You stare up at the hulking man in steel armour, with his face hidden from you under his helmet's visor that glints in the darkness as he looks down at you with his head tilted in confusion. He's still gripping the crossbow and a quiver of wickedly sharp bolts is hanging from one side of his belt while his longsword's sheath hangs from the other side. They look... painful.

"Well?" His voice rumbles from under his helmet. "Aren't you going to answer me? Why are you here?"

His words make you flinch. "Oh, um..."

Wait. Why is he asking you why you're here? Isn't it obvious you're hiding from the possibility of being killed like the snivelling coward you are?

What's he doing here?

You pull yourself to your full height with your quarterstaff, looking him in the eye-slits of his visor.

"I should be asking you that question, Alvar."

He lowers his crossbow. "Didn't you overhear that conversation I had with those paladins? I own this forest now."

You scoff. "I find that quite hard to believe."

"The paladins didn't!"

"The paladins realised they had better things to do than contend with some freak in armour claiming he bought a worthless forest so they could kill a few wolves. They didn't believe you either."

"Freak - ?" Alvar takes a step back from you and puts his free hand on his hip, looking truly ridiculous as he does so. "I am not a freak! And I don't remember you being so rude - "

"I don't remember you being so rich," you growl as you step forward. "And I think I'm allowed to be a little ruder now that I can be killed on sight. Now tell me what you're doing here or I'll - "

"What, you'll burn all my books?"

You take a step back, surprised by the quip, but you feel the rock you were previously hiding behind hit the back of your shoe and you lose balance - you yelp as you trip back over it and hit the dirt with a thud. Alvar starts laughing heartily and you grimace as you pull yourself back up.

"Oh, you're simply not in your prime!" He wheezes. "Hiding out here in outlawry has made you an unwise fool!"

"Yeah, well apparently buying a forest has turned you into a smartass," you shoot back. "Just tell me what you're really doing here."

"Well, I'm not lying when I say I bought this forest. Here," he says as he takes a folded piece of paper out of his armour, "I have the deed."

He unfolds it and waves it at you - sure enough, it's a declaration from the Crown granting Alvar Glengness full ownership of Rifan forest, signed by him and with the red wax seal of the Winged Lion of the House of Scoparius - it seems official and completely authentic, much to your surprise.

But that just raises even more questions.

You narrow your eyes at him. "Well, what are you doing with the forest? And how'd you buy it?"

He folds the deed back up and puts it away. "I've gotten something of a hefty inheritance from a rich relative of mine. As to why I bought it - EXP! I can grind up the dryads that live in the deeper parts quite easily."

"Easily? Dryads are extremely dangerous creatures for low-level adventurers such as yourself."

"Nothing a small fire can't fix! Burn a dryad's tree down and they go mad, don't they?"

"Do you know how fire-resistant a live tree is? You'd need more than just a small fire to burn one down, let alone multiple. And you can't make those fires easily."

Alvar suddenly goes very still, like a steel statue basking in the shadow of the forest canopy.

"Mm... indeed... I can't make those fires."

He slowly raises his crossbow back up, loading it as he does so, with the bolt's gleaming tip pointed straight at you. You feel yourself begin to sweat in dread as you stare it down.

"But you can, wizard outlaw. Burn them down for me, or I shall end you here."

You did not expect this. You had always thought of Alvar as just another bug for you to crush on your way to glory and power. You never expected that bug to have much in the way of bite, and yet here it is, pointing a weapon right at you. But that doesn't matter right now. You need to figure a way out of this situation.

You consider fighting him head-on for a second, but quickly dismiss the idea - you have no combat spells prepared while Alvar is strapped with ranged and melee weapons. Running away might be a good idea -

- it suits you well, coward -

- but Alvar's crossbow is trained on you right now and if you tried to run he'd instantly fire it. The same issue comes with using Expeditious Retreat - the moment you mutter the incantation he'll put a bolt through you and you'd lose concentration, ending the spell. False Life could buy you a little time but not much - the extra bit of hardiness it grants you would let you survive one extra crossbow bolt at most. The only other spell you have is -

- wait. That's it.

You grin at Alvar, raise your quarterstaff and mutter the incantation for Unseen Servant, gritting your teeth as he fires the bolt and it tears through your arm's flesh. You sense an invisible presence flood the area between you and Alvar as he reaches for another bolt from his quiver, oblivious to your spell, and you telepathically give your new servant orders.

Before he's managed to grab the next bolt, Alvar's belt falls to the ground, unbuckled by your servant, along with his quiver and the sword attached to it. Panicking, he grabs the belt and fumbles with it as you run into the deep end of the forest. He swings at you with his fist as you run past him and although it smarts as it makes contact you don't let it slow you down as you go delve deeper and deeper, the sunlight fading away under the increasingly dense canopy, casting Expeditious Retreat as you do so and feeling power flow into your legs as you run faster and faster, the servant disappearing into nothingness as you move out of its range -

- your back strings as a bolt pierces through it, but you cast False Life and the pain fades away -

- you cast Detect Magic and your eyes begin to vibrate as you dart between the darkening silhouettes of tree trunks, until you finally see one glowing faintly with green magical energy - the tree of a dryad. You can't hear Alvar's footsteps anymore - you must have lost him. You heft your quarterstaff in the air and cast the cantrip -

Firebolt.

You hurl a ball of flame at the tree and it bursts upon as it makes contact, the fire quickly spreading across the bark with ferocity as it consumes it rapidly. This kind of fire couldn't be replicated by a tinderbox. It was more than enough to burn down any live tree.

You'd be damned if you let some idiot fighter take the dryads' EXP from you. You're not going to let anyone take anything from you ever again and you meant it this time - not your father, not Donovan, not Alvar - you're going to take as much EXP as you needed to become a Hero and a mortal god, regardless of your outlaw status, and you would burn down anyone and anything that came in your way of achieving that, so that you'd never, ever have to feel that humiliation again, and you'd prove them all -

You hear a scream.

Someone staggers from the burning tree, their body totally engulfed in flame. Within it you can see the ashen form of what might've once been a diminutive young woman. The dryad. She screams desperately claws at her skin, trying to put the fire out, but they continue to sear away at her flesh without respite. Your skin crawls and your body goes stiff at the sight of it. She reaches her shaking hand out at you in terrible desperation as she collapses to her knees. She's begging you to put the flames out. You begin to take off your bag -

Don't even bother. Don't you want to be strong? Let her go mad, then kill her. She's probably just using her Fey Charm on you to trick you into helping her.

- but decide against it. Instead, you just stare as she screams and the tree is slowly but surely reduced to nothing more than a pile of smouldering ashes. The flames run out of fuel and disappear, both on the dryad and what's left of the tree. She's nothing more than a dried-out husk of pale skin and bones, curled up on the ground and wheezing terribly as she tries to scream, her mouth wide open and frothing.

But the worst thing about it was that her eyes were still that of a beautiful dryad, and they were filling with tears. She could no longer speak, you were sure of it, but those eyes were begging you for an answer to a simple question.

Why?

Why are you doing all this? Why did you destroy her? Why did you kill those goblins? Why did you attack Donovan?

Why are you hurting so many people?

So that you'll be strong enough to never be hurt again.

Ever since you were little, you've justified every fucked-up thing you've done with that one little argument. You beat that kid up so that he'd be too afraid to steal your toys. You stole those spell scrolls from your roommate so that he'd never be able to use them against you. And now you've destroyed this dryad's mind and body so you could mince up her soul into EXP so you'll never meet the same fate as her. Even if it doesn't make your actions right, it makes them have some purpose - you do awful things to protect yourself. You're not hurting all these people in vain.

But as you stare at this living corpse of a dryad you created, you can't help but wonder why you believe that. The voice of the goblin shaman echoes through your mind.

Our god has forsaken us. Yours will too.

You hear the trudging of Alvar's iron boots, at first a whisper in the distance, slowly get louder and louder. Eventually, he stops - he's right behind you. You don't turn back to face him. Or rather, you can't. You can't stop staring at the dryad. At what you've done in the name of protecting yourself.

You hear a metallic click. It sounds like Alvar's loading a bolt into his crossbow. "Easy now. Step away from the dryad," he says, "and I won't strike you down right here and now."

You can't help but smile at that comment. 'Strike you down'? Who even talks like that anymore?

A strange thought crosses your mind. You decide to pursue it.

"Alvar," you say in monotone as you turn to see him, "why do you hide your face?"

He shifts uncomfortably in his armour and his aim on his crossbow wavers. "That doesn't matter right now. Just let me get the dryad's EXP and we can all - "

"It does matter. You've always been rather strange, haven't you?"

He takes a step back, lowering his weapon. "Where is this coming from?"

"Your manner of speech is old-fashioned. You search for gold on quests, despite having plenty to spare. You claim to have rich relatives and yet you go to a Freeman school instead of some fancy rich-kid academy."

"I - you - no - so what?! That doesn't prove anything!"

"I never said there was anything to be proven." You narrow your eyes and approach him. "But apparently there is."

You knock the crossbow out of his hand easily with a strike from your staff. He doesn't resist. He can't. He's paralysed in fear.

You lift the helmet off of his head. You silently celebrate to yourself; your hunch was right.

Alvar has an elegant, sharp-chinned face, without so much of a hint of a beard or stubble. His black hair is long, wavy and smooth, and he has perfectly shaped eyebrows that arch over deep, sea-blue eyes. But you don't care about that. No, there's something far more interesting here.

His ears are long and pointed. He's an elf.

He stares at you in terror. You smile at him. He flinches and whimpers.

"You've been trying to forget your own race, haven't you? Considering you're entirely willing to kill dryads, you're an exile from the elven countries who decided to settle here. But your kind aren't welcome in Logras - you're just as much an outlaw here as you are one there. So to avoid persecution, you decided to blend into human society the best you could. You hid your face, began worshipping Thrones, joined an adventurer's school, quested for riches, sold what you had for gold and bought land with it - you did everything you thought was human in an effort to be one. But you still managed to fail in your deceptions. And the worst thing is that you've even managed to fool yourself a little. I'll tell you one thing, Alvar Glengness, and one thing only.

"Your lies have broken down. The life you've desired with all your heart has slipped through your fingers and become dust. Despair, fool. Your toils and crimes have been for nought but shame and pain."