A warm summer breeze, carrying the faint taste of seasalt, flew through the streets of Havreclair, reminding the citizens of simpler times. Times in which tensions, both in and outside the Nine Kingdoms, weren’t this high and the threat of war didn’t loom deeper every day. It was a busy day in the port city, with sailors and travellers buzzing about, either boarding their ships or disembarking from them, as they had just arrived. Residents of the city were bustling through the various shops, haggling for better prices for the goods they were purchasing. Many children played in the streets or in the gardens adjacent to their homes, letting their imaginations run wild with whatever topic they found intriguing at the time. Whilst most of her peers were busying themselves, competing to see who was the best at ‘play pretend’, one of the children had found something most unusual and was too curious to let that slide. Ria wasn’t an ordinary child, by all measures—she was more intelligent than the vast majority of her friends, noticed things out of the ordinary quicker than most, and had a tendency to stick her nose deep into things that were in no way her business. She had gone to the old and abandoned warehouse she and her friends frequented as their ‘base of operations’, as Piérre put it, to find anything to quell her boredom, but instead she was met with a multitude of unusual things, making her wonder what was going on. Shortly after opening the old doors of the by-now ancient-looking house and putting down the food basket she had brought alongside her, she noticed the state of disarray everything seemed to be in. A few of the glass bottles they had stored in a drawer were emptied and lay carelessly strewn beside it, as if all gulped down by a man who had wandered through a vast desert and almost died of thirst. A great many cupboards and drawers were left wide open, as if searched in frantic haste, though she couldn’t tell for what purpose, since no one in her friend group had ever used them often, much less for anything important. Ria wasn’t unaccustomed to being the tidiest member of their little mischievous band of misfits, far from it in fact, though she had to admit that it didn’t usually reach this level of disaster.

“Weird, they aren’t normally this lazy,” she mumbled to herself while trying her best to somewhat clean up the mess.

It was then that she realised another thing that felt unusual, even more so than the rest of her findings. The sensation she had started to feel in her skull when she had gotten closer to the warehouse and dismissed as a headache at the time had grown into something else. Now it was akin to a faint heartbeat, prodding insistently at her mind. It didn’t take very long for her to realise that the closer she got to the stairs leading to the entrance to the cellar of the building, the slightly unpleasant feeling grew undoubtedly stronger with each step, if only increasing lightly. She halted shortly before the door in confusion. They had always kept it slightly ajar, never closing it fully, as Piérre was afraid of them getting accidentally trapped down there. It was shut now, and the stone which they had used as a failsafe to not lock themselves in, out of sheer stupidity, was kicked carelessly into a corner. When Ria stepped onto a creaking step, the wood protesting under the newly added weight, she could have sworn she had heard a faint yet frantic rustle coming from behind the heavy oak door. She wasn’t afraid of whatever hid down there – it wouldn’t have been the first time a stray cat or another animal got lost in the warehouse and had to be rescued, after all. Only last week, Angeline had saved a little bird that had found its way in through a window but somehow could not get out again. She pushed the door open slowly; the hinges were creaking, as they were probably older than her whole friend group together. At a first glance, nothing seemed different than usual: old storage boxes stacked messily in one corner and shelves that had accumulated enough dust to smother the whole kingdom in the other. But for a singular moment she could have sworn she had heard quiet footsteps distancing themselves further.

“Hello?… Someone there?” Ria asked tentatively into the void.

Only silence greeted the girl, but she was certain that her senses didn’t betray her, and so she ventured deeper into the old cellar. Every step she took further, the incessant prodding at her mind strengthened in turn, as if trying to assure her she was going down the right path. Ria was buzzing with excitement by now, already trying to guess which of her friends was down there, trying to break her perfect streak in ‘hide and seek’. She had a knack for finding people who tried to hide from her – much to the chagrin of her mates, who always insisted she had cheated when they were inevitably found. She had reached the last few metres of the room when she spotted a shape peeking out from behind another shelf used as a cover. What she had found looked like the outline of a worn-down boot, protruding out from its hiding place. Whoever wanted to best her was seemingly unaware that they had planted their foot square outside any semblance of cover, making her momentarily suspicious, as her friends—even if they weren’t good at hiding—were not usually quite this bad. She spent all of maybe ten seconds deciding on how she should confront the person standing at the far end of the room before settling on the most direct approach she could muster.

“You know I can see you standing there, right?”

An older, almost elderly male voice rasped a sigh, sounding utterly defeated. It took Ria only a few seconds before she realised that this individual was indeed not someone from her friend group, as she had predicted, but rather someone completely unfamiliar.

The man muttered something quickly under his breath, not letting the girl catch what he said. A few moments passed before the man spoke again, this time louder and clearer.

“Alright, I’m coming out now. I beg of you to stay calm.”

His accent sounded foreign, unlike any Ria had ever heard before, not even from one of the countless sailors who passed daily through her hometown. Before she could think about what exactly he had meant, the old man stepped into her sight, hands raised in the air. Her breath hitched. Saying he looked different would have been the understatement of the century. Which in itself already said a lot, as living in a port town like Havreclair her whole life, she was very used to seeing people of all shapes and sizes. He had a complexion that was almost as dark as Angeline’s, though not quite. His hair was long and of a silver colour, braided into plaits. Hazelnut and weary eyes locked their gaze on her, obvious fatigue mixing with the surprise of seeing such a young child in a random cellar he had, rightly, assumed abandoned. But what grabbed her attention the most were his ears – they were elongated, sharp and long, inhuman. When he noticed her blatant staring at them, he tried to cover them up, but it was of no use, as she had already seen what she needed to to identify him as an elf. The man mentally prepared himself for what was to come, already dreading what was bound to happen next. He could never have predicted what happened next. “You look weird,” Ria told him blatantly. The elf’s shoulders slumped as total confusion set in. He had expected anger, fear or hatred – not a remark about his looks being ‘off’.

“Hey, what’s your name, little one?” He asked gently, trying to appear calm and collected, although his fidgeting hands betrayed his nervousness.

“Ria,” she quipped almost instantly. “What’s yours?”

“My name is Drisseridon,” he answered her. “Drissi – what now?”

In his growing irritation, he was on the verge of repeating how to pronounce his name correctly but then ultimately decided against it, as there were far more pressing concerns. The elf was getting more and more distressed as he evaluated all of his options, though one thing was clear to him almost instantaneously. However he would choose to proceed from here, he couldn’t bring himself to harm an innocent child, even if it was one of theirs.

“Listen, Ria. I’m not here to cause any trouble, alright? Merely trying to make ends meet.”

He was in the midst of coming up with a more dignified explanation for his existence in the cellar than having broken in when his belly rumbled, painfully drawn out and loud.

“Are you hungry, Drissdi?” He slowly nodded once. “I haven’t eaten in five days,” he admitted quietly.

Ria couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew just how miserable and grumpy she got when she didn’t eat for a day and could, despite her best efforts, not imagine what that would even look like when the duration extended to multiple days. After contemplating for a few seconds, she simply turned on her heels and started walking towards the end of the room she had come from. Drisseridon, now confused beyond all measure by her sudden departure, asked where she was going. The girl, already climbing the first flight of stairs, stopped and glanced back briefly to answer him.

“I brought food! I’ll go and get it!”

The elf was rendered speechless for a few moments by this kind act of benevolence; he had seen only hatred and anger directed at him in these lands – never anything even remotely comparable to this.

“Thank you, child.”

Ria only smiled at him in return and left afterward.

They spent the whole of the afternoon sitting together, sharing the abundance of fruit Ria had brought with her, and discussed a wide range of topics, including how Drisseridon ended up in the cellar and whether she enjoyed living on the western coast.

What had to happen eventually did, and so with the sun setting slowly, the time to say their goodbyes came, which the elder used to once again express his gratitude for her actions.

“It was really no problem, Drissi,” she laughed earnestly. “I like helping people!”

That hit the mark harder than expected. People. Not monster, not fiend. How long it had been since he hadn’t been classed as something other, something lesser. Seeing this little child help him the moment she learnt he was in need, without expecting anything in return whatsoever, warmed his heart and gave him hope. Maybe this generation would succeed where his had failed so miserably and would finally bring peace for all. He smiled fondly at her.

“And thank the light you do. Run along now, dear. I’m sure your mother must be distressed about you by now.”

Shortly after Ria had left, Drisseridon collapsed against the wall, the day’s stress and his aching leg catching up and almost overwhelming him.

“Light preserves us. Thank you for sending me that child.”

He rested for maybe an hour before, for the second time that day, he heard a sound coming from the stairs. At first he thought Ria had returned, but the hushed whispers behind the door soon told him differently. Whoever was beyond that door was decidedly not friendly. He drew the knife he had stolen a few days ago, after he had lost his weapon while being chased by his pursuers, ready to defend himself with the little strength he had left. Drisseridon pressed himself into the far wall of the room, praying it would be enough to conceal him. The door was broken open, and he heard several armoured footsteps descend the stairs. They belonged most likely to the City Guard, he guessed, and there were a lot of them. The elven man heard five pairs of boots that stood out from one another. From this he wouldn’t be walking away. When he realised that he most likely wouldn't be able to step away from this confrontation, Drisseridon made his decision. He was done running. He would stand his ground, one last time. He’d fight to his last breath if he had to and take as many as possible of them down along with him in the process. He stepped out of the shade he was hiding in and buried his knife deep in the weak point of the armour of the human soldier who was closest to him, puncturing the leather that protected his neck. The body collapsed to the ground with a sickening thud, alerting the others. The second human tried to strike him with his sword, but Drisseridon parried it with ease, using the gained momentum to spin out of reach of the third soldier’s blade that was aimed at his head. For anyone less involved in the deadly fight, his elven grace might have deceived them into thinking his moves a masterful dance, but it wasn’t. This was pure survival, honed by decades of training and determination. Yet, his technique was flawed. He was too focused on the men directly in front of and beside him to notice another at the far end of the room, aiming at him with his crossbow. The bolt whizzed through the air and struck true. In an instant, Drisseridon got pinned to the wall behind him; the bolt lodged in his right shoulder. He screamed in pain, and the jolt made him lose his grip on his weapon, which clattered loudly to the ground. He only barely registered the triumphant voice yelling gruffly at his comrades.

“Ha! Got the bastard!”

Drisserdion tried to free himself while the soldiers closed in, though it was no use – the bolt was too deep, and he didn’t have enough strength left to fight on. His shoulder slumped in defeat as the humans prepared to haul him off, to where he wasn’t sure. One of the soldiers, speaking with the unmistakable authority of a leader, ordered, “You two, take the elf to the interrogation room in our station, and Lamar will clean up here.”

The others didn’t argue and went to work, even if Lamar didn’t seem too pleased by the prospect of having to pick up the remains of his former colleague. It was barely 15 minutes later, and only a few streets away, when the captain had found the address that had been given to one of his men. After he had looked at the name of the family that was carved on a wooden sign bolted to the wall of the house, he knocked on the door. A woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, with short auburn curls, opened the door for him shortly after.

“Bonne soirée, Madame Ivoria, I am Capitaine Armand Vedrine of the City Guard. I believe you were the one who visited our post earlier this afternoon. The woman nodded once. “Yes, it was, sir. Please come in.” He noted her foreign accent immediately but couldn’t quite place it. Entriosi, perhaps?

“And please, Captain, call me Elena.” After he entered her home, she led him into the kitchen. He declined the seat he was offered, electing to stand rather than sitting down.

“I fear there is no easy way to say this, Elena, but we found an elf in the warehouse you wanted us to search.” Elena froze. “An elf? A r…real elf? Right beneath our noses?”

Elena's thoughts raced through her mind. How could this be? She had feared that her daughter had almost been taken by a depraved, perverted soul when she talked with Ria about her outing and mentioned the "kind man in the cellar". The man nodded slowly, not quite believing it himself. “Don’t worry, he’s in custody now. Have you spoken with your daughter about the encounter? If she experienced anything unusual, it would be best to tell me.”

She hesitated for a moment, considering what to tell the officer. “She said something about feeling this odd sensation when she went down to the cellar. Something about a headache getting worse the closer she got to him.”

Armand thought for a long moment about what she told him, then nodded to himself once before continuing their conversation. “Your daughter is very brave and has a special gift, Elena. You should be proud; she saved many lives today.”

Vedrine took out a small piece of paper and scribbled his name and his personal recommendation on it before handing it over to her. “Here, take this. If the day ever comes when your daughter wants to do important work, give it to her. I hear the king is looking for people with her kind of talent to recruit to ensure our people's safety. They will soon present a new organisation to the public. Your daughter could go far; I’m sure of it.”

Elena blinked once, stunned by what the man had said.

“My dear Ria, out there protecting the innocent?”

A tidal wave of pride surged through her at the thought of her little angel saving lives.

“Thank you, Captain. I’ll keep it safe should she be interested when she gets older,” Elena smiled warmly. “That’s all I’m asking. We could use someone with her talents.”

The Capitaine wasn’t much longer in the Ivoria household, quickly taking his leave after he had no more questions for the woman in order to return to the city guard post, where he was sure the elf was already being questioned by his men.

The next day, the masked man would arrive at the station, take control of the interrogation after presenting his authorisation from the capital, and then start questioning the uncooperative elf. Vedrine would be troubled and scarred for the rest of his life by the horrific, gruesome outcomes of his labour.