Once in the main passage, Starling led them only a few dozen yards before stopping and indicating to Walter that the door at which they had arrived was that of the cooperage. Pulling her cowl lower, Reeve squeezed along the wall, past the group of elves-in-waiting, to reach the door.

“Should—,“ Reeve’s question was cut short by a loud cry of surprise from the direction they’d just come, “—never mind,” she said. “Stay here. Everyone, just stay here.”

She pushed through the door into the cooperage and stopped. “Ohmagod…what happened?” Reeve could not remember seeing that much blood distributed that widely since her father’s first run-in with Bunce. There was not a single bench, tool, pile of staves, partially constructed barrel, or rack of completed barrels that didn’t appear touched by it. Wanda’s fighter sat, legs crossed, on the floor next to a loot bag. She held in one hand a long, straight, wickedly pointed sword. The blade gleamed brightly near the hilt, but the rest of it was, like most of the room, dripping with, presumably, the blood of a carpenter no longer present, save for the loot bag. “Are you OK?”

“I really don’t know what happened,” the fighter said.

“That’s like your and Dad’s mantra.”

“I lost track of where you were, and as I was looking for you I felt like this was where I was supposed to come.” Wanda looked around the room. “When I got here, I knew he was the one. That he needed to pay for what he had done.”

“What is going on?” Reeve’s head was starting to feel like it did when she used to swim in the ocean with her eyes closed and the up and down of the waves made her dizzy.

“Also, some things came out of my mouth that I would rather not repeat,” Wanda said.

Reeve stared at her mother for a moment. There was another cry of alarm in the distance. “Bees. Shoot. Mom, we need to go.”

“I’m still working through some things, Mija. I may need a minute.”

“I’m sorry, Mom, but if we don’t go now, I think there’s a pretty good chance that our companions, Dad, and some elves who really like Dad are going to be attacked by a lot of bees, or elves, or bees and elves. Hard to say how the timing’s going to work out, but we gotta go.” Reeve walked to her mother while making a ‘get up’ wave of her hand.

When she stuck her head through the door into the hall, Reeve found that the shouts from down the passage had multiplied. The elves around Walter were fidgeting like a herd of skittish animals. Reeve very much did not want them to suddenly wake from the sway of her father’s charisma at the same moment that swarming bees that her father probably wouldn’t know how to control arrived.

“We’re ready to go back to the lovely cell you’ve provided us,” Reeve said to Starling.

Starling immediately began leading the group down the passage, and Reeve followed at his elbow, using her free hand to gently nudge him into the fastest walk he could manage. After a quarter minute, the sound of running feet from ahead caused her to drop to the side, placing the group of elves between her and the on-comers. She found herself next to Thomanji'yheri and Leaf. The fallen elf was guiding Wanda via a hand on the wrist, and the expression on the face of Wanda’s human fighter avatar suggested she was still very much working through things.

“What is the trouble?” A voice from ahead called.

“There may,” Leaf called back, her elfin voice anonymous, unlike her fallen elf’s appearance, “be a few errant bees.”

The sound of the running feet continued by. The shouts continued to multiply behind them, and another dozen elves passed them in the time it took the party to reach the alcove below their cell.

“Dad, send them back to whatever they’d usually be doing right now,” Reeve said quietly, once she was able to maneuver through the crowd and bend to Walter’s height. The bee veil nodded.

Reeve turned to Leaf and Thomanji'yheri. “We need to get Bunce. Hopefully, the twins will be here too. If they’re not, I don’t know what we’ll do. What’s the one ‘realistic’ option for getting out?”

“The main river gate,” Thomanji'yheri said. “But Helia’s guards are always there. It’ll take more than a few bees to see us through.”

The elves around them began filing out of the alcove. Reeve looked at her father.

“I asked them if they could get us more snacks,” he said.

“All of them?”

“They said they’d bring a lot of snacks.” Walter looked extremely pleased.

Reeve found that she was uncertain which mantra was appropriate for the situation and gave herself a pass. “Stow your veil and pull down your hood. If there’s anyone in our cell other than the twins, we don’t want them to immediately know it’s us.” Reeve again pulled her own cowl low, and Leaf did the same as Walter took off his bee veil and swung it into his Inventory before raising the hood of his robe. The three turned to Thomanji'yheri and Wanda, both without robes.

“Well,” Reeve said, “you showing up will probably confuse anyone who’s up there, and that could buy us a little time. Might want to put away your swords though.”

Thomanji'yheri nodded and sheathed his sword, then looked at Wanda, who still held the bloodied blade at her side, seemingly at a loss for what to do with it. “Oy, gods. No wonder ye went and slay that adulterous carpenter,” Thomanji’yheri said.

“Whataya mean?” Reeve said.

“Helia seems to have a powerful revulsion to the unfaithful—always struck me as having suffered a betrayal herself. That blade there is Unerring Devotion, an estoc Helia enchanted to seek out and slay the unfaithful.”

The companions all looked at the blade Wanda held. Tilting her head as though curious, she slowly raised the blade to point at Walter.

The halfling did not move.

After a few seconds, Wanda lowered the blade and smiled a homely, crooked-toothed grin.

“OK, well, that’s a relief,” Reeve said. “Awkward, but a relief. Mom, you picked that up in the armory? And you didn’t take its sheath?” Reeve looked at her fighter mother. “Know what? Doesn’t matter. Just hang onto it for now and try not to wander off to kill unfaithful elves. Can you do that?”

Wanda frowned.

“Unerring Devotion can have a powerful effect on her wielder,” Thomanji'yheri said.

Reeve felt her shoulders slump despite her efforts to stay positive. She closed her eyes and tried to think of a mantra. She decided that the heavily modified ‘My mother can control her own desire to slay unfaithful elves’ wouldn’t cut it, and settled on, ‘My mother can do better next time,’ to which she felt compelled to add, ‘Maybe.’

She opened her eyes and looked at the stout, red-eyed dwarf standing before her. She pointed to Wanda. “Could you try to keep my Mom from killing any unfaithful elves while Leaf and I sort out whatever we find upstairs?”

“Aye?” Thomanji'yheri said.

Reeve looked at the column of water before them. “We can use this thing?”

“Starling made it so,” Walter said.

“OK, let’s go. People are going to start asking questions about the missing hives at some point.” Reeve stepped into the water and turned to make sure that her parents followed without incident. Thomanji'yheri and Leaf were the last in.

The party ascended, light soon filtering from above. Reeve didn’t like the feeling of trying to breathe through whatever magic was keeping the water from wetting them, and, with relief, she inhaled a deep breath as soon as her head broke the surface. Scanning the room from within her lowered cowl, she was glad to see Dawn standing before her, a few yards from the pool out of which they completed their ascent.

Leaf screamed, and Reeve turned. The fallen elf, still completely shrouded by her whitewater robe, was collapsed on the surface of the pool. Behind her stood Dusk, who held a bloody dagger.