[img]http://fdzeta.net/imgcache/417140dz.jpg[/img]

Drezlen clung to the side of the mountain like a tick, its mines sinking deep into the stone, its bloated warehouses bulging with precious metals: silver, copper, iron, even mithril. Foundaries digested the ores in smelters whose fires never cooled, belching endless streams of thick smoke and ash which added to the dark haze that daily blanketed the city. At the wharf, a black, tainted lake formed by damming the once white rapids of the Blackwash, barges jostled for room their captains eager to return to the bright, sunny capital to the south. At the center of all Drezlen’s filth, as if it itself was the source, sat the Blight. Situated in a low point, an ancient sinkhole caused by overzealous dwarf miners, the Blight provided the city with cheap labor: sturdy dwarves for mining ore, untiring trolls for transporting it and industrious gnomes for working it. Daily, those fae lucky enough to obtain a job, streamed out of the slums clutching their working papers with paranoid fingers, making sure not to make eye contact with the armored iron police who monitored the crowds.

Klade watched them pass with a tightened jaw - disgusting. He knew some ignorant nobles and their soft, liberal sycophants thought the fae beautiful, innocent even. If they only knew. His eyes turned momentarily from the runty crowd of gnomes and dwarves and to his partner standing resolute on the far side. Iron visor lifted, Klade could see the patch over his left eye. He knew what lay behind it or more to the point what didn't. He'd been there that night, a junior officer who still thought fairies were the cute characters of story books. He could remember ripping that rabid pixie from Jaden’s face like it was yesterday and he still had the scar on his palm to prove it, left by the same needle sharp blade which had gouged Jaden's eye. Not forgetting the lesson he’d learned that fateful night, Klade returned his attention to the crowds. Never trust a faery, not even a pixie... least of all a pixie. 

Klade's grip tightened on the pommel of his iron claymore as a massive troll passed above the smaller fae like an ice berg being swept along a river. The head with its sweeping rack of horns turned toward the young officer and Klade expected defiance in the monster’s yellow eyes. Instead he saw only sadness. “Keep moving there,” shouted Jaden from across the street. 

[center][img]http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs27/i/2009/186/c/9/Urban_Fantasy___Elves_by_Yayashin.jpg[/img][/center]

Niabell waved rapidly to the crowd as it churned through the greenlight district. Her sister, tall for a wood elf, craned her elegant neck over her shoulder. “You don’t really think he’ll see you?” As if in defiance of her words, a wrench rose to catch the morning light and flashed as it waved in response. Iliana sighed in exasperation as her younger sister clutched her heart in joy. “A gnome….?” The wood elf wandered over to her sister’s dressing table and plucked one of the many tiny brass contraptions off its surface. She held it up as if evidence of the absurdity of it all. “Niabell you’re in love with a gnome.”

The young elf turned about blushing, but quickly rushed to snatch the treasured gift from her sister’s hands. It was a dancer formed entirely from wire artfully wound into a swan figure. She turned the crank on the clockwork and watched it dance with wide eyes. Iliana just shook her head, “you better not let the mistress catch you fraternizing with lowborn.”

“Aignéis isn’t as bad as you think,” her sister protested as she set the toy down amidst a lustrous collection of similar bronze fancies.

“Oh really, let me tell you that Sidhee still thinks of herself as a Seelie queen,” Iliana snorted, “as if that would make her queen of anything but a brothel these days anyway… You mark my words, though, if she finds out you’re seeing a commoner, a gnome no less, and not as a client. You’ll find yourself out on the street serving up two copper quickies for goblins.”

[img]http://th08.deviantart.net/fs70/PRE/i/2012/119/c/7/sewer_exit_by_alexlinde-d4xz30t.jpg[/img]

Schlind inched his bloodshot eyes close to the gutter. Green skin crinkled about the narrow sockets as he watched heavy leather work boots and tinker clogs alike shuffle past. The goblin absently picked a mushroom from where it protruded from a crack in the concrete. After gobbling up the blue toadstool he dropped down into the muck. “You see her?” another fetid fae gargled from the shadows. 

“Too crowdy,” Schlind whined, hunching his malformed shoulders. “Wait till waist beards go to their mines, then I looks again.”

The other goblin stepped from the shadows, a rotund faery with the both the shape and complexion of an infected pimple. “If we don’t find her Prince'll drain our blood for mana juice.”

“Gretch! You don’t need remind me,” Schlind looked toward the eroding walls of the sewer where a phosphorescent signature still glimmered beneath newly applied green graffiti. The battle between the two gangs, wyldling and Unseelie, left its mark in alleys and on bricks all across the Blight and under it. 

“If we don’t get their cook,” his companion snarled, “wyldlings run the underbelly soon. You want that, work for crazy humans who eat magic and trip the dream? You seen what wyld magic do!”

“Might be better than serving mean ol' Princie,” Schlind grumbled.

The other goblin’s eyes flared, “no even be thinkin’ that you mold brain!” His beady eyes drifted up warily, “Prince hear you, Prince hears everything...”

Schlind gripped holt of the slimy rails which lead to the surface, “I… maybe go look again now.”

“You do, I watch out… for basalisks…”

Schlind climbed back toward the surface, his stunted brain squeezing out a rough image of the girl he was tasked to find. Human yet not, a dreamborn with the violet hair to prove it. 'Changelings they was called, children of da chanted, most die, found by goblins floating with the trash, eyes glowing like still live. This one not flushed though, this one get Schlind flushed if Schlind not find her...' Reaching the top of the ladder, the young goblin pressed his eyes to the grate once more, peering through a hundred pair of legs, looking for the girl with the purple hair. 

[center][img]http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs13/i/2007/030/a/b/The_wizards_palace__by_Hungrysparrow.jpg[/img][/center]

Mayor Brannig watched the chaos unfold from on high, hands spread wide across the stone railing of the palace veranda. High above the soot, he breathed deeply of the relatively fresh alpine air. Casually, he knocked some snow from the granite ledge and watched it tumble down toward the angular roofs of clustered estates which jutted up like the shorn surface of a shingled sea. "Zar?" His grey elf guard's pale eyes swiveled ever so slightly beneath a sharpened brow. The grey preferred monosyballic names, this much Brannig knew... more efficient.

"My Lord?"

"How many times do I have to tell you, Zar." The broad shouldered, broad bellied man straightened his back, "I'm not a Lord, I'm a business man." He looked down, practiced eyes finding the old foundry in seconds. Memories of hellish heat and choking fumes seared his mind. "You think blood bought me this office."

"No sir," the Grey Elf replied evenly, "you were elected." Brannig studied the slim flawless figure of the monochromatic faery but found not the slightest hint of sarcasm.

"Yes... elected." He leaned back out the high window. "What do you think of proposition nine, Zar?"

"An opinion?"

Brannig knew by now that Grey Elves thought of opinions what most people think of the unmentionable black sludge they accidentally track in from the street. "An assessment," he rephrased.

The Grey Elf scanned the room. He was alone with the mayor, a common occurrance for most human Lords trusted their Jarnalfar protectors more so than they did their own wives. "It's a mistake, sir."

"Hmmmph," the Mayor chewed on his next words a moment before spitting them out, "some in my court tell me the fae may revolt if it fails to pass. The last time the dwarves went on strike it cost us four barges worth of silver... a Blight in chaos, now that might shut down production for weeks or more..."

"Will the mayor excuse me for speaking freely?"

Brannig sized up the elf once more. He had the build of an adolescent boy, with the delicate features and pointed ears of one of those green light whores, yet he had seen the elf catch an arrow right out of the air, an arrow aimed for his own heart. "I'd have you speak no other way, my friend, Gods know you're the only one in my whole court who speaks sense."

"There is a jacta among my people, an error in thought, it is called nel dwekar, the slippery slope. Your advisors, those who wrote this proposition, they think with their hearts instead of their brains, they intend to give and they expect thanks, but they step onto the nel dwekar and they will only get more demands. They will give even more and the demands will grow, they will grow until the unthinkable is what is."

Brannig looked at Zar shocked, "but the proposition only lifts the daytime curfew... and only for the lowtown districts."

"It will not stop at that. Nel dwekar. Once you step onto the slope you can not stop until you reach the end and the end is the unthinkable. Fae loose throughout the city, wild magic setting fires in the commons, enchanters peddling their drugs to highborn children."

"By the Gods Zar, I never considered...." Brannig stepped away from the window, suddenly recoiling from the city and the Blight which festered at it's center. "I will accept your counsel, my friend, by Dagon I swear this proposition will never reach the voters." He stopped beside his body guard on the way to the wardrobe. "Do you not feel anything for the fae, Zar. I mean, your people were once..."

The blue eyes stared back untarnished by emotion. "The essence of things is to be found in the present my Lord, not the past."