We made it to the next town without any monster appearance so we decided to find a place to stay and plan. We found an inn near the edge of town and then we rented rooms. I was finally able to get some alone time with Claire that lasted at most an hour before we were interrupted. We had a nice talk about our plans for after this, where she wanted to settle down and even how many kids she wanted. I let her talk since I really never thought about those kind of things. Then right as she was starting to talk about where to have the wedding, Edward knocked on the door and asked if we could come out.

“Sorry Claire, but we should probably join them. We can pick this up when we come back alright?” I say as I let go of her. She stretches and the heads for the door. I grab my sword and follow her.

“Ah here comes the happy couple! We were just talking about you two.” Thu’ane says causing everyone to look up from the map.

“No we weren’t, we were talking about our route.” Ryan says.

“Shh, they don’t know that.” Thu’ane says and Ryan just gives him an apathetic look.

“I don’t think Ryan likes you very much.” I say to him.

“Nah, he just needs to warm up to me.” He says.

I stare at Ryan for a bit then turn to Thu’ane.” Nah, he just doesn’t like you.”

“Can we get back to business?” Ryan asks and we both sigh and nod.

“The shortest route would be this one, but we’d have to cut through the mountains. If we went around it would add about three days. SInce we don’t know if we have a time limit to make it, I suggest we act like we do and take the shortest route.” I say.

“But we run the risk of running into monsters in the mountains.” Thu’ane says.

“Yeah, but we can take care of them easily. Besides, it’s not like we’ll run into anything massive like Ogres or Trolls. They live in the northern part of the mountain range.” I say with a nod in agreement from Thu’ane.

“And even if there were Trolls I know a spell that replicates the sun’s effect on them. Ogres are naturally weak against magic so they won’t be that big of a problem for me either.” Mariana says.

“See that solves that problem, but I remember hearing that Kelpies roam the river near this side of the mountain.” Thu’ane says and I remember back to my time meeting a Kelpie. It was dragging a young boy to the river and I shot it with my bow. It wasn’t fatal but it let go of the boy. I hunted it to the river and was almost overrun by Kelpies, but my teacher was there to help me.

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“I remember our teacher saying that they were weak against lightning magic since of their reliance on water. So Edward’s magic should negate those.” I say and look up at Edward who is in amazement. I realise that Claire and Ryan are also in amazement. I guess when we got serious, we really got serious because we had almost every angle of our roughest part of the trip already figured out.

“Wow, you guys really think of everything, don’t you?” Edward says.” I never thought your skills were this thorough. Especially given you were trained for maybe two and a half years.”

I shrug,” When it comes to fighting and this kind of thing I guess I’m just a natural.”

Thu’ane nods and says,” He was the fastest trained unit of the King’s Shadow since the boss was trained as a kid. I just thought it was to make up for his horrible magical ability.”

“I also studied nightly of everything I learned and would often pull all nighters studying and practicing. I thought it was my hard work, but maybe it was more.” I say.

Beth comes in from shopping for supplies with Smokey who has a bone in his mouth. She sets down the bags full of food and cloth.” Have I missed anything?” She asks.

I fill her in on our current plan and she gives me a grave look.” Is something wrong?”

She nods and says,” When I was younger my family were nomads and I remember passing through the Nars Mountain range.There’s unique monsters there that not many people know about.”

Ryan grabs her hand and whispers something in her ear. Obviously this was a bad memory for her.” We need to know what they are so we can prepare for them.” Claire says in a soothing voice that makes my heart skip.

She shakes her head and says,” They are nameless. When I describe them it won’t sound like any other monster. I could draw them. Maybe that will help.” She then pulls out a pencil and starts to draw. Her finished picture gave me a tugging feeling from the back of my mind. It looked familiar and I tried to think what it was called.

“I have never encountered something like that. Did you figure out its weakness?” Thu’ane asks in a serious tone not heard often.

She nods and says,” My mother had a torch that when it was moved towards the beast it jumped back. No other weapon made it react like that.”

That feeling is much stronger now. I remember back when I was younger and all the books I read about monsters and ghosts. There was one that I was thinking of and couldn’t remember its name. I asked one question.” Did it eat people?”

She nods and then I remember a story from a book. A Native American legend of a beast that ate humans and was afraid of fire. I racked my brain trying to remember its name. I shake my head and say,” We had a legend like this back on Earth. I don’t know how but I think they are the same thing. On Earth their weakness was fire and they were once men who turned into cannibalistic spirits.”

“So you need fire to kill them?” Claire asks.” Good thing my fire burns brighter than any others.”

“Soooo, now that we learned that do we still want to pass through the mountains?” Thu’ane asks.

I nod and say,” We need to get to the castle as fast as possible. We don’t know what that group has planned.

With that we decided to split off and get some sleep before we head out. I grab Claire’s hand and say,” Let’s go for a walk. I want to stay awake and talk with you a bit more.” We walk around the small town and I realise that living in a small town like this won’t be so bad. But like every other time there’s monsters waiting for us as we reach the edge of town. It was a pack of Gremlins armed with spears and knives. It’s a good thing I brought a regular sword instead of the Dao.