Our first full stop, where I parked the van and could be fident I was done driving, was at a Ranger Lodge about twenty miles from Bardale. Acc to Dad, he knew a guy in the Ranger's Guild who had ended up being transferred to here, and that guy had, through an ented messenger pigeon, assured him that we could stay there for the night.

  "Careful, carefu- aw, hell."

  "Whoops," I said, watg the remaining uririckle out of the poor deer's bdder.

  The assumption wasn't ungrounded: boys tend to be like their fathers. Napoleon Iro is a master outdoorsman who could skin, drain, and gut a deer carcass in three minutes with his eyes closed and one hand behind his back. Therefore, Joseph Iro should be able to gut a deer carcass with a small amount of guidand instru from one of the Rangers.

  Unfortunately, I was not a great outdoorsman. I didn't have what it took. And I had just demonstrated this by actally puncturing the deer bdder with the knife, spilling urine all over its lower half.

  "I, uh... I don't suppose that's the sort of thing we just off, is it? Or do we just scrap all the meat that got piss on it?"

  "We ri off with a lot of water," the Ranger said, already doing that with his teen. "Dammit. Oh well, mistakes happen. You'll get better with practice."

  "Mm," I said. He was right that practice would improve my skills, but he was dead wrong about how often I inteo field-dress a deer.

  The High Elves were not called that because we sidered ourselves to be better than anyone. We were called that because we lived in densely-built cities of high towers, just like how Wood Elves are called that because they live in fairy gdes which are almost always in the woods, and Dark Elves are called that because nobody knows where they live and that's how they like it. The fact that I was a city boy at heart was not a betrayal of my elveage, I swear, it's Napoleon who's the weird oh his stupid goddamn grass-toug addi.

  "How about you do the rest of it, so I don't screw up your dinner any further?" I suggested.

  "Fair enough. Alright, watch closely. So what you wanna do is-"

  We'd gathered around a bonfire as the su, and ate big, hearty bowls of deer and potato stew, seasoned with whatever wild herbs the Rangers mao rustle up.

  "So," the lodgemaster began, cutting through the chatter. "Joseph Iro."

  "That's me," I said, after swallowing my test bite of stew. I was learning that I didn't like deer very much, but whatever, free food was free food.

  "I've heard a lot about your father," he tinued.

  "I take after my mother," I said idly.

  "Tell me... how good are you at campfire stories?"

  "Never dohat on my life," I said. "I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude, but I am not a Druid and I am definitely not a Ranger. I built aire goddamn house inside my caravan because I was that opposed to spending a few nights sleeping in a tent. I know my dad's given you high expectations for what an Iro is like, but... That's not me, y'know?"

  "You're an occultist who studies the magic of story and song," Faith said dryly.

  "...Okay, point, but still," I said. "Uhhh... Okay, what kind of story would be appropriate..."

  "Well, you're an elf," one of the miseers (I would not be learning their names, I did not care about these people) pointed out. "How about something old and historical?"

  I tapped my as I thought about the stories I could tell.

  The first ohat came to mind was the story of Terpsichore Iro, and how she'd united a Mage-Knight and a Succubus to destroy the cult of Demon King Paimon. And then I immediately dismissed that, because as cool and elf-like Rangers might like to think they are, they are fually still Hikaano, and I'm not telling a bunch of strange Hikaanos a story about sex. Because that was the emotional moneyshot, for anyone who wasn't a direct desdant of Artorias Wind-Caller- the way that Terpsichore flipped the script on Volex, weaving a tale of love and redemption arayal around her, until a formerly cold and cruel demon for whom sex was just her preferred on became a noble, g person who would betray her own king for the people she loved, who had shown her kindness she was unaced to.

  Because a big part of that kindness was that Terpsichore Iro fucked Volex so good she couldn't walk afterwards.

  So... Time to pick a different one. Maybe... Ah, to hell with it, let's go real cssic.

  "...Alright, so," I began. "Let me tell you one of the oldest stories there is."

  Six thousand years ago, there had been only two true peoples in this world: humans, and dragons. The capriciously cruel Fairy Lords of Annwn would abduct humans from our world, but a thousand years and several geiohe Fairy Lords were sughtered like cattle and their grand manors id to waste; staggering back out of Annwn, and sealing the pne away from ours with the Iron Gate, came the hardy dwarves and the immortal elves, lost and homeless in the world that had once been their home.

  The problem was easier for the dwarves than the elves- the i magic of the dwarves, plus their learned skills and culture, allowed them to carve vast holds into mountains, and begin building The Mountainhomes. For elves, though, they ultimately weren't anything more than humans whose profoundly traumatized old-timers cked the good graces to die of old age.

  The elves as a people splihe Dark Elves came to the dwarves, hat in hand, begging to learn their ways, and the dwarves, remembering their elven allies in the rebellion against the Fairy Lords, happily obliged; ohe Dark Elves had learned enough of the dwarven craft to carve their own underground homes, they disappeared from the surface of the earth, o be seen again. The Wood Elves found themselves longing for the lost splendors of Annwe the overwhelming trauma of the Otherworld and the caprices of their captors, and strove to recreate some of those splendors, creating and nurturing rich Fairy Gdes in the deep, untamed forests of the world. The High Elves tried their best to re-embrace their stolen humanity, and built deies of high towers, and weling humans into their midst.

  Unfortunately for the High Elves, the Fairy Lords were hardly the only otherworldly tyrants they had to worry about. Iime the High Elves had been away, some humans, secluded and in shadows, had managed one way or ao make tact with the Demon Kings of Hell. The Demon Kings wahe riches and resources of the mortal pne, for Hell had long since beeed and despoiled beyond repair by their rapacious greed, and they promised these humans that, if they were to open a portal to allow the demons into the mortal phey would be rewarded greatly, and made a Duke in their King's new demesne.

  One of these would-be summoners, a human whose name was lost to time, spoke to a Prince of the High Elves about the Demon Kings, expining his task, and to share the reward with the Prihe Prince, Mordecai Rosewood, had been but a child during the Fairy Rebellion, and had grown up knowing only the glory of victory, and none of the true cost of war. Over his thousand years of life on the mortal pne, he had beeually frustrated by the h Elves- he knew just how effective an elven army could be, a his people refused to fight, refused to quer the world that he believed should rightfully belong to the High Elves.

  Mordecai wheedled everything he could out of this summoner, promising him that, soon, the time would be right to act. And then... Mordecai simply waited for the summoo die of old age. He inteo rule the world himself, after all- why should he be forced to share it with some pitiful human? And once he knew he would not... He took a little vacatioold his brother, Lysander Rosewood, that he simply wao visit the Wood Elves in the nearby gde.

  When he arrived, he sughtered the Wood Elves, and everything else living in that gde. With the unholy power of his bloody desecration, he wrenched open a hole in the veil between pnes, and threw opees of Hell.

  And through those Gates marched the most successful Demon King there ever was: Lucifer Mstar, the Dark Lord. The ranks of his armies were filled with special breeds of demon, crafted by Lucifer himself from the souls of humans who had been o Hell, and bred into beings that we would today reize as ord goblins.

  Mordecai weled the Dark Lord with open arms, expeg to be rewarded for betraying his people.

  The Dark Lord rewarded him as a traitor deserves: a swift death, before Mordecai k was ing. That he died painlessly was the only mercy.

  From that point onwards, it was war. Grandiose, bloody, terrible war. Mordecai got his wish, in the end: the High Elves raised an army ao war, immortal masters of their craft sughtering demons like cattle, carving a bloody swath through the hordes of the Dark Lord, until, at long st, after three years of fighting, High King Lysander Rosewood faced the Dark Lord in single bat.

  The fight was long, bloody, and brutal, carving huge gouges into the ndscape, destroying their surroundings. By the end of it, their ons- masterworks of artifice given the gra entments their peoples could muster- had shattered, and bee useless.

  So Lysander Rosewood beat the Dark Lord to death with his bare hands. By the time it was over, nobody could reize the Dark Lord's remains, and Lysander himself was only reizable by the sm wisps of his soul still ging to life.

  Lysander recovered, uhe care of the greatest Druids to walk the earth, but as, his victory was not final. A Demon King, you see, is much like a Living God- simply killing them doesn't destroy them forever. A st two hundred years ter, in the nds still cimed by the orcs, a child was born with the reinated soul of the Dark Lord. Surok Mash quered the warring s of orcs, and began the Dark Crusade, starting a pattern that sted for more than three thousand years. Only as retly as six hundred years ago was the mantle of the Dark Lord finally extinguished, by a young, half-elven knight sworn to The Mother, Elven God of Freedom, Justice, and War, bringing the world a measure of peace at long st.

  "...Eh, you'll get there," the lodgemaster said, after I finished.

  I rolled my eyes, and stood up, preparing to head back to the van so I could finally get some fug rest.

  "Wait," Faith said, before I could go. "Who was that half-elven knight? Don't we remember his hat was only six hundred years ago- your own mother is more than two thousand! Surely someone who was there remembers his name!"

  "You already know his name," I said. "His name was Hano, and he became the God of Padins."