If we’re being honest about it, I think we all spend most of the next day asleep in some way shape or form: whether in our own chambers, in someone else’s (as was the case, I’m pretty sure, for Jonas), or on the study settee in front of the fire where I spend much of the afternoon dozing while Flynt eagerly reads through the book and all its wonders.

The only adventuring related thing we really do is decide who gets use of the magical objects we found. Meg takes the anti-poison broach and Jonas the necklace of Essence renewal. I try to talk him into the necklace of protection as well, but he insists he shouldn’t get more than his share. Tyrus already has a ring with a protection spell on it from his grandfather, and another of the same enchantment apparently won’t do anything, so Flynt and I exchange looks.

“You get injured more than I do,” he says, which is historically difficult to deny, so I end up with the red necklace, which I wear under my shirt. It’s weirdly warm against my skin and will take some getting used to. Checking my [Personal Stats], it doesn’t seem to raise my [Defense] rating either, so maybe it does damage reduction instead?

The weather is pretty rotten for most of the next week. We do a lot of training down in the storage cellar, while Flynt and Meg go for a run around the city (Meg’s idea, Flynt seemed to think it was pretty weird).

Otherwise, we do a lot of reading, a lot of napping, and a lot of chatting. I start to lose hope that we would actually be setting out again any time soon—certainly not for places unknown—but when I wake up Acvum morning to bright sunshine and singing birds, my heart all but leaps into my throat.

I pull on my adventuring garb, stuff a couple changes of clothes and an extra pair of boots into my bag along with the map and book, and bound downstairs to the small dining room off the kitchen, wearing a grin that not everyone in my party shares.

“I’ve never seen you this chipper in the morning,” Tyrus observes, scowling down at his breakfast coffee. “I didn’t realize you were so excited for this.”

“We’re embarking in search of a mystery.” I grab a piece of toast as I settle at the table, and grin across at Meg, who is buttering her own toast and also looks ready to set out at a moment’s notice. Neither Jonas nor Tyrus are quite up for adventure yet, though, and Flynt still hasn’t come downstairs. “I love a good mystery. And I’ll be honest. The last few days have been nice, but I’m restless. I’m not here to sleep.”

“It was nice, though,” Jonas says as he eats some kind of bacon. “I didn’t mind a nice warm bed.”

“I bet you didn’t,” Meg murmurs. She makes eye contact and shrugs my attention over to Jonas, whose blush can be seen despite his deep brown complexion. Tyrus just looks proud of himself, which, fair enough, and he takes a big swig of coffee.

Flynt comes in, as well put together as ever, his Han-Solo-style adventuring garb pristine and fitted. He also looks excited, though I’ve discovered that Flynt is generally a morning person—at least, he is when he hasn’t been up half the night keeping watch (and even then, he’s nowhere near as grumpy as I tend to be even with a full night’s sleep).

“Bright morning,” he bids us, pausing at the sideboard to collect a plate of food and some coffee, before sitting on the bench seat next to me. I check him in the shoulder in greeting, and he grins, doing the same. “We ready for our next adventure?”

“Some of us more than others,” Meg says.

“Hm.” Flynt glances at the other guys and raises his brow. “You both did agree. Are you having second thoughts?”

“I still have my first doubts,” Jonas replies. “But I’m with the team. It just isn’t even seventh bell yet. We’re used to being the first ones up. You all are interrupting our morning with your sudden early rising. We don’t like it.”

The three of us glance at each other.

“Should we… leave?” I ask.

Jonas sighs heavily. “That’d be ridiculous.”

“But we shouldn’t make this a habit?” Flynt says.

“Please don’t.”

We finish our breakfasts and the three of us work with Almira to stock my bag full of supplies while we wait for Jonas and Tyrus to get ready for the journey.

Now that I have an indefinitely permanent living situation, I no longer feel the need to take all my possessions with me at all times. Now, most of the knickknacks I’ve found, and a healthy chunk of my personal effects, are stored in my room, which has created [Tabs] on my [Inventory] screen: my [Bag], my [Wardrobe], and my [Chest]. My [Bag] space hasn’t filled up yet, but with stuff enough for five people in it, my on-the-go [Inventory] tends to be fairly robust, even with only my useful items and of course the [Legendary Cloak] that I don’t want anyone to find.

Today, I carry with me half my coins but all of the party’s, as was decided, as well as a handful of gems just in case, plus a boatload of other items since we don’t know how long we’re going to be out. As we wait, I make sure to review the contents carefully like a checklist.

The nice thing is that the bag keeps all food in some kind of stasis, so the stew will come out hot, the sandwiches will stay fresh, and we won’t have to worry about the breakfast meat going bad.

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[Inventory] always makes me laugh, though. First, at the fact that I can’t see the items in the bags belonging to my party members. Second, at the way it classifies things; the fact that it notes things like napkins and hand towels as being “mundane”—thus suggesting that there are magical equivalents of each—amuses me. Same with things like my underwear, though apparently anything you wear can technically get a protection enchantment added to it, which for some reason conjures an image of a pair of plus-one tighty-whities.

I wonder briefly if we should take more food and I add a small mundane bag of assorted berries, a wrapped half pound of jerky, and a half dozen bread rolls fresh out of the oven. Almira, who is a pale human woman with black curly hair and a heart-shaped face, has infinite patience through the whole thing.

When Tyrus and Jonas appear, I add their packs to [Inventory], struggling as always to getting Tyrus’s through the mouth of my bag. Then, we bid goodbye to Almira, who promises to communicate our departure to Flynt’s father, and we set out toward the docks by eighth bell.

The weather is beautiful, and in the sunshine and fairly early hour, we make a quick way across the city to the Eastern Docks Ward. I wish I could say it looks better in the bright early spring sun, but I’d be lying. If anything, the area is worse than when we last saw it under a heavy layer of snow.

Like last time, we’re followed by spotters on the rooftops, though that peters out the closer we get to the water. Once there, the tails disappear into the crowd—and it is crowded down here. We all keep getting bumped and jostled and I keep my bag pulled up close to me to avoid any potential pick-pockets; it would be hard for them to call out items from my bag in the short time they’d have before I’d notice, but I wouldn’t put it past a skilled thief. Tyrus has demonstrated on more than one occasion just how easy he finds such an endeavor (which is more embarrassing every time he does it).

We make our way down to the main road along the water: a broad cobble stoned path that leads from the Eastern to Western Foothills along the entirety of the Docks District. It’s not a straight shot, but with the day as clear as it is, I can see all the way from the grimy working vessels we’re closest to down to the gleaming masts of the yachts down near the wealthy western side.

A part-elven man runs hard into Jonas ahead of me and Flynt, at my side, barely takes a beat before grabbing the accoster’s collar and pulling him backward, causing him to drop the pouch taken off Jonas’s belt. Our healer quickly snatches it up and the man gasps out an apology before Flynt pushes him away, shaking his head and muttering under his breath.

The other man seems startled, unsure what to make of our half-elven, part-orkish colleague and he skitters away. I watch him weave through the crowd and up onto the sidewalk on the other side of the thoroughfare, and he whispers to a pair of humans — a man and a woman.

“Keep a close watch,” Flynt says, his voice low and almost swallowed by the chaos of the docks around us. “This isn’t an especially safe part of town.” As if I hadn’t clocked that twenty minutes ago.

“I figured that out by the people who’ve been following us the whole way.”

“Where?”

I glance over my shoulder toward the far rooftop and see a figure there, crouching by a crooked chimney, watching with a spyglass. I wave.

“What’re you doing?” Tyrus appears from nowhere beside me, pulling my hand down. “What’re you letting her do?”

“He’s not letting me do anything,” I reply, dodging a large human who barrels through our group with no intention of veering away from his path. The crowd is beginning to make me dizzy and it’s the first time since I’ve been here that anxiety starts to tug at my throat. “I wanted them to know I saw them.”

“They’re not the ones you need to worry about,” Tyrus says. “We have a good relationship with the Kartesians right now. But it’s best to ignore them. Their presence is redirecting attention that we don’t want.”

The Kartesian crime family all but owns the Eastern Dock District and, though he’s still a little annoyed by the fact that we attracted their attention when we went in to destroy that spider nest, I think Tyrus is secretly excited to be on their radar. They paid us quite well for the favor and promised to remember us.

Frankly, I find it a little unnerving the more that I learn about them—they’re not quite the Corleones, but give them a decade and they could be.

“Tyrus, where are we going?” Meg asks, glancing backward. “I’m just walking here, but I have no idea to where. Leave Keira alone, you really can’t lead from behind.”

He grumbles and pushes forward, almost getting hit in the head by a large fish that a fishmonger thrusts forward to try to get our attention. Tyrus dodges uncannily fast, though, with a slew of angry Dwarvish curses, which prompts a flurry of similar directed back at him along with a hand gesture. Only Meg’s insistence keeps him on track, and we continue single-file down the boardwalk.

I keep an eye out over my shoulder—both at our rooftop spotters and at the trio that tried to steal from Jonas. They’re also following, seemingly not noticing the Kartesian tail or not giving a shit about it. I wonder why they’ve marked us. We’re clearly not the easy pickings we may look like we are (and I’d disagree with the notion that we do look like easy pickings).

Tyrus turns us up a pier about two-thirds of the way down, where a bunch of independent vessels seem to be moored. They’re generally on the smaller side and many of them advertise cheap fares and safe crossings across the sound, usually on hand-written wooden signs propped where the boat is tied up.

Some of them have someone lingering outside, leaning against the side of the vessel or the pier’s railing, their arms crossed. There’s about a dozen of them, mostly men and mostly human, though there’s a woman of what looks to be some degree of orkish descent and a pair of female elves, one of which gives me a small half-smile and gentle head bow as we pass, which I awkwardly return while trying not to fall behind. Everyone clearly works hard for their living and their faces and clothing tend to be as weather beaten as their hulls.

Nearly all the way to the end we pause in front of one of the larger boats on the pier. With one large main mast and one smaller, it’s bigger than most private sailboats I’ve been on back home, but it’s nowhere near as large as a cinematic pirate ship. It does have what looks to be some kind of below-deck situation, though, with a couple of portholes on its side. More than that is hard to describe, though; I know about as much about boats as Vizzini.

Standing in front is a man who I would guess is half dwarven: he’s probably four-foot-ten—a few inches taller than Tyrus, who I’m told is quite tall for a dwarf (though I am told this by him, so who knows the reality there)—with tanned, sun-damaged skin, and biceps as big around as my thigh. They are covered in elaborate, decorative tattoos and I wouldn’t be surprised if they tell a story to those who know how to read them. He has wiry dark curly hair and his beard is notably longer than Tyrus’s was pre-jelly attack, though it’s just as well-groomed despite some salt deposits from the thick sea air.

“Gendric,” Tyrus says, grinning and reaching out a hand, which the man takes hesitantly, glancing at the rest of us in Tyrus’s wake. “Remember when you lost that hand of cards and said you owed me a favor…”