Tamako walked into the side alley where Jen and Sam were waiting for her, and said, “I don’t think anyone followed me.”

Just them Slim came sprinting around the corner messaging them, “Run! There’s an Elf tracker on your scent. Your forgetmenot (Jen, Sam, Slim) charms aren’t working against his skill.”

They ran through the backstreets and alleys using their forgetmenot charms to avoid notice and attention from the random people they were running past.

Jen messaged everyone, “any ideas?”

Slim replied, “We’re getting ahead of the elf, but distance won’t stop his ability to track you, it will only buy us a little time. The only way to break his link is to go Deck jumping, and that’s probably more dangerous than simply killing him.”

Sam replied, “O.K. let’s just set up an ambush and kill him.”

Slim replied, “Works for me, but you’ll have every elf on the Deck, or really anywhere, tracking you down, because I doubt we can kill him before he marks us.”

Sam nodded, “If we get enough distance, I bet…”

“Enough!” interrupted Jen, “We are not going to kill someone just because he is tracking us! Other ideas, now!”

Tamako asked, “What is he using to track us?”

Slim replied, “I’m only guessing, but since you left the arena before he started following you, he is probably using shadow tracking. How he figured out which shadow was yours from all the others, I have no idea.”

“So how do I get rid of my shadow?” asked Tamako.

“You don’t. It’s not your shadow from the sun, but your mana shadow. Unlike your mana, the shadow your mana leaves behind changes constantly, but the elf is following that change constantly while he is on your trail.”

Jen said, “Turn right up ahead.”

Sam replied, “Will do! Where are we heading?”

Jen pointed towards some taller buildings off in the distance, and said, “generally that direction.” She then glanced at Slim, and only messaged him, “What if you do your ‘thing’, while we throw Tamako in a wagon and head out of the city?”

Slim’s ears laid flat with his dislike of Jen’s suggestion, but he recognized she was clearly not making it an order, and she only messaged him keeping it private from the others. Slim replied, “It might work, but why should I even consider that if we haven’t even tried killing the elf first?”

“Because I’m not going to kill someone just because they are following us!”

Slim hissed, “That’s not my problem.”

“O.k., got it! You won’t do it,” replied Jen.

Jen said to Sam, “Let’s run to the top of one of the buildings and try to lose the elf by travelling over the rooftops.”

Sam replied, “Jen, I haven’t even started working on the hang gliders we talked about.”

She replied, “I know, just jumping distance between rooftops.”

Slim yowled slightly, and said to everyone, “That’s not going to work. Elves are raised jumping between trees that are further apart that we can even think about jumping.” Slim paused for a second and then grumbled, “Just go get a wagon Jen.”

“What’s up? Why do we need a wagon?” asked Sam and Tamako at the same time.

Jen replied, “I’ll catch up with everyone in a few minutes with a wagon and a tarp, explain later why I can’t explain.”

********

When Jen caught up to them with a wagon, Sam commented, “That was quick, and when are we going to find out what you have planned? Slim won’t tell us anything.”

Jen looked stressed when she replied, “I stole it, but left enough gold for them to buy 10 wagons.”

Slim ordered, “Get into the wagon and cover yourselves with the tarp.”

Sam asked again, “What’s going on? What’s the plan?”

Tamako wanted to know as well, but her embarrassment and guilt at being the cause for all the problems had kept her unusually silent.

Jen replied, “I’m not going to tell you. You simply have to trust me and Slim with this. We’re getting in the cart, and then we’re all going to feel terrible, while Slim gets us safe.”

Sam wasn’t too pleased with the explanation and he knew now was not the time to start demanding more answers. Last, and most importantly, he trusted Jen, so he climbed into the cart without any more questions.

Once the three were in the cart and were covered with the tarp, slim expanded in size and placed his head through the harness and activated his skill. The cart and Slim were simply invisible to anyone’s sight or mana senses. Neither Slim nor the cart left any tracks or made any sounds as Slim pulled the cart at a steady pace for about 15 minutes until they arrived at the group’s safe house where Slim moved them all inside, sealed the door, and collapsed from exhaustion.

******

Toss Up had to promise a small fortune to hire an elf tracker on such short notice, but the tracker showed up a few minutes AFTER the quest activated and the arena was now empty.

“You’re late! How are you going to be able to track her!” demanded Toss Up.

Elves despised everything that was not, well….an elf. However, they would tolerate the other races for enough gold, and they knew they couldn’t realistically exterminate all the other races. The elf tracker was quite tall and looked down his nose at Toss Up, and replied, “You may address me as Andarlian Sanova Valtonian.”

Toss Up hated dealing with elves, he knew they were all arrogant jackasses, but he also knew “how” to deal with elves, and replied, “The contract was signed and is binding. You’re late! We agreed to pay a lot of gold for you to get here on time.”

The elf replied, “I will track her as I wish. The Elf Tracking Guild has never failed to find a human we wanted to find. Pay the gold now or face the wrath of our guild!”

Toss Up knew that no amount of being nice changed anything with the Elves. If anything, Elves saw kindness as being weak. If you were nice to them, they would just bully you more, and Toss Up replied, “Fuck you! Under the contract you’ve forfeited advance payment by being late. I will pay you the full sum once you lead us to her and help us follow her until she gets to where she is staying, leaves the city gates, or teleports from the shop. That’s the deal!”

The elf turned on his heal and headed down to the arena exits. As the elf circled the arena he said, “It was just her and a man that was in the finals?”

Toss Up narrowed his eyes suspecting the elf of more weaseling and said “That’s correct.”

“This is going to take longer without anything to identify her. I’ll have to use a shadow scent and search for the oldest female scent to weed out all the women that have run in and out of here. That’s going to cost extra!”

Toss Up replied, “Fuck you again! I’m not agreeing to a re-negotiation. Just do your job!”

Toss Up watched the elf closely. He knew that if he turned his head for a moment the elf was likely to take off after the woman, leaving them there and later claiming it was Toss Up’s “fault” for not following him to the woman’s location.

As expected, without warning, the elf turned and quickly left down a side street tracking the woman they were after.

“Asshole!” Toss Up mumbled to himself as he hurried to follow the elf.

The elf slowed his pace back down as soon as he realized Toss Up was still with him. The elf looked back at Toss Up twisting his face up in disgust at the human, but said nothing as he slowed his pace down. The elf was tracking the woman as slow as possible to increase the fee, but he couldn’t go too slow or the shadow scent would fade.

When the shadow scent clearly indicated the woman’s pace changed and that she was on the run from him. The Elf didn’t understand how the woman found out she was being tracked, but then he complained at Toss Up, “You must have done something to give away our location. We’ll need to pick up the pace and that will cost extra!”

Toss Up showed his verbal diversity to the elf with his reply of, “Fuck you! Do your job!”

After trailing and running through the streets for about 15 minutes on the woman’s shadow scent, Adarlian paused as the shadow scent simply vanished. Andarlian’s first instinct was the human man behind him was doing something to block his tracking, “But that’s impossible!” he thought to himself. He turned towards Toss Up to accuse him of interfering even if he knew it was impossible, but saw the impatient look on the man’s face and knew for sure it wasn’t him, plus he didn’t want to show the human that there was a problem.

Andarlian followed the scent backwards a little way and confirmed the woman hadn’t backtracked. He’d noticed earlier that something kept trying to distract him while following the scent, but the magic was weak, and he’d easily been able to ignore it. There was only about ten minutes before the shadow scent would disappear. Shadows blurred and changed constantly, and if he couldn’t get back on her trail quickly, he would never find the woman. The elves’ tracking reputation was at stake, and he knew disgracing his guild would be worse than the embarrassment of asking for help.

Andarlian activated his sound wave, “I’ve lost the shadow scent.”

“How long do we have?” came the immediate reply.

“Ten minutes at most.”

“Competent elves are on their way to finish your job.”

Andarlian’s pale skin, paled even further at the rebuke.

Toss Up asked for the 3rd time, “What’s wrong? Why have we stopped?”, and as the elf ignored him again, he was about to get right in the elf’s face when five additional elves arrived. “You’ve fucking lost her haven’t you! Deck Director Keisha is going to hear about this.” Internally, Toss Up thought Keisha had made a mistake when she authorized spending the gold to track this woman just because of a powerful spear… that broke after being used against Bellagio, but he’d never heard of any human on the Second Deck with the ability to shake an Elf tracker off their trail. He gave a slight sigh of relief that he didn’t question Keisha’s directions even slightly.

Andarlian advised the other elf trackers, “There’s still about 6 minutes left on the shadow scent. This is where it ended.”

Toss Up used his sound wave to call in the situation directly to Deck Director Keisha.

Director Keisha replied, “Damnit! I can’t get there in 6 minutes. Call me back immediately if they pick her trail back up and I’ll join you.”

An hour later, after the elves cast multiple spells and used several enchanted scroll, Andarlian turned to Toss Up and said, “The contact is complete and no payment is required,” before turning with the other elves and leaving.

Toss Up hollered at them as they left, “You bitches are incompetent. You breached the contract when you showed up late. Your guild is going to be hearing from Deck Director Keisha about this!”

The elves simply ignored Toss Up as they continued to walk away.

******

Jen, Sam, and Tamako, felt the mana get ripped from the body a few moments after they laid down in the wagon. Their mana channels convulsed as they tried to pull mana in from the air surrounding them, like a drowning person trying to breath in air. Jen and Sam soon passed out from the pain, but Tamako struggled through it and was about to throw the tarp off of them, when Slim messaged her, “Quit fighting, or this will all be for nothing!”

Telling a drowning person to not try to reach the surface of the water and breath in air is easy, but for the drowning person to actually listen is something else. However, Tamako’s pain was overshadowed by her shame in causing all the problems. Unfortunately for her, she did not pass out from the paid like Jen and Sam, but she did will herself to be still and accept the pain as punishment for her mistake.

Slim ran his mana almost empty getting everyone to the “safe house” as Sam called it. He was exhausted from using his mana, but it only took him a few minutes of rest before he got up from the floor to check on the others. The tarp they were laying on was covered in feces, urine, and vomit, but they were all breathing and he could tell with a little time they would be fine. However, Slim wasn’t going to hang around with the smell another minute. As he was about to leave and keep an eye on things from outside the safe house, to is surprise he noticed Tamako start to move. He wanted to ask her how she was able to start recovering so much fast than the others, but the stink outweighed his curiosity, and he messaged her, “I’ll be outside keeping a lookout in case they somehow were able to follow us. Take care of them.” and then he slipped out and shut the door.

*****

Two Bets hated elves after one beat his cousin senseless for simply “being in the way” while the elf was tracking someone for a guild. Luckily for Sam, Jen, Tamako, and Slim, it was Two Bets, a low-income maintenance man that found the pile of gold in his shed, instead of his little wagon. Two Bets then declined the System Gambling Quest, that offered him more gold and euphoria, to simply tell the elves that were running around his neighborhood about the gold, which Jen had been holding for several weeks before she used it to pay for the wagon.