I tossed the heavy bomb into the air and caught it. Everyone in the room, even Mongo, looked at me with a horrified expression. The item’s stability was still at 150. I could punt the item, and it wouldn’t go off. Besides, this was a safe room. Still, they were all looking at me like I’d lost my mind. I had a quick memory of a goblin bomb bard who’d been doing something similar as we’d passed by. I remembered thinking he was crazy at the time. I put the bomb away, smiling sheepishly.
“I worry about you sometimes,” said Donut.
“Oh, I know what this is,” Mordecai said the moment I handed him the shirt. “You said this was on a city elf, right?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to read his description before Donut and I killed him. So what’s the deal?”
“You shouldn’t see any real uniformed military on this floor other than the guards, or maybe some of the mobs. You will definitely see an organized military presence on the ninth and maybe on the sixth. And you never know what’s going to happen on the others. But the only jackholes who organize themselves like this are the city elves. They’re a gang, and they called themselves the 201st Security Group.”
“Ohh,” I said. “I thought that was a unit patch.”
“They’re morons is what they are,” Mordecai said. “You’ll find them mostly in the larger cities, but also in the medium-sized ones that are governed by the skyfowl. I should have known they’d be here.”
“Are they mercenaries?” I asked, taking the shirt back.
“They’re nutjobs,” Mordecai said. “There are a lot of types of elves. High elves, like your elite friend’s family. Those guys are the forest-dwelling magical beings you’re probably most familiar with. There are dark elves, wind elves, goblin elves, and a dozen more. And then there are the city elves.”
“He looked like a normal elf to me,” Donut said. “But he was a little crazy. He knew our names.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why he knew you,” said Mordecai. “But anyway, on the surface, you had a small segment of society who believed really crazy things. Like aliens walked among the people and that lizard folk had taken over the highest levels of government. You know what I’m talking about, right?”
“I do,” I said. “But they don’t seem so crazy now, do they? You guys were walking around among us.”
Mordecai scoffed. “Yeah, but not the reptilians. Those guys run a shadow government? Please. The last reptilian I knew couldn’t even properly run a fantasy football league. Anyway, I’m talking about crazy, conspiracy nuts. People who believe the government is trying to use mind control on them, secret societies, gay frogs who shoot tracking microchips into you using cellular towers, and so on and so forth. Not your run-of-the-mill conspiracy theorists, but those who go the extra mile. Tin-foil-hat-wearing, silver-drinking nutjobs. The kind of people who cover their vehicles with crazy, schizophrenic text about radio signals coming from toilets.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” I said.
“That’s a city elf. They are designated as a separate race because their stupidity is so outstanding, the high elves consider it a genetic defect and kick them out. All elves originate with the high elves, who are big on banishing and wholesale genocide. It’s what happens when you live forever but still keep having babies. So the city elves gather in the cities. The young and especially stupid ones always find their way to the 201st. It’s a big, poorly organized militia that considers itself a proper military outfit, and it has only one goal. To protect the skyfowl from the earthbound.”
I laughed. “What? They’re earthbound. Aren’t they?”
“Yeah, so, they believe the skyfowl are angels. They believe all flightless creatures are so jealous of us… of the skyfowl I mean, that all humans and everybody else without wings want to destroy them. They believe when Scolopendra unleashed that nine-tier attack, one of the tiers was a spell that made the earthbound want to kill the skyfowl. That’s absolutely not true. People want to kill skyfowl because skyfowl are assholes. They don’t need a spell to make people hate them.”
“But, why?” I asked. “Why do the elves care?”
Mordecai sighed. “It’s kind of a long, complicated story, and we’re brushing on a subject I was going to bring up at a later time. We’ve touched on it before. Gods and goddesses. In-game deities. We’ll get to what they really are later. You don’t need to worry about that on this floor. Anyway, all you need to know is that elves worship the Oak Mother, the mother of all gods. Her name is Apito. And in one story about Apito, it is said that in order to maintain the path to heaven, her angels must remain free and alive. And in a completely separate story, Apito is said to have called the skyfowl ‘bless-ed.’ And in a third, apocryphal story, Apito said only the angels are ‘blessed.’ In that same story she says any violence against angels is to be stopped, and if it continues, she will destroy all the worlds. Ergo, a batshit crazy, doomsday cult sect of banished elves now dedicate themselves to protecting the skyfowl in anticipation of the day when the tree goddess destroys the universe.”
“All-righty then. And what do the skyfowl think about these guys?” I asked.
He paused. “Skyfowl in general are a diverse people, like humans, but the ones on this level are a little different. They’re mostly non-religious. They are, as a rule, negatively inclined toward any flightless creature. They think of you as a servant class, that you’re beneath them. In the mythology of the volcano levels, the skyfowl were the ruling class of the Over City, and the High Elves were the ruling class of the forested regions of the Hunting Grounds. So when these elves show up in their cities, oftentimes falling to the ground and slobbering all over themselves as they offer obeisance, they’re treated as an amusement, a joke. Nobody takes them seriously. They have their stupid uniforms and their play-acting, but I’ve never seen anything come of it in all my time here. This angel thing is their main motivation, but they also have all sorts of weird theories and beliefs. Everybody makes fun of them. I’ve never known them to actually inflict violence.”
“Well, we’re going to find out what’s going on,” Donut declared. She stood stiffly. She’d put the picture of Bea into her inventory. “I’ve decided that we’re going to follow through with this quest, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us, Mordecai.”
“Is that so?” Mordecai asked.
“GumGum died because of us. And Carl, Mongo, and I have decided to make it right.”
Mordecai just looked at her, then he shrugged after a moment. “If that’s what you’re gonna do. I ain’t your dad. I’m your manager. You know how I feel about quests on this floor. But as long as you spend as much time grinding and killing as possible, then so be it.”
Donut looked surprised, then triumphant. I could tell by the nonplussed look on Mordecai’s face that he’d already decided we were stuck with this quest whether we wanted it or not. We’d already been sucked in, much the way we’d been sucked in when Signet had kidnapped us.
“GumGum is dead? Did I hear that right?” Fitz asked, looking at us with wide eyes. “GumGum the orc?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “She was killed by a group of krasue.”
“Oh, oh no,” the barkeep said. “I… I gotta sit down. GumGum dead. I can’t believe it. She was m’best customer, she was. krasue. I knew they’d get her one of these days.” The man wandered back into his kitchens.