Oste had originally been just a halfway house and a bounty board, but had slowly become a city over 200 years. Or at least, a very large collection of halfway houses and bounty boards. It had been one of the last cities to fall when the High Elves and their Northmen allies came down from their mountains and waged war on the Midden, and one of the first cities liberated in the Last War, over two decades ago, when they had been driven back to the frozen shithole from whence they had come. It was a city in size only, confused by its own identity and having no real purpose outside of being the place one went when they didn’t want to be found. It had no official rules or laws, it recognized pec, dwarfish scrip, and barter equally, and nearly every kind of good and service could be traded there without bureaucratic supervision. Of course, slavery, war profiteering, and most forms of contract killing were outlawed in Oste. They were civilized, unlike their erstwhile overlords. Since becoming a Free City, it returned to its roots as a massive collection of brothels, taverns, inns, and any other vice considered taboo to humans and mundane to elves. Some shitty people had come to Oste in the past few years and tried to take over through violence and monopoly, but most members of the local Neighborhood Watch had been residents of Oste during the High Elf rule, and made sure to break up any gang trying to centralize power. It was a delicate balance, and Edrelle made sure to partake in that ecosystem as much as she could. It was her favorite human city.

She took a thoughtful hit from a water pipe of dubious origin, and exhaled a cloud of multicolored vapor. That was new. She observed her little domain, the paradise she had spent a sizable portion of her newfound fortune on creating. It was a stately suite, or at least, it had been stately, before she had covered every surface inside it with courtesans, drugs, food, drink, and for a reason that she could not recall, a very hung over donkey. She didn’t even know how they’d gotten it to the top floor. She sat up in the bed, against the tacky plush headboard and about 7 different pillows. The bed was massive, about the size of one of the private rooms on the floor below, and littered with pillows and over a dozen prostitutes of varying age, race, gender, and states of dress or consciousness. She pulled a match from the crumpled box beside her and took another hit from the bong. Whatever was inside it, it was potent enough to make her wonder which way the world was spinning, which meant it was some pretty good shit.

“Hey, Aidamir.” She nudged her favorite prostitute with her foot. He was passed out face down on the mattress and she was a little bit afraid that he might be dead.

“Adamar.” Issued the muffled correction from the human.

“Shit, sorry, Adamar. What’s in this?” Edrelle held aloft the water pipe. “Tastes half like Ürdleaf, and half like burning tin foil.”

“No clue, Old Shay brought it with her.”

“Ahhh right. I’ll have to track her down after this. You know I knew her when she was just Shay?”

“Couldn’t give a shit.” Adamar said, rolling over and grabbing the pipe. Edrelle passed him the matchbox, before dragging a huge platter of food over to her with her toes and helping herself to the stale pastries stacked on one end.

“Good morning, by the way.” The elf said, grabbing a handful of baked goods.

“It’s past noon.” Replied the human, before taking a rip from the bong. A few seconds later, he was coughing and sputtering, purple and green wisps spraying from his nostrils and mouth. “Gods, that’s strong! And there was barely any left. How can you fit so much food and so many drugs into that tiny little body of yours?”

“Chalk it up to elf biology, I guess.” She said, popping another jelly roll into her mouth. “And I’m not tiny. I’m tall for an elf.”

“But where does it all go?”

“Uh…same place all food goes. Are we really having this conversation? Do they really not teach you humans where food goes?”

Adamar huffed. “You know what I meant. Why aren’t you as big as a Tersadox? Or dead?

“Not dead because my Elvish liver works three times as efficiently as yours, and I’m not fat because all the fat and sugar I eat goes directly to my ass.” She clapped a hand against her thigh proudly. It wasn’t exactly the truth, of course, but more of an oversimplification of ‘where it went’. And she was quite proud of her ass.

“Lucky elf bitch. And here I am, probably needing to go on a diet after this.” Adamar touched his hips sensitively.

“Shut up, whore,” Edrelle laughed. She loved calling men ‘whore’ like one loved a sunset or a bath. “I hire you every time I’m in town because you’re fun, not for your trim waistline.”

“Yeah, I have other clients who do appreciate a human with a nice physique. It’s not fair with elvish and orcish competition out there, I have to offer something else besides being your version of ‘fun’.” He sighed and set the matchbox and pipe down on the platter, rolling onto his stomach and grabbing a tart off the tray and biting into it with a measure of defeat and relief.

“You do have something else to offer! Your amazing personality!” Edrelle laughed, before smacking the man on his ass hard enough to make him yelp.

“You bitch! After what you did to my ass last night, you ought to know better!” He snarled through a mouthful of tart, which made her laugh even harder, especially at the idea of him having a ‘mouthful of tart’ for the second time today. Yesterday? It was hard to keep track.

“Speaking of, what do we do with the donkey?” She said, gesturing towards the beast of burden in the corner, evidently sleeping off its own hangover, and again the human shrugged.

“Not be here when it comes time to take care of it?” He proposed.

“That’s what I like about you, Idamir!”

“That time was on purpose, Ed.”

Edrelle crawled to the edge of the mattress and began rummaging through a pile of clothes that had been thrown against the wall the night before. “Remember, my name’s Kris while I’m here. Wait, I may have burned that name,” she inspected up a robe that might fit her, “I think I’m gonna try ‘Calamity’ as my next name.”

“Oooh, edgy. That robe’s mine, by the way.” Adamar said. Edrelle huffed and tossed it to him, letting it flutter onto the mattress.

“’Course it’s yours. It’s tacky as all hell.” She said bitterly, before grabbing another one closer to her size but of measurably lower quality.

Adamar rolled to the edge of the mattress and put the diaphanous silk on as he got up. “You’re just jealous, Calamity. I got it after your last visit, it cost two hundred pec.”

“Someone got you to pay two hundred for that thing? Looks like I’m not the only thief in this city.” She tied hers at the waist. Whoever the robe belonged to had a considerably bigger chest than her, and the robe fell open to expose a light scar over her heart, something she liked to show off intentionally. She found it sexy, anyway. She got up, falling over immediately and stumbling into the wall.

“Shit. That stuff is strong. Totally forgot about that.” She leaned against the wall as Adamar passed her prosthetic leg to her. It wasn’t of Elvish or Dwarfish quality, but it was probably the best she could get in the city. Humans tended to lose limbs pretty easily (Not unlike cockroaches, Edrelle thought), and the prosthetic leg was fitted by a practiced craftsman from high quality mahogany. The end had a hard rubber tip, which hardly had the traction of a foot, but Edrelle was a quick learner and had managed to learn how to use it with equal grace as before in only a few days after getting it. She was lucky she had been amputated below the knee, she couldn’t imagine needing to hobble. At least this way she could still walk like before. She strapped it on, bending her knee a few times to get used to the weight before hopping back off the edge of the bed.

“Alright. Let’s go exploring.” She said, making sure the robe would stay open where she wanted and closed where she didn’t. She was fastidious with her looks.

“I’m not gonna be caught ripping a place off with you again, am I?”

“Nah, they’re smart enough to charge me in advance here. I just want to do some good-natured snooping in the lower levels of the house while everyone’s bathing. They only do hot water for a few hours down there, so everyone’ll be fighting for a spot in the baths, and we can check out everyone’s crap downstairs. Ever been to the public levels?”

“I’ve been hired down there. It’s so creepy, everybody’s beds on the same level, and I’m supposed to work with everyone staring at me.” He said, standing a little too close to Edrelle, making her scared that the human might actually be worried about her after the leg incident. “Aren’t you too good to rob normal, everyday people anymore? I thought you only went after the rich. It’s a dick move to steal from the people already in a bad enough place that they have to sleep on the public floors.”

“Not stealing! Just snooping! All the craziest characters come in on the public levels, I wanna see what kind of specimens of human life we have going on down there. Purely for science.” She protested. This was a rare truth from her. Edrelle had always been fascinated by the collections and hobbies of human beings. They lived and died so quickly that even the most mundane of objects became treasured items to them. Seeing the ones that lived on the move, that stayed in the public areas of houses like this? Those were the ones worth exploring.

“Whatever you say. But if someone recognizes me down there I’m going to pretend I’m not from here. I’m a high-class gentleman of red cloth, it’s embarrassing to be seen down there.”

“And yet, you admit to working down there before. Interesting.”

Adamar chuckled. “Just because I’m high-class doesn’t mean I’m picky. I contain multitudes.”

“Yuh-huh. Whore.”

“You’re the one who hired fourteen prostitutes last night, elf skank.”

“I was celebrating a windfall, I needed to make up for time spent un-debauched!” Edrelle protested, happy her knee would get a rest after the final flight of stairs before the public room. It was a large hall, the same size as her suite upstairs, but filled with rows of beds. One pec and you had a bed for a week, just as long as you were fine with sharing a living space with the rest of the Midden’s wanderers and vagrants. It was a wonderful sight. Everyone’s property was either strewn about on their beds, or rolled tightly and tucked into the corners of the bedframes, depending on how paranoid they were. There was rarely anything to steal down here, but to a snoop? It was a treasure trove. The detritus of life’s onward march towards ruin. She began picking beds that caught her interest, looking at things. A broken sword and a dull, heavy ring atop some elvish cloak. Boring, plus the ring didn’t fit her. A pile of weapons including a longsword, poignard, sabre, dagger, and a sling. Edrelle wanted to look through them but found a pair of gloves made of rat leather, and decided she didn’t want to look through the belongings of any men who wore rat leather. A gray cloak and pointy hat with a sword and staff that looked pretty neat upon first glance, especially when she found a pipe concealed within the staff; but had an inescapable old man smell that turned Edrelle off, like mung beans and a poorman's pipeweed. One bed had a silver longsword and a steel longsword, both of which looked extremely expensive and yet so brittle that Edrelle was afraid to draw them fully from their scabbards. The sword on the next bed wouldn’t even open from its locket, no matter how hard both Edrelle and Adamar tried to pull it from its sheath. They also found a small wooden box of berries next to it that smelled psychoactive to the elf’s nose, but Adamar reminded Edrelle that it was rude to sample someone else’s drugs without permission. The next bed had a huge double-ax and what looked like a hide loincloth bound with an impractical golden belt. Edrelle bet Adamar he couldn’t sniff the loincloth without retching. She won.

While her courtesan recovered from the smell, Edrelle investigated the last bed in the row. The only weapon was a woodsman’s ax that looked secondhand, but what interested her was the clothing. They were rolled in a tight bundle and set against the bed frame, and had obviously been used as a pillow the night before. She picked up a strange article that looked like a jacket had been cut in half just below the armpits, so that it was a pair of three-quarter length sleeves attached by a shrug of leather-enforced canvas across the back and a high collar. It was made of a tight weave that she recognized, but in her altered state didn’t quite care to recall.

“Hey Adamir, check it out.” She tossed the oversized garment over herself. “Latest fashion trend. You’ve heard of sleeveless shirts, now get ready for shirtless sleeves.” She laughed, taking it off and inspecting the earthy gray fabric closer, admiring the fine triple-stitching at the shoulders. It was definitely built for action.

“For someone apparently so old and smart, you obviously don’t get around a lot. It’s a bolero, you idiot. And I wouldn’t recommend you mess around with a plateau-giant’s stuff. And stop getting my name wrong on purpose, it’s not funny anymore.”

“Bo-ler-o…” Edrelle tested the word. She enjoyed how it rolled off the tongue. She looked at the back, and inspected a linear, twisting shape stitched into the back in a bright turquoise-colored thread. “Hey, Adam-whore?”

“Yeah, Calama-tits?”

“When you say plateau-giants, do you mean like, the ones from south of the sea?”

“Yeah, why?”

“They’re called Southlanders.” She said. Her thumbs had stopped idly tracing the thick fabric as the wheels in her fogged brain clunked to action.

“Yeah, they are. Southlanders, Tower-men, Pygmy Giants, Sun men, Southfolk, Wasters. It’s all the same, honestly.” Adamar said.

“But we prefer Sutherland.” Said a new voice, deep and resonant.

“Yeah, guess so…” Adamar ruminated, before whirling around in surprise.

Shit. Edrelle dropped the bolero and turned. There she was—her wavy black hair was a bit longer, her dark eyes were a bit more tired, her halter was a bit looser around her middle, but it was the same girl—the gentle tattooed giant from the forest.

“Oh, hi! Cusco, was it?” Edrelle hadn’t heard her coming, which was bad. Either the girl was trained in the art of the silent step, or whatever that shit Shay had cooked up for her was strong enough to dull her elf-sense.

“Cozca." The woman corrected. "Hullo, Kris. And…?”

“I’m…you know what, my name’s not important. See ya Ed, good luck with your friend!” Adamar said, retreating towards the staircase. He had good survival instincts, like any prostitute worth their silphion. Edrelle flicked her eyes towards him and nodded, before looking back at the Sutherland. The woman was still massive, even after what seemed to have been a hard month since last they had met. Broad at the shoulders, with that ostentatious amount of flesh and muscle that hard-working humans had. None of the efficient, fibrous muscles of an elf—human brawn unsubtly let itself be known to the world. She still had a bit of a gut, but it was the puppy fat of a survivalist. She didn’t work out to be pretty, like Adamar. She was strong for strength's sake. For survival. Edrelle took a deep breath. Giant or not, Cozca was still a human, and a young one at that. She was standing straight, and despite not remembering if she had fought a Sutherland since the war, she was quite confident their martial arts were still the same: grappling and throwing, with elbow and fist strikes, only kicking when they had their guards up or if they were using a sword. They used a method of wrist, elbow and other joint locks as well, usually able to completely pacify other humans. But elves were always double-jointed, and Edrelle could slip out of them. Now, about her plan of attack—

Time had not slowed down. My elfsense had not kicked in. My mind didn’t go into autopilot. These were the justifications that Edrelle made for why she hadn’t noticed the Sutherland moving forward and punching her eight times in the space of what felt like a slowed-down second. The next two thoughts were: Wow, I really need to get more of that rainbow stuff from Shay, and, as a left hook caught her jaw and she felt a molar become dislodged, This girl is fucking gifted from the shoulders. A knee in her gut, and then an elbow from overhead slamming into the back of Edrelle’s neck flipped her over the giant’s knee. The leg then kicked out and sent the elf tumbling across the floor. She landed on her back, and stared at the ceiling, with her hands falling on her stomach. If she hadn’t just had the shit beat out of her in less than five seconds, it would have looked as though she were peacefully resting.

“I need to steal that move.”

“What?” Cozca asked. Edrelle’s elfsense was finally crawling out of her brain. For a moment, she thought she was hallucinating. But unfortunately, no: the human kept perfect control of her breathing. She was relaxed, her stance was ready, but not tense, and she had that ridiculous reach that was the bane of elves in hand-to-hand combat, even sober ones. Fuck a duck’s luck. Edrelle hopped back up to her feet fluidly.

“That move, where you rolled me over your leg and kicked me with it. I gotta steal it.” Her brain was thrumming with endorphins, her glands kicking in to sober her up as fast as she could, metabolizing whatever was possible, sweating out the rest as a fine oily sheen that began to coat her body. She felt the robe sticking to her in places as her body expelled intoxicants with the haste and efficiency only High Elf alchemy was able to guarantee.

“Not sure if you’d be strong enough for it.” The Sutherland replied. That fucking stance. It was wide, low to the ground, without too many holes in it and her hands were held out, palm side down. Sutherlands knew how to fight shorter opponents. It was like she was being taunted, as if this country bumpkin was pretending to actually know how to fight elves. She didn’t know shit. Not yet.

“Come and see if I am, then.” Edrelle snarled. Bait the human into fighting on your level, and she’ll be forced out of that stance. It worked. The giant was swift for her size, using the floor as a springboard for speed and her long legs for distance. The Rushing Step, right out of the Southlander playbook...not that they wrote any actual books, or plays. The giant knew how to use her body, but Edrelle knew the environment. Elfsense told her every detail of it; there was never a fair fight to be had against an elf, even in your own home. She stepped lightly up onto the bed behind her. The giant planted a foot and threw a jab. Easy block, and counter— The jab fell short. A feint! The Sutherland’s other foot flew out from under her and kicked the bed over. It would have tumbled a human, or even a lesser elf. But Edrelle simply stepped with the rolling bedframe, jumping off at the last second to gain as much air and kicking out with her prosthetic leg, aiming for the human’s head. Not enough power to kill, but certainly enough to knock her out. She then realized the jab hadn’t been to feint, or at least, not entirely. Her arm still outstretched, Cozca braced Edrelle's knee with one forearm and grabbed the peg leg out of the air entirely, before gripping the elf by the thigh with the feint arm. She then used the momentum from the spin kick to continue turning Edrelle, before letting her go like a hammer toss. Edrelle slammed into the wall and dropped onto the mattress with the smelly loincloth, and had to shut her senses down to keep from gagging on the odor. She instinctively gripped the battleax, but let it go when her conscious brain noticed she had even gone for the haft.

It wasn’t that she had the honor for a fair fight, especially against a Sutherland, but she had done enough to this particular Sutherland that beheading her with some scantily-clad barbarian’s ax seemed like the kind of shit her brother would do, which is to say, something so fucking evil and devious that there was no way to justify it, even to herself. She didn't need that kind of bad energy in her life right now. She rolled off the bed to her feet. Foot.

“So the Mierwood sap didn’t work?” The giant asked. Edrelle had sensed her tense up at the sight of her grabbing the battleax.

“Huh?”

The giant pointed to the prosthetic. “Your foot’s gone. My cures didn’t work?”

“Oh! No, your medicine worked fine, I just got into a fight when I came here and lost it then. Thanks, by the way. For saving me. My hero.” Edrelle said in her sweetest voice. The Sutherland growled. Humans are slaves to their emotions, Edrelle recited in her head, as the human’s tension and rage built.

“I’m glad you’re not dead. But I want my stuff back.” The big woman said, circling around to close the distance between them. Edrelle kept an eye on her, backing away from her. She knew the surroundings better, but it didn’t change the fact that she was being backed into a corner. The intimacy with which she knew the corner didn’t count for much if she was still

being pushed into it. She kept an eye on the Sutherland’s stance. She had to watch out for those hands.

“Robbing you wasn’t personal, Coz…it was purely business.”

“Don’t care about your motivations, Kris. I just want it back.”

“Yeah, the reason I clarified it was business is because it’s gone by now. I sold your stuff. Sorry, kid.”

Cozca stopped in her tracks. “My ax? My cloak…”

The elf shook her head. “Sorry Coz. It’s what I do.”

The big woman sighed. It was like she was deflating, all of the breath that had been there before losing steam. The look she regarded Edrelle with next was cold, colder than the mountains she’d spent her life in, colder than the way her “family” had looked at her like a freakish war mutant. It made her squirm. There was no fear in the Sutherland’s eyes, and no burning hatred, something missing from the way her family had looked at her. It was a sadness and disappointment fully leveled against one person, as if Edrelle had taken away the only things reminding Cozca of her family back home. Edrelle felt a pit of guilt forming in her gut when she realized that was probably what she had done to the young traveler. Sutherlands rarely returned home when they left.

“Look, Coz, I’m sure we can work something—”

The giant exploded into movement, closing the distance between them with a speed Edrelle only thought was possessed by elves. It was hard to anticipate her movements; the giant was relaxed, her dark eyes were hard to see from Edrelle’s height, those stupid big hands and those ridiculous shoulders. She hadn’t seen someone fight like this since the war—

Duck under the jab, parry the palm strike, back away from the switch kick—shit. Edrelle had sacrificed all of her advantage to back away from the leg swinging at her shins, and had failed to anticipate her opponent using the momentum to twist into a brutal horse kick that buried itself in her stomach; taking full advantage of the space between them, Cozca used those damnably long legs of hers for an explosive strike to the elf’s midsection. Edrelle would have been tossed aside if she hadn’t braced against a bedframe with her back foot, balancing on the peg of her prosthetic. She had her hands free—she put one hand over the knee and the other under the woman’s ankle and dropped, bringing her full weight down on the leg as she pressed the knee in a direction it was most certainly not designed to go, at least, not for a human. The girl screamed. Edrelle would have normally grinned at this, but instead just felt the pit of guilt deepen in her stomach. She felt sick. Her high was completely fucking ruined and she probably shouldn’t have had so much to eat for breakfast. She couldn’t bring herself to regret her actions, though. Humans were too attached to their possessions, but in the grand scheme of their ephemeral lives…Edrelle would profit more from selling them than Cozca would have from keeping them. She reminded herself of that. It didn’t do much to salve her guilt, and even less for her upset stomach.

The Sutherland proved herself despicably flexible, and swung down on either side of Edrelle’s head as she bent forward. It was less technique and more desperate speed and strength. It was exactly what Edrelle had been baiting out of the big girl. She rushed forward, jabbing the giant in the throat to close her windpipe with one hand and grabbing her shoulder with her other as the arms rushed past her. She was inside the guard of her opponent, and it was here that she would win. She braced the woman’s neck with her forearm, keeping pressure on her with the hand over her shoulder. A merciful blood choke. The giant would pass out and hopefully dream of large women, and wake up with an unenviable headache; by then Edrelle would be gone.

“Go to sleep, Cozca…” She said, and the giant coughed in response. She had hit her windpipe a little too hard maybe, but she had to make sure. She looked into the girl's eyes; were a deep gray-brown, like freshly turned grave soil, or an earthy spice pile in the market. A storm on a sea filled with blood. And they regarded Edrelle with that same cold disappointment...No, it was something worse than disappointment, and even more frigid. Edrelle realized with disgust that it was pity. Only one other person had looked at her like that before. She bit her lip and pressed harder, and the eyes lost focus as the giant passed out. Finally. She sat up to congratulate herself, before one of the giant’s knees came up to collide fully with Edrelle’s groin. She fell over. Damn robe had fallen open...tears welled up in her eyes as she gasped, the emotional pain in the pit of her stomach replaced with the much more tangible stomach pain that accompanied a knee to the privates. She pulled herself up and punched the giant across the face. No reaction. It must’ve been a reflex action, but Gods did it hurt. Edrelle staggered to her feet, closing her robe. She didn’t know whether to call the Neighborhood Watch or to get her money and leave town, but unfortunately, someone had seemed to make the decision for her. She heard a “pthoo!” sound, from the corner of the room, and felt an insect bite her scapula, quicker than she had time to react. She looked over her shoulder. A tiny, feathered dart was embedded in it, and numbness began to spread from where it had stung her.

“Son of an emerald whore, not again…” She said, falling in an embarrassing position with her head on the Southlander's stomach. I’ll never forgive myself for falling into another damn trap. She thought, wondering who she had pissed off this time as her vision clouded. It better not be Tabor…not this time… were her last thoughts before losing consciousness, as a shadow passed over her and Cozca.