The forest path back to the village felt way too much longer than the way in.
As they were coming back into the village, Lys kept two steps behind Vessa the whole time. She wasn’t talking, so he didn’t either. It felt easy enough for both of them.
She’d been locked inside her own head since they encountered the second undead, which she killed just as she had the first one.
She was not rattled, not shaken like Lys, who’d never been in a fight with undead like those before. Although he had been a little spooked by the sudden appearance of that last undead without any warning, which almost spooked both of them, at least he hadn’t gotten this closed off in his head or silent as she had been now.
He kept scanning the treeline on both sides. A habit he hadn’t fully adapted into yet, but it was already working on its own because of his hunting skill.
The forest looked very ordinary to them from here. Birds calling, light filtering through the leaves, the thick smell of turned soil, and green things everywhere. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing dead in perfect circles like those they saw back deep in the forest. The out of the ordinary stayed deeper in, past the spot from where Vessa stopped being overly tense all of a sudden. From this distance, it was almost possible to tell that there is something wrong inside the forest, which made even Vessa’s morning terrible.
By the time the first village rooftops poked through the trees, Lys’s legs were starting to complain. Not the clean burn after a good drill. Deeper. The kind that settled into the joints.
Even walking on his own was getting tough for him by this point. On top of that, Vessa picked up the pace the moment the guild building came into her sight after they entered the village. She was already somewhere else in her head, working through whatever came next. And Lys had to match her speed without being asked.
They came in along the main road. Lys caught movement at the edge of his vision. Sara’s shop across from the guild entrance had its sign up now. Workers moved inside the open doorway. A small crowd already hovered near the front.
Then he spotted Bertha’s broad back right by the entrance, apron tied on, arms crossed as she was checking people out like she was keeping watch. He thought about crossing over, saying something, checking in about their progress.
But he stopped himself, knowing that he was working right now. And Sara’s working, too. He can’t get in the way of their work. Only after Vessa dismisses him will he check up on them.
He followed Vessa through the guild door.
The inside was way busier than it was yesterday morning. Pell stood behind the counter with a fresh stack of registration papers that had grown since yesterday. He was handling two people at once with the calm efficiency of someone who was used to multitasking. Three adventurers Lys didn’t recognize studied the map board over the big wall on the hallroom’s wall. A new quest notice was pinned on the board, its paper still crisp, ink barely dry.
Vessa walked straight to the counter without slowing her pace. She leaned in and spoke in a low enough voice that only Pell could hear what she said. The man’s face changed, not alarming exactly, more the look of someone who’d just been handed information that bumped something higher on his list. He gave one short nod to her and reached for a different drawer on his table. His movement suggested he wasn’t exactly about to do his usual work right now.
Lys waited a few steps back, watching all of this.
After a minute or so, Vessa stepped away from the counter, while Pell disappeared through the back door. And finally, Lys moved up beside her.
“Uhh, Miss Vessa. Do I have to do any drills today or something?” he asked.
She looked at him. She noticed the forest dirt on his boots, on the set of his shoulders. He looked way worse than her, even though she was the one who had fought those undead, mostly.
“No,” she said, averting her eyes, her usual gruff voice back on her. “Drills aren’t mandatory. You can skip them today if you want.”
“Okay, cool. Then I’ll.. uhh…..do them tomorrow then.” He said it over his shoulder because he was already turning toward the door.
He didn’t wait for an answer from her. He’d spent enough time around her now to know she wasn’t into long sentences. Plus, he wasn’t gonna do any drills today even if she asked him to. He felt way too tired for that.
Vessa, on the other hand, was already looking back at Pell’s counter, who had come back from inside with a device in his hand, which looked very much like a communication device in a magic-based world would look like. Both of their faces looked like they had just heard something they didn't like.
-----
Lys pushed through the guild door and stepped into the afternoon light. And the noise outside hit him first.
Not the usual market rhythm of people buying and selling or moving through their day. This was tighter, lower. The particular pitch of a crowd that had gathered around something ugly and decided watching was as far as they were willing to go.
He stopped on the top step of the guild entrance.
The crowd stood packed in front of Sara’s shop. Thirty people, maybe more. Tight enough that he couldn’t see her shop’s doorway clearly. The murmur of the people rolling off toward him felt wrong somehow to him. Like they knew something bad was happening, and he didn’t know anything about it.
And it made him way too uncomfortable than he was willing to bear.
He quickly moved off the step and pushed through the outer ring of people.
The scene opened up all at once.
A big man had grabbed Bertha by the collar of her dress. And she was struggling to get his hands off her.
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