I was pretty hungry after the duel. My body didn’t have the reserves it should have had, since I’d barely had a chance to recover from my ordeal with the ants.
I wanted to buy some food, but I didn’t know the language or the currency of the dark elf city. I didn’t have any food in my bag, having given all of it to the monks and not bothering to stop and hunt before coming here. Another oversight on my part.
I made my way out into the streets of the city, navigating around the busy dark elves and various smaller monsters that crowded the streets. I didn’t see any restaurants or stalls selling food, so even if I had currency, I wasn’t sure if there was a place to even buy it. Nobody around me looked like they had had a good meal in a long time.
I pushed down my ravenous hunger and focused on learning the dark elf language as fast as I could. That should, hopefully, help me understand more of what was going on around me and might help me find a way to get some food.
I walked through the city covered in my cloak, listening and noting every word I heard. My enhanced memory and the numerous languages I knew from my Earth helped me analyze the basic syntax and structure of the language. Each word I heard added to my understanding. After several hours, I was confident I could speak some basic form of the dark elf language, although not enough to carry on an extended conversation.
Night never fell, since we were underground, but the workers of the city seemed to congregate together and head toward the temples at some agreed-upon time. I followed the crowd and soon found myself waiting in a long line outside one of the temples, the smell of food coming from the front of the line. My stomach protested, urging me to cut the line and steal as much food as I could carry, but I ignored it.
Around a half hour later, several dark elves in voluminous purple robes gestured me forward and handed me a spongy block of food the size of my forearm. I kept my head down and my body hunched as I accepted the food, but nobody seemed to be paying attention to me. I followed the goblin that had been in front of me out of the temple courtyard, puzzling over what I had been given. It was spongy and light to the touch, almost like a bread of some kind. When I was clear of the crowd, I entered stealth again and ducked into a nearby alley. I took a big sniff of the food and sent my nanobots to inspect it, and they reported it was a variety of mushroom, likely the type I had seen being cultivated outside of the city. Apparently the mushrooms could be sliced up and served like bread and provided at least some sustenance to the majority of the city.
I took a greedy bite of the mushroom, my hunger getting the best of me. It was earthy but not unpleasant. It had no seasoning and was room temperature, but my empty stomach demanded more, so I frantically ate the mushroom while drinking the water that was left in one of my canteens. A brownie and three kobolds crouched in the alley with me while I ate, hastily eating their own food as if afraid someone might steal it. They were so busy eating they didn’t even look in my direction.
After I finished eating, I waited to see what some of the creatures in the alley would do. The kobolds left together and seemed to have a destination in mind, so I followed them quietly. They led me to a plaza, where I saw more dark elves and other monsters waiting in line again, this time to drink from a central fountain. I waited patiently in line, and when it was my turn, I drank as much water as I could and then swiftly filled my canteen.
I retreated from the fountain as soon as my canteen was full, then watched the rest of the monsters as they drank their fill and then wandered away from the plaza in a number of different directions. The city around me slowly stilled, growing quiet as people began to return to their homes, or at least the place they slept if they didn’t have a home over their head. I wandered the city as it slept, watching the protected villas and temples as they settled in for the night.
I quickly learned that while the rest of the dark elves and other monsters slept, the more privileged and powerful dark elves were very active. The first stirring in the night was from the walls of the city itself. I heard a desperate fight in the distance and ran toward the noise, finding the wall under attack from the giant spiders.
I sensed the spiders as I approached the wall. From below, I could see guards on the walls. They were dodging nets made of webs that flew upward and coated the top of the wall in bundles. The guards ran sideways to avoid the nets, firing bows and spells down at the spiders that were attacking them. Several female dark elves dotted the walls, casting significantly more powerful spells on the spiders below. All of the dark elf spells seemed lined with purple fire. The female dark elves summoned meteors of purple flame to crash down in front of the city walls, eradicating spiders by the handful.
I watched the fight at the walls with interest, but I was distracted by the sound of more fighting inside the city behind me. I left the walls and followed the new sounds, only to find a large number of dark elves battling each other across the rooftops of the city. They faded in and out of invisibility as they fought each other, ambushing and counter-ambushing each other all across the city. Several of the villas were under attack as well, dark elves scaling the walls and attacking the guards to force entry into the villas under attack.
Even while the walls were under attack, the dark elves spent their time and energy fighting each other instead of killing the spiders that besieged them. It was by far one of the stupidest things I had ever seen in my life. The dark elves were a people so violent, so treacherous, so self-centered that they couldn’t even bring themselves to stop killing each other long enough to protect their city from certain doom. If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.
I turned away from the sight and found a secure alley to crouch in, waiting for the “night” to pass. The next couple of days passed quickly. I spent my time learning more of the dark elf language and scouting out the different houses. As I began to understand what was said around me more, the dark elf workers became a great source of knowledge about the city. There was, indeed, a house war going on while the city was under siege. The workers were angry about the situation but had no power to do anything to change things. The workers had nothing but non-combat classes and were kept weak and starved, unable to do anything but accept what the houses were doing to them. The rulers of the city controlled it with brutal violence. Any questioning by the workers or enslaved was met with torture for the offender and anyone they knew or were related to. The houses controlled all of the warriors, mages, and priests, other esoteric classes that could easily kill the classless workers.
As I listened to some of the workers complaining about their lot in life, I heard them discuss a temple they claimed was actually trying to unite the dark elves and do something about the spiders. The temple was considered heretical by many, but the hope that it might actually unite some of the more powerful dark elves against the spiders gave hope to the workers.
The majority of the dark elves worshiped a spider-goddess, which was remarkably similar to the mythology from my world. I initially thought it was strange that the dark elves would worship spiders, considering the current spider infestation threatening to kill them all, but it turned out the spiders weren’t killing the dark elves for no reason. According to the gossip around the city, the intelligent spiders that besieged the cavern were escaped slaves that the priestesses had once used in barbaric sacrifices to their goddess. The spiders had escaped into the tunnels around the city and bred rapidly, cutting the city off and killing anyone that tried to leave. Despite being responsible for the current situation, the temple that had been sacrificing the spiders denied it was ever involved and refused to do anything about the spiders, claiming that killing them was sacrilegious.
The temple that was trying to unite the dark elves and stop the spiders worshiped a different goddess, Lamashtu, the goddess of the undead and vengeance. Normally, I wouldn’t think a goddess of the undead would be looking out for the best interests of the city, but according to rumors, this temple was a bit revolutionary when it came to the politics of the city, and it declared the spiders an anathema, vowing revenge for what they had done to the city.
When I first heard a worker mutter the name of the goddess, I felt my luck begin to spin, telling me the temple was the lucky break I had been waiting for.
I scouted the city until I found the cathedral of Lamashtu and approached it during the busy “day” of the dark elf city. The temple was smaller than all of the other temples but beautiful all the same. It rose five or six stories and was adorned with fine stonework. Spaced around the sides of the temple were large open windows and soaring archways that led inside. The grounds were guarded by several dark elves who stood at the door of the temple, armed and alert.
The dark elves weren’t the only protection around the temple. Strange ghostly monsters patrolled the area. As the spirits walked, their steps kicked up small plumes of dust as if they existed in this reality or could interact with it somehow, yet they were ephemeral and wispy, clearly ghosts of some kind. They were very dedicated to their task, endlessly pacing back and forth over their assigned ground, watching the streets near the temple grounds for intruders. The monsters were an eclectic mix, many of which I had never seen before, such as a winged gargoyle, a stone worm, a small dark dragon of some kind, and several other, harder-to-describe monsters.
Nobody was approaching the temple, so I couldn’t blend in with a crowd, but I decided to take a risk and introduce myself openly. I stepped out from where I was hiding and approached the dark elf guards stationed at the door to the temple. As I stepped out to approach, I felt the spinning of a coin in my head, reassuring me that this was the place to find what I needed to solve this quest.
“Halt and state your business,” one of the guards said to me in their language.
I replied in the same language. “I am here to speak to a priestess about the assistance I may offer against the spiders,” I said, lowering my hood so the guards could see I was a human. Well, a human-shaped person, at least.
The two guards exchanged a look and turned and hurried inside. The other gestured for me to wait, so I did.
A few moments later, the second guard returned and held the door open for me. I noticed that these dark elves were paler than the other dark elves I had seen. Their skin was slightly translucent and their eyes were clear white, a stark difference from the eyes of every other dark elf I had seen so far. They didn’t look quite like ghosts, but considering their goddess’s domain was the undead, I suspected they weren’t quite alive either.
The second guard led me into the temple and down several flights of stairs underground. I saw several winding tunnels and large open areas under the temple, revealing that the worshipers here controlled significantly more space than just the temple above. A number of guards and priestesses watched me as I passed, all of them paler than the other dark elves I had seen. Their white eyes followed me as I walked past them. None of them seemed hostile, but they were all clearly curious about who I was and how I got into their city.
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Eventually, the guard led me to a small office where a priestess sat reading over several scrolls she had spread out on the stone desk in front of her.
“Sit, sit,” the woman said as I entered the room. A small stone bench sat before her desk, so I carefully took a seat on it. The woman in front of me was pale like the other dark elves I had seen in the temple, but she also had a faint glow of gold around her, signifying her power level. “We had heard rumors that house Baeniryn had lost track of an interesting guest that had come to visit.” She looked up from her scrolls and stared intently at me. The white pupils of her eyes seemed to glow silver in the dim light of the office. “May I ask what brought you to our city and why you have now approached our temple?”
“To be honest,” I told her, “I’m here because of a regional quest to try and save your city. The quest said you were dealing with a spider problem and offered a reward for assisting you. I am also hoping to get a class or find a way to assist me with a personal issue of mine while I am here.”
The woman let out a small laugh when she heard about the quest. “A quest to save monsters like us? This world is truly strange. I thought the system would only ever see us as fodder here on your world, to be killed for your people for sport and experience. How charming that we have been incorporated into your quest.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” I told her. “But I’m willing to help if I can. I’m just looking for people trustworthy enough to assist, and the information I learned in the city told me your temple might be the only one actually focused on the spider problem.”
“Yes,” the woman said, leaning back with a look of annoyance on her face. “That is quite true. My brethren are . . . imbeciles, to say the least. We are so consumed with our intrigues that we cannot unite long enough to stop our city from being destroyed. It is quite pitiful, really.”
I didn’t respond, not wanting to offend her by agreeing even though I did.
“Regardless, what can one person like you do to help us that we can’t already do for ourselves?”
“I’ve thought about that,” I said, recognizing the truth in her question. The dark elves I had seen were very deadly and should have been able to handle the spider problem relatively easily, except for their lack of unity and one other problem. “I think the biggest issue you have is that your people seem to rely on stealth and speed more than brute strength, and when you try to fight the spiders in their tunnels, you cannot bring any of your strengths to bear. The spiders can detect you with their webs, avoid you when you come in strength, and ambush you when you are vulnerable. You have no way to pin them down and eradicate them, from what I can guess. I could solve that problem.”
“Hmmm,” the priestess replied, “that is very accurate. You have been watching our people and learned so much about us already?”
“Just a few days of observing your people on the wall and your assassins fighting each other through the city tells me a lot about your people,” I said, “and I cleared through one of the spiders’ tunnels to get here, so I know firsthand how disadvantageous fighting there can be.”
“So you have a solution for us?” she asked, clearly intrigued by what I was saying.
“Yes,” I replied, “I think so. You see, I have a perk that lets me sense monsters anywhere nearby. It let me sense the spiders before they could ambush me in their tunnels. I think that my perk, combined with teams of dark elf Warriors and Mages, could be enough to push the spiders back.”
I could tell the priestess was skeptical at how my perk would make a difference—and the truth was, I wasn’t sure if it would be enough either—but I felt like my perk would remove one of the main advantages the spiders had. The powerful dark elves could do the rest if they united long enough to take advantage of the opportunity.
“It would be slow,” I said, “but we would never be surprised by the spiders. We could clear tunnels one at a time and not have to worry about cross tunnels or ambushes from the webs we were clearing because I would know if the spiders were gathering or lying in wait.”
The priestess idly scratched the side of her face as she considered what I was saying. “And what would you ask for in return?”
This was the tricky part, because I didn’t want to reveal my vulnerability to magic around a dark elf that clearly had a number of magical classes. At the same time, I didn’t really want any other rewards from the dark elves unless they absolutely had no class they could teach me that would fit with what I needed.
“I’m interested in your classes,” I finally told her. “I like to collect rare or powerful classes, and I think that your people may have some that the surface has never seen. I would assist your people in killing the spiders. In return, I would ask for the pick of one of your non-combat classes and one combat class of my choice, from all of the classes that you have in your city.”
“That is quite a demand, you know,” the woman said. “We very rarely share our classes. And never with a human before. And if we are seen to be succeeding where the other houses are failing, they may unite to attack us simply to stop us from gathering the glory of saving the city. We could be killed by our own people before we stopped the spiders.”
“If you don’t do anything,” I countered, “you will all starve to death soon enough. I have seen the exits of this cavern and they are all sealed, with no way out. If you don’t do something soon, none of you will survive.”
The priestess thought for a moment, rolling up the scrolls she had been reading before. “Tell me, human, where do you come from? We’ve hunted your kind before, but not for many years have we seen anyone come to the underdark. We suspected your kind may have expired on the surface, fallen to lesser monsters.”
I considered how much to tell her, not wanting to appear like I was completely without allies. “It’s true. Humans have weakened on the surface, but there are a few holdouts still left. My city has a few pockets of humanity left, fighting to survive.”
“Are people from your city like you? Are they willing to work with monsters like us?”
“I doubt it,” I said honestly. “They are just as scared of monsters as anyone else.”
“Do you have power in your city that you could compel them to work with us? Or at least leave us in peace?”
I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I was curious why she was asking about my city so much and if the inhabitants would work with her people. I decided to reveal a bit more about the reality of Nova Roma to her, interested in where she was going with her questions.
“I don’t have power currently,” I told her, “but I have some things in the works that might be changing that soon. I think you would be left alone in my city for a different reason, though. Most of the people left alive are huddled behind walls and rarely venture out. The vast majority of the city is overrun by monsters. I’m one of the few that has the power to deal with the situation right now, although I hope to find more people able to help reclaim the city from the monsters that roam its streets.”
“Hmmm,” the priestess replied, looking at me thoughtfully. “Then here is my offer: you help my people with the spiders, but not in the way you have proposed. I hold no faith in my brethren. Their shortsightedness has proven to me that my people deserve their fate. Even if we made progress in destroying the spiders that besiege us, my people would stab us in the back at the first opportunity, even if it doomed us all. They would rather starve to death than lose face, and the houses are run by arrogant matrons that believe their own power could clear the spiders at any time. They are wrong. The spiders are just as powerful as many of our matrons are now, but they are too blind to see it.
“Instead, I propose a truce between you and my people. Help us escape the city and we will resettle in your city, far away from these spiders and my people. We will coexist peacefully with your people and will assist you with reclaiming your city from the horde of lesser monsters, in return for your assistance here.”
I was very interested in such a proposal, but I needed more than just assistance back home. And it would mean failing the quest here, I suspected, if I abandoned the city with just a few refugees.
“I will still need my choice of a class,” I told her. “That is the main reason I’m doing this, although I’m also interested in your proposal, but without my choice of a class, I can’t agree. Your proposal would mean I failed my quest, so I wouldn’t receive all the rewards the quest had promised.”
“Well,” she replied, “I cannot promise you a pick of all the classes the dark elves have unlocked, but I can promise you a choice of one of our classes. They aren’t as powerful as some of the other dark elf classes, but they have very unique skills that may serve you well. If you assist us, I promise an alliance between our people and yours and your choice of one of the classes that our temple has unlocked. If failing your quest is more important than saving some of the only decent dark elves still living in this city, then I may have misjudged you, human. That is a decision for you to make.”
“Okay,” I said, recognizing that what she said was true: saving some of the dark elves was more important than a mere quest reward, and so far, I had a good feeling about her and her people. They did seem more straightforward and less arrogant than the other dark elves I had met. And I had to admit, my doubts about saving the dark elf matrons and their people had only grown as I learned about them. “If we did this, where would you all settle in the city? There isn’t an underground like there is here. Most of the city is destroyed these days, except for a few enclaves of humans. You would be discovered if you just moved into the city, and it isn’t exactly safe.”
The priestess laughed lightly. “Oh,” she said, “you humans. There is always an underdark, even under your city. Trust me, the ways to our world are there. You just haven’t found them yet. We will find a place. It may be occupied when we get there, but we should be able to find a solution.”
She flashed me a smile, and I noticed her incisors were unusually long and sharp.
“Huh,” I said, “well then.”
I thought over the proposal a bit more. I really didn’t have any fondness for the majority of the dark elves I had seen. They were vicious, mean, uncaring, and conniving. If the spiders wiped them out, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. I was only here for the quest and for a chance to find a powerful class. If I could save some of the more reasonable dark elves and earn a class and some allies in Nova Roma, then it was a good bargain in my book.
“Okay,” I said, “I agree to your plan. I think we can make it work.”
“Great,” the priestess said, giving me a broad smile. “You will not regret your decision.”
“I have an ability that can immortalize our agreement,” I told her, “if you would be so kind as to let me try it with you.”
“Oh?” the priestess said, surprised.
I activated my ability to form a magical contract that I had recently gained from my Evolution of Leadership. I hadn’t had a chance to try it out before, but now seemed like the perfect time. That way, there would be no confusion or betrayal between me and the dark elves I was agreeing to work with.
When I thought about activating my ability, I saw a golden scroll appear in front of me and in front of the priestess. On it was written our agreement, already laid out for us both to see. The priestess reviewed the agreement and added a few more provisions, specifically about what would happen if the dark elves that resettled in our city were attacked, making clear that the dark elves had the ability to defend themselves. I agreed with the changes and worked in a few other conditions as well. My experience negotiating contracts for my megacorp was coming in handy.
After some time, we had an agreement both of us were happy with and we both “signed” the contract. I felt it take hold, a bridge of energy forming between me and the priestess. I felt the bridge of energy, marveling at the strange sensation. As I examined it, I somehow knew that I could call up the contract we had formed anytime to review the terms of our agreement, and I could even break the agreement at will if I so desired, something other people could only do if I had included that as a term in the agreement. I had the sense that if the priestess broke the agreement without such a provision through some more powerful magical means, it would cause a significant backlash, possibly even killing her.
“I’m pleased you came to us today,” the priestess said. “It was truly a blessing from Lamashtu. My name is Alaunvayas. I am the high priestess of this temple and my people will obey my will in our agreement. I will go prepare for our departure. Come with me and I will see you settled until we are ready.”
