The Four-Leaf Inn had a scratched-up counter with beer taps and barrels behind it, and an array of durable tables in the front. Eliza had also decorated the tavern with watercolors of forests and woods: the one with bluebell flowers was her favorite.

But the most important part of any tavern is its people. This part was mostly missing, and the warm candlelights present most evenings had already been snuffed out. The only patron who remained in the twilight was a man who went by Rick.

“Vulture Company, hee, hee. They’ve really returned.”

He had his own platoon of beer mugs in front of him.

“Eliza! One more… just one more…”

“This will be the last?”

“No, but the one after that will.”

Eliza shook her head and poured him a glass mainly of ice.

Rick’s own adrenaline had drained down to its dregs. The quest request had unleashed an emotional bomb on him, and after his initial exhilaration all that remained was fear, pain, and heaviness of soul that only a large dose of alcohol could cure.

Rick’s poisoned tea had contained belladonna, which is better known as nightshade. And nightshade is known even more colloquially in Andrestia as ‘Death’s Cherry’s’—if he drank that liquid he’d have died.

“So they’ve come,” he muttered, and Eliza looked at him, tilting her head.

“Rick...?”

“If a man named ‘Colin’ asks to stay at the Inn, see to it he takes off his gloves. If there’s tally marks, refuse him. If he asks if we’re friends, deny it,” Rick instructed. “And stop watering down these drinks.”

“Rick, stop!”

“These drinks aren’t just for me. Getting that ‘Gatekeeper’ drunk is the only way I can think about handling that dreadful group at all.”

“‘That ‘Gatekeeper’s not another woman, is she...?”

“Ah! That’s another way to feel good. Send a woman up to my room tonight, I’m in the mood for someone with long legs and a big chest. It’s about time I try that, don’t you think?”

Eliza stepped onto a stool, and checked herself in the mirror of the bar. She was short enough she had to stand on her tiptoes to catch glances at her full body— her brown hair cascaded to her hips, as she wore a neat flat apron and a scowl.

“I don’t mind finding you a woman, I guess. But calling in someone like that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe I’ll just call on her, because the way she looks at you… and I suppose she fits half of what you said anyway. If you care.”

She jumped off, and her shoes clapped the hardwood. “And I thought you don’t take those kinds of visits anyway. You hate them. Don’t you Rick? Rick?”

“Snrrrrick.”

Rick slumped and snored. A glass mug tottered and splashed onto the ground, and Eliza went to grab a mop. Then she dropped it: a rough voice had thrown her off—

“Old friend.”

“Rick!?”

“If you had to choose between what’s safe and what’s right. What would you do?”

He propped up his head with shaky arms. His eyes were red-rimmed but held a mournful vigor, and it was a seriousness that didn’t seem to fit the clumsy young man. Eliza flipped the mop and waved it as priestess wards away bad spirits, or as a nervous elf bartender might do to an Adventurer that seemed a tinge possessed.

“You can do good things without risking everything, right?” She answered.

“I see… so that was a choice.. maybe that was always a choice, somehow… but if I’ve already lost most things… but I haven’t… have I…”

Rick stumbled up and slammed into another table. Then steadied himself and re-arranged the fallen cutlery. “...but it might all be lost.”

“If this is about your debts,” Eliza said. “Then you needn’t worry about them. You mooch off me and you repay Mazevale twice, three times over. It’s our pact. Our understanding.”

Unfortunately, Rick wasn’t really understanding much of anything right now. Rick was muttering incoherently, and the beer mugs multiplied before his eyes—not because he was drinking more, but because he was just trying to get that plastered.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“If this is about something else, then I stick to what I said: you don’t have to take risks to do something good. Because Rick, that’s kind of what I do with you…”

He collapsed. Onto the bar’s hardwood floor; onto Eliza’s slim shoulders; into the mattress of Room 103, and his nightmares possessed him. It was the same ‘dream’ that crawled into his brain, over and over again. First, there were goblins. Then, there was drinking. Then, there was a sweet closeness. And finally… finally…

There was an ending that he couldn’t change. He could repeat this dream at night, or reenact it during the day—the drinking, then the sweetness—but the unhappiness at the end of it would smother him as surely as death.

Failure Adventurer.

Failure Adventurer.

His ‘nightmare’ wasn’t about when the town first called him that name. It was about the event that led to Rick calling himself that in his own mind, when he learned the truth of who he was and embraced it.

He awoke to a night terror that straddled him; its legs pressuring his chest and heart. Rick did not speak, did not protest, and accepted this haunt as a price for having remained so stoic for so long.

Then his breathing slowed. His heart returned to an average pace, and the vivid nightmare turned to a bruised memory at the back of his skull. Rick flicked on the lamp, and the still figure did not vanish and neither did its pressure leave him.

“Strange. This is supposed to be a dream.”

Maybe it was the woman that Eliza had sent up for him. An escort?

“That chest looks familiar.”

No—

“Pern?”

She near cracked his ribs with her thighs.

“I’m gonna kill you Rick! I’m gonna kill you! Familiar? I knew you were looking, but — familiar? That much?”

“Kill me then.”

She stopped, and looked.

“Rick.”

Pern wore a singular expression. It was as though she were a huntress who forged through the jungle to search for a tiger, only to find an injured pet.

“You really are hurt.”

“I’m not.”

“You are!”

“You were hiding. Like a hibernating bear. Admit it!”

Pern refused to stop straddling him down.

“I, S-Rank Ace Detective Pern can capably crack the curious case of the crushed crestfallen canoodler. I went to the Adventurer’s desk and made inquiries. You know all Guild assignments are public record, right?

“Sure I know, now that you’ve told me.”

“So you know that the Adventurers registered as ‘Ricard Zweithander’ and ‘Pern Arienette’ are both listed as the quest takers for Mazevale Quest Number 3223, right? It’s on the bulletin board!”

So much for that second favor Rick had asked from Estelle. If he hired her as maid, he’d cut her pay. Only two gold and ninety-seven silver marks a day for her!

“I intend to clear it, not fail it,” said Rick. “I don’t see why you should be so bothered.”

“Clear it?”

“Yes.”

“Clear it!?”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Clearing it—no. You speaking clearly about your wants and needs—yes.” Pern said. “I like this. I like this a lot!”

And the lady knight looked quite pleased, though not so much like a lady.

“So, you’ve got a quest—you intend to clear it — and you’re deeply bothered by it, this ‘Quest 3223.’ You can hide nothing from the ace observations of Pern.”

“The actual quest details are secret, so this is all you’re going to get.”

“But I could just squeeze them out of you, can’t I?”

Pern looked down at him proudly. She braced her hands against his chest; and leaned all her weight against him. Her body combined with the mythril mass represented a significant attack. .

“Rick, I”m someone who’ll always be with you. That’s what a friend is, or at least how I imagine one to be. Confess! Confess to me what’s wrong!” She rocked back and forth. “I won’t let you go til you tell!”

They looked into each other’s eyes, Pern’s green to Rick’s brown. They witnessed one another’s faces and how they mixed anger, playfulness, and a third taut, fiery emotion. And then waited and stilled with that simmering mix.

And somehow, to Rick—that moment came out as sweet.

“I’ll tell you everything. But stop going against me.”

“I’m not against you though.”

“You’re pushing against me. You’ve wrapped around me like some kind of snake, for crying out loud.”

“This was so you wouldn’t run away!” Pern snapped. “T-that’s all!”

She flopped onto the bed’s other side and threw her head on the pillow. Rick was now free to glance at the door and the window, and found that neither had been forced open. Eliza must have let Pern in with the tavern keys, and though there was suspicious light outside the window it was likely a guard from the Guild.

“We’re fighting the Vulture Company. They’re a band of mercenary assassins that gave me and a companion a great deal of trouble, once. We’re supposed to attack them tomorrow at sundown, and His Majesty’s soldiers are supposed to clean up afterwards.”

“That’s easy then. It’s not like we need to slay them all by ourselves.”

“So it seems.”

“And regardless, an S-Rank is worth 10,000 of the King’s Men.”

“I think a woman like you is worth any number of men,” Rick said seriously, and Pern was uncharacteristically silent.

“I don’t swing for the other team,” Rick carried on. “So whether it’s one man or one hundred thousand they do nothing for me. You, on the other hand, are unquantifiable. If we went on a date, it’d either depress me or put me in a fantastic mood for the rest of the night.”

The lady knight rolled her eyes as Rick grabbed his coat: “Pern. Care to go for a walk?”

“Then, is this a date?”

“I can guarantee there’ll be action.”

“Then let the sparks fly!”