Chapter 20: The Village

In general, the further you get from civilisation, the stranger the landscape and wildlife get. Floating islands, illusory forests, half-formed chimera beasts… Of course, there are always exceptions.

A particularly good example is the forest spanning over almost half the kingdom of Stalia, which has never been fully explored despite numerous efforts over the centuries. Maps made in previous expeditions would be shockingly incorrect on the next one, and even navigation by the stars or compass prove ineffective once one ventures deep enough.

Of course, the real reason for this is exceedingly simple, as…

-The page ends there.

(POV Aaron)

Before answering his call for food, I check for signs of dehydration, as that can be a more immediate problem than hunger. There are none, so I shrug off my pack and fished out some pieces of dried meat – something you can never go without when travelling is long-lasting food – and slowly feed him a few pieces.

After exhausting almost half my supply of the stuff, he finally recovers enough to push himself up into a seated position. He looked around at us, embarrassment clouding his features.

“Um, thank you for, for saving me…” He says awkwardly, scratching his head. Then he seems to think of something, and his face brightens. “Are you dwarves?” He says, pointing at Jakin and Boaz. “And a human?” He looks at me. “How strange…” Then, as if realising something, he suddenly starts stuttering apologies, “Uh, not a bad strange! I just meant, you look interesting – ugh, I mean, just, I’ve never seen anyone, who isn’t a demon before. Sorry.”

He slightly bows his head in apology under our bemused gazes.

“So, how did yeh end up at the edge of a forest with no food?” Boaz asks him.

His face flushes slightly in shame. “I… I have food but, I… can’t cook.” He almost mutters the last part.

Boaz raises his eyebrows incredulously. “And yeh didn’t think of that before you be going into the woods?”

“No…” He scratches his head. “Can… can I travel with you, just, to the next city?” He asks hesitantly.

I look to Jakin and Boaz for confirmation. Shrugging slightly, they nod at me. “Sure. Are you alright to walk?”

In response, he puts one hand on the ground and pushes himself to his feet. We set off again down the road, this time with an additional member.

As we walk, I occasionally glance around to scan the landscape, a habit picked up from our few run-ins with tigers. On one of these instances, I happen to spot our new demonic friend looking intently at the dwarves’ huge shields. After a while, he turns around and catches my inquisitive gaze, but he just awkwardly turns to face ahead again. After a few seconds, he surreptitiously glances back towards me, then seeing me still looking at him, he turns his head away again.

Finally, I just clear my throat and say, “So, what are you planning to do once you get to the city?”

His tense face visibly relaxes. “I’m going to become an adventurer!” He says confidently.

Slightly taken aback, I take another look at him, trying to see if he’s physically capable of... well, fighting. I can’t see much due to his loose sleeves, but it doesn’t look like he’s buff. Not that that’s the only thing that determines fighting ability, but it certainly helps.

In fact, although I couldn’t say for certain because he’s a different species to me, but he looks quite young. Couldn’t be older than twenty.

“Do you know how to fight?” I ask uncertainly.

He shrugs. “I got taught how to fight for a few years, then practiced on my own for a few years after that, so I think I’ll be okay.”

“Do you know how to fight monsters?” I clarify.

“I… I’ve never fought one before. But if I start with weaker monsters and work my way up, it shouldn’t be too hard…” He says, sounding a little unsure.

It finally hits me that I’ve never asked him for his name, or even introduced ourselves. “I almost forgot. I’m Aaron, and those two are Jakin and Boaz. Jakin is the one with the scar on his cheek.” I explain.

He pauses a moment and shrugs. “Xiltroth.”

Huh. Demons have interesting names.

“Are you three adventurers? Have you ever fought really powerful monsters?” He asks curiously.

“We’re adventurers alright. As for powerful monsters… Now that I think about it, we do have a great story we can tell him, don’t we?” I say half in surprise as I looked towards the twins, at which they nod appreciatively.

Jakin says, “How about yeh tell him, yeh seem excited enough about it.”

I grin widely. “Well, I’ve just never had any interesting stories to tell before. At least, not ones that were about me. Okay Xiltroth, do you want to know how I got these scars?” I begin.

After that ends, we continue in silence for a while, before Boaz throws his arm to stop us.

“There be something strange about the ground ahead…” He says, stooping down to take a closer look.

Jakin stoops down next to him. “Earth here be freshly turned… the rest of the road is dry and hard. What was your name… Xiltroth, try whacking it with your stick.”

“It’s not a stick, it’s a staff!” Xiltroth scowled, but he reaches out his staff over the patch of slightly discoloured earth and gives it a firm poke.

The ground deforms slightly inwards where the staff touches the earth. Confused, he gives it a stronger push, and the ground caves inwards, revealing a huge hole. It encompasses almost the whole breadth of the road.

I look over the edge, scratching my head as I look down the hole. It must be almost twenty meters deep… aaaaand there’s spikes at the bottom. Who the heck would have the time and resources to dig something like this?

I can’t come up with anything, so I try asking the others. “Who would have the time and resources to dig this?”

Boaz shrugs. “Whoever it is, they be more powerful than us. Let’s just get out of here.”

“No point in hanging around looking at it, anyway.” I say, making my way around the perimeter of the hole.

Still confused about the whole situation, we continue on our way.

Throughout the day we pass through a few small villages, and the road branches off many more times to other villages, presumably. When we stop for a meal, we find that the meat in Xiltroth’s pack has a weird odour… It has gone off, so we chuck it. Oddly, Xiltroth professes his astonishment that food can go bad. How sheltered a life had he lived?

But then when we settle down some ways from the road to camp for the night, he seems perfectly okay with it, even though he doesn’t appear to have a tent with him. He just gets a few pieces of clothing out and hunkers down to sleep on them.

Eh? I’m confused. Is he a sheltered kid or not?

We take it in turns to keep watch, apart from Xiltroth of course. It’s one thing to walk alongside someone during the day, but I don’t trust a stranger to guard me at night. Nothing happens during my shift, just the quiet, constant sounds of insects and things shifting in the breeze, but I am roused from my slumber some time later by the sounds of fighting. It’s very brief, dying down scarcely a dozen seconds later, so I just shrug internally and drift back to sleep.

When we wake up I see the corpse of a man-sized beetle resting on the ground a few meters away from camp, its shield-like wings crumpled and twisted to one side, and its armoured head bearing a deep hole. Stretching, I yawn and vaguely wondered if it was capable of flight prior to its wings’ destruction.

I say good morning to the dwarves and start packing up my tent. We don’t have any fresh meat to cook, so we resign ourselves to nibbling at dried meat and biscuits around the last flickering embers of the fire. Makes you miss cereal, but golly is that breeze refreshing. And the view is so lush… Forget those concrete jungles, I’ll take this any day.

Half way through breakfast I finally remember Xiltroth. Still gnawing on the chewy meat, I crouch down and shake his shoulder. His eyes shoot open, blink a few times, then focus on me.

“Good morning.” I say to him. “More dried meat for breakfast, I’m afraid.”

He gets up, packing his bedding – such as it is – back into his bag before moving over to the fire. Boaz hands him a portion of our food. Our supplies are starting to dwindle because of our extra member, so we’ll have to stock up in the next village we pass.

After a second, Xiltroth points at the bug corpse, exclaiming, “What on earth is that!?”

Jakin chuckles. “That, is the reason we keep guard at night. Monsters. ‘Course, this one had the bad luck of thinking of me as its supper. Its slick armour may have helped it against a sword or arrows, but my pick be another thing entirely.”

“I don’t suppose it would be worth taking along?” I ask. “I can’t imagine anyone would be interested in the meat, and it looks like you did quite some damage on the largest armour plates.”

Boaz goes over and takes a closer look. Musingly, he says, “There be a few of the smaller sections that are left undamaged… nothing else of worth that I can see.”

“That thing is worth something?” Xiltroth asks, still looking in disgust at it.

Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Of course. Everything is worth something to someone. It just depends if you can find that someone. I can imagine these plates being used to cheaply produce armour, and there’s always plenty of people who want armour. So, it has value.”

On that note, we head off again.

It’ll be great if, in addition to non-perishables like dried meat and perhaps a few pieces of fresh meat for that night, we can also get some other things, like oats and some more fresh vegetables. My vegetable supply is running dangerously low…

And maybe we can make some porridge if we have oats. I remember one of the twins has a pot…

From then on, we see the occasional monster. They are all the same giant beetle as before.

Although they are unable to fly, they are able to perform extended leaps with the assistance of their wings, and their mandibles look considerably powerful – not that we are ever slow enough to let them use them on us.

As for their hard exoskeletons, A single strike from my mace can heavily damage it, and my second on the same spot can crush through to the flesh below. And if you are able to disable their fragile wings early, they become fairly slow moving, leaving them open to heavy, accurate strikes.

All in all, a difficult opponent for a beginner, but not much of a challenge for an iron rank adventurer. Plus, if you had fire magic, disabling their wings becomes as easy as directing a single plume of flame their way.

Consequently, Xiltroth doesn’t attempt to fight one.

Most of the day passes in a flash, and it’s soon evening, so when we see a village in the distance we eagerly hurried towards it. To us, it means warm food, supplies to last us the rest of the way to Xantor – which we have nearly reached, if the map we have was any indication of reality – and possibly even a bed to rest the night in.

As we near, I see that the wall surrounding the village is visibly taller than that of other villages. Perhaps due to the large jumps of the giant beetles?

But the gates are open, as they oft are in villages during the day, and we pass through them without incident. Inside the village, people in plain clothing walk around carrying baskets, bundles of sticks…

We head for one of the largest buildings in town: the tavern. In small places like these, you’re lucky if they even have one, but this place does. I suppose that on days where there’s nobody from out of town staying in, they make ends meet by acting more like a bar and restaurant for the local folk.

After having a deliciously warm meal containing actual freshly cooked meat and vegetables, I asked the tavernkeeper about available rooms while Boaz and Jakin enjoy a round of drinks and Xiltroth contentedly pats his full stomach.

They have a simple communal room, which has five beds but is still cheaper than four individual rooms, so we pay for the night. To our dismay the lock on the door is broken, but as there is very little we could do, we just lean the single, rickety chair in the room against the handle.

Or, we try to, but the chair is too short and the handle too high for it to work properly, so we just leave it in front of the door. Thoroughly disgruntled about the lack of security, we get into the beds.

In comparison to modern mattresses, these beds are the epitome of discomfort, but they are still a far cry from bare earth and canvas tents.

I drift off into sleep a short while later.

I awaken to a hand jostling my shoulder, and my eyes snap open, struggling to see who it is in the darkness.

The white hair and red eyes gives the person away as Xiltroth, and I relax somewhat. I glance out of the window, also devoid of latch or lock, and see that it’s still pitch-black out. I look questioningly at him.

He starts whispering to me. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was just listening to the wind, but then I overheard people talking downstairs.” He gulps. “They were discussing how best to kill us in our sleep and divide the gold.”

My mind grinds to a halt for a moment, then sputters back to life and starts to race. “They referred to us, specifically?” I ask, equally quiet.

He nods grimly, his face oddly pale.

I consider his face for an instant, trying to tell whether he’s lying. He looks too scared for it to be a lie, so he’s probably telling the truth. Still, that doesn’t exactly mean we can go down there, guns blazing.

They could just be talking about it, and never actually be planning to go through with it, and even if they were planning to kill us, we’d have no proof if we went down there and killed them.

Either way, best to inform the dwarves first.

I walk over to Jakin and tap him on the shoulder, waking him up. He looks at me questioningly, but I just put my finger on my lips in a motion for silence and repeat the process for Boaz.

I motion them closer and start whispering. “Xiltroth says he heard people planning to kill us downstairs.”

They look understandably taken aback, then begin to furrow their brows. Boaz speaks quietly, “For now, how about we try and listen in as well. The more we know, the better.”

Everyone nods in agreement, and we all stop talking, moving, we even try to breathe quieter. I activate mana reinforcement, since it increases not only physical strength but also the five senses.

After concentrating for a few moments, I hear a soft voice from below the floorboards. We are on the second floor, so it’s likely it is coming from the bar area.

“-e boss will be wanting most of the cut, no doubt. A right shame, but that’s how it is.”

A second voice spoke. “Can we get around to it already? If I’m almost falling asleep, they must be sleeping like logs.”

The first voice replied to him, “A few more minutes, then we’ll go up and kill them. And keep quiet, will you? This gets much harder if they’re awake.”

The voices stop speaking entirely.

“Let’s get our gear on, then.” I keep my sentences short to avoid unnecessary noise.

I put on my armour slowly and carefully.

“Will, will we be able to beat them?” Xiltroth asks, clutching his staff tightly in both hands.

Putting my pack on my back, I roll my shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to get it to settle properly. I turn my eyes to him. “Relax. You won’t be able to fight if you burn out your muscles gripping your staff.”

His hands relax a bit, but his face is still fearful. Sighing, I say, “Look, we’ve escaped from a horde of werewolves before. A couple people won’t be any problem for us. Just try to keep track of your surroundings, and we should all be fine.”

He nodded, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. When he opens them again, they are calm and determined.

We sit down on our beds, waiting in silence for our assailants to approach. In the dark. With the chirps of crickets beating constantly upon our eardrums.

It doesn’t take too long before my attentive ears catch the sound of a creaking stair.

And not long after, slow footsteps coming down the corridor towards our door.

The door handle quietly turned, and the door starts to open… then it hits the chair, loudly dragging it across the wooden floorboards.

They pause for a moment, then slam the door open. During this, the chair gets caught on a wonky floorboard, tipping sideways behind the door. The violently opening door takes off the chair leg with a loud CRUNCH.

Two men stand in the opening of the door, looking quite awkward.

“Stealthy.” Comments Jakin dryly, glaring at them.

They grimace, taking out long daggers and charging at the person now standing opposite the door – me.

But we’ve already been ready for them for a while now, and the twins aren’t exactly about to let me face them alone.

Each dwarf slams into one of them with their shield, pinning them against the wall. They are barely able to move their limbs under the pressure.

“So,” said Jakin threateningly. “Why don’t you tell us all about why you decided to kill us?”

They stay silent.

I decided to try a different tactic. “Look, we don’t have to kill you. If you talk, we’ll just hand you over to the guards.”

The first man doesn’t say anything, but the second one started laughing. “Yeah, hand us over to the guards!”

That doesn’t bode well. After that, neither of them says a word, apart from occasional chuckles and exchanged glances. So, with a brief struggle we tie them up, leaving them in the room as we go downstairs to see what’s what.

After descending the staircase and entering the bar, we are shocked by the scene before us.

I think every single villager we saw today is sitting there, still in plain clothing, most of them quietly nursing drinks.

All of them turned towards us in a single, almost concerted movement.

For a moment, we just looked at each other.

Then they all pull out weapons.

…Well, damn.