Victor

  Preparations for battle were finally underway - by which I mean the fourth princess of Anaura and a scruffy-looking nerf-herder were out on a shopping trip! That of course would be us, Red Lightning, who had just completed their first quest! It had been a long and eventful day, yesterday; we'd driven all the way from Tor Anaura, made a pit stop in Midbrook, registered at the adventurer's guild, engaged in some general heroics, had a leisurely ride back to the city, and by that point we were pretty tired as it was almost evening. That was well for me, I had wanted a nice hot bath and a change of clothes before I went out anywhere nice.

  Before hitting the sack we did go out to a local tavern for a celebratory drink; the princess had local wine, and I had some local brandy, while we listened to the bard sing a tale of a silly dragon who got ganked by angry villagers after stealing their ale supply. The night's sleep was good, breakfast was decent too - this Inn gets a positive review overall! Oh I was feeling so much better, more thanks to the generous plate of eggs and thick sausages than the previous night's drinks: wise man once say, "there has never been a sadness that can't be cured by breakfast food, grasshopper". Now here we were perusing the market with our newfound cash reserves; can't you hear that jingle jangle sound, oh yeah!

  Battle preparation stop number one: the armory. What I needed, personally, was a shield suitable for beginners and some armor in which I could drive without difficulty, and still be able to perform necessary combat maneuvers. In addition to the close-quarter combat techniques the army had taught me, I was also a black belt in Jeet Kune Do and could do both reasonably well in kevlar. Medieval type armor was going to be a different story; I'd be sacking agility for protection, which I reckoned would hurt my knife-fighting too.

  But thankfully the armorsmiths here were used to outfitting adventurers with varying fighting styles, so all we had to do was ask the experts on the matter. The smithy we visited was a middle-aged human gent with graying brown hair and a full beard. Every part of his body showed signs of having been host to a cinder or two over the years; I'll bet he's the kind of guy whose mustache could have a bit of lit cigarette in it and he wouldn't mind.

  "Hmm," he said, stroking his beard after I'd told the tale of my abilities, "well there's a couple of ways we could do this," he was gruff, but sounded wise, "but no matter what, we'll need a base layer of gambeson to start out with. With your budget, breastplate offers the best protection, but it'd stiffen your torso so much as to impede those moves you just showed me," yeah guilty as charged, I'd performed some street fighting right in front of him, "the second option is a layered approach. Either way, I'd recommend selecting one of my bucklers for the shield."

  After trying on some breastplate, I confirmed that it was most definitely too stiff for my style; the smithy said that mithril, an expensive material prized by both elves and dwarves, would drop the weight significantly and even offer additional flexibility. But the key word here is expensive, and when I saw the price tag of a single mithril skullcap, my jaw dug a hole in the floor and I think I started doing a Redd Foxx impression with my hand on my heart and all.

  What came next was a fun bit of dress-up; I tried on various coats and pieces of armor, modeling for the princess who told me how she thought it looked. She even threw on my duster for me to see how well my new protective gear complemented the outfit. We settled on a brigandine cuirass with light mail, a pair of steel vambraces, a set of brigandine cuisses and shin guards for my legs, and a trimmed down kettle helm that I could wear under my hat. Additionally I picked out a nice round metal buckler with a thick boss. I was tempted to have him modify my duster coat for some additional protection, but time didn't allow for it - one of these days! Checking myself out in the mirror, I reckoned I looked pretty good, and the princess seemed to agree.

  When I asked the smithy how long it would take to tailor make a suit, my heart dropped; ten to twelve days? Argh. But he told me not to worry as there was an extra service we could purchase - a user of pattern magic who sold her services to every armorsmith in town. With her aid we could have it done before the end of the day, so of course we decided to throw down the extra cash. After finalizing our purchase, we were shown the way to the pattern mage's office - it was a relatively modest place, cozy, smelling of new clothes.

  The pattern wizard herself was a middle-aged beastfolk lady with rabbit ears, one sticking up straight and the other flopped over. She introduced herself as Meli Karga, from the southlands; Karga being the name of her tribe of beastfolk rather than a simple family name. My part in the whole process was short; Meli took my measurements, had me put the armor on, and bombarded my body with multiflorescent magical energy; kind of tickled actually. Hell she even measured my hat against the helmet and my head and made notes, while nodding and humming.

  "All right y'all," I was surprised to hear that her accent was coming through like a southern belle, "if you'll come back in about an hour, it'll all be done!"

  Meli handed us a small ticket, like one of those you'd get at the dry cleaners; we thanked her and moved on to finish the rest of our shopping while we waited. All told, armor shopping ran us two-hundred and fifty crowns. The next logical step was weaponry. I'd wanted to purchase a sword, as like most boys I'd grown up looking for a perfect stick and pretended it was a sword. Even guys who didn't end up playing miniatures-based wargames, tabletop RPGs, and critically acclaimed MMORPGs with free trials up to level 60, the way my good buddy Sakamoto did, had at one point or another imagined being a knight at some point in their lives. Really who didn't love a good swordfight scene in an action movie? Heck even a guns 'n cars guy like me could appreciate the occasional video about an Australian guy shouting the names of castle parts unto the heavens!

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  So, the weapons shop reminded me a lot of the gun stores in my old world, with taller weapons on the walls and shorter ones in racks or cases. I don't feel the need to describe all of them because I was only interested in the swords today. Oh boy did I try a lot of swords - short swords, arming swords, long swords, messers, sabers, rapiers, there was even a katana; ah, so it turns out the people from the "Dragon Sea" had a culture similar to Japan from my old world, but I didn't find about that more until much later so hold yer horses.

  Anyways, I actually chose an arming sword - a type of weapon sometimes mistakenly called a longsword - for the simple reason of it being the type of sword Valyrian used. It felt pretty good in my hands, but I knew it was going to be a good while before I was any good at using it. There - now I matched the princess for melee reach! The princess also selected a longbow for herself, having quite simply forgotten to pack hers when we left Tor Anaura - oh how she sighed ruefully, and oh how I could relate.

  Item three, miscellaneous equipment. This part took a while since we had to go to many different shops to get what we needed. I already had my own sleeping bag, and since I wasn't about to share one with the princess, I made sure to get her one. I'd left the tent-bringin' up to Sedjiwaski so I didn't actually have one myself; a smallish one seemed to suit our purposes best - still enough room to sleep apart but compact enough for the trunk of the car.

  Add a couple of blankets and bolsters to that and we were set for bedding. Hey wait, could the princess use her wind magic to fill up something like an air mattress? Note to self, ask later. They actually sold imported compasses and spyglasses but I already had both of those things, boy scout that I am. They also had all manner of rope, climbing gear, man, so many goodies. Torches were a given especially what happened yester - ulp - you know; 5 of those.

  Item four, provisions; we were going on stakeout so we were going to need some portable food. I didn't have any MREs from my old world, but that's fine because every goddamn word of that acronym was a lie. I doubted that they'd invented canning here either, but then again I'd seen a pocketwatch recently...but then I realized that could also be a magic tool. Anyhow, I wanted some fresh meat - sure that wasn't going to keep long but at least it'd survive a day's drive in the cooler. For the first night, at least, I wanted to grill. I'd bought charcoal back in the loggin' town of Kennie, danger zone, and I still had my portable camping grill in the trunk of my car. I selected a couple of large sirloin steaks, let's see, this is probably prime, or close enough to it.

  Ah, the animal itself was some sort of large four-horned creature unique to this world. Oh what I wouldn't give for the time and facilities to make some delicious smoked brisket! We were also able to procure bacon and eggs to fry over the campfire in the morning. As for everything else, what we needed was food that could keep for a few days or more since we only had a vague understanding of when the attack was to come. For that we went to a specialized grocer that catered to adventurers - we bought a dozen days worth of what they called "iron rations" for each of us. These contained dried meat, dried fruit, nuts, and that sort of thing; thanks to nature magic, drying fruit was made lightning fast but jerky was still done the old fashioned way. Ohh if I could just get my hands on some new world peppers I'd stew up a mean pot of chili, ah one of these days. We also picked up some hard cheese and bread while we were at it.

  Laden with goodies as we were, we dropped off everything in the trunk of the car. The princess created water, then froze it, and dropped it into my cooler; I laid the meat and eggs inside. I noticed that the princess could make perfect little ice balls which I would keep in mind for later whiskey sips. Incidentally, you know that really good glass-clear ice you sometimes saw at bars? That's the kind of ice she could make - that was better than anything an ice wizard could possibly do in my book and I made sure to tell her so. Having done that we returned to Meli's tailor shop and retrieved my new protective gear. I grinned broadly; she'd used her pattern magic to dye it exactly the way I wanted it. I tried it on and it fit like an overused simile: perfection. I spent a good amount of time admiring myself in the mirror.

  I drew my Colt and pointed it at the mirror "Are you talkin' to me," I said. Huh? Your highness, why are you giving me such a look? Fine, I'll stop. Weird, do I have some kind of tell when I do a movie quote? Nah, no way.

  But what was I looking at exactly? Why, just something from my old world, a picture of which happened to be stored on my smartphone. Oh yeah the beastgirl marveled at the device, and the three of us took a selfie (how millennial of me). Incidentally, I had a lot of questions about pattern magic and made it a point to visit this particular mage again at some point later. The princess, too, was eager to learn more about the discipline.

  Total spent today: 250 crowns for armor, 90 crowns for weapons, 9 crowns, 25 helms, and 8 caps for food, 11 crowns, 1 helm, 5 caps for miscellaneous gear. We also managed to sell off goblin weapons for scrap, 10 crowns for the lot, but I kept the chain the Brute had been using as an improvised weapon. After our guild fee, inn stay, drinks, and today's gear trip, our cash reserves were as follows: 437 crowns, 114 helms, 87 caps - which the princess assured me would last us a good while, and now that I'd gotten a chance to shop in a couple market places I was beginning to understand. After our shopping spree we were still full of energy, and time being of the essence we checked out of the inn and started our thirty mile drive up to the ambush area - under the shadow of a place called "Barber Hill".