Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

House Argenti
Monopoly: Silver
Patriarch: Halidus Argenti

The second-oldest of the seven houses, House Argenti is responsible for all coinage and banking in addition to their silver mines. Uniquely among the noble houses, the Argenti elect the head of their house from all adult members for a lifetime turn not unlike the Lord Regent; for this reason they are often labeled the “Little Regents.” This strong egalitarian streak has led to the Argenti being the most eager to do business with, and extend more rights to, the surface city and its quick folk. This reputation is a double-edged sword, making them extremely popular with non-dwarves but also often regarded as weak or traitorous by their fellow dwarves.

House Heusos and House Isarnan and implacably opposed to House Argenti, and this rivalry (the “Gold-Iron Alliance”) has only grown more intense since Halidus Argenti was able to prevent Qana Heusos from being elected as Lord Regent. House Argenti also has relatively strong ties with the upstart House Makrana, with Halidus Argenti currently engaged to be married to Parian Markana the Younger’s sister.

House Heusos
Monopoly: Gold
Matriarch: Qana Heusos

By far the most wealthy of the seven houses, with a lavish lifestyle commensurate with their great wealth, the gold miners of House Heusos have dominated the city’s politics since its inception. Legend holds that the King Underground was a Heusos, and only his lack of direct male heirs has left the house forced to seek election to the post of Lord Regent. In addition to mining and refining, House Heusos uses its money to invest in many enterprises, though its conservative heads routinely refuse to extend loans and financing to non-nobles and non-dwarves. The majority of Lords Regent throughout the city’s history have been Heusos, but they are in the middle of an unusual drought, with no Heusos among the last five to hold that title.

Matriarch Qana Heusos was the strong favorite to succeed the childless Melah Gabelle, the previous Lord Regent, but enough of her fellows were upset by her hamhanded attempts at bribery and threw their weight behind Halidus Argenti. In the end, a compromise candidate was chosen, but Qana still seeks to bully, blackmail, dominate, or overthrow him, as her whims dictate.

House Galena
Monopoly: Lead
Matriarch: Ctesia Galena

The lead mined by House Galena is used in the city’s plumbing, in cosmetics, and in the various magical engines that help bring fresh air down to the dwarven city from the surface city. These products are naturally toxic, a state of affairs that House Galena alternately disputes, ignores, or embraces. The Galena dwarves are stereotypically famous both for their natural beauty and their savagery. Many rumors link Ctesia Galena, the house matriarch, with organized crime, protection rackets, and other unsavory activities.

Nevertheless, House Galena nobles are highly sought after as consorts, and indeed three of the current seven houses have a Galena married to their current patriarch or matriarch. This constant influx of blood ties has saved House Galena on many occasions, though it is also noteworthy as the only great house besides the new House Makrana that has never produced a Lord Regent.

House Verdigris
Monopoly: Copper
Patriarch: Koten Verdigris

The second-oldest of the seven houses, House Verdigris was once a supplier of bronze weaponry for the military but has since transitioned into offering high-quality metallurgy services and essential conducting pieces for electricity and magic. The copper roofs popular in the surface city are nearly all Verdigris products, and they are renowned for their commitment to the scholarly study of science and magic.

The current Lord Regent, Koten Verdigris, is from this house. He was chosen as a compromise candidate when the seven houses could not agree between House Argent and House Heusos. As such, Koten is well aware of the precariousness of his position and has adopted a policy of conciliation and appeasement, seeking not to make waves and not to anger the other powerful dwarves who might unite behind another candidate.

House Isarnan
Monopoly: Iron
Patriarch: Fergus Isarnen

Iron for steel has made House Isarnan the most martial of the Seven Houses by far, and the High General who commands all the city’s dwarven armies in the event of war has been an Isarnan for five hundred years. The current holder of that office is Fergus Isarnen, and he has been strongly criticized in recent years for holding back stocks of iron and steel for military use rather than allowing more to be used for common blacksmithing. A notorious conservative, Fergus has adamantly refused to extend any citizenship or recognition to the quick folk who dwell on the surface. He also opposes arming any non-dwarven troops, leaving the city watch as the only quick folk with arms of any quantity.

House Isarnan has not produced a Lord Regent in centuries, and privately many feel that “the sword rusts in its scabbard” as there have been few threats, internal or external, to test House Isarnan’s bluster. The consort of the current Lord Regent is an Isarnan, however, and the house hopes that their future children might inherit the position and even unite the two houses.

House Gabelle
Monopoly: Salt
Matriarch: Tuzia Gabelle

Salt, while not glamorous, is an essential facet of everyday life, used in everything from cooking, to preserving food, to making cheese, to raising livestock. Thus the salt mine monopoly operated by House Gabelle has served as a constant, if dull, source of profit and power, one that has produced ten Lords Regent since the founding of the city. Lord Regent Melah, the predecessor to the current holder of that title, is still widely respected.

The perception among the other houses that salt is base or common is deeply resented by members of House Gabelle, who tend to be rather ostentatious and open in flaunting their wealth and power as a result. They are patrons of the dwarven symphony, the annual gladiatorial games held on the surface for the quick folk, and other cultural events. This does not stop rumors that they are plain, boring, and on the decline, however.

House Makrana
Monopoly: Marble
Patriarch: Parian Markana the Younger

The youngest of the Seven Houses, House Makrana is barely a hundred years old and its first patriarch, Parian Makrana the Elder, has only recently died. Parian was able to rise from the rank of commoner, albeit a decorated military veteran commoner, by cannily partnering with quick folk to invest in marble quarries considered useless by dwarves but highly prized for building on the surface. By paying strong dividends to wealthy merchants in the surface city, he was able to build capital and establish a noble house while allowing his partners to “own” a monopoly despite not being dwarves.

House Makrana is currently the sole source of they mysterious element “bauxite,” which is used to make blades stronger and lighter than any yet known. Its source and forging are closely guarded secrets, and the other houses greatly fear that it will further disrupt a delicate balance already tottering due to House Makrana’s rapid rise to power.

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Dragons were driven underground long ago, secreting themselves in the furthest parts of the world once the mortal races, both the slow folk and the quick, had grown powerful enough to oppose them. They sought refuge at the roots of mountains, at the pressure points of fault lines, at the basements of great caverns that they collapsed behind them. One such powerful beast buried itself once, long ago, in a place that became rich with minerals due to its passage and its influence, as the mysterious process that draws precious things to the great wyrms worked its way over centuries.

The greatest city the current age knows was once a simple dwarven mining settlement, set up to mine these riches. So vast and rewarding were the canyons and fissures below that they soon grew in power and population, with the noble houses growing fat and indolent and enjoying the sway they held over the surface city and its quick folk. Dwarven nobles provide the Lord Regent of the city, the most powerful single king in the world by meany measures, and the wealth of the mines flows through him. The King Underground, the legendary first miner that claimed the lode as their own, will never return and their line is broken–so they say, anyhow.

When the miners awoke the slumbering beast, it slew them without a second thought. But then a curious predicament presented itself: how to subvert and destroy the city above, the vast cancer that had grown in the wyrm’s slumber, without bringing the full force of the mortal world down upon it? The dragon had ideas of reviving its race to primacy once more, after all. The solution it hit upon was as simple as it was brilliant.

Have the mortals kill one another. Act through agents to sow chaos, discord, and violence above. Then, as the city fell apart in open warfare and its nobles were preoccupied with slaughtering one another, the time to rise would come. Those few that survived would soon know the primacy of the wyrms that, once hunted, had faded into legend and myth.

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Wealth brings wyrms, the elders always say. This is why the old cities of the Above were always so strongly fortified. Dragons would seek to steal their wealth from above, and the insidious Below, the cursed refuge of evil souls that writhes deep within the planet, would seek to bubble up from below like an overstirred pot. The great fortresses of old, be they made by the slow folk or the quick folk, were always reinforced at both ends.

But that was before the Age of Reason, when the dragons were all hounded to the far corners of the earth and killed, and the Below was brought to a low simmer by declining belief. A soul that believes in nothing, after all, never reaches the hell Below or the bliss Above but merely ceases to be. And dragons, the great agents for the Above and the Below in their various shifting allegiances and guises, were all but extinct.

All save one, anyhow. And she had a plan.

The greatest dwarven city of the Age was sunk deep into the richest mines ever discovered, with a vast metropolis wade by the quick folk set atop it and owing fealty to the nobles below and the mythical King Underground. What if a dragon were to make their way to the basement of this great city and claim its horde? It could be done in secret and with subtlety, and as the last of the drakes still possessed her dead consort’s seed within her, it could be the birth dry of a whole new generation of her kind.

So she snuck into the great city in the guise of a petty quick folk and began to work downward. Quick folk, slave, elf, and even dwarf – she made lives as them all as she worked ever downward. It was decades, centuries, before the miners and the dwarven houses that employed them began to notice the deep tentacles in their society, the wealth flowing downward, the crime bosses and gangs acting in concert with the mysterious evil rising from below.

By that time it was perhaps too late. Distracted by the shiny bauble of the Lord Regency and its power, the nobles had allowed a true Queen Underground to arise, and the time when she will make herself known and feast on that which has grown fat an complacent is soon at hand.

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When the founders of the city arrived, dwarves drawn by the mineral wealth that exceeded anything they ever could have imagined in the Old Mines, their first delvings uncovered a massive beast. An elder wyrm of the kind no longer found in our world, it had set itself atop the vast veins of gold, silver, and still other unknown ores as one of his lesser kin might set themselves upon a stolen hoard of coin. But the dwarves, ever canny, sought to negotiate with this dragon, whose power they could not hope to defeat. Through flattery and guile, they reached an accord which would stand for millennia.

They acknowledged the great wyrm as their lord, and pledged to tie the city to his life force. If he ever perished, the subtle magicks and intricate engineering of that place would fail. There was thus no reason for them to kill him and every reason to protect him, though he never deigned to appear above the surface and simply appointed a Lord Regent to act in his stead. In return, the dwarves were allowed to mint their coins and sell their wares.

Over time, irritated by the continued growth of the city, the dragon retreated underground in tunnels of his own excavation. But by the time the new city, built by humans and the other quicker species, began to rise on the surface above the now-subterranean abode of the dwarves, the dragon was all but forgotten. The heads of the great dwarven houses regarded him as mere myth, the King Underground, and the Lord Regent had become a king in everything but name, a bauble that the nobles squabbled for amongst themselves.

However, as it always does, the corruption of the earth arose once more, bearing with it evil and chaos on wings of sulfur. As the Below ever sought to subvert and overthrow the Above, one of its reaching tendrils found the sleeping dragon deep beneath the city and invaded his dreams. Perhaps the Below does this with full knowledge of what the dragon’s corruption and death will bring on the surface. Perhaps it merely enjoys the sport.

But the time will soon come when the minor rumblings beneath the city, whispers of evil that are denied by the noble houses, will bear dangerous fruit for all that remain in what has become the greatest city the Above has ever known.

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“This is a list of potential candidates,” Richenda said. She drew close, her body a pale lithe nightmare in the stark light, beautiful and terrible. “Powerful mages, sorcerers, and wizards all. They have all suffered tragedies, and only they have the necessary power to create what I desire.”

The Weaper took the list, scrawled in a delicate and flowing hand. “Why not do it yourself? I don’t need to tell you how powerful you are. A soul transfer should be simple as winking.”

Richenda tossed her head, with a fan of stringy midnight hair splaying across the light. “If it were a mind transfer, or awakening a dead body, or even summoning an Abyssal, it would be,” she said. “But to transfer a soul? That requires not only power, but a deep and abiding love.“

“Hmph,” said the Weaper. “Surely there is someone you feel that for.”

Richenda whirled, a dangerous look in her eye. “Perhaps there was,” she said, sadly. “Perhaps there is,” she added, with a playful note. “Perhaps there will be,” she finished, playing her hand across the Weaper’s chest. “But…”

“But?”

Richenda took hold of the assassin’s belt, hanging crosswise and filled with throwing knives, and lifted. Blood ran from her hand, but she only laughed her stale cannibal breath as the Weaper pitched and moaned, strangled by the belt that held them aloft.

“But I do not care to sacrifice such a person, whether they be past, present or future!” She bellowed. “I have sacrificed enough, wouldn’t you say?”

“Y-yes,” choked the Weaper. “N-no…”

Richenda flung her assassin across the room with a strength that belied her thinness, her paleness. “It doesn’t matter what you say or what you think,” she continued. “I will enter the mistress’s sanctum, and I will have what is inside, if I must devour the Quitch herself to do it! And you will carry out my instructions without another question, or I will do it myself after I have had my fill of you, is that clear?”

The Weaper sat up, choking. “Crystal.”

“Good,” said Richenda. “It needn’t be anything fancy. A human body with a human mind and a nonhuman soul. The crystal I’ve given you will tell you for sure. And when you find them, make sure that they are the sole survivor.”

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But yeah, I spent most of my classes with Jyrus until last year. He wasn’t a Grand Scholar, but he knew his stuff in arcane studies. And arcane studies just happened to be my major! Funny how that works out. Jyrus was this tall, attractive young cleric, crazy hot, but with a gentle heart and healing hands that I totes saw firsthand. A life spent by the sickbeds had marked him with perpetually shadowed, smouldering eyes. Jyrus was such a socially awkward cutie with us, and when he tried to be frienly with me, it always came off as unintentional flirting. Much to his chagrin, poor guy got red as a tomato. But a lot of fun.

Before the…incident…anyway.

Oh, you wanna know about the incident? You sure your tummy is fortified enough? It’s totally not for the squeamish.

So to, like, tell you about the incident, you need to know first about the Ordeal. All students and teachers must eventually undergo the Ordeal order to become Grand Scholars. Queen Nevra doesn’t want a bunch of Grand Scholars resting on their laurels either, so she had a room of nightmares created to test her finest and brightest. We call it the Dark Room, and it deffo earns the name. It’s a mystery that no one’s been able to unravel in, like centuries. And that’s not for lack of trying either, kiddos.

So! Let’s say you wish to become a Grand Scholar, a prized jewel in the crown of the queen. Easy peasy lemon breezy! All you gotta do is survive an hour within the Dark Room. Nobody knows what is in this room, but like hundreds have been killed inside of it. How do I know? Well, for one thing, we students get to see their mangled, fear-petrified corpses get fetched and delivered to Richenda as fodder for her necromancy afterwards. It’s a swell time.

So one time, we tricked Jyrus into going in there. We were bored, so one night me and the girls decided to throw this socially hopeless but smokin’ hot fellow a bone, and invited him to drink with us. He was a bashful and oddly charming diversion from our usual shenanigans. The night took a nasty turn, though, when the Ordeal was brought up.

By Missy of course, before she was a marmoset. And dead. “Why don’t you try it Professor?” she said. “How can we respect you if you always act like a coward?”

Jyrus laughed it off at first. “I just wish to continue teaching at the academy. I have no desire of proving myself by going through the Ordeal. I have nothing to prove.” Pretty sure he didn’t drink too often, and everything we said kinda struck him as charming and funny when he was buzzed. Plus, we were always fixated on the Dark Room. Cuz when a teacher, beloved or not, got their butt taken by the Ordeal, it would mean canceled classes for weeks until Nevra could find a sub.

But then the girls came up with an idea while I was out on the balcony. Had to make room, you know? So when I came back, the girls were kindly offering to escort Jyrus back to his room, since the castle was rather dark at night and he was clearly soused off his butt. He walked arm in arm with the girls on either side. I followed along, feeling kinda silly, plus I was totally just-this-side of drunk myself. Two sheets to the wind, I guess.

Anyway, it was far too late for me to be able to do anything by the time I started realizing the direction we were being led. All I remember is Jyrus suddenly going totally pale and his eyes becoming just these big round discs as the door to the Dark Room was shut on him. I made the mistake of looking. The other girls knew to look away but she I tardy to the proverbial party. I hadn’t been in on the “joke.” So I saw what was inside the Dark Room. I totally had the chilling privilege of watching the room devour my professor.

What did I see? Hell if I know. I could’ve sworn she saw a disembodied head floating in the doorway behind him. Was it my own head that was smiling at me? What was it? Why did-

No, I’m not thinking about that anymore. Nope.

The whole castle was woken by the manic screams and pounding at the door. Jyrus was rescued from the room by Harper the Annihilator, who just came sweeping down the hallway as fast as a storm wind. He burst open the door and retrieved Jyrus’s convulsing body. He survived, somehow, but his life is a haunting imitation of what it once was. Ever since, Jyrus is too frightened to look me, or any of the students, in the eye. He’s haunted by ghosts that we students could never comprehend.

Yeah, so I know all about the Dark Room and, for now, I totally avoid it. It feels like a far-off monster that lurks beyond the horizon, but in the furthest corners of my heart I know that my academic career at the Mercura Academy will eventually lead me to the Dark Room. The room awaits everyone that sets foot in the Academy. But the thing that keeps me up at night isn’t the fate of poor hot Jyrus. No, it’s the things that I think I saw inside the Dark Room. I have no interest in trifling with it again. The Dark Room isn’t for me. Nevra’s love and favor aren’t the things I’m after.

No, beauty eternal and everlasting, the kind that leaves men and women breathless, flushed and longing, is my dearest dream. I totally bide my time quietly within the castle walls, surrounded by backstabbers and walking ghosts. It will all be mine one day; the wealth, the youth, the power of the Witch Queen.

I can wait out all of them.

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Um, who am I? You’ve never heard of Lissa Bidethory, the total star pupil of Mercura Academy? Well, then, I’m glad you asked! I’m totes down to give you the deets.

I’ve been here about five years! Five of my best years, the flower of my youth. When the other girls were out there working it to get on the husband gravy train, I was nose-deep in books and classes. But that’s okay! It’s all part of my plan. Like, in a thousand years, they’ll be tomb dust and I’ll be slamming back ouzo with my peeps like not a day’s gone by. That’s the total power of arcane mastery. It’s why I do what I do.

Mercura Academy’s got all sorts of cool profs. There’s Harper the Annihilator, who’s deffo teaching me how to soothsay. But the only thing I can really see coming in his lectures is that he looooves the sound of his own voice, kay? Richenda the Undying has a lot to teach me, but she’s also got a lot to learn. Like, the entire class knows she has a cadaver under the lectern for a snack. She’s not fooling anybody. But that stuff about life force and eternal enduring? Now that’s what I’m down for. I even get to be in the practicum that Nevra the Witch Queen holds. This one time, I saw Missy McBride call her ‘Quitch’ to her face. Yeah, they carried her out as a dead marmoset after that one.

But yeah, I know all of the Grand Scholars of Mercura Academy on, like a personal level. My teachers and peeps are always giving me shoutouts in the halls. Once I was in the library, and Queen Nevra totally came up behind me. “The sight of young Lissa pouring over my clerical books while tugging thoughtfully on her hair never ceases to bring an affectionate smile to my face,” she said. I was high on that vibe for like a week. But it’s not just fun and games, you know? I know some of the most powerful people in Mercura. Like, I have totally made it my business to stay informed. You may think I’m just a bubblehead with nothing behind this big old smile, but this mind is like a steel trap, my friend. I can tell you all about the side-eye the Quitch has been getting from her Grand Scholars lately, what brand of polish Lectra uses on her armor, and where all the bodies are buried.

Just kidding about that last one. We don’t bury bodies, they usually get cremated. Or devoured, because Richenda will totes snarf them up if she gets there first.

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Lectra walked up to the cage, her long blond hair trailing behind her. “I had thought, sir goblin, to use you in experiments,” she said in her lilting singsongy voice. “But this is, I think, a much better use of your maturity and talent for meditation.”

“What…have you done to me?”

“Why, saved you from the Swamp of Wastes, of course. A goblin hermit there is no use to anyone. But with the new form I’ve blessed you with, you may be a useful bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

“There are worse things than goblins in the wastes, especially as I’ve been using them for my studies,” Lectra laughed. “If the resurrection of the dead were easy, everyone would be doing it.”

“But…but why a tiefling?”

“Were you expecting an aasimar? With the magicks I am commanding, some demonic taint is to be expected. But they are resilient and useful, as I hope you will be. Now, let’s get those memories suppressed…!”

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Gash Nosebrass looked at the pieces of flesh before him, as delicately pointed as they were savagely maimed. Elf ears, so soft and supple that they could only have come from a noble of some means. The orc warchieftain jabbed a finger at them. “Tell me of this, girl. How came you by these trophies?”

“In battle, of course!” laughed Thundra. “I told him that if he surrendered all of his valuables, that he would not be harmed. He declined my generous offer, so I took them anyway. He gave me an earful about it.”

“Well-put!” Gash laughed. “What do you say, boys, do we allow this slave-girl to keep her trophies and join in our revelry?”

There was a resounding round of cheers from the orcs and half-orcs in the tent, to which Gash raised his own stein in approval. “Who am I to argue with such a crowd?” he said. “Tell me, girl, you look familiar. Did I perhaps kill your father?”

“You might be my father for all I know,” said Thundra. “But I know for sure that you’re screwing my sister Stormy.”

More raucous laughter from Gash’s fighters, and the warchieftain himself displayed a wan yet dangerous smile. “Ah yes,” he said. “One of the fairest slaves we’ve taken on in some time. Hopefully she’ll bear me some handsome sons for the troop, eh?

“I’ve always found her to be unbearable myself,” said Thundra.

“Tell me something else, Stormy’s Sister,” continued Gash, still with that dangerous half-smile. “My boys tell me that elf was wearing heavy armor. How did you kill him?”

“With this, of course,” Thundra said. She took the great axe out of the oiled rucksack in which it had been lying and displayed it to the warchieftain. “I call her Samaxetha.”

Only about half of the assembled band got the joke, but those who did chortled at it mightily. “And where,” said Gash softly,”did you acquire Samaxetha? Slave recruits are sent into battle with spears, no? Less to lose if you’re killed.”

“I stole it from one of these louts,” said Thundra proudly, encompassing the whole party with a sweep of her hand. “I forget which one.”

“Then, aren’t you tempted to use it on me, your enslaver?” said Gash. “Surely the thought must have crossed your mind.”

“My plan is to bide my time, work my way up within your ranks, until I’m strong and untouchable. I’ll work so that I never have wobbly knees from going hungry, the way I was before. When I’m that strong and useful to you, I won’t need to kill you to get my freedom. You’ll give it to me yourself.”

“Oh, will I?” said Gash.

“Because you know that eing strong and having large amounts of gold is the answer to living a good life, just like me,” finished Thundra proudly.

“Ha! Very well then.” Gash broke into a more genuine smile now, apparently satisfied. “Boys, whoever owned that axe before, it now belongs to Sister-of-Stormy here. Go on then, slave-girl, have merry and revel in your victory. Take those ears and wear them proudly around your neck. And when the revels wind down tonight, Mugh,” the warchieftain gestured at one of the men beside him at the head of the feast, “see that Sister-of-Stormy finds her way to my tent. She lacks the supple fairness of her sibling, surely, but she has piqued my interest and will do for the night.”

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“You’re the strongest and toughest out of all of us,” said Thundra. “A strong slave can work their way up in the ranks to eventually become a soldier if they find ways to prove themselves. But you’re just sitting around harvesting potatoes or carrying loads on your back.”

Thundra’s elder sister approached her with a growl. “Let me make this perfectly clear, sister,” said she. “I. DO. NOT. WORK. WILLINGLY. FOR. SLAVEDRIVERS!”

Lightning always shouted; she had since Thundra was in swaddling wrap. But that outburst was something new; a deep nerve had been touched upon. Zeffir and Stormy had made themselves as small as they could in the hut, pressing themselves against the thin canvas walls, so as not to be caught up in their sister’s wrath.

Wiping Lightning’s foamy spittle from her face, Thundra set her heels firmly on the ground and looked her sister in her burning eyes. “Fine,” she said. “You do as you want, sister. But you know what? This lot isn’t as terrible as you think. You know what I like about Gash’s horde? There’s no hypocrisy here.”

“HA!” said Lightning. “Tell me where you see that, Thundra. From where I’m standing, with a forced load on my back and potatoes in my hands I’m surrendering to folks that didn’t grow them, it looks like an insecure orc forcing others to do the dirty work to keep him in comfort.”

“Gash has worked for what he has. So have all of his fighters,” said Thundra. “If you’re strong, you have the chance to exel. You can make something of yourself swinging a sword–or, I suppose, digging out potatoes as you prefer. And if you’re weak then you find something else to do.”

“All I see is the weak being trampled and cannibalized to help the strong,” Lightning growled. “You’d praise that, along with the lot that will see you in bondage to the end of your days?

“This about what we saw back home. The poor suffered and died so that the rich could live good lives. It’s no different in Gash’s horde, except that the strong can advance themselves here. And if you’re not strong, well…just look at Stormy, who’s small but fair, and who has Gash’s eye? Or Zeffir, who’s quick and sneaky and comes at you from the side when you’re not looking? We’ve all found places here that we never could have had at Mother’s.”

“Someday, I think, you’ll see just how wrong you are about this place, little sister,” said Lightning. “I just hope the rest of us are around to protect you then.”

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