It was dangerous wandering around in those times, but there was nothing else left that I could do.

Ever since the war began started, not quite a year ago, all the other elves fled from the kingdoms of the angels. I heard rumors of people (capturing elves?) looking for elves to capture. There was money on their lives. I haven’t heard of what happens to their bodies afterwards, though. I doubt knowing would help my situation.

They were all different versions of horrible things inflicted on my kind. I wonder why they hunt down elves. Every elf ever in this realm has always been peaceful, and there are giant forests, oceans, wastelands, monsters and two other kingdoms between here and the battlefront, how would they help if they even wanted to?

The sudden war between the angels and the elves was just as surprising to us; why hunt us down in such far away kingdoms?

Elves are spartan in what they own; only kings and Queens have any luxuries, and even then, only a few. Everyone else managed to afford horses and wagons to move far away into the distant barbarian lands in the south.

I would either suffer the fate as all other elves caught in this city, or I would find some luck and a way to leave.

I was stuck here, in this kingdom surrounded by wilderness, trying not to get caught.

Carefully, fully covered my in cloak with a large hood to hide my face and ears, I wandered through an alleyway between two buildings. As I wandered out from the shadows of the alleyway and into the sunlit street, I noticed there were three men gambling, in my way.

"Pardon me," I said, holding the cloak tighter, as I stepped around their little game.

"Where do you think you’re going, little lady?" one of them said, putting his foot in front of mine.

I fell to the ground, my hood flying off my face and head. I was done for.

"Damn! That’s no girl!" One of his friends said.

"Trash that! It’s an elf!" he yelled.

"I didn’t think there were any left," the third said.

One of them grabbed me by my hood, then closed a hand around my throat.

"So who gets to kill it?" the person behind me asked.

"I’d say the question is: Is he worth more alive or dead?"

"Why don’t we take his possessions first?" a third person asked.

Someone reached his hands into the pockets of my ragged pants and then ripped off the strap over my shoulder. None of them seemed to care when I screamed, and passersby just stopped to watch, it wasn’t as if an angel’s life were at stake, it was just an elf.

"He doesn’t have anything’ more than three copper squares and a damn fiddle, who’d buy a piece of elf junk anyway? Worth more as firewood."

He was about to smash my lute, the only possession I ever owned, struggling and screaming didn’t help, but I didn’t care. It was my lute, and I didn’t want to be separated from it, ever.

"Hold it," the third said, grabbing the lute before he could smash it over his knee.

"Don’t your remember those signs that were posted in the street near the courthouse?"

"What signs?"

"You’re a real idiot, you know that? The signs, Queen Uranus will pay good money, lots of it, for the first elf that can make music."

"I say we should break his legs, but if the queen is offering a reward…"