Everything was turning bluer, less black as the minutes went by, and I wanted to get back home before the sun came up, before it started getting hot. My head was down, staring at my feet, giving the impression I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. The art I was practicing now was the art of invisibility. It was best not to attract attention. Stay in the shadows, scurry in and out of the cracks and corners where the buildings met the street, where walls touched each other and the floors. Become as meaningless as the bugs and rodents. But most of the time, not even that was enough.

If it came to that, I was ready. Though I preferred not to start trouble unless absolutely necessary. Of course, it usually wasn’t me who started it. But so far, everything seemed quiet and calm. Everyone was sinking back into their holes, like the lizards I used to watch back at my father’s ranch.

I was scuttling along on the bottom level of the city. Over head, buildings and pillars of all sizes reached out into pathways, streets, bridges, like large stone branches. They connected and wove together several stories high, creating streets above streets, undulating through out the city. A threaded canopy. I usually thought of it as a great wad of rock cobwebs, and the structures never really left a lasting impression of color, this due to mostly being out at night. To me, they were often just the cool and dim background of purple and blue when I had my sight open. Even when I didn’t everything was in shadow. Dark grimy grays, browns, and black. Even in the speckles of faded orange candle light, everything was a shady haze.

I lurked in some back alley way, hunched against the chill of the desert night under my heavy cotton cloak. The air was dry and cold, cruel to my sinuses. I was trying not to inhale through my nose when I passed by a narrow gap between buildings and heard voices. My head turned, my sight opening, and the warm colors of heat flooded my eyes. I saw the bright pink, red, orange, yellows of three adult males and the smaller frame of a boy that had been knocked to the ground. Their eyes burned red and undefined in my vision.

I blinked and the colors faded to normal sight once more. Now I saw the glint of metal in the night. They approached the boy on the ground like angry dogs, weapons drawn like baring white, sharp teeth. The boy was about my age, maybe younger. He was a white elf. His hair was long and straight around his shoulders, a light blonde similar to white gold. I couldn’t see his face from that end of the alley.

It wasn’t too uncommon to see a white elf or human here. Ranelu banished their criminals to Delusuu if the crime was severe enough. But what disturbed me was his youth. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Would they really send children to our side?

I hesitated, but turned my head away from the boy with his blonde hair and ivory skin, continuing down the alley. But his voice still reached my ears.

“Hey! Hey! I said it was a joke! I’ll give it back!” His voice shook, and I could feel his desperation. He didn’t sound like a criminal at all.

I stopped in my tracks again. Could I really do that? Walk away? Listen to him die?

Damn it. If that wasn’t worth starting trouble then what was?

I spun on my heel and doubled back. My hands found the crossbow and arrow under my tattered cloak. It was loaded when my eyes found the four in the alley again, and my finger closed over the stingingly cold trigger, sending the shaft and point into the knee of the man on the right. I watched him fall, heard his cry of shock and pain, as I charged down the alley way toward them. The other two were turning their heads, hair just a tinge of dirty white in the shadows, the white of their eyes widening with realization, narrowing in on me. They weren’t fast enough for the element of surprise that was mine. I flung my crossbow across the face of the man on my left. It connected and he cried out. My right hand had drawn the wooden sword at my side, and I slammed the handle of it into the center man’s gut, and then spun around not waiting to see their reactions.

The crossbow slipped out of my hands so that I could grab the boy by his shirt and tug him up, shouting, “Get up! Go!”

He scrambled to his feet, and we took off down the alley, rounding the corner together. Our feet pounded the ground, and I heard the two pairs behind us. We twisted and turned in the alley ways, even darted across an emptying street, but they still followed close behind. And no one cared that two kids were being chased by men with knives and swords. The kid huffed next to me, yet managed to keep up with my longer legs.

But I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because we ran straight into a dead end. The walls had closed in on us and we were trapped. The boy and I snapped around to find the older men still close behind.

I gripped the wooden katana with both of my hands and widened my stance.

“Hey, you know how to fight?” I asked without taking my eyes off our approaching predators. I panted, vapor rising from my mouth in little puffs.

“Yeah!” There was almost a strange enthusiasm to his tone, as if he was excited about this. I turned my head and saw him gripping a green wooden staff in his hands. It was well crafted and bore strange gold symbols I didn’t have time to study. He turned his face to mine, his forest green eyes peering at me from an angular elven face. He grinned as if he was having the time of his life and held his staff out in front of himself horizontally.

I stared for a moment, but when I heard the steps of our pursuers my attention snapped back to them. The arrow I shot had managed to keep one of them down. Now it was even, two-on-two. They were older, but that’s all. They must have stolen their weapons somewhere, and thus, didn’t know how to truly hold them. The wooden handle of my sword was warm and familiar. My mother had taught me how to hold my sword.

I hoped the boy next to me was as good as he was confident. Even if he wasn’t, I was fairly certain I could take out both. The street dogs came snarling in on us, and I ran out to meet them. The one on my right came for me. His metal swiped at me. I slammed a heel down and leapt backward, to the side, and then forward. The wooden katana struck his ribs. The older drow buckled, so I took it down on his back, and then down a final time on his head, and he was out, collapsed on the ground.

That’s one down. Just one left.

Then I turned to see how the other boy was doing. It seemed he had managed to smack the weapons out of the attacking man’s hands, but I turned in time to see him hesitate, and then a fist connected with his face sending him backwards against a nearby wall. So I took my sword to his turned back. He buckled, but then rolled with it, landing on his feet again. I rushed after him, and when he went to dodge my sword, I smashed my knee into him. He gasped; the wind was knocked from him. My hand grabbed his clothing and threw him to the ground; my sword came down again on his skull. The man lay still on the stone ground.

I stood up straight, panting, heart pounding, adrenaline still throbbing through my system. I exhaled, eyes closed, allowing the tension of battle to slip away. My eyes opened again and my heart had slowed down considerably. My wooden sword had flecks of blood on it, so I grabbed a bit of my cloak and wiped the sword off on it, then turned to face the boy. He had slid down the wall, dazed, bleeding where the man had broken open the skin on his cheek bone. The red blood looked black in the night against his dirty white skin.

I walked over and pulled him to his feet by his shirt.

“You okay?”

Before he could answer, I heard hurried foot steps to my left. Both of us turned our heads to see a girl round the corner to our dead end. I only had a second to take in her short brown hair, her blue eyes wide as she stared at the two of us for that frozen second. She was my age and wore loose male clothing.

Her deep blues locked onto me. It happened quickly. The girl clenched a fist and struck me full in the jaw. I hadn’t been ready for it, so her punch threw me to the ground. I heard and felt something in my jaw pop, my teeth crunched together, pain blossomed, and I was hugging the ground.

I heard the boy talking to the girl, though my mind was strangely numb as I took in the words.

“K-Kira …! You just punched the guy that saved my life!” The boy’s voice was a bit shrill.

There was a moment’s pause before she spoke.

“Oops …” which came out quiet and slow, but then she said, “Oh jeez! I’m so sorry! It—it looked like—I thought—”

It was around then that I managed to sit myself up a little, holding my jaw where she had hit me.

“Not bad …” I grunted and then looked up at her. “You didn’t use any magic with that, did you?”

I got a second look at her now. While her ears were pointed, there was something just slightly different. Perhaps it was just her body, but she had fairly toned arms. The tunic she wore had no sleeves under her own heavy cloak, which allowed me to examine the still feminine but, developed muscles of her biceps, forearms, and the majority of her shoulders. She looked as if she could have some human blood in her. Her hair was short, close to her head with strands of unruly waves flecked through it.

Kira blinked her blues at me, still wide with confusion.

“Eh? Magic …? No, I don’t know any magic.”

Strange, I thought the white elves knew magic too. It seemed as if all female Drow knew a little. It was odd to see a girl who relied more on her own physical strength.

I stood up to my feet, jaw still aching, and hand still holding it.

“Not bad for a female without magic,” I said. As the words left me I saw a dangerous flash in her eyes, and as they narrowed, she didn’t look very sorry for hitting me anymore. Her arms folded across her chest after pulling her cloak shut. She had a strong confident way of holding her shoulders back, along with a stubbornly set jaw. Her posture reminded me more of a young male’s, and her blues regarded me coolly.

There was a pause, in which the boy looked from her to me with his green eyes. I spoke first as I felt my eyes narrow at both of them.

“Why are you in Delu? You don’t look like criminals.”

Kira exchanged a half smile with the boy’s cheery grin. They both looked back at me.

“That’s because we’re not,” she said, still smirking at me.

“We came ‘cause we wanted to,” added the boy.

I stared at them for a long moment. They stared back. I raised an eyebrow at them after the pause.

“You came to Delusuu … because you wanted to?” I asked slowly, just to make sure I got it right.

The boy bobbed his head enthusiastically. Kira nodded once.

It wasn’t impossible. The border control mostly concerned themselves with keeping anything from Delusuu from coming through to Ranelu. They were always dumping their criminals here. They didn’t seem to care what went through to Delusuu as long as it stayed there. Perhaps it was easy for them to get across. The thing I couldn’t figure out was why they would want to.

“But you must know, must have heard how it is here—I mean, about the Drow as well.” My voice was a little shaky from the cold. It was biting at me through my cloak.

The two exchanged private glances again, smirking at each other before they both looked back at me as little silver wisps rose from our mouths.

“Yes, we heard about all of that. Our whole lives actually,” said Kira, her voice was thready, starting to become affected by the cold too. “But we usually like to see things for ourselves, instead of just believing everything someone else tells us. I mean, heh, that’s just stupid.” Her chuckle was a confident one, as if to prove her point even farther. It wasn’t the nervous laugh a shy person would make.

No, what’s stupid were these two. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from these kids. How could they come to such a dangerous place just to see it for themselves?

“Well, congratulations,” I said with a little snarl to my tone. “Your friend nearly got himself killed. Not a good place to be.” I turned and started walking past Kira. “You should go back to Ranelu now.”

The boy called out before I could get five paces.

“Hey wait!”

I turned back to look at him and his green eyes and gold hair.

“We don’t plan on leaving soon, and you’re the first friendly face we’ve seen for days!” His voice was peppy and loud with the cheer that seemed to ooze from every pore of his being. He was still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, even after his nearly-murdered experience.

I narrowed my eyes at him, feeling the furrow between my brows. My voice hardened and I said, “First rule of Delu: Do not trust anyone. Even if they have a friendly face.”

He blinked at me, looking curiously confused.

“But you saved me.”

I rolled my eyes at this and folded my arms over my chest. How naïve were these people?

“Is it really that nice of a place that you guys come from?” I asked, but didn’t wait for the answer. “Sure, I may have just saved you now because it was convenient for me. Then I would keep you around, be real nice, act concerned, help you find food, let you stay at my place out of my own selfless generosity, and all those friendly things, but really I’m just fattening you up, making you trust me, so that you won’t be expecting it the moment I sell you off for my own gain. Maybe as a slave to some noble house, or to the brothels.”

It was silent for a moment after this. Kira had furrowed her eyebrows, disbelief in her blues. The elf boy looked more than just curiously confused. His knitted gold brow and slightly open mouth was utter bafflement.

“People would really do that here?” the girl asked.

I felt the bitter laugh bark out of my mouth and turned away again as I said, “Like I said—go home.”

“We’re not done here yet.” I heard the stubborn heat in her voice like I saw the bright red of warm bodies, and I knew she didn’t like anyone telling her what to do. Despite myself, I couldn’t resist, and turned my head to look at that hardened will in her face. It was in her set jaw, folded arms, and squarely placed hips. Most of all, it was in her narrowed deep blues.

As I glared back at her, I couldn’t help but feel as if I had done this before, been here at this exact time of day, at the same dead end, with a boy of white gold hair and pale skin, and my gaze narrowed at those stubborn blue eyes. Even the glares, the conflict between us, felt right. As if it was meant to happen. I didn’t let the feeling stop me. Why stop when what I was doing felt like I should be doing it?

“What?” I said, letting my voice grow as hard as her stare. “You think all this danger is fun and exciting? Thought you’d come here for a lovely little adventure? Wake up before one of you dies and realizes this was a big mistake.”

I saw those blues flare up again, and she put her hands on her hips.

“We came here to know the truth.” Her voice was still stubborn and heated.

I turned around again, sneering my retort. “The truth? The truth is that you won't last long. They rape, enslave, rob, sacrifice, and kill nice little girls and boys like you.”

The boy stared at us curiously, no longer bothering to look confused anymore. He had become a quiet observer once again. Kira continued to glare and after a moment arched her brow at me and said, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Will this place do the same to you? Is that the fate that awaits you?”

It was true; I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I had survived on luck and skill so far, but I was still only one person. Someday, someone would get lucky and that would be it, or there would just be too many. When I first came here, my plan was to find a way out of Delusuu, and then to somewhere far away, where no one has ever heard of the Drow and their empire. But the borders were tight, and I couldn’t find a way through yet. It’s only been a year, but it felt so much longer.

It took me a moment to respond, and when I did all I said was, “Maybe.”

I watched her glare lessen, and she seemed only thoughtful now, until a smirk crept up on her lips. She narrowed her blues at me.

“That settles it then!” she said. “We’re staying with you.”

The boy perked up at this final conclusion. He had been staring down at the cracks between the stones on the ground. His eyes widened, and he grinned, excited once more.

“Really?!” he squealed at Kira and turned to me with his wide green eyes. “You look fun! Hey, what's your name? I'm Tarrowco Greenthorne. This is Kira, my sister. She's older than me—hey, how old are you? Where do you live? Do you have any parents?”

He spoke fast, and I was so confused by this sudden decision all I managed to say in response was, “… Eh?”

Kira was smug and smiling, arms crossed over her chest again as she said, “Well, you know, I was thinking three kids together have better chances of survival than one alone.”

“Yup!” piped Tarrowco.

Kira took a step forward, leaning in closer to catch my eye. She was still smirking. “And you saved my brother—He means the world to me. We owe you.”

All I could do was stare at them for a moment. They wanted to stay with me? Like friends? I had been alone for a year since I left my father’s place and Tilly. I swore I’d come back for her and take her with me, but I was nowhere near my goal of leaving Delusuu. Maybe it would be easier if—No, I couldn’t make them stay here with me. I couldn’t just use them for my own benefit. I would be no different than the brothel owners and noble houses if I did. It would make me just like everyone else.

They could get killed or worse. No one liked white elves here. Their bodies often littered the streets, mostly naked, faces so white and pale, turning gray, roasted from the sun and then frozen by the night, eyes glazed over with flies and maggots. Once I saw a gathering in a square where a high priestess was sacrificing a white elf to Lloth. I left before they started to castrate him.

I didn’t want them to end up like that.

I felt my brow tense and mouth go thin as I stared back at them.

“You have the freedom to leave here. You should use it. Don't waste your time on a guy you just met!” I snapped, adding snarl to my voice again.

Kira stood up straight again, oddly not taking offense to my tone. She proceed to speak calmly as if she was already very certain it would go her way. At least she had finally wiped that smirk off her face. “It's not just that. Like we said, we're not done here yet. I'm investigating. I wanna know why this place is like this. I mean ... people aren't born evil.”

“No duh,” said Tarrowco, nodding sagely.

Evil. That must be how the white elves described us, and I could see why they did.

I snorted and said, “How do you know?”

To my dismay, she looked no less confident and that damn smirk had reappeared. Though I doubted anything she had to say in return would be worth much. Not that I was curious.

“You. You're my proof that dark elves aren't born evil. If you were you'd have left my brother to die or killed us yourself.” She folded her arms across herself, partly to keep herself warm it seemed.

I stared at her, willing my expression to blankness and calmly said, “You know, it isn’t too late for that last part.”

Kira let out a warm laugh into the cold desert air. I wondered what shade of orange it was. She lifted an eyebrow as she replied, “Is that supposed to be intimidating?”

I sighed, forgetting the tough act and shivered.

“The point is that you don’t even know me. You don’t know who I am, what I’m capable of, or what I could do to you. It’s stupid. Go home.” At this I turned and started back down the alley, wanting to move to produce heat and because I didn’t know when those men could wake up. Kira and Tarrowco followed, sliding up next to me on both sides. I scowled ahead, not daring to look at either of them.

“So who are you? What’s your name?” Kira asked from my left. I kept my jaw set hard and didn’t look at her or reply. I didn’t want them to know anything more about me. They weren’t going to stay with me. It was absolutely out of the question.

“Where do you live? You have parents, right?” Tarrowco piped from my right.

I kept silent, ignoring their presence. It was quiet for a moment, but then Kira said, “Fine. Ignore us like a baby. We’ll just follow you home and stay outside in the cold until you take pity on us and let us in.”

I fought the smile threatening to infect my mouth. I snorted.

“What makes you think I’ll take pity?”

The girl laughed that warm laugh again. I could almost feel it defrost my skin. Instead of pointing out how I already risked my neck for her brother, she said, “Come on; just let us stay for one night. We’ve got no where to go and it’s freezing out here.”

“You should of thought of that before you came here,” I replied, my voice as cold and dispassionate as the dry air.

“If you let us stay, we’ll leave for Ranelu in the morning.”

I finally stopped and turned to narrow my eyes at her. Maybe all of this was just a way for her to get some place to sleep, picking on a sucker like me. Saving her brother might as well have written it across my forehead in big red letters. I considered that she may also want to rob me while I slept. Not like it mattered. I had already spent all the money I’d stolen recently. That was probably the worst these two would do to me. They didn’t seem like the type to kill. Not when Tarrowco hesitated to bash in his attacker’s head.

Maybe that was all she wanted, a place to stay for one night. That made a lot more sense. There was no way they were really serious about staying here with me or about her whole investigation story. I had actually believed them. This girl must think I was a real idiot.

After my hard stare, I said, “Okay. Just one night.”

The two beamed like children. Tarrowco gave a cheer a little too loud for so early in the morning.

“Great!” said Kira, grinning like her brother and clapping me on the back. “So what’s your name already?”

I furrowed my brows wearily at their enthusiasm and grumbled, “Rontu Nyzento.”