Arn fancied himself clever, or, at the very least, an expert daydreamer. Nonetheless, try as he might, Arn could not dream up with a scenario where there wasn’t actually a secret group out to kill him. “Its all a mistake,” “she is crazy” and a dozen other scenarios sounded just fine until Arn got back to Keana dissolved into glowing butterflies, and all his scenarios promptly broke into bits like a ship splintering on rock. So, reluctantly, Arn more or less accepted that if he wasn’t actively being hunted now, he could be at any moment.

Arn carefully looked back every so often after the group left town. No one was following, but he was all too aware that one road and one gate led back into Reach. The town guard relied on lookouts on Reach’s walls, and did not patrol. Eventually, the road split into three branches and there were multiple trails into the forest. For now though, ambush was a very real possibility.

Arn wanted to believe that there was something clever he could do to stack the odds, but kept circling back to Elder Dannis’ guidance to know what he was, and what he wasn’t. He was level nine. Fighting, even from a superior position, would be a disaster. His folly in being open about his class meant he couldn’t hide; not in Reach. He could ask folks to keep an eye out for the tattoo, but what good would that actually do? The guard in Reach was far stronger than the guard in villages like Arn’s own Amber Pastures, but what could he actually tell them at this point given how little he knew, and how far-fetched it all sounded? No, he would hear Keana out, but like as not he would need to pack up or sell his too-recognizable were-bear coat, part ways with the group and head somewhere new. The thought made Arn sad, and did little good at present, so he banished it for now, and resolved to make their last expedition a productive one. Whatever the future held, extra coin could only help, and level ten certainly wouldn’t hurt either.

Having picked a corridor that appeared free of obstacles and hazards on their map, the group ignored the marked paths and simply wove through the trees, heading south in a meandering back-and-forth pattern. Already, the foliage on the forest floor was visibly starting the recovery process, with tiny shoots pushing through the ground in places. Still, the forest floor was relatively bare, and it was easy to spot the few things the ravagers had avoided. The group found a fair quantity of mushrooms, and the occasional gem-heart in a small fraction of the many sets of bones they came across. Netting a gold or two each for something over a day’s work was starting to look realistic, and the mood of the team was good. Arn, however, grew increasingly anxious with every find – his life didn’t seem to work this way, not even in short stretches. Sunshine was a warning to watch for rain.

The rain, however, didn’t come. The group harvested and meandered, speculated about Keana/Jennifer, and more generally wondered how in the Hells life could possibly have become so odd so quickly. Eventually, it came time to camp. Arn volunteered to take the watch for the entire night; the inn had felt like heaven last night compared to his time in the tree, and he had slept well. Rested, stressed and needing relatively little sleep, he wasn’t going to sleep anyway. Arn tried to focus on manipulating flame mana – The Path to Power had its usual daunting list of different exercises – but every sound was a distraction, and his heart wasn’t in it in any event. Arn quit practicing shortly after unlocking level two of Flame Mana, and whiled away the hours imagining scenarios from life on the run, to settling down somewhere as a guard. Arn was starting to understand the appeal of settling down with a “nice fat wife” as Elder Dannis had mentioned; certainly seemed reasonable if you compared it to “consorting with a demon,” if that was what Keana was.

The night seemed to stretch forever to Arn as his thoughts spun round and round to little effect, but dawn came right on time regardless. As the group headed back, varying their track just enough to continue checking new areas, Arn tried to relax. Although Arn later attributed the disaster to cursed karma, the reality was simpler; with their focus on the ground, the party forgot one of Mayor Stillwater’s oft-hammered rules – “look up now and then.”

Walking in front of the group, Arn’s had no warning other than Val’s scream. Turning around, Arn saw the left side of Val’s face, shoulder and torso covered in a dog-sized green slime. Arn saw Pepper looking up in horror and reflexively raised his shield above his head just as a slime slammed down from above. Arn tilted his shield to the side and shoved with little effect; Arn reluctantly dropped his shield as the slime edged towards his hands. Squeaker let out a shrill protest, took off and small flames licked his wings.

Val flailed at the slime with his dagger uselessly while screaming. Sar shot a grounded slime with a Fire Lance, which caused part of the slime to catch fire, visibly shriveling. The burning slime changed direction, fleeing, albeit slowly. Slimes continued to plop to the ground, slowly heading to the closest target. Pepper pushed Sar ought of the way of another falling slime and shouted “there are too many, Arn grab Val and run!” Arn grabbed Val around the waist on the opposite side of the slime and hoisted Val in the air as Squeaker fluttered about them trailing fire.

Pepper led the way, pulling Sar. Arn followed with Val around his shoulder, ignoring a deepening burning sensation as the slime on Val slowly expanded over Arn’s were-hide sleeve and uncovered hand. Pepper ran 100 feet and commanded “drop him. Sar, burn it. Carefully!” Arn put Val down and pulled back, but the slime simply stretched, holding tight to the sleeve of his were-armor and his unprotected hand. A tiny streak of flame hit the slime connecting Arn’s hand to Val as Squeaker flared in, small claws extended. Sar hit the main body of the slime covering half of Val with a flame wave while grinning madly. After a moment, Pepper pushed Sar away hard shouting “enough!”

Green Slime Slain by Party!

After the notification, the slime surrounding Arn’s arm lost coherency, some slowly drooping to the ground. A coating of slime remained over Arn’s hand and continued burning, but Arn ignored it to survey the slimes. The slimes were ambush predators, painfully slow on the ground, and appeared to have given up the attack.

Arn noticed Sar start to walk towards the slimes and shouted. “Sar! Burn my hand first, then get your free experience.” Sar turned with a mad smile and obliged, hitting Arn’s hand with a wave of fire. Arn pulled his hand away shouting “enough! Go get em!” Squeaker landed on Arn’s shoulder radiating pain, but didn’t look badly hurt; his fire seemed to have protected him from most of the slime’s acid. Arn spared him a brief pet for reassurance and turned to Val. The left half of Val’s face was pocked by ulcerous bubbling flesh, a soft glow the only evidence that Pepper had used her heal.

“Arn! Hold his head still for me!” Pepper shouted. Arn knelt and grabbed Val’s head. Pepper knelt on his upper chest, pinning one arm easily and fought to get a knee on the other. When she had Val under a measure of control, she uncorked a healing potion, putting a finger on the opening to control its flow, and poured about half over the wound. Pepper then shoved half the bottle into Val’s mouth as he moaned, held his jaw and tilted the bottle. Val’s bucking slowed, but his eyes remained rolled back in his head, and his face wasn’t healing fast enough for Arn’s liking. The slime left acid behind. Val has a healing potion as well, doesn’t he?

Arn hurriedly explained his thought to Pepper, and began searching Val’s pouches. Arn quickly found the potion and handed it to Pepper, who remained straddled over Val. Pepper took the potion, but hesitated. “This won’t be enough. You can’t just use two back to back. But no choice I guess.”

Pepper again poured half the bottle on Val’s wounds and forced half into his mouth. Contrary to Pepper’s warning, however, the results this time were actually significant; Val’s face progressed from a hideous ruin to severe, but less horrific burns. Val came to with a gasp, wild eyed and asked, “what? The slime…”

“You’ll be ok now” Pepper explained. “Might have to pay some serious coin to make sure you don’t end up with any scars. You know, preserve those pretty boy looks. Considering . . . well, just be grateful we had two healing potions. First one neutralized the acid I guess. Now shut up, let me hit you with Restoration one more time, then if Sar is done roasting slimes, we can get the Hells out of here and get back to town.”

* * *

In a metal vault separated from his storefront by fifty feet of granite, Omar Silver bustled around, organizing the valuable parts of his newest shipment. The vault was built by his grandfather over sixty years ago, and had never been robbed. Nowadays there was likely no one left that even knew the store had an underground vault, which was the way Omar liked it. His backroom above (i.e., what everyone else imagined was the heart of his store) was itself well protected, but had been successfully robbed once during his lifetime. Which was fine; good even. That was perhaps the key secret his grandfather passed down – the longer a store goes without a robbery, the higher-level thieves you attract. So the backroom was defended very well, and had thwarted or killed at least three serious sets of thieves, but was not intended to be impenetrable. Better to lose five hundred gold once in a lifetime than risk true ruin.

A crystal on the ceiling flashed as he finished signaling customers. Omar hustled to the center of the vault and stepped into the rune circle engraved in the floor. On this side, security was non-existent; Omar simply closed his eyes to block out the flash and appeared in his backroom. On the backroom side, the security measures were layered. The first layer of protection was concealment. The teleportation circle was hidden, and produced almost no mana when inactive. The second layer of protection was that the circle was heavily enchanted to work only for Omar, and it would take hours for even a highly skilled mage to create a work-around. The final layer was uncertainty; teleporting into an unknown and presumably defended location was normally the height of folly.

Omar had more than enough in the backroom to service most customers, which was important both to make the backroom look like his real storage area to would be thieves, and also to keep down costs. Even a well designed short-range teleportation array was costly enough to operate that Omar should technically never use it for anything short of a rich customer, but he never wanted his customers to feel he couldn’t meet their needs and accessed his underground storage more than pure profitability suggested. Although his grandfather and father would surely never approve, the truth was that profit was not Omar’s only motivation; he liked being busy, and genuinely loved interacting with people. So, as usual, he entered the front of his store with a smile.

Two men dressed in leathers; a hulking heavily scarred man with crossed axes strapped to his back, and a smaller handsome man with a plethora of daggers scattered about his person. In less than a heartbeat, Omar’s Assess skill flooded him with a wealth of information. Omar noticed that the leathers both men wore were ill-fitting, modest quality and only lightly enchanted – suitable for a level twenty perhaps, but only just. Their weapons, on the other hand, were quality mithril with enchantments that shone to Omar’s mana sight – easily suitable for level thirty adventurers. Omar noticed these details and a dozen more, including their odd hand tattoos, and concluded that they were between level twenty-five and thirty. Omar speculated that their mismatched gear marked them as cut-throats/scavengers or, less likely, unsuccessful gamblers or victims.

Omar smiled and launched into his introduction with decades-ingrained reflex. “Welcome! Welcome! I’m Omar Silver. They call me Omar Silver-Tongue but no worries, I only sell the best here. You will have no complaints!” Charisma mixed with a dash of idiocy; a careful recipe that seemed to put people at ease.

The small man gave a fake smile and said “glad to meet you Omar. I’m Ernest and the big lug is Vern, don’t talk much. We’re just passing through, don’t need anything in particular, but we heard the folks at the inn going on and on about the young fellow that burned a whole field’s worth of ravagers with one of your explosives. Sounded like something that could be useful, got any more of em?”

No one was “just passing through” Reach. Omar quickly put two and two together and concluded that young Arn’s absurd story was likely true; these men were, for some inexplicable reason, interested in killing him. Omar’s investment in Arn was small, but Omar was aware enough to realize that he lived vicariously through his customers to an extent, and he was intensely curious what young Arn could become. Regardless, Arn was “A Customer,” and these thugs were not. Simple.

Omar spoke with Persuasion, and his words seemed to somehow ring with an impossible combination of absolute truth and conviction, a mother’s warmth, unassailable logic and compelling necessity. “Of course! First, so I can better help you, tell me what you want with young Arn?”

Ernest’s head nodded like a bell bobbing back and forth. “We are going to kill him.”

“Tell me why so I can best help” Omar commanded.

As Ern opened his mouth, Vern slapped him in the head. Omar dropped Persuasion and said “you must have quite the Will big fella. But I’m afraid I still need to know the answer. Why?” Under Vern’s prodding, the two headed to the door. Omar chuckled. “You don’t think the door will open for you, surely? We aren’t done.”

Both men turned around, reached for weapons . . . and just stopped before touching them, as though an invisible force prevented them from completing the motion. “Shopkeeper’s Peace,” Omar said. “Not a great skill really. Only stops those I could deal with by other means, but avoiding bloodshed helps keep my image friendly. You should be grateful it worked. Only fools or champions attack a level fifty two shopkeeper in his shop.” Raising his voice, Omar continued, “now one last time, what in the Hells is your interest with the boy?”

Ernest cackled and said, “he is just the first . . .” and fell into gurgling as Vern’s dagger left his throat. As Ernest began visibly disintegrating into dust that swirled away like smoke, Vern suddenly began pulsing with red light. As Omar reached up to activate a defensive amulet, Vern exploded in a flash of red light and was gone. All that was left of either man was a pile of clothing and gear.

Omar was no Lore Master, but of necessity knew quite a bit about classes, skills and items, from the common to the exceptionally rare. Emergency teleportation artifacts, rare beasts, and a dozen class skills came to mind, but none fit, especially given the two different displays that accompanied the vanishing. A puzzle. Still, one mystery solved; the vanishing act explained why their armor was ill fitting. It was meant to be left behind; those two weren't dead. Omar grabbed his coat and the closed sign and headed for the door.

* * *

Jack Green, Blackjack here, cursed and slammed the communication crystal back into his saddlebag. His travelling companion Manson asked “what’s up?”

“That idiot Ernest somehow got the attention of a high level shopkeeper who used some sort of compulsion on him. Ernest sang like a canary, told him they were hunting the boy before Vern broke the compulsion and they de-spawned out. The boy is still in the jungle, but whether we can get there in time to catch him before he makes it into town, I don’t know. Lets move!"

Manson sighed. “You and the legendary classers.”

Jack scowled. “You know damn well why. If we don’t deal with these bastards now, they will get strong enough to threaten us.”

“How?” Manson asked. “We have thirty immortals. What are a couple of nothings going to do?”

“I don’t know. But they are popping up now for a reason. We are opposed, you know that. Their skills break the rules. We can’t ignore them. We finish the list and get back to work.” Jack looked at Manson and spoke decisively. “Now shut it and ride. We have a big ass boy to kill.”