Black Knight - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

~ [Somewhere, sometime in the distant past] ~

Quiet laughter carries down the dark hallway — the voice of a girl trying to stifle her giggling in the dead of night.

“That is very snide, Herr Ritter,” she says, looking up at the suit of armor that is mounted to the wall behind it. She sits there with crossed legs down on the floor of the hallway, the soft moonlight of a night like any other carrying in through the large glass front windows that line the long area behind her. She laughs quietly, one hand on her lap and another holding a chipped tea-cup that was meant to be disposed of. Broken porcelain is a disgraceful thing to find in a noble’s estate. “I cannot believe that you would say such a crass thing.”

The corridor is quiet as she stares up at the empty suit of armor. It does not move. It does not speak. It is… nothing. Well it is something. It is a thing — an object. It is a hollow shell of metal, inside of which there is nothing to be found. Inside the armor is no soul, no warmth, and no body. Not even the moonlight from beyond the glass panes behind her can manage to eke past the metal exterior to illuminate a single piece its inner.

It is empty.

— She laughs again, this time covering her lips to hold her mouth closed, as she had seen others do so often here in this place, giggling as if it had said something to her.

It hadn’t, of course. It is just a thing — just nothing.

She’s playing pretend in the dark by herself, speaking to her only friend — imaginary — who sits there in the back wing of the castle estate, forgotten and dusty.

Ever since that night many weeks ago, when Herr Ritter had safe-kept her sweets for her, she has come back to him now and then when she can manage to sneak away at night so that the two of them can talk.

During the day, she is too busy, and she would get caught trying to get here. But at night, the shadows offer her the opportunity to do so.

A faint glow comes from the distant end of the corridor, together with the noise of movement. The guards are coming.

She springs to her feet, turning to run. She only quickly stops for a second, turning back and lowering herself in an awkward curtsy. “Good night, Herr Ritter!” she whispers in a hurry and then runs off, unaware in her rush that she forgot the tea-cup, which rolls down against the wall.

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~ [The Dungeon, Present Day] ~

Hundreds of monsters fill the space, crawling around the walls and running down the corridors as they surround the arena. The fight is going poorly for the adventurers inside, as far as an outside observer could tell, as they are quickly being swarmed by the mass of teeth and claws.

A dozen crossbow bolts cut through the air in an instant, flying straight their way. The feathers and razor sharp heads, made of ancient materials, whistle in a death-rattle as they fly toward warm bodies.

An orcish man, a fighter, lies down on the ground and instinctively covers his face as vibrant glows begin to build at his side.

— A black cape flows through the air, the colorless fabric creating a curtain for an instant that obscures the arena from his sight.

“Sir Knight!” yells a worried voice from the side as a heavy thunk comes out several times over as many of the bolts vanish into the cloak, but just as many press in through the plate metal from the front. A good half lodge themselves into his chest and neck. The shouting sorcerer turns his head, looking at the other caster, a human druid, next to him who had been preparing a spell too. “- NOW!”

The sorcerer is holding his own hands aloft, his fingers surrounded by several rings of fire. Next to him is a druid, channeling magical poison into a large, gelatinous mass. Together, the two of them shoot the spell toward Sir Knight’s back, trusting that he’ll move.

And he does. The giant shifts to the side, his flowing cloak pulling out behind him and leaving a strange, wavy trail in the air as if the empty space where it had been were reconstituting itself — shimmer like it might in the heat of a summer’s day — a quivering in the air pulls the flying toward itself, drawing it in.

(Flink) and (Casjira) and (Sir Knight) have used: (Combined Spell {Flame Rings} + {Noxious Sludge} + {Total Entropy}) [VIOLENT COMBUSTION]

The room fills with an inverse light as a deafening roar shakes the dungeon. Sir Knight’s cloak lifts up in an instant as the spell passes past him, the strange fabric that holds no colors rising up over them, covering them in darkness before the explosion of the catastrophic spell rebounds back their way.

For a moment, the reverberation of the catastrophic eruption is muted. The adventurers float in vague murk for a moment, their senses muffled in the darkness that seems to ebb in and out like a shifting tide.

Then, after a moment passes, the light of a normal world returns to them all.

The sorceress, druid, and fighter look around the smoldering arena, covered in vivid orange cinders. A huge, smoking crater marks the center of the space, where an entire chunk of the dungeon is now missing. The explosion had sent shrapnel out in all directions, killing just about everything at once with the force of the blast. Crushed, mangled, and scorched monsters lie everywhere.

“Wow…” mutters the sorcerer, eyeing the destruction. “That went better than I thought,” he says, surprised. The fight has come to an end.

They’re down on floor five of the dungeon.

Sir Knight had been down here by himself, pushing a little further while Acacia is at home, resting her illness away. The man’s soldiers are out running some errands outside of the city that he needs done for their long-term plan. He had come across this group of adventurers who had bitten off more than they could chew and came to help them out.

“We’re never using that spell again,” laughs the fighter, wiping ash off of himself. “Sheesh.”

The dungeon often sustains structural damage for a variety of reasons, thanks to the adventurers and the monsters. However, just as it restores the dead monsters, it also restores the destroyed pieces of the dungeon’s architecture, piece by piece. Dungeon-magic, a form of magic that only dungeons are capable of wielding, is a very potent thing. It’s been a highly studied field of magical science for quite some time now, with many scholars spending their entire lives studying dungeons — sometimes even just one single dungeon.

“Yeah, that was…” starts the druid, before then stopping herself with a sharp gasp. “- Sir Knight!” she shouts, looking at him in horror. Long, broken bolts from crossbows are lodged into his breastplate, several of them moving through back to the other side. “Flink!” she yells, her face pale. “Get a priest! Hurry!”

— There’s a sharp snapping of wood, as Sir Knight just reaches back behind himself and breaks off any of the jagged arrowheads that have been shot through his armor and are still lodged there, having pierced him fully. “Wait! Don’t move!” she exclaims, urgently gesturing for him to stop. “Don’t mess with them!” argues the druid, grabbing his arm with both of her hands to stop him from messing with the arrows. “You can’t pull them out yourself, or you’ll bleed out!”

The knight turns his head up from the bolts piercing him to look at her. “Thank you, but I’m fine,” remarks Sir Knight casually. “No worries.”

She yanks on his metal arm. “You’re having a medical emergency! You need to sit down!”

He stares. “No, really,” replies Sir Knight dryly. Without much effort, he moves his arm that she’s latched onto anyway and then just yanks out the bolts one after the other out from his breastplate, dropping them to the floor. “You guys should start looting the monsters,” he instructs. “Before they respawn.”

“— Already on it!” yells a voice from the side, the fighter, giving him a thumbs-up from the nearby distance.

The druid watches in quiet horror as Sir Knight grabs hold of a long bolt that has pierced through the center of his chest and pulls it free. The wood and the metal scream as they rub against one another. “You need to stop,” she says. “Flink. Where are those bandages?!” she yells at the sorcerer, who is already digging through his rucksack for anything of the sort.

“Really. You’re over-reacting,” remarks Sir Knight. “This is nothing for me,” he explains, knocking on his armor.

“You could die from this much blood loss,” she argues with a terrified expression.

“— I’m actually not losing any blood; don’t worry,” replies Sir Knight, shaking his head. He looks to the side. “Anyway, be careful next time you guys come this deep, okay?” he asks, lifting a hand in a mild wave as he turns to go. “You were lucky that I was here.”

“…Wait…” she calls helplessly after him, receiving only a hand on her shoulder from the sorcerer, who had finished digging out the bandages. She looks at him as he shakes his head toward her, letting her know there’s no point. “He’s going to die, Flink,” she explains quietly, holding out her hand to show him the deeply red stains that are the color of heart-blood on her palm that she had gotten from touching Sir Knight.

The sorcerer purses his lips and shrugs, grabbing a rag from his pocket and wiping the red off of her before throwing it across the room. “That’s just who he is,” says the man as he stows the bandage back away again. “He’s a hired-hand, I think. Must’ve been some grim stuff in the past to make him end up this way.”

She turns her head. “Sir Knight is? What do you mean?” she asks, looking as the shadow moves off alone into the distance.

The sorcerer nods in Sir Knight’s direction, as the man walks off into the distance, red leaking down his armor from the back. “He’s always earning money, always working,” explains the sorcerer, adjusting his bag as he then gets started with looting the dead monsters too. “He never stops except sometimes at night,” says the elf, looking up for a moment. “And then… he just… walks by himself for hours and hours around the city,” says the elf. “…Just… alone. Must be some real ghosts there,” he explains, tapping the side of his head.

“— Yeah. I saw him do that the other night too,” agrees the fighter, moving on to another corpse. “Through the rain and everything, all by himself, for hours. He must’ve been drowning and ice cold in all of his armor.” He shakes his head. “Maybe it’s self-punishment?”

“…That’s so horrible,” says the druid, holding her hands over her mouth in quiet despair. “He’s such a nice man. Why?”

The two men look at one another, nodding before looking her way. “Between us?” asks the fighter, looking her way. “I think he’s in under some bad water,” explains the orcish man. “What else could it be?” he asks. “To have that kind of dry attitude to being shot six times.” He taps his head. “I’d be dead on the ground and crying.”

“Debts, maybe,” guesses the elvish sorcerer. “I think that woman he works for is…” He shakes his head. “- I think she has something over him.” He rises to his feet, all of them looking at one another and at the red stains that mark the path Sir Knight had left over. “Whatever it is, it has to be bad,” he says as they look at the blood. “Really bad.”

The troubled druid looks off toward the distant shadows in distress at the grim plight of another, of a kind soul, but sees nothing there except for total emptiness, led toward by a trail of ruby blood.

How horrible.

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~ [Sir Knight] ~

Location: Acacia's Room Below the Adventurers' guild

“…Sir Knight…” says Acacia, looking at him and then at his messy hands.

The two of them look down at the absolutely destroyed cherry cake that he’s holding in his gauntlets. The delicate wrapping paper has been absolutely shredded, and the whole thing is now nothing more than a ruptured mess of cream and broken dough and a rich, red goo that drips down through his fingers. Cherry stains are all over his armor.

“— It got shot by a crossbow,” he explains, looking at it.

“…I can see that…” remarks Acacia with a dry tone and expression.

“Maybe I should have put it in my cloak and not in my armor,” he suggests, shrugging.

She looks up at him and sighs. “Hold still,” says the girl, grabbing her single plate as she does her best to leverage the mess from his hands onto it. “I like that you remembered that I like cherry,” says Acacia, setting the plate down on the bed since there is no table. She crawls down on her stomach, reaching beneath the bed for a rag, before getting up again and wiping off his hands for him. “But maybe next time, Sir Knight, go to the dungeon before you go to the bakery,” she advises.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight, looking down at her as her tiny fingers grab the side of his palm to turn it, letting her clean in the crevices of his fingers with the cloth.

It’s quiet as they stand there, the noises of the city outside carrying in somewhat through the stonework and the tiny windows of the basement room.

After a moment, Acacia looks up at him and opens her mouth to say something. But she fails to do so and looks back down at his hand, gesturing for him to give her the other now to wipe off. He obliges, and she folds the cloth over, wiping that one clean.

“Hey, listen. I just…” starts Acacia quietly as she works.

Sir Knight shakes his head. “It’s okay,” he explains, stopping her. “This is what this is,” he says. “The thing that we’re doing here.”

She purses her lips, looking up at him. “— Shut up,” mutters Acacia, fuming for a second before then loosening her posture and looking down at his hand. “I just wanted to say that I appreciate everything,” she says in a quieting tone, turning her head to look at the wall next to them, which has become so very fascinating all of a sudden. Walls just have a tendency to do that these days, it would seem. “That you’re nice to me and all of that,” says the once princess, turning her gaze back another way, this time looking at the other wall opposite.

“It’s okay,” he repeats, having sensed her thoughts prior.

She shakes her head but doesn’t look at him. “No, I just…” She fumbles with her words.

The truth is that having a friend is a very troublesome thing for someone who has never had one. It may, in fact, even present a difficulty in life.

Acacia looks back up his way. “Thank you, is all.”

He nods to her and then again nods back to the door behind him. “Sure. Wanna go watch the ducks in the park together?” asks Sir Knight. “We can feed them what’s left of the cake,” he says, looking at the ruined thing he had actually bought for them to share today.

It turns out that snacking is a great hobby, and one that the former princess is fond of. Who can blame her?

Acacia smiles, gesturing for him to leave. “I’d like that, Sir Knight. Just give me a minute to get ready,” she says.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight, walking very loudly so that the world might not hear the shameful sound of a sickly noblewoman doing her best not to start crying at the prospect of someone being nice to her — a friend. “Are you going to do a handstand on your bed aga-

“- OUT!” yells Acacia, slamming the door after him, a cherry-stained rag flying out and slapping against his helmet.

______________________________

~[The Adventurers’ Guild]~

It is later that night. Insects shrill outside in the trees and grass patches that line the street, having found comfort in the warmth of the city even during the winter. Voices ring out from all around as taverns and inns are filled to the brim with people eating and drinking their fill, celebrating another day of life, and just generally living it up as one tends to do when surviving another day of a life well earned.

“Eeeh?” asks a hooded woman in a surprised tone, sitting at a table and holding a tankard she hasn’t drunk much from. She looks over in surprise. “I heard that guy is a total creep,” she says, receiving a series of immediate glares from the table next to her.

She lifts a hand defensively up as if to block their eyes. “Did you know that he’s in connection with the Vildt underworld?” she asks. “Total shade.”

A swordsman gets up, his hands on the table, as he looks at her. “You watch what you’re saying,” he barks, half-drunk. “Sir Knight is a great guy, right?” he asks, looking around at his party. The thief nods with crossed arms. The priestess, who looks far more troubled and ragged than she had been a week ago, laughs a weak laugh. There is a sound of rustling metal somewhere in the room, and she stiffens up in immediate terror, shrieking as she almost spills her drink.

The hooded woman shrugs. “Think about it,” she says, tapping her head. “He comes out of nowhere and ‘captures’ a ring of thieves,” she explains. “But then a few days later he’s sitting in a Vildt Teahouse.” She leans in toward the man with a smug expression. “If you ask me, the whole thing was staged.”

“You’re drunk,” says a voice from the side, accusingly, from a nearby table. “Sir Knight is a great guy. He saved our butts in the dungeon today,” says a dark-elven archer, her bow hanging over the back of her chair.

“You too?” asks an orc covered in spots of ash next to her.

“Anyway, Sir Knight was here before that,” says the swordsman, sitting back down in an annoyed manner. “He helped fight off the attack on the city.”

“Oh yeah, I saw that!” says someone at another table, receiving a bunch of murmurs. “He was so brave,” she sighs, resulting in many eye rolls.

The hooded stranger shakes her head. “And that isn’t a little too convenient for you all?” she asks, going against the tide in the room. “That this guy appears out of nowhere and suddenly saves the day at the same exact time as the enemy shows up?” she asks, looking around the room. “What makes you think he isn’t one of them?” asks the woman, the room growing quiet at her accusation. “— That he isn’t a spy?” She holds her hands out to her sides. “Where did he come from? I’ve never seen him before then.”

The adventurers’ guild remains quiet for a time as people think about what she said.

— A heavy metal tankard donks against her head, thrown from the side.

The room erupts into drunken cheers and celebration as she stands there, her arms held out at her side, half-drunken ale soaking into her clothes and dripping down her fingers.

A hand plants itself on her shoulder, and she turns to look. “Hey, I think you should leave,” says the guild receptionist, having come out from behind the counter. “You’re causing a scene.”

____________________________________

The door slams shut behind her, and people laugh on the other side of the heavy wood as she is cast out into the night. The cold winter air comes to bite her immediately, nipping and gnawing on the wet, stained clothes she’s wearing.

Pulling down her hood, Junis’ long ears plop free from the fabric. Droplets of sticky ale run down their grooves. The cold gnaws on them immediately, but it’s better to have her head free than covered in the wet hood.

Holding herself, the blue haired elf looks around the dark street and then quickly hustles away. She thought this would work, but clearly she was wrong.

What a mess.

Shivering, her wet hair sticking to her neck, Junis the elf looks around the dark street and into the many lit windows. Where does Acacia live, anyway? She knows that it’s somewhere around this area since she was always around here. But she doesn’t really know where, exactly.

This latest plan didn’t work out. It looks like that man, Sir Knight, has won over the adventurers just like he won over Acacia. She’s barking up the wrong tree if she’s hoping to dislodge him from her this way. He seems to have a powerful social presence. That’s very dangerous. The planted handkerchief plan didn’t work either. Acacia had seen him with it, but she’s probably too deep under his charms to let something like that sway her.

He’s a funny guy, Sir Knight. Worse still, he seems like he’s very on guard. He didn’t fall for a single one of her tricks or seductions, and he literally led her in a circle for hours. Why?

Junis narrows her eyes as she walks down the dark street, trying to come up with a new scheme. After all the effort she put in to get Acacia to leave the academy, she’s not going to let this strange, suspicious guy ruin her hard work by showing up at the last minute and making that girl content to stay around here.

— She looks back behind herself, staring down the dark main street into the distance in which nothing moves. No silhouettes break the total lightlessness of the night.

It’s cold.

Alone, Junis walks through the night, making her way down the many winding streets. Lessons start again at the academy in the morning. She should get some sleep soon. She has to do well in her studies, and she has a very busy morning tomorrow before that.

Not aware that she is being followed, she heads back toward the more expensive neighborhood, where the estates and houses are that belong to people of wealth and repute. Ice and frozen slush crunches beneath her boots as she goes, her hands unable to decide between holding her long ears, at which the wind nips, or the rest of herself to keep warm.

__________________________________

~ [Sir Knight] ~

Location: The Adventurers' guild

It is the morning of the next day.

-[QUEST]-

Robbery!

The secondary estate of the family of Count Ersteig has been burglarized. The family’s private residence in the city is missing several items of significant sentimental value to the count. Any information leading to the capture of those responsible will be handsomely rewarded.

Sir Knight looks up at the guild receptionist, who has handed him the quest on a slip of paper. She’s gotten much less nervous around him after a few days of this back and forth. What’s unusual, though, is that she has given him a quest. Usually, he just takes one from the board himself and leaves.

He looks back down at the sheet of paper and keeps reading. There is a scrawl in secondary handwriting, different from the above.

Dear Miss. Acacia Odofredus Krone,

I request the services of your employees. It has been brought to my attention by my security advisor that they are skilled in the capture of thieves.

Please arrive at the estate in a timely manner.

Ersteig, Marok

“Who’s this guy?” asks Sir Knight, not knowing the man’s name from any of Acacia’s memories. Ersteig himself is the count of this region and a vastly powerful man, especially from this low place they’re living in as commoners. A count is a noble of the lowest tier, but a noble nonetheless. He’s a sea-serpent in a pond of water moccasins.

But he’s never heard of a ‘Marok’.

“Marok Ersteig is the younger cousin to the Count,” replies the receptionist. He looks back at her. “He lives here in the city.”

“But he’s not actually a noble himself?” asks Sir Knight, folding the paper together. She shakes her head.

She leans over the counter, lowering her voice. “Respectfully, I would advise you not to decline,” she whispers. “And not to mention his status to him either.” The woman gestures for him to come closer, first looking around the room. Sir Knight leans down, and she whispers. “…There are rumors about missing people,” she explains quietly. “People who upset him. Be careful.”

Sir Knight turns his head an inch, looking at her. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks.

The receptionist winks. “Us low-class plebeians have to stick together, right?” she asks.

He looks at her and nods, straightening himself back up to leave. “Thanks,” says Sir Knight, wondering if that’s really true. Acacia’s memory of being here during the night he and she had met, doing her best to look for work, and being punished for it, is still fresh in her mind, and so it is the same in his own.

— He turns his head, looking back at the receptionist as he leaves.

People are complicated.

__________________________________

It is a little later.

“…Are you sure about this…?” asks Acacia quietly, pulling on the fringes of her new sleeveless white dress that she hasn’t quite found herself into yet as she adjusts the long stockings she’s wearing beneath it. Draped over her bare shoulders, fastened only with one button, is a black, waist length cloak for modesty, warmth, and, more importantly, color coordination.

Wood rattles around her as she sits there inside a rented carriage, shaking as it moves down the cobblestone street. Acacia fidgets, pulling the fabric of the dress back down lower over her knees.

They had gone to a tailor immediately, as soon as Sir Knight went downstairs with the new quest. Then, using a considerable chunk of money, they rented a prim carriage and an anqa to pull it for a day. Very expensive. He’s making good money in the dungeon. But this kind of stuff eats away at it very quickly, not to mention her new clothes, which are of a designer brand that had to be immediately tailored.

These things cost money.

— Sir Knight’s soldier, sitting on the coachman’s seat, whips the reins lightly.

“I am, Your Majesty,” replies the darkness inside the carriage with her that has not manifested into a body. Given his usual size, it would be very cramped in here for the two of them. Far more than is able to be worked with, like in the basement room. “This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” he explains.

Acacia sighs. “I’ve never met Count Ersteig,” she explains, looking out of the window at the people watching her drive by very curiously. “But I recall my sister telling me that he was an… unpleasant man.”

“This isn’t him; this is his nobody-cousin,” remarks Sir Knight. “Although, he appears to also be an unpleasant man.”

The girl shakes her head, leaning back. “I suppose it must run in the family.”

“So very many things do,” replies the dark spirit that swells around her, floating like vapors of smoke that refuse to leave her presence, as if dedicated to suffocating her. “However, despite all of that, this is the first fruit of our labor,” says Sir Knight. “The sprout of your name has begun to bear a small treasure.”

Acacia looks at him. “I had no idea you were so poetic, Sir Knight,” remarks Acacia with a somewhat smug smile.

“I’m not,” replies Sir Knight. “But I was bored and read about some stuff in the library,” he explains. “Knights are chivalrous, right? Apparently a part of chivalry is writing poems.”

She clasps her hands together next to her face. “Oh, brave Sir Knight,” says Acacia in a somewhat quietly theatrical tone. “Will you write your lady Acacia a poem?” she asks.

“No,” replies Sir Knight dryly. “Der Schwarzer Ritter does not write poems.”

“Huh…?” asks Acacia with a smug smile, unclenching her hands. She rests her elbow on the window and her head on her fist as she looks at him with an amused look. “Is that so?” she asks.

“It is,” replies Sir Knight, quite plainly. The shadows weave and writhe. “I’m actually very shy, you know.”

Acacia lifts an eyebrow. “Mhm,” lets out Acacia in a sure tone. She lifts her other hand, spinning a finger through the shadows that move and follow it, as if she were wrapping a string around her digit. “And what if someone, let us say… ordered you to do so, oh shy Sir Knight?” asks Acacia, shrugging. “You know, someone you were, let’s say… bound to listen to and to obey?”

“It would be very unfortunate for us both,” replies Sir Knight.

She smiles. “Hmm…”

“Do not,” says Sir Knight.

She repeats herself even louder than before. “Hmm…” says Acacia in a playfully sharp tone.

“I mean it,” says the horrific entity.

Acacia lifts her arm to her face, theatrically swooning. "Oh, dearest Sir Knight,” she starts in a dramatic tone.

“- No.”

“- My heart aches so bitterly,” continues Acacia as she goes on with her act. “For I long so dearly for the gentleness of a soft word,” she says, her hand falling to clutch her heart. “My heart falls into deepest despair, for I see not the beauty of the world without such treasures before mine eye.”

“It’s not gonna happen.”

She opens an eye. “Sir Knight. I order you to -”

- Acacia interrupts herself, quickly covering her mouth as she turns her head and starts coughing deeply from the base of her chest. Her arm reaches out, grabbing hold of the vial that the shadows have already dug out of her bag. Acacia leans her head back, downing her medicine and then taking a moment to breathe.

“You good?” asks Sir Knight.

Acacia sits there with her eyes and mouth closed, her tongue working through her mouth to remove the taste of the bitter medicine.

“I’m fine. Thank you,” she says after a moment more.

The carriage comes to a stop. The two of them turn to look out of the window at the large manor nested in the middle of the city, with a significant, well kept estate around it.

It looks like money.

Acacia sighs in relief as she sees it. “It’s like being back on dry ground again after being out at sea,” she says.

“You’ve never been at sea,” remarks Sir Knight, receiving a deathly glare in response. He manifests himself, turning into his physical body. The carriage begins to sink on one of its axles as he becomes tangible, his head and body hunched down over so that he fits.

Cold eyes look his way, bending to avoid being crushed by him. “Sir Knight, I order you to -!”

— The door to the carriage swings to the outside as a servant opens the carriage to greet them at the count’s inner-city estate.

“Esteemed guests, please allow me to welcome you to…”

Both of them look over from their seats, turning their heads to stare at the servant in the outfit of a maid, looking up their way with a clearly very troubled expression.

Junis, the elf.