I took first watch, letting the others rest. Tom took the second shift and Hruk the last. We worried our attackers had allies who'd come looking for them. Fortunately, the only faces we saw belonged to foxes and other scavengers interested in dead flesh.

"It's strange to see gnomes in a bandit party, isn't it?" Tom asked the following morning as we rifled through the dad's corpses.

"It is," Hruk replied, nodding.

"Why?" I emptied the gnome's Satchel onto the ground. Several aether crystals, a couple of vials, a flask, and a coin purse fell out. "Can't anyone become a bandit?"

"It's just odd, is all." The crystals got Hruk's interest. He gathered them up and held the almost perfectly cut pieces up to the light one at a time. "Dwarves and gnomes are the richest races on the disk and take care of their own. Their natural gifts make them hirable by most guilds too. Mostly the poor, desperate, or criminals turn to banditry."

"Reckon they could be working for someone looking to control the roads?" I asked. "They didn't sound keen on attacking us until I mentioned the supply route."

"That seemed odd to me too," Tom commented. "This is the quickest route to Eldar's Port."

"I think it's our gnomish friends," Hruk stated. "We should tell someone."

Tom shook his head. "Without more evidence, you'll get blacklisted by the guilds for such an accusation. The gnomes are a powerful lot after all."

“I suppose you’re right.” An exasperated sigh escaped Hruk. “It’s a shame really, because anyone that thinks about it can see all the pieces. If they control the roads and interrupt land trade routes, people will have no choice but to use the products coming down the rivers.”

“The pieces are all there really,” said Tom. “The question is: who has the power or the foolhardiness to stand up to the Seekers of Oth?”

“Seekers of Oth?” The name got my attention. It sounded more like a religious order than a guild or mercantile organisation.

“They’re the group that runs the trade routes between Schwartzberg and Eldar’s Port,” Tom answered. “Ever since a gnome joined the Merchants’ Guild Council, they’ve been on the rise. The pig farm upstream from Dil’s Nook belongs to them too, I’m sure.”

“The dwarves haven’t let them into the Bankers’ Guild yet, have they?” Hruk asked.

“No.” Tom chuckled. “The dwarves don’t trust outsiders at all. You’ll only ever see dwarves handling the gold with their kobold servants handling the lesser jobs. For a travelling bard, you know surprisingly little about the world, Perry.”

“He’s spent the last year in a goblin prison after angering my former tribe’s shaman,” Hruk said before I could reply. “You said your former master was a champion, didn’t you, Perry?”

“Well, that explains the odd music, ideas, and deep pockets,” Tom commented, returning to rifling through the bandits’ belongings.

It came as no surprise that only the gnome had items of value. None of us wanted to claim their weapons despite minor rune work on the bandit leaders’ axe. The fool never got the opportunity to use it. Hruk had disarmed in and they had brawled instead. It likely held monetary value but at the same time, but Hruk claimed runescripts were often recognisable. If gnomes truly hired the bandits, we didn’t want people connecting their demise back to us. So, we only claimed the aether crystals and coins. Since Hruk understood them better, he held onto them.

“It’s strange for a bandit to hold on to so many of these,” Hruk said, putting them away one at a time. “They either robbed a trader dealing in a variety of crystals or got them for various sources. Either way, this is a small fortune, Perry. It makes no sense for bandits to carry around this kind of wealth. They’d either stash it somewhere or find a fence with these stones.”

“Can you use them, or do we have to try fence it ourselves?” I asked.

“We won’t have to go through all of that trouble,” Hruk answered. “Repurposing all of this shouldn’t be an issue. Question is: what do we do with the remains? Just leave them here for someone to find?”

We both glanced to Tom for an answer. He knew the area better than us. In the end, I used the Wand of Shaping to create a couple of pillars three metres apart. The ground between them sank to compensate for the missing soil and stone. We pushed the body into the hole before collapsing the pillars.

Besides the trampled grass and tossed earth, the area appeared untouched. When I used a departing melody in the hopes Life Mana would encourage local flora to cover our tracks, the surrounding tall grass stirred. Neither Hruk nor Tom noticed anything out of the ordinary as they focused on feeding the beasts and packing up the bedroll. But I did. Tiny clay figures peeked out of the clearing’s edge at us. Their faces lacked defining features. Instead, the heads resembled an upside down eggs with little holes cut into them.

I glanced back at the others, but only Doctor Whoo appeared to notice them. She snuck closer in her once again miniature form, inspecting the little creatures from behind me. When the sunlight struck the entities, they diffused, filling them with an orange glow.

“Earth spirits?” I whispered.

The little figures shook their heads.

“Field spirits,” one of them answered in a soft, cricket-like voice. “Is the green man going to hurt us?”

“Why would he hurt you?”

“The blue fire,” another one replied. “It burns. First, he hurts us. Now, you feed us.”

“I apologise for that,” I said. “Hurting you wasn’t our intention. If we knew you were here—”

“We’re everywhere,” they told me in unison.

“I’ll be more careful. I promise.” I glanced back at the others. They remained oblivious. Meanwhile, my fingers continued to dance over the strings and Life Mana radiated from Sasha. I guessed the music had drawn out the field spirits and Spirit Sense helped me see and converse with them. “But, yes. We left the food for you underground where you can feed with the worms, the beetles, and all your other friends. Is that alright?”

“They nodded. We’ll eat the flesh and nourish the plants, then ground the bones into dust. You’re a nice champion. We’ll ensure no one finds out what you did to the bad people.”

My melody and the spirits together accelerated the local flora’s growth further. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight. The applications of Sasha’s mana, when combined with my rapidly growing Mana Control, continued to astound me. Now I had Spirit Sense to befriend the world’s ethereal denizens, too. Tracy truly did not know how badly she screwed up by giving me the Coward’s Brand.

We continued to risk it down the more dangerous roads for another day. Then, finally, we left the wild hills and found ourselves surrounded by farmland. Tom pointed out hill folk villages and towns shared by them, humans, other races too. We heard tales of funny clients, dodgy scribes, and greedy merchants.

The traffic on the road increased as well, and we passed patrols as well. I soon learnt that Eldar’s Plains, and the cities didn’t have an army. Instead, guilds shared policing and protection duties. Tom explained how the Adventuring, Hunting, and Mercenary Guilds took the lead. Then organisations like the Merchants’ Guild had a private army for protecting their financial interests too. However, others kept a close eye on them, since they were more likely to protect their own interests over the general good. Now with rising tensions because of the gnomes, that was truer than ever.

I took the journey as an opportunity to practise my original songs and adapt to Arena Disk. The stereotypes of hill folk being jolly folk had proven true. Every evening, I’d spot members of the hamlet congregating in each other’s gardens for a drink and smoke. After a couple of pints, they’d sing their people’s song. It was educational, and Tom helped keep the memories fresh on the road.

When we camped the following evenings, we were fortunate enough to have company. If the other travellers were hill folk, we naturally joined each other around the campfire and exchanged produce they’d brought from home. If they were human, Tom invited them to join us anyway, and the temptation of the mead casks made refusal impossible.

“I can’t believe you had a magical beast so close to my children,” Tom said, glancing at Doctor Whoo as she napped atop a barrel of mead. “My wife would kill me if she ever learnt what she truly is.”

“I’m sorry,” I replied, chuckling. “I doubt people would be willing to talk to me if they knew I had a shrike on my heel. For safety’s sake, I keep her miniaturised when around civilization.”

“You project a deceiving image, you know. Trained by a champion and tamer of magical beasts. Peregrin Kanooks isn’t the harmless bard he claims to be.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Hruk said, leaning off the back of the cart to feed Booger an apple. “I used to think the hill folk were a gentle people until I met Perry.”

On the fourth day of our journey, Eldar’s Port came into view. A titanic river extended from the left, emerging from thick woodland—mangrove swamps according to Hruk—before cutting through the plains. Eldar’s Port extended along its banks. The city appeared forever extending along the river’s edge, with rough wooden shacks standing on stilts on the water. The river continued, seemingly endlessly, to our right.

It occurred to me then that I had never seen the horizon while on Arena Disk. After a set distance, everything just got hazy. I saw the clouds, but not the land beneath. It made sense. We were on a disk and not a sphere. Only ocular power and meteorological occurrences acted as deterrents to my vision.

The cart slowed as I took our surroundings in. We finally found ourselves in line to enter our destination. Armoured humans and gnomes walked up and down the queue. Those at the gate thoroughly inspected every vehicle entering. Pedestrians moved in and out of the city at a quicker pace, but they, too, spent surprisingly long talking to the guards.

“They’ve increased security since the last visit,” Tom commented. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Didn’t you say they still have a soft spot for hill folk spirits and pipe weed?” I asked. He nodded. “Good. Let me do the talking. I should have enough Charisma to get us in.”