“Starling,” Walter said, “I am cold. Could you get me a dry robe?”

Starling nodded and started to speak.

“And,” Walter said, “after that, I’d like to go retrieve my weapons from the armory.”

Starling looked slightly less certain, but again nodded and started to speak.

“And,” Walter said, “my companions will accompany us to the armory.”

Starling looked with distaste at Reeve and Leaf.

“So,” Walter said, “they will also need new robes that draw less attention.”

Starling frowned.

“Preferably,” Walter said, “robes of Helia’s guard.”

Starling gaped for a moment, then recovered and started to sputter out a protest.

With a nudge from Reeve, Walter took one of Starling’s hands in both of his and said, “Thank you.”

Starling smiled like a morphine drip was starting to take effect.

“You’re like a cult leader,” Reeve said quietly to Walter as Starling stepped aside and gestured them toward the pool.

“Safe now?” Walter said to the elf.

Starling smiled. “Yes, you shall acquire no additional moisture.”

Walter, Reeve, and Leaf stepped onto the water of the pool. Starling looked uncertainly between the platter taking up one of his hands and the unconscious honey badger lying on the floor.

“Bunce can stay here until we return,” Walter said.

Starling turned and joined them on the pool. Walter stood on tiptoes on the water to survey the food remaining on the platter and chose a pecan as they began to descend.

As Reeve descended, the pressure of the water against her increased, and her ears began to ache, but she remained absolutely dry. She held her breath as the light from above faded, her father, Leaf, and their escort becoming vague gray shapes that slowly merged with the darkness. Her heart began to beat faster, and sweat prickled her scalp, which, being underwater, she found remarkably disconcerting. She wondered whether her breath would hold.

A hand found her forearm. “Breathe.” The words sounded distant and muffled. Reeve cautiously opened her mouth. No water entered. She relaxed her throat and slowly drew in air. It did not come easily, as though she were breathing through thick cloth, but it came.

Wavering light appeared from below, dim when she first noticed it but soon bright enough to illuminate their group. A hand on her back prompted her to step toward the distorted surface before them, and she emerged from the column of water into a small, brightly lit room carved of the same soapstone. Breathing became easy again. She looked back at the curved vertical liquid surface from which Leaf now stepped. They all remained entirely dry.

“You should wait here while I visit the laundry for the robes,” Starling said to Walter. “It is unusual for guests new to the camp to be out of their quarters, particularly while still wearing the robes of the just-arrived.” The elf indicated the party’s solid orange attire.

“Sure, great,” Reeve said. “We’ll just hang out in this tiny kill room until you get back.”

The elf frowned at Reeve, but Walter lay one hand on his arm and said, “We’ll wait right here. Thank you for all of your assistance. It really means a lot.”

The female elf who had earlier accompanied Starling and Helia suddenly strode into the small room, starting to speak to Starling before she was fully through the door. “Are you returning to the kitchens?” She began to take the platter from him, but, realizing that a half-orc was standing to her left, froze and recoiled a step. Her eyes fell on Walter. “You!” She said.

“Wurmslayer,” Starling said.

“Wurmslayer,” the female elf said in a hushed tone.

“Wurmslayer,” Starling said to Walter.

“Wurmslayer,” Reeve said in a mimicking sing-song tone from which she couldn’t restrain herself.

“This, Wurmslayer,” Starling said, “is Aspen.” Starling turned to the new arrival. “We are going to check on Wurmslayer’s belongings.”

“But they are to remain here,” Aspen said, gesturing to the room above.

“Explain, Dad,” Reeve said.

“It’s OK, Aspen,” Walter said.

“I see,” Aspen said, looking satisfied with the explanation.

“I shall return soon with the robes,” Starling said.

“We’ll wait right here,” Walter said.

When Starling reentered the room ten minutes later, bunched robes under one arm, he had to push his way through thirteen orange-robed elves to reach Walter, an elf still holding the platter being the last that Starling wound past. “Wurmslayer,” he said, pulling the robes from beneath his arm and unrolling one small, black-cuffed orange robe inside of which were two robes that looked like they were made of whitewater.

“These are fantastic, Starling!” Walter said, beginning to peel off the wet robe he still wore.

“Hold up a sec, Dad,” Reeve said. Taking the whitewater robes from Starling, she handed one to Leaf and then raised the one she still held to form a makeshift privacy curtain. Seeing Reeve’s intent, Leaf did the same with the robe she’d been handed, using the wall of the room to form the third side of a triangle within which Walter stood.

“Reeve, I really don’t care if these nice folks see me in my skivvies,” Walter said.

“I didn’t think you’d care,” Reeve said, “but I have no idea how they’d react if you—really anyone with Charisma 48—stripped in front of them. It might be like—“

“—how crowds reacted when the Beatles deplaned?” Walter said.

“Who?”

Looking hurt, Walter shook his head and slowly worked his way through the arduous task of peeling the wet robe up and over his head and accepted the new robe, which Starling offered through a gap in the makeshift curtain. Once re-robed, Walter looked around, pleased.

“Great,” Reeve said. “Now, keep them happy while Leaf and I change.” She pushed Walter forward into the crowd of elves and then turned her back as the crowd turned their attention to Walter. She and Leaf quickly removed their orange robes and donned the whitewater robes and raised the hoods, then pulled them low over their faces. Reeve cupped her hands to her mouth, hidden from view within her cowl, and said in Walter’s direction, which she estimated based on the divot in the small pool of elf heads, “Walter, armory.” Reeve heard a halfling voice from within the elves, who quickly fell silent, and then those nearest the door to the hall began filing through in ones and twos, Reeve and Leaf the last to leave the room behind the group, which headed left down the passage. They passed a room full of tiny elf children. As they were approaching a passage to the right, Reeve swerved into Leaf, pressing the fallen elf toward the left wall of the passage. “Helia,” Reeve whispered. Leaf moved up the left side of the group, and Reeve followed, putting the elves between them and the passage in which Helia stood talking to the twins.

The size of the subterranean camp awed Reeve. They continued past more rooms, some visible through windows of water, others obscured down passages or by water-covered doors. She examined one of the doors as they passed it, trying to understand how it worked, and when she again looked ahead she had to pull up abruptly to avoid walking into the group, which had stopped. She watched elf heads move apart, as though a zipper were being pulled, and then from the group her father appeared in front of her.

“Starling has been giving me a running commentary as we’ve been walking.”

“That’s great,” Reeve said. “I hope the armory will be somewhere on the tour.”

“We just passed the fermentation cellar.”

Reeve frowned at her father. “What, you want to try their sauerkraut? Kimchi?”

“Mead.”

“Mead. Great. You thirsty? I was hoping we could focus less on snacks and more on finding our weapons and getting out of here.”

“To make mead,” Walter said, “you need honey.” He looked at Reeve.

“Bees,” Reeve said.

“Bees,” Walter said.

“Down here?”

“Starling said that their apiary is just on the other side of the armory, next to their greenhouses.”

“You don’t like bees.”

“I still don’t like bees,” Walter said. “But this may be my chance to see if I’ve really learned anything with this Apiculturist business.”

“Skill.”

“Yes.”

“OK, but let’s go to the armory first, yeah? Prioritization.”

Walter nodded, looking excited and nervous.

“And let’s hurry. We passed Helia and the twins. If they’re all headed back to our cell, she’ll realize soon that we’re gone.” Reeve looked at the group of elves waiting expectantly behind Walter. “Or she may notice that a fraction of her camp is missing from whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing.”

Walter nodded and disappeared back into the elves, the zipper effect repeating from the near side of the group to the far, and they began moving again.

“I hope my dad’s sway over these elves holds,” Reeve said quietly to Leaf. “I wonder if there’s a maximum size he can affect at once.”

“This has not happened before?” Leaf said.

“We were in pretty unpopulated areas. And I generally tried to keep him from talking. Werfendale was the biggest town we visited, and it sounds like when he and Dawn were at the market he only spoke with vendors, and that gentlewoman, who gave him most of what she’d purchased. So, I guess we haven’t really tested his Charisma on groups.”

The group ahead of them began squeezing itself through a door to the left. When Reeve and Leaf finally passed through the doorway and then the passage of a few dozen yards beyond, Reeve was relieved to see that they were in the armory and that her father’s halfling appetite hadn’t sent them first to the kitchens. But the relief was gradually replaced with dread as she looked at the racks of weapons that stretched into the distance—swords, lances, bows, maces, and every conceivable device of death shimmering in the light that permeated from above. She began pushing herself toward the front of the group, elves she passed grumbling as they were nudged aside then reflexively silencing themselves when they saw the whitewater robe.

“Dad,” Reeve said quietly when she reached him, “has Starling told you how many elves are in this camp?”

Walter shook his head and looked at Starling. “How big is this camp? How many of you are here?”

“Well on five thousand, when all scouts and troops are in camp.”

“Five thousand?” Reeve said to herself. She squatted to speak more privately with her father. “Dad, I don’t know what’s going on with Helia, but this isn’t a normal game event we might look to win in a story mode campaign. We’re in the middle of a straight-up army, and I don’t think we’re on the same side as them. We need to get our gear and get out of here.”

“What,” a deep voice behind them said, “in Gondrayn’s short and ringleted beard below are all you babbling idiots doing in ‘ere?”

Fighting to stay calm, Reeve rose slowly and turned, making sure as she did that her father’s hood was up and that her cowl remained low and her hands in their sleeves. From a secondary room, a dwarf nearly as broad as he was tall had emerged and stood leaning on a long, low workbench covered with weapons in various stages of repair or construction. His beard was bound in five tight braids that fell past his wide belt, on which hung an array of well-worn but gleaming blacksmithing tools that Reeve thought collectively must weight nearly as much as her father’s halfling.

Reeve’s once-over stalled when she got to his eyes. They were intensely red. And it wasn’t that the irises were red, like fake contacts, or the pupils, like red-eye in camera flash, or the scleras, like someone with really, really bloodshot eyes. The entire orb within each socket was a brilliant, uniform red.

Reeve placed a hand on Walter’s back and guided him toward the dwarf. Walter cleared his throat as they approached the bench, the dwarf’s gaze less inviting than a bridge drawn back from a deep moat.

“We just need to find a few weapons that are being kept here,” Walter said.

“Oh, do you?!” The dwarf’s voice was suddenly preposterously enthusiastic. Reeve relaxed, until his bushy eyebrows fell like hammers. “I don’t care if you just need to find what little wits the gods gave you,” the dwarf roared, “you’re not doing it here, and you’re not laying your hands on so much as a painful splinter without a requisition order from Helia. You know the drill.” The dwarf scowled at Walter for a moment, his eyes narrowing to thin red slits that shifted to Reeve and finally Leaf, seeming to easily pierce the darkness of their cowls “Since when,” he said, “has her majesty recruited halflings to her ranks and built her guard from half-orcs and Fallens?” He leaned back and, from below his bench, hefted what might have been the largest, and what was definitely the most wickedly jagged, broadsword Reeve had ever seen.

Reeve took a step back and raised her hands, her father simultaneously sinking down until he was peeking at the dwarf from behind the bench. Looking over her shoulder, Reeve saw that the elves had also backed away and appeared unwilling to abandon Walter but equally unwilling to confront the dwarf.

Another Level 4 AI, Reeve thought. This could be going better.

A light began to glow in the small space between Reeve and her father, and within the glow, a homely male human fighter began to appear. He wore poorly crafted leather armor and held a sword that Reeve would have left in its scabbard in favor of bare fists if she’d had only the two to choose between in a fight.

“More?” The dwarf said. He shook his head. “Gods no. You lot,” he raised his sword to a position of readiness and began moving toward the end of the long bench, “have best explain yourselves before I have the real guards come and clear you out, if I don’t just do it myself. Been too long since I’ve been able to wield my own work.”

“Hola, mija,” the fighter said to Reeve in a deep voice.