“Mm…” Christoph groaned under his breath, fingers twitching listlessly as his eyebrows fluttered. Standing over his sleeping form, Emilia shook her head and fought the urge to join him on the forest floor.

“Christoph?” Kneeling down, the beast-woman placed a single hand upon his chest, slowly rocking him awake. “Christoph, wake up.”

“Aah?” Squinting in the early morning light, he raised a hand to shield his eyes and glanced around the small hollow they had bedded down in for the night, little more than a crook in the roots of a particularly gigantic tree. Sunlight filtered down to flicker over his face despite his best efforts at blocking the rays of light, and he tilted his head at the cat-girl as she remained crouching down beside him. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Christoph stretched out over their blankets before reaching for Emilia’s face and pulling her into a gentle kiss. “Good morning.”

“Good?” Following her partner as he tried to back away, Emilia planted a dozen kisses on his lips before she was finally satisfied. “You were tossing in your sleep. Are the fairies finally getting to you now?”

“I don’t think so,” Christoph replied with a shake of his head. They had been travelling for a couple of days by now and still hadn’t seen any of the denizens of the forest, but Emilia’s sleep had been plagued with the strange and unusual nightmares that served as a trademark of the fairy lands. He, on the other hand, had until now been sleeping in relative comfort by her side. “I dreamed of home.”

“Home?” Pushing him down into a furry embrace, the beast-woman cuddled up to him, nuzzling at his face and neck. “You mean the other world?”

“Yeah,” Christoph said. “Fighting Claude must have reminded me of what it was like back then.”

“Well,” Emilia replied, “Leila still wants to hear about it, you know?”

“Leila can ask Bastias to send her there if she wants to know so badly,” Christoph replied with a scowl. Sitting up, his eyes locked onto the carcass of a crystal beast which lay nearby. “Is that for me?”

“Aha.” Nodding enthusiastically, Emilia dragged the monster closer. Clumps of moss were scraped off the overgrown tree root in the process, and her lover made a face as it clumped onto the creatures crystal scales . “I got it for your breakfast!”

“What about food for you?” Christoph asked, pulling the small meal off the floor and lifting it directly into his lap. Turning it over, he brushed the moss away before turning back towards her once more. “It’d be better if we could find some game here rather than chewing through our supplies early on. Actually, do we have any of the jerky left?”

“You can’t have any.” Emilia said, narrowing her eyes at him and backing up towards the saddle bags nearby. “I got you some food, so you can give the rest of the jerky to me, right?”

“Hey, I bought that jerky you know?” Reaching out, Christoph held a hand up in her direction. Wriggling his fingers, he raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “Come on, hand it over.”

“There’s none left!” Crossing her arms triumphantly, the cat-girl’s ears twitched as she made the declaration. “I ate it all while you were asleep!”

“…That explains the meal you got me, then.” Sighing down towards the crystal monster she had killed for him, he pried a scale free and popped it into his mouth. It was good, better than the jerky had been. “Still, you should have been more careful with the rations. We might not end up making it out of the Leas-, I mean the forest today. Not that we could afford much more than basic goods even if we did reach the dwarven lands before sunfall.”

“How much money do we have?” Emilia asked. “Aren’t you Gold ranked now? Gold rankers are supposed to be rich, aren’t they?”

“Everything costs money,” Christoph replied. “Lodgings, food, medicine, gear, crystals for the skimmer… don’t even get me started on how much it cost to get crystal beasts to eat in Manitas City. They don’t just lie around outside of the city walls you know?”

“You have to have some money though,” Emilia said. “Right? You can’t be… you aren’t poor are you?

“Don’t give me that.” Meeting her look of horror with a deadpan scowl, Christoph raised an eyebrow at his companion. “Unlike some people, I at least have more belongings than some scruffy looking fur rags and worn out daggers.”

“Hey!” Raising her arms, Emilia attempted to cover her ragged wraparound top and shorts in an entirely uncharacteristic display of modesty. Given the amount of clothing that the beast-woman wore, she very nearly succeeded in covering her garments entirely. “I still like these better than those other things you bought for me!”

“Just put them on already,” Christoph said with a frown. Ripping one of the legs off his meal, he leaned down to begin his breakfast. “And stop that, it just makes you look like you’re naked.”

“Says the human who insists on wearing so many clothes and then ruins them every time he gets in a fight,” the cat-girl replied with an unimpressed look. “Why don’t you just wear pants like you did in the Paw?”

“Maybe I should,” Christoph said. Discarding his last outfit, he’d noticed that his already meagre wardrobe was quickly running thin. Maybe he could invest in some pants that wouldn’t be ruined by bloodstains in the future. “Well, we should definitely focus on earning more money in any case. I could survive by eating the mountain monsters, but you need actual food and medicine.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Waving her hand, Emilia dismissed his plans. “The dragons here collect gold, don’t they? By the time we finish them all off, we’ll be rich!”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Christoph replied. “The dragons might be one thing, but taking gold away from dwarves is quite another.”

…

The sun had risen high above the forest by the time Christoph and Emilia reached the far edge of the Leash. The cat-girl bounced on the balls of her feet, glad to be free of the unseen fairies and their accursed nightmares.

“Calm down,” Christoph said, tying the last of the ropes down where they held their blankets over the skimmer. “Help me cover this thing up, will you?”

“Uh-uh.” Shaking her head, the beast-woman frowned as her limp ear flopped with the movement, reaching a hand up in a futile attempt to straighten it out. “Can’t we just go past them up the mountains?”

“They are up the mountains,” Christoph replied with a sigh. “It isn’t my fault that dwarves and elves don’t mix.”

“Okay. I’m going first then.” Ignoring his attempts to hide the skimmer in the forest, Emilia began skipping out towards the edge of the trees. Glancing back, she smiled as he paused to watch her walk, the clothes he’d bought for her hanging loosely around her body as she moved. That reaction alone had made abandoning her old fur garments worthwhile. “See you later, then!”

“Hey, wait up!” Rushing to finish the task at hand, Christoph gathered their bags and hurried after her. “I know that dwarves get along with the beast races rather well, but you can’t just leave me to try to enter their mountains on my own, I’m not-”

Pausing, the duo raised their heads and shared a glance.

“Did you hear that?” Emilia asked, ears flickering wildly. “Someone’s fighting.”

“I did.” Pulling ahead of her, Christoph zeroed in on the source of the commotion. “It’s coming from further ahead. I guess that just leisurely entering a new city for once would have been too much to ask.”

The clashing of metal on crystal grew louder as they approached the edge of the forest, and Christoph recognized the flicker of crystal monster’s mana in the distance. The signatures were drowned out by sunlight as the pair broke from the trees, and he paused for a moment as the environment abruptly changed. Glancing to the sides he realized that the trees had been felled intentionally, the forest ending in a rigid line that cleared the area at the foot of the mountains.

“I see,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s so they can see things coming from up in their towers.”

“Come on,” Emilia said, tugging at his hand as she took the lead. “There’re monsters up there!”

“Wait a moment,” Christoph replied as she began to drag him further up the slowly increasing slope. Any further and they would be in the shadow of the guard posts, well within the range of spells and bows. “We can’t just rush in and-”

Swallowing his words, Christoph sighed as the cat-girl let go of his hand and bounded away. Shouldering the packs, he ran after her as best he could, quickly covering the hundred or so meters between the forest and the guard posts ahead. To his immediate chagrin, he saw Emilia rush into the rear of the monsters’ pack, engaging with one of the creatures as the dwarves kept the rest at bay, heavy wooden gates looming upwards behind them.

“Be careful!” Dropping the bags, he made sure there were no more of the savage canines lurking nearby and decided against moving in to help the offense. There was a yelp as Emilia made short work of her opponent, and Christoph jumped forwards to stop her from making another move. “We can’t just rush in and mess with their fight. They don’t even know if we’re allies yet.”

“Ugh.” Crossing her arms, the disgruntled beast-woman made a face and allowed her partner to hold her back. “They’d better pay us for the one I got.”

“Don’t push it,” Christoph warned. If Liam’s knowledge was accurate, the dwarves were small but guarded people. There seemed to be two squads ahead, and the captains of each were yelling enthusiastically as they fought. “They might take offense to the fact that you stole one of their kills.”

Several more yelps followed as the dwarves rounded up the remaining creatures and put them to death, long-handled halberds and large-bladed axes slamming down on each monster in turn. The mountain people were shorter than the majority of the other races, but their warriors were mighty, even if they didn’t even reach to Christoph’s shoulders. The men almost always sported long, well-groomed beards that their female counterparts matched with their own wildly arranged hair, darkly colored locks often reaching down past their buttocks when they let it free. Although the dwarven race as a whole had garnered an image as being rotund, that seemed more to do with the connection between wealth and weight in their culture than any real physical predisposition. Christoph has often heard people saying that there was nothing so poor as a slender dwarf.

“That’s four.” Grinning over toward his equally exuberant comrade, one of the more active dwarves twirled his halberd as Christoph and Emilia approached. “Do you hear that, Robert? Four, I got!”

“Four?” Shouldering his axe, the second dwarf narrowed his eyes at the first. “Are you sure you aren’t daft, Edward? I see nine corpses here!”

“I got that one!” Piping up before Christoph could stop her, Emilia waved her hand at the two shorter men and took a bow. “I’m Emilia, of the Greater Paw. This is Christoph, he’s mine and not for sale.”

“Christoph,” Christoph said with a bow, “of the not for sale, apparently.”

“You got one of the beasties, then?” Ignoring Emilia’s look of indignation, Edward made a face and turned back towards his rival. “That makes four for both of us then Robert?”

“Indeed,” Robert replied, scowling up at the moody cat-girl. “If Emma here hadn’t poached one of them, we’d have had a fine conclusion to our battle here, and our wager too.”

“Ah.” Pushing Emilia behind him, Christoph put on his best smile and raised his hands in a placating shrug. A wager? Had they bet each other they could take out more of the beasts than the other? “Well, there’s always more monsters in the forest, right? I’m sure the wager will be settled before you know it.”

“It was for a tankard after the shift,” Robert replied, raising a hand to tug at his beard. “How d’you expect us to relax with that hanging over our heads, huh?”

“You could always-” Christoph began.

“Don’t be suggesting some game of chance, laddie,” Edward said, lowering his halberd and eyebrows all at once. “Dwarves settle their wagers by merit of skill, not chance.”

Cursing inwardly, Christoph racked his brain. No wagers on matters of chance? Liam hadn’t included that useful tidbit of information with his knowledge! Running through his options, the adventurer was saved by the appearance of a pulsing light at the edge of his vision. Turning back towards the forest, he raised a hand to shield his eyes from the evening sun.

“Well then,” he said, mouth widening into a grin as the mana signature grew larger yet. “It seems there’ll be one more chance to settle this today, my friends. Now, you don’t have some sort of guardian unicorn that watches over this side of the forest, do you?”