A bright light lights up my surroundings, and I see my shadow stretch out in front of me. And that was a sign that it was time that my planning session came to an end. I will say it was very productive.

I open my eyes and stretch my arms. I use the water from my canteen to freshen up.

"May today be a day where I only take steps toward my goals." With my morning routine done I jump to my feet.

I look up to the sun and it seems that I slept in.

I look around and it's only me here 'Where'd she go?' I grab my bag and take down the wall and roof.

'She probably left to do something, guess I'll just go forward with my plan and start looking for a place to stay.' She'll probably find me somehow, if worse comes to worst, I'll just go into the residential district where the Sword in Stone is located. I found out the location from our game yesterday.

"Grrrrrrr." Seems like my stomach's got something to say. I eat the loaf of bread that I got from the old man.

"Grrrrrrrr."

'Oh come on, that wasn't enough for you? Alright fine, I guess it has been a long time since I last ate a real meal.' The first order of business is to get some food and then find an Inn.

I make sure to hide my sword and then start walking. I already knew where one was, at least my running around wasn't all for naught.

In all honesty, this place doesn't seem all bad, while the residents were cold to me when I asked for help, it wasn't in bad faith. Associating with a foreigner could end very badly for them, for all they knew I could've been an assassin that was after the king and then they would get accused of helping in the assassination.

But now looking at them they seem nice, kids running around, the women running errands, some men were working and some men still hungover from the night before.

I arrive at the tavern and open the doors to find it relatively empty.

I take a seat at the bar "Just some soup and whatever kind of meat that gets cooked the fastest." The barkeep offers me some alcohol.

"I don't drink." I open my pouch and count just fifteen copper coins, five silver coins, and one gold coin.

'I'm runnin' low on funds, she better pay me soon.' I look at the only other people in the tavern, two people out cold in one corner and a group of men who look to be knights at a table.

"Here you go, sir." I hand over five copper coins.

"Sorry, but it's actually ten copper coins." As he spoke, I noticed that he was looking at the group of men with a loathsome expression.

"You trying to tell me the price of a simple meal doubled overnight?" He nods with a sigh.

"I'm truly sorry, but with the taxes rising we also have to raise our prices." Last time I checked this kingdom was doing fine financially, so there's no real need to raise the tax. In my opinion taxes as a whole are a terrible idea.

I just hand over the extra five and begin to eat

After a bit, a man with blonde hair puts his arm around me, his breath reeked of alcohol.

"Oh, sorry I thought you were one of the old men that often came here." I lightly push him away, but he falls over in a very dramatic fashion. I get a good look at him and then I realized he was one of the men in that group.

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"Hey, there was no reason to assault me, I was just mistaken! It's your fault for having that grey hair!" I look at the barkeep to see if he's gonna say something, but he just acts oblivious.

"You just assaulted an esteemed knight, you're lucky I don't arrest you right this instant!" I look back at the group of men and they're just laughing while looking at us.

"Pay me ten gold coins and I'll consider letting this slide." I get a good look at him, he's a bit taller than me and he's better built.

'Kinda shitty of you to ignore this whole thing wouldn't you say, barkeep?' That is what I wanted to say, but when I looked at him he just had a frustrated look to him as if this wasn't the first time this happened.

"Just piss off." I gesture for him to go away and continue eating.

"Hey, I'm talking to you here!" He knocks the food off the counter. I instantly stand up and ready my fist, but before I could do anything the doors opened.

"You bullies!" I look at the doors and find a little girl pointing her finger at the man.

"You brat, get outta here you're ruining the fun!" One of the men shouts from their table.

"Shut up! Don't you get tired of harassing us?" The barkeep finally does something and shushes the girl, but she doesn't stop.

"No, I'm tired of this. We all are!" That's when the man walks over to her and bends down to be eye-to-eye with her.

"You truly are just like your mother. You talk too much, if you don't stop you'll end up just like her." The men cheered at this. The moment she heard this she started to hold back tears.

"Now run off home before we run out of patience." He gets back up and turns his attention back to me.

Suddenly a tankard of beer hits the back of his head. He immediately turns around and throws a punch at where the girl was, but he completely misses and falls on his face.

I look at the girl, but she was no longer where she was. She was in the arms of a certain redhead.

"I thought I warned you the last time you tried to pull this stunt?" She comforts the girl, who was in shock and full-on crying at this point.

The other men get up. It seemed like it was time for me to step in, but they just helped their friend up and left the tavern while muttering something along the lines of 'It's not worth it'.

"It's fine, they're gone now." I walk over to the two, but before I could say anything, she glares at me.

"What type of man are you?!" I was taken aback by this outburst so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say.

"Honestly, Were you seriously about to do nothing?! Not only did you let him walk all over you, but you were going to let him hit a child?!"

"First of all, he attacked because you threw that beer at him. Second-"

"Save your excuses. I'll deal with you later." She puts down the girl. Maybe that sounded like I was excusing him, but that definitely wasn't my intention.

"It's okay now, darling. If you stop crying I'll get you whatever you want, do we have a deal?" She wipes her tears before giving a thumbs up.

While she's handling the kid, I turn back and look down at the spilled food. 'What a fucking waste.' I start to clean up and the barkeep joins me.

"Don't worry about it, I'll clean it up." he reluctantly lets me clean up and goes behind the counter.

"Now go order whatever you want." The kid nods and runs to the barkeep.

Pandres sits down at one of the tables.

After I finish cleaning up, I walk over to her.

After a bit of silence, I open my mouth to speak, but she beat me to it "I'm sorry, she told me that she saw you stand up and wanted to stop you from fighting. I jumped to conclusions and that was wrong of me."

I take a seat in front of her "No, I should be the one apologizing. You were right, I should've done something before it even escalated to that point." She puts her chin on her hand while looking at the girl with pitiful eyes.

We just sat there in awkward silence until the girl came with a plate of bread and bacon, I pull out a chair for her since she's got her hands full.

She sits down and immediately starts scarfing down the food. I tell her to slow it down or else she'll choke, but she just ignores me.

"He's giving you advice, y'know? You shouldn't ignore him." She takes a look at Pandres and then me, after a second or two then she mumbles an apology.

"By the way, where did you go while I was asleep?"

"I woke up earlier than you, got bored, went on a walk, and then ran into some weirdo talking about some prophecy," I warn her that prophets don't exist. At least not here.

"You don't need to tell me that, I already know that bullshit is just crazy talk," I recall what she said last night and she was directly contradicting herself.

'She's already pissed about what happened earlier, I doubt she'd be happy with me pressing her over some unnecessary details.' I turn my attention to the girl.

"Ah I forgot to introduce myself, my name's Sebastian. What's yours?" She said something, but her voice was too low so I didn't quite catch it. She's acting completely different from the girl who was just scolding that asshole.

"Her name's Angel, she's a bit shy around new people, so please excuse her."

"It's not like that! Eh…" She looks at Pandres after realizing she just yelled at her.

"I'm sorry for raising my voice… but it's not because I'm shy, I just find him weird." These folks are too comfortable with just throwing insults. First, it was creep, then old, and now weird.

Seems like my annoyance was showing on my face because she quickly added "I don't mean it in a bad way! You're just strange…"

'Ah, now strange.' Pandres laughs "She means something nice, but she just doesn't know how to express it." She whispers something in the kid's ear.

"Yes! That's what I mean, you look like one of those beautiful angels from the paintings of that one artist." Tears of happiness were welling up in my eyes… not really, but I was happy with the comparison.

"Yeah, I also thought that when I first met him!"

"Really now? If I remember correctly you called me a creep."

"That was because you were sleeping at a graveyard. Nothing to do with your appearance."

"Heh, the real creep is the one who was walking around in the rain and harassing people." I glance at the kid and she's finished with her food and is smiling at our back and forth.

"Kid, do you wanna do something nice? If you liked the food then you should go thank the cook, I'm sure it'll make his day." Her face lights up and with that, she gets up and excitedly runs to the barkeep.

We both stare at her happily complimenting the barkeep and he looks very happy compared to the depressing expression he had before.

I look back at Pandres and finally ask the question that's been on my mind "Would you mind telling me what happened with her mother?" She visibly tenses up as soon as the words left my mouth.