I politely asked the mert to wait until tomorrow fotiations for the year. After all, who knows what new problems might arise after this discussion with the Baron. I did, however, make sure that we got all the mert's supplies that reviously ordered sorted to their destinations.

  The elf patiently waited for me to finish my work with the mert before speaking up themself, again in a nguage I didn't uand and hadn't heard before. For what it's worth, I'm actually quite impressed that Shasta speaks as many nguages as she does. I've noticed a distinct ck of the two goblins I sent with her, but now isn't the time t that issue up. As I ed my own thoughts up, Shasta begaranstion for the elf.

  "Greetings Zakarus of Kembora, I am Elora Elloetta representative of Elloetta, one of the five Great Matriarchs of the elven nds. I myself am here to establish retions on behalf of our Matriarch, after we received quite the iing reting of events that unfolded here a few years ago. However, it seems that we should hold off oiations until you've hahis apparent dispute with Rathnd. A word of advice, humans, and Besmond III especially, are notoriously underhanded."

  "Thank you for the advice, and I'm looking forward to discussing matters with you soon." I reply.

  When invited into the meeting spa the city hall, the Baron of pfur insisted that he had at least fuards with him in the room. It didn't directly bother me, because after all, we are demons. Zaka, Zeb, and Shasta joined us for the meeting as well. The Baron unched into another long winded speech, making more eye tact with Shasta and his own guards than with Zeb, Zaka, or myself. As he fialking, he passed a part dowable.

  "As I'm sure you're aware, by the areaties of defense, if demons ierritory of any allied nations, the other nations are to aid in the repulsion of the demons. However, Besmond is a generous king, and es with an offer. Return all the nd that has been stolen, and submit yourselves as servants to Rathnd. King Besmond promises fair treatment should you immediately ply."

  Before I get a ce to respond, Shasta retorts in the human tongue. I cautiously observe, ahe Barowitd he speaks again.

  "I'm certain Kao won't stand for this. I retorted to the Baron, 'Surely you are aware that at least one of these isnds is now under dwarven trol. Do you io have us return that nd as well?'" Shasta pauses before tinuing, "The Baron replied, 'Yes, at some point we would expect that nd to be returo us, otiated for, however, that isn't relevant right now. What I'm here for is the demons' response, not some representative of Kao Ostark's.'"

  I turo start discussions with our side, "I'm opposed to this, but there is some weight behind the idea of some ti wide treaties being invoked. I doubt many tries would respond, but holy, the weight of more thaion would be hard for us to take on, and that's assuming that Kao holds his end of the bargain up."

  Shasta interjects, "Kao talked big before about the ability to hold you ransom, but he's a man of his word, if an outside force really did want to take these isnds, he'd fight tooth and nail. I recall him making vague threats before, but that was mostly as a deterrent for betrayal. Speaking of, suddenly submitting yourself to a fn pht just cssify as that..."

  "So we're stu a bad situation." Zeb pauses for a moment, "If we give in, we make an enemy of Kao, and if we don't give in, we're making an enemy of the kingdom of Rathnd."

  "If its a choice between freedom aude, I think it's obvious." Zaka says.

  I'm ined to agree. Plus, I don't even know how legitimate this cim is.

  "Yes, I suppose it is obvious." I say and turn to face the Baron, "We reject your offer. We have no reason to believe that any of this is valid, and further, your attitude plus yueness makes you seem untrustworthy. You may tio stay here until the caravan leaves, but at that point, you're no longer io stay here."

  "So be it. I told the King it was a waste of time to try to iate with savage demons."

  With that, the Baron stood up ahe room with his guards.

  "I have a bad feeling this was his goal from the start." Shasta says.

  "Oh? What makes you think that?" I reply.

  "As the representative of Elloetta said, Rathnd is a pretty shady try. In all likelihood, they probably want the nd for the metal you've found, and would rather there be no demons here at all. I'm guessing if you agreed to submit, they'd make the terms so unreasohat you'd have no choice but to fight back ter anyway. Either that or you'd all be sves until all the metal was mined, and then they'd either abandon or kill all of you. Either way, they have a pretty bad reputation. What you o be ed about now is what their scheme is moving forward."

  "Well, we should probably try to gain favor with Elloetta at least then, to stem whatever potential damages might e from this." I respond as we leave the meeting room.

  As we began walking back to our respective sleeping quarters, I noticed a shadow up by the steam ons. As I approached, the shadow darted off into the woods. Yeah, that's probably going to be an issue too. Someone's already colleg intel on us.

  Thankfully, by the m it didn't seem like anything had been sabotaged. Whoever was skulking about didn't seem to break or damage anything. When I met up with Shasta and the elven diplomat in the early m, I let Shasta know that someone was iigating the steam ons, and likely other things in the night.

  She didn't seem that surprised by the information, stating that "Given we're dealing with Rathnd, we're lucky if that's all they did."

  Shortly after, Shasta, Zeb, Zaka, myself, and the elven diplomat and two of her guards entered city hall auro the meeting room that many of us had been in the night before.

  "Sorry for the dey in having this meeting, yesterday was a bit hectic but you have our full attention now." I said, atuated with a slight nod at the end of my introdu.

  "Yes, Rathnd always does have a way of making everyone else's affairs more tedious." Elreed. "The matter at hand for the Elloetta Matriarchy was initially po just be some basic greetings and diplomatic retions, as our territory is aire ti away, across the innd sea, but now that Rathnd is involved, I'm already going to have to be careful with how we hahis."

  "Then I suppose, in the spirit of cooperation, I should tell you that we rejected Rathnd's offer. Although, it really was more of a demand than an offer."

  "I appreciate the information, as that should at least make our retionship more clear. As always, politi the ti are such a bother. I was looking forward to this being a simple, ns attached sort of diplomatic meeting, but that's no longer possible. We elves prefer to keep things simple and peaceful, so when we heard that the demons on this isnd seemed more ied in keeping to themselves than taking any aggressive as, we thought it would be a good opportunity. To us, most of the other races always seem a bit too busy fighting over minor things. I remember when Rathnd was a quaint try along the innd coast a few hundred years ago, but those days are long gone. Now they're the third rgest human try, and dominate a majority of the innd coast. Oh, but I should pause for our transtor to keep up."

  The elf paused and waited for Shasta to transte. Shasta was seemingly keeping notes on a piece of part, and she had a few more, but I thought it might be a good opportunity, so after she transted, I excused myself and quickly ran to the academy where I was st some of the paper our mill had made. I returned after only a few minutes with a stack of 20 sheets of paper, and hahem to Shasta.

  "Wow, you guys really have been busy. Paper's a niodity, but it's a bit of a pain to transport over the water, so the only pce that I've used it is in Korsask. Who taught you how to make it?" Shasta asks.

  "Oh, I had to e up with it." A half-truth, as my knowledge from earth gave me the gist of the process, but I had to rediscover a lot of the specifics.

  "Incredible..." She said almost imperceptibly.

  "Sorry, please tinue." I nodded.