I’ve got ‘Old Town Road’ going around my head.

It’s the morning after the Koldarus incident, and we’ve just set out from Brackwater, taking the main road to a fishing village on the coast. About halfway there, we’re to take a left turn through Millwood which will lead us to Three Farms.

“What is that song you’re whistling?” Andraya asks.

“It’s a sort of country song, from my own world.”

“Can you please stop? It’s not very good.”

“Andraya is fussy about her music,” Misty explains. “One of her less endearing qualities.”

I’m not offended. I’m not a fan of it anyway and listening to other people whistling can be irritating, I understand that. Plus it’s such a beautiful morning, it’s hard to be in a bad mood. The sun is about halfway through its climb to the top of the sky, so the air is cool and fresh. There are birds fussing in the hedgerows that line the road and rabbits hopping about in the fields beyond. Quite idyllic really. Literally a world away from the London crush and filthy air quality that I’m used to.

A thought occurs to me.

“Should we be worried about the Sorrow Spreaders?” I ask.

“Wary, but not worried,” says Andraya. "This road leads to Brynhold as well as Lancove. So there are often level three and four parties traveling along it. The Grief Harvesters tend to hunt to the south and west of Backwater, in the other direction that we’re headed.”

“That’s a relief.”

“It is. But there are other dangers aside from those sorry bastards. Ones more balanced to our level, but dangers nonetheless.”

“Great.”

We walk on for another hour. I’m tempted to ask how long it will be until we get there, but I don’t want to seem impatient. Andraya mentioned that Millwood would be a good place to camp overnight, so presumably it’s going to take all day to reach it. So that’s about another seven or eight hours of walking until nightfall.

Surprisingly, I’m not feeling any physical toll from so much marching about. Usually I’d be knackered by even this mild exercise. My fitness is pretty high for my level I think so that must be contributing to my stamina. I try to be pleased about this, and not worry about the eerier aspect of unseen forces changing my mind and body. I still feel like me. So as Misty said back in her house, the best course of action is not to worry about it.

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It’s early afternoon now, and it is hot. Turns out leather armour gets pretty toasty in the sunshine. I wish I had some deodorant, and something to help with the chaffing on my newly muscled thighs. I’m pondering whether to ask Misty if she can whip up a bottle of skin cream, when Veppi motions for us all to stop.

“I can smell something,” he says. “Something wrong.”

“What do you mean?” Andraya asks.

“Decay, death. A large corpse rotting in the sun. Or several corpses. Just over the hill there.”

“Probably nothing,” says Andraya. “Let’s go on. But cautiously.”

The rest of the party crouch down, and begin to move with accomplished stealth. It turns out that I’m not capable of so much grace. I try and follow their moves, but birds fly from my approach, and my tread sounds loud and clumsy. That’ll be my subtlety score of nil I guess.

Andraya is just up ahead of us, and when she reaches the crest of the hill, she motions for us to wait.

“What is it?” Misty asks. “What can you see?”

“There’s been a battle. There are three, maybe four dead. Looks like an adventuring party. The thing that killed them is still here, chewing on one of the corpses.”

“They’re adventurers?” I ask Andraya. “And their bodies are just lying around, getting munched on? They haven’t ressed?”

“What do you mean, ‘ressed’?” she says.

“They haven’t resurrected somewhere? Gone back to a graveyard or a spawn point?”

“Only the gods are capable of resurrection,” says Andraya in a matter of fact way, as if she’s talking to a child. “And even then they do it sparingly.”

“So, what happens if you die? In battle I mean.”

“You stay dead of course.”

That raises the stakes considerably. Perhaps it’s different for outsiders like me. Let’s hope so.

I move up as stealthily as I can to take a look at whatever is eating the dead. About fifty yards in front of us is a large naked humanoid with dark grey and lumpy skin. It’s about eight feet tall, scrawny and with an impressively hairy back. There’s a spear sticking out of its leg which doesn’t seem to be bothering it. We watch as it wrenches a dead adventurer’s arm from its socket, shucks off the armour, and starts scoffing it like an oversized chicken drumstick.

“Fucking hell,” I say. “That is properly disgusting. What the fuck is it?”

Andraya looks to Misty, who identifies it for us. “A ghastruul. Unusual to see one here, they’re quite rare in Talwen. My guess, it’s been summoned by someone.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“The Brynhold Leech?” Andraya suggests.

“That would make sense. She probably brought it here to patrol the road, thin out any adventurers on the way to her tower.”

“Can we take it?” I ask.

Andraya gives me a look. “You tempted to run down there, waving your sword above your head? All gung ho like you were with Koldarus and his men?”

“A bit, yeah. Look at all that loot lying around. I feel like we could beat it.”

Misty nods. “We could. It’s only level two. But it has a cartload of health, and some special attacks that could one shot the unlucky.”

“Like the dead we see before us,” says Veppi. “I vote we give it a wide berth.”

“Agreed,” says Misty. “It’s doable, but it would be a tough fight.”

Andraya looks to me. “What do you say Doon?”

“It’s not like me at all, but I’m kind of itching for battle. I’ve got a strong urge to smack its corpse munching face with my sword.”

“It’s your strong urges I worry about,” says Andraya. “Taking that thing on isn’t a wise move. I agree with the others. We skirt around it, and continue on unscathed.”

I think this is the first time in my life that I’ve been disappointed at avoiding a violent situation.

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As the sun sets, we reach Millwood and set up camp in a clearing that’s near the forest’s edge. I watch, amazed, as Andraya pulls a ridiculous amount of kit out of her ordinary looking backpack. There’s a skillet and some tin plates from Misty’s kitchen, a mat, a canvas canopy and some rope. It’s like watching a magician pull a never ending stream of coloured handkerchiefs out of their jacket sleeve.

“Is that a bag of holding?” I ask, taking a D&D inspired guess.

“Voluminous bag,” she says.

“Nice,” says Misty. “They’re expensive. How did you get it?”

“Let’s just say I have a generous benefactor.”

I think about asking if this benefactor would be generous enough to pay off Misty’s debt, save us going on this excursion. But I don’t want to sound shitty.

“You didn’t bring a bedroll?” Andraya asks me with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not going to share mine.”

“No, didn’t think about that.”

“Me neither,” said Mistle. “But we won’t need one on a night like this. I can mix us something nice and relaxing. We’ll get comfy enough Doon, I promise.”

I can’t tell if she’s flirting. I think she’s just being her usual pleasant self and I’m an idiot at reading signals.

Before too long, Andraya has fixed a canopy above where we’re going to sleep and I’ve made a passable fire. It turns out that using the flint wasn’t as tricky as I thought it might be. Misty volunteered to cook and is now making flatbread in the skillet.

She pulled the ingredients out of thin air. Just said a few words and conjured some flour and herbs, and mixed them with water from her canteen to make the dough.

“Amazing,” I tell her. “How you did that. Just made that stuff appear from nowhere.”

“It is useful, yeah,” Misty says. “A bottle wizard never goes hungry, that’s for sure. Or thirsty for that matter.”

“You couldn’t just conjure the bread? Have it arrive ready made?”

“I could. But where’s the fun in that? I love cooking.”

The bread is ready, and Misty hands it out to us. She gives us each a small bottle of red liquid to drink too.

Andraya gives it a sniff. “This is cordiale Misty, is that right?”

“Yeah, helps the conversation to flow. Tastes good too.”

The bread is delicious, which is no surprise as everything I’ve consumed since arriving here has been astonishingly good, with the exception of a potion or two. Maybe I’m just used to eating crap and this is what real food tastes like. The drink is great too, kind of like cherry liqueur.

“So Doon,” says Andraya, setting down her plate. “Tell us something of the world you’re from.”

“I don’t know where to start. It’s so different to here. I live in a huge city, London, with massive buildings and endless streets and houses, all grey. There are tonnes of people, millions of them actually, from all over the world, all crushed in together, getting in each others way. We got a sky scraper that looks like a pickle, and a giant wheel by the river that you can ride. We used to have great places to go see bands and hang out but times are hard and they’ve closed down, and we had a disease like a plague that fucked everything and we’re still getting over that. We have politicians, you know, rulers, that seem to hate us. There are loads of cars and trains, and some of the trains run underground in the dark and there are mice down there on the tracks that look like they’re made of soot. So many rats too, and foxes on the streets at nights. I always like to see those though, the foxes not the rats, I had a family of them in my garden one year. I liked to watch the cubs playing together when I got back from the pub. But it’s dirty and noisy, and people kind of ignore you and are sort of cold if they don’t know you. Most of the people that live there look miserable most of the time, especially on their way to work, but they light up when they see their friends, they just seem to have no time for strangers. Except Ella who was this girl I lived with, my girlfriend, she'd talk to anyone and I deeply, deeply loved her, and she's why I'm here, in this place because she might be here I don't know but if she is I have to find her, and back home in London I make sandwiches for a living which is two bits of bread with stuff in between and I sell them to people and er, I’ll stop talking now.”

Misty holds up her bottle of cordiale. “Like I say Doon, it loosens the tongue.”

“Yeah, that was weird. I don’t think I’ve ever said so many words in one go."

"So, this Ella," says Andraya. "You talked about her in the Cackling Pig when we met. You said you broke up, and you thought she was dead for a while, but then she sent you a message to come and save her in our world?"

"Yeah, kind of. I think. It sounds wrong doesn't it? Foolish."

"Not at all," says Mistle. "For you, it sounds like the most important thing in the world."

I feel overwhelmed suddenly. Thoughts of Ella and home, they're too big for my head. I feel a sense of rightness and wrongness at the same time, like I'm where I should and shouldn't be all at once. It's too much and so I opt to change the subject, give my brain a chance to contend with something easier than the absurdity of jumping into a fantasy gameworld to save an ex who may well be either dead or still mad at me. "Andraya, what about you?" I ask, "Where are you from?”

“A village just west of Wyncross. My family worked the land, farming pigs. They still do, but that wasn’t a life I was drawn to. I wanted to be a singer from an early age. I have a beautiful voice, the trill of a songbird. So when I was thirteen, off I went to bard school and trained, but I didn’t really enjoy it. Most bards are self-obsessed pricks, it turns out, so I left without graduating, and decided to try adventuring instead. I went to Pantamus, the guide in Wyncross and got my thy, and pitched my tent in the camp of the Peacock Angel, Androlphus, as a Cantatic Priest. His powers are drawn from performance and song, and so that suited me well. He has never appeared to me, though I have sung with him in his cathedral in Wyncross. It was ecstasy.”

Veppi is sitting just away from us on a tree stump. He’s smoking his pipe, hence the distance. He knocks out the tobacco on the stump and says “Androlphus is a name I recognise. But only vaguely, and it’s not a pleasant recollection.”

“How so?” Andraya asks.

“I’m not sure,” the otter replies. “Perhaps I’ve met him, perhaps I’ve argued with him. I can’t be certain. It’s more of a feeling than a memory.”

He climbs down from his stump to get closer to the fire.

“I can see I’ve insulted you Andraya,” he says. “And I apologise. I meant nothing by it. I’m sure I’m mistaken. I’m newly born from a magic chest, what do I know of the patrons of this world?”