Far across the golden wastes from Bo, Garot's mercenary group had set up camp for the night.

And - as Bo and Yvet fought SkullFist - the mercenaries lay with their backs on the ground, and their faces turned towards the stars.

Those that slept, anyway.

As for those that waked, they passed the time doing the sorts of things men in mercenary groups tend to do. The problem was that Garot was exceedingly good at such things. Possibly to his own detriment.

"It's just me and you, Kline. Are you feeling lucky?" Garot let his dice fly and a huge man on the other side of the board followed suit.

He - along with four other men - was seated around a small wooden board, atop which the pair of dice danced. The clatter of bones bouncing on wood was magical and yet terrifying. All five men watched spellbound by the cruel spins and twirls of the dice that pirouetted in the hands of lady luck. Finally, the pair came to a stop, passing judgement on who had won, and who had lost.

The faces of the dice showed intricate little drawings of strange animals, and as they settled and the two animals were revealed, the men surrounding the board went quiet as they tried to figure out who had won.

"A Gella and a Hern... who wins between those two?" Kline - The giant who had thrown the other dice - asked softly.

He was big, far bigger than SkullFist. He wore no shirt, revealing a tortoiseshell tattoo that was different from any Bo would recognise. This tattoo had a second layer within the first one, a smaller blueish-silver mosaic of hexagons.

He loomed over the dice like a grown man playing with children's toys, almost as tall sitting as Garot was standing.

"Uh… The Hern, I think." Another man said. His tattoo was regular, only having one layer. However, the many scars running up and down his arms made him stand out as anything but normal.

"Come on guys, let's get serious. I know that I've been winning a lot tonight, but are we really going to pretend that the Gella would lose?" Garot asked slyly. There was something annoyingly persuasive about his tone - like he was too personable to be trusted.

He was… uncouth. He wore baggy leather clothes and had a striking scar that ran from his right cheekbone to his jaw. This scar was buried beneath a scraggly blonde beard that contrasted his piercing blue eyes. They were the eyes of a thief, always moving, always on edge, always nervous. His hands too were twitchy. They inched towards the dice with nervous obsession, itching to touch them, to throw them, to win.

On the palms of those hands was the tattoo of a coin. Each palm showed a different face of the coin. His right was that of a scale surrounded by ancient runic writing, and his left was a snake coiled around a branch with a single leaf.

"Get a grip, Garot. Since when has a Gella beaten a Hern?" Kline snapped, leaning closer to the dice.

Garot raised his hands placatingly. "Hey, I don't make the rules. But think about it. What is a Gella?"

The giant's bushy eyebrows did an elaborate dance. "I don't know what the hell your damned Gella is… But I do know that it's way smaller than my Hern. I know that for damn sure!"

"Yeah, but the Hern is slow; it's cumbersome. The Hern would still be trying to figure out where the hell it was while the Gella crawled all over it." Garot raised an eyebrow. "And did I mention the poison?"

All four of the other men groaned in a way that said they had heard this reasoning more than once that night already.

"Hey, hey, hey, don't be like that!" Garot said cheerily. "Look, I think you lot tend to underestimate poison, but the Gella is pretty much unbeatable."

"Except for the Topestra." One of the men - another hulking brute - added.

"And the Yilt," said a third man.

"Yes, well, those are special cases, and from where I'm standing." Garot pointed at the pair of dice. "It looks like Kline rolled a Hern."

The giant clenched his jaw, causing his face to bulge dangerously as veins wriggled like thick worms under his skin. He looked like he was on the verge of exploding, but Garot knew he wouldn't.

That was the trick.

He danced on that edge, lived there, even. The line was just something he rode because when people thought they had a chance, and when their judgement was compromised by anger, They made poor decisions.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

And Garot loved poor decisions, he had made a decent career profiting off them.

Kline wouldn't attack because he might win the next game… might… Garot just had to make sure that didn't change.

Suddenly, he felt the palm of his right hand begin to burn. It wasn't the familiar warm sensation that warned of bad luck, but a scalding, searing heat that must surely herald the coming of some apocalyptic misfortune.

He glanced up at the giant, eyes wide.

Surely… surely he wouldn't kill him over something as simple as a game of dice… right?

Garot's hands started to shake even as the right one continued to burn. The tattoo of the coin was like molten iron being pressed against his skin, but the pain was soon subsumed by fear.

He stood up hastily, scrambling back.

"Where are you going, big man?!" Kline shouted after him. "Come back! I'm not done with you!!"

But Garot ignored him, turning around and scurrying away from the circle of men.

Still, the burning sensation didn't lessen. If anything, it got worse.

So, his bad luck had nothing to do with the game he had been playing. Then… what was causing it?

Garot's hands allowed him to read his fortune like divining rods. Not in the hokey poke way that some old woman on the side of the road did with tea leaves in a cup, but in a way that actually worked... sometimes.

If he was in for a stroke of good luck, his left hand would get cold. The colder, the better.

And if terrible misfortune was on the cards, then his right hand would grow hot relative to the scale of said bad luck.

However, he had never felt his hand grow as hot as it was now, not even close.

Garot hurried through the camp, trying to find out what was causing his tattoo to react like this. He rushed past tens of sleeping mercenaries, and even more who were drinking and wrestling, or sparring with their weapons blunted. But none of this set off his right hand any more than it already was.

As a first-tier Acolyte, his connection to Tyche, the god of the gamble, was not particularly strong. Oftentimes, his tattoos simply wouldn't work, and when they did, it was vague at best. More than once, he had made a decision relying on those tattoos, only to end up far worse off than he had started. That was how he ended up in this godforsaken mercenary group to begin with.

But the current sensation he was feeling was so clear it couldn't possibly be misconstrued. This was serious, very serious, and he needed to find the source of the coming calamity, fast.

His shadowy figure stole through the camp, rushing past sprawled-out mercenaries who slept in a wide, exotic variety of contorted positions.

As he ran towards the centre of the camp, he felt the tattoo burn hotter the closer he got to the captain. Up ahead, he saw the soft glow of lanterns that hung on metal poles in a circle around the captain and his closest men.

They were all bunched up together in the centre of the circle, whispering in soft, conspiratorial tones. This was an interesting sight as the majority of the captain's men were second-tier Acolytes and, thus, huge. On average, they stood at around nine feet tall, covered in bulging muscles that would snap the tip of any spear that somehow managed to break through their steely skin.

Garot inched closer to the circle of light, feeling his hand grow hotter with each step he took.

He winced at every little noise he made but still hadn't gotten close enough to hear what they were actually saying. The words merely reached him as garbled, unintelligible noise.

Swearing under his breath, he dashed forwards in the dark, keeping as close to the ground as was humanly possible. Luckily, the second tiers - while far stronger and more resilient than the average man - were not more perceptive.

Garot was almost in the light now and could barely hear snatches of conversation as it drifted along the night air in ghostly whispers. For big men, they sure talked quietly.

"Captain, are you sure this thing will work?" A voice drifted across the wind. Despite its softness, it was deep. "Ever since the skiff broke, I've felt that our luck is not so good."

As Garot squinted into the gloom, he could just make out a hulking figure that held up some sort of cage, or at least, it looked like a cage from where he was sitting.

"Who cares about the skiff breaking? We can fix it on our way back. What matters is that the fox’ll not get outta that there cage; you can count on that!" Came the captain's reply.

Garot grimaced at the mention of the fox, which had set off his hand like he had just stuck it in a bonfire. Now, he had a good idea of what his coming misfortune was related to. He just didn't know why yet.

"But this ain't no regular fox, right?"

"Ah, stop acting all prissy, will you? When have you ever been afraid of gettin' your hands dirty?"

"It's just… I- I got a bad feeling bout this. My gut says we shouldn't be dealing with them..."

"Sh!" The captains snapped. "What's our number one policy Drak?"

The big silhouette looked down glumly. "We don't go blabbing about our employers."

Garot's stomach flipped. If even one of the captain's goons could tell something was off, then this was serious.

"But what if we bump into one of them local tribes we were told about?" Asked Drak.

"… I guess that depends on what those little bumpkins have to say about us getting the fox. If they get in our way, then we'll just have to move them out of our way..." the captain said ominously, his voice low and cold. "Besides, you've seen the little critters this region calls predators. There's no way these locals are strong enough to do nothin' to nobody."

Garot swallowed hard, edging away from the lantern light. He shuffled back and out of sight, crawling halfway through the camp before remembering to stand up again.

Eventually, he returned to the game, only to find that the men he'd been playing had vanished into the night, taking his money with them, of course.

Defeated, he sat down on the spot where the board had been and sighed. His hand still throbbed, but the pain had become background noise, fading into more of a dull ache than the initial burn.

The lost money didn't really bother him, it had a pittance anyway. He had far bigger things to worry about.

He lay back on the sand, with no bedding to call his own. After spending the last few days sleeping on the ground, he'd grown used to it, and yet, as he lay there, sleep evaded him. There was a little voice in the back of his head that cried out, telling him he had to run away; he had to escape whatever fate the mercenaries were rushing towards before it was too late.

And, Garot was usually right about these sorts of things.

After all, Garot was lucky.

Sometimes.