“Euen Dawl? The Master Hunter? He’s as good as any man, I’d say. His parents were a good sort, too—always lookin’ out for the other kids in the village. His grandmother is a respected member of the community, a very respectable family. His grandfather, though, was an odd sort. Quite the recluse.”
“Oh! Pastor Jormund is a sweet boy. A good man, I’d say. Even throughout all the tragedy he faced... But you don’t need to know anything about that. You stay out of those woods!”
“Euen is a little shit, he is. Even as a child, he was. Always tagging along on Jormund’s heels, begging for attention. I guess I’d be, too, given a family like that.”
“Euen and Jormund? Friends? Oh, those two were thick as thieves once upon a time. They stopped talking to each other, oh, four or five years ago. Back when Jormund’s poor wife and Euen’s grandfather passed. Those were sad times. No one likes to talk about it much. Ah! I’ve already said more than I should!”
“Jormund’s mother warned him not to trust that family, and look what it did to him. Lady watch over him....”
“Rew Dawl—Euen’s grandfather—now, he was strange one. Always claimed to be some caretaker of the forest. As if he could be—bloody old coot. Worse, he filled the heads of all those younguns with all that nonsense—nearly got them all killed—and it did kill Melora!”
“Melora? She was Pastor Dawl’s wife. A lovely young woman, much loved in the town. Unfortunately, being good doesn’t exempt a person from a bad fate... Poor girl. Jormund doesn’t talk about her anymore, but it must torment him....”
“Don’t listen to them others around town—Euen does what he can for this village. He’s just like any other, living with the sins he sowed in his young life. Moreso, even. Jormund, too. They grew up with magic in their hearts just to have it ripped out by reality. Just you stay out of those woods, you hear?”
Within a couple of hours, Guin completed roughly ten quests in the village, gathering bits of information about the pair as she went. What she did hear painted a picture much larger than she anticipated.
It would seem that the connection between the Pastor and the Hunter was far deeper and more intricate than she had thought—and pieces were missing. No one wanted to tell her anything.
“Hmm?” Guin looked around, not having paid attention to where she was going. She was supposed to be delivering some apples for the horses, but she had found her way to the fields instead. Clicking her tongue, Guin turned on her heels to correct herself till she noticed Alta Noin’s cottage out of the corner of her eye.
She supposed it was still too early to meet Jormund there; she didn’t want to meet him yet, anyway, but her feet found themselves wandering over, lured by the smell of something baking.
Moments after Guin knocked, Mrs. Noin opened the door for her, her smile once again lighting up all the wrinkles on her face in a way that gave Guin a sense of joy she felt she hadn’t experienced in a long time. “Ah! Guin dear, you came to visit! Lovely—lovely! Come inside! My first batch of cookies is just coming out of the oven!”
Thanking her, Guin went inside and took out three extra apples she had taken from the orchard. “Mrs. Noin, I have some apples here that I thought I would share with you! Can I help you with anything?”
“Oh, how sweet of you, dear! Why don’t you put them on the table,” Mrs. Noin told her in her soft, gentle way. “Do you know how to bake?”
“Um,” Guin shrugged. “A little, but not very well.”
Alta Noin smiled and laughed, “Well, since you have come all this way to visit this old woman, why don’t I teach you some things? I’ll get my baking done faster, and you can take some bread and cookies back with you!”
“Sounds good!”
Together, they baked their sweets, and Guin earned herself the cooking skill through Mrs. Noin’s tutelage. Even though many of the things she was being taught were things, she had learned in the past, being able to spend time with Mrs. Noin reminded her very much of her family and her own grandmother, who had taught her how to cook when she was younger. It was one of those thing that people tended to take for granted.
When they had finished and cleaned up, they sat down for a cup of tea. They talked a bit more about Jormund and his mother, the Paladin.
“I heard that he had had a wife,” Guin mentioned, fiddling a bit with her cup. The old woman’s eyes turned soft and sad.
“Melora,” Mrs. Noin said fondly. “A lovely child with a strong will and nature to temper Jormund’s own inner fire. You remind me of her,” the old woman reached over and patted Guin’s knee as she spoke. “She was a good girl, but though her heart belonged to Jormund, her soul belonged to the land. To the wild. I should know—I was placed in charge of teaching her her wife duties when she was barely older than you. But it wasn’t sewing and cooking she took from this house. No,” she nodded back to the wedding portrait over the fireplace. “It was my husband’s tales she learned best.”
“His tales?”
Her smile was a bit mischievous as she said, “Oh yes. He had many tales. A Servant of the Dragon King shall always have tales. Tales of awe and wonder. Tales of horror and fear. Tales of sadness and the deepest sorrow. For these tales delight the Dragon King—and, of course, children and young women who long for adventure.”
Guin snickered. “Is that why you married him?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Men with tales do make for the best husbands,” she nodded sternly, then smiled. “But it is no matter. You are so young, yet—you have your own tales to spin. For know that the same is said of wives!”
“What kind of tales did he used to tell?” Guin asked, her mind wandering a bit. The Dragon King... He was another figure that seemed to come up a lot. Alta Noin might have had more information than she gave her credit for.
“Tales of so many adventures more numerous than the stars,” she said wistfully. “Traveling the woods. The world beyond this village. He did not come from here, you see. He was born in a city far from here, with water that tasted of honey and a sea made of gold. He traveled from there, from that treasure country, as a merchant. From city to city he went, accumulating vast riches at a young age. One day, he was lost in the woods when he met a beautiful man—and that man was the Dragon King.” It was obvious that Alta Noin had spent year years learning the craft of storytelling from a master, her voice rising and falling in a natural, lyrical way. “Joining the Dragon King as a Servant, he followed the Dragon King back to the White Fox Forest, where he met a beautiful woman. He fell in love, married her, and lived out the rest of his days happily. Or so he said,” she smiled. “I don’t care if all those fanciful tales of glory and wonder were real. He was a good man. A good man. No matter what this village says...”
“It sounds like he lived a full life,” Guin said. Mrs. Noin’s eyes sparkled as they went over to the picture on the mantle. “What happened to Melora?” she asked but saw that the old woman had once again been lost to her memories.
After a little while of watching the woman lost in her dreams, Guin washed her teacup and bid the tiny old woman farewell. It was evident that if she wanted to hear more of the story, she would have to follow through on the quest that Jormund had originally given her: to visit and keep her company. This wasn’t something one was expected to do in an afternoon of tea. Guin left quietly—doubting the old woman had noticed—and made her way over to the Hunter’s Guild.
As it was only ten minutes down the way, she set her mind to do two things: one, build a reputation and a relationship with Dawl and the hunters, and two, try to find out more about the corruption that had happened before. Anything at this point was a clue.
While she wasn’t sure what to expect from the guild and this Master Dawl, Guin was ready, to some degree, to give them the benefit of the doubt. Innocent until proven guilty, I suppose. She may have seen guilt on Dawl’s face the night before, but she had also seen shock and pain. If there was more to the story than her interpretation, she had to know what it was before she could make any kind of sound judgment.
However, she had to make whatever she did count. There was sure to be a risk in overstaying her welcome.
The Hunter’s Guild was a lot busier during the day than it had been at night. It was still quite early in-game time, but the area was alive with people working various jobs from weapon upkeep, to the tanning of skins, to the caring of hounds.
Guin’s eyes fell upon the rude jikak man from the previous night, and she crossed her arms.
“Shall I play with him, Guin?” Liorax appeared, lounging lazily on her shoulder. “It does ever so please me to toy with pigs....”
She watched him as he cared for the hounds. The pig man’s face made her cringe, but the look of mortification on his face made her pity him, and the dogs seemed to love him. “I wish I could say yes,” Guin told the cat on her shoulder. “But I have another job for you.”
Taking to floating in the air uncomfortably close to her face, Liorax’s eyes went wide. “Oh? A job? ...For Death?”
“... Can you actually kill people?” she asked, genuinely uncertain.
“... No,” the cat said in a disappointed voice, then gave a mischievous grin. “Not directly, at any rate.”
Guin shook her head, “Let’s not worry about it for now. What I need you to do is see if you can find the pelt. Don’t touch it, just see if it’s around here somewhere.”
“Snooping, is it?” Liorax did a lazy spin in the air. “An easy task—though a better one for dog, I’d say...”
“Please?” Guin poked his nose. “And if you hear anything relevant, try to get it back to me.”
His tail flipped around. “What do I get out of it?”
“Uh...” Guin paused. She hadn’t thought about that. “A cookie?”
“Oooh,” went the cat. “Very well. I shall accept your offering upon my return. With that, he left in a flash.
Offering, huh?
Scanning the area, she found Dawl talking to a group of men dressed all in furs as they walked through the yard. The Hunters’ Guild itself wasn’t a bad place; there were plenty of people there who looked quite satisfied with their lots in life, practicing their trades and living peaceful lives. It seemed like a nice community.
When Dawl saw her, he sent the men he had been talking to away and approached her with his easy grace. “Hail, young one,” he said with a curt bow. “I fear that we were not properly introduced last night. I am Euen Dawl, Master Hunter of Bade’s Hunters’ Guild. I bid you welcome.”
“I’m Guin Grey,” she told him. “How do you seem to know Pastor Jormund so well?” She played.
He smiled wearily. “That is a long story and not one for this day,” he said. In her head, Guin tsked as he went on. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, however. If you are here for the pelt, though, I am afraid that I will have to disappoint you; no one has yet come forward, and my investigation thus far hasn’t led to anything.”
“I see,” Guin frowned. She did not like his tone, but worse, what he was basically telling her was that she needed to raise her relationship with him to get anywhere. Is this what the main game is going to be like as well? It made her want to tear her hair out. “Then, I have little else to do while I wait,” she began, putting her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels. “You wouldn’t have anything for me to do around here, would you? I can run errands, or if there is something about the pelt, I can look into....”
“For you?” Dawl crossed his arms and stared her down. “Well. We are always in need of hands, I suppose, and mine are tied at the moment. Though I want to stop the corruption before it spreads any further.... Tell you what,” he told her. “We are very busy now because of the town festival soon—ironically,” he began to mutter, “One to pacify the spirits of the forest no one in this bloody town believes in anymore.
“Nevertheless, there are quite a few mundane tasks to be done on our end. Why don’t you help Garren gather wood in the forest; he can teach you how. You can find him over there,” he pointed to where a muscular man was splitting wood. “If you finish with that, then you can pretty much talk to anyone here, and they’ll have something for you to do. A few might even teach you their trade; since it’s just a small-town affair, the quality isn’t so important as it is to get things done. In the meantime, perhaps doing these jobs, you can get a few of them to tell you what they know. What say you?” The quest screens popped up, and Guin accepted quickly.
“Then, I’ll go talk to that guy over there!” she waved in the direction of the woodcutter.
“Off you go, then,” Dawl said with a nod. Not paying him much mind, Guin set off to loosen a few tongues.