Chapter 1: Negotiations

As my spear pierced through another barghest I realized that I really hated fighting semi-corporeal monsters. All that hassle with making sure they were actually solid when you hit them just wasn't for me.

Barghests looked like wolves when they were visible at all. An eerie pale green glow surrounded them, particularly their back halves. The further back you went the fuzzier their edges became until their hind legs and their tails were just pale green smudges. They were only physically there when they went on the offensive, which meant there were really only two ways to fight them. One, make them hit a shield and then immediately stab them with a spear for the second they were corporeal after impact or fight them with bare fists as skin contact immediately solidified them. And thank the gods for that, because otherwise they would be able to just phase through you and rip your heart right out. Which, as an aside, was why you never ever wanted to start trouble with a banshee unless you had a cleric along.

Speaking of clerics, there was actually a third way to fight barghests. It just was not a way that was open to me: They could be hurt by magic and miracles, which was what Alisha, my beautiful elven priestess, was currently doing. She had inscribed a sacred circle on the ground that the barghests couldn't cross without suffering sixth degree (read: bone-deep) burns and was pelting the beasts with air lances. For the most part the barghests with their weird spectral movements were too fast for her though she did manage to kill a few and succeeded in herding the rest towards Selene and me. I was doing the spear and shield thing, bouncing them off my shield and stabbing them to death, while Selene, my lovely blond sort-of-paladin, was fighting them with her bare fists, thick strips of rawhide wrapped around her forearms so the beasts couldn't tear open one of her arteries. Normally even a physically powerful human like Selene wouldn't be able to punch wolves to death but Alisha's enhancement miracle had made the recovering paladin strong enough to do the deed. Though, to be fair, I wasn't quite sure whether the strength enhancement or the aura of divine energy around her was doing more work in this case. Alisha had also blessed my spear and Selene's strips of rawhide but until she became a minor saint the blessing wouldn't add too much to our attacks. It would help a lot against truly undead creatures but barghests weren't really undead, just semi-corporeal.

“Fuck”, Selene yelled as she caught another barghest by the throat and then punched it so hard its neck snapped as she added, “Off!”

Another barghest slammed against my shield, unable to get past it to the squishy snack that was me, and on the rebound I thrust with my spear and caught it right in the eye, dropping it instantly. Then I heard another one of their distorted growls right behind me and braced myself for the upcoming pain but it never came. Instead it let out a yelp as a hammer blow of air from Alisha tossed it into the air before she sent an air lance into its open maw and out the back of its skull.

“Thanks for the save”, I told her as the barghest's body fell to the ground.

“Always”, she replied in her lilting voice and smiled at me.

I surveyed the battlefield and realized that, with that, we'd killed the final one. Thirteen barghests, all told.

Our quest had been to procure twelve barghest fangs and so we'd gone out to find a pack of the buggers but the only pack we'd managed to track down had been significantly bigger. And since killing a couple of them had pissed the rest off right and proper we'd had little choice but to kill the rest as well. Thankfully, as the quest giver only asked for twelve fangs, that left the furs and anything else we wanted to us.

We took some time skinning the things, which were now wholly tangible though still suffused with pale green light. I also grabbed the skinned bodies and shoved them into a second bag of holding. Certain circles paid good money for barghest meat but not quite enough to make me willing to butcher them myself. Getting half their worth from a butcher was good enough in any case. As barghests were only half corporeal their meat was only half as fattening as the mass should indicate so certain ladies of high society prized their meat as a diet meal. I couldn't fathom anyone eating wolf meat for any reason as it had a nasty texture and flavor to it but then again I didn't need to understand it, I just wanted money for it.

The furs, meanwhile, were amazingly valuable. When used as furs they kept their pale green glow, making them useful as blankets that also acted like nightlights and when turned to leather they could be used to make leather armor that offered great protection against spectral foes.

Night had fallen by the time we were done with the barghests so we let Alisha use her Homeward miracle to transport us back to our home in a matter of seconds, skipping the two hour trip back. The stupid ghost wolves only showed up at dawn and dusk so we'd had little choice but to let it get this late.

When we got back to our room, which was getting quite cozy now since I'd rented it back when I'd been by myself and not with two beautiful women at my side, it was late enough that we had to scramble to get seats down in the tavern, but we managed and treated ourselves to a good meal before we washed up and collapsed on the bed.

**

It'd been five weeks since our return from Urd's Embrace and since then business had been slow. My specialty as an adventurer was to help Chosen Ones take down Dark Lords but there had been no Chosen Ones in need ever since we'd slain the Dark Lord Selene had been chosen to deal with. Such down times weren't that uncommon to me and the mun I made helping Chosen Ones normally kept me fed during such droughts but now I had two beautiful women with me. We didn't have money problems, exactly, but I didn't really want them to think of me as a slob who lazed around when not on quests. Also, I had to admit, while the mun wasn't tight yet, what I had assumed to be a massive windfall from our last quest hadn't been that impressive. Alisha had joined me owning nothing but the clothes on her back and while Selene had had the payout from being a Chosen One and slaying her Dark Lord she'd given most of that to her parents and most of the rest she'd used to splurge for the first time in her life, buying clothes and toiletries she would never have been able to afford as a peasant.

Thus we'd taken to doing quests that nobody wanted for one reason or another, like slaying barghests or exterminating giant rats. Good pay but a pain in the ass for one reason or another.

But in those five weeks our group dynamic had also settled. Alisha got up early almost every day to make us breakfast. The housewife role suited her amazingly well, though calling her a housewife would undersell just how powerful she was as a cleric.

At least three days a week I would instruct Selene in sword fighting. I'd never trained under a single master for long but in ten years I'd managed to pick up quite a few tricks and Selene was a gifted learner. A few years of training and she might need someone better than me to keep teaching her.

Our plan for the day was to report our success and hand over the barghest fangs and then see what other quests we could find. The day after, though...

I felt Alisha leaning over me. The scent of breakfast had woken me up a few minutes earlier but I was still lying on the bed, eyes closed and thinking. She leaned down until her long wavy hair tickled my cheek and said:

“Good morning.” When I didn't react she leaned down even further, her lips touching my ear as she whispered into it: “I know you're awake, Felix. Get up, lazy bones.”

In response I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her down into a hug. She yelped as she was swept off her feet and then cuddled into me a little.

“Are you excited for tomorrow?”, I asked her and she gulped, so I kept probing. “Excited? Worried? Desperately embarrassed?”

“A-all of the above?”, she replied, uncertainty in her voice.

During our previous adventure Alisha had let slip that elven women ovulated every nine weeks and were particularly... in touch with their baser instincts on those days. Tomorrow would be the first moon-drunk day for her since we'd become lovers and we'd hatched a plan. A plan she'd alternated between finding mortifying and exciting over the last few weeks but from her explanations of how desperate she got when moon-drunk our plan was just about the only way we could see that would work for dealing with her urges without getting her pregnant. While we both agreed that we wanted children eventually it was not yet the time for us.

And wasn't that a thought. Me, Felix Tailor, the Godsforsaken and eternal bachelor, had not one but two women he wanted to have kids and spend the rest of his life with.

Just then Selene rolled over into us. “Oh for gods' sake, stop tempting me. Either you get up now or I'll push you both down and we'll be stuck here for a couple hours. And then the Adventurer's Guild will be overrun by the time we get there.”

“Weren't you supposed to still be asleep?”, I asked the blond warrior.

“I went for a run this morning and then went back to bed. You're the one lazing around”, she replied haughtily.

I grabbed Alisha, who was still lying on top of me, and flipped us around so she was the one lying on the bed. Then I got up while very deliberately pressing a knee in between her thighs, eliciting a gasp from her. As soon as I'd pushed against her I was gone again and stood all the way up.

“Alright, there, I'm up, are you happy now?”

Selene smirked as she gave me a blatant once over. I usually slept in nothing but my underpants and my women seemed to love looking at me dressed like that. When she was satisfied with what she saw she nodded and got up herself.

“What are you lazing around for?”, I asked Alisha who was now the only one on the bed, her thighs pressed together and a frustrated look on her face.

“You can be a real pain in the ass sometimes”, she told me.

I smirked at her choice of words, considering what we'd planned for the next day, and she blushed furiously when she realized it.

**

We'd elected to visit the Adventurer's Guild half an hour after it opened so that it wouldn't be all that busy anymore. The early bird caught the worm, certainly, but that was only true for the adventurers who preferred the low-hanging fruit, not the kinds of quests we were after. As we entered we saw a party discussing battle plans. Nothing unusual except for the fact that the party consisted of a human witch, a Wood Elf druid girl, a dwarven fighter and a Minotaur. A female Minotaur. Not only was it exceedingly rare for Minotaurs to venture into cities and even rarer for them to become adventurers, but there was just something off about the females of the species. I mean, I'm not really the judgmental type but you have to admit that there's something that's just not right about a woman with the head of a cow, never mind the hooves. Even more so since female Minotaurs had both breasts and udders.

As we passed the group we found the receptionists' desk. There were only two people in line in front of us, one of them the man in grubby armor Alisha and I had seen the first time we'd come here together. The other person was clearly with him, a cute blonde in clerical robes who seemed unsure of herself. Instead of greeting the head receptionist the guy simply leaned forward and asked:

“Goblins?”

The head receptionist, a gorgeous honey blonde with a side ponytail, gave him a radiant smile as she handed him a quest sheet and sent him on his way. The priestess had to scramble to keep up with him.

“What's up with that guy, anyway?”, Alisha asked quietly.

“No idea”, I told her. “He just really hates goblins. Bit of a weirdo but anyone who goes out of their way to kill those little shits is fine in my book.”

“Agreed”, Selene said.

The three of us walked up to the head receptionist and greeted her before I placed a bag with twelve barghest fangs on the counter. She inspected it, counting the fangs out one by one and then handed us the quest reward, minus the guild's referral fee of course.

“I don't suppose you've got any Chosen Ones around?”, I asked her after I split the mun between the three of us, not really expecting an answer. At my question, however, her lips curled up in distaste.

“I do, but...” She looked around to make sure nobody was listening in before she continued: “He gives me the creeps. Just between us I would suggest you ignore his request and wait for the next one. Professionally speaking, however, I want that man out of this establishment, stat, so if you do accept his quest I'll waive the referral fee.”

I thought back to my last meeting with the goddess Athena where she, too, had told me to ignore the next Chosen One to come asking for help. I'd dismissed her warning because to my knowledge Athena had never had my best interests at heart, but I trusted the head receptionist quite a bit more than old stick-up-the-ass Athena, so I turned to my women.

To my surprise, it was Selene who said: “We can at least talk to him and see how much of an ass he is.”

**

Part of me wanted to agree to help the Chosen One sight unseen simply out of spite. That part of me fell to its knees and gutted itself the moment we entered the meeting room. I'd been making my living babysitting Chosen Ones for six years. I'd met smug Chosen Ones, insecure Chosen Ones, arrogant Chosen Ones and meek Chosen Ones. I'd met burly warriors who'd simply wanted some extra insurance and I'd met slender pretty boys who looked like they should have been taking the lead role in hilarious comedy plays where their characters were forced to dress up like women.

But I'd never met a Chosen One I'd instinctively disliked as much as the guy sitting at that table. His armor was made of bronze and was shaped to resemble a sculpted physique with defined pecs and a six pack hammered into the metal, though the wearer certainly didn't fill out that boisterous look. His arms and legs were covered in similar armor, both the points of his sabatons and the tips of each gauntleted finger were tapered to sharp points as if made for stabbing. Poking out underneath the breastplate was a chainmail and leather kilt and a blood red cloak adorned his back.

The wearer of this gear should have been a tyrant or a gladiator. Instead, he looked like a serial sex offender. His hair was long and black and stringy and not long for this world going by his receding hairline. His face was all angular shapes, with a large rectangular nose and beady little eyes and no chin to speak of. I knew judging by appearance was bad form but the perpetual sneer on his face made it really hard to try and see past it. More interesting was his companion, a figure hidden under a brown robe that covered their features.

But I turned my gaze back to molester guy and nodded. “Chosen One”, I said evenly.

“Mercenaries”, he replied. “I hear you are in the business of helping Chosen Ones achieve their goal.”

“Correct”, I said.

“Then I am gracious enough to let you come along on my quest”, he told us.

I already hated the guy. I half considered walking away. I honestly did. But... we hadn't had any truly lucrative quests in quite a while. Weeks and weeks had gone by with no Chosen One in sight. Athena had warned me off from taking this man's contract but, honestly, screw her if she thought she could dictate my actions. But at the same time I didn't want to take the job just to spite Athena. Even the guild receptionist had said the man gave her a bad feeling. But then again she'd also said she'd waive the referral fee, so that would mean if I could milk a decent price out of this guy I wouldn't have to hand any of it over to the guild, which would make the money carry us that much further.

Were we desperate enough to work with someone like this? Not quite yet. But who knew when the next Chosen One would come along? The mun I'd gathered over the years would still stretch a while but both Alisha and Selene had expressed concerns at their own financial situation. They refused to leech off of me and so they'd been paying for quite a bit out of their own purses and their finances weren't as good as mine. So...

I decided to haggle with him. An outrageous sum would either scare him off or let us profit massively.

“You can show your grace by paying our fee”, I said.

His expression soured. Alright, soured more. “How much?”, he asked.

“Five thousand mun”, I said calmly.

That was a ridiculous sum on the face of it. Once upon a time the worth of a mun had been just enough for one man to feed his family for a day but inflation had brought it down to maybe a quarter of that value but even so five thousand mun would be able to carry us through a couple cold winters and let us splurge on equipment. But if he refused to pay then we had a valid reason to just up and leave.

His eyelid twitched as he heard the sum. “Fuck off. Two thousand.”

I turned around to walk away, not saying anything, looking for all the world as if I didn't care at all either way. Selene and Alisha hesitated for only a single heartbeat before turning as well.

“Alright, alright, five thousand”, he said.

I paused in my tracks and Alisha and Selene almost ran into me before they, too, stopped. “It's five thousand five hundred now, for pissing me off”, I said as I turned around. “And I want two thousand in advance.”

I could hear him grit his teeth, but finally he barked out: “Fine.”

I turned around and sat down in one of the chairs, my women following my example. I waited until he had placed two thousand mun in front of us before I asked: “So, where is this Dark Lord of yours? Anything else relevant you know?”

Suddenly he was all business and delivered a short, comprehensive report on the situation, to the point where I wondered if he'd been a soldier before he had been chosen. “The Dark Lord's castle is located south by southwest, about six days on foot from here. As the route we'd need to follow is in between the caravan routes leading to Calice and Carthage, the caravan network will be of limited use to us. His castle appeared about two months ago and he has already been gathering troops for several weeks. Given the way the density of monsters in the area is decreasing we are assuming him to be a beast master. Also, he has already begun raiding the nearby villages, though I guess it'd be fairer to call them probing attacks since the villages were able to fend off all of these attacks with only minor casualties so far.”

“Alright”, I said, thinking out loud, “in that case it's urgent but not desperately urgent quite yet. Next point”, I said and turned back to him. “What are your capabilities and what about your companion over there?”

He bristled a bit at the bluntness of the question. Asking about abilities wasn't bad form exactly but usually such questions were asked more sensitively. “Fine, I guess it's useful for you to know”, he said. “I was chosen by the god Ares and he gave me three miracles to use. One a battering ram, one a fire storm and one a war horn. He also gave me an enchanted gladius that creates arcs of fire when swung and that was enchanted for durability, sharpness and armor piercing.” I nodded. It was uncommon for a Chosen One to have all their miracles provided by the same god, but it wasn't too shocking. And the sword made me almost hope he'd fail in his quest because that sounded exactly like the kind of weapon I'd love to use. He continued: “As for my companion... Yume, show yourself.” He pronounced the name 'YOO-meh' and in response the figure pulled off the hood.

Yume was gorgeous. She had a rounded face with delicate features, her eyes thin like I'd been told the people from the realm beyond the volcanoes looked like, her lips thin and pale and her cheekbones high. She also had a small cute button nose and startlingly blue eyes that looked sad and defeated but held my gaze unerringly. I also noticed an ugly red leather collar around her neck. Her hair was red and mostly straight though with a bit of volume to it as it hung down to her breasts. But the most distinctive feature were her pointy ears. Not pointy like an elf's though. She had two furry triangular ears jutting out from the top of her head, the outside covered in fur the same color as her hair and the inside snow white with a ball of fluff at the base. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. A fox. A red fox. Her face was all human but the hair color and the ears were clearly fox-like, her ears twitching after being freed from the confines of the hood.

“Tell them about yourself, Yume”, the Chosen One said and there was a barely perceptible flash of red from the collar before Yume said, almost mechanically:

“Yes, Master. I hail from the realm beyond the volcanoes to the south. I am a kitsune, part fox as you can see. I excel in illusion magic though I can cast fire magic as well if necessary.” She paused, then her lips twisted and she added, as if forced to: “And I belong to my Master.” It didn't take a genius to tell that Yume wasn't in her position willingly, but I didn't comment on it.

“So, an illusionist and a Chosen One with a sword and miracles”, I said. “Along with the three of us this should be doable.”

The Chosen One nodded. “Good. We will depart right away then.”

I shook my head. “No, we won't. The three of us have personal business to attend to tomorrow. We will leave the day after tomorrow. Come here when the Adventurer's Guild opens and we will come to meet you. Until then, relax and enjoy the capital.”

He wasn't thrilled with having to wait but he had no choice but to accept and we parted ways.

“Did you seriously make him wait just because of what we planned for tomorrow?”, Alisha asked incredulously once we had put some distance between us and them.

I chuckled. “Half because of that and half because I wanted to piss him off. I didn't like his attitude.”

“And I didn't like the way he looked at us like pieces of meat”, Selene added.

“He did?”, I asked. My opinion of the guy dropped another two notches. It was now about to hit bedrock.

“Yeah, you were too busy gawking at the fox girl to notice”, Alisha told me. “In your defense, she was breathtaking.”

A normal girlfriend would have been upset by her man staring at another woman. My women instead stared right along with me.