V3Ch33-The City of Ancients
The high bronze gates swung open as the party moved close enough to enter.
Tybalt saw the ivory palace extending into the sky in the distance. Humbler and more common-looking but still elegant buildings rose in pleasant shades of blue, green, salmon, and lavender on both sides of the city’s central street.
“Welcome to the Nialf, the City of Ancients,” the herald announced in a grandiose tone.
The fake King turned back and looked at Tybalt and Dero with an arrogant smirk. “How does it compare with your experiences in, er, the Animal Kingdom?”
“Gaudy,” Dero replied with an indifferent shrug.
“The streets are oddly empty,” Tybalt observed. There was a small group of men and women huddled on one side of the path, but other than them, no one walked around outside.
“Unlike humans and beastfolk, the high elves do not strain nature’s bounty by overpopulation,” the false King said.
“I guess your situation up here is even worse than we’d guessed,” Dero muttered - almost, but not quite, under her breath.
“What was that?” the fake King snapped.
“Shut up,” Tybalt said calmly.
Everyone turned to stare at him.
But Tybalt’s eyes remained where they had been, on the small group of men and women huddled together at one side of the path into the city. They moved and spoke like the living. To almost anyone else, they would seem like a group of normal people going about their day - oddly dressed, perhaps, but ordinary enough.
Tybalt, however, could see that none of them gave off any life force.
If anything, what he felt was somehow the opposite of life force. A sort of hungry void.
Undead.
“What did you say?” the herald asked in a tone of disbelief.
“I guess we’re done playing games,” Dero said brightly. “So you can go and fuck yourself. Quietly please.”
He just stood and stared, while the others began to murmur things.
“The indignity…”
“How dare this little trollop…?”
“Some royal she turned out to be!”
“We’re going to go talk to the real King now,” Tybalt said with an air of assurance that he inflated to just above his true level of certainty.
“Which means we don’t want to hear any more from his jesters,” Dero added with a little wink.
They pressed forward into the city. The others stayed at the gate, as if still paralyzed - or perhaps forbidden by their master to do anything further now that they had been called out. Tybalt wondered what the High Elf King’s actual plan had been.
Dero grabbed his arm as they walked and rapidly traced a few words.
“I assume you’re sure?” her fingers said.
“That’s right,” he said. “But I need your help. You know what he looks like.”
She nodded. “Hard to believe a real ruler wanted to waste our time with a game like that.”
“He probably has his reasons, but we can’t afford to be too understanding. We have our own time limitations, even more than I realized before we arrived.”
Dero frowned. He still hadn’t found a good moment to tell her he was out of contact with his undead. It needed to happen soon, though, before she got them into a fight with the Royal Family that they couldn’t win without outside help.
He reached out and quickly traced a word on her forearm.
“Peace.”
Her frown deepened. She nodded but looked slightly troubled that he’d felt the need to emphasize that. She hadn’t actually started any fights yet, and Tybalt was normally one to happily rush into confrontations even where he wasn’t fully prepared.
He smiled faintly. She might figure out the situation on her own, before he could even find a private moment to explain it.
They reached the gaggle of gathered people, and it became obvious what they were - or rather, what they were all pretending to be.
“Alms? Alms?” asked one of the men without any apparent life force.
He turned to the two new arrivals, keeping his eyes downcast, as befit the lowly station he was pretending to inhabit. He held out a wooden cup. Much of his face was hidden behind the hood of his garment.
“Alms, strangers? For a poor beggar?”
“You’re no beggar,” Tybalt said, gritting his teeth. It was actually slightly offensive to him to see probable royalty playing at poverty.
A low effort disguise at that, he thought. Or a disguise by someone who’s out of touch with the concept of poverty. Then again, perhaps the high elves have no poor, and this was something they researched in a book.
The group wore ragged clothing, but the effect of the rags was spoiled by the fact that it was more strategically torn and deliberately, evenly worn down silks and dyed fabrics that only the wealthy could afford. They also didn’t have the smell of the street about them. Because that would require them to go more than a week without bathing.
“Alms, alm- what was that?”
“We’re not interested in being entertainment for bored royalty,” Dero said. “But I guess we might be able to spare some coin if you’re a real beggar. Why don’t you show us your best begging? Dance for us. Like you really mean it.” She gave the man a condescending smile.
“Milady, I don’t - wait.” The supposed beggar straightened his posture instantly and looked Dero in the eyes. Tybalt noted that the man’s eyes were alive with a certain eccentric intelligence.
“You just like dressing up as a beggar because you’re too wealthy to enjoy normal pleasures?” the dark elf asked. “Or is this you playing court jester?”
“Princess Dero,” the man said slowly, eyes still fixed on her face. “Is it truly you? You’re alive?”
“Happy to see me, old man?” Dero asked. Her tone was prickly, almost threatening. She turned and gave Tybalt a little nod. This was the real High Elf King.
“Shouldn’t you be calling her Queen Dero?” Tybalt asked.
“I don’t mind the sound of that,” the dark elf agreed, still smirking.
“You were never crowned,” pronounced a melodious female voice from off to the side.
Tybalt and Dero both shifted to look at one of the female ‘beggars’ who had turned to face them. Now the elf woman shielded the bottom half of her face with a silk fan as if she was too rich for them to look at her.
But Tybalt could see the amused eyes, the delicately maintained eyebrows, the silver-blonde hair, and an even paler complexion than the cream color that seemed to be characteristic of all the high elves.
“And how would a beggar know about that?” Dero asked. “Or are you done pretending?”
“Everyone knows the tragedy of the dark elves,” replied the real King from the other side. “Including beggars. That’s not a tell as to who we are… but yes, I think there’s no more point in playing dress-up.” He clapped his hands and raised his voice. “Everyone, please return to your normal clothing and behavior. Our guests figured it out, and we’re going to trust in their peaceful intentions.”
Everyone around them moved instantly to obey, forming a phalanx around the royals, Tybalt, and Dero. The King and Queen themselves threw their silken ‘rags’ onto the ground, revealing richer finery underneath than anyone around them was wearing. The King wore his hair as long as the Queen’s - to his shoulders - and had an intellectual look. He dressed all in black, with red rubies adorning his clothing at the chest and shoulders. The Queen wore white with blue gemstones in a pattern matching the King’s from the opposite end of the color spectrum. With her fan lowered, her features were beautiful but slightly cold, as if she wasn’t certain she was pleased that they had company.
At the same moment the King and Queen changed their look, the buildings Tybalt and Dero had passed to confront them, where they hadn’t seen anyone moving as they entered the city, suddenly began to bustle with activity. No one came outside, but people who had apparently been holding still within the buildings started to move again.
He… pulled the whole city into his game of pretend? Are they even living elves, in those buildings, or some sort of undead like this cadre of fake beggars?
Something felt a little bit too intense about this act.
But the necromancer didn’t feel the moment was right to ask questions. The high elves would have told them if they were willing to talk about whatever the true reason was in front of all these people.
Tybalt and Dero allowed the party to move in relative silence the rest of the way to the great ivory palace, though the necromancer could feel his fiancee suppressing her urge to say something the whole way.
She was going to be difficult to restrain on this trip. Assuming that restraint was even wise.
I guess it depends on how badly I need them to help me with these dragon negotiations… I don’t feel an exceptional level of power from them, but it’s hard to be sure.
Tybalt took the chance, as they neared the palace gates, of reaching out with his magic senses. With those combined with his necromancer powers, he imagined he might be able to tell what sort of undead these were. They might consider it an invasion of privacy. He thought of it as a logical precaution given that the elves had gone so far as to hide their ruler’s identity. He needed to know what he was dealing with, if possible.
But as he opened his senses a bit more than usual - grasping, with his necromantic power, at one of the entourage, since the King might be a bit more dangerous, and there were multiple undead here - the necromancer felt nothing.
Not the thread of undeath energy he usually sensed holding his own creations together.
Not the life force he would expect if he’d somehow been mistaken before and these people were all actually living.
Just a void.
What the fuck are you?
Tybalt noticed movement out of his peripheral vision. He turned, and found himself meeting the High Elf King’s gaze.
The two rulers exchanged cold smiles.
For just a moment, Tybalt thought he saw a flicker of something in the other man’s eyes. A trace of color. Red in his eyes?
Well, that would make a little more sense of the situation…
His mind went over the other clues he had observed, and then he decided he was certain enough.
He touched Dero’s arm, just briefly. Long enough to trace a single letter: “V.”
He felt her body shift slightly as she nodded. The dark elf didn’t seem particularly surprised. Perhaps she was covering it well, or maybe she had already had some inkling of what was going on. She had far more life experience than Tybalt, after all.
There was every probability that she’d tangled with a vampire before.
The royal escort swept them past the ivory gates and up to the great doorways of the palace.
“Please leave us alone with our guests for a time,” the King said to the entourage. Only his wife stood by his side, everyone else giving him, the Queen, Tybalt, and Dero a respectful distance. “We will ring for dinner in a few hours or so, but there are important matters of state that will not permit delays.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” echoed some of those gathered.
Others were already beginning to make themselves scarce, perhaps because they weren’t part of the household staff. The fake King stayed a little longer than the others and stepped in closer to Tybalt and Dero.
“I hope Your Majesty and Your Highness understand that I was humbly playing a role,” he said, all haughtiness gone.
“Yep,” Dero said, speaking before Tybalt could open his mouth. “Get lost now like the King said.” She sounded bored.
“Playing the role very unfaithfully, if you said anything to the Princess that you need to apologize for,” said the High Elf King with a withering look at his double.
“Your Maj—”
“We didn’t take his words seriously,” Tybalt said. “We figured out that he was playing a role quickly enough. So he couldn’t possibly have given any offense.”
The King raised an eyebrow. “You will have to let me know what gave it away. We are a bit wary of outsiders here at the moment.”
“At the moment?” Dero muttered under her breath. Tybalt could tell the King had caught it, but he just looked amused.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, my lord,” he said, ignoring her remark and looking right at Tybalt. As he spoke, the fake King slipped away. “Thank you for delivering the Princess to the land of her kin safely. It’s been so many years, and it is a joy to learn she did not perish with her family. Even if you hadn’t come to negotiate peace, I would grant you safe passage just for the gift of her return. I am the real King Colin of the House of Allium.” He waited for Tybalt to introduce himself.
“I am Tybalt of the House of Black, Beastking, ruler of the beastfolk, the undead, and all the residents of the Salt Waste.”
The necromancer looked right into the King’s eyes as he said “the undead,” and he saw what he wanted to see. The smallest flinch. It felt like a confirmation.
After a moment, the High Elf King dipped his head in the slightest gesture that might have been a bow if one chose to read it that way. Tybalt mirrored it as best he could, as he had when the fake King did exactly the same thing.
These elves are proud. I thought it was just a Dero thing.
“Let’s go inside,” said the High Elf Queen, narrowing her eyes at Tybalt.