroom for Elise. “And who was the last king of Dokkalfheimr?”

“King Asbjorn the Unwise.”

“And why is he called Unwise?”

“Because he tried to evict the dragon that made its home in a nearby mountain. It had settled into a cave, and by all accounts was bothering no one, but the cave was in Dokkalfheimr territory, and he couldn’t abide by that. He sent a polite message asking the dragon to leave, and then followed it up by sending Dokkalfheimr’s greatest warriors to slay it. They were slaughtered, and in retaliation, the dragon also killed Asbjorn and his entire family. With their greatest warriors and the entire line of succession dead, the kingdom only survived another year before the orcs overran them and forced them south.”

“And what is this dragon’s name?”

“It’s-” Elise stopped and thought for a few seconds. “Munir?”

Greta took another piece of dried mushroom and threw it at Elise, hitting her directly in the nose. Elise didn’t know how she did it. No matter how far away she was, or how she moved, the old woman always hit her right on the nose. She suspected that Greta had some kind of skill related to it, but if she did, she had never shared anything about it. It did not hurt, but Elise’s nose was sensitive enough that it always made her flinch.

“Wrong. I never told you its name.”

“Sorry, Teacher,” said Elise, grabbing the bit of mushroom from the island nation it had landed on.

“Your Dwarvish is getting better.”

“Thank you, Te-”

“It’s almost as good as mine when I was a year old.”

“Well, I’ve only been learning for three months, so I’d say I’m doing pretty well.”

“Don’t get smart with me,” said Greta, throwing another piece of mushroom. 

“Sorry, Teacher. I’ll try to be dumber in the future.”

“Brat.”

Although Greta had originally only been teaching her how to speak Dwarvish, as they got closer, and Elise was able to understand more, the lessons had eventually changed to be more focused on Dwarven history and society. Elise didn’t mind. She was never great with languages, but for some reason, she had little trouble learning Dwarvish. Part of it was definitely immersion, but she also suspected it was partly due to her ears.

The reason she had stopped trying to learn languages on Earth was that she could never understand them when spoken. After four years of high school Spanish, she could read and write it fine, but whenever she heard anyone speaking it, it just sounded like a jumble of random syllables. That was not the case with her rabbit hearing. She could make out every single little detail of every sound she heard without even making an effort.

Her speech was still quite accented, but she was proud to say that she could carry on full conversations about complex topics without getting lost, and her conversation partners could almost always understand everything she said.

The lesson went on for another hour, and Elise learned about how, after Asbjorn the Unwise’s demise, the dwarves had been forced to flee to the west, which was a harrowing and dangerous journey, constantly slowed by orc raiders and unwitting shortcuts through high leveled regions. The lesson ended when they finally made it to their destination, the human empire of Albionia because Greta was growing Drowsy. 

While she still claimed to be in perfect health, Greta was borderline narcoleptic, and more than once, she had fallen asleep after saying goodbye, before Elise had even left the room. Elise had factored this into her plans as well. With a little bit of subtle nudging from {Suggest}, Greta would fall asleep during the lesson, and Elise could slip out without her noticing, or being suspected of being a co-conspirator. Greta was a well-respected historian who had even tutored Hallbjorn, back when he was a beardless prince, so she probably wouldn’t be in any real trouble, but just in case, Elise wanted to make sure that she would not be considered complicit.

The journey back to the castle was not long, but it was convoluted. The king wanted to avoid any potential incidents, so the route they took to and from the old woman’s house was not the fastest one, but the one with the least people. They took a right out of the woman’s house, walked down the quiet little neighborhood for a few blocks, and then took another right, which took them the opposite direction of the castle so that they could go around the public square at the end of the street.

They also made Elise wear a black cloak, which she thought was silly. Even if they couldn’t see her clearly, the only other small animals living around the city were cave cats and cave rats, and she was clearly neither, and she was also the only small animal that had a half dozen armored dwarves escorting her. She supposed she was at least less eye-catching with the cloak on though. She hadn’t noticed in the dark of the wyrm cave, but in her latest evolution, her fur had taken on a reflective silver sheen that made her really stand out anywhere there was light.

As they walked through the slums, Elise noted that the coughing seemed to have increased again, which wasn’t good. There was a minor epidemic in the city at the moment. The king wasn’t too concerned, since it was not deadly, and the symptoms were mild, but every day, Elise noticed more people getting sick, and she wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or not, but the coughs seemed to be getting worse as well.

When she got back to the castle, her first stop was the king’s office.

“How was the lesson?” asked Hallbjorn, looking up from a stack of papers.

“The same as always,” she replied.

“That’s good. Did you learn anything interesting?”

“Today’s lesson was about Asbjorn the Unwise, and the aftermath of what he did.”

“Ah, yes, Asbjorn. Such a fool. If not for him, we would never have needed to retreat underground.”

“Indeed,” agreed Elise.

“Your rune is shining brighter again today,” he remarked.

Elise looked down at her chest, and, as usual, saw nothing. According to the king, on the day she arrived, it was glowing so brightly that at first, he almost hadn’t noticed her wings. In the days and weeks after that though, it had slowly faded until it was barely visible. Then in the last week or so, its glow had started to intensify again. No one knew what it meant, but she certainly didn’t want to be there when they found out. 

“I wish I could see it too,” she sighed.

“Perhaps you will, eventually,” said the king. 

“Perhaps.”

“Will you be heading to the library again?”

“Yes.”

“Enjoy your time there. Don’t get crushed under a book again.” He chuckled.

“I won’t. Have a good day.”

About a month into her stay in the castle when she was confident enough in her Dwarvish to attempt to read a book, she had gone in alone, and in the process of trying to grab a book off the shelf, had accidentally dropped it on herself, and the king had just happened to be walking by when it happened. She was not injured anywhere but her ego, and the king loved to bring it up every chance he got.

She left the king’s office and went to the library, flanked by only two guards now. She would have preferred it was zero, but the king insisted. The librarian, a young woman named Anna, was hunched over a book when they entered, and didn’t seem to notice their presence. 

Anna had a round face, a round body, and long, curly, brown hair. Her eyes were the same color as her hair, but it was almost impossible to get a good look at them because of how much she squinted. The dwarves had no optometrists, which was a shame because Anna really needed one. She had to hold her face a few inches from the pages to be able to read the words on them.

“Ehem,” said one of Elise’s guards.

Anna still didn’t notice them. Perhaps she was a little deaf as well. Before her guard could clear his throat again, or say something to get the librarian’s attention, Elise tried a different method. 

Drow! she thought, targeting Anna with {Suggest}.

The poor woman nearly fell out of her chair in surprise. She looked around the room for a few seconds, panicked, until her eyes settled on Elise and her two guards.

“Oh!” said Anna, straightening her clothes. “Elise! Sorry, I was just so absorbed. I’m reading a book called the Wives of the Lost Expedition. It’s about- well, I bet you can guess what it’s about. It’s really interesting! I’d highly recommend checking it out. After I’m done reading it, of course.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Elise. “But I’m here for the maps again.”

“Of course, of course. You must really like geography!”

“I’ve always thought it was pretty interesting.”

“For sure! I’ve never really seen the appeal myself, but my brother loves maps. I bet you and him would really get along!”

Anna hadn’t always been so friendly to Elise. Like the rest of the commonfolk, she had been suspicious, and even downright hateful when they first met. But through a few uses of {Charm} and a few blessings from {Fairy Dust}, Elise had gotten through to her, and now Anna treated Elise like an old friend. It was enough that Elise was starting to feel bad about lying to her.

The dwarves didn’t have much in the way of non-Dwarven history and knowledge, but they did have maps. They were all out of date, and likely unusable as far as borders went, but the mountains and rivers would still be mostly the same. Elise didn’t plan on living her life underground, so she wanted to learn as much as possible before making her escape.

More important than the surface maps though were the cave maps. Given that it was the royal library, they had up-to-date maps of the entire city and all its surrounding caves and passageways. It even had the tunnels leading to the experience farm caves, which were normally kept hidden from the public. Elise had only found these a week before, right around the time her rune had started glowing again, and they had become the final piece of the puzzle in planning her escape. 

It did cross her mind that her escape plan might have something to do with the glowing of her rune, and that by continuing with it, she was only playing into Fate’s hands, but she didn’t care. If it was Fate, then it would happen anyway, and if it happened that her fate was to leave the dwarves, then she wanted to make sure she was fully prepared for that.

She was not allowed to take the map outside the library, and she had no way to carry it even if she was, so she had spent the last few days committing the entire thing to memory, down to the last offshoot. This session with the maps was really just a final check to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

When she was done there, she went back to her room to get ready for bed. She had no idea what time it was on the surface, but it was past the Dwarven sunset, when the street lights were dimmed and extinguished, and the taverns stopped accepting new customers. It was a boring day, but a tense one, at least for Elise, and she had a hard time falling asleep due to the anticipation. Now that she had confirmed her memorization of the maps, she was ready to move on to stage two, and the plan only had two stages.