Joe cast Shadow Cloak and quickly crept back to where he left the toads. He saw that merchant that was once trapped behind a Steelwood Tree that had fallen across the road when Joe was traveling between Lefpool and Mankerin. Otto was his name. His clothes were in tatters and he looked a lot skinnier than last Joe saw him. The toads were expanding their throats, about to belch fire at Otto.

Joe cast Backtrack three times in quick succession. Once to get himself close enough to Otto to target him, again to bring him out of the fight, back to where Joe had been resting moments before, and then Joe came right back to the back of one of the fire toads. He placed a hand on the toad and cast Lightning Jolt. The toad convulsed as the electricity coursed through its body and two arcs of electricity passed out from it into two more fire toads.

All three toads keeled over and Joe could see the kill notifications in his HUD. Despite being more numerous and harder to defend against than the frost dragon, they were much weaker individually so a single casting of Lightning Jolt could easily overcome them entirely. As the surviving fire toads reoriented to deal with this new intruder Joe cast Backtrack again to get to behind them from their new position and repeated the Lightning Jolt.

With half of the fire toads dead, the remaining ones redoubled their efforts to burn the intruder in their midst. Some of them were even observant enough to back up to large boulders so they couldn't be grabbed from behind. So Joe cast Levitation on the boulders. He couldn't move them fast enough to really hurt their rubbery bodies, but he was able to take out the remaining fire toads in just over a minute be removing their cover and shocking them from behind.

Joe took one last look around using both Thermal Sight and X-Ray Sight from his hat and didn't see any fire toads in the area. He called out to Otto.

“It's safe now, they're all dead.”

After a few minutes Otto limped into view, clearly favoring his left leg. Joe saw the injuries on Otto and used Levitation to rearrange some boulders to give him someplace to sit with back support.

“Thanks,” Otto weakly said. He looked to Joe with vague recognition in his eyes and finally he was able to place where he'd seen that felinoid before. “You were the one that removed that tree, weren't you?”

“Indeed I was.” Joe gestured to Otto's right leg, “May I?”

Otto nodded and Joe placed his hands on the leg and cast Healing Touch. Otto immediately showed signs of improvement.

“I think your leg was infected, but my magic should have cured that.” Joe also handed Otto his waterskin and a pouch of jerky. The man took it slowly, but from the way he was eating the jerky Joe got the impression that he hadn't eaten in a while.

“You rest up, regain your strength. I came here specifically for these toads and I need to have my mana refilled before I do anything with them.”

After a few minutes of Joe sitting and meditating it looked like Otto wanted to say something but didn't want to interrupt whatever Joe was doing.

“It's okay, you can talk to me while I recover my mana, if you feel up to it.”

Otto looked ashamed as he began to speak, “Last we parted I vowed that I would make our scales whole, yet here I am once again indebted to you, kind Joe. I had thought I found myself the deal of a lifetime, I would have made dozens of platinum from a simple delivery of goods.

“You see, I am a Merchant, but I found I could make more money as a smuggler. Illicit ingredients to forbidden potions and poisons was my main business. I had delivered some ingredients to a group of nasty men and women between Trenos and Mankerin. They then asked me to deliver a crate to Lefpool, but I had to do it within a specific time frame. Said I would get paid 50 platinum on top of my normal rate.”

Otto put his head in his hands and cried, “Why did I accept that job? I knew it was too good to be true. All the signs were there. I'd heard of what those people did to passing merchants. I should not have trusted them, but I was so greedy.”

Otto regained his composure after a minute and continued to share his story. “I made great time on the way to Lefpool, at first. Then I came upon that fallen tree. Two days I was camped out there until you came. I was so sure another caravan would have passed and had the manpower to deal with the tree, but of course they didn't when those bandits had taken everything of value from them so they had nothing to continue on with to Lefpool.

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“Finally, after you removed obstacle I rushed to get to Lefpool. My poor horse was worked nearly to death in my haste to get there in time. But I did it! I was so excited to ride into Lefpool just before my deadline. I still didn't know the reason for the deadline, but I had assumed it was because my contact would leave after the appointed time. Not so. The deadline was when the potion would wear off.”

“I was meeting with the contact I was told to seek out and he was about to hand me my money when it happened.”

Otto looked lost in the memories and was silent for a time before Joe prompted him with the question, “What happened?”

“She finally woke up.” Otto saw the look of confusion on Joe's face and quickly defended his actions. “I swear! I didn't know I was transporting a person. I never would have agreed to the job if I had known. But right in the middle of the transaction she started making noise from inside the crate. She was a small little thing, a gnome. They opened the crate to threaten her into silence again. I had seen too much, though. They said their new weapon would need target practice, so they kidnapped me as well.”

Otto looked like he was revisiting it in his mind. “Even though I was a merchant, when I was younger I had dreams of being a great warrior. I had five levels in Fighter, which let me survive what they subjected the both of us to. She had to cast her spells on me.” Otto pulled up the rags of what used to be a shirt and exposed scarred burns on his chest and stomach. “She had a fire spell. They made her burn me whenever she had enough mana to cast it again.”

Otto let the ruined cloth fall back down and winced slightly as it touched the scarred flesh. “Still, I didn't hate her. She nearly killed me several times, but I know she had no more choice in it than I did.”

Joe picked up on the past tense description of his feelings for the girl, whom Joe determined to be Lessa.

“How did you get away, Otto?”

“They got complacent. They had a new guard and one night I was able to grab him and choke him to death before he could make a sound. We couldn't speak because they never wanted us to talk to each other, so we didn't really plan what was about to happen. I made for the window, expecting to jump down and then catch the girl. She saw me at the window and just shook her head. Before I knew what was happening she climbed back into her bed and set it on fire with her in it.”

Otto was crying a lot more now while he was speaking. “I think she assumed that since I was able to take her fire all the time that it wouldn't hurt so much before she died. But oh her screams!”

Otto's eyes looked more haunted than ever as he recounted this part. “I couldn't stand to see her suffer so I grabbed her from the fiery bed. She tried to stop me, she didn't want me to rescue her. I wasn't rescuing her from her end, just the pain. In her final act she looked into my eyes and realized what I was going to do. She nodded.”

Otto needed time to calm down before he could finish recounting his experience. “I finally figured it out while walking the last couple of days. I've had nothing to eat until that meat you gave me so I distracted myself any way I could, including going over what happened again and again. She knew. She knew that if I got away they wouldn't care. I had nothing they needed. But if they thought she was out there, they wouldn't stop looking for her. Do you know how valuable it is to have a Mage working for you?”

Otto shook his head and tried to dispel more negative emotions.

“She sacrificed herself to get her out of that situation and to save me. Five days I walked, got attacked by monsters, and finally I find you again. I never really believed in Fate or Destiny, but this is way too much of a coincidence.”

Joe thought for a moment before responding, “I agree. My friends had wondered what became of Lessa, and now I'll be able to tell them.”

Otto looked rather confused at that statement so Joe clarified somethings for him. “If it eases your conscience any, the bandits who sold Lessa are already dead. I saw them attack a caravan, kidnap a teen elf to do the same thing to him, then murder his father when he tried to object. So I followed them, entered their secret underground base, and killed them all before freeing their prisoners. No more bandits attacking the caravans, no more seventeen year olds getting kidnapped to be forced to become Mages and then smuggled to bad people who use living people as targets against their will.”

Joe looked to the bodies of the toads, “Are you going to be okay while I take care of what I came here to do?”

Otto was emotionally spent already, and hearing that the bandits were dead pushed him to the breaking point. He just nodded silently, closed his eyes to stop the tears, and tried to rest.

Joe was able to get fire resistance potions and a nice set of Leather Armor of Fire Resistance. After he got those he mostly stuck with mundane products. Their blood was a vital ingredient in the potions, so he got a lot of vials of that, and he also got a lot of uncured toad skin.

Otto was completely transfixed by what Joe had done. “I thought when you did that to the tree it was some Carpenter spell, but no, you can do that to anything?”

“Well, to any formerly living creature that didn't have the potential to get a CWEST Guidebook.”

Joe handed over the new Leather Armor of Fire Resistance as well as a pair of toadskin boots he had made to Otto. “Here, put these on. Let's move a little further out of the toads' territory, then I'll ask you to wait for an hour or so while I go get supplies. I haven't been camping because I can return to my home every evening. Tomorrow I'll take you there, but it will take a lot more work taking another person, and it will be colder as we travel north, so we'll need supplies.”