An Unwavering Craftsman

"Would [Permanency] work on this potion?" asked Lana, looking down at the sea rushing past below.

"Yes, I believe so," answered Greenhair.

"That... sounds like a bad idea," opined Damien carefully.

"Why? We're flying!"

Damien found himself wondering if [Permanency] would work on something like a poison, and if so, would it make it harder or impossible to cure? More likely, it would have no effect on artificial cures, but would completely block the victim from clearing it naturally. In that case, a poison that didn't present as a poison would be truly evil. Something to sap someone's energy, or dull reflexes. To give them an unpleasant life without making it obvious something was wrong.

In the specific case of a potion of flight, though... "No, you aren't flying—you're floating. There's a difference. How do you expect to walk when you don't weigh anything?"

"Umm..." said Lana, trying desperately to think of a solution that would let her fly whenever she wanted, but wouldn't also cripple her everyday life.

A potion of flight had a maximum duration, but could also be cancelled at will. Removing the maximum duration wouldn't prevent a manual cancellation, but that would spoil Lana's goal of being able to fly whenever she wanted.

"With our enhanced strength, we could probably strap wings to our arms and fly like birds," pointed out Grace, floating alongside them.

"Oh! That sounds fun! Think you can make me some wings, my boy?" boomed Shigeo.

"I could make something that looks like a wing, but I suspect there's all sorts of important detail hidden in the shape, texture and movement. I'd be surprised if I could make something functional. Find me a book on how wings work, and I'll see what I can do."

"Why are you all chatting inanely when I have to do all the work?" complained Fleta, who had taken a potion of water walking, rather than flight, and was sprinting at supersonic speeds across the ocean, the others tethered to her with ropes. Her [Drag Elision] meant that she felt no drag at all, from either herself or her passengers.

"Because you're the fastest, dear," called down Shigeo.

"Besides, we can only talk because of your [Drag Elision]," pointed out Damien. "We wouldn't be able to hear ourselves think, never mind each other's voices, if the wind was whistling in our ears at this speed. So basically, it's all your fault."

"Shigeo, dear. Our kid seems to have lost all his respect. I think we need to teach him some more."

Damien floated a little higher.

"You're looking worried, Greenhair," said Lana, ignoring the usual family antics.

"Bear in mind that we're headed to his homeland, from which he has been banished," supplied Grace, when Greenhair didn't respond.

"It's not as if anyone there could hurt us, but going against his banishment like this required overcoming a big cultural barrier," added Damien.

He wasn't sure what to make of Greenhair accompanying them. Given that he agreed with the way elves did things, his wanting to return seemed out of character. Perhaps he was afraid of more divine assassins if he remained alone in the Thief's Wastes; however strong his equipment made him, he still needed to sleep.

His actual reason was simply that he wanted to hear what the elder elves had to say, assuming they said anything at all. They'd held their tongues thus far, but given recent events, and that their party already knew part of the story, he was hoping they would share.

Fleta sprinted on, the island of Ygrillana lowering in front of them as they descended the northern wall of the bowl. As they drew near, it didn't take Fleta's eyes to pick out the massive lehibe trees in which the elves made their homes.

"Where do I need to go?" Fleta called up. The island itself was big and obvious, but she had no idea where on the island their targets lived.

"The largest cluster of trees. The one in the centre of the island," replied Greenhair.

"Typical. Why can't they live on the coast?" grumbled Fleta. "Now I need to run through half an island worth of jungle."

"Umm... That sounds like an even worse idea than permanent potions of flight," said Damien, not looking forward to being bashed into countless trees while floating at the end of a rope. His enchantments would protect him, but wouldn't make the experience of being slammed into tree after tree a pleasant one.

"Have some faith in your mother, my boy," shouted Shigeo, gaining height.

Fleta set one foot on the sandy beach, then leapt, landing in the canopy of a palm tree. From there she jumped to a taller tree, and she was soon darting from canopy to canopy with a speed that, while far below what she managed over open ocean, was still far beyond what the youngsters could have managed at ground level.

Lana squeaked as a branch clipped her feet and quickly followed Shigeo upwards. The others joined her.

"Okay... I'll admit this is faster than walking," said Damien begrudgingly. Quicker it might be, but he felt that being dragged along like a kite wasn't the most refined method of travel.

Not that there were any refined methods of travel through a forest, at least for humans. Maybe the elves had their own arrangements with twigs, thorns and dense undergrowth, but everyone else needed to either leave a trail of destruction wherever they went or finish their journey in dire need of a new outfit.

There were surprisingly few signs when they hit Llinorn, the elvish capital. There were the great lehibe trees, erupting from the canopy and rising hundreds of metres into the air. The occasional clearing shone with more light than the pair of distant source-lights could cast, and elves could be seen congregating in some, but it was far from any walled city of humans. There were no obviously unnatural structures of any kind, although a woodsman would pick up that a natural jungle was unlikely to form such perfectly circular clearings.

The lack of walls didn't mean the city was undefended, of course, and Fleta came to an abrupt halt as a dozen elves popped out of nearby trees, encircling the group.

"Halt!" called their leader, looking suspiciously at Greenhair as the floating members of the party drifted down to canopy level and cancelled their flight potions. "You are trespassing on elvish property. You have ten seconds to drop your weapons."

"Or what?" asked Damien. "No insult intended. I'm just wondering what you intend to do if we don't."

"Damien, while I appreciate your unbridled curiosity, please leave the diplomacy to me," said Fleta. "Look, even your dad is holding his mouth shut."

Shigeo did indeed have a hand on his chin, doing his best not to make a snappy comeback of his own.

"Open fire," ordered the leader, not bothering with any more talking in the face of the uncooperative criminals. A wave of skill-assisted arrows and magic attacks came flying at the party from all directions.

"Seriously? Fire magic in the middle of a forest?" exclaimed Shigeo, breaking his self-enforced silence, while ignoring all the attacks. He didn't even protect the others. He didn't need to.

"Note that they are all aiming slightly upwards, to avoid hitting the trees," said Greenhair. "Even then, elven fire mages will often take a feat to avoid burning vegetation."

"At least they answered my question," said Damien, slapping an arrow away with a backhand, the metal arrowhead bouncing off his skin. "Shame they seem to be having performance issues, though."

"Interesting fact, but there was an attempt about ten years back to encourage all adventuring squads of twelve men or more to bring an appraiser with them. Would help them immensely here," said Shigeo, catching the sword of an elf attacking from below in his bare hand. He yanked it up out of the elf's grip, bent it into a full circle, then politely handed it back.

"Actually, it would take more than a standard appraisal to pick up our equipment," said Fleta, grabbing the hair of an elf climbing up below her and yeeting him into the distance. "From the power behind some of these attacks, they seem to have a few high-levelled tier sevens in their group. Knowing our tier and level alone might not be enough to discourage them, given our party's make-up and how outnumbered we are. Depends how badly a team of level one hundreds scared them."

"I don't recall ever seeing appraisers in an adventuring group," pointed out Damien, who was doing his best to catch an arrow. It wasn't going well. His reinforced reactions were sufficient for timing a grab, but with their skill-reinforced speed and power, the forces involved caused the arrows to burst apart.

"Yeah, they didn't really think it through. There weren't enough appraisers, and for those that were around, why would they risk life and limb with a band of adventurers, living out of a tent, when they could have a cushy, higher paying job in a city? It would have taken a really weird sort of person. I think they had, like, three applicants. Two of which turned out to have recently been involved in fraud, and only applied as a means to get out of the cities for a bit."

The attack petered out as elves ran out of arrows, mana or sanity.

"Finally," muttered Fleta, in a very undiplomatic tone of voice. "If you're done, can we talk now? Sorry for invading, but we want to discuss the loss of the eastern source-light and the deaths of Illumis, Kakkerxat and Murill with your elders."

The elves looked at each other uncertainly. One of their melee fighters took the opportunity caused by the distraction to get behind Lana and slit her throat. Or to attempt to slit her throat; all he actually achieved was to blunt his knife.

"Ow," said Lana, grabbing the elf by the wrist and squeezing. "That stung!"

The elf made some interesting noises as his flesh and shattered chunks of bone oozed between Lana's fingers. Then she added insult to injury by throwing up all over him. Having had zero combat experience, and little practice controlling her magically enhanced strength, she'd put considerably more pressure on the elf than intended, and had no psychological tolerance for the resulting mess.

"Okay, fine," said Fleta, drawing her daggers. "I'd intended to be as diplomatic about this as possible, but with the fate of the world at stake, if we need to fight our way through..."

"Wait!" shouted Greenhair, but Fleta didn't. A second later, she was back on her branch, while every elf on the assault squad found themselves missing their right arms above the elbow. The collection of thuds and splats as the elves who'd been relying on those arms to keep their grip on trees impacted the floor below was drowned out by the screaming of those that remained.

"Sorry, Greenhair, but that wasn't getting anywhere and I take attacks against my family seriously, no matter how unlikely to succeed. I'm sure you have decent healers available."

"Greenhair?" spat the guard leader, and if looks could kill, Fleta would have been a stain on the tree trunk. The name incensed him even more than having his arm sliced off. "How dare you call a noble elf by such a derogatory name?"

"Wait, we've been insulting you all this time?" Damien asked Greenhair, reasonably sure that Greenhair had been the one to introduce himself as such.

"It is a fitting name for one such as I," he answered.

Damien frowned as he worked that through. "You really need to cut out the self-deprecation. You are, right now, one of the most powerful people in the bowl. You could single-handedly crush this entire kingdom."

"Who are you?" screamed the leader, eyes darting around as he checked on his squad and other reinforcements available in the area, still making plans to attack the group.

The fight hadn't gone unnoticed, and those reinforcements included another two full squads of twenty men each. Lightning flashed, shards of ice flew through the air, arrows whistled, Fleta sighed.

"You know," said Damien, turning to Greenhair again, "I've always found it odd how accepting you were that your own people banished you, but could it be that all elves are suicidal?"

"Not at all," Greenhair answered, looking offended. "We simply have a strong sense of duty. No guard of this city would surrender and let an intruder waltz in, no matter how large the power gap."

Damien still failed to understand the mindset. What was the point in dying to an invader that you had no chance of beating? If it was a fight to buy time, then maybe it could be worth it, but against Fleta even buying time was impossible. They would be better off fleeing, surviving to take revenge another day. Perhaps he couldn't look at it objectively, knowing that they weren't actually there to kill anyone or cause damage. If he was the one guarding against an opponent he thought was going to slaughter everyone in the city, running away would be harder, even if he knew he would die uselessly.

Fleta blurred again, and the barrage stopped. Elves fell from the treetops with expressions of confusion on their faces, with no idea what had just happened. They tried to stop themselves falling, only to find limbs wouldn't respond. Their level-enhanced vitality prevented the falls from being fatal, but without the aid of a healer, none of them had the capability to stand, Fleta having severed the tendons in their arms and legs.

"Okay, that's their duty fulfilled, and none of them are dead. Everyone happy now?" asked Fleta.

"... I squeezed his wrist and it exploded," mumbled Lana.

"Everyone except Lana, I think," answered Damien.

"Hmm? No, I'm fine. It's just... I mean... Wow!"

Lana's face sprouted a rather scary grin, causing Damien to edge away slightly.

"That tree is the home of those we seek," said Greenhair, pointing at one of the larger lehibes.

Lana, filled with the enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered her power, bounded towards it and scrambled up the side, effortlessly leaping between handholds.

"The entrance is at ground level!" called up Greenhair to her receding figure.

"Oh."