Ernst Kopfler had come to the trade hub of Marienburg with his family some eight or so years ago, moving from the capital of the Reikland to this location because of his father and the merchant work he did. It was well known that Marienburg was the epicentre of trade and commerce in the Empire, and now he, his father, and his mother were sharing in this pie...a sadly rotten pie; in fact he had no idea, as he stood their on the balcony of the rickety building where he lived and gazed into the shadowy streets, how they had even ended up there! Possibly something to do with his father's insane gambling habits?

For nearly an hour he had been where he was, the thirteen year old boy staring out at the rooftop across from him, sure as anything that he had seen someone or [i]something[/i] moving up there not five minutes ago. Trying to ignore the foul-smelling canal nearby, as hard as that was to do for anyone with a healthy nose, he narrowed his eyes once more and willed them to pierce the darkness where he thought...knew...something now sat.

There was nothing though, nothing but the blackness of night and the chill wind that blew the rot and reek of the watercourse toward him, or was there?

On the opposite side of the street – well, alleyway would be a more accurate term, the entire 'street' being nothing more than a thin trail lit by the worst lighting known to man – the slender figure sat with inhuman patience and looked back at the adolescent Imperial, a minute angling of his neck the only gesture of curiosity he had made in the last two hours.

Upon arriving in the city he had visited what was known colloquially to the Humans around here as 'Elf town', a most basic if not offensive moniker for the section of this ancient Elven colony still inhabited by his people – 'his people', hah! - and where he had taken a look at the Tar Eltharin runes that so amazed visitors, tourists and foreign merchants alike. What they did not understand was that, as aesthetically pleasing as all Elven script was, what they thought were magical incantations or important notations were in fact trivial scrawling of the most mundane kind.

During the War of the Beard, that long forgotten conflict except for between the two combatant races, what the Men called 'Marienburg' had been known as [i]Sith Rionnasc'namithshir[/i] – an Elven fortress at the mouth of the river Reik, meaning “Star Gem of the Sea” in the Human tongue – and, as with the garrison forces of all races, those stationed here had partaken of graffiti for humour, relaxation or out of spite.

For example, he had read one of the carvings on one of the nearly submerged colonnades that read “Letherion Beardplucker joined with your wife here”, a piece that certainly lost something in the translation, the word 'joined' – as with many words in the Elven tongue – having a duel meaning of either coitus or marriage, or both. Such is the complexity of Asur script and spoken word.

Across the rooftops of the town he had made his way, avoiding anyone and everyone with supreme skill and not a little bit of using the encompassing night as camouflage, at least until the youth had seen him and not stopped staring in his direction since. Of course the boy, who would have been no more than a baby in the years of his own people, could not penetrate the gloom to catch sight of him...not until he moved, something he had to do if he wished to make this meeting.

It was only then that Ernst caught his final sight of the long-limbed figure with a gasp, remembering it for the rest of his life, how he had seen an Elf in the wild and lived to tell the tale.


[hr]


"I would advise you to leave my destrier to his own devices, seigneurs. If you like having fingers and face that is."

A Bretonnian?

If there was one thing that Listec truly abhorred about Man, it was just how slow they were...By Loec they moved with such cumbersome speed, and adding armour to their already inferior bodies only compounded it tenfold.

From his perch on the rooftop of the shambles of a building, although all around were [b]somehow[/b] far worse, he could see and smell everyone that had already arrived. Two men...correction, a man and a woman...and a Dwarf. Well, this just got more interesting. The dour and stout figure was smoking some form of pipe weed, the smell separating into a hundred differing scents within his nostrils, but it was not strong enough to block out either the foetor of the Doodcanal or that of the Dwarf's body odour.

Yes, here was as good a place as any, a good place to observe and analyse, and so until the entire coterie of sellswords showed themselves he would remain where he was; patiently sitting near a hole in the roof, crouched with the precision and silent poise of a feline, and waiting.