"I mean, I can. If you want."

"No, no… I'd probably just lose my nerve or something."

She pulls a gold piece out of her pocket and fiddles with it.

"I'm gonna start at the beginning. So, the Greysky City Thieves' Guild. It's a pretty crappy organization. Which is probably just what happens when you take a bunch of thieves and robbers from a terrible city and have them run a business."

Nod.

"You know, I think I stayed in Greysky City once. Before I met you. I used to work for this paladin guy, and he was investigating all the hives of scum and villainy."

"Sounds like he had a lot of investigation to do. Anyways, I quit the Guild almost a year before we formed the Order."

"That's good, right?"

"I mean, it's not like I quit because of how much everyone there was an asshole. I quit because the guy in charge was taking like 99% of my earnings and I needed to save up a bunch of cash, fast."

She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the letter. It's been folded and unfolded so many times the writing is starting to fade at the creases.

"My dad got imprisoned by this guy called Tyrinar the Bloody who wants two hundred thousand gold pieces to let him out."

"Oh no! Is that why you're so obsessed with money?"

"I mean, partly? Part of it is just that, you know, it'd be pretty great to be rich. Luxury, security, pits full of gold coins that you can swim in…"

"And do other things!"

"Yeah, that too."

"So… does Roy know about your dad?"

"What? No, are you crazy? I can't tell Roy! I can't tell anyone!!"

"… I mean, I'm telling you. But that's because you're really important to me and I feel like I can actually trust you."

"Oh. That means a lot. But why don't you trust Roy? He's super responsible."

"I mean, he's not a bad person or anything, I just… I dunno, it feels obvious that you can't trust most people. Because you don't know what they're gonna do with that trust. Plus, Roy's so… Lawful. What if he thinks that it'd be wrong to rescue my dad?"

"From a guy named Tyrinar the Bloody, absolute master of Tyrinaria?"

"Okay, point. But we're headed to the Western Continent after all this, right? I don't want him to think that I'd drop the saving-the-world quest for this. I mean, I hate leaving my dad behind, but he can take care of himself. And the world is important, you know? But I'm pretty sure Roy still sees me at least a little as a greedy, unpredictable rogue who he can't count on. I don't want to give him more reasons to think that."

"I guess. Who knows, maybe once we're all done we'll go to Tyrinaria and it'll turn out he did a daring escape. Since he's your dad."

"Yeah, that's the spirit!"

Haley puts the letter back away.

"I think that was basically it, really, and you can say your thing now. Unless you want me to go into more detail about what Belkar and I did since we split up first?"

Elan shakes his head.

"I can go. I don't have any secrets, but… some pretty messed up stuff happened. I still don't know what to do when we go back."

Haley nods encouragingly.

"So there was this noble from Azure City, Kubota. He didn't like Hinjo and wanted to take his job. He spent months sending monsters after the fleet to try and get Hinjo to die in a way that looked like an accident."

"… And there was this ninja girl who worked for him. Therkla. She was a half-orc and she had a really big crush on me."

"What happened?"

"She sent me a note asking me to meet up with her in secret. Kubota had ordered her to get rid of me so he could assassinate Hinjo, but she wanted to run away with me instead and be my girlfriend. I told her that I already had a girlfriend and it wouldn't work out… are you okay?"

"… Yeah. I just was thinking about last year, with that sorcerer chick in the bandit camp."

"… I was never gonna do anything with Therkla. I'm in love with you."

"Yeah.

"Sorry for interrupting."

"It's okay. If anything, I interrupted myself."

"Anyway, after I turned her down, everything went nuts. Like, this little demon who was also working for her boss showed up and tried to get her to kill me. And then it turned out that Hinjo and Lien and Durkon and Vaarsuvius and a bunch of soldiers had been spying on our meeting! I think they wanted to capture her and get evidence that Kubota was trying to kill Hinjo. She didn't want to betray her master, so Hinjo arrested her, except then the little demon summoned a really big demon and a fight broke out. And then Therkla escaped and took me to the fleet because Kubota was sending some more of his ninjas to kill these soldiers who Hinjo promoted to being nobles at their wedding."

"Sounds pretty complicated."

"Yeah. And it got even worse from there."

"Were you too late to save the nobles?"

"No, they're fine. But… Kubota was there in person. And I was thinking, great, now we can capture him, but Therkla didn't want him to get in trouble. She wanted him to give up and… pretend it was all a big misunderstanding, I guess? So he could weasel out of being charged with anything? Or at least to leave the fleet behind and take over some other city. But he didn't want to take over some other city. He tried to force her to go along with his plans by threatening to kill me, but she wouldn't budge, so…"

"He poisoned her and ran away. And I couldn't do anything to save her, because I don't know Neutralize Poison, and Durkon was busy fighting the big demon, and…"

"Oh, Elan…"

She leans forward and hugs him.

"She didn't even want to be raised from the dead. I told her that Durkon could do it, and she said…"

He looks down.

"If he raises me from the dead, will you dump your girlfriend and be with me?"

She hugs him tighter.

"Then I had to go and catch Kubota. And he was so… so smug! He guessed that Hinjo was still alive, so he surrendered and talked about how he was going to pretend that Therkla was scheming against Hinjo on her own! And then—and then Vaarsuvius disintegrated him!!"

"Wait, what?"

"Yeah!"

"Was… was he fake surrendering or something? Like, you turned your back for a moment and he was about to poison you?"

"No! I had him tied up, I didn't even know V was there! But… I guess I should back up. Because I forgot to mention how V has… kinda been going crazy for a while. And I didn't really notice it, because—at first it was just locking themself in the lower decks to research spells to contact you, but then they just started getting… meaner. And they weren't sleeping, or that thing elves do instead, and they never came up for meals, and their face got all… weird and crackly? And they basically never wanted to talk to anyone about anything unless it was to be rude to them for interrupting their research."

"… Sheesh. I feel kinda bad, because apparently there's been this stupid epic abjuration spell on Azure City and everyone in it ever since Xykon took over."

"Don't feel bad. I mean, it's not like you cast the spell or made Vaarsuvius—"

"Sorry, that was mean. I'm just… frustrated with them. Because they basically didn't even know or care about any of the bad things Kubota did, they just wanted to avoid 'a second tedious trial scene.' They figured that since I had him tied up, he was the main villain, so it was okay to just! Zap him! And blow all his ashes into the ocean! And when I was like, hey what am I supposed to tell Hinjo, they were like, you're a bard, make something up. And accused me of cheating on you with Therkla just because I was sad about her! And then they…"

"They left."

"What?"

"The morning after the fight, they told us that we were basically dead weight holding them back and they probably weren't even gonna meet up with us after they found you. Which… is kinda silly, now that I think of it, because if they found you first then the first thing you'd wanna do is meet up with me."

"… Yeah."

She shakes her head.

"Sorry, that sounds… I like V a lot, but I don't know how to deal with any of that."

"Me neither! I just hope that Roy does."

"Yeah. Well… we don't have to worry about any of that for a while."

They sit quietly for a few minutes, then Haley starts talking about the Azure City resistance movements. Elan talks about some of the more fun things that happened, like the wedding and the orc tribe and the bonus material underwater adventure from the book compilation.

Eventually, it's time to go.