Ratface brought back another alligator. It was just a normal one and had been easy to deal with. That was particularly true a boy who was good at tracking and a girl who could literally control the plants around them. Ratface had largely been on carrying and skinning duty.

She cut into the alligator and started skinning it. She had gotten better, but her attempts were still declared amateur by Abigail. A few cuts and some tugging later and she’d finished the job. She left the meat for the old woman to deal with for dinner. Of the group she was the best cook. Ratface and Isabelle were tied for last.

“Just a normal gator again?” said Abigail. She started chopping it up into little pieces and added some of the meat to the pot and others to their provisions.

Ratface nodded and Abigail made a face as she prepared the stew. Ratface watched in disappointment. She was sick of stew by now. Yes, she’d been starving only a while ago but since she’d met Abigail it had pretty much been all stew all the time. She said as much, and Abigail rolled her eyes.

“Stew is a good adventurer food. It makes the food last longer,” she insisted.

Isabelle came over to join them. She had her old person illusion on which made her smile seem extra big as her wrinkles merged with her smile lines.

“City gator?” she asked.

“Normal gator,” said Abigail. The two of them exchanged a look but stopped when they noticed Ratface watching them. They’d got more and more concerned every day she brought back a normal alligator.

Ratface didn’t ask. She suspected they wouldn’t tell her if she did. She had an alternative source of information she could bother anyway.

Ratface went to join Tiffany and Albert. They’d made their own fire at Abigail’s insistence. She phrased it as practice. Ratface reckoned that it was an excuse to let the adults have some space to themselves for discussing whatever was happening with the alligators.

Tiffany was using her magic on the grass where she planned to sleep in an attempt to make a comfortable bed for herself. So far, her experimenting had had mixed results. One night she’d managed to make herself a nice moss bed to sleep in. Most of the time time she’d just grown the grass up and made herself a tick nest. This current attempt was leaning more towards the latter if Tiffany’s frown was anything to go by.

Albert was lost in thought staring at the spear his mother had given him. His expression was complicated and Ratface could imagine his emotions were even more so. Ratface wasn’t sure what to say to him.

Her relationship with her own parents was pretty simple. Her dad was a goblin she didn’t know, and her mum had been great, until she died. Ratface felt sad about it but not as much as she probably should. The glamour probably helped make that easier to deal with admittedly. Hard to feel an emotion about someone when you couldn’t remember their face.

Okay, so her emotions were a little complex.

Still. It’s not like she had to deal with one parent disowning her and the other parent somehow being even more complex. Ratface didn’t really know what to do to help with that.

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Tiffany usually gave him a hug if he looked too down but Ratface wasn’t really a hugger.

Instead, she’d gone with interrupting him.

“Is it weird that we’re only seeing alligators?” she asked. She plopped herself down next to him, so he was forced to pay attention. He looked away from the spear as he contemplated the question.

“Yes and no. What animals do you know are in swamps?”

“Pretty much just alligators.”

He paused in whatever he was about to say and looked at her in surprise.

“Wait, really?” He asked.

Ratface shrugged. She wasn’t from around here. Lurian didn’t have alligators to her knowledge.

“Usually, the swamp has a bunch of different creatures in it,” said Tiffany. She’d given up on her bed to sit closer to the fire, “alligators, rats, snakes, there’s even bugs.”

Ratface looked at the mosquitos swirling around the fire. Albert snorted.

“She means proper bugs. Big ones that swarm.”

Ratface shuddered. She didn’t like the idea of fighting a swarm of something that could fly.

“I’m glad we didn’t get any of those in the sewer,” she said.

“Well, the sewers are designed to encourage rats and alligators to move in, not bugs.” said Albert. He kept explaining when he noticed her confused face. “Most areas have an artificial breeding ground for monsters. It’s a good first quest for kids like us.”

That seemed stupidly dangerous to Ratface. They’d nearly died because of what seemed like wilful negligence. Her mother would have never sent her to a sewer.

Admittedly, in another year her mother would have sent her out to help in raids, but it’s not like they were sending her out in the vanguard to fight adventurers. Not unless something went wrong.

Ratface was saved from her cultural reflection by Albert’s continued musing.

“With that many city gators dead we should have run into something. We should see some monsters migrating at least. Something is either gathering them or somethings scaring them away.”

Ratface nodded. It was like how Abigail had explained creatures would come back with the golem gone. She looked over to Tiffany.

“Could a druid gather up creatures?” she asked.

Tiffany shrugged.

“Maybe a persuasive or powerful one. Druid magic is sort of convincing things to work with you. That’s why vines are so easy, it doesn’t take a lot to convince them to grow.”

“What about the rot rat?” Ratface asked.

“He shouldn’t have been able to control them at all. I don’t know what that was,” said Tiffany.

Ratface frowned. That was weird. The creatures in the sewer had stopped being so organized when he died but if he wasn’t controlling them then shouldn’t that not matter? Had something else been watching them fight?

The thought didn’t fill any of them with happy thoughts and they tried to change the subject. They moved onto lighter stuff like Tiffany’s first interaction as a druid with a pig.

The creatures were gluttons and gave off a level of ruthlessness that was hard to ignore. The pig had assured Tiffany that if she brought it any ‘scraps’, the pig would deal with them. Ratface resolved to never turn her back on a pig again. The others eventually went to sleep and Ratface checked on Halmir.

The rat was sleeping again. He hadn’t been the same since he bit the rat man. Ratface was worried about him but both Tiffany and Isabelle had checked on him and declared him physically healthy. Abigail had taken a look and started giving him the last of their city gator meat. The only time he woke up these days was to eat. He kept eating too much to the point he was starting to swell. Abigail had assured her it was fine but to keep feeding him. Ratface wouldn’t lie, she was worried about the little guy.

Abigail had told her to wait and see which hadn’t helped at all. She didn’t know what the other woman knew but she knew there was something. She’d at least told Ratface that if he was still sleeping this much by the time they got to their destination, someone there could would help him.

Ratface didn’t miss the implication that he needed help. If it wasn’t something wrong physically then maybe he had magical disease? No one seemed concerned as much as she did. Isabelle had assured her that he wasn’t dying, and Tiffany said rats slept most of the day anyway and this was normal.

Ratface wasn’t convinced. He had always woken up with her when they’d been at the middens. She stroked his fur until she started getting sleepy, then set him down before she fell asleep on top of him.

Maybe when she woke up, he’d be back to his old self.