Beneath the steady rays of the afternoon sun, four adventurers and a child trudged their way down a game trail that slithered through the forest east of Caledorn. At the head of the crew, a young boy named Jack was dutifully leading the way while he spoke animatedly to the tall, dark-haired man behind him. Happily chatting to the eager kid about everything from anatomy to tax evasion, Dalthan followed along, desperately trying to hide how out of place he felt hiking through the wilderness. Behind him was Keysha, the [Sharpshooter]. She spent her time splitting her attention between scanning their surroundings for threats and regarding Jack as if he were a particularly nauseating species of slime. Zaplixel, a [Swindler] wizard, followed the high-strung young woman. The mage took every opportunity to toss a snide remark Dalthan’s way, much to the thief’s annoyance. Behind them, all, Shale, a [Stone Golem], silently bore witness to the banter shared among the band of evildoers. If the creature made of magic and solid stone had any thoughts on the party’s endless bickering, it kept them to itself. Rocks seemed to be quite content to weather the passage of time in silence.

One member of the party who certainly hadn’t been silent was Dalthan. The [Rogue] had been quizzing Jack ever since the party had struck off toward Mr. Vaan’s farm. Not only did it keep the thief entertained, but he felt his tutelage must be helping to get rid of the ‘neutral evil’ mistake he’d been saddled with. He could feel the goodness tingling through him whenever the kid looked at him as if he were handing out pet dragons.

To be fair, the unfamiliar tingling could have been his allergies acting up.

Nevertheless, Dalthan felt that the warm, fuzzy feeling had to be connected to Jack’s starry-eyed gaze. Why else would heroes rescue damsels and overthrow tyrants if not for the adoration of the masses? He’d always known there was some racket behind their disingenuous words and crocodile smiles. Now he felt certain that he’d finally unearthed the true purpose of their grift.

Fame.

Sanctimonious assholes. The lot of them.

“So, what do you say when someone in the city Watch asks you if you’ve seen anyone unusual?” The thief pulled a low-hanging limb out of Keysha’s path as he spoke, offering the woman a flourish of his hand to accompany a stately bow. After gallantly bending the branch out of her way, the rogue released it the moment she stepped past him.

The thump of the limb striking a certain [Swindler] and the colorful curse that followed was music to his ears and well worth the withering look Keysha tossed his way.

For his part, Jack seemed totally detached from the shenanigans going on behind him. While he absently waved the stick he’d plucked from the riverbank earlier, the earnest blond boy considered Dalthan’s question with the care of a moneylender weighing a stack of coins. The thief would have urged the child to answer more quickly if he hadn’t been keeping one eye on Zap to make sure the wizard didn’t send another fireball hurtling his way.

“I’m supposed to say, ‘I thought she was your sister?’” Jack turned back to look at the rogue as he spoke, the child’s face lined with worry that he’d be wrong, but his voice tinged with hope that he’d guessed right.

Sadly for Jack, Dalthan passed judgment with a shake of his head. The blue-eyed thief then patiently corrected him. “That’s how you respond when they ask if you slept with their wife. Which will happen, trust me. Your answer was close, but not-”

Anything else Dalthan had to say was lost in an indignant squawk when Keysha’s booted foot soundly connected with the rogue's ass. Awkwardly lurching forward, the thief’s arms pinwheeled desperately in an attempt to keep his balance. It took a remarkably graceful feat of acrobatics to avoid bowling Jack over.

A feat that the scowling Keysha did not seem to appreciate.

“What the hell was that for?” Dalthan angrily hissed. A wince etched itself across his face while he tried to massage the sting away from the site of Keysha’s unprovoked attack.

Zaplixel was snickering behind her when Keysha responded with a roll of her eyes. Even Shale seemed to be laughing at his expense if the subtle quakes passing through its body were any indication. It was a pointed reminder that he would find no sympathy among his newfound companions.

Keysha leaned forward, pointing one long finger at Dalthan’s chest. Her lips parted, but before the [Sharpshooter] could reply, Jack bravely inserted himself between the innocent rogue and his dangerous assailant.

“Leave Prince Dalthan alone!” Jack said, brandishing his stick. His jaw clenched and his eyes sharply focused, the boy resembled a paladin facing down a horde of ravenous zombies.

“Prince Dalthan?” Startled by the boy’s revelation, Zap shouted the royal title incredulously.

Jack, being the dependable partner that he was, immediately dropped his stick and covered his gaping mouth with both hands.

Dalthan sighed in defeat like a prisoner watching his cell door swing shut.

Whatever had been at the tip of Keysha’s tongue vanished when a hot flash of anger seared the annoyance from her eyes. “What the hell is the kid talking about? We’ve spent all day bending over backward for the sake of your plans and now the young, impressionable child is calling you a prince?” Keysha didn’t reach for her bow, but she didn’t have to. The implicit threat in her words couldn’t be more plain if she’d written them out in blood.

Which she might still do. But it wouldn’t be his blood her quill dipped into.

“Oh, like you care.” Dalthan dismissed her concerns with a flippant wave of his hand. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. If he were just a bit smaller, you’d be asking if we can feed him to Fluffy.”

The accusation took the wind from Keysha’s sails. Like a week-old bouquet of roses, the woman visibly wilted while casting a furtive glance toward the confused kid. Her voice was strangely apologetic when she grumbled, “Feeder faeries are expensive. And some of them aren’t naturally sourced! You think you’re buying a plump pixie and it turns out to be a fucking homunculus. That’s why I prefer to keep Fluffy on a wild-caught diet when I can.”

“Wait,” Zaplixel said, giving Keysha a critical stare as he fastidiously adjusted the glittering rings he wore. “You want to feed the kid to that abomination you call a pet?”

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“What’s wrong with that?” Keysha asked as she rounded on the wizard with an indignant huff. “For Balerik’s sake, the kid spent all afternoon with Dalthan. There’s got to be something wrong with him.”

The air filled with the musical sound of the wizard’s numerous bracelets rattling when Zaplixel lifted his hands to placate the fierce [Sharpshooter]. “I couldn’t agree more. The boy must be a few pebbles short of a Stoneskin potion if he could confuse that con artist for royalty.”

“No offense, Shale,” the [Swindler] continued. “I feel like comparing the boy’s intellect to a bunch of gravel was an insult to stones everywhere.”

The golem chose to charitably overlook the bald wizard’s casual rockism.

Dalthan, however, was not so willing to disregard the mage’s words.

“Hello? What about me? I’m offended, dipshit.” Dalthan snapped. The thief gently patted the young boy’s head in, what he assumed, was fatherly compassion. “Jack is offended, too.”

“Nobody cares,” Keysha said, her black leather armor creaking ominously as her shoulders lifted in a lazy shrug. “I’d rather talk about feeding Fluffy.”

“What she said,” Zap confirmed, flashing the rogue a toothy smile.

Shale deigned not to reply. Possibly because it was feeling insulted by Zap’s earlier faux pas. That, or because it was a rock and they didn’t talk about anything. Ever.

“Oh, you poor, short-sighted bastards. Have you forgotten that we’re here on a mission?” Dalthan, shaking his head in disappointment, turned his attention back toward Jack. “What’s rule number four, kid?”

A smile broke across the child’s face as if Dalthan had just offered him free candy for life. “Oh! I know this one!” The boy thrust his hand excitedly into the air as he said, “Rule four: Always stick to the plan.”

“That’s perfect, Jack.” While the trio of evildoers was focused on him, the rogue discreetly urged Jack to start down the path again. Needing little encouragement, the boy abruptly turned and began to quickly make his way down the winding game trial. “Always stick to the plan,” Dal repeated over his shoulder as he turned to follow the kid. “First you do the job, then you worry about the double cross. This is basic stuff.”

“The four of us are going to have a long talk once the chore is over,” Keysha murmured, her words cutting through the air like the serrated edge of an arrowhead.

Dalthan looked back, taking note of Zap and Shale falling in line even as he tossed Keysha a sweet smile that did nothing to soften the cold luster of his emerald eyes.

“I’m counting on it.”

~~~~~

All things considered, Dalthan was happy they’d picked up the pace. The sun was steadily drifting closer to the eastern horizon with every passing minute. Shadows that had cowered beneath the noonday sun grew bold and aggressive in the afternoon’s waning light. Long, jagged slashes of darkness crept across the forest floor, granting the wilderness an ominous cast that hadn’t been present when they’d begun their quest.

“This reminds me of home,” Keysha said, her voice breaking the spell of silence that’d settled over the party like a heavy quilt.

“Oh really? You spent a lot of time following a child’s lead at the behest of an idiot’s plan?” Zaplixel’s nasally voice could probably be heard for miles around. Dalthan thought about telling the prick to shut up, but in a rare display of restraint, he decided to stay quiet.

Rule eighteen of The Handbook was ‘Don’t interrupt wagging tongues.’ Who knew what sort of intel Keysha might inadvertently let slip. It could prove important.

Especially considering he’d bet the only two chips he had to his name that they were planning on killing him before they left this gods' forsaken forest.

“No, you asshole.” Keysha shook her head, the motion sent her no-nonsense ponytail swaying against her shoulders. “I come from a boreal forest. Maybe you’d call it a taiga.”

There was a fondness in her tone that made the woman sound years younger than her appearance. The emotion lacing her voice tempted Dalthan into hazarding a glance over his shoulder. He wasn’t disappointed. The expression on her face was as unfamiliar as the intensity of her words. A faraway look softened her features, bringing warmth to a set of gray eyes that were typically hard and flinty.

“My village sat on the edge of a lake,” the lean woman continued, “Yash Glaxon. ‘Frosthome’, would be a fair translation. We were one of several tribes that called the forest home. Life was hard, and the people were harder, but we managed. Until a great quake shook the land and shattered our peaceful world.”

Dalthan could see Jack standing at the end of the game trail fifty yards further down the path. Through the breaks in the trees, the thief could make out the beginnings of an idyllic farmstead that occupied the rolling fields beyond the edge of the forest. This would be Vaan’s farm then. But the timing was off. He wanted to hear more of the [Sharpshooter]’s story, so he purposely slowed his stride to drag out the last few yards of their journey.

Lost in the winding passageways of her memories, Keysha slowed her steps to match his pace while she spoke. “For five days and five nights, rivers ran backward. Low lands flooded and some lakes drained. I can still hear my mother and the other shamans crying out to Rimewind, the God of Winter, to save us from the calamity that was destroying our land.”

“He never answered,” Keysha spat, the hard lines returning to her face. “So we had to make our own way. Find our own solutions. We knew where some of the nearby villages were and we knew that they had suffered far less than our people. There was fighting, arguing, and cursing. But in the end, there was agreement. I joined my father and the rest of the hunters. We left Frosthome and slipped through the forest to the town of Rushing Water. Once we got there, we took what we wanted.”

“And it was easy.” Keysha’s lips thinned into a razor-blade smile. “By the end of the year, we’d conquered the entire forest. Three years afterward, our flag hung from every settlement within two hundred miles of Frosthome. We were no longer farmers and hunters. We were Reavers.”

A chill ran down Dalthan’s spine when the archer’s stormy gaze sought him out. “So believe me,” she murmured, “when I say your plan to finish this chore isn’t the only option. I spent a lifetime convincing good folks to do bad things. An arrow pressed against the throat of a loved one can be very persuasive. When it isn’t, the results can be very instructional to the rest of the spectators.”

The four evildoers traveled the last few yards in silence. Jack, who’d been too far away to hear Keysha’s villainous monologue, felt a stifling tension in the air like the humidity on a hot summer night. Eyes leaping from one adult to the other, the boy resembled a cowed dog when he slunk over to Dalthan’s side for protection.

“That’s it,” Jack murmured, his thin, reedy voice barely above a whisper. “That’s Mr. Vaan’s farmhouse.”

Dalthan focused his attention on the livestock grazing in the field beyond a rickety wooden fence. Past the pasture, high on a hill, was a two-story building that looked like a glorified cabin to the son of Wavecrest. His urban sensibilities made him want to scoff at the rustic appearance of the plantation house. But deep down, he knew he was looking at something painfully familiar.

Wealth. Or this land’s version of it.

“You’ve put farms like this to the sword before? Pillaged them and took what you wanted?” Dalthan asked, never taking his eyes away from the house atop the distant hill.

“More times than you can imagine, [Rogue],” Keysha said, her voice cold as a winter corpse.

Now it was the thief’s turn to glance back at her, offering the [Sharpshooter] a smile that matched hers, blade for blade.

“You’re not going to need your sword, Keysha,” the thief promised her.

“Because this time, you’ve got me.”