Sky crouched as close to the tall jagged boulder as she could dare. The surface of the rock here looked as sharp as the dagger strapped to her thigh. Mom had warned her about how sharp some of the boulders in back of Dirlop Mountain were. Warned her not to go off the road. But no. Sky risked it. Better some sharp rocks than some bandits ready for a fight. Or so she thought. A boom rumbled nearby. Enough to shake the very mountain itself. Like thunder, but the sky was as clear and blue as her hair. And the...

A boom rumbled the whole anvil of a kitchen? A boom from a distance? A good solid distance. Enough to wobble Jakon in his place as he stood by the heavy iron table and chair. His corned beef sandwich wobbled almost as much as him, but fell apart even quicker. That the boom’s rumble was so intense, it forced him to catch the heavy table to steady himself. Yet the table itself shook. Shook enough that it was hard to hold it. The smell of broken rock filled the room. A smell far too familiar from the mines. From exploring...

His stomach still remained uneasy by the time Jakon got back to his familiar anvil of a kitchen at home. The sleek stone walls sheened with the usual diamonds. The gemstones all glowed high in the ceiling. Hmmm. Wait. That elf guy hadn’t commented at all on the gemstones. Strange. Humans usually did. Eyed them wide and greedy, more often than not. Why so many other races treated gemstones like currency rather than the practical materials they were … Wait. Ah! The smell of lunch hit his nose like a troll’s club to the nose, but in the best way...

Ramsel quietly cursed his luck, but he had accomplished most of what he needed to do at the blademaster academy. The scentless poison coating his steel sabers should start weakening the dwarf students soon enough. All except that Jakon. Maybe. But as a beast elf, even in wood elf form, the poison wouldn’t affect him in the slightest. Not without s solid scratch from the blades. A scratch none of those dwarfs would be strong enough to inflict on him. Not ever again. Soon the countless gemstones throughout the ceiling would soon belong to his kind. Wealth that would buy...

Jakon thought his heart stopped for a moment. No. More than a moment. Several moments. Well beyond … well … The card in his hand was gone. Before him was a puff of bright red smoke, as large, no, a bit larger than he was. Taller and wider, like a bubbly boulder of smoke. And the smell, it was … cherry musk? Yeah. It was so much like what he read elf girls should smell like, well, if they don’t wash enough, they smelled fruity and that muskiness, like a feminine version of what that elf boy Ramsel smelled like....