Back in the village, Chaele handed over her berries and the tooth, and took her meager copper earnings. Really, it was the experience of berry-hunting that mattered at the end of the day. The moment she’d given that tooth to the village dentist, a woman standing a half-dozen feet away started waving dramatically at her. “Over here, over here!”

Chaele beckoned to Kodish. “Come on, what are you doing?”

“Emptying my bags,” he said, dumping his backpack in front of a cart weighed down with junk.

“Not worth it,” she decided, smirking at the single copper he was handed. Once Kodish was done, she went to the woman waving. “’Sup?”

“Greetings!” the woman started. “Thank goodness you are here! My husband is a beloved minister of the village, a handsome, strong man! But just recently, he decided to go for a hike, and he never returned! I’ve heard rumors that—-”

“Too much, get to the point,” Chaele interrupted.

“Find my husband, the minister,” the woman said. “He’s by the cliffs.”

Chaele took off, Kodish on her heels.

“I was listening to that,” he told her.

“It’s just like every other speech that you’ve heard before,” Chaele told him. “And a hundred others you’ll hear in the next day, okay? We’re shooting for end-war stuff, Kodish. We don’t want to be the last ones to get to that dragon!”

Kodish shrugged and started jogging to keep up with her as they neared the cliff. The sun was bright so he shielded his eyes to see better. “You think he’s alive?”

“Who knows?” Chaele peered around too. “Just look, okay? And kill some hyena-things, may as well.”

After five minutes of slaying and searching, Kodish yelled, “Over here!”

Chaele finished off the creature to her left, snatched up the broken claw from his body, and then went to find Kodish. He was towering above a man on the ground. The minister, certainly.

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“Come on,” she said. “Your wife is worried. What are you doing down there?”

“I’ve been grievously wounded,” he told her in a harsh, dramatic whisper.

Kodish held up his pack. “I’ve got some stale bread. Works for me.”

The minister shook his head. “This wound is different.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Kodish muttered.

“Well it is. Because the hyena-thing, the big one, it bit me,” the minister confided.

“Yeah, bit me too. The bread works.”

Chaele glowered at her companion. “Shut up, Kodish.”

Kodish shut up.

“Anyway,” the minister went on. “You’ve got to find it, and kill it, and take it’s tooth.”

“Already done,” Chaele said.

“What?”

“We killed him and took his tooth,” she elaborated.

“But — but you CAN’T DO THAT YET,” the minister said, panicked. “You have to kill him first! Then I can tell you that you did a good job, and then I can ask you to take the tooth to the village dentist. Only then can I be healed enough to return. You must hurry!”

“Why? You’ve been here all day,” Kodish pointed out.

The man shrugged. “It’s getting boring. Just do it again, okay?”

Kodish and Chaele exchanged looks, groaned, and went to kill the beast. Once it was dead and rotting, Kodish knelt down and yanked the fang out once more. When Chaele didn’t, he blinked. “Get the tooth, you heard him. We have to hurry.”

“Hold on,” she said testily.

“Why? Do you need bread?”

Chaele shook her head. When he stared at her, she gave the most annoyed sigh of the day so far. “My bag is full. I’ve got to drop some rocks.”

As she emptied part of her bag, Kodish’s cheerful, booming laughter filled the area. “Could have gotten a copper for those.”