Ow, my head really, really, really hurt. This was the worst hangover I'd ever experienced since becoming a dwarf. It was worse than my one attempt at binge drinking in my previous life, where I had been a lightweight with some heavy drinking friends who thought it would be funny to get me super drunk.
To figure out why my head hurt so much, I tried tracing my steps from the last big event I remembered.
Thinking back to the previous day, I recalled the graduation ceremony for first year students at The Issanorian Institute. During that ceremony, Valtnur and I had been greeted by the Chancellor of Issanore, Chancellor Rothilion, where he had basically told me off for sullying the halls of their vaunted elven institute, and he had then sternly whispered several orders to Valtnur using words and phrases I didn't understand.
After leaving The Institute with Valtnur and his daughter Jenise. We had been rushed back to his estate where he threw an impromptu celebratory party for us, for helping his daughter graduate her first year. But that's where my memory faded to black.
Did I have too much to drink at the party? I didn't think the thin wine that the elves called alcoholic beverages would have had enough clout to knock out a dwarf. Or at least they hadn't in the past year we had spent drinking it.
As my eyes fluttered open a little, wincing at the light that made its way in through the shutters, I realized we weren't in the solid hut that the dryads had built for us in Issanore. I couldn't hear the harpy wings, or centaur songs outside, instead there was just the pounding of waves on the seashore. Leaving me wondering where the heck we were.
"Hey, you. You're finally awake." The gruff voice of an annoyed man brought me from my thoughts, and cleared a bit of sleep from my eyes.
I opened my eyes a bit more, seriously praying to the ancestors and the gods of this world that I wouldn't wake up to see two Nord rebels and a horse thief tied up next to me, and tried to locate the source of the voice.
The speaker was a tall young man with short brown hair and slightly elongated ears that marked him as a half elf. His eyes were sharp and crafty looking, and they were glaring at me in annoyance.
"Hey, no going back to sleep! Your dwarven snoring is really getting on my nerves." The half elf nudged me with his boot since I was apparently sleeping on the floor.
Doing my best to ignore the pounding in my head, I slowly sat up and looked around. I saw Bekhi sleeping next to me on the floor, she was still wearing the gaudy elven robes that we usually wore to the social events among the elves, and based on her breathing pattern she would be waking up soon. The room where we were sleeping looked to be the living area of a human house, and a rather crudely built one at that.
"Where are we?" I slowly asked the half elf. "And who are you?"
"And the dwarf speaks." The half elf said in a sarcastic tone. "I was beginning to think that pops sent me a couple of brain dead corpses to be buried alive in the empire."
"The empire?" I asked with a start and a wince as the pounding in my head reached new levels of pain. "We can't be in the empire. We were feasting in Issanore just last night, and the empire is hundreds of miles to the south."
The half elf smirked at my confusion. "Hate to break it to you buddy, but someone back on the island slipped some magic drugs into your wine that put you to sleep for a couple weeks. Here, this letter was in the box I pulled you out from. It'll probably explain everything."
He handed me a letter that was sealed with wax that had Valtnur's seal. Using my hidden gauntlet blade as a letter opener, I opened the folded parchment. The letter was written in the flowing script of the elven language, but the letters were scrawled out, with frequent ink blots indicating that it was written in haste. I silently read through the contents.
"Kvalinn. If you are reading this letter, then it means that I have succeeded, and safely smuggled you to the continent, specifically the Throndian Empire. Your actions at The Institute have caused Chancellor Rothilion, and the sycophantic council that follows his every word as if it were orders from the gods, to call for your death, and the dissolution of my house for bringing you to Issanore.
Even though it has led to the destruction of my house, I thank you for your efforts, Kvalinn, and thank the gods for bringing us together. It is thanks to you that I was able to look upon my daughter with pride for the first time since she was born. I pray to the gods that you find success in the human empire, and that your endeavors to 'modernize' this world bear fruit. Signed, Valtnur.
P.S. Do not ever return to Issanore. The dissolution of my house means that I will be forced to call upon the gods to collect my soul before Hamseriadau, goddess of time, foresaw, and I will no longer inhabit the mortal realm to protect you from my kin.
P.P.S. I am sending something of great value to me along with you. I pray that you care for it with the same care that you give your own daughter.
P.P.P.S. I am also sending something that Chancellor Rothilion will furiously want back, do NOT let him have it.
May the gods, and your ancestors, watch over you as you travel through the Mortal Realm. Signed, Valtnur, of the house once known as Aedahl."
So Valtnur was dead due to what we had done in Issanore. I hoped that the afterlife of the elves was kinder to him than his life in the Mortal Realm had been.
As for what we had done that angered the chancellor enough to call for my death, there were a couple things. Being a dwarf was probably the primary one. The pointy eared rat was all in on the theory of elven racial supremacy to the point where a 20th century alt right person would've told him to cool it. Aside from that, I had also retrained Valtnur's daughter, Jenise, away from her own views of elven supremacy.
When we had first been brought over to Issanore, one of the 'favors' Valtnur demanded of us in exchange for the passage, had been for us to get his daughter through her first year at high school, which the elves called The Institute. She had previously flunked out of every class in first year and had nearly been booted from the school entirely. After meeting Jenise, we found that her uncle had heavily interfered with her education and basically indoctrinated her into his views of elven supremacy and personal superiority. It took a while, but we eventually got her back to reality and got her through her first year at school.
I hoped that Jenise would be alright now that her father was gone. If her uncle took over the local lands, he would probably take her back under his wing and undo all of our hard work.
"Kvalinn? What's going on? Where are we?" Bekhi opened her eyes, and looked around the room in suppressed surprise. She was clearly hungover, like I was, and was not enjoying the new experience.
"We're in the Empire." I replied. "Valtnur drugged us and shipped us here while we were asleep."
"The empire?" Bekhi joined me in sitting up, and looked around groggily before realizing something. "Gerde. Where's Gerde!?"
I realized our beastkin adopted daughter Gerde was not sleeping next to us. For a moment, I felt a deep pit of dread in my heart that she had been left behind in Issanore. The next moment though, I felt a different kind of pain as Gerde burst into the room and hugged both of us bone crushingly tight.
"Mama! Papa! You're awake! You were asleep for so long I was worried!" Gerde was crying a little in relief, her wolf tail was wagging happily now that we were awake. She was now three years old, and while she wasn't that much stronger from last year, she was definitely taller. Just over an inch taller than me, not counting her wolf ears.
"We're ok, Gerde." I patted her back in an attempt to get her to loosen her grip.
The half elf rolled his eyes at the familial display. "The kid woke up a couple hours ago and has been whining like a sad puppy non stop. She's your problem now. I'm not taking care of her anymore."
"Thanks for watching her as we slept." I said once I had regained my breath. "Who do I have the honor of thanking?"
"Call me Allan. I'm one of Elnaril's half elf kids that Uncle Valtnur sometimes pays for news or favors. Although sometimes pops sends me bodies that he needs disposed of where the dryads and the mermaids won't accidentally stumble on them. This is the first time that either of them have sent smuggled people though."
Setting aside the mention of mermaids roaming the oceans, I moved on to ask him about the letter. "Well, Allan. In his letter, Valtnur wrote said something of value was being sent along with us, do you know anything about it?"
Allan wryly smirked. "Yeah, it's all waiting for you in the other room. I haven't had time to unpack it all yet, so your guess is as good as mine as to what it is."
"I hope it's our weapons and armor." Bekhi said as she got up. "Or at the very least, a change of clothes. I don't want to walk around human lands wearing these lousy robes."
I definitely agreed with her on that. The elven style of fancy dress was extremely elaborate and very impractical. Focusing solely on striking visuals with long robes that were heavily embroidered with gold and silver thread. Even walking around in them required careful movement to prevent tripping on the hem of your pants.
There was also the matter of the weapons and armor I had made in the elven lands. I hadn't made anything doomsday level while I was there, since they could have potentially ended up in enemy hands either through theft or my death, but the weapons and armor I had made for personal use were still relatively powerful. Just enough so that I wouldn't want to fight against someone wielding them.
Gerde helped us to our feet, since she hadn't been affected by the potion the same way Bekhi and I had, and we all followed Allan to the back of his house to a room that seemed to be used as a storage room. There were several large boxes of various sizes stacked against the wall. Three of them were already opened, and judging from the size and shape of them, I guessed that Bekhi, Gerde, and I had been smuggled in those boxes.
"I've got other work to do, so you can open them yourselves. I'll be back tonight with some food, but I'm kicking you all out tomorrow so don't get too comfy here." Allan pointed to where the tools were and then left in a huff out the back door.
"Alright, Gerde. Sniff out our clothes." Bekhi said in a playful manner while grabbing the tools and tying back her sleeves. I followed her example since I didn't want to disassemble the wooden boxes in the human equivalent of a tuxedo.
Gerde nodded and started sniffing each of the boxes with a cute overly serious look on her face. Her beastkin nose was able to detect scents that dwarves and humans couldn't, but to my chagrin, most of the time she just used this ability to find my cookie stash.
After just a minute or two of searching, Gerde stopped in front of two of the largest boxes with a surprised and confused look on her face. "Papa! Open this one! This one too! Hurry!"
I wasn't sure why I needed to hurry, but if the boxes had some other clothes other than these elven robes, then I would move like lightning.
Bekhi and I took a box each and started to disassemble them. The boxes were at least as tall as us, and much wider, so we were a little unsure what could be packed inside. What we found however, was the last thing we expected.
"Goblins grog!" Bekhi stepped back in surprise. "What are they doing here?"
Inside the boxes were two sleeping teenage elven girls. One was Jenise, Valtnur's daughter whom we had tutored for the past year. The other one was Delimira, the daughter of Chancellor Rothilion.
We had met Delimira during our time at the Institute, where she had somehow finagled her way into calling herself my apprentice and had gotten to be a fairly good weaponsmith. On the lower end of the human skill level at least. Which was still better than nearly every other elf, since the elves as a whole despised manual labor and almost none of them willingly partook in it.
Delimira, surprisingly didn't share her father's elven supremacy views, and even stranger to me, she absolutely hated lies and the high handed talk that was normal for her people, and did her best to speak as informally as possible in both Imperial and Elven.
"Mrgh, another five minutes." Delimira stirred sleepily, brushing her golden blond hair out of her face. When she caught sight of me staring down into the box in disbelief, she opened her eyes wide. "Master Kvalinn! Did we make it out safely? Are we in the human empire?"
Jenise echoed the question a few seconds later, her dark brown hair tangled up in a bed head of mythic proportions. "Are we in the empire? Did everyone survive the trip? My father said there was a small chance that the potion could put us to sleep forever."
"Ancestors beard!" I said angrily. "Why would Valtnur drug us with something so dangerous!?"
Rubbing her head in pain, Jenise glared at me in a manner that was extremely similar to how her father had looked when stating the obvious. "Because the alternative was to face the council's judgment, and there was no time to convince you to drink the potion willingly."
"Leaving that question aside for the moment." Bekhi said as she rapped on the boxes to try to detect her dwarven clothes. "Why are you two here? Shouldn't you be back in Issanore?"
Jenise blinked rapidly, as if to dispel any tears that might form. "You read the letter from my father, didn't you?"
"Kvalinn read it. Did I miss anything important?" Bekhi had never bothered to learn the flowing elven script, since she didn't think the elves had written anything she wanted to learn, leaving it to me to translate anything written for her.
"The reason I'm here, and not in Issanore, is because the council ordered my father's death for breaking the ancient taboo against bringing dwarves to the island. If I had stayed at home, then I would have either been forced to live under my uncle again, or be enslaved by my father's executioners. So I begged my father to send me with you to the Empire."
Bekhi nodded in understanding and approval. She had worked hard over the past year to break Jenise of her habit of relying on her 'elven perfection' for her sense of worth, and was glad to see her pupil standing up for herself. "That explains why you're here, Jenise. But what about you Delimira? Didn't you win the fights against the suitors your father tried to get you with?"
Back when we first met Delimira, her father had been trying to forcibly pair her with several eligible bachelors at the school to bolster his position and influence as the chancellor. She hadn't been too keen on being the second or third wife of a politician's son for her father's benefit though, and saw our arrival at the Institute as her ticket to freedom.
At first, she had tried to just socialize with us, hoping that the suitors and her father would see the action of associating with a dwarf as dishonorable enough for disavowal, and forget about her. When that didn't work, she took up weaponsmithing, a craft that very few elves performed since they mostly left that task to their centaur servants and slaves. It turned out she actually had talent, and so I started teaching her my craft alongside Gerde.
That pushed the chancellor, and Delimira's suitors, over the edge, and they had challenged her to multiple magic duels to force her to stop pursuing what they considered a task unbefitting an elf. I may have put my thumb on the scales in those fights by giving her runed weapons to fight with. In my defense though, I really didn't want to lose my first apprentice to politics. Plus, Gerde really liked her, even calling her 'big sis Del' so I didn't want to break the two of them up.
Last time we saw Delimira, she was with her father at the first year graduation ceremony following behind him, so I had assumed that they had made up. However, her next words disillusioned me.
"You really think my father would be the chancellor if he let one of his own kids rebel against him? I knew that he would wear me down eventually, so I followed you back to Valtnur's estate. I meant to just have you keep teaching me over the summer, but when I saw you being loaded onto the ship in boxes, I asked Valtnur to send me with you. So here I am." Her attitude was defiant and her words were spoken in a brash tone.
"Now what?" I asked. "Did either of you think about the consequences of coming with us to human lands?"
"No. But staying in Issanore would've been worse than anything the humans can throw at us." Delimira said emphatically, with Jenise nodding her head in agreement. "I'd have ended up engaged before the next school year ended, and married and pregnant weeks after graduation at thirty. All so that I could bolster some nepo-baby's ego while feeding influence and information back to my father. I'll pass on that."
"Um, Kvalinn." Jenise reached into her flowing sleeve and pulled out a couple pieces of paper. "I just remembered that my father gave me these letters, he had me hide them in case we got caught by the council."
She handed a letter to me, and one to Bekhi. My letter was written in flowing elven letters, but Bekhi's was written in neat and crisp Imperial.
My letter started with Valtnur reiterating to me to not return to Issanore. Then, in pure legalese, he formally handed guardianship of his daughter over to me until she reached the elven age of maturity, or thirty years old.
I looked over at Bekhi to find out what her letter had said. She was gripping the edge of her letter in frustration.
"That pointy eared, troll toothed rat!" Bekhi said as she crumpled the letter. "First he drugs us, and sends us to the empire in crates. Now he's dumping his daughter on us without so much as asking!"
"I'm guessing Valtnur did something Bekhi didn't like?" Delimira asked. Bekhi had been cursing in Dwarven so she couldn't understand her. I quickly summed up what our letters had said.
"Does this mean I have a new big sister? Big sis Jenise!" Gerde grinned happily, her tail wagging merrily in glee at getting a new sibling.
"Kvalinn. I might be mom to Gerde, but we aren't adopting an elf. That's my line in the sand."
I wasn't going to argue with Bekhi on that. Gerde was a helpless infant when we adopted her, and too cute to let go of. Jenise was a seventeen year old girl who already had parents. Granted, her father was now probably dead, and her mother had already disowned her due to her failing her first round at first year classes, but I didn't want to be the replacement dad to a teenager.
"Um, if it's alright with you, I'd like for you and Kvalinn to just keep being my teachers." Jenise shyly spoke up. "You both have experience in dealing with humans, and since you already helped me through school, could you help me learn to live among them?"
Bekhi relaxed a bit now that she wasn't being asked to take on more parental roles. "I guess we can keep teaching you what we know about the world, for now." She glanced over at Delimira. "But what about you, young lady? Kvalinn can't keep teaching you weapon smithing, since he doesn't have a forge anymore, so what are you gonna do?"
"I'm gonna follow my master of course." Delimira grinned as she spoke.
"But why?" I asked. "We aren't your guardians, and I'm not even officially your master. Plus, I can't teach you anything until I find someplace to settle down, and it could be years until I find a good place. We've already searched half the continent and we might have to search through the other half before finding the right place."
"Why not settle here? Then I could officially be your apprentice." Delimira asked. She then turned to the door. "Hey, half elf, I know you're listening at the door, come on in and join the discussion."
Allan opened the door, and jauntily walked in as if he hadn't just been caught eavesdropping. "Yeah, what do you want?"
Bekhi and I looked over at Delimira in surprise. "How could you tell Allan was listening in on our conversation?" I asked. Delimira just wryly smirked.
"When you grow up in House Thilinire, you either learn to detect eavesdroppers or die." She turned to Allan with just a hint of the attitude of the Chancellor's daughter. "So, Allan, is there a place for a good weaponsmith to set up shop here?"
"Nope." The answer came immediately and without hesitation. "This is just a small smuggling town that's not even on the maps. No one here has the cash to buy dwarven or elven weapons. You'd be better off going south to Kiszentmik. They have both a port and a fort, so any weapons you make would sell like hot cakes."
"Alright!" Bekhi smiled for the first time since the conversation started. "Can you take us there? Also, do they have a good Adventurer's Guild?"
"Like hell I'm taking you to Kiszentmik." Allan said with a frown. "The Empire's going to war, and they're conscripting every able bodied man they see. You'd steer clear of the city too if you knew what was good for you."
"Wait, who's the Empire going to war with?" Jenise looked at Allan with wide eyes. "The last news that reached Issanore said that the Empire was at peace."
"The news only reached here last week, so I haven't had a chance to send in my report, but the gist of it is that the dwarves called in a favor and offered a boatload of cash to the empire to help them fight against some sort of goblin invasion."
"Was it Einangrad?" Bekhi asked with a concerned look on her face. "Com'n, Kvalinn! We've got to find our weapons and get home!" She then began attacking the crates with a crowbar, desperate to find the weapons that could keep her family safe.
"Nah, it wasn't the lone mountain to the north." Allan waved dismissively. "It was the southern mountains that called for help."
That made more sense to me. Over the past year, I had delved deep into the libraries of the elves, and had learned a lot about the world. The Tharkuldohr, or the southern mountains as the humans called them, wes the birthplace of the dwarves. The dwarves used to occupy the entire southern tip of the continent, but ever since the last high king died hundreds of years ago, goblins, orks, trolls, and dozens of other monsters, had been chipping away at the dwarf owned territory. Now the Tharkuldohr Kingdoms was just a strip of mountain kingdoms that protected the human world from the Goblin Wastes. If a goblin invasion was going to come from anywhere, it would be the untamed Goblin Wastes.
"But why would the empire help the Tharkuldohr Kingdoms?" Delimira asked as she helped Bekhi destroy the crates in a search for weapons. "Isn't the empire on the outs with the dwarves right now?"
"That's old news." Allan shrugged and leaned back as he watched us work to unpack. "The empire now owes the dwarves for helping to put down a minor rebellion in the Bredeberg county last year. Also, according to the rumors, the goblin invasion is so big that the dwarves had no choice but to eat crow and ask the humans for help."
"I see." I tossed the remains of another box into the corner. "Bekhi, if they're conscripting people to fight in the southern mountains, then this might be the quickest and safest way to get somewhere with a rune forge where we can find a place to call home."
"Kvalinn, they're conscripting people to fight in a war. I'm not taking three kids to fight in a war. Found it!" Bekhi punched through a box and took out her trusty hammer, which she began swinging around like a windmill before smashing every box into kindling with it.
"I can fight, Bekhi." Delimira said as she dodged every splinter that came her way. "I've been fighting for my freedom for months in magic duels, and I'm as confident with my sword as you are with your hammer."
"I can fight too, Bekhi." Jenise said in a quiet voice. "You've been teaching me to fight for nearly a year now, and I think I can hold my own."
"Gerde can fight, Mama!" Gerde said as she found her own hammer and started swinging it about. "Let's go fight some mean goblins!"
"Are you kids sure about this?" Bekhi asked. "This is going to be a lot more dangerous than magic duels or practice matches. And that's just the battle, the road to the battle will be long and difficult as well."
"I'm definitely sure." Delimira dug her sword out of the piles of wood and clothes and unsheathed it with a confident grin. "I'd rather follow you to war, then wait around for the Council to pick me up and return me to my dad."
"P-please let me go with you too." Jenise looked appealingly towards Bekhi.
"Let's go kill the bad goblins!" Gerde smiled happily as she went with the flow.
"We can train them some more while we're on the road." I commented in an attempt to tip the scales. "Military convoys are even slower than the trade convoys we've escorted in the past. We're hundreds of miles from the Tharkuldohr mountains so it will likely be months before we actually have to fight."
It took several minutes, but eventually Bekhi shook her head as she came to a decision. "Gaah, alright. Fine. But just so you know. I'm gonna train you until you call out to your gods for mercy." Bekhi began pulling her dwarven clothes out from the wreckage of the crates so that she could get changed.
The three girls started cheering as Allan rolled his eyes at the display. "I'm not sure why you idiots are so excited about going to war. But if you're determined to die, I'll take you to Kiszentmik tomorrow morning. But you better pay me for my time!"
I agreed to his terms and then got to bargaining. Valtnur had sent along way more than what we could carry on our backs, so once we finished sorting the necessary from the unnecessary, we got Allan to agree to take us to just outside the city walls in exchange for all the unnecessary stuff. He refused to guide us inside the city due to some unrelated smuggling warrants.
There was a good amount of expensive elven robes, jewels, and trinkets among the unnecessary stuff, but considering we were going to war I wanted to make sure we were traveling as light as possible. Also, I figured I could make the money they were worth relatively easily if I sold off some of my better weapons, or a doomsday rune. Not that I was going to do that, we were going to war after all, and we needed every weapon we could carry.
"By the way, Allan." Bekhi said over the diner table as Allan served us fish soup. "Have you heard any news from Einangrad? That's where Kvalinn and I are from and it would be nice to get some news from home."
"The lone mountain remains the same as ever. Prickly towards everyone and not letting spies or traders into their mountain. The only mention of them in the grapevine was that a couple hundred dwarves from there are going to join up with the empire's army."
"Did you hear what clans are involved?" I asked. "Or what towns are sending warriors?"
"We're too far outside the main trade lanes for anything like that to make its way here, the only name I heard was some town or person called Vesturhildrun. Does that ring any bells?"
"My family is from there!" Bekhi said with stars in her eyes. "Do you know who's in charge of the town now? Is my dad still Thane? Whose he leading into battle?"
Allan shook his head in annoyance. "Look, I told you. All I've got is the word Vesturhildrun. Nothing else. You want more info, then go to Treven. That's where all the armies are supposed to be assembling."
"Kvalinn! We're going to Treven. We'll get to see friends and family again!" Bekhi threw back the watery human beer with a cheer.
"Hold it!" Allan cut off her celebration decisively. "I'm taking you to Kiszentmik and not a step further. It's hundreds of miles to Treven and I've got a lot of well paying cowards waiting for me to smuggle them out of the empire. Pops got lucky in catching me between trips, but I can't put off my business for the weeks it would take for me to show you to Treven."
"They're going to be conscripting us, and taking us to Treven eventually anyways, Bekhi." I said. "Sooner or later, we'll get to find out all the news from home."
"I'll get to meet Granddad!" Gerde said with a cheer.
I smiled at my daughter's enthusiasm. Taking a sip of the colored water that the humans called beer, I let my mind wander back home. I wondered how my father was doing. Was he still working alone down in the deepest part of Nurnwuhr, or had he been forced to take a wife by the clan so that he could pass on his knowledge to future generations. The answer to those questions would likely only be answered once we joined up with the armies in Treven.