books

Chapter
Seven

“What is in your hand?”

 

Timeline:

The savage storm has ended and the Serenity Home company return to camp just to see a most unusual sight and their trek takes them far and beyond their expectations..

This story starts right after
“Heaven’s Willing”.

 

 

Ranger Laila stared suspiciously at the strangely gnarled bit of thorny vine sticking out of the soil, then gave the surrounding trees, the bush, and the undergrowth a long, intense look but saw nothing out of the ordinary, relatively speaking..

..accept the day seemed a tad too cheery.

Birds of all shapes and sizes had, apparently, decided this day was a good day to ‘chirp’, hence they did. Many of the trees were also crawling with hyped squirrels, chipmunks, mice, and she had seen at least three different families of baggy badgers digging through some dirt, a dozen or six rabbits, a big, surly brown bear and her three, overenthusiastic cubs, a small herd of dear, and finally, when she’d seen a Ritual Lynx lurking nearby, she had put her foot down, metaphorically speaking, because not only the Ritual Lynx’s were rare, but they were extremely smart, cunning, and crafty, and they were seen only by their prey right before they pounced for the kill.. if that. In all her ranger career, Laila had encountered Ritual Lynx tracks, just never a live one, which was likely why she had been so irked..

..even if it hadn’t been for the glaring, arrow-shaped sign post of thorn vines ‘growning’ out of the dirt!

“As if all the birds and the beasts chirping and growling in the same direction wasn’t enough. Bloody Hell. It looks like a migration!”, she fumed.

“Yeah.”, agreed her cousin, Bremorel. “It’s like someone’s trying to tell us something.”

“Indeed. You think we should follow where it leads? Could be a trap.”, Laila mused with a frown.

“No! It is not!”

..the girls heard a tiny, hushed, and panicked voice followed by an..

“Oops!”

..and the shuffling of bushes, some twenty yards away, and something running off..

“Girl, you are wicked.”, Bremorel said with a chuckle.

“I just wanted to make sure, that’s all. We have been seeing strange things ever since we left Serenity Home, but for the last three days, ‘strange’ just got ‘weird.’ I had to be sure.”, Laila replied.

“So, she is leading us somewhere..”, Bremorel confirmed. “The question is, where?”

“Well, we are going in the same general direction of the tracks, so, I am willing to go along. Not to mention, this one is taking us through less undergrowth and an easier-to-travel route. We have covered more ground in the same last three days than we did the last six as if we were traveling on paved a road, per se.”, her cousin said thoughtfully.

“Why doesn’t she just come and talk to us? Would make everyone’s life easier.”, Bremorel asked.

“Why don’t you just go and talk to Thomas? That would certainly make everyone’s life easier.”, replied Laila an with amused glint in her eyes.

Bremorel fumed.

“Harsh, girl. Very harsh.”, she hissed with a sour face.

Laila snickered.

“Are you doing to tell the others?”, Bremorel asked carefully after a while.

“You mean, Master Aager..”, Laila said with a smile.

Bremorel didn’t reply. She only frowned and pressed her lips together with distaste.

“So. How is it like teaming up with him during the night watches?”, Laila asked, hiding her smile.

“Miserable. And quiet. And quite miserable! How did you think it would be? At least you get to talk with Udoorin. That bastard sneaks around all night and I end up having to be constantly on full alert. I feel tired and drained, come mornings. I think he is hoping to catch me off guard just to entertain himself. Like that’s going to happen.”, Bremorel replied with an ugly expression on her face.

“I doubt he is doing it for the entertainment value, cuzz. I don’t think he even knows what that word means. He is merely irked because of the new girl and because she has been pestering him while he sleeps. I am thinking he is trying to catch her on the act.”, Laila said with a bemused tone.

“Good luck with that.”, her cousin scoffed vindictively, then added, her voice becoming somewhat baffled, “I can’t even find her tracks and I didn’t even know that was possible. How does she do it?”

“Well, if what she says is true, which I do not doubt, she is.. or was the daughter of Master Cathber. She was bound to have learned a thing or two from him. I mean, whenever there was any need to get in contact with him, the sheriff or Mayor Arthandos would only send the ranger masters Davien or Moorat, or both. To my knowledge, no other ranger has been able to find him by his tracks because he has or leaves none.”, Laila tried to explain and there was a confused sort of frown on her face too, now.

“The absence of Master Cathber will change many things.”, declared Bremorel. “He was the essence of balance in Ritual Forest. I am thinking we will be forced to run from one end of these woods to the other, trying to do what he did.”

“Deep thoughts, cuzz. I approve.”, Laila said with a brittle grin.

Bremorel gave her a cold, ‘thousand-yard’ glare.

“You do annoy when you say things like that, you know that, right? Yes, I might not have a clean record, but I do read.”, she sniffed disdainfully.

Laila chuckled.

“Sorry, cuzz. Couldn’t help that one. But I was also being honest. Dreary days are coming. I can almost feel it in my guts.”, she said with a frown of her own.

“That your human or elf gut talking?”, Bremorel asked wickedly, knowing how much her cousin disliked elves.

Laila didn’t say anything for a good long while as she stared at the gnarly thorn vine pointing east and slightly north and down the ‘clear path’ leading in the same direction. She also noted ‘root impressions’ in the dirt. Though they were mostly hidden under fallen leaves, there were a lot of them. It scared her to figure that there hadn’t been a ‘path’ here at all, but the trees had sort of ‘shuffled aside’ to either side, to ‘make room’ for the path and there was nothing in her human side that could understand or comprehend something that was so uncannily monumental.

Only her..

“Elf side..”, she murmured.

The base morale of the company had risen considerably over the past few days. No one knew why possibly because they hadn’t quite figured out that very same fact. Clear signs of its presence were not seen in the merry approaches of the paladin girl, Lady Moira, who liked to smile and radiate a certain aura of confidence, boosted vigor and energy. The signs were clearly there, where the scowling Temple Guardian, Lady Magella was concerned. On three different occasions, witnesses; Laila, Udoorin, and Gnine, had reported that she had actually laughed!

While the little gnome, Gnine, had found this hilarious all on its own, Udoorin had opted to take a more, not casual, but ‘careful’ stance. Laila, on the other hand, was totally freaked out about it, and stayed clear of the she-dwarf whom she expected would revert to her usual, scowling-self at any time..

..with compounded interest!

She had even taken her cousin, Bremorel, literally grabbing her by the arm, and dragged her away in hopes of sparing her from the ‘fragment’ effect, when the time came for the Temple Guardian to somber, or perhaps, ‘sober’, up.

Master Aager, however, had not found the spreading ‘mirth’, nor ‘joy’, amusing at all. With dark, squinting eyes, he seethed in every direction to find the source of said mirth, but the young woman who he thought was responsible for the ‘blasphemous’ joy, was nowhere to be seen.

In all candor, he did not understand the girl..

..at all.

And not because he thought she was ‘odd’, but because he had never actually seen her even smile, let alone laugh, to spread such mirth and joy. She was socially catatonic, emotionally cantankerous, ferally suspicious, and personally scared at any given time, culminating in the conclusion that she was a constant distraction in general, a pestering annoyance, irritation, and aggravation at a personal level..

..as he glared down at the bit of vine tugging at his foot from where he lay, face down, on the moist dirt!

This hadn’t been the first time odd things had started happening to him shortly after ‘that girl’ had.. joined?.. them.

A bird had dropped ‘poop’ on him the very first day. Then a squirrel had knocked the full content of its winter savings in the form of walnuts at him for no reason, followed by a crow that had felled a pebble on his head. It hadn’t been a big rock or anything, just a small pebble.. followed by a whole murder of crows, all felling similar pebbles on his head and shoulders. As crows went, Aager hadn’t been surprised to see one of the pebbles hadn’t been a pebble, but a glittering, bright gold coin!

The man in dark leathers had pocketed the coin with vindictive satisfaction as payment for all the trouble he’d had to put up with but apparently, it wasn’t going to be enough.

He stared down and at his knees.

It was a good thing he’d had his dark leathers padded the way he had, otherwise, he would likely be bleeding due to any number of cuts and bruises. Then he stared further down and at his foot, and at the bit of vine sticking out of the dirt in an upside-down ‘U’ shape!

The girl was tenacious, he would have to give her that. But quite vindictive and not very subtle and she didn’t seem to shy from outright cheating if she thought this was a game.

“Really?”, he growled at the vine that was now tugging at his boot with fascinating, if not quite creepy, animation!

The vine continued to tug at his foot as if wanting to further trip him onto the ground.

“Not very bright, are you?”, he grated at the vine. “This is as low as I can possibly fall. You have made your point!”
The vine ignored him.

“Stop it!”, he hissed at it as he pulled his foot out of the little, overenthusiastic strangle vine.

Slowly, he rose and dusted himself and stared around.

In all his life, he had never met anyone who had come after him that he couldn’t somehow sense. Whether it had been due to his ever-present, ‘barely-under-control’ paranoia, or the little bit of magic training that he’d had when he had been a teen that he’d kept a secret, or something more innate, or the combination, or even the inadvertent culmination of all of the above, he had almost never been caught off guard before. Yet here he was, fallen prey to some non-sentient bit of vine.. and birds, and squirrels, and crows..

Alright, perhaps not the crows.

Crows were intelligent birds.

And vindictive. And were known to live for over a century or two, or even three, but that was beside the point.

He just couldn’t sense the young woman hiding out there somewhere in the forest..

..at all!

And it was annoying as Hell, which was a whole new sensation for the man in dark leathers.

Aager Fogstep did not get annoyed.

Whether it was due to the fact that people seldom wanted ‘that scary man’ to fixate on them or because he didn’t care enough about anyone to be annoyed, or because he just didn’t have an emotional threshold high enough to feel something as base as ‘annoyance’, was up to debate. For Aager, it was only a matter of intense frustration, the way things kept ‘happening’ to him, and the way the girl would someone manage to sneak up to him, another clear first in his life of crime, and not precisely as vindictive as he thought it was at first, but more along the lines of a warning, or perhaps, ‘informing’, or even reminding him, every night, and ‘breathe’, more than whisper, into his ear that ‘he was not a good person’.

Like he needed her to tell him that.

But then, that was it, wasn’t it? No one in his life had ever told him that he wasn’t a good person. He had been told a great many things, called a great many more, just not that he was a good person! Who did that?

Well..

..the odd, and oddly pretty, and somewhat buxom young woman certainly did.

Strangely enough, no one in his five years of tenure at Serenity Home had bothered to make a ‘good person’ out of him either. The sheriff had treated him with professional respect, and after having ‘tested the waters’ where he’d been concerned, had left him to his own, not quite chalked him off as unsalvageable, but rather as, ‘not ripe and ready’. The rest of the town had given him a wide berth, much like you would to a vicious and rabid dog. The Senior Temple Guardian, Demos Lightshand had spoken to him on rare few occasions, though mostly for ‘worldly matters’, and every such time, he had merely inquired about his health and how he was faring. Now that Aager thought about it, perhaps the elderly and well-respected Temple Guardian hadn’t been asking about his physical health after all. Then there was Lady Magella. Lady Magella had treated him like she did everyone else, which would have been quite commendable, had it not been for the fact, and that it meant, she scowled at him as she scowled at everyone else..

Yet, here was someone who had, and Aager now understood, was not reminding him, but ‘telling’ him, that he wasn’t a good person, possibly offering him that other options were available to him..

..in her socially catatonic and emotionally cantankerous, ferally suspicious, and personally scared way!
“Master Aager!..”, came Ranger Laila’s careful, carrying voice. “..Over here!”

Aager dusted himself, rolled his shoulders, and silently ghosted over to the call..

..to find a very small, carefully hidden, burned-out campfire.

Laila was down on one knee, tenderly running one hand over the remains and the ashes of the campfire with a tiny frown on her face. She leaned in closer and took a few, careful sniffs, then turned to face the man in dark leathers.

“He has been here, Sir. The sneak thief.”, she said in her low, somewhat throaty voice.

“I wouldn’t have thought he would be foolish enough to make a campfire, let alone stay to enjoy it.”, growled Aager as he stared down at the charred remains of the fire. “He has deviated from his norm. Something has changed.”

To give her credit, Laila did not cock an eyebrow at the dark man standing at a close but ‘considerate’ distance. She stared at him with her ‘professionally cool’ face, even though she admitted to herself, not as grudgingly as her cousin Bremorel would have done, for the man was not only smart, he was just as fast on his shoulders as he was on his feet. Given what little information he’d had, he had still come to the likely conclusion.

As a side note, Laila Wolvesbane gave everyone her ‘professionally cool’ face when she wasn’t sure if the person at hand was a friend or foe. Where ‘that Aager-guy’, as her cousin liked to call him, was concerned, she knew he certainly was not a friend. Whether he was a foe was not quite the question, but whether it truly applied to him. Deep down, she honestly wished it never did, and not because she wanted to be friends with him, but because she didn’t want him to be a bloody foe!

Laila was a smart and practical girl like that.

“Yes, Sir.”, she said amiably. “We found two new sets of tracks. Fresh tracks. Apparently, our sneak thief came here and waited. Looking at the campfire, I would hazard a guess, for at least one day and two nights. Considering the amount of ground we have covered in the past few days, I would believe we have more than made up for our lost time.”

Aager frowned. He wasn’t, per se, a pessimistic person, but he sure as Hell wasn’t an optimistic one either. The news that they were almost on top of the smarmy sneak thief did not elevate his ‘joy’.

The man in dark leathers had long been on the opinion that if there was any room for misfortune, mischance, or sheer human stupid, it would occur. Evidence had proved him that many times over.

“The fresh prints, Ranger Laila..”, he growled.

“Yes.”, the ranger girl said, picking up her narration. “There were two of them. They came from the west and late last night, or very early this morning, met with the sneak thief. And together, they set out soon after heading directly east.”

“Any idea who these new people were?”, he asked, but he thought he’d already had an idea as to who they were.

“Yes, Sir. I believe they were also assassins, likely a member of the same organization because their foot-ware was of the same make and model, though they did not belong to the team that infiltrated Serenity Home. One of them was also wounded, though not mortally. He had a limp to his gait but there was no blood, which tells me, that whatever happened to him, happened several days ago. Also, they both were extremely agitated and.. ‘furtive’.. as if on the verge of panic, and ready to run.. which tells me—”, she said.

“—the story, that odd girl told was likely true.”, finished Aager with a sour grit.

“Uhhmm.. I expect so.. Sir..”, replied Laila carefully. “At least some parts of it, though I can’t see how she could have managed to kill so many of those orc-like creatures as she claimed. I mean, sure, she dismantled us, but then, we are not exactly a very organized group.. yet.. and we were hardly in pristine condition, to begin with, and even though a smart foe would have sought and exploited precisely those lacking conditions in their enemies, I believe we could have taken her out.. eventually..”

Aager did not say anything for some time. Enough to make the ranger girl fidget just a tad and unconsciously rise to her feet and take a defensive stance!

And the man in dark leathers noticed it.

“Never assume what you do not know, Ranger Laila. I believe I have told you this before. You have exceptional skills that are not limited to your well-earned rank as a First-Class Archer. You have a good head on your shoulders, and excelling instincts to go with it. It would be a sad day should I be forced to bring the news of your demise to your father just because of a misplaced assumption, which on its own should tell you, assumptions are theories that lack facts or evidence but mere conclusions coming from a lazy mind. A something, to my knowledge, you very much dislike.”, he grated.

Laila’s face flushed.

Not only because the man in dark leathers was right, on any number of levels, but because she was suddenly angry.

Yet she stubbornly clung to her ‘cool’ and kept an ‘almost’ straight face.

“Yes, Sir.”, she mumbled.

“Where is Ranger Morel?”, Aager asked, staring down at the campfire remains.

“She is out, reverse-tracking.”, Laila said, her face still hot. “She will come back when she is sure the two assassins indeed, came from the west end of the forest. She will go as far as five miles, then return.”
“Very well—”, the man in dark leathers said, and with some innate instinct, he took a swift side-step..

..just as something dropped from above and splat right next to him.

Aager stared at the thing without any outward display of emotions. It took all of Laila to suppress a sudden rush of glee, however, as she stared at the greenish-white spread of gooey bird-poop! The man in dark leathers gave it a second’s more worth of glance at the sticky thing and let loose something between a sigh, or frustration.

“Carry on, Ranger Laila.”, he growled finally and turn to leave, but paused.

“And, no, there will be no attempts to ‘take her out’, eventually or otherwise. You can not attempt what you can not find. And that girl can not be found when she wishes otherwise. And..”, he said, looking around. “..the forest is on her side.”

Laila blinked as it finally clicked on her.

“She’s a druid!”, she almost gasped.

“Yes. She is, Ranger Laila. And a powerful one.”, Aager agreed with a growl.

“But.. how? I mean, Master Cathber is.. was a druid.. but he was like, one of his kind and.. and she is too young to be a druid.. It takes decades to comprehend the nature of.. Nature!”, Laila objected.

“Again, you are assuming things you should not, Ranger Laila. I know little to nothing about druids. Hence I do not assume. I do not bestow them any power they might or might not have, nor do I foolishly underestimate them. If you are speaking from experience out of acquaintance with any druids, by all means, share your insights.”, the man in dark leathers growled.

Laila’s face flushed.. again..
And this time, she lost her ‘cool’, and her anger blistered on her expression.

“You just love slapping that into my face, don’t you.. Sir?”, she flared.

“Perhaps you should amend your habit to assume, then, young Ranger Laila. Preferably before it becomes a petrified feature of your character.”, he grated, and not so much as a counter-slap.

He said it, as he saw it.

“Do not pick up new vices.”, he growled before she could say anything to retaliate. “Your cousin has enough many of them as it is. You do not want to burn in the same crock as her.”

Laila glared at him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”, she asked angrily.

“Exactly that. You must understand, Ranger Laila, that everyone in this company sans Master Gnine, was chosen for a purpose and what they could bring to attain that purpose.

“Your cousin has so much to offer, more so because she is so young, yet she chooses not to because of her pig-headed attitudes. I could effort to turn a blind eye as I have before, had we still been at Serenity Home. We are not, however, in your town, and hence, I am unwilling to risk neither your life nor the lives of the others because I am unable to rely on Ranger Morel and her inability to separate work from personal emotions, which will eventually catch up to her and bring her down. I would rather not be there when that happens as such a sad occasion will surely put you into a frenzy and make you lose all your ability for impartial thought and sound judgment, meaning I shall lose both the rangers under my command.”, the man in dark leathers growl, and his voice reverberated with frustration.

Laila stared at him.

“Do you understand me, Ranger Laila?”, Aager grated.
“I do.. Sir..”, Laila mumbled, then added, “She can change, you know? Bremorel can change. You said it yourself; she is young.”

“True, Ranger Laila. But that isn’t the issue, is it?”, he replied, his voice dropping down to a low rumble.

Laila opted to wait instead of making a further fool of herself. Not anymore than she already had.

“The real issue is not even, ‘will she?’, but ‘can she?’”, the man in dark leathers gritted.

“Why are you telling me this?”, Laila asked, a bit freaked out.

“I would rather have both of you working in tandem, now and in the future with the SIS, Ranger Laila. You must be made aware that your town may not stay a town for much longer. The sheriff knows this. And so does the mayor. Some would have it continue to be a sleepy little town, but that is not quite possible at its strategic location, its current political reach, and its growing population. Not anymore. And ranger masters Davien and Moorat will not always be there, neither will they hold the titles, ‘Master’, forever. You are the next generation of rangers, and hence, you must be made aware, also, that both of you are the likely candidates for said jobs, once they are open. Should your cousin continue at her current pique, I would rather have at least one of the highest potentials working for their town, than stubbornly cling to their personal losses. As little to no emotions I may, or may not have, Ranger Laila, and contrary to what those around me want to believe, I do not totally lack them and neither do I deny myself of what little I have. I also, however, do not let them reign free or unchecked at the cost of the lives entrusted to me, and neither should she. If Ranger Morel is incapable of grasping this base fact, I am afraid she will be dead by her own doing much before she can reach her true potential.” Aager replied harshly..

..and then he was gone.

Is the area secure, Ranger Morel?”, Aager growled in the dim light of the campfire that evening as he stared at the faces around him.

“As secure as could be. If we were planning for a longer stay, I would have gone for real traps like spike-riddled pits or hidden bear traps, but we are staying here for just the night, hence I only laid coil-traps around the camp along with snap-bushes. The coil-traps will not do much against large game or someone who can find them in the dark, but they should entangle anything human-sized or smaller. And the snap-bushes aren’t anything more than an irritation, really, but they will serve as a warning for us.”, Bremorel replied a bit stiffly.

“Will they harm..?”, he asked but left it hanging. The young woman and her elusive stance were becoming more than an irritation for the man in dark leathers.

“I doubt.”, the ranger girl replied with a bad impression of a straight face. “She was watching me from above, perched on a tree branch while I was setting up the traps. I waved at her and told her to come down and maybe even help. She yelped and took off.”

“Thank you.”, the man in dark leathers said, which only garnered a surprised sort of a squint from the ranger girl.

“Alright.”, he said in his low, gravelly voice, calling everyone to attention. “It is apparent our sneak thief has found new friends; two of what remains of the second batch of assassins that were sent here. We do not know what their ultimate purpose or mission was, but according to our, ‘scarce guest’, and for whatever reason, they have attacked and murdered Master Cathber Gwet’chen Bolgrig late one night while he was asleep in his home in the forest.

“My guesstimation is, that attack and the one that took place in Serenity Home occurred around the same time, which makes me believe neither was random but done with careful planning and deliberation. Of the ones that attacked Serenity Home, only the sneak thief survived. Of the other group, only two have managed to escape and both batches were hit by two different raiding parties of the orc-like creatures almost simultaneously and with surgical accuracy. Sans the one we killed, the rest of the ones that ambushed and killed our batch of assassins appear to have returned back to wherever they came from. The other party entered Ritual Forest without being detected by the dwarves patrolling the western borders of the forest and hit Nurturing Heaven and destroyed it. According to our ‘guest’, that party comprised of twenty to thirty-five of these orc-creatures and she counter-ambushed and killed all of them. There are some discrepancies as to how thirty-five of these creatures managed to attack and destroy the wood elf communities and slew more than half their numbers.

“My working theory is, they came in much greater numbers, possibly a cohort, sent one platoon south to intercept our batch of assassins while they sent another to dispatch the other batch of cutters that killed Master Cathber while their main force hit the wood elves and destroyed Nurturing Heaven. As to how they managed to sneak that many of their numbers past the dwarven patrols, I do not know. Evidence, however, tells us they are very good at stealth and quite able at ambushing.”

He paused for a moment and watched the faces around the fire before he took up his grinding narration..

“There appears to be doubts on the matter of how the young lady could have possibly taken out a whole platoon of these creatures single-handedly. I am inclined to believe her because I see no reason for her to lie. True, she is odd, but our Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, here, assures me the girl answered all her questions honestly and truthfully, to a fault and she strongly believes the young woman does not even know how to lie.

“As much as I personally find that last bit hard to believe, I am, however, partial to taking Lady’s word for it since I was given little choice in the matter..”, he gritted.

Lady Magella did a snorting sort of noise from where she sat, steering the pot of stew she was preparing.

“..which brings us to my former conclusion; the young woman has no reason to lie to us since she is out there somewhere, right now, is capable of attacking us again but hasn’t, and after she was told who everyone here was and what we were doing here, she has displayed no regressing aggression towards us but has opted to merely follow and observe us from a shy distance. Considering her skills in wild-craft and survival-based stealth, along with what we have already seen, and possibly not seen her do, again, I am inclined to believe she has, indeed, destroyed the second orc-like raiding platoon. I would have preferred she came forth and joined us in our discussions as to what we plan to do next, but she has shown no such initiative. It is clear she prefers to watch, rather than participate.”, he growled, and once again, he looked at each and every face gathered around the fire and added..

“That being said, should she come forth and try to communicate with anyone of you, do not show any form of aggression, do not speak loudly, lower your weapons if you are carrying any in your hands, or keep your hands off them if you aren’t. Always identify yourselves to her and make sure she sees your open hands. There is a great possibility for stupid, here. I would rather it was not triggered on our part. She is an unknown entity. She may be a great asset or a greater problem. A problem we may not be able to overcome. Should that happen, we shall fail our mission and some of us will not return home. That is a risk I am not willing to take. Is that understood?”

There was a chorus of low, mumbling sounds as everyone nodded at him.

“Now then, we have two options ahead of us. We can continue to follow the sneak thief and the two assassins that joined him, or we may pick up our pace and circle them from their north or their south and cut them off before they reach the east end of Ritual Forest, which seems to be their destination. I do not know what is waiting for them there, but I expect we will find our answers, or they will find some form of transportation, either some horses, or possibly a ship waiting for them at the cliff-beaches of Endless Sea. Either way, should they get to said transportation, there will be little to no chance of ever catching them. If we decide to cut them off, however, we will be moving all day, and all night, for the next several days with very little time for rest and we will be exhausted by the time we cut them off. If any of you have any other options or ideas, this is the time to offer them.”, he grated, then fell silent.

A long, mulling sort of hush fell over the camp as Lady Magella continued to steer the pot and she seemed lost in her stew!

Young Udoorin was frowning as he pondered over what had just been said. Master Gnine was squinting into the night and the forest around them. Rangers Laila and Bremorel were also staring into the night although the younger of the two was covering the opposite direction of her cousin. Lady Moira seemed to be juggling an idea in her head but she seemed to have failed at arriving at the happy conclusion she had expected.

“Would it make any difference if I, and perhaps one more, could go directly north and out of the woods, then ride straight east and around the edges of Ritual Forest, then turn south? Perhaps cut them off from ever getting out of the forest?”, she sort of offered.

“Uhhmm.. We do not have any horses, Lady Moira.”, Udoorin told her with his rumbling voice.

“We have Ayla, my loyal holy steed. I may call upon her once again. She will carry me and possibly one more, quite tirelessly, for many days.”, she replied.

“I thank you for your offer, Lady Moira.”, Aager grated a bit stiffly. “But I have no intentions of splitting the party and making both vulnerable. True, that the orc-creatures are strong and have trampled over the assassins but that is not a failure on their part. Ambush is a powerful weapon and the orc-creatures seem to enjoy making good use of it. And assassins, by their very nature, will utilize it. Your offer is a good one, but it lacks practicality; we would need more horses, yet we do not have any. And then there is the fact that we do not know where they will come out, which could be anywhere from the south end of the ruins of Themalsar, all the way down to the shores of Arashkan river.”

“Is there anywhere nearby that can lend us some horses, perhaps? Or buy them, though I am not sure I can afford one.”, Udoorin offered dubiously.

“Laila and I can get ahead of them and cut them off.”, Bremorel said eagerly. “I know we can!”

Aager growled in frustration.

“We are not splitting the group, Ranger Morel. I believe I have already made mention of that.”, he grated.

“Yes, but if Lady Moira took, say, Lady Magella with her and circled around, we could ambush them from their rear by the time they reach the eastern reaches of Ritual Forest, hence those two can get at them from their end!”, she objected.

The man in dark leathers felt like he wanted to chew on his knuckles. It would seem, no matter how versed she was in swordsmanship, archery, tracking, foraging, ‘brawling’, and likely more, as a ranger, at the end of the day, Bremorel was an eighteen-year-old girl with little to no tactical training other then close-quarter combat. She wanted the sneak thief and she wanted him with the single-minded attitude of a downhill plague!

And Aager was just about to burn her on the spot when someone intervened..

“Perhaps you should ask the girl.”, Lady Magella said without looking up from her stew.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

“What?”, she asked. “You can, you know. She isn’t totally unavailable. I am sure she is out there, right now, watching us.”

“Uhhmm.. Lady Magella.. she also isn’t really all that cordial, too, you know?”, Udoorin mumbled.

“No, she isn’t, and I am thinking she has a lot of good reasons not to be. But even now, as we speak, she is watching us, which tells me we have garnered her interest, her curiosity, and perchance, her envy, for we are unlike anything she has seen before. It is possible she yearns to come out and speak with us, or even be with us but can’t because she fears us, also. She does not know us, and from what I have gathered, she has never really had anyone other than Master Cathber, who is now dead. She has had no one in her entire life. No friends or family. And those she tried to get near, punished her for it by way of beating her, stoning her, and even whipping her, none of which we have done to her. I can’t imagine why the men of Dim Woods ever did what they did to her. The whole idea makes me want to drop everything and go and ask them —with a cudgel! Suffice to say, the things she has suffered at the hands of men is also the likely reason why she is a bit on the wild side. So tell me, young man, what is your excuse for being discordial?”, she asked with a mild scowl.

“Uhhmm.. she bit me?”, the big, burly young man mumbled as his face flushed.

“Awww..”, the she-dwarf said with impressive sarcasm. “You want me to put some ointment on that?”

“No?”, he replied as he flushed some more.

“I am very much disappointed in you, young man. Very disappointed, indeed. I am sure you would have made your father proud with that attitude.”, she further burned him.

“You just couldn’t keep my father out of this could you?”, Udoorin said, his face turning surly.

“Well, excuse me, young man.”, she scowled at him.

“Look, I don’t have anything against that girl, Lady Magella. I am sure you know that. All I said was she wasn’t very forthcoming. What I said isn’t wrong nor is it really an accusation.”, the young man said defensively.

“What makes you think she can help us, Lady.”, Aager cut in, truly frustrated with their meaningless bickering. “Or that she would, even if she could.”

“If she is a druid as you believe her to be, she should have some affinity with animals. Whether she would help us or not is up to her to decide. But if we do not find some way to reach out to her, she is not going to approach us and neither is she going to communicate with us. I guess it is a simple matter of, we will never know if we don’t try, isn’t it?”, she said sternly.

Aager did not countermand her.

The Temple Guardian was, apparently, on a ‘trampling’ frame of mind and wasn’t likely to back down nor back off.

“Perhaps you would like to volunteer and speak with the young lady?”, he asked in a neutral tone.

“Don’t be naive, boy.”, she scowled at him. “The girl is in a limbo where I am concerned. She respects me, but she is also afraid of me.”

“Wonder why..”, Udoorin mumbled.

The Temple Guardian threw him an incinerating glare.

“You, gnome!”, she snapped and Gnine jumped two feet into the air as if she’d just jabbed him with a six-inch packing needle!

“Whot?”, he almost yelped.

“Go and make yourself useful!”, she scowled.

“Wait, what?”, Gnine ‘eeped’.

“Go out there and bring her here!”, she said patiently, though she was fuming through her nostrils.

“What? Why? When did I ever do you wrong, Lady?”, said with a high-pitched voice.

“What are you talking about, boy?”, Lady flared.

“That wasn’t nice, Lady.”, Laila said, stifling a laugh.

“Yeah, wouldn’t it be better if Laila or I go and find her? She doesn’t seem to be afraid of us.”, Bremorel inserted.

“Did I call on you two? No, I didn’t.”, Lady fumed. “Do you know how I know that? Because I did not call out your names! If the girl wanted to talk to either of you, she would have. She might not fear you two as she fears me or Lady Moira. But she is shy of you because both of you are rangers. For Master Gnine, however, she has no regard whatsoever.”

“Hey, I resent that.”, Gnine said, very much taken aback.

“That was a tad harsh, don’t you think, Lady?”, Laila said with a frown.

Lady fumed some more.

“Perhaps my phrasing was wrong.”, she conceded. “What I meant was, she does not see him as a threat. At all. She asked about everyone, but never about him. Don’t take this the wrong way, boy. It is possible she has never seen a gnome up close. There are whole villages and even colleges in Tinker Hills, all full of gnomes, but there aren’t any gnome communities in Ritual Forest. She will not see you as a threat, and if you go out there alone and call to her by her name, you might garner her curiosity. Enough to speak with you. You have a smart mouth, use it for something useful for once!”

“Or I might garner her wrath and she might just strike me down with one of her lightnings..”, Gnine said in a half-panicked voice.

Lady was really starting to get annoyed now.

“Boy, if you want to eat tonight, I suggest you go and earn it!”, she snapped.

“You are threatening me? With stew?”, the little gnome asked incredulously.

“The stew is the carrot, boy..”, the she-dwarf said and smiled at him.
Gnine gulped.

“I suppose that settles what’s in the stew tonight.”, rumbled Udoorin.

To say Master Gnine felt highly offended was a bit like saying he was short, somewhat ‘well padded’, but quite proactive! By the time he reached the edge of the trees around the small clearing the ranger girls had set up their camp for that evening, he was very nearly blistering and very much appalled, even, and more than a little hurt. In a world full of big, clumsy humans, prickly, condescending, conceited elves, and thick-witted, bouldering dwarves, gnomes were sensitive and delicate creatures, dammit!

The gnome looked back, then around to make sure the scowling she-dwarf was well out of earshot before he told the world at large what he thought of her hair-brained idea;

“Very insensitive, heavy-handed, and.. and.. silly, dammit.. So, there!”

Gnomes were not known for their cowardice. But they weren’t stupid either. And walking into some dark forest, alone, quite unarmed, in the middle of the night, and where he knew something decidedly weird had set up shop, was just..

..stupid!

With a freaked-out expression on his face, he hamstered through the bushes and among the trees as far as he would dare, then sat down, leaning on a fallen trunk, to think things through and how to lure the odd girl..

..and on, just what he would do should he succeed.

“Bloody dwarves.”, he blurted. “Bloody dwarves and their obstinate ways.. Bloody dwarves, their obstinate ways, and their insensitive attitudes.. Take that too, dammit!”

Then he made an odd, sudden gesture as if catching a fly and grinned.

“Ah haaa!”, he smirked triumphantly as he stared at his closed fist.

“Gotcha!”

Then he peered into the crack of his fist, grinning even more!

“How does that feel, you pestering little weasel?”, he cackled. “I think you and I are going to have a very long conversation about this, won’t we?”

..as he let loose another mirthful cackle.

“No? Well, I suggest you come quietly, or I shall eat you.”, he added with another manic laugh.

“Perhaps you thought sneaking around the way you have was fun? Well.. I will show you fun.. Now, let’s see.. Some rosemary and some cinnamon, a bit of peppermint, and a pinch of salt ought to soften your misdemeanor, wouldn’t you agree? I believe a spin or two over the campfire and I am sure you will be all nice and soft inside and quite crunchy on the outside!”, he said as he shivered in delight..

..and he laughed again, even louder this time, as he kicked the air with his small, gnomic feet!

“Wha.. What do you have in your hand?”..

..came a hushed, scared, and curious voice from somewhere in the dark.

“Plea.. Please don’t hurt him!”

Gnine froze!

And squinted into the night but when he didn’t see anyone, he shrugged.

“This isn’t really any of your concern, pretty lady. This is between him and me.”, he said casually.

“P.. Please don’t cook him.”, came the diffident voice again.

“Why not? He has been here, then there, then everywhere, hiding and spying and lurking for days and it’s pissing me off. Time for him to face some harsh realities that I, Master Gnine Tinkerdome, do not like it when people sneak around my back.”, Gnine answered grimly as he tried very hard not to shiver in fear.

“Wh.. what do you have in your hand? No.. no one but I have been hiding and lurking around you and the others for days. Had.. had there been another, I would have known..”, he heard the voice say almost pleadingly.

“P.. please let him go..”

Gnine’s insides shivered.

The cunning little game he had played had paid off, but it had lacked the one thing he hadn’t considered, even though it was somewhat implied ‘between the lines’ when the obstinate she-dwarf had spoken about the odd girl. His little game was meant for an audience that could handle a prank.

Not for a girl who had absolutely no idea what a prank was..

‘Dammit!’, he thought. ‘That’s just sad. And creepy as Hell!’

“Very well. I may let him go. But what will you give me in return? Since you have been doing exactly what he has been doing; hiding, spying, lurking..”, he said tightly.
“Wh.. what do you want? What do you have in your hand?”, the voice said and Gnine heard a faint sound from above, and he very nearly shrieked and wet himself when he looked up to see a beautiful, somewhat angular face looking down at him, less than two inches from his own face.

“You want to know what I got in my hands, do you?”, he asked, trying to stubbornly cling to his ‘cool’.

“Y.. yes..”, she stuttered as she slowly came further down and settled right before him.

And Gnine noted that the girl was even more terrified of him than he was afraid of her!

“I have something hard to catch, and even harder to keep, in my hand..”, he said, displaying his teeth.

“What.. what do you have in your hand?”, she stuttered again, as she looked intently at his fist.

“Do you really want to know what I have got?”, he asked again, and with a grand display, he waved his fist.

“Y.. yes.. I do..”, she said once more and Gnine noted her eyes were burning with intense curiosity now.

“Again, what will you give me for what is in my hand?”, he asked.

“Wha.. what do you want? I have only this dress, some soap, some herbs, and a bit of homemade rose oil. I have nothing else.. I.. I also have a spear but it is not with me..”, she mumbled as she tracked the fist the little gnome was waving around quite and quietly captured by it, not unlike a cat petrified by a bird flying in circles just out of her reach.

“I don’t want your dress. You.. you will probably need it.. I have little use for herbs or a spear. I have my own soap, and as beautiful as the scent of rose oil is, it is a little heavy for my taste.”, he replied, pinching his nose.
“What.. what do you have in your hand?”, she asked, yet again, and very nearly in.. tears! “I.. I can not give you what I do not have. You must ask me something I have and take it.”

Gnine just stared at her.

Ogled, really.

And he felt his heart clench as something clicked in his mind; whether the young woman was merely gullible or not, he was not sure, but it appeared she was incredibly innocent..

..on so many sad levels!

“Perhaps you can come with me and ask the others if they would want to bargain for what I got in my hand with something you have?”, he said as he quenched the churning sensation that had settled and started squeezing at his chest. “I am sure one of them could use your herbs.. or your rose oil. Should they agree, I shall show you what I have in my hand and not eat him.”

Possibly for the very first time in his life, it occurred to Gnine that perhaps his pranks were not as funny as he thought they were. And he further felt like a bastard as he once again waved his fist around, then slowly, he rose from where he sat.

“Now, let’s see, something for what is in my hand.”, he said as he smiled up at her, sort of to confirm and seal the deal.

Then he reached out to her with his other hand and showed her his open palm.

“Coming, my dear? You can hold my hand if you like. Seeing as you are so much taller than I am and obviously strong enough to use a spear, I am sure there is little I can do to you. I mean, just look at me; I am nothing but a harmless and happy little gnome.”, he said cheerily.

The girl stared at his hand, made sure her hair was properly bunned, then, very slowly, certainly not eagerly, and clearly afraid, took a deep breath, all the while keeping her gaze locked on his fist, she held his open hand, and let him steer her..

..and Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane followed Master Gnine Tinkerdome, quite morosely and quietly petrified, to the clearing up ahead, and to their camp..

Everyone stared quite and quietly astonished, and silently impressed, as the little gnome came scurrying out of the night with no other than the shy, scarce, and scared young woman, holding on to his hand, no less..

“Well, I’ll be..”, blurted Ranger Laila.

“I would rather you did not finish that sentence, young Laila.”, murmured the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella. “But I must agree. I sent him off in hopes of.. something.. just not this!”

Unexpectedly, the little gnome did not have a happy grin on his face, nor the accomplished expression one would expect from someone who had done the ‘impossible’. He had a frown that didn’t quite go with his otherwise mischievous glint and he was quietly fuming for some reason.

He was also giving the she-dwarf some very unfriendly glares!

“Ladies and gents..”, he began as he carefully steered the diffident young woman near, but not any closer, to the campfire. “..The young lady here and I have made a bargain. I have something in my hand that I have captured and very much want to cook and eat. She wants to see, what it is and if I would be kind enough, ‘please’ not cook him and eat him, and hopefully, set him free. She offered all her possession; some blocks of soap, some herbs, and some homemade rose oil. She also said she has a spear somewhere, just not here.”

Everyone ogled at him.

Then at his tiny fist..

Aager, however, did not. He looked at the very much scared girl and something boiled inside of him. It was not empathy, nor was it compassion. Aager Fogstep was a beggar where said emotions were concerned. He was only angry..

Very, very angry.. at the little gnome.

For he had understood what ‘Master’ Gnine had done, and exactly what it entailed. To be totally honest, the man in dark leathers was a murderer. He had killed, many times, many people. He had sliced open throats, gutted men, and even women, kidney-shot them, garroted them and put holes into their hearts. He had, however, never fooled nor tricked any of them to their end. He went at them with the clear intent of what he had in mind and he left no doubt about it, and when people saw him coming, they had known exactly why he was coming at them. And perhaps for precisely that reason, he found what the little gnome had done, quite unacceptable.

“I, however, have no use of a spear, and little use for herbs, and to be totally honest about it, find rose oil to be a bit too girly for my taste. I am also, however, not an unreasonable man, and have thus offered the young lady here the option to show what she’s got to you lot, and if you find any use to her ‘wares’, I shall accept her end of the bargain fulfilled and release the thing I have captured and not eat him.”, Gnine said with a slightly disgusted tone.

It was Lady Magella who spoke after a long moment of bedazzled silence as she also understood what the little gnome had done, giving him a very steady, and meaningful, ‘you and I are going to have a very long conversation about this’, sort of look.

“But of course, my dear little Master Gnine..”, she said with a very unconvincing smile. “We would very much like to see what the young lady has to offer for the release of.. whatever it is that you have in your hand..”

“C’mon, pretty lady.”, Gnine sort of nudged the girl clinging to his free hand. “Show ’em what you got. I am sure you have something they would want.”
Her gaze cast down, and without looking at anyone, Inshala reached up and made sure her braided, conical hair was all in place, then she sort of padded her dress as if to make sure she was presentable, and finally undid some of the knots on her vine-braided belt, removed any number of small pouches, slowly knelt down and placed them on the ground.

“I do not know what you want.”, she said in a hushed, very much abashed, and barely audible voice. “The little gnome did not tell me all the rules. I have these three blocks of soaps and I have many herbs. Some are common, but they have many uses. Some are harder to find. I have fresh blueberries, some dried mud berries, some aspen tree bark, a little bit of fey cherries, some ground Kumse Beetle powder, a few stems of blood grass and hawkweed, and a very little bit of rare troll poppy —not good for consumption but very good for severe pains when mixed with rainwater and red mud, and made into a paste. I use it when men beat me. Will you beat me now? I want to know what he has in his hand. What.. what do you have in your hand?”

Everyone stared at her with a sick expression.

“No one here is going to hit you or beat you, young lady.”, Lady Magella said, though her voice was stuck somewhere between extreme anger, intense frustration, and trying to sound kind, all at the same time!

“Ow.. Okay..”, the girl mumbled, still staring at her feet, and giving the little gnome’s closed fist a side glance every once in a while. “I.. I have a fist of devil’s cherry leaves, too. And some basil, dried, bitter-lemon seeds, cloves, mint, and some faded pixie dust. I have many other herbs, but not here. I have.. I had them at home, but I can not go there anymore..”

She paused for a moment, her face burning with mortification as if she had just realized she had spoken far too much.

“And.. and I also have this..”, she whispered, and produced a small flask, perhaps two inches tall, two inches wide, and half an inch in depth, and it contained a very ‘faded’ pink something in it and added, with a very much embarrassed tone, “Homemade rose oil. I.. I made it myself.”

The people gathered around the campfire continued to stare at her with bewildered and somewhat heartbroken silence.

“Wha.. what is in your hand?”, they heard her very nearly beg the little gnome, who now nurtured a distinctly stricken face. “You must tell your people to choose something from these and accept the bargain. We.. we agreed on this..”

A stormy expression appeared on the she-dwarf’s face and this one, she did not hide from the little gnome. It was like she wanted the get her hands on him and throttle him, then and there. But with a deep, wrathful breath, she pushed her anger down and smiled.

“If you have made such a bargain with our esteemed little midget, we shall, of course, honor it.”, she said pleasantly and started looking at the herbs.

To be sure, Lady Magella was a learned Temple Guardian. She had some knowledge about herbs and their uses, and she even recognized a few of them as she looked into the contents of the pouches. Most, however, she had never seen before, let alone heard of them, nor did she know what use they would be.

“Rangers Laila and Morel.”, she said, looking over her shoulders. “Perhaps you two could find something of use among these?”

And she said it like, ‘you had better find something here that you want or else!’

Laila and Bremorel immediately came and stared at the herbs, checking each and every one of them with similarly vague expressions on their faces, and the more they looked, the more the young woman became desperate and on the verge of tears.

Finally, Laila went for the one thing that she had yearned for the moment she saw it; the small flask of rose oil. Very carefully she unstoppered its tiny, and tightly stuffed cork and took a whiff.. and lo..

The oil was incredibly intense like she had never smelled before! It smelled beautiful and she very nearly swooned where she stood. Her cousin, Bremorel, saw the expression on her face, frowned, and said, “Gimme that!”, and she also took a small, careful whiff, and she very nearly rocked in her place!

“Whoaa..”, she said. “This is some strong scent, girl. I mean, Serenity Home has some of the best perfumes in the region because of the rich growth surrounding it, and merchants from as far away as Durkahan, Koruxan, and Palantine come to buy them. But this? This is some high-end stuff!”

Now very curious, Lady Moira approached the ranger girls.

“May I?”, she asked politely

“Of course.”, Bremorel said and offered her the tiny flask.

Lady Moira took a small intake, then with a very flushed face, she stared at the fidgeting young woman with amazement.

“Did you really make this yourself, Lady Inshala?”, she asked..

..but the girl was simply too petrified to answer.

“She said, she made it herself.”, Gnine prompted. “And I am inclined to believe her.”

“This.. this is, indeed, quite priceless, Lady Inshala..”, Moira exclaimed. “I mean, I may not use this while in armor due to my calling, but I am not sure I can afford it even if I wanted it —in terms of ‘fair price.’”

“How about we settle this with a drop or two each?”, Gnine offered. “I know a bit of alchemy, and methinks a dab for you, a dab for Ranger Laila, who I can see is wooing for some, and a dab for Ranger Bremorel, who will hurt me if I don’t let her have a go at it as well, should suffice for Lady Inshala’s end of the bargain.”
“Done!”, Laila blurted.

“Done!”, Lady Moira said, her face burning with guilt.

“And done, already!”, Bremorel very nearly snarled, and snatched the tiny flask from Moira’s hand, put her index finger over the flask, dipped it upside down once, and very carefully, touched her scented finger to her slender neck, right below her ear, then did the same to her other side, gave the bottle to her cousin, and with a broad, silly grin on her face, she said, “I am not sharing this moment with any of you!”, and took off!

“Well, really, now.”, Lady Magella said, staring after the ranger girl with astonishment.

Laila also took a dab from the flask and lightly touched her own neck, twice, and much like her cousin, she said, “Sorry, but some things can’t be shared!”, recorked the flask, slapped it into Moira’s hand.. and took off.. in another direction!

“What is the matter with these girls?”, the Temple Guardian said in total bafflement.

“I am a paladin, Lady Magella, but many girls just love the smell of rose oil, which is direly expensive and rare to come by for even those such as myself. One that is this pure and smells this wonderful is, methinks, irresistible, and quite unsharable.”, Moira tried to explain, opened the flask, noticed the people watching her, blushed brilliantly, turned around to give herself some privacy, and applied a ‘touch’ of the perfume. Unlike the ranger girls, however, she did not immediately take off. Very carefully, and with intense self-control, she stoppered the tiny flask and gently handed it back to the shying young woman.

“I.. I thank you, young Lady Inshala. Seldom are some things truly a treasure. This one? This one is..”, she said kindly. “Now, if you will excuse me, I would like to savor this moment alone, then atone for it and meditate. After all, I am but a young woman and do not lack vices.”

And with loud, clanking noises, she steered herself behind a nearby tree, sat down, closed her eyes, and a beautiful smile spread on her dreamy face!
“Wow.”, Udoorin said with an uncomfortable cough. “I.. That was unexpected!”

Temple Guardian Lady Magella was staring after the dazed paladin girl too, now. And with a very, very curious squint, she eyed the tiny flask in the young woman’s hand.

She must have raged some serious mental battle in her head because she was also biting her lower lip. It is possible ‘reason’ and ‘sense’ might have won over curiosity, hence she did not go for the flask, herself. She did, however, bend down and picked one of the smaller pouches.

“If you wouldn’t mind, young lady, I would like to take these dried, bitter-lemon seeds. I know for a fact, that they are quite robust, and very much poisonous if mishandled. I can’t even think why you would have it on you. It does not have a common use.”, she said.

“Ta.. take it..”, stammered the petrified girl.

“What do you want in return? Your bargain with Master Gnine is complete.”, the she-dwarf said kindly.

“I.. I can not take something.. from a Temple Guardian.”, she mumbled as she gave a hasty glance at the gnome standing next to her, and asked, “What do you have in your hand? You made the rules.. and we.. we made a bargain. and.. and it is complete..”

“Hold it.”, Lady Magella said. “If you will not take something from me in return for these seeds, perhaps we can offer you a place among us?”

..But the girl turned to the little gnome and was staring down at him and his closed fist, very intently.

“You.. you gave your promise, Master Gnine Tinkerdome. What.. what do you have in your hand? You promised you would show me and you promised you would not eat him!”, the girl said frantically.

Gnine stared up at the young woman and saw blank innocence there.

And he felt like an ass!

“But, of course, pretty lady. We had a deal and Master Gnine Tinkerdome always keeps his end of a bargain.”, he said and opened his fist.

The young woman, Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane, stared at the little gnome and his fist as a tiny, sparkling mote, burning red, orange, yellow, and lavender, rose out of his open palm, whizzed around once, twice, then shot up into the night sky, and disappeared..

“There you go..”, Gnine said with a broad smile. “The little bugger is free..”

Inshala just stared up at the night for a long, long moment, as if fascinated, or merely stunned. Then she looked down at Gnine and there was an odd expression on her pretty, and somewhat angular face as if she was confused, or even confounded.

“Wha.. what was that?”, she asked.

“That, my dear girl, was ‘magic in a fist.’”, Gnine replied with a grin.

“But.. I do not understand..”, she said, totally baffled.

“I am sorry, pretty lady.”, the little gnome tried to explain, his face going slightly pink. “But you were all alone and sitting out there somewhere in the cold night and I thought perhaps you would rather come and sit next to our fire and share our food. Sharing is better than cold and alone.”

The young woman tilted her head to one side, not unlike a puppy trying to understand something it had never seen or heard before.

“I.. I am always alone. But not very cold. I do not feel cold like others do. And.. and Mortals do not share.. They do not know how.. What they share, is only a stick.”, she mumbled.
“Well, we have no stick to share, my dear. We do have a nice, warm campfire, and Lady Magella here, has a delicious stew which I am sure she would love to share with you.”, Gnine offered.

“I.. I do not understand..”, the girl repeated.

“My dear girl..”, Gnine said. “..you have been here, and you have been there, and you have been everywhere, also, for the past several days. It is clear you do not want to be alone. ‘Alone’, would have gone. You did not. Stay with us. Here, we share everything. Here, we help and protect each other. Here, you do not have to be alone. Nothing is good ‘alone.’”

The young woman pressed her lips together, then the lower one sort of pursed out and she pouted.

“You.. you ambushed me to come to your fire..”, she blurted in disbelief.

“Well, when you say it like that..”, the little gnome spluttered as his face flushed.

“Master Gnine.”, Lady Magella said in her ‘just before a verbal trashing’ voice. “I believe you are finished here. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would. And totally.”, Gnine agreed, gave the very much baffled, confused, and disappointed young woman a very extravagant bow, and took off!

“Sit, girl.”, Lady ordered, pointing at a spot next to her and near the fire.

Inshala settled down, her face burning. Very slowly, she started gathering her pouches, her soaps, and her tiny, rose oil flask, and knotted them all on her vine-woven belt, then went still, staring nowhere but the fire.

“Here.”, Lady said gruffly and gave her a bowl of hot, steaming stew and a wooden spoon. “Eat.”

The girl took the bowl, and the spoon, smelled the stew, pinched her nose, silently reached into one of her pouches, and dusted the stew with some dark reddish powder, took another whiff from the steaming bowl, then slowly, she started eating— ⊗

“Girl, you smell so good, I could eat you!”, came Bremorel’s wicked snickers from somewhere off in the night.

“What in the name of the Great Heavens..”, spluttered the Temple Guardian.

“Two spots of rose oil and you are the little girl in her pink, frilly dresses again!”, the ranger girl was saying with a heartless laugh.

“Yeah.”, they heard Laila snort. “It wasn’t me swooning just a few minutes ago!”

“And it was worth the minutes. I don’t do girly make-ups but wow, this thing smells something awesome.”, Bremorel said with an exhilarated voice, then snickered. “You should see Lady Moira’s face.”

“What? Why?”, Laila asked.

“I think she is thinking of her flame, back at Durkahan!”, her cousin replied with another snicker.

“How do you know? Wait, Lady Moira has a flame?”, blurted Laila.

“Well, really, now!”, Lady Magella said, her face all flustered.

⊗ —and she noticed the reflection in the patch of darkness sitting across the fire.

The eyes stared at her for a breath more..

..then both the darkness and the eyes were gone.

Some twenty yards away, Gnine was sitting alone, waiting for ‘the other shoe’ to drop.

He didn’t wait too long.

“What you did..”, came the growling voice from somewhere behind him and he very nearly ‘eeped’ out of his pants, even though he was expecting the man in the dark leathers. “..was evil, Master Gnine.”

“You would know all about evil, wouldn’t you?”, the little gnome snapped with unexpected vehemence.

“Yes.”, the voice grated. “I do. But I also know where to draw the line. Tonight, you crossed it.”

“Did I? The Temple Guardian literally threw me to the lions and expected me to do what neither Laila nor Bremorel could do. Hell, I have been watching you these past few days, and the way you have been running back and forth looking for that girl, and not even you could find her, let alone capture her.

“You allowed Lady Magella have her way with me as she pleased. I didn’t hear you object to her on my behalf. I am sure you would have, had it been Udoorin, or anyone else, for that matter. But then, I am not even part of your ‘company’, am I? I guess I am expendable in your eyes since you do not feel responsible for me. Everyone here has their own set of skills. Perhaps you expect me to use a sword, or a bow, or a dagger, or some big, gigantic battleaxe?

“Well, I don’t use such uncivilized weapons. I have my own set of skills, and obviously, I have a brain. You people dumped what none of you could do, right on my lap, no, you dumped it on my head, and I did it. My way!”, Gnine spat with an uncharacteristically non-jubilant tone.

There was a long, choking sort of silence after that.

“Should you want to be part of this ‘company’, Master Gnine, perhaps you should comport yourself as a member of said company. True, you found her and you brought her here. But there are some things even I would never have done. You, young man, played with her innocence.”, the voice grated.

“No, I did not play with her innocence, I played to her youth.”, Gnine replied, very much angry now. “I was never aware she was so innocent. Not until it was too late to turn back. Now that she is here, I guess it is up to you to keep it that way and make her part of this ‘company’. I am sure she will have gained full membership long before I do. Now, if you are not planning on slitting my throat, Master Aager, I would rather you go pester the esteemed Lady who put me up to this in the first place.”

By the time the little gnome figured he was alone once again, all his anger had faded and he shivered as a chill ran down his spine even though he was sweating profusely..

She said mounts will be waiting for us when we come out of the forest.”, Ranger Laila reported the next morning. It had been a somewhat strained sort of breakfast. Everyone had tried to act ‘casual’, but the overall effect had been like watching a bad theater where novice actors mimed and gestured with exaggerated motions and talked louder than they should as if they wanted to be heard from the farthest seats..

..for the benefit of their new member, who had stayed up very late, not sure what to make of these people or perhaps to find out if were not trying to catch her off guard and beat her! It was only because she had succumbed to exhaustion, both physically and emotionally, that she had finally fallen asleep where she had been told to ‘sit’, by the scowling she-dwarf.

And when she’d woken up, she was all groggy and confused, and she’d looked around with bleary eyes and watched people in blurry shapes walking and talking all around her, at which point, she had yelped and almost taken for the nearest trees when the same scowling she-dwarf had told her to ‘sit’ and ‘eat’, as she’d been pressed a small plate with some things in it that smelled wrong..

Well, perhaps the word, ‘wrong’, was not correct, but it did smell of some things, just not quite her taste. Whatever it was, it certainly was not fresh and it did smell a tad on the moldy side to her keen senses.

Without looking up, or anywhere around her, she had taken the plate and munched the ‘food’, though she was forced to sprinkle any number of her own herbs and spices into it to make it marginally edible.

She had, however, in her silence, made no comments about it while she ate, and from the corner of her eyes, she watched the people sitting around the low campfire, adding further to her confusion, because these people were loud, all the while making sure her conically bunned hair was in place and her dress was nice, clean, wrinkle-free, and tidy.

Yup!

These people were loud, alright.

Like, very loud.

To her casual standards, at least.

It was no wonder they hadn’t been able to catch the bad men that had attacked their town. She certainly had caught up to the ones that had killed her Father, though only to find out they had already been killed. That hadn’t deterred her though. She had then gone after the vicious, orc-like beasts, and there had been many of them. They had moved fast and swift, and they had moved quietly. But in the end, she had overtaken them and..

Inshala suppressed her own recollections of what she had done after that, though she did shudder at the thought of the creatures because something about them was just.. off? True, she did not like orcs, goblins, or rare as they were in Ritual Forest, kobolds. And to her understanding, most of them were mean, cruel, mischievous, certainly, but they were also ‘natural’.

The orc-like creatures, however, were not. And from her point of keen senses, they had had a glaring presence like they neither belonged to nature in specific, nor to the world at large! And she hadn’t even needed to see their remains to figure that one out, once she was done with them; the forest had simply refused to accept them into her bosom!

She had ended up removing their very presence by other means and she, even now, wondered what her Father would have done to remove them. Or what he would have said about what she had done. And more importantly, she wondered, would he have approved?

The young woman, Inshala, sighed as she munched the food on her plate and noticed everyone had gone silent, and they were all looking at her!

Her face suddenly burned and her hands inadvertently went to her buns. Then she patted down her sleeves and her dress where she sat, and just stared at her plate.

“Yes?”, Lady Magella asked her kindly.

“Y.. yes?”, she asked her in return in total incomprehension.

“We were making plans to speed up our pace and perhaps catch the people we are looking for, by getting ahead of them and stopping them before they leave the forest. We think they will get out from the east side of these woods and find some form of transportation there, horses, or even a ship. If they do that, I am afraid we will never find them again. Lady Moira offered an alternative. She said we could go north and out of the forest, since it is close to where we are now, and ride around and cut them off in open ground before they could leave. It is a good idea, but we do not have enough mounts for that.”

The young woman, totally silent and petrified, did not move at all, let alone offer any opinions on the matter.

Lady gave her an appraising sort of look, sighed, then spoke out loud.

“Everyone, give us some privacy. It is clear the young lady here is not accustomed to crowds. Make room and make yourselves useful.. elsewhere!”

Everyone scattered!

Everyone except the man in dark leathers.

He stood, unmoving, and about two yards behind the sitting girl.

Whether the girl noticed the she-dwarf staring in his direction, or because of some innate instincts, it wasn’t clear, but she turned her head around, a bit like an owl, and stared at him..

..and to Aager’s surprise, he saw no fear in her eyes as she held his dead gaze.

Like, none at all.

She feared the she-dwarf, Lady Magella. She feared the paladin girl, Lady Moira. She stayed clear of the big, burly man, Udoorin. And she kept at a safe and respectful distance from the ranger girls, Laila and Bremorel. She even feared the little gnome, Master Gnine. Yet, she showed no such cower for him which intrigued the man in dark leathers, for even though he never went out of his way to look dangerous, nor did he display any particular animosity to anyone, no one really met him eye to eye, let alone not fear him at all. No one but Sheriff Standorin and now this young woman.

And she wasn’t giving him any ‘dirty’ looks nor staring at him with belligerence either. Her face was, to put it simply, ‘blankly’ bold!

It dawn on him that the girl feared the others because she thought they had something she didn’t, possibly something along the lines of ‘social interactions’, hence she was quite ‘wild’ and quietly ‘feral’.

Master Aager was certainly not wild, nor was he ever feral. But he shied from said social interactions, not out of fear nor with disdain, but possibly because he saw them as needless, pointless, and a likely distraction.

And to simply put, he just didn’t want them.

He also noted that the young woman was staring at him with certain, calculating eyes. The kind you would see in a predator considering her moment to pounce. Yes, she was looking at him, not whether she could take him out or not, but whether the time was ripe! She was looking at him through her storm-gray eyes as one, wild and feral predator..

..to another, dangerous and skilled killer!

Crow’s feet appeared at the corners of Aager’s eyes as he squinted down at the girl when she said, without taking her eyes off him.

“He should go.”

The she-dwarf cocked both eyebrows, looking at the young woman, and then at the man in dark leathers.

“You heard the lady, Master Aager. You should go.”, she said finally. “You want to butt heads? Do it on your own time.”

Aager’s eyes crinkled some more, then turned his back at the young woman, and walked away.

“There. They are all gone. You have something to tell me, young lady?”, the Temple Guardian asked.

“Wha.. why do you keep calling me that?”, the young woman asked in return, and only after the man in dark leathers was totally out of sight.

“Call you what, my dear?”, Lady Magella frowned.

“That.. and this ‘lady’, thing.. I know what a dear is. It is a herbivore animal with antlers, more so in males than females. They eat leaves and grass and they taste good. But I do not know what a ‘lady’ is, and you keep calling me by those names. That little gnome who ambushed me with his fire-spark also kept calling me those. I am Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane and I am a person. Not an animal, and not this lady-thing.”, she said, her gaze falling back to her plate. Her voice hinted some confusion, a bit of frustration, and a pinch of defiance.

“Uhhmm..”, Lady mumbled, more than a little baffled. This was going to be a very long conversation if she had to go into the details of social titles or ‘endearments’.

“Very well.”, she said. “I apologize for calling you by those names, although, for future reference, a lady is sometimes a real, sometimes a polite title given to women. And we call those around us that we care for as ‘dear’, or as ‘my dear.’”

“But.. I am not a woman!”, she said with vehemence.

“You are not?”, Lady asked, a bit baffled.

“I am a girl!”, Inshala replied indignantly!

“Ow. Right. Of course, you are.”, the Temple Guardian said with a smile.

“And no one but my Father cared for me. And he did not call me ‘dear’, he called me ‘my little chestnut!’ But I don’t want you to call me that either. Only my Father is allowed to call me that. And because he is dead, no one can call me that anymore!”, she said with a fierce face.

“Alright. I shall call you by your name, then. How is that, Inshala?”, Lady said amiably.

The girl seemed a bit on the feral side all of a sudden for some reason, though the Temple Guardian couldn’t figure out why.
Apparently, there was some serious context here that she was missing. Or perhaps it had something to do with her being beaten.

The girl had sort of stressed on the words when she’d said, ‘I am a person. Not an animal.’ Had the people who beat her, accused her of being one? If they had, she very much wanted to find out who they were and pay them a visit. Possibly taking her mother, her sisters, her brothers, her aunts, and her uncles —her whole extended family along with her. She knew for a certainty that some of her sisters and aunts would come just for the enterprising fun of it!

Perhaps, she thought, she should stick her youngest sister, Grugreth Twonutz, upon them. Then she countermanded herself. No one deserved Grugreth Twonutz!

“It.. it is fine..”, the girl mumbled, her feral expression suddenly gone and replaced by mortification.

“You must, however, understand and make allowances if the others call you ‘lady’ or ‘dear’. Because that is how they, at times, refer to one another.”, Lady told her.

The girl fumed with confused frustration.

“Ow.. Okay..”, she said, her vexed voice returning once again.

“Now, then. Before we go on to other matters, I would like to know what your intentions are.”, Lady said, not unkindly, but also with a serious tone.

“I do not understand.”, the girl mumbled.

“Will you be staying with us? As part of this company, I mean. You see, everyone here relies on one another. And they trust each other.. more or less. And everyone here knows the others will not run away or take off. And we all watch each other’s backs.”, the Temple Guardian explained.

“I.. I do not know. I have never had anyone but my Father. I will not run. But if you try to whip me, then I will run away because that hurts a lot..”, she said, her voice low and afraid. “And.. I do not want anyone looking at my back either. I have.. I have ugly scars on my back. I don’t want them to know about my scars. I don’t want them to see them. But if they watch my back, they will. Then I might run away.. I do not know..”

Lady Magella’s face tightened as she pressed her lips together. When they were done here, she thought she ought to visit the people who whipped this girl and definitely stick Grugreth Twonutz on them. They bloody well deserved her!

“You are a good girl, Inshala..”, she said sternly.

The young woman stopped staring at her plate and looked up at the she-dwarf.

“..but not very smart!”, added Lady Magella.

And now the young woman was ogling at her.

“Have I not told you already, that no one here will hit you, beat you, come at you with sticks, let alone whip you? I remember telling you that. Several times, have I not?”, the she-dwarf said angrily.

“Yes. You did. But..”, the girl began.

“There are no ‘buts’, Inshala. When a Temple Guardian gives her word, she keeps it. Are we clear?”, she said with a scowl.

“Ow.. Okay..”, the girl mumbled, her face turning red. “I.. I will stay with you, then. I will even talk to some of you.”

“You can talk to any and everyone here, dear child. No one here will hurt you, and they will make sure you are safe. Master Aager will want to talk to you so you can tell him what you can do, and he can tell you where to do it.”, Lady said.
“Ow.. Okay.. But.. he is..”, she mumbled, her face flushed even more, but stopped speaking.

“He is what, girl?”, the Temple Guardian asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

“He must be told that he is not..”, she mumbled some more, paused, then added. “No.. I will tell him what he must be told..”

“Very well.”, Lady sighed. “Now, then. To the matter at hand. Can you, in any way, help us find some horses perhaps?”

“I.. I have never ridden a horse before. I did not need one. But.. but I can call for some..”, she said mutely.

“Very well. We should start moving then. Do you need anything?”

“No.”, the girl replied simply. “Wha.. what do you want for the food you gave me? I have this dress, but I think I will need it. I have some soaps, the herbs you saw last night, the rose oil, and I have a spear, but it is not here now. I must go and get it.”

“We do not charge for the food among us, Inshala.”, Lady Magella said kindly. “We are of the same company now. Rangers Laila and Morel usually bring us some rabbits, or even some quail, while they are tracking, and together, we cook them, along with the vegetables I have, and everyone eats it.”

The girl stared at her blankly.

Lady sighed.

“Did you bargain with your father when he cooked for you?”, she asked.

“No. My Father was kind. And he never hit me.”, the young woman said.

“There you have it. We do not bargain for the food we cook either. And we never hit each other.”, the she-dwarf said reassuringly.

“Ow.. Okay..”, the girl said a bit morosely. “I.. I shall go and get my spear then return. It.. it isn’t far.. Will.. will you still be here?”

“Yes, dear child. We shall still be here.”, she smiled at her.

The girl rose, carefully padded down her dress, made sure there were no rips or tears, or any smudges on it, checked her braided, conical buns, and took off.. at an impressive speed!

The girl had a strong and rather economical physique and she made good use of her arms, her shoulders, her somewhat shapely hips, and her legs, as she pulled up her skirt-dress to give herself the freedom of movement, like someone who ran a lot and for long distances, and she leaped a few feet every once in a while to cover more ground, and soon enough, she disappeared behind the bushes and the trees. Lady also noted, that the odd, shy, scared girl was also very light on her feet and she almost didn’t even seem to touch the ground as she ran, explaining why she did not leave any tracks.

She sighed, and started gathering her own belongings, along with the plates, the forks, and her pots and pans, gave them all a summary wash, then put them into her rather large backpack, and hauled it just to see the young woman standing in front of her, her face flushed, but not because of the run. In fact, she hardly seemed out of breath at all. And she was also.. well.. for the lack of a better word, ‘glowing’, and she was having difficulty in hiding a certain ‘eagerness’ in her stance. And she was holding a long, nearly ten-foot-long shaft that ended with a sharp, a rather cruel-looking blade; a spear.

“Do you need shoes, dear girl?”, Lady asked, staring down at her small, narrow feet.

“I.. no.. Temple Guardian.. I have never used shoes..”, she mumbled with a mortified expression. “I.. I do not like shoes.. They smell..”

“Do you know how to use that weapon?”, she asked, nodding at her spear.

“I do not, Temple Guardian.”, the girl replied promptly and without hesitation.

Lady cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Why do you carry it then?”, she asked.

“The spear is not mine, Temple Guardian. I took it from one of the orc-creatures I slew and do not need it.”, she said.

“What?”, Lady asked, totally baffled now.

“I took it because Mortals think I am weak when they see I do not carry a weapon. I am no longer a little girl, hence I am not weak anymore and I am able to defend myself without the need for a weapon. But they do not know this and they make mistakes and think they can hurt me even though they can’t. When I have this weapon, they will think before they come at me, hence I shall not make their sins, my sins.”, she replied intently.

And now Lady cocked her other brow at her.

That had been a rather roundabout way of thinking and saying, ‘I carry it as a deterrent.’

Apparently, the girl had a deep understanding of.. ‘mortals’..

Deep, different, and unexpectedly.. wise?

“Very well. Shall we get started then? Should you need anything, you may ask me, or anyone else here.”, she said as she started after the company who were all waiting for them.

“I shall ask you, Temple Guardian.”, the girl nodded quietly but didn’t move.

For a long moment, she stood where she was in petrified limbo. She recalled every time she had gone where Mortals had been, and she also remembered what those Mortals had done to her, just as she recalled, quite vividly, how she had suffered at the hands of Mortals, also.

It was then, that she had learned Mortals were fickle, unreliable, untrustworthy, and very much cruel. Yet, here she was, about to ‘follow’, and even be ‘part’ of these Mortals, and she inadvertently wondered; had she, once again, volunteered for more of the same?

Whoa!”, Ranger Bremorel exclaimed as she came out of the forest and stared at what she beheld.

There, some fifty yards away, was a whole herd of horses varying from brown spotted to chestnut to snow white to even one, light-ebbing black.

“Midnight.”, the young woman, Inshala, said from behind her with a very shy and mortified expression. “He said his name was ‘Midnight.’”

“You can speak to horses?”, Bremorel asked incredulously.

“I.. I can speak with many things, Ranger Morel, should they wish to talk to me.”, the girl said, her face turning to an even brighter shade of red.

“You can call me Bremorel, Inshala. And you do not have to call me ‘Ranger’, every time, you know?”, Bremorel said, giving her a poor attempt at a smile.

The ranger girl wasn’t the best option where making new friends was concerned and smiling at strangers was not exactly her forte, obviously.

“But.. your leader.. The one with the darkness calls you by this name, does he not?”, she asked, her tone a bit confused.

“Yes. He calls everyone by their proper name and title. But I think he does it just to annoy us. Friends can call one another just by their names. Since he isn’t my friend, he is calling me Ranger Morel.”, the ranger girl tried to explain.

“I.. I do not understand. Why is he not your friend? And, is your name, not Morel? If you are Bremorel, then who is Morel?”, Inshala asked, even more, confused now.

Bremorel stared at the girl.

Ogled, really.

And thought a mind-dipping headache coming her way.

“My given name is Morel. Years ago, when I became friends with Udoorin, that’s the big man over there..”, she said nodding at the big, burly man walking towards them with the rest of the company. “..he gave me the name, ‘Bre’, meaning brave and ‘fiery’, so for my friends, I am ‘Bremorel’. For many others, I am, however, ‘Morel’, even though I myself do not use my given name anymore.”

“I.. I did not understand many of the things you just said. I am young and oft silly. But I will use the one that you like, Ranger Bremorel. The horses will take us where we want to go. But they will choose who they will carry.”, the young woman said carefully.

“I like the black one. ‘Midnight’, was it?”, she said, staring appreciatively at the great, beautiful stallion.

To her surprise, and somewhat sulking disappointment, Midnight did not come to her. Another, a deep, dark chestnut approached her, and nodded at her, whipping his tail with massive arrogance, all the while shaking his long stream of mane, as it hooved the ground twice.
“You.. You have been chosen..”, Inshala said quietly. “..by ‘Bosk’, Ranger Bremorel. Be.. be careful with him. He is very proud and aggressive.”

“Bosk? A bit on the ostentatious side, isn’t it? Well, now, Bosk. I guess you and I are going to be riding in the same direction for a while— Whoa!”, she exclaimed as the proud stallion reared and kicked the air at her, telling her exactly what he thought of her being so casual with him..

..but Bremorel, being the aggressive girl that she was, was having none of that.

With a swift side-step, she rammed into the horse, grabbed at one of his ears, and pulled down.

Real hard!

The horse squealed in pain and very nearly buckled as the ‘she-human’ came eye to eye with him.

“You are a beautiful boy. I would hate you to trot around with a single ear. I am a ranger and I will have none of that from you. Do we understand each other?”, she asked the horse politely.

Bosk squealed some more and tried to kick the ranger girl!

Bremorel dodged that as well..

..and pulled at the ear even harder!

“Do we understand each other?”, she said again, glaring at the horse.

Bosk whined..

Bremorel released the ear and patted the horse on the neck.

“There we go. Good boy. I am not all harsh, though. If you behave, I will find some nice, juicy apples for you. How about that?”, she said with a broad smile and patted the horse some more.
Bosk gave her a side-long glance as he flicked his ear.

“You.. you hurt him!”, blubbered Inshala.

“No, dear girl. I merely showed him we both have the capacity to hurt one another. And the capacity to be friends where he can carry me to where I want to go and I can make sure he gets to eat apples.”, the ranger girl grinned at her and hoped on the broad back of the horse.

Inshala ogled at her.

“Men and horses aren’t all that different.”, Bremorel explained. “They both want to boss you around. If you show them that they can’t, they won’t. If you show them you can both benefit from respecting one another, everyone will be happy.”

“Wish you could give yourself the same advice.”, snickered Laila as another horse, a beautiful, spotted, grayish-blue mare with a frosty main and tail, by the name, ‘Meander’, trotted up to her and gave her a careful and graceful bow.

“Hullo, love!”, Laila whispered at the mare and caressed her long, elegant neck.

“His name is, ‘Glowrin.’”, Inshala was whispering at Lady Magella as a surly-looking white horse with odd-looking black patches and a pink nose came trampling at them.

“Glowrin? You mean, ‘glowering’, perhaps?”, she told the young woman.

Inshala let loose the oddest of sounds.

Something between a squeak and a hiccup.

The girl had just snorted!

Then they heard the big, burly man rumble.

“Oi! What are you doing? What do you want?”, Udoorin said as he stared at the big, mid-brown, mournful-looking horse nudging at him.

“Tell him, her name is ‘Melody.’”, Inshala whispered at Lady. “Tell him she has chosen him and will carry him where we want to go.”

“You could tell him yourself, you know? He is a good boy. And quite polite. He will never hurt you.”, the Temple Guardian said as she patted ‘Glowrin’.

“I do not know him. And he is very big.”, Inshala said stubbornly. “And he has much iron and rust on him.”

“Very well.”, Lady said, then she turned to the young man. “Stop playing with the horse, boy. Just get on it!”

“What? I am not playing with it. I don’t even know this creature. What if it tries to bite me?”, he said, giving the horse long, suspicious looks.

“Just get on it, young man.”, came the growl of Aager.

“I don’t know this animal, Master Aager. It is clearly a wild horse. I don’t know about you, but I certainly do not want to fall off it when it decides to be playful!”, Udoorin said.

“Are you telling me you are afraid of a horse, young Master Udoorin?”, the man in dark leathers asked coolly. “Seeing as the ‘girls’ seem just fine with theirs.”

Udoorin scowled at him.

“You just had to say that, didn’t you?”, he rumbled.

“And you just had to get on the horse!”, Aager grated.

Then a deep, throaty neigh was heard and the herd parted.

With a thundering gallop, Midnight charged!

And all the other horses gave way, with their riders.

Aager Fogstep dashed..

..and appeared right before the charging black stallion.

With another deep, throaty neigh, the beast reared on his powerful hind legs and came down..

..and the two, one man, one beast, stared at one another.

The beast neighed.

The man growled..

“You are a dark one, aren’t you? Inside and out. I can work with that, for we have a saying where I come; it is always midnight in Drashan..”

The company rode long and hard for the next several days and the horses served their chosen riders well. They traveled through the days and most nights and stopped only long enough for the horses to rest as their riders fed them and rubbed them down, then took a hasty bite, and slept for what few hours they could afford to lose.

The little gnome had been quite put out when none of the horses from the herd had approached him, and there had been quite a lot of them they had left behind. He had suspected this had been some kind of payback from the odd girl, Inshala, for having tricked her to come to their camp. To his consolation, however, he had ended up riding behind the pretty, red-headed paladin girl, Lady Moira, who had summoned her own great holy steed, Ayla. He was smart enough not to prank her but mischievous enough to smuggle in some jokes that had made the merry girl laugh any number of times while she blushed furiously at some of his more, ‘implied’ gags, capers, and parodies. Overall, he had enjoyed the ride, and the young woman who never seemed to shy from a good laugh, nor a grin, for that matter, and seeing as how she had never told him to shut up, must have enjoyed it as well.

The great black stallion, Midnight, had not bowed down to the man in dark leathers. It wasn’t clear why, but it had, perhaps, sensed their urgency and hence, the necessity for haste to get them where they needed to be. The alpha of the herd had led his ‘subjects’ with thundering hooves and hoarse, throaty snorts and was now standing watch over them, much as he watched the man in dark leathers silently ghost over to him.

The man caressed the horse that was staring boldly at him, never taking his eyes off him as he rubbed him down, then growled at him.

“Thank you..”

..as he stared into the night.

The odd girl was missing again.

She had told Lady Magella that she did not want, nor needed to ride any of the horses, and had informed her that she would find them when they stopped for the nights.

And she had.

Every night they would stop and make a small campfire and start cooking while rangers Laila and Bremorel would scout the immediate area and form a safety parameter while young Udoorin and Lady Moira would stand guard, and slightly winded, the young woman would come walking out of the forest and join them.
No one had asked how she had ‘ran’ all that distance, through the forest and all the bushes and the undergrowth, no less, but they had been quite disturbed about it as well. Laila was the only one to comment on the matter and she had merely, and vaguely said, “It’s a druid thing. They can do weird things.”, and let it go at that.

It was the fourth night, the food was cooked and served, and everyone had settled in and with the exception of Aager himself and Ranger Bremorel, the others were fast asleep. Aager had gotten the impression that, however she was doing it, he surmised she had been traveling at a path somewhat parallel to theirs. Just not out in the plains north of Ritual Forest, but in the forest itself for some reason. The man in dark leathers did not question, inquire, or simply put, poke his nose, as to what those reasons may be. He was a man who was after pertinent answers, not the details of people’s privacies, possibly because he didn’t really care or he just didn’t want to get involved. What mattered was the girl hadn’t arrived that night.

He squinted into the darkness and pressed his lips behind his half-mask.

Aager Fogstep seldom hated anything. He just didn’t bother with such frivolous emotions.

But he very much disliked situations exactly such as this one where people did not keep to their promises and just about ‘anything’ could have happened between last night and now, in a real sense.

“You are not a good person.”, breathed a soft, hushed voice into his ear.

“You are late.”, Aager growled even though he had been caught very much off guard.

And felt something he hadn’t for a very, very long time;

Irritation at a personal level!

“I do not belong to you.”, she hissed at him.

Aager turned to face her.

“I am a person! I belonged only to my Father and he is dead.”, she said with an angry siss!

“If you are a person, you belong to no one.”, the man in dark leathers replied mercilessly.
The girl froze.

“I.. I do not understand..”, she whispered, and Aager got the impression that she sounded.. hurt?

“Humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes.. it does not matter who or what we are. If you are, you may owe those around you, but you may belong to no one, and no one owns you. If you can accept that, then you are a person.”, he replied, putting just enough emphasis on his words.

“No!”, she said stubbornly. “Everyone belongs. If you do not belong, then you are alone! What makes us, is where we belong. Alone must always run. And the running can not belong..”

Aager cocked an eyebrow.

For these were not the sentiments of a wild and feral mind.

Or perhaps they were exactly the words of a wild and feral mind..

Furthermore, he sensed something rare in her words and the way she phrased them; intuitive premonition, instinctive deductive reasoning, and perhaps a bit of empathetic sagacity?

Among their company, only two others would have argued the nuances or the merits of such an existential debate; the Temple Guardian Lady Magella and, he suspected, Master Gnine.

But where Lady Magella would argue the point with the scowling mandates of her beliefs and doctrines, Master Gnine would have done it more out of the need to satisfy his mental prowess, hence his ego. Or to exercise his free will and argue the point for the sole reason that ‘he can’..

This young woman, however, was not parroting some doctrine, nor was she trying to satisfy some self-serving ego. There was just too much fire in her words, too much desperation, and for someone like Aager Fogstep, that ‘felt’ like it should mean something. But as to what it ought to mean, did escape him.

All that aside, what did not escape his notice, however, was the ‘thing’ in her voice. He could not see her in the dark, as opposed to what he suspected that she could, hence he could not see her face nor her eyes or what unrestrained expression she beheld. Her voice, however, said it all..

Anguish.

“Should you want to belong and not be alone, you must stop running. And to belong, you must obey the rules of this company. You told us you would be with us when we made camp. You were not. You made Temple Guardian Lady Magella very much worried and put the other members of your company at risk when I had to send rangers Laila and Morel to go and look for you. That is not how ‘belonging’ works. When you give your promise to your company, we must know that you will keep to your promise and be here on time.”, Aager grated coldly.

There was a long, depressing sort of silence when he was finished and he thought he heard a noise that sounded vaguely like a sniff.

“I.. I was held up..”, he heard her ‘wet’ voice say.

“Held up by what?”, Aager growled.

“Orcs.”, she replied.

Aager’s eyes narrowed.

“And where are these orcs now?”, he asked.

“Coming. More than twenty. Less than forty.”
And the man in dark leathers snarled..

“RANGER MOREL! WAKE THE OTHERS, NOW! TO ARMS!”

 

---

The
Behavioral Anatomy
of an
Odd Girl.
from the story,
“But you deserve this!”

 

Nearly two weeks have passed since
the Serenity Home attack and the subsequent fire.

A group of select individuals has been tracking down the fugitives responsible for the attack and the fire, heading north through the Ritual Forest. 

On their way, they meet the strange, silent, and somewhat catatonic girl, Inshala ‘la Fey’ Frostmane.

This short story takes place a bit after the strange girl has started sharing the same campfire with the rest of the group.

 

---

 

When the ranger girls prepared the camp one evening after another day’s treacherous pursuit, Inshala ‘la Fey’ Frostmane watched them from behind some nearby bushes with sad, longing eyes for she saw two ‘friends’ banter and laugh, and who sounded very much like something she had heard of;

Sisters!

She did not know, nor did she understand what that word meant, but it sounded warm and beautiful, and it made something squirm in the pit of her stomach with eager fervor.

Later, she silently sneaked up at the sinister-looking man in dark leathers, the one that everyone referred to as Master Aager, though she saw nothing about him that should make him a Master. Her late Father, Cathber, had been a Master and she thought he deserved that title more than anyone else did, and the way these people so blatantly called the man in his dark leathers a ‘Master’, infuriated her down to her very core.

She so wanted to stomp her feet and scream;

“You don’t deserve ‘Master’. My Father was Master and he deserved it, and he ‘lived’ it!”

But then, they also called the gnome, Master Gnine.

They also called him ‘that little midget’, too, sometimes.

And ‘mischievous prankster’, ‘no-gooder’, ‘always something up his sleeves’, along with a few other things that she knew not what they meant.

The young woman was thoroughly baffled.

Just how many things did they need to call the little man to get his attention, already?

She mentally snarled at the incomprehensibility of these people and forced herself back to the task at hand, very quietly parted the bushes she was hiding behind, and whispered at Master Aager, as she oft did;

“You are not a good person!”

Although she showed distant, reproachful respect to the she-dwarf, Lady Magella, she diligently stayed as far away from the tall, well-build paladin girl, Moira, who smiled at everyone and she watched her with fear-riddled eyes as though she expected to be purged by her at any moment and without any warning.

Or perhaps with a warning.

The reddish-brown-haired girl was a paladin, after all, and even though Inshala expected some form of ‘purging’ from her, like, any time now, she did not expect any duplicity from her at all!

She showed absolutely no interest whatsoever in the large, burly young man who answered to the name; Young Udoorin, though Inshala was not sure if ‘Young’ was his name or not. Perhaps it was a bit like how, as she had found out after days of confused mulling, that Lady had been the Temple Guardian’s ‘name’, and people did not call her that as some form of polite, girly title, which had been a dear relief on her part, though it did confuse her at another level and she had very nearly shredded her hair off whether she should call her, should the need arise, as Lady Lady Magella or not.. as odd and just weird as that sounded.

Alright, she really was drifting away from the issue at hand, now, which was the big, burly boy.. man.. young man.. young boy?

Inshala sighed..

To be honest about it though, he did look young.. ish.. though he also had a scruffy looking patch of bushy-something growing on and around his chin and she thought he looked just silly with it!

She sniffed at the little gnome, Gnine, with a pinched face.

She had not gone near him again after what he had done to her with his ‘magic-in-a-fist’ trick, which she thought was ‘not nice’..

At all!

And she refused to speak to him even though he had apologized to her any number of times, nor did she hold his hand again.

On another such camp, she sort of tethered up to the two ranger cousins, again, and with extreme bash, she tried for a very poor attempt of a conversation, after which she told Laila, the pretty half-elf girl,

“You are wearing your clothes wrong.”

..while pointing at the rip on her leather pants she had attained during their encounter with the big, orc-like creature.

..and mended it, on the spot, using a delicate bit of magic.

To the total bafflement of the ranger girl.

As in, “What just happened?”, sort of bewilderment!

The very next day, she skirted near Bremorel, the other ranger girl, the one with the beautiful, deep green eyes and the ‘skunk-messy’ coarse-black hair, and pointed at the tear on her shirt, attained during the same encounter, and said,

“You are wearing your clothes wrong!”..

..and mended that as well.

Later that very evening, she slinked up to Master Aager and harshly breathed into his ear while pointing at a gash on his knee;

“You are wearing your clothes wrong, too.”

And added with a hiss..

“But you deserve it!”

 

---

 

Chapter
Six

“Heaven’s Willing”

 

Timeline:

The churning, savage, and wrathful storm is gone and the Serenity Home company returns to camp just to see a most unusual sight and their trek takes them far and beyond their expectations..

This story starts right after
The Storms of a Broken Heart.

 

 

Master Aager? Are you alright?”, the huge man asked as he picked up the broken bits of the tree. “You seem peevish.”

“Peevish?”, rasped the sinister-looking man in the dark leathers from under a whole pile of thick branches and a large, splintered tree trunk. “Just how many years did you wait to use that on me, young Udoorin?”

“Many.”, smirked the big man and with a mighty heave, he lifted the trunk, giving enough room for the Master Aager to slip out and grunted as he slowly let the splintered bark back down.

“We have a visitor.”, he half-shouted and he was speaking with exaggerated tones.

“I am concussed, Udoorin. Not deaf.. Report!”, the man in dark leathers said as he slowly and carefully sat down.

Aager felt his head spinning and he had a hard time trying to remember the last few minutes before he’d blacked out.

He recalled he was running for cover in the raging storm when some lightning had struck a tree just next to him. The whole tree had split right down the middle and toppled on him! He remembered trying to avoid being crushed then something heavy and quite stiff had hit him on the head and.. that’s it. The next thing he knew, the big, burly young man, Udoorin, was standing over him and calling his name..

At least, he thought, he had escaped the worst of it. The whole tree could have fallen on him and that would have been that..

His stomach churned and he felt sick. He also felt the promise of a jarring headache coming his way.

“Bree, Laila, and the midget are back. Still waiting for Lady. I expect she will either get control of that big warhorse and turn it around, or hold on to it until she reaches Durkahan, or decide she’s had just about enough and throw herself off the horse and limp all the way back here and make us all suffer for it. As for Lady Moira, I don’t know. She is just sitting there.. well, kneeling actually, with her hands in the air and.. that’s it! She isn’t moving or responding. She’s in a.. I dunno.. ‘catatonic’ state, I suppose, you could say.”, replied the Udoorin guy, pointing somewhere in the night.

“Who is the merry visitor? I suspect he’s responsible for this mess?”, the dark man asked, touching a tender spot on the back of his head.

“She..”, corrected Udoorin.

“What?”

“He is a she.. A pretty one too.. With funny hair.. Are you alright, by the way?”

“Like we didn’t already have an overabundance of women in this group..”, Aager grunted as he slowly rose from the ground.

“And they all are pretty..”, smiled the big one. Then he lowered his voice. “Please don’t tell Bree, I said that. I still carry her bite mark!”

“Guess I’ll just have to save it until I need a favor.”, replied Aager without so much as a smile.

“That’s not funny.”, frowned Udoorin.
“What’s the ‘visitor’ doing? Who is watching her?”, asked Aager, totally ignoring the big man’s plea.

The spinning hadn’t quite stopped yet, but just then, the jarring headache had arrived.

“No one, really. She seems as catatonic as Lady Moira. She has prostrated herself at Moira’s feet and begging her to burn her!”

“What?”

“I know, right? We have all the prettiest girls and all of them are off in the head.”

“And now you owe me two favors.”, said Aager, and this time, he did smile, though it was lost behind his half-mask.

Udoorin scowled at him.

“Why’s your armor off?”, Aager asked him as they walked towards the paladin and the newcomer.

“Figured, lightning and chainmail.. You know.. Bad combination.. A bit too late though.. Got singed pretty good.. It’ll leave a mark.. I hope it doesn’t leave a mark..”, said the big man with a worried expression.

“I am sure all the marks you have already, along with the ones you will get won’t add to your beauty.”

“That was not nice, Master Aager. I know I am not pretty, but you didn’t really have to hit me in the face with it.”, grumbled Udoorin.

“You never cease to amaze me, young Udoorin.. Your priorities are truly mind-staggering.”, replied Aager staring at the big man.

Udoorin’s face darkened.

Aager gave a perfunctory check on everyone in the group. Bremorel, the young ranger girl, seemed a tad wild-eyed. She had rekindled the fire and was now holding her big bow in her hand. The bow was cocked and almost half-drawn and she stood with her back to a tree, facing the newcomer. She also entertained an ugly shiner on her left upper cheek.

Gnine, the troublesome little gnome was whispering something while gesticulating rapidly at the half-elf girl, Bremorel’s cousin, Ranger Laila, who was standing next to him. She was also holding her bow in one hand with an arrow ready on the string.

“Well.. At least two people here are paying attention.”, scowled Aager.

Then he called to the half-elf girl.

“Ranger Laila. Go and track down Lady Moira’s horse, and bring the Temple Guardian back, if you will, please.”

“Why me?”, Laila asked.

Aager did not reply. He just stared at her.

Laila also scowled at him, then took off into the night.

It seemed like Master Aager wanted to make sure everyone around him was somehow scowling at him. Or at least a few of them should be, at any given time.

He silently approached the paladin girl, Lady Moira, who stood unmoving on her knees and with her hands in the air, just as Udoorin had described.

And then he saw the ‘visitor’. The person responsible for very nearly dismantling the whole lot of them, in under a few short moments.

To be honest about it, she could have, had she not stopped, and that made the man in the dark clothes wonder.. They certainly hadn’t been able to do anything to her, let alone see her. She had, quite literally, played with them much like a cat would game with a mouse.

Why had she attacked them in the first place and then stopped her assault when she was almost winning? And who was she? Where had she come from? What was she even doing out here, in the middle of a forest, and alone? Was she alone?

All pertinent questions.

But the girl.. Aager couldn’t really make out if she was pretty or not, as young Udoorin had claimed.. Not that it mattered, nor that he cared. She did have ‘funny’ hair though. Tightly wrapped and braided on both sides of her head like some kind of cones.. Aager did not question the demented mentality in that. Girls did all sorts of strange things with their hair.. among other things.. He just nodded, when the occasion demanded it, and moved along.. or away..

Preferably away!

The girl had knelt with her face in the dirt, covering and moaning in unmitigated terror;

“Burn me..”

“Please burn me..”

“Free me of my demons..”

“Please burn me..

Aager wasn’t one for emotions, let alone for the subtler ones like ‘sympathy’ or ‘compassion’.. If someone asked him what they were, he’d probably just stare at them blankly.

But something about this girl nudged at him.

Without knowing why he took a few steps back.

“Udoorin.”, he called.

“What?”, replied the big man.

“Put your armor back on.”

“Why?”, asked Udoorin.

“Because I said so?”, growled Aager.

Udoorin grumbled some, looked up at the night sky as if checking for signs of new lightnings, then put his armor back on and buckled its straps to his satisfaction.

“Now what?”, he said as he approached Aager.

“Now go and pick the girl up.”

“What? Why?”

“We need to question her and we can’t do that while she is doing.. whatever it is she is doing now.”, replied Aager.

“I am not touching her.”, said Udoorin hastily.

Aager stared at him.

“You know what she did, man. Not to mention, you don’t just go and touch a girl. That is just rude.. and not right..”, Udoorin defended himself.

“When did I ever give you the impression I cared for any of that, young Udoorin?”, fumed the dark man. “You can either do what needs to be done, or go back to town and explain yourself to your father.”

“That’s way out of line, Master Aager.”, growled Udoorin.

“We are not out here for a polite stroll, young man. We are here to do the ‘dirty work’, so the rest of the people can sleep without a care. You volunteered to come. You wanted to come.. This is the part of the job that needs to be done; we interrogate prisoners and that is exactly what she is now. She is Lady Moira’s prisoner. And since she is otherwise busy —or incapacitated, that duty falls on us!”, replied Aager and he seemed to bite each word before he spat them out.

Young Udoorin’s back stiffened as he still gave Aager a very nasty stare.

Then slowly, he came at the girl still prostrating before Moira.

“Umm.. ‘cuse me.. lady.. But we need to ask you some questions. Are you unwell? Perhaps you need some help. You really should get off the ground. It’s wet, cold, and probably dirty..”, he stammered, then reached down and tried to pick her up.

“Don’t touch me!”, hissed the girl and bit his hand!

And with unexpected haste, she skipped once, twice, and was very nearly a dozen feet away, crouched on the ground, showing all her teeth at the big man.

“Crap!”, swore the big man. “Why do girls keep biting me, dammit.. I can’t be that tasty!”

Then he turned and slowly approached her again with his hands open while making soothing sounds.

The girl hissed at him again..

“I think that will do, young man. You should be ashamed of yourself, for touching a girl without her permission. You have shamed your father..”, snarled a voice in the dark, and heavy footsteps were heard. Then, a rather angry she-dwarf appeared, and there no mistaking about the scowl she had on her face.

“Lady Magella..”, stammered Udoorin. “I.. was merely..”

“You were merely what, Udoorin Shieldheart? Abusing an already traumatized little girl? Look at her. It’s clear she’s had some rough time.”, she admonished him.

“I.. You got me all wrong.. I was just..”, spluttered the big man, trying to explain himself.

“Go, Udoorin. Just go.. Cut some wood, boil some water, peel some potatoes.. Just go and make yourself scarce but useful!”

Udoorin stormed away, fuming..

“This is all your fault, Master Aager.”, he very nearly spat, as he walked past the dark man.

“No. It is yours.. Learn to ‘own’ your follies, young man. But I got what I needed to, anyway.. For the time being..”, replied Aager calmly.

“You. Girl!”, ordered Lady Magella. “What is your name and what are you doing here?”

The girl hissed at her as well.

“I am the Temple Guardian of Serenity Home and you will NOT hiss at me like some wild beast.”, spoke Lady and there was a distinct no-nonsense quality to her voice.

And the girl lost all her ferocity.

“You.. you are.. a Temple Guardian?”, she asked with her eyes wide open.

“Yes, I am. And I have some twenty-odd years under my belt to prove it!”, Lady replied sternly.

“Have.. have you come to burn me?”, the girl asked.

“Burn you? Now why would you ask such a silly question?”, replied Lady in disgust and with a very much offended tone.

“Burn me.. Please..”, the girl said and suddenly prostrated herself, once again..

..and wept!

“Burn me.. Burn me and free this world off me!..”

Udoorin, Bremorel, Gnine, and Laila stared at the wretched sight before them.

Lady Magella’s eyes teared, for her first assessment of the girl had been correct. Too correct. The girl was unbelievably traumatized.

Aager only looked at the girl with an unfathomable and barely-contained expression.

He remembered Drashan and his own childhood, not that he’d had much of it. He remembered his mother, whose name he couldn’t even place anymore. Having remembered her, he inevitably recalled his sister. The sister that had been entrusted to him and then taken away from him, sold to some brothel, and burned alive in a horrible, unquenchable fire. He remembered all the vile people he’d cut there. Every single one of them. And he remembered the beatings and the whippings.. and the guillotine..

..and how he came to Serenity Home; secretly broken, hiding in his own traumas, untrusting, very nearly and murderously hateful.

Serenity Home had helped, somewhat.

Enough to have suppressed his base hatred for everything that had to do with life at least. It hadn’t been enough that all these kids, sans perhaps the she-dwarf, had been entrusted to him, and now this? He was never one to truly believe the greatness of the Heavens, but this? This had been a step gone too far. He felt like someone was having a great time punning him from the high above! Then he looked down at the girl. She seemed young and small, but her form, although battered, looked quite mature with ‘pleasant to look at’ sized breasts, a slim waist, ‘could use a pound or two more’ body, very dark, ‘funny’ hair (who would bun up their hair like that, anyway?) and a diminutive face, printed with slightly sharp and angular features..

Young Udoorin had been right on one point though; the girl was, indeed, quite pretty.. More so, Aager suspected, if she’d not been in the condition that she was now.

Many questions inevitably crossed his mind. Who was this girl? Again, why had she attacked them and why had she stopped? Why was she hissing and spitting at them like some pissed-off, feral cat? And why the bloody hell did she beg to be burned? Then it dawned on him as to why he had so unexpectedly felt some semblance of empathy for the girl..

For he had, unwittingly perhaps, found the one person who was far worse than he was.

How are they?”, the man in dark leathers growled as he approached the Temple Guardian who was hovering over the two figures, one tall, well built with long, strong arms and legs and with reddish-brown hair, and in plate armor crusted with mud, the other, a slight form with strange, dark, and conical hair braided around the sides of her head, with breasts just this side of buxom, a small, strawberry mouth in muddy and shredded clothes and they both were out.

While the tall paladin girl lay, quite rigid, where she slept, the other had curled into a little ball under the blankets Lady had spread over her and neither steered in their fitful sleep.

“There are resting. The little one is merely exhausted. Very, very exhausted. As for Lady Moira, I can’t say. I don’t know what she did to get herself comatose like this, the silly girl. I didn’t even dare to move her enough to take her armor off, not that I can. She is a paladin and unless she gives her express consent, no one may legally touch a paladin’s sword, shield, or armor.”, the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella replied with a frown.

She paused for a moment, stared up at the man in dark leathers with baleful eyes, and spoke like she would burn him with her words.

“If you tell me to get them ‘up and running’, you and I are going to have a problem, Drashan..”, she threatened. “Because I do not know what is wrong with the silly paladin, and there is nothing I can do about the exhaustion the other foolish girl is suffering.”

“As a matter of fact, I was merely going to ask you to have a look at the bump on my head since my vision will not stop spinning..”, growled Aager. “..but it would seem I shall have to forgo that, seeing as I would be putting myself in your tender wrath. No sane Drashan would willingly put themselves in such a foolish predicament.”

Lady Magella glared at him as the lean and somewhat ‘gaunt’ man in dark leathers turned around and walked away. She fumed and mumbled something about disrespectful, overly smart delinquent children, then frowned a bit and thought perhaps she ought to amend that because as far as she knew, the boy had never been disrespectful, outright or otherwise, to her or anyone else for that matter. Harsh, certainly, and brutal, but never disrespectful. One could even say, the boy displayed respect with mechanical accuracy! Then she fumed some more and thought she ought to amend the part where he was a delinquent too, for the boy had never been accused of any unlawful behavior, and then she was left with nothing in her hands to fume about other than the fact that he was from Drashan, which was not a fault, but fate, and he just didn’t like to make friends, which, in all candor, wasn’t a fault either, even if it was, perhaps, a flaw in character.. if that..

“Kindness, leniency, forgiveness, and compassion, Demos always said.”, she fumed to herself.

“Come, boy.”, she called after the man in dark leathers with a slightly subdued voice.

Aager Fogstep stopped in his tracks and slowly he turned around.

“Sit.”, the Temple Guardian ordered, pointing right in front of her.

The man ghosted over and slowly, and carefully, he lowered himself to the ground.

“The mask and the hood. Off with them.”, she said gruffly.

Aager stared at her.

“The mask stays.”, he growled.

“You want my help, you will remove your mask, and your hood, boy. I can not know the extent of your injury without checking the whole of your head. Now, take off your mask. But if you think you have something to hide, you should know, young man, we already know your face.”, she scowled at him.

“We?”, Aager asked.

Lady Magella’s face turned a bit red but she did not elaborate.

“Ahh.. I wasn’t aware the good temple and the people that worked there kept tabs and spied on the citizens of Serenity Home.”, the man in dark leathers said, then, slowly, he removed his hood, then undid the leather thongs holding his half-mask, and removed that as well to reveal a face, scarred but asymmetrically handsome. He had short hair, wet and plastered to his scalp due to long hours under his leather hood, and once removed, he displayed a tight, moderated grin under his half-mask. A grin that certainly didn’t do any justice to what a grin should have entailed. His nose was straight and prominent, though it gave the impression that it had been broken at least twice and ‘fixed’ by the boy himself.

Lady Magella’s face darkened.

“We do not spy on people, young man.”, she very nearly snarled. “But we do keep tabs on those who have the potential for greatness.. or great evil.. Such is our responsibility.”

“I.. see..”, Aager said, his grin turning into something ‘evil’.

“And to think I was thus casual with the lives of the people around me. Perhaps I should have attended to your temple a lot more frequently just to get the know-how on convolution if nothing else.”

Lady Magella’s face went even darker.

“Don’t be coy.”, she said harshly at him, as she reached out and tenderly touched the large lump on the back of his head. “And don’t try to act innocent. We know all about you and your past.”

“Huh.”, Aager grunted.

“Tell me. Would you have offered information about yourself had we asked?”, she scowled and she noted the many scars on the young man’s scalp, hidden under his short, wet hair.

“Your question seems a bit moot, don’t you think, Temple Guardian? Since you have already scried and divined my past.”, he replied quietly.

“How would you know about scrying or divining? Or that we would use such methods?”, she scowled at the back of his head.

“I doubt you could have found a single man alive that would have told you anything conclusive about me, or my past, Lady, for I left none alive. That would leave you with few options, which would be scrying or divining.. or both. Seeing as how it is against the King’s Citizens Rights and Privacies Act which clearly says ‘Everyone is allowed to their own privacy and non may be spied nor scried upon without a magistrate’s express permission and with legally acceptable and plausible cause.’, and seeing as how your Serenity Home does not have any magistrates, I suppose that would put us both on equal grounds where delinquency is concerned, wouldn’t you agree?”, the man in dark leathers said with his grating voice, but his grin was gone now.

Lady Magella’s face turned truly ugly now. And she breathed down the young man’s neck. Not only was the boy smart, but he had also done his homework and had actually learned the King’s Laws. Not even the town guards knew about King’s Citizens Rights and Privacies Act, let alone the ones pertaining to scrying or divining! And he was as cunning and ruthless as a Ritual Lynx in his application of said law.

“You still haven’t answered the question as to how you would even know about scrying, or divining?”, she scowled.

“Didn’t see that in your crystal ball? Perhaps you did not ask the right questions to the Great Heavens. Or you did, but they thought you had crossed the line and refused to comply. Or maybe they thought bothering them for such acts of delinquency was unacceptable?”, Aager replied, and his evil grin had returned.

“We don’t do crystal balls!”, Lady spluttered, then flared. “And you have a minor fracture on your head. I will heal this and you will never talk of scrying or divination to anyone. Are we clear, young man?”

“Are you trying to bribe a representative of the law, Temple Guardian? If you are, I feel the need to remind you that it is against the law to bribe any member of the law enforcement no matter his origins. I would also like to inform you that your offer of bribe is a tad low. The loss of a Drashan convict due to blunt-force trauma on the head is a small loss in the eyes of the Great Heavens, I am sure.”, the man in dark leathers growled amusedly. “But I suppose I shall have to settle with the underhanded compliment that you would think me as ‘potential for greatness.. or great evil.’ I, on the other hand, would not have described myself as someone with potential, great or otherwise.”

“And you would describe yourself, how?”, the she-dwarf scowled as she walked around the man, held his face between her hands, and started murmuring some prayers.

“I am a simple man, Temple Guardian. There is nothing special about me. I am, at best, a troubleshooter and the only thing notable about what I do is, I do it with accuracy. Anyone who would bother to show such tenacity could do what I do.”, Aager growled, then frowned a bit for he felt something wash over him; a wave of cool relief, perhaps? He wasn’t quite sure how to describe it. But he felt his dizziness fade and his mind clear as his throbbing headache subsided.

‘So, the Temple Guardian knows her job.’, he mused. True, she had accompanied them when they had gone on a punitive mission against the ogres at Oger’s Foot and seen her heal several injured guards there. And again, he had watched her heal the ranger girls, Laila and Morel when they had been ambushed by the orc-like creature, but he, himself, had never been ‘healed’ by her before.

Yes. He would have to make sure she was always ‘up and running’, if he wanted this company to return back to Serenity Home, ‘alive and functional.’

“I do not believe you are as simple as you claim, young man. And you certainly have tenacity and accuracy in the plenty, and in everything you do. Which is the point.”, the she-dwarf said, still holding his face in her hands.

“There is a point, then.”, growled Aager.

“No one can be tenacious and accurate in everything they do.”, she said with a frown.

“The sheriff shows similar attributes, Lady. So do the ranger masters, and given enough time, so will rangers Laila and Morel, if they could overcome their personal issues.”, he grated dismissively.

“The good sheriff is tenacious and careful, but he lacks the conviction to kill. The ranger masters only care about the dangers without but not the dangers within. And even if they did care, they do not have the right kind of perspective, nor do they have the correct frame of mind to deal with the details of the civilized crime. As for the young ranger girls, yes, given enough time, they might achieve the tenacity and the careful accuracy that you possess, should they get over their personal issues, which is the point. Again.”, Lady Magella said.

“So there is a further point.”, Aager said bemusedly.

“You have the conviction to kill, the right perspective, the correct frame of mind, and the ability to figure that our young ranger girls have personal issues by only having read their files. You have the singular skill to deduce, and the will to take action, and should it be necessary, to kill.”, she replied, still frowning at the scarred face.

“Huh.”, the man in dark leathers grunted. “That is an odd assessment coming from a Temple Guardian of Life, Lady..”

“I revere life, Master Aager. I do not worship it. People believe death is the end. Yes, it is an end, but it is not the end. Life and death are not so extricated from one another. Neither has meaning without the other, and either needs the other to give meaning to themselves, for life is more when you know it will, one day, end.”

“Huh.”, Aager grunted again. “You are staring into my eyes. Perhaps you expect to find some human emotions or some semblance of compassion in there?”

“One can not have compassion, let alone any human emotions, if one stubbornly denies them of themselves, young man.”, the she-dwarf sniffed disdainfully, then, with a ‘belligerent’ smile, she added, “I am staring into your eyes because you have dark, intense, and pretty eyes, Master Aager. You shouldn’t hide them behind a mask and a stinking hood.”

“Huh.”, Aager grunted for the third time. “I am sure there are easier, if not believable, ways to tell me I need a bath, Temple Guardian.”

“I am sure you are going to burn some young woman’s heart with those eyes someday.”, she smiled again, and this time, she wasn’t frowning.

“I doubt, Temple Guardian. I have no wish to further burden myself, nor do I need any such foolish distractions. Are we done here?”, he grated and suddenly, a dark and ugly expression settled on his face.

Lady Magella’s frown reappeared and she sighed.

“We are done here.”, she said and dropped her hands, and soon enough, there was only the sinister-looking man with his hood and half-mask standing before her. “You should get some sleep while you can, Master Aager. We will be staying here until both the girls are ‘up and running.’”

“I will want to question the girl the moment she wakes up.”, Aager growled, turning to stare at the strange, curled-up girl.

“I would rather you didn’t, young man. It is clear she is severely traumatized. Not to mention, she has some serious magical powers.”, the she-dwarf objected.

Aager fumed. It would seem they were getting one delay after another at every turn and constantly falling behind.

“You saw what she did last night, boy.”, Lady Magella reminded him. “She literally dismantled our whole company and I doubt we would have all survived had she not stopped.”

“Perhaps you can question her. She seemed to trust you.”, he grated.

“I certainly will not interrogate a little girl!”, the she-dwarf flared in disgust.

“She seems like a fully grown woman, Lady. I am sure she will survive.”, Aager growled.

“I do not believe she is as old as she seems, Master Aager. It is possible she is an early bloomer. Or perhaps a late one. She is not human. Perhaps a half-elf. I can’t be sure and I refuse to pry.”, Lady Magella said frowning down at the sleeping girl. “And she is terrified. I do not know of what, but what you witnessed last night was not a moment’s panic. It was an accumulated reaction.”

Now it was time for the man in dark leathers to frown. He, too, stared down at the young woman. Indeed, she seemed to have all the earmarks of youth despite her tattered clothes, her funny, conical, matted hair, and her mud-covered face and arms. Aager noted the mud on her feet as well.

They were tiny feet.

“Where are her shoes?”, he growled.

“She didn’t have any.”, the Temple Guardian replied.

“So we know nothing about her.”, Aager said flatly. “Who she is, where she is from, why she attacked us, or why she even stopped..”

“We do know, for some reason, she thinks she is a demon, or that she has one inside of her.”, she said with a worried tone.

“Is that even possible?”, the man in dark leathers growled.

“It is. Though I have never seen nor witnessed such a case. I do not, however, think she is.. A demon, I mean. Nor do I believe she is possessed by one.”, Lady Magella said.

“Why?”, Aager growled.

“Her aura..”, she replied simply.

“What of it?”

“It is there. I can feel it. But it is neither bright nor dark. And there is the known fact that demons, or someone possessed by one, can not, so arbitrarily approach a paladin. Yet she did. She came and threw herself, prostrated, really, right before Lady Moira. Yes, she is, for the lack of a better word, ‘odd’. But that could be due to many reasons and none of them need to be demonic in nature.”, the Temple Guardian explained.

“Do we have the time to figure that out? We are not exactly out on a stroll, Lady. And our query is already three days ahead of us now. If he manages to find his way out of this forest and get his hands on a horse, it is over.”, Aager said in his low, gravelly voice.

“Have faith, I would say, but you have lost yours a long time ago, Master Aager. That is a problem.”, she told him sternly.

“Perhaps. I would suggest you compensate for the lack of my faith by adding more to yours.”, he replied, slowly got up, gave both the girls a long, hard look, then growled, “Rangers Laila and Morel..”

The two ranger girls approached the man in dark leathers, giving the unconscious paladin concerned looks, and their ‘odd visitor’ a wide berth.

“I would like both of you to scout this area, two hundred yards, and set up a safety perimeter. Take young Udoorin with you. And Master Gnine as well.”, he grated at them.

Laila and Morel looked at one another.

“We could do the scouting and the safety perimeter better without civilian involvement.”, Laila objected, paused, then added, “Sir!”

“There are no longer any civilians here, Ranger Laila. As of now, everyone is a combatant and I want all of them to be able to protect themselves while defending the camp where we have a Temple Guardian busy with two people who are otherwise unable to defend themselves, let alone defend others, and one of which is an unknown, and dangerous entity. Learning how to survive outside the safety of his town is something I can not teach young Udoorin when there are two rangers who can do it better. And I believe it is time Master Gnine learned to carry more than his own weight and be of some use.”, Aager growled.

“That is harsh.”, Morel scowled at him. “Gnine did help when that creature attacked us.”

“If shooting tiny, flint-sparks at a creature that can knock down two, well-trained rangers and still be able to go toe to toe against young Udoorin on sheer brute strength, is the best Master Gnine can do, perhaps he does need some training, wouldn’t you agree, Ranger Morel? Or perhaps you would rather cuddle him and then watch him get slaughtered when we face more of the same, or worse. Either way, I care little about his peril. If you truly care for your friend, you should teach him how to survive what he might face, just like your ranger master did to you, and I can’t imagine Moorat having cuddled you.”, he replied in a low, grilling tone.

“Why do you hate him so much?”, she asked as she glared at him.

Laila put one hand on her cousin’s shoulder but she shrugged it off.

“No, cuzz. If there is some ongoing grudge or animosity here, we ought to know.”, she said stubbornly.

“‘Grudge’ and ‘animosity’ are things you are much better versed than anyone else here, Ranger Morel. When I say, ‘I care little’, I mean exactly that. But I would rather he return back to his uncle, safe, intact, and functional. As for hate. No, Ranger Morel, I do not hate Master Gnine. You must care enough about someone to truly hate them. I do not. I will, however, not tolerate any idleness, distraction, or uselessness on his part either. Everyone in this company was selected for a reason and a purpose. He was not. He came on his own persistence and his own volition. I decided to turn a blind eye to this because I respect his uncle, but not enough to tolerate the foolishness of his niece. If Master Gnine can not offer anything unique for this mission, he is two things I am not willing to tolerate; a burden and a distraction.”, the man in dark leathers almost snarled.

Laila frowned at him. Although what the man had said was true, in a very, very practical sense, the way he’d delivered it had also been very brutal. Bremorel’s face just darkened. It seemed like she wanted to say some things but other than some incomprehensible splutters, nothing really came out.

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila snapped to attention as she grabbed her cousin by the arm and dragged her away before she said something stupid.

“I so hate that man.”, Bremorel seethed when they were out of earshot.

“No, you don’t, cuzz. You are only very, very, very, very pissed off at him, that’s all.”, Laila said with an amused tone.

“So, very, very, very, very, does not constitute as hate, now?”, her cousin spat irritably.

“No, Bree. It does not. I know you. You are always angry at something, or someone, but you never really hate them. And you are only angry with Master Aager because he keeps slapping you down.”, Laila said placatingly.

“Whose side are you anyway?”, Bremorel asked ‘angrily’, and glared at her cousin.

“I am always on your side, cousin. Always. But if you’d stop going ballistic on him all the time, he wouldn’t slap you down the way he does. He does the same thing to everyone who shows him their teeth. Even to Lady Magella.. just.. you know.. politely.”, Laila replied calmly.

Bremorel was just about to go into a long, hot tirade about that when her cousin cut in.

“Look. Assume he is a sling rubber, alright? That’s what I do. The more you pull and stretch it, the harder it snaps back!”, she said with an amused tone.

Bremorel stood where she was with this weird expression on her face for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Girl, you are wicked.”, she said finally.

“A bit, yes. But I’d like to see it as being practical. Less of a hassle that way. Next time, don’t bark at him or try to bite him. Not that you are going to win at barking or biting against a Drashan. Do your objections calmly and see how that goes. Try it. I am sure you will see I am right. I mean, you have already tried your way and it clearly isn’t working. And since you don’t like being slapped down, at least this way, you won’t.”, Laila advised coolly.

“I refuse to kiss his arse!”, her cousin said hotly.

“Bree, if you are implying that I am kissing his.. ‘whatever’.. you and I are going to have a serious spat.”, she said with exasperation.

“I am not going to fight with you over that man.”, Bremorel growled angrily.

“Smart of you not to. Considering neither of us wants to date him.”, Laila said with an amused expression.

Bremorel snorted.

“Yeah, like anyone would want to date that guy.”, she scoffed.

“C’mon, girl.. Let’s go get Udoorin and Gnine and teach them some rudimentary survival skills, shall we?”, Laila said.

“Why does this feel like a chore?”, her cousin asked sourly.

“Hey, don’t be like that. What we teach those two might very well end up saving their lives.”, Laila said with a serious tone.

“I know. And as sad as it sounds, Udoorin will actually learn some things. At least he will give it his best. But I can’t imagine Gnine not turning this into a joke.”, Bremorel replied with a pinched face.

“Well, you can always threaten to stuff him into your pocket if he does.”, Laila smiled.

“Eww, girl. I am not putting him anywhere near my pockets. Can you imagine the kind of pranks he might pull in there?”, her cousin said with a horrified tone.

I understand the part where I need to be careful where I put my step so as not to destroy existing prints, but I don’t understand the difference, or rather, I don’t see the difference between your footprint and Bremorel’s.”, Udoorin was saying as he stared down at the two, ‘same’ imprints in the dirt.

Laila sighed.

Teaching Udoorin how to look for prints, and differentiate them had turned out to be a lot harder than she’d thought it would be. Then she remembered how patient her ranger master, Davien, had been with her during her initiation period and she sighed again.

“Those two imprints are nothing alike. Laila’s feet are smaller than Bremorel’s.”, Gnine piped from the side, then hastily added, “Not that your feet are big, Bree, it’s just elf feet are generally smaller than human feet and they are narrower.”

“And you would know this, how?”, Bremorel asked him, giving him a level gaze.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that, OK? I notice things.”, the little gnome said.

“You.. notice things..”, she said flatly.

“Yes, I do. For example, your hips are narrower than Laila’s. But then, you are much younger than she is.”, Gnine continued, not knowing he was suddenly preparing his own grave!

“That so?”, Laila asked, and now, she was also giving the little gnome a similar, level gaze.

“Hey, it isn’t my fault you got wider hips, girl. But then, Bremorel usually skipped meals when she was young because she was too busy picking fights with boys. You didn’t. So that might have something to do with it.” Gnine trampled on.

“Gnine.”, Udoorin rumbled.

“What?”, Gnine said irritably.

“For a smart gnome, you really are not.”, the young man said.

Gnine stared at him.

“So the whole idea of footprints is about the size of the imprint?”, the big, burly man asked, pressing on.

“Yes, and no. True that the size of the footprint matters, but it isn’t limited to it.”, Laila replied. “Many different factors come into play.”

“Such as?”, asked Udoorin.

“Such as the length, the width, the depth, the kind of boots the person you are tracking is wearing, which affects the length, the width, and the depth of the imprint, along with the type of ground the print is on. For example, on a stone floor, you will get prints only if there is some dust. On gravel, you might end up not getting any prints, but only dislocated stones or pebbles, much like you will get different results on dirt if it is dry versus the same dirt if it were damp, more so if it is muddy. The same foot will leave different depth and width, and sort of a ‘drag’ if they are running as opposed to walking. The impressions left behind will change if they are carrying extra weight, or you will end up with a different set of prints from the same person if he were, say, limping, and so on..”, she tried to explain.

“Wow. When you dish out all these details, what you are doing becomes much more awesome. And makes you look a lot cooler.”, the young man said with a ‘very much impressed’ tone. “No wonder Master Aager was so persistent in wanting the two of you rather than any of the other rangers.”

“Did he, now?”, Bremorel asked with a cynical pinch.

“Yes. I was there when he, my father, and the ranger masters, Davien and Moorat were arguing about it. The ranger masters didn’t want to send you two, but Master Aager insisted. Said, ‘I want them, or you can go and track down those assassins on your own and leave Serenity Home vulnerable to more attacks.’”, Udoorin said.

Both Laila and Bremorel stared at him in silent astonishment.

“That didn’t settle well with Ranger Master Moorat, though. He said, if the town guards had done their job, they wouldn’t be in this mess, to begin with, and Master Aager told him, had the ranger masters done their job, the miscreants wouldn’t have been able to come anywhere near the town, let alone enter it, seeing as they were carrying a bloody heavy object with them and through their forest!

“I thought Moorat was going to draw blade on him, then and there. He was so angry. As if that wasn’t enough, Master Aager told them, ‘I want them because I need a new set of eyes, seeing as the old ones have failed Serenity Home thus thoroughly!’”

And now, both the ranger girls were staring at him quite and quietly petrified.

“How is it that Master Aager is still alive?”, Bremorel blurted.

“Well, my father intervened at that point and told my uncle to give in gracefully and to give Master Aager the ranger novices and make less of an embarrassment of himself. But let me tell you, I have never seen Uncle Moorat that angry before. Even Ranger Master Davien got angry once it clicked on him as to what was going on and he said, ‘That was not nice, Master Aager. We work day and night to keep Serenity Home and its surrounding fields and lands safe.’, but Master Aager cut in and said, ‘I am fully aware of your tenacity, seeing as I receive your reports on this matter, which I have no doubt are accurate and current but are sorely deficient and are glaringly inconclusive. Perhaps you believe holding back on information pertaining to the safety of your town gives you some entitlements I am not aware of. It does not. And last night’s attack was the proof of that misconception and we all suffered its consequences. That aside, I doubt the events of last night were some small-time payback, but something much more convoluted, yet elusive, and will likely take us far beyond the limits of your jurisdiction. Neither of you can leave for such an extended time, much like neither of you will take orders from SIS because neither of you believes its importance, bringing us back to my reason for asking for the esteemed ranger novices, Laila and Morel, whom I have had the privilege to work before. I need a fresh set of eyes that are not, as yet, petrified in their ways, and are more likely to have an open mind than either of you.’”, Udoorin said with a broad grin.

Laila and Bremorel were now, utterly stupefied.

And just when they had thought they had figured the man in dark leathers. They were so confounded, that they didn’t know whether to feel mortified that he had, indeed, chosen them specifically and that he felt ‘privileged’ for it or to feel anger at his level of ruthlessness.

“I am sorry, guys.”, Udoorin said. “But you can not judge, nor try to comprehend Master Aager. Neither of you has the reliable reference points to truly understand him. I mean, I have been under his tutorage for like, five years now, and I still don’t get him. I am not sure if all Drashans are like him or not, but something tells me he would stand out even among those cutthroats and pirates. Being a murderer is not all that difficult, even if you are very good at it. Him? He has lived at the very edge of ‘I have survived today. Must have a new plan for tomorrow.’, every single day of his life. That is the kind of life he lived until father brought him here and still, as ruthless and ‘dead-inside’ as he may be, he isn’t some maniac. True, that he might feel little remorse for ending up killing someone, but he never kills without reason, and he never does it for the fun of it. He owes my father a debt of honor, and it’s all about fulfilling that debt, which is to say, keeping ‘our’ town safe, and that is all he lives for. Anything else is chalked off as a ‘distraction’ for him. That being said, about these tracks..”

The ranger girls stared at him, then at one another.
Gnine was sort of chewing on his digits and he had a distinctly pinched expression on his face.

“Check out my footprint. What does that tell you?”, he said smartly as he stomped on the soft dirt, to sort of change the subject.

“It’ll likely tell me there is a no-good gnome around?”, Bremorel said with an amused expression. Then she frowned. Slowly, she knelt down and inspected the small impression in the moist dirt.

“Come look at this, cousin.”, she said, as her frown deepened.

Curious, Laila also knelt down and stared at the print.

“What?”, Gnine asked. “What do you see?”

“Hmm..”, Laila mused, also frowning now.

“What?”, the little gnome repeated. “What do you see, dammit?”

“What happened?”, Udoorin asked, also curious. “What’s happening, Laila?”

“This is odd.”, Laila frowned. “What do you think, cuzz?”

“What, dammit?”, Gnine fumed in frustration.

“I am thinking, what you are thinking.”, Bremorel replied, then turned to face the little gnome. “Where did you say you came from, Gnine? I mean, before you and your uncle came to Serenity Home.”

“A small village at Tinker Hills, why?”, Gnine asked, a bit irked.

“No.”, Laila said.

“No? No, what?”, he said, a frown of his own appearing on his face.

“You are not from Tinker Hills, Gnine. I know what a Tinker Hill gnome’s footprint looks like, and this is not the imprint of a hill or a forest gnome.”, she said, staring at him and the impression in the dirt.

“What does that mean?”, Udoorin asked.

“What are you saying?”, Gnine piped, and there was a tint of sudden panic in his tenoric voice now.

“She is saying exactly what she is saying..”, Bremorel replied. “You are not from Tinker Hills because all the gnomes there are either hill, or rarely, forest gnomes, and both of us have been there enough many times to have seen their footprints.”

“What! You think we lied to everyone?”, Gnine said angrily. “I am telling you, girl, I mean, my uncle used to travel a lot, but I was born and raised there. I still would have been there, had it not been for the firedamp accident that took out our whole village. I was stuck under the dirt and debris for days!”

“I am sorry, Gnine.”, Laila said kindly. “I didn’t mean to bring up old wounds.”

“Yeah, what she said.”, Bremorel added. “We are just telling you as we see it and these prints do not belong to a hill or forest gnome. I have never seen gnome prints like these before in my life.”

“I don’t understand, Bree? Gnine isn’t a gnome?”, Udoorin asked incredulously.

“No, dammit, of course, he is a gnome. Just not a hill or forest gnome.”, she replied irritably.

Laila was giving Gnine an appraising look.

Gnine on the other hand had a harassed and freaked-out expression on his otherwise mischievous face.

To her surprise, she also saw ‘fear’ in his eyes.

Laila had no idea why her little gnome friend was suddenly afraid, or what it was that he was afraid of, but there it was..

“He might belong to some sub-race of a hill or forest gnomes we are not aware of, Bree. Just because we don’t think he is either, might easily mean nothing. Tracking isn’t an exact science, after all.”, she said.

Bremorel gave her a, ‘What are you talking about, girl!’, sort of look to see her cousin shake her head, very slightly.

“Right.”, she said, picking up on her gesture and added.. lamely.. “What she said. I mean, we are kinda new rangers after all.. barely out of novicing!”

“Novicing?”, Udoorin asked. “Is that a real word?”

“I suppose it is.”, Bremorel replied glibly, her face going slightly pink. Then she coughed and continued. “Reading tracks is more of an art. Time, careful attention to detail, and repetition will fine-tune and hone your skills, just like it is with everything else.”

“Smooth twist.”, Laila smirked quietly at her. “Now then, we are not going to go into too many details and the finer points of tracking at this moment. We will just show you what to look for, then call us to do the reading.”

And the two ranger girls showed young Udoorin and a very much ‘silent’ little gnome where to look for tracks, how to avoid disrupting current tracks, and how to leave minimal tracks of their own for the next several hours..

By the time the sun had set, Laila had shot several rabbits and not a few quail. Udoorin was building up the bonfire with the logs he had chopped from the fallen tree, and he was carefully feeding it into the merrily crackling fire.

Bremorel, along with her cousin, and Lady had cleaned up the hunt and stuck them on iron skewers, and were now placing them next to the fire.

Aager sat a few yards off to one side, somewhat hidden in the shadows of a tree and some bushes, carefully watching the forest while keeping an eye on their new ‘guest’.

Gnine was nowhere to be seen, though Laila and Bremorel knew he was, not quite hiding, but had isolated himself behind another tree on the other side of the camp, silently, and possibly, seethingly contemplating his past.

The ranger girls hadn’t pushed their ‘very unexpected’ finding, and after so many years of being friends with the little gnome. They hadn’t had the time to talk over it, but suddenly, nothing around them seemed as they should, or the way they thought they were, and none of them seemed to be carved into stone anymore and that bothered them. Irked them, even.

Quite a bit.

Had this been why ‘that Aager-guy’ had wanted them for? ‘A need for a fresh set of eyes that are not, as yet, petrified in their ways, and are more likely to have an open mind..’, he’d said.. apparently.. And you never quite knew someone until you did one of several things with them; traveled with them, fought with them, or.. fought against them! Perhaps the latter was why he was aggravating everyone around him the way he did. Or more likely, he was aggravating without trying but using it to his advantage anyway..

Yes, Laila thought. That seemed more like ‘that Aager-guy’.

Then there was the footprint issue. Gnine’s footprint, to be more precise. True, the little gnome had been her friend since she was twelve or so and Bremorel’s friend since her cousin was no older than four.. Soon after her father had been informed that she had been brought and placed at the Serenity Home orphanage. To be totally honest about it though, there had always been something about their little friend. Him and his uncle, Nimbletyne Tinkerdome. Rumors had it, they had arrived at Serenity Home one day, and after a quick exchange of coin and deed, his uncle had literally bought off the bit of land, along with the shop, and the house above it, that they had settled in —much to everyone’s surprise because Serenity Home was not a cheap town.

Then Master Nimbletyne had brought in workers from as far away as Arashkan and had the shop and the house above it torn down, and in no more than a month or so, had them build a whole new workshop three stories high with living quarters and all! True to its perspective, Serenity Home had held on to its ideals; ‘Anyone who came in peace would find peace’, hence, no one had bothered nor interrogated the ‘inventor’, as he’d declared himself to be.

People, be it humans, elves, dwarves, or, naturally, gnomes, however, were sentiently curious beings, hence they talked.. about ‘that gnome and his niece!’ Master Nimbletyne had been a pleasantly charming gnome with the air of a well-educated and well-preserved personality. He had gotten along very well with his neighbors and Serenity Home in general. He’d gotten along with the sheriff and the mayor as well. So much so that he had even become a member of the town’s councilmen. He was smart, intelligent, polite, too polite with the ladies in particular, and other than two specific incidents, he never got on the wrong side of the law; the first had been with another councilman, Haradin Franderson, which no one had taken seriously because, to put it politely, everyone with an ounce of sense would end up, one way or another, on the councilman’s wrong side.

Haradin Franderson was that kind of irritating man.

The other person to have had a beef with the very civilized and cultured gnome had been no other than Moorat Maelstrom when the disreputable ranger master had stuck Nimbletyne’s niece, Gnine, into a sack and dumped him on his doorstep and had told him to keep ‘the little midget’ out from under their feet or they wouldn’t be responsible if they stepped on him!

The ‘incident report’ on the matter filled out by Sheriff Standorin, who was Moorat’s brother-in-law, had been a bit vague since neither the ranger master nor the fuming gnome had pressed any charges, and neither had they been all that forthcoming but rather, and quite lamely, explained it off as ‘a mere small misunderstanding between two civilized people’ —a statement the sheriff would have, maybe, found plausible had only Master Nimbletyne and some other random townsman had been involved.

Moorat, however, was not a civilized man no matter how one stretched the word!

Eyewitness testimonies in the incident report said, and quote; ‘He went ballistic on the ranger master! And clubbed him down into the ground, hissing and spitting something about never laying hands on his niece again!’

No matter how cordial either party had been afterward, the sheriff had not taken the idea of people publicly clubbing one another very well. Not in his town. But since neither party would say anything on the matter, the dispute had inevitably been dropped, but not quite forgotten..

..not by the sheriff, and not by Moorat.

And in all likeliness, not by the otherwise very calm, very civilized, and ‘pleasantly charming’ gnome, though he had never made mention of it afterward, and neither had he held any grudge against the ranger master.

Known to only Sheriff Standorin was the little confession Moorat had given him late one evening when he had come to visit his brother-in-law, in confidence, and off the record;

“Dammit, Stan.. I saw murder in his eyes.. Like, real murder!”

It had likely been one of the only two times the sinister-looking ranger master had been so freaked out in his entire life. The first had been when his sister, Limnia Karya, Sheriff Standorin’s wife, and young Udoorin’s mother had died.

For Laila, however, most of that was hearsay at best or mere rumors. The young half-elf ranger never really turned a blind eye to gossip. But she had always been a bit on the stoic side about it as well. Laila preferred facts. Solid, tangible facts. Which was probably why she seldom lost her ‘cool’ —as in, emotions scrambled with her good sensibilities and better judgment! And said facts told her; that her little friend was not a hill or forest gnome. What he might be, she couldn’t say, but ‘to her knowledge’ of the gnome also explained great many of his peculiarities. Gnomes in general were an industrious lot. They were curious about everything.. to a fault.. Their reputation for causing trouble, or always having the potential for it was not because they had some innate delinquent tendencies but due to their unquenchable sense of curiosity —mostly!

Gnine? Gnine’s understanding of curiosity was unlike anything she had ever seen before. He was proactive, mischievous, and ever pranking —to the point of turning something that would have otherwise resulted in mild irritation.. to open wrath! He was very loyal to his friends, true, but he always seemed to push things to the point of self-destruction. And he always seemed to watch and observe others and, well, for the lack of a better word, impersonate them, not in character, but in essence.. as if he was looking, or even seeking something others had that he thought he lacked, and he did it with some deep-seated, inner desperation or urge.

Apparently, whatever it was he was seeking, the little gnome hadn’t found it yet..

Laila had no intentions of pestering her friend on the matter of his odd origins, but it certainly irked her to no end. She would have to warn her cousin not to pester him either. As much as the little gnome liked to laugh, something told her that when provoked, he would show similar ‘murder in his eyes’ attitude, much like his uncle had.

Don’t touch me!”, hissed the young woman and glared at Lady Magella, going so far as to try to bite her hand!

“You will stop this nonsense now, girl, or by the Great Heavens, I will turn you over and spank you until you cry ‘uncle!’”, the she-dwarf said sternly.

It was mid-morning the next day when the young woman had awoken. She had risen from her curled-up position with bleary eyes and a groggy expression on her face. She stared around as if trying to remember something until she’d spotted Lady Moira sleeping right next to her. She had ogled at the young woman, still in her plate armor, for a dull moment of confusion, then, and as if pinched or even jabbed by a needle, she had yelped to her feet, stumbled, and promptly fallen on her butt. It was then Lady Magella had knelt down beside her to kindly lend a hand and help her up, but the girl had hissed at her with a vicious, “Don’t touch me!”, and had tried to bite her!

And now the young woman was half-hidden under the blankets the Temple Guardian had used to cover her the night before and was staring at her through feral, suspicious, and scared eyes.

“What is ‘uncle?’”, she asked, her face still full of the same feral expression, but also confused, as one of her slender hands slipped out of the blanket and she touched her conical hair as if wanting to make sure they were still there or that it hadn’t been messed up. Apparently, she was a woman who cared about her appearance despite her tattered clothes.

Lady frowned, for it wasn’t precisely what the girl had said that had sent a shiver down her spine, as odd a question as it had been. It had been her voice; there was absolutely no sentience whatsoever in her small, scared, and totally confused voice!

“You don’t know what an uncle is?”, she asked carefully.

“I do not.”, she replied, and her tone was cold and flat now. “Is it a stick?”

Nope!

The girl truly had no idea what an ‘uncle’ was.

But.. why had she thought it was a ‘stick’, of all things?
“An uncle is either your father’s or your mother’s brother.”, she told her.

The young woman gave her a skeptical look.

“I don’t think so.”, she replied declaratively and bitterly. “My Father had no brother. And my mother was killed. If she had a brother, he is equally guilty as those that killed her because he never came to help save her, so why would I cry ‘uncle?’ Perhaps you have an uncle that hits you with a stick!”

“If any of my uncles hit me with a stick, I am thinking that would be the last thing they did in life. That’s if they survive my mother.”, Lady said with a bemused expression on her face.

The girl stared at her for a long moment with mistrust, incomprehension, and confusion clearly etched on her face.

“Are you going to burn me?”, she asked suddenly!

“Now why would I burn you, girl?”, the she-dwarf asked, both appalled and irritated.

“I am demon. You should burn me!”, the girl said.

“We do not burn demons, we exorcise them back to Hell. But I doubt you are a demon. If you were, you wouldn’t be able to sit, let alone sleep, next to a paladin.”, Lady replied, trying to curb her irritation. Whoever this girl was, she wasn’t just odd, she was direly traumatized and the Temple Guardian suddenly wanted to get her hands on the people who’d done this to her. Some of what she felt must have shown on her face because the young woman leaned back and pulled her blanket all the way up to her nose.

“Are you going to stone me, then? It hurts but I do not mind the stoning. But if you whip me, I will run away.”, she said, and her feral expression returned.

“What? What are you talking about, girl? I do not stone or whip people. I am a Temple Guardian of Life. I have not hit anyone for the last twenty years and more.”, Lady said, trying to sound calm.

“Did you hit before that?”, the young woman asked, her voice slightly muffled behind the blankets.

“Yes. I wasn’t a Temple Guardian then. The last person I hit was my younger brother.”, the she-dwarf replied.

“Why did you hit your brother? Brother is blood.”, the girl said, staring intently at her.

“He wasn’t much of a brother.”, Lady replied, frowning slightly. “Now tell me, who stoned you?”

“Men. Many men. But not now. When I was small.”, the young woman replied harshly.

“Men? What men? When did they do this?”, Lady asked, now struggling to keep her calm.

“They are not here. They are far to the north and west of here.”, she replied flatly. “Where are.. the others? I saw two.. girls.. Last night. And a big man.. and a small man.. and a dark man..”

“What men? Who stoned you, girl?”, the she-dwarf repeated herself..

..but the young woman did not reply. She just stared at her, waiting..

Lady sighed. The girl was not just odd. She was also a bit off.

“The two girls you saw last night are rangers from Serenity Home. Their names are Laila Wolvesbane and Bremorel Songsteel. The big man you saw was young Udoorin Shieldheart. He is the son of Serenity Home town’s sheriff, Standorin Shieldheart. The small one is a gnome. His name is Gnine Tinkerdome. They are all out in the forest making sure we are safe. I am a Temple Guardian from the same town and my name is Lady Magella. The paladin you saw last night and who is still sleeping is Lady Moire. She comes from Durkahan, a city far, far away from here. And the dark one you saw is Master Aager Fogstep. He is the right hand of the sheriff and he is a lawman. Some days ago, our town was attacked and some people burned some of our homes. The ranger girls found their tracks and we were sent to find these men. We found most of them, but they had already been killed by some things. We suspect one of these men escaped and we were trying to catch him when you.. found us last night.”

The young woman continued to stare at her, and Lady got the impression she was trying to understand, or perhaps, digest the things she’d just heard. And no. She wasn’t mulling over them, she just didn’t understand some of the things she’d just been told.

“I do not know what a lawman is, but the dark one is afool.”, she said finally.

Lady pursed her lips.

“Uhhmm.. A fool? I.. don’t know what to say to that.”, she replied, as a merry glint appeared in her eyes.

To be fair, Lady Magella hadn’t snorted once since she’d arrived at Serenity Home from Scowling Hills to become a Temple Guardian and her scowling stance was very nearly ruined at that moment. It was only her knowledge of the man in dark leathers that told her something wasn’t quite right about what the young woman had just said. After all, Master Aager was many things, to be sure. Being a fool just wasn’t one of his hallmarks..

“How do you mean?”, she asked carefully.

“He is always hidden. Even when not. He is far and he is near. Silent but not sneaking. He smells of sweat, iron, and death. He is like ghost, only deader!”, the girl said with a petrified expression.

Lady’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Wow’, she thought. ‘That was the most comprehensive description of Master Aager I have ever heard and she said it without even thinking!’
Then it dawned on her.

“Ow. You mean ‘aloof’..”, she said.

And to her surprise, the young woman’s face went pink, then turned to a beautiful, blooming red!

“Yes, that.. Afool..”, she repeated herself. “I can smell him. He is watching me. He must know.”

“Know? Know what?”, Lady asked. Conversing with this girl was truly tasking her.

“That he is not a good person. Perhaps he can kill me and free me of my demons.”

Lady sighed. They were back to square one, and back to the demons again.

“No one in this company will kill you, young lady. And if anyone so much as touches you, they shall have to answer to me first.”, she said trying very hard not to growl.

“Why?”, the girl asked, not with surprise or even with any form of curiosity.

She just.. asked!

“Because we belong to our own, girl. And only those that we allow may touch us. And we do not hurt people unless they try to hurt us.”, the she-dwarf replied and this time, she did growl.

“You tried to touch me. The big man tried to touch me. I tried to hurt you. I do not understand your rules.”, she said with a confused tone.

“I was trying to help you get up. The big man was trying to get you off the mud. And, I do not know why you tried to hurt us, but in the end, you stopped and no one got hurt.”, Lady tried to explain.

The young woman stared at her blankly.

“What is your name?”, Lady tried to change the subject. “Where do you live? Where did you come from? Who are your people? And.. why did you attack us, even though we meant you no harm.”

The girl pulled up her blanket a bit higher and hid her face. For a long time, she didn’t say anything. Then her small voice was heard.

“My name is Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane. I live.. I lived somewhere near where the wood elves used to live. But I can not go back there anymore. I.. I have no people. I only had my Father but he died. I.. I didn’t want to attack you, but I was angry because I thought you were the bad men who killed my Father. Are you going to hit me? I will hurt if you hit me but I won’t mind it. If you whip me I will hurt more but I will run away if you do.”, she mumbled.

Lady very nearly bit her tongue with rage upon hearing her small voice and how she so easily submitted to being beaten, stoned, or even being whipped. Just who had done that to the girl?

“Girl.. I mean, Inshala..”, she fumed, then paused. “You have a beautiful name.”

“I.. I do?”, the girl’s voice was heard.

“Yes. It means, ‘Heaven’s Willing’. What a dear, dear name you have. It is a blessed name.”

Nothing responded to that, but Lady got the impression that the young woman hiding behind the blanket was either blushing furiously, flustered, or petrified.

“And, we do not beat, stone, or whip people. Do you understand me?”

“I understand your words. But Mortals say one thing, do another.”, her small voice came from the blanket.

“Well..”, Lady said angrily. “..this dwarf does what she says.”

The girl drew her blanket down a little and her eyes and her nose were visible again.

“I do not understand. When will you hit me, then?”, she asked, quite baffled. “The men that hit me always told me they would hit me.”

Lady very nearly tore her hair out!

“Who was your father?”, she asked in total frustration.

“My father was Cathber Gwet’chen Bolgrig.”, she said quietly and her eyes shimmered. Then, large drops of tears came running down what was visible on her face and disappeared into the blanket.

Lady stumbled.

“What? What did you say, child?”, she rasped.

“My father was Cathber Gwet’chen Bolgrig and bad men came to our home and they killed him.”, she said with a morose expression as more tears came running down.

Lady felt incensed.

True, she had never met Master Cathber, but her grandfather, Argail Smitefast, and her mother, Margaret Madish, along with any number of her relatives certainly had, and he had been a major figure in Ritual Forest. Some even said the forest was his. Others, like her own master, Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand had told her, in confidence, that Master Cathber was the Ritual Guardian, though he had not gone into the details of what that might entail exactly. Lady, however, had gotten the impression that it entailed something big, as in, monumental.. and not only did this young woman claim to be his daughter, she was also saying he was dead —killed!

And then, something else clicked in her mind.

The girl had said, ‘I lived somewhere near where the wood elves used to live.’

“You said where the wood elves ‘used to live’. They do not live there anymore? Has something happened to them?”, she asked in near panic.

“Some few days ago, men with dark hearts and ill intents came sneaking out of the night. They killed my father while he was asleep. I was not there. I did not see it happen. Then they ran back into the night. The same night, some big, orc-like creatures appeared. Many of them. And they attacked the wood elf village and destroyed it. Some of them escaped, but it was much less than half of them..” the young woman said in the same, morose tone, and the she-dwarf just stared at her.

“..Once they had their fill for elf blood, they also ran and hid in the night.”, the girl continued. “I went after them and the dark men with the dark hearts. I traveled hard and found the men, but they had also been killed by these creatures before I could avenge my Father. So I went after the orc-like creatures, for they do not belong to my Father’s forest. And the other night, I finally found them. They thought they were smart when they ambushed sleepy elves. They thought they were cunning when they ambushed blind men with blind hearts in the night. But I showed them smart and cunning for I am demon and I am not blind in the night and I sleep awake, hence I ambushed them and I destroyed them all.”

Lady ogled at her. And more than a bit freaked out!

“I.. well.. that is good.. I suppose..”, she stuttered.

“No.”, the girl replied her eyes suddenly ablaze and there was a feral fire burning in them.

“It was terrible, and it was balance!”

Where did she go?”, Aager growled.

“I don’t know. We were talking and she became agitated towards the end and she just jumped up and ran off!”, Lady Magella said, her face a bit red.

“You let her get away.”, the man in dark leathers said. It wasn’t a question nor was it an accusation, but merely an observation.

The she-dwarf squinted at him as her face went darker.

“How was I supposed to know she would just take off? What did you expect me to do, put her in irons, perhaps?”, she flared.

“I trusted you to keep her here, upon your insistence and against my better judgment, Lady.”, he grated.

“That girl has suffered Hell in the hands of men. Under no circumstance was I going to bind her.”, Lady flared at him.

“Temple Guardian..”, Aager said lowering his voice. “..what took four of us to kill one creature, she destroyed single-handedly and according to you, not one or two, but a whole horde of them. Do you understand what that means? That girl has the potential to dismantle this company on a whim and we have just lost her. She could be anywhere. She could be watching us and debating whether she should finish what she started last night.”

“I am fully aware of just how dangerous she is. Or what kind of a danger she might pose. But I am not an interrogator nor am I a jailor. I spoke to her in hopes of putting her at ease. I told them who we were. I identified everyone here. It is possible she might not trust us but I do not think she will come after us again.”, Lady replied, glaring up at him.

“Well, that’s a relief. It is bloody hard trying to shake out of a chainmail while dodging lightnings.”, rumbled Udoorin.

“Good to know your priorities are in order!”, the she-dwarf snapped at him.

“You are aware, that you have given her everything she needed to know about us and single us out at her leisure..”, Aager said through gritted teeth.

“I told her we had two rangers and I told her of their names. I do not think she will go after them. If she is the daughter of Master Cathber as she claimed to be, she will have respect for them because Master Cathber certainly had. And if I recall, it was him, who gave Laila and little Morel their titles, Wolvesbane and Songsteel.”, she replied harshly.

“She is right.”, Laila said with a drawn face. “I.. I can’t believe Master Cathber is dead.”

Bremorel didn’t say anything. She wasn’t there. She was some fifty yards away crying.

No one had truly known the old hermit of Ritual Forest on a personal level. Possibly because no one really did. But he had been the most, singularly renowned person in the vast stretches of these forests. There had been many rumors about the old man. One of them had been, that he had actually fought in the first Themalsar War, some eight hundred years ago which had occurred nearly three hundred years before Serenity Home was even founded. The other one was, he would appear, without warning, and at any time to protect his forest.

For the ranger girls, however, Master Cathber had been something of a legend.

For Bremorel, he had been a bit more.

Known to no one left alive but the young woman in mourning was the fact that she had known Master Cathber very nearly on a personal level, even if it had been when she’d been only two at the time. So had her mother and father.

“I doubt she will come after me, not that I am worried about myself. She seemed to have some respect for Temple Guardians. She certainly will not attack Lady Moira. She fears her to her very core and sees her as something akin to Holy. She showed little to no interest in young Udoorin, here, and as long as Master Gnine does not do anything foolish such as to try and prank her, he should be fine as well.”, Lady Magella said.

Aager waited.

“I can not, however, promise she will show similar indifference to you, Master Aager. Your general appearance as someone in dark leathers is much the same as the men who killed her father. If that will not do, your ignominy surely will.”, she added with a vindictive smile.

“I was not aware Temple Guardians found satisfaction in the ignominy of others, Lady. I stand corrected.”, the man in dark leathers growled.

Lady scowled at him.

“Is Lady Moira going to be up anytime soon?”, he asked, changing the subject.

“I wouldn’t know.”, she replied. “I do not know what is wrong with her.”

“I am up..”, came a very tired voice from behind them. “..and will be running soon enough.”

They all turned to see Lady Moira trying to rise from under her blankets.

The paladin girl’s face was pale, drawn, and seemed somewhat swollen. There were dark circles around her sunken eyes, though there was a merry glint in them and although her lips seemed to have lost their color, she still gave them a wan and crooked smile.

“My..”, she slurred. “..I really must look horrible to have garnered such astonished stares.”

“You!”, Lady spluttered angrily. “What did you do, girl?”
“I am sorry, Lady.”, she replied honestly. “Help me up first?”

The Temple Guardian stomped over to her and gave her a strong hand but Moira wavered and stumbled back on her butt and just sat there quite exhausted..

“Or perhaps not.”, she said happily!

“You..”, Lady spluttered some more. “All of you! You will be the end of me!”

“Please don’t say that, my Lady Magella. You will live long, and you will prosper, I am sure of it.”, Moira said earnestly. “If I could but plead a bowl of some of your delicious stew, I should bounce right back.”

Lady mumbled something about young women and having no sense whatsoever as she dumped generous spoons of thick, steaming stew from the portable cauldron boiling over the bonfire and into a bowl, then brought it over to her.

“Careful, it is hot.”, she said as she hovered over the girl.

“Best thing about the burdens of being a paladin is you never have to worry about hot bowls, Lady.”, she said with another smile and took the steaming bowl in her gauntlets. Then, and with little need for false courtesy, she spooned the stew down and slurped the remaining juice, pulled out a lace hanky, and wiped it off her mouth and cheeks with a slightly pinked grin.

“I believe you have some explaining to do, girl.”, Lady said sternly. Apparently, the smiles and the grins had bounced right off the she-dwarf.

“You are so like Granma, back home, Lady.”, Moira said cheerily.

“Well, excuse me!”, Lady Magella said, taken aback.

“Oh, I apologize, Temple Guardian.”, Moira smiled. “I did not mean to offend you. Granma —that’s Lady Grana Maarva, who is a grand and a dear woman, who is also known to have destroyed the occasional knight or paladin with her glare.”

Lady Magella tried very hard to upkeep her glare but failed. The paladin girl was just too honestly nice. Inadvertently, she smiled.

“I have heard of Lady Grana Maarva.”, she said.

“She is the mother of the First Lady of Durkahan.”, Moira said happily as she rose. Carefully, and with a bit of creaking, she moved her strong arms, broad shoulders, then legs and smiled again. “Everything seems to be in order. Your stew is a miracle at work, Lady Magella. I just must have the recipe for it.”

“My dear girl, you should rest a bit before you start running off.”, the she-dwarf said with concern. “You must be in pain.”

“A bit of pain is good for the soul, Lady. Reminds us of our mortality, hence it learns us humility.”, Moira replied with a slightly pinched face. “I believe I gave a bit too much of myself back there.”

“What happened to you? What did you do?”, Lady asked.

“When the storm hit, it wasn’t acting normally. Particularly when I saw the lightnings chasing our dear companions around. Master Aager, however, had ordered me to get you to safety, hence I did. I sent you with my dear and trusted steed, Ayla. After that, I tried to sense our tormentor but failed, which I thought was both interesting and a revelation all on its own, for you see, I may sense, with certain success, when evil lurks nearby. Try as I might, however, I sensed absolutely nothing. That meant, either our assailant and aggressor was too far, which would have made it quite impossible for him to have struck us with such surgical accuracy, or he was not evil but merely misguided. Hence I identified myself and our intent but further failed to persuade our tormentor. That, I am afraid, left me with beggared choices but to prove my identity by deed. I believe I gave a tad too much of myself to the task. But in all candor, I was in a hurry and I was in plate armor with lightnings tearing down upon us, also.”, the paladin girl explained and finished with a merry, and bright grin.

“Young lady..”, the she-dwarf fumed. “As much as I admire your use of cool logic, quick thinking, and tenacity, particularly under duress, it was foolish of you to have done what you did. You could have died. You had me worried sick.”

“I am sorry, Lady Magella. I truly am. But I guess when it comes to faith, there just aren’t half-ways. Dying for what you believe, and saving dear friends along the way, isn’t really a bad way to go, now is it?”, Moira said and her grin became even brighter.

The Temple Guardian just stared at her.

“Yes.”, she said with a deflated exasperation. “You foolish girls will be the end of me..”

A pair of storm-gray eyes hiding behind a thick clump of bushes watched the two ranger girls with envious fascination.

One was an elf. Or not. The pair of eyes wasn’t quite sure. Perhaps she was a half-elf.. a bit like herself; half-human and half.. something else.. She had a slender figure that walked the earth one careful step at a time as if she were in a pit full of snakes or some big, nasty insects. The half-elf girl had pretty, brown hair with a tint of red in them, apparent only when the sun shown at the correct angle. She had pretty blue eyes too. Eyes that stared at the world around her from the fletch-end of a yard-arrow. Her nose was bold and daring, and the lines around her mouth said she was a girl who liked to laugh, just not in public. Only when she was with rare few friends.

The pair of storm-gray eyes frowned a little because the half-elf was wearing her hair and clothes wrong!

Irksomely so..

What bothered, more than irked, her at the same time was the flustered sensation of guilt she was feeling just then; the storm-gray eyes did not like snooping, as much as that particular word made her want to giggle, deep down she very well knew what that word entailed and it was ‘not nice’.

Interestingly, she felt no shame nor guilt, whatsoever, when she was hunting or pouncing in her other.. well.. suffice to say, at that very moment, she felt what she was doing was somehow wrong, and ‘not nice.’ But of the many things her Father had taught her was the simple fact that observing was always better than barging into things like a stupid goat.. or an angry Mox, both of which she had done these past few days. Perhaps it was time to heed her Father. After all, ever-present kindness and his words of advice were the only things left to the pair of storming eyes.

With the happy conclusion that they were ‘observing’, as opposed to snooping, the storm-gray eyes.. well.. observed! To that end, the eyes drifted off to the other ranger girl. She had a lithe figure, not quite filled out yet and she walked with the surety of someone who had gone into many fights and come out of the other end as the victor. She had coarse black, distinctly uncombed but not quite disheveled hair, daringly beautiful green eyes, a surprisingly soft face, a pouting mouth, and fair brows, though all of it was somewhat ruined by the scowl that marred her overall beauty just then. She had a very big sword strapped across her back at a comfortable angle and the storm-gray eyes felt a tiny bit of disturbance around the girl skulking among the trees for she felt death and anger emanating from her.

The eyes shivered with consternation. Then she pouted, for this one was also wearing her clothes wrong and her hair was a skunky mess!

When the two ranger girls were gone, she waited for some, as the bushes crashed and parted in the distance and the eyes stared with sour distaste at the big man with lots and lots of heavy and sharp iron.

The thing that had her confused about him the most was how he had lived to be so big when he made so much noise. She was sure there was no game to be found five miles in any direction after the kind of clamor he was making. And he was so messy! There just wasn’t anything salvageable where he was concerned to the point, whether he wore everything he had ‘wrong’ was a moot point!

With him came the red-headed girl with the iron clothes and the brilliant, heavenly light, and the storming-gray eyes watched her with fear and with hate. After all these years, she had finally found someone who would burn her and cleanse the world from the foul demon that she was, and the red-haired girl had not done it and the owner of the storm-gray eyes thought that had been both ‘not nice’, and just mean!

Then the red-headed girl stumbled and very nearly fell and the storm-eyes did a quick intake of breath as she noted the girl seemed dead tired for some reason and the eyes hiding behind the bushes stood in limbo, not sure if she should go and help her against very much wanting to go and help her. As much as she feared and hated the girl in all the iron clothes for not burning her, she was pretty and she had an awesome smile. And she laughed a lot and shared that laughter with those around her. And she always walked with her back straight, proud, but not with pride..

..as odd as that sounded!

Then the big man with all the sharp irons came running to the faltering girl and helped her up.

“Don’t touch her!”, hissed the storming eyes but when she saw the paladin girl smile up at the big burly man and thanked him with a very generous smile, she fell silent and felt.. confused.. and confounded.. and very much vexed and perplexed..

The big man’s face went red, mumbled some things, then returned back to where he had been and started making his clumsy, and very noisy trek. The storm-eyes unconsciously noted down somewhere in her endless repertoire of observations that should the red-haired girl ever decide to actually want to do her job and decide to burn her, she would make a final bequest of her to ‘do her pretty red hair’, before she burned and banished her!

Well..

Apparently, someone had issues..

The storm-gray eyes watched them go and waited, silently and still, as the little ‘gnome’ boy came into view and for whatever reason, the eyes dismissed him, then and there, the moment she saw his eyes. Eyes that held mischief and far too much ‘trouble’.

The lonely soul hiding in the bush did not like mischief. And certainly never sought trouble. For her, mischief was folly and silly, and trouble meant being beaten or stoned or whipped.

Behind him came that angry and always-scowling she-dwarf and the storm-eyes took a few involuntary steps back. She felt fear for the tall, red-headed girl, but that was sort of.. she wasn’t sure.. Her Father would have known the right word. Eclictantable? Epliplaptable? Exispensipal? Or maybe it was.. existential?

Yes. That it. Existential!

The storm-gray eyes felt ‘existential’ fear for her.

For the she-dwarf, however, she felt healthy and tangible fear. The kind of fear you feel when you were dreaming a bad dream you couldn’t escape versus when you were face to face with an angry bear or a feral Ritual Lynx.. only more detrimental!

Then she saw a dark smudge on the far side of the angry and always-scowling she-dwarf; the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask, and the storm in the gray eyes started to churn again, just like it had when she had found out her Father had just been slain and a low, unmoderated growl escaped from behind the bushes..

Carefully, the owner of the storm-gray eyes withdrew and far into the woods. The man and his darkness would have to wait. She would deal with him later. On her own terms..

She would make his life miserable!

At a safe distance, she undid the slim, hand-woven vine belt that held several pouches from around her slender waist and put it on the ground. Then she pulled off her tattered and dirty dress, and standing naked in her quite buxom figure, she did an odd gesture and clear water came pouring down into her hands from thin air.

From one of her pouches, she took out a hefty block of lavender soap and started scrubbing and washing her dress.. quite vigorously! Once she was done, she took a whiff from the thread-bare dress, pinched her nose, then called more water and washed it again with equal vigor..

..then again.

And again..

..to her odd and obsessive satisfaction, whipped it a few times to get the wrinkles out, and hung it on a nearby low branch.

She undid her conical braids, and with more water, she washed her very long, very dark hair, and herself over and over and over until her tender, baby pink skin was shriveled and rashed with ugly red blotches..

With tears in her storm-gray eyes, and with a pinched sniff from her cute, perky little nose, she pulled out a very tightly rolled towel from another pouch and dried her very dark, and very long hair, then her slender neck, her buxom breasts, her slim waist, her shapely butt, and finally her strong legs, all the way down to her small, narrow feet, and hung the towel next to her dress.

She made another gesture and a hot zephyr brushed her hair, the dress, and the towel. She repeated this until her hair, her dress, and her towel were dry, though she left her hair just this side of moist.

The storm-eyes disliked brushing her hair when it was dry and brittle..

She took her towel, whipped it a few times, but this time to make sure there were no ants or bugs or any leaves or twigs on it, folded it many times, then rolled it into a very tight bundle, and stuffed it back into its corresponding pouch. Then she took her dress, carefully inspected it, noted the wear and tears, made a third gesture, and started ‘mending’ the rips and tears, and in under a few minutes, the dress was not new, but it certainly didn’t have a single hole or shred on it, nor was it smudged with dirt or mud.

The storming-eyes had only this dress and she’d had it for a very long time, hence she took its maintenance quite seriously!

As magic went, these were quite minor spells, or more like cantrips, really.

For someone who had a thing for an understated obsession with personal hygiene, cleanliness, grooming, and being neat and tidy, however, they were absolutely a ‘must have’.

Once she was done, and only after she was, not acceptably, but justifiably satisfied, she slipped into her dress and pulled it all the way down to her small, narrow feet, very much clean and refreshed. Now it was time for her very dark, and very long hair.

The storm-eyes did not sigh nor did she show any expression of resignation. With meticulous rigor and fastidious attention that surpassed obsession, but certainly bordered the fringes of madness, she started braiding her hair. By the time she was done, her slender fingers hurt, her arms hurt, and her back and her neck also hurt. But she was not quite done yet. She wrapped them all into two, symmetrical cones and bunned them on each side of her, now all clean, rather pretty, and slightly angular face, then slumped down for a long breather as she waited for strength to return back to her arms as she contemplated on the last few days that had turned her life upside down, then totally destroyed it.

Inshala ‘la fey’ Frostmane felt more alone and abandoned than she had ever been before.

You are not a good person.”, hissed a voice from behind the bushes that evening.

The company had traveled north, then angled east. They had started slow and carefully picked up their pace as Lady Moira’s ebbed strength returned. After a diligent search, the ranger girls had, once more, found tracks of their missing sneak thief, many miles away, not quite by chance, but by trained and attained tenacity of the ranger girls, Laila and Bremorel, and the unrelenting urges from Master Aager, and by the use of deduction, guesstimation, and logic, they had found where he had ‘holed up’ during the savage storm with the green lightnings..

..to the dismay of everyone, for he had, by pure, dumb luck, stumbled on another ‘hidey-holes’ left behind by no other than the deceased Master Cathber.

The smarmy sneak thief was extraordinarily lucky, which had merely added to the insult already felt by the very much infuriated ranger girls. Aager only fumed, though he did it with his usual silence hidden behind his half-mask. In the end, he knew, everyone’s luck would run out. Practical logic was there to stay and he would take that any day over some fool’s unreliable luck.

It was when they had settled in for the night around a carefully dug-out campfire. Lady Magella was sleeping and upon her scowling insistence, so was Lady Moira. Gnine, the little gnome had made himself scarce once more like he did ever since the ‘footprint event’ and was nowhere to be seen. Ranger Bremorel was snoozing off to one side until the time for her shift with no other than Master Aager would arrive, to her disgusted dismay. Young Udoorin was sitting, his back to the dying campfire, staring intently into the darkness, his great battleaxe resting on his lap and Ranger Laila was out there somewhere, carefully scouting the area.

It was then Aager woke up to the hot, vindictive air, breathing into his ear;

“You are not a good person.”

At that moment, the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask considered a lot of options in his suddenly awake mind. He thought of launching himself at the young woman and capturing her. He thought of debating her rather blatantly obvious perspective of him. He thought of ignoring her. He even thought of turning around and smiling at her, sort of to put her at ease, though this one he had chalked off and killed immediately. Aager knew he had many skills where murder was concerned, but nothing in his repertoire had ‘smile’ or ‘at ease’ in it. In the end, he decided to go for something he never did. Something he certainly had, but never gave to another..

Assurance.

“I see you are back.”, he growled barely turning his head. “Good. Lady will be pleased.”

There was a long, incredulous, or perhaps, ‘speechless’ sort of silence, then, as quietly as they had come, the storming eyes were gone.

 

---

 

Chapter
Five

The Storms
of a Broken Heart

 

Timeline:

The skies darken and churn over the Ritual Forest with disturbing precedence as the company from Serenity Home hunt down the last survivor, a sneak thief, of the culprits that attacked their once-peaceful town.

The young rangers, Laila Wolvesbane and Bremorel Songsteel are hurt and still recuperating from the wounds they suffered from an unexpected attack; a creature, tall and lean, cunning and brutal, calculating and merciless, yet unseen or unheard of, leaving them in pain and frustration as their query, the sneak thief, gets further and further away from them.

 

This story begins shortly after
The Ambush.

 

 

I am fine.”, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane said wearily as she lay under her blanket and cushioned by a heap of fallen forest leaves.

“What she said.”, added her cousin, Ranger Bremorel Songsteel, lying under her own blanket, also cushioned by a heap of leaves.

“You will be fine when I say you will be fine!”, replied a scowling she-dwarf as she steered the small iron pot hanging over the campfire.

“That.. that doesn’t even make any sense, Temple Guardian!”, Laila said with an infuriated tone.

“After what happened the last time, you still want to sass me, do you? And I thought you were the smarter of the two cousins, Laila Wolvesbane!”, the she-dwarf replied mildly, without even bothering to look at her.

“I resent that.”, mumbled Bremorel, then pinched her face as a sharp, sizzling pain shot right across her abdomen.

“Which part do you resent, little Morel? Do tell.”, asked the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella, and this time, she did turn around to give the young ranger girl a very, very steady gaze.

Bremorel gulped.

“Uhhmm.. the part where you would think Laila is the smarter of the two of us?”, she mumbled.

“Young Laila is not black-listed from anywhere in Serenity Home, little girl.”, Lady replied, though, surprisingly, not as harshly as she could have said it.

Bremorel’s face pinked, then turned red.

Her cousin stifled a laugh, but a snort did escape her.

“She’s right, you know.”, she whispered at her merrily.

Bremorel scowled at her as her face became darker.

“Shut up, Laila. You look like a bloody raccoon!”, she snarled at her, then hissed again as another stab of pain jabbed at her.

Laila gave her cousin one of her ‘thousand-yard’ glares, though in all fairness, with her newly set nose and the black rings around her eyes, the ranger girl did resemble a raccoon.

“And you are.. you are.. leaking all over the place!”, she spluttered angrily.

“Awesome comeback, cuzz. You really have no street culture whatsoever. Leaking all over the place? Really? That’s the best you can do?”, snarked Bremorel. “Ranger Master Davien has left a lot of gaps in your training, girl.”

“And Ranger Master Moorat has left a lot of bark on you in yours!”, Laila shot back.

Bremorel laughed..

..and then hissed as her tummy sizzled and she ended up squirming under her blanket.

“Ss.. See?.. Tha.. that was.. much.. better..”, she chuckled even as slicing and churning prods of pain gnawed and ricocheted across her belly.

“Are.. are you alright?”, Laila asked with scared consternation as she pushed her blanket aside and crawled on the ground, one of her legs not quite functioning. Under the scowling gaze of the Temple Guardian, she made her way to her cousin, grabbed her, blanket and all, and hugged her fiercely! “Please don’t do things like that again. It would kill my father if something happened to you.”

“No, it would kill your father if something happened to you!”, came Bremorel’s muffled voice.

“You really are an idiot, you know that right?”, Laila fumed.

“What? Why?”, her cousin’s voice was heard.

“When will it get through your thick head that my father absolutely adores you. Never once did he ever see you as some stranger in his home, but always as his very own daughter, and my sister.”, Laila said angrily.

“I am a stranger in your home.”, mumbled Bremorel.

Laila sighed.

“Your father was my uncle, Morel. And he was my father’s brother.”, she said, calling her by her real name as she did on rare occasions. “I loved my uncle and he certainly adored me. And now I’ll tell you something I have never told you before. Even after all these years, my father still turns around and says, ‘Aramsis would have laughed at it.’, when he tells me one of his lame father jokes and I roll my eyes. And when I return home from one of our grueling patrols and you don’t come home with me, he sits late into the night and stares out the window in hopes that his brother’s daughter, the niece he adores and is so proud of, might turn up. He even puts aside a plate full of whatever he made for me, just in case you might drop by. It is churlish of you to not accept the love and care he has for you and insist on being a stranger in his home.”, Laila said quietly.

No reply came from under the blankets this time. Only some sniffling sounds.

“I.. I am sorry, Laila.”, Bremorel said finally. “I truly am an idiot. As long as I called myself a stranger in your home, I thought I wouldn’t have to face some.. realities..”

“Which is the point. It is not my home, girl. It is ‘our’ home!”, Laila replied kindly.

“You have missed your calling, young Laila. You should have been a Temple Guardian.”, came Lady Magella’s voice from where she sat, still steering the little pot over the campfire.

“Yeah, and sit around all day reading incomprehensible religious scripts.”, mumbled the ranger girl. “Like that was going to happen. The only thing I ever liked there was the singing, and that was once a week.”

Bremorel gave a slobbering snort and hissed once more.

“Stop. Please..”, she nearly begged her cousin. “You are going to do what that stupid beast couldn’t, and kill me!”

“I won’t kill you if you promise never to act so rashly again, cuzz.”, Laila replied seriously. “My father does not have enough many daughters that he could spare. I never want to see him become that broken man when my mother died. Not again. I mean, he became catatonic and he was so furious, all the time, at himself, at the elves, and at the Heavens. And when he heard about what happened to your mother and your father, he went livid. He was beside himself. He very nearly went mad with grief because he thought you had been killed too. Nothing I tried had worked to turn him around, Bree, you must know this. What’s worse, they wouldn’t even allow him to go and bury his own brother and his sister-in-law, who was my mother’s oath sister, because ranger masters Davien and Moorat claimed the area was ‘too hot’ and that he really shouldn’t see what the orcs had left behind, though they swore that they put them, and all the other deceased to rest, and that every one of them had their proper graves.. Then the news of a little girl having been brought to the Serenity Home orphanage arrived. A girl that matched the description of his little niece. I was there when Sheriff Standorin brought him the news. My father just slumped down and cried. Turns out, it took them nearly three months to figure out who was who because some of the bodies were not readily identifiable and some of the woodsmen had gone missing. And woodsmen being woodsmen, kept no records of the people that lived in their many clusters of small villages. There were neither any birth nor death certificates. Yes, technically, both of us are also woodsmen, having been born there, much like our parents were, and I know how much we all love our freedoms, but really? No birth or death certificates? It’s like when you are born, no one takes any notice of you, and when you die, it’s like you never existed.. Out of all that chaos, there were only two kids recovered from the orc raid and they were placed in the orphanage and no one knew who they were until the dust settled. And guess what? One of them was a savage little girl who wouldn’t talk but only fight, bite, and hiss at anyone that got too near, the other was a little boy who had lost his voice and never talked at all until he was into his teens; you and Thomas. And the little girl’s uncle was living just on the other side of the very same town!”

Bremorel was staring up at her cousin from inside her blanket with a numbly broken and tear-stricken expression. Laila glanced down at her, then, thoughtfully she stared up at something off in the distance to give her the illusion of privacy.

“I hated you, you know? When my father first brought you home from the orphanage. And for a long time after that. All the effort I gave to make my father happy, nothing worked. But then, this pint of a hissing girl came along and it was like my father was reborn. I honestly thought he loved you more than he loved me. And I was afraid you were going to steal him away from me. I mean, I was already missing my mother for years and I just couldn’t stand the idea of losing my father too. Then Udoorin happened and that was a game-changer for, I think, everyone that was involved. That day, I found me a sister, a cousin, and a life-long friend that I knew I wanted to stick to, like no other..”, she said with a whimsical sort of smile, though it made her look a bit odd, with her two black eyes.

She stared down at her cousin again and this time there was something desperate and pleading in that stare.

“You, and I.. We know what losing loved one’s means, cuzz. We know it intimately. Those that are dead and gone, are dead and gone. The ones that are left behind, however, are left behind to suffer.”, she said with a whisper, then fell silent, holding her cousin even tighter to herself.

Bremorel didn’t reply for the longest time.

She just couldn’t..

“Why?”, she asked finally. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“Because..”, her cousin replied. “Some things must be accepted when they are told, Bree. Not proven. Once you know it is a fact, all its beauty, all its calling mystery is now gone. I wanted you to accept my word when I told you, on innumerable occasions, that my father adored you. And even though he never said a word to you, he loved seeing you in the house. When I returned from our patrols, he was unbearably happy. I mean, he would hover all over me, making me tea, bringing me hot doughnuts, and slices of jam pies, and always cooking the foods that he knew I liked. He would have all my clothes washed and pressed, to my despair, and have them neatly stacked in my drawer. When you also dropped by, however, he was, I suppose the correct word would be; content. Yes. When you came home, the world could come to an end, then and there, and he would still be happy because ‘both’ his daughters were there with him, which is exactly what you are to him; not some distant relative, but a daughter..”

“Wow..”, Bremorel whispered. “I never knew..”

“Well, that’s because you are an idiot.”, replied Laila.

Bremorel let loose a wet sort of snort.

“And now you ruined it all.”, she said.

“Do I have your word, cousin? That you will stop this reckless attitude of yours?”, Laila asked, her voice serious.

“I.. I will try, I promise. But a lifelong abuse of stupidity will not be easy to just shrug off. I.. I know I have no right to ask you for it, but I would really appreciate it if you gave me the chance.”, her cousin replied.

“I will. As long as you are trying, I will.”

“Well, now that you two have that covered, I suppose I may be allowed to do my job.”, Lady said with a scowling tone as she walked up to them, carrying the bubbling pot she had been steering in both hands.

The ranger girls stared at her with trepidation.

“Put your cousin down, little Laila. You may be done with her, but I am not.”, the she-dwarf said briskly.

“What.. what are you going to do to her?”, Laila asked, pulling her cousin even closer to herself.

Lady Magella cocked an eyebrow at her, then smiled.

In all candor, it was possible she was going for a sweet, and perhaps even a pleasant smile, but the end result had freaked out both the ranger girls even more.

“The same thing I am going to do to you.”, she said.

For the next hour, the company heard many agonizing screams as the Temple Guardian applied hot gruel mixed with many foul-smelling herbs on young Bremorel’s sliced abdomen, followed by many embarrassingly girly yelps from her cousin, Laila, as the same sticky and stinking ‘porridge’ was applied to her leg. By the time it was over, Udoorin had ripped a long strip of his shirt and tied it around his sore and nearly crushed throat in hopes of hiding it from the dreaded she-dwarf, the paladin girl, Lady Moira, was standing guard with a diffident expression on her face, and the little gnome, Gnine was hiding behind some bushes. Even Master Aager was nowhere to be found!

When will they be up and running?”, growled Aager Fogstep.

“There will be no ‘up’s, not will there be any ‘running’s, Master Aager. Not anytime soon.”, Lady Magella replied, scowling up at the man.

Aager stared at the she-dwarf.

Squinted, really.

And he silently fumed in frustration.

“Every minute we waste sitting here, the chances of our query to escape raises exponentially, Lady. The rangers must be made available, and now.”, he grated silently.

“Made available? Perhaps you think the rangers are some machines that I could fix by changing their broken parts? I am fully aware how much you care for those around you, Master Aager, and how little compassion you have for humanity at large, but that is low even for you.”, Lady Magella replied coldly.

“What I think is irrelevant at this point, Temple Guardian, and seeing as how I have no care for those around me, and nons compassion at all for humanity at large, this conversation is rather moot. What matters is that the rangers are made available, now.”, the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask growled.

Lady Magella scowled at him.

Quite and quietly furious.

“One day, Master Aager, you will have to face your ignominy.”, she told him with a very frosty tone.

“Yes.”, agreed, the man in dark leathers, then with the same indifferent growl, he added, “The rangers, Temple Guardian. Have them up and running within the hour..”

..And walked away.

To say the Temple Guardian, Lady Magella was furious, was not unlike saying the sun generally dawned along the eastern horizon, sailed lazily across the sky, and settled somewhere off west.

She was livid.

She was visibly trembling in furor.

She was mumbling and spluttering with outrage.

And she was stomping her feet with every step as if stepping on some particularly daft idiot’s head!

It was no wonder the little gnome, Gnine, was making himself scarce. True, he was a troublemaker by nature, but he was also smart enough to almost never be caught. Young Udoorin had ranged out as far as it was moderately safe, more out of some instinctual survival drive against the blistering she-dwarf than deliberation the way Gnine had. Even Lady Moira, who had gotten along with the Temple Guardian just fine, because she was a classy, polite, and sensible sort of girl, avoided her. Perhaps taking a cue from the young man, she had also ranged out, her sword and shield at the ready.

Master Aager was nowhere to be seen, however. He had opted to avoid needless and pointless conversation that would involve further accusations of ‘ignominy’ from the furious she-dwarf. True, he cared little for what people thought of him as he’d had compassion washed out of his system by the time he’d barely been five, but having the Temple Guardian so cavalierly chalk him off as ‘little care for people’, as opposed to ‘little care for what people thought of him’, did irritate him, as correct as the Temple Guardian’s original assessment of him had been. Also true that he had avoided Serenity Home temple quite diligently. So much so that one could go as far as calling it, ‘with an unholy passion’, but not because he felt any personal hatred, animosity, grudge, resentment, or even odium for the temple nor the people who worked there. Other than, perhaps, self-loathing, the only thing he might have felt was ‘rage’.. As to why he felt so, was a matter that needed to be looked into. But that was for another time. The most interesting part in all this was, he did not feel said hatred, animosity, grudge, resentment, and certainly any bigotry for the Great Heavens above. Whatever his faults and his sins were, Aager Fogstep never stooped to accusing the Heavens for his own follies. He did what he thought needed to be done, then owned them. In all fairness, one could easily assume, that the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask was quite ‘impervious’ to the Temple Guardian’s attitude.

It did, however, irritate him. After all, he had displayed nothing less than utmost respect to the people who worked there, much like he showed the same professional attitude to everyone around him whether he actually felt the respect he displayed or not..

The focus of the Temple Guardian’s overall and cumulative fury was nowhere to be seen, but the reason for her infuriated anger, at that very moment, were both grunting and hissing in torturous pain some twenty yards away, one limping, the other somewhat bent over in throbbing cramps as Laila and Bremorel stalked through the forest, searching for the sneak thief’s tracks.

Unbeknownst to the furious Temple Guardian, however, the sinister man in dark leathers had left strict orders to the big, burly young man and the paladin girl that should either falter or encounter further altercations, Udoorin was to rush ahead and both defend and cover Ranger Bremorel while Lady Moira would do the same for Ranger Laila. It wasn’t a very good plan nor did they move with their previous gait but the matter of fact was, they were on the move, as slow as it was, and they were not sitting just to be subjected to any possible ambushes by the same creatures that had slaughtered the cutters.

For Aager, that was a win.

“How are you doing?”, whispered Laila, as she limped up to her cousin.

“Hurt, and hurting..”, Bremorel whispered back, her face pale, and her voice hoarse. Very slowly, and tenderly she knelt down and sat on the forest ground. “Gets worse when I bend or kneel down for any reason.. I really must be wicked and paying for my past sins.”

“Why would you say that?”, Laila asked, coming to stand next to her.

“No rest for the wicked?”, she said with heavy sarcasm.

Laila stared down at her cousin and an angry frown appeared on her boldly striking face.

“That’s not even what that phrase means.”, she said irritably.

“I beg to differ.”, she replied.

“You may beg, but not for being wicked, you dolt!”, Laila said sternly.

Bremorel snorted, then winced, as sizzling pain crisscrossed her abdomen.

“Why do you think that Aager-guy is pushing us like this? Is he really this petty to make us suffer the way he is? Perhaps he didn’t like it when I called him an arse..”, she said, her face pinched.

“I don’t think he cares enough, one way or the other, to be that petty, cuzz.”, Laila mused. “I think he is merely being cautious.”

“This is him being cautious, is it? Running two wounded rangers, his only chance to ever find and catch the bloody sneak thief, into the ground?”, Bremorel replied with bitter resentment.

“No, cuzz, he just doesn’t want us to end up the same way the cutters did. The creature that got us busted has a lot of friends out there somewhere, remember? And they just might decide to come back. As strong as they are, they seem to prefer ambushes over direct confrontations. Or maybe they just like to play with their food. Master Aager is keeping us on the move in hopes of avoiding exactly that.”, her cousin mused thoughtfully.

“Your persistence in defending that arse amazes me, girl. You got something going for him that I am not aware of or something?”, she said, giving her an evil smirk.

Laila returned her smile with a level gaze.

“Do not make me hurt you more than you already are, Bree. I could snuff out your candle with a pinch.”, she said balefully.

“A pinch, huh? So you are going to pinch me, are you? Like a little girl?”, Bremorel barbed. “But then, you did scream like one, when Lady was applying that stinking porridge on your leg. A little, girl raccoon!”

“Yeah.”, Laila replied. “As opposed to slobbering all over the place like you were.”

“I get the first dibs, by the way.”, her cousin said.

“Dibs? What dibs?”, Laila asked a bit confused.

“The sneak thief. When we catch him, I get the first dibs to punch his face in.”, Bremorel replied with a grim expression.

“Girl, you can dib all you want. When I see him, I am not going to bother with his face. I am just going to shoot him in his breadbasket and watch him squirm.”, Laila said coolly.

“Yeah, I suppose that’d hurt.”, Bremorel nodded. “But you are going to have to do a quarter-draw for that. Otherwise, the arrow will go right through him.”

Laila gave her another level gaze.

“So you are going to teach me how to shoot arrows now, are you? Girl, I was shooting apples off trees at two hundred yards before you were even admitted as an initiate.”, she said angrily.

“Hey, I shot the ugly orc-whatsit and pinned his arm. You got yourself backhanded, then had him break not one, but both your swords. Didn’t Ranger Master Davien ever tell you never to try and block an axe swing with your blades? How stupid is that?”, Bremorel scoffed.

“It got right past you and jumped me. What’s your excuse for getting yourself sliced open?”, Laila sniffed at her.

Bremorel’s face flushed as she stared at her cousin guiltily.

“That was harsh. Even if it is true.”, she mumbled.

“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to burn you like that.”, Laila admitted, also flushing a bit.

“No. You were right. In all our frustration to catch the sneak thief, we neglected who we were and acted like a pair of stupid Moxes. And that’s coming from me!”, she said bitterly.

“Did Udoorin really ram that thing off you and then try to strangle it?”, Laila asked, sort of to change the subject.

“Yeah, the idiot.”, Bremorel said. “And he didn’t try to strangle him because he wanted to. He lost his axe! All those weapons he brought and he ended up trying to kill the first creature he came across with his bare hands.”

Laila snorted.

“But he is bloody strong, I’ll give him that much. I punched that animal square in the face and it didn’t even feel it. It did go purple when Udoorin was squeezing his throat though.”, Bremorel admitted grudgingly. “I shudder to think what will happen to the girl he finds to his liking. He will probably break the poor thing and say, ‘what just happened?’”

Laila laughed.

“C’mon. Let’s get moving. I can hear him, and Lady Moira crashing through the bush.”, she said, then paused.

“What?”, her cousin asked.

“I like her.”, Laila said.

“Her? Her, who?”

“Lady Moira. She’s steady and cool, and she’s got this sense of peace around her. And the way she rushed up to me when I was down. It was kinda awesome. She was like this heroic monument standing there with her shield up and her sword drawn. She said, ‘Fear not, fair Laila, I shall defend you and your honor or die trying, if I must. Heavens Willing, and together, we shall stand against darkness. Thus shall Good and Light prevail!’, I mean, she said all that so smoothly.”, Laila replied mutely. “I think we should form closer relations with her. Udoorin won’t talk to her. Not that he doesn’t want to, but he is such a klutz when it comes to girls, he just mumbles some things at her then runs off. Gnine will talk to her, but I dearly hope he doesn’t try to prank her. That would end badly. Lady Magella chats with her, but their talk is more like ‘shop talk’, if you get what I mean. And I can’t imagine Master Aager having a laugh with her. I don’t even think he knows how to laugh. Which means she must be feeling a bit left out.”

Bremorel grimaced.

“I hate forced friendships.”, she said.

“It won’t be forced, trust me. I don’t think she is as stiff and archaic as she seems.”, Laila told her.

“How do you know?”, Bremorel asked curiously as she carefully rose from the ground.

“Saw what she was wearing under all her shiny armor.”, her cousin said with a broad smile.

“You spied on her?”, Bremorel asked incredulously.

“No, girl, why would I spy on her? She was trying to get out of her armor, and I just happened to be there, so she asked me if I would be kind enough to unbuckle the straps on her sides and shoulders. I did, and she had this beautiful, pink satin blouse under it. It was very pretty and it had these silver embroideries on it, and some lovely frilly sleeves and.. Don’t look at me like that, alright! It was pretty!”, Laila said, her face going slightly pink.

“Girl, your world stops cold when you see a pretty dress. Good to see that hasn’t changed.”, Bremorel laughed, then hissed as another cramping stab of pain ricocheted around her belly.

“Everyone’s got some vices, alright.”, Laila said hotly. “Is it a crime that I like pretty dresses? I mean, I can’t wear them anymore, but I still like them.”

“You can wear them in town. I am sure Uncle Darien would love it. He certainly would approve.”, Bremorel offered, trying for a grin, but it ended up being a bit like a grimace.

“Yeah, Laila Wolvesbane in a frilly pink dress. I am sure that won’t cause any circulating gossip.”, she replied with a pinched face.

“I can’t imagine anyone making fun of you. I can, however, imagine D.D. Dexter’s face when he sees you in it.”, Bremorel snickered as she took a few, tender steps and started after the sneak thief’s tracks.

“Girl, if you would listen to me just once and put on a dress yourself, you could have your boy eating from your hand!”, Laila said irritably.

“I know the effect I have when I wear dresses, Laila. Especially when I put on my black dress skirt that falls down to my ankles. The one with the white collarettes and sleeves. Uncle Darien almost burst with happiness when he saw me in it, considering what he paid for it. I wore it once and took a stroll through the town, then returned home, put my usuals on, and went back and beat all the boys who’d ogled at me. The carnage was epic!”, her cousin said with a frown.

Laila laughed again.

“But I don’t need Thomas eating from my hand. I need him to brave up and ask for my hand.”, Bremorel replied with a resigned sort of voice.

“In all candor, you did look quite dashing in that dress. It was one of the rare times I actually felt jealous.”, Laila admitted.

“Don’t be daft, cuzz. You’d look great in it too. Hell, you look good in any dress.”, her cousin shrugged.

“Wish that were true. I don’t have the right hair color for that dress.”, Laila said with a deflated tone.

“And I can’t believe the kind of things you two talk about, and while we are hot on pursuit!”, rumbled a voice and Udoorin came crashing up to them.

Both the ranger girls sighed.

“We talk about a lot of things, Udoorin.”, Laila said. “What? Did you think we are like, these two stone-cold rangers prowling in the woods? No. Not unless there was imminent danger involved. As rangers, we rarely get to entertain social lives. This is what we do to stay sanely civilized.”

“Really? I mean, I didn’t know. You two always looked so cool, all the time.”, the young man said, more than a bit astonished.

“We are cool.”, Bremorel replied with an ‘offhand’ smirk. “But we are ‘people’ too. Everyone seems to forget that, where rangers are involved. Town guards make their rounds and their shifts, but at the end of the day, they all go home.. To their wives and kids.. We have no rounds, we have no shifts, and we have no posts. We are sent on missions and we are always on alert. We can die at any time and no one will know. In all your life, have you ever heard of a ranger’s burial?”

“Uhhmm.. No..”, Udoorin replied with a frown.

“That’s because we don’t get burials, Udoorin. By the time they find our bodies, there is hardly anything left to even identify us.”, she said coolly.

“I.. didn’t know that..”, the young man mumbled.

“So when we are alone, as two rangers, we can talk whatever bloody we want.”, Bremorel said, as her ‘cool’ cracked a bit.

“He doesn’t know, cuzz. No one really does. There is no reason to berate him for it.”, Laila intervened.

“I am sorry, Udoorin. I didn’t mean to burn you like that.”, Bremorel said quietly, her face slightly flushed.

“No, no. I am sorry. As Laila said. I didn’t know. But I would look for you, both of you, should something happen to you. And never stop until you got your ranger’s burial.”, Udoorin mumbled again.

“That’s sweet. And depressing.”, Laila smiled, then asked. “Now. Why are you here and where is Lady Moira?”

“I am here because you two stopped and we caught up to you. Lady Moira chose to stay behind because she did not want to seem like she was intruding between friends, which I thought was rather thoughtful of her.”, he replied.

Laila gave her cousin a meaningful, ‘told you so’, sort of glance which Bremorel returned with a thousand-yard squint.

“We stopped because I needed a breather.”, Bremorel said. “Now that I am rested, we shall continue our pursuit.”

“Don’t over-push yourselves. If you are tired, stop. I don’t think the sneak thief is faring any better than us.”, Udoorin rumbled with a frown.

“Are you concerned for our well-being, young Master Udoorin?”, she snickered.

Udoorin gave her a scowling glare.

“I would rather neither of you ended up needing a burial, Bree. As much as you would think otherwise, there are people who care about you.”, he said still scowling at her. “You freaked the Hell out of me when that animal sliced you. I mean, I actually saw red, back there. I forgot all my training and just rammed into it like an idiot. Hell, you freaked the Hell out of Lady Magella too. I think that’s why she was so furious with Master Aager. And after he forced her to heal the two of you the way he did, it was all she could do to barely stand.

“She did seem wobbly after she prayed over us.”, Laila mused. “And the cut on my leg and the slice on Bree’s abdomen were both gone. What I don’t understand is, I still can’t move my leg the way I should and Bree, here, can barely stand up straight.”

“I can explain that.”, piped a voice and the bushes parted to reveal the little gnome, Gnine.

“Gnine..”, Laila said a bit angrily. “I told you not to—”

“I didn’t follow you, girl, chill, already. I only came because I noticed you two had stopped.”, Gnine said, returning her irritation in kind.

Laila fumed a bit, then sighed.

“Alright. Do explain why my leg and Bree’s abdomen still hurts like someone’s placed hot lumps of coal on them?”, she asked.

“I asked Lady Moira why you two were still in pain even though Lady Magella had healed you.”, he said with a shrug.

“Why didn’t you just ask Lady Magella?”, Bremorel asked.

“Girl, really? You want me to willingly and knowingly volunteer to get verbally, and possibly physically abused? I mean, she’s irritable in her good day.”, he replied, staring at her incredulously.

Bremorel snorted.

“Look, you want to know why you two are in pain or not?”, he asked with an exasperated tone.

“Do tell.”, Bremorel said with an expression that told everyone she was fully expecting a wild, highly convoluted, and very much improbable explanation from the little gnome.

“Like I said. I asked Lady Moira and she said it has to do with the mind.”

Both the ranger girls raised their eyebrows at him.

“The mind?”, Laila asked.

“Yes. I admit I didn’t understand everything she said, but from what I did understand, elves, humans, dwarves, gnomes, or any other race or beast, we all get hurt in life and if it isn’t fatal, we expect to heal in time. Which I think is the crucial point; Time. Our minds are configured, through experience, that a cut, a bruise, or sickness takes time to get better. When Lady Magella healed you, the cuts are gone, and the muscle damage is no longer there, but your minds have never seen nor experienced that happen before, hence, you still feel the excruciating pain, which isn’t really there.”, Gnine explained, interestingly enough, quite succinctly, and without his usual ‘I know things’ attitude.

Both the ranger girls and Udoorin ogled down at him.

“You mean to tell us that we are making up the pain? In our minds?”, Bremorel asked, scoffing at the gnome.

“I think what he means is, we are imagining the pain.”, Laila mused.

“Essentially, yes.”, Gnine confirmed. “On both cases.”

“You mean I am squirming, and there really is no pain at all?”, the younger of the two rangers frowned.

“I am sure there is some residual pain, but it shouldn’t be any more than some very minor sizzle. Or perhaps something akin to your period cramps.”, he replied.

Laila and Bremorel’s faces went red.

Udoorin coughed uncomfortably into his fist.

“And how would you know what a period cramp feels like?”, Bremorel snarled at him.

“Hello? We have been friends since, like, forever.. You didn’t think I wouldn’t notice when either of you was ‘unavailable’ to hang out for days, every month?”, Gnine replied impudently.

The ranger girls glared down at him, their faces still burning.

“Look, just think or imagine some nice things, alright? That should stop, or drastically reduce the amount of pain you think you are feeling.”, the little gnome said.

“Like what?”, Bremorel asked hotly.

“Do you really want me to tell you what you ought to imagine?”, Gnine replied with a bemused expression on his face, then added with a grin, “I mean, I certainly could, but I am not sure if you could follow?”

Bremorel gave him her best, thousand-yard squint then reached down and smacked him over the head!

“Ouch, girl, you sure have a heavy hand. I am tempted to ask if Thomas knows this side of yours but that’d be a moot question all on its own, seeing as how well he knows just how heavy-handed you are!”, the little gnome said, scratching the sizzling spot of his smacked head. “How’s the belly?”

“Eh? What?”, she asked, still angry with the little gnome.

“How is your tummy, girl? You just bent down for that smack. You should have been squirming in pain by now.”, Gnine said, still scratching his head.

Bremorel froze.

Then she quickly turned around so they wouldn’t see, pulled up her leathers, and her shirt, and stared down at her previously scarred abdomen.

In all likeliness, it is a bit nonessential to mention that the young ranger girl did not have a soft tummy. Perhaps, once, she’d had the potential for one, but unless some things changed, and quite drastically, that ship had long sailed..

Bremorel Songsteel had some serious abs!

The inevitable result of years of physical training coupled with her naturally athletic figure had earned her broad shoulders, strong arms that could sing with a great, two-handed sword, and stronger legs that could run all day. It would appear, the only thing soft about the young ranger was, surprisingly, her voice, which oft went unnoticed because she was usually snarling at someone, anyone, at any given time.

“Well, now..”, she whispered in astonishment. “I should have ruptured the cut and been bleeding all over the place.”

“Let me see that.”, Laila said and came to look at her open belly. “Wow, girl. Have you been working out? You look delicious!”, she said with an impressed smirk, causing her cousin to blush.

“There you have it. You just have to set your minds elsewhere and you should be fine. Seeing as we are likely going to get hurt again, and any number of times, it is reasonable to say we will end up under Lady Magella’s scowling care. I can’t promise any tenderness on her part, but I can promise if you can mentally adopt the idea that she can heal you with her prayers, and mostly without even scarring, you can overcome the pain you think you are suffering.”, Gnine said, sort of smugly.

Bremorel shoved her shirt back into her pants and dropped her leathers over again staring at the gnome musing whether she should thank him or apologize to him for smacking him over the head.

As if on cue, her cousin, Laila, turned to the little gnome with an evil looking smile on her face, and just when she was about to speak, Gnine squinted up at her and said, “No, Laila, you can’t kick me just to see if your leg hurts or not!”

Laila had the grace to at least look like she was a bit ashamed.

“Now that you two are fixed, we can pick up the pace and Lady Magella won’t have an excuse to come at any of us.”, Gnine said.

“I wasn’t aware you were so eager to go hunting criminals, Master Gnine.”, Bremorel said with one eyebrow cocked, though a smile did play around her lips.

“I am not. But anything beats getting burned by our esteemed Temple Guardian.”, he replied while looking around to make sure she wasn’t anywhere near.

Laila Wolvesbane froze where she was, one step over the other, and not quite down, as a sense of dread like nothing she had ever felt washed over her.

The sun had dimmed and the evening was coming fast, and the two ranger girls had started looking for a suitable, relatively safe campsite when she’d sensed the feeling of dread. She had stumbled once, then again, as the air had become denser, and almost seemed to choke her. And then she had frozen in her place as she had, one foot not quite settled. Only her eyes moved and she could see her cousin, some thirty yards away and among some trees, also standing still, her back stiff, her greatsword in her hands, but she was trembling, so much so that she could barely keep her sword straight.

With learned awareness, she felt, more than saw, clouds, dark gray and muddy purple had gathered and churned above her, and from far, far away, she thought she heard a low, feral rumble followed by a sudden, eye-searing flash, and an earth-shaking thunderclap..

Then the Great Heavens all came crashing down as if it were the end of times!

Rain in a forest and in June was nothing unusual. Quite the contrary, considering the mild climate around Serenity Home and Ritual Forest in particular. But what came down flattened Laila into the ground and she was suddenly deafened by the shear, roaring of the downpour, followed frequently by the savage, clashing thunderclaps. She pushed herself forward, over fallen branches and under the heavy brush. Spattered in mud and quite drenched, she made her way to her cousin, who was also in a similar disposition. She had, however, also curled up into a ball, her greatsword fallen, and she was whimpering in a hole formed naturally in a tree.

“Bree.. Get up, girl. We can’t stay here. We must get the others and find shelter. This downpour is not natural.”, she shouted at her over the rumbling thunder.

Bremorel did not respond nor did she move. It’s like she never heard her. She just huddled in the hole and whimpered!

“It’s coming! It’s coming!”, was all she could moan!

Laila stared down at her cousin, quite astonished. Bremorel Songsteel NEVER whimpered, nor did she ever cower!

“What is it, Bree? What did you see? What is coming?”, she asked her urgently in a hoarse voice as she drew out the two, lengthy daggers she had borrowed from Udoorin and peered into the hazy and pouring forest, but she couldn’t see anything beyond fifteen yards. Seeing nothing she could identify as an immediate threat, she put her daggers away, grabbed her cousin, and her greatblade, and forcibly ran her back to the company.

The company, as it turned out, hadn’t fared any better than they had. Lady Magella was soaked and was huddled against a tree looking highly offended. Lady Moira was drenched and had her back on the same tree trying to keep an eye in every direction. There was also a haunted look in her eyes. Udoorin was covering the adjacent tree, also drenched, and his face was pale and his short hair seemed to be standing on its matted ends. Gnine had somehow climbed up the tree Lady Magella and Lady Moira was huddled, and he seemed totally freaked out.

“Where is Master Aager?”, Laila shouted over the enormous roar of the rain.

“He took off the moment the rain started.”, scowled Lady Magella angrily.

“What?”, Laila said with an astonished tone as she ‘dropped’ off her cousin next to the scowling Temple Guardian.

“He might have said something about finding shelter or some such.”, the she-dwarf mumbled grudgingly. “What’s wrong with little Morel?”

“I don’t know. She sort of clamped down the moment the rain began. Kept repeating, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming!’, but I didn’t see anything.”, Laila replied, wiping the rain off her face. “This.. this rain.. It isn’t natural..”

“No, it isn’t.”, Moira agreed. “I don’t know what unearthly fool summoned it, but there is a great sin afoot walking these woods this evening. Methinks we must find cover at once.”

Lady Magella, Laila, Udoorin, and up from the tree, Gnine, ogled at her.

“What do you sense, dear girl?”, Lady asked her.

“An unspoken evil has been let loose upon the world, Temple Guardian. It is savage, it is vile, it lusts for blood, and it hungers for the flesh of mortals.”, Moira replied, taking a better grip of her tall body shield and her long sword, though she kept its point-end low. For a moment, she fell silent as she stared down at the whimpering Bremorel, then mused in a much quieter voice. “It would appear, dear Ranger Bremorel is a very sensitive young woman.”

Lady Magella stared at her.

So did Laila, but not with the incredulous eyes as the Temple Guardian did. For what the tall paladin girl had said, seemed to confirm some things she had sensed, guessed, or even known about her cousin. True, she, herself, was a half-elf and was much more attuned to nature due to her elf heritage. But for whatever reason, and when it came to certain other things, her cousin had shown an unexpected aptitude to sense the presence of danger, or even death, than she ever had. Laila had always wondered or even suspected, whether her cousin’s sensitivity for ‘mortem’ had been due to the traumatic horrors she had been forced to witness as her parents got slaughtered right before her eyes while hiding in a little closet and at an age, no one should have seen such things.

With a determined expression on her own face, she sat down on the wet forest ground, scooped up her cousin as best as she could, cuddled her, and noted she had stopped shivering now, though she did spasm and jerk violently every once in a while.

The rain had started whipping at them by the time Master Aager appeared. There was an ominous, howling wind as well and streaks of, not electric-blue, but greenish lightnings flashed and jabbed down into the forest, followed by discontent rumblings of the churning clouds above as well now and at an alarming frequency as leaves, twigs, and even branches got swept and crashed every which way!

“Come.”, growled Aager, as he pointed in a direction. Then he motioned at Lady Moira and Udoorin, then pointed at Lady Magella, Ranger Bremorel, and up at the little gnome who was clinging at the tree, very much frightened.

Moira sheathed her sword, quickly hung her tall shield on her back, firmly buckled it there, and offered her hand for the Temple Guardian to take. Lady grunted, hauled herself up with the help of the paladin girl, made sure her pack and all the food and utensils were where they should be, and nodded at her. Udoorin reached down for Bremorel, but Laila shook her head and pointed up, then slowly, and with a grunt, picked her cousin up, and followed Lady and Moira.

“Come down, Gnine. We are leaving this spot..”, Udoorin shouted over the wind.

“Can’t!”, the little gnome shouted back down.

“You can climb up there but you can’t climb back down?”, the young man shouted.

“It wasn’t this wet when I climbed up here, alright!”, Gnine replied with freaked out sarcasm. “If I try and climb back down, I’ll slip and break, Heavens know what!”

“Jump, then. I’ll catch you!”, Udoorin shouted up at the little gnome.

“The Hell I will! I am not jumping down and hope that a lummox like you will catch me!”, Gnine replied with even more sarcasm.

“Lummox?”, Udoorin said, frowning up at him.

Still staring at the wet gnome, Udoorin stabbed his greataxe into the ground, then with a massive jump and a savage heave, he grabbed hold of the branch and pulled it arching down at a rather precipitous angle, and came face to face with the little gnome.

Gnine Tinkerdome ogled at the frowning head of the big, burly young man staring into his eye, and gulped.

“Now, then..”, the young man told the little gnome.

“Wha.. What are you doing?”, Gnine ‘eeped’ in horror as the heavy branch arched down even more.

“You have two options, Gnine, and neither is very good. One is where you let me get you down, the other is I let go of this branch and it snaps back up and slings you as far as you can go..”

Gnine ogled at him, some more.

“Very well.”, Udoorin said. “Sling it is..”

“No! Don’t leave the branch!”, Gnine ‘eeped’ again.

Young Udoorin let go of the branch..

..but not before he grabbed the little gnome by the scruff of his jacket and a mere foot from the ground.

“Please do not call me names, Gnine. It is a contemptible thing to do, and it is beneath you.”, the big, burly young man told the little gnome, lifting him up to an inch from his own face.

“But of course, young Master Udoorin.”, Gnine piped hastily.

“Don’t smarm, either. It doesn’t suit you, for one, and I am not some unstable nut job who will go berserk on you at the drop of a hat. Just stop with the name-calling, the insults, and the pranks. I am sure it was fun for you when I was fourteen. But it hasn’t been fun for me. Not then, not now.”, Udoorin said, still frowning at the diffident face staring back at him. “Now, then. Can you keep up? Something tells me this wind and this rain is not going to go away any time soon, and will only get worse.”

“I’ll do my best.”, Gnine replied. “You can put me down now.”

Udoorin grunted and put him down, went over to his very heavy backpack, hauled it up, threw it over his shoulders, and started towards the barely visible form of Laila fading in the savage downpour..

Aager Fogstep ran them through the chaos of the raging storm and through the forest for nearly a mile. With crisp, harsh, and grating growls, he urged them on. “Move!”, he very nearly cursed, as something deep down his barren soul steered, for he felt the tingling sensation of magic gathering in the savage storm.

What no one knew, not even Sheriff Standorin was that Aager Fogstep knew magic. Not intimately. And certainly not enough to be a wizard nor a sorcerer. But enough to have the upper hand in his numerous fights against all the cutters he had killed back at Drashan.

And it was also back then when he’d been a young teenager, that he had apprenticed himself to a beautiful, luscious, and a rather sensual young woman named Primrose, an alchemist and quite the dabbler of the arcane arts by day, and an enthralling belly dancer by night. A woman of soft flesh and charming smile, alluring eyes, and delicious-looking breasts with her numerous beady necklaces, bracelets, belly chains, and bangles.. She had been, perhaps, the only woman the very young, nameless boy from Drashan had ever been infatuated, with back then.

Who the illustrious Primrose had really been, no one had known. She had arrived at Drashan and set up shop, offering her services as an alchemist, a potion master, someone who concocted poisons and antidotes during her days, and offered other entertainments come sundown in the more ‘optimistically classy’ inns and saloons of that wretched island of thieves, thugs, murderers, lechers, whores, and pirates —the worst of the worst humanity had to offer anywhere in the known world.

How a nameless boy of early teens from the stinking and derelict streets and a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties had met, and why she had tutored him was a story for another time. But the matter of fact was, she had learned him the ways of alchemy, potions, and poisons, and philosophy, history, religion, logic, and a pinch of magic.

It was her tutorage that had saved the young, teen Aager back then, and many times, and later as the young man Aager, on many occasions, upon the rooftops of Drashan, fighting and effectively killing many cutters, and when he had come to Serenity Home with Sheriff Standorin, some five years ago..

And due to that very same tutorage, that very moment, he had sensed something was terribly wrong with the wrathful storm raging around them. Hence he had dashed into the forest and sought something, anything, that would offer shelter. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew, he just knew they had to get out of this downpour..

..and whatever else it might entail.

“In here. Hurry..”, he growled as he pointed into a little, hut-like ‘thing’, build from interlocking branches, leaves, and vines.

Lady Moira, who had been running in front of the company, and right behind the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask, stared dubiously at the tiny hut.

“There is a hole in the hut that leads further into the ground.”, Aager growled. “Room enough for all of us, if barely.”

“What is this?”, Lady Magella asked, frowning at the tiny hut.

“I do not know. I found it while seeking shelter. Suffice to say, it is here, and it offers said shelter.”, he grated and pointed at the hut once again, telling the paladin girl to ‘go in’, already!

Moira dropped to her knees with a loud, clanking noise and crawled into the hut, and disappeared in it. Lady Magella mumbled some things under her breath, removed her backpack, and she too crawled into the hut and pulled her pack in behind her.

“What happened to her?”, Aager almost snarled, staring at the whimpering, curled-up girl in Laila’s arms.

“I don’t know. She’s in some kind of shock. I can’t bring her around and she needs to be out of this rain.”, Laila replied, panting heavily.

“Why isn’t young Udoorin carrying her?”, the man in dark leathers asked. “He did join to do the heavy lifting, after all.”

Laila gave him one of her best, angry glares.

“She is not heavy, and I am not letting anyone touch her, Master Aager.”, she snapped at him and without waiting for an answer, she set her cousin down, ducked under the hut, and dragged her in.

Gnine didn’t say anything when he caught up to them and just ran into the tiny hut, though from the expression on his face, he did seem like he was grossly offended about something.

Following him was the big, burly young man, Udoorin, who didn’t comment, nor argue about the size of the hut. He had, after all, been trained by Aager for the past five years and when push came to shove, he didn’t question the sinister-looking man. It was possible, should the man in dark leathers barked, ‘Jump!’, he would only ask, ‘How high?’

The young man tossed his very heavy backpack aside, knowing it wouldn’t fit through the tiny gap, pulled out his extra axes, and holding them firmly and away from his face, he slid and disappeared into the hut.

Aager gave a final look around him, scanning the hazy rain and the flight of leaves and branches, stared up when another greenish lightning flared up the churning, dark gray and purple sky, pressed his lips tightly together behind his half-mask, did he hold his breath!

There..

He heard it again. The thing he’d thought he had heard a few days ago;

The roar of a savage and feral beast!

What is this place?”, Lady Moira asked as she huddled next to Lady Magella, who was giving the little gnome a furious look.

“It is kinda cozy. I like!”, Gnine said impudently as he huddled on the other side of the tall paladin girl, holding up a small, portable lantern.

“I don’t think this hut, nor this ‘rabbit hole’ was originally prepared for such a crowd.”, Laila mused as she stared into one of the half a dozen sacks heaped into one ‘corner’ of the ten by fifteen foot, ‘earth’ room. It also had a low ceiling with roots sticking down where everyone except Lady Magella and Master Gnine had to crawl to get in. “I also think this was some sort of a way point for supplies, other than being a hidey-hole.”

Lady Magella frowned and reached for another of the sacks, untied it, and stared into it.

“Carrots.”, she reported. “They seem quite fresh and well preserved.”

“Yes. There are potatoes in this one.”, Laila said as she went for the other sacks. “Onions, turnips, garlic, some ginger, dried apples and peppers, yams, sweet corns, radishes, some well cured and dried meats, and quite a few smaller pouches stacked in one of the sacks. From the sharp scents, I suspect they are herbs and spices; black pepper, mint, salt, and some things I don’t know what. There are also a few small barrels of water.”

“Is it possible this batch might belong to the creature that attacked you?”, Moira asked.

Laila frowned as she assessed the items in the sacks for a long moment.

“No..”, she said finally. “These are.. I don’t know how to phrase it but, all of these seem a bit like someone who likes their veggies far too much. I mean, I am a ranger and part elf, but I wouldn’t eat some of the things here even if my father cooked them. Look at this. There is even some preserved broccoli here. Broccoli? Really? Who eats that thing? And the spices. Human, elf, dwarf.. no military would have any of the spices here. The salt, yes, because it has many applicable uses. The other spices? I am sure they also are good for you, but they would be far too expensive for the military, and one certainly wouldn’t bring them here and hide them. Not like this. I have never seen any military hideout like this one. I mean, if it were up to me, I’d have dug a hole, put everything in it, then covered it all up with dirt, flattened it, then scattered leaves and twigs to give it a natural camouflage and no one would have found it. I certainly wouldn’t have erected a hut over it, as small as it is.”

“Your assessment is correct, Ranger Laila.”, Aager growled as he too rummaged through the sacks. “This is not a military way point stock. Neither is it a smuggler’s stash.”

“How do you know?”, Lady asked, now turning her permanent scowl at him, not that she really needed any encouragement on his part.

“No weapons.”, Aager said simply. “I have found some medical supplies, but they are limited to bandages made of the simplest of cotton and clean linen, and mostly herbal remedies. There is water but no ale, rom, or any other form of liquor.”

He paused for a moment, looking, and considering something in the little pouch he had just pulled out of one of the sacks.

“And then there are these..”, he grated, turned around, and gave the pouch to the Temple Guardian.

Lady took the small pouch from him and curiously looked into it..

..and just sat there staring into it with a dumbstruck expression on her face.

“What is it?”, Gnine asked, voicing everyone’s provoked curiosity

Lady didn’t answer for a long moment.

Then, with a totally baffled expression on her face, she mumbled..

“Candy!”

What?”, asked Gnine incredulously.

“Candy. Looking at their colors, I am thinking; lemon, strawberry, mint, and grape flavored.”, Lady Magella repeated. “I don’t understand.”

Everyone stared at her equally baffled. Aager, however, was staring at all the sacks and reevaluating their content.

“Tracks.”, he growled suddenly. “Are there any tracks in here?”

Laila stared at him.

“A bit too late to ask for tracks, Sir. Everyone here has trampled over everything.”, she replied with a frown.

“Nobody move.”, he growled then turned to her. “Look. Anything you find will be of some use, Ranger Laila.”

“Is there something we should know, Master Aager? You seem to have an idea.”, Lady asked, staring curiously at him.

“Yes.”, the man in dark leathers growled, but he did not elaborate.

Lady Magella scowled at him, some more..

Laila only sighed, carefully lay her cousin down and pillowed one of the sacks under her head then fumed.

“The lantern please, Gnine.”, she said through gritted teeth. “And where did you even get a lantern?”

“It’s my own designs. I can turn it on and off at will. Or rather, there is a knob at the bottom. If you turn it clockwise, it will go brighter. If you twirl it counter-clockwise, it will go dimmer until it turns off.”, replied the little gnome with a smug sort of grin.

“This is fascinating. I didn’t know you could do things like this. Is it magic?”, she asked, ogling at the tiny lantern.

“It might be.. perhaps.. maybe.. a bit.”, Gnine said evasively.

“The tracks, Ranger Laila.”, Aager grated.

Laila fumed again, took the lantern, twirled the little knob at the bottom like she was told, and suddenly, the underground rabbit hole was flooded with a very bright light!

“Wow!”, exclaimed the ranger girl, squinting away from the lantern.

“You might want to dim it down a little bit.”, mumbled Gnine a bit embarrassed.

No one said anything but they were clearly impressed by the handy craftsmanship of the little gnome.

Laila scanned the room from one corner to the other, telling people to slowly get up without nudging, as she very carefully inspected the dirt floor. After perhaps a full thirty minutes, she gave her report..

“Like I said before. We trampled the room well and good, Sir.”, she said.

Aager didn’t press his lips together as he stared at her and quietly, he waited.

“I did, however, find a partial and it does not belong to any of us.”

“What? You got all of our foot sizes?”, Udoorin asked, a bit surprised.

“I don’t ‘got’ them, Udoorin. I just ‘know’ them. By looking at tracks, I can tell your weight, give or take a few pounds, likely your race, and possibly even your gender, and if you were extra burdened, along with how fast you were moving, or if you were tired or spry.”, she replied.

“The partial, Ranger Laila.” Aager prompted.

“Yes, well, I am not quite sure, to be honest, but it looks like a human footprint with an off skip to his gait. Very light. It could be because the tracks are old, or maybe because.. I don’t know.. Like I said, I am not sure.”, she said with a confused sort of frown on her face.

“Perhaps because the tracks are not quite so old, but the person they belong to was quite old?”, Aager offered.

Laila stared at him.

“It is possible.”, she conceded, then frowned again, started to say something else, but held herself.

“You have something else to add, Ranger Laila?”, Aager growled.

“I.. I found another set of prints..”, she mumbled.
Perhaps it was time for the man in dark leathers to stare, for he did. Silently, he squinted at her.

“Did you, now?”, he growled in a low tone.

“Yus!”, Laila admitted with a flushed face.

“Tiny feet, perhaps?”, he grated.

“Yus..”, she said, her face turning into a darker shade of red.

“What is it?”, Lady Magella asked, frowning at them. “What are you two talking about?”

Aager’s piercing gaze bore into the ranger girl for a breath longer before he turned to the Temple Guardian.

“I believe this ‘rabbit hole’ belongs to no other than Master Cathber Gwet’chen Bolgrig. I expect you know who he is?”, he grated.

“Yes, of course, I know who Master Cathber is, though I have never met him in person.”, Lady scowled at him.

“I suspect he has many other hidey-holes all over this forest, which is understandable.”, he growled.

“Why is that understandable?”, she frowned.

“This is his forest.”, Aager said simply.

“And the other set of footprints?”, she asked.

Aager did not reply immediately. He stared at Laila for a moment, who flushed even more.

“I am unable to give any more information on this matter at the time being, Temple Guardian.”, he grated finally.

That..

..offended the she-dwarf. Very much!

“Would you like to elaborate on that, young man?”, she asked, her face smoldering.

“No, Temple Guardian, I would not. Operational prudence.”, he replied.

That..

..offended the she-dwarf even more!

“Well, excuse me!”, she flared.

“Does the Serenity Home Temple share all their findings with the Sheriff’s Department, Lady Magella?”, Aager growled in a low voice.

“No. We do not.”, she admitted grudgingly.

“There you have it, Temple Guardian. I apologize for the inconvenience but should you want said information disclosed, you will have to run it by the sheriff himself.”, he said.

“What is your purpose here, then, if you are not speaking for the sheriff?”, she scowled.

“I represent the town, Lady. And the law, as ironic as that sounds. My purpose here, however, is to make sure two things happen. One is that the culprits who attacked Serenity Home are brought to justice by any means necessary, dead or alive. The means were left up to me to decide as I see fit.”, he growled.

“Is that so?”, the Lady Magella said with an even deeper scowl.

“Yes.”, the man in dark leathers replied coolly. “You see, I am not a public figure, Temple Guardian, hence I do not need to appear cute for the sake of appearances and what the people around me think is their prerogative. My second objective is to make sure everyone here is to return back to town alive, intact, and functional. My mission parameters were deliberately left vague as ‘get it done’, but not limited to it, which is where ‘as I see fit’ comes into play.”

Udoorin stared at Aager, then looked around at the others uncomfortably.

Gnine tried to make himself appear smaller and was fiddling with one of his sleeves.

Laila returned to her cousin’s side and took her into her arms again though her eyes were ablaze and she was fuming through her nose. It wasn’t clear as to why she was so furious. It was possible, no matter what she did, or how smart she was, things seemed to end in the favor of the man she very much disliked. And no, Laila did not hate Aager. She was almost sure her cousin did not go as far as hating him either. But they both resented him and found him very irksome. What the ranger girl truly found frustrating about him, however, was just how cunning, ruthless, remorseless, and soulless he really was.

Lady Magella’s face had turned outright black, and her lower lip was trembling with abject fury.

“It has come to my attention how you always seem to refer to Serenity Home as ‘your town’, and never ‘my town’, or even ‘our town’, Master Aager. One wonders as to why?”, she grated.

“One should not waste time entertaining such delinquencies, Lady Magella. It is pointless, it will serve no one, and it certainly will not help us catch our query.”, the man in dark leathers replied in his low voice.

“Perhaps you think yourself above the rest of us..”, she said, giving him a baleful glare.

“I shall be above everyone when I am hanging at the end of a noose, Temple Guardian, for I am living on borrowed time and hence see no reason to adopt your town as my own. What is not mine, I can never lose.”, he growled. “That being said, perhaps you would serve ‘your town’ better by seeing to the well being of the young ranger, Morel, for when she is down, she is not moving and neither is she doing her job. Ranger Laila, Master Udoorin, with me..”, he grated, and ghosted back out of the ‘rabbit hole’ and out into the storm..

You could have been a bit politer with Lady Magella, you know?”, Udoorin mumbled as they got out of the tiny hut.

The storming sky had settled down to a fitful, dissatisfied dawn, and grumbled every once in a while. The greenish lightnings still flickered among the churning clouds and the air smelled of sulfur and charred wood.

Master Aager Fogstep, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane, and young Udoorin Shieldheart were standing on top of a steep hillside, staring west of Ritual Forest, for there, far, far away, the dark, purple-black clouds seem to have congealed and something was going on there also..

..something disquietening and soul-draining.

Young Udoorin’s relation with Master Aager had begun some four or five years ago when Sheriff Standorin Shieldheart had sailed to the infamous Island of Drashan under the flag of truce to offer them a non-aggression treaty with the murderous pirates who resided there and ruled the bloody island with iron-fist tyranny. When the sheriff had returned from Drashan, he had not arrived alone, however. With him came the young, but soulless man, Aager Fogstep. No one quite knew why the sheriff had brought the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask with him, but shortly upon their arrival, the lax and mildly trained guards had learned, that their days of lazy response to their duties were very much over.

Within the first few weeks, a pandemic of cracked heads and bruised faces, and not a few stab wounds had broken out. Within the next few months, the level of discipline among said guards had risen exponentially, and by the end of the first year, they were par to Arashkan city militia!

First among the cracked heads had been no other than the sheriff’s own son, Udoorin, a troubled, and troublesome young man back then. Not unlike a daily prayer, the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask had come down on the young man, adamantly, and quite mercilessly, and had turned the irresponsible boy into ‘something’..

Suffice to say, their relationship had not started thus cordially. In fact, by the end of the first week, the boy had hated him —utterly.. By the end of the second month, and with the help of several of his friends, he had tried to even ambush the sinister man in hopes of some well-earned payback —with clubs! To be fair, the attempt hadn’t been a very brilliant plan, nor a convoluted one, to begin with, and had ended by him finding himself with a brand new crack on his skull, in jail, along with his co-conspirators, all entertaining similarly painful adornments!

In time, and particularly after the boy’s unexpected relative fame in Serenity Home when he had apprehended some strangers skulking in the town while his father, Sheriff Standorin, Master Aager, ranger masters Davien and Moorat, ranger novices Laila and Bremorel, and quite a number of the other rangers and town’s guards had been off to some operation at Oger’s Foot, that young Udoorin had come to realize the significance of the very harsh and quite painful training the man in dark leathers had learned him. And bit by bit, he had come to genuinely respect him, even though there was only a five-year age difference between them. Still though, and at times such as these, the young man still ‘mumbled’ his displeasure at him in hopes, perhaps, to get a ‘human’ and ‘humane’ response out of him.

“You want to tell me something, young Udoorin?”, Aager growled as he squinted into the dark, purple-black storm raging far in the distance.

“I just did, Master Aager. It wasn’t nice of you to talk like that to the Temple Guardian.”, Udoorin rumbled. “And what was it that was so important that you would talk her down the way you did.”
Aager turned to give the young man a long, cool gaze.

“I do not go out of my way to disrespect people, young Udoorin. This, you should know by now. And I have the utmost respect for Lady Magella. However, for someone who does not share information that might be pertinent for the safety of her own town, I see little reason to return the favor. As for what I refused to share, perhaps you should ask Ranger Laila about it, since, at the time, she, herself had refused to divulge said information in the first place.”, he grated.

“Perhaps you should not ask Ranger Laila about it at all!”, Laila spat. “It is none of your business.”

Udoorin cocked an eyebrow at her.

“That was a tad harsh, Laila. Did I do something to you that I am not aware of?”, he asked honestly.

Laila fumed, then sighed.

“I am sorry, Udoorin. Look, can we talk about this some other time? Or never? This really has nothing to do with you.”, she said then turned her attention to the raving storm. “That is not a natural occurrence at all.”

“No. It is not.”, Aager confirmed. “And I do not think it really is a storm.”

“How do you mean, Sir?”, Laila asked.

“I am not a weather expert, Ranger Laila. Had I been a Drashan pirate, I would have made some professional assumptions. You, on the other hand, would understand storms and weather patterns much better than I would in a forest. Does the appearance of a storm in such a relatively small area seem natural to you?”, he grated.

“No. Storms, as I understand them, are all about heat difference in usually two or rarely more weather patterns colliding with one another. They are extremely violent and tend to want to expand as far as possible to even out said differences. Of course, this is an overly simplified explanation but it is true.. in essence, and you would very, very rarely see it occur in such a small and confined area. At least not when there is plenty of space for it to spread.”, she mused. “And lightnings do not flash in green like these ones.”

In silent, spooked amazement, the three of them watched as the storm churned, boiled, and displayed its ‘contained’ wrath. One green lightning after another flashed savagely and struck down followed by an enormous thunderclap and between the claps, they heard screams!

And among the screams, they heard the sounds of howling ‘things’, the roaring cough of some feral beast, and something was laughing! It was a hallow, soul-ebbing laughter. Something elemental and primeval. Something that did not belong to this world..

“I.. I don’t know what is going on over there, but I suddenly don’t want to be here..”, Laila said, her voice trembling.

Young Udoorin did not say anything. He couldn’t. He merely watched with fearful fascination. He certainly wanted to run away, but it seemed like something weighed down his legs and he just couldn’t move. Aager didn’t say anything either. Whether it was because he was equally stunned or afraid, was unclear, for whatever expression there was to be had, it was hidden behind his half-mask. One thing he was certain of, however. Some great power was at play there, and it didn’t seem like something he wanted to get involved.

The howling storm crowded and smothered the confines of its funnel and ravaged the lands and the trees below it for another hour. When it was done, it didn’t slowly dissipate, nor did it leave quietly. With a final, ground-shaking howl, it just vanished and only the ruination of the lands right below it was the testament to its existence. The three stood there petrified for a long time until Aager shook free of his fear-shackles.

“We had better get moving. It would seem we are not alone in these woods seeking something today. And I want to put as much distance between whoever is out there and ourselves as possible.”, he growled.

“We are not going to investigate what just happened there?”, Udoorin asked.

“Young Udoorin. It would only appear whatever transpired there, only seems close. That distance, however, is deceiving and it will cost us at least two days to reach it, which is more time than we can spare. We have already lost almost a full day sitting out the unholy storm and my only hope is that our query also hid and waited it out. That, however, will work more to his advantage than it will for ours since the storm would have washed away all his tracks. I am guessing he also knows this and will use that time to either foolishly rest, or smartly run as fast and as far as he can.”, Aager replied with smoldering anger. “We will return back to the hut, collect the others, and move out.”

Then, on the way back, Aager leaned in and growled at the young man.

“The next time you want to question me about not sharing information, young Master Udoorin, perhaps you should listen to your own advice.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Sir.”, Udoorin said with a baffled expression on his face.

“Junior Temple Guardian Thomas Dimwood was never mentioned in your long report about the events that took place in your town when we were gone for the Oger’s Foot operation. Yet you let that slip several days ago when you were talking to Master Gnine. Now, why is that?”, he grated as he stared at the young man.

Udoorin’s face flushed.

“I.. I wasn’t trying to hide anything, Master Aager. I promise. Thomas asked me not to have him get involved. He was there because I asked for his help. He knocked one of the men trying to get away by clubbing him with a flail. I honored his wishes because he’s a good man and my friend. And to be honest about it, it didn’t seem pertinent to me back then.”, he said hastily.

“It isn’t up to you, nor is it up to him, to decide what is pertinent and what is not. If everyone redacts and serves what information they wish, said information becomes inaccurate, which is to say, wrong people may get killed. Our job is to find security risks where Serenity Home and all the lands around it are concerned. Thousands of lives depend on the information we gather. If the information is lacking, people lose their lives. Do you understand that?”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“Yes, Sir. I do.”, Udoorin replied mutely, his face burning now.

“One day, your father will grow old, young man. His only wish is that you take up his job as the new sheriff of Serenity Home.”, Aager said.

“What if I don’t want to be the sheriff.”, Udoorin mumbled.

“What if you don’t?”, Aager growled. “Perhaps you should ask your father why he became a sheriff in the first place. I am sure that will give you the correct perspective, considering you were born because he chose to be the sheriff!”

“What?”, the young man exclaimed, staring at the man in dark leathers, but Aager did not elaborate.

Udoorin fumed in frustration as he followed him down the hill and to the tiny hut.

Bremorel was ‘awake’ when they ducked into the tiny hut and crawled down the rabbit hole. Her face was pale and she was still jerking and spasming uncontrollably every once in a while as she tried to slurp the hot soup Lady Magella had made for her and the others while they waited for the savage storm to blow out.

“But why was I affected so much?”, she was saying. “Did anyone else panic and collapse?”

“My dear girl, you did collapse, but what you experienced was not panic.”, the Temple Guardian said.

“It was, Lady. It was sheer, blind panic. I felt.. I felt like I was..”, she mumbled, but fell silent and did not voice what it was she’d felt.

“It is alright to be afraid, Ranger Bremorel.”, Moira said kindly. “I am afraid of many things and I do not fear to admit it. It isn’t bravery if you can not feel fear. It is bravery when you are afraid, but still, go ahead and do what needs to be done.”

“This was.. this was like a nightmare.. It engulfed me and I couldn’t breathe.. Darkness was everywhere.. And death..”, she said hoarsely as her face flushed in mortification. “I have never been so afraid in my entire life.”

Lady Magella gave her a thoughtful look. She had known Bremorel since the day she’d been brought to Serenity Home and placed in the orphanage when she’d barely been four years of age. She had been an angry little girl back then, always shouting at the top of her lungs and always fighting. That hadn’t changed much in the following years.

When she had been twelve, she’d picked a fight with the sheriff’s son, young Udoorin, who was also of the same age, along with three other boys. The sheriff himself had intervened and she had been arrested and put to jail for a week to ‘cool off’, then drafted off by Ranger Master Moorat as a ranger initiate to help her channel her anger to something useful, or at the very least, something less destructive.

That particular idea hadn’t come from Moorat, but from Lady Magella’s spiritual superior and the head of Serenity Home Temple, Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand, though no one had told that to the young girl, and to be fair, Moorat had resented having been forced to put up with ‘that little demon!’ who had clearly been foisted on him. Sheriff Standorin had certainly found the whole idea somewhat a ‘novelty’ and told his brother-in-law, Moorat, to stop moping and to make a ranger out of said little demon..

Under the harsh tutorage of the ranger master, Bremorel had grown and flourished, and she had become a very good ranger, making Moorat quite proud. Unbearably so at times. It was all he could do but strut before his brother-in-law, Sheriff Standorin, whenever the young ranger attained a new achievement, putting the sheriff in despair. Not because of the young ranger’s well-earned achievement, but because of Moorat’s gloat! The point that interested, and worried, Lady Magella was, had the girl really gotten over her anger?

But then, that was the question, wasn’t it?

Lady Magella had hoped that she had but the evidence proved otherwise. What the evidence also showed was that the young woman had also never quite gotten over neither her mother’s nor her father’s death.

Lady never blamed her for that. All things considered, who would get over such a sudden, drastic, and horrifying loss, especially taking in the fact that the young woman had witnessed their deaths at the hands of the orcish raiding party from as close as a few feet, hiding in a tiny closet. Hungry, thirsty, very much in shock, and perhaps permanently traumatized, she had sat in her parent’s blood, expecting their butchered corpses to wake up for days until she was found..

..which explained, Lady thought, why the girl had succumbed into panic-induced shock, right when the storm had struck, confirming her suspicions that the storm had not been a natural occurrence, but something else.

Temple Guardian Lady Magella was a priestess. But her particular school of choice had been of ‘Life’. And all her teachings in the past two decades told her that the storm had been, not precisely evil, but it certainly had ‘death’ in it. It also said something about young Bremorel, for she had felt the ‘dread’ of the storm so thoroughly and down to her very core. That the young ranger was exceptionally sensitive to death. Or to put it into a more tangible perspective, Bremorel had become intimately, if not quite attuned, per se, but rather aligned to death, if that made any kind of sense. Lady Magella suspected, given enough time, the girl would become better at understanding what she felt, in turn, becoming stronger for it, should she master and harness her traumatic past and hence, her fears.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, my dear child. We were all afraid. It may have very well happened to you because you were closest to it at the time. When your cousin brought you, it was all she could do to stay standing.”, she told her with a surprisingly reassuring tone and a gentle smile..

..which freaked the Hell out of the ranger girl!

“That is true, dear Bremorel. I am a paladin and I could hardly stay standing, myself.”, Moira admitted from where she sat.

“What she said.”, Gnine piped as he slurped his soup. “I ended up hugging the tree I had climbed and couldn’t even get back down. Udoorin ended up dragging me off it, and quite literally..”

Bremorel didn’t say anything for a long while as she drank her own hot soup from her bowl.

Her hands were still trembling but at least the jerky spasms had stopped. She knew the others were trying to help and ease her embarrassment if nothing else. She also knew what she had seen, or thought she had seen in that darkness when it had engulfed her. And once again, she was four, and she was back in her home at Dim Woods..

 

“Morel, my sweet baby, quick. In here. Hide..”, her mother, Seleina, was saying and from her voice, little Morel knew her mother was so afraid. And there were tears in her eyes as well.

Bremorel remembered the screams coming from outside their little woodmen’s cottage, but for whatever reason, their volume had suddenly become barely audible.

“Mom. I can help. Please, let me help.”, the little Morel had begged as her mother carried her over to the tiny, handcrafted closet box, opened it, pulled out its few, poor, handwoven content, and placed her in it.

“Listen to your mother, Morel.”, her father, Aramsis, had rumbled as he walked up to them. He had a big, wood men’s axe in one hand and another, smaller axe in the other.

Bremorel’s father had been a large man with broad shoulders, and powerful arms and little Morel remembered watching him chop wood outside their home with mandatory ease.

In retro respect, she had always wondered how he had been so gentle with her mother, who had been a tall, willowy sort of girl with long, dark hair, long, slender arms, and legs.

“You must be brave, my beloved little Morel.”, his father had said, kneeling next to the closet box.

“And never cry, or make any sound. You are a Darkmaine and more important, you are a Sunstrider. Darkmaine’s never shy from a fight, and Sunstrider’s never shy from life.”, he had said, grinning like a boy.

For whatever reason, that had given all the backbone both she, and her mother had needed..

“I will stay in this box, father. And I will not cry. I will be quiet as a mouse and no one will hear me.”, she had promised.

Aramsis had given her one of his big, broad, and very much proud smiles and hugged her, very tightly, and then rose to make room for her mother.

Her mother knelt before her and had hugged her as well, even more tightly, as she had smelled her hair, and deeply, then given her one last look and whispered to her..

“You are your father’s darling and my beautiful baby. And my beloved sister, Seraphim Silverdûne’s niece. I love you as she loved me. Never forget it..”

With that, she had closed the lid to the small, chest-like box and her father had given the smaller axe to her mother. They had nodded once and turned to face the door.

And as if on cue, the screams coming from outside were audible again..

..and the door to their little, woodsmen’s cottage had burst open, letting in the orcish raiders..

 

Bremorel shuddered, then sighed.

It would seem, that years just couldn’t wash some things off her desolate memories..

“It is time to move out.”, growled a voice and ‘blessedly’ tore her away from her gloomy past. Then she woke up to the fact that it was that evil guy, Master Aager, who had spoken, and she scratched over ‘blessed’ and scowled in his direction, just for a good measure.

It would also seem, that the young ranger girl, Bremorel was a tad vindictive like that.

“We shall move out when the children are done putting some hot soup into their stomachs.”, Lady Magella said, and to Bremorel’s delight, she was also scowling at the man in dark leathers.

“This isn’t a stroll in the woods, Temple Guardian. The storm has had its fill and our query is likely on the move once more.”, grated Aager.

“Our query, as you like to call him, is wet, hungry, and is likely lost in the woods, Master Aager. I have no desire to emulate his stupidity by letting my children do the same.”, she replied with her jaw set as if she was crunching walnuts!

Aager fumed silently.

“I guess I shall have to bow to the inevitable obstinacy of the dwarven kin.”, he replied in his low, gravelly voice, crawled up to the Temple Guardian, and opened one, empty hand.

Lady Magella stared at him, and at the empty hand.

“What?”, she asked, a bit perturbed.

“My share of the hot soup, Lady. Unless I am exempt of your tender care..”, he growled, though there was amusement in his dark eyes.

Lady scowled at him, then poured him a bowl of hot soup as well.

“Indeed, your tender care forever amazes me, Lady.”, the man in dark leathers said politely, nodded at her, then settled down next to the little gnome, Gnine, who gave him a careful, sidelong glance, and started gulping down his own remaining soup.

“Ahh, food!”, Udoorin said brightly and crawled up to the Temple Guardian followed closely by Ranger Laila..

There is death in the air tonight.”, Lady Moira murmured as she stared up at the dark, chilly sky. It was was early summer and it shouldn’t have been this cold. Ritual Forest always enjoyed a ‘blessed’ climate, even during winters; never really deadly cold. In fact, one could survive the seasons with a rudimentary tent, a small campfire, and a blanket, and the beautiful forest itself offered many little ponds of clear water and bounty in the plenty.

Tonight, however, something seemed to have overridden the norms of the forest and it was, even now, prowling and stalking in the night with a bloody vengeance in mind..

“No dear, child, there is ‘murder’ in the air tonight.”, Lady Magella corrected. “I can feel it in my very bones. Many murders have already happened, but the thirst for more has not been quenched.”

“Cheery..”, Gnine mumbled from behind the Temple Guardian.

“No, it is not!”, the she-dwarf snapped.

“I am sorry, Temple Guardian!”, the little gnome piped hastily. “Of course, it is not! I mean, how could it ever be? Murder is an evil sin!”

The Temple Guardian turned around and gave the little gnome a burning glare.

Gnine gulped.

“I don’t need your smart mouth, Gnine Tinkerdome. I respect your uncle. I would like to respect his niece as well. Don’t mare his reputation by your delinquent behaviors.”, she hissed at him.

Gnine gulped again.

“No, Temple Guardian, I won’t. Of course, I won’t!”, he replied immediately.

The she-dwarf gave him another burning glare, then turned around and in a commanding tone, she very nearly barked at the young man walking next to the paladin girl, Moira, just a few feet ahead.

“Udoorin. Drop that backpack of yours and go find the Drashan. Tell him we are going to make camp early this evening. I want a large bonfire going. I want you, him, and young Moira on watch, and I want the ranger girls resting. He’s been running those poor girls into the ground ever since we left Serenity Home.”

“Uhhmm..”, mumbled Udoorin, a bit surprised at her abrupt manner. “Okay, but who is going to carry my pack while I go and find Master Aager?”

“I will bring it along.”, she said harshly.

“Uhhmm.. Are you sure, ma’am?”, he asked dubiously. “It’s.. a bit heavy..”

“I am sure I can handle a backpack, young man.”, she scowled at him. “Now, go!”

Udoorin dropped his pack and took off as Lady Magella mumbled something about the lack of respect in kids nowadays, grabbed at the backpack’s straps, heaved..

..and fell!

“What in the name of Great Heavens..”, she spluttered as she picked up herself and stared down at the pack.

It hadn’t moved an inch.

She made another go at it and pulled, heaved, pushed, dragged but it still didn’t move..

..at all!

“Well, really, now!”, she flared.

Gnine hiccuped and bit at his knuckles. If he laughed, he just knew the Temple Guardian would hurt him!

“What does that boy have in this bloody thing?”, she fumed. “Lady Moira, if you will, do give me a hand with this.”

“I apologize, Temple Guardian. But my code of honor forbids me to touch another’s property without the express permission of its owner.”, Moira said, also trying to hide her smile. “Whatever it is young Master Udoorin has in there, surely he must think it essential to carry around with such arduous fervor.”

“I.. see..”, the she-dwarf said with a frown. “Well, I suppose you are right. We shall have to wait until they return, then.”

It took perhaps half an hour for the young man to find Master Aager, which is to say, the man in dark leathers crept up to him in total silence and growled in his low, sinister voice..

“You are out of line, young Master Udoorin. I believe I had warned you about not doing that. During our first meeting.”

Udoorin gulped.

“Please don’t club me over the head again. I was trying to find you upon Lady Magella’s orders.”, he said hastily.

“Ahh.. Is the Temple Guardian giving the orders now?”, he mused.

“I.. wouldn’t know, Sir. I believe she wants to make an early camp. She said something about ‘murder in the air this evening”, and sent me off to find you.”, Udoorin explained quickly.

“You left the Temple Guardian alone, in the woods?”, Aager growled.

“Lady Moira was with her. And Gnine..”, Udoorin gulped.

“Lady Moira is an unknown entity in this company, young Master Udoorin. I have yet to hear why she came to Serenity Home in the first place. Something she has thus carefully avoided in not mentioning. As for Master Gnine, I shudder to think how he would fare should the Temple Guardian come in harm’s way. I wouldn’t mind at all if he ran and never came back, but not at the expense of Lady Magella.”, the man in dark leathers grated and started walking towards the company.

“I.. wasn’t aware you disliked Gnine so much, Sir.”, Udoorin mumbled. “I certainly wasn’t aware you were so fond of Lady Magella. Considering how she seems to want to burn you at every opportunity.”

“‘Dislike’ is a word I would find falling short of the little gnome, young Udoorin. I detest idlers and those who think they are somehow entitled. Suffice to say, it is up to Master Gnine to change my opinions about him, not up to me to fix it for him. As for the Temple Guardian, she is the core of this company. Our rangers are our guides, yes, and should anything happen to one of them, we still have the other to lead the way. Even should I fall, the company can still achieve its goal. Should something happen to the Temple Guardian, however, this company will dwindle and eventually die, for she is the only one among us who can keep us all alive, in the most literal sense.”, Aager growled and there was no emotion in his voice..

..at all.

“That is a rather cold way of looking at things, isn’t it?”, the young man said with a very disturbed tone.

Aager Fogstep did not reply.

The man was still young and this was not Drashan. He’d had his empathy drained out of him by the time he’d been five but apparently, things were different here, and even after five whole years he’d spent at Serenity Home, he still couldn’t understand how naively optimistic these people were.

“What took you so long, young man?”, frowned Lady Magella when the young man returned with the man in dark leathers.

“I am sorry, ma’am, but Master Aager isn’t easy to find, you know? Why are you still here?”, Udoorin said.

“We couldn’t move your pack.”, the Temple Guardian said flatly. “Just what do you have in this thing?”

“Uhhmm.. this and that.”, the young man replied evasively.

“There is no point in wasting time here, Lady Magella. The rangers have already set up camp some five hundred yards north of here.”, Aager growled.

“They have, have they? Good for them. Those girls need the rest.”, she scowled a tad belligerently at him.

“I guess they do, Temple Guardian. Shall we?”, Aager offered mildly.

Lady Magella seemed like she was looking for something to argue but the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask hadn’t really left anything to argue about, so she let loose a ‘humph’, and started towards the camp.

Udoorin hauled his very heavy backpack and followed her with Lady Moira, Gnine, and Aager bringing up the rear.

The next storm came without any warning.

The ranger girls had lit a large bonfire, and against Aager’s better judgment, but he’d held his opinions on the matter to himself. For whatever reason, the Temple Guardian felt agitated towards him and he did not want to turn the company against one another, nor to disrupt their loyalties.

He himself was affiliated directly with the sheriff’s office.

The young ranger girls, Laila and Morel, however, were not. Their loyalties were to Serenity Home and to their respective ranger masters, Davien Hart and Moorat Maelstrom.

The Temple Guardian, Lady Magella’s affiliation was to her temple, and to Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand. Young Udoorin did not have any official affiliation even though his father was the sheriff of Serenity Home. The boy also had high respect for the town’s temple, the Senior Temple Guardian himself, and by his proxy, for Lady Magella.

The young paladin girl, Lady Moira had no affiliation to Serenity Home at all. While her military command and training would place her under the de facto jurisdiction of the sheriff’s department, her spiritual command, however, would put her under the temple’s jurisdiction.

As for the little gnome, Master Gnine, he had no affiliations with any official office, department, or temple, making him a loose cannon however one looked at it.

Aager did not like politics. He knew the necessity for it at times, but rarely did he partake nor want to have anything to do with it, and those who knew him well enough also knew never to politic him! Hence the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask opted to seethe in silence as he stared into the night, his back turned to the fire, and somewhat apart from the rest of the company. He didn’t really need these people to like him. But he did need their cooperation, preferably willingly. A something he knew wouldn’t happen should he further aggravate them.

It was likely everyone around the campfire, at that very moment, would have been surprised, and possibly even be somewhat ashamed had they known, the man in dark leathers did not care, at all, whether they appreciated his efforts, his tenacity to pursue, and his dedication to his work that would inevitably and inadvertently save the lives of ‘their’ town. It was likely they didn’t, or perhaps, simply couldn’t understand his efforts, his tenacity to pursue, or his dedication to his work. After all, practical pragmatism at his level of understanding and application would likely constitute, and consequently be branded as ‘sin’.

“Stew?”, said a voice, and Lady Moira was standing next to him with a steaming wooden bowl and a hand-carved wooden spoon.

Aager gave the tall, well-built, and perfectly proportionate paladin girl a barely discernible side glance before he took the bowl of steaming stew that smelled of some delicious aroma; apparently, the Temple Guardian had gone out of her way to prepare the stew to be extra nurturing, if not outright delicious.

He took a small sip from the stew and frowned.

This was not Lady Magella’s cooking.

The Temple Guardian had a heavy hand when it came to her preaching and she showed a similar tenacity, or perhaps ‘doggedness’, when it came to her cooking.

This stew, had sweet potatoes, carrots, spars onions, ground apples, and minced rabbit meat. It was lightly spiced and had something else in it. Something he couldn’t quite figure of. He took a long, deliberate whiff of the steam and it clicked. There was rosemary in the stew, a something that was not in the Temple Guardian’s repertoire for ingredients that he was aware of.

“It would seem young Ranger Morel does know how to cook.”, he growled. “Does she know you brought this to me?”

“Ranger Morel is a greater person than you give her credit, Master Aager. It is true, she is young, and it would seem there is some sour history between her, her cousin Laila, and you, but I doubt, under any circumstance would she wish ill of you.”, Moira replied, giving him one of her pretty, broad, and genuine smiles.

“That is yet to be seen.”, Aager grated. “I am surprised the Temple Guardian let her cook, seeing as how concerned she seems of her ‘children.’”

“‘Let’, is a powerful word, Master Aager. The esteemed Temple Guardian is not a tyrant, after all.”, Moira said, stifling a laugh.

“I beg to differ.”, the man in dark leathers replied grudgingly.

“She does, however, honestly and genuinely believes that the people around her are, in fact, her very own children; young and foolish. A feeling she has adopted and opted to extend even to me, which is the point.”, the tall, comely girl said.

“There is a point, then?”, Aager growled.

“But of course, Master Aager.”, she replied. “A point you are missing.”

Aager turned to face the tall, reddish-brown-haired girl and cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Do enlighten me.”, he ‘almost’ snarled.

Lady Moira took absolutely no umbrage at his attitude. Her smile became even broader and she shined like a bright star.

“As misbehaved as you are, from her relative point of view, willy-nilly, you, Sir Aager, are one of her children, also.”

Huh.”, Aager grunted.

And just when he’d thought he had figured out ‘people’..

Apparently, there was more to said people than some equation no matter how pragmatic his approaches were. Also apparently, ‘people’ preferred to settle for foolish feelings than to adopt practical efficiency even in situations as dire as life and death.

‘People’, Aager thought, were foolish indeed.

“So they sent the paladin to put me in my place?”, he grated.

Moira smiled once more.

“No one sends a paladin but the Great Heavens, Master Aager. Much like our esteemed rangers, you have also been running around all day, every day, since we left Serenity Home, making sure we were safe and beyond ambush. I brought you the stew because it wouldn’t be out of place to assume you also would be humanly hungry. Even us paladins require it. True, our souls hunger for spiritual surcease, but our bodies run on food.”, she replied serenely.

“Why are you here?”, he asked suddenly.

“I thought that was rather apparent, Master Aager.”, she said, staring meaningfully at his stew.

“No. Why are you really here?”, Aager growled.

“Ahh. You are referring to my arrival and consequently, my presence at Serenity Home.”, she replied calmly. “I was informed by my direct superior that he had received disturbing news about possibly sinister activities around some ruins not too far from here and was told to investigate. I was also told to get in contact with the locals in hopes of getting more, preferably up-to-date information of the surrounding lands. I was seeking likely companions for my venture, which is why I was in your town. Suffice to say, things turned out not quite as I expected. When your sheriff, Standorin Shieldheart, offered me the job to accompany and safeguard their people, I agreed. One, because that is what we paladins do; we safeguard those who are entrusted to us, and two, I was hoping our trek would lead us to my destination. Either way, I shall stay with you and yours, and make sure they are safeguarded and returned back, ‘alive, intact, and functional, as you phrased it.”

Aager stared at her.

“That was very impressive, Lady Moira. You have said many things, yet, neither did you answer my question, nor did you reveal anything verifiable.”, he grated.

“Yup!”, she said with a merry grin.

“I wouldn’t have thought paladins would be so convoluted.”, he growled.

“There are no convolutions involved, Master Aager. It is merely a matter of operational prudence. I apologize for the inconvenience, and as much as I would personally have preferred to divulge the details of my presence here, you would first have to run it by my superior himself.”, she said with a sweet smile.

“Shrewd, Lady Moira, and touché. You have just stabbed me with my own blade.”, Aager grated and with a tint of amusement.

Funny how of all the people in the company, this red-headed girl, a total stranger, had turned out to be more of a mental challenge than he would have given her credit. She was cool, calm, undemanding, and she never shied from sharing her brilliant and sunny smile despite his dark presence, hinting to him, that she truly did believe ‘good’ and ‘kindness’ would prevail and whether Aager found that naive, she didn’t mind at all.

It was then, he felt a chilly updraft even though they were out and in a forest and a tingling sensation buzzed around his fingertips— ⊗

“Honestly, Master Aager, that was never my intention but a mere happy coincidence.”, she said with a grin. “I was saving that particular explanation in case someone did ask for the reasons for my presence. You just happened to be the lucky winner.”

“I would have thought Temple Guardians and paladins did not place much faith in coincidences..”, Aager growled as he looked down where his fingers rested..

⊗ —on his dagger’s pommel.

“EVERYONE, SCATTER!”, he barked as he shouldered the paladin girl..

..and knocked her down!

And without any warning, the second storm exploded right over their heads!

Something stung Aager somewhere down his hip and pain slashed at him. He grunted as the jabbing pain ricocheted back up his spine and he dropped to the ground.

With a loud clank, the paladin girl, Moira, also dropped next to him with stunned surprise, not quite understanding why the man in dark leathers had tackled her..

..until a savage thunder clapped right above them!

Aager looked down to see smoke rising from the ground, and from his side. He didn’t wait. With inhuman resolution, he ignored the stabbing pain and rolled away from Moira just as the sky coughed and a sheet of blinding flashes of lightnings came stabbing and tearing at them followed by a series of deafening thunderclaps.

The man in dark leathers felt numb and concussed.
The light was just too bright and painful to look at, and the staccato of thunderclaps was too loud and disturbing to shrug off.

“Scatter and.. take cover!”, he managed to splutter as he tasted blood.

He had bitten his own tongue and he hadn’t even felt it.

“Lady Moira..”, he growled in the general direction he thought she was.

“I am here, Master Aager. Are you alright? Your leg appears charred. Hold on, I am coming. We must get you out of this storm.”, she shouted from somewhere behind him, and with a voice that had much more control of herself.

Aager heard the clanking of the girl in her plate armor when another lightning flickered and there was a sonic blast followed by a grunt, and another clanking of armor as the paladin collapsed.

“I am alright, I am alright. It’s merely a flesh wound. Be right there..”, Lady Moira shouted ‘merrily’.

“No.”, Aager grated. “Get to the Temple Guardian and get her out of here.”

“I may not leave an injured comrade behind, Sir Aager.”, she objected.

“GET THE TEMPLE GUARDIAN OUT OF HERE!”, Aager snarled!

To give her credit, Moira did not stop to further object, or question his judgment, nor did she look around dumbfounded, or even confused.

She started chanting something and dashed to where the bonfire was hissing and spitting fitfully under the raging storm and there she found Lady Magella standing around, fists on her hips, her hair drenched and plastered, and with an expression that said she was clearly and highly offended about something!
“Udoorin. Get out of that armor, now! Bremorel, stay away from him. He’s a walking lightning rod! Where is that little no-good-gnome! Laila, take your cousin and go find him!”, she was shouting, forgetting the fact that she too, was wearing chainmail armor.

“I can find him faster if I go alone, Lady.”, Laila objected.

“Don’t argue with me, girl. TAKE YOUR COUSIN AND GO FIND GNINE!”, Lady blared at her.

Both Laila and Bremorel took off, parting and looking under bushes for the little gnome while young Udoorin had dropped his very heavy backpack, tossed all his weapons, and was struggling with his chain armor as the sky above them churned and blazed more lightnings and the night shuddered with growling thunderclaps.

Moira skid next to Lady, gave her a curt nod, and finished her chanting..

..and with a great whine, a massive warhorse, some eighteen hands tall, rose out of the ground with brilliant, celestial light!

Lady Magella ogled at the great, holy steed as Moira grabbed her, and without giving her the time to protest, hauled her up and sat her on the saddle of the massive beast..

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, GIRL?”, shrieked the she-dwarf.

“You and the Great Heavens forgive me, Temple Guardian, but you have to go.”, Moira said guiltily and to the horse, she whispered, “Run, Ayla. Run like the wind. Take the Temple Guardian to safety!”

The great steed reared, and took off with the screaming she-dwarf!

Moira turned around to see a feral streak of lightning tearing at the ground sending chunks of tuft and turf, and Udoorin, flying in the air. The young man dropped back down like a sack, some ten yards away, with a pained grunt, got up, and started running towards the trees.

She saw Master Aager roll on the ground and zig-zag through the clearing and watched in horrified fascination as the night lit up and another lightning came flashing down..

..then again.. and again!

What fascinated her was how the growling man in dark leathers danced and evaded the forking spears of nature with inhuman determination. What had her truly lose her calm was the fact that the lightnings seem to follow him! As swift as he was, however, he finally dropped when a tree, a bare few feet away from him got struck, split down the middle, splintered, and came crashing down on him, and buried him under its heavy branches.

“That just can’t be natural.”, she said hoarsely..

..and comprehension clicked in her mind.

There was someone out there and whoever he was, he was responsible for the storm and the lightnings, and for whatever reason, he was punishing them.

“You may think me naive for believing in ‘good’ and ‘kindness’, Master Aager, but I do not.”, she murmured.. and she stepped in front of the dying bonfire, and in plain sight, and did she raise her arms into the night as if in supplication and called;

 

Ye, who hast cast dire storms,
and thunder, and thus wild,
Upon us, I beseech, do look
and deep, for we are beguiled.

Sense, do I loss, and wrath,
and sorrow, and anger,
Yet do I sense wonts,
and desires, and do they hanker.

A peek, is I beg, for you
to see in mine truss.
And see your sin, beckon
with haste and char us.

 

And a single beam of light lazily came down from the night sky and pushed the darkness away. It was a bright, golden light. A beautiful light. A light that bespoke of High Heavens and Angels beyond.

And just like that, the storm ceased, the rain stopped, and a choking silence settled into the night.

In the brilliant beam of light, Moira stood kneeling, rigid, unmoving, and petrified..

..and a little figure in tattered clothes came crawling from behind some trees just beyond the dying and hissing bonfire. In abject fear, she clawed her way to the unmoving paladin and prostrated herself before her, moaning..

“Burn me.”

“Please, burn me.”

“I want to be free of my demons..”

“Burn me..”

 

---

 

Chapter
Four

The Ambush

 

Timeline:

This story begins a few days after
The First Clue.

 

 

See? There, under that clump of wild berry bushes..”, Laila Wolvesbane whispered from where she lay.

Bremorel Songsteel peered intently at the bush from where she too, lay hidden. She gave the berry bush far and deep among the trees, some eighty yards away, a good, hard stare.

“Nope. Still can’t see anything.”, her cousin whispered back, frowning at the unyielding bush.

“Come.”, Laila said. “Let’s circle around it and see closer.”

“No. If you say it’s there, then it’s there. I trust your eyesight more than I trust anybody else’s, cuzz. Let’s go back and tell the others. And give that Aager-guy something to chew on.”, Bremorel said with a smirk as she slithered back, careful not to make any noise. When she was far enough, she got up and her cousin appeared next to her and they both started back towards the company.

“Bree..”, Laila reprimanded with exasperation. “You really should get over him, already. He’s doing what he thinks is right for the survival of the town. Would have been surprised if he did anything else, really. Everything I have heard about him says, he has no life.. I mean, almost literally.. He barely goes to his dingy little home, he skulks around the town ambushing the guards to make sure they are sober and awake, and when he’s off duty, he comes down on Udoorin in hopes of making him more than a dumb axe-swinger. To be honest, I feel sorry for both of them. I would have bailed my training if Ranger Master Davien had treated me like that. Not that he would..”
“Why are you defending him, Laila? You detest him as much as I do.”, Bremorel asked scowling at her cousin.

“It doesn’t matter what I personally think of him, cuzz. He is doing his job, and apparently, possibly because he has nothing else to do with his life. I mean, you’d wish, someday, that boy of yours would brave up and ask you out and hope it would eventually lead somewhere, or to something, right?”, Laila said.

“I am not answering that.. It’s clearly a trick question.”, Bremorel said with a brittle sort of grin.

“What I am getting at is, you have hopes and dreams. Everyone does. That man doesn’t. What’s truly creepy is, he doesn’t do anything for even a bit of satisfaction. And you’d think he would be all commanding and pompous, you know, since the sheriff chose him to lead us, right? But he hasn’t shown the slightest interest in any human ego. I mean, if that’s not creepy, I don’t know what is. I don’t think he cares if he is the leader or not. I mean, he really doesn’t care! But since the job’s been dumped on him, he’s doing it much like a surgeon would use his sharp knives to cut out a barbed arrow without shredding open an artery.”, Laila tried to explain.

“How do you know so much about him?”, Bremorel asked, squinting at her cousin.

“I asked around.”, Laila shrugged.

“Why?”

“I got curious. Particularly after Bane-Song operation.. and having seen the way he’d grilled us for hours even though we were recuperating. You know, it made me wonder why he got so obsessive over things that seemed so trivial at the time. I think it has to do with his past.. and likely due to some things that happened to him back at Drashan.”, the half-elf girl mused.

“Who cares!”, fumed Bremorel.

“My dear sister-cousin..”, Laila said seriously, though there was the tint of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

“..of all people, I would have thought you would understand the consequences of misunderstanding people.”

Bremorel froze where she was.

Then she turned to her cousin and gave her a very frosty glare..

“That.. was uncalled for, Laila. Dammit, girl, that happened years ago. I was just a kid, then.”, she fumed, and somewhat guiltily.

“SH-12117601-1732!”, came a growling voice.

Both the ranger girls held their breath and almost dropped to the ground, Laila drawing her bow with a yard-long arrow cocked and Bremorel’s greatblade appeared in her hands! Then recognition dawned on both of them and they eased, just a little..

“Master Aager.”, Laila said coolly, though she was having a hard time keeping her cool. “You should never sneak up on a pair of rangers. An apology will be too late!”,

“If someone has managed to sneak up to a pair of rangers, I doubt an apology would suffice.”, Aager Fogstep growled as he stepped out from behind a tree.

“Why are you here?”, flared Bremorel. “Aren’t you supposed to watch over the company?”

“You are part of the company, Ranger Morel.”, the man replied as if stating the obvious. “You had been gone for more than your usual time. I came to check up on your well-being.”

“Our well-being? I doubt you care—”, Bremorel started belligerently but the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask cut in.
“—Do not afflict your personal doubts and issues upon others, Ranger Morel.”, Aager grated. “Wasn’t that the very reason you were conscripted as a ranger initiate in the first place? I would have thought you’d have learned something from that particular mistake. Your insistence in proving me wrong on this matter is baffling.”

Bremorel’s face turned black.

“Bree, please..”, Laila said softly to her, putting one hand on her shoulder and giving her a warning squeeze. Then she turned to the man and spoke in her calm, serene voice. “We were held up because we found another dead carcass hidden under some wild bushes. We wanted to make sure there was no one around or to be certain it wasn’t a setup.”

“Was this one eaten and discarded like the others you found?”, Aager asked intently.

“It appear to be, however, we are not sure yet. We opted to return and inform you and the others rather than risk any ambushes that might be waiting for us. We think, who or whatever killed the other animals, must have killed this one as well, though I suggest we go back and check to make sure.”, she said.

“I trust your judgment on this matter, Ranger Laila. We now have a very large, wounded wild boar you ended, and six other dead animals, killed by something, gnawed upon, then tossed under some bushes, and all in different locations. Your thoughts?”, Aager asked.

That was one of the many other things that irked both the ranger girls. As much as Laila and Bremorel detested or disliked this man, he rarely gave them direct orders if he could avoid it. He would opt to ‘want’ they did something, or perhaps even ‘wish’ they did whatever it was that he wanted from them to get done. And he always asked their opinion, and he gave the distinct impression that he didn’t do them to be polite nor out of professional courtesy, but only because of some practical and pragmatic reason; he simply trusted their judgment on matters pertaining to their skills and training.

Yup.

It irked the younger of the two girls particularly and to no end..

“I believe our previous assessment is still valid, Sir.”, Laila said coolly. “There are thirteen of them, twelve of which have had extensive and similar training, and are all humans. The last one, however, is not. I believe he is either an elf or more likely a half-elf and has never been outside a city before. At least that’s the impression we got from his tracks. Whoever he is, he is used to walking on flat, hard surfaces, much like cobblestones.”

“Not from a town?”, Aager asked.

“No. Towns might have cobblestones but they tend to be shoddy because of poor material and workmanship. Good quality cobblestone and professional workers are very expensive. And because they are trampled by cattle and sheep in towns and villages, they become uneven and eventually crack which also makes it a bit pointless to use the fancier stones or professional workers to lay them since under constant trampling of herds of cattle or sheep, they are going to crack anyway. Serenity Home has decent quality cobblestones but neither cattle nor sheep are herded through our town.. No, the half-elf was not from some small, rural town, but from a big city with flat, high-quality cobble. I have never been there but I am thinking he is from the Great Arashkan city. I hear they have and can afford such fancy utilities.”, Bremorel said grudgingly, then paused.

“You have more to add, perhaps?”, the man in dark leathers offered with his gravelly voice.

“I think he is some sort of, I don’t know..”, she said and her face flushed.

“What?”, growled Aager.

“..a man whore!”, she finished, her face burning now.

Laila stifled a laugh and her face also went pink.

Aager gave both of them a long, appraising look.
“And you would know what a man whore is how, Ranger Morel? Seems a bit out of your jurisdiction.”, he grated, though it gave the girls the impression that he was laughing under his half-mask.

“I don’t!”, flared Bremorel, her face going even redder now.

“I believe you, Ranger Morel. But by all means, do elaborate.”, Aager said, his growl amused.

“Ranger Laila noted one of the men was wearing a white, frilly shirt, the night of the attack. We have been following their trail for days now and we can both find each and every single one of these people as long as there is a trail to be found. And the frilly one was not wearing soft leather boots like the others, but hard boots made for a city dweller. I.. I picked up a scent that I believe also belongs to the same man. I had felt it before, but I didn’t recognize it for what it was, alright?”, the young ranger spat with flaring anger.

“Alright.”, Aager replied noncommittally. “But please, go on.”

“Well, he smells of perfume! A swooning sort of perfume!”, she blurted.

“Swooning, was it?”, the man in dark leathers said, both his eyebrows raised, now.

Bremorel’s face went totally dark as she dug herself deeper and deeper.

Laila was trying very hard not to smile and but she was starting to crack..

“What Ranger Bremorel is trying to say is..”, Laila coughed, “..she thinks the perfume scent she picked likely had some form of Aphrodite in it.”

Aager immediately understood what they meant. In fact, it was quite possible he understood more than they did. Not because he was a Drashan, but because of what he’d done there. Aphrodite was a rather enflaming and arousing chemical, highly illegal in the Kingdom of Isles, as he’d found out when he had come to Serenity Home some five years ago, but not totally unavailable either.

Slipped into the drink of a man would purchase the expected results. Sprinkled into an unsuspecting woman’s drink, however, the results would be.. well.. to say the least, rather erratic, if not outright erotic, and it came with quite savage demands on the now, totally, and unreasonably aroused woman’s part, depending on the dosage. Considering its somewhat vanilla and cinnamon aftertaste, it wasn’t unheard of for men and women of high standing and power delighting over it, even though it was very expensive and hard to come by. For inexperienced young girls such as rangers Laila and Bremorel, the effects of even the scent of the arousing concoction would be, likely as expected; sort of swooning!

Aager stared at the two young ranger girls and noted their eyes were just a tad over dilated. Which explained why they both were blushing so furiously. As an interesting side note, Aager Fogstep never opted to stay his silence and let them squirm. It was unlikely he did so due to some sense of honor, much like any decent human being would have felt, but because he found the whole, arousing concept to be foolish!

“Ranger Laila.”, he grated finally. “Do you have anything else to add to your report?”

“Yes, Sir.”, she said, her face flushed even more as comprehension of what was going on slowly dawned on her. “They have picked up their pace. Always before, their tracks were ‘a foot apart’, the way people would walk when they are going for stealth as much as for speed. A balanced ‘stalk’, per se. Now they seem to have dropped the need for overt stealth and opted to go more for speed.”

Aager frowned over that. Their trek through the forest was slow enough, constantly keeping an eye on the tracks so as not to lose them all the while keeping an eye for the unseen. If these people had picked up their pace, following them would become somewhat easier when they had two, experienced rangers, but they would also have to throw caution aside, which, all things considered, he didn’t want to do. True, rangers Laila and Bremorel were battle-tested. He surmised, so was the paladin girl, Lady Moira. As for himself, he had lost his chance to be ‘at ease’ by the time he was five, back at Drashan. Lady Magella had also seen some action, before and after she had become a Temple Guardian. But Udoorin was still lacking in real combat experience. As for the little gnome, Gnine, Aager didn’t really care one way or the other as long as he wasn’t a distraction or got under other people’s way.

“Very well.”, he finally said, adding a bit more stress and reverberation to his growl. “We shall have to pick up the pace as well. We can not let these people get away. We must catch up to them before they leave this forest. Ranger Morel, you are on point again, if you will. Ranger Laila, I would wish you to be only thirty yards behind her now. We shall no longer be spread apart as we were. The remaining company shall also be only fifty yards behind you.”

“They will hear you coming.”, Bremorel objected.

“Our query has picked up their pace, Ranger Morel. That tells me, either they no longer feel the need for stealth, which means they are somehow nearing their exit point and are about to get away, a something we can not let happen, or something has had them spooked, which means they know their stealth hasn’t worked and are now desperate to get away, also something we can not let happen. Either way works for us and against us at the same time because if this was some sort of convoluted plan, the people who are involved will want to remove the ‘middle man’ which just happens to be our query. If they are dead, our mission will have been killed as well.. Now, if you will, Ranger Morel, take point!”, grated Aager, then started back towards the main company.

Bremorel glared after him.

“Also, Ranger Morel, no more sniffing swooning scents, please!”, came the growl of the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask.

“Sir..”, Laila called after him.

Aager paused.

“That thing you said earlier. SH-1211—”, she began.

“—7601-1732.”, finished Bremorel.

“Yes. What is it?”, Laila asked.

Aager turned around and stared at the two ranger girls. Whatever their faults were, they had a good eye, and ear, apparently. Enough to recognize little details, an aptitude not to shrug them off, and an excellent memory to close the deal, per se.

Yes. They had a good head over their shoulders and Aager knew he had made the right call in choosing them over more experienced rangers.

“On the twelfth of November, year seven thousand six hundred —o one, thirty-two past seventeen hundred local time, an incident of some significance occurred in Serenity Home. That ‘thing’ is the incident report number of that event.”, the man growled.

The ranger girls frowned as they mulled over what they’d just heard, but came up with nothing and the man in dark leathers did not further elaborate, to their collective frustration.

“What incident?”, Bremorel snapped finally.

Aager stared at them some more, though there seemed an amused glint in his otherwise dead eyes.

“Three boys verbally assaulted a young but striking half-elf ranger initiate, culminating in a fight where the ranger’s twelve-year-old cousin showed her displeasure by breaking the nose of one of the boys, kicking the groin of another, and chewing the arm of the third.”

Laila’s face went red.

Immediately!

Her cousin’s face, however, had already turned black..

“As a ranger initiate..” Aager continued mercilessly. “..one would have expected the young half-elf to intervene, being what she was, and older than everyone involved, and break the fight. Instead, she opted to add herself into the fray as well, further adding to the confusion.”

Laila was staring at her feet now.

Bremorel was squirming, her face going even darker..

“The fight was dispersed when the sheriff arrived, but not before the ranger initiate’s twelve-year-old cousin had concussed a fourth boy, who was, in fact, there as collateral, by way of slamming him into a wall, then beating on him until he was hospitalized. The culminating events after that were; the younger of the cousins became the first underage to ever be locked in a jail, even if it was for a mere week, in all of Serenity Home’s history, consequently winning her the prefix, ‘Bre’, meaning ‘brave’ and ‘fiery’, given to her by no other than the boy who’s arm she had chewed, and then being drafted off to be trained by Ranger Master Moorat.”

Aager paused one last time before he left.

“Yes, quite significant, indeed..”

Are you sure you want to insist on carrying all that, young Udoorin?”, growled Aager Fogstep as he stared at the very big, burly man, his many weapons, and his very heavy backpack that he was sure contained more of the same. “Perhaps you might want to dump some of them? We are going to need to pick up our pace.”

“No, no, I’ll be fine, Master Aager.”, the young man said with a flushed face. “I don’t want to be in a position where I can’t find a weapon to use. Sounds like a bad excuse to die..”

“So is tripping and falling on all those weapons, young man.”, Aager growled. “Lady Moira carries only one sword. I can’t imagine why you would need so many?”

“Lady Moira has a different calling, Master Aager.”, Udoorin said, his face going even redder.

“Leave the boy alone. He wants his toys, let him keep his toys.”, scowled Lady Magella from behind the very large man.

Aager did not retort, nor did he retaliate. He simply turned around and started after the ranger girls.

“Master Aager seems tender about your well-being, Master Udoorin.”, Moira smiled.

Udoorin didn’t say anything. He made a hauler sort of stomp on the ground to get all his weapons, his heavy chainmail, and his dreadfully heavy backpack in place, then rumbled.

“Lady Moira, Temple Guardian, Master Gnine? Let’s get started. We don’t want to fall behind.”

Lady Magella allowed a discreet smile to play around her mouth but didn’t comment at the polite and somewhat formal attitude of the boy she had known all his life. She did, however, give a furious scowl at Gnine, just as the little gnome was about to make a snark about the young man’s formal attitude.

Gnine grinned impudently at her, then he too started after the rangers.

It was perhaps two more days later that Laila came running back. She was holding something in one hand when she dashed back at the main company and came to a skidding stop next to Aager.

“We found this.”, she said holding up the thing in her hand.

It was a small, compact leather pouch.
Aager took the pouch from her and stared at it, carefully inspecting its size and shape and seems.

“This isn’t a pouch. It is an exceptionally designed and crafted backpack. Very compact and made of high-quality Mox leather. It’s very slim but has a buckle for a blanket roll on top, pockets to hold various items on either side and even a clasp at the bottom end for a rope. Whoever these people are, they were well prepared.”, he said as he opened the pack to see even the content comprised of high-quality gear, rations, collapsible hooks, a hammer, several six-inch spikes, a dozen foldable caltrops, and a slender cantine of water.

“This is not Mox leather, Master Aager.”, Moira said, after she’d reached for the pack and felt its texture. “We grow herds of Mox on the mountains around Durkahan because its leather is extremely tough and durable hence we use it for many military and non-military applications. We have also been trying to soften it and make it more flexible for civilian use for centuries to no avail.”

“Huh.”, the man in dark leathers grunted.

“Though I agree with your assessment.”, she added. “This is, indeed, excellent craftsmanship, let alone, cunning in design. Our scouts and rangers have similar gear, but not of this quality.”

“It’s griffon hide.”, came a small voice and everyone turned to stare at Gnine.

“What?”, he said. “It is..”

“You would know this, how?”, Aager growled down at him.

“Does it matter?”, the little gnome asked a bit impudently.

“At the moment, we do not have enough information to include or discard anything, Master Gnine. Hence we can not assume which information is relevant and which is not.”, the man in dark leathers grated.
Gnine shrugged.

“I am the niece and the apprentice of an artificer.”, he said as if that explained everything.

Apparently, it didn’t, since everyone kept staring down at him.

“Artificers handle all sorts of different kinds of material. They have to if they want to invent and/or artifice things. To be honest, I don’t see myself as an artificer, though I have dabbled with it due to my uncle. I have, however, taken the Artificer’s Oath, meaning I can’t tell you or go into the details of anything about how certain things are crafted.. Not the specifics anyway.. What I can tell you is, this is refined griffon hide leather and superb quality too. But as uncommon as it is, griffon hide is not unique. There is any number of places that tan and utilize griffon hide. It isn’t as tough as Mox hide, but it can be worked with a lot less effort. It won’t stand against sharp objects such as swords, axes, spears, or arrows like Mox hide can, but it will withstand quite harsh conditions such as extreme cold, it is long-lasting, and you can make sophisticated craftsmanship like these slick backpacks.”, he explained seriously, which was quite a bit, unlike his usual stance.

He stared at the backpack for a moment, then added.

“This really is excelling work. It must be at least a hundred gold pieces worth.”, he mused as he eyed the pack. “I mean, if no one wants it, I could actually use it.”

“That was quite educational, Master Gnine. Should we figure its presence is, indeed, irrelevant, you may have it.”, Aager grunted, then turned to the young ranger. “You had best not leave Ranger Morel alone. Keep your eyes open, if you will. Something tells me these people are feeling threatened and not by us.”

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila said smartly and took off.

Aager took a quick stock of the rest of the group. Young Udoorin hadn’t said anything because he had been busy heaving for breath like an overhauled draft horse! After two days of near-constant running through the uneven wilderness of Ritual Forest carrying all the weapons and his own, gruelingly heavy backpack, and with shallow rests the kid seemed to have lost any access body fat he’d had.

Yet, he hadn’t complained once.

Lady Moira seemed strung out as well. There were dark circles around her eyes, she seemed somewhat disheveled and quite sweaty, and she was favoring one leg, which was expected. She had stepped into a rabbit’s hole and toppled over with a resounding crash. Had it not been for the unexpected reaction from Udoorin running next to her, the results of that fall could have been quite painful, if not crippling. The young man had simply stuck out his free arm and stopped the girl in mid-fall! She had thanked the young man with a flushed face, who had gone bright red himself, over the awkward situation..

..and hadn’t said a word since then.

The otherwise stoic she-dwarf, Lady Magella had not taken the constant running through the woods so calmly, though. Being a Temple Guardian had given her many privileges and well-earned prestige, but the long years of ritualized repetition of non-physical activities had ebbed what she’d claimed in grumbling discomfort and annotations as, unyielding dwarven fortitude. By the end of the second day, she had fallen asleep while on the run..

..and with some unprecedented wisdom, the little gnome, Master Gnine, had not laughed when the Temple Guardian had run right into a massive oak tree and promptly knocked herself out!

To the surprise of everyone, the same little gnome had somehow managed to keep up with the company. But then, other than what very little he’d been carrying, he had all but hauling himself. Even then, he hadn’t said much nor had he complained, not out loud anyway. Although he was also tired, he showed unexpected resilience. He also seemed a bit bored.

Of all those around him, sans perhaps the ranger girls who had spent years on-the-field training and been running through most of the southern end of Ritual Forest, all the lands around Serenity Home, and between Scowling Hills and back for the entirety of their career, only Aager Fogstep did not show any signs of exhaustion. Whether it was due to some inhuman mental resolution or due to his past life in Drashan where he had learned, firsthand, that those who tired or dropped their guard, died.

After all, he had fed upon that particular aspect of human nature many times..

Or perhaps it was merely due to the fact that his half-mask did the job it was intended for and hid his fatigued face from those around him. As the two rangers dashed ahead, the rest of the company followed them while the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask made wide circles around them as if to make sure he was there should either end of their company require assistance.

And now he stood silently, some two hundred yards off to one side, listening..

..and he thought he heard, from far, far away, the roaring of a wild and feral beast.

We found more of them.”, Laila reported, holding up another of the same backpack they had found earlier that day. It was almost evening now and both the ranger girls had returned to the main company, each holding various items, mostly identical slick packs, coiled ropes, spare clothes, scroll cases containing many empty parchments of various qualities, and strange, compact canisters which the little gnome, Gnine, cautiously identified as fog grenades, though he admitted they could be holding other kinds of, possibly poisonous and quite deadly gases, and were generally not very reliable and they would be better off to just bury them all.

“So, it is true, then?”, Udoorin rumbled as he unbuckled his shield, dropped many of his arms and his very heavy backpack, and sat on the ground. “They are spooked and they are on the run? As a side note, when do we eat?”

“Thinking with your stomach?”, Bremorel scowled at him.

“I am hungry, Bree. I wasn’t aware this was something I had to hide.. Is it?”, he asked honestly.

“I suppose you want us girls to cook for you?”, she scoffed.

“Never crossed my mind, really.”, he said with a straight face. “Not with all the girls here. But hey, I could cook if you like.”

“NO!”, came a chorus of protests from Bremorel, herself, her cousin Laila, Lady Magella, and Gnine. Moira didn’t say anything, possibly because she was being polite. And since so many had already objected, neither had Aager offered his opinion on the matter.

The ranger girls had already dug a fire pit, circled it with stones, gathered armloads of dry branches, cut them down to manageable sizes, and had the fire started. There was even a small iron pot full of boiling water hanging over it.

“What? You think I can’t?”, the young man said a bit taken aback. “I learned cooking from my father and he’s excellent at it.”

“Well, there’s something you never hear; that Sheriff Standorin being an excellent cook.”, Laila smirked.

“Yeah, what she said.”, Bremorel said, also smirking.

Lady Magella had dropped her backpack as well and was now rummaging through it. She pulled out several choice potatoes and tossed them at Gnine.

“What am I going to do with these?”, the little gnome asked.

“Peel.”, the she-dwarf replied gruffly.

“What? There are all these girls and you want me to peel the potatoes?”, he said incredulously.

“The ranger girls have been running ahead, tracking, scouting, and making sure no one snuck up on us without us knowing. I am cooking. By all means, do ask Lady Moira, a paladin, to peel potatoes, Master Gnine. I wasn’t aware you were thus important a figure that couldn’t offer what he could to his own company. Is this what Nymbletyne’s been teaching you? “, she glared down at the gnome.

Gnine shrank.

Quite visibly..

“Peel.”, she repeated, then turned her back on him and took out an onion or two and some carrots, and cleaned them, chopped them into little bits, then tossed them into the boiling pot. Then she started at the two rabbits Bremorel and Laila had shot while they’d been tracking.

“Of course.”, Udoorin was saying indignantly. “My father takes everything he does seriously, including cooking.”

“It isn’t that I don’t want to believe you, Udoorin. But this is something I just got to see with my own eyes.”, Bremorel laughed.

“You can ask him when we return. I am sure he can teach you how to cook.”, he said.

“Shots fired!”, Gnine piped from the side.

Bremorel glared at him as her face darkened.

Then she glared at Udoorin too.

“I doubt your father—”, she began through clenched teeth but the young man cut in.

“—Before you say anything you will regret, Bree, let me tell you that everything in our house is hand-crafted by my father, including the kitchen table, the stools, plates, the handles of all the spoons, the forks, and the knives, the bed frames and the posts, the cabinets, the wardrobes, the cushioned elbow seats and the chairs in front of the fireplace, and the bookshelves. He also likes cooking in the kitchen he built. He used to cook for my mother because, much like you are now, she was a ranger too, and she used to come home quite late at times and usually very tired due to her designated patrols. Father never complained, but he did make sure she ate well.”

“That was not nice, Udoorin. Bringing your mother into this.”, Bremorel hissed furiously.

“I didn’t bring her in. I only wanted you to know why my father is a good cook, other than being a good sheriff. So if you want me to cook, I don’t mind it. And I can put you to shame any day by doing it.”, the young man said with a slightly irritated shrug.

“Why so serious all of a sudden, Udoorin?”, Laila asked.

“I am serious most of the time, Laila. You should know that by now. You two are my friends. Best and closest ones. But I don’t like it when you question the things that I tell you, or when you joke about them. I have never lied to you, and I have never played you. I accept both of you the way you are and respect you for what you do for the town. I also respect you as my friend. I would, however, expect a similar attitude in return, that’s all.”, the young man said with a slight frown.

Both the ranger girls stared at him, then gave each other a guilty sort of glance.

“I am sorry, Udoorin. I really am. My intentions were not to question your word. But merely teasing for a laugh.”, Laila said honestly.

“Yeah, what she said.”, Bremorel added.

“I know your intentions are not ill. I doubt we would have been friends had I thought otherwise. But your tease for a laugh is at my expense. I mean, I would expect this from Gnine, who has no respect nor regard for anyone, just not from you. And certainly not from you either, Bree.”, Udoorin said, still frowning.

“Hey!”, objected Gnine. “I resent that.”

“Which part do you resent, Gnine?”, the big, burly man turned to look at him this time. “That you have been pranking me on a weekly basis for years?”

“You have no proof of any pranks I may, or may not have done to you!”, Gnine said indignantly.

“Gnine.”, Udoorin said patiently as he breathed from his nose. “Has it ever occurred to you that I am the son of the sheriff and the trainee of no other than Master Aager and that I might have picked up a thing or two from either of them? Do you really think I couldn’t find ‘proof’ if I really wanted to? Did you really think I didn’t know who was pranking me all these years? And that I never retaliated, not once, because I respected your uncle more than I respected your lack of regard for others? And why I never just tossed you over the town walls and into the Arashkan River? And believe me, that certainly would have been a laugh. But you know what? I don’t do laugh at other people’s expense. Not since I was a stupid kid. So tell me, Gnine, what makes you so special?”

The little gnome ogled at the big, burly, and frowning young man.

Udoorin waited for a moment to get an answer, but when he got none, he breathed from his nose once again, rose back up, kicked the dirt with one boot, picked up one of his greataxes, “I’ll take the first watch.”, he rumbled, then stomped off.

It was several minutes later when Laila and Bremorel appeared from behind some trees and walked up to him, making just enough noise so he would know their approach.

Udoorin stared behind, saw the ranger girls, fumed a bit, then returned his gaze into the forest.

“What is going on, Udoorin?”, Laila asked kindly, staring at the broad back of the young man.

“Nothing.”, mumbled Udoorin.

“Come on.”, Bremorel said. “We are friends. Whatever it is that’s really bothering you, you can tell us.”

“I said, nothing.”, rumbled the young man once again.

Laila sighed.

“Is this about the fight? It was years ago, Udoorin. We were all younger back then. And did stupid things. And among everyone who was involved, you were the only one to show any maturity. Hell, I still remember when you knocked on our door. I was still so furious when I saw you through the window and was about to open the door and shout at you but my father stopped me. I could see you squirming, yet you still braved up and knocked on our door and apologize, to me and my father. Then you did the unexpected. You told me you would like to be my friend and that you would be very, very happy if I didn’t refuse you. I only agreed with you that day because you broke my mind! I just couldn’t find anything to refuse your peace offer. And a good thing too. I got a lifelong friend that day.”, Laila said softly.

Udoorin didn’t say anything and didn’t turn around, but his fade did flush a little bit.

“I am not even sure if I could add anything on top of that.”, Bremorel said. “I mean, I thought Laila had betrayed me when I was finally let out of my week-long stint in jail and came home to find both of you talking and laughing in the garden. Turns out, one week wasn’t enough and that they should have given me a longer sentence because of what I did to you, and to.. uhhmm.. the other boy.. And I became ‘Bremorel’ thanks to you!”

Udoorin still refused to say anything as he silently fumed.

“So, tell us, Udoorin. What’s really bothering you?”, Laila asked.

“Yeah.”, her cousin said with a smirk. “You know you are going to cave in eventually. Might as well do it with grace.”

Udoorin fumed some more, then caved..

Laila and Bremorel were his friends and admittedly, were like the sisters he never had.

“My boots.”, he rumbled finally.

The sister-cousins stared at the big, burly man, then at one other in total incomprehension.
“Uhhmm.. Your boots?”, Laila asked carefully.

“Yes, my boots!”, Udoorin said angrily. “Some idiot dumped squishy and disgusting worms into them the night of the fire and totally destroyed them. I had to get me this new pair just before the council meeting and they are killing me!”

We found them, Sir.”, Laila said with a drawn face. Aager stared at her, taking in the details of her tautly sketched expression.

“They are dead.”, he stated in a low growl and started walking in the direction she had come.

Laila’s brows shot up.

“Yes. How did you—?”, she began, jogging after him.

“That is why they were spooked, Ranger Laila. They figured they were being hunted as well. Also why they dropped all their non-essentials and picked up their pace. And because shady people always end up dead under shady conditions. Not really something I would expect you to understand.”, he growled as he picked up his pace.

Laila’s face went a bit rigid.

“You would, though, wouldn’t you?”, she said hotly.

“Yes.”, Aager replied calmly. Then, for a bare moment, he paused to look at her and said, “But you misunderstand me, Ranger Laila. I would not expect you to understand, but not due to a lack of intelligence on your part. You will not understand because you are not a shady person. Quite the contrary. You are as honest as they come by. And as abrasive as your cousin is, and for whom I hold no rancor even though she can hold a grudge long past its due by four years, she too is a good person. But at the end of the day, she was drafted as a ranger initiate in hopes that her temper might be put to good use. You, on the other hand, volunteered to be one even though you were physically much weaker than all the other applicants. You were, however, also much more focused, smart, result-oriented, cool-headed, and you have a personal, not a vendetta, but a mission embedded in your calling; you want to make sure no one suffers as you did.”

Laila stared at the face he could barely see under his hood and his half-mask as he read her.

“As for the grudge your cousin wants to dearly hang on, you make a better show of hiding it, which is smart on your part.”, Aager continued as he started walking again. “The safety of the lands surrounding Serenity Home is your responsibility. I did what I did, back then, because the safety of the same Serenity Home and those that protect the lands surrounding it, is mine. Perhaps my timing was incorrect, back then. But the simple matter of fact is, I do not like complications and the unknown. Because what is not known can not be quantified nor can it be analyzed, thus making it quite incomprehensible, consequently turning it into a security risk that I can not prepare nor guard against. Suffice to say, I was doing my job.”

“Do I hear an apology in there somewhere?”, Laila asked tentatively.

“I find it to be needless, pointless, and quite arrogant to apologize for doing my job, and neither should you, Ranger Laila. Perhaps you have not noticed, public relations is not my area of expertise nor is it within my arena of interest.”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“Uhhmm.. you could handle things a bit nicer though.”, she mumbled.

“‘Nice’ is for people who have the luxury of being safe and can sleep in their beds unafraid. It exists so long as they believe they are safe. I, however, do not have such luxuries nor do I have such constraints. And should I foolishly think otherwise, people would stop feeling safe, and all ‘the nice’ would die.”, he growled.

“Your life must be lonely, miserable, and barren, Sir.”, Laila said with a lamenting tone.

“You assume what you do not know, once again, Ranger Laila. I do not seek a life.”, he snarled.

Laila ogled at him as they ran.

“But, why?”, she asked inadvertently.

“Just what life would the Heavens possibly have to offer a Drashan murderer such as myself? Perhaps you think there is some angel out there waiting for me.. No, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane, you are young and you have hopes. You can never truly understand ‘the shady’ because you are also honest. I, on the other hand, care little for hopes, and for me, honesty isn’t worth a speck on a pot de chambre! Your moral integrity is due to that same honesty. I, on the other hand, do not entertain such delusions. What I do have is mere pragmatic practicality. Should I fail to uphold my word, I will lose what credibility I have, which will reflect upon my intent in a very practical sense; when I tell someone I will kill them, they know, with absolute certainty, that I will do exactly that. What awaits you is endless possibilities which, in essence, is the very definition of life. What awaits for me, however, is nothing short of a noose followed by a very long stint in Hell.”, Aager grated, biting at his own words, murdering the conversation from his end.

Bremorel knelt behind a thick patch of bushes when the others came crawling silently beside her doing their best not to step on any dead branches. Her cousin, Laila, had appeared next to her and lightly tapped her on the shoulder, informing her she was there without speaking.

Gnine hadn’t really needed to crawl, but he did it anyway and was quite silent on his feet. Lady Magella, Moira, and Udoorin had been an altogether different proposition. Try as they might, their armor clanked and clinked as they approached on all fours, an exercise that Lady Magella had found quite offensive.

Master Aager, however, was nowhere in sight.

“What’s with you?”, Udoorin rumbled when he crawled up next to the ranger girls.

Bremorel didn’t reply. She stared at the big, burly young man with a pale and drawn face for a moment, then nodded towards the other side of the bushes. Udoorin frowned, then slowly rose and poked his head over the bushes, his great battleaxe in his big fists, and froze. There, some twenty yards away, lying on the forest ground were bodies in dark leathers and hoods, perhaps half a dozen of them. They lay sprawled and slaughtered!

Laila tapped the ogling young man on the shoulder and nodded at him to take the right. She looked back at Moira and nodded at Udoorin and the armored paladin girl, Lady Moira silently telling her to go with them.

Then she mimed the she-dwarf, Lady Magella, to hold her position then slithered to the left and behind a tree and waited while her cousin rolled to her left, and very quietly stalked her way to further circle the area.

“Do not stand in front of me!”, she hissed when the little gnome tried to creep up from under the bush. “And don’t move.”

“What?”, Gnine asked, turning to look at her with a frown, then fell silent when she saw the young ranger girl’s face. Whatever expression he saw there, it had been something he’d never seen before. Laila was afraid. But there was also a determined glint in her eyes and her lips were pressed tight, as she slowly drew her longbow cocked with a long, heavy, and deadly-looking arrow fletched with red and white feathers all the way up to her delicate, slightly pointy ear and held it there. Then Udoorin, with a big battleaxe, backed up by Moira, her long blade drawn, crashed into the clearing ahead and where the bodies were as Bremorel did the same from the other direction, her greatsword held low. Laila held her position, her bow pulled back and straight.

Then Aager appeared from the far end, a sharp, agile shortsword in one hand and a sharper dagger in the other. He looked up at where Laila was standing hidden behind the tree and curtly shook his head and the ranger girl lowered her longbow and put the arrow carefully back into her quiver.

“Udoorin, Lady Moira..”, Aager growled. “..secure the premises, if you will. Ranger Laila, please take a closer look at the bodies. Ranger Morel, I would like you to find any tracks leading here and from here, please. Master Gnine, check out their gear, their packs, and their pockets. Lady Magella, see if you can find anyone salvageable in this mess.”

“Salvageable?”, Lady asked a bit confused.

“Anyone that is alive and can be saved..”, the man in dark leathers grated.

“That is a rather inhumane way to put it, young man. These people were alive once.”, the she-dwarf said reprovingly.

“And now they are dead, Lady. These men infiltrated and burned your town. People you knew are dead because of them. You will have to forgive me if I do not share your sentiments for them..”, Aager growled.

“Life is sacred, Master Aager. We do not get to choose which one is better than the other.”, she scowled.

“It is good, then, that I was not here when they were slaughtered for I feel little remorse for their demise. The only thing that matters to me is that I still do not have the answers I want as to why they did, what they did.”, he shrugged as he knelt over the bodies, or rather, what was left of them.

Whatever had happened here, it hadn’t been a simple fight where people had cut one another. It had been base slaughter and there hadn’t been so much as ‘cutting’, as there had been ‘hacking!’

“This isn’t honorable combat.”, Moira said with a sick voice. “In combat, you run your opponent through and once he is down, you give him his last moments to make peace and perhaps cast a few last words of prayer. These people, whoever they were, have been subjected to deliberate acts of vile butchery.. After they were killed!”

“Yes.”, agreed, young Udoorin, also in a nauseated tone. “And unlikely by swords. Axes, I think. Rather big ones too. It is understandable to get carried away in the heat of battle and display access violence. But once the enemy is down, he is down. There is no point in continuing to hack at them. It is pointless and it also makes you vulnerable to further attacks. It is also a redundant exercise since you are wasting time killing someone who is already dead thrice over. I mean, just look at this mess. They have been beheaded, their innards have been pulled out, and they are missing their arms and legs!”

Lady Magella walked over to the carnage, all the while fuming. She took one glance at the cluster of mangled corpses, sighed, dropped her pack and undid the knots holding the shovel tied to its back, and started digging.

“Uhhmm.. What are you doing?”, Gnine asked as he rummaged through the few backpacks he found, and carefully, and with a great amount of distaste, patted at the dead men’s bloody clothes and pockets.

“These men need graves, Master Gnine.”, she replied, fuming from her nose. “I suggest you grab a shovel yourself and start digging as well.”

“What? You want me to dig graves for these people? They attacked our village. They burned our homes and shops. They are directly responsible for the death of many of our townsmen! Hell, they almost killed my uncle and burned down our home and workshop!”, he replied angrily.

Lady Magella stopped her digging and gave the little gnome a long, steady gaze.

“And hence, they should also dictate our moral standards?”, she said, frowning at him.

“Well, no, not when you put it that way..”, Gnine trailed off.

“Start digging, Master Gnine, instead of looting. I would rather I didn’t have to dig one for you!”, she fumed.

“You could be harsh for a Temple Guardian, you know that?”, he mumbled.

“Excuse me?”, the she-dwarf glared at him.

“Nothing, nothing..”, Gnine said hastily and started digging as well.

“These are some of the people that I saw and tracked, Sir.”, Laila reported, as she also knelt beside the carnage. “See the soles of their shoes? I was right. They are soft caoutchouc and they have been eroded.”

“Very good, Ranger Laila. What do you think happened here?”, Aager asked.

“Some things ambushed them. Perhaps two nights ago. We were moving at a slower rate than they were running because we have to make sure we don’t lose their tracks and we are being cautious.”, she said as she began to ‘read’ the tracks she had found and composed the story they told.

“They were asleep. Accept that one over there. And that one.”, she said, pointing at two corpses, one on the northeast, the other on the southwest end of the camp. “They were the first to die. Whatever hit them, they came from the west side of the camp and they took out their lookouts and fast. Then they jumped the rest of them. I do not know what they are. I have never seen tracks like these. They are large. Humanoid in shape. I suspect they are at least three hundred, perhaps three hundred and fifty pounds in weight, and likely eight, or even nine feet in height. Their steps are ‘stomping’, rather than marching. Like a horde, then an orderly military formation. A bit like orc raiders but not as shifty, and certainly much more decisive, which is puzzling as to how they caught these men off guard. They used various weapons broad-tipped spears, much like the one we found on the wild boar I killed several days ago, and wide-bladed, and jagged-edged axes. The men reacted almost instantly, even though they were ambushed. They fought fast and bloody, but it was dark and their campfire had died down. The creatures waited for the right time to attack. They pushed and bullied their way onto them using the longer reach of their weapons and their own bulk, forcing the men to bunch up and crowd each other. That’s when the real butchery began. Even then, some of the men made it out of the ‘siege’. I suspect Bremorel will find their tracks and they will likely be heading north. What baffles me, even more, is that the creatures did not pursue them. After they cut the last of the men that stayed behind, they headed east.”, she said with a slightly flushed face, as succinctly as possible, and without trying to embellish her oration.

Everyone had stopped what they were doing. Udoorin was staring at Laila with amazement from where he stood on guard.

A similar expression clearly said Moira was impressed as well. Gnine was ogling at her with his mouth open and Lady Magella was looking at her with slightly misty eyes as if saying, how fast they grow!

Only Aager’s reaction was reserved. He stared down at the corpses as he mulled over the ranger girl’s narration.

“What?”, Laila asked, her face a bit pink, when she saw the astonishment on their faces.

“That was amazing, that was.”, Gnine said with an awed sort of tone.

“Not really. I mean, that’s what ranger masters Davien and Moorat train all of their novices to do.”, she replied, her face going brighter. “It isn’t just shooting arrows and swordplay, you know. Most of our training is on reading tracks and reading into the details of our findings. Bree can do pretty much the same thing. Better when it comes to elaborating, really. Perhaps it has to do with her being human. Or younger. Or having a better imagination than I have. Or even because she reads more than I do.”

“Bremorel reads?”, Gnine blurted.

Laila frowned at him.

“Of course she does. All rangers do. Wisdom and knowledge are not at the edge of a sword, nor are they on the tip of an arrow, you know.. Reading is almost mandatory for us rangers. At least our respective masters made it so. And not just any book but religion, philosophy, tactical warfare, law, and even art.”, Laila said.

Gnine and Udoorin stared at her some more. Lady Magella nodded in assent, and so did Moira.

It was about then the bushes parted and Bremorel appeared, her greatblade still in her hand.

“I found tracks heading north and very slightly west. There is another corpse about two hundred yards in the same direction. Seeing as he had an evisceration running right across his belly, I suspect his friends tried to drag and save him but left him behind once they figured he was already dead. He does not appear to be butchered like this lot, which tells me he was among the ones that took off. Sans him and these, we now have only four runners and the one with the white, fancy shirt..”, she reported.

 

• • •

 

They spent the next few hours digging graves for the butchered corpses of the men upon the persistence of Lady Magella who wouldn’t budge on the matter, and to Aager’s intense frustration who believed it a waste of precious time, but he kept to his silence even though he gnawed on his mental fingers.

The man in dark leathers never went the extra mile to make his enemies suffer. But he didn’t dig graves for them and neither did he pray for their souls. He simply killed them and moved on to the next with a frightening and practical economy.

After they were done, the Temple Guardian had said a few, short words of prayer over the deceased, then they had started their hunt once again. To their very much disturbed exasperation, they caught up to their query the very next evening..

..only to find them slaughtered as well!

I do not understand.”, Bremorel said, looking down at the corpses. “These people seem like professionals. And yet, they got ambushed not once, but twice in a row. You would think they would have been a bit warier the second time around.”

“The human body can stand only so much stress and continuous exertion, cuzz. They have been on the run for days and in a forest, they are not familiar with. No, let me rephrase that; they have been on the run for days in a forest! I mean, we could go on for days with little rest, certainly. But we have been trained for it for years. Ranger Master Davien made me run, climb, and carry heavy sacks for almost a full year before he thought I was ready for the longbow. Then for the sword. These people likely had training for large towns or cities. Having seen their equipment, I’d guess they could easily climb up any given wall, break into a residence without making overt noise, and do murder. Climbing straight walls and running on city streets is not the same as climbing trees or running through a forest full of hazardous undergrowth.”, Laila mused, also staring down at the bloody bodies.

Young Udoorin and Moira had taken their places and were keeping an eye out while Aager was searching the bodies with the little gnome, Gnine, while Lady Magella watched them disapprovingly.

“What do the tracks say?”, Aager growled as he dumped the content of a pouch he had found into his palm, noted the few coins, put them back and stuffed the pouch under his belt without displaying the slightest shame, and dug into the backpack of another corpse.

“They got ambushed and then had their arses handed over to them!”, Bremorel said irritably.

“Would you care to elaborate, Ranger Morel? Something more than what I could have figured out myself, perhaps?”, Aager grated as he continued to rummage and ransacked the bodies.

Bremorel fumed as she glared at the man in his dark leathers, hood, and half-mask who totally ignored her attitude and continued looting the bodies.

“They were sleeping, but not deeply. The way they are sprawled tells me they were facing west as if they were expecting an attack from that direction again. The tracks, however, say the creatures that ambushed them before, came at them from the east this time, explaining why they went east after they hit the original company the last time. Apparently, the creatures made a wide semicircle, turned north, followed these men by running a hunting pursuit somewhat parallel to them, then waited for them to settle in for the night, then hit them. Two made a run for it. One was wounded and he didn’t get too far. His body is right there behind those bushes. They skewered him in the back with a spear even though he was dying.”, she said, narrating the events of the previous night.

“And the other one?”, Aager asked.

“The second one got away unnoticed.”, she shrugged.

“How do you figure?”, the man in dark leathers asked.

“Because there are no tracks indicating he was followed. After they were done with the killing, the creatures trampled over the corpses and continued west. Their tracks go for a mile in the same direction. Unless they changed course after that, they are no longer in the vicinity.”

Aager mulled over that for a moment, then slowly, he rose..

“Thank you, Ranger Morel. And you, Ranger Laila. Both of you have done exemplary work in tracking down the miscreants that attacked and burned Serenity Home. The narration of your findings in a comprehensive and intelligible context has proven my point in insisting that the two of you, in particular, should guide this company. Your masters, Davien and Moorat would have been proud.”, he growled.

Laila went slightly pink but she tried to cover it with a frown.

Bremorel’s face went red, then dark, then she scowled at him.

“That being said, I believe the one that got away was the one in the white, frilly shirt?”, Aager ask, though he said it as if stating a fact, rather than to confirm a question.

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila said.

Bremorel opted to nod only.

“To further detail the context, I believe these men were cutters.”, Aager said, nodding down at the men.

“Cutters?”, Lady Magella asked.

“Assassins.”, he replied shortly, then, perhaps because he came to the conclusion that a more detailed explanation might be in order, he elaborated. “But to my knowledge, these are not of the regular variety. I believe these people belonged to some specific guild. Or even a cult.”

“How do you mean?”, she frowned. “I have never heard of a cult of assassins before.”

“These men.. They all wear the same outfit. Their gear, their weapons, and even the content of their packs are all standardized, which suggests they also had the same training. Your average cutter’s guild would have basic training in assassination, infiltration, poison, espionage, and close-quarter combat. But other than that, each individual cutter would have their own individual habits, quirks, preferences, and even have traits such as favorite poison and/or killing style. These people don’t seem to have any individualized trait that would make any particular one stand out among his peers.”, the man in dark leathers growled.

“You seem to know quite a bit about ‘cutters’, Master Aager. Makes one wonder as to why?”, Lady Magella said, squinting up at him.

“There is nothing there to wonder, Lady. I know them well because I cut open any number of them, back in Drashan.”, he replied with an ‘almost’ indifferent shrug. “A deed I never felt remorse for even after repeating as often as I did.”

Everyone gave a sort of sidelong glance in his direction.

“These people, however, do not fit any cutter’s profile I have ever seen.”, Aager growled on. “And they were good at what they did, and would have likely survived had their assailants been something else, which tells me the creatures that are now roaming freely in this forest are far more dangerous and deadly than anything I have heard. They ambushed a group of well-trained assassins, not once, but twice, hitting them from two different directions. These creatures did not pursue them when they ran but followed them at a parallel course, then circled around them. That tells me they are not only cunning but also deliberately cruel for they could have followed the ones that ran after the first hit and slaughtered them. Instead, they let them go, giving them a false sense of security that they had gotten away, before hitting them a second time. What is more, the cutters that ran in the first ambush did not run because they feared for their lives, nor did they abandon their mates, but were desperate to carry out their mission.”

“How do you know?”, Lady asked.

“Because cutters do not have honor. What they do have is a sense of professional integrity. Do not misunderstand me, Temple Guardian, for I am not praising them, but merely stating a simple and practical fact; if they do not accomplish the task they were paid for, they will lose all their credibility and no one will hire them again. Not to mention, someone will be sent after them and kill them, if only to clear their own guild’s name. I believe they took something from Master Nimbletyne’s workshop before they set that device off and burned it all down, along with all the neighboring shops and homes. That is why some of them stayed behind to fight while the others ran; to reach their destination and their likely client. The last survivors of the second ambush tried to do the same but were also slaughtered, leaving only one person running and hiding out there and he is not a cutter and neither is he a member of their guild.”, Aager grated.

“The man whore!”, Bremorel blurted!

A deadly, smoldering silence fell on the company.

And after a few, pregnant seconds, Gnine burst out laughing! Udoorin tried to keep a straight face, but a snort escaped him. Moira’s face was bright red and so was Laila’s. Bremorel realized what she’d just blurted and a horribly mortified expression appeared on her darkened face. Lady Magella was staring at the young ranger girl with both her brows raised. She coughed once, cleared her throat, then murmured..

“And you would know about man whores, how?”, she asked, giving her a level gaze.

Bremorel clamped her mouth shut as her face went even darker.

“I believe the esteemed Ranger Morel is referring to the man in the white shirt..”, Aager said coldly. “..with surprising affinity.”

Poor Bremorel..

..died.

Several times over!

“Now, then.”, Aager continued, leaving the blurting girl to her own, well-earned mortification. “Perhaps Master Gnine could enlighten us as to what was stolen from his uncle’s workshop, perhaps?”

“I have no idea.”, Gnine replied promptly.

Aager fumed from his nose as he stared, coldly, down at the little gnome.

“I can’t say.”, Gnine blurted finally under the coldly seething eyes of the man in dark leathers.

“You can’t say?”, Laila asked. “Why can’t you say?”

“I can’t, alright? It is privileged by customer-client privacy.”, the little gnome said, clamping his mouth shut.

“I see.”, Aager grated. “And does such privileges entertain clients attacking and burning homes and shops and causing the death of civilians?”

“Look, I don’t even know what they stole, exactly. I have a guess, but we are not even sure the people who attacked our village are actually these people.”, Gnine said pointing at the dead cutters. “And we are definitely not certain said client and these people are somehow related in any way, let alone have any form of definitive proof that they are the same people.”

“Really?”, scowled Bremorel, her previous mortification suddenly turning into anger. “You are going to hide behind some technicality?”

“Don’t you glare down at me, girl! It isn’t technicality, it is the law. And said law is backed by the Artificer’s Oath written down by the elders of Tinker Hills eons ago. I can’t just spill the identities of clients without definitive proof that there has been foul play by said clients.”, Gnine replied a bit heatedly. I would be banned and banished from the Artificer’s Guild and I am not even a full member but a mere apprentice. I would lose all possible future prospects and licenses.”

Bremorel glared down at him.

Laila, however, put one hand on her cousin’s shoulder and refrained her. She was just about to say something to the little gnome when someone else beat her to him and it surprised everyone.

“These may not be the same people, but they belonged to the same guild, or cult, or whatever you want to call it.”, rumbled Udoorin.

Everyone turned and stared at the young man, possibly because he seldom spoke, let alone offer an opinion, particularly when Aager, Lady Magella, and perhaps even Lady Moira were around now.

“How do you know?”, Gnine scoffed at him.

Udoorin shrugged.

“They wear the same quality and make of clothes as some of the people who came to our town asking for your uncle, Nimbletyne, about two years ago.”, he said with a frown. “I remember because my father, Master Aager, even you, Lady Magella, along with Laila, Bree, ranger masters Davien and Moorat, and a good number of the other rangers were off to stomp on the ogres at Oger’s Foot and father had left me in charge as the acting sheriff.”

“I remember.”, Aager growled.

“There were five of them then. Me and Thomas, along with several guards apprehended four of them for questioning because they were, well, acting suspicious, but one of them was not there. He was at your uncle’s workshop. We went to get him too but he wasn’t with your uncle anymore. When we returned back to the sheriff’s office, we found the guards knocked unconscious, and the four men killed in their cells. They had their throats slit. You wanted proof, there it is.”, the young man said.

Gnine silently seethed and glared at Udoorin, but it had little effect on the big, burly young man.

“I don’t know what they asked my uncle to craft.”, the little gnome said finally and with fuming distress. “For the same, customer-client privacy oath, my uncle never shared any information about who his clients were, nor did he tell me what he was crafting. I helped him, as his apprentice, but I never knew what it was that we were working on. After nearly a year of trials and errors, he finally finished it but the client never showed up. The only thing I know about it is that the thing he had crafted was small and round, not unlike a round-bottomed flask, except it was upside down, that it was made from some durable glass that wouldn’t easily break, and that it also had some very, very delicate wiring inside it. Beyond that, I don’t know what its purpose was and I don’t think my uncle knew either. A lot of clients just give him sketches or just tell him to artifice something that will do this or that. He did, however, suspect it was part of some larger device though, and that each part was outsourced to different artificers such as my uncle. So if they stole that, it wasn’t in any of the backpacks from the previous group, nor is it here. And it isn’t something that could fit into a pocket, considering its size and delicate make and nature, it would need very careful wrapping, then packed and boxed in something quite sturdy. In all likeliness, it would require its own backpack, and certainly lengthier, taller, and deeper than the slick ones these men were carrying.”

They all silently mulled over that as Aager squinted down at the little gnome, assessing him. And there, he saw what he was looking for. The slight dilation of his pupils and the tiniest twitch in one eye..

The little gnome had a secret.

And he was afraid..

“What are you not telling us, Master Gnine?”, he growled at him.

Gnine flinched.

“I don’t know what you are talking about!”, he said and clamped his mouth shut again!

Aager stared down at the little gnome for a bit more. At least long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

“If Master Gnine has more to say on the matter at hand, I am sure he will. Otherwise, back off, Drashan!”, Lady Magella snarled, stepping in front of Gnine..

..to everyone’s surprise.

“Harsh!”, Aager growled, his brows raised, though no one could really see them. They also couldn’t see him grinning under his half-mask. “I believe this was the tender touch of your calling at it best, Lady. Hence I bow to the inevitable and take my leave.”

Lady Magella scowled at him.

“Ranger Laila. Ranger Morel. I believe we have ourselves a sneak-thief to catch.”, he said, turning to the ranger girls.

“Sneak-thief?”, Bremorel blurted.

“Yes, Ranger Morel. As much as you would like the last surviving miscreant to be a man whore for reasons I cannot fathom, he is, in fact, a sneak-thief, which will make him quite a bit more challenging to catch than the cutters, here. Which is also why he got away from the creatures while the cutters couldn’t.”, Aager replied in his gravelly voice.

The ranger girls stared at him.

“I believe this will, indeed, be the challenge of your carriers as rangers. I would very much want you to prove me wrong that one sneak-thief is better at getting away than two distinguished ladies such as yourselves in catching him..”

It was perhaps around the shallow hours of late afternoon, deep in the glooms of Ritual Forest when it rose from under the bushes. It didn’t burst out. It didn’t shout any challenges. It certainly didn’t make any noise when it rose, quite silently and slowly, right in front of Ranger Laila, who had been a bit too distracted with her pursuit of the sneak thief’s trail.

As much as they did not want to admit it, Master Aager had been right. The sneak-thief had turned out to be smart, cunning, extraordinarily crafty, and bloody lucky! Particularly considering how the ranger girls had looked down on him as a ‘mere’ city dweller running in a very big forest with no training on survival nor any sense of direction whatsoever!

The sneaky weasel with the white frilly shirt, however, had proven them wrong!

Apparently, not having had any training on survival in the wilderness did not mean he was without any resources. To the abashed and somewhat mortified discovery of the ranger girls, the man had climbed up trees, jumped from branch to branch, and to the adjacent tree, a stunt that would have been quite impossible considering the distance between the trees and the thick foliage of the next tree. Yet he had, leaving no trails or tracks to be found.

After spending hours and hours of searching, would they finally find the spot he had ‘landed’, making them lose precious time. And he always seemed to run, quite tirelessly, in seemingly random directions. The smarmy idiot had gone as far as leaving his white frilly shirt stretched out on some bushes, clearly wanting the ranger girls to find, and once again taken up to the trees, practically mocking them.

Suffice to say, after three days of the infuriatingly frustrating, and depressingly grueling hunt, Laila and Bremorel wanted to catch ‘that man whore’ in a worse way. Hence they had changed their pre-ordered tactics and had ranged out quite a bit further than they should have in hopes of never losing his trail again. Whether it had been chance or act of deliberation, they never quite found out when the creature, some seven and a half feet tall with dark, coarse black and matted hair, pale, grayish-green skin, well built yet lean, and in dirty brown leathers and chain armor caked with blood, rose up from behind a dense tuft of bushes, taking Ranger Laila by total, and horrified surprise, who had been too hyped with frustration and engulfed in seeking tracks.

The creature rose..

..and back-handed her!

Laila couldn’t even let loose a yelp as she flew back, a yard or two, and crash-landed on her back, her face bloodied, her nose broken, her lips split, and her eyes glazed, as she stared blankly up at the waning sky, vaguely visible through the forest canopy.

“Get up, girl..”, she slurred to herself, and only because of her years of constant and grueling training as a ranger, she rolled to her side..

..and saved her own life when the creature brought down its massive axe!

“Bree!”, she yelped as she rolled again, but not fast enough, as the edge of the axe bit into her thigh.

The moments that followed were a bit blurry for the Ranger Laila when she came to the intimate and immediate understanding that her life depended on what she would do next and that her friends would get to her in time.

As frightened and in pain as she was, she staggered to her feet, not even bothering with her bow, she drew both her longblades into a defensive stance to buy herself some time..

..and the axe came down again.

At that point, Laila made her second mistake. She tried to block the jagged blade of the axe by cross-barring her swords. The creature showed no emotion on its face but the faint sneer of disgust around its tight lips as it brought down its axe once more..

..and shattered both her swords!

Laila shrieked in pain as the splinters of her own sword shrapnelled and shredded her brown-green leather armor and her shirt and red hot stains of blood splattered as she dropped to her knees.

“Mat X’mar Parar Loshka!”, the creature snarled and rose its big axe for one last time.

With a whispering buzz, something hit the creature and it staggered for a bare second.

It turned and stared at its left shoulder to see a long, thick shaft that ended with dark brown and white feathers sticking out of it!

It turned in the direction of the arrow’s flight path to see Ranger Bremorel drop her bow and start running at him as she pulled her greatsword from her back with a very angry and determined expression on her face..

..just as the bushes on its other side crashed apart and the big, burly Udoorin came charging at it, his massive axe raised.

The creature turned to face him and tried to raise its own axe in kind, but even the arrow from the charging ranger girl wasn’t fatal, it had, however, pierced right through its packed biceps and effectively pinned his arm to his own torso.

The creature gave another disgusted look, once at the big, burly man coming at him, then at the shaft, and with a grunt, snapped it off, then slid his arm free just in time to face..

..Ranger Bremorel!

Expecting the creature to defend himself against the charging Udoorin, and to slash at its unprotected back without the need to defend herself and coming at it too fast fearing for the life of her cousin, Bremorel was caught off guard when the creature swung its axe at her. The ranger girl’s face went pale the moment she understood her mistake and knew what was going to happen next.

With defiance born from desperation and ingrained training, she made a split-second decision and dropped to a skidding stop, one leg stretched out, the other folded, and counter swung her greatblade at an almost parallel angle with the axe coming down at her. Unlike her cousin, however, Bremorel did not try to stop the big, jagged axe at the end of its arc by blocking it, a fatal mistake to make in a conflict between an axe and a sword, she didn’t try to dodge it either because that option was not in the picture anymore. She had come at the creature too fast and too blind with fury. Hence, she opted for the next best thing and dearly hoped it would work. She caught the axe at just the right angle where she could slide it along the blade of her sword and sort of ‘steer’ it away from its intended course.

To be sure, Bremorel had many faults and many more traumatic character flaws most of which she was fully aware of, but the girl had earned her name as ‘Songsteel’ for a good reason; whether by some instinct, or due to the harsh training of her ranger master, Moorat, who was also an expert swordsman, or she was just a natural, or even the collective combination of all of the above, Bremorel Songsteel ‘understood’ the sword. But unlike most good swordsmen, her sword was not an extension of her arm, but the other way around. When she drew her sword, she became the extension of her own blade! Hence her swing was almost perfect and it did steer the jagged-edged axe as it sliced her armor, cut a shallow, diagonal gash down her abdomen, and landed right next to her outstretched leg and bit into the ground and she inevitably came face to face with the grayish-green creature.

“Mat Loshka, yourself, you stupid orc!”, spat Bremorel..

..and punched it in the face.

She might as well hit him with a feather pillow for the creature barely registered it.

And that is when young Udoorin rammed into the creature and sent it flying past her. With his own, rushed momentum, he swung his own greataxe and slashed open the creature’s chest. He swung again but the creature showed unexpected defiance to pain and ducked under his second swing, stepped up, and got into his face. With a low punch, he knocked the axe out from the young man’s hands and grabbed him by the throat, and squeezed.

Udoorin grunted as he bunched up his shoulders, and he went for the creature’s throat as well, and a gurgling and strangling wrestle for life ensued.

The creature was taller than the young man by nearly afoot to be sure, but the young man was stubborn. He clung to the throat he was trying to crush with both of his powerful arms just as the creature tried to do the same to him.

Neither noticed the little gnome creeping up to them from behind the thick undergrowth. Gnine crouched low, made a small, clawed fist, murmured a few odd words, and a tiny, burning mote appeared in it. He took careful aim at the larger of the two, struggling men, and hurled the red-orange mote at it.

The small, fiery mote of fire fizzled past them both. A second mote followed this one, but it splashed on a tree some few feet off to their left and winked out. Gnine cussed at his own poor aiming and hurled a third and hit the creature on the side of its face and it let loose a strangled grunt of pain as harsh, red, burnt marks appeared where he’d just been seared. Unable to breathe, the creature showed another display of survival instinct and took one step to his left even though the young man was clutching at its throat, using him as a human shield.

They struggled back and forth as both of their faces went purple, then black as throbbing veins appeared on their temples, and their eyes started to bulge out of their sockets, yet, neither would yield.

The creature suddenly went for one of the many knives on the young man’s belts and swiped it out of its sheath and tried to stab him but Udoorin grabbed his wrist and the struggle became a two-way death trap as they continued to strangle each other as one also tried to cut him while the other desperately denied him his blood until the creature grunted once, its eyes rolled up, and it dropped limply onto the ground and the young man drew a long, stuttering breath.

“You.. you sure took your merry time, Master Aager.”, the young man rasped, holding his own neck and staring at the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask wiping a long and bloody dagger in his hand.

The man seemed unruffled as he coolly cleaned his dagger, checked its pointy end, grunted once in disgust, then put it back into its scabbard.

“All those axes and swords and knives, and you ended up trying to strangle your opponent while defending yourself against your own knife. Something seems off with your preparations, wouldn’t you agree, young Udoorin? I have one sword and two knives and used only the knife, and I used it only once.”, Aager growled.

“The bloody creature was all over Bree!”, Udoorin fumed as he coughed for breath. “I couldn’t risk hitting her so a bulled him off her. I hit it once but he just wouldn’t die.”

“That is how things work outside the safety of your town, young Udoorin. People, creatures, and oft-times, monsters do not comply to your wishes and die just because you want them to.”, the man in dark leathers grated as he leaned over the dead creature. “Now, go help the rangers girls, Laila and Morel, if you will, and have Lady check your throat.”

Udoorin scowled at him.

“I am fine.”, he croaked.

Aager turned and gave the big, burly man a level stare.

“Fine.”, Udoorin rasped angrily and stomped off.

The man in dark leathers returned his gaze down at the creature.

It was tall, but he noted that it didn’t have ‘bulk’. Instead, it had well-defined muscles that could only be defined as ‘lean’, and Aager had watched it as it engaged the rangers girls, first Laila, then Morel. One might say it was cruel, at this point, or even evil of him to watch from the sidelines as the girls struggled against it. It was interesting, and more than darkly frightening to figure that he hadn’t done so to have the ranger girls ‘baptized by fire’, per se. Much like the rest of the company, they were his responsibility, true, but training them wasn’t his job, nor was it within his jurisdiction. If their respective ranger masters, Davien and Moorat hadn’t been able to do that by now, the girls did not deserve to be rangers, and their masters did not deserve to be ‘masters’, nor did they deserve any respect. The aforementioned ‘darkly frightening’ part was, he had watched just to see, not what the girls were capable of, but what the creature could do because it had opted to attack the ‘rear guard’ ranger first, rather than take out Ranger Morel.

This creature had watched and observed the behavioral pattern of both the ranger girls and came to the conclusion that it would take time for the ‘sword wielding’ ranger leading the party to reach and help the ‘bow wielding’ one. Hence, it had chosen to take Laila out first, then take out the other ranger. After that, and with no one left to track, he would either make itself scarce and disappear in the woods and likely return and pick the rest of the company one by one, at its own leisure.

No, Aager thought.

This creature, whatever it was, was not merely cunning. It was innately, and sinisterly cunning. And there were more of them somewhere out there in the forest.

As a side note, he did admire both the ranger girls.

Even when she had been taken totally by surprise and knocked down with such brutal force, Ranger Laila had somehow thought to roll aside and save herself, and likely her father a lot of grief. But as good as she was with her bow, her judgment had been abysmal where her swordsmanship was concerned, the way she had tried to block a battleaxe at full, spitting speed with her longblades. As for Ranger Morel, Aager thought she had fully earned her name as ‘Songsteel’. That counter swing of hers to steer the axe to relative ‘safety’ had been something he knew he, himself, wouldn’t be able to do. Certainly not with his shortsword. But the idiot shouldn’t have needed to go to such dramatic straights had she used her mind not to charge at the creature like a stupid Mox!

At least young Udoorin hadn’t tried to chop the creature then and there. Aager thought he would have to compliment the young man at some point for his choice of approach, just to boost his morale, if for nothing else. But then the young man had spoiled it all when he had made the same mistake Ranger Morel had made even though he had had the creature dead to rights and came at it like a stupid Mox!
Aager did something he almost never did.

He sighed.

And searched the creature thoroughly and found nothing other than a thick, jagged hunting knife, a skin of water, and some rations in the form of raw, and somewhat ‘meat gone bad’ bits of animal parts. He examined the make of its armor and boots and noted they hadn’t been stolen nor had they been looted from some random corpse, but tailored for it specifically, which meant, somewhere out there, these creatures had weapon and armor smiths, and possibly other artisans among them which he found to be disturbing, for he had never seen nor heard of anything like this thing before, and as of now, all he could say about them would be, ‘a very big orc’, which would have been acceptable by some country bumpkin, just not by the sheriff’s right hand..

He stared at the creature for a few more moments, further observing and contemplating what it would entail should more of its kind come in force..

Then he shrugged.

‘Probably a blood bath.’, he thought and drew his dagger out once again, sliced open its throat even though he had killed it by the simple expedience of thrusting his blade into the base of its skull. And for a good measure, he also stabbed it in the heart.

Overkill?

Aager shrugged again.

A kill was never ‘over’ until it was over..

How are you?”, Udoorin rumbled, his voice still raw, as he came near Bremorel who was sitting on the ground, nursing her side and her stomach with a bloody bandage in her hand.

The ranger girl scowled up at him and was just about to burn him with her usual abrasive and quite pugnacious, ‘How the Hell does it look like I am doing?’, sort of attitude, but she bit her tongue and merely grunted with a pinched face and said, “I hurt.”

“I am sorry I couldn’t get to you in time but I stopped to make sure Laila was alright.”, rasped the young man.

“Is she?”, Bremorel asked gruffly but Udoorin didn’t miss the fear in her voice.

“She is hurt too. Busted quite a bit, really. Lady Moira rushed to her side, shield, and sword ablaze. Should have seen her. She looked so cool and dangerous and told me she would guard Laila with her own life, Heavens willing —her own words.”, he replied.

Bremorel tried to snort, but that only bought her more pain. The young man knelt beside her and saw blood seeping out of the gash in her leather armor.

“You are leaking badly. Let’s have a look at how bad it is.”, he said leaning over her.

“I am not showing you my belly!”, hissed the ranger girl. “Go get yourself a girl and stare at her belly. This one’s reserved!”

“Reserved? Reserved by whom?”, Udoorin asked with a flushed face.

“That’s none of your business!”, she snarled at him.

The young man sighed. He had no idea what the girl was talking about, other than the fact that the young Temple Guardian Thomas had had an eye for her for like, ever, but she had shown no interest to him whatsoever. He also noticed that her face was pale now. Too pale.

“Alright.”, he said gruffly. “Please don’t take this the wrong way but you are about to pass out and you need Lady to look at that wound. And no biting!”

Then, without waiting for her to reply, object, or threaten him, he put one arm behind her back, another under her legs, and scooped her off the ground! And before she could even show her displeasure, and to add further insult to ‘injury’, he rumbled, “If you make a fuss or try to scratch out my eyes, I will tell Thomas that you are a wuss!”, he rumbled.

Bremorel shut up and let the big, burly man carry her without a fuss, though she did hiss at him, once, with mortified vehemence, “No biting? Really? You are bringing that up now?”

In retrospect, young Udoorin never knew the ranger girl’s in her arms actually had any interest in the young Temple Guardian. He even had some reservations that she might even be toying with the poor kid, which he thought was not all that nice of her to be doing because Thomas was his friend and was a good, decent man and he had been desperately trying to garner some or even a glimpse of affection from Bremorel, but Udoorin had always thought it had been a lost cause because, well, Bremorel just never had been the ‘affectionate’ sort of girl even though she was quite pretty. If you were going for a fight, you wanted her on your side. For matters of the heart, not so much. The odd and blisteringly flushed silence that settled over the young ranger girl in his arms changed everything he thought he knew about her.

“Huh..”, he said to himself. “..just when you thought you knew someone.”

With steady steps, he carried her to where Lady Moira was still standing with a serious and determined expression on her face. She had her shield held high and in front of her, covering almost all of herself, and those behind her, and her other arm was stretched out to one side with her sword pointing slightly down; an on-guard stance.

“Bring her here.”, he heard a gruff tone; Lady Magella in her no-nonsense voice, which was basically her usual mode. “I believe little Morel and I have some talking to do that’s long overdue.”

Bremorel flinched and her face went even paler.

To give the young Udoorin credit, he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even snort. He silently carried her over where Lady Magella was, and carefully set her down next to a bloodied Laila.

“Well, aren’t we a pair of idiots!”, Bremorel snarked in pain.

“Yeah..”, replied Laila blearily. “..The bastard totally caught us with our pants down.”

“Language!”, scowled Lady Magella.

“What?”, Laila slurred at her with bleary eyes. “Never got caught with your pants down?”

Bremorel snorted, then hissed as the pain hit her again. Lady Magella glared down at Laila, then reached over and tweaked her nose and set it in place.

Laila let loose a terrible and painful shriek!

“That is what happens when you sass your Temple Guardian, little Laila..”, the she-dwarf said coolly, then turned to the other ranger girl. “Now, young Morel. I believe you and I have some things to discuss as well.”

“I would rather not!”, Bremorel said hastily.

“Ahh, but we do..”, Lady smiled at her pleasantly. “..Laila here has been careless. I have just taught her the consequences of that. I have also reminded her just how her father would feel should he lose his only child. With you, we shall talk something else..”

“Such as?”, Bremorel gulped as she stared at the she-dwarf with a freaked expression.

“Such as how you have been so abrasive, quite rash, and rather reckless up to date. A conversation we both know you have been avoiding for years.”, Lady Magella said as she gave her a very creepy smile. “And then we shall discuss the peculiar habit of skulking around my temple come sunset, that you have picked up of late whenever you and your cousin return to town..”

Aager Fogstep stared down at the two ranger girls. Both of them were sweating profusely even though they were asleep, wrapped up carefully by Lady Magella, who kept checking in on them, not unlike a mother hen.

Harsh though she was, the Temple Guardian had not been stingy at all when it came to those she thought were her children and had used a considerable amount of her skills to mend both the ranger girls.

Aager stared at them some more and noted they still seemed very pale and their lips had turned a bit grayish-blue.

Upon scowling orders from the Lady Magella, the little gnome, Gnine, was peeling potatoes again, as the girls would need some decent and hot meal when they came around.

Udoorin was sitting near them, one of his greataxes propped on his lap, his heavy pack tossed aside along with the rest of his arsenal. He had his back to a tree and he was still nursing his throat. He was also staring at the fire burning in the pit he had dug and lined with stones.

And he was silently seething.

What had happened to the ranger girls was not his fault. But for whatever demented reason, the young man didn’t see it that way. And other than ramming the creature off Bremorel, he had basically been useless, and quite redundant at that. After having lost his axe and ended up grappling with the thing, he knew, had there been a second one of them lurking around, he would have been dead, and likely Bree as well. He hadn’t seen Lady Moira fight, and even though she looked competent, two rangers and a fighter, as he saw himself, and to his surprise, the little gnome, Gnine, had entered the fray by throwing some things at the creature, and they still hadn’t been able to bring one of them down. Not until Master Aager had shown up. And had it gotten past the paladin girl as well, it would likely have meant Laila would have died then and there, leaving the Temple Guardian Lady Magella to fend for herself..

This one fight had been a wake-up call for the young man at a colossal scale and he didn’t take it well.

“I do not recall having trained you to mope, young Udoorin.”, growled Aager as he came to sit next to the young man.

Udoorin pressed his lips together in frustration.

“Perhaps you think this was all your fault.”, the man in dark leathers continued. “Be sure that it was..”

Udoorin turned to stare at him, his face turning sick.

“..but not for the reasons you think. Not unless you figure you are responsible for the rangers, missing the point; you aren’t. They have been trained by two of the best ranger masters this side of the Kingdom of Isles has to offer.

“The fault began when young Laila and Moral chose to discard and disregard my orders and spread out the way they did, acting out of frustration rather than sound logic in hopes of catching the sneak-thief. But the fault did not end there. It was my job to make sure they followed the orders I gave them. It is for the same reason I have been ambushing and, consequently, beating our own town guards all these past years; to make sure they all are where they were supposed to be, awake and sober. It is for the very same reason the ranger masters have all the rangers, including young Laila and Morel, patrolling the lands around your town over and over and over. We do this because we all know ‘safe’ is an illusion. Your childhood friends forgot this and got themselves almost killed. I neglected the very same thing and did not curb them to fall back and almost got them, you, and Lady Magella killed as well. Of the lot of us, only Lady Moira did not go out of her way to be foolish nor did she try to impress those around her by showing off her battle prowess. She stabilized her fallen comrade then stood to watch over her and made sure her condition did not deteriorate for the worse, and she is not even from your town. She did her part and stopped there because she expected to do ours. That, young man, is at the core of any given military unit. Thus far, we failed. Utterly.”, Aager grated harshly.

“You forgot Gnine.”, Udoorin mumbled.

“Master Gnine is not my responsibility. He came of his own volition and he certainly was not of my choosing. I owe neither him nor his uncle the effort to keep him out of trouble. I am not his mentor nor am I his babysitter. Responsibility is something he must learn for himself, likely the hard way.”, the man in dark leathers growled.

“He might have issues, but he is still a part of this company, Sir.”, Udoorin said stubbornly.

“Admirable as it may be, your sense of loyalty is misplaced, young Udoorin, and certainly lost on Master Gnine.”, Aager almost snarled.

Udoorin shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter.”, he said.

Aager fumed at the boy’s obstinate stance where his friends were concerned, even though said ‘friend’ had punned and ridiculed the young man since he had been but a boy. The troublesome little gnome’s attitude hadn’t changed towards young Udoorin even when he had grown to be the big, burly man that he was now.

The fuming Aager considered how he’d dealt with boys of his age, and those even much older than he’d been back at Drashan. Then, oddly enough, his seething frustration evaporated.

He gave the young man a sinister smile, even though it was hidden behind his half-mask, and grated..
“If he is, as you say, part of this company, perhaps he should comport himself as such, starting by telling us what he is capable of, instead of keeping things to himself and springing surprises on us while we are under duress. That is not only irresponsible, it is idiocy. I warned him not to be a distraction. He has thus chosen to ignore me. Hence I shall tutor him as have I tutored you..”

 

---

 

Chapter
Three

First Encounters

 

Timeline:

This story begins a few hours after
A Day After.

 

 

Well, at least we won’t be dealing with that arse, any time soon!”, Bremorel Songsteel sneered with spite.

Bremorel was a striking young woman with a deceptively slender figure. She had dark, coarse hair running freely down either side of her beautiful face and back, and she gazed upon the world around her through deep green eyes, though her ‘pretty’ was somewhat marred with a seemingly permanent mark of petulance.

“Which arse is that?”, her cousin, Laila Wolvesbane asked amusedly.

Laila was perhaps an inch shorter than her cousin and had a decidedly supple figure that hinted at the wood elf side of her heritage, with long, dark brown hair that she’d pulled up and bunned into a ponytail. She had fair skin, though slightly tanned, and beautiful blue eyes. Unlike her cousin, however, Laila asserted or had perhaps adopted a calm and cool aura.

“That Aager-guy.”, Bremorel hissed.

“Good to know where we stand, Ranger Morel.”, growled a voice and Aager Fogstep appeared from behind the trees at the edge of Ritual Forest..

The man, Aager, was a lean, almost ‘gaunt’ figure and an edge above average. He was in his dark leathers again and he wore a low hood over his head and had a half-mask covering his face just below his black, soulless eyes.

He carried several daggers on his person and a shortsword that he’d chosen to hide under his tattered cloak. In all his tenure in Serenity Home ever since the sheriff had brought him from Drashan, no one had really seen him in anything other than his current outfit and very few had actually seen his face.

The two cousins had asked what the sinister-looking man actually looked like to the sheriff’s son, Udoorin, who had been trained by the very same man in his dark leathers. The burly young man had simply refused to make any comments on the matter and always seemed to have this haunted look on his face whenever Master Aager was mentioned.

Also, no one had ever heard him say a word without his growling voice. One might even say, if not very charitably, that the growl was his actual voice and he wasn’t going out of his way to make himself appear more intimidating, not that he needed it. Hence, when he stepped out from behind the trees, Bremorel’s face went bright red, then turned black when she came to a few, immediate conclusions..

One; he had heard what she’d thought about him.

Two; he was here, meaning he would be coming with them.

And three; she hadn’t heard nor felt his presence.. in the woods.. and she was a ranger, dammit!

“Master Aager.”, Laila said coolly and quite seamlessly. “What brings the sheriff’s right hand all the way out here? I would have assumed you’d be in the town, looking for possible clues there.”

“You should never assume what you do not know, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane”, Aager growled. “It is a bad habit to adopt and harder to lose. I am here on Sheriff Standorin’s orders. Seeing as you are here as well, I can safely say, his plan to put a team together late last night has born fruition.”

Laila stared at the growling man in the dark leathers. She tried for a moment to stare into his soulless eyes and stubbornly refuse to look elsewhere, but failed. She wondered, but for a moment, was this man truly soulless as they said he was and already dead inside? Or perhaps he was merely a corpse that didn’t know it was dead. She averted her eyes, fearing she might be pulled into the depths of his bottomless pit, fumed once, then gathered her cool around herself and breathed..

“Your orders, Master Aager?”

“What?”, exclaimed Bremorel, first gaping at her cousin, then at the man in dark leathers.

“Apparently, Sheriff Standorin was a few steps ahead of us, the mayor, and our respective ranger masters, Bree. And has appointed Master Aager as the leader of this company. Would have been polite of him the have mentioned it in the council meeting, though.”, her cousin said coolly, even though she was quite angry about the way the sheriff had totally ignored protocol and ‘man-handled’ everyone in the group.

“Well, shit!”, Bremorel spat. “I knew it was too good to be true.”

“A bit crude, but essentially accurate, Ranger Morel. Though I find it an odd assessment, calling the burning of your town and the death of your townsmen a good thing, particularly coming from a rank ranger. I suppose congratulations on your promotions are in order, here. Well earned..”, he growled.

Bremorel glared at him as her face flushed.

“Now, if you will..”, Master Aager continued. “..I would appreciate it if you two started following the tracks you found this morning. Ranger Morel, I want you to take point and as far as two hundred yards and I want Ranger Laila to be no more than half that range. Should either of you encounter anything, I want Ranger Morel to stay hidden and Ranger Laila to warn us.”

“Why am I taking lead?”, flared Bremorel.

“Why am I staying behind?”, asked Laila, though less belligerently than her cousin.

Master Aager stared at them both for a silent moment. Then spoke in his gravelly voice.

“I have been following your reports for over four years now. And thus far, both of you have adopted a certain pattern where you, Ranger Morel, prefer close combat and like to make good use of her greatblade and you, Ranger Laila, would rather use your longbow. Thus I have put both of you in a position where each one of you can best utilize your habits. Unless the reports you have been giving are false.. or maybe you would rather change your habits?”, he said.

“Why didn’t the sheriff just tell us you were coming?”, Laila asked, though more out of curiosity now than any belligerence.

The man in dark leathers paused for a moment as if considering whether he should tell or not, or perhaps decide on how much he should tell. He and the ranger girls had a history and not a very good one, though admittedly, it hadn’t been anyone’s fault, really, but merely the culmination of circumstances at the time.

Then he shrugged.

It was possible their journey would take them far, and even to unexpected places. He didn’t really care whether they liked him or not, much like didn’t feel the need to trust them, which wasn’t really saying much since he didn’t trust anyone, but they did have to learn to trust him. At least enough not to question his judgment or orders at the wrong time.

“Should you give it but a mere moment’s sentient thought, I believe you would be able to figure out as to why the sheriff did not bring up my involvement in the council, Ranger Laila.”, Master Aager said steadily.

Both the ranger girls stared at him, but it was Laila who grasped what he meant.

“The sheriff does not trust the council!”, exclaimed Laila.

“You seem surprised, Ranger Laila. Which is surprising all on its own, seeing as how your respective ranger masters do not share all the information they gather with anyone, let alone the council, or even the sheriff himself. Suffice to say, the security of a town that harbors over ten thousand souls is not on the priority list of certain people.”, Aager said in his growling voice.

“Haradin!”, spat Bremorel.

“I believe you have already filled your quota for blurting things you shouldn’t for one day, Ranger Morel. I dearly hope you are better at tracking than you are otherwise.”, Aager said coldly, as he gave her a very frosty stare, nodded curtly at them, and then stalked past them to assess the rest of the company..

I so hate that man!”, flared Bremorel as she ran past her cousin while keeping an eye on the tracks, some one hundred yards away.

“Can’t say I like him either, but he was right, you know. And apparently, very observant. We never mentioned our weapon preferences in any of our reports. Yet he’s managed to deduce the fact that you like bashing things and I prefer pinning them.”, Laila mused. “Perhaps there is a side of him we are missing?”

“I don’t bash things, I cut them!”, her cousin said hotly, then added with a nasty grimace, “And whatever side he’s got, I’d rather he just dropped dead, already!”

“Bree..”, Laila said reprovingly. “That’s not nice. Yes, he is irritating the way he is, and I did not appreciate the way Sheriff Standorin handled things either, but I understand why he did them. Whoever these people were, they had intimate knowledge of how to enter the town, who to hit, where he lived, and get out unseen.”

“I know that. I just dislike that man, that’s all. Ever since Bane-Song operation. And what’s with the growling, anyway? I mean, who talks like that?”, Bremorel fretted.

“Maybe that’s his actual voice.”, her cousin shrugged. “A bit like Missus. You know, the innkeeper’s odd cat?”

“That cat doesn’t growl, she caws like a crow!”, Bremorel objected with a snort.

“That’s what I mean. Maybe it’s something like that with Master Aager, too.”, Laila said, looking down at the tracks they both were following. “One of these guys is really dragging his feet.”

“Yeah. Maybe he’s tired.”, Bremorel said, pinching her face. “Missus dropped on a rake and had her throat punctured. Poor thing. Lucky she survived. You think that Aager-guy dropped on a rake and had his throat poked as well?”

“I don’t want to know. C’mon. Let’s pick up the pace, shall we? Take point, Ranger Bremorel Songsteel!”, she said with a grin.

“Will do, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane!”, her cousin grinned back and took off..

Uhhmm.. Master Aager?”, Udoorin stumbled when he saw the man in his dark leathers, hood, and half-mask stalk their way.

Udoorin Shieldheart was a large young man. Large in height, large in width, and large in depth! A largeness in bone and hard-packed and earned muscle, rather than mere bulk and a height to go with it. He had dark brown hair, dark brown, puppy sort of eyes that hadn’t quite seen full maturity, and for whatever reason, he was entertaining a scruffy looking patch of beard, possibly to make himself look older than his eighteen years and perhaps be taken more seriously by his elders.

Aager had never commented on the boy’s facial preferences, but had preferred to reserve his opinion on the matter even though he thought the boy looked ‘silly’ with it, a word he seldom used, possibly because he had never cared what others thought about himself. He also preferred to never get involved in other people’s private lives or their issues. And now, the boy also looked like a walking armory; a heavy chainmail showered down his bulk, all the way to his knees, two very big battleaxes were strapped on his back along with a shield, another battleaxe in one of his large fists, and his father’s longsword hung on his belt. There were at least five or six knives and daggers tucked into several other belts and a like number strapped around his legs and in his boots! He looked very much like a kid who had been given free rein at a candy store!

“Perhaps you are planning on rolling over the enemy in hopes of cutting them down to minced meat with all the sharp and pointy things you are carrying”, Aager grated amusedly.

Udoorin’s face flushed.

“I just want to be sure I have spares, Master Aager. You know, in case one of them breaks..”, the young man mumbled.

“Just how many of them are you planning on breaking?”, Aager asked.

The young man flushed some more.

“Lady Moira.”, the man in dark leathers then said, nodding at the tall, young woman in her shining plate armor.

Lady Moira Hooman was indeed a tall girl, almost matching the young man she was walking next to in height. She certainly wasn’t as packed as him, but the tight straps of her armor and the ease she showed in her step in her fifty-pound sheer steel she was carrying said she likely had some serious muscle and a lot of battle training to go with it. She wasn’t a beautiful girl in a conventional sense, but with her light green eyes, her quite generous mouth, and her long, reddish-brown hair bunned up the way she had, her beauty glowed with a sunny and honest appeal. It was clear this young woman liked smiling and laughing at silly things, rather than adopting a more somber or perhaps scowling glare at the world around her. Considering what she was, it totally ruined her high status as a paladin.

“Master Aager Fogstep.”, she said as her sunny face lightened as she returned the polite nod. “So nice to finally meet you.”

Aager paused, for he got the distinct impression that the young woman had actually told the truth, rather than made a polite or even passing comment. True, he was a Drashan and that stinking island of thieves, cutthroats, lechers of all stripes, whores, and pirates had never harbored a paladin, yet he’d heard of them. Particularly after the sheriff had brought him to Serenity Home. And one of the few things he’d heard was, that they always spoke the truth; the girl had actually meant what she’d said!

“Is it?”, he growled.

“Indeed it is, to finally meet the man skulking outside my room back in the guest house I was staying.”, she replied with another sunny smile.

Aager paused again.

For he had also come to the intimate conclusion that this young woman was not merely sunny and honest, she was sunny, honest, observant, careful, and knew how to disarm a man without using her base femininity or a sword.

And apparently, she was not some mindless knight in shining armor.

Well, she certainly was not stupid.

How had she heard him though? No one heard him coming. Not when he didn’t want them to. And the guest’s inn had carpets.

The girl grinned at him. It had a pretty grin, really.

“No mystery there, Master Aager.”, she said happily as if reading his thoughts. “We humble paladins have certain existential senses, hence we can, at times, feel when evil is abound.”

Aager’s dark eyes became even darker than they already were.

“Well, at least she knows something I do.”, he mused silently.

“I have sent the rangers, Laila and Morel, out to find the tracks of the people we suspect to be responsible for last night’s attack and to follow them. Should anything happen, I have told them to fall back and warn us. I want you and young Udoorin here, to face the enemy while the rangers do what they do best. Is that acceptable with you?”, he asked aloud though his tone gave the impression he wasn’t really asking but merely being polite.

“But of course, Master Aager. That is what we knights and paladins do best. To face the enemy head-on.”, Moira said happily. “I would, however, have it made clear; has the good sheriff assigned you as the leader of this company? Rank and status should always be made clear to avoid confusion, particularly in battle.”

“The sheriff has assigned me to make sure everyone here comes back alive and functional. I believe he gives me more credit than warranted for such a harsh endeavor, particularly with so few battle-tested, sounds unrealistic at best.”, Aager growled.

Udoorin gave him a side-long glance.

“A dour but reasonable assumption, Master Aager. I shall follow your command, then, and do my best to make sure all your townsmen return safe and sound.”, she said with another sunny smile.

“Huh.”, Aager grunted. “Will a paladin willingly follow a man she can sense coming at her in the dark?”

“I try not to judge people at their worst, Master Aager.”, Moira replied happily, then asked, “Curious though, are you perhaps related to an Aager Farstep? He was a well respected and quite a pious man.”

Aager Fogstep stared at her for a bare moment then growled.

“No.”

Then looked behind her and at the temple guardian, Lady Magella.

The she-dwarf, Lady Magella, was a blocky sort of dwarf. Although she was known for her care, back at Serenity Home, and the temple, her kind of care was not always as tender as could have been. She had a comfortable weight, and if one could get past her perpetual scowl, they might reach her kinder side. And when she spoke, her words tended to be as ‘bludgenous’ as the mace hanging at her side.

For many reasons, Aager had avoided her and her master, the Senior Temple Guardian, Demos Lightshand, even though she had accompanied him, along with the sheriff, and the two ranger masters, Davien and Moorat, on several troublesome occasions in the past. He had been strictly polite and politically correct with all the Temple Guardians, then stayed as far away from them as possible. And now he was going to be stuck with the she-dwarf for an extended period, who was even now, scowling up at him.

“Temple Guardian.”, he growled politely and nodded at her.

“Master Aager.”, she responded, almost in kind. “We never see your happy presence at the sermons.”

“As a matter of fact, I have been inside your temple, and attended to your sermons. Twice.”

Lady Magella cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Once to see what kind of security risks your temple might present.”, Aager said blandly. “The other was to actually listen to your oration. Turns out, your sermon was wasted on me.”

“Didn’t like what you heard?”, she frowned at him and even though she opted to ignore it, she had not missed the underlying reasons for his first visit.

“No, ma’am. It was about the Heavenly punishments pertaining to theft and murder. I thought I got the gist of your calling at that point.”, he replied with a grin, though it was lost under his half-mask.

Lady Magella made a huffy sort of snorting noise.

“You missed the sermon the week after.”, she said.

Aager did not nudge her to continue.

“Yes. It was about kindness, compassion, and the beauty of love shared with others.”, she scowled.

“I doubt I missed much then, Temple Guardian. I do not even know what those words entail and it is unlikely I ever shall.”, he growled at her.

“Perhaps you will, someday, Master Aager.”, Lady Magella said, squinting up at him.

“People like me deserve what the Heavens have in store for us, Lady. Suffice to say, I do not live for your standards.”, he grated from under his mask.

“You must be a wise man, Master Aager. Seen the future so thoroughly, have you?”, she said angrily.

Aager didn’t know what the Temple Guardian was getting at nor did he understand why she was suddenly angry. People seldom got angry with him. Feared him, yes. Hated him, certainly. Angry? Not so much, for the man in his dark leathers seldom left angry people alive in his wake.

He fumed a bit, then spoke.

“Lady, should we encounter anything during our journey to find the miscreants that burned Serenity Home, I would rather you stay at the back by at least fifteen yards. I would also like you to keep a base watch to your rear as well. Now, if you will excuse me, I need to be elsewhere.”, he growled and took off without waiting for her reply.

He had just been reminded why he had thus avoided the town’s temple and her guardians so thoroughly.

Psst!”, hissed someone and Ranger Laila froze, her longbow half drawn with a red and white feathered arrow cocked on the taught string.

“Psst!”, came the sound again, and Laila breathed from her nose.

“Gnine..”, she fumed as she turned around to see the little gnome hiding under some bushes. “..what are you doing here?, she fumed.

Gnine Tinkerdome was a mischievous little gnome, slightly on the stocky side. Mischievous, proactive, curious, intelligent, obsessively observant about queer and bizarre things, highly creative, yet insusceptible to his surrounding, and mostly up to no good. He wore immaculate clothes consisting of a pair of trousers tailored to his size, a somewhat flamboyant, colorful shirt, a similarly colorful vest, knee-high soft leather boots, a shoulder bag, several small pouches on his belt, a jarring cloak, and the only things he had on him for a weapon was a little knife and a wooden, hand-crafted sling. It appeared like he had gone out of his way to be spotted and become the sole focus of attention under any circumstance. All he seemed to need was a sign that read;

 

I AM HERE.
PLEASE SHOOT ME.
PREFERABLY SOONER
THAN LATER!

 

“Getting away from Master Aager.”, the gnome replied with a broad grin. “Saw him grilling you and Bree. Then he filleted that oaf, Udoorin, which was a happy thing, really. Was fun watching him squirm like a little girl.”

“Gnine..”, Laila fumed again. “It isn’t nice of you to say such things about Udoorin, considering he saved your uncle from the fire just last night. Got his hands burned for his efforts too. Had Lady Magella not worked on them, it would have taken months for him to make any good use of them.”

“I am grateful that he saved my uncle. Really..”, the gnome said honestly. Then added, “Doesn’t disqualify him from being an oaf, now, does it?”

“What is it with you and him, anyway? What’s he done to you that you would treat him like this? I mean, me and Bree fought with him once but that was years ago and he was honest and mature enough to come and apologize and decide to be our friend rather than hold a grudge, considering what we did to him after the things he’d said about me.”, Laila said a bit angrily.

The little gnome shrugged.

“He’s my outlet!”, he replied impudently.

“You could be mean sometimes, Gnine. Do you know that?”, the ranger girl frowned. “Now go back. You should be with the main group, not out here.”

The little gnome shrugged again.

“Nah.. I’ll hang around with you two. I don’t want to hear Udoorin babble all day, and I certainly do not want any preachings from Lady. Although I must admit, the paladin chick is kinda hot and she has a very pretty smile!”

Laila glared down at him.

“You have no idea what is going on or what we are doing, do you, Gnine? I’ll tell you what, you are going to turn around and go back to the group, or you are going to turn around and go back to town. It’s up to you.”, she said, still fuming down at the little gnome.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”, Gnine objected.

“I am a full ranger now, Gnine.”, she almost hissed at him.

“Yeah, so?”, the little gnome asked, sticking his chin out.

“It means, I am the law in the wilderness, Gnine. I have the legal power to command anyone short of a major, and certainly any civilian. Anyone who does not comply is subject to heavy fines and serious jail time.”, Laila said frostily, pretty much losing all her cool.

True, the little gnome and she were friends but they were not inside the safe walls of Serenity Home now and this was not a game. Last night had proven that. Apparently, Gnine’s point of view of the world around him made him somewhat impervious to certain, quite deadly realities. For him, this was, perhaps, something of a challenge, or perhaps even a dare.

“Chill, girl, it’s just a stroll through the forest. Nothing’s going to happen here—”, he said..

..but his words got cut when they heard a crash through the woods and something huge smashed its way right through a fallen tree trunk just fifty yards away!

Large, shattered splinters of half-rotten bark showered all around them. One landed merely a few feet from Laila just as she took a few smart steps to her left and behind a tree, as another, foot-long splinter clipped the little gnome on the shoulder and promptly dropped him spinning on his arse..

“How rude!”, the little gnome said angrily, holding his shoulder.

Then he looked up to see a giant of a wild boar, some five feet high hoof-to-hunch and perhaps four feet wide, its coarse fur matted, its eyes red and blind with fury, its twenty-inch tusks bloodied, and it was foaming and grunting at the muzzle as it came charging at him!

“What the—”, he spluttered, as he ogled at the beast.

“Gnine!”, barked Laila from behind the tree, but the little gnome just continued to stare at the beast with stunned and somewhat disconnected admiration as if it were some kind of a memento on display.

“BREE!”, she shrieked!

With a shrill shriek of her own, Bremorel burst out of the bushes almost on top of the wild boar and took it by total surprise. The boar squealed in recognition of the danger coming at it from its flank and tried to swirl but its massive momentum worked against it and it skidded sideways some fifteen feet before it lost its balance and tumbled over once, twice, then crashed dead, right before the little gnome!

Standing behind him was Ranger Laila, her longbow stretched taut with a second arrow cocked and ready..

And she was fuming balefully down at the little gnome.

“Good shot, cuzz.”, Bremorel said appreciatively as she dashed up to them.

“Good distraction.”, Laila nodded. “Worked like a charm.”

“Yeah. That’s me, Bree the Charming Distractor!”, her cousin smirked.

“I think I soiled my pants.”, Gnine mumbled in awe as he stared at the monstrosity that had piled right before him.

“You must be. Poor Thomas tripped and fell on his face when we were leaving the mayor’s office while ogling at you.”, Laila said with a bemused expression.

“And you just had to spoil the moment by bringing him into this, didn’t you?”, Bremorel scowled at her.

“Just saying. You do know someone else is interested in that boy, right?”, Laila said.

Bremorel’s face turned pure black.

“What? Who?”, she snarled.

“You sure you want to know?”, her cousin asked, sort of offhandedly.

“I will need to change my pants, I think.”, Gnine mumbled.

“WHO, DAMMIT!”, Bremorel hissed.

“The mayor’s eldest daughter.”

Bremorel ogled at her.

“How do you know?”, she asked, a bit freaked.

“My father..”, she said with a shrug. “She came to his workshop last week to put in an order for a new hope chest. Father offered her some tea while he started drawing some sketches and they gossiped.”

“What the bloody hell is a hope chest?”, Bremorel asked.

“It’s a chest for girls to put their dowry.”, Gnine prompted!

Both the girls stared down at him.

“Whot?”, he said. “It is! Hey, can I have one of these tusks? Looks like an awesome bit of memento.”, Gnine said eagerly, staring at the steaming boar.

And now Bremorel was really freaked.

“That.. that woman is like twice Thomas’s age!”, ‘eeped’ Bremorel.

Laila stared at her like she did when she was staring at an idiot.

“What?”, Bremorel asked, her face flushed a bit. She knew that look.

“The hope chest wasn’t for her, cousin, not to mention, not only twice his age, but she is already married. It’s for her daughter, Janith, obviously.”, Laila said.

Bremorel’s face deflated.

Quite visibly.

And her shoulders drooped.

Janith was a very pretty little girl. She was also kind and well-liked by the townsmen. Always smiling and always polite. She had silky, auburn hair, soft, baby-pink skin, and lovely brown eyes. And she was the granddaughter of no other than Mayor Arthandos Yuleman. Bremorel, on the other hand, was only a ranger and that’s all she had to offer. True, being a ranger had its privileges and was nothing to sneeze at, and she, herself, was a pretty girl with coarse black hair, beautiful pale-green eyes, fair skin slightly tanned under the sun, and a striking figure to go with them all. She was also a troubled girl and trouble. She was abrasive, she was angry all the time, she scowled at everyone, and she was sullen at her best behavior. Not to mention, she was gone most of the time due to her duties and her household skills were next to none. Her best cooking was over a campfire and somewhat charred quail, though, admittedly, she could make a mean rabbit stew! She also had the bad habit of starting a fight at the drop of a hat, which explained why she was also banned from pretty much every public place in Serenity Home other than, ironically, the temple itself, where the young, well respected, very polite, caring, and pious young man, Thomas, lived and worked as a Temple Guardian. And a match between him and Janith would very much appeal to the whole town, as opposed to her.

“Hey, can either of you girls gimme a hand with these tusks?”, Gnine asked as he tried to pry them off the beast’s snout.

Laila smacked him over the head!

“Ouch, girl! What was that for?”, he glared up at her.

“What were you thinking, Gnine, standing right in front of a charging wild boar?”, she hissed down at him with an angry frown.

“Whot? It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! When else was I going to ever see a boar this big and charging at me?”, he asked.

Laila just stared at him.

“She can have him..”, mumbled Bremorel in a barely audible, defeated voice.

“You are an idiot!”, Laila said with exasperation.

“Who? Me or her?”, Gnine asked.

“Both of you!”, she flared, glaring at both of them. “You, for standing in front of a charging boar, and you, for folding the moment you hit a snag.”

She glared down at Gnine and fumed at him.

“Did it ever occur to you that you might be trampled by an eight hundred pound animal, if not outright gored?”

Then she turned to her cousin and fumed at her as well.

“And did it occur to you that the boy just might have a say in this, much like you do? It is clear he is interested in you, much like you are interested in him. He is also very much afraid of you and you are acting like a stubborn mule and insisting that he should man up!”

“Ow, you are talking about Thomas!”, Gnine piped. “I like Thomas. He’s smart, reads books all the time, and he is excellent at debates. Horrible at hog-ball, though. He can’t seem to play without getting knocked out! But I agree with Bremorel on this matter. He really should man up and ask her out. Not the other way around.”

“There!”, Bremorel said, grinning at Laila triumphantly. “Gnine agrees with me!”

Then she smacked him over the head as well!

“Whot? I just agreed with you, girl.. What was that for?”, whined the little gnome, cowering from the ranger girl.

“That was for standing in front of a charging boar, you idiot”, she hissed.

Good kill, Laila.”, Udoorin said with a broad grin as he stared at the great beast.

“Excellent shot indeed, Ranger Laila. You do your calling justice.”, smiled Moira.

Laila’s face flushed a bit.

“Yeah. She shot it right in front of my eyes —literally!”, piped Gnine.

“That’s my cuzz, Laila Wolvesbane. She could shoot threads through needles.”, Bremorel beamed.

Lady Magella didn’t comment, though the expression on her face showed she was clearly impressed as well.

Aager did not comment either. He had knelt beside the beast and was carefully studying it. After a long moment, he rose.

“Young Udoorin. Perhaps you could help turn the beast over.”, he growled.

Udoorin walked up to the beast, stabbed his battleaxe into the ground, grabbed the boar by the hind legs, and heaved. His trunk-like arms bulged and his face turned red. It took him a full minute until the beast finally budged, turned over, and fell onto its other side..

..to reveal a thick, broken shaft of a spear sticking out of its flank!

For a moment, everyone just stared at it.

Only rangers Laila and Bremorel made any noise.

“What the..”, Bremorel exclaimed.

Laila hissed.

“How did you know?”, Udoorin asked finally.

“Didn’t. Just a hunch. As great an archer Ranger Laila is, a beast this size downed by a single arrow seemed unlikely.”, growled Aager.

“What? You think Laila can’t bring down a boar?”, flashed Bremorel.

Aager stared at her for a moment.

“I have little to no doubt about the archery skills of your cousin, Ranger Morel. A single arrow to the head, or through the neck would have brought down an average boar. But one as large as this seemed improbable. Hence it occurred to me that the animal might have been previously wounded.”, he replied calmly.

Bremorel glared at him.

Laila, however, reached down and pulled at the shaft but it didn’t budge. She tried some more, but she was unable to pull it out. She gave her cousin a look and Bremorel grabbed hold of the broken shaft, and with the use of the whole of her supple figure, she managed to wrench it out of the boar.

“This isn’t a ranger’s weapon.”, she said, looking at the broken shaft, then at the long, sharp, jagged blade of the spear. “It is too heavy to make a good throw. I don’t recognize the make of the blade either. And no ranger nor any self-respecting hunter would purchase a spear with jagged edges like this one and hunt with it. It would be good if you have a rope of some sort tied to the other end of the shaft, I suppose, but it is a cruel way to kill an animal. Not to mention, it would be a rather short throw, and should you fail, you would have a wounded beast running around and slowly dying of gangrene. Again, a cruel way to hunt. We kill for food or when an animal has gone rabid. Either way, we make sure we get the job done and swiftly.”

“Yes.”, Laila agreed, musing over the blade. “This isn’t one of ours. I do see some runes on it though.”

“It isn’t dwarf make.”, Lady Magella declared and everyone turned to look at her, probably because it was one of the rare times she had actually said anything.

“What? It isn’t. Dwarves mark their weapons to take responsibility for their craftsmanship. Those runes are not dwarven. They do seem to be a derivation of orcish, I think.”

“Orcish?”, Moira asked. “I wasn’t aware there were orcs in this region.”

“There are orcs in every region.”, Laila said sourly, avoiding looking at her cousin. “We watch them when we see them. Sometimes they merely want to pass through. Sometimes though, they want to raid. Those, we kill.”

“You let orcs live here?”, Moira asked a bit surprised.

“As much as I dislike them, Lady Moira, yes, we let them be because they have as much right to live as we do. We have many communities and races living in Ritual Forest. We even have ogres here. Hell, we have an orc in our town who works for Master Gurk Larson, the blacksmith. Came out of nowhere some fifteen or sixteen years ago and said he was tired of the blood spilling and wanted to work for his bread. Many people objected but Mayor Arthandos agreed to let him in, saying anyone who came in peace, worked and sweat for the peace was welcome in Serenity Home.”

“That is amazing.”, Moira said. “I am afraid we have no such luxuries at Durkahan.”

“So this is an orc weapon.”, Aager said quietly.

“Likely.”, Lady confirmed with a scowl. “Dwarves know orcs very well for our history is full of conflicts and confrontations with them. This spearhead, however, seems a bit too perfectly cast and sharpened for your average orc. They are not mentally equipped to care for their weapons and armor. If this did, in fact, belong to an orc and has access to similar quality weapons, we are in trouble because that thing will penetrate a shield and even plate armor.”

“You seem well educated on weapons and armors, Temple Guardian Magella.”, smiled Moira.

“Call me Lady. That is my name, not a prefix.”, Lady said.

“Oh, I apologize, Lady. I was not aware of that.”, Moira said sincerely.

“Tis alright.”, she shrugged. “My mother had strange ideas when I was born, I guess. And yes, I do have extensive knowledge of weapons and armors. After all, I wasn’t born a Temple Guardian, nor was I even consulted on the matter, which is beside the point. Suffice to say, a raiding party of orcs is a serious matter to consider. A raiding party of orcs with weapons of this quality is altogether a different proposition.”

Everyone mulled over that.

“Thank you for your insight, Lady.”, Aager growled a bit stiffly, took the broken shaft from Ranger Morel, and handed it over to Udoorin. “Put this into your pack. We might want to show it to Master Gurk’s orc apprentice when we return back to town. Now, rangers Laila and Bremorel, take point, if you will.”

Laila didn’t say anything. She nudged Bremorel, who seemed like she wanted to snarl something, possibly in way of retaliation to the man in dark leathers for ordering them around. She gritted her teeth instead and took off with her cousin.

“I so hate that man!”, she flared again, when they were several hundred yards away..

Not you, Master Gnine.”, Aager said in a low voice just as the little gnome was about to take off after the rangers.

“What? Why?”, piped Gnine innocently.

Aager Fogstep gave the little gnome a stone-cold stare, but the little gnome was a bit too hard-boiled for his own good, and he stared back at the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask, with the same innocent eyes.

“Master Udoorin, Lady Moira, and Lady Magella.. I would like a private word without esteemed master gnome here if you will”, he growled, not taking his eyes off the little gnome.

Udoorin grinned and didn’t bother to hide it. He pulled his big battleaxe from the ground and started after the ranger girls, followed closely by Moira.

“I want to see him in one piece.”, Lady said ominously.

“That will be up to him.”, Aager replied.

Lady Magella gave him a long, steady look, then she too started after the ranger girls.

Aager waited for the duration of perhaps a sixty count, never taking his eyes off Gnine.

Then, slowly he spoke..

“You are a distraction, Master Gnine. When Sheriff Standorin suggested we might end up looking for possible criminals who might have started the fire in your uncle’s workshop, he offered me to lead the company. He asked me who I would pick for such an extended hunt and I told him I wanted the ranger novices, Laila Wolvesbane and Morel Songsteel, but only if they were promoted to full rangers before we left. I asked for them specifically because they had proven their mettle many times before. I asked for his son, Udoorin, as well, because I thought him to be ready and that he couldn’t keep him locked in a town for the remainder of his life, and that it was time for him to see the real world. I asked him to speak with the Senior Temple Guardian, Demos Lightshand, so he would lend us Lady Magella because I believed we would need her wisdom, if not her skills. I then asked him to convince Lady Moira to come with us, because a paladin would be more useful to us than help dig through the rubble. You, however, I never asked to be burdened. Would you like to know why?”

“Uhhmm.. Is this a trick question?”, mumbled Gnine, for as hard-boiled as he was in his insolence, an extended conversation with this man was a bit too much for him.

“Do I seem like a man who does levity, Master Gnine?”, the man growled at him, still staring into his eyes and the little gnome saw, really saw the bottomless pit of his dark soul.

Gnine gulped.

“No?”, he said as he swallowed something crawling up his throat.

“I never asked for you, because you are a distraction, Master Gnine. You were a distraction to everyone around you back at Serenity Home, and you are a distraction now. You endangered the lives of both the rangers with your distraction, and we just got started. Of all the people in this company, only you are here of your own volition. That means, everyone but you, are under my protection. I am responsible for everyone here. I am not, however, responsible for you. And should you put the lives of those under my protection in danger with your distraction one more time, one of two things will happen. Either I shall tie you into a knot and leave you behind for someone to find you, if at all, or I shall kill you and tell your uncle why, then face whatever punishment I am to suffer..”, the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask grated.

Gnine ogled at him, his face going pale.

“You must understand, Master Gnine, this is not a game and we are not here to have fun. How you see the world and the people around you is something I care not. But everything we do has its consequences. This, you must accept even if you do not understand nor comprehend. Now, I shall share you, and perchance, learn you, something I have shared with no other..”, he growled, stressing each word.

And slowly, he pulled off his dark half-mask, then his dark hood to reveal a face to go with his soulless eyes; scarred and stitched, with short, black hair plastered on his scalp. And finally, he opened the front of his dark leathers..

“What.. what are you doing?”, yelped the little gnome.

..to present a lean, somewhat gaunt chest toned with spring coil muscles.

“I am showing you the consequences of stupidity, Master Gnine..”, he growled in disgust, for it was a chest mauled with dark, ugly whip scars.

Gnine just stared at his chest, and at his scars, for there were so many of them and they looked horrible. The little gnome turned around and dumped the content of everything he’d eaten that morning! Aager Fogstep did not smile nor did he show any signs of satisfaction at the after-effects of his lesson over the irresponsible, indifferent, and impulsive little gnome.

“If this is not to your satisfaction, Master Gnine, perhaps you would like to exhibit the other side. The best ones are there..”, he grated almost savagely.

“No, no.. I think I got the gist..”, Gnine spluttered, then hurled again, and only after gulping down many deep breaths.

“It is good that this is gist enough for you. Otherwise, I might have had to grill you.”, Aager said.

“No, no.. No grilling is necessary.”, the little gnome said hastily.

“I am happy to have lived up to your expectations, then, Master Gnine. I would hate to have to resort to the other two options.” Aager growled as he covered the crime scene of his scars, and soon enough, he was the man in dark leathers, hood, and half-mask, again.

Young Gnine Tinkerdome peter pattered after the group with Aager Fogstep silently ghosting behind him.

The little gnome held his silence for as long as he could, then inevitably blurted..

“I was tempted to say, chicks dig scars, Master Aager, but yours are a bloody landscape!”

 

---

 

Chapter
Two

The Day After

 

Timeline:

This story takes place the day after
The Hubris of Men

 

 

The old man stared out the window of his office and at the choking haze; the clear evidence of the terrible fire that had burned down eight homes and shops, killed nearly twenty of his townsmen and wounded three times as many. He coughed as the sulfurous smoke seeped inside and clawed at his throat.

He watched in quiet contemplation as a pair of children, a boy and a girl no older than ten, struggling with heavy buckets of water, push past under his window followed by men and women with shovels and rakes making their way in the same direction. He felt sick when he saw two guardsmen carrying a half-covered charred corpse on a makeshift gurney towards the temple in hopes of identifying who he or she was to put a name on their gravestone.

His old, pale blue eyes blurred and a sob escaped him.

Mayor Arthandos Yuleman had not taken this job for this..

In fact, he had never wanted the job and neither had he applied for it. He had been a man with little dreams and no aspirations. Not since his wife had died, leaving him to father three daughters. In time, he had lost what little was left of his already depleted motivation and even his base drive to live. To simply put, Arthandos had simply let go..

..and become the town’s drunkard.

Or ‘that gutter rat!’

And then something unexpected, and quite unprecedented had happened. The former mayor of the town had died in some silly construction accident and the seat of what power his office had held was suddenly left vacant, yet no one had wanted the job.

Evidently, people had better things to do than to deal with the foolishness and the stupidity of a whole town, as peaceful as it was. The only person who did want the job was the rich merchant, Master Haradin Franderson, who, in all likeliness, would have turned the town into his personal agenda.

The townsmen didn’t want the job, but they did not want Franderson to have it either. The only problem with that was, no one really had the monetary power or influence to stand up to him, and neither could they produce an alternative candidate, as in, someone foolish enough to apply for the job..

..until some overtly smart guy, whom Yuleman dearly wished to find someday and have a very ‘fistful’ chat, had placed his name as a candidate, possibly as a prank to throw at Haradin’s face.

Well..

If it had been a prank, it had certainly worked; Franderson had been, quite, but not quietly incensed when he had seen the final count of the vote!

And likely made him the laughing stock of the town, particularly when ‘that gutter rat’ had come out as the winner of a job he hadn’t even known he had applied by a ninety-eight percent majority!

It was at that point his daughters, ages varying from eight to sixteen at the time, had decided to step in, quite strenuously, that it was time their father, and the newly appointed mayor of Serenity Home, should come home and sober up!

Arthandos Yuleman snorted bitterly.

He had, in fact, sobered up, and given his all to the job, and, as it turned out, he had made a surprisingly efficient mayor and prospered the town, its surrounding lands, and brought her dwarven, gnomic, and elvish neighbors even closer in terms of relations in the past twenty years or so.

Yet, all his accomplishments had died, along with many of his townsmen, in the strange and creepy fire last night.

“Perhaps I should just resign and go back to being an old drunkard again. Apparently, I am not up to the task..”, he mumbled as he stared out the window, just to see another burnt corpse being carried off on another gurney.

“Perhaps you should stop with the self-pity, Arty..”, came a low, rumbling voice from behind and Sheriff Standorin Shieldheart stepped into the room.

Arthandos Yuleman turned around and stared at the big man.

For someone who was past his prime, the sheriff was quite a large man with broad shoulders, powerful arms, a massive torso, and still standing upright. His hair was tousled and he was covered in dust and soot He also had a bloody bandage on his right leg and he was limping.

“What happened to your leg?”, Arthandos asked with his somewhat wheezy, smoke-choked voice.

“Got curious.. and paid the price..”, Standorin said with a grimace. “Wanted to see if there was anything I could find that might tell us something in the burning workshop of Master Nimbletyne.”

“Did you?”, the mayor asked.

“Yes. Stupidity is painful.”, the sheriff replied.

Yuleman grunted.

“You should have that checked.”, he said.

“The Temple Guardians have their hands full as it is.”, Standorin replied, running one of his calloused hands through his hair. “They don’t need to deal with a cracked femur.”

“A cracked femur? Good Heavens man! You are walking around with a busted leg?”, the mayor exclaimed.

“The workshop exploded when I was peering inside and a large bit of debris sort of slammed on the leg and sliced it open. I applied some bandages. Should be fine as long as I don’t run around on it for a few days.”, the sheriff shrugged.

“You just don’t want to end up being treated by Demos Lightshand. Or worse, Lady Magella.”, Yuleman snorted.

“No, I don’t. I also don’t want a long, agonizing preach coming my way for missing out on their sermons. One stupid for one day is my quota.”, the sheriff said irritably. “Are you really thinking of resigning? Because if you are, you do know who will want to replace you, don’t you?”

Yuleman did not reply.

“And when he becomes the new mayor, it is likely I shall also resign.”, the sheriff continued with a grimace as he shifted his busted leg. “I have no desire to help Haradin dismantle this town and turn it into his personal warehouse.”

“You will leave the town to his mercy?”, Arthandos said a bit appalled.

“I can’t stand stupid, Arty. What’s your excuse?”, Standorin replied, looking at the old man with deliberate belligerence.

Arthandos sighed.

“I let this happen, Stan..”, he said, pointing at the forlorn scene outside his window. “I should at least take responsibility for it.”

“Don’t be daft, Arty. You didn’t let this happen and you know it. But I agree that you should take the responsibility for it. Just not the way you plan to.”, Standorin said harshly.

Arthandos Yuleman stared at him.

“What do you have in mind, Stan?”, he asked after a long moment.

The look Standorin gave him was quite grim. He took a deep breath and rumbled..

“Order us to put a team together and find the real perpetrators.”

Order, please.”, wheezed the mayor of Serenity Home town, Arthandos Yuleman, a man well past his prime with white, thinning hair and brows, pale blue eyes, and many worry-wrinkles. He reached for the canteen on his table, uncorked it, took a long pull, gargled his mouth, then spat into the bucket sitting next to his table. “Damn, this smoke! I apologize for that, gentlemen, my nostrils are clogged and my throat is still burning. Now, shall we get started?”

There was a pause of assent, as the mayor stared at the people gathered in the room. Sheriff Standorin was there and there was a determined expression etched on his face and although he was standing, he was favoring one of his legs. The one with the bloody bandages. The town’s council members were there too, each a standing member of the society; Thokan Silversong, a handsome man in his early fifties and was the town’s bard, Gurk Larson, a burly man with bulky shoulders and black, spiky beard and mustache, the blacksmith, Yarvel Stratler, a somewhat slender, wispy sort of man, also past his prime, the baker, Viranes Heidi, a tall, blocky, no-nonsense sort of woman in her late forties, the butcher, and Haradin Franderson, a man in his fifties and in custom-tailored shirt, jacket, and trousers, a very successful merchant.

They all had similarly grim faces, though Council Member Haradin’s expression was a bit on the haughty side as if it was his usual stance.

“We are missing Master Tinkerdome.”, Viranes said with a surprisingly soft voice.

“Yes. He was still at the Temple the last time I checked.”, Sheriff Standorin rumbled. “He was quite severely wounded last night, though he did say he would try and make it.”

“Very well.”, Yuleman said. “I would rather he be here and give us his side of the story.”

“What is there to give? Him and his silly experiments.”, very nearly sneered Haradin Franderson. “Who is to say this wasn’t all his fault?”

“Yes.”, agreed, Standorin. “Who is to say?”

Yuleman gave the sheriff a barely discernible glance just to see him staring at Haradin.

“We do not accuse people without proof, Master Haradin. If we did that, I am afraid this town would be quite empty, wouldn’t you agree?”, the mayor said mildly.

Haradin grunted.

“Now, sheriff, do give us an update of everything you have learned thus far if you will please.”, Yuleman said.

“There isn’t much to give, Mayor. It is simply too early to make any assumptions at the moment, or any decisions, for that matter.”, the sheriff rumbled.

“It’s been hours and you haven’t gathered any information yet?”, Haradin asked incredulously. “Perhaps you are not up to the task, after all, sheriff.”

Standorin leveled his gaze on the council member. He didn’t scowl nor frown at him. He merely stared at him.

Very steadily.

“Priority dictates town guards secure the area while we find and rescue the injured to avoid further deaths, Councilman. Not run around blindly seeking unknown culprits in the woods, which is what the rangers are for.”, he said quietly.

Haradin grunted again and mumbled something about the inadequacy of the town’s guards and the people leading them.

Yuleman carefully shook his head at the sheriff, but the sheriff chose to ignore it. He fumed from his nose as he spoke in his low, ‘warning’ voice.

“I saw many townsmen out helping last night, Councilman. In fact, I could vouch for the presence of almost everyone trying to put out the fires, digging through the rubble, and carrying the dead and the wounded. Even the town orphans were out carrying water. They all are still out there, still digging through the rubble, still carrying the dead and the wounded, and no one has really slept. I did not, however, see you nor your son, Lucious. Not last night helping or even lending a hand, not today, come sun up. Talk to me about inadequacy one more time, and I shall gladly call you upon your word.”

A choked sort of silence settled in the mayor’s office as Councilman Haradin glared at the sheriff.

Thokan Silversong, however, was grinning, though he did a good job hiding it behind one hand. The burly Gurk Larson was also grinning, though he didn’t bother hiding it. Yarvel Stratler was staring at the ceiling as if counting the candles up, on the chandelier, and Viranes Heidi was frowning at Haradin with a look that seemed to say;

“Sir, just how stupid are you?”

“Ehem.”, Arthandos Yuleman cleared his throat once more. “Perhaps we can talk about what we do know?”

“Yes, Sir.”, Standorin said, not taking his eyes from Haradin. “As of late last night, an unexpected explosion of unknown origin occurred in Master Nimbletyne’s workshop. We do not know what actually caused it. What we do know, however, is that it happened when he was asleep and so was his niece, young Gnine Tinkerdome. We do not know the nature of the fire other than it was unquenchable.”

“Unquenchable?”, asked Gurk Larson.

“Yes. Quite unquenchable. The amount of water we dumped onto what remained of Master Nimbletyne’s workshop was unprecedented, yet, whatever the fire was, it was bright green, and it just kept on burning. And spreading. In the end, we didn’t put it out, it snuffed itself out. From what young Master Gnine told me while his uncle was unconscious, it must have run out of whatever fuel it was running on, though he did admit he knew not of any chemical or alchemical compound that would be so indifferent to water. He also mentioned someone had hit him over the head while he was sleeping.”, Standorin reported.

“Did anyone else see anything? Or anyone?”, Thokan Silversong asked.

“Other than what Master Gnine’s claims, no.”, the sheriff admitted.

“Then it is possible this was, after all, Nimbletyne’s fault and obviously his niece is covering for his uncle.”, Haradin said and this time, he did sneer.

“I doubt.”, said a harsh voice, and the door to the mayor’s door opened and a man with broad shoulders, patched green leather armor, high leather boots, and a greatsword across his back entered.

He wasn’t a tall man, perhaps an inch under average with coarse black hair and he had a very sinister-looking face.

“This is a closed session!”, Haradin spat.

“Don’t care.”, the sinister-looking man said with an unperturbed and indifferent shrug.

Yuleman sighed.

“Ranger Master Moorat. What brings you here?”, he asked tiredly.

“My feet! But that’s beside the point.”, Ranger Master Moorat snarked harshly, then looked back and almost snarled, “Don’t just stand there, you dolt! Come in. And you two as well.”

Another man entered, a rather good-looking half-elf in immaculate green and brown leathers with a longsword at his side, a longbow in one hand, and a quiver full of dark-feathered arrows strapped across his back. His steps were light and careful and he smiled politely at the mayor, nodded at the sheriff, and hailed the councilmen with a somewhat vague expression.

Two more pairs of steps followed him inside.

One of them was a beautiful, brown-haired girl, also a half-elf, with bold, declarative features. Her armor was also immaculate and seemed like she was emulating the half-elf man in her step. She also held a longbow in her hand, a quiver full of arrows strapped across her back, and a pair of long blades hanging from her belt. She entered the room and though she was quite young, she stared at the council members with a cool, distant expression on her face.

The other was also a girl, younger than even the half-elf and she had a mane of coarse black hair ‘pouring’ down either side of her striking face. She stepped into the room with a slightly diffident posture evident in her deceptively slender body that gave the impression that it needed a few more years to fully fill out. She had deep green eyes and her lips were pressed tightly together. Although she was also dressed in greens and browns, her bow was hung over her shoulders and she had opted to carry her great blade, scabbard and all, in her hand. Her careful steps took her near Ranger Master Moorat, then she stared at the people in the room with a slightly guilty expression on her face like she’d been on the receiving end of a thrashing from every single one of them.

“Gentlemen.”, the half-elf ranger master said brightly. “I apologize for Moorat’s behavior. But we were sort of in a hurry.”

“Ranger Master Davien. Always a pleasure to see you.”, Yuleman replied with a smile. “What brings you here, other than your feet?”

Ranger Master Davien stared at the mayor with a blank expression.

Yuleman sighed again.

“Never mind.”, he mumbled. “What is so important that would require the presence of both the ranger masters?”

“Ahh!”, Davien said as comprehension dawned on his face.

Moorat gave him a disgusted look.

“We are here because we believe we have witnesses.”, he said brightly.

“Witnesses?”, asked Yuleman.

“Yes, Sir.”, Davien nodded earnestly, then pointed at the half-elf girl standing next to him. “This is Laila Wolvesbane, my ranger novice.”

Then he pointed at the other standing next to Ranger Master Moorat. “And this is Ranger Novice Bremorel Songsteel.”

“The ranger novices hardly need any introductions, Master Davien. We all know who they are and their accomplishments, particularly during the Bane-Song Operation.”, Yuleman said, giving the girls an encouraging smile.

That made the young ranger girls flush and squirm a bit.

“Indeed..”, Davien continued even more earnestly. “..and as it turns out, our young and esteemed ranger novices, here, were out over on the other side of Arashkan River and in the forest during the time of the fire and they witnessed a group of men in dark leathers, hoods, and cloaks running off into the night!”

The mayor’s office fell silent once again as everyone stared at the two, young, ranger novices.

“Where exactly did you see these men?”, the sheriff asked, looking intently at the girls.

There was a moment of silence as if the ranger novices couldn’t decide which one of them should speak. Then the younger of the two, Bremorel, nudged the other to take the lead. Laila grimaced then took a step forward and spoke, her voice a bit husky.

“A day’s march southwest from First Watch, Sir.”, she said, then amended that by giving him another point of reference. “Or two hours walking distance northwest from the town’s stone bridge.”

“How many were there? Can you describe them?”, the sheriff asked even more intently.

“I counted thirteen of them, Sir. With the exception of one, they all wore dark leathers, trousers, hoods, and cloaks. We, that is, Ranger Novice Bremorel and I checked for tracks this morning to be sure. Whoever they were, they were quite light on their feet, and they gave us the impression these people were city dwellers rather than men of wilderness.”, Laila reported succinctly.

“How do you know?”, Haradin asked, squinting at her.

Laila shrugged.

“The soles of their boots.”, she said simply.

“What of them?”, he asked.

“They were made of soft caoutchouc. Suitable for cities where there are flat cobblestones. Caoutchouc is expensive. Among many of its other uses, they make soft and spry soles for shoes, and hence, they are particularly good for sneaking. Not so much for wilderness since they will wear and erode in a week or two, or purchase holes in a hurry if they step on roots or dry branches, which is quite unavoidable while running in a forest. And the tracks indicated as such.”, she explained.

“And what were you two doing that late at night out in the forest?”, Haradin countered.

Laila, however, did not reply. She opted to silently stare at him.

“What?”, Haradin squinted at her. “You can’t answer a simple question?”

Laila continued to stare at him and the others noted the ranger masters had also gone still and were staring at him as well.

“She is being polite..”

..came a soft voice and everyone except the rangers turned to the young ranger novice, Bremorel.

“Being polite?”, demanded Haradin harshly.

“Yes. You may be a councilman of this town, but you do not have any authority over any ranger of any rank. You are not even military personnel, but a civilian. You don’t get to ask impertinent questions, make demands, or interrogate rangers. Only king’s magistrates may legally question a ranger. The silent stare is our polite way of reminding you of that fact.”, she said with a deceptively calm tone.

Moorat snorted from the side, not even bothering to hide a very toothy grin, which made his already sinister features even more savage, while Davien stared at Haradin with a slightly confused expression.

Laila, however, didn’t show any visible reaction. She was used to her cousin’s abrasive quirks. She also knew of the rangers’ legal stance versus civilians. What surprised her was that her cousin knew it as well.

“You insolent little—”, Haradin began, his face flushed darkly.

“Also..”, Bremorel cut in, suppressing her fury. “..if you publicly insult a ranger, one of two things will happen, sir. Either you will be fined heavily and face jail time no more than thirty-one days, or I will take offense, in which case I shall call you to task and run you through, then face the king’s law on criminal charges pertaining a ranger and an offending civilian. Either is fine with me. Optionally, you could insult me privately and we can skip all the legalities..”

“Please.”, said Mayor Yuleman sternly. “If you will, Ranger Novice Bremorel, this is, strictly speaking, not an interrogation. We are merely trying to understand what happened last night. I have absolute respect for you and Ranger Novice Laila. After all, the peace and prosperity this town have entertained these past centuries was due to the diligence of her rangers along with all the other men and women serving her.”

Bremorel’s face flushed a bit.

“We were out camping, Sir.”, Laila said, looking at the mayor. “We had just returned from our patrol last evening and decided we’d grab some food from home and have some fun on our own as two, off-duty rangers. We do that every now and then. It was past midnight when we saw the sky light up, hence we started running towards the town. When we reached the edge of the forest, we saw a bright green fire shooting up into the sky somewhere from the center of the town. We also heard footsteps coming our way. We didn’t know who they were, but we thought it would be wiser to bring back any information we could than to pick a fight with an unknown number of men. I counted the heads, Bremorel counted the steps, and came to the conclusion that there were thirteen of them. Then we ran to the town to see what was going on and if there was anything we could do to help. And this morning, we went back to where we’d seen the men and we found their tracks heading north and slightly east, carefully avoiding the outer reaches of Elder Hills on their west and First Watch on their east.”

Everyone mulled over that.

“You said, with the exception of one, they were all wearing black leathers, hoods, and cloaks.”, Sheriff Standorin said.

“Yes, Sir.”, Laila nodded. “The ‘exception’ was wearing tight-fitting pants, high boots that had soft soles, but were not made of caoutchouc. He was also wearing a short leather jacket, and a white, frilly shirt!”

“A what?”, the sheriff asked incredulously.

“White, frilly shirt, Sir. You’d think someone who’d be sulking in the woods would wear something green and brown, or at the very least, something dark, but this one seemed like he’d joined the wrong party. He wasn’t wearing a hood nor did he have a cloak. It was too dark to make out his face though. Should ranger masters Davien and Moorat agree, Ranger Novice Bremorel and I can track them down and hunt them. We will, however, need backup.”, Laila said.

Haradin sneered and mumbled something about sending little girls to do a man’s job.

Bremorel’s eyes blazed at that and she was just about to lose all her suppressed fury when Laila pinched her to silence. She stared at Haradin and with her cool, husky voice, she spoke..

“By all means, Master Haradin, be the man and hunt them down. We are all eager to see the legendary brevity of the Franderson’s who never shy from endangering themselves for the sake of others!”

Thokan Silversong chuckled at that while Gurk Larson snorted. Yarvel Stratler had a poorly hidden grin on his face, and Viranes Heidi was frowning at Haradin, again, and she seemed to say;

“Sir, you really are stupid, aren’t you?”

A gurgling sort of snort came from the door and Gnine Tinkerdome appeared there. There was a vicious grin on his face and a merry glint in his eyes as he winked at Bremorel and Laila. Behind him, a surly-looking she-dwarf, Temple Guardian Lady Magella, stomped her way in, helping another gnome, this one limping, Gnine’s uncle, Nimbletyne Tinkerdome.

And behind them came a venerable old man in plain brown robes, Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand, followed closely by two more people. One was a serious-looking, clean-shaven young man wearing a plain jacket and trousers, Thomas Dimwood. The other was a tall, burly man, also young, Udoorin Shieldheart, Sheriff Standorin’s son, carrying something round, cylindrical, and blackened in his massive arms. Whatever it was, it must have been very heavy for the young man was sweating profusely.

I would have wished us all a good afternoon, gentlemen, but that would be quite churlish and insensitive of me to do at the moment..”, the venerable Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand said with a serious expression.

Demos was more than venerable. His once light-blonde, shoulder-length hair and untrimmed beard were white and sparse and his face had many worry-wrinkles. His back was hunched and he walked with the aid of a slender, otherwise unadorned staff, but the years had not dulled his deep blue eyes which took everyone in the room with intelligent assessment.

“This is a closed session!”, Haradin said angrily.

“Ow, bite me, merchant!”, snarled Moorat. “But just so you know, I will bite back!”

“Gentlemen, please. The current crisis demands all hands on deck.”, Arthandos said wearily

“Senior Temple Guardian, please, take a seat.”, he added, rising from his own seat behind his desk and offered it to him.

“Thank you, Mayor. But that seat is yours. As are the responsibilities that come with it.”, Demos said kindly. “I apologize for the intrusion, but since Master Nimbletyne, here, insisted on coming, I thought it be wiser to make sure he can.”

Viranes Heidi did get up and with help from the surly-looking she-dwarf, they sat the limping gnome into her chair. Master Nimbletyne seemed quite battered and bruised, and he whined as he settled down.

“Thank you my dears.”, he said, trying to sound cheery, though he was sweating profusely and he had bandages on his head, his arms, his hands, and one of his legs was splintered.

Temple Guardian Lady Magella scowled at him and her scowl seemed to be a trademark of her sturdy features. She was not a pretty dwarf, but she did have a certain steady something about her. Her clothes were clean and tidy, and a cast-iron, diamond-shaped mace hung at her side.

The big, blocky Viranes Heidi, however, gave the gnome a big, generous smile.

Demos Lightshand turned to the large, burly young man and wheezed..

“Why don’t you put that thing down, young Master Udoorin.”, he said, nodding at the charred, cylindrical object. “I am sure it is heavier than it looks. Then find a few chairs for those standing. Perhaps young ranger novices Morel and Laila could give you a hand?”

“Yes, Guardian Demos..”, Udoorin mumbled, then with a great heave, he put the cylinder on the floor where everyone could see.

He might as well slammed it down.

The floorboards creaked and groaned, and several of them cracked and caved in!

“Good Heavens, boy!”, Mayor Arthandos exclaimed. You ruined my floor!”

“I am sorry, Mayor, Sir. It’s just heavy.”, Udoorin said, his flushed face turning even brighter.

Curious, the blacksmith, Gurk Larson, got up and came near the cylinder. He tried to nudge it, but failed. Then he hugged the object and tried to lift it, but he could barely tilt it. He heaved and pulled at it until his face flushed to no avail. He finally gave up and turned to stare at the young man with astonishment.

“I did say, it was heavy.”, Udoorin said, a bit embarrassed. Then he motioned at the two ranger cousins and they went out to find some chairs.

The other young man, Thomas Dimwood, was still standing next to the door, and he was entertaining a furious blush of his own. He didn’t look anywhere, certainly not at the ranger girls.

The ranger girls must have noticed this because Laila had her lips slightly pursed like someone trying to suppress her mirth while Bremorel had opted to totally ignore the young man but she had ruined it with a scowl and her cheeks had pinked a little.

Young Thomas shrank visibly and cringed as they went past him.

“What’s with him?”, Udoorin asked.

“How should I know?”, Bremorel said, snarling at him.

“What’s with you?”, he asked this time.

The ranger novice glared at him.

“Just how heavy is that thing?”, Laila asked.

“Don’t know. Must have been around twenty-five stones, I think.”, he replied as he poked his head into adjacent rooms, looking for chairs.

“What? That’s like three hundred and fifty bloody pounds!”, she exclaimed. “You could carry that?”

“Uhhmm.. Obviously?”, the young man answered a bit uncomfortably. “Look, let’s not make a big deal out of it, alright? Ow, here are some chairs.”

This isn’t iron, nor is it steel.”, the blacksmith, Gurk Larson, was saying. “I do not know what it is, but it definitely is neither. Or at least it must have something else in it besides iron.”

“I agree.”, Master Nimbletyne agreed as he coughed. “Sorry. Can’t seem to get rid of all the smoke I inhaled when I was out. And for those who are wondering, this thing, whatever it is, is not my crafting. I artifice items of certain delicacy that usually require magnifying goggles and tweezers, so to speak. Alchemy just isn’t really my area of expertise. This thing belched fire like there was no tomorrow! It must have contained a concoction of a certain complexity. Had I some of the original fuel, I might have been able to figure out what it was, given enough time but you’d have more luck by hiring an actual alchemist from Tinker Hills. As for why they brought it to my workshop, I do not know. And because the whole shop is destroyed, I can’t even say if they took something or not.”

There was a long silence as everyone mulled over that.

“Perhaps it was a former, unsatisfied customer, Master Nimbletyne.”, Haradin said, squinting distastefully at the gnome.

Everyone who was a senior in the room was seated now, with the exception of the blocky Viranes Heidi. She had opted to stand behind Nimbletyne as if wanting to make sure he was alright. She had grabbed the canteen on the mayor’s desk and kept on pushing it into the little gnome’s hand, forcing him to take a sip every now and then.

The gnome’s niece, Gnine Tinkerdome, was also standing behind him, though he was somewhat lost behind the very large Viranes.

Lady Magella and Thomas were standing behind Demos Lightshand, while Laila and Bremorel had taken their places behind their respective ranger masters, Davien and Moorat, and Udoorin was standing behind his father, Sheriff Standorin Shieldheart.

Nimbletyne did not bother glaring at him. He simply shrugged.

“I do not have unsatisfied customers, Haradin.”, he said like he was merely stating a very obvious fact.

“Whatever the reasons were, it was sloppy.”, the sheriff rumbled.

“Sloppy?”, Haradin scoffed. “Does what you see outside look sloppy to you?”

“I was out there all night, Councilman. Thought I mentioned that already. The fact that it caused so much damage and so many random casualties is not the mark of professionalism. If you want someone dead and gone, there are many other ways to do it. Easier and certainly with discretion. This..”, he said, pointing at the window, “..was a mess.”

“What are you saying, sheriff?”, Yuleman asked.

“I am saying, these people, whoever they are, wanted to make a statement. A very arrogant one. I suggest we use their arrogance against them. I have contacts all the way from here to Arashkan. I am sure the temple has contacts of their own.”, the sheriff said. “But while we are looking for answeres here, I offer we pick a few of our own people and send them after these miscreants. Sort of to harras them, if nothing else.”

“We will need rangers for that. But we will also need both the ranger masters here to make sure there are no more incursions coming our way.”, the mayor objected.

“True. I was thinking more along the lines of what Ranger Novice Laila offered. Both she and young Bremorel have proven their battle prowess and their skills in the past.”, Standorin said with a slight grin.

“Sure, you don’t have to ask.”, Davien said sincerely. “Laila is an excellent tracker and an excelling archer.”

Laila held her breath. So did Bremorel.

Moorat, however, gave Davien a disgusted look.

“Well, bugger. Now that the dolt has agreed, I can’t even say no, can I?”, he muttered angrily. “Ranger Novice Bremorel still has some training to go but I believe she can hold her end of anything that might come her way.”

Both Laila and Bremorel were grinning now.

“Father.. uhhmm.. Sheriff?”, Udoorin rumbled tentatively.

“You sure?”, his father asked, looking at him over his shoulder.

“Doesn’t matter if I am, father. This needs to be done and I’ll be more useful out there than I will be here.”, the young man said carefully.

“If Senior Temple Guardian Demos could be persuaded to part with Temple Guardian Lady Magella, that would make four. And four is better than three..”, the sheriff said and let it sort of hang there.

“Temple Guardian Lady is a strong-willed acolyte.”, Demos wheezed. “I am sure she would rather stay here and look after this old man but she needs to be out there, not wasting her life making sure I have eaten or have enough blankets.”

Udoorin almost whooped.

Lady Magella, however, did not show such enthusiasm. She just scowled some more.

“Perhaps young Lucious would like to join as well. I hear he is good with a longblade.”, the sheriff offered, smiling at Councilman Haradin.

“How altruistic of you to offer other people’s sons and daughters so callously.”, Haradin sneered at him.

Udoorin coughed.

“I offered myself.”, he said simply.

Haradin glared at both of them.

“Lucious is busy and has things to do.”, he spat.

“He must be. Seeing as, father and son, neither of you could be bothered to lend a hand in putting out the fires, nor with the aftermath. Tell me again, what do you do for this town, Councilman?”, the sheriff asked.

“Sheriff, please. This is a pointless debate.”, Arthandos said then looked at the four youngsters thoughtfully. “Four. Will that be enough?”

“I have two more candidates, Mayor, though one might require some persuading. Or perhaps not.”

“Very well.”, Yuleman said. “Five is better than four, and six is better than five. Gentlemen, I believe we have some work to do and it’s out there, not in this room.”

It was about then when everyone had risen to leave, and a tiny but decisive voice was heard.

“I am going too.”

Everyone paused and looked around to see its owner, and the little gnome, Gnine Tinkerdome stepped out from behind the big, blocky Viranes Heidi.

“What are you doing, boy?”, Nimbletyne hissed.

“My part.”, Gnine said boldly.

“Boy, this is serious. Everyone who is going has had some training. You don’t. You are the only one I got left.”, Nimbletyne said almost pleadingly.

“And you are the only one I got left too, uncle. And someone tried to kill you last night. And this lot’s all brawn but no brains. Surely they will need someone with intelligence.”, Gnine said stubbornly.

“Feh!”, Haradin scoffed. “Two little girls, a boy, a caretaker, and now a charlatan, just like his uncle!”

Haradin never quite saw what hit him and to be fair, he really didn’t see what hit him!

He stumbled forward as if he’d lost his step on a run and just dropped, face down..

..and stayed there.

“Viranes..”, Yuleman said in total defeat. “Why? Why would you do this?”

“I have just about had enough of his snark.”, flared the big, blocky woman.

“Do you know what he will do to you?”

“Don’t care.”, shrugged Viranes.

“He will write a petition all the way to Arashkan and summon a magistrate here and he’s got the power to do it.”

“Don’t care.”, Viranes repeated. “This is Serenity Home. Not Arashkan.”

“My dear Viranes, Serenity Home is bound to Arashkan.”, Yuleman said in a deflated tone. “He will make sure he gets everything you own when he sues you.”

“He can have whatever he wants from me. But he’ll have to dig them from under all the rubble, seeing as my home and my shop is also burned.”, Viranes said bitterly.

“He will need witnesses to sue her, you know?”, rumbled Standorin. “I honestly don’t know what happened. I was talking with my son and had my back turned. Whatever happened, must have happened too fast.”

“Stan..”, Yuleman said with a very disapproving tone.

“I was conferring with masters Gurk and Yarvel, here, and only saw him trip and fall, and I am sticking to that story!”, Thokan Silversong said from the side.

“Hell, yeah!”, barked Gurk Larson.

“Yes. What he said..”, nodded Yarvel Stratler with pursed lips.

“And Davien was talking with me. Isn’t that right, Davien?”, Moorat said.

“I was? I mean, you were?”, Davien asked a bit vaguely.

Moorat gave him a very evil glare.

“Well, I suppose I was.”, Davien said hastily.

“This sounds decidedly like a worldly matter that the Temple should not be involved.”, wheezed Demos.

“Nice. You all seem to have gotten yourselves covered.”, Yuleman glared at them all. “What about me? It happened right in front of me!”

“Don’t look at me, I am hurt. Isn’t that right, my dear Viranes?”, Nimbletyne asked.

“Damn, right, you are hurt.”, she said angrily.

“Uhhmm.. you could be busy trashing me, Mayor, Sir.”, Gnine offered in a small voice. “I don’t mind being trashed. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Arthandos Yuleman sighed.

“This is doomed to come back and bite us. I am sure of it.”, he said in total defeat.

 

Lady Moira.”, Sheriff Standorin called over the crowd of people as he limped through the debris with his son behind him.

Lady Moira was a tall, athletic young woman, perhaps in her early twenties, with a mane of reddish-brown hair. She had broad shoulders, powerful arms, and long, shapely legs, all encased in heavy plate armor, and she was busy raking through the rubble, helping the townsmen move the larger stones. Apparently, she hadn’t bothered taking her armor off while doing manual labor. A sheathed longsword and a tall, heavy shield were leaning on a wall nearby. She was covered in soot and dust, her hair seemed disheveled, and her handsome face was all smudge smeared. She looked up when she heard her name and gave a sunny smile at the sheriff.

Udoorin just ogled at her.

“My Lord Sheriff Standorin. Good to see you again. Mayhap you should be resting. Methinks that wound is quite serious.”, she said solemnly.

“All in good time, Lady Moira.”, the sheriff said with a similar, solemn tone. “When you first arrived, you said you were looking for a job. Are you still interested?”

“But of course, My Lord Sheriff. I came here in hopes of righting wrongs and bringing shy miscreants to justice. And it would thus seem I could be of some use to your once merry town.”, she said, then grimaced, lowered her voice, and whispered. “Mind I drop the archaic? I am sure it hurts you almost as much it hurts me.”

Udoorin was openly staring at her now.

“However you wish it, Lady Moira.”, the sheriff said with a smile. “As it happens, our rangers have found tracks that belong to possible miscreants running from our town, and deep into the forest. We have put together a team of able young men and women to bring said miscreants to justice. Perhaps you could be persuaded to join them in this endeavor?”

“You need not ask, Sheriff. You have the legal authority to order any knight or paladin of a certain rank. They would be obligated to comply.”, Lady Moira said seriously. “I am equally comfortable helping these townsmen dig through the rubble as I am helping you find these bashful miscreants. Good is wherever we can help.”

“Thank you, Lady Moira. I would like to introduce you to my son, Udoorin. You will be in the same company with him, along with two rangers, a Temple Guardian, and an able young gnome. Someone will meet you just north of the town. Best you gather your belongings as soon as possible.”, Sheriff Standorin said.

“Then I am ready, Sir. Sans my sword and my shield, which do rest but a few yards over, all my worldly belongings are on me.”, she grinned, tapping her plate armor.

Yesh!”, whooped Bremorel Songsteel with an elated grin. “Finally!”

They had started soon after the council had adjourned. Young Udoorin and Thomas had carried Councilman Haradin Franderson’s unconscious body to his quite expensive townhouse, and told his son, Lucious, that his father had tripped and fallen, and possibly knocked himself out during the council meeting, then hastily left. Ranger novices, Laila and Bremorel had been promoted to full ranger status just before they had left and they both were quite happy about it. After a few farewells from the sheriff, the ranger masters Davien and Moorat, Master Nimbletyne, and Senior Temple Guardian Demos Lightshand, the group had departed for the long trek that would take them through vast reaches of Ritual Forest, and as far as their query would run.

“What are you so happy about, Ranger Bremorel Songsteel?”, her cousin Laila asked with a grin of her own.

“This is our first big and unattended assignment. That’s why I am excited, Ranger Laila Wolvesbane.”, Bremorel replied excitedly.

“How come you know so much about the law? You trampled right over Haradin, back there.”, Laila said, her grinning tone changed to something that sounded like she was rather impressed.

“I told you I read when we returned from our patrols. What did you think I have been reading all this time? Silly girly books?”

“Something like that.”, Laila admitted.

“Really? Just where do you think was I going to find those kinds of books? In the Temple library? All they have there are religious scripts and books on law.”, Bremorel said drearily. “Law seemed more exciting.”

Laila chuckled.

“I can’t believe the kind of things you do just to get a glimpse of that poor kid and then totally ignore him when he was standing right there, in the same room where we were. Could have said, goodbye, at least.”, Laila said.

“The conditions of my expectations haven’t changed. If he wants me so badly, he’s just going to have to man up and come speak to me..”, Bremorel said stubbornly..

Laila sighed.

“Your D.D. Dexter wasn’t there to say goodbye, to you either.”, Bremorel said a bit waspishly.

“D.D. isn’t in town. His master, Thokan Silversong, sent him on some journey a few days ago.”, she replied with another sigh. “That’s why he wasn’t there to greet me when we returned from our patrol the other day.”

“What? Why?”, Bremorel asked.

“Master Thokan said it’s a bard thing. All bards must travel every once in a while to gain certain worldly experience and perspective. Apparently, a bard can’t be stuck in one place for too long. They must set out and travel for a few weeks, or months, or years.”, she explained.

“Well, that’s a bummer.”, her cousin said. Then she added brightly, “But at least you two will get to miss each other.”

“I am not temperamentally equipped with the whole, ‘missing’ thing.”, Laila said quietly.

Bremorel fell silent.

She wasn’t temperamentally equipped with the whole, ‘missing’ thing, either.

Then she glanced back at Udoorin, who was wearing heavy chainmail and holding a big battleaxe in one hand. He had two more battleaxes strapped across his back along with a shield, his father’s longsword on his belt, any number of knives and daggers on several other belts, and even a few tucked in his boots. He was talking with the tall, reddish-brown-haired girl in her newly polished and shining armor, Lady Moira, who only had her heavy shield strapped to one arm, and her beautiful longsword hanging from her belt. The young man’s face was a bit flushed and was using his words sparingly. The girl, on the other hand, was quite generous with her words and her comely smile. Behind them came the little gnome, Gnine Tinkerdome, ogling openly at the paladin girl as Temple Guardian Lady Magella silently brought the rear, still scowling.

“This is going to be a merry band.”, Bremorel said with a touch of sarcasm. “Do you know her? I heard she is a real paladin.”

“First time I am seeing her. I did hear she came all the way from Durkahan about a week ago, but I don’t know why.”, Laila mused, also looking back.

They walked at a steady pace for the next two hours until they reached the edge of Ritual Forest when Bremorel spoke again.

“Well, at least we won’t be dealing with that arse, any time soon!”, her cousin sneered with spite.

“Which arse is that?”, Laila asked amusedly.

“That Aager-guy.”, Bremorel hissed.

“Good to know where we stand, Ranger Morel.”, growled a voice and Aager Fogstep appeared from behind the trees..

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