Tushar walked through the imperial palace. Eyes were everywhere. Even when the halls were empty, someone was just by the corner. Yet Tushar walked; it was obvious he was looking for somewhere private. Today, it was easy to find somewhere private since most of the guards, servants, and the imperial family were out in the town.

“How does it look?” Tushar whispered.

“There is no gap in their routine, but you could get in,” Bilgar said. They were speaking to each other through a magic bone piece that transferred air frequency between the pair.  

The man smiled. They continued to plan how they would break into the elf queen’s room tonight. If they wanted to survive, they needed the emperor to protect them, and to ensure the emperor protected them, they needed leverage against the elves in favour of the emperor.

During the festivals, away from the public eye, the emperor and his advisors were negotiating with the elves, to officially add them as citizens of the empire. Negotiating tax rates, land distribution and cultural exchanges but nobody has enough knowledge to properly step up the terms. Tushar planned to get that information.

The wing where the elves were staying was a secluded three-story guest tower, nestled between a sprawling overgrown garden and the main imperial castle. The top floor holds a single, private room with a wooden terrace. It is rarely used and assumed secure. Most ground-level access is tightly locked, and climbing the smooth stone walls is impossible without tools — especially the overhanging terrace on top.

“Okay then, how’s it looking?”

The garden is overgrown and cannot be disturbed — vines, shrubs, and stonework must remain untouched to avoid detection.

“That’s elf magic for you, the weed does all the work, how’s the patrols looking?”

Regular patrols monitor the garden paths, but not the hidden corners. Most obvious entrances are sealed or watched. They chose the place themselves and enhanced the grass and trees around to match their taste leaving the building as a foundation, a build made by man for man.

“How are you going to get in?”

“The same way I always do the forgotten drainage tunnel, at this point I believe it’s part of the build plan”

“A forgotten drainage as part of a building plan?”

“Yeah, like I have so much money I can afford to ignore parts of my home. You know, like how that other kingdom showed off gout as a sign of the elite”

“Oh yeah, what to them.”

“They were too fat to run and their people too hungry to fight”

Beneath the guesthouse, hidden by the unchecked roots and moss-choked garden, lies a storm drainage tunnel. It was originally used to keep the foundation dry, feeding runoff into a shallow ravine beyond the estate wall.

The outer grate is rusted, broken, and half-buried under ferns — visible only at a certain angle when the moonlight hits just right.

“How is it?”

“The tunnel is tight but passable. Damp, rats everywhere, but still intact.”

It leads beneath the guesthouse's base and ends in a small, iron-latched utility hatch, once used by servants to access the basement for heating and maintenance.

Once inside the basement, Tushar discovers abandoned Storage, just some old furnishings, wine barrels, and dust-covered tools. The room has been untouched, the markings on the floor show it was entered but they left quickly so they didn’t notice the disused servant shaft; a narrow spiral service stair winds upward, completely enclosed in the wall, with iron rings embedded for carrying supplies. It's steep and silent, ideal for sneaking.

“Just my luck”

“What is it? You got caught?”

“No, found a way to the upper floors, I can breeze right in”

Tushar made his way up almost whispering at how easy it was but then he met a snag in his enjoyment. The second-floor landing is missing its connecting stair to the third floor, and the collapsed pieces have dust and rust all over them, it happened long ago and was never rebuilt due to disuse. From here, there's no direct way to reach the top room, except through the front door.

“Just my luck” he said in a sunken tone

“What now?”

“The stairs only reach the second floor, now I am stuck in an abandoned passage. There are some rooms, no footprints or tree branches around, so no elves here”

“Look around then, maybe you’d find something”

Tushar searched the rooms one by one, they seemed to be maid rooms, they were all small with single beds, and small windows that were just holes in the walls with iron bars and a desk. Around the fourth room, he found what looked to be a laundry basket with some curtains and rope to hang them. Tushar had an idea.

Using the curtain rope found in a linen chest, a collapsed wooden beam and a bit of good older mercenary resourcefulness. He fashions a quiet climbing harness to scale a narrow support pillar leading up to a servant’s dumbwaiter shaft, sealed but not fully rotted. He squeezes through into a wardrobe alcove inside the top-floor chamber. He stands in the shadows as still as possible not wanting to make a sound. Observing the elf queen sleeping in her bed.

No one else was around, and he had stood there for an uncomfortable amount of time. She was asleep. Tushar walked up to her bedside, not disturbing a thing. His steps left no traces — not sound, not dirt — which was shocking, even to him. He moved within the shadows, careful not to let his form drift into the moonlight pouring through the window. He would not hover. Not yet.

“There she was.” He whispered, his mouth left agape.

He had readied himself for this moment but nothing had prepared him for the weight of it. She lay utterly still, so unmoving she might have been sculpted by the entities in a moment of unbearable devotion. Her chest barely rose; even sleep obeyed her. The elves called her goddess not because she demanded it, but because knowledge did. Elves value knowledge and wisdom above all else; gold, lands, people, flesh and even morals.

Her face was unremarkable by the standards of courtly praise, unlike the rumours about her spoke of, but quiet, composed, indifferent to worship. A beauty that did not try. That did not need to. She was not a dream. She was real. And real was so much more dangerous. A man should not easily be shaken by what he sees, he must remain focused but it was her hair that undid him. It was just so different.

A river of living gold spilt across the pillows and down the edge of the bed, catching the moonlight like honey through a fogged forest. It flowed like memory itself, glinting with things forgotten by the world. This was not hair meant to be touched — it was meant to be read.

He didn’t dare move closer. Not yet. To move would be to break something. A moment like this — the first moment — only happens once. He let the silence stretch; let it hold him in its jaws. He had finally found the place where obsession ended, and something colder, deeper, began.

“Relax,” Tushar said. He was not here for her. Not really. He was here for the thing behind her eyes, the thing they worshipped, the thing she would never give freely.

Tushar reached into his cloak, bringing out the glassy form of a creature no eyes had ever seen. It shimmered faintly; its tendrils suspended in the vial like threads of moonlight caught in water. It was a jellyfish.

The queen stirred slightly as he uncorked the vial, but did not wake.

The jellyfish slid out like oil, tendrils reaching toward her face with gentle curiosity. Tushar held his breath as it made contact. The queen’s eyes fluttered open, green and furious.

She gasped.

A hand rose instinctively to shove him away, her magic flaring—but the venom had already begun its ghostly work. Her limbs twitched with sudden betrayal, grace unravelling into jerks and spasms. Her voice caught in her throat like a songbird in a snare.

"Wh—"

Tushar didn't speak. There was no room for ceremony.

She clawed at the bed, the sheets bunching under her fingers. But her strength drained like water through a sieve. The jellyfish clung to her cheek like a kiss from the void, glowing softly. Her legs buckled. Her arms stiffened.

Then—stillness.

Her body fell back, stiffened and lifeless as a mannequin. Her hair, now lay tousled and tangled across the bed, its once-smooth brilliance broken into wild, glinting snarls that whispered of urgency, heat, and the ruin of reverence.

Tushar retrieved the jewel from the jellyfish’s stomach.

He whispered, not out of guilt, but ritual: “Forgive me but I still want to live.”

The jellyfish receded into its vial. Tushar didn’t run — running made noise. Running drew eyes. Instead, he slipped but out of the way he came like a shadow pretending to be a man. Just the soft sound of a thief leaving a god’s bedchamber with what he came for. His palms were sweating. His legs were steady — barely.

Knowledge, they said. Elf knowledge. Ancient stuff. But he was going to use it as a bargaining chip in some silly negotiations. For a moment he stopped to think, there could be something here that could get me out of this situation as a whole, but before he could embrace the thought, he remembered how the emperor talked about Wania.

“Let’s just play it safe. I hope she wakes up tomorrow”

He had gotten out, unseen. Made his way far enough. Admiring the jewel in his hand Bilgar came up from behind.

“It’s bigger than usual. Shinier too” he said.

“That’s because it’s from someone with some weight in their brain, unlike the rest of you” Tushar replied

Bilgar scoffed at him then his expression turned serious “You don’t think we went too far, do you?”

Using the jelly to extract information was dangerous, it could easily kill a normal man or turn them insane. Sometimes if you’re lucky the person would just lose some memories but in those cases, the amount of knowledge they took was never this much. He hadn't meant to take that much. Not really.

If the people caught on to them, they’d gut him before he had time to explain. Not that there was anything to explain.

“What was I going to say? Sorry lads, just nicked a bit of your goddess's brain, no harm done.” Tushar said.

“We do what we must, not just for us,” Bilgar said.

He pressed himself against his bedroom wall, heart pounding. Somewhere in the capital, a bell chimed the hour. Still no alarm. Still safe. For now.

“Had to do it,” Tushar muttered under his breath. “Didn’t have a choice.”

It was their way out of this mess, they put themselves in, and until they got out they had to curry favour from the powers of the empire. The kind of people that formed an empire through blood and corpses. People who didn’t care if their greed caused another war to break out.

He needed to protect his men, the northerners. Children and elders depended on his band to bring back food and other necessities. But this isn’t the first time his group has crossed the elves, and the offence this time is a whole lot more serious.

“She’s still breathin’, ain’t she?” he thought, scratching his fingers through his hair, he would go bald with worry. “Didn’t hurt her. Not like that.” But even he could feel it — something had shifted. Something big. Like pulling a stone from a dam and pretending the water won’t notice. At this point, they were in too deep.

She looked different after. Still beautiful but the light, the stunning radiance, it felt like it dimmed. Just a little. Just… less. Like a candle that had burned a bit too long.

He shook the thought off and clenched his jaw.

“Not my problem. Ain’t no goddess. Just a means to an end.” These were the final thoughts before he forced himself to sleep.