Relentless Potential (Original Fantasy)

A/N: Surprise Eloise POV!

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Eloise was a fool! She was the biggest fool that had ever lived! She'd kissed him! Why had she kissed him?! Face aflame and heart in her throat, the brunette swiftly makes her way to her father's room and closes the door behind her before putting her back against it.

Then, she tries her best to calm her racing heart, breathing in and out slowly as she blinks the tears threatening to form in her eyes away. Eloise doesn't even know why she's about to cry! It had been a great day! She quite literally had no complaints!

But perhaps that was part of it. When had she last had a day as good as today? A day where she was cared for and protected in such a meaningful way? When had she last spent so many hours in the company of one person who seemed to actually care about her… and who could carry a conversation and actually share the moment with her?

A surge of guilt wells up in Eloise's chest and she hurries her way over to her father's side. He lays there on the bed just where she'd left him, barely breathing let alone conscious. Kneeling at the side of the bed, Eloise takes one of his frail hands in her own, interlacing his fingers with hers and swallowing around the lump in her throat.

"… H-Hi dad…"

There's no response of course. Her father is maybe coherent for a few minutes each day at this point. The Rot Lung has set in deep and as it gets further along, it accelerates. He probably doesn't have much longer now… mere months at most.

She reaches over for a nearby basin of clean water and wets a sponge before bringing it to her father's lips to get some moisture down his throat. His body, as damaged and failing as it is, still goes through the motions, his cracked lips sucking up the small amounts of moisture from the sponge again and again as she goes back and forth between the basin and his face.

At the same time… Eloise begins to talk.

"Today was a good day, father. We finally… we finally have a fresh supply of Rot Lung Preventative now. More doses than Last Hope has seen in years…"

She goes on to explain how that was possible. Truth be told, the troubles that the small border town faced hadn't started with her father catching Rot Lung and falling this ill… no, they'd started when no one in either her generation nor the generation after had happened to gain the Gift of Alchemy.

That was the Gift that Apothecary Arnold had, the Gift that was perhaps one of the most crucial Gifts for the town of Last Hope. Unfortunately, Arnold had never married and never reproduced. He had no children to inherit his Gift directly.

There were ways around that, of course. Some children were late bloomers, gaining Gifts after the age of ten rather than at the time of birth. These children could have their Gifts influenced by those around them, not just by their parents.

Every child that Last Hope had produced who didn't have a Gift from birth had been sent to apprentice with Apothecary Arnold over the past couple of decades. But not a single one of them had gained the Gift of Alchemy. And Apothecary Arnold had just gotten older and older, until they were stuck with the problem they had today.

To be fair, it wasn't as though the problem was solved by what Thomas… err, by what Lord Marlow was doing either. As much as Eloise appreciated his actions, they were still going to be stuck without a proper Apothecary when Arnold finally passed. At which point, Last Hope would probably die out in another generation or two as it stopped being self-sufficient.

Because frankly, they didn't get much in the way of trade. They were a quite literal dead end on the far flung edge of the Kingdom. Nobody ever seriously wanted to venture into the Darkwoods or the Rotlands, and those were the only true geological features anywhere near the town.

Once upon a time, before the Rotlands crept in, Last Hope had a lot more room for expansion and growth… but ever since, even though they'd managed to hold the Rotlands at bay, there was no denying that they were penned in. Trapped, if you will… being squeezed like a vice.

All of this, Eloise knows full well. She knows her father is going to die. She knows Apothecary Arnold probably only has another ten or twenty years at most in him as well. She knows Last Hope won't last long without the man either.

What she doesn't know… is why she kissed Lord Marlow?! That was just so… stupid of her! It didn't matter how nice he was! It didn't matter how kind he'd been to her, or even if he might have f-feelings for her! What mattered was that he was a noble and she was a commoner. Even if she was the daughter of a Mayor, that still didn't put her anywhere close to his level!

Of course… Thomas didn't really act like much of a noble. He'd shown up looking like one, but in days he'd dropped all of that and just… thrown himself into doing whatever he was told. Even a month later, Eloise didn't know how to explain it. Only that… it made her feel warm inside, to see him helping like he was.

There was what he'd told her though, that first day he'd arrived. How he was banished from the Capital by his family. How he'd been accused of crimes he didn't commit and was sent to Last Hope as a punishment, exiled to the ass end of nowhere so that they no longer had to deal with him.

Maybe that was why he didn't see himself as much of a noble. Because the other nobles had… discarded him or something. Either way, Eloise had to admit… she liked Lord Thomas Marlow. She liked him a lot.

Dame Camilla on the other hand, now she left something to be desired. Even if she did cut down those goblins in just a few seconds a while back, even if she'd helped Thomas by taking him into the Darkwoods so he could gather ingredients for Arnold… Eloise still didn't like her. She didn't like how Camilla treated Thomas, like he was more of a prisoner and she his warden, rather than him being her Lord and she his Knight.

It wasn't right… but it also wasn't Eloise's place to comment on such things. Both the Lord and his Knight were so far above her it wasn't even funny, so all she could do was keep her mouth shut whenever she saw Thomas limping back in from his early morning training sessions with Camilla, or when she saw Camilla scowling and watching Thomas closely when the female Knight thought nobody was looking.

… Somebody was always looking in Last Hope. They looked out for their own here, and while Camilla was still an outsider, a Knight from the Capital… Thomas was different. It might only have been a month, but he'd become one of them. He'd inserted himself into their lives and helped them all in ways that as a noble, he was not expected to. He… he was something special.

Maybe that was why Eloise had kissed him against all common sense. Maybe that was why she wanted to do it again even now, despite knowing how bad of an idea it would be. She'd only kissed him on the cheek, to be fair… and yet, she found herself imagining for a moment what his lips might taste of instead…

No. No, she couldn't let herself go down this path. Shuddering, Eloise pulls away from her father's bedside, putting the sponge and basin back in their spots. She leaves the room, one last glance back before she departs, and makes her way to her father's study instead.

Arriving there, she closes and locks the door securely behind her before heading to her father's desk… her desk in truth at this point, at least these past seven months anyways.

Last Hope might be small, and it might be in trouble… but a Mayor's work was never done. She'd thought with the arrival of a Noble Lord that she and her father would be out on their ass by the end of the day, and Eloise had even made arrangements with Beatrice to move herself and her father into the Blacksmith's House… but that hadn't proved necessary.

In fact, the exact opposite of what she'd expected had occurred instead. Thomas was insistent that she continue to take on her father's duties. He seemed convinced she would do a better job than him as Mayor, real or otherwise, of Last Hope. And so far he'd done everything in his power to help her rather than try to tear her down.

If only he knew the truth… if only he knew...

"Hello again, darling~"

Eloise freezes as the slightly muffled voice comes from behind her. A slight weight on the back of her father's chair lets her know someone has placed a hand on it. No blade comes for her neck, but she still stays absolutely still, even as the owner of the voice and hand makes themselves further known by stepping out from behind her and into her line of sight.

The owner is dressed in black leathers that almost seem to pull in shadows and snuff out light. She's wearing a mask that covers the top of the head and the bottom of the face and only shows the eyes while letting long knife-like ears poke out the sides. A woman all in black… but not a human woman.

No, the color of the skin around her glowing red eyes as well as her ears marks her for what she really is… a Dark Elf.

"Miss me, sweetheart?"

Eloise shudders as she tries (and no doubt fails) to keep the fear off of her face. She always feels like a mouse caught in a trap during these interactions… and each and every time she comes away wondering how she managed to survive.

Still, after a moment she manages to bite out a response.

"What… w-what do you want?"

The Dark Elf tilts her head to the side, glowing eyes menacing as ever as they take Eloise in.

"What do I want? Darling, we both know why I'm here. It's the same reason I've visited you the past two times. Tribute."

Tribute. That word… Eloise has come to really hate that damn word. It all started a month after her father had become fully bedridden. A month into her trying to keep Last Hope together and barely managing to hold on.

This one, this Dark Elf… had shown up then just like she was showing up now, appearing in this very room while Eloise was sat at this very desk trying to make sense of her father's records so she could figure out what needed to be done. And… she'd threatened her, plain and simple.

The Dark Elf had never given Eloise a name… in her head, she always refers to the other woman as 'Shadow' because that's what she is. She's a Shadow, moving through the dark like she was born to it, never appearing to anyone else, never getting caught.

Apparently, Shadow and Eloise's father had an arrangement that Eloise didn't know about. Her dad had been paying Shadow and her Dark Elf Gang for protection from the more menacing parts of the Darkwood for years. It was less protection and more extortion though in Eloise's humble opinion.

Shadow claimed that she and her gang kept the greater monsters, the ones capable of wiping Last Hope off the map in a night, from savaging the town. They 'protected' Last Hope from these creatures, making sure that only weak things like goblins or wolves or spiders managed to creep out and menace the town.

Never mind that those 'weak' monsters could still injure or kill a citizen of Last Hope if the townsfolk weren't careful. They were 'beneath' Shadow and her gang's notice, supposedly, so even though Last Hope paid for protection, they couldn't be relied on for such… basic threats.

Yeah, that sounded like bullshit to Eloise… but she also knew that it didn't really matter if Shadow and her gang were protecting Last Hope or not. Everyone knew the stories about Dark Elves and how powerful they were, after all. They were immortal, living for hundreds if not thousands of years and gaining more and more power through their Gifts in all that time.

Even if Shadow and her gang were doing absolutely nothing at all, paying them off so they kept doing nothing and didn't start doing something (like wiping out the entire town in a night themselves) was worth it.

But…

"I… I'm not in charge of the town anymore, I'm afraid. Neither is my father. They sent a Lord from the Capital to take over a month ago. And he has a Knight with him… a very powerful Knight."

This might be it. This might be their chance to be free. Eloise keeps the hope out of her voice though, her eyes downcast as she delivers the 'bad news' to the Dark Elf looming over her.

"I don't know that it's safe for you to come here anymore… the eyes of the Capital have turned upon our town. If anything were to happen… more Knights and nobility might come along. And I don't think either of us want that…"

She tries to be as nonthreatening as possible. She's trying to make it clear she's neither boasting nor gloating…

Alas, that doesn't stop Shadow from grabbing her by her hair and yanking her head back. Once again, Eloise almost expects to feel a cold blade kiss her throat but that doesn't happen. Instead, Shadow just stares down at her… and chuckles.

"You're cute, sweetie. But if you really think I didn't already know about the Lordling and his minder, you're more foolish than I thought."

What?

"Did you honestly believe that I would walk into your quaint little town without being up to date on current events? Did you think I wouldn't have done my research? Tsk, tsk, darling. You need to keep up."

No…

"And really… trying to hide the fact that the Lordling has kept you in charge around here? From me? I'll give you some credit for trying to run a scam on me of all people, but still… for shame."

She… she hadn't…

"Don't worry though, sweetheart. You and I are still a team, alright? I won't take it personally… this time. After all, there are still things I want from you. And not just tribute either. No, I want information. I want to know everything you know about the Lordling and his minder."

Well. Shit.

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A/N: Dun dun duuuuuun!

Please let me know what you think! Your feedback, suggestions, and ideas for this story are keeping the inspiration flowing in a big way!

Plug: There will always be FIFTEEN (15) Bonus Chapters of this story to read over on my Patreon!

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https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/157707/relentless-potential-original-fantasy