We sit in an Inn that's also a restaurant on the first floor.
Sply had ordered a plate for me since I was unsure of the foods that were good and which weren't but in reality it was because I couldn't get my mind off of those Elves.
"Why…?"
Sply looks at me.
"Because they are Elves."
Our voices are low, not a lot of people happen to be at the restaurant during this time of day.
My bow and bag are right beside me at the corner of our table.
"And?"
"Lazuli… Elves are seen as blood drinking monsters."
"What?"
I ask her.
"Steel hasn't told you this?"
I shake my head.
"I'm not sure I was ever told."
"Well that's true. They have had that reputation forever, and if you even try to argue that, that isn't true…"
She pauses a waitress, young, brunette and with a giant smile. Comes up to us with two plates of food.
Rice, an amazing brown sauce, that faintly resembles curry sauce and chunks of meats mixed into the sauce.
"Thank you."
I tell the waitress, before she walks away from us, with a great smile on her face that she flashes to us.
Sply stores the food with the spoon that was provided to us when we arrived.
"… you'll end up dead."
"What?"
"Yeah."
She takes another bite of her food, mixing the curry and meat with rice as she eats.
"There's only one thing…"
She swallows her food.
"One thing that they hate more than the existence of Elves… humans or beastmen that like Elves."
"What does that mean?"
She takes another bite of her food.
"You should eat before the food grows cold."
She says, as if that's what I asked her about.
But, Sply has been the one person that it's better to take her up on her advice then to not.
Looking down at my food and in the current moment, my stomach feels very hungry, the smell of the curry looking food runs through my nose and activates something to make me hungry.
Mixing the food together, I take a bite and it does taste good, and it feels nice to taste something good.
For the moment, now that I'm feeling hungry, I stop asking questions and slowly eat my food, leaving us in a quiet spot of silence as we finish our food.
Soly takes out a pouch of coin, pays and pays for the meal.
"Follow me."
Grabbing my pack and my bow, as Soly gets up to go to the front of the place.
I jog after her.
"A room, with two beds."
Sply demands, to a guy that is very friendly looking, that has a good ole' smile and a western accent.
"How long you an' your boy planning to's tay?"
His voice is very kindly asking.
"How dangerous would you say the Soul Cave in this area is usually for others?"
Soly asks in her calm, nonchalant way.
"Ooo, you one o' them, hun'ter fellows?"
Soly nodded in response.
"Well, if yall need to know, they are usually easy to deal with, 'specially once you get the go 'head from the hunter association…"
He chuckles once.
"They be giving out free Cave entry passes."
He looks down to me now.
"You a hun'er to boy?"
"I'm not su…"
"He'll be one soon. Just need to sign him up."
Soly says, stopping me from finishing my sentence.
"Well, go do gud, in hun'in those damn Elves."
"I think three nights?"
"That'll be fifteen coin."
Splay reaches into her pouch and pulls out fifteen coins putting them all on the counter between them, then gives her pouch a good shake to see if she still has more and it rattles, a lot.
Soly receives a key from the man.
"Enjoy y'all's 'tay."
He says to us, as we go to the side of the building with a staircase leading upstairs and into a hallway with a large amount of rooms up top.
We both continue going.
Following the hallway to get to the end of the hall and take a right turn, and as soon as we take that right turn, is our room, as known by the fact that Soly opens the door and we enter the room.
Sply holds the door open for me.
I enter before her, admiring the majority of the room.
Before hearing the voices of the slaves that aren't that far from this place.
The window lets wind fly through and makes a small whistling sound, that actually sounds nice.
Soly goes to the bed near the door and lays there.
I drop my bag on the ground near the bed and softly put my bow on top of my bag.
Before going in between the beds and sitting to face Sply, who's just laid a bit in bed.
"Why would the people here hate us more that elves?"
She sighs at those words.
"Because Lazuli. They are assholes. They can't imagine a world where elves don't exist for them to make them work day and night."
"But why."
"Lazuli. I can't give you all the answers in the universe…"
She says, her voice turning a tad sour from all the nonsensical stuff I've been asking.
"But I will say this, before meeting both you and your sister, I was on their side, now after getting to see that Marcilene, didn't drink your blood, nor Steel's, I'll say that some of them don't deserve this treatment."
"But…"
Sply gets up and shushes me.
"We have to leave. Need to get your hunters license and then our Cave passes."
Sply says as she towers over me a slight amount.
Standing up, I head to my bag, grab my pouch of coin, strap them to my hip.
And follow Soly as she walks back outside with me in tow.
Downstairs, through the restaurant and out the front door of the place as some people begin to come and go as they enjoy the place.
Following behind Sply, I take in the western style of the place, along with the people that wear their clothes in the same way, woman walking in nice and easy dresses and men in high boots, big hats and vests that cover just enough of their clothes to be it stylish.
Following signs and the provided pathways on the roads, with a few struggles on the road we manage.
Sply and I make our way to a hunters association.
A big place with many people coming in and out of the place with different sets of armor and weapons, not usually keeping in style with the people that are in this town.
The place is big enough to be considered a motel, if people ever wanted to call it that.
A dirt pathway proved until the front of the entrance, where a stone pathway is provided to stop the tracking of massive dirt at the entrance of the place.
Making our way past people leaving the place Sply and I enter and see the spacious room on the inside, that Sply just ignores, but I take in while following her.
Many lines to people in the place, some have people carrying heavy bags of something, with a trail of blood following behind that person.
A janitor, that looks to be a small gray haired cat, grabs a mop and mops up the mess.
Lines and lines of people wanting to get to a reception desk to talk about something.
A giant board, with a sign above that, that reads: Help Requests.
Many people conversing, and laughing at tables full of people, with giant maps and pencils to mark places.
Some even talking to give much advice to the people that are in these big groups of people to make sure that they don't get hurt.
I'm stuck in awe of the place as I've never been to these types of places, with the ever present amount of people.
"Lazuli! Stay close."
I jog to get closer to Sply, not knowing that I've spread the distance between us.
"Sorry."
She ignores that.
We end up going to one of the places that have a receptionist behind a barred desk, with a bell just in reach of the opening between the desk and bars.
We stop in the front with a young looking receptionist, that still follows the same western standards here.
She smiles at us.
"What can we do for you today?"
She says to us, her voice light, with much happiness in it.
"Hunters license and Cave entry."
"Oh, well, Cave Entry isn't the one you can do here, but a hunters license is possible."
She pauses as she reaches to her side, pulling a large folder of something and snapping it open, then beginning to write inside of the folder with a pencil that looks very, very different from mine that is currently in my bag, back out our place.
"Him."
She points to me.
The receptionist looks to me and smiles.
"Well, what a young adult."
She says her tone bright, with happiness in it.
"Yup."
She pauses.
"Okay, so Name and Age."
"Lazuli, and I'm Nine."
"Okay."
She begins to write in the folder and stops and slams the folder shut putting the pencil down beside it.
I hop up at surprise of the slamming book.
"So, what will it be. A bracelet, necklace or ring?"
The receptionist asks.
"Sorry?"
"He'll get a bracelet."
Soly answers for me.
"Sorry?"
Before I know it a brown metal, forms appears on the surface of the desk in front of me and stays there, forming slowly into a bracket.
The bracelet has a very light brown shine to it.
"There you go, your hunters license. Ready for retrieval."
Sply grabs it and holds it to my chest.
I grab it and slide my hand in through the hole.
The metal lining has a part where I can tighten it and so I do.
Sply continues around the place and finds a line, that reaches from here to the furthest pits of hell.
Above that line is a sign that reads: Cave Entries
"So long."
Sply groans.
"Okay. Lazuli. Explore the place. You should be fine. And I know you'll be fine because if you don't end up fine, you'll end up hurt. And I can't let that happen."
Sply says.
"I'm going to wait in this line and get a Cave entry pass for us."
She says, and without hesitation she goes to the line, most likely to get there before the line turns into a bigger line.
With hesitation in my step, I begin my journey to go outside.
"Did you hear about the Help needed? An Elf slave got free from her masters."
"The Cave in this place is so easy, but the line to get a cave entry is so long."
Many people talk amongst them.
"Dude, do you see that receptionist? She's hot."
Their conversations useless.
"The caves are easy, but further down you get the more dangerous, we don't plan to go any deeper than halfway."
Other important.
Walking out of the place, with a sense of lost.
I look back to the inn, that both Sply and I had been planning to stay at for the duration of the stay. It's a good distance away, then I look infront of me.
A large town infront of me that has maybe many of things for me to look through and understand about the place that I'm currently at.
'It could be fun..?'
My heart wobbles a bit at the thought of going alone on my adventure for a bit.
In a town that I don't really understand.
'It could be fun?'
The thought pops into my mind as I say that gaining a small amount of confidence needed to be able to continue down back to the dirt pathway, from the cement flooring.
As I walk past building after building, the place just doesn't seem to end, until it does.
But I've only walked in a straight line, down this street, never even took a detour.
But what I saw was amazing amounts of places.
Shops that sell souvenir donkeys, small ones that could stick to my bag.
Another shop sold weapons, not just regular old weapons, but mint conditioned, shining pieces of equipment, that shows it's beautiful style by being shiny.
And like peanut butter to its jelly, there is a shop right across that sells armor.
Mimicking, it's friend on the other side of the dirt pathway. Shiny armors, helmets of different styles even some masks to hide your face.
If the armor isn't metal, it's a brown leather armor, that is hung loosely on the armor stand, but its color shows that it's well taken care of.
Shops that have food, and treats, even candies that I haven't had since I was in my other life…
'That was one of the good get aways from my mother and father.'
"Keep quiet girl."
Those are the words I hear as I slobber on my lips.
I look around and see that people don't hear it other than me.
'Did…? Did the candy just call me a girl?'
I look at the candy from the other side of the glass even harder.
"If you don't keep quiet, I'll bring you back to the elven farm."
I look around again.
Then take a few steps back.
'Even if that was candy it's very weird.'
I look around.
And I hear muffled screaming coming from around the corner of shop.
Turning the corner I see two big men, one with a knife, the other standing by the knife wielding man's side.
Below them is a small, weak looking woman, with skin covered in bruises and marks of blood, showing a point of which she was hit repeatedly with a sharp object.
Not only that, her ears, they are pointed, her long, brown hair is behind her ears making them being seen clear as day. She looks slumped, her eyes dead inside, like she knows the next thing that'll happen.
"Good, we're going to make this quick."
Both of them stifle a laugh.
Before I know it my body tenses.
I appear beside them and grab the knife first, then I shove the man, whose actually a teen about a few feet taller than me.
The other teen looks surprised at the development and stands there stunned.
I grab the elf and pull her behind me, stepping backwards slowly and putting distance between ourselves from them. The size difference between the both of us apparent, with how tall she is.
Holding the knife in my hand, I wave it in front of myself.
"Dude? What the hell?"
The teen that's on the ground says.
His hair white, skin tanned and an angry look on his face. The other teen helps him.
A dark skinned, blonde buzzed teen, with a nasty looking grin on his face.
"We'll share her."
The dark skinned one says.
'WHAT?'
My face looks at them in disbelief and disgust.
'This would have never slid back home.'
For a quick second I turn to fix her hair, blocking her ears as I push her back so we can create space, her face doesn't seem to change.
I hear footsteps running to me.
Then a roar as one of the guys gets closer.
My body tenses.
I move away and spin around the knife stabbing into a fist of the tanned one.
"Leave us alone."
I grab her hand and run.
As the tanned guy muffled a scream.
We run to the inn, following the street that me and Sply took prior to this. Many people look at the two of us, seeing not me majority of the time, but the girls, horribly beaten body.
Running and running, both the elf girl and I head right back to the inn. A wave from the same waitress, ignoring her, I run upstairs and head back to the room.
For a few seconds the eyes of the waitress and everyone else lingers on the two that entered the place, surprised to see a girl of her age covered in a mangled body.
The elven girls breath heavy and my mind running wild.
"Sply's going to kill me."
I say in a panic, closing the door behind us.
Turning around to check on the girl, she is sat on her knees.
"I'm sorry, sir. I'll promise to do what you ask. Please don't hurt me."
She begins to move her hair away from her face, then grabbing at her blouse.
"WHOA WHOA!? What are you doing?"
She looks at me.
"I plan to make it easier for you, now that you and I are in private."
"What?!"
She moves her hands away from her blouse, and bows down.
"I'm sooo sorry."
"I don't know why your apolozing."
My mind runs around in crazy horrible circles.
The door opens behind me, and I panic, running to grab at the door, but I'm too slow and it opens fully.
Sply stands there looking at the elven girl.
She looks between the both of us.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
"Gone for five minutes…"