The villages were becoming smaller. This one, where the boat dropped us, could barely be called a fishing village; it didn’t even have an inn. It did have a good position inside a bend in the river, remotely similar to the first village I had ever been to. I was struggling to remember its name.

"Do you remember the name of the village we were at right after I arrived? This place reminds me of it, but I'm terrible with names."

She seemed to give it a lot of thought. "I really don't remember it. All the villages at the frontier have names like Frontier Something or Edgewood. My favorite was New Village. I think I've been through a dozen named that."

"So do we stay here tonight, or just push through?" I asked.

"The captain said it was the last village they knew of. Wouldn’t hurt to talk to the locals."

Alira looked around and stopped a man nearby. "Do you have a village leader we could talk to?"

He looked us over more closely. "Vanik is overseeing the building of the watchtower at the end of the road," he said, offering no further comment.

There were only a few dozen buildings at most, and they were building a watchtower. Life seemed hard at the frontier. It didn’t take us long to find the construction site. By the looks of it, maybe half of it was finished. What caught me by surprise was the wall surrounding half the village. It was almost brand new—they weren't messing around with defense.

A short man turned to us as we approached. He seemed to be giving the orders. "It's not often we have visitors, and by the way you look, you don't seem like colonists." He seemed pleased with his deduction and added in a sadder tone, "We could always use more people here."

"We're just passing through. We are bounty hunters heading south to catch some rare prey," Alira used the half-true story we had agreed upon.

"There aren't any villages past here, so you better stock up on supplies," he said very seriously.

"Any info you can give us on what awaits?" Alira asked.

"Well, we are raided by kobolds, but they are more of a nuisance. What you have to worry about are the magical animals." He shuddered as if remembering a bad memory. "Ten of our hunters got attacked by a panther. One said it was invisible; another said it was faster than the eye could follow. Only six hunters returned. We don't go too far after that."

"So night could be scary, got it," I tried to lighten the mood.

"There's no amount of coin that could convince me to head into the wilderness almost alone."

I guess he was right—two was almost alone.

"Anything else?" Alira asked, all business.

"After a few days, you'll reach a river. That's where our maps end and stories begin. Some say centaurs live beyond it, or even tribes of orcs. Some even claim they heard dragon roars." The leader had a flair for the dramatic, I'll give him that.

"Thank you for the information," Alira said, and we continued walking away from the wall into the wilderness.

"So I guess no sleeping in the village?"

"That village had almost no women, you might not have noticed. I prefer the wilderness to lewd stares."

"Oh, I have a good story," I said, remembering it. She seemed to deflate; she did love my stories.

"So, on my world, since we don't have powers, we imagine people in stories who have superpowers, and they fight for good and all that," she nodded. "One of the most famous ones is called Superman and has a skin-tight suit with a big letter 'S' on his chest."

"Skin-tight? That can't be very comfortable," she smiled.

I smiled back and continued, "Anyway, the 'S' on his chest is his symbol, and a lot of people on my planet would recognize it. They even put it on t-shirts."

"So you bought a t-shirt?" she looked at me, unimpressed.

"Yes, and where I'm from, people weren't really used to this kind of t-shirt, so the first time I went out with it was the weirdest thing ever." I paused for effect, knowing it would make her roll her eyes.

Rolling her eyes, she asked, "Weird how?"

"For the first time, I experienced what it's like to be a woman." She even stopped walking for a second, seeming actually interested.

"Everybody on the street was first staring at my chest and only then at my face, and most people skipped the face entirely." She was trying not to smile but failing. "Very soon it became annoying. I wanted to shout to them, 'My eyes are up here!'" At this, she started laughing.

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"So you do know what it feels like. I'm always impressed by, I guess you could call it emotional maturity," and she leaned in to give me a short kiss.

"I thought I was naive."

"Oh, you still are," she laughed, "but it is very rare to recognize your own faults, and even rarer to understand how others truly feel."

"During my teenage years, not being popular in school provided ample time to observe and understand others. Maybe that's why reading people comes quite naturally to me."

"Really? You? Not popular with the ladies? I find it hard to believe."

"I wasn't always this good-looking," I said in the most serious tone I could muster.

She was laughing again. "I'm serious. Are the men in your world that much more attractive than you?"

"Right now, I'd say I'm above average, but in high school—that's school when we were teenagers—I was way, way below average."

"Then when did you bloom into the current you?" she asked.

"In college, that's school when you're 20"

"You still have school when you are twenty?"

"I think I mentioned we have a lot of school, like 15 to 20 years of it depending on the profession"

"Twenty?" She looked astonished. "I got homeschooled for 10 years, and it was the best education money could buy."

"Damn, and I was going to ask you how many hearts you broke in your teenage school years." I said.

"Well, it was a double-edged sword" she appeared introspective "Unlike you, I was considered way above average in the looks department, so I had lots of suitors, but because I was in the upper echelons of society it gave me freedom to be independent, a little to independent if you ask my mother, then I had a huge fight with her and cut my hair short, way shorter than I have it now just to spite her and with a man's hairstyle and maybe a little arrogance the suitors thinned."

"So come on, what the story with your mother, is she like evil or something?" I looked at her seriously, "or are you going to dodge the question again?"

She seemed torn but relented, "Fine, she's not evil just overbearing, and we got along pretty well until the arranged marriage part."

"I get that arranged marriages are not ok, but you must have really hated that guy, if you went from a good relationship to not talking to each other for years" It still was strange, but some parents could be over the top I guess.

"She was ok with me refusing suitors, even found it amusing, but when the prince became interested she changed, she became 'you have to grow up' and 'opportunity of a lifetime' ahhhh" her anger was starting to show, so I didn’t press further.

We walked in silence after that, soon the village was long past, and we entered the forest with the 'magical panthers'. The forest epitomized creepiness, with gnarled, lifeless trees and a dense canopy that allowed only sparse beams of light to penetrate the darkness. Shadows swayed and flickered in every direction as the wind rustled through the branches, creating eerie illusions that made you constantly second-guess what you were seeing.

Soon there was no road to follow, so Alira lead the way as she had some innate compass or something.

"It's getting dark, shouldn't we make a fire or something?"

"I got a bad feeling since we entered this forest, I thought putting some distance would remove the feeling" she looked around as if expecting an attack any second.

"It does look creepy, I'll give you that" I almost bumped into her as she stopped.

"Tracks" she gestured to the ground.

I was far from an expert, but there were a lot of tracks that clearly were not human.

"A group of creatures a little bigger than we are, intelligent. " I perked up and looked at her.

"How can you possible tell that by the footprints?"

"See the light lines? It means they were dragging something" there were some lines that appeared sometimes.

"I'm no expert, but the tracks go in our direction, so we go right or left?" I asked.

"How do we know the settlement they live isn't that way?" she argued.

"So what, we go back?"

"No, we can't afford to waste time, we go forward, but at least we know what to expect."

Unfortunately we had to follow the tracks as it was the best path by far, and maybe it seemed to me, but they looked fresher somewhat, maybe we were gaining on them.

"Three of them and one prisoner." Alira announced. "They must have camped, if we push we might reach them"

"Why would we want to find trouble?"

"Normally we don't, but they have a prisoner and if we rescue it they might give us important info on the region." guess that makes sense.

It was dark now, and I could barely see anything, the moonlight had almost no chance of reaching here, but as I said that a flicker appeared in the distance.

"We are getting closer, the fire is clearly visible" she said.

I wouldn't say clearly but ok. It took a while to sneak upon them, and soon I saw the three 'creatures' illuminated by the fire.

They were some sort of lizard people, they even sat on logs like people and were talking. The prisoner appeared to be a half of their height and was some sort of anthropomorphic mammal. It had ears, red fur, maybe a fox or a squirrel.

Alira gave me the go ahead, and I got up and started running towards them. I fired a Lightning Bolt running, I thought he'd react faster, but maybe the low light made his reaction slower and got hit and collapsed. The other two fled, abandoning their companion. It was a bit of an anticlimactic end.

The little guy was tied up with his back to us.

"Hello" I said to the little guy just as Alira reached near me, and it was our tun to be careful of our surroundings.

He seemed to have closed his eyes out of fear, but eventually courage won out, and he peaked a look at us.

"Pinkskins!" he seemed surprised to see us. His voice was clearly understandable, no weird accent like other non-humanoid races, maybe a little bit of high pitch.

"I guess we could be called pink skins" I said to Alira.

"Why were you a prisoner?" She asked.

"Captured me, took me to village to sacrifice or work" his tone seemed surprisingly cheerful for someone in his situation.

"I'm going to cut the ropes, don't run away, we mean you no harm." Alira cut the ropes with her sword.

"What do we call you?" I asked.

"Grixel is name" he was already smiling more than even me.

"And what are your people called?"

"I'm kobold" he said.

He didn't look like any pictures of kobolds in any games or fiction, but I guess they can't be all true.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Alira this is Tiberius" she said pointing to me.

As he's fear diminished, he came closer to the fire. He really did look like a mix between a fox and a squirrel, and he was in a word super cute. Big eyes for his frame really made him look like the cutest thing.

She began to tie up the lizard who was just stunned. Finishing she turned to Grixel "Will the other two attack us tonight?"

"They attack only when more than target" I could understand him but his grammar sucked.

The tied up guy started showing signs of waking.

"Let's see what lizard man has to say for himself"