I should have been happy when Phlegm’s tavern came into view but instead, all I felt was sick. My gut was roiling like I’d somehow swallowed an entire beehive and despite the temperate weather, I was sweating like a pig.

This was it. This was when everything that had been so wonderful and calming would get flipped around again.

My plan was simple. Get to Stanthorpe and build a home base. That was it. That was all I wanted to do. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Now my family would have to decide whether they would be coming with me, or if they would follow Gabby back to the Outsiders in search of Theo.

I knew Stella would come with me but everyone else was a wild card. Even Nora, who knew everything that had happened, was just as likely to go with Gabby, who she seemed to consider a surrogate daughter, instead of me. Wouldn’t you choose that kind of connection over some random ass guy who liked to piss you off every five seconds?

Part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and just go with them where ever they did. I’d fought so hard and come so far just so we could all be together again. The other part of me couldn’t stop replaying the way I’d left Theo in my mad rush to escape that place. He would not forgive me for it and I didn’t want him to. Hell, if I saw him again I might just actually kill him. What I couldn’t stand was the idea of losing the people I actually cared about to the poison-tongued asshole. Even with a charisma ability as high as mine I still couldn’t talk my way out of trouble like that giant of a warrior could.

I ran my fingers through my damp hair and tried to figure out my next move. I could tell by the fact that every building aside from Phlegm’s had been reduced to little more than rubble that the horde had broken through the Outsider’s defenses.

That surprised me a little. When I’d walked the front line looking for Hanley I’d thought them all crazy for putting themselves in danger but I never actually considered what would happen if they failed. This was it. The horde had blasted through the outer suburbs of Perth like a swarm of locusts through a cornfield.

There was no telling how far they’d gotten or how powerful the horde still was. It was likely the Outsiders had barely made a dent in the monster's numbers by the look of what they’d left behind.

This was what the entire country was going to look like. One giant sun-soaked island with every hint of humanity wiped out. It wouldn’t take long for nature to retake the place. That thought wasn’t so terrible. Nature was here long before we were and it would always be here long after we left but damn, what about the monsters? I doubted Melumek would just get bored and snap his fingers to make them disappear. No, there was something else he was after. Something I didn’t understand.

There were things I still needed to discover about the world we’d been thrown into. I just couldn’t figure out the correct way to do it. Instinct told me to play the game to find the ending but what good would that do? Surely sneaking into another Fellowship of Fayum Church and discovering everything they knew about their leader would get me closer to the truth. Maybe I could find out more about Mary’s Redoubt, a place that had been tickling the back of my mind since I read it in the Toilet Master’s book.

It was useless. I felt like a man stuck on a ledge being pulled in every direction but never making it anywhere.

“Come,” Gabby called, breaking me from my solemn thoughts, “we’re almost there.”

Sob let out a wild whinny and took off at full speed leaving nothing but a cloud of dust in his wake. The stallion didn’t even wait for Taki to appear before he took off down the skinny side street to find his beloved stable.

That answered one question for me. Sob would definitely follow me if it meant being close to a goblin stable.

Jacob slammed into my shoulder in his mad rush to follow Gabby and didn’t so much as apologize. I cursed and rubbed at the bruised joint as I watched the pair prance off. I had no idea when they’d had the time to get as close as they seemed to be now but I couldn’t be upset by it. It was good to have companionship when everything was falling apart.

I supposed that’s what Nora was for me. She was always there when I needed her. Always reliable in a tight spot. She was even easy to talk to even if most of our conversations dissolved into silly arguments. She was strong where I was weak. Losing her would be the biggest punch in the gut.

I know what you’re thinking; Nora and Joe sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g. But it wasn’t like that. It never had been. I’d never really had a close female friend before. Not by choice but by sheer circumstance. It was kind of nice.

“So, what’s got your face all screwed up?” Nora asked as she walked along beside me. “You know you shouldn’t think that hard, your brain can’t handle it.”

I elbowed her but all that did was leave me with a sore elbow and her laughing.

“I’m still heading out for Stanthorpe. Nothing has changed about that. Will you come with me?” I asked.

She stayed quiet for a moment, her bushy eyebrows dropping over her eyes as she stared after the two youngsters. I’d about passed out from holding my breath when she answered, “Yes, I will.”

I smiled so hard my dry lips cracked a little but the stingy pain didn’t mean much. “Even if it means leaving Gabby and Jacob behind?”

Nora sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. “We don’t get to tell them where to go. They’re grown, it’s their choice. Do I like it? Of course not. But they’ll always know how to find us again if we build our base. That was the idea, wasn’t it? Have one single spot for all of us to go to when we’re not separated doing our own quests or whatever?”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I guess you’re right. I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

“Well, start thinking about it like that. It’s the only thing that’s going to keep our boots on the ground while we keep searching for Nigel.”

She fell silent again after that but I could see the cogs in her brain turning. She was thinking deeply about something important but wasn’t yet ready to share it with me. I desperately wanted to know what it was but I wasn’t going to force it out of her. She’d tell me when she’d figured it out.

A splatter of white gunk hit the ground right in front of us. I yelped and leaped back as the ground began to sizzle and a cloud of sulfur stench burned my nose. Cursing like a sailor I turned my eyes up at the blasted pigeon sitting on a pole above us. I yanked my arm up and let loose a bolt, skewering the thing right through the breast. It dropped like an apple from a tree and hit the ground not far away. A useless lump of acid-shitting feathers.

“Now, was that really necessary?” Nora said with a healthy dose of judgment seasoning her tone.

I stomped over to the pigeon and yanked out my bolt, returning it to my quiver before looting the tiny corpse for its Acid Sack.

“It’ll be good for my potions,” I said as if I wouldn’t have done it anyway.

“Mhmm,” she said, marching on past me and up the stairs to the tavern.

“Mistress Nora!” Taki screamed as he charged out the door. “It is so good to see you again. Your friends said you were coming but I hardly believed it. Did you kill anything good today?”

Nora laughed and scruffed up the hair atop Taki’s head. “Not yet but it is only early. I promise you’ll be the first to know if I do.”

Taki beamed and his long pointed ears twitched. Then he turned his eyes on me and started absently straightening his little brown vest. “Joe, um, I have a message for you from Phlegm. It’s important.”

I frowned and stepped closer, “What is it?”

Taki dropped his head sadly and pulled a crinkled note from his vest pocket. He held it out to me and said, “Here.”

Phlegm wrote in an odd blocky kind of way but at least it was easy to read, unlike those fancy interconnected scrawls you saw some people use. I mean, what’s the point of prettiness if you can’t actually read it, right?

Joe,

when you get this come find me down by the creek.

I have important news for you, it can’t wait, you understand?

Phlegm

New Quest: A Mysterious Note

Description: Find the goblin Phlegm down by the river.

Nora was unashamedly reading the note over my shoulder when I finished with it. Taki on the other hand had disappeared entirely.

“What do you think it is?” Nora asked.

I shrugged. The notification that had flashed up in front of my face when I’d read it had been the barest of descriptions I think I have ever seen. I had no idea what the goblin could want from me.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she asked as we topped the stairs and pushed through the door into the tavern proper.

Everything in me screamed and begged for me to say yes but instead, I mumbled, “No, there’s no point. It’s probably something stupid like ‘Phlegm needs you to collect ten worms so he can catch tonight's dinner’ or some other bullshit sidequest like that.”

Nora snorted and took a seat at the bar. “You’re probably right. I’ll stay here with the kids then. Take Stella with you though, okay?”

Stella let out a loud bark at the mention of her name and started wagging her tail with gusto. I chuckled and scruffed up her fur. “Of course, I will. Who’s my good girl? Is it you? Yes, it’s you!”

Nora laughed and gave me a little shove that saw me stumbling and clutching a chair to keep from falling. “Go on then, and hurry back. We’ve got plans to make before we head off again.”

“Righto, see you later. Are you coming with me too, Frank?” The bird screeched from my shoulder and smacked my face with his outspread wings in his haste to flap over to join Nora at the bar. “I guess not, be a good bird. You know Phlegm will roast you if you wreck up his place.”

As I walked back toward the door I pulled up my quest menu and marked Phlegm’s as active. Then I navigated to my minimap and eyed the little pointer that would guide me in the general direction I had to go. In this instance, it was a helpful mechanic. Having been born on the literal other side of the country I didn’t know what river Phlegm had been talking about in his note. Thankfully, it wasn’t very far away.

The sun had barely shifted in the sky when we found the goblin crouched on a rock holding a fishing rod with a bucket of fat fish beside him.

“Phlegm, you called for me?” I said in place of a greeting.

The goblin's head whipped around so fast it made me tense up. “Joe! It’s about time you got here.”

“How long have you been waiting here?” I asked, eyeing the two other filled buckets I hadn’t seen earlier.

“Oh, about five hours. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the tavern. Too many twitching ears if you catch my meaning?”

Stella was snuffling around the goblin’s catch while I found another big rock to lean against. I crossed my arms, took a steadying breath, and asked the burning question, “What do you want to talk about?”

Phlegm’s big nostrils flared as he turned his eyes back out to the river. He gnashed his mouth a few times before a noise that could be called a word came out of it.

“I have all kinds of people visit my taverns, you know? Some good, some bad, and some who are somewhere along the spectrum in that grey middle ground. A lot of them have stories to tell me. Some even give me quests to hand out to other players. You know that, I’ve given you some before.”

I groaned, closed my eyes, and let my head drop back. Even the warmth of the sun soaking into my skin couldn’t take away the pain of a man carefully avoiding the point of his story.

“Yes, and?” I said, hoping to hurry him along.”

“I had a visitor last night who seemed awfully interested in you. Asking all sorts of personal questions, you understand? One’s that even Talkative Taki wouldn’t have been comfortable answering.”

I rubbed a hand through my hair. The image of a giant man in black heavy armor with a sword and shield flashed through my mind. “Who was it?”

Phlegm hesitated, his little clawed hands shaking on the grip of his rod. “You understand I didn’t tell the man anything, right? No matter how desperately he tried to trick and manipulate me.”

“Phlegm, just tell me who it was.”

I saw the goblin’s throat lift and drop with a hard swallow before he answered, “He called himself Orion.”