Definitely Evil, Not-Quite-Ex

Vivian, Daughter of High King Auron, twirled her parasol. Fine, thin, blonde hair swished about, per elvan standard.

“Been a while,” Skott managed.

“I’ve had people trying to find you for years. You seemed to disappear off the face of Aeirun after you killed my father,” the she-elvan spoke this last phrase with venomous vitriol.

“You had a bounty on me?” Skott scoffed. “Not surprised. But I am flattered.”

It was common knowledge that Skott of Omaha had returned from whence he came. He was called the ‘Hero from Another World’ for a reason. It wasn’t some secret identity.

“I don’t know how it works in the world of Omaha, but guests aren’t supposed to betray their hosts,” Vivian spat.

Elvan were not immortal, the way elves were in common Earther fantasy stories. They did have a certain consistent ethereal beauty to them from age twenty to one hundred, though Skott was largely immune to their charms. This is to say that Vivian was a bit taller but largely unchanged from the time when they met out in the southern jungles.

“My hosts set a village on fire as recreational sport.” Skott scowled. “Sorta voids the warranty on guest responsibilities.”

“What’s a warranty?” Lucy asked.

“That’s not important right now.” Skott waved her off. “Vivian, why are you here?”

“This is my house,” Vivian said matter-of-factly. “One of five, all of which were burnt or stolen from my noble line by your unruly mob.”

“You don’t want the mansion back. You summoned a tornado in the middle of it,” Skott said.

“That was just to cover our teleportation.” Vivian closed her eyes and nodded. “Long have I planned my return to my ancestral home. Give it back.”

Skott looked to Lamora, then back to Vivian. “Now my memory is a little spotty some decade and a half on, but I distintly recall you saying you mostly lived down south. This was, what, a vacation home? Did you ever even visit here?”

Vivian’s cheekbones and lips warmed into a full-face frown. She was wearing full makeup even for this raid of a governmental building.

“Come now, Skott of Omaha. If we wanted to take these usurpers hostage, we would have done so already. But here we are. I’m asking nicely.”

Many of the masked Redeemers in the wings held spell staves and other catalysts. They were itching to use ‘em, too. ‘Asking nicely.’ Skott stifled a laugh.

“Elvan tree-manses. The beautiful gardens. The indentured servants quarters on the outskirts.” Vivian looked back at the throngs of elvan to court sympathy. “These are vital aspects of elv-culture. Yes, the existence of a detached tree-carved mansion and associated servants from the client species are every elvan’s by right!”

The other, elv-occupied side of the room erupted into applause.

Skott sighed. “You’re not going to get the treehouse back, lady. Certainly not with the fully staffed indentured servant roster for you to whip for spilling some soup on a guest’s sleeve. Look, the city is still standing. Build another treehouse. Buy an apartment. The orc quarter is all apartments. I’ve seen it. Heaven forbid you downsize even a little after losing a slave rebellion. Sheesh.”

“I can come and go in this place any time I want.” Vivian let out a bit of sparkling magic from her free hand in a demonstration. “The manse is mine by blood-ties. What does this rabble of lowborns have that supersedes the ability to simply warp into my own mansion at will, hmm?”

“Well, Viv, was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.” Skott said, and walked over to Lamora…

+++

There was something Lamora confided in Skott, not long after her band of free orcs arrived to put a stop to the celebratory anti-goblin pogrom outside that nameless market town. It had taken a bit to earn her trust, but even half-recalled knowledge of various Earth inventions helped out a great deal around a guerrilla camp.

Skott ducked behind a barricade in the bedlam-laden meeting hall, just in case some enterprising elvan wanted to get a pot-shot in on the hero from another world and become a legend.

“Should we tell them?” Skott asked.

Lamora looked to the three of five children they had assembled here. She frowned slightly, tusks showing.

“Very well,” she said.

Skott nodded, then shot Lucy and company a glance as well. This did involve them as well. Why, the boys had just met their father that afternoon. Who knew if they were psychologically prepared to weather yet more strange lineage-based revelations?

“Hey, Viv,” Skott said. “You say you deserve this tree just because you are Auron’s daughter?”

“Just so.” Vivian nodded. “For a thousand generations, my prestigious family lineage has cultivated this tree. Dwelling inside it, planning its growth and expansion. Overseeing the servants as they shaped its interiors and grew our crops. And so it was, through my long and continuous family line, until my dear father the High King Auron was viciously and wholly without cause murdered by his own guest and ungrateful rebellious rabble.”

Vivian began fanning herself with a gloved hand. The elvan, masked Redeemers or no, made some arcane symbols with their hands. The Aeirun equivalent of the stations of the cross, Skott suspected.

“To confirm.” Skott leaned in over the barrier slightly. “Your claim to this mansion-turned-government-building is that you’re heir to your father.”

“High King Auron, great martyred hero to all elvan against the populist rabble,” Vivian said, placing great emphasis on her father’s name.

“Right. Well, what if I told you that…” Skott motioned for Lamora to step out. The prime ministress did so, with Skott holding his bat out ready to riposte in case any enterprising elvan decided to lob a magic missile at her. “… none other than the Coalition of Free Species Prime Ministress Lamora-Kignora does in fact have elvan blood herself.”

The far side of the room grumbled, barked out some preemptive denials alongside some anti-orc slurs. Vivian barred her own very sharp elvan teeth. They generally kept their mouths shut in a thin smile whenever possible, for such outward display of anger and predatory intent was a bit taboo in elvan culture.

“In fact.” Skott cast one last look at Lamora, who nodded her permission. “Lamora is the granddaughter of High King Auron.”

Now murmurs spread through the room on the coalition side of things as well. Lucy frowned and scratched at her chin, mulling over the implications.

“Lies!” Vivian hissed and crossed her arms defensively. “To ever even insinuate that my father, High King of the elvan, would dare lie with some greenskin laundry wench.”

“Oh?” Skott tilted his head. Lamora had mentioned her mother and grandmother before her were indentured with the laundry team. “You already know who we’re talking about.”

Vivian did not shoot Lamora so much of a glance. “Well, yes, everyone knows generations of servants are recorded in our indenturement ledgers. It did not take much to track the lists of recorded runaways. You rebellion burnt most records, but father knew exactly what reprobate she-brute caused you to run away from our gracious hospitality to go… roll in the hay with.”

“We didn’t do anything until the victory celebration,” Skott said under his breath, then, louder: “Point being, Lamora has the same genealogy-based blood-magic rights to this place, no?”

Both halves of the room had taken to rapidly vacillating between staring at Vivian and looking to Skott/Lamora for a response.

“This seven-foot-tall, musclebound thing is no elvan.” Vivian waved dismissively at Lamora.

“I would never once claim to be so,” Lamora began.

“… and to dare insinuate that my father would dare sire her half-orc mother is… brute. Savage. Abominable!” Vivian managed, full-sentences too far gone for her wrath.

Skott put a reassuring hand on Lamora’s shoulder. “True, she’s an orc by most categorization and self-identification. But she does indeed have an elvan grandfather. That’s what, one-fourth elvan? It’s she uses nature and healing magic.”

Vivian bared those uncivil-looking fangs again.

“Look, we’ve got genealogy tests back home,” Skott said. “I can hop back to Boston and acquire some. Should work on the same principles here as on Earth. And what they’d find, I suspect, is that you and Lamora are… what, cousins? Aunt and niece? I… don’t actually know how this works. But you’d share parental lineage, for sure.”

… which means Lamora could warp into this ballroom by blood magic, same as you, went unsaid.

“T-the incantation for family home security spells a-are a closely guarded secret of the—“ Vivian began, stammering.

“The mage’s college solved on-demand trans-dimensional portals, I think they could puzzle out the spell for warping into an ancestral tree-manse,” Skott said.

Vivian seethed, but her body language appeared deflated. No longer the confident silhouette of a composed noblewoman.

“We brought you into our home,” she hissed. “Only for you to spread rebellion and dissent amongst the servant classes!”

Skott sighed, then looked Vivian in the eye: “Look, I’m trying to go easy on you because of that. But your idea of hospitality was to invite me on a ritual goblin-murder hunt. I figured it was some agro-on-sight monster den. But no, it was a regular village. Civilians. Not even a threat to anyone.”

“You vile other-worlder. Slaying my father alongside this horde of orcs.” Vivian spat this epithet. “Besmirching his name, abusing guest right, and now… and now… speaking ill of our sacred rights and traditions!”

Vivian let out a sob of exasperation. The rest of the room was deathly silent.

“I mean, if they could remotely fight back, that would be one thing. Lord knows plenty of Earth media primed me to see some sort of goblin hovel as a monster den. But it was a town with a well, a market, a nursery.” Skott paused for a moment and looked Vivian in the eyes. “Everyone killed in those goblin hunts, over many long centuries of tradition, was a person, Viv. That supersedes guest right, says I. Once I saw the reality of the situation, there really wasn’t any other course of action I could possibly take.”