Chapter 3

The city which Kyu guided her group through was... not beautiful. Obviously, this was one of the more poor districts and Sage saw primarily Elves or poor and worried looking Humans. Some seemed like they suffered from some kind of addiction while others just flat out slept in the streets. Interestingly, the homeless-looking people were almost entirely Humans with very few Elves and even these could always be found in some kind of group. Sage would notice that there were several of these big concrete blocks in this city with smaller apartment blocks sprinkled around them, separating them like undrawn borders. More than once Sage would see banned Balmorian flags, either the royal variant or the national variant and sometimes even an Elfish Maranurrian Flag: Red-yellow with a green crossbar and three crowns in the center, instead of blue-yellow with a green crossbar without additional ornaments, which was the official flag. The red stood for the Communist destiny of the elves, the crowns for the traditional noble families that ruled the Island in a feudal style prior to the colonial era. From an ideological perspective it was weird how Elves worshiped the revolutions promised by Marx while at the same time wanting to return to the feudal roots of their country, yet it just seemed like something Elves would attempt. All of these symbols on the flags were banned though obviously, the police did not have the necessary authority here to enforce a ban on unconstitutional, that being Elfish symbolism.

Kyu turned left, led them though a narrow alley and the city changed entirely, to the point where Sage wasn't sure anymore they were still in the same place. Suddenly, the quality of the roads and sidewalks improved and the endless monotone concrete-monsters where replaced by elegantly designed multiple-party apartments, shops and restaurants. The population walking around in the city turned overwhelmingly Human and seemed much happier, chatting and shopping in the street canyons. Kyu did not have much of an eye for them, though Sage couldn't get to see enough of the place, as everything here seemed like a new experience to him.

What was an iPhone?

Was that shop that sells alcohol publicly he saw as well?

All of this seemed so weird to him, as if he wasn't used to this society at all. Soon the group took over the lead and Sage didn't stray for the sole reason, that the last in line, Curel reached for his hand and pulled him after her. The road took a turn left and suddenly they headed straight for a wide river.
The bridge under which Kyu gathered her troops was quite a feat of modern architecture, spanning at least a hundred meters over the stream that lead to the sea. Large freight ships were crossing the sea below it, smaller fishing boats and yachts of rich Humans could be seen in moderate distance towards the shoreline. Sage watched the scenery in awe and only Kyu's rough pokes could get him back into focus.
"Okay, guys, remember our tactics. Do not show yourself before you know what we will attack. It's better to run away then to get caught. Don't show your faces..." she pulled a black backpack of her shoulders. Inside of it was the equipment for the raid. Smoke-bombs, telescopic truncheons, some petrol in a plastic box, a lighter and some green face-masks with a crown icon on it. Kyu handed out a face-mask, a truncheon and a smoke-bomb to each of them, but kept the petrol and the backpack to herself.
"Ready?" she asked after each of them had covered their face sufficiently and each of the girls had bound her hair back to a ponytail. Sage felt really uncomfortable, but everyone else in the group nodded once and decisively. It was too late to turn back now.

Like natives on the warpath they snuck up the green stripe of the bridge, leading up to the street, which seemed pretty busy this morning. The road was stuffed with cars, trying to cross the bridge at the peak of morning traffic. An endless avalanche of steel and aluminium, heading for the peaks of this concrete desert on the other side of the polluted river. Yet a surprising amount of the people who wanted to cross the bridge were Elves and none of them seemed to possess a car. Many of them were even kids walking in groups or accompanied by young men and women. On the other side of the road, they saw their target. It was a camp by the roadside, consisting of three tents and five motorcycles. The spot was occupied by Humans with white skin colour, each wearing matching biker coats. They were blasting English music onto the street, which was so noisy that even Sage, who could understand English, couldn't make out any lyrics except some racist slurs. By the camp, they had erected signs, giving out a clear message.
"Elves are not equal to Humans" with a devilishly grinning old Elf next to it.
"God hates the Elves" with two kissing male Elves next to it, looking unhealthy and small.
"Your time on this planet is over!" with a large, white hand spraying insecticide over Elf-mosquito hybrids.
"No Elfish-Jewish conspiracy in Maranurr!" and two hands shaking each other, one with the flag of Israel and one with the flag of Balmor in its sleeve.
Only one of the humans was on his feet, walking over the sidewalk and occasionally shouting a racist slur against a passing group of elves of just flat out spitting or kicking at them. The Elves did their best to avoid him were ever they could, obviously aware of the humans goal to achieve an escalation, but it didn't work out properly.
Immediately, Sages inhibition's to commit violence against these guys sunk rapidly. Yeah, they probably deserved it, even if it was against the law. Kyu gestured the group to remain hidden behind the bridges rail and peeked to make a plan.
Then she leaned back and said: "Stay back. I think if we'd burn these motorcycles, we'd hurt them much more then our bats ever could."
"No..." Curel contradicted quite quickly. "I will do it."
Kyu gave her a confused look, but Curel was quick to explain: "Hey, let's be honest. In an actual fight, I'm of no use to you, but I'm small and unsuspicious. I could sneak up to the camp without them seeing me as a threat. Besides, Sage is going to need you as a guide, once you're trying to escape."
Sage was genuinely thankful they had Curel in the group, who seemed to be the only one to constantly keep track of his status and where he needed help. It was almost like she was babysitting him.
Kyu nodded in agreement.
"Alright, do as you want." she handed over the backpack with the petrol and made space for Curel to climb up the green. Curel threw the backpack over her shoulder and rushed onto the street, were the traffic was so stuck, that she could easily move between the cars and avoid getting hit. Also, thanks to her ridiculously small body size, she could even use the smallest of the cars as cover, so it was impossible for the humans on the other side to spot her. In fact, it got pretty hard for even Sage and Kyu to track her movements, once she had passed the second row of cars.
For her size she was moving surprisingly fast and crossed the sidewalk using a crowd of Elves as additional cover. Sage could see from his position how she continued her stealth mission by using the motorcycles as cover while spilling petrol over the saddles and engines. She moved from motorcycle to motorcycle, but unfortunately she only had enough petrol for three of them. She threw the plastic container away and pulled the lighter out of her pocket. Seconds later the first of the Harleys was set ablaze and she quickly turned to burn the second one. Success!
But then a loud screech of warning came from the camp. Five huge, muscular men had jumped up and two where already running to their motorcycles.
"Now, attack!" Kyu shouted and pulled the truncheon from her pocket.
All of the Elves plus Sage and Inu jumped from their cover and onto the street. Unlike Curel, none of them paid much attention on staying hidden. Kyu specifically went as far as to walk over the bonnets of the cars to get to the camp quicker. Unfortunately, they seem to have underestimated the distance and obstructions they had to cross to aid Curel, who had thrown the lighter away and pulled the smoke-bomb. The two men were already closing in on her as the support for her was only halfway across the street and even though Curel's running skills surely were impressive for her size, she wasn't fit to outrun someone almost twice her leg length.
"Fuck!" Sage thought, as he realizing that this wasn't going at all as planned. Curel was going to be captured by them. Kyu was already one row ahead of the rest and yelled: "Take on someone your size!"
Unfortunately, this did not stop the two humans from chasing after Curel, but made one of the other two men step into Kyu's way, swinging an iron chain after her. Kyu dealt with the situation as heroically as she could. She ducked down, below that Human's strike, which was admittedly not too hard given Kyu's smaller body proportions. She then swung her truncheon into his side like she was David attempting to cut down Goliath. And indeed, it was an impressive testimony of Kyu's fighting prowess that the man bent over painfully holding the side where the young Elf's weapon had struck him.

Still, Curel was in danger and Sage was the closest one to saving her. Right in this moment, the situation got worsened as Curel stumbled from her attempt to get from a crouch into a standing position again and starting to run at the same time. The first of the humans was now only less than two meters away from her and Sage pumped everything of his willpower into the goal to reach and protect her, letting his legs do him some impressive maneuvering and leaps between the cars. Still, he wouldn't reach her in time, no matter how much he tried.
In this moment, something weird, yet very fortunate happened. Only a meter before he could reach the tripping Riverelf, the human stumbled himself and stopped in his movements, looking around confusedly as if he had lost track of where Curel actually was or as if a sudden attack of dizziness had come over him.
"Well, that's what you get for standing up too fast from that campfire..." Sage thought and tackled the human at full swing, sending him flying in an uncomfortable-looking angle to the ground.
Curel now had time to regain her balance and threw the smoke-bomb into the camp, close to the motorcycles. A loud hissing noise ran through the battlefield, as if a firework had been started and immediately after, the bottle exploded with a deafening 'Bang!' and releasing thousands of glass splinters along with smoke into the air. The third motorcycle obviously got hit by the heat wave and the petrol ignited, causing a smaller, second explosion. Now, not only the camp was in panic, but also the street with people leaving their cars to avoid becoming a collateral damage and Elf children running onto the street to avoid confrontation.
"Run!" Sage shouted towards Curel and got ready to face the second guy who had chased after her by instinctively lowering his stance and gripping onto his weapon. For a second he was genuinely worried about the outcome of this duel, as this guy was bigger than him and a lot heavier, but luckily someone was actually having his back. Like a snow-white force of nature, Inu sprung into the frame, ramming her shoulder into that bull-neck's chest. She was not smaller than him. Maybe lighter but also, filled with ferocious determination. Sage could almost see something animalistic in her in this second as she threw herself to the ground with his victim and started punching him into the face with her fist and the hilt of her truncheon like it was nothing. She seemed like a completely different person, going from cute and shy into battle-frenzy in a matter of moments. Instead of worrying about that, Sage raised his eyes and looked around if someone needed help. Surprised he realized that they were actually winning this battle.
Mercy seemed to be a foreign word to Kyu, as she pulled her weapon back and then swung it from below into the face of the bent over human in front of her, most likely scarring his face and knocking him out. Only two humans were standing at this of them was the guy that stood by the street and harassed people and the other guy was still back at the campfire, too overwhelmed by the charge of the Elves to react. This was his demise, as Kyu, Titania and Laniel now jumped into the circle, formed by the tents and professionally surrounded the men. It was Laniel who leaned forwards and struck for his knees, sending him to his feet and Titania leading the first blow to his face. Sage noticed that Elves might be physically weaker, lighter and smaller than Humans, but Woodelves at least seemed to move with superior speed and reflexes which allowed for this crazy maneuvering even as untrained rioters. Sage twitched as he realized that his newfound friends would not stop when they merely had defeated the enemy. They were mad, furious even.
Whether this was rightful fury or just mindless rage, it didn't matter at the moment as they all were beating now on opponents who were already on the ground. Inu was still sitting on her victim's chest, punching his face to a bloody puddle with each second she remained here, while Kyu and her sisters ganged up on a single guy who had not even made the attempt to fight back, beating him with their truncheons, even when he was loudly begging for mercy.
"Enough!" he called and walked over to Inu, grabbing her shoulder. "Enough"
Inu turned to him and for a second he was legitimately scared that she might attack him. Her yellow eyes had turned into narrow, glowing, mad balls in her eye-sockets and her fists where covered in her victim's nose-blood and maybe even a bit of her own.
But then, Inu seemed to come back to her sense. Her pupils expanded and she looked below herself, examining the human she had just beaten into the hospital. She stood up as if to avoid getting grabbed, even though he wasn't really conscious at this point anyway.
She looked at him, with remorse in her eyes, at least for a second, then they displayed panic.
"Sage, watch out!" she called and launched herself forwards. Sage could barely look over his shoulders to see what was going on there, but he quickly realized, that the guy which he had tackled down to save Curel had stood up and attempted to attack him from behind. All he was getting now was a powerful punch coming from Inu's first, right into his belly. He stumbled back and vomited onto the ground, before collapsing.
"That's enough!" Kyu called, while facing the guy on the bridge, holding his phone to his ear. It was pretty obvious he was calling reinforcements of some kind, be it the police or thugs of his kind. "Let's get the fuck 'outta here!"
She threw her smoke-bomb into one of the tents and ran towards Sage to grab him be the arm. Inu, Laniel and Titania all took different directions, with all of them avoiding the road. Sage hastily reached into his pocket and opened the bottle-cap before unprofessionally throwing it into the camp. He was just too happy to get rid of active, breakable explosives in his pockets. Four more explosions he could hear behind himself, each one more quiet, until Kyu turned around a corner with him so he couldn't hear the camp anymore.

For a second it looked like Sage was better at running then Kyu, thanks to his overall bigger body and longer legs which allowed him to take over the lead, but after just a short sprint towards the end of the alley, Kyu proved to be the one with the greater stamina.
It was weird, because the slim body's of Elves looked more like they were sprinters rather than runners. Yet, Kyu looked like she was pretty in shape and having less than half his body mass probably helped in maintaining a higher speed over a larger distance.
"Where are we going?" he called after her,
"Shut up and run!", she called back over her shoulder. "They are still up our ass!"
As if they had waited for the signal, sirens could be heard in the background, issuing Kyu to take a turn into an even smaller alley. Somewhere behind, someone called: "Two went down that alley! Get them!"
"Fuck!" Kyu cursed, quickly taking another turn and leading Sage straight over a backyard lawn. "We're taking a secret route."
She picked her phone up and changed course to escape the claustrophobic backyard lawn. It was weird how the Humans here insisted on maintaining 4 square meters of grass behind their house, even though there was no sunlight shining down on it ever. Kyu pulled him on, through another passage back into the poorer district with the concrete-appeal. The police seemed to know though the fugitives were aiming for this part of the city, as squads of police cars were entering this part of the city just now.

This woke the city.

Elves stepped on the street to stare at the Police cars with open hostility, while Humans retreated off the streets. Tension was building fast, but Sage didn't see much of it as Kyu pulled him across the street and into another gap between two concrete-monsters. This time, it seemed like a dead end though as the sirens were behind them and the alley ended in front of a high concrete wall.
Kyu had the phone now on her ear, which she had pulled out before they even had entered this district.
"Uyka?" she asked. "Please, open the fucking window, were in a bit of trouble here."
She hung up. Just seconds later, a window, about 10 metres above the ground in the alley opened and a rope ladder was dropped down the wall.
"Hurry up!" a voice from above called. "If the police see you climbing up here, it's my clan that's in trouble."
Kyu rushed to the ladder, but then stepped aside to let him go first.
"I dragged you into this." she said. "So I'm gonna go after you."
Sage nodded and began to climb up. Only halfway up the ladder he realized Kyu was probably trying to avoid him looking under the short Dyun-skirt of hers. For a second he internally mourned the lost opportunity, and then he had to begin focusing his thoughts and strength on lifting himself through that narrow window above.
A young elf with purple-dyed hair and tribal tattoos all over her body stood in the room and scrutinized him mistrustfully.
As Kyu lifted herself through the window, she asked: "Kyu, why have you brought a Human into our clan? And why is he wearing a Do-Karrh?"
"The Do-Karrh he is wearing was a gift from our clan." she said while catching her breath. "And he is an ally. He speaks our tongue and helped us demolish these national-party fuckers at the bridge. His loyalty must not be doubted."
"Oh, is he?" the purple-haired Elf asked in a sharp, ancient dialect of the Woodelves.
"Apparently, I do..." Sage replied between his exhausted huffs in the same dialect, with just a pinch of sarcasm in his tone. This legitimately surprised the Woodelf.
"Indeed." she kept talking in her people's dialect. "I thought humans could not even learn our tongue properly. I have never met one who spoke the Haroun Dialect."
"Well, one time is always the first time..." Sage responded, proving his fluidity in the girl's language. "I appreciate your help."
The girl shrugged, seeming much less hostile to him now: "I'd do anything to aid an ally. Unfortunately, there are not many in our clan who think the same way, so you must go soon."
Kyu intervened into their formal chat: "Can't we please go back to normal Elfish? I can barely understand a word you two say."
"Of course..." the tribal girl said and added with a pinch of smugness. "Though, you might consider learning the Haroun dialect one day. It's the language of your ancestors and the Elfish that you're speaking is a butchered version to fit into the clumsy throats of clumsy Humans."
Kyu rolled her eyes, but spread her arms to embrace the Elf into a hug: "Thanks for your help, Uyka... we might've been caught if it wasn't for you."
Uyka nodded with a grin on her face: "Yeah, you owe me one. On the other hand, you stand up for our people, something which our clan's leader is not brave enough to do. So, at the end of the day it's probably me who owes you one."
Kyu was still holding her arms wrapped around her friend, but now let go and looked deep into Uyka's eyes.
"The day were the clans rise up will come, Uyka." she said. "And as long as you are among them, your clan will be present the day the Human oppression over us goes down in flames."
"I will be there." she said and offered Kyu a fist-bump which she happily accepted.
"Good." Kyu responded to her and made a gesture to Sage to follow her. "We're no longer required here."
"I'll guide your way out." Uyka said and lead the duo out of her room and through a long floor towards a staircase. This building looked a lot like the Clan building which Kyu lived in, but it seemed smaller and more compact. The entrance hall on the other hand was wider and contained a massive statue of a winged Elf with sharp facial features, facing the entrance of the building.
"Hello, Lady Jamira.", Uyka said when passing by the statue.
"Hello, Lady Jamira.", Kyu repeated when crossing the edge of the statues shadow with her feet.
Sage just watched the statue fascinated as he passed by... and almost bumped into Uyka, who had stopped and placed herself in his way.
"For someone who knows our language so well, you know surprisingly little about our customs." she said clearly displeased. "You greet the Lady Jamira, when you see her. Everything else will bring dead girls and ugly sons."
Sage raised his eyebrow confused, but a small push of Kyu convinced him it was smarter to not offend the woman who had saved them.
"Hello, Lady Jamira."; he said with a slight bow.
"Apologize too." Uyka said, with a tone that sounded a lot like an order.
Sage sighed and bent over further saying: "I'm truly sorry for... neglecting your presence."
This seemed to satisfy Uyka and she stepped aside so Kyu and Sage could walk out of the building.
When they finally went back onto the street Sage looked over to Kyu questioning.
Kyu sighed: "Lady Jamira is a figure from Elfish religion. And a pretty powerful one too. She is the Symbol of Lust, Fertility and Love. Uyka's Clan worships her as protectorate of their clan. Seriously, if you ever happen to think our clan is weird in their traditionalist beliefs, just spent a day with these religious fanatics and you'll quickly notice that we're actually pretty progressive."
"I see..." Sage just responded. Yeah, a Clan as strict as Uyka's would've probably not taken him in, so Kyu's family probably wasn't even too bad in that regard. The streets on this side of the building were much calmer. The police was still patrolling, but on the other side of the building and in the border-area of the districts, so their chances of getting caught were massively reduced by the trip through the building. Still, Kyu hushed the two to hurry on and get to their Clans building.
Sage already wanted to go through the front door, but Kyu pulled him back again and led him around the building until they found another rope ladder. Sage climbed up ahead, as his company waited next to the ladder again for him to take the first steps.