[Hlaeth] Ch 27 - A Firm Terran

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            “But… if so many undead were the population of your world entire…” the elven king pointed out, the numbers daunting even to someone like him.

            “Most of the rest of my homeworld has been reduced to wilderness and abandoned cities now. On that grim and ironic note, other gods are attempting to move their servants onto our world, seeing all the abandoned land ripe and open for colonization. We remain quite busy and will be for the foreseeable future.” I gestured at my Dragonheart Cloak, which was impressive enough, even to Eternals. “There are no dragons native to my homeworld, all that are there came from elsewhere, and we kill them as soon as we see them.

            “We are under siege on a planetary scale, and nothing of what is coming in is friendly or potential allies. If we allow them to settle in, they will grow and attempt to conquer us in time, so we fight. We fight all the time.”

            They shuffled uneasily.

            “Being subjected to such earnest and heartfelt attempts at colonization makes us rather sensitive to the subject of conquest and colonization aimed at us.” Not to mention so many of the remaining humans on Terra came from nations once subjected to both measures by foreign powers. “I thus have no designs upon you, your lands, or your people, and certainly not your wealth, lore, accumulations, or the like. When I leave here, I will doubtless not return without a direct invitation, and I believe that will be unlikely. I have innumerable things to occupy me at home, I certainly don’t have time to be messing around in other worlds, too.”

            That did appear to relieve them, even suspicious old Eldritch. The High Mage obviously had a very biased view of who was relative to worth in what, but the simple logic of my world being bloody busy enough, why bother with others?, was sufficient to ease his suspicions.

            He probably still expected me to rob them blind or something, ‘all humans are thieves’ firmly fixed in his forebrain, but what could I do about that?

            Especially since I had liberated some scrap lumber from the magical trees, but that was their Land here compensating me for my time, and their desires to take all the profit from my work didn’t affect what I had done one bit. Secrecy in this case just kept their greed from rising up, and allowed me to present a more humble and modest image. Good was far, far from avoiding tricksterism and cleverness, especially when others were ungrateful.

            If they wanted to share something valuable, like knowledge or magic or something, that was a different story. I’d be happy to take extra spells home for people to work on converting to our standards.

            “If you really want to reward me, then I’ll take minor utility spells. The little ones, the things that make life easy to work with every day, that help weed the garden, mend the clothes, paint the walls, entertain the children, and cook the dinner. Hedge Magic, it is called among my people. Things that make life easier and funner, as opposed to the combat magic which reminds us of how utterly worked over we’ve been by the coming of magic.

            “Oh, and elven music. They won’t forgive me if I don’t come back with some elven music to regale them with. Elves have quite a reputation at home, and they’ll want some actual proof I managed to finally make peaceful contact with a tribe of you.”

            The royals looked both amused and thoughtful. “You have met elves like us on other worlds?” the king asked curiously.

            I paused, and shook my head slowly. “Not like you. Another subrace, another related offshoot, with clearer ties to the Fey. Their social structure was also fairly closely aligned with Hell, as well.”

            All three elves blinked at me. “Hell?” the Queen asked softly. “They were… dark elves?” she asked sharply.

            “No, actually.” I gestured about the hall. “They lived in a green and glorious forest. They surround themselves with natural beauty. They seek perfection of art and mastery of social skills.” I paused for emphasis.

            “They consider all other sapient and non-sapient species potential prey for the hunt, and hunting and slaying them is their most glorious artform. They consider anything less than physical perfection abhorrent, the slightest scar enough to ban you from higher society, and ugliness the greatest of sins. They adore the lethality of poison, and assassination physically or socially of their rivals is their most constant game.

            “The world is there to be used and abused as they deem fit, with only required beauty, grace, and artistic flair limiting them in what they might do.

            “If you took all the worst elements of your own society, magnified them while keeping them utterly elven, you might have a small impression of what the society of those elves was like.”

            There was silence as they digested that, and by extension my own previous exposure to elves, outside of those I’d run into on the Warpworld… and on Korbald’s, who also didn’t impress me.

            The ones I was talking about were the ones we’d met on Terra, not just those I’d met in passing.

            “I suspect your meetings with them were less than cordial,” the king said wryly, trying to understand just where the appropriate deaths he’d read from Mortus Dius came from. None of them had been virtuous souls in the slightest, so he hadn’t been able to discern any had been elven on his one session.

            “They hunted our heroes and civilians alike for pure entertainment value, flitting off through the shadows of passing clouds to their home realm so we could not strike back at them in return. At best they considered it an entertaining game of cat-and-mouse, mostly they just took joy in the stalking and killing of an inferior species.

            “They didn’t much like it when we found the way there and let them know what Heaven thought of their antics. Those who skulk in shadows and snipe from darkness while relying on poison for their kills tend to be extremely unprepared for straight-up fists to the face and the like.”

            “Or magic capable of ending armies of the undead?” the elven king remarked wryly, nodding once.

            “I might just have reduced their most splendid city to ash and grit in passing. I didn’t stay around long enough to see what became of it after several square miles were aflame.”

            I’d already shown I could wipe out miles of ravaged woodlands, so that was nothing new. Of course, I had done it MUCH faster back then, being rather pissed as I was and not holding back.

            Those elves hadn’t been happy to see an Elemental Monolith mauling the happy fuck out of their precious sculpted woodlands, they hadn’t, complete with a small army of Elementals to help spread the love. Poison THIS, arsehats…

            I hadn’t killed any children or innocents directly, my magic able to be adapted for just that purpose. Some might have died in the resulting fires or abandonment by their parents, but Mortus Dius wouldn’t track secondary deaths to that extent, even if logically I knew they had happened.

            War sucked, and they’d chosen the fight. They just hadn’t been prepared for the fight to be carried back to their homeground, instead of taking place on ours. After all, the first rule of war was to fight it on someone else’s ground, not your own, if you could at all.

            If they didn’t like the fact I picked on elves, well, it wasn’t their people, so it wasn’t their problem, and the raiders certainly weren’t a tribe of elves they’d want to be associated with, regardless.

            Not that Eldritch there wasn’t going to use it as yet another excuse to be prejudiced against me, seeing how I had experience killing elves and the like. Obviously it meant I was even more dangerous and unpredictable than he’d first thought…

------

            Discussions wound down after that, my course clear and whatever they considered suitable remunerations for my efforts to be applied shortly at their convenience. If I got nothing, I truly didn’t care.

            However, they were a whirlwind of magical efficiency at certain things, and so their collection of human art and artifacts had been put on display with dazzling speed and surety. I was led by Herald Ilbromel from the throne room directly to the hall where such things had been brought out of storage and arranged in a temporary display, with the historians and caretakers of the objects on hand to explain their past and significance to me.

            The fact I came from another world with a wholly unknown history to these elves naturally made me a great curiosity. Word had spread rapidly of my true power and appearance, especially when down-shifted back to my more natural and unassuming role, and they were both careful and energetic in answering my questions, with none of the prior hauteur and arrogance they probably would have exhibited before.

            I studied the objects they had on display, ranging from armor and weapons with light magic on them to keep them preserved, to sculptures and jewelry and figurines and even an array of coinage, numismatics apparently being a common hobby among elves with its combination of artwork, history, and functionality intermixed.

            I even swapped some Crystal Coins for some of their own coinage, the elves astounded at the sight and use of them, as well as their origins. Condensed karmic experience from the loyalty of one subjects as the willing tax paid was a completely surreal concept to them, yet one that played strongly to their sense of individuality and belonging to their people.

            As for assessing the stuff, that was what Psychometry was for. With a touch to the associated object, I could learn things about the maker, how long ago, their mindsets as they made this structure, and get a general idea of the society they lived in by those mindsets.

            A lot of medieval mindsets there, tribal/clan/kingdom loyalties, rivalries instead of collusions with neighboring peoples, inflated senses of accomplishment and value, racism, specism, arrogance of belief…

            None of that was much of a surprise, I wasn’t expecting a showing of Goodness with the explanation of Empires and Kingdoms, both operating on feudalistic and inherited structures. The coins were particularly informative, tracing the pride of hope and beginnings to the growth of arrogance and superiority, heading slowly into the decline of pure proud elitism and disdain, devolving into uncaring superiority and de facto caste systems as hope was crushed and money became a sign of oppression rather than a tool for growth.

            I fingered the platinum coins in my hand with glowing digits, leaving no marks or oils to be polished away, my expression unkind as the thoughts of the human to make it ran towards using it to buy an assassin to kill a rival for a woman’s hand.

            The historian, an elf moving towards the ethereal look of their elderly, watched me closely, not wanting me to disturb the collection, but I had no intention of doing so. The coins clearly radiated her love for the history they represented.

            “You take good care of them, Elder,” I complimented her, magic washing across the coin to clean it before it floated back to its place. “Thank you for this introduction to the humans of this world. I would like to say I am impressed, but… no.”

            She did not seem very surprised by that observation. “The shortsightedness of the local humans is not surprising. One can see it in how vigorously they melt down the coins of the prior regimes to replace them with their own, as if trying to bury the greater past and replace it only with the things they themselves accomplish.”

            “Complete with excesses of violence that are pains to live through and entertaining to hear of and watch from a very safe distance?” I could only sigh.

            “It seems you are not unfamiliar with the problem of shorter lives.” Her purple eyes twinkled in amusement.

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