We spent the next couple of hours warmed by the still-burning fire.

At some point Gabby commented, “I didn’t realize you had scales,” and I looked down at myself. She was right. In the flickering firelight the mottling I’d always had looked a bit like scales.

I shrugged and said, “Neither did I.” I wrapped my tail around her waist and pulled her close again.

Some time later, as we were breaking into one of the more permanent stalls looking for something for me to wear, I asked, “Why did you leave the Demesne?”

“I had a vision,” she replied. “I saw you in the fire. I only stayed there because—well, it seemed like the only way out for you and Max. And he’s the Shadow. You know. He’s rich.” She blushed deeply enough that I could see it even in the dark. “But anyway, when I saw you being burned, I knew that I had to try to stop it from happening. Not that I really needed to, as it turned out. And I saw the Fracture again.”

That explained a lot, I thought. “The Fracture?”

“Yes. Pingo T’Ong has it.”

And just like that, everything finally clicked into place. Thork Yurger, the orcs, everything. Pingo T’Ong had been at the heart of everything that had happened to me since this adventure had begun.

“There’s more,” Gabby continued. “He’s using it to summon a monster. If he isn’t stopped, he’s going to start a war and kill thousands and thousands of people.”

I was still feeling fairly amazing. “Then let’s go and stop him.” I said it without even thinking about it.

<<<>>>

A few hours later I started to seriously regret those words.

We’d managed to find me a tunic and trousers, I’d been able to replace my boots, and Gabby had even let me borrow a half-decent knife. We’d also stolen a couple of horses. By the time the sun had climbed half-way to its zenith, we’d left the friendly little town of Brelor several miles behind us. I fervently hoped I’d never have to step foot in that town again for the rest of my life.

Sadly, that was about where the last of my euphoria had left me as well.

No longer did I feel as if I could take on an army of trolls or conquer the world single handed. In fact, I felt comparatively shabby. My new tunic was a bit tight across the shoulders and the fabric was rough. The trousers were chaffing me where a man shouldn’t ever be chaffed and I was sure that my boots were rubbing a sizable blister onto the knuckle of each of my littlest toes. The chain links still attached to the manacles wrapped around my wrists made annoying jingling sounds every time I moved. To top it all off, I still had that uncomfortable pressure deep in my chest, and it didn’t seem at all interested in going away.

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But these little complaints were the least of my issues.

First on the list of really big issues was this: what did I think I was doing? I’ve said before that if I can help it, I make sure that I enter any fight with the odds well and truly stacked on my side. And yet, here we were, charging off (slowly, at the pace of an easy walk) over the foothills towards a man powerful enough to scare an entire village into doing his will, without him even having to be there. Sure, much of his power may well have stemmed from rumor, but I knew for a fact that he commanded at least one very determined assassin and a small army of orcs. And that assassin had recently shown some fairly decent skills.

And while I didn’t credit the barkeep’s words about boils or failed crops, I did respect Gabby’s abilities as a seer. I’d seen first-hand what she could do, and hadn’t known her to ever be wrong. And she had said that Pingo T’Ong was working on something big that smacked of very dark magics indeed.

Who in their right mind would actively choose to walk into all that?

Yet that’s exactly what Gabby and I were doing. All by ourselves. Without our own army, assassins or magic to aid us.

Gabby had whatever weapons she usually carried. I possessed nothing more than a knife, a tail, and a certain innate talent for fighting. And that was about it.

Now, let’s measure all this against my criteria for getting into a fight. Unfair? Check. Odds stacked heavily in my favor? Well, no. Not at all. In fact, quite the opposite was true. And in this particular case, one out of two is no good whatsoever.

It just wasn’t my type of fight.

The second item on my list of really big issues was related to the first. Thork Yurger. I hadn’t seen him since flinging a fair amount of wood in his direction when I was being burnt at the stake. For all I knew, he’d found a dark hole somewhere and curled up in it, certain in the knowledge that it would be the end of him if he told Pingo T’Ong of his latest failed attempt to kill me.

But he could equally have fled the town of Brelor for his master’s palace. The only advantage Gabby and I had was the element of surprise. And Thork Yurger could have already cost us that.

For all I knew, the path to Pingo’s palace could be lined with orcs, just waiting for us to walk by. And that could bode ill for our health.

The third item on my list of really big issues was this: what in the name of all the gods had happened to me?

Let’s get serious here. I’d survived being burned at the stake! And not just survived. I could have had a picnic in there! Who does that? Better question: how?

Was I some sort of demon, as so many people had suggested? What else could I possibly be?

And there was another, perhaps more interesting question: what else might I be able to do?

Sure, we were heading towards one of the very things that might be able to help me answer some of these questions, but really, all this had happened just the night before. I wanted a little longer to think things through before embarking on this sort of adventure.

Several times already I’d started to say something. What exactly, I didn’t know. Something to encourage Gabby to turn around, find a better plan or at least wait a while before confronting Pingo. But Gabby was Gabby, and I didn’t think there was anything I could say that might dissuade her from doing what she knew was the right thing to do. If I said anything, she’d look at me with a disappointed expression and continue on all by herself.

Perhaps it doesn’t cast me in a very good light, but I’ll admit that I’d also considered simply stopping and letting her do that. But I didn’t want to see her get hurt. So I walked my horse beside her, thinking that it would have been a beautiful morning if we hadn’t been on our way towards almost certain doom.

That’s when we reached the winding path that led up the side of a mountain to Pingo T’Ong’s palace.