The falcon statues are even cooler up close!

"Do you think that means there's more heroes in Falconreach than in other cities?"

"Yep! Heroes come to Falconreach from all over Lore, because it's on the way to lotsa places!" 

"That's really cool! Is Lore the country or the planet?"

"Lore is the whole planet, and the country is Greenguard," Twilly starts to explain as they reach the gates. 

Two people in shiny gold-embellished armour are standing guard. Their weapons look very sharp and very real. 

"Hail, adventurer!" one of them says. "Are you here to help us with the war effort?" 

"Um… I didn't know there was a war on. I have a quest in the Surewould Forest that I don't know how long it will take, but I think once it's finished I'll be able to help with other stuff?"

 "We've received word of a massive undead army on its way to surround the town," she explains. "We've already had a few skirmishes, and we're expecting a big attack tonight once the sun goes down. We'd appreciate any help you could give while you're here—talk to a boy named Ash in the town square." 

"Oh! I helped drop a bunch of bombs on an undead army that was going towards Oaklore earlier. Undead and also slimy. But that was probably a different army…"

Elan goes quiet. He was already planning to spend the night in Falconreach so he'd have plenty of time for sneevil-finding tomorrow, so it's not like he has to choose between helping out tonight and trying to find the Black Dragon Box. But he's also not sure how much help he would even be, and what if the fight ends up being like Azure City?

"I knows Ash! Come on, Elan, let's go talk to him and find out more!" 

Twilly leads the way through the gates and down the main street.

"Okay!"

Elan looks around at the buildings and people going about their day.

Timber-framed houses with cheerful whitewashed walls line the streets. Most of them are only a single storey, but they look cosy rather than cramped. There aren't many people out and about other than more of the armoured city guards, but as the light begins to fade, candles flicker to life in the windows, lending a warm glow to the evening. 

Past a shop with a potion bottle painted on its hanging sign, they enter a wide open square at the centre of a crossroads. On the north side of the square, there's an inn (one of the few two-storey buildings) and a smithy, both identified by similar picture-based signs. To the south is a bank and a large, official-looking building that might be the town hall. The north road looks like it eventually winds its way up the hill to the Guardian Tower.

Twilly waves enthusiastically at someone standing just outside the inn. 

"Hiyas, Ash! Meet my new friend Elan!" 

Ash turns out to be a dark-haired boy of about 13 or 14, wearing a few bits and pieces of armour and carrying a sword that's a little too long for him. 

"Hi Twilly! And...Elan? It's very nice to meet you! My name's Ash, and I'm going to be a knight one day! Are you an adventurer?" 

Elan loves how cozy it is! And all the picture signs. It's pretty different from the big cities he's been to before (Cliffport and Azure City) and he likes it.

"Hi Ash! Yeah, I'm Elan and I'm an adventurer. The guards said there were a bunch of undead coming to attack the city tonight and that you would know more about what to do."

He's still apprehensive about this, but he weirdly feels better that the guy in charge is a kid.

"That's right! I've been running messages and coordinating volunteers," Ash says proudly. "I know I'm just a kid, but it's better than taking one of the Guardians away from the front lines. We need every able body we can get to help defend Falconreach! Will you help?"

"I can try! What kinda help do you need? I'm okay with a sword and I can do illusions… wait, I think those don't work on undead… but I can also play inspiring music that helps other people do their best!"

"Inspiring music sounds great! Does it work best if the other people are really good fighters already, or if they're not, or does that not matter at all? Sorry, I've not heard of a class that does inspiring music before..." 

"…um, I'm not super good at math, but it gives a plus two. So maybe that means it works best for people who are already good enough at whatever they're trying to do that they do it right sometimes but not all the time? Oh, do you know if the undead attacking are the kind that can do magic fear? I can also play a different kind of music that makes people braver."

"I, uh...haven't had any reports about magic fear? Mostly people seem a normal amount of scared of the army of undead that's attacking the city! I think a song that makes people better at fighting is probably more useful than one that makes them braver. Most of the people fighting are Guardians or adventurers, and they're already really brave!" 

"That's true… I think my bravery song helps for attack rolls and damage rolls? I usually use the competence song because it's pretty all-purpose."

A thought occurs to him.

"I'm not wasting your time trying to figure this out, right? I wanna do the most helpful thing, but if it would be better for me to start doing stuff right now I can."

"You're not wasting my time. This sort of thing is what I'm here for! It doesn't sound like the main attack has started yet, anyway." He puts his hand to his mouth in an exaggerated 'thinking' gesture. "If your bravery song and your competence song both help the same amount with fighting, I think you should use the bravery song. Being braver is never a bad thing!"

That thinking gesture looks pretty normal to Elan!

"Okay! The guards said that the undead were going to try to surround the city, so where should I go? Oh, Twilly, are you staying with me or doing something else?"

"Twillies go help in the healers tent!" He points to a big tent set up at the edge of the square. "Unless you wants me to fight with you, Elan?" 

"Nah, the healers' tent sounds like a great choice since you're a healers! I think I'll be okay…"

He's still a little concerned, though.

"How long do you think the fighting will be? All night? A whole day? Longer?"

Twilly looks at Ash, who shrugs uncertainly. "I'm not sure. But it'll go a lot faster with your help!" 

Elan really hopes that means he should be expecting something more like earlier with Glumbert than like Azure City.

"Okay. I think I'm ready. Where are the people I should play for? Or are there a bunch in different places?"

"There are teams of Guardians at the south and east gates, but the biggest group is gathering at the west gate. That's where all the other adventurers are going, so I guess it must be where they think the most undead will attack! Just follow the main road straight back the way you came. Or I can come with you and show you the way, if you want!" 

"I can probably find it if you're busy… Is there a north gate too?"

Ash scratches his head. "I guess there is? But it's just the gate to the docks, so nobody really calls it that. Anyway, I really don't mind showing you the way to the gate! I don't exactly have anything better to do—I'm pretty sure Guardian Jenni just gave me this job to keep me out of the way." 

"Well, hopefully there aren't any underwater zombies attacking!"

Elan's gotten very familiar with the trouble posed by aquatic enemies.

"My friends would do that kinda stuff with me, too. Make stuff up to keep me out of the way."

"But you're a grown-up adventurer, not a kid like me! Why would they do that?" Ash protests as they start heading back towards the gate. He seems to have decided to accompany Elan. 

"Well, I am the youngest one in the party, even if you ignore the ones who grow up slower than humans. But that's only a difference of like three years, so I think it's probably more that I get into trouble a lot. Like, one time I blew up a castle, which was pretty awesome at the time, except then we all got arrested because of it. But then it turned out that the arrest was kinda fake in the first place, because the guy who sent his paladin to arrest us actually wanted us to work for him but didn't have any other way to ask us because of… I think a bunch of secret stuff and rules? I dunno, I wasn't there when he explained it to Roy and then Roy was still mad at him when he explained it to the rest of us. Because the whole getting arrested thing really sucked."

Pause.

"I forgot what we were talking about before this."

Ash is utterly fascinated. "Whoa! You've had such exciting adventures! ...I also forgot what we were talking about." 

Elan laughs.

"That's probably okay! Let's see…"

A lot of his stories from the past year are more scary-for-real or sad than exciting…

"A few months ago, my evil twin brother switched places with me so that I would be stuck in jail while he messed with my friends. I got his half-orc… uh, I think they're called ogres here… buddy who was in jail with me to break the bars. And then while I was trying to figure out how to catch up to my friends, I met a really cool famous pirate who gave me a ride to where my friends were staying on his airship and taught me a bunch of cool swordfighting tricks!"

"Ohmygosh your life is so cool!!!" Ash exclaims, voice breaking in excitement. He's not really looking where he's going anymore, but the gate is in view. The armoured guards seem to be gathering there along with a small group of recognisably adventurer-looking types. 

Elan beams.

"Thanks! I'm not even ten years older than you, so I bet that by the time you're my age your life will be just as cool, or even cooler!"

Elan tries to figure out what the other adventurer-types seem to be feeling about the upcoming attack, and also how much cool stuff they have on them. That first thing is pretty hard, though, so he'll probably have to ask when they get in talking range.

The adventurers are mostly either fighters in plate armour, magic-users in robes, or dagger-wielding rogue types in leather. They're a colourful bunch, most of the armoured types having apparently painted their armour and the mages wearing different coloured robes, although none of them have coordinated their accessories or weapons with their overall colour scheme. Some of them look excited to be here, some are playing it cooler, but nobody seems terrified.

It's hard to tell how cool their stuff is, given the unfamiliar magic system. A lot of it seems weirder than he's used to: a rogue has a pair of daggers made entirely of glowing crystal, a fighter has a green-bladed sword with thorns sticking out of it and roses growing from the hilt...just about everyone has a weird probably-magic weapon, and a solid half of them have belts that look far too unfashionable not to be magic. (He'll have to look closer to see if any are wearing rings.) The rest of their gear looks mostly normal, except that capes seem to be in fashion.

Elan tentatively concludes that the adventurers are expecting a challenge, but not a deadly one. He thinks their unfamiliar stuff looks pretty cool but can't draw any specific conclusions on what level they seem to be. The guys at the gate seemed to think he looked capable, though, so maybe Elan should also expect a nondeadly challenge.

"I'd ask if you wanna join in, but if something did happen to you then the Guardians might get mad at me. So… you should probably do whatever you were gonna do anyway."

Ash droops with disappointment. "Yeah, I'll just...see if the Guardians here have any messages they want me to take back. Good luck out there!" 

"You too! Hopefully the next time something like this happens won't be until you're allowed to participate!"

Saying it out loud he's pretty sure that the next time something like this happens will be in like six months. Which sucks for a number of reasons!

Okay, well, he should probably get a better sense of the people he'll be working with before it suddenly turns into a zombie emergency! He tries to find a group that seems interruptible, and then:

"Hi guys! I'm Elan."

"Hello there!" says a man with long green hair and purple robes. "I'm Garth, and this is Yuraz and Fuyic," he says, indicating his companions in turn. Yuraz is a woman in blue leather with cherry-red hair, and Fuyic is a blond man in red-and-gold armour whose sword bears an uncanny resemblance to a large fish. 

"What class are you?" Yuraz asks. "I don't recognise that style of armour." 

"I'm a bard, mostly! This is actually just regular clothing; I used to have a mail shirt but then my evil twin brother stole all my clothes and when I got them back I had already had a significant costume change. Anyways, bards play magical music that uplifts people's spirits! I'm gonna play a bravery song that gives a morale bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, and saving throws against fear."

"Awesome!" says Garth. 

"Yeah, but you'd better get your Bard armour on already," says Fuyic. "The undead are already gathering out there." 

"Oh crap!"

Elan's old stuff is in his backpack, but his mail shirt is almost definitely near the bottom. He can…try to get it out if it seems like undead are about to get close to him? For now, he decides to start playing, since that should help everyone around and not just him.

One of the city guards steps forward and clears her throat to get everyone's attention.

"Alright, adventurers, listen up! I'm Guardian Anna, and I'm in command on this front. For those of you who haven't heard the reports, we're looking at a large mixed group of skeletons, flying eyeballs, and deadwood trees. If you've got a Light weapon, get it out; if you can't use it, trade it to someone who can. We're going to move out as a group, taking the path to the north—that's on your right as you come out of the gates. Form up, let's get moving!" 

Elan quiets down while Anna talks. The flying eyeballs and evil trees are unfamiliar. It's too bad Durkon isn't around! He would probably be great at fighting undead trees.

He starts playing again when the group gets moving. He wonders if he should get a bunch of elemental swords…

Their group heads out of the gates and up the northern path to a large clearing. Night is drawing in now, and the shadows beneath the trees stretch out across the grass with grasping hands.

From those shadows, the monsters emerge in waves. 

First, a flurry of wings as a swarm of batlike shapes swoops down from the trees to harass the vanguard. Some merely slam full-body into the fighters, while others start blasting with their eye beams. In the flashes of red light, Elan can see that most of the body between the wings is taken up by a single giant eye, with only a little nub behind it to which the wings and tail connect. 

Behind the flying eyeballs come the ground troops. There are the skeletons, armed with a mishmash of melee weapons from warhammers to katanas. Unlike the undead Elan is familiar with from back home, there's no telltale pinprick of light in their empty eye sockets, just a blank darkness. In amongst the skeletons are a few of the green slime monsters Elan saw back in Oaklore, although he's now getting a much closer look at them. Each slime is a blob about half the height of a man, with a blobby mouth opening and closing as it extends pseudopods to strike out at nearby enemies.  

Alongside them shamble the deadwoods, walking trees with a few dying leaves clinging to their upper branches. In each trunk, the craggy bark forms the shape of a face, trapped in a leer, a grimace, or a scream of horror. The deadwoods pick their spots and root themselves into the ground with unnatural speed, sending their roots shooting back up in unpredictable locations to trip people up and grab at ankles. The heroes' advance slows and falters. 

Gross, flying eyeballs! Elan had been imagining, like, lawyer-friendly beholders, not literal eyeballs with wings and… tails. The skeletons are, of course, spooky and scary, but mostly in a normal way. The evil trees are probably the creepiest enemies of all, mostly because of the expressions locked into their bark-faces. Elan can't help but imagine that these trees have human souls trapped inside them, forced to do the twisted bidding of some insane necromancer. Or something like that.

He should really focus on his courage song instead. Come on, heroes, be brave! Elan believes in you! It sure looks like there are a lot of scary monsters, but there are also a lot of heroes. And the heroes are working hard to defend what they believe in.

(Bardic songs don't necessarily have to be about whatever their effect is, since technically the effect is magical in nature. But it's a lot easier to pour your whole self into something if you're singing about something appropriate!)

The courage song seems to be helping! The defenders rally! These undead might be be horrifying and gross and so on, but ultimately they're just monsters that go down when you hit them enough times, right? They get on that. 

A flying eyeball shoots up into the sky to get away from the fighter that had it cornered, and swoops down at Elan. 

ew ew ew

Maybe next time Elan should play his song on the kazoo so he can have a free hand. For now, he'll switch from lute to sword as fast as he can… which is apparently fast enough that he can try to skewer the eyeball like a big gross cocktail olive. Neat!

It is stabbed! In retaliation, it attempts to slam its entire bodyweight into him. This isn't very effective, because its entire body is considerably smaller than his head. 

And Elan can re-retaliate!

"Take that, slimeball!"

Now he has a winged eyeball kebab skewered on his rapier. 

While he was briefly distracted from the rest of the fight, the undead have pushed forward. The front line is closer to him than it was before, and if he doesn't do something about that, he might end up in melee with some non-flying monsters in the immediate future. 

Oh, right, the part where there are a whole bunch of enemies. He flicks his rapier in the direction of the horde, because in his opinion it would be really funny if the eyeball bonked a skeleton on the head, then glances back for a free spot to retreat to because he'd rather play his song.

He can find a safer spot to stand and play his song! 

The defenders push the undead back step by step. (Or, in the case of the slimes...squelch by squelch?) A few of them pick up the lyrics of Elan's song enough to sing along with the chorus when it comes around; this doesn't do anything to boost the magical effect, but it does seem to have a nonmagical effect on morale. 

And after a while there are no more undead left standing! (Or flying, or squelching.) Not all the defenders are still standing either; the Guardians start coordinating efforts to help them drink healing potions if they're conscious or carry them back to town for healing if not. 

It is literally the best thing ever when people start to sing along. Maybe he can learn some more local songs so the next time something like this happens he can get even more people to join in!

He makes a beeline to one of the people helping the unconscious defenders.

"I have a spell that can probably get up to thirteen people back on their feet!"

"That would be great! What do you need us to do?" 

"Get the people you want me to cast it on together so that nobody's more than 30 feet away from anyone else. I can cast that specific spell once—and mana potions don't change that—but I have some other healing spells that work on one person at a time."

Sure, they can direct people to bring the unconscious adventurers over to Elan instead of back to town, it's closer. 

Yay, he's helping!

After the first batch, he counts his spell slots. He can cast Cure Critical Wounds three times, Cure Serious Wounds four times, Cure Moderate Wounds four times, and Cure Light Wounds twice, if anyone needs that. He's probably going to bed after this anyway, after all.

Some but not all of that healing will be very much appreciated! Casualties were pretty light overall and nobody seems to have died. The adventurers seem to need a low-level-adventurer amount of healing, a bit more than the Oaklore knights but noticeably less than Elan's party members might. 

And then they can all head back to town under their own power! The other adventurers are mostly in good spirits, even the ones who were previously badly injured. 

One armoured fighter is showing off a kind of evil-looking axe with a skull on it. "—and even though it does Darkness damage I was still cleaving through skeletons like they weren't there!" 

"Where did you say you got it?" 

"From the inn in the town square! It was expensive, but absolutely worth it, this thing is crazy powerful." 

Wow, being able to provide more help than needed (and not have this be a euphemism for "tried to help in a way that actually interfered and now the other guy is annoyed at him") is exciting! It's also good because it means everyone's doing okay!

That axe guy sounds significant! Elan lurks in an attempt to eavesdrop some more.

He's not the only one crowding closer to get a better look. A few people saw this guy fighting and can confirm that his axe seemed to do pretty well against the undead. 

"Did it come from, like, a mysterious figure in a dark corner with a hooded cloak?" someone asks. 

"Ha, good one. No, it was the innkeeper. Sarafina or whatever her name is." 

"Sabrina?" 

"Yeah, her." 

"Oh, I got mine from her as well!" a mage puts in, waving a staff with a skull topper. "I was sceptical when she offered me a Darkness weapon for fighting undead, but it worked fine! And if it does that well against undead, I'm definitely making it my main weapon from now on, 'cause it'll be even better against everything else." 

Hmmm.

The more Elan listens, the more significant it sounds. He should probably find out more about Sabrina the innkeeper, especially since he'll probably be staying at the inn tonight.

"Darkness is usually bad against undead, right?" he asks someone who hasn't yet proclaimed that they got an extra-special Darkness axe.

"Yeah, undead are Darkness aligned, so they tend to have resistance to it. The best thing to use is a Light weapon like mine." She holds up one of her glowing crystalline daggers. "Most people don't have a full elemental set, though; I'm lucky I had these. A Darkness weapon could easily be someone's best option if they were unlucky." 

Elan nods.

"I wonder why these guys' Darkness weapons did so good, then! We probably weren't fighting… weird secret Light-aligned undead… maybe the weapons are just good enough that they overcame the undead resistance? Or maybe they're regular weapons that just look like Darkness weapons…"

"I think the story is they do more damage than other weapons, by enough that it cancels out the resistance? They can't secretly be some other element, you'd notice as soon as you used them. Just like we'd have noticed if the undead were attacking with Light instead of Darkness. Are you new to this or something?" 

"Yeah!"

He's also generally quite silly, of course, but as long as it's true that he's new to this he doesn't see anything wrong with admitting it. It makes sense that you can tell the difference between weapon types, though, just like how Static felt static-y.

"Huh, okay. Well, you should get the hang of telling damage types apart soon. They're obvious when you use a weapon or see someone use it up close, and you can usually tell just from picking one up once you know what to look for."

Elan nods.

"That makes sense. Do stronger ones ever hurt to touch? I mean, if you're not being attacked by them. Obviously a weapon being used to attack you hurts."

"I don't think I've ever even heard of that. Who'd design a weapon that hurt to use? And who'd buy it?" 

"That… is a good question. Where I come from sometimes mean people put curses on weapons as traps or just because…"

Shoot, did that make him sound suspicious?

"Oh, where are you from? You don't have an accent or anything..." 

"Thanks! I'm from a different planet with different magic and classes and stuff."

If he said the name of the country he was born it would probably turn this conversation into a Who's On First bit.

"Oh, cool," she says distractedly, not sounding like she really believes him. 

Anyway, here's the town square again! It continues to have an inn; most of the adventurers head there. 

Also here's Ash! 

"Hi, Elan! How did it go? Did your courage song help?" 

The great thing about low-stakes interactions is that it doesn't really matter if the other person believes him about where he's from.

"Hi Ash! I think it helped a lot. There was a kind of scary moment where a flying eyeball tried to get me, but I managed to get it first, and then when I started playing again the people around me started singing along! It was really cool and now I wanna learn some of the songs that people around here know."

"Awesome! Um, the best place to hear songs is probably the inn? You should get a room there for the night, anyway, it's pretty late." 

(It's now fully dark; the sun finished setting while they were fighting the undead.) 

"That's true! Plus, I overheard some people talking about how the innkeeper sells really good weapons, apparently? There were like two people who got sold Darkness weapons for tonight's fight and they said they cut through the skeletons like they weren't even there."

"Darkness weapons? That's super weird! Maybe I should investigate that..." He yawns. "...but maybe tomorrow." 

Elan laughs.

"You said it!"

Off to the inn! Well, Elan should find Twilly first. But then it can be off to the inn.

Twilly has been chilling in the healers' tent! 

"Hi Elan! How did the fighting go?" 

"It went pretty good! Flying eyeballs are really gross. One was trying to get me, but I managed to skewer it like a nasty eyeball kebab. And then everyone started singing along with my courage song! That was awesome."

"Yay! We's been really bored in the healers' tent, so it must have gone well." 

Twilly has his own place in Falconreach that he shares with some other moglins, so he doesn't need to go to the inn, but he can go in with Elan and introduce him to the innkeeper? 

"That does sound like a good sign."

Elan appreciates this!

"Does the innkeeper also make weapons on the side?" he asks on the way.

"She sells them sometimes but I doesn't think she makes them herself? It's mostly adventurers trading in their old stuff for new stuff, I thinks." 

Inn! The entryway has a hatstand and a big noticeboard labelled "Odd Jobs", which looks to Elan's well-honed adventuring eyes like a source of sidequests. Twilly goes right on through the next door and into the main room. 

"Huh! I guess that pushes the question of the weirdly good weapons back."

Elan takes note of the sidequest board but follows Twilly in. Man, he loves inns. They're so homey! For obvious reasons, of course, but also because they're such an adventuring classic.

The main room is bathed in the warm glow of candles, and filled with the cheery hubbub of adventurers celebrating their victory with one last drink before bed. 

A blonde woman wearing an apron stands behind the counter. "Hi, welcome to the inn! I'm Sabrina. Looking for a bed for the night?" 

See what Elan means?

"Yeah! Hi, I'm Elan."

"Nice to meet you, Elan." 

She will sell him a room and a meal for what Twilly can confirm are reasonable prices! 

Hooray! Elan can listen to the other patrons talk while he eats his meal. Well, sometimes he gets distracted because something someone said reminded him of something else. But either way, he doesn't have to think about his looming responsibilities right now and that's fine by him.

The chatter in the main room is lighthearted, the adventurers in high spirits after their victory. Some of them are swapping stories: none sound very impressive to Elan, it's mostly low-level stuff like fighting sneevils, bandits, and forest animals, but some of them have fought undead before and are comparing stories about that.

Somebody is telling everyone about this really weird metal monster they fought in the woods near here. Someone else is complaining about the time they trekked through a really muddy marsh full of aggressive mushrooms and didn't even get any good loot. One guy is trying (and failing) to convince his drinking companions that he fought a dragon once. 

It's kind of weird, listening in on all these low-level encounter stories. Elan's used to feeling lost and out of his depth, like everyone is more grown-up than him. Well, Belkar doesn't really make him feel like that, he thinks. And Haley doesn't make him feel like that in a bad way. But now he feels kind of the opposite. He wonders how long it will take for his adventures to catch up with him…

The guy talking about the dragon catches his ear and he loses his train of thought.

"—I'm telling you, it was taller than this entire inn! It could've eaten me up in one bite!"

"Yeah, right. Why didn't it, then, huh?" 

"Because...I had very cleverly smeared myself with garlic!" 

"...garlic?"

"They can't stand the stuff!" 

"I thought that was vampires?" 

"Well, uh, it works on vampires too, I guess. But it definitely works on dragons." 

"I think you're making this up. I think if I covered you in garlic and offered you to a dragon it'd say Oh, how nice of you to season the meat—"

"Shut up, I'm telling you, it happened!" 

"Maybe it was a vampire dragon! A drampire!"

"Yeah! That's totally it. It was a vampire dragon." 

"Suuuure." 

"Fine, don't believe me. Just don't come crying to me when a dragon eats you because you didn't listen to my expert dragon-fighting tips." 

Elan giggles. He fought a dragon once! Well, he got pinned under a dragon's foot for a few minutes before it swallowed Haley whole and then spat her out because Lizard Vaarsuvius charmed it. And then disintegrated it when they were no longer a lizard. And also Haley told him she loved ukuleles because she chickened out of telling him she loved him at the last second.

… he should go to bed, probably.

There's a room waiting upstairs for him.

It's not large or fancy, but he has it all to himself. There's a fire in the hearth, a rug on the floor, and a softer bed than the one he slept in at Oaklore Keep last night. 

Cozy! Elan sits in front of the fire for a few minutes, until he starts to get dozy right there on the floor. He gets into bed, which is just as cozy as sitting in front of the fire anyway.

"Good morning. I hope you slept well!"

Sabrina will serve him breakfast along with all the other sleepy guests. There are a few people in the inn this morning who look like normal travellers, but this mostly seems to be an adventurer hangout. 

"Good morning! I did, yeah, and everything was really great."

Before digging into breakfast, he decides to ask about the weapons.

"I was in the defense party last night, and a bunch of people said they got really good weapons from you right before! Did some really powerful adventurer come in recently or something?"

"I do have some pretty powerful weapons for sale, and I sold a few yesterday to some adventurers who were about to fight the undead!" she confirms cheerfully. "Are you interested in buying one yourself?" 

"Maybe not right now, 'cause I'm saving my money."

On account of only having started to earn any around here the day before yesterday, but still.

"Thanks for offering, though! Maybe sometime soon I'll come by and have more money to spare."

And now he can focus on the most important meal of the day!

Twilly shows up around the time he's finishing breakfast. 

"Hiyas, Elan! What do you wanna do today? We could head straight to Surewould Forest, or we could go shopping in town first if you wants?"

"Hi Twilly! Hmm… do you think a map is something we could find in town?"

"A map of what?" 

"Weren't we gonna see if someone had a map of Surewould Forest that was like the one Sir Valance had?"

Elan takes Sir Valance's map out, just in case he did something silly like not notice that the map he already has covers that area already.

(Sir Valance's map sadly only covers Oaklore Forest.) 

"Oh yeah! Twillies not sure who to ask, though. Maybe the Odd Jobs board has something that could help? Or we's could go into the forest and ask my friend Robina! She knows loads about Surewould Forest!" 

"Meeting your friend sounds fun! I wanna do that."

"Yay! Is there anythings else you wants to do first? We's could buy you some more weapons with different elements, maybes? Oh! And we has the moglinberries to sell!" 

"Hmm, that is a good idea. I think I have enough for one weapon, if it counts as much as Static? Maybe I should ask Sabrina how much her stuff costs… it's kind of a shame I let the bear have all my berries, except for the part where it kept you safe."

"You can have half the money from my berries, Elan! We picked them together anyways, and it's my fault you had to feed yours to a bear..." 

"That sounds like a good idea! Do you think we should ask Sabrina about her weapon prices before selling the berries, or after? Who should we sell them to, anyway? Is there someone who makes all sorts of jams and fruity treats?"

"Well, Sabrina is right here? Oh, and Spruce is also right here!" Twilly waves at a green moglin on the other side of the room, who smiles and waves back. "She makes moglinberry cordials and jams and things for the inn." 

If Haley were here, she would probably try to figure out who would be likely to pay more.

"Well, does Sabrina usually buy everything she needs for the inn by herself? If it's usually her job to buy things then we should probably talk to her. And then maybe talk to Spruce later, just for fun? Ooh, but maybe if we sell Spruce the berries then she'll give us a discount on the berry products, or pay us in cooking classes! Except you can't buy swords with cooking classes, at least not from innkeepers. So probably we should just do all the money stuff with Sabrina today?"

"I thinks if we sold the berries to Sabrina she'd probably just sell them to Spruce to make delicious things with?" Twilly points out. "So it makes more sense to sell them to Spruce ourselves. And once we've done that and counted how much moneys you have, we can ask Sabrina about weapons and you'll know if you can afford to buy them!" 

"Okay!" agrees Elan cheerfully. "I guess I assumed that she worked here, as a berry chef! That's probably too specific. A fruit chef?"

Twilly giggles as they make their way over to Spruce. 

"Hiyas, Spruce! This is my new friend Elan!"

"Hiya! Good to meetcha, Elan!" 

Spruce is only the third moglin Elan's seen up close, counting the blue one who set the bear on them. She looks pretty similar to Twilly, other than having green fur instead of red; if there are visible differences between male and female moglins, they're subtle. 

"Hi Spruce! Twilly and I picked some moglinberries yesterday and he said that you would be a good person to sell them to."

"Oooo, moglinberries, yummy! And if you only picked 'em yesterday, they'll be nice and fresh. I'll take 'em for sure!"

"Hooray!"

Then the sale of moglinberries can proceed.

"Do you make healing potions with them, too?" he asks conversationally. "Or just regular food?"

"Me? Nah, I'm not an alchemist. If you wanna talk to one of those, there's a new potions shop around the corner that just opened recently. I heard the lady who runs it is a Master Alchemist all the way from the capital!" 

"Whoa, that sounds pretty cool!"

It's a shame that Elan's so busy right now, since he keeps hearing about fun things to do and see! Maybe things will calm down a little bit soon and Elan can take a couple of days to really explore Falconreach. Although it probably wouldn't hurt to get his hands on some healing potions, in case he gets separated from Twilly or something.

"Hopefully we'll see you around!"

And now to see what Sabrina has for sale…

Sabrina has an eclectic selection of weapons for sale, most of which were apparently sold to her (or to the inn's previous owner) by passing adventurers. She pulls out a box from under the counter to show him the selection. Daggers, staffs, swords, a few axes, all in wildly different designs. 

"What kind of weapons are you looking for, are you mostly a swords guy? You seem a little high-level for most of this junk, but I might have something that's an improvement on that Energy sword..." 

"I use rapiers 'cause they're lighter and flashier! My total character level is fourteen but I dunno what system you guys use here—I'm used to epic levels starting at twenty, except the difference between level one and level two is smaller than the difference between level two and level three, so I'm not actually almost three-quarters of the way to epic. What elements do you have? Even if it's kinda low-level, it'd still be one more element than I have right now!"

"Hmm, other than that level 50 scythe on the wall, I don't think I have anything above level 10 right now..." 

(Mounted on the wall behind the bar is a super fancy silver-edged scythe, with 3 concentric spinning rings encircling a floating gemstone at the top of its haft. It radiates magic strongly enough that Elan can sense it from several steps away.) 

Sabrina starts rummaging in the box. "How about a level 8 Light sword?" she suggests, passing him a green sword wrapped in briars. "That'll be good if we get any more undead incursions! And I'm pretty sure I've got a level 9 Ice sword in here somewhere...or if you're looking for something a bit lighter, I've got daggers too..." 

(That scythe is so cool. Elan is pretty sure that he's never going to buy it, even though it's so cool, because when would he even use it. But probably there are lots of different super-cool level 50 weapons out there! And probably at least one that's just right for Elan.)

"I've never used a dagger before," he says thoughtfully, "but maybe I should learn sometime?"

He holds the planty sword experimentally. Anti-undead is probably more handy than anti-fire, but level 9 is stronger than level 8. Maybe he'll go with whichever one feels cooler (…as in awesome, not necessarily as in cold) to hold.

The plant sword feels synaesthetically warm and bright, like being outside on a sunny summer day. It makes a bright shiiing sound when he experimentally swings it. It's broader than the rapiers he's used to, but it's lighter than a metal sword of its size. 

While he's testing that one, Sabrina digs up a big sword with a strangely cleft blade, a small hunting knife, and a dagger that looks like it's made of ice. (The hilt is wrapped with leather.) 

"Ice sword, Light dagger, Ice dagger," she says, pointing to each in turn. "And"—she lowers her voice a little—"you were interested in the other weapons too, right?" 

Elan is immediately a fan of how the Light sword feels in his hand. The Ice sword seems a bit much; maybe whenever he gets an Ice weapon he should go for the dagger.

"Is it okay to look at them even if I can't afford them yet?"

He succeeds at having an inside voice.

"Sure. They are a good bit more expensive than the rest, fair warning! Hmm, you probably don't want an axe, so take a look at this one..."

From a different box hidden under the counter, she pulls out a weapon that certainly looks cooler and more expensive than the others he's been looking at. It's a curved single-edged short sword, like a scimitar, with a wicked-looking serrated edge and a decorative skull on the crossguard. A second blade, a little smaller but with the same curved, jagged shape, protrudes from the pommel (decorated with another skull), turning it into a double-ended weapon. 

"The Twin Blades of Doom! Have a try, see what you think." 

"Well, twin blades would be thematically significant," he says to himself.

He hesitates just long enough to ask himself if this seems like a trick to get him to touch a super-evil weapon that will possess or mind-control him. He decides that honestly it would be more likely that she'd use one of the regular-looking weapons if she was doing some sort of long con like that.

So he experimentally picks it up.

...well, his eyes don't start glowing red and he doesn't start chanting in Infernal, so he's probably fine on the possession front? 

As Elan picks up the Twin Blades of Doom, a rush of power surges through his veins, cool and refreshing like the night breeze, washing away the lingering sleepiness of the morning. The weapon is light in his hands, and moves easily; it's not what he's used to, but it feels like it would fit his swashbuckling fighting style better than a broadsword or an axe. 

Whoa that's cool. It immediately makes perfect sense why the people who had swords like this did a good job last night against all the spooky monsters.

"Where'd you get these?" he says, in less of an inside voice than before.

Shrug. "I don't really keep track of where I get any of this stuff. Adventurers come in all the time and sell me things they don't need anymore." 

okay 💙 yay 💙

Elan almost definitely can't afford this thing, but he can still ask the price.

Sabrina will happily quote him prices for all the weapons he's been looking at! The normal swords or daggers are all within his budget, although he can't quite afford two of them right now, so he'll have to pick one. 

...and then for the Twin Blades of Doom she says a number that has another couple of zeroes on the end. He super cannot afford it even a little bit. 

Elan reluctantly sets down the extremely cool double-ended sword thing because yeah, he'd need way more money to afford that thing. It didn't hurt to ask, though!

He decides to buy the Light sword. It's always good to be prepared to deal with undead.

"Hope you have a great day!"

"You too! Come back anytime." 

She seems nice! And definitely not suspicious.

"We're gonna meet your friend Robina next, right?" he says to Twilly on the way out. "'Cause we sold the berries and got a sword?"

"Yep! We's going to Surewould Forest to see Robina and ask her where to find the sneevil forts!" 

Ash is in the square outside the inn! He has an old shirt stuffed with straw and tied to a pole, and he's industriously hitting it with a wooden sword. As Elan and Twilly exit the inn, he overhears the last part of their conversation. 

"Oh, that sounds like a fun adventure! Would it be alright if I tag along? I won't be in the way, I promise! I've been practicing really hard with my sword, I'm sure I can handle some sneevils." 

Elan thinks.

"That sounds okay to me. None of the sneevils we've talked to have tried attacking us yet, although there was that time they were gonna kick Twilly out of their fort. And they're kind of frustrating to deal with, but mostly because they're kind of self-centered. Anyways, I think it should be all right. What do you think, Twilly?"

"I think it's proooobably fine? Sneevils aren't very tough, and if Ash does get hurt, we's got lots of healing magic between us! But, Ash, you gots to listen if we tells you to run away because we met something too scary, okies?"

"Yesss—I mean, yes, of course, I promise!"

Eeeee he gets to go on a real adventure with a real grown-up adventurer! He puts his wooden sword away and hurries to follow Elan and Twilly, fumbling to attach his real sword to his belt as he walks. 

"So why do you want to look for sneevil forts, anyway? Is there a bounty up on the jobs board? Are you looking for treasure to sell? Oh, oh, did they steal a super important legendary artifact and you're on a quest to get it back?" 

Ash is so cool.

"Yeah! Or, I don't know how legendary it is, but I'm pretty sure it's super important. And I guess to be fair these particular sneevils didn't steal it, they just traded it with some other sneevils who did."

"Ohmygosh I'm on a quest to help find a super important stolen artifact!" Ash whispers to himself, not quite quietly enough. "This is so cool!" 

Twilly leads the way east, the opposite direction from the way they came into the city last night.

Not far out of the town square, they pass a big fancy set of double doors that probably aren't solid gold, but are certainly gilded, and engraved with intricate carvings. Other than that, it's mostly houses in this direction, but right near the eastern gate is a shop with an animal paw-print on its sign and a birdcage visible in the window. 

Ash's enthusiasm is infectious; Elan walks bouncily.

"Ooh, a pet shop! Or maybe a familiar shop?"

"That's Grams's pet shop! She's super nice, and she's really good at training pets. She pays me to help out with the animals sometimes, and some of them are really cool and rare! She even has a pit grinder that's, like, incredibly tame, even though they're supposed to be impossible to train. I got to pet it once, and look, I still have all my fingers!" He displays them proudly. 

"Ooooh, what's a pit grinder?"

Elan is imagining something that lives in pits and has a lot of teeth. Maybe it's a kind of really big creature that has a pit-like mouth and hides in holes in the ground? Or maybe it's a kind of really small creature that lives in pits in huge groups and they all gnaw on people who fall in, like piranhas.

"Uhhhh...I guess they're sorta like a hare crossed with a wolf? Except they have even bigger teeth and claws than that and they want to bite your face off!" 

Unfortunately, Elan's mental image of a hare is A Rabbit, But Bigger, so he literally imagines the dreaded bunnywolf. But with bigger teeth and claws and wanting to bite his face off.

"I'll make sure to not try and pet any until I know more about animals, then!"

One of the first lessons in Animal Handling is respect for the animals, which includes the very real possibility of hurting (or causing the animal to hurt) yourself or the animal or both.

They pass through the eastern gate, manned by a pair of Guardians like its western counterpart. In the daylight, without an impending invasion, they're a lot more relaxed, and just wave the party on through. 

The road beyond the gate forks almost immediately. The main road runs along the southern edge of a forest, and a path branching off to the left heads into the forest itself. To the right, lush farmlands and fields stretch away south. The shadowy forest of Doomwood is hazily visible in the distance.

A signpost proclaims that the left fork goes to "Surewould Forest" and the right fork goes to "That a' Way". 

Elan waves right back.

"What's in That a' Way?" he asks as they turn towards the Surewould Forest.

"It used to just be a crossroads, where the Great Sandsea Road meets the road to Doomwood, but nowadays it's a popular place for travellers to stop and rest. You can meet all sortsa merchants and travellers from far-off places!" 

"Ooh, sounds deserty! Unless Sandsea means the beach? Ooh, beachy…"

"Yep, the Sandsea is a big desert! Twillies not sure where the sea part of the name comes from, I's never been there." 

The woods around them are pleasant and green and not at all desert-like. The road bends around to the left, heading further north, but pretty soon Twilly steps confidently off the road onto a grassy path that seems to lead deeper into the forest. 

"That road goes to where Warlic lives, up in the Elemental Foothills! But we's got to go this way to find Robina." 

"Well, dunes kinda look like waves, and deserts are usually big and flat like the ocean, so maybe that? Ooh, or maybe there are people who live there and invented something to travel across the desert that look like sailboats. I'm pretty sure I've heard of that somewhere."

When they turn onto the smaller forest path, Elan makes sure to pay extra attention for things like plant monsters, aggressive mushrooms, or regular monsters.

"Warlic's one of those smart magic people, right?"

The name sounds kinda like warlock, except a lot of magic users who aren't warlocks get really mad if you compare them at all for some reason. Magic users that aren't bards seem to do kind of a lot of that with each other, actually. It seems kind of silly…

Wait he was supposed to be paying attention to his surroundings.

"Yep! Warlic is the Blue Mage. He knows loads and loads about magic!" 

They startle a squirrrel, which runs up a tree. The area seems clear of monsters so far.

"Ooh, how many colors are there? Is it a whole rainbow of mages?"

"I doesn't know of any other mages with colour names! Maybes you could call Cysero the Green Mage? But he doesn't call himself that, so it would be a little bit sillies." 

Elan nods.

"Is Warlic really good at Water magic and Cysero at Light magic? Or do they have blue and green hair? Or maybe they wear blue and green robes…"

"They wears blue and green robes! Warlic is good at ALL the magics, and Cysero is good at making magic weapons. And explosions!" 

"Cysero has a magic shop in Falconreach," Ash adds. "I can show you where it is next time we're in town, if you want to meet him?" 

"That sounds fun! Wizards are cool!"

They can also be really mean, but… that's probably just a Vaarsuvius thing. Or mostly a Vaarsuvius thing. On to a different topic!

"Are we going to Robina's house, or is this just someplace we're really likely to run into her?"

"Twillies just going to try all the spots Robina likes to hang out in the most! The Merry Women has a secret camp around here somewheres but I doesn't know wheres it is." 

A river burbles somewhere up ahead, getting louder. 

Nod.

"That makes sense, since it's a secret camp."

He hears that river! There probably won't be river monsters two days in a row, but he keeps an ear out anyway.

Pretty soon they can see the river as well as hear it; their path runs alongside the bank, heading upstream. It sounds like they're heading towards some rapids or maybe a small waterfall. 

A blob of water a bit under half Elan's body mass hauls itself out of the river nearby and coalesces into a vaguely slime-monster-like form with a vague suggestion of facial features. It ignores the party and starts squelching wetly away at an angle. 

Elan's admiration of the pretty river is interrupted by the water… thing.

At least it doesn't seem to be attacking?

"What's that?"

"A water elemental!" Ash fumbles to draw his sword and point it in the direction of the water blob. 

Twilly doesn't seem alarmed. "Only a baby one. And it isn't attacking us and it isn't in our way..." 

"I agree with Twilly."

He kind of wants to follow it and see what it's up to and where it's going, but… they gotta find Robina…

"Do they get mean when they grow up or something? And… is that a brand new baby?"

"Probably not, but Twillies not a water elementals expert and I doesn't know what brand new baby water elementals is like...they gets bigger and tougher and harder to kill when they grows up? And sometimes mean, I guess." 

"That happens to a lot of people," says Elan sagely.

He remembers something Vaarsuvius told him about where baby water elementals come from and decides to think about something else instead.

"Well, if it isn't being mean right now I think it should be safe to leave it alone."

Also, it's cute! Weird-cute, but still cute.

"Oh, okay." Ash droops with disappointment, but puts his sword away without arguing. 

The small water elemental squelches away out of sight, and they continue upriver towards the growing roar of the rapids. 

"Robina likes to hang out by the waterfall!" Twilly explains. "If she's not there, we's look by the really big oak tree next." 

"Okay!" agrees Elan.

He… noticed that Ash was disappointed, but doesn't know how to address that. He should probably try, at least.

"I think it's better to defend yourself than to pick fights. Sometimes you need to ambush a bad guy or at least surprise attack them, but you're still usually defending someone, right?"

"Yeah. I know it's dishonourable to start fights for no reason, and I have to be honourable because I'm going to be a knight. And I know it's...kind of bad that I was hoping it would attack us so we could fight it. But it would have been really exciting!" 

Elan almost says something like well, it's just a baby, so probably not that exciting and then considers how he would have felt if someone had said that about a level-appropriate goblin encounter when he was first or second level.

"New challenges are always exciting," he says instead. "Have the other Guardians let you fight any monsters before?"

He shakes his head. "I've never been in a real fight before," he admits. "The Guardians won't let me join until I'm older, not even to train with them! There's no way they'd let me fight alongside them. That's why it's so awesome that you're letting me tag along! Maybe if I get some real combat experience, the Guardians will change their minds." 

Elan hums.

"That makes sense to me. Most of the adventurers I know started when they were adults, but I know my girlfriend joined the thieves' guild her dad worked for when she was like sixteen or seventeen, and my best friend's little sister is like third level and she's sixteen… well, she might have had a birthday in the last nine months. And I think our party wizard started studying wizardry when they were like 40, which for an elf is, uh…"

He finger counts and then shakes his head.

"They're like a hundred thirty something now and they're in the same age category as me. Anyway, I can see why you wanna prove yourself. How do you train normally, if nobody lets you train with them?"

"I, uh, mostly just practice against a training dummy. But sometimes passing adventurers give me tips! That's why I practice in the square right outside the inn." 

"Well, that's pretty smart!"

Ash grins. "Thanks!" 

The stream bends around a thicket, and as they round the bend, the waterfall is before them. Water crashes down from a small cliff into a pool, before flowing downstream back the way they came. 

(It looks like the sort of waterfall that might have a secret cave entrance hidden behind it.)

An auburn-haired teenage girl, about 17 or so, is sitting under a tree near the waterfall, atop a heap of boxes. She's dressed in green, lightly armoured, and has a bow lying on the grass next to her. 

She waves cheerfully when she spots them. "Hi Twilly! Who are your friends?" 

"Whoa, cool!"

Elan points excitedly at the waterfall, not noticing the girl until she speaks.

"Is that your friend?" he asks Twilly.

Twilly waves back at her. "Yep, this is Robina! Hiyas, Robina, this is Elan and Ash!" 

"Great to meet you! What brings you to my neck of the woods?" 

"Twilly says that you know lots about the Surewould Forest and maybe where the sneevils have forts! We're—"

"Ooooh, hold on, shhh!"

She puts a finger to her lips and points.

A lone sneevil is skipping along humming to themself, oblivious to being watched. 

In their arms is a familiar black-and-gold box. 

Holy cow! Elan points at the sneevil too.

"That's the thing we're looking for!" he whispers. "The box!"

Robina is grinning in gleeful anticipation. 

"Wait for it..." 

The sneevil passes under a tree—

—and, WHOMP, a trap goes off. In an instant, it's hoisted into the air by a snare around its foot, to dangle upside-down. The box falls from its grasp and tumbles to the floor. 

Robina, having anticipated the timing, darts over to grab the box. 

"Hah! Got another one! Looks fancy, too. Did you say this is yours?" 

"It looks a lot like it… Twilly, what do you think? You're the expert here."

Either way, he keeps his eyes on it because he doesn't want it to get stolen again.

"Yep! See the dragon head symbol on the side? That's the Black Dragon Box, alright!" 

"The Black Dragon Box, huh? Well, sorry, but this box is now the rightful property of Robina the Hood and the Merry Women," she says brightly. "You saw me get it from that sneevil fair and square!" 

(The sneevil, still dangling upside-down, wails, "Nooo...my box....")

Aw man!

"… Can we please have it anyway?" he tries. "As a present to your good friend Twilly? Or we could trade for it. I don't have much to trade with yet but I could do you a favor, maybe?"

He's not sure what kind of favor she'll ask for, but… he can always say no if it's something bad. That leaves the box with Robina, though, but probably that's better than Elan doing something bad?

Twilly's eyes get really big and shiny.

"Pleeeeaase, Robina?" 

"Hmm...well, alright, if Twilly vouches for you, I suppose I can make you a deal. Come with me on one of my missions and help me make the forest a better place, and you can have the box. Agreed?" 

Elan's about to agree, but…

"Just checking—what does making the forest a better place mean? Is it, like, picking up litter or helping sick animals?"

He doesn't even know if enough people come in here to litter but he's pretty sure that if there is any litter, that's bad.

"Wait, have you not heard of the Merry Women? They're famous all the way from Doomwood to Swordhaven!" Ash interjects. "Um, Miss Robina the Hood I think you're really really awesome by the way!!" 

"I haven't, actually! I'm from pretty far away."

He'll definitely explain the full context to Ash later; he just doesn't want to derail the conversation. But if she's Twilly's friend and Ash thinks she's awesome, she probably doesn't want to do anything bad, which makes Elan feel a lot better.

"Oh, well, in that case, allow me to introduce myself properly!"

She sets the box down on the pile next to her so she can give him a proper courtly bow.

"Robina the Hood at your service, leader of the group known as the Merry Women! We steal from the rich, and give to the cuddly wuddly little forest creatures!" 

He bows back, because that seems fun.

"It's nice to properly meet you! Do you mostly redistribute… food and medicine, then?"

The alternative has him entertaining a mental image of various sylvan critters going to the market with bags full of gold, which is of course adorable.

"Sometimes we do! But even gold they can't spend is better off in the hands of a boveox than in the hands of swindlers, embezzlers, and corrupt businessmen!" 

"What's a boveox?"

Possibly a relation of the updog, but you can never be sure.

"...uh, big green animal with horns? Where did you say you were from, again?" 

"Uh, we call it the northern continent buuuut I think you don't have it on this planet."

"Whoa! You didn't tell me you were from another planet!"

(Elan was already the coolest person Ash has ever met, but this really cinches it.) 

Robina...raises one eyebrow at Twilly in a request for confirmation, and gets a nod. Her eyes go very wide for a moment. 

She recovers quickly, toning her expression down from shocked to politely intrigued.

"I don't think I've ever met someone from another planet before. How did you get here, if I might ask?" 

"I don't actually know," he admits. "A few nights ago, I was with my adventuring party. Then I went to sleep and woke up in a forest near Oaklore Keep! And then I met Twilly and Lady Celestia."

He doesn't even know if this was something that somebody did, or if it just… happened. Like a randomly appearing Gate.

"Wow, that sounds super scary!"

Ash pulls a horrified face. "You could have landed anywhere, like the Northlands, or Doomwood, or the middle of the ocean!"

"Aw, man, that would have been pretty scary! I feel like I would only have landed in those places if it would make for a better story than this one, though… like I don't know what the Northlands are like but if they're like the far north part of my planet they'd be really snowy, so I'd probably be found really quickly by someone nice who gave me warm clothes or took me to their house. Probably the same with the Doomwood, or I would have only had to fight like one of those spooky evil trees. And if I was in the middle of the ocean there would probably be an island nearby."

He remembers the many islands he visited while on Hinjo's ship. The one with the orcs was fun! He hopes they're doing okay.

Twilly nods. "I thinks you was meant to land near me and Lady Celestia, because of the prophecy." 

"What prophecy?" Robina's eyes narrow. 

"Oh, ummmm, Twillies doesn't know anything! It's just something Lady C said..." 

Elan nods. "She seems super secrety. And also super… umm, I dunno the word for it but when that box first got stolen by a sneevil she was really chill like she was expecting it to happen, or at least like she was pretty sure that things would turn out okay in the end."

Or like she was secretly a bad guy, but Elan does not have enough evidence for that and he doesn't even really think it's true.

"I have heard that powerful magic-users can be a bit, um, strange," Robina says. "But there are plenty of stories where knowing the contents of a prophecy does more harm than good, so I suppose that might be a reason for her to keep it a secret..."

Elan nods.

"Yeah, especially when they sound scary so you do a bunch of impulsive stuff to try and protect yourself except, oops, turns out you accidentally made the scary thing happen. Anyway…"

Elan doesn't want to get too sidetracked.

"So you mostly focus on rich and powerful people who hurt people and take away the money they're using to hurt people? I think that sounds like something I'm okay helping with."

He wonders if any of the people she Robinas would be played by the jerks Haley grew up with, if this was printed in a comic.

"Oh, good!"

Robina perks up as she explains, "Today's target is Richard the Vile, a corrupt nobleman who's been getting fat off the profits from his lands while the people working the fields struggle to make ends meet. He's passing through Surewould, and we're going to rob him blind!" 

Elan nods.

"What do you usually do? Sneak up on people like ninjas? Trap them? Surround them?"

"It depends on the target. For ones like this, where there's a moving target coming along a known path, we set up an ambush in the trees! Are you any good at tree-climbing?" 

"Umm… I think I'm okay. Like, I don't have any ranks in Climb, and it's been a while since I climbed into a fruit tree to get a snack, but I don't have a Strength penalty either. So probably I'll be okay as long as I don't try to do anything super fancy?"

"We can try to find you a nice easy safe tree," she assures him. "Twilly, are you helping too? What about your other friend...Ash, wasn't it?"  

"OhmygoshRobinatheHoodknowsmyname—uh, yes! It would be my honour to assist you!"

"Twillies not so good at climbing trees...or robbing peoples. Maybe I's could hide in a bush and heals peoples if they gets hurt." 

"You could also maybe be a lookout… oh, wait, Richard and anybody with him might notice you and if they get suspicious that could ruin the ambush. I dunno, most of my ambush experience is from the other end."

"Hiding somewhere out of sight so you can heal us afterwards sounds great, Twilly! Don't worry about climbing any trees or taking part in the ambush."

Twilly's ears perk back up from where they've been drooping. "Okies, Robina!" 

Robina leads them to a spot where the main northern road passes between some nice climbable trees, and helps Elan and Ash climb up high enough to conceal themselves in the branches. Twilly hides in the undergrowth a little way away. 

"On my signal, you two jump down and point your swords really threateningly at the carriage, okay?" 

"Sounds good to me! Should I say anything when I point my sword, like… Richard the Vile, your swindling days are over!? Or is that your job."

That's probably Robina's job, come to think of it, since she's the leader.

"That sounds great! Please, be my guest." She grins, and drops to the ground to go hide in her own tree.

(She does not at any point clarify what the signal is.) 

Oh yay!

Elan, being Elan, does not think to ask until she's already gone.

… Hopefully it'll be something obvious like a whistle or owl hooting noises?

It's not long before a horse-drawn carriage comes rattling down the road towards them. The occupant isn't visible, but it looks plenty fancy enough to belong to an avaricious noble. 

The carriage draws closer...closer...

And an arrow flies from the treetops!

It lands in the middle of the road, right in front of the horses. They spook and kick up a fuss, bringing the carriage to a messy and abrupt halt right before it reaches the trees they're hiding in. 

Oh! That seems pretty obvious. And if it turns out that the guys in the carriage aren't the guys they're looking for, Elan can probably just say "oops, thought you were someone else" or something like that. He leaps down and draws the Light sword.

"Richard the Vile! Your swindling days are over!"

Robina and Ash jump down after him and join Elan in surrounding the carriage with weapons pointed at it. 

"Hand over your ill-gotten gold!" 

A richly-dressed man leans out of the carriage window. 

"Ah. Robina the Hood. Of course." The clink of a coin purse. "How much to let me go on my way?"

"All of it! This isn't a toll or a bribe. We're confiscating your money to put it to better use!"

He sighs. "Come on now, girl, be reasonable. You call yourself a do-gooder, don't you? And yet you're acting no better than a—a common highwayman!" 

"Maybe she'd be more reasonable if you were more reasonable to all the peasant farmers!"

A raised eyebrow. "And who might you be? I have to say, you don't look like a woman." 

"I'm not!" says Elan cheerfully. "I'm helping Robina with this as a favor. My name's Elan!"

Sure, a 'favour', he's probably getting a cut of the gold or something. Anyway, it sounds like this is Robina's show, so he returns his attention to (sigh) negotiating with a teenage girl over whether he gets to keep any of his hard-earned gold. 

Robina is not sure he understands the definition of the word "all", do they need to go over it again? 

"I mean, you've probably got a bunch of 'hard earned' gold back home anyway! Plus it doesn't exactly sound like you plan to stop being all greedy and corrupt, so I'm sure you'll be rich again in no time."

… He doesn't think this counts as giving bad guys tips on how to do bad guying.

Sir Richard scowls at both of them. 

"It's the principle of the thing, young man! I wouldn't expect you to understand." 

"Well, maybe not, but I'm still not going to your office!"

He ignores the pun as beneath his dignity. "This is getting you nowhere." 

"I agree."

Robina raises her bow and aims an arrow at Richard the Vile. "Last chance to hand over your gold without a fight!"

"No thank you, I don't think I shall." 

As he speaks, the two guards put themselves in the path of the arrow and ready their own weapons. (Roll initiative!)

Yeah, he probably wouldn't be so Vile if he was the type to hand over his gold without a fight.

"C'mon, Ash! Let's get these thugs!"

Robina stays back out of melee range and starts peppering the guards with arrows while Elan and Ash close in. If Elan's paying any attention, it'll be clear she's aiming to wound, not kill, going for limbs rather than torso or head shots. 

That's good, because Elan is also aiming for that! It also matches what Robina's character archetype seems to be.

"En garde!" he says as he joins the fight.

Elan's fighting style is, of course, focused more on looking cool and flashy than about "realistic" "swordfighting" "tactics." But he doesn't want to be too flashy, since there are two other people on his team he wouldn't like to overshadow. He also wants to think of some better wordplay, of course.

Ash...is doing pretty well for someone who's never been in a real fight before! He's managing to injure the enemies, and not himself or Elan. 

But if Elan wants to make him look good, he might have a difficult time. Ash is clearly not used to trying to hit something that can move, and his wild swings are...mostly effective as a deterrent keeping the guards from running away from Elan. When he gets a hit in, or blocks one, it's largely by accident. 

Managing to injure the enemies and not injure himself or his allies is a great first step! Elan should tell Ash about the first time he and his friends tried to fight a small group of kobolds.

Making Ash look good is less of a priority than getting the guards disarmed and ideally sitting on their butts with stars and possibly zany flying wildlife flying around above their heads, since Elan doesn't want to let Robina down.

With Elan and Robina working together, and Ash managing not to be an active hindrance, they can achieve this with relative ease! Robina is definitely not at the standard Elan is used to from his party back home, but she's more than competent enough for this fight. 

In short order, both guards are, indeed, on the ground seeing stars. Robina is unhurt, and Elan is barely scratched, but Ash is pretty banged up. 

Oh dear! Elan could probably help Ash on his own, but:

"Hey, Twilly!" he calls into the bushes. "Ash could use some healing!"

A small fuzzy head pops out of the bushes. "Twillies help!" 

Twilly scurries over to Ash to heal him; apparently he needs fairly close proximity. Wave the stick, summon green glowy magic circle, and tada! No more cuts and bruises! 

"Thanks, Twilly."

Robina turns her attention back to Richard the Vile, who's cowering inside his carriage. 

"Now will you give us your gold?" she asks with fake innocence. 

"...fine. But you have to escort me the rest of the way through the forest, since you've knocked out my guards. I don't want to be attacked by even more bandits and not even have any money to give them!" 

Elan looks at Robina uncertainly.

"That seems fair to me? Since the point of doing this was to help people, not to give this guy a hard time."

Even if he is a Richard to a bunch of peasants.

Well, the point was kind of also to give this guy a hard time...but the comments about bandits stung a little, and she's feeling like being nice out of spite. 

There's just one problem.

"...do any of you know how to drive a carriage?" 

"I can… ride a horse?"

"I've...been on a cart? It didn't look that hard..." 

Well, that doesn't sound particularly promising, but of course Sir Richard isn't going to drive his own carriage. 

"Perhaps you could use some of that healing magic and wake up one of my men to do the driving," he suggests instead. 

Elan glances at Robina.

"That seems safe enough to me, if we take the money first. And their weapons, so they can't double-cross us."

"I suppose there's not very much that can go wrong if we have all the weapons and all the gold," Robina agrees.

They can tie up both guards for now, and collect their weapons and put them in Elan's backpack, along with a clinking pouch of coins handed over by a reluctant Sir Richard. 

"Alright, which guard do you want us to wake up?"

He points to one. 

"Okay! Twilly, can you heal that guard, please?" (She points to the other guard.) 

But what if Richard knew that she was going to do the opposite of whatever he said and picked the one he didn't actually prefer on purpose????

It probably doesn't actually matter that much, since they were already able to kick the guards' butts before disarming them. And if it turns out that only one of the guards can drive, the worst that'll happen is they got "swindled" into waking up both of the guards.

Twilly heals the guard Robina picked! He doesn't seem to appreciate it very much but that's okay, helping people is its own reward. 

Robina looks at Elan. "Do you want to explain the plan to this guy before we untie him, or shall I?" 

"I think I can do that! And if I forget anything big you can bring it up."

He addresses the guard next.

"Okay, so the bad news is we already took all your money and weapons. The good news is that we're gonna escort you to the place you were going and protect you in case anyone else tries to attack you and once we get there you can have your weapons back! Where were you going, anyway?"

"Uhhh...Verteroche Crossing?"

This guard is so confused right now, but he sure isn't complaining. This honestly seems like one of the better outcomes from a starting point of 'waking up after being knocked unconscious in a fight'. The boss looks furious, though, so that's going to be fun later. 

"Do you need me to...do anything?" 

"Oh, right. None of us can drive! So we want you to do that."

"...Okay." Man, he got taken down by a bunch of bandits and none of them can drive? That's kind of embarrassing. 

Anyway, sure, the boss seems to be going along with this plan so he will too. Fighting these guys didn't go great when he had a weapon and a buddy, and seems likely to go even worse if he has neither. 

Robina enlists the awake guard's help hauling his unconscious buddy into the carriage. She'll sit up front next to the driver with her bow, and everyone else can ride in the carriage if they want, with Elan and Ash ready to jump out and help if bandits attack. 

(Sir Richard is not a big fan of this plan, which involves sharing his carriage with an unconscious body, two bandits, and a moglin. Sir Richard does not get a say.) 

Hey, Twilly and Ash are nice! (Elan tries to be nice too, of course, but obviously he doesn't get to make that call for himself.)

"So… what do you usually do?" he tentatively asks, even though he's not sure Sir Richard really wants to talk to him.

Sir Richard just glowers. 

One awkwardly silent carriage ride later, without even any bandit attacks to liven it up, they reach the turning to Verteroche! 

Robina gathers the party together in a little huddle a short distance from the carriage. 

"Alright, any bright ideas for how we give them their weapons back without risking them turning on us before we can get away? I don't trust Richard to keep his side of the deal." 

"Is it a huge problem if they try? We did already beat them. Maybe we could… set them on the ground right here and then leave really quickly? Or I could give you the money and you and Ash could go ahead of Twilly and me."

"Or we could throw them the weapons while already running away?" 

"But then somebody might get bonked by accident!" 

"Well, we don't have to throw them very hard…"

Elan pauses.

"Wait. Robina, you have a bow! Okay, what if I let Robina hold on to the money, then I go and hand them the weapons normally, so it doesn't look like we're afraid of them. And then we wait to leave until they drive away?"

"Hmm...I think that works! Alright, hand me the moneybag." 

Elan hands over the money!

"Okay, I'll go over by myself so they can't try something mean and sneaky like taking Ash or Twilly hostage."

He then takes the guards' weapons out of his backpack and heads over to Richard.

"Here are your things back! In the future you should be nicer to people, and also less greedy. Then people like Robina won't want to steal your stuff."

"Hmph." 

The guard who isn't tied up takes the weapons. Sir Richard, wisely, does not try to order him to attack Elan. They drive away down the road to Verteroche without further incident. 

"Alright! Great job, everyone. Now we just need to give all this gold away!" 

Elan didn't really expect to be able to singlehandedly convince Richard to change his Vile ways, but it's always worth a shot.

"Hooray! Do you have a list, or are we just gonna find people and/or creatures in need on our path?"

"We're just gonna see who we find on our path! Unless they're bandits or sneevils—bandits can steal their own gold, and sneevils will just throw it away." 

"Wait, who does that even leave? We're in a forest, nobody lives here except bandits and sneevils—uh, and the Merry Women, of course." 

"The cuddly wuddly little forest creatures, right?" says Elan, who remembers what Robina said earlier.

"Exactly!" She grins at Elan. "It shouldn't take us long to run across some if we head back the way we came." 

"Wait, you were serious about that?" 

"Of course! Where did you think monsters got the gold you loot when you kill them?" 

"You know, I kinda thought it came out of nowhere. Like XP!"

He wonders if it works like this back home, too.

Heading back along the road through Surewould Forest, it doesn't take long for them to find some monsters! 

Robina points out a cave entrance off to the side of the road. "There's a group of basilisks that hang out in that cave. Shall we go see if they're in?" 

"Ooh, yeah! Wait, are these the kind where you need sunglasses to talk to them safely?"

"Sunglasses? Right, if you're from another world I guess the basilisks you're used to might be a bit different. The ones we have here are big, ugly, crested lizards with the Stone element. They use sonic attacks, and have a poisonous bite that temporarily paralyses you for a few seconds." 

"Weird! Ours are lizards, but not very big…"

He mimes holding something roughly the size of an iguana.

"… and they have a gaze attack that literally turns you into stone. But if we just have to not be mean enough to them that they bite us, that sounds way safer."

"We'll probably have to knock them out to plant the gold on them. But, based on how you did with those guards, you should be able to handle it fine!" 

"Huh. Like a reverse burglary…"

That sounds scary but also fun! They should probably try to be really quick about it.

"I just remembered I have a spell to neutralize poison. But if the bite wears off in a few seconds, it might not be very useful."

"It's not really worth it, for this, no. Good to know for other things, though—there's not much in Surewould that's naturally poisonous, but sometimes bandits like to use poisoned weapons, and those can be nasty. Anyway, ready?" 

Elan takes one deep breath.

"Yeah! Let's get reverse-burgling!"

"I mean, yeah. Let's get reverse-burgling."

Leaving Ash and Twilly just outside the cave entrance, Robina and Elan sneak in. The sunlight filtering in from outside doesn't make it very deep into the cave, but some kind of glowing moss or fungus on the walls provides just enough illumination that they don't trip over their own feet. 

Robina peeks around a corner and nods. "The basilisks are here," she whispers. "Let's do this!" 

Not having to think about where light is coming from is the best!

"Great!" he whispers back. Now to plant a bunch of clinky gold coins on some sleeping monsters… he'd better follow Robina's lead, since she's done this before.

When Robina said 'big lizard', Elan might have been imagining something around the size of a komodo dragon: bigger than the ones back home, but small enough to pick up and hold in one's arms. These ones are closer in size to a crocodile, with impressively tall crests on their heads and backs. Most of them look like they outweigh Robina as she picks her way between their snoozing bodies. 

Moving slowly but confidently, she demonstrates the procedure for planting gold on a monster. It goes like so! It's pretty much like looting them but in reverse. 

That's even bigger than a lizardfolk! They're smaller than a young adult dragon, at least, and also sleeping.

Reverse-looting is pretty obvious once you see it done. Elan takes the side of the cave Robina isn't on, un-pickpocketing a reasonable amount of money to each big lizard.

This goes pretty smoothly for the first few.

Just as he's straightening up from planting his last handful of gold, the basilisk he's bending over suddenly opens one eye and stares straight at him. A low hiss emerges. 

Aw man!

Elan's decently fast, so maybe if he steps back Right Now he can avoid getting bitten.

"Sorry for waking you up!" he stage-whispers as he does so.

He steps backwards and—oops, that's not a rock, that's a scaly lizard tail. 

A second basilisk startles awake with a snarl, whipping its head around to see where the threat is. 

"Uh-oh. Time to go!" 

Robina starts hopscotching her way towards the exit. 

She doesn't have to tell Elan twice!

"Bye! Sorry! Bye! Enjoy your gold!"

The basilisks seem to be too sleepy to bother chasing them, although they continue to hiss until they're safely around the corner out of sight. 

Robina leans against a wall. 

"Whew! That was a close one." 

Elan nods.

"It sure was!"

It was almost comfortingly familiar, though—he has a lot of practice running away from monsters.

"Are there more creatures in need of gold?"

She bounces up. 

"Yes! Let's go find somewhere else to put the rest of this gold!" 

"Hopefully they're less scary than the basilisks!"

Or the same level of scariness—the basilisk cave was more tense than scary, for the most part.

"There's not a lot in Surewould Forest that's scarier than a basilisk. Except me and my Merry Women, of course!" she jokes as they rejoin Ash and Twilly.

"Watch out for ambushes as we go, though—clawkins like to hide in the bushes and jump out to surprise attack people." 

"Oh, that's good. Do you ever get evil adventurers coming in to fight you? Or people who are mad that you took their stuff?"

He can definitely keep in mind that there may be sneaky creatures hiding in the bushes… for a few minutes, anyway. He knows that his Spot skill is, well. Spotty at best.

"Evil adventurers aren't too common around these parts. And, well, you've just seen how it usually goes when people get mad that we want to take their stuff! Some people put up more of a fight than that, but we're still a match for them." 

"When they gets really mad they sometimes complains to the mayor. Or to the king! They puts bounties up for Robina and her ladies sometimes, but nobody wants to take them."

"Well, that's not quite true." Robina grins impishly. "Someone did turn me in for a bounty once..." 

"Whoa, you got captured?"

"Or so they thought! You see, the 'bounty hunter' who brought me in was actually one of my own Merry Women in disguise! She tied me up in a way that looked convincingly secure, but that I could secretly undo by pulling on a single rope hidden within my fist. As soon as they handed over the gold, I slipped my bonds, she shed her disguise, and the two of us ran off into the woods to count our loot!" 

"Wow, that sounds like a daring escapade! Did you reveal the ruse in front of everyone? Did they try to chase you?"

She giggles. "They tried! But the rest of our band were waiting just out of sight to help cover our escape. We got away scot free and one bounty richer—and with a great story to tell!" 

Elan nods in satisfaction.

"That's the best way to live! Especially if the stories are inspirational. Who did you end up giving the bounty to?"

"Oh, I don't remember, it was a while ago. Anyway! Do you have any exciting stories of your adventures?" 

"Oooo, yes, Elan tells great stories!" (Ash has heard a few of them already.) 

Elan grins and thinks about something that would be fun to tell. He's already told Ash about how he blew up a castle and then the whole party got arrested and dragged to Azure City, and about how Nale switched places with him to frame him for murders and trap him in jail so he had to become a Dashing Swordsman… maybe he can retell the parts of it that are about Haley? He bets Robina would appreciate a Haley story. And first, some context…

"So a few months ago, my friends and I were adventuring in a castle to fight a mean evil lich, and my friend Roy broke his sword. It was his great-grandpa's sword first, so he was really mad, and when a dwarf in the next town we visited told him that he'd have to get some really rare metal from outer space to fix it, he agreed. On our way to get the metal, we stumbled into… the lair of a black dragon! Um, in my world nice dragons have shiny scales and mean dragons don't. So the dragon attacked us! We managed to beat him, but not before he almost ate my friend Haley. Now, Haley had a secret… and right before my friend Durkon healed her, when she thought she might die, she almost told me! So I had to wonder about the secret for a while.

"We spent the next few weeks hauling all of the dragon's loot out of his grotto, and the very same day that we finished and set out on the road again, this paladin lady, Miko, from a country hundreds of miles away came to arrest us for her boss! We tried to fight her, but it was raining and she had a lot of fighting moves that we didn't know to expect, so we agreed to go along with her.

"On the way to where Miko lived, we stopped at a hotel. There were a bunch of wacky misunderstandings, because it turns out that Roy looks a lot like a king the hotel people were expecting, and some guys who wanted to kill the king attacked us, and it blew up the inn… with all the dragon gold inside it. Haley took it really hard—so hard that she couldn't speak! Whenever she tried, it came out as gibberish.

"When we finally got to where Miko was taking us, a cleric tried to figure out what was keeping Haley from being able to talk right, and they found out that when she got that nasty shock from the gold blowing up, it kinda… made all the secrets she was keeping swell up her brain a little? I dunno, I'm not a cleric. But they told her if she tried to reveal one of those secrets on purpose, it would probably undo the damage.

"She was really scared of that, because… well, she was keeping those secrets for a reason. She was scared of what would happen if someone found out. And so even when she tried a couple of times, she was never able to really make herself do it. Until the night that my evil twin brother tried to kill her.

"See, we met for the first time in the lich's castle, and he wanted me to leave my friends and adventure with his. I didn't wanna do that, and he got really mad and tried to kill me. So he had this big grudge against me and decided that he wanted to switch places with me, trap me in jail, and then kill all my friends, because they wouldn't expect me to ever hurt them.

"I managed to break out of prison and hitch an airship ride to foil his evil scheme, and when I got into the room he was in… he was dancing with Haley, and she was wearing a really fancy dress! I was super confused, and he used a magic spell to trick me into thinking that she was evil and working with him. But then Haley saved the day! Because her secret was that she—loved me—"

"Um, and she realized that it would be worse to not tell me than to tell me. So she did, and got her speech back. And then we kicked my evil twin's butt. And I became her boyfriend."

And now she's not here. And maybe he's not her canonical boyfriend anymore.

"It'd be really cool if you were able to meet her someday. She's a rogue and really good with a bow, like Robina. And she spent a few months helping a resistance movement in a city that was taken over by an evil ruler."

Towards the end of that, Elan might have noticed it getting a bit harder to walk on account of the small red fuzzy lump hugging his leg. Moglins are very good at hugging even when they can only reach up to your knee. 

"She sounds like my kind of girl! I'd love to meet her someday if there's ever an opportunity."

Aaaaand then Robina has a feeling it might be good to change the subject. Would Elan like to hear about her Merry Women and some more of the adventures they've had? 

Elan smiles gratefully at Twilly. What a good friend.

"Yeah!" he says to Robina. He totally guessed right that she and Haley would be peas in a pod. And he would love to hear about Robina's adventures with the Merry Women!

Robina regales them all with the tale of how she first met Little Joan (who is not little at all) and won her respect by defeating her in a duel. Which, of course, happened on a very dramatic and cinematic single-plank bridge over a river in this very forest. 

"...and now she's my right-hand woman!" 

"Oh, wow! Are you basically best friends now? Is the bridge still here? Do you visit it every year and have a rematch for old times' sake?"

"Ooooh, we should totally do that! It's not far from here, actually, it's—" 

Ambush time! 

Someone or something about human-sized and furry leaps out of a bush as they pass, and tries to tackle Elan to the ground.

Oh no, Elan totally forgot about paying attention to ambushes! He tries to control his fall so that he doesn't hurt himself or end up solidly underneath whoever is tackling him.