“It isn’t that simple,” Victoria said. She still didn’t even turn around while talking, which created a feeling of distance. “Ferrith couldn’t get steel ranked contracts if he wanted to. He’s never around.”

“Never around?” I asked. “Why would that matter?”

Alloha volunteered an answer. “You don’t understand what it’s like getting contracts. New ones are posted first thing in the morning, and if you don’t have someone there to snatch them up, the only ones left are those nobody else wants.”

“Yup, I stayed up all night to get us this spider contract,” Torra said proudly. “Mornings at the guild are chaos when new contracts get posted. The Breakers get first pick, being steel ranked. They take all the best contracts and dole them out to their cronies. The rest of us have to fight over the scraps. By early afternoon, the only ones left are the cheap government contracts, or the real dangerous ones even the Breakers don’t want.”

“Interesting,” I said. “So, if Ferrith is never around in the mornings to snatch up good steel contracts, he’ll never rank up?”

“Not unless he wants to clear a pack of pursuers by himself,” Torra said with a laugh. “Not like anyone’s gonna help him with a suicide mission like that!”

“Nobody parties with Ferrith anymore,” Victoria said seriously. “They know better.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

Once again, Victoria didn’t volunteer an explanation. “That’s just a rumor!” Alloha said. “He takes the dangerous contracts that don’t pay as well. That’s the only reason people that party with him die. Who else does that? Most of the contracts he takes have been on the board for months! If Ferrith didn’t clear them, most would never get completed at all.”

I found this part of the conversation hard to believe. Ferrith taking contracts that didn’t pay well? When I’d been with him, it seemed like he was obsessed with money! “I still wouldn’t party with the guy,” Torra said. “It’s one thing if the paladins say they can’t prove he did anything wrong, but at a certain point, you just have to play the odds. And the odds say most people that go out into the woods with him don’t come back.”

“I came back,” I said. “He’s the one that summoned me to Earris. I spent two nights out in the woods with him before we reached Haemir.”

“See?” Alloha said. “Not everyone dies! When I was a kid, my uncle’s cattle were getting preyed on by spiders and Ferrith was the only one that came to deal with them. He didn’t have the money to sweeten the contract, so it was just the basic government one. Without adventurers like Ferrith, a lot of threats wouldn’t ever get dealt with. I want to be an adventurer like that someday. Screw making steel. Bronze is all I need.”

“Wait,” I said. “When you were a child? How old would that make Ferrith?” He seemed like he was in that period where he could have been in his twenties, but probably wasn’t yet in his forties. If Alloha was mentioning her childhood, that had to have been at least fifteen years ago.

“I don’t really know,” Alloha said. “I’m sure it’s in his file back at the guild. You could ask to look him up when you get back. How long did you travel with him?”

“Just those two nights,” I reiterated. “I was an accidental summon when he was clearing out a nest of harpies. Once we got to Haemir, he dropped me off at the Porter’s and I haven’t seen him since.”

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“Huh,” Torra said. “I thought you were joking about that ogre thing.”

“Not everything is a joke, Torra,” Alloha said.

“You’re really an ogre, then?” Torra asked me. “You look like a tiny rissian.”

I shrugged. “I don’t really know if I am or not,” I told him. “The people in my world don’t get as tall as ogres, and we can’t eat mud, but I’m open to the idea we’re distantly related. It would make as much sense as anything else I’ve experienced since I got here.”

“I guess some breeds of ogres just look like little rissians,” Alloha said. “I bet there’s a breed out there that looks exactly the same.”

“Uh, no,” I said. “We don’t look the same. Not really.”

“How’s that?” Torra asked.

“My skin’s a different color,” I said. “You guys just can’t see it.”

Torra held up the back of his hand against my cheek. “I don’t see it,” he said. “A little pale, maybe, but that’s just cause you need to get more sun.”

“That’s not what I meant by a different color,” I said. “It’s not about how dark my skin is, it’s about rissians not seeing the color red.”

Torra laughed. “Good one,” he said.

“We can see green just fine,” Alloha added.

“It’s not a joke,” I said. “Rissians are colorblind and you don’t even realize it. It’s not green that you can’t see, but when I try to describe it to you, my translator just changes it to the closest equivalent color you can understand. This other color you can’t see is in my skin. That’s how I can tell myself apart from rissians. Other ogres all have that same color in their skin, to varying degrees.”

“You see that?” Torra asked Alloha. “That total deadpan delivery? I’ve got to practice that. I always crack a smile right as they’re starting to believe me.”

Alloha giggled. “He’s getting you back for the poison thing. You’ve got to stop doing that when you meet people!”

“I’m not joking!” I insisted. “I can really see colors you can’t.”

Torra frowned. “You’re serious?” He shook his head. “No, I know how this goes. As soon as I admit I believe you, you’ll admit you were pulling my leg the whole time.”

“I dunno,” Alloha said. “It’s kinda past the point of being funny anymore. And look. He’s not smiling.”

“I can prove it,” I said.

“You cannot prove a negative,” Victoria chimed in.

“I don’t need you to see the color to prove it exists,” I said. “How about this? I can make an approximation of a colorblind test.” I looked around for something red I could use to prove my point and saw some red berries on a bush. Some were red, and some were green. Perfect. I grabbed a handful of them.

“Careful with those,” Alloha warned. “They’re poisonous. Only birds eat them.”

“How poisonous are they?” I asked. “Do they kill instantly?”

“We call ‘em Shit Berries,” Torra explained. “If you eat ‘em, you’ll get stomach cramps, then have to shit real bad.”

Alloha groaned. “Ugh, no! Don’t listen to him. They’re called Crampies. Sometimes they taste great, but even then they give you cramps.”

Torra shrugged. “Call ‘em what you want, don’t change that they make you shi—”

“We get it!” Alloha interrupted. “You don’t have to be so crude!”

“It’s okay, guys,” I said. “I can just taste them to make my point.” I separated the berries, so I had two handfuls: one red, one green. I tasted one of the green ones and spit it out. It was bitter and burned the tongue. I tried a red one and found it was syrupy sweet with just a kick of heat to it. “Okay,” I said. “Alloha, you said sometimes these things taste good?”

“Oh, yeah,” Torra said. “The sweet ones are almost worth the cramps, but you never know what you’re gonna get.”

“Well, I can tell them apart,” I said. “Every time. I’ll prove it.” I took a single red berry from one hand and added it to the green ones. “Here,” I said to Alloha. I held out my hand, and she took the proffered berries. “Shake those up.” She did as instructed. “Now, do any of those look different from the others?”

“Not really,” she said. “Some are bigger. Is that what you mean?”

“No. One of those berries is the special color only I can see. It tastes sweet. Pick a berry at random and taste it.”

She did, grabbing an unripe one. She spit it out immediately. “Blech! Bitter.”

“Try another,” I said, knowing there was only a 1-in-20 chance she would pull the ripe one.

“I don’t get what this proves,” she said as she spat out the second berry. “You got a bad batch. Sometimes they’re like that. The trick my mom told me was to pick them only if you see birds eating them. They only go for the sweets ones.”

I pointed to the single red berry in her hand. “Now eat that one,” I encouraged. “It’s a sweet one. I promise.”