We were quickly shepherded out of the castle, and, without a good reason to linger, started to leave the surrounding area, not wanting to get into trouble with the residents. As we walked, Adra spoke up.

“What are we going to do now? You mentioned that you are weakened, do you want to stay in town until you are back at full strength? Or do you want to watch the three idiots in the stocks, maybe throw something at them?” she asked, looking over to me.

“No, certainly not. Remember when I asked Lagor for tasks sending us further west? I plan to leave soon - maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after.” I answered, weighing potential problems. The food and blessing from Drega had done quite a bit to lengthen my hair, and with those days, it would be well on its way to be grown to the same length it had been. I had noticed that the previous colouration that the small sparkles of Astral Power had given it was coming back, maybe with a little more silver, but I took it to mean that the burning had not caused any permanent damage.

“As for the stooges, they can rot for all I care. If they cross my path outside, I will kill them but I will not go out of my way to hunt them.” I continued, even if throwing a few snowballs, maybe with icy cores, was quite appealing. Or, maybe even better, to make a video, showing them in chains, being humiliated by the common folk.

“You have that smirk on your face, do I want to know what you plan?” Adra asked, making me giggle a little and shake my head.

“No, just thinking about those three.” I answered, carefully returning my face to a neutral mien.

Suddenly, I felt as if Lenore had slapped her wing to the back of my head, pushing me to focus on a few people walking the streets. I blinked, slightly annoyed, not seeing anything interesting in them, they were just more Adventurers. They were not too uncommon a sight, walking around in leather armour and with visible, albeit sheathed, arms. There was an undertone of annoyance in her thought when she pushed a memory onto me, from her perspective. It showed the ambush that had caused me to order Kelgorn’s death and focused on the faces of those preparing it. I profusely thanked Lenore when I realised that indeed, those few adventurers, walking nearby, as if nothing was going on, were the same that had prepared the ambush. I wanted to duck into the shadows and hide, maybe attack them, but I forced myself to remain calm. I might have done worse than I thought, Sigmir squeezed my hand in reassurance, telling me that she was there.

“Is there anything one of you needs to do here in Kolyug?” I asked, looking over the others. I was not quite sure how our supply of those things we couldn’t hunt for ourself was, I knew about the cooking-supplies but other things, I just didn’t know.

“No, I think we need a few things, but there’s nothing big. I haven’t seen any impressive artisans, so I doubt we could get better gear. If we had more money, a lot more money, to be honest, we could get something magically enhanced, but I doubt that we can pay for that, even with the quite generous payment for our latest hunt.” Adra answered my slight non-sequitur.

After a quick brainstorm, we split up, Adra and Rai going together to get more salt, quicklime and soap, while Sigmir and I went to grab some vegetables that wouldn’t spoil easily and maybe some grains, simple things to add to our diet. It didn’t take long and neither Sigmir nor I felt a need to haggle a great deal, simply paying the slightly high but not outlandish prices, grabbing our purchases.

I had filled Sigmir in about the people I had seen and my fears - that they might be after us or that they might scout Kolyug for a larger attack. Either would be bad news for us and I wanted to leave the town behind, hopefully escaping before a real net could be cast. She warned that we would need to be careful that there could be an ambush waiting on the road. Overall. she agreed that our options were to either wait until the danger had passed, which might take weeks, or months, maybe even years, or to move as fast as possible, hopefully getting away before any serious effort can be organised. It was, after all, just a day ago that their ambush had failed, so it might not be a problem yet.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As soon as we had procured the supplies, we caught up with the others, finding them haggling with a merchant for a better salt-price. I interjected, suggesting to Adra that we could just get our salt in Yugan, remembering the naga-village at the coast, where Sigmir and I had spent a night what felt like ages ago. There seemed to be a glimmer of recognition in his eyes and suddenly, the price dropped a great deal, he must have known that the naga had the ocean at their doorstep and could use their magic to harvest any amount of salt they needed, making it virtually worthless.

Adra used the opening, slashing the price even further and soon, we were out of the store with a small sack of salt.

Outside, Adra looked at me questioning. “Yugan? Where’s that?” she asked, curious about what she had to think was our next destination.

“Yugan is a small naga village, if you can even call it that, quite far north-east of here. We won’t head there but I hoped that the merchant might have heard the name, or maybe recognise it as a naga-name and lower the price. It worked, didn’t it?” I explained, laughing a little. Adra joined me, happy about saving money and maybe even more happy about deceiving people. To her, haggling and trading was an extension of her personal, maybe natural, inclination to ambush and strike from concealment. Sigmir was frowning a little, she felt that deception was dishonourable but she accepted that we thought of it as just another contest of ability, so if they failed to see our deception, it was their fault for lacking perception.

“Anyway, do you have what you need?” I asked, bringing my mind back on track.

“Yes, I think so. Why the sudden hurry?” Adra asked.

“I will tell you later. For now, we will leave Kolyug and move west.” I answered, starting to walk towards the inn where we had left some of our things.

There, I got the biggest laugh of the day, in the stocks we had seen the first day my three dear, stoogy friends were bound, with a few children standing around them, laughing. As we watched, a few more came running, carrying some snow with them, starting to pelt the stooges with snowballs, laughing if their throws managed to get a particular funny reaction, like the moment one of them started to cough because he had inhaled some snow.

I wondered why they were still logged in and asked a watching guard how long they had been there.

“Oh, not long, maybe five, ten minutes. The children will soon grow tired of their game, but for now, they enjoy it.” he answered, making me think that maybe the children held them in a state similar to combat, preventing log-out. Or maybe the first few minutes they couldn’t log out.

Curiosity got the better of me and I walked over, deciding to simply ask them. The children retreated a bit, as if we adults were disturbing their games and I stepped up to one of them, the others staying back a little. They seemed tremendously happy to see me, mumbling all sorts of insults, making me wish for a snowball to shove down his throat.

I asked why they were still logged in, two of them told me it was so that they could do all things of normally unspeakable things to me, my party and my dead body, not necessarily in that order but the third muttered something about a longer log-out timer, keeping them in the game for fifteen minutes. I thanked the one who had answered, telling the other two I would show them what I thought about them. A short thought to Lenore caused cackling laughter and she left her Hallow, materialising on my shoulder. The stooges looked wide-eyed, and she hopped from my shoulder onto the stocks, above their heads.

Moments later, something warm and slimy dripped onto the head of the first stooge and the children nearby started to howl in laughter. while Lenore hopped over to the other intransigent stooge.

Once again, she used my voice to speak. “That will take a moment, why don’t you go inside and get your things?” she asked, to which I nodded. I didn’t even have to, Rai had gone inside while I had approached them and was just coming out with our things, so I just watched the white slime seeping into the stooges hair.

It didn’t take Lenore long to ready another bomb to drop on the second stooge’s head, causing the children to almost fall over laughing. Afterwards, Lenore hopped back onto my shoulder before vanishing in her Hallow.

“I could make some awful pun here. But I think that would be just shitty.” I told them, before turning and walking back to the others, laughing to myself.