“...Find you a girl!”

Joseph rolled his eyes.

“Is this really the time for it? Besides, I have a girl. Can’t wait to kill her already.”

The armsmaster chuckled, swinging his legs back and forth.

“Evalyn? Come on, kid, she is a mind-eater! That’s the worst type for the relationship, a woman who can read your brain tax-free!”

“That’s why I want to kill her. Fastest divorce ever.”

Ralf shook his head, allowing the laughter to die down.

“Well, I am serious, kid. Wouldn’t you want the best experience the lawless life has to offer?”

“And catch a disease? No, thank you. My only wish is to get back home.”

“Back home?”

Joseph jammed his mouth shut, cursing his long tongue and the sappy atmosphere that made him slip.

“Coming to think about it…” Ralf began, looking somewhere aside. “…You’ve never really told me anything who you really were, except for your hunter grandpa. Want to confess your sins?”

He directed his attention at Joe. The wording came out as half-joking, but Ralf’s expression was genuinely calming. The cook studied Joe’s reaction for some time and turned away.

“But if you don’t want to, I am not going to pry any further…”

The warmth rose up within Joe’s heart. He wasn’t sure if his mind was ready to entrust his circumstances to another person, but it didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel the gratitude towards Ralf.

“It’s not really a big secret… It’s just… complicated. There are things I don’t understand myself.”

Ralf looked at him from the corner of his eye.

“Want a drink?” He winked.

“Sure, I’d be glad to.”

*****

The Grutch was brewed from uranium, Joseph was sure of it. The devil’s cocktail fell down his throat, spreading agony through his shaking body. His throat dried faster than the water in Sahara, his lungs could not stop coughing, and he felt like the temperature rose up by forty degrees at least.

Ralf watched the torture with a badly hidden amusement. The ‘Rattlebones’ around them vibrated from the active crowd on the first floor, in stark contrast with the morning graveyard-like scene.

“Told you, Grutch is for poisoning your enemies, not for relaxed drinking. But don’t drink it with water, otherwise, it’s going to get worse.”

Joseph coughed a few more times, before he finally saw the light and returned from the land of the dead.

“Holy shit… what is this thing?”

“Poison.” Joe stared at the armsmaster, who only shrugged innocently. “Prepared treyar poison, alcohol, some spices and citrus. Spices and citrus neutralize the dangerous part of the poison. Unfortunately, the taste remains, but after drinking it and not falling over deceased, you’ll feel much better.”

Joe could notice the improvements already, but no treasure in existence would force him to drink this alcoholic equivalent of magma ever again.

Ralf clenched his hands together and laid them on a table.

“Well, Joseph Snowfield?” he asked, trying to imitate a smile of an interrogator, poorly. “I want to hear what you have to say to me.”

“Right…”

He thought about taking another sip of Grutch, but his instincts screamed at him in unison.

“I was born in a small town on a planet called Earth. We lived during somewhat peaceful times. As in, the foreign wars never reached my country, although we had a junkyard of inner problems too… Sorry, it doesn’t really matter.”

Ralf nodded, not daring to interrupt.

“Anyway, one day we heard that, at night, shooting stars would be visible in our town. We went to the main square and then… something happened. Was it an actual star, a meteor, something else, I don’t know - I only remember that it had nothing. No heat, no pressure, nothing. It was a bright light that seemingly fell down onto the Earth. I was blinded, but that’s it. Then I woke up on the slaver ship and ran into Xander right after.”

Joseph fell into silence. His finger ran on the edge of his cup. On the opposite side, Ralf was looking in his direction, either waiting for something, or keeping himself from saying anything.

Joe felt the need to make it known.

“That’s it. You know the rest.”

His hand grabbed the cup, and before he knew it, flame streamed down his body again. This time, he reacted and braced himself, waiting for the drink to calm down. He exhaled, feeling a bit of pride for enduring this assault on his intestines with much fewer casualties.

Ralf held his cup in his hands. Joseph began to worry about the state of his handler.

“’Morning Star’ to land! Ralf, you alright?”

The cook winced.

“Ah?! Right, right. So, you are from some other space rock called Earth and was brought here by a weird light-like thing. Did I miss anything?”

Joseph felt a slight shock at the revelation that Ralf knew what a planet even was, but the cook got all the checkmarks down without a single miss. He nodded, confirming.

“And you are trying to find your way back?” Ralf continued.

Another nod.

The cook lifted his cup and downed the liquid inside in one shot.

“I will be as honest as a pirate can be, Joseph,” he slammed the cup on the table. “Were it to be anyone else, I’d have told them straight away that I haven’t heard worse fairy tale ever since I was born. But I saw the things you brought with you. I saw the clothes you wore, stained by your blood. I cannot find any other explanation for them. So... I believe you fully.”

Ralf smiled.

Not with a grin of a savage, enthusiastic pirate.

Not with a cold-blooded smile of a wolf, who found his prey cornered.

But with the calm, relaxing visage of a man, who truly enjoyed the company of his friend.

And Joseph appreciated the gesture. He lifted his cup.

“Well, to crossing this accursed circus called the Threshold, then!”

Ralf was all too glad to support his words.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Ralf spoke up. His tone banished the warm atmosphere, leaving behind only them and the secret they now shared.

“I only know one place that might help you. The University. The Mages' University, in the Capital. Dealing with the abnormal and unknown weirdness is their hat. Problem is, reaching the Capital from Lower Reaches is a pain in the arse. Add to that your allegiance to a well-known pirate ship, and the work you have to do becomes a hustle of the ages. The best way from Ghastly Wail is through Forgotten Ridge. There is a ‘sparrow’, docked at the northwest port. It takes about a day, but it will deliver you right to the town.”

When Ralf took a pause, Joe realised what the armsmaster truly meant.

The man offered him a choice. Without looking back at the opinions of crewmates from the ‘Morning Star’, Ralf showed him a way to leave the life of a pirate and reach his goal, avoiding unnecessary barriers on his path.

He felt a weight crashing down on his shoulders. It was a way out. One, that asked of him to leave the few connections he made in these past five days behind and venture out on his own, towards his destination. Towards the promise he made to himself.

The temptation of this option rivalled his hatred for Evalyn.

The second choice wallowed in its simplicity. Do nothing. Let the Fate carry on as it was. Hope, that, one day, he would find what he was looking for. Hope, that he would survive long enough for it to matter.

None of the possibilities screamed that they were all gold, no rust. He knew nothing of the civilization outside of Ghastly Wail, and the pirate den was hardly a premier example of what the proper society of this world would be like. He could run into problems with authorities at any moment, or waste all of his Zinks and never find more. Still, the civilization may offer its own advantages, and it might allow him to leap over several obstacles on the way to his goal. The most important of which would be the freedom of travelling, without the dependence on the 'Morning Star' and its crew.

The second variant had a stinky smell all around it, but he could see some gems in the gutter. First and foremost, his relationships with the people on the vessel were far better than he could hope for. Alchfrid and Xander helped him get back into the action, even if not to the level he hoped for. Secondly, they were experienced pirates and soldiers. He could always use their knowledge to his advantage. And third, he did feel a tug in his throat after he realised that he would have to leave Ralf behind. Maybe it was way too soon to call this man his friend, but out of all people on the ‘Morning Star’, his connection to Ralf seemed to be the strongest. He wasn’t even sure, why, himself - the events on Stone Maw Island would push Pat and Irfan into that position rather than anyone else, but a weird fog of melancholy downed on him each time he contemplated leaving the armsmaster.

“Would you miss me?”

Ralf’s eyes were bigger than a soup bowl.

“Who, me?! Did the Grutch burn your brain so hard, you hallucinating things now?! Me, the armsmaster of the ‘Morning Star’, the veteran of Northern Horn Revolt? Miss you?!”

He stopped for a moment, then stood up. Joseph didn’t even manage to let out a squeak in time before the titanic hands of the man hugged his body.

“Of course, I would, you schmuck! You gave this old man so much fun in the last five days, I’ve never realised how stale our piece of rusty junk became!”

Ralf let Joseph go. Joe quietly counted the number of bones that were still in one piece. All of them seemed to survive the assault on his privacy, but his mind still nagged him about it.

“So you decided to leave, huh?”

The stormy expression on Ralf’s face made a pressure swell within Joseph’s heart. He did not choose the path yet, he merely stood at the crossroads. He couldn’t even dig up the necessary energy to take a step in any direction, hanging on his indecisiveness.

“I have not decided… yet. I… can’t. Let’s wait until the meeting is concluded. I’ll tell my choice then.”

“You might not get another opportunity to leave,” Ralf shook his head. “Anything can change the course at any moment. I’d say, it’s better for you to make a move now, during the downtime.”

“What if I want to spend more time with you?”

Ralf grumbled something under his breath, then fell down into his chair and let out a tired smile.

“Sometimes, you can find some crafty words… What do I do with you?... I don’t mind. We have some time to kill until the night arrives.”

“Do you have anything specific on your mind we could do? Not girls, though.”

Ralf drank the contents of his cup and rubbed his double chin.

“How about we continue our detective work? Ghastly Wail gives me creeps today, and I have an itch to understand why. Wanna give me a hand?”

Would he mind carrying on with the investigation? What a foolish question.

“Where do we begin?”

The sparks in Ralf’s eyes warmed him up more than the Grutch did.

“I say, we do a couple of patrols around the settlement, try to fish something out of the ordinary. Then, if we get nothing too useful, we’ll check the watchmen headquarters and their warehouse, just to be sure. What do you think?”

“Sounds like a plan. Should we do anything else, like, prepare?”

“Only if you want to.”

Joseph inspected his arsenal. No changes were present from the morning. Bombs still slept in his pockets, waiting for the time of their glorious performance to arrive, ammo still weighted down his pants, rifles and the axe still held their positions. There wasn’t much he needed.

“Seems to be fine.”

Ralf nodded with approval in his expression.

“Should we go, then?”