ILIAS PAYNE

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Most of the time, we had to set up camp just offroad and put up tents to sleep in for the night. Each tent occupied two people, though Camaro was the outlier and claimed an entire tent to himself. Heloise and I ended up sharing one. She was truly a doll. The moment she pulled a blanket over her, she was dozing off. She didn’t snore, but she slept with her mouth open and sometimes she would whistle every time she exhaled.

When we would arrive at a settlement by dusk in the late afternoon, we would call it a day and book rooms at an inn before restocking our supplies. During this, Camaro always met up with whoever was in jurisdiction of the settlement to talk business—though I had a nagging suspicion that he just didn’t want to do errands.

The oddest of these settlements was Rockbell.

Rockbell was a mining town which meant we were constantly breathing in coal. Even though the inn we stayed at was on the outskirts of the town, each of us had to cough every now and then as the dust still managed to reach the settlement’s most outer parts.

The oddest of the Rockbell residents was the colonel in charge—John Armstrong. The best way I could describe him was that he was a weasel. He was skinny and had a receding hairline that surprisingly fit his look. He had whiskers for a moustache. But the most memorable part about him was that he was a drunkard.

Every time we stayed in a town, Camaro would always make it a point to visit and talk with whoever was in charge. As we were settling into our rooms, Colonel Armstrong walked in reeking of alcohol, stumbling and bumbling.

“Colonel Camaro, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, his face flushed red as he extended a hand.

Camaro shook it. “Yes, it is. What happened to Colonel Yoki?”

“He was promoted to brigadier three years ago and is currently working under General Clegane.”

“That’s good for him.”

“So what brings you into town? Have you come to arrest me?”

“Arrest you?”

Colonel Armstrong punched Camaro in the arm. “I got you. Hahaha! I’m hilarious, right? But seriously, why are you here?”

The two colonels left for a walk to continue their conversation.

On our tenth day of travelling, we arrived at Bel Tine. According to that adventurer Odetta talked to, this was the town with a supposedly legendary doctor.

I wonder if she found them.

Bel Tine was much smaller than Gilead.

While our hometown’s population was approximately two thousand, Bel Tine’s was only seven hundred. But everything else from the way the town looked to how it functioned was pretty much the same. If they were hiding a first-class doctor, then they were doing a great job at it.

The tavern we had our supper at had a party because a young jynxist who lived in Bel Tine left to take the State Jynxist Exam.

Camaro went to bed early and missed the entire celebration.

After Private Gama mentioned that I was headed to the Capital for the same reason, confusion arose because of my age (apparently it was the same age as their jynxist)—but only for a minute before the tavern roared louder.

This body was not used to alcohol, but everyone kept insisting I drink some booze. At one point, the entire tavern was chanting my name so I chugged a pint to calm them down.

One pint of ale shouldn’t hurt.

But the party was so lively that I ended up drinking twelve.

Heloise, who was supposed to be watching over me, ended up getting drunk first. She got into a drinking competition with a barrel-chested dwarf who, by the looks of him, had alcohol flowing in his veins. Not surprisingly, she lost and passed out on her eighteenth pint.

Heloise was the same person when she was drunk but she became an idiot who blubbered words every now and then.

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I passed out just after midnight. We were supposed to leave at first light, but everyone was drunk and slept in.

“I thought I was able to trust you when I left to sleep early! I honestly can’t believe all of you!” he scolded. “You all pressured Ilias into getting drunk so I understand him, but why are all of you hungover?”

“We rarely have parties like these, Colonel,” Sergeant Hendrik said.

“Hendrik, you’re the last person I would suspect of wanting to get drunk. I’ll seriously have to get stricter with you four.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Private Gama mocked. “You say that all the time.”

“Besides, why’d you make Ilias drink? The first hangover is always the worst and we have a whole day’s ride ahead of us.”

“You’re acting like you didn’t drink at his age.”

“Yes, in fact, I got my first hangover when I was ten. The difference is that I drank when I didn’t have to travel.” Camaro sat by the foot of my bed. “How are you doing, kid?”

“My head…” I said. “I can’t do it. I don’t think it’s safe for me to ride today. Sorry, Colonel.”

He sighed. “I guess we can stay in Bel Tine for one more day. We’ll leave before dawn tomorrow.”

Since they missed breakfast, Camaro’s unit left to go search for a tavern to eat at. The colonel took care of me by giving me water and keeping me stable as I puked into a bucket.

My head was spinning and it felt as if everything was wobbly. I hadn’t gotten drunk in so long and this body wasn’t used to even a single drop of booze. I just wanted to open my head and massage my brain.

“Are you hungry?” the colonel asked.

“Yeah, but later. I’m not in the mood to eat.”

Heloise woke up, rubbing her eyes as she glanced out the window.

“I never took you for someone to get drunk,” Camaro teased.

“I got carried away, I suppose.”

By the time Heloise and I felt better, it was almost noon. Breakfast was long over so we would have to skip to lunch. My sense of balance was so bad that I couldn’t walk straight for more than a couple of steps. Camaro had to carry me on his back while he held Heloise’s hand as she trailed behind him like his little sister.

We found a tavern down the road that gave us a meal that consisted of a chicken leg and thigh, a loaf of bread, corn soup, and pickled carrots. Our heads were hurting so bad that Heloise and I ended up ordering more corn soup on the side.

“Just keep drinking something to flush the alcohol out of your system,” Camaro suggested.

“Why did I decide to get drunk?” Heloise questioned herself “The last time I got a hangover was only ten years ago.”

“Only?”

I said I was only going to have that one pint, how did I end up going overboard with twelve? I regret this so much.

By this point, we had finished eating and were simply resting. Camaro, who was reading a piece of paper he got from the event board, suddenly spun his head as a man with a wrinkly face walked passed our table. Camaro turned his whole body to study the man.

“Dr Creed?” he questioned. “That is you, isn’t it, Doctor? It’s me! Ray Van Camaro from Gilead. You still remember me, don’t you?”

The wrinkled man, apparently named Dr Creed, stared at us in confusion before his eyes shrunk and he spun on his heels, making his way out of the tavern in a sprint.

Camaro got up to chase after him, but only got as far as the door before he realized his two companions were in no condition for a foot chase.

“We’re sorry,” Heloise said. “If we weren’t hungover, you would’ve caught him.”

Camaro shrugged it off. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you guys didn’t get drunk last night, we would’ve been out of here this morning. That, in turn, would mean I would’ve never run into him in the first place.”

“What kind of doctor is this Creed fellow?”

“He specializes in everything. Anything you think of, he’ll know. He’s smart too and sometimes researches biology and jynx.”

“He specialized in everything?” I repeated. “So just like Mother?”

“Yes, but he outclasses her without even trying. You don’t remember this, Ilias, but he’s the person who helped your mother deliver you.”

He was the wrinkled man present during my birth?

“Oh, he was?”

“Yeah, just a couple of weeks before you were born, I asked General Clegane if they can send over a doctor to help aid your mother during her labour and run the clinic while she was recovering. Apparently, King Arthureus was visiting Seraphim when the message arrived and insisted to let Dr Creed deliver you. Dr Creed is a revered doctor so I certainly wasn’t complaining.”

“He stayed to take care of the clinic?”

“No, he left suddenly after your birth. General Clegane sent one of his doctors to do that. Your mother was the only doctor in Gilead after all. She couldn’t be recovering while going around doing work and taking care of you.”

“Where’d Dr Creed go?” Heloise asked.

“I don’t know. I thought he left because he needed to do something important but he winds up missing a couple of weeks later. Now we know where he went.”

“One of Mother’s friends came to Bel Tine to look for a powerful doctor strong enough to cure her brother’s deafness.”

“Yeah, I remember her. Odetta.”

“Yeah, Auntie Odetta. Is there a chance that the doctor she was searching for was Dr Creed?”

“Not a chance. It was Dr Creed,” Camaro insisted. “I heard from your mother about a town with a powerful doctor that denies he exists. This is that town and he is that doctor.”