I walked over to Hawk and laid my hand on his shoulder. “Sorry to hear that, it must have been hard to grow up without your parents.” Hawk just nodded his head in agreement. “Let’s take your mind off of it for a little while, why don’t you open the chest?”

“No, it is yours I wouldn’t feel right.” He said to his hands.

“Really I want you to. You can have whatever is inside as well.” Someone has to have some offense on this team, it sure isn’t going to be me.

“If you insist.” He reached for the bag, had to twist his arm on that one.

“What do you think it will be?” He asked as he hefted the heavy chest out of the bag.

“Probably something heavily enchanted, if I had to guess.” That earned me a huff from my companion.

He pulled out the chest and slid it in front of the lone lantern hanging in the center of the room. He popped the latches with a creak and hefted the lid opened. The room was filled with a soft golden light as the light from the lantern reflected off the mirror finished surface of a full set of medieval style armor.

Congratulations! You have found the lost armor of the conqueror Julius Khan The Great! He ruled half the planet with an iron fist wearing this set of armor. Now maybe you can use it to do something other than walk around and trip over things!

“Wow!” Was all that either of us said.

“You think it will fit?” I asked him.

“I am not wearing that! It looks like it is worth a kingdom, and I might as well paint a target on my back.” He shut the lid.

“Wait a second! Don’t just dismiss it we don’t even know what it does yet! You can at least try it on, and we can read the book to see the effect it has on you!” I handed him the stat book, and he just dropped it like it was recess and it had the cooties. “Look if you want to be an adventurer you will need awesome gear, and this is about as awesome as it gets. You should at least give it a try.”

“Fine I will try it on in the morning after I bathe. Let’s build a fire and get some sleep.”

“Alright, I will start the fire if you grab some more wood. You have a loose nail?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I fail to see how that is going to help you start a fire.” He tossed me a nail and I smiled back at him.

I nudged Andrea on my shoulder, “Little help here?” I asked.

“Sure, just let me do all of the heavy lifting. Kill this, start this fire, help me with my zipper…” She grumbled as she slid down my arm and onto the hearth. Once there she grabbed the nail in one clawed hand and then slowly let it get closer to her other hand causing an arch to form. She put the arch in the kindling that was sitting next to the fireplace and it immediately started to smoke. I let her climb up my arm and wrap back around my neck as I blew on the embers and shoved the small fire under a half-burned log.

Hawk was staring open mouthed at how easily she had started the fire. “You mean to tell me that every night when I started the fire you could have done that?” Not the response I was expecting.

“Well, yeah I guess, but I didn’t think about it until now.” I just shrugged it off.

“Even that one night when I lost my firebox and had to rub sticks together for half an hour? You never thought to help me out?” He was a little red in the face at this point.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t think about it. It was pretty cool, though right?” He didn’t reply as he turned and left the house.

Twenty minutes later after he cooled down, he came back in. “How does that work?” He asked with no preamble.

“The nail?”

“Yeah, how did you use a nail to start a fire? And how did a tiny bolt of electricity kill all of those elders?”

Guess he was angry enough that he didn’t care how uncomfortable I was talking about my killing spree. “You want the long or the short answer?” I asked.

“Short, but not just some over simplified nonsense. I am tired, but also curious.”

“Electricity is very simple, you have potential, resistance and current. They all have a relationship with each other. There are a few equations that make it pretty simple, but I won’t bore you with them. Everything has some amount of resistance, and air has a lot of it. As she brought the nail with higher potential up to her other hand with lower potential current flowed between them. There was a lot of resistance because of the air gap, so it was a low current. High resistance connections are very inefficient and lose a lot of energy in the form of heat. That arc you saw was very hot. As for the elders your heart works off a small electrical current, so when you introduce a different current it causes your heart to stop pumping blood, or pump erratically and not move as much. That causes you to die.”

“I want those equations tomorrow.” Is all he said before he dropped the wood on the floor and crashed down onto his bed. I smirked and added a couple logs to the fire and spread out in front of the hearth.

Thump, “Aww, what was that for?” I rubbed my butt where the imprint of a toe throbbed.

“It is too late to still be in bed, get up.” A much cleaner and grumpier version of Hawk said.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You cooked anything yet?” I asked rolling around still half asleep.

“No, get cleaned up you are starting to stink.” You give a guy one set of artifacts and he gets all surly on you.

He had a point though. “Where do you get clean around here?”

“There is a small pool of low current water by the river. We use it to clean and just upstream is where we get our water. There shouldn’t be too many people out there this late in the morning. Be careful the rocks can get pretty slippery on your way out.” He went to the door with me and pointed me toward the trail.

I thanked him and got going. It was far to the river, about a half mile or so down a pretty steep slope. I passed several women and teenagers carrying laundry. When I finally arrived, the pool was empty. I stripped all my lucky clothes off and jumped in. The water was nice, if not a little cold. I found a smooth rock and leaned back on it just letting the water soften up the road grime. No fish floated to the surface, so I shut my eyes for a few seconds and maybe dosed a little. I heard something and woke up. I looked around.

There standing at the edge of the water was a tall beautiful full-figured woman. She wasn’t skinny, but not fat either. She looked young and her skin had a slight tan. She was staring right at me. I realized I was naked and that the water didn’t hide anything. I jumped and went to grab my clothes then I realized they were over by her. Then I realized that I was a Dragonborn and even though I was naked I wasn’t showing anything. She giggled at me.

Then my heart stopped as she reached down and unceremoniously grabbed the hem of her dress and lifted it up over her head. She then walked down into the water and dove in headfirst. She swam over to me and popped up. She reached up with both hands and brushed her hair out of her face like an SI cover model.

“Hi.” I managed to get out.

“Hello, my name is Lianne. What is yours?” The water was freakishly clear, and I struggled to keep my attention on her large brown eyes.

“Me? Uhh Xanthos. My name is Xanthos.” Smooth like sandpaper covered in tar.

“Xanthos, didn’t I see you go into Hawk’s hut last night?” She asked with a sweet smile.

“Yeah, we have been hanging out. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, just there have been some rumors about him and well, I wanted to see if they were true.” She wasn’t even pretending to bathe, just treading water and batting eyes. Why don’t I have this kind of luck when I don’t have scales and a sack over my junk?

“I can probably answer your questions; we have gotten pretty close over the past couple weeks or so. He is a nice guy; you could probably just ask him yourself.”

“I don’t want to scare him off; he always rushes away when you start probing him for personal details. I just wanted to know if he likes girls.” Her body language was obvious like she knew what affect her naked body was having on me, and that I was just going to answer any of her questions. She was correct!

“I can certainly ask; it seems that I need to start listening a little more. Honestly, I can’t say that it has come up. We haven’t run into anyone that he has shown interest in so far.” I really am a terrible friend maybe my exes were right.

“So, you two aren’t…” She let the awkward question hang in the air for a minute.

“Aren’t? What?” I asked.

“You know…” She trailed off again.

“No, I don’t.” I replied.

“You aren’t well, ah, together?” She asked.

“We are traveling together if that is what you mean.”

“No, I mean like romantically.” She said with a little blush.

“No, he isn’t my type.” Stupid, stupid, stupid I must work on my context.

“What is your type?” She asked.

“Tall, smart, funny, and loves to cook if I have a choice.”

“Oh, well Hawk is pretty smart, and he does love to cook, and he is pretty tall. I don’t think he is all that funny though.” She was counting it off on her long slender fingers as water drained off.

“I also kind of need them to be female, just a personal preference sort of thing.” I smiled at her.

“Oh, so you aren’t...” Does she ever finish a sentence?

“No, I am not, are you?” I asked.

“No!” She exclaimed like she had been shot. Maybe I should add not homophobic to my criteria for partnership.

“Just asking, didn’t want there to be any confusion. You know all you have to do is ask Hawk if he is gay, I don’t think he would mind. I don’t even think you would have to be naked.” I finished with a smirk.

She suddenly remembered that she was naked and looked a little embarrassed.

“Nice to meet you I have to get back and finish lunch, my father is probably looking for me.” She swam back to her clothes and walked out of the water trailing a stream of water off her. She bent at the waist and picked up the towel she brought with her and snuck a peak back at me. I was leaning back pretending to be lounging in the sun peaking down with my eyes closed. She smirked and quickly threw her dress back on, it hugged her curves since she wasn’t fully dry yet.

“Nice meeting you Lianne, I will let Hawk know that you asked about him. Hope we can catch up later.”

She replied by waiving at me and started back up the trail.

“Either the women here aren’t that modest, or she is a rare example. What do you think Andrea?”

“I think she was plowing you for information and distracting you just enough to ensure that you were only paying attention to her.” She didn’t like the concept of taking a bath and had chosen to sunbathe on a rock instead.

“What do you mean, she was just asking about Hawk probably thinks he is hot.”

“You think in a tiny village she wouldn’t know if he likes boys? Please, she played you like a fool.” Andrea laughed at me.

“I didn’t tell her anything, what do you mean she played me?”

“You will see.” She never even lifted her head.

I was as clean as I was going to get without a scrub brush and some soap, so I got up and headed to my pile of clothes.

“Hey! Where are my clothes?” I yelled.

“Told you.” Andrea said still laying there.

“Why didn’t you say something? This is the sort of thing you should warn me about!”

“Oh so I am not just a lighter? I thought I was just supposed to keep my mouth shut and do as I am told.” She huffed.

“Come on let’s go get my clothes back she couldn’t have gotten far.”

“She comes when she is beckoned.” Frustrating Dragon! Why is everything about her? I just lost my god level artifacts!