The old lady’s house was surrounded by a large garden of herbs. Even the only window on it was covered in drying herbs. Nobody in our group stopped the monk before she opened the door and walked in unannounced with the herbs in the leather bag we just earned. Her house was reeked of various drying plants and the grass stained old lady likely smelled just as strongly. The old lady turned to us with a scowl.

“Get out of my house. Helpers are supposed to have manners.”

“Says the lady who lied about how common those herbs were. I should have found over a hundred by now with how common you said they were.”

“Be glad I’m even willing to give you something for these herbs. To a common person, they might as well be a simple weed. I’ll give you a silver as promised. I don’t want to see you around anymore. Don’t think I’ll recommend you to others either if this is how you were raised.”

Our monk crossed her arms. “No”. The apothecary lady turned to her confused. “No, I’m not giving these for a single silver piece. I’d sooner burn them and prevent anyone from picking them again.”

“You’re a fool to think you have anything to bargain against me with. You walk away and I’ll get John’s kids to pick me some to plant in the garden later. You wait for a better deal and those plants will begin to dry. You hit me and I’ll have the guards arrest you.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the saintess walking forward to help, though who she was trying to help I didn’t know. Apparently, the monk noticed as well, as she shook her head and the saintess decided to wait.

“Have fun getting anyone to find these plants anywhere close for a year.” Reaching into the bag she pulled out a large bundle of leafy but flowerless plants. The roots were attached and everything. The apothecary’s face morphed into one of horror.

“Why would you do that! The roots are destroyed! Those plants are the only thing nearby that can be used against fevers. Your actions might cause people to die later. Do you realize that?”

The old lady’s knees almost gave out at the sight and she leaned on the wall for support. Whether she was feeling rage or loss I didn’t know, but the monk’s actions had a definite effect.

“I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me how important they were. You didn’t tell me how rare they were. You didn’t tell me how valuable they were. You thought of me as an easy target and you paid the price.”

The old lady clenched her fists seemingly trying to regain some composure.

“Are you telling me, that because I gave you less money than you felt you deserved, you knowingly destroyed rare medical herbs to hurt others?”

The monk walked away from the old lady to a wall and table of dried herbs. “Of course not. I destroyed common weeds. I didn’t destroy anything important, simple kids could find them later from how you described them.” The monk picked up a few leaves from the herb covered table. “Also I hate liars.”

With that she walked out the door. The prince looked at her more bewildered than the other two, though I imagine my face matched his at the moment. We quickly left the room, though I heard the saintess say “Have a good day”, which felt like more of an insult at this point than she likely intended.

“Faith”, I tried to find my next words carefully, “Would it not be wise to take something from her as compensation? A tool or some teachings even?”

“She would likely do something out of spite, as she already proved herself a liar.” Her eyes were forward and her strides were long, trying to get away from the house as soon as possible.

The thief spoke up as well, “Why do you hate liars so much?”

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“Nobody in the monastery lied. People might have been rude or get into fights, but lying goes against many of our teachings. I suppose our core tenet can best be described as being honest to oneself and honesty will be returned by the world. It has multiple interpretations, but many of them disapprove of lies.”

“Think you could give one of those plants to Louis after processing it? I don’t know how the medicine is made but you were looking at her medicine table very carefully, surely anything would help break his fever.” The saintess looked over to our furious monk. She then turned to look at me and widened her eyes in shock. Rather than responding to the saintess, she simply handed over a plant from the bag to me.

“You hand me this as if I should know what to do with it.”

“She dried the leaves of a few things that looked like this, so grab a leaf. The stem and roots weren’t anywhere I could see. We may need to experiment later.”

I looked at the others, realizing that my fever had almost fully gone away in the short time that the monk showed her second side to us. My miraculous recovery was likely what shocked the saintess, as the shock of my recovery was evident on the faces of the others. The prince walked over to the monk and whispered something into her ear. She looked very displeased as she nodded.

“Suck on the plant, starting with one of the leaves. It should help you.” The prince showed me a practiced smile at those words. There was something going on that I didn’t know about, but the details eluded me. We already knew the plant was for fever medication, so I was stumped.

Shifting to our next task We immediately began to track the lumberjack’s brother. It was likely the easiest time I had hunting someone ever. He didn’t bother to hide his trail and he went in a direction the others didn’t usually go. I felt like we were making good time going deep into the woods, only occasionally having to bushwhack to keep on track.

It was so easy I began to think about other things while tracking. Or I tried to. The prince kept asking me questions about tracking during the trip which kept me from getting much else done. I didn’t take him for the type that would be this bothersome, but every ten steps he kept asking how I knew I was going the right way.

I pointed out broken branches, footprints, and other signs of the trail as we walked. My eyes were glued to the surroundings for clues when something I didn’t want to see appeared before us. Bear tracks. A very large bear by the size and depth of the paws. I could fit both my hands within the prints, and I reckon it was about 5 times the weight of a man if I remembered how to gauge weight correctly.

“Careful everyone, the prints are headed the same way as our villager. There is a really big bear that uses this as his territory.”

“Can you figure out if it can use magic?”

I looked over at the prince. He was certainly asking important questions finally, trying to learn how strong a possible enemy was, but he was the resident mage, not me.

“Not without stabbing it and seeing if it tries to burn, freeze, or bite us.”

He looked annoyed at my answer but nodded silently. Flames flickered over his fingers again as he began to do a breathing exercise as we walked.

Eventually, the footprints ended. A large pool of mostly dried blood lay on the patches of grass. Some bloody scraps of fabric soaked in what was left of him. No shoes or personal objects remained intact enough to determine his identity. Despite it not being morning anymore, some morning dew was visible around the scene. There weren’t signs of a fight, nor of him trying to claw at the ground to get away, so I could at least be hopeful he might have died relatively fast. I might have once believed that to be a morbid thought, but there would be plenty of worse ways one’s final moments could be spent when attacked.

I heard someone retching behind me. Without looking I could already imagine the thief or monk holding her hair back as the girl emptied her stomach of what little we were able to forage off of a bush this morning. Her white outfit would now be sullied by herself.

“I say we slay the beast and take its hide for armor. We could likely get enough for two people. The people who make leather surely can’t take that long.” The prince seemed dead set on killing it. He held his back even straighter than usual and ran his fingers through his hair.

The saintess looked at him and said “Let’s put this to a quick vote then, all who disagree with avenging the brother speak up”. All of us looked at each other silently. The thief nodded at the monk, then glanced at his green shirt which constituted his defense against attacks. A thin layer of wool would do him very little against teeth. Anything would likely be better. The saintess held her stomach, somehow mixing a determined focused stare with a nauseous empty stare. Her clothes hadn’t gotten anything from her on them, but plenty of dirt along the bottom.

“I’ll start tracking the bear, get ready for a fight.” The thief held his crossbow in hand as we walked a considerable distance to a massive hole under a large tree that a black bear was sleeping in. The beast had blood still covering its snout. To my dismay I was completely wrong about its weight, it was almost twice what I predicted. Worse, It was beginning to wake up.