When they awoke the next morning, Mitzi insisted on bringing Fenrir breakfast despite walking as though her legs were made of jelly. Fenrir allowed it on the condition that she also get some for herself so she could eat with him and Elmeria, and sent Elmeria with her to help carry anything necessary. Elmeria obeyed without a word, maintaining a stone-faced silence aside from several stray gnces at Fenrir.

  Once they got back, they enjoyed the simple yet filling meal in a comfortable silence. Mitzi snuggled up against Fenrir while they ate while Elmeria sat across from them, pointedly focusing on her food.

  After the meal Mitzi took great pleasure in brushing Fenrir's fur. At first he tried to protest, but he had to admit that the brushing did feel pleasant, and being well-groomed didn't detract any from his appearance either, so with a wry shrug he eventually submitted to the diminutive goblin's ministrations. She was just finishing brushing out his tail when a goblin knocked on the door and was let in at Fenrir's direction.

  "Chief Shazrak ask you come when ready. Make pn for raid," the goblin said, bowing slightly.

  Fenrir gnced back at Mitzi, who ran her brush through his tail one more time and then smiled brightly up at him. "All done."

  "Excellent, thank you. Why don't you stay here with Elmeria and the two of you can amuse yourself however you like while I meet with the chief?" Fenrir replied.

  Mitzi gave a chipper nod, and Fenrir looked over at Elmeria, who gave him a reluctant nod as well. Satisfied, he rose from the stool on which he had been sitting and stepped towards the door, saying to the messenger, "Lead the way."

  After a quick stop in the communal baths to clean himself, Fenrir was led down through the stagmite to what was clearly a pnning room. A rge table stood in the center, littered with crude maps drawn on parchments in various conditions ranging from newly made to obviously ready to fall apart. A knot of goblins stood around the table, the distinctive frame of Chief Shazrak rising above the others.

  Shazrak gave Fenrir the same brief but warm welcome Fenrir had received from him previously, and then they got down to the business of deciding how to go about raiding the hoard of the White Horror. As he had expected, the chief had no issues with Fenrir's conditions, and the great lupine was impressed by how level-headed and down-to-earth the goblin chief was. If an idea of his was questioned, he did not take offense; rather, he inquired why the questioner thought the idea was a bad one and took what was said in response to heart, several times dropping an idea entirely due to the feedback of his advisors. Most of his ideas, however, were good ones, and though it took them several hours to form a gamepn everyone was satisfied with, there was little time wasted in the doing of it.

  They took a short break for lunch, and were finished by midafternoon. As they were finishing up, Shazrak invited Fenrir on a tour of his underground kingdom, an invitation which the direwolf was happy to accept. He found things much as the chief had described the day before during the feast, except that his description of the forest-cave had failed to mention how rge the cavern was. It easily dwarfed the cavern which housed the goblins, Fenrir estimating that the distance to the far wall of the massive subterranean chamber had to be well over twenty miles, and the distance from floor to ceiling, though it varied considerably, averaged over ten. Trees grew in abundance, and towards the center an oblong ke with several bays like gigantic fingers poking into the forest occupied a space some five miles squared. A distant golden ball close to the ceiling dispensed light and heat to sustain the pnt and animal life below, and unlike the ball in the city-cave above was almost too bright to look at.

  There were several farms huddled against the near wall of the cave, well secured against the depredations of wildlife, and a logging camp which had carved out a fair-sized clearing in which young trees were already again beginning to sprout, but most of the cavern remained untouched, a haven for the fauna which called this pce home.

  A hunting party was just ready to start out into the forest in search of game, and Fenrir and the chief joined them. The direwolf enjoyed the chance to hunt again, and during the course of the hunt he noticed a surprising variety of animal life present in the cavern. He reflected that a naturalist would likely give a fortune to have the chance to study the unique ecosystem that had sprung up- or more likely, been carefully cultivated in this giant subterranean chamber.

  On the way back, with his contribution to the hunt slung across his shoulders, Fenrir asked the chief how they managed to avoid depleting the cavern of its animal life if they lived primarily off its bounty.

  "We have been careful not to hunt too many of any one creature," Shazrak expined. "When the deer grow too few, we slow or stop hunting them entirely for several years until they once again grow numerous, and the same for any other creature. Even the meat-eaters, though they threaten us as well, provide a vital service to the bance of life, and we have been careful not to upset that bance."

  Fenrir nodded, impressed. Clearly the popur trope in Earth culture of goblins being dim-witted or short-sighted did not hold true for this community.

  He got back to his room not long after two chimes, or around five in the afternoon. Chief Shazrak had shared his desire for swift and decisive action, so their raid was pnned for the next day. He stepped into the room to see Mitzi brushing out her hair in front of a small mirror set up on the table, while Elmeria y on her stomach on the bed, scribbling something in a notebook. His entrance attracted both their attention, Mitzi giving him a beaming smile while Elmeria scowled, the barest hint of a blush rising to her cheeks.

  Over dinner Mitzi told him what the two of them had gotten up to in his absence. After he had left, they had gone to the communal baths themselves to wash up and had ended up spending quite a bit of time there. Elmeria had expressed curiosity as to the nature of the beings who had originally built this underground city, and while Mitzi didn't actually know, it had still served to break the ice between them somewhat. Observing them over the course of the meal, Fenrir couldn't honestly say they acted like friends, but the hostility and caution Elmeria had dispyed towards Mitzi the day before was rgely gone.

  After the baths, they had ended up wandering through the city, Elmeria trying to satisfy her curiosity about the origins of the mysterious builders even as Mitzi tried to satisfy her own curiosity of who Elmeria was, who Fenrir was, and what the nd they came from was like. Judging from their expressions in the retelling, neither had really gotten what they wanted.

  Fenrir was happy with how their day had gone, however. However unwillingly, Elmeria was being forced to see the goblins, and by extension Dark-races as more than just a faceless evil. He was beginning to be increasingly hopeful that he could successfully subdue her and emerge unscathed despite the monkey wrench thrown into his pns by their mutual banishment to Apollyon. He looked across at Elmeria, who had repsed into her stony silence as soon as he had entered the room. 'So this is her pn going forward, is it? We'll see how long it sts.'

  The two women had gotten back to the guest room several hours before him and had occupied the rest of their time with lounging about and engaging in their own pursuits. Fenrir noted that Elmeria already seemed far more comfortable in the sheer garment she had been given the day before than she had been during the feast. Mitzi, of course, showed no embarrassment whatsoever in baring her breasts to the world, providing a view which Fenrir could not help but enjoy from time to time.

  They spent the rest of the evening quietly enough, Mitzi teaching Fenrir a game pyed with small round stones and finger-length sticks, while Elmeria wrote in her notebook and pretended not to be interested in the other two's activities.

  They ended the evening with mutual oral intercourse, Fenrir deciding against full on sex since Mitzi was still more than a little sore from the extreme stretching she had taken the night before. Instead, to her great delight he teased her to several orgasms with hands and mouth and then she returned the favor for him, gulping down his semen with relish. While not quite as satisfying as regur sex, it served effectually to take the edge off for the both of them. As before, Elmeria slipped out of the room, presumably to wander the city for awhile as she waited for the two of them to finish their bout of coitus.

  The next morning after breakfast while Mitzi was brushing his fur, Fenrir turned to Elmeria. "Yesterday the chief and I, among others, formed a pn to acquire a Key of Apollyon. I'll be leaving in a few hours to execute that pn, and I want you to remain here until we get back. Mitzi can look after you in my absence."

  The statement made Elmeria finally break her facade of indifference. "What do you mean? Where are you going? You can't just leave me here, I've seen how some of the goblins look at me. They'll kill me, or worse," she said, her voice rising further the longer she spoke.

  Fenrir shook his head. "They will not harm you. I've made an agreement with the chief. In exchange for my help, you will be kept safe for me. I don't know exactly how long it will take, but I don't expect to be back for several days at least."

  "And you expect him to keep his word?" Elmeria spat.

  "I do. You are prejudiced against him because he is a goblin. I am not blinded by hatred of his race, and everything I have seen points to him being honorable. He will keep his word. I will be honest, I would not be surprised if there are several amongst his followers who may not have the self-control to follow his orders when presented with a beauty like you, so I recommend you avoid wandering alone when I am gone. Stay in the room as much as possible, and when you do go out, stay with Mitzi. Clear?"

  Her cheeks reddened, but she otherwise ignored the compliment. "I heard what you said at the feast. What if you get yourself killed by this White Horror?"

  The rhythmic strokes of Mitzi's brush faltered. Fenrir shook his head slightly. "If I do, I have made arrangements. And besides," he continued as a teasing note entered his voice, "I thought you wanted me to get eaten by a dragon. I recall you saying something to that effect awhile back."

  Elmeria's color deepened, and she turned away with a short "Hmph."

  Fenrir gnced down at Mitzi, who was looking back up at him with concern shining in her rge blue eyes. "Don't worry, I don't intend to be eaten," he said, raising one hand to pat her on the head. "I just took care to prepare for every outcome." She didn't look entirely reassured, but the headpats seemed to mollify her enough to prevent any protestations, and she finished brushing his fur without comment.

  Standing, Fenrir stepped over to Elmeria, who looked up at him in arm. In a low voice he said, "I know you don't trust me, and that you hate me on principle. But whether you believe it or not, I don't actually harbor any ill will against you. You are only my enemy inasmuch as you choose to be. Keep the promise you made me when we were first banished here, and you will at the least be safe and comfortable, whatever the outcome of our raid."

  Elmeria gred up at him as though attempting to pierce the depths of his soul with her gaze. Eventually she dropped her gaze and sighed. "I always keep my word," she muttered dully, her face a mixture of hopelessness and regret.

  Drawn by a sudden impulse, Fenrir lifted a hand to pat her on the head as well, making her freeze abruptly in pce. "Cheer up. This isn't the first time I've faced off against something bigger than me." Internally, he thought, 'Of course, nothing I've faced off against quite matches up to this, even if I don't consider the fact that my abilities are inaccessible, but then I don't actually need to kill it either, just keep it busy. Still, this will easily be the most dangerous thing I've done so far, but there's no point in worrying anyone.'

  His hand paused in its motions, and Elmeria looked up at him with a startling vulnerability shining out of her bright hazel eyes. She said nothing, only looking at him with such an intensity that it almost made him feel self-conscious. Then the moment passed, and she shrugged his hand off and turned away again.

  An hour and a half ter, Fenrir was walking with Chief Shazrak at the head of a column of goblin warriors back up the tunnel by which he had come down to this buried city two days ago. Spirits among the goblins were high, and while the chief was a bit more guarded in his reactions, Fenrir could tell he was excited at the opportunity the direwolf's presence afforded.

  Once out of the tunnel and back in the directionless gre of the world above ground, the goblins broke into a ground-eating trot that, while not as fast as Fenrir's preferred pace, still ate up the miles in a deceptively short time. It did not take long at all for the little depression that marked the entrance to Goblintown to vanish in the distance, and Fenrir settled easily into the slow trot, his ears full of the tribal chant the goblins sang as they ran.

  TheBestofSome