After escorting Laryn, Kenna, and Gaten back to Vallor, the elves did not reappear. Two days passed, and the level of anxiety among the villagers grew. Laryn hoped that they were considering his offer, and not preparing for war.

  Vallor did prepare for war. What else could they do? A continuous rotating watch was assigned to monitor the rope bridge. Defenses were constructed on the beach, mostly fences and low walls, designed to provide shelter from arrows or break up any kind of attack.

  Gall—the big man with a scarred face—took the lead, coordinating and training. Thallon crafted spears.

  The people also began building additional shelters and a storage shed.

  Most importantly, they continued hauling material to the core for Laryn to sift. Increased influence would have a large impact on how any fighting ended up.

  Laryn had not elevated anyone to fill the role of overseer. He was able to manage everything at this scale, with a little help from Adi. With no overseer, nobody else was able to access the interface of the core, and potentially figure out how powerful it truly was.

  He also kept people away from the core, declining to let anyone study it. As unlikely as it was that anyone here had been trained in reading the ancient runes that described the core’s function, Laryn didn’t want to risk it. He didn’t know what was written there, and unless he could trust someone to explain it to him, it was better kept a secret.

  So he continued sifting for life, earth, and water essence, building up their influence and preparing for what seemed to be a nearly inevitable assault. The balance debuff grew, and Laryn wondered if it would be better to focus on water. But Adi reported that many of the tiles he’d visited in Annar were life tiles, and if it turned out that they wanted to claim those tiles, being out of balance toward life now would be a good thing in the future.

  “It’s better to have an essence profile that matches the tiles you expect to have in the future,” she said.

  Laryn sifted and sifted, until influence topped two and a half. He wanted to have enough influence in store that capturing the next ring—which contained thirty tiles—wouldn’t be that far off. He started wondering if he shouldn’t just capture more tiles that they weren’t using, which would increase the amount of time he could rewind, but decided to keep the influence for now.

  Thallon crafted armor and weapons for them. He scouted the island, and discovered several outcroppings of minerals and ores, so they began making plans for extraction. A rudimentary forge was started.

  Despite protests, some of the people had constructed a private shelter for Laryn. Formed of logs, and using a cloth to cover the opening, it was small and simple, but he did appreciate the gesture.

  Laryn realized an obvious solution to their problem one night, and awoke feeling more positive than he had since the elves had first appeared. The realization allowed him to relax and sleep peacefully for the first time in many nights.

  The next morning he emerged from his shelter. He stretched, blinking into the sun, and breathed deeply of the fresh air. Smells of water, foliage, and a hit of wood smoke greeted him, and he smiled. The scent was delightful, a far cry from the putrid, rancid odors that often filled the streets of Eltar. Being in the wildlands did have some perks.

  He was beginning to think that nothing could possibly go wrong on a beautiful day like this, when his eyes fell on Gall, standing guard outside his shelter.

  “Where did you get that helmet, Gall?”

  Gall grinned at him, the scar on his cheek twisting. “Thallon made it for me,” he said.

  Laryn eyed the helmet. Crafted of gentle curves, the helmet covered and protected much of Gall’s head. A cut out for the face, with ridges to direct glancing blows away, and a skirt at the shoulders indicated careful workmanship with craftsman’s tools.

  “Thallon did not make that,” Laryn said, stepping closer. The steel helmet had delicate engravings on it; scrollwork of leaves and flowers. “He’s still trying to smelt ore. Is that gold?”

  Gall shrugged. Behind him, in the direction of Annar, a tendril of smoke twisted into the air.

  “He did not sit around all night inlaying gold and silver floral designs in a helmet for you.”

  Laryn looked at the smoke, his face darkening.

  Gall’s grin faded.

  “Come with me,” Laryn demanded.

  They found Thallon at his forge, examining several additional pieces of armor and weaponry, crafted in a similar manner to Gall’s helmet. The man had taken the helmet off, and now carried it under his arm.

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  “What is this?” Laryn gestured to the weapons. “What did you do?”

  Thallon snapped to attention, his smile melting from his face in the heat of Laryn’s fury.

  “I, uh, we… I mean…” He searched for the words to deflect Laryn’s ire. “It was Hela’s idea,” he said.

  “Don’t even have the stones to take responsibility,” Laryn spat. “What was Hela’s idea?”

  “She said you approved of it.”

  “What did I approve of?”

  “The raid?”

  “You raided the elves?” Laryn smacked a hand into his face.

  “It worked!” Thallon protested, folding his thickly muscled arms. “We captured bags of grain, fish, and some armor and weapons! Nobody was hurt.”

  “No elves?”

  Thallon shrugged. “We might have killed one.”

  “How did you get grain across the river? Did you swim?”

  “We made our own bridge,” Thallon said. “Twisted up a long rope and shimmied across it.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Probably,” Thallon said.

  “Take it down. Gather it all up,” Laryn ordered. “Everything that you stole last night. Anything that anyone took from the elves, and I mean anything! Any sign we had anything to do with it!”

  Thallon glanced at Gall.

  “I’m trying to save your lives! It’s like you’ve never dealt with elves before. Now move!”

  The two men jumped into action.

  Laryn fumed as he searched for Hela. She was convinced that the elves were void cultists and had to be dealt with. But under no circumstances should she have acted without his direction. She was a wildcard that he needed to manage immediately, before things got even more out of hand.

  He found her sitting by the fire, serving up an elaborate meal consisting of stolen elven food. The atmosphere around the fire was brighter than it had been in days, as people enjoyed the new foods.

  “What is this?” he demanded, grabbing slabs of dried meat and shoving them back into bags. He snatched a platter out of Hela’s hands.

  “We tried dealing with them in the past!” she protested. “Elves are stubborn and will never negotiate with you. You have to take what you want from them or they’ll walk all over you!”

  “They’ll come here and kill us,” Laryn spat. “People will die!”

  “People die,” Hela shrugged. “It’s not fair that you got to go eat their food and we had to sit around eating gobo.”

  A few people murmured their agreement.

  “Besides,” Hela said, “they’re void cultists. They deserve to die.”

  More mutters of agreement followed.

  “You’re all fools,” Laryn snapped. “You said they’d kill me if I went to their village, but here I am! They don’t need to trap us or trick us. They can just kill us all and capture our kingdom core. I’m telling you, that even on our land with our influence, they can. Even with my strength I could only kill a few of them.”

  Hela paled. The other villagers fell silent.

  “The core is very strong,” she said. “What use is our strength if we don’t fight the void?”

  “It’s not that strong,” Laryn snapped. “I hoped to mark out a path of peace with them, but you’ve forced me to violence. We had better get ready. Everyone listen to me. There’s a chance they don’t know what we did yet. They’ll figure it out eventually, but if we can buy time we might be able get out of this alive.”

  Laryn’s father would have executed Hela on the spot for insubordination. Maybe Laryn should do that, and make an example out of her, hand her body over to the elves.

  But Laryn didn’t want to rule like his father. And killing everyone involved in the attack would be just as bad as fighting the elves. Besides, he understood why Hela had done it. She would have to be punished. But first they had to deal with the elves.

  “Take everything that you stole, and I mean everything, to Thallon’s forge. We’ll conceal it all there. And you,” he said, whirling and jabbing his finger in Hela’s face, “had better hope that we get away with this. If you have blown up our negotiations…” He trailed off, because he didn’t know what he was going to do. The unspoken threat was enough.

  People scrambled around as the cold fear of death settled in.

  Laryn walked to the kingdom core, and scanned the woods, looking for signs of elves. He knew he wouldn’t spot them if they didn’t want to be seen. Two men manned the elf rope bridge, prepared to cut the rope at the first sign of aggression. Surely the attackers had been traced back here.

  “Adi,” Laryn said. “I need some advice.”

  Adi appeared beside him, breathing heavily. “What’s up?” she asked. Her hair was damp with sweat.

  “Why… What have you been doing?”

  “Um, administration stuff,” she said, wiping her brow.

  “Where?”

  “Inside the core. Just making sure everything is running the way it should.”

  “You need to maintain the core?” Laryn asked. “And I thought you didn’t really have a body. How are you so sweaty?” He wrinkled his nose.

  “Someone’s got to do it,” she said. “And I don’t know, it’s hot and stuffy in there and it wears me out. Maybe it’s just the memory of the body.”

  “Whatever,” Laryn said. “Some of my people took matters into their own hands and attacked the elves.”

  “Oh,” Adi said. “That’s bad.”

  “Yeah,” Laryn agreed. “I don’t know if the elves know about it yet or not. I ordered them to hide everything. If there’s even a slim chance that we avoid detection, maybe things don’t have to devolve to fighting.”

  “You can’t count on that.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s your plan, then? For the elves who want to kill you now?”

  “We’ll have to fight them. My question for you… What do I do about the people who caused this problem? My father executed people in Eltar for far less. But—”

  “But you need them. You don’t want to duodecimate your own population.”

  “Exactly,” Laryn said.

  “That’s a problem,” Adi agreed. “Do you think you’ll lose if the elves attack you?”

  “In a straight up fight? Both sides would lose. It would destroy both of us if they came here and attacked. But that’s not how elves usually do things. They’ll pick us off, one by one, and we’ll never even see them.”

  “Are there any other things the elves might do? Think about it from their perspective.”

  “Well… Maybe they really liked my proposal. And they’re worried about more of their people being killed. And they don’t have fire in their blood over the attack, so their still willing to come negotiate… But if I were them, I’d demand restoration and retribution.”

  “A logical decision,” Adi said.

  “Maybe Hela and Thallon are right,” Laryn grumbled. “As long as that elf village is right there, the full power of this kingdom core will be locked. I won’t be able to get more levels for the rings they’re blocking. If we strike first, before they have a chance to react, maybe…”

  A whistle sounded from the bridge. Elves were coming. The time for a surprise attack had passed.

  Laryn jogged toward the sound, hand on his sword. Were they going to talk first? Or had they simply decided to attack?