Welcome to Gaia! ::

Donovan glanced off to the side to see Gion, he found it hard to believe it would be hard to insult them, but if Gion said so.

Fine... He motioned with one hand at his side. Just keep watch.

Thank god for Skye and having doctors for cousins, otherwise he would worry about his ability to communicate with Gion.

"Well, it wasn't that hard to find the entrance," Donovan replied back drly not adding the fact Nadya let them here, "And since we're on the topic of questions, we have some ourselves, hence," he motioned, "Here we are, standing in front of... all you gentlemen here."

"Why to ask questions," Donovan stepped in front of Nadya to put her out of the spot light.

He couldn't understand how that concept was so hard to understand, they were here to ask questions, well true that wasn't the whole truth, but well, it was hard to explain that other reason now wasn't it? Donovan looked thoughtful and decided he would mention about the human activity, and hopefully he had read correctly into how different or isolated the races were.

"You see, my collegues are Southern elves who have noticed an unusual..." Donovan pretended to find the right words, "Activity going on in the Borderlands and their homeland in general, human acitvity. Now, being human myself," he put his hands lightly on his chest, "I would like to believe that my fellow humans would not do anything so horrendous, unfortunately. People think I'm an," he bunny rabbited the term with his hands, "An elf lover, so of course my fellow humans aren't going to give me the day of time about this activity, and if it's true well who is going to admit to a crime."

He paused as if he was thinking for a mometn, deeply and thoughtfully.

"However," he pointed out, "We cannot ask other elves, after all humans and elves do not really.. completely.. oh hell let me admit it, we humans don't have a good reputation among the elves, so therefore we cannot ask because they just assuse all humans, and well that's no good."

Donovan waited for that to sink in, the thing he didn't like was that this depended on him (which he was trained for) to spot a lie, but he also hoped that Nadya or Daemon could spot a lie too. Besides, sometimes it was what one did not say, that might mean a lot.

"So, we thought," Donovan pointed to the others and himself, "Why not ask the Dwarves? Afterall, you do a lot of trade with the humans that must travel through the Southernlands and therefore if anyone notices anything odd it would be you. Further more, being a Dwarf would make you an excellent neutral party, because you would have views no one else would have."

Unless they were going to be bastards and not say anything Donovan thought.

"Please, good sirs," Donovan finished, "We are depending on your good grace to help us, help others. So, there it is, we question you about any unusual activity among the humans, we go back with a report giving you your deserved credits."

And hopefully you'll see this as a chance to deflect any suspicious in where you might actually tell a lie so big it'll bite you in the a**, he added to himself mentally.

Gion coughed again, but this time it wasn't to get Donovan's attention. It was because of the dwarf's final comment. Of course Donovan spoke differently from the humans of this land ... he spoke properly. The humans here didn't care to learn the language properly, only enough to do their business.

Still, he signed to Donovan, They were discussing whether you were interested in selling me to them ... they think I'm a child.

He was both amused and angry at the thought - angry that they had been correct in their assumption that the dwarfs were buying child slaves from the humans, but amused that he looked childish enough to be bought by them willingly.

"Shiny?" The dwarf laughed and turned to his leader. A moment later both of them chuckled, as did the rest of the assembled dwarfs. The leader spoke, and the translator, rather than waiting, translated as he did so.

"Look around you," he laughed at Donovan. "Welcome to our magnificent halls! Look at them and tell me if you see anything that shines! We have nothing here but stone!"

The translator continued to laugh, but the leader looked suddenly thoughtful. He called to his aide and spoke to him in a quieter tone. The translator looked surprised at first, but he nodded to his leader and turned back to Donovan. He was completely serious now, and obviously hesitant to tell what his leader had said. He kept casting shifty glances at the elves, then beckoned for Donovan to step closer.

The translator leaned in close to Donovan (or rather stretched, since the human was so much taller than he was) and murmured ever so softly into his ear.

"How are you at locating people?"

The dwarf nodded, still looking somewhat uneasy at the sight of the two elves in the room, despite the fact that it was a woman and a child - hardly dangerous in and of themselves. The woman looked terrified anyways.

"We might be interested in having you locate someone for us," he said to the human very very quietly. "If you can do this, you could become a very rich man - so rich that you wouldn't have to worry about what the elves thought of you."

He raised one eyebrow pointedly.

The dwarf smiled faintly and nodded satisfactorily to himself, then murmured, "There's an elf who's been wandering the Four Lands for the past decade or so, he's been killing off our associates, as you call them. We were just wondering if perhaps you could locate him for us. He's disappeared, but he's got to pay for what he's done. We lost a lot of good men to him."

He scowled at the thought. Yes, many of their best ...

"We would, of course, pay handsomely," he added. "Enough to make sure you never have to worry about your relationship with the elves again ..."

The dwarf nodded quickly. "Yes," he agreed, a small playing about his lips, half hidden by his bushy beard. "He's far too dangerous for you to take on by yourself, so just find out where he is now and tell us. We'll take care of the rest."

He paused and watched Donovan thoughtfully for a few moments in silence, then added, "It's important that this is done so that we can continue our work. We've had to halt it lately because of him."