It felt like being welcomed home. Initially, the locals only smiled and waved. Then when I dismounted the cart, and they got an unrestricted view of my feet, it wasn’t just the adults crowding around me. I had people crowding around with dozens of questions.

“Are you from Sack End?”

“Is that really a gleeman cloak?”

“Why are you travelling with a green man?”

“Why does your instrument have an aether core in it?”

“Do you know Wonderwall?”

I didn’t know where to start. In fact, I didn’t register more than half the questions thrown at me. Fortunately, Tom came to my rescue. He pushed everyone out of my way, dragging me away from the main street and over a grassy knoll.

“Give him a chance to wash and eat you, monsters!” He exclaimed. “Where’s your sense of hospitality gone? This isn’t how we treat guests, is it?”

Tom’s words got the older folk to back off, but the younger members of the crowd persisted. When I failed to answer their questions, they moved onto Hruk. Their questions appeared well-natured enough, but the endless barrage didn’t give him a chance to answer. However, he appeared more accommodating than me. Perhaps it was the first time Hruk got such attention. Barely any of it appeared negative, much to my surprise—and, from the look of it, Hruk’s too.

As a rule of thumb, the hill folk appeared conventionally good looking. Quite a few of them appeared on the heavier side but felt natural for a people who made a living off agriculture and rearing animals. They had an appealing jolliness about them, which brought a smile to my face. I guessed it was a product of the Charisma attribute. Their racial bonuses made them appealing to anyone that met them, after all.

The haranguing got annoying after a while. Thomas genuinely looked embarrassed as he whistled a couple of young men over and used their help to unload the cart. He threw a couple of harsh words at them, and several appeared to take offence and backed off. Then he paused when a young woman approached us. She had enormous feet, but they were smaller when compared to the rest and hairless. Her long light-blue sundress didn’t match the farmer-folk garb the rest wore. She stood half a head taller than everyone else as well, suggesting she wasn’t a full-blooded halfling. When I shot Analysis at her, the system only labelled her as a ‘Halfblood Halfling’ and didn’t share any more information.

“Thank you for coming, Elena,” Tom said. “These lads have a boar that got stung by a skink whip.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she studied Hruk and I. “This isn’t a boar, Thomas. It’s a gorgeous brorc and I can’t believe you let her get hurt.” Then she stiffened when Doctor Whoo climbed out from between the crates piled on Tom’s cart. She chirped angrily at one of the young hill folk men. I guessed he had disturbed her slumber. “Curious.” Her brows furrowed as she returned her attention to Hruk and me. “Did you get any medicine, herbs, or flowers off my list, Tom?”

“It’s the same as last time, Elena,” he answered. “The supply is low, and demand is high. This is Perry and Mage Hruk, by the way.”

“Nothing then.” She sighed, studying the wound on Booger’s bottom. “I’m sorry, Perry and Mage Hruk, but I can’t help you. We’ve barely got enough medicine for our own, can’t exactly spare any for a stranger’s mount. However, there are wild herb poultices that might contain the festering and slow the spread. You’ll have to go to one of the main villages or Eldar’s Port before you find something that can neutralise this.”

“Anything will do,” Hruk said. “If not for Booger, we wouldn’t have survived the last four days. Fixing him up is the least I can do.”

Elena nodded, her curious eyes inspecting his stone-gauntleted arm. When Hruk fidgeted uncomfortably, she tore herself away and untied Booger from Thomas’s cart. The large brorc protested for a moment, but then an emerald glow surrounded Elena’s arm as she stroked him.

“There, there,” she said in a soft, soothing voice. Booger exhaled loudly and appeared to relax. “That feels better, doesn’t it?”

Neither Hruk nor I were spared another glance as Elena led Booger away. The brorc didn’t spare as a glance, but I took that as a good sign. He felt comfortable enough with the woman not to need us. Then again. Booger had known us for a little more than a week. I was pleased to find Hruk looking relieved. His instincts likely told him to trust her, and I agreed with them.

After Tom finished unloading his cart, several halflings stepped forward with sacks of vegetables, grains, cured meats, cheese, milk, and grain. When they finished, his cart was a third as full as when we mounted it. Tom thanked them and gestured us to follow before heading down a narrow path towards the far end of the hamlet. We eventually came upon a large hillock-house with a wide stream flowing past it. Woodland sat across it and several stumps marked the border.

“This is home,” he told us. “The wife should have a proper meal for you in the pantry. The stream should be fine for washing up, but if you’ve got delicate stomachs, don’t drink the water. I’ve got bed to spare—”

Violent coughing interrupted him mid-sentence. The hut’s door burst open and a pint-sized halfling boy came dashing out. He pounced on Tom, throwing her arms around him. Tom laughed, returned the embrace, but then looked past him at the house’s doorway. A taller girl stood, leaning on the frame, and coughing violently.

“Welcome home, Da,” she said, wheezing.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed, Sara,” he told her. He glanced over his shoulder at the path. The curious folk had gotten bored with us and had returned to their lives. Tom’s shoulders relaxed as he fished a little vial out of his pocket and pressed it into the girl’s hands. “See if this helps.”

“You shouldn’t have, Da.”

“Go back inside. I need to show my new friends around.”

The girl glanced at us and smiled weakly before returning indoors. Tom sighed, glancing at us. The look on his face suggested he wanted to ask what was wrong. I could tell that he wanted to vent. Perhaps the thought of having a powerful artificer mage visiting hamlet gave him hope that we’d be his salvation. Then Tom’s shoulders squared, and expression hardened. I could tell he was psyching himself up.

Instead, he led us around the hillock-house to the back. A small grass-roofed hut stood facing the stream. Tom let us in and half-heartedly waved at the single cot and desk inside. “I’d offer to let you stay in the house, but I can’t with my daughter in her current state. Especially when you’re this unclean.”

Once again, I fought back the urge to ask him what was up. In the end, he didn’t need our urging and spilled voluntarily.

“It’s the gnomes, I tell you,” Tom said. It didn’t appear to bother him that he was talking to himself more than us. “First, they took over the Merchants’ Guild in Eldar’s Port and implemented import taxes on anyone that’s not directly allied with them. We barter around these parts. If you want gold, you sell your goods in Eldar’s Port. Gold gets us medicine, new tools, artificed and tinkered goods, fabric, and so much more. The only products they’ll accept from us are our mead, spirits, and pipe weed.” Tom glanced at Hruk. “As you know, Mage Hruk, none produce them as well as hill folk. That means the old balance and harmony is gone. Certain families have too much coin now, and money ruins people, I tell you.”

“What else?” Hruk asked. I suppressed a chuckle. I hadn’t yet wavered while he’d already given in.

“What do you mean, what else?” Tom asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You said, firstly. What else are they up to?”

“Oh. They moved upriver from us. We can’t tell what they’re up to, but the children started getting sick from the water. I don’t have any proof, but I bet they’re responsible for that, too.” Tom shook his head disapprovingly. “They’re raising pigs in giant cramped pens. The poor things don’t have the room to move around and graze. It’s ugly and mean, I tell you. Then they have the audacity of trying to sell it to us, demanding ridiculous rates for the trade.”

“I don’t like gnomes,” Hruk told him. “My mother was one, and she hated them as well. They come around acting benevolent and claiming they want to share knowledge and help you grow, but then it turns out they don’t actually care about you. They were after our aetherite stores. Not to trade, but to steal under the guise of training materials. They’re a crooked lot.”

“Can you help us, Mage Hruk?” Tom asked.

Hruk glanced at me hesitantly. “I don’t know how, honestly.”

“But we’ll do whatever we can,” I said, smiling. Despite his history, I had sensed not long after our meeting that Hruk had a good heart. Besides, if not for Tom, we’d be starving in the countryside with a dying brorc. “It feels like fair trade.”