Look, I’m just gonraight with whoever is reading this. The record of my adventures often look something like ‘travel through forest, walk down this road, fight some bandits oblins, sleep at this in.’ And you’d be correct that, bar some other strange monster like that deer or an ogre, that’s basically what a lot of my life after reag Vesperalis was like.

  But there is plenty of adventure and strao be had. I’ll get to it soon, trust me.

  At any rate, after that first night in the forest we got bato the road, and made some headway. It was much sloing than I’d like because we had to take frequent breaks for Bere. I wao head back to Briree and see if we couldn’t vince Darra to part with her fabulous elven sword, but Rachel wao get a head start on finding NPC help for us.

  So, we headed for a small vilge called Afon-Alun, to the east.

  We’d just started our third day of traveling together. We’d only fought one group of bandits, who were also marked by a bck lion medallion, weirdly, and we were starting to settle into our identity as a party.

  We’d actually killed the whole bandit group to a man before we even really knew what we were doing, so maybe we were too good. We got some new crossbows and some bolts out of it along with 44 gold pieces and some ge.

  Bere made a group chat for us called “The Kill Crew.” Why it o be separate from the other chat, and when we would ever split up so as to , was anyone’s guess, but I was keen to make her happy. She still wasn’t back at a hundred pert yet.

  “So,” she started, marg cheerfully o me while Rachel brought up the rear, “Rachel seems to agree with you that the NPCs here in Vesperalis are people too, with souls and everything. And I’m not gonna argue with her givehing she’s been through tely. But do you really believe that?”

  “Of course. We have no real evidehat anyone has a soul. We just have to act like others have them. And in ag, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not, funally it is because we make it so.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Here. Think of this. You met one of Caleb’s kids, right? And we agree that Caleb has a soul.”

  “Well, if we didn’t, that would make us super-mega-racist.”

  “Definitely. So, if Caleb has a soul, and parents create children who also have souls, why wouldn’t his son have a soul?”

  “Yeah. Right. So when Prince Xander passed through Briree, he hit on me immediately. Which, sure, I’m hot, whatever. But when I let him dowly, he called me ‘short.’”

  “You are short.”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “What is your point?”

  “My point is, that if I had a kid, even if they were an insufferable twat, I’d believe they had a soul.”

  “See?”

  “But he’s not my kid, so fuck ‘em.”

  “I feel like we’re off track.”

  Rachel caught up to us.

  “What are you guys talking about?” she asked.

  “Whether Prince Xander has a soul,” I said, nontly.

  “Oh, god, that guy sucks. But even spoiled brats have a soul.”

  I gestured to Bernie, and she spread her hands out i.

  “Here’s the real head scratcher,” Rachel said, grinning like she was about to drop something on us, “do you really believe that we’re the first people here? That aming group is the only people that made it here?”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “Wouldn’t we see more stes?” asked Bere.

  “Not if they got here before cellphones. Little twelve year old Percival from World War Two era Britain ain’t bringing a cellphone.”

  “You could be onto something,” I said. “I mean, it would expin why everyone speaks English.”

  “Everyone speaks English!” Rachel said, excitedly.

  “That’s weird!’ I said.

  “I hought about that,” Bere admitted.

  “But if they had just visited once,” I tinued, “ats would have drifted so much that we’d have a hard time uanding them. Like ey. But they sound perfectly fine! Like, maybe they e here all the time!”

  Bere looked between us with an expression I couldn’t pce.

  “You two are cute when you get excited about stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean when you get like this,” she repeated, “you’re hel cute.”

  “Thanks,” Rachel said.

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that.

  The road led us out of the forest and across an expanse of rolling hills. The grass was an uny green that I had only seen in pictures, the kind of green that only happens in far off pces. Certainly not in Texas. And the sky was just pure blue from one horizon to the other.

  A ways off the road was a small camping spot under an oak. Someone had pced a couple of thick uprooted tree stumps around a ring of stones just big enough for a nice fire. I weled a little bit of shade, and a pce to sit.

  We didn’t bother with a fire because we didn’t pn on staying long. Our stes said that Afon-Alun was just a couple hours down the road, and daylight lentiful.

  “Other than the ce for a warm bed,” I said, “what else do we hope to find here?”

  “Well,” Rachel said, “rumor has it that every couple of weeks a raops in for a bit of booze, and to pick up work, then heads bato the Kingswood. Having someone who track, and shoot wouldn’t be a bad addition to our party.”

  “Agh, rangers suck,” I said.

  “What do you know abers?” Rachel asked sarcastically.

  “Rogues do better DPR and druids do better spells. And if I wanted a pet, I’d get a fish. Rangers basically suck at everything.”

  “Okay,” Rachel offered, “well, how else do you expect us to find this dragon? And once we find it, if it starts flying around, how are we going to fight it?”

  “You’re starting to have a point.”

  “We need a hunter. Hopefully this ranger is high enough level for the job.”

  We also needed food. Bernie had killed some rabbit and squirrel, so we had dried meat. Rachel ro at that, and showed us how it was done. But we were very low on freshwater and other food.

  Also, it would be o sleep in our own beds. We all smelled pretty rank at this point, and piling into the same bedroll was losing its y.

  Soon, we were doing, but I could tell that Bere needed a little longer before we tinued on, so we started up a song from a py we knew. Rachel’s voice was a bit pitchy, but sweet. We sounded pretty good together.

  After we’d ed up camp, we headed out.

  In not much time, the bridge over Afon-Alun — the town’s namesake river — came into view. It was a beautiful stone built arch, and the entrance had a twelve foot tall statue looming over it. The statue seemed to be of an elven man with a forked beard, with his fist raised as if he had once held something that was no lohere.

  A small guard shack held three guards. After some questioning about our business, and paying a copper for the toll, we crossed the bridge into town.

  The vilge seemed quaint, with beautiful cobblestoreets, and thatched roof buildings. I could also see e elven-styled building, looming like an upturned bird at the end of the square. We ehe pce, the sign of a fish leaping from a foaming mug, marking it as the tavern.

  The tavern held many people, including my first look at a dwarf. Stocky and bearded, he lived up to my expectations, and seemed to be the proprietor. He’d built some kind of railing behind the bar so that he could run around behind it, and still see over it, while still being sized for tallmen.

  I also noticed a painting above the bar. It was a beautiful woman in profile, with a date in a pque on the frame notating a date ten years previous. The figure had a aquiline nose, and sparkling blue eyes. Her lips were pulled up in a slight smirking pout. It was Sofia. How? Ten years ago. And she looked exactly as I remembered her. Maybe even more beautiful.

  What was going on with her? What was her portrait doing here?

  Bernie walked up to the dwarf and versed with him for a bit, before heading back to us.

  “His name’s Bruthur. Nice guy,” she then motioned with a thumb behind her, “man in the er is er.”

  The man in the er was as handsome, and rugged as one would hope a rao be. His dark skin and pointed ears showed him to be of mixed heritage of some sort, and the skin of his scalp showed from a head whose stubble had yet to fully grow back from being shaved. In fact, it matched his stubbly beard, but for a thick well kept mustache.

  He had a green cloak thrown over his chair o a nice pair of travel worn boots, a fazing at a map, brushing ash from it as he sucked on a thin hand rolled cigarette that smelled of something sweet. I didn’t see any ons but for a beautiful bck longbow, unstrung and leaning against a post.

  When his gaze fell on us, I saw his eyes to be a honey brown flecked with gold. They were elven eyes, but I couldn’t help but feel like I had seen something like them before in someone else.

  “Are you barefoot?” I asked him, donning the monocle. It said ‘Cal of the Kingswood, lvl 6 Ranger; 52 hp.’

  He smiled and replied, “it’s one of the simple pleasures of civilization. How might I help you fine folk?”

  “We’re looking for a hunter of monsters,” said Bere, leaning oable.

  creased his eyes, aood. He set his cigarette in a bowl, and held his hands out asking, “may I touch you?”

  “Yeah,” Bere said, startled but intrigued.

  The man turned her hand over and pced his fingers on the pulse in her wrist, gazing at her ily. He then brushed a finger across the skin of her brow.

  “You shouldn’t have let her get like this. She needs water,” he said to me. “I’ll be back.”

  I pulled out my waterskin as he led her to his chair then whisked off to the bar. He bent over the bar to talk to the dwarven bartender, who got down from the rail and came back with a kettle that he pced over the wo stove. The rahen grabbed a mortar ale from behind the bar and began crushing something into one of his cigarette papers.

  “You okay?” I asked Bere, as she drank from the waterskin.

  “I mean, I’m a little thirsty.”

  I looked to Rachel, apologetibsp; Who just raised her eyebrows in bemusement.

  I gnced back at the ranger who’d plopped the homemade sachet into a mug, before carefully p the boiling water over it. In moments, he was back with a steaming mug of tea.

  “This, young ss, should ease your exhaustion,” he said, pg the tea carefully on the map in front of her.

  “Ah, thanks,” Rachel said. “We knew she was hurting still, but we just had to get here quickly.”

  “And would digging a roadside grave be more or less a damper on your travel pns, than a stop to take care of your panion?” the ranger accused, a hint of s hiding below the cool waters of his civility.

  “Now,” I started, taking a step forward, “just you wait—”

  “We never—” Rachel began.

  “I’m fine,” Bere said.

  The rahrew up his hands. My hao the sword at my waist. The ranger quirked an eyebrow at me, but seemed unbothered. I stepped bad crossed my arms.

  “I think we should sit, aroduce ourselves,” the ranger said, then pulling daggers from his sleeves, he smmed them into the tabletop. He then sat o one dagger, aured to the other, “in case you may .”

  “I’m not knife fighting you,” I said, but sittio the dagger anyway.

  “Yeesh,” Rachel said, then sat.

  “A shame. I love a good knife fight,” the ranger said with a fox’s grin.

  Bere reached across the table. The ranger slid the mug of tea out of the way just in time.

  She pulled first the one dagger, then the sed from the tabletop, ung them both across the bar simultaneously. They flew with incredible speed and precision, before thunking straight into a post.

  “Boys,” she said with not too much derision, “nobody’s fighting tonight.”

  The table was silent for several heartbeats.

  “I think I be too quick to defend a young maiden, when I should remember that some maidens are capable of their own defehe ranger said.

  “I think we may have pushed her too hard,” I said.

  Both apologies were unsaid, but uood.

  “My name is Shade,” she said before taking a sip of the tea. “And this is delicious, thank you.”

  “You are quite wele Lady Shade. I am Cal of the Kingswood.”

  “Just Cal?” I asked.

  “Just Cal.”

  “I am Breznik,” I said, my hand. He took it and we shook.

  “Oriana.”

  “Ah, like the steltion,” Cal said. “A strong name for a strong woman.”

  “Thanks,” Rachel said, tug a piece of her hair behind her ear.

  “So tell me friends,” he said, taking his cigarette and lighting it anew. “Let’s start over. What need of you for a monster hunter?”