We got on the road pretty quick. That first day I was left exhausted, sore as hell and sucking air. But we had been able to clear out a crypt of five skeletons, earning a health potion and about 25 gold.

That had brought us to a party gold total of 367, for now.

The skeletons had gone down pretty easy. I'd lured them down the hall, and Bernie shot them with the magic crossbow from a side passage. With all of her damage multipliers, even with their piercing resistance, they'd crumbled in a single shot.

The next day we used as a rest day. She spent time with Fan’inel, apparently the name of her elven contact, and I went on a date with Berryhop, a Gnome girl I’d met the day before. She was cute. She picked mushrooms, was about ten years older than me, and had a large family that she was keen for me to meet.

She said she liked my singing voice. I never sang anymore back in the real world. Maybe it was easier here, where nobody knew me. I’d help her pick mushrooms sometimes, and she’d bat the poisonous ones out of my hands. On breaks we’d lay under the tree amongst the falling leaves, and I’d sing pop songs I knew.

It was fine. Bernadette called them NPCs — ah, Non-Player Characters. I’m not sure I agreed.

Those goblins had bled real blood. And when Berryhop exhaled, I could smell the mushrooms and onions on her breath. That was real enough for me.

I thought about texting Caleb. I didn’t.

I texted Rachel instead.

Beznik: Heya Rachel! Map says you’re still 100 miles out. Is that true?

7:55pm

Oriana: nice to hear from you too

Beznik: shit, man, I didn’t know what to say

Oriana: I know magic bullshit got in the way, but haven’t heard from you in five years. First text I get is in the group and it’s about Sofia

Beznik: I’m sorry

Oriana: It’s fine. The girls and I are headed your way as fast as we can. Maybe a week and a half out if we keep this pace. Just stay there, I’ll pick you up.

8:01pm

I wondered what ‘the girls’ meant, but it seemed like she was mad at me, so I didn’t push.

The next day we ran into a bunch of wolves. I was able to scare them off with some waving of a torch. Bernie’s crossbow helped.

By the fourth day I’d reached just shy of the experience threshold to advance to third level. I could tell Bernie was frustrated at my slow progress, though she figured I just needed one more quest.

But at that point I was really maxed out.

Mechanically, I had two levels of exhaustion. This meant most of my abilities lost their bonuses to effectiveness.

Spiritually, I just wanted to crawl into that weird straw bed at the Squirrel and go to sleep forever. Physically, my muscles groaned like a rusted hinge when I moved, and everything hurt. I’d never been in so much pain. I hated that goddamn forty pound backpack, and that heavy belt with every fiber of my being.

My body just couldn’t keep up. Bernie let me rest for two days while she explored the town on her own.

She didn’t sleep at the Squirrel with me those days. She said she had somewhere, and I kept my word about not being weird, so I never learned who that somewhere was.

Berryhop would visit me for tea. I asked her for a kiss, and we made out some in our room upstairs. She was an awkward kisser, hesitant, but fit in my lap which was fun. Weird, but fun.

By day eight of staying in Brindletree, my muscles had healed enough that I thought I could probably head out again. In the morning, Berryhop broke up with me via a hand delivered note. This is what it said:

Dearest Breznik,

I don’t know if you’re really who they say you are, one of the Promised Heroes, but I can tell that the life you’re meant to lead is different from mine.

The songs you sing fill my heart with joy and promise, and when I lay awake at night, the feeling of your strong arms around me lingers. I also really like the way you kiss. You may have ruined me from dating tallmen ever again.

I can’t help but feel that I’m holding you back. You should be adventuring with your tallmen friend.

Plus, if I ever brought you back to the Springwillow home, I’d never recover from the scandal. Cousin Berrybutton brought a halfling back once and it was the talk of the whole neighborhood for months.

I hope we meet under different circumstances. Perhaps a different Berryhop and a different Breznick could—

No I daren’t write it.

Be well. I will miss you.

Forever thinking of your song,

Berryhop Springwillow.

Look, I’d cheated a bit singing Elvis here where he didn’t exist, but I also didn’t claim to have written the songs either.

I walked around the tree the town was named after, a massive deciduous tree at the center of town with normal autumnal leaves striped with shiny black. The leaves fell around me and I found my mind settling on what Bernedette would say about the breakup other than the event itself. After about ten minutes of feeling sorry for myself, I got over it. She was sweet, but we just didn’t have anything in common, and she knew it. Good on her for figuring that out.

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Bernadette met me at the bar. Tea was, well, tea and more of those cheese muffins, as well as a hardboiled egg. She was in her shift and vest, not her adventurer clothes. I didn’t think I needed a vest, but she looked nice in it, so it made me think twice.

“Where’s Berryhop?” she asked as she sat down.

“I’m sure you can guess.”

“Of course, but I thought maybe you wanted to talk about it.”

“I’m fine.”

“Did ya’ll—”

“Now who’s being weird?”

She put her hands up and patted the air in surrender.

“Alright, alright, that’s fair,” she admitted. “But, selfishly, I was interested in the mechanics.”

“Gross.”

“She’s tiny!”

“So are you.”

“Hmm,” she seemed to chew on that for a bit then said, “you ready to head out in a bit?”

She helped me back into my armor, then I exited the room to let her get hers on. Once kitted out, I shouldered our pack and we headed for the road.

The guard waved at us on our way out, cracked an actual smile for once. I had the monocle, and popped it in for a brief moment.

Versidius — guard lvl 4; HP 22

Now, that was interesting. That was one of the tougher people in town by reputation, and he was the same level as Bernadette. No skull-and-crossbones. Obviously she had tested the monocle in town, so somebody was over our level. But this guy wasn’t actually as tough as I thought. He still had more hit points than me though.

“Where we headed?” I asked.

“North,” she said.

“Yeah, but what’s the quest?”

“Headed toward the closest goblin camp.”

“You want us to clear out a goblin camp?”

“Well,” she looked back at me and smiled, “not yet. You’ll see. It’ll take us most of the day, and we should save our breath.”

The wind came in cold from the North, up the trail, and while my legs still ached it was bearable. I was grateful for the wind because I was already beginning to sweat. Really wished the road wasn’t on an incline, though.

The leaves fell like they always did, and I wondered what the world looked like outside this forest. It was pretty, but I was keen for a change of scenery.

Bernadette had a full quiver of bolts for the crossbow and her bag seemed fuller than it had been. I wondered too what she had in store for me.

My thoughts turned to the events of the week as we hiked, and something just didn’t seem right to me.

“I think we should be more open about who we date, and where we are,” I said.

“Man, what did I say—”

“I know, I know,” I butt in, “I don’t want to be weird. I want you to trust me. But I think that means we have to actually trust each other.”

She stopped and turned around. I stopped too, secretly welcome for the reprieve.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean, I know you want to be able to spend time with who you want, and you’re weary of, I don’t know, my judgment or my interest or whatever. But if I don’t know where you are, I can’t protect you.”

“I don’t need your—”

“Yes you do. I need your protection, and you need mine. Until we find Rachel, it’s just us out here.”

A flash of anger crossed her face, but she let me speak.

“That Fan’inel guy,” I continued, “I’m sure he’s fine or whatever, but what if he wasn’t? What if you got hurt? Maybe you’d be able to text me, and maybe you wouldn’t. But I don’t know where he lived, or when you’d be back, or anything.”

“Okay,” she said, hesitant.

I wasn’t sure what to say next, but I felt like maybe I said something wrong, so I waited for her to say something first.

“I don’t like it when you talk over me,” she said.

A hundred ways to defend myself, to explain why I had talked over her, came to the front of my mind. I kept my mouth shut and instead said, “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Look,” she continued, “I know I’m tiny, and cute, and honestly kinda sexy once people get past that, so guys get real possessive of me. I can’t have that.”

“Right.”

“No, listen. I can’t have that with you. You’re right, it really is just us out here. We’re about to go do something really dangerous, and I need you watching my back, and not thinking about — about, I don't know — how much you want me.”

Did I want her? I wasn’t sure. The way she talked about herself wasn’t untrue. I liked looking at her. And I did feel protective of her. But then again, I was protective of all my friends. Were we really friends now?

I guess we were.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I said as sincerely as I could.

Bernadette's soft brown eyes searched me, looking for something.

“What are we doing out here, Bernie?” I finally said.

She sighed, obvious frustration showing.

“You just have to trust me.”

“You’ve got to give me something.”

She glanced at her slate.

“We’re headed to an elven outpost, the Woodguard. They have a little base set up a little bit from the main goblin camp. We’re about six miles out from that.”

“Alright.”

“And that’s all I’m willing to say right now. Once we do what we need, the secrecy will all make sense.”

“So what about… Nevermind. Will you at least consider what I said?”

“You made a good point. And it’s not like I didn’t make it weird with the gnome girl, so I’ll try to be better too.”

“That was fine. I can handle some teasing.”

“Okay. Well. Good talk. You ready to walk?”

I laughed at the rhyme and said, “Let’s do it.”

I don’t think we’d really figured ‘this’ out, whatever ‘this’ was.

She seemed to have a lot of anxiety about how I would behave around her. Maybe this was valid. Maybe I did something wrong to lead her to feel this way. Or maybe it wasn’t about me.

But then again. She didn’t trust me. She still wouldn’t tell me what we were doing out here.

We stopped for a rest an hour later and it was awkward. We ate from our provisions, and listened to the wind, and I obsessed over whether I had made things better or worse by forcing a conversation on this.

“Fan’inel was harmless. He thinks he’s a big shot, but the more he told me the less likely that seemed. If I thought he could get dangerous, I would never have stayed over,” she explained.

“Okay.”

She stared at me and worked on some piece of food behind her lips. I figured she was waiting for me to say more.

“Well,” I said, “you want to know about Berryhop?”

“Yes. God yes. A gnome, man, why?”

“She liked me. Said I sang well. And it’s fucking scary out here.”

“It is,” she admitted, glancing up the road. “And I guess her hair was nice.”

Her hair had been white, streaked with a shock of pink, and she had kept it back in a simple ponytail when she was foraging. But when she let it down it was a huge fluffy mane of softness. She’d let me play with it on our breaks under the trees.

“Why Fan’inel? Was it really all about the information?”

“Did you see the way their eyes sparkled? And his shoulders…”

“He had nice shoulders.”

She just responded with a ‘mhmm’ then stood.

“Come on, I think we can make it just as it gets dark.”

I took a sip from my waterskin and screwed the cap on.

The rest of the day went by quickly and dusk settled in just as we set our sight on the two elven guards up the roads. The pink and gold clouds were a riot of colors between the dark trees that framed the sky. Bernadette greeted them with a codeword of some kind in elven and they escorted us to the camp.

The camp, or ‘cut’ as our escorts called it, was mostly a rough palisade with a trench dug around it. A dozen tents in a square plan with neat and orderly rows greeted us as we walked past the two guards there.

The guards were wearing that fancy elven plate, but our escorts had a simple leather cuirass and greaves over layers of cloth. They had beautiful floral embellishments on the leather, but didn’t seem much sturdier than Bernie's armor.

Based on the number of tents, I estimated there to be much less than a hundred men here. I had no idea how big the goblin camp was but it had to be more than this.

I assumed we were here to help them. But if that was the case, why all the secrecy?

The main tent was large, and dusk had fled by the time we were seated there. Crickets chirped and soft singing drifted in from the open flap. A lamp set on the table filled the place with a soft glow, illuminating maps unfurled, and letters opened.

A fancy chair was set next to the table. It almost looked like a throne, with a tiger skin draped over it. Behind the chair was a cot and more animal skins.

As soon as we were alone, Bernie stood, put a finger to her lips then ducked out of the tent, leaving me alone.