Thomas studied his reflection. His bare chest had a pair of ugly, star-shaped scabs where the hooves had impacted him, on either side of his sternum. He thought those would scar. His hip had divot in it, a depression of heavy scar tissue, right below his pelvis on the left side; he couldn't turn to look at it, it made his ribs ache fiercely, but the reflection helped. He was somewhat taken aback at how clearly he could see his pelvis; he had lost weight. His ribs, too, were visible, and his stomach actually had visible muscles.

His face, however … his face was a mess. Well, the right side of his face was a mess. The cheek had torn, and he suddenly realized that it had to have been stitched back together when he had been out of it; his memories of the minutes after the battle with the deer were a hazy blur. He was glad he had been out of it for that part; his tongue found the other side of the ragged scar, and … the thought of a hole in his face was sickening. The swelling made it hard to tell, but he thought that side of his face would have a … gaunt look, now.

“Hurry it up, Thomas.” Anne's voice. He leaned over, dipping the rag in the water, and rising, started scrubbing at his face, his armpits, his groin. They could see him, standing naked over the stream, and he no longer cared. He'd found worse things than that, and was now somewhat … amused, at how he had behaved before, amused at the embarrassment that had colored his experiences since he'd come here.

He dipped the rag again, gentle scrubbing the wound in his hip, so as not to rip open the scabs. He'd been okayed to start tending his own wounds, as long as he was careful. Another dip in the stream, and he cleaned his chest. The cheek, he dabbed more than scrubbed; it hurt to touch, his jaw and gums aching at even the slight pressure.

Thomas wrapped his odd kilt around himself, and buckling it; Norris had sewn the torn clothes together, the fragment of the yellow button-down dress shirt alternating with stripes of the black pants, sewing it directly to his belt. He looked like a mad bee, he thought, smiling to himself. He joined Anne again, feeling more presentable, and a little more human.

They'd reach Piketown today – it was, according to Anne, visible from the hills, but he didn't much feel like the painful ascent – and descent – to see for himself. They'd stopped to clean up, moving slightly upstream each time. Thomas has turned away while Anne and then Arias cleaned, but had noticed that Norris had not. The thin man hadn't stared, but he also made no effort not to look as they stripped, cleaned, and dressed again, which Thomas would have objected to, except the man had washed first, and the two women seemed to have the same attitude.

Thomas had been last, and was somewhat surprised by the absence of comment from Anne, but he supposed she could have seen as much as she wanted, over the last few days. They hadn't made an effort not to look at him, either. He supposed he was somewhat of a prude by the local standards; he was slowly starting to realize that people just didn't care that much. Another difference in social attitudes that would take some getting used to.

They continued walking once he got his very battered, very smelly wing-tips back on. His socks were long since disintegrated, and the leather, rubbing on his bare feet, felt like it should be leaving a dozen blisters, but they'd yet to appear. Damage resistance, he supposed, was pretty useful for mundane issues like that.

As Piketown came into view, Thomas thought for a moment they had been going in the wrong direction; the houses were the same kind of muddy brown, with bits of straw sticking out. The difference became apparent, however, as they moved past a final hill, and the river that the stream ran into came into view; it was enormous, the sort of thing he had only ever seen in magazines and on the internet, and he doubted he could swim across; it was easily the length of a football field across, and he saw the first wooden construction, a thin latticework of piers stretching out into the water, with a couple of – canoes? – tied in place. No, canoes didn't have tiny little sails. Dinghies? He only knew the word from an old raunchy song he'd heard as a teenager, though, from which all he'd gathered was that a dinghy was a small boat, so he wasn't sure that was right, either.

The people here were dressed more like his three traveling companions, in brown shirts and pants, with floppy hats. The fabric, he'd learned when Norris had paused to re-apply his bandages one evening and Thomas had asked him about it, was coated in a seed oil which made it water-resistant. Not that it had rained yet, or even looked like rain might be a possibility.

Arias rejoined them when they approached the town, silent as ever, and gave Anne a quick nod, which was returned. Anne led them towards a building on the river side of the town, giving Thomas a good view of the villagers fishing; there wasn't a fishing rod to be seen, instead they using odd little circular nets, which were tossed and pulled in rapid succession. The fish were retrieved and tossed into little mesh bags without much ceremony; the bags he could see were full of fish, in various states of thrashing death. He felt vaguely uncomfortable about the way they were just left to – drown? Die in the air. But he followed Anne without comment.

The building they moved towards was a long, T-shaped affair, with very thin windows that drew up into points; a square window with a flat top would probably require some kind of wooden beam, and trees appeared to be in short supply. Also, he didn't think he had actually seen any glass. A fabric screen served as a door, and he paused to wonder at the wooden doors that had been in Grimhaven. Maybe the piers and boats took all the wood that they could collect here? Then again, he hadn't actually paid much attention to the doors in Grimhaven, and now that he thought about it, they had seemed oddly light for wood. And then Thomas mentally slapped himself for wondering about doors, of all things, and moved in, as the three adventurers had already made their way inside. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, a conversation had already having begun.

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“Oh, hello, Balier. I was expecting mayor Cavroc to be in.” A man's voice responded, and Thomas nearly jumped back out of the building at the deep, growling tones of it, practically a growl.

“Anne, Norris, Arias. And a newcomer.” It took Thomas a moment to get past the growl, which made him think of death metal vocals, to notice the clipped words, like … it sounded like a metal vocalist doing an English accent, almost; the refined one that everybody thought of as … the name failed him, but he could remember England, for some reason. An English accent. Received pronunciation, he thought the term was? “The mayor is indisposed for the time being.” A pause – Thomas was startled by the reflection of light in yellow eyes, as his own slowly adjusted. The man was enormously tall, two or three heads taller than Thomas himself, and was wearing heavy furs. Then the man continued, tone slipping slightly into something a little more conversational. “Some lout tossed him a river scorpion, thinking it was a lobster, and he caught it by the wrong end.”

“Oof.” Anne's voice, and Norris' sharp intake of breath, suggested this was a bad thing. Thomas had no point of reference for that statement, except that a scorpion had a stinger. “I assume Shal has it well in hand?”

“Well enough. What brings you three down our way? Another missing farmer's daughter?” The eyes flashed again as the man's head turned – Thomas got the impression of long hair bouncing slightly. “A missing wife? Who might you be, friend?”

“This is Thomas.” Anne replied when Thomas didn't immediately respond, caught up in trying not to formulate a response that wasn't 'She's not my wife'. “He's a ...” She glanced his way, then back. “Lost traveler, looking for work. Owes the mayor of Grimhaven, and would prefer to pay his debts back in coin.” Balier sniffed, a deep sound, like a dog whuffling. As Thomas' eyes adjusted, he was starting to struggle to get his impressions of the massive man under check. Those were definitely furs the man was wearing. He had not seen an enormous cat's smile. This was not a lion person, and he definitely did have a sudden and pressing need to piss himself.

“Well met, Thomas. We can find something, I'm sure. And your business, Anne?” Aw shit. Was he talking to a lion person with a posh English accent?

“About the same, maybe more dangerous work if you've got it. Nothing up country at the moment.”

“Bandits taken care of, then?”

“Not us, but yes. They were all dead when we got there. Only news of note was that somebody broke into the prison after the bandits were executed.” Thomas started. Had that been him?

“They manage any mischief?”

“Just scaring the hell out of the guards. Probably a late rescue attempt. It was just one man.”

“Any descriptions? We can keep an eye out.”

“They didn't get a good look, apparently he has smeared mud and shit all over his face.” Oh. Yep. That had been him. Well, at least he hadn't made much an impression. And he hadn't been mistaken for an escaped prisoner; that was good, right?

“Well, I may have work for you, at any rate. There may be a strix nest somewhere about. Three disappearances from the outlying farms in the past six months, and since people started keeping an eye on their children, some farm animals have started vanishing.”

That got a long pause, and Norris started quietly cursing. Anne took a long time responding, and sounded more tired and resigned than anything else. “We'll take care of it.”

The three left to talk to talk to some of the villagers, leaving Thomas alone with what he was increasingly certain was some kind of lion-person. Balier sniffed again, looking Thomas up and down.

“You smell afraid.”

“A-apologies. I don't mean to offend.”

“I think I'll consider it a compliment, all things considered.” The voice was satisfied. Thomas' brain was going all on its own, now. Wow, but he'd have a great career back home. A metal vocalist who could do intonation? “So what were you doing in the prison?”

“I – what?” That caught Thomas entirely off guard. How did this Balier know? As if hearing the thought, a massive hand lifted, tapping the side of the … man's face. Nose?

“I have a nose. You got nervous when the subject came up, and relieved when Anne said the man's face hadn't been seen. So, what were you doing in the prison?”

“I ...” Thomas froze. What could he even say? “I don't know?” Okay, probably not that helpful. He kept talking, hoping to find his way out of whatever this mess was going to turn into, “I didn't break in, I woke up there. I didn't even know it was a prison, I thought I had gotten drunk and woken up in some crazy murder cult's dungeon.” There was a lengthy pause.

“Murder cult's dungeon?”

“Yeah, like the … like the family of murderers, I thought I was going to be cut up and eaten or something. I woke up in the dark, and there was a hole full of shit which my foot slipped into, and I got shit all over me, and then managed to break down the door and run for it. I didn't even realize it was a prison until I had gotten out and cleaned myself up.” Another pause.

And then a horrible huffing growling noise. Thomas took a step back, ready to run, when he slowly realized the lion-person was laughing. He slowly, slowly relaxed. Okay. Laughing was good, right? He thought, in the dim light, that Balier could fit Thomas' entire head in his mouth if he wanted to. Laughing beat that.

“Alright. If that's a lie, it's one I'm inclined to accept. Now. You smell like blood and injuries and weakness.” The tone suddenly shifted, and Thomas was considering running again. Balier sniffed, and made a whuffing noise. “Now that I might take offense at.” Thomas tried to calm himself down. “If I was going to eat you, it'd be after a bath. You also stink of sweat. So what was it?”

“Herd of silver fawn? Little deer things with great big teeth, like a sabretooth tiger.”

“A sabretooth tiger? Haven't encountered anything by that name. But you survived, I gather from your presence. And it's a pack, not a herd. They're carnivores,” and Balier waited a beat, “like me.” Now the man had to be doing that on purpose. He waited a moment longer, then made an amused noise, like a train had just heard a joke about a tractor. “Ah, you learn. Well, you survived, which isn't nothing. Are you a fighter like that lot, or are you looking for something safer?”

“I ...” Thomas stopped to consider that. “Both? I'm level six. Er, on my sixth ascension?”

Another whuffing noise. “Now I'm more impressed that you survived. Warrior?”

“Brawler.”

“Somewhat less impressive, but even so. Well, let me see if I have any … safer work for you. It won't pay much, and it'll probably be dirty, messy work.”

That figured, Thomas supposed. People didn't pay money for things they didn't mind doing themselves. He wondered what shit job he'd end up with.