{-Myr-}

“I swear that next time I see those deceiving—”

“Zetai, I get that you’re still mad, but I’ve heard this about twelve times and I don’t think we’re supposed to curse here,” Reynneak sighed.

She grumbled something, looked at the twins, and calmed down a bit. “Well, at least they didn’t do anything to you. It doesn’t look like there’s any of them here anymore, either…”

“Casrane was going to lead them to Anseshara,” Llewel mumbled.

“She said she’d be fine, though,” Myr pointed out. “I mean, she’s gone this long doing that kind of stuff. I kinda doubt there’s really any reason to worry about her now.” She was trying to reassure him that it’ll be fine, but even after all the attempts it still didn’t seem to do anything.

Relenri, who’d quietly been listening to the twins explain their side of events, finally dared to ask, “Have you heard anything from Tinath? You had to leave before I could ask you earlier…”

“No, and I hope it stays that way,” Zetai replied matter-of-factly. “I don’t care to hear whatever excuse she’s going to come up with. She helped the guys that wanted to kill my friends. She’s not coming back from that.”

Myr partially understood what she’d be getting herself into by saying it, though she thought it better than doing nothing. “She was just doing it to see Casrane, though. I don’t think that’s something we can blame her for…”

Reynneak shook his head. “There’s no point in trying to reason with her now. In middle school, she beat up a couple of kids and didn’t even pretend to apologize when the teachers got involved. Twice.”

“Three times, actually,” Zetai corrected as if it did anything but make it worse. “They did it again when you were out sick that one time.”

“If there was a way to ever convince her into talking about it, I would’ve been able to do it,” he continued. “And there’s not much of a chance she’s going to let this go. At all.”

“You’re all treating it like I have no reason to distrust her,” she remarked. “No matter why she did it, there’s still the fact that she did. Everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves. Giving them anymore than one is just going to get yourself in a mess you can’t get yourself back out of.”

“That’s not what you said about it earlier. Are you talking about Tinath anymore..?”

She only punched his shoulder in response.

“What are you going to do now?” Relenri prompted. “It sounds like everything’s going to be calm for a while.”

Zetai shrugged. “It should be safe to go back to Kadol and give him the artifacts that we found. We might not be able to give him all five of them, but at least we’ll get something halfway decent out of it.”

Reynneak looked at the twins. “Just one last thing before we leave, then. Are you two sure you’re alright? A lot of different things keep happening at once, with everything about Cassidy and your family. It’s fine if you’d rather have some time to think about it than moving on like it never happened.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Myr gave a reassuring smile but it was Llewel that actually said something. “I think we’ll be fine.”

They left soon after they knew they had everything they might need. Myr couldn’t help but notice that they all walked through the city and forest with more caution than usual; though, really, it probably wasn’t that much of a surprise. She didn’t say anything about it and just hoped that it wouldn’t become normal for them after this.

The silence was filled by the talk of what they were going to do afterward.

“What kind of quests are available, Rey?” Zetai had become much more relaxed after they left the city, even if it still felt like she was prepared for a fight.

“A couple of fetch quests, some monster hunting… looks like there’s one between Kyirius and Anthalas, too,” he replied.

“You can check the descriptions from there, right?” Llewel mumbled. “Make sure to see who’s offering it and if it mentions anyone else. Casrane told us to avoid the Rune Reactivation Project.”

“Do you remember the names of any of them?” Reynneak asked. “It’s going to be a bit harder if I don’t really know what I’m looking for.”

“A… couple? Give me a little more time and I should be able to come up with something. At least a couple of the people from Anthalas, in case anything mentions them…”

“It’s not that big of a deal if you can’t think of anything,” Zetai reminded him. “One of us can look it up if it really seems that suspicious. If you can’t immediately remember anything then it’s fine. I honestly don’t know how that kind of thing is supposed to work, but I don’t think forcing it is going to get us anywhere.”

He nodded but said nothing else.

They still avoided the area around the building, staying in the forest; they found Kadol where they’d met him, from the looks of it just ending a quest with another set of players.

He waved the other group goodbye to welcome the four of them. Though at first it seemed like he only saw the twins. “I’m glad to see you’re both safe. Well, I suppose if you weren’t, I wouldn’t know that you existed at all…”

“You’re also on my list of suspicious people,” Zetai remarked, “with the stuff you said before went in there.”

“I only told you you had nothing to fear if you had nothing to hide. I would say such a thing would be common knowledge.”

“You knew and let us go in there anyway.”

“I knew who they were, not that Nankohm had arrived there. On its own, neither one of those facts mean anything. When they’re combined is when things start to get unpredictable.”

She gave him a glare that proved that she didn’t really believe him, but it wasn’t what they stayed on.

Llewel took out the four artifacts they’d found. “We came to return these.”

Kadol smiled. “So you’re finishing the quest? You know you’re not going to get the best reward unless you give me all of them.”

“Do you really expect us to go back there..?” Reynneak mumbled.

“There’s nothing keeping you two players from it, and it looks like by now everyone else has left.” Seeing that they weren’t going to change his mind, he asked, “Are you certain? Once you complete the quest, that’s it. You won’t be able to get any more rewards out of this.”

Zetai nodded. There was something a bit begrudging about it, but her word was what he needed.

“Thank you for helping me and my fellow researchers,” Kadol announced. He took the artifacts and handed her the bag of coins. “There should be nine hundred coins in there, since you gave me four of the artifacts.”

She then glanced over at Reynneak, but he was one step ahead of her and already had the map open. “It looks like there might be another scholar around here.” He paused and glanced at Kadol. “Are you friends with someone named Ilias?”

Kadol nodded. “A good friend. If I remember correctly, he needs help with his research—trying to get some kind of ancient contraption to work. You’ll need to fight a couple of monsters but otherwise it’s mainly puzzles.”

“That’s a lot more information than people usually give us,” Myr pointed out. “Most of the time they’re really vague with it…”

He shrugged. “I don’t have much reason to do that to you. I’m often rather generous with the people that help me. When you see Ilias, tell him I talked with you. He’ll actually do something helpful when the monsters come.”

“Thanks.” Zetai glanced at the other three. “Come on, let’s get going. Sounds like we’re going to be helping a lot of scholars for a while.”