I took my time getting back to where we had set up camp. Who knew when the next time I would have access to a dungeon would be. And since this one effectively had its balls cut off, I figured that I might as well take some time to explore.

I didn’t find much. A lot of death. A couple of handfuls of assorted coins. The trick (I think) for finding hidden loot and even some traps. Magic sight didn’t help much — except when it did — but in my wanderings, I was moving so slowly and cautiously that eventually, I began to see things that stood out.

A protruding branch that felt off. A gnarled knob of wood. A dense thicket of thorns. A berry bush.

Another thing I found were singular plants grown in of the way locations. These I took a lot of trouble to harvest carefully. In every case digging around them to carry even the root system if I could. I didn’t know what they were, but I had read too many stories about rare herbs and expensive reagents found inside dungeons to leave even stuff that I had no clue what possible benefit it could have behind.

I did resolve to read a book on herbology one of these days. Maybe even find an alchemist. This was a world of magic, so there had to be something more to it than just some new age mumbo-jumbo of homeopathic medicine. Wilmette had shown me how to find and prepare a lot of the more common medicinal herbs I could see in the everyday world, but his dungeon diving flora schooling left something to be desired.

Eventually, I made my way out of the twisted labyrinth of thorns and trees. My first stop was the place that I had stayed the night before, but when I got there, it showed clear signs of having been abandoned. Sign one, Wilmette’s leanto had been torn down.

It was getting dark, but I decided to make the walk back to the main bivouac. I spent my time trying to figure out a way to use the healing runes that Wilmette had taught me to come up with some sort of an anti-bacteria and anti-viral spell.

The problem there was that the concept of germs wasn’t one that runes dealt with. In the end, I was forced to use an ad-hoc life arrangement for small life and then modify it with very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very-very small which wasn’t pretty. I cast the spell with between 10 and 60 very’s hoping for the best, and ran it over my skin and even modified it to my respiratory system.

Hopefully, I hadn’t swallowed any bits of corpses or blood while I fought because I wasn’t sure how to kill off the bugs that weren’t supposed to be there and the ones that were.

As I walked, I thought there had to be a way to make a runic snap shot of myself in perfect health to use as a reference point for healing. Failing that maybe I could make my immune system work harder. Something to do with white blood cells, I guess. I hadn’t been a biology student by any means, and if the guesswork in tracking down germs was hard, I could only imagine how hard it would be to figure out the runic equivalent of bloodwork.

Then I considered that there was just so much lost by this idiotic campaign to hunt down twice lived. A powerful runic mage who had once been a surgeon or a medical researcher was only one thing that could make this world so much a better place to live.

Eventually, I found my way back to the location where we had set up our base camp. Unsurprisingly I saw that Mr. Bigglesworth had been staked out and tortured, and lay dead on the ground. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I will admit that I’d come to like the filthy little guy. On the other hand, I had been putting off thinking about what to do with him. I couldn’t exactly keep him and take him back into civilization with me. And the idea of releasing a goblin back out into the forest maybe to find other goblins to breed and eventually terrorize the locals didn’t appeal to me either.

Snores were coming from Wilmette’s lento as I crawled into my own. Oh well, this was nearly over. I was sick of the forest. Never thought I would say that, but it was true. I imagined a cozy inn, good food, companionship. Of course, we were probably bound to go straight back to see my father. Suddenly the forest seemed a lot nicer again.

I woke up in the morning with the dawn and crawled out of the mass of propped up to trees and fallen branches that I had called home for the last little while.

Wilmette was sitting by the fire and there was food already cooked. He had a pack beside him.

“Half hour we leave.”

I ate quickly and then gathered up my few belongings. Ignoring the mashed deer brain and urine I’d been using as a tanning agent, I mostly had stacks and stacks of dear leather. Too much really to carry. I sighed and then bundled about twenty of the best pieces and grabbed some of the woodland herbs I had been drying and put them in my pack.

I turned my back and left the camp site. Wilmette was waiting. Carrying a several much bigger bundles. He was glowing with mana, and for second, I was jealous of his ability to keep his strength and fortitude going over long periods of time.

Then I realize that he if he was burning mana like this he might need to recharge, in which case, I was the only one around. Which worried me, and I decided to keep a careful watch. It probably wouldn’t be necessary, but just in case.

Seven days later we emerged from the forest into fields where simple rolling farmland touched the edge of the woodland. Simple crops of some sort of tuber and corn were growing in the fields.

Soon we came across a dirt road that led away from the fields, and eventually, as we walked tiny farmhouses that had been built up out of sod, dirt, and dug into the ground began to appear. At one, rustic white chickens clucked and strutted around yards and between the trees eating grubs and other parasites. A wooden wheelbarrow that had been painted red was propped up against a barn, drying out in the sun. So much depends…

As we followed the road, the houses began to take on a more permanent nature. Sod and dirt gave way to wood. Eventually wood gave way to stone buildings in the tiny village that we eventually entered.

Wilmette made his way to the local merchant and dropped all of the deer skins he’d been carrying onto the counter. “20 silver,” he said.

The merchant looked through them carefully, examining the quality, eventually saying “one gold five silver.”

They argued for a while and eventually settled on one gold fifteen silver and a handful of copper. Wilmette turned to me. “I be in Inn. Need whiskey.” And he left.

I put my skins down. A precedent had been set with Wilmette and the haggling went a lot easier. Eventually, we settled on 30 silver and 3 copper. Then I asked to see if the Merchant had any fresh, clean clothing. Wool. Not buckskin. Since after so much fighting, the stuff I was wearing was in a terrible state of disrepair.

He showed me what he had. Common everyday clothes. Nothing special. Comfortable and durable. I bought two sets and just like that the money I’d gotten from the deerskins was spent.

Then I asked directions from the merchant to the Inn. It was an incredibly small village. They hadn’t even decided on a name yet. And so the Inn wasn’t that hard to find as it was simply three more buildings down.

I entered the inn and found Wilmette at a table doing exactly what he had said he would be doing. He had a bottle of alcohol in front of him and was sitting at a table in the corner watching the room.

Finding the Innkeeper was easy. He was thin and filled with almost spastic energy. I paid for a room with some of the money I’d found in the dungeon. Then bought a beer. I doubted the water in a place like this would be sanitary.

Then I sat down beside Wilmette.

“Villiage got no whores,” he said and spat.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You spend time in forest buggering pet gobble. But real man got needs,” he said.

“I’m sure the next town will be better.”

Wilmette sighed and poured himself a drink from his bottle and tossed it back in one smooth gulp.

The inn started to fill as farmers finished up with their fields and came in to socialize and mingle with their friends. An older man with a banjo began to play music and occasionally singing simple folk songs.

It was popular entertainment, and people started to sing along. Pounding their feet and clapping their hands to the beat.

Then one song caught my attention.

The Ballad of Cart-San

“Now deaths a fickle bitch.”

I heard a twice lived say

“I’s soul’d my soul, ta be alive,

my doom’s deferred today.”

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Speed’n down the lane.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Send em on their way.

The Twice Lived was a-creep’n

Like Twice Lived’s are known ta do

A-slink’n and a-conniv’n,

Little know’n their time wuz due.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Speed’n down the lane.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Send em on their way.

Inquisitors can get em all,

and string up by their balls,

those that’s left, Cart-San gets,

to mash em where they falls.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Speed’n down the lane.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Send em on their way.

Now Cart-san ain’t got no Driver,

Nor no merchant at the steer

Cart-San just got a cargo

Of fate ta deliver near.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Speed’n down the lane.

Cart-San, Wagon-San,

Send em on their way.

So if you are a Twice Lived

This I warn your ear,

If you see Cart-San, then

Let your third life take you

Some where far from here.

Let your third life take you

Some where far from here.

It seemed to be a popular song because there was more than one call to hear it sung, and just before I went upstairs to my room someone had pulled out a fiddle to accompany the banjo and people were doing jigs and couples were kissing in the corners while the jolly aires of The Ballad of Cart-San played on.

Ah… simple rural folk. Salt of the earth, and all that.

I was up early the next morning and the inn keeper’s daughter served me a simple breakfast of oat meal and fresh berries. Then I relaxed with a beer waiting for Wilmette to show up.

An hour or so later he made it down the stairs, a bit worse off from having spent the night drinking but nothing homicidal. After he’d eaten, we asked directions, began walking again.

Nine days later we found ourselves outside of a far bigger city. Again, instead of looking for an inn, Wilmette headed straight for the most prosperous neighborhood in the town, and located the woman who was undoubtedly the most successful merchant in the city.

The moment we entered her establishment, I saw the kind of curios that would have decorated my father’s home. Gilding was everywhere. Rare silks and expensive furs lay displayed on shelves. Books and maps were behind glass cases, behind the counter. And costly swords and armor, undoubtedly more for display purposes than functional were mounted on the walls.

The merchant eyes went through various stages, the first was the desire to kick us out of her fine store, the second was to eyeball where everything was incase of theft, the third was curiosity, and then came greed, all of which passed in a fraction of a second before her face took on a friendly neutrality.

“Welcome to my establishment,” she said in a finely lilted Magrith. “I assume you are here to sell?”

Wilmette grunted, then in his barely intelligible dialect of Cretan he said “Selling this.” And he pulled out the dungeon core and placed it on the counter.

The merchants eyes were now filled with greed. “ten gold.” She said instantly in the clearest crispest Cretan I had ever heard.

Wilmette could barely contain his anger, he almost drew his sword, and he did spit on the floor. “Worth minimum 50 Platinum. Nature and Life. My guess 75 years old.”

Seeing that even though Wilmette looked and spoke like a yokel, he at least knew his dungeon cores, “You would need to go the capital to get that kind of money. Out here in the boondocks, I could maybe offer you 9 platinum.”

“Could get 12 no questions asked from Inquisitors.” Countered Wilmette.

“True. But I could probably scrounge up 15, but that would be my last offer.”

Wilmette thought about it for a little while and then rolled the core over to the woman. “Deal,” he said.

The woman picked up the core and then went into a back room with it. She came out a moment later, with some paper.

“I have the banking contract documents right here.” She lay down some documents that had denominations on them. One indicated it was worth 5 platinum. Another 3 platinum. Another 2 indicated they were worth 2 platinum and three more were worth 1 platinum.

“They have been sealed to my accounts with a bit of my blood. If you wouldn’t mind pricking your finger, and leaving a bit of blood on each, they can be transferred over to you.”

Wilmette had apparently been through this arrangement before and casually pulled out his knife and sliced open his finger leaving a trail of each of the 7 banking documents.

When he was done, the woman said. “A pleasure doing business with you my good half elf, if you see anything in the store that catches your eye I can definitely arrange a discount. And if you happen to stumble across any similar goods, keep my establishment in mind.”

Wilmette turned without saying anything and left the store. Our next stop down was of course the local branch of one of the Empire’s banks, where Wilmette deposited his money, and withdrew a hefty bag of gold coins.

After that, he led us to an inn in the seedier part of town. It was near one of the gates out of the city. But thankfully it didn’t look like the kind of place that would have bedbugs.

Wilmette simply walked in, went up to the bartender, plopped down ten gold coins and said “Stay 3 weeks. Food, room, bitches. Lots of bitches.” Then he thought about it for a second and plopped down ten more gold “Same for boy. Show him difference between Woman and Gobble.”

He then turned to me and handed me three gold coins. “We stay here 3 weeks. Solstice soon. Elm turn 12, naming ceremony. Father tell me, if you live, I give name. Maybe you want watch others get Status ceremony. Rest. Fuck hoes, not gobbles.”