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So far, the disease had cropped up in five different towns. The council still said there was no reason to worry. Tam knew better. He tried to warn the gnomes of the Wildwood colony but they just told him that it was probably nothing. Anybody else would've believed them but Tam knew better, he saw the worry the gnomes hid every time they asked about it. So when two councilors suspiciously appeared in the woods talking about how they could never find out he followed them. He knows he told Sophie that he didn't but, well he had just met her, why should he trust her with the real story. Plus she seemed to have some kind of connection to the council, she looked weirdly similar to Oralie. Plus would she have even believed him? Even Linh was skeptical.
So he followed the councilors into the night he heard them talking about drakostomes whatever those where, he got close enough to see that one was a guy with curly brown hair holding a circlet with a green gem in the center. He was running a hand through his hair facing a women with long ringlets of blond hair a pink stone shining in the middle of her forehead from her circlet.
“This isn't goo - threating war – ty restri – the plauge.” Tam was far away so he couldn't make out all of what the guy was saying, but what he could hear and decipher. He realized that it meant that the council knew the plague was a possibility, they knew the ogres started it, and that they were doing nothing to help.
How dare they? After all the gnomes had done for them. After everything, he already didn't have a high opinion of the council after they banished his sister but this, this worsened his opinion of them even more.
He tried to get closer to make out the rest of what they were were saying. He wanted to know the whole story. Only problem was he was so focused on his anger that he wasn't paying attention to the ground and-
Crack!
Stepped right onto a stick. Fan fucking tastic. Just his luck.
The councilors whipped around
"Who's there!" The man shouted waving a melder around like a child that just got out on the last day of Foxfire would wave around mallowmelt.
"Show yourself!" The woman shouted as well back to back with the man also holding a melder. And of course they had to have melders because the night wasn't eventful enough, just the cherry on top the top of a big ice cream mountain of shitty luck over the years. Though he doubted they knew how to use them considering their well, councilors they seem to always be hiding in their castles, or behind their goblin bodyguards, oblivious to the citizens they were supposed to be ruling.
"I don't like this Oralie I feel like we're being watched" the woman- Oralie, huh he thought she was the innocent one apparently not, nodded
"I agree let's return to the rest of the council” and with that they disappeared in a bright flash.
Great.
His one lead for this plague vanished at of thin air because of a stupid fucking mistake. But he had overheard them. Maybe it wasn't the giant reveal he wished it was but, well you don't always get what you want in life. He and Linh were living proof of that. But his messed up life aside this proves that the council knew about the plague, which was horrible. He didn't like the twelve but the gnomes trusted them.
Oh goodness.
He had to warn the gnomes. He just hoped he wasn't too late.
The next morning he brought the subject up at breakfast the gnomes all told him that he just had an overreacting imagination. Even the leader of the Wildwood colony told him that he was letting his fear and mistrust of the council blind him. And that underneath everything they've done their still good people. Then told him to run along. Tam just nodded and leaped to exillium with his sister.
But underneath his surface there was a fire burning inside.
Because it was bullshit.
All.
Of.
It.
Bullshit.
And just because the gnomes and even Linh didn't believe him he knew what he saw.
He knew what he heard.
The next week all the gnomes in Wildwood had been hospitalized. When he and Linh questioned the emissaries there they just waved he and Linh off, or told them they don't have time for problem children.
Because that's all people thought they were “problem children.” oh how Tam wanted to prove them wrong or to give them a piece of his mind. But it wasn't the time or place.
They have the plague one of the doctors told him and Linh, taking pity on them seeing as how the gnomes practically raised them for the past three years. It felt even more like a punch in the gut when the doctor took a deep breath and told them
“and we don't have a cure yet.”
Tam vowed then that he would set this right and save the gnomes of Wildwood like they saved him and Linh all those years ago.