Will learned quickly that Bramble was the name of the plant he had mistaken for a mountain, as well as the name of the town next to it. There were no farmers in this town, and the place looked more like a fortress with a high palisade wall on top of a giant earth mound. A castle peaked over the top of the palisade, and the whole wall was well manned with men carrying crossbows. The group watched as what looked like a giant songbird dove at the men on the wall. A volley of bolts flew to intercept the bird, causing it to crash heavily against the wall.

There were two more attacks like that as Will’s group approached the wall. Luckily while it seemed one man was injured, no-one was killed. Then a bird thought it would try its luck with Will’s party. It dove, and the party readied itself, just in time for Koma to leap up and snatch the bird out of the air. Koma gave a quick jerk of his head, and the bird’s neck snapped. Koma laid the bird proudly at Will’s feet, and Will scratched him behind the ears. The bird suddenly disappeared, and giant bird parts added themselves to Will’s inventory.

“Oh, by the way, is there something I can do with the several tons of bear guts in my inventory? I didn’t think it would be a good idea to just dump it out in the middle of nowhere.”

“There are a few different things you could do. If you just want to dump it, go into the bramble a way and just leave it there. There are enough beasts there to deal with the mess. Otherwise, you can use this.” Emerys pulled out a bag of powder. “Just pull out a piece of gut and pour the contents onto it. Then add it back to the same slot and set the time settings of that slot to accelerated instead of stopped. After a while it will turn into compost that you can sell for a good amount to any farmer. You can do the same to the meat if you want to get rid of it, but Madracora was a fairly high level beast, which means its meat will be expensive on its own.”

Will considered the bag before taking it and summoning the smallest piece of viscera he could. It was an organ half the size of a sedan which Will could not identify. It was still warm. Will poured the bag onto the viscera and added it back to the slot with all of the rest of the guts. He then tried to add the moose and bird guts to the same slot, and was surprised when it worked. He found the settings and realized that the time setting was a slider. The slider was currently all the way to the left and a label underneath the slider read stopped. He moved it to the right and watched as the label changed from stopped to slowed. Slowed had a percentage next to it that got lower as he moved the slider right until the label changed to normal. As he moved it farther the label changed to accelerated times two then accelerated times three. When he got to accelerated times four he started to feel a bit drained and that became even worse at accelerated times five. He quickly moved it back to accelerated times two when he realized that this felt the same as when he had touched that soul crystal. Fortunately, he did not collapse, having stopped in time.

“Thanks, Emerys.” Will said. “I didn’t know that you could change settings per space. Oh and did you know that you could combine slots? I added the viscera from the moose and bird to that of the bear.”

Emerys and Amalise looked at each other.

“You were able to combine slots?” Amalise asked.

“I just tried combining two similar things in my inventory.” Emerys said. “Multiple slots full of composting viscera. It didn’t work.” Will just shrugged. On a whim he combined two of the slots with desks from the room with the repository, and they went, leaving an empty slot. Except now when he selected the full slot, it gave a breakdown of everything that was inside. He pulled a single coffee mug from that slot and placed it back in. without intending to, the mug went into a new empty slot and Will realized his mistake. Every new item went to a new slot by default, but with a little practice, he realized he could add directly to any slot. He combined all the loot from the repository room into one slot, and all the meat into another. His weapons got another slot, and he found out it was just as easy to retrieve an individual weapon this way as it was before. Suddenly his inventory was a whole lot bigger and a whole lot emptier.

“If I were to put down a crate and fill it with stuff, could you take it into a single slot?” Will asked.

“No, of course not.” Amalise replied. “We might be able to get a bandolier full of potions into a single slot, but the crate would go into our inventory leaving the contents on the ground.”

“Well it seems that my inventory is just better than yours.” Will grinned at Amalise, channeling a bit of Emerys. Despite the annoying start to their relationship, Will was starting to like the two gods.

“Hey! What do you think you're doing just standing out there?!” A guardsman called from the gate. “You're pulling shrikes down on our heads!” The group started jogging toward the gate.

“Sorry, we just got a bit distracted is all!” Emerys said as they approached.

“All of you are welcome in Bramble, but I have to insist that you leave your pet outside the walls.” The guardsman said as they came under the roofed barbican. Will’s face immediately darkened and he was about to give the guard the same treatment as he had all the others when Emerys stepped between them.

“Will, it’s not a big deal. Koma can take care of himself for a few hours. We have plenty of daylight left so we will come out as soon as we speak to the lord.” Will gritted his teeth, but nodded and let his anger go.

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“Hey Koma,” Will said as he petted Koma’s giant head. “Can you stay out here for a bit? I need you to kill a lot of those shrikes for me, do you understand?” Koma whined and licked Will’s face with a tongue bigger than Will’s hand. When he realized Will was serious, he padded off to lay on the road fifty feet from the barbican.

“Good, you may enter, but do not overstay your welcome. Bramble is not friendly toward strangers. We expect you to get your business done and be gone.” The group just stared at the guardsman. One of Emerys’ followers opened his mouth to yell at the guard for his disrespect, but Emerys just held up a hand and the man stopped. Emerys led the way through the gate and into town. Inside was a small village surrounding the foot of the castle.

As the group walked forward, the guardsman’s words were proven true. Women shuffled their kids indoors and slammed the doors behind them. Men hefted tools and stared at Will’s party with hard eyes.

“Is anyone else weirded out by this?” Emerys whispered. Amalise nodded in response.

“There is something going on here, and these people are very clear they don’t want us to be any part of it.” Will said. Emerys, who had been happy to take the lead at every point throughout the trip, was now looking uncertain. Will realized that this was the first time in a long time he hadn’t been worshiped when arriving in a new town.

“It isn’t a problem.” Will said. “We didn’t come here to get in their business. We will just do the quest and leave. Barring that, we can just go into the bramble and kill beasts to our hearts content.” Emerys nodded, clearly relieved to have some direction. The group made their way to the castle where they climbed a flight of stairs, crossed an elevated drawbridge, and entered through the main doors. They were led up more stairs before they finally made it to a room where they were let in. Inside was a large wooden table covered in maps, with shelves looking more like wine racks full of scrolls lining the walls. Two guards stood at the perimeter clothed in mail and gambeson and carrying spears. By the table in the middle stood a golden haired man in fine clothing. He had the look of a warrior gone to seed. His build was broad and strong, but his belly strained at the buttons of his shirt.

“Adventurers my lord.” The servant who had led them here said. The golden haired man looked them over.

“Gods too if I have my guess. What an honor.” Will couldn’t tell if the man was being sincere or not, but had an instant dislike for him.

“I am Lord Jarvin Aalto. I am glad you have come. The shrikes have become quite the nuisance, and have made it entirely impossible to continue with the harvest of the brambleberries. I would like for you to go and cull their numbers. You should also try to find some of the nests. Their eggs can be very good eating, and would be a good way to reduce the numbers quickly.”

“My lord,” Will said. “Your people seemed very disgruntled by our presence. Is our being here going to be a problem?” Lord Aalto waved off the comment.

“They are just a bit overwrought about the recent deaths. As long as you attend to your work and do not linger, there won’t be any issues.” Lord Aalto pointed at the map that was laid out before him. It was a map of the bramble, as was every other map on the table. As Will looked at the maps, he saw his own map filling in the space bit by bit. “The shrikes like to nest in the upper reaches, which is where you should go. Avoid any areas where you find large amounts of spiderwebs, and stay as far away from the ground as you can. It gets very dark in the bramble, and some very large creatures make their homes there. I will pay a silver peasant for every bird you kill, and a silver slave for every egg you smash or retrieve. Is that acceptable?” Will looked at Emerys in confusion, and Emerys rolled his eyes.

“That will be just fine.” Emerys said. “We will be on our way then.”

“Very well. Good luck.” Lord Aalto said. He promptly turned back to his maps and completely ignored their departure. In the hallway Will stopped as a man in voluminous robes exited the stairway. The man reeked of herbs and chemicals, and was ever so slightly gaunt with a ghoulish cast to his skin.

“Oh, hello adventurers!” His voice was weak and soft, but he grinned with a confidence that seemed misplaced in him. “Come to deal with our shrike problem? Good good! I am Alchemist Savil, the creator of the drought of growth. I am so glad to have you here!”

“Thank you, Alchemist Savil.” Will said. “Yours are the first kind words we have heard since we came here.”

“Don’t mind the villagers, they can be a suspicious lot. My concoction has made them quite wealthy, and they are suspicious of even the barest threat to their livelihood. And Lord Aalto has always been very focused.” Alchemist Savil said.

“I will take your advice to heart then, but we need to go get started on our quest.”

“Be safe and have fun!” Will hadn’t taken the man for old at first, but realized that the man was actually quite old, though well preserved for his age. He watched the alchemist enter the map room and they were led downstairs and out of the castle. They made a quick beeline for the exit to the town where they found Koma jumping and snapping at three hovering shrikes. A sea of dead birds surrounded him, and as they watched a bird got overconfident and was snatched out of the air as it hovered too close.

Koma jumped happily as Will approached, but had his attention drawn back by the two still hovering shrikes. Koma snapped one of them out of the air and an icicle impaled the other. Will looked to Amalise who still had her palm outstretched.

“Wow, I would love to learn how to do that.” Will said.

“You just have to go to Aetherglow.” Amalise said in a singsong voice.

“Not a chance.” Will replied. Koma rushed up to him wagging his tail. It struck Will then that while Koma was a wolf with all the physical characteristics, he acted far more like a dog. Tail wagging was not something wolves did, yet Koma was wagging vigorously as Will scratched behind his ears. Something to look into later. For now it was a good thing. Will knew how to work with dogs, wolves were a lot harder. After rewarding Koma, Will turned to the birds. With a small mental push, they all disappeared and their parts were added to his inventory. Each had a respectable amount of meat, and Will decided he would have to try it later. He threw a few scraps to Koma who was delighted to snap them out of the air.

“That town was weird.” Emerys said, an uneasy look on his face. “Maybe we should look into it?”

“No.” Will said with finality. “Their problems are their business until they ask for our help and offer good gold. Besides, they don’t want our help. We just need to do our job and get our money.”