Outside the town hall a single elf was pacing back and forth.

“Ugh… It’s too cold… I could’ve been back home sitting next to the fireplace and eating Isabell’s cooking if it weren’t for Kosei!”

The name of the elf in question was Rosh, he liked painting and warmth and although he wasn’t born in a particularly influential family he was able to marry his childhood love, the village chief’s first daughter Isabelle.

Life wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for old Rosh though, as ever since he and Isabelle first started getting serious her father, the village chief Kosei, had started getting increasingly envious of Rosh for getting all of his daughter’s attention.

Rosh had had to put up with being Kosei’s handyman for almost fifteen years, usually it was something simple, such as refueling their robot horses or going grocery shopping, he was alright with those.

But every so often he had to do something a bit more than that, whether it was following Kosei on his cross country trip to visit the other elven villages, which had kept him from his wife for several months by the way, or such as that one time he had to go to the mountains of Thorson alone to-

You know what, let’s not talk about that one time actually.

But the baseline was that Rosh had to put up with a lot of shit from his father in law.

Rosh took a deep breath.

*Haaa- Hack hack*

Or rather Rosh had tried to take a deep breath but the cold, dry air felt almost like smoke when it filled his lungs and caused a coughing fit.

“Bloody hell…”

Rosh had already resigned himself to possibly having to stay here throughout the night, the only thing keeping him from directly disobeying Kosei’s order was the thought of how angry Isabelle would get at Kosei if she found out he was the reason Rosh was late.

There was actually one other reason as well for Rosh staying, all things considered, relatively content with staying out here rather than back home.

“Ugh, Iris…”

Rosh’s shoulders shook just thinking about her.

Iris was Kosei’s other daughter and Isabelle’s younger sister.

Some would like Iris to a cat, but Rosh wouldn’t.

Because that’s just stupid.

‘At least cats are nice and loving half the time to make up for their asshole tendencies.’ Was what Rosh thought on the subject.

Although Rosh would never say it because he did not enjoy sounding harsh deep down he did think that Iris was never nice to anyone if not to further her own agenda, whatever it might be.

Never.

Rosh still remembered the winter when Isabelle first introduced him to Iris.

They’d all outside gathering… something…

Rosh couldn’t remember exactly what they were gathering because it was many decades ago, but he did remember that it was very important at the time.

They had gathered what they needed and were heading back home only to get caught in a snowstorm.

It had been impossible to see anything and the snow and cold winds made it so they couldn’t use torches to see either.

The only option they had was to trust the only person who could light the way with magic: Iris.

Now at the time Rosh still trusted Iris to be a decent elf being, not to the point where he’d trust her blindly but at least he didn’t think she would lead him down a steep slope with a seperate ball of light when they got close to home.

Rosh had fallen down the slope and sprained his ankle, the important things had broken in much the same way you’d expect something important to break if it took a stumble down a steep slope and then have an elf fall on top of it.

When Isabelle and Iris finally found him after he’d started shouting in pain Iris had accused Rosh of getting drunk before an important expedition.

Isabelle didn’t believe Iris but also didn’t believe that Iris could’ve been the culprit, safe to say it took a while to get back on the good side of Kosei when he thought Rosh had put Isabelle’s life in danger by getting drunk.

Rosh still didn’t know what Iris had gained from doing this but he did know that it must have been something.

“Hey! Afro wearing fuckface!”

The afrod elf in question looked up from a seemingly particularly interesting mound of snow to see Lizz, a small blonde dragonfly-kin wearing a blue and black striped onesie.

“What?” Rosh asked Liss.

Rosh and Lizz didn’t like each other much, they didn’t have any reason too, but they also didn’t dislike each other due to similarly not having any reason to.

Well, other than the small dragonfly-kin having a fouler mouth than a whole fleet of sailors.

“Shiona said to tell you that this’ll take a whole, go home and play a good husband.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes, now shoo! Shoo!”

While saying so LIzz was also shooing Rosh away with her hands and a mildly annoyed expression on her face.

Well the annoyed expression was normal actually, Rosh and the others had already learned the only time she didn’t look annoyed was when she was asleep or eating.

“Yeah but… Did she say how long it would take? Kosei is gonna go mental if I say I left you lot here.”

“Don’t forget about Ronnie.”

“... … … What?”

“Nothing, I was just saying how Kosei won’t be the only one wanting to rip you a new one.”

Rosh sighed. ‘Lovely.’, he thought, ‘That’s just lovely.’

“Also you won’t be leaving us.”

“Hang on, but didn’t you just say-”

“Yes I did, what are, fucking deaf? You’ll be going back to wherever the fuck you lot live but you won’t be leaving us, instead we’ll be leaving them.”

Then before Rosh had time to think Lizz had already taken off, somehow flying the right way to the Kosei’s place despite never having been there before.

Rosh was very confused but decades of having to follow Kosei’s seemingly random orders had conditioned him in such a way that he simply followed Lizz without thinking about it.

* * * * *

Meanwhile inside the town hall a sneaking figure could be seen… sneaking…

The figure was a humanoid yet birdlike figure and went by the name Shiona.

“Cy, how’s the thingy going?” Shiona asked despite there not being anyone around.

[If by ‘thingy’ you mean the invisibility spell add-on it will be done soon, you’ll be able to stay outside their village without worrying about being found.] a feminine voice responded.

It had come from a small black cube hanging on a string around Shiona’s neck.

“lovely.”

Shiona stopped walking, the corridor in front of her split into three different paths.

“Which way Cy?”

[Straight forwards.]

“Thanks, but anyways just how bloody big is this place? I swear this is some doctor who shit.”

[Doctor who?]

Shiona laughed but didn’t explain anything to Cy.

“Okay, which way now?” Shiona asked Cy as they came to another split in the corridor.

[...]

“Cy?”

[Shiona you might want to look at the map]

Hearing that worried Shiona greatly.

She picked up the black cube and looked held one of its sides which was glowing blue up to her eyes.

“I don’t get it, what’s wrong?”

[Follow the fleecy’s trail.]

“Okay, uhm… It goes there, then there and there, and then… it stops? That means we’re close to their village right?”

[Shiona, it doesn’t end there.]

“What do you- Oh.”

[Yeah.]

“It starts again.”

[Yeah.]

“Way underground.”

[Yeah.]

“...”

[...]

“How fucking deep even is that?”

[At least some five kilometers.]

“Wait, wasn’t the Pickits’s place just fifty meters below the surface? Isn’t that, like, a thousand times deeper!? How fucking even is this spell able to keep track of them like that!? And also just how in the fuck did they even get there!?”

(AN: Pickits are the mole people who pretended to be boulders in case you forgot)

[After I mark someone with the spell we’ll be able to track them at least twice this distance, as for how they got there I don’t know how but somehow they did, maybe we’ll be able to figure it out once we arrive?]

Shiona didn’t respond, instead she looked down sullenly at the floor.

[Come on Shiona, pull yourself together, even if we aren’t able to get down there with them Plush will probably come back on his own once he wakes up right?]

“...Yeah.” Shiona said and looked back up and started walking again with a determined look in her eyes.

“You’re right, let’s go there first and we’ll see what we can think of then.”

Cy was very happy that her friend had cheered up again but other thoughts were racing through here head.

‘This depth…’ She thought. ‘To get that deep that fast can only mean one thing…’

Shiona didn’t know what it meant but Cy did.

A fair while ago Lizz had come to Cy’s room to discuss various things.

During those discussions they talked about who they were and what had happened to them to willingly become a part of the book of knowledge

Cy had talked about her family and how she had been forced to slave for the people who killed them, accepting the books offer to get away from those people.

Lizz had talked about her life in a society where they summoned demons to harness their power, about how everything had gone straight to, as she had called it, “shit-ville central” after the summoners had grown greedy and started using the book of knowledge to summon demons stronger than they could control.

Shed spoken about her brother, the first hero, and how he’d fought the rest of his live killing demons to restore the book in hopes it could help them, how her brother had eventually died.

She’d spoken about how she’d spent the millenia following her brother’s footsteps, going down into the ruins of the abandoned civilizations to kill the demons and restore the book.

‘This…’ Cy thought. ‘This has to be one of them.’

‘A portal to one of the lost cities.’