Davit is in a large stone kitchen heating an oven with large thick logs, when his beard becomes a hinderance on his cooking of dinner. The legs of blink deer were roasted rotisserie for four hours and continually bathed in their own sauces plus a verity of herbs and honey. Everyone was pleased, but my little sister, still only a child was the most pleased as she waved around the remaining leg of deer in the air and said “Yay Davit”. Only for davit’s attempt to pull on his beard to fail, it had singed off up to collar.

The next day I followed my father from factor to factor to vendor to dealer in hopes of securing the best price.

Seventy five gold coins per antler would have been good but they drew a whooping eighty four ounces of gold each. In the kingdom of Tarro we use point seven-five-ounce coins. Big math talk. I had to count my coins twice. The dragon scales sold for six gold each excepting one which had some defect and sold for five. After paying the factors and the trades people I held over a hundred and fifteen gold coins.

I went to market and bought what I could to stock up my ring for my future travels and to prepare for another elaborate dinner.

Wyvern stakes costs me two gold each for four. A rare mushroom called a truffle cost another gold. I bought some citrus fruit and a dozen bottles of wine. I bought a few pounds of spices another five pounds of salt. I bought a great big barrel full of fine white flour. I bought two empty buckets as both my buckets were filled with stuff. I purchased bulk cheese and fresh fruit. I purchased a few other odds and ends and at end of market I still had over a hundred gold. I didn’t find any sugar or brandy at market. I would need to find a substitute for my recipe. Brandy was rare this time of year outside of expensive wine houses where it was served by the shot. I needed a half a bottle to para-boil the wyvern steaks in. Simultaneously caramelizing and detoxifying the slightly poisonous meat.

I could para-boil them in water sure, but that wouldn’t caramelize the meat the same way as the brandy. I thought about using my parents reserves but I was trying to make them a meal, not steal from their stores. I settled on juicing a bunch of the fruits I had just purchased to make a fruit juice bath for the wyvern steaks to steam in. It was my biggest failure to date and it set me back about nine gold.

No one likes wyvern steamed in fruit juice compared to everyone loving it in brandy. Proves you can’t substitute sometimes. No wonder the wyvern steaks were so cheep if its so hard to find brandy.

The next morning, I ate confection after multicolored sweet pastry confection. With coffee and a few slices of bacon. I was to set out later that day to find my final two ingredients. Dwarf’s blood mushrooms and giant blue lizards called tyrant lizards if they grow too large and become territorial. Both tyrant lizard meat and tyrant lizard eggs were highly prized in cooking and rare ingredients indeed. Dwarf’s blood mushrooms were seasonal to the mountainous terrain I was to be visiting in search of my tyrant lizard.

I baked twenty-eight loaves of bread before I bid the family farewell and I was off on my journey. I was abled to find brandy a few towns over where they had more extensive orchards so I doubled down and stocked ten bottles of the strong stuff for a single gold coin. I was still running well short of sugar. I went out of town about eighteen days before hitting the eastern territories where I took a ferry down river. I ate some delicious river fish with rice and a sauce made from fermented beans.

I traveled to the Ralashmar’s territories on the edge of the Suizrane high planes. A craig filled warren where I was likely to find my tyrant lizard. I hunted eastward away from populated places checking notice boards and job halls in any small town or village I passed to track any sign of my quarry.

Six days after I got off the boat in Ralasmar I finally sighted my quarry, I was at some manner of pub or brewery where one of the patrons was telling me about the giant tyrant lizards of his homeland some ten days travel into the deserted regions. I hadn’t anticipated traveling this far, but ten more days each way wasn’t going to break my rations. Especially not if I were still foraging.

On day four of my travel to the deserted region I began to feel a general discomfort. I felt like I was being watched. On subsequent missions into my memory to feel when this feeling stemmed from, about an hour ago, I think I began to be followed.

I readied myself and brought to mind what weapons I would want to bring to hand in which situations. I readied myself to pull my bow. I stopped behind a tree and turned to find the path behind me empty. I wasn’t imagining it, either I wasn’t being followed anymore or they were not following anymore but, ahead of me in ambush.

Forewarned and forearmed I walked forward proudly down the road looking for any potential angles of attack. I saw ahead there was a rise in the road. A cleft in the hill on the right. Perfect place to rain down hell on the unwary. I turned to my left and dashed up the hill pulling my long bow and found worse than I had expected. It was not merely goblins but bandits on horseback. Two on the hill on the left which I was now ascending, and one on the hill to the right.

I fired an arrow sure footed and even handed. It found its mark and one rider stumbled from his saddle the other rider finding me in his sights and firing his crossbow down at me. I dodged to the side and it grazed my ribs on the right-side of my body but just barely. I drew and fired again, I took him in the face and he too fell from his horse. The bandit on the hill to the right side of the road took aim and fired with his crossbow but it went wide. I took aim and fired back, and hit his sweet horse In the flank mistake. I fired again before he could stirrup his crossbow and pull it back. I took him in the arm and he dropped his crossbow. I got to fire a third time and I did not miss this one. Taking him from the saddle I had three new horses to claim.

I rode them into the next village where I sold them at laughable sums of silver to grateful farmers. Apparently those bandits had been a sore point in this villages survival for a while now.

I told the mayor I dispatched three mounted bandits and she about mounted me. I mean no disrespect to the attractive mayor of Riddlinsburg, a modicum of decency is required in almost all professional etiquette. After a long and passionate night on the town with the mayor I found myself having breakfast at the inn having not slept at all.

I had eggs and fat blackened sausages for breakfast. Traveled until lunch where I took a five pointer at a hundred meters. Dinner would be buck today, I ate a sandwich from my depleting inventory and sized up my latest prey. At five points and full maturity I might get three weeks of meat out of this guy yet. I formed a rough smoke house and decided to smoke him whole after skinning the carcass for the pelt. I got him hawk shot through the eye. Having stripped the pelt and stored it in my ring I smoked the remaining deer over a low scattered embers for a day and a half until it felt like it was cooked all the way through.

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I moved inland from there snacking on smoked deer jerky. I found myself pulling weeds and snacking on them to see if they had value as food more often then I should have. I added several edible mushrooms and about a dozen green leaves to my menu. I found wild sage and some berries. I found wild pears of unmatched tenderness, especially considering how it was only late summer not yet late fall. I found a rock warren filled with crayfish. I ate plenty of crawdads well spiced and seasoned that night.

By the time I found myself at the anticipated village of Sawtree it had actually been eleven days of ambling through forest and rough scrub. The village was sparse and meager, the one inn having seen better days. I found myself bartering in copper and found it humorous. If you didn’t barter people would feel robbed or insulted, but when one hundred copper to one silver, and you have plenty of gold coins, it doesn’t really make sense to worry about 2 coppers for the price of a bath.

After the inn I visited the town notice board and found two postings about tyrant lizards. One featured the known location of its den, on someone’s property inside their fence no less. The other was a large territorial male sighted repeatedly on a popular walking trail. I figured I was interested in both. The Female’s nest may have a clutch of eggs. The large male may yield tasty lizard meat. And so it was in indelicate fashion that I would dispatch both tyrant lizards and still be looking for mushrooms.

The tyrant lizards den was inside farmer john’s chickencoop’s wiring. The coop had been long sense emptied of any chickens, and the only lad brave enough to face the monster lizard had been eaten.

I arrived and slew it in two fluid movements. Powered by adrenaline and close to certain death I slew the beast in a strike across its eyes followed by a swift decapitation. Blood sprayed on me as the creature died. It struck me as immaterial as the beast needed slaying and I happened to be here, greatsword in hand.

The second beast on the other hand, well that monster earned the title in my mind of tyrant lizard. I went for it the first time while it was sleeping in the dark of night. Moments before my blow landed something alerted it to my presence, be it my smell or the faint glow of life around every individual the monster saw my attack coming and the jig was up.

I lunged forward but the monster propelled by fuel from the nightmares of orphans exploded upward and out over my back. I felt its back claw graze my left shoulder as it descended behind me.

In a flurry of motion I twisted my stance ninety degrees, shifted my feet sixty degrees and stabbed forward trying to find my target. I glanced a blow off its lower middle abdomen and scraped free a few scales. It made and in-human hiss and roar before it jumped and lunged at me. My sword switched for my spear as it impaled its self on the length of oak.

It kicked backwards and fled into the night. I tracked it by its blood on the ground and the vegetation disturbed by its passing, when ever it passed over free sand it left too many tracks for me to not notice the direction of its travel. If you fight and iguana the size of a horse, be sure to finish it off in the first salvo else you might hunt the bastard monster for another chapter.

The bleeding tyrant led me to its lair where I in fact found its mate. I would be doing battle against a wounded male and a female protecting her clutch at the same time. And I would be doing it in the dark. My specialty. I feinted at the female she lunged forward in response, not my anticipated reaction. I made a hard stab and she ran her self down my spear. I felt awkward and exposed as the monster kept barreling towards me despite the length of spear piercing its side. I summoned a mace and batted it backwards then summoned my last spear. A long one at twice my natural height. The female wasn’t dispatched but she wasn’t up and fighting either, the male had taken this time to psyche its self up and was fully interested in charging me. I held my spear one end towards the ground one end towards the bad guy and the big f’ing lizard snaped my spear like it was made from a twig, lashed out into me and send me flying, bloody and ragged.

I felt like I needed a spear but they were destroyed or otherwise occupied at this time so I summoned my greatsword into my hand as I stood and turned to great the tyrant menace.

It was hissing and thrashing as a piece of the spear had taken it through the abdomen. I glanced at the downed female, she wasn’t advancing so I decided to put the large male out of its misery. An overhand strike was out of the question in the warren so I was forced to make six or seven glancing stabs into the things unprotected face until finally I got one into its mouth.

I surged forward and stabbed my sword into its brain. When it finally fell slack several minutes later the female was also dead. I collected the remains of both lizards and found a clutch of fourteen eggs. The earlier clutch had been eight eggs. This totaled me to three tyrant lizards and twenty two sweet and succulent lizard eggs.

Pickled lizard eggs. Poached lizard eggs. Love my lizard eggs. Tough as leather and hard to get at. Even harder to buy than to eat them.

Two lizards the size of ponies and one the size of a warhorse. Check. Lets get back to the house and see how things are going. On the route home I foraged mushrooms, onion grass, onions, wild tobacco, wild parsnips, yams, beats, and berries. I talked to no one until my return to Riddlinsburg. I may or may not have made my first child with the mayor. But we ate lizard eggs and drank brandy and it was pretty freaking glorious.

It was still a good distance to home but I was eager to try this tyrant lizard meat. At the mayors house we hosted a fry-up. Over forty townspeople joined in to eat the magnificent barbecue. Many well wishers hoped the mayor and I might marry and at this point I wasn’t opposed too it. I was complemented fiercely on the barbecue. It was a matter of honor to cook for for another person in this village so I said my thanks and farewells as everyone left. The mayor and I retiring to her room.

I almost didn’t want to leave Riddlinsburg but I knew I couldn’t stay. At least not until my mother saw me with a shaved face. Then I might be able to come back and give Riddlinsburg a try. I said my farewells to the mayor and we kissed. I left in silence on foot out main gate. I bought some dwarf’s blood mushrooms before departing Riddlinsburg acknowledging I hadn’t managed to find them in the wild.

I made my way forever home bound. When I arrived I was just in time for my sister’s birthday. The very next day I met with my sister to see what she wanted for her birthday. She asked me to make the lizard I had retrieved from the desert, and I figured that was easy enough, but I insisted I still get her some present and she refuted that assumption under grounds that she didn’t need anything.

I shaved my face and got a haircut. I was borderline civilized. I wore full garments from neck to toe and boots and the whole part of humanity theme was achieved. My sisters tenth birthday was a success.

The lizard meat I prepared into cracatas, a blend of plenty of cooked meat atop vegetables and cheese inside a thin flatbread. The meat is tenderized with a tenderizing agent (its lemon juice) and liberally seasoned with spicy red chili powder. The hot meat melts the thin layer of cheese and turns the meat and vegetables into a cheesy soupy mess. You roll the flatbread into a sort of roll then eat it from one end to the other. Truly delectable.

Now that my list was finished, I decided I had probably grown in strength enough to consider some of the more challenging options I had earlier dismissed. I would need some help for some of my targets. I would need to form an adventuring band or hire mercenaries. Sure, I could probably defeat a small wyvern but was it worth dying for trying? I am pretty good with melee weapons so we’d need someone with armor and a spell caster to back us up. A healer would be good. So it was probably high time for me to go to the adventuring guild.

It was a tall stone building with painted frescoes depicting monsters being slain. It was hard to miss the three-story stone structure in the otherwise non-descript two-story side of town. I was excited to finally join the adventurer’s guild.