Everything was going perfectly fine right up until they were robbed by bandits.

Their journey had been going incredibly smoothly. When Arden and Valerie had first picked out horses to rent, they'd deliberately chosen the largest and strongest on offer, expecting to have to carry everything they owned with them. With all of the supplies once carried by Valerie's horse now gone, the animal was more than capable of carrying both her and List without apparent strain, though it was a bit of an awkward fit sharing the saddle.

List wasn't talking much, but when she did dain to snark at them, or at least at Valerie, it was more joking than hostile. The villagers either never came for them, or were too terrible at tracking to find them. And by the second day, they were back onto signposted roads, heading for the town of Shadefall.

Even as pleasantly as things were going, it took Valerie three days to work up the courage to ask what Arden had been silently wondering since the three of them had set off.

"So, what made you change your mind?" Valerie asked.

"Hm?" List mumbled.

She still hadn't told Valerie or Arden about Gidus. For starters, she still wasn't sure she hadn't imagined the old man. But even if she hadn't, she didn't see what difference it would make.

"I guess I just had my fill of garbage and forest scraps for dinner," List said. "And I suppose you might have had a point about the whole having someone to vouch for me thing. I'm not the strangest looking person living in Xykesh. Maybe a change of presentation will help with. . ." she gestured to her eyes using her tail, "all of this."

"It must have been hard, growing up hellborn," Valerie said, trying to offer sympathy.

List’s jaw tensed. "Yep. Sure was.”

Valerie winced at the curt tone of her voice. "Sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"Just forget it."

A familiar kind of awkward silence fell between them, with List sulking, and Valerie mentally kicking herself for pushing too hard too fast. But then, in defiance of their established pattern, it was List who broke the silence.

She let out a long breath, cleared her throat, and then asked, "So. How long have the two of you been in Xykesh?"

Valerie leapt at the opportunity to put her previous overstep behind them.

"How does everyone know that we're not from here?" Valerie asked.

"You mean besides the clothes and constant references to places nobody's heard of?" List said. "You two just look lost, all the time. You act surprised by bloody everything you come across, and every time you hear the name of a place, it's like you're writing it down in your head for later. Honestly, you can't have been long, otherwise you'd have at least gotten a little good at hiding it by now."

Behind them, Arden gave a bemused grunt. List narrowed her eyes, trying to work out what was going on in his head and getting nothing. Valerie sighed.

"We've been here about a month now," she said. "Dr. Siren is the University of Olwin's leading expert on monster biology, and he convinced the university to let us take a research trip here. Finding a ship to take us here was hard. The best we managed was one captain who sailed us most of the way, then gave us a rowboat to finish the trip ourselves."

"You rowed here?" List gawked. "Through the storms?"

"It was rough," Valerie said. "Really rough. But somehow, we managed. Made landfall on some beach, and ever since then we've been hopping town to town, looking for anything that fits our bill. We were on our way to Shadefall when we heard about it, and Dr. Siren sent me to check it out while he finished securing some extra supplies."

"Really?" List looked back over her shoulder at Arden, riding behind them. "What was so important to get it was worth sending her by herself?"

"It wasn't far. And as we've established, she wasn't supposed to engage until after I arrived," Arden said. "I assumed Valerie was ready to handle scouting on her own. And I was very nearly right."

"Well, that's one way to look at it," List muttered.

"At least it all worked out in the end," Valerie said, trying to defuse the situation.

And that was when it happened. With the three of them distracted, none of them saw the snake slithering into the road. But Valerie's horse did, and when the reptile hissed at them, Valerie's horse reared back, throwing List off of the back of the saddle. Valerie barely held on, though that didn't matter as a second later, a lasso whipped out from the tall grass surrounding the road, cinching around her and succeeding where the horse failed.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The world spun as Valerie's horse vanished out from under her, and she hit List on the way down. Arden's horse was panicking as well, though he managed to keep it under control and under him. He had his reins in one hand, and his other pointed directly at Valerie, his fingertip already glowing bright white. For a moment, Valerie was utterly confused.

Then she felt the knife at her throat, and things made slightly more sense.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" a rough, drawling voice from behind Valerie. "Let's all just calm down, huh?"

Valerie struggled to take in the situation without disturbing the blade already biting into her skin. Her horse was gone, its hooves thudding off in the distance somewhere behind her. The lasso was still tight around her body, pinning her arms. List was on her back, groaning and clutching her hand as the snake from the road slithered away from her. Arden remained on horseback, his hand leveled like a weapon ready to fire at whoever was holding Valerie hostage. Her attacker was tan skinned, with what looked like white hair, and maybe some blue makeup on his face. But that was all she could get out of the corner of her eye.

"Let her go, or you die," Arden stated flatly.

"Okay, we're upset, that's understandable," Valerie's assailant said, talking quickly. "Let's play this out. You try to speak to a prayer to blast me, I show you the inside of this girl's windpipe."

"Your knife is in position to cut, not thrust. Bleeding to death takes time," Arden said. "Anything you do to hurt her, I will undo, and then I will kill you for trying."

"Alright," Valerie's assailant agreed. "I see your god bothering, and I will raise you—"

He let out a sharp whistle, and the grass around them came alive with a chorus of rustling as a dozen more bandits stood up, all carrying crossbows loaded and ready to fire. Valerie didn't see the smile on her captor's face, but she could hear it in his voice.

"So, let's review the order of operations. I hurt her, you kill me and fix her, you both die in a hail of crossbolts, that one succumbs to venom," her captor jerked to indicate List, who was already writhing on the floor, "and then my boys split my share of the loot and bury us all in an unmarked grave in the side of the road. Personally, I don't like how that shakes out. How about you, boss?"

Valerie started to reach for the knife on her belt, only to feel the blade on her neck press even closer.

"Don't even think about it, Blondie," her captor said. "Not unless you want to know how your friend over there feels."

A cold, reptilian hiss sent ice through Valerie's veins, and she glanced down to see the same snake from the road now slithering across her legs. Instinctively, she froze, and then looked to Arden.

"So, how about instead of all of us dying to make these idiots richer, you put away the lightshow, we come to an arrangement that makes everybody happy, and we all walk away."

"Don't. You. Fucking. Dare," List grunted through clenched teeth.

The doctor's face had hardened into a glare, and as his gaze swept their ambushers, Valerie realized he was gauging how quickly he could take them all down, and if it would be fast enough. Valerie found herself doing the same.

They were surrounded. Arden was a powerful priest. He might actually have been able to do it. Take them all down, and save both Valerie and List—again. But he wasn't sure. And Arden Lee Siren was many things. But a gambler was not one of them.

The glow faded from Arden's fingers, and he slowly raised his hands into the air.

In short order, all three of them were tied up, sitting back to back, a gag stuffed in Arden's mouth, and the bandits helped themselves to Arden's saddlebags—along with his saddle itself, his coin purse, and his and Valerie's horses. All the while the leader and his pet snake kept an eye on them.

What Valerie had initially thought was makeup was, in fact, patches of smooth, bright blue scales, decorating his cheeks like freckles, framing his face, and spreading out down the back of his neck, though she also spotted them on the backs of his hands. He had a young face. In fact, Valerie probably wouldn't have put him much older than her and List, if at all. He wore a black snakeskin armored jacket with a violet lining, fit snugly over his lean, toned frame. His eyes were either striking or unsettling, Valerie couldn't decide—bright yellow, with the too-narrow and too tall pupils.

After only a moment's confusion at his appearance, Valerie realized he must have had an anima somewhere in his family tree. The anima of Teccah weren't human, but that didn't stop humans from having children with them, and the results looked like the bandit leader—a human with animalistic traits tacked on.

"Hey. Nice necklace you got there, holy man," one of the bandits said, fingering the pendant around Arden's neck.

"Whoa, hands off!" the leader snapped to his underling. "Saints, Jermiah, you never go to church, or what? You don't fuck with a priest's holy symbol."

"Seriously?" Valerie said. "That's where you draw the line?"

"Hey, I'm allowed to have principles," the leader defended. "And there's a big difference between separating a man and his gold and a man and his god. Besides the letter l. One's business. One's sacreligious. Besides, we're not trying to kill anybody we don't have to, and your friend here looks like she's gonna need some god-bothering once we're gone."

In the time it had taken the robbery to get underway, List had gone deathly pale, and broken out in a cold sweat. Her hand that had gotten the snakebite was swollen, and she was actively shuddering in pain, but that didn't stop her from shooting the bandits a death glare.

"That on the other hand, is much less sacred," the leader said, and pointed to Valerie's wrist.

Her wristbow was still broken from being chewed by a werewolf, despite her best efforts to repair it over the past few days of travel, and yet she'd been wearing it anyway, out of habit drilled so deeply into her she often slept with it on.

The leader of the thieves removed the weapon, undoing the straps that secured it in place as naturally as Valerie might have.

"You weren't using this, right?" he asked, and Valerie glared.

One of the thieves signaled to the others that they were ready to move, and the leader clapped his hands. "Welp. Boss. Blondie. Hellion. It's been real. We're gonna be on our way, you have a safe rest of your trip."

And with that, the bandits began to clear out, taking everything Arden and Valerie still owned with them, save the clothes on their backs. The leader stayed behind a moment, holding his arm down to let his snake slither up, coil around it, and transform into a jade armband on his bicep. He flashed the trussed up trio a bright smile and a wink in Valerie's direction, and moved to follow his gang.

"Oh, last thing," he called back to them. "If anybody asks what happened to you, tell them you got bit by Xigbar the Snake!"