Like so many places in either world that Mila knew, Moussehof was a city founded by a people in the grand wilderness of lands already clearly occupied by other folks. The human-dominant empire that did the ‘civilizing’ was from overseas and had made a grand reach into the mainland before finding out two things in quick succession: the environment here on Godsland did not take well to wide-reaching countries, and their neighbors back home were much less pacified than previously believed. An empire crumpled easily, but the remnants stayed behind as best they could, the human nations Balkanizing as they were forced to sink or swim.

That was hundreds of years ago, to the point that Mila had the name of the empire rattling around somewhere in her mind, but it was immaterial outside of its curious similarities to the British empire, up until their Fantasyland crumpets got crumbled. That did not mean the origins of the city did not bleed through to the current day, though, and she could easily feel some of it as the group trudged into the city, giving solemn nods at many of the faces they saw in the gloomy, overcast morning light. The diversity of faces was one of the key signs they were still in the rougher edges of the town, plenty of humans around but more of everyone else than the center of the city would prefer. Willing to accept other folks, be they local or foreign, as long as they did not get too uppity or demand to be treated too nicely.

The standard, irritating thoughts about her home of the last decade or what have you did not get to distract the pinkie enough from their job, unfortunately. It was the slimmest solace that she would not need to escort the remains the last littlest bit of their final journey, nor that she would be there to deliver the news. Nobody else was truly distracted either, in spite of their best efforts. In the days-long hustle to get back before Aluca’s telekinesis sputtered out, who would be doing what for the final bit had been hashed out quickly, and now it was just a matter of doing the things, discussion not needed. Naw-Naw and the mage would be delivering the bad news to the families, while the others would be taking their gear back to their shared home and starting to get things squared away there.

Home being the inn and tavern they had an arrangement with, nestled carefully right where the other delineation between the nice and bad parts of town met - whether the locals called the city by its given name or the derisive monicker of Rat-Hate. The exact linguistic evolution there was not something Mila knew exactly, but she was pretty sure it involved the local accent making the city’s actual name sound like “Mouse Off”. No matter what, though, she was camp Rat-Hate.

Whether the Wander Inn, with its wooden sign where the last letter had been stolen and the ‘I’ listed to the left to rest against the ‘r’, belonged to the good or bad part of town depended on the day. Mila let out a small sigh at the dodged bullet when she pushed open the door and found it feeling way too comfortable for it to be a ‘nice part of town’ day, a small blessing. She slid forward, doing a half-spin as she pulled the full sized door behind her and held it open for Hughestace to come through, followed by Rora laden down by the other two’s packs, none the worse for wear with the burdens. The elf raised a hand with all five fingers up and gave a nod to the proprietor, managing to flick dark locks to frame his face in Hollywood precision with the move, before heading over to a round booth in a corner, thunking his pack into a vague cubby built into the side of the seats and sliding into shadowy depths.

Mila padded along, helping Rora to doff everything she was carrying and being extra careful to definitely be focused on propping the big, heavy sword up amongst their possessions as the golden woman carefully clambering up to the seat. Staring would not be becoming of Mila, after all, no matter how much she might appreciate the muscles the knightly lady had. Mila did not bother working with the footholds once it was her turn to get up, instead taking a step back to leap, half-falling and half-landing butt-first in her spot, tail tucked to the side so she would not land hard on it.

Said tail snaked around behind her before slithering down by her feet, jerking to and fro in tight, rapid twitches. A sure sign that she was still stressed, although her table mates knew better than to point out the tail tell given the current mood that they also suffered from. The sullen silence was only broken as the proprietor, a big, conspicuously muscled woman, trotted over to thunk more tankards than it seemed possible for her to hold on the table, the foamy amber threatening to spill over.

Darimash was a friend to the group, albeit the stilted friendship of a relationship that was paired next to money changing mitts. She was their landlord of sorts, with a deal struck up that helped both parties along - Rat-Hate rarely got big groups traveling through that would actually fill up the Wander Inn’s rooms upstairs, and adventurers were on the road often enough that they were more often than not paying for a home they were not using. So the deal that Rora had negotiated was a straightforward one. The adventurers paid a heavily discounted price for rooms their own and, when in town, would help out around the place. To their benefit, they only paid for when they were in town, and the attic was always open to them, for sleeping or stashing stuff while they were away. The other rooms, in those rare boom times, had no such guarantee.

The handiwork around the establishment felt a bit below Mila’s pay grade, sometimes, but fixing up the odd door hinge or water plumbing was hardly difficult work for her either and she knew it helped, making it a trade she gladly partook in. It also meant that they, and everyone else willing to pay, got to eat Naw-Naw’s cooking once they got to their apron proper and got to running the kitchen. The gnoll could fry a fish twenty different ways, and every way was delicious.

“Rooms’re ready, your usuals,” Darimash let them know. She paused, taking in the barest of nods, and gave a deeper one herself. “I’m sorry to hear that, then. I’ll let Telit know. Looks like y’all’d prefer a quiet evening.”

There was a moment’s wait, to allow for a refusal to be voiced, but none was coming. It took Mila dragging her mind forward enough to slap her tail against the base of the booth, which in turn jerked her head up. “We dunno what got ‘em. We killed some yotels, but it wasn’t them. Something big, mean, and poisonous.”

The purveyor of vittles nodded more resolutely, a grey spark in her eye. When you ran the premier dining establishment for tried-and-true and would-be adventurers both, you more than picked up on what felt normal, and Darimash felt nothing but weirdness from that description, much less how shaken the group was. She moved on, making her rounds to see which other patrons would be running past Telit’s usual haunt and would be willing to pass the rumormonger-and-opportunistically-fixer a message. A face to face debriefing would have to wait.

Being left along with five human-sized servings of alcohol was a dangerous prospect in the best of times for the trio, but the funk made it all so much severe. Hughestace gave it two solid beats before a clammy hand shot out, grabbed a cup, and threw it back, gulping once and twice before thunking it back on the table, head popping back to hit the wood behind him. He did not say anything, but the glance Rora sent his way was enough to know the ale was already starting to hit him hard, his usual lightweightedness on full display. Mila and Aluca had argued it was due to some… solubility factor of membranes or something, because he was a semi-aquatic elf.

Her longer look in the other direction was to watch Mila tackle her first glass in a much more directed, focused fashion, putting the drink away with the measured breathing of someone who would and could put many more away this day. And that left Rora in the middle, working on her drink slowly but methodically, twisted up in her emotions.

“That was truly awful.”

Mila’s head bobbed in agreement to the elf’s words, a little grateful that they would be speeding through Hughestace’s ‘drunk and pointing out the obvious, yet still understandable’ phase. That last bit would fade quickly enough, soon followed by the sprint of talkativeness, and would return the quiet man to being quietly drunk. Not that she disliked her teammate or did not often try to balance him in that thin, talkative space, but the recent events were not what she wanted to talk about.

Hell, it was the thing she wanted to think about the least. Even the whole nonsense about Fantasyland and Scienceland and how all that information sat over her and her life was a more comforting topic to ponder. Given that the topic set off her anxiety about as much as the idea of having to get all dressed up and give a speech that would have to be well-received by assholes she did not like, it was impressive. Disheartening, but impressive.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Mila’s first drink was now empty, held aloft and tipped over so that the last few drops could fall into the bottomless pit some folks called a kobold. It landed on the table harder than was strictly needed, but the thump served its purpose, a nice cathartic oomph to channel Mila’s frustrations. She had no gods-damned clue why she had two sets of selves riding around in her noggin, and if anything listening took that too literally, it meant that it could have been divine fuckery mucking about in her mind. The Mila from Scienceland had pretty high standards for who she let in to poke around in her brain, as a series of therapists that did not work out could attest to, and the gestalt her had those same standards. Yet she very much doubted that the God of Good Mental Health was the one fucking with her, call it a hunch.

A small blessing was that, while their elven companion was two sheets to the wind in just as many gulps, Mila knew that her drinking would not soon escape her. It made it an easy decision to reach out and slide one of the spare drinks over to in front of her, making the executive decision that Aluca would not want to let a good drink get room temperature. And poaching from their erstwhile companions tempered the temptation to order something stronger from the bar - last time she had gotten a bottle of liquor, she still was not sure what had happened, beyond it clearly blooming out to several bottles. The mammal-types still gave her the occasional sideways look that she had not been able to decode yet.

Beyond that, the hard alcohols of Scienceland were a good bit kinder to you on the same approximate budget. It was not to say Darimash’s stuff was bad, notably, just that when it came to scuzzy, cost-effective drinks to get properly shitfaced on, maybe Fantasyland as a whole had a few things to learn. Wooo, industrialization.

Her concerning analysis of alcohol’s tipsyfying-power-to-standard-unit-of-currency rattled a few screws, enough to bring her back to the present, near-lapping at Naw-Naw’s drink that she had in her hands. It was rather unladylike and she set herself to just taking gentle, small sips of her third cup. The bitter ale mixed with the metallic smell and feel of the tankard, not dissimilar from licking a battery, and she focused on that for a little bit, not noticing Rora’s eyes watching her and pointedly ignoring the three new drinks set out in the middle of the table. It’d be a while, she promised herself, before she had another one tonight. If she had another one.

She did startle, jumping in place and straightening up tall when Naw-Naw’s weight hit the seat of the bench, sliding around and soon being joined by Aluca himself. Both looked as rough as Mila felt, which could only mean that she looked like something a cat had horked up. The thought did not make her feel better.

It did make her look at the two closer, though, and she did not need to ask how it had gone. Bad news was better than having to wonder forever, but that did not make the delivery nor the receiving of it any less emotionally charged. And that charge had clearly drained them, an uncalloused hand and a thick, fur-backed mitt each claiming drinks of their own and working towards Mila’s streamlined method of consumption, very out of character for the both of them.

Their landlord, lovely as she was, drifted by only long enough to feel that they were not ordering food, at least not yet. They would need to eat, to bathe, to dig out their spare clothes from the trunks they had stashed away in the attic, but that was all for later, when everything was dulled and less like poking at an exposed nerve in the back of their collective mouth. They were all out of sorts, all out of character, which meant that the drunken Hughestace was the only one trying to broach any conversation, failing due to a mix of slurring his words and slipping into his native tongue, the dialect of elven only halfway parseable by Mila in the best of times.

Uncomfortableness stretched out, languishing like the metaphorical cat that had puked up perhaps all the party, until Mila just could not have it any longer. “Reckon it’ll rain tomorrow?” She asked stiffly, shifting the weight of her cup around its weighted base.

The awful stab at small talk helped break the spell with a round of snorts and giggles, none all that hearty but enough to be *something*. The mage popped his drink down hard enough to splash a little bit onto the table as he fixed her with a look with one eyebrow raised. “It’s rained at least a little each day in the last three weeks here. Do you reckon it’ll rain tomorrow?” Using her exact words brought a cracked smile to Mila’s face.

“Oh, I reckon. I reckon indeed.”

“… I’m not betting against that, if that’s your intention here.”

“It’s rained the last three weeks! Why, if there’s a dry day on the horizon, it’ll be tomorrow!”

Mila’s empty ploy to get a sucker’s bet in her favor pulled a snort of a laugh from the table as a whole, the stress everyone was holding starting to drain away. Slowly, but it was a relief, the first concrete feeling that they would not be crushed under the gloom forever. Trying to keep that momentum, Mila turned out from the table and glanced across the wide tavern, eyes built for subterranean living cutting through the flickering lighting without issue.

They were not up for partying with others, not yet. Not tonight, and probably not tomorrow. But that did not mean they could not appreciate something suitably greasy to go with their drinks and their own company. Darimash was sat in a chair, across the way, but preternatural business owner senses ensured she looked up to catch the probing look Mila gave her, reading the question the gluttonous customer was silently asking. “Chicken, frog, and catfish today. One of each?”

Mila thought it through, a piece of her acknowledging that the frogs and catfish were magically influenced and extra large. The chicken would just be regular chicken, though. She was pretty hungry. “Two of, I think. Whenever you get to it, though, no rush,” she decreed, knowing better than to pressure the person who would be in spittin’ range of your food.

She turned back to the table, reconsidered, and leaned back out to request, “And a deck of cards, if that’s alright?”

“Depends. Anything gonna happen to my cards this time around?”

Mila gulped visibly, only now recalling that they were on slick mud from the last time they had borrowed cards from, and then reimbursed, Darimash. “No games involving slapping this time around, so no. Taking a break from slap games. Can’t take Rora anywhere.” The last tidbit was said in a faux-whisper and earned Mila a tail-pull that dragged her back into the shadows of their nook, much to the tavernkeeper’s uproarious appreciation.

Mila turned back to her friends, one hand reaching back to rub at the top of the base of her tail, where it tucked into the back of her shorts. “Damn, have you been working on your grip strength? Think you just shattered a few scales!”

Rora had looked a bit embarrassed from the joke aimed at her, but the idea that she might have actually hurt Mila’s tail, still held fast in her hand, had her eyes shooting open and fingers falling slack. “I’m so sorr-“

Not willing to let the unneeded apology finish up, Mila pulled her tail down through the loose hand but not away, popping the end of her tail up to arc over and lightly bop Rora on the end of the snout. It paired well with the forked tongue stuck out. “Relax, relax. Please. I’m stern stuff.”

“Mmm, Miss Mila Stern Stuff, isn’ the name many use,” Naw-Naw agreed, edge of their lips pulled up as they enjoyed the show of the two kobolds toying with each other. Both had grown up in small kobold towns, and while their upbringings were mighty different, their similarities were fun to watch bounce off of each other.

The monicker felt right to Mila herself. “It’d be an improvement over Mila the Mad. As much as I appreciate the alliteration, it makes me sound….” She trailed off, unsure of what her biggest gripe was.

“Unhinged?” Hughestace ‘helpfully’ managed to get out, not paying much mind to how shocked the ambush made Mila.

Aluca piled in at the moment of weakness, “Like you’ve got anger issues?”

“Ya do tend ta get to sketchin’ in yer book to calm down from fights’n stuff.”

Mila tried to look affronted at all of these blatantly false, untrue accusations, but she had troubles keeping a straight face at how quickly she had been hit by the series of observations. It all broke down when Rora tried to come to her defense, putting forth, “Well, you know those… intellectual exercises are a kind of meditation. They help, right?”

And then it was her trying to pull herself from her laughter, her drinks maybe having hit her harder than she had thought. Should have had a snack first, perhaps. The others were enjoying it too, at least, no matter if they all could feel it being a bit forced. But that was ok.

“Is it intellectual if it’s me scribbling nonsense traps that’d only ever work for nonsense scenarios?” She asked, thumping against the back of the seat, tail still twitching about in Rora’s small hand.

Aluca’s answer of “Certainly, it’s just theoretical” came at the same time as Naw-Naw’s “Nah, all nonsense,” which felt wildly accurate in its own way while being rather funny to the three that had not supplied an answer, setting them to more giggle fits. By the time they had managed to get themselves under control, a deck of cards had managed to find its way to the center of the table, and they all eyed the box warily, nobody quite sure what to do with it yet.

It did not take too long before the standoff was broken by Naw-Naw, who began doling out the entire deck around the table - anything like poker leaned into gambling too much for their collective taste, and it was embarrassing to admit but the caveat of no slapping ruled out their more standard card games. That left bullshit, whose rowdiness was typically capped at shouting its titular phrase.

It was not much after that when the game was in full swing, accusations of lying getting flung across the table from near the outset, mostly between Mila and Aluca. Cards changed hands, interspersed with people wiping down their greasy hands on cloth napkins as they threw themselves into the bar food with gusto, and nobody even got on to Mila for also practicing controlling her tail by dedicating it to snack duty, once Rora had eventually let it free. It was a good way to spend the hours into the late night.