[CORBIN FOREST]

Jord scrambled down the dirty trail, always looking behind him. Did they see him sneak out of the village?

Corbin Village’s gates weren’t locked or anything, except at night. But that didn’t mean that Jord wanted everyone to know where his whereabouts were. There was a reason that he wanted to get away clean.

For you see, he didn’t keep his treasure in his house.

No no no no, that was far too easy. He didn’t trust the rest of these country bumpkins as far as he could throw them. If they knew what kind of wealth he was sitting upon, well, they’d do to him exactly what he would do to everybody else. He was utterly convinced of that.

Shame that the hunting expedition had to go out yesterday. Shame that the blue lizard nest had to be around these parts. He had to put his plans on hold for a day, but at last the moment was here.

A small clearing in the woods. Unassuming.

That was, except for the large rock leaning against a tree. Jord smirked. There it was, that was his marker. All he had to do now was move it aside, and he’d be able to access his stash. He thought about what he might do.

He wouldn’t take it all at once - No, that was far too conspicuous. Bit by bit. A few pieces one day, a few pieces another day. It would be easy.

And by the time he had squirrelled it away all into his abode, he’d present a portion of the treasures to the village elder, and then his daughter would be as good as his! He imagined how the wedding would go - how he’d kiss her in front of the big burly oaf, maybe stare directly into his eyes while doing so - and then it would be the night of the marriage...

So distracted by his own daydreams was Jord, that he didn’t notice the massive shadow that approached him from behind. Not until it grabbed him by the head, and smashed his skull into the stone.

SLAM!

Jord tumbled to the floor, his nose a broken red mess. It took him a second to collect himself - how did...?! Nobody had seen him leave the village - he was sure of it -

“Been a while, Yellow-Bellied Jord.”

Hearing that voice jolted him awake.

It couldn’t be.

He spun around, only to see the face of his nightmares and nineteen more. All large burly men. They had ripped off their identifying symbols, but Jord knew them when he saw them. Red Riders, and at the front was the head himself.

“B-boss!” cried Jord, flinging himself onto the ground like the supplicant he was. He dared not raise his head up, not in front of the Red Beast of Ermire.

“How nostalgic,” mused McDougal, as he scratched his fiery red beard. “You’d still call me boss?”

“The boss is the boss! You’ll always be my boss, even if I’m not a part of the Red Riders anymore!”

“Oh? Is that so?”

McDougal leaned down, and gripped Jord by his hair. He forcefully pulled upward, eliciting a pained yelp from the man in front of him. He stared into his eyes.

“Why do you think I’m here, Jord?”

Jord felt as if he could die from dehydration with the cold sweat running down his back. He tried to say something, anything - but his throat had stopped working and all he could do was gasp like a dying fish.

McDougal gestured to another one of the bandits with a motion of his head. The man came forward, picked up the rock with ease, and tossed it aside with an earth-shattering slam. Jord blanched. It took him ages to push that thing into place!

Another came forth with a shovel, and soon an excavation was taking place. Jord peeked out the corner of his eye, his heart sinking. Oh Divinities! They knew!

At last, the digging was complete. At the bottom of the hole could be seen a burlap sack. The men grunted to each other, one jumping down and tossing the sack upward. The other one caught it. Upon settling, the clinking of coins and other metal objects could be heard.

McDougal reached over, and pulled the string tying the thing together apart. Out poured a cascade of golden coins, precious metals, and other objects that could only be described as treasure. But McDougal wasn’t interested in those things. Not yet. He was looking for something specific.

A large red globe, the same jewel that Jord had taken so gleefully and absconded with when he had left the Red Riders.

“Did you know that mages work with the knightly orders, Jord?”

He shook his head as much as he could. Blood was still pouring out of his nose.

“I’ve met a few in my time as a knight,” said McDougal conversationally. “They come up with some very interesting inventions. Like this one, for instance.”

He scraped a little something off the jewel - it was barely noticeable, until McDougal put it right against his eye. A little red sigil, masked by its similarity in colour to the jewel it had been sitting on.

“This is what they call a tracker. I put them on all my favourite pieces. You just had to go for the big one, didn’t you?”

He raised his fist. Jord closed his eyes, waiting for the beating to start.

But nothing of the sort happened.

Jord instead gagged as McDougal forced something down his throat. He swallowed in surprise, before being thrown to the floor. It took him a second to recover before he was back staring up at the face that haunted his dreams.

“Now for the next two days, you can’t run from me. I’ll always know exactly where you are.”

Jord wanted to cry.

McDougal looked upward, in the direction of Corbin Village. He had always suspected the coward would pull something like this. So when one morning he had awoken after another excessive night of hedonism and a portion of his treasures had vanished, he knew.

It was Jord’s good fortune that before he could take action, word had arrived of the Iron Bars’ extermination campaign.

But now, it turned out that Jord had done him a favour. He had lost everything when his hideout was purged, and from what he had heard the Iron Bars were still hunting stragglers. No easy highway robbery for him, not unless he wanted the Barknights finding him and finishing what they started.

Which meant that he had no real way to earn money without risking revealing his survival.

That was, until he remembered Jord. There was still a small portion of his capital, right here in the middle of nowhere. Almost enough to get them out. Perhaps to the south. The kingdom’s officials were so easy to bribe.

Almost enough, but not quite. They were lacking food, too.

He looked into the sack, and back again at Corbin Village. The village was as far north as one could get from the capital, and travellers hardly ever ventured in this direction. It would take weeks, if not months for those in the cities to find out what happened here.

By then he and the rest of his cohorts would’ve already crossed the borders.

Once more, then, for old time’s sake.

Twenty men against a village... Would that be enough?

He noted the fortifications built around the village. The grand gate. This far north and deep in the mountains, it wasn’t surprising that they were careful about security. They could breach it by force, but why not take an easier route?

Hmmm. Maybe he should shore up his forces a little.

---

[MERDASA - Lost Lamb Pub]

Muse slammed her head on the counter table. Webby hopped off her shoulder and onto the wood, making himself comfortable.

The bald bartender raised an eyebrow. He had a splendid moustache he made use of exquisitely as they wriggled up in suppressed bemusement.

“Something strong, little lady?”

“Strongest you got.”

Not that it mattered much. Her half-orc constitution meant that unless it was specially brewed for orcs, it wouldn’t really matter. It didn’t take long for the bartender to place the large mug in front of her.

It stunk.

Several of the patrons sitting around her turned green and moved a few seats away. She took a gulp. Not bad. The bartender smiled at her. She looked at him back.

“Should you be drinking on the job?”

Ah right, she still had her Iron Bar insignia on. She looked at it in mild annoyance. Four vertical gray lines that symbolized both a fence and the bars of a cell.

“S’not a problem. I’m on my break.”

No information, nothing. She had checked around everywhere. The Adventurer’s Guild was a bust - not that there were many people there at the moment. Greater Goethia’s roaming monsters were usually taken care of by the Flags, and there hadn’t been a new Dungeon in the area in ages. No adventurers really saw the point in sticking around when work was so sparse.

The market hadn’t been much better, although the merchants were certainly happy that they didn’t have to worry about caravans getting attacked by the Red Riders anymore. Considering how recently the campaign had happened, no other bandit gangs had managed to fill the power vacuum yet. It was a good time for trade.

The local branches of the Orders hadn’t been helpful either. They had nothing to tell her that she didn’t already know. Although now that she was here in a proper city, she had access to the carrier hawks of her order. Any information that did come up, she would be able to relay back almost immediately.

The day had been long. She had checked with the information brokers, beggars, and even a few criminal sources that the Iron Bar had carefully cultivated relationships with. Even going that far had gotten her nothing at all.

She pondered to herself what the point of it all was as Webby motioned to the bartender for some milk. The little guy got a shot glass filled with the stuff, and was as happy as a clam as he sipped at it.

It wasn’t exactly like there was a time limit on this stuff, or that she’d have failed if she went back empty-handed. If these black-eyed people weren’t around, then they weren’t around. It was as simple as that.

But this was the first time she had been picked out by a superior. The first time that she alone was given a role and expectations to fulfil. She desperately wanted to do so. Especially to the Grandmaster of the Black Lamp.

She took another gulp.

He was the first other orc she had ever heard of to be a knight. And a Grandmaster at that!

She smiled to herself and gently brushed her fangs with her index finger.

Maybe even she could make it that far one day.

“...was unbelievable.”

“You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

“I swear on my mom’s grave. He was unreal. Made our Rey look like a joke.”

“Rey? Reymond of Corbin Village? Runner-up in the Ermire Martial Festival Archery Division? That Rey? Pffft. Pull the other one! Other villages would trade ten men for a single hunter that good. If it weren’t for his illiteracy, he’d be a knight.”

The voice was boisterous, but tinged with a little regret.

Muse agreed. That was regrettable. A basic education was necessary to be inducted into the orders, no matter how good your skills were. She was intimately familiar with that.

“One arrow for each blue lizard. If you don’t believe me, I’ll even put money on it. He joined the hunting party with six arrows, and he left with six corpses. Deus Lightbringer as my witness, and strike me down otherwise.”

A pair of men sat down next to her, absorbed in their conversation. And they must’ve been really absorbed, because neither of them had noticed the stench emanating from her hands yet.

That said, she understood the other man’s disbelief. Blue lizards were no joke. She had participated in a hunting exercise back when she was still at the Heraldic Academy and in training to cull a pack of the things; many of the students, especially those who had confidence in their archery, left broken-hearted at the end of that expedition.

They were smart, aware, and incredibly fast creatures. It was as if they had a sixth sense for when they were being targeted. The slipperiness of their scales was that if an arrow approached them from anywhere other than the perfect angle, they would be deflected and leave less than a knick.

Many hunters, adventurers, and knights had to give up on their ranged weapons and pick up axes, swords, and spears in order to hunt blue lizards. It still wasn’t easy, since now you were in range of their chilling breath and icy claws.

She thought back to those memories with fondness.

A Dire blue lizard had shown up at the very end of the training exercise - nobody was ready for that. It took six of the instructors, active senior knights, to take it down. It could only be called a blessing of the Divinities that nobody was seriously injured, although two students did have to take a year off to recuperate.

“And he came out of nowhere? Give me a break. If you’re looking into a career as a storyteller, I’m going to be taking the lead in the Spear Division next time!”

The man on the further end proclaimed his disbelief, but Muse could tell from his tone and intrigued expression that he was starting to buy it.

“He did kind of come out of nowhere. But if Bron’s willing to vouch for him he can’t be a bad guy. Apparently he scared Diabolos out of Jord when he walked up in the dead of night with his black eyes--”

Muse’s long ears twitched. Did she hear that right?

No, no. A lot of people referred to dark brown irises as black as well, right?

“--Dark as the night. You know where our eyes are white? Well his are black as pitch. It makes his yellow irises really stand out. I met him in the light of day and it took me a bit to get used to them. Don’t think I would’ve reacted much better than Jord if I met him in the darkness--”

Before she could stop herself, she had gripped the man talking and spun him around on his seat to face her. The man blinked, as if he wasn’t quite sure what had just happened.

Jaime was very confused. The screaming half-orc literally inches from his face probably didn’t help. What the - where did that stench come from? Was it there the entire time?

“PLEASE, TELL ME MORE!”

A whiff of her breath was almost enough to make Jaime keel over.

Webby continued sipping his milk happily, unbothered by the commotion being created by his mistress behind him. He motioned to the moustachioed gentleman that provided nourishments, and the man nodded as he reached for another bottle.

Life was good!

---

[CORBIN FOREST - Blue Lizard Nest]

The burly man behind Jord pushed him further into the darkness.

What could only be described as chunks of blue lizard littered what remained of the nest. Smashed eggs were strewn throughout as well. The smell was truly revolting.

He tried not to pay attention to how the ground moved, as though it were a breathing, living thing. Tried, yet failed.

Somehow, he was resigned to his fate.

“Heh, good thing I still had one of these left.”

In the darkest part of the cave, he saw a defeated monster lying on the ground. It was larger than the other beasts; almost twice as tall. Its blue scales were more brilliant, almost iridescent in its lustre in the dim lighting of the cave. Several large gashes littered its pelt, but they weren’t serious wounds. Their dealer clearly did not intend any real damage.

Squatting over it was the mountain of a man named Milverton McDougal, with a longsword-sized crimson axe in hand. Jord watched as the bandit pried open the beast’s jaws, and, without fear, forced something down its gullet.

An awfully familiar sight that made Jord scratch his own throat nervously.

Before long the creature had gotten up from its previous stupor. It calmly regarded the slaughtered remains of its brethren, before looking up at its new master.

“Kibi-dango,” answered McDougal when he noticed Jord’s perplexed gaze. “Managed to steal three of these off a travelling merchant from the far east. Expensive products. They make slaves of any magical beast for a few days. I think we’re ready.”

McDougal turned around.

“And you...”

Jord could see his own thin, fragile, and bloodied form reflected in the man’s eyes.

“...You’re going to make this all work.”