Len is lucky she likes dresses. Although, she likes shorter skirts and higher heels, and tights too. She could get away with wearing pants, probably. General Amaya wears pants. Jen wears pants. Claudia wears pants and skirts.

Len keeps her legs covered at all times. It keeps people from asking questions that she has no intention of ever answering here. People were too obsessed with magic. They wouldn't udnerstand the truth.

That magic wasn't real. That 'magic' was just science that humans couldn't yet understand. She could. She had spent her life unlocking the secrets of the world around her and applying the sciences and it had left her with rather… unique souvenirs.

She called herself a doctor. She called herself a bio-mechanical engeneer. None of that covered all of what she did. She took it upon herself to reconstruct humans, to enhance them, but everything she did she did to herself first. How could she ask others to put themselves in a dangers she was unwilling to face herself?

So she pushed the sciences, until she had this.

Her arm, that is.

It's more than just her arm. It's so much more, but an arm is what she is missing and so an arm is what she uses it for, hidden under leather gloves and out if the sight of gods and men. The metal is silver, perfectly shining and smooth. It could almost pass as an arm painted to look like the tin man for halloween. But halloween doesn't exist here, and so it is an oddity that she is more than happy to keep to herself.

Magic, it could probably be dismissed as, but she doesn't want to answer too many questions of Viren's. She doesn't trust him, not as far as she can throw him, and the new 'assignment' she's been given doesn't help matters as all. So she keeps her hand and its secrets hidden. This world doesn't need to know about her Matrix.

Not that old one did either.

Len held her skirts in one hand as she descended the long staircase. It was dark and deep where they were keeping the elf, and she had to bring a candle with her each time she went down, even in the middle of the day. She was lucky she had, somehow, managed to rid herself of most of her claustrophobia years ago, or Lord Viren might well be needing someone else to look after his little guest.

This time, she's brought an extra bowl with her. She knew Lord Viren had been down there earlier this morning. So she had come prepared.

She sets the candle down when she enters on a low stool in the corner.

"If I unchain you so you can pee, will you try and kill me?" she asks. For the first time in their brief relationship she sees surprise flash through his burning eyes. "Oh come on. 'Already dead' or not I'm sure you'd prefer to die with a bit of dignity. So. Can I have your word that you won't snap my neck when i turn around to give you that dignity?"

"And why would you trust my word?" His voice is rough with disuse, and maybe screaming. She's hoping for screaming. There's a new cut on his brow, and his cheek is bruised and already turning yellow. His left arm looks bad too. "I am an elf."

"Oh, I know you are," she assured. "It's pretty clear. With the purple skin and horns and all. Antlers?"

"Horns."

"Horns. But I know men, more than I wish I did. And I figure your words worth about as much as theirs. People are people. Now, yes or no?"

He eyes her. She thinks it might be looking for some treachery, but he must not find any for he nods at last, once.

Lord Viren didn't give her the key, but if she angles herself right the elf can't see silver glimmer out of the gap of her long sleeves to slide into lock. It clicks and falls away and she still half expects him to gut punch her in the gut, but he doesn't. He rises to his knees, his body quivering with the effort.

Len takes a healthy few steps away and turns her back. There's a drain in the corner, close enough for him to pee in if he aims. She gives him a few minutes before she hears cloth rustle and a grunt and dares look back. He'd against the wall again. She can't believe he didn't spread his legs out in front of him and alleviate his undoubtable pain. Must be an elf thing, or an honor thing, or a stubborn guy thing.

Len goes to kneel at his side and grabs a cloth off of her tray, dipping it in in a thin yellow soup. "Let me see your wrist?" she asks.

"Why?" he demands. It's a fair question and though his eyes are still burning there's something new in them.

"Because they look raw. It's just diluted yarrow, it'll stave infections and give some relieve from the chaffing."

"I am already dead. You are wasting your time. "

"Maybe," she admits, "But Lord Viren told me to tend to you and that is exactly what I plan on doing."

He didn't say anything else, and he still refused food and water but he humored her tending his scrapes and bruises. It wasn't much, and she knew that nothing she did would really help him, but it was something. Surely it was worth something.

He didn't put up a fight when she chained him back to the wall and left, the food now cold on the plate.

That night there is another, chained to a wall. She stops at the base of the stairs, staring at him. She knows him, if only by reputation.

"Commander Gren."

He tosses her a smile, in strangely high spirits for the position he's in. That is to say, strung up on the wall with chains.

"Hi Len. I didn't know you came down here."

"Yeah. I feed the elf. What are you doing down here?"

"Oh, you know, just hanging out."

Len stared at him.

Gren smiles at her and she's honestly surprised with how gentle it is. "Can l get a bite of that bread?"

"Uh, yeah." She feeds him the bread, her stomach turning. She couldn't imagine what Gren had done to end up down here. She'd heard that he was one of the best commanders, General Amaya's personal aid, and no one had ever said a mean thing about him.

So why was he chained up? This was Lord Viren's dungeon, not the public one. She didn't understand how laws worked here. But she didn't trust Lord Viren, or his kids. And this seemed kind of shady. Very shady. She does not like it at all.

"Thanks," he smiled at her and Len nodded, drawing away.

"Sure."

Unnerved and a little sick to her stomach Len made her way to the elf. He refused, as he always did, to eat.

"You're troubled," he said, in that strange voice that seems so otherworldly. For her, it really is. Len doesn't say anything at first, and he goes on. "You've placed your loyalty in an honorless man."

Lenore shakes her head. "I'm not - I mean, I work for him, so I guess I am," she says, "Not that an assassin has much honor."

He stiffens and turns his burning eyes on her.

Len looks at him, a calmness blanketing her. "You're an assassin. You sneak around and kill people in the dark, when they don't know you're there, and you can't fight back. I can't say I find much honor in that."

"Your leader takes the life from other creatures and uses it for twisted 'magic' and you preach to me about honor-"

"Lord Viren is my employer. He couldn't lead me to a bathroom."

The elf sneered at her. "Human greed. Is gold all you think of?"

Unapologetic, with an anger simmering under her skin Len kneels in front of him.

"I have been so broke that I couldn't attend classes because because I was too weak from hunger and I didn't get paid under the next day. I have had nothing, I have begged and clawed and dragged my way out of that poverty, yes, created by a human system, but I am here now. And my sister relies on me and she will not know that creeping fear or that pain or the humiliation that comes with it. So yes, gold is takes up a lot of my attention."

"And you may call us greedy, and you may call us cruel. It's true. It's in our nature, I've felt it, I've been its victim. The worst things I've seen in my life came from humans. But as capable as we are of cruelty, we are equally capable of kindness. It is a choice that each of us must make. And I chose, when I can, kindness."

She stands with a swirl of her skirt.

"Have a nice night, sir elf."

She is halfway down the hallway when his voice reaches her again.

"Runaan."

She stops at the doorway. Halway between Gren and the elf, with the staircase lifting itself up above her head. Leading out of the darkness and tight walls and the remembered terrors.

"Goodnight, Runaan. Goodnight Gren."

She climbed the stairs and left them behind. She expected, when she returned, to find her sister waiting for her in the room.

She found, instead, a letter.