“Would you look at that Fred! It looks like Gumball is trying his best to make a comeback! He’s slashing all over the place with his knife and it looks like Sausage is too afraid to move forward.”

“I wouldn’t count Sausage out too early, Frank. He’s the reigning champion for a reason and in his last ten bouts, he’s finished eight of them decisively, drew one of them, and was disqualified from his last fight.”

“Oh, I remember that last one, Fred. I’ve never seen fecal matter be used as a weapon before and I never want to see it happen again. But what’s this!? Gumball seems to have accidentally cut himself during his wild onslaught of slashes and Sausage isn’t going to let such a prime opportunity pass him by!”

“Sausage is one of the most technical combatants on the roster. The moment he sees a chance like this to counter his opponent, he’ll take it.”

The crowd roars with enthusiasm and lunacy as Sausage stabs Gumball in the neck and Gumball falls to the ground lifelessly.

“I can’t believe it! He did it! Sausage is still the undisputed champion!”

“What a fight, Frank. What a fight. It took a lot of grit and perseverance to not give up in the middle there and to me, that’s what makes a champion: heart. You can be the most skilled combatant on this entire roster but if you don’t have what it takes to put your life on the line for the victory, then you’ll never have what it takes to become champion. I think what Sausage has shown here tonight will quiet his doubters and naysayers for quite a while. What an amazing fight. Dear gods, I love this damn sport.”

“And that folks will wrap up this evening’s edition of Goblin Knife Fighting! Now, a word from our sponsors. Have you ever wanted a custom sword made to fit your hand and your hand only? Come on down to Denton’s weapon emporium on the southwestern side of the city! Denton’s can fulfill all your weapon needs. Stop by now to take advantage of Denton’s year end sale and remember, if you don’t shop at Denton’s, you’ll be ventin’... your anger that is.”

The crowd around us chants GKF over and over again. It honestly doesn’t get much sleazier than goblins knife fighting. But damn was that entertaining as all hells. I don’t even mind that I lost 50 silver tonight from all my bets. Alright, that’s a lie but it was still a great night nonetheless.

When we get back to Azureview Manor, the both of us turn in for the night and I head to the private room I rented out for 60 copper. I used wanting to clean myself with hot water as an excuse to rent a private room with a single bed for myself for the night. When I get inside, I quickly search through my leather pack and bring out the brick of Schon I have stashed inside. Using a knife, I carefully tear open the brick and slowly scoop the black powder into the small wooden tubes I bought at the general store we visited today before we headed to the smithy for the goblin oil. 1 silver for a tube the same size as my pinky might seem a bit much but at least they’re reusable and refillable.

This will be my second brick of Schon I’m going through. I ran out of the prepackaged doses about two months ago and that’s when I started on my first brick. It turns out I’m pretty skilled with my hands and I could easily recreate the black paper stars to store the drug but it was too time consuming and I filled up a waterskin with the powder instead. It worked really well until two weeks ago when someone asked me for a sip from my waterskin and I had to tell them I was using it as my piss bottle. That’s when I decided to look into alternative ways of storing my doses of Schon.

Once all 50 tubes are filled to the brim with the powder, I store all of them inside my lockbox before locking it and stuffing it into my pack. I leave a single line of Schon on top of the knife I was just using and wrap the brick up tightly before stashing it under everything else in my pack. I don’t dilly dally any longer since Riane asked me to tag along with her for herb shopping tomorrow and swallow the black powder before getting into bed. The last thought I have before falling asleep is whether Midriver has goblin knife fights as well.

…

“This is dried Ilithian moss. It was originally used to line funeral pyres and once the pyre was set on fire, the moss would burn and release a smoke which would induce psychoactive effects on whoever inhaled it. You can imagine how boisterous those funerals were in the past. But this will suit our purposes just as well.”

Riane picks up a handful of the dried green moss with her leather gloved hand and stores it into a small silver airtight case before moving on to the next selection of herbs. The shopkeeper is keeping his eye on her but seeing how professional she is at storing the herbs, I don’t think he’s worried about her running off without paying. Today Riane invited me to go herb shopping with her but I didn’t realize I was to be the recipient of our shopping. She said she wants to help slowly wean me off of Schon before I become completely addicted to it and all these herbs and plants she’s picked out are alternatives to the drug. None of them will have quite the same effect as Schon but she wants to try and get me as close to the same state of intoxication as possible and see if that will work.

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“Alright, and these are Dream Bite caps. Quite a coincidence they’re named after the thing we’re trying to get rid of. How quaint. Anyways, chew a stalk of these and they’ll send your head through the atmosphere. Whether it will stop your dreams or not waits to be seen.”

Riane inspects the mushroom clump with dark red mushroom caps covered with green dots and their pure white stalks. There’s about 12 different stalks in the one clump she’s holding by itself. Huh, I’ve seen these before.

“Aren’t these poisonous? I remember seeing them on the Basteb peninsula and Wraine told me they’d kill you if you ate them. Something about shitting out your innards”

“Wild ones are poisonous. Ones cultivated in mushroom farms are fine. It has to do with the types of nutrients they absorb as they grow and wild ones naturally grow from decaying poisonous plants thus they turn poisonous themselves. One clump should be fine to use as a sample for now and once you’ve experimented with each of these thoroughly, you can keep purchasing what works for you.”

With that, our herb expedition comes to a finish. The total for all the plants Riane picked out for me along with a wooden smoking pipe is 90 silver which is quite the sum. But if I can use this instead of Schon then it might be worth it. She hands me the silver case filled with the plants and says the case is a gift for me. As we’re heading out the shop, I can’t help but ask Riane the thing that’s been on my mind for awhile now, “Riane, is Bertrand’s leg alright?”

Riane stops in her tracks, frozen. She looks at me for a moment, studying my face and seems to have come to a decision. “What I’m about to tell you stays between the two of us. If I hear about this from anyone else in Candle, I’ll have you know dying by eating wild Dream Bite mushrooms is far from the worst death I can imagine.”

This time I’m the one who’s frozen by her words. I’ve never seen this side of Riane before. “My lips are sealed.”

Riane examines my face to see if I’m lying or not before saying, “Good. The only reason I’m telling you anything in the first place is because that old oaf is too stubborn and hardheaded to ask for help when he needs it and since I can’t keep an eye on him during fights, you’ll have to be the one who does it. You know, he isn’t a man who’s very good with his words. Hell, it took him years before he finally told me he was interested in me.”

Whoa, okay, a lot of information to unpack there. Riane continues, “But every time we’re together, he always says how proud he is of you. To him, you’re like the son he never had. Again, if you tell him I said any of this, I’ll slip something into your next meal that’ll make you bleed from every orifice on your body.”

Shudders run down my spine at her words and I have no doubt she could do it too. Riane huffs a sigh and looks at the sky before she says, “The wound he took from the war with Midriver’s Finest was more serious than I thought. Since it was closed up with Olin’s spell, I thought it was fine considering he was up and walking around the next day. But about a month later, he started feeling intermittent bouts of pain and he’d momentarily lose feeling in his leg. Going for an entire day without getting his leg treated permanently damaged it and nothing we tried, herbal treatment, visits to every clinic in Midriver, or even magic could get it back to the way it was before.”

Fuck, I knew it. This all stemmed from that leg injury. “But he didn’t want to tell anyone. He had to be strong for Derriv and Candle in their time of need. Always the vanguard, for better or worse. It didn’t become a problem until the incident in Mudrock. He had a lapse during the fight and nearly died if it wasn’t for Georgil saving his life. But Georgil died in his place instead. Bertrand was distraught over his mistake for weeks. He has to be Candle’s invincible vanguard otherwise… otherwise he’ll let his daughter down.”

His daughter? “I don’t quite understand. What do you mean by his daughter?”

Riane glances around us as we’re walking to make sure no one’s around to hear us before saying, “Bertrand loves his brothels. So much so that he had a daughter with one of those women he visited. He loved his daughter but her mother? Not so much. After she gave birth, she showed her insidious underside and when Bertrand’s daughter turned three winters, she sold her to the highest bidder. When Bertrand found out, he raised hell in the city for days and killed his way into the residence of the noble who bought her but it was too late. They used his daughter as target practice for their new hunting bow.”

Riane pauses to recompose herself. I don’t blame her. This is a heart wrenching story about someone close to the both of us. “Bertrand got his revenge and almost as an afterthought, he killed his child’s mother as well but that could never bring his daughter back. Since then, he’s had this notion in his head that he has to be this invulnerable, unstoppable force of nature.

“Maybe that’s how his daughter saw him and he’s just trying to uphold that memory for her. I don’t know. All I know is he needs someone watching his back and you’re the only one I can trust to do it. Derriv is too busy giving orders, Quinn’s a scout and he has his own responsibilities, Angelene’s always in the rear, far away from where he is, and I don’t know the other members of Candle well enough to ask for their help. I can only rely on you.”

It’s like I’m meeting Bertrand again for the first time. I had some inkling regarding his past with what Reed said when he was trying to bait him out of the compound but this is a lot more than I expected. But what else can I say? Bertrand is my mentor, he gave me my shot at joining Candle, and even if I don’t want to admit it, I do see him slightly as a fatherly figure. “Although I don’t know how much help I’ll be, I’ll do it. I’ll watch his back for you.”

Riane only responds by giving me a gentle smile.