Chapter Forty-Three - The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer)
The Girl-With-No-Name (AKA Dreamer) sat on a rock and chewed at a particularly tough piece of jerky. The meat was singed on the edges, cooked in a fire that Feli had lit next to one of the wyvern corpses.
She watched the inspector with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
The Girl-With-No-Name was a tough, battle-hardened warrior.
She had fought bandit lords and eaten them, she had trampled goblin hoards and eaten them, and she had been patted by even the most scarred members of the Adventurer’s Guild. Those that saw her knew that she meant business.
Her pretty dress was stitched up and was covered by a bandoneer with snack bottles. She had a knife in a sheath by her hip, and another tucked under her ruffles. Her body was as scarred and grizzled as her gear.
There was a plaster on a boo-boo she’d gotten on her shin one time when she tripped while running to eat a troll. A scar that she looked on fondly now that it had stopped hurting.
“Wha’ch’a want?” she asked the inspector.
The man had tagged along with her party as they went on a mission to eat a whole flock of wyverns. So far, they tasted like chicken, but chewier. It was pretty good meat.
Someone at the guild told her that eating meat would make her big and strong, so she ate all the meat she could.
She ate all the meat she could before learning that too, but maybe with less enthusiasm.
“I just had a few questions,” the inspector said. “About you, mostly.”
The Girl-With-No-Name monched down on a bone and cracked it so that she could slurp out the marrow inside. Nice and gooey. “Mmm, go on then,” she said before tossing the bone down her throat. She loved wings, they were so fun to eat.
“Who are you, exactly?” he asked.
This guy had shown up to inspect her party. Not much to say there. They were all tough-as-leather adventurers. Some of the best in the world, even. “Just a girl with no name,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. “But I actually do have a name, but I don’t want to use it or else the other me might find out I’m here.”
“Pardon?”
“Yeah, alright,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. “But I won’t be forgetting.”
She didn’t know what that meant, but she’d heard it in an inn once from one of the cooler adventurers, and she always wanted to use the line.
“Okay,” the inspector said. “Where do you come from, then?”
The Girl-With-No-Name sighed. She pulled another wing from the edge of the fire. Lorean had brought some sauce, and it was sizzling nicely on the fatty skin. “Look, lemme tell you my deep dark origin story, okay?”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Uh, alright.”
“So, one day, I was with this girl. The best girl in the whole world. My job at the time was to find these bandits. Low-level runts. Wastes of space and time, but someone had to take care of them.”
The inspector nodded. He’d probably heard of the sort.
The Girl-With-No-Name shifted on her rock. Her bum was getting sore, but she couldn’t sit on the grass. That was too soft and nice, and a proper hard boiled adventurer wouldn’t do that.
Besides, it was hard to get the grass stains out of her dress. The blood stains at least looked cool. “So, I needed to find these bandits in a hurry. I made several hundred of myself to scour the woods. The me who found the bandits first would win a prize beyond compare.”
“What?”
The Girl-With-No-Name sighed again. “A head pat,” she muttered as she looked into the sky longingly. “I was one of those me’s. Lost in the woods, too slow to return, and guaranteed to lose besides. So I just... wandered off. Maybe I’d find more bandits and get pats for those, you know?”
“I... think I understand.”
“So, I found bandits, then more of them, then I ran into these three buffoons. Junior adventurers, trying their best. I decided to lend them a hand.”
“You stole all our food,” Feli said.
“And since then, they’ve grown into an excellent team,” The Girl-With-No-Name continued.
“All I do is pamper you all day. I haven’t fought anything in months,” Jean said.
The Girl-With-No-Name chuckled. “That’s not true. Sometimes you give me piggyback rides. You’re a valuable member of the team.”
“I am increasingly confused,” the inspector said.
“Look, I was lost, so I found a new thing to do, a new... purpose,” The Girl-With-No-Name said. She closed her fist and narrowed her eyes. “A new reason to live. I’m going to be the very best adventurer, until everyone knows my name.”
“Which you don’t have.”
“And then she’s going to welcome me back with open arms and so many pats.”
The inspector looked at her party members, but they mostly just shrugged.
“These stories, they’re always about a girl, aren’t they?” The Girl-With-No-Name asked.
“Trust me when I say I’ve never heard a story even remotely like this, and if I hadn’t seen you summon tentacles from the void to kill a group of wyverns I would be far less likely to entertain you.”
The Girl-With-No-Name sniffed and shook her head. He didn’t believe her. Not entirely.
It didn’t matter. With time and effort, she would prove herself, and once she did, she’d return, triumphant and powerful, back home.
She looked forward to it.
“Hey, can we cook the eyeballs too? Those are juicy!”
***