Victor had finally done it. Two months of travel, two weeks of getting caught up in that caravan’s weird quest to eliminate all pet rocks and variations thereof, and then there was that sandwich peddler; but no matter, he’d done it! Victor had finally reached the capital city! Now all he needed to do was enter, find the smithy, and apprentice under them. Easy!

—-////——-////——////——////——

Victor sat in a stone room, with stone chairs, a stone table, and stone walls. This room was in fact the very same room that Ailleacht was in that past week, although Victor didn’t know that. Sitting across from him was a man with curly black hair and a great bushy beard; Captain of the Guard, Michael. Michael unrolled a scroll with not much written on it.

“Do you know why you’re here?” He asked the obviously uncomfortable Victor.

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Victor shook his head. “Am I in trouble?”

Michael barked out a short laugh. “Ha! Hardly! But I do need your report on what happened in Sidelake village,” he responded.

And so, Victor began his tale of what happened.

——////——////——////——////——

“So the caravan forced you to turn around and take care of the Pet Mer-Rock infestation?”

“That is correct. I had to take out the queen by myself, as well. The strange thing was that the next day, the caravan disappeared. Another strange thing was that I could’ve sworn I saw a Pet Rock with a top hat, but-”

“It disappeared, too, right?” Michael asked. Not out of curiosity, but for confirmation.

“How did you know?” Victor was confused.

Michael grimaced. “Our records go back pretty far, kid. That was Sir Rockington the Number.”

“The Number?”

“We don’t know how long Pet Rocks live for. He could be ‘the first’, ‘the 4th’, or even ‘the 1902nd’. We simply don’t know,” Michael shook his head and shrugged. “What we do know is that big things are going to happen soon.”