The Phantom's eyebrows shot up at the same moment as a shuriken whipped from Eledhe's fingers. The one elf reached out and caught it in midair. "Well," he remarked, examining it. "How very asinine of you."

He was having trouble assimilating this. Elves. Elves here? How? Up the tower - through the room - when had they come? Why? Why wasn't the Heartshard gone? The Heartshard - the Phantom groaned aloud, feeling the unbearable itch in his fingertips to snatch it, grab it! The thing was right there! Two steps, and he would reach it. Two steps, and he could blast the trio of them into the eighth level of the underworld.

The elf lazily turned his eyes on Phantom Grey, the throwing star whizzing effortlessly to and fro between his fingers faster than Eledhe ever tossed it. He tilted his head curiously and said to his comrades, "Look, that one's going to try for it."

"Oh, excellent," said another. "I don't really mind cleaning this, you know."

The Phantom closed his eyes and dropped the greatsword. It clanged on rock like a death knell, as the rest let their own blades fall as well. Just as his fingers released the hilt, he thought of Silvryn, and wished with all his might that he could call the weapon back. Just to run one of those elves through, just one! They stood there, lobbing remarks back and forth as though they were at a noble's garden party, when Silvryn could be dead -

"Where is she?" he grated, fists itching to find a target somewhere upon the person of the three. Preferably in the area of the face. "I swear, if you've hurt her -"

"Who's he talking about?" interrupted one of the elves, looking vaguely confused. The Phantom could feel his one fist shaking slightly.

"She's not dead, if that's what you mean," announced the one who seemed to be in charge, twirling a dagger and strolling down the row of disarmed rebels. "Lord Raen's smarter than that, he's no human." He cast a look at Eledhe as he said this - Eledhe, who was crimson with fury and white-knuckled with the same desire the Phantom felt - and then appeared to lose interest in savoring their entrapment.

"So that," he began, "is this - Heartshard? Yes. Quite so. Artifact of unimaginable powers, I'm told." He paused, his long, tapered fingers fluttering over the jewel. "Like to know why you're still breathing?" he inquired, appraising them one by one. "Because one of you is going to make quite sure that it's perfectly docile and unlikely to do anything - unexpected. I don't think I'd enjoy that. Would you?"

This was directed at the other two, who both responded with morbid cheer in the negative. The elf raised an eyebrow. "Well. Best pick the one you wouldn't mind losing."

The Phantom thought briefly and regretfully of Silvryn, and stepped forward.

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It only took Kjan half a second to guess the Phantom's intentions, and even by then he'd already grabbed the man by the arm and pulled him back. "Give us a moment, will you?" he shot in the direction of their captors. "Our friend appears to still be mildly concussed from the barrage of rocks earlier."

Without waiting for permission, he spun back around to face the Phantom. "What in the seven levels of the underworld do you think you're doing?" he demanded in an undertone, perfectly aware that the elves could probably still hear. "You know full well what that thing will do to non-royalty - which you are, by the way, in case you hadn't noticed. You might as well have just jumped off the stairs back there and saved us all the trouble, if this was your intent all along."

"So you're royalty, then?" shot back the Phantom in a hissing undertone, casting a look over his shoulder. The vaguely bored looks the elves were wearing impressed upon him just how little time they had. "Who else do you suggest? I don't think Eledhe has any royal bloodlines."

Eledhe didn't bother to glare. "Hurry up," she said from between clenched teeth. "They won't wait forever."

"My intentions changed when the one royal heir we had was kidnapped by elves," the Phantom continued. The strain in his voice, even half-whispering, was evident. "We've got a better chance with me than with anyone."

"Done yet?" said one elf loudly. "Lord Raen didn't seem very patient to me."

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"Not quite," Kjan replied tersely, not bothering to turn around. "Curse it, Phae, I've saved your damn life too many times for you to do something this stupid. You're the leader of the rebellion! If you're not around to lead, then that means that I have to, and nobody wants that, including me. If we're going to just pick someone at random, then pick the one whose father could bloody well be the king for all he knows. It's a sight easier to get a new second-in-command than it is a new Phantom."

He paused and took a slow breath before continuing. "You know what? Fine," he said evenly, one hand resting on the hilt of his knife. "Try to take the thrice-cursed thing, if you dare. But you'll have to go through me first."

Dante had been silently eying the elves since they had stepped into the room. They seemed to take a malicious pleasure in waiting for one of them to sacrifice themselves to this cursed stone, and Dante had about enough of it. There was only one way out of this situation, that he could see, and he wasn't about to wait around for the rebels to blatantly ignore it some more.

Stepping out just enough so that he face the Phantom, he spoke up, willing himself not to look at the rest of his group. "What about what the dwarf said? About Jate? I mean, he's our best chance isn't he? Of course they are just going to kill the rest of us as soon as he does whatever it is they want him to do... but isn't it worth a shot?"

He looked around at their faces, all ready to do whatever it would take. Finally he glanced at Jate, and a note of insistence hit his voice. "Well, isn't it?"

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Jate cringed, knowing the truth behind Dante's words. He had known them inside all along, but just couldn't bring himself to actually speak them. Ever since they had set sights on the tower he knew they were near the Heartshard. The words of the ancient dwarf had dogged his every step, resonating louder and louder with each movement into the heart of the tower. Yer a prince, boy, or I'm a cave lizard. Even squeezing his eyes shut and forcing the words out didn't help - they just came right back. The elves were a shock. How in the seven levels of the underworld they had arrived there without any of them realizing it was remarkable. Then again, they were elves.

Once it appeared that the Phantom was going to attempt reaching for the stone himself, Jate could barely breathe. The words were pounding over and over - a prince, a prince. Kjan didn't help to alleviate them, he almost thought that it got worse. Watching the two old friends stand nose to nose - in a manner or speaking - nearly made Jate's heart stop beating. He could stop it all. He could speak up--

He couldn't. And then he didn't have to. After the momentary flinch, Jate almost felt relieved. He'd get it over with. And after all, would dying by trying to live be much worse than dying because elves wanted to run him through? He took a few slow deep breaths.

"Dante....Dante is right. It's worth a chance. And after all, I'm not that important in this group of people." He rubbed his hand over his eyes. "And...who knows?"

Squaring his shoulders, Jate tries to muster all of the courage of the house of Ralkaien. Bad idea - that house was known more for bribery and misplaced values than courage. Yet it seemed the noble ancestors of his line wanted him to succeed, perhaps for the first time in his life. Calm reached his mind and he took a few steps forward.

The lead elf's eyes glinted. "Isn't it nice to be the 'chosen one'?" he mocked. "Your little band seems rather glad to be rid of you, by the looks of things. A general consensus!" The other two smirked, one still continuing to toss Eledhe's shuriken.

Jate set his hand on the jewel. A faint warmth seemed to resonate from it, spreading up his arm and filling his body. He tensed, waiting for it to incinerate, freeze, or otherwise kill him, but all that happened was the warmth persisted for a moment, then subsided. Closing his hand the rest of the way around the jewel, Jate felt as if he was holding liquid light. "They were just folk legends, then," he heard behind him. The voice seemed to come from a distance, everything around himself was wrapped in a void. Jate turned. He saw three elves moving toward him and the rest of his group trying to find weapons, but they all seemed to be moving in slow motion. "Hand it over," the elf sneered. "If you can touch it, human mongrel that you are, then--" He had no chance to finish. Fear and anger coursed through Jate and the Heartshard seemed to pulse along with his veins. The elves simply - there was no other word for it - exploded in a spray of dazzling light.

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going on a journey through my old claims

Ash stared as the explosion of light vanished, leaving behind a few bright motes that arced towards the floor, fading as they fell. Blinking to clear the afterimage from his vision, he glanced around the chamber. Jate and the rest of the group seemed fine, but there was no trace of the elves left.

He broke the stunned silence with a shaky laugh. “I guess that old dwarf wasn’t as crazy as he seemed.” Retrieving his knives from the ground, he felt a rush of relief- relief that he hadn’t had to fight any bloody elves again, and relief that he was still alive. He turned back to Jate, glanced at the Heartshard, and grinned. “Remind me not to try to sneak food from your pack anymore.”

For one frozen moment, a moment in which the Phantom's world as he saw it changed imperceptibly, he stared at the jewel in Jate's hand. It was glittering, diamond-like, with something nearly palpable that felt like ferocity. Several things occurred to him simultaneously. The foremost one was a short series of logical realizations: Jate was royalty. Therefore Jate must be the heir to a throne. Silvryn was also heir to a throne. Seeing as there were only two thrones available at that particular point in time -

Two and two, or in this case one and one, combined to form a conclusion that even the Phantom hadn't considered. He had time to be briefly astonished before the next thought occurred, this one also involving Jate and an added measure of extreme gratitude towards the young noble. The Phantom really had no wish to experience even one level of the underworld.

This thought led to the third one. He certainly wasn't royalty. It could no longer be argued that the Heartshard's choosiness was a myth, because the non-royal elves hadn't succeeded in taking it. Therefore, if Jate hadn't taken it - actually, if the Phantom had taken it...

He looked at Jate first. "You are really going to have to tell me more about your family tree sometime soon."

Then he turned to Kjan. There was a brief silence. The Phantom contemplated several things to say, and chose the most succinct one. "That was an exceedingly stupid thing to do, wasn't it?"

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"Yes, it rather was," Kjan agreed absently. He didn't say anything further for a moment, instead electing to pick up his other knife from the ground and examine it far more closely than he probably had any reason to. It wasn't like there was really much more to say. It had become something of a tradition: Phae tried to do something stupid, Kjan tried to talk him out of it. There was no set pattern to who won the contest of wills - usually just whoever was feeling more stubborn at that particular moment. At any rate, it wasn't anything worth making much of a fuss about. He gave an insouciant shrug and slid the knife back into its sheath. "With 'second-in-command' comes the post 'most likely to have to keep the idiot rebel leader from getting himself killed.' I'm used to it by now."

Evincing a small smirk, he turned his attention back toward Jate and, more specifically, the gem in the young noble's hand. That part, he still hadn't quite figured out yet. As far as he knew, the Ralkaien line didn't carry in it a single drop of royal blood (though not for lack of trying). So why was Jate able to not only touch the artifact, but harness its power? The obvious answer was that the boy was royalty, but how? Kjan shook his head slightly, determining that those questions could be answered at a later time. At the present, he was feeling quite content to be alive at all.

"I do not wish to interrupt," Tomith said, breaking the silence, "but we should discuss this in greater depth at another time. Do not forget that you have agreed to meet Lord Adaniar at Griffin's Fells. It is still only morning; we could cover a great distance before sunset, if we set out now."

In the time that they had all been occupied with staring rather conspicuously in the direction of Jate, a door had opened in one of the walls, ostensibly leading outside, and Tomith now gestured toward it with a nearly imperceptible air of impatience.

"Now, why couldn't they have just done that in the first place?" Kjan wondered under his breath. "Would've made things considerably easier."

"Since when are things easy?" responded the Phantom, glancing once more around the chamber and then leading the way outside. Emerging from the innards of the obsidian tower, the inside of which had been lit only by the brilliance of the Heartshard, was akin to abruptly resurfacing from being underground.

The Phantom blinked in the sudden sunlight, feeling momentarily displaced and wondering why, until he realized that the fog had all but disappeared. A few feeble wisps were just being reduced to memories by the enthusiastic sunlight. He turned around, craning his neck up and up and finding his gaze abruptly halted in midair by the very visible top of the tower. He shook his head with a helpless, "Dwarves."

Eledhe made a faint sound of agreement. She was just tucking the shuriken that the one elf had been toying with back into her belt pouch. Flipping her black braid over her shoulder, she arched a cool eyebrow at him in the pregnant pause that followed. "Yes?

The Phantom cleared his throat awkwardly. "While I'm admitting I was stupid," he began, appearing uncomfortable, "regarding earlier -"

"Yes," responded Eledhe contemplatively. "That was stupid." A second pause ensued. She toyed with the end of her braid absently. "Though I think that while we're speaking of stupidity in general, I've had you beat for a while now." She tossed him what amounted to a terse half-smile. The Phantom looked bemused.

"That was an apology, stupid," Eledhe muttered in an undertone, rolling her eyes. "Well? Are we going?"

He stared at her for another moment or two, then blinked, and wondered what exactly had just transpired, but she was already gone. Feeling as though something had been accomplished nonetheless, the Phantom squinted at the sun. "Right, let's go," he said with at attempt - it didn't take much - at briskness, looking around at the assembled group. "Here to the Fells is no afternoon's stroll."

The air as they began walking in a roughly pinpointed direction that the Phantom determined with aid of his map, and said rebel leader fell into step beside Jate.

"So," he began, "enlighten me as to how it feels, being royal."

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Jate paused for a while before he spoke. What would it be like to be royal? He knew what it was like to be a noble, but royalty? He had lived for a year near the royal chambers and had some semblance of an idea. If they snapped their fingers, they had ten servants ready and waiting. They had the best food and the best clothes. Yet even after living by the chambers for a year, he still couldn't get over the splendor and magnificence of everything within. And it might be his? Jate felt as if he was still in a daze, a dreamlike state that could burst at any moment. Yet the realities were all too clear. After all, he had almost been killed by elves. That thought brought him back.

"At the moment, I'd say being royal feels an awful lot like being a rebel on the run from murdering elves and avoiding capture," he said with a wry grin. "And apparently, royalty are extremely hungry and have sore feet." He contemplated this thought for a moment. "I don't suppose there's any chance of decent food between here and Griffin's Fells. The whole getting there thing takes precedence, unfortunately."

Remembering the Phantom's earlier comment, Jate continued. "I don't think I can really tell you my family history. As far as I know, the Ralkaiens don't have any royal blood in them. And I ought to know. Lady Prima made me sit through about thirty hours of her reciting the wonderful bloodline that I should be so thrilled to be a part of. That was a penance for complaining about my father. Which, now," he brightened "he may not be my father after all. That would be nice."

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going on a journey through my old claims

The Phantom evinced a quasi-amused smile. "Hm. I could be royalty, then," he said, absently kicking at a pebble with his boot. "Be convenient, that would." A brief pause, and then: "I think you're unfair to our food. It's delicious, provided you have the culinary standards of a rock. Wouldn't surprise me if dwarves did."

Then, as he composed his next words in his head, there was silence. The Phantom wondered if perhaps this discussion could be postponed, but dismissed the thought. "Never thought I'd rise to be acquainted with two royal heirs," he said lightly, feeling the now-customary dart of anxiety for Silvryn. Not dead, the elf had said, but that struck him as more foreboding than encouraging. Pulling his thoughts back to the present, the Phantom shoved his hands in his pockets. "I suppose we should do a little research on that family tree of yours, then."

Despite the composed words, he felt as though he were trying to propose something decidedly delicate. The Phantom cleared his throat awkwardly. "So, assuming it is Kytana in which you happen to be royalty," he began, "and assuming you are in fact an heir - though I'm not sure how it would be otherwise - you'll rather need some help getting back on that throne of yours, hm?"

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"I would imagine so," Jate replied. "Being that the only people who believe I could possibly be royalty - and that aren't outlawed - would be me, and...me. Well, and this Heartshard here. Which may come in handy, but I don't want to kill all the nobles just yet." He fell silent. Just exactly how would he get the throne? There were so many obstacles. The regent, for one. The elves. All of the nobles who would want no part of a new kind of rule. The common folk might accept him, but they had little say in government. Jate sighed. Yet the troubles to come shouldn't let him be distracted from the troubles of here and now.

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going on a journey through my old claims

The Phantom had rather hoped that he might be able to get his point across without having to be overtly direct, but unfortunately Jate didn't seem to grasp his point. "Well, yes," he said, a touch evasively. There was a short pause.

Feeling resigned, the Phantom sighed and folded his arms. "Let me explain something to you," he began, adopting a world-weary air. "See, there are three sides to this mess. One, the Regent. Two, the homicidal elves that are after us. Three...well, you know that part." He gestured at their party in general. "I'd really think that three sides is enough, wouldn't you?"

Assuming agreement from Jate, he continued. "So really, unless you'd like to waltz into Y'rydha and tell the Regent 'pardon me, but I happen to be the heir to the throne', or ask some of those elves for assistance - which I really wouldn't recommend - that leaves option three."

He watched Jate's face carefully, and wondered if the proposition required clarification. "What I mean to say, you see, is that...you help us and we'll help you."

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Jate wondered why the Phantom seemed so hesitant to spell out that particular idea. "Well, I don't think there's anyone else, and I certainly seem to be, if not wholly embraced, at least welcome in this group. I'm not quite sure of all the help I can give, but I'll most definitely accept yours." He gave a small grin at the look on the older man's face. "Did you expect me to throw a fit and say I wanted you out of my sight? Come now, I thought you had more respect for me than that."

Slinging his pack off his back, Jate carefully tucked the Heartshard inside. "I think I'll need a better way to carry this. Packs are too easily stolen or lost. Although, anyone trying to steal it may get blasted into the lowest level of the underworld, but you never know."

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going on a journey through my old claims

"You have to admit, we didn't make a very positive first impression," Kjan interjected lightly. "What with taking you away against your will and making you hike for miles and miles across treacherous terrain - though I still say it's a far sight better than the cell that would have been the alternative - and endangering your life numerous times without your consent." He paused and glanced over at the Phantom thoughtfully, seeming to contemplate briefly before adding, "On second thought, I'm fairly certain that's how the Phantom treats all his friends. You should be immensely flattered."

Smirking slightly, he turned back to said Phantom once more. "About how many days to the Fells, do you think, given that we are yet again on foot?"