The "Best" RPG Ever-124

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

"So...how's your project been going?" Aria was sitting across from Loren in a restaurant booth. He'd already insisted that he'd take the bill in the process of ordering their food.
"Oh, to make a computer? Pretty great~! I got a first batch of samples in, gave some feedback, and expect the next one anytime now. It's not exactly surprising to find that people will make whatever nonensical toy I want if I throw enough money at 'em."

"I guess that's one advantage of having to feed your sword monster blood all the time," he said. "How is..that, by the way? Any uh..do you feel any more or less, uh, insane from it?"
"Maybe less? I've learned to..control my dreams, to some extent."

Loren gave her a questioning look, and she realized that this aspect of her 'cursed sword' hadn't come up in conversation with him before. "Well, it's just that when I sleep, I have a completely lucid dream that happens in perfect lockstep with real time, and the demon...I guess what its body would look like if it was alive? Is just kinda chilling way off in the distance, this like ten-story-tall guy chained up and asleep. I used to be just kinda stuck on a 'cliff' place with nothing to see but this...incomprehensible visual fuzz behind me, and him in front of me. But Kath helped me 'craft' that fuzz into some actual, like, imaginary rooms or landscapes or whatever a few times, and now I can kinda do it myself. And I've learned how to meditate to pass the time, too. So, overall, it's not nearly as maddeningly boring as it was at first."
"I...see. Well, I guess that's good?"
"Yep!"

"A-anyway," he said, changing the subject away from one he found moderately uncomfortable, "I had some correspondence recently with one of the cryptomancers who helped me with that dragon's teleport crystal. Just expressing some, you know, professional curiosity about the basics of how her area of expertise works. I got back an excited essay about 'logical chains' and 'code sequences'. Entirely different diagrams and terminology from yours, but some of it felt quite similar anyway. Maybe you'd be interested in a read?"
"Heck yeah!" Aria grinned big.
He gave a slightly confused look. "'Heck'?"
"Uh—don't worry about that," she said. "Just an emphatic...adverb, I guess is what it is in this case?"

"I'll take your word for it."

---

Rose led the way through the door to the house, then quickly around to her own door—not wanting the Felis's awful breath to stink up her friends' home any more than necessary. "Well—here we are!" she said with a sweeping gesture. "Um, what do you think of my forest?"
Randall took a moment to actually look around before answering. "Pleasant place. Bit strong on the nose, but a pretty unusual look to my eyes—inna good way. Never seen something so close to a jungle and a garden all at the same time."

"Heheh..well, I try. Have you..ever been to another nature dragon's place?"
"Can't say I have. Most dragons aren't keen to show off their hoards to anyone."

"Well, that's just a shame," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "What's even the point of making a place pretty if you can't show it off to anyone?"
"Hah. You really are an odd one for a dragon," he half-slurred, starting to step forward. "I don't feel much activity directly below us, which is prolly good news for you. Lezss go a little further out."
"Sure." Rose started off toward the east, making sure to take the less direct, more clear route rather than risk him stumbling over something.

"I s'pose you've shown your friends around the place before," he said after a moment, seeming to hope to make conversation. "Not to mention miss Vaedin, eh?"

"Yep! Uhm, actually Vae's seen more than anyone else, I think."

"I be' she has."

Rose stopped in her tracks, turning around to glare. "Uh, rude."

"Bad joke, I suppose. Sorry," he shrugged.

"Hmph." The dragon-girl just turned around and continued leading the way.

"Ahh, you are sweet on her, aren't you? I applaud your tastes—she's really a f..fine looking young woman."

"There's way more to her than her looks! Just like most people!"

"Oi, I know that.

"After hearing her name, you know, I though' she sounded sorta familiar. It came back to me a little later...I happened to be in the country around the time Vaedin's experiment supposedly caused an explosion."

"I'm well aware of her history, you know."

"Sure. But anyway—knowing full well herbalists usually don't make explosives, I had a look around the ruins myself. Curiosity, an' all that."
"Uh-huh? You find anything?"
"No' as such. No structural sabotage or anything like that. Though—I also went by the healer's afterward, upon hearin' the old fox was still alive, and even recovering. Bumped into an unusual young woman there. Big cloak over a fancy-looking dress. No one else there seemed to notice 'er tail."

When he didn't continue his story for several more steps, she said, "Lots of people have tails, right? I mean, like—I've got a tail, you've got a tail."
"Sure, but most folks haven' got that sort of tail these days. Your witch friend's the only one that comes to mind right now."

"Oh. Sooo, you noticed she was a witch." Remembering the entire thing with Ezra's old party, she asked, "Did you...kill her?"
"Nah. Sure, I followed her out of town, we fought for a bit. She liked to throw a bunch of knives and daggers around, but—didn't bother using her magic. I think she'd noticed I wasn't playing for keeps.

"Anyway. After we'd spoken for a bit, I let her go. Seems she just wanted to 'reward' the old fox for something or other. Errh...it was...helping cure a fever her apprentice had, some years back. I though': If her aim was to help him, funny way to go about it. But at leas', she didn't seem so bad. Not worth the effort to really try to kill."

"Did yoouuu..catch her name?"
"Sure. Grizzle...uh...something." He paused, then snapped a finger. "Griselda! Tha's what it was."

---

Katherine used Lynn's mind for the dream meeting once again, this time bringing in Zack first in hopes of cutting off any nightmares he was having right away. His dream actually seemed less distressing than the night before, although it might have just been because she caught him so early. After that it was Rayna's turn, and then she 'invited' Clera's two minds in, again making a door linked to one in Ian's house for them to step through whenever they were ready. Their dreamspace was about as coherent as she could usually make anyone else's, only without her help, so just yanking them in felt kind of rude when this was an option.

While they waited, the wolfgirl strode up to a couple of feet in front of Rayna. She paused, confused by this behavior. "...Yes?" He reached across, taking one of her ears in each hand, and gave just strong enough of a tug to be painful. "Oww!" She recoiled, stumbling back a couple of steps and putting her hands over the 'injured' ears. "What was that for?!"

"Like you don't know." He walked away with no further elaboration.

"Wait—how'd that hurt here anyway?" she asked, Katherine's way. "Shouldn't I just, wake up?"

"Not if I don't want you to," the catgirl said with a slightly mean grin. "Especially while you're in someone else's dream."

Before this conversation could continue, Clera's door opened, and the winged girl stepped through, followed by Ian. Looking around briefly, the former said, "Am I interrupting something?"
"Nothing important," Zack said, going to a couch Katherine had 'spawned in' to sit down.

"So, what did you..remember? Or—did you remember something?" the catgirl asked.
"I—or we—had a feeling that something was familiar about the events described in the letter from town," Ian started. "But it was too distant to grasp. We suspected it was in Clera's memory, and would be easier to bring up while separated."
The winged girl nodded. "That turned out to be right. But, it's not something I have a lot of detail on; just something I heard about from one of my professors back at magic college. An echo of a rumor used as a cautionary tale, if anything.

"It was...regarding a small group of mages trying to research chaos magic..some of Jacob's predecessors, you could say, but much less careful in their methods. They set up a small base not even very far into the frontier, with a few soldiers to keep them safe. Their research was seemingly uneventful for a few years, but at some point, something went..wrong. It's uncertain what happened, but most of them—including all of the soldiers—were later found dead in ways that suggested the use of rather powerful and...creative magic. Those who did return, well...
"It's not that they were completely mad—at least, not in the usual way. They seemed to possess all of their faculties, I mean. They could cast the same magic as before—if not a bit more powerful. And they spoke in complete sentences, but there was something unhinged and panicked about their tone of voice, and nobody could quite make sense of what they were saying. The concepts would just—slide off one's mind, or else thinking about what they were saying too much would hurt...which sounds to me like how 'dangerous information' behaves. They also tried to lock eyes with anyone they could, and some of those who they succeeded with became...suddenly violent. Others just said their eyes looked 'wrong' and wouldn't elaborate. The whole group was eventually killed off by those who didn't go mad from looking in their eyes—and others who managed to avoid doing so at all."

She shook her head lightly. "Sorry—now that I've recalled it, it really doesn't seem as useful as I'd hoped it would be."
"Hmmn...It still tells us something," Lynn said. "This kind of thing has happened before. It's a thing chaos magic can do, just in general. But it usually doesn't?"

"And dangerous information is involved!" Rayna added. "That means dangerous information is tied in with chaos magic in some way. Maybe it's 'dangerous' because it can make people crazy like that!"

"That would seem like a good reason for knowledge to be locked away," Clera said.

"But none of them turned into actual monsters, like that Donovan guy?" Katherine asked. "Do you know what their races were?"
"Hmmh...the country this professor was from was largely populated by humans," she recalled. "It's a fair bet that's what they were, or at least the majority."

"Beastfolk are genuinely part animal, and chaos magic can turn animals into monsters," Rayna mused. "Maybe humans are so non-animal that its 'way' of turning them into monsters is..different?"

"Where does that leave elves, then?" Ian asked. "Then again—I suppose we had better hope to not find out."

---

After a moment of quiet, Randall rolled the subject of conversation back slightly. ''Abou' miss Vaedin, though...what's she think of her whole situation? Being stuck as a lady, and all?"
"Well—she told me it was a pretty low price for basically getting to stay permanently young and healthy," Rose said. "What, have you seriously never, like, tried being a girl? There's totally magic that can make that change, at least temporarily."
"Oh, I've tried it. It just felt..unnatural, and off, to me," Randall said. "Never really wanted a second taste."

He sighed. "Immortality, eh? I suppose it's no' so bad for dragons 'r elves. Maybe Vaedin's early enough in on the experience to not feel any downsides yet. But I've long since felt like it was more of a burden than a blessing."

"Huh. The, uh, Captain said something like that once," Rose said. "Like—she said she was 'cursed with an inability to grow old', and how it's not in a human's nature to live forever. Or, like, not forever I guess—no one really lives forever."

"I s'pose not. Hmm." He seemed to be thinking about something, but she didn't feel much like asking what.

"I don't really feel like there's anything special about me, though. I just feel like, as long as I'm happy with my life now, how long the future or past is for me doesn't really matter?

"..Ah, here we are!" She gestured outward. The border between her forest and the land beyond in this direction wasn't especially sharp. There were still plenty of plants around; they just weren't quite as bright and vibrant. But Rose could feel the difference. "D'you feel anything underground around here?"

"Hmmh. Not right here," he said. "I do feel something faint off...that way." He pointed in a mostly-north, slightly-east direction. "Allow me to lead the way forra moment."
"Sure!"

---

Being guided by the gods, in the completest sense of the phrase, required a certain frame of mind—or else was bound to cause a great deal of frustration. It was fairly often that one would be led to do something that appeared inconsequential, nonsencial, or even counterproductive, and it was only when one was lucky that the reasons came to light at all, even if it took a decade before they did. Sometimes one would have to deliver a message, or answer a question, without even knowing any of what was being said. The tasks varied in difficulty and risk to one's health in a fairly random pattern, requiring one to always be on one's toes.

This frame of mind began with understanding that they weren't being capricious on purpose. They simply don't think the way mortals do, and every mortal in the world is their collective concern, rather than any particular one. With so much on their plate, it was understandable that they wouldn't have time to sit each person they needed something from down and fully explain the details. Perhaps their plans even required such secrecy that even most of those carrying it out needed to be ignorant in order for it to succeed.

At any rate, Fazren was long since used to taking on such a frame of mind. The reasons didn't matter; the consequences weren't his to know. He attributed his peculiar longevity first to healthy living, and second to this attitude—which, even if it went unnoticed and so failed to garner him any particular favor with the gods, at least prevented a great deal of life-shortening stress he might otherwise experience.

He found himself in the garden he'd been meditating in that afternoon, stirring as though from the same unintentional nap. The general idea was there, and the details matched completely in a small area close enough to his position for his mind to have remembered well, but farther out things were fuzzier. The garden seemed to stretch out beyond its boundaries in the real world, enough that the rest of the town appeared as some distant shadows of structures obscured by fog. Recognizing this, as well as a strange sort of awareness that he was supposed to have been awoken by a splash of water at this moment but had instead awoken naturally, led him to the conclusion that he was in a dream. Furthermore, it was one that appeared orchestrated to make him aware of this—to ensure he would be lucid.

Fazren stood up, looking around, and soon picked up on a figure walking in from what would have been behind him a moment ago. He could tell that the figure was female, and sported canine-like features, athough whether they were those of a fox or a wolf—a Canis or a Vulpin—was less clear. Somehow her figure wavered between being quite tall (almost his height) and slender (even a bit lanky), and quite short with some deep curves.

He squinted his eyes at the figure as she came closer, yet didn't seem to grow any more distinct. "What's the matter?" she teased. "Can't decide what you like?"

"I've long since learned to appreciate beauty in many forms," he said pleasantly. "Then—I suppose I ought to feel honored."
"Hmhm...there's no need for that." She drew close enough to reach her hand...up, maybe?...and lightly touch his half-missing ear. "You should do what you like, you know? You deserve that much for putting up with us for so long." She ran her fingers across it briefly, touching the healed nub where it should've attached to the missing bit, before dropping the hand. Her fingers through his fur was an unusually pleasant feeling, but the old fox restrained himself.

"...I'm not sure whether I should take that to mean it's what you want," he said. "I don't suppose you have any hints for me to pass along to a more talented weaver?"

"Not my area of expertise, I'm afraid. No worries, my husband is sure the two of you will figure it out soon enough. I'm just here to give you something she already has—for later."

She opened her arms out toward him, physically asking for a hug. "Shall we?"
Fazren smiled. "By all means."

---

Randall's right ear twitched, and he stopped, turning that way to look at whatever he'd heard. "..Oi! You need—"
Rose caught up enough to look in the same direction, at about the same time as the person he was talking to turned around. It was a fairly small, thin Felis girl with bright pink hair, wearing some badly-damaged light armor, but what had made him stop mid-question was the fact that her face—now turned their way—was covered with a splatter of blood, some dried and some still warm enough to be wet. By her position now, she seemed to have been crouched over the dead body of a deer, which looked less like an animal had killed and begun to eat it, and more like someone had spared extra effort to tear it apart and mutilate it. The claws of her blood-covered hands and her bare feet were all fully extended, and now that she saw the two of them, she'd started hissing threateningly.

"What in the..?" Judging by his reaction, Randall probably hadn't had a clear view of what she'd been doing before she turned around.

It took the dragon-girl a moment to process the sight herself, but after that she started to think she recognized the girl's face. That, and she perceived something distinctly...wrong...with her eyes. "Wait, that's..!"

"Hey!" The hissing Felis pounced in their direction, claws out; Randall reacted blindingly fast, raising a chunk of dirt diagonally upward with enough force to violently swat her away to one side and send her rolling off along the ground. He remained facing her as she recovered, raising more ground up into the air to join with what he'd already taken hold of, splitting and compacting it all into a number of spikes all in a half-circle in front of and slightly above her. His hand was raised threateningly, ready to throw them all at her as soon as she made another move. "You stay away from me...!"

"W-wait, don't kill her!"
"Crazy woman don' look interested in a truce to me!" She had pulled herself into a posture very much like a normal feline getting ready to pounce at something.

"B-but that's Mia!" Rose said quickly. "One of Hyacinth's, um, friends. They're only crazy because of the chaos magic stuff, and we know how to fix that!"

When Mia tensed to jump at them again, Randall settled for smacking her with the flat end of one of the spikes, sending her rolling sideways for a second. "Can you fix it?"

"Well—no. But Mira can! O-or the Captain, or Jacob. We'd just need to get her back to town."

"And how do you propose we do that?" As soon as she'd caught herself, the hostile Felis was again standing on all fours and hissing at the two of them.

"Knock her out?" Rose suggested, although they'd tried that with Donovan without much success. She tried pulling up some of the plants around Mia into some vines to restrain her, but she reacted unnaturally fast, jumping to one side and out of range before any of them could grab her.

"That first or second hit should've done that!" Randall said, keeping his spikes between Mia and them as she moved. "And now what's she..?"

"RrrRROOOOWWRRH!" Mia made a sound like an angry wildcat (or maybe one experiencing extreme pain) as she convulsed. From her back erupted some ten or more...well, they looked a lot like her tail, except they were coming out of random spots across her back, and they were longer and thicker than normal Felis tails were supposed to be.
"Uh, she must be turning into some kinda super-monster form! Th-this happened with Donovan, too!" Some of the 'tails' seemed to violently split apart from about halfway down onward, fanning apart with webbing between to turn into something resembling insect wings. Others had just their ends erupt out with white spikes that looked like they might be made entirely out of bone. Mia's body had grown slightly in size—though not nearly as much as the Canis man's had—and was fully covered in matted fur, her head changing to look like that of an actual wildcat as she continued to painfully howl.

Rose finally noticed that Randall had raised up and compacted together two big walls of earth on either side of the transforming Felis, and was spreading his hands out in preparation to slam them inward. "No good reason to wait for her to finish—"

"No, don't—!" She couldn't get her objection out before he slammed his hands inward, clapping them, and in the same motion brought the earth-walls in on the monstrous girl with surely enough force to squash anything flat.

The dragon-girl stared at the unnatural column of dirt resulting from this moment, now starting to crumble under its own weight without the earth mage's help, for a moment in silence. Then, without warning, she picked him up by his neck, her hand-claws tearing into his shirt. "I said DON'T KILL HER!!!"

He put his hands on her arm, not pushing to get free but putting his weight on something other than his neck, and he yelled back as angrily as she had: "That thing was not a 'her' anymore, Rose! It was obviously getting ready to kill both of us!"

She was crying uncontrollably at this point. "But I could've—!"

The argument was interrupted by the noise of a bunch of the dirt being thrown aside from near the top of the mound. Both of their heads turned to find Mia, seemingly unharmed by the impact, just finished digging her way out with the bizarre spiked claw-tail-things, and shaking off some leftover dirt like an animal would some water.

Rose dropped Randall and raised some vines to grab her again, but Mia leapt into the air and—unexpectedly—used the wing-like appendages from her back to fly. She flew toward them briefly, while ascending, before making a sudden midair 180 to start flying away. The vines couldn't reach her in the air, and it didn't look like she was coming back.

Without a word, the dragon-girl took off after the feline monster. But Mia had a head start for one thing, and she flew surprisingly fast, with an amount of maneuverability Rose's gigantic wings couldn't quite match. Mia wasn't flying particularly high, and soon found a collection of trees to dart around and between; Rose had no choice but to fly above the treeline, and after a minute or two, she no longer had any idea where Mia had gone. After some more searching—which included even landing on the ground and trying to 'feel' for the monstrous Felis's presence between the trees—she gave up and flew back.

"Well?" Randall was waiting, arms crossed and obviously displeased—but Rose still felt much angrier than he looked.
"I lost her."
"You should've torn that thing's bloody throat out before it turned into an invincible beast!" he said.

"Well—I didn't, and I won't. You go back to town and report what's happened, I'm staying with my forest. If she comes anywhere near it, I'll wrap her up in vines so tight she can't move, and then I'll take her back to Mira and we'll fix her."

"Works for me. I ought to at least be safe back there."

Wishing Cookies

The source image for this caption was found using an image generator.

The "Best" RPG Ever-123

First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Rayna had an idea of what to suggest, but it wouldn't work if she just brought it up out of the blue. Plus, if she approached the prince to talk to him right after checking for monsters ahead, he and the soldiers would assume it was about something to do with that, and she didn't want to make anyone worry. However, just as she was trying to think of some other 'meaningful' excuse to talk to him, he approached her.

"Hey, something the matter?"

"Oh, not at all," he said with a quick, reassuring head-shake. "I simply...had a small point of curiosity. Having experienced your magic for myself..you really are capable of making one temporarily stronger, or faster, or otherwise more capable?"
"Sure," she shrugged. "It has 'upkeep', though; I mean, it costs me some...energy, you could say, and concentration, to keep it going."

"Of course," he nodded, "Magic is loathe to give something for nothing. But, I am curious: If you can enhance those attributes, surely you also have some way to discern their original states? That is, some objective way of knowing one's capabilities at a glance?"

"Right. That's actually one of the easiest things for me to do."

"That was what I thought, which brings me to my actual point of curiosity.

"Please do not fret about offending me; I only want the truth. In your estimation, compared to—say—the guard you have seen in town, how do I and my escort measure up?"

Obviously, Rayna kept their voices low to everyone else for this part of the conversation. "Well—you're at least as good as one of the members of the guard, I'd say," Rayna said. "I mean—not the Captain, obviously, but one of their better members otherwise. You're pretty agile, and have obviously had some training. I think the only thing that's tripped you up recently is that you're more experienced in, uh, social fights than life or death ones, but that's nothing you couldn't adapt to with some practice."
"That does match my own expectations," he said. "And the soldiers?"

"Well...honestly, I'd more compare them to your average civilian back in town than one of the guard. Now—that doesn't mean they can't fight; your 'average civilian' out in the frontier is still a tough customer compared to, like, a farmer or merchant way inland or something. I mean—they all had to get here somehow."

He nodded. "I..might have guessed as much. Perhaps I could ask Lady Ezra to have some of her guard train them during their stay in town? If they come back noticeably more capable than when they left..."
"Another way of showing the folks back home the worth of the frontier town?"
"That, and they could earn far better positions than their current ones," he said.

"So, it'd be out of gratitude to them?"

He nodded. "Conscripted into this task or not, and regardless of ability—they have put their lives at risk for my sake."

For a moment, Peregrine glanced quietly in a particular direction, mostly forward but slightly off to the side. At a glance he appeared to just be looking at the carts to make sure they were still rolling along as intended, but Rayna could trace his gaze in a straight line through the carts to right where Zack was.
"Still curious about something else?" she said, a hint of teasing to her tone—but not enough, she thought, to be disrespectful. "You knooow, if you really want to know about our knight friend's past, you could do worse than just admitting your curiosity to her. Surely a noble would feel compelled to give some answer to a prince, right? You might even guarantee yourself the full story if you phrase it as suspicion about her trustworthiness."

"I wouldn't dare stoop to that," Peregrine said. "You all have Lady Ezra's trust, which is sufficient to have mine—and if not, then your actions so far have also more than proven worthy of it. But I will..consdier asking her, if the opportunity presents itself."

"Good luck," the fox-girl said with a friendly grin, heading back to the front to check the monster forecast again. Giving him a more extreme alternative she knew he wouldn't like made the 'nicer' option seem even more reasonable, just as she'd guessed.

---

After the bath, everyone headed back to the house. As they came up to the door, a familiar figure was standing in front, his hand on the way to his side from having just knocked on it.

"Oh—hey Loren!" Aria got his attention while she ran closer. "What's up?"
"Up?" He glanced skyward for a second.
"What brings you to our door?" she tried instead.

"Ah. Well—I was just wondering whether you were in, or off doing adventurer things."
"Not anymore! We just got back from driving off an army of wolves and a chaos-magic-infested Canis guy."
"And a bath," Mira added, lifting a bit of her hair to show it was still slightly damp. "Does 'you' mean all of us, or just her?"

"Err—just Aria, really." He crossed his arms. "I've been making preparations for the teleport crystal's arrival since this morning, and figured it was about time to call it a day. So, you want to go somewhere? Have dinner?"
"Are you asking me out on a daaate~?" she teased, grinning viciously.

"N-no!" He flushed; it probably didn't help that the witch had just put the image of all of them undressed and bathing into his head. "I'm just bored, is all."
"Huh. Well, I was sorta planning to check in on you anyway, sooo, I can come along, sure!"

While the two of them headed off together, the rest of the group went inside, Lupa following close behind Nora on the way to the living room. The weaver shifted to fox-form as she went to find a place to sit and read, but when she turned around to actually sit down, she found the wolf-girl looking up at her expectantly. "Yyes?"

"Um, Nora!" Using someone's actual name meant she was serious. "What's a 'daaate'?" she asked, imitating Aria's drawn-out way of saying the word.

"A date?" Nora repeated back. "It's just—when two people are attracted to each other, and go somewhere together. With each other, but...otherwise alone."
"Attracted...uhhm...'interested'? Like Mira said Red Bird is?"

"Right. As in, romantically?" Lupa got an especially sharp head-tilt from that word, and the elf sighed.

She finally sat down on the couch, patting the opposite end so Lupa would sit there. Why wasn't Zack here to have to deal with this? Then again, he might be reluctant to talk about it. At least Mira could be called in to help if her own efforts to explain didn't work out so well.

"Look, you're an adult...mostly. I mean, you were an adult wolf, at least. So, you know how..puppies are made, basically, right?"

"Mating? Yes," she nodded.

"It's—people don't just come up to each other and st-start..doing that. At least, not..normally. It's usually, a matter of two people who are..interested, possibly, in that, getting to know each other. Preferably over a number of meetings, over a fairly long period of time. Because...for people...getting together like that is, a big deal. A commitment to stay together."

"Oh. That's nothing strange," Lupa said. "Only mate with one who is worthy."

"R-right. Annnd, the idea of 'worthy' among people includes...it being someone you can get along with. Hence, going on dates with someone you think you're interested in, to figure out if you're right for each other."

"Soooo. Is Aria dating Glasses Man?"

"Not..according to them. Although, I thi—I mean...it, really isn't any of my business," she said, cutting herself off from speculating. However, this also confused Lupa.

"Not..business?"

"It's—look, there are some personal boundaries that it's rude to cross without permission. It isn't right to guess at others' relationships when they aren't comfortable sharing. Even if..some people have a habit of being nosy."
"'Nosy'?" she repeated, confused at that term too.

"Err—too curious about other people's private matters. The idea of the term is..sticking your nose somewhere it doesn't belong?" Lupa seemed to only sort of understand this part, raising her hand to place her palm on her own nose.

Putting her hand down again, she said, "But, Lynn is dating, right? Black-fur...uhhmm, Rast? Or, is that business?"

"Well—yes, she is. They've openly admitted to it, so it's okay to say they are."

"And! Rose and Glasses Fox?"

"I..you'd have to ask them, but it certainly...seems like it," she admitted.
"Is Master dating?"
"Uh, n-no. I..don't think Zack has any desire to be interested in anyone 'that way'."

---

A while after sunset, the prince called the caravan to a stop and they made camp. Once everything was set up, he called everyone (except Katherine, who was already busy making supper) together to briefly speak. "Good work, everyone. We have made excellent time today, and quite safely at that—thanks in no small part to the contribution of you courageous and capable ladies," he said, with a small arm gesture/bow in the four adventurers' general direction. The soldiers briefly clapped and cheered in agreement with him about this. "Because of that, we should only be two days' journey off from town now, at the most. There is no need for us to dangerously rush, but I believe we could easily do as well tomorrow. Get a good rest tonight, and remain alert and ready until we finally arrive."

After his speech, everyone scattered to various parts of the camp to wait for supper to be ready. The prince waited a moment for them to do so before starting to make some rounds to check in on everyone—the soldiers first, then Katherine (though he exchanged no more than a brief greeting with her, not wanting to disturb her work), Rayna and Lynn (briefly joining their conversation on what to do for entertainment later that night), Clera (who was sitting down cross-legged and eyes closed, so he didn't disturb her either), and finally...coming to Zack.

The knight had positioned himself on a far edge of the camp, looking outward. Of course Rayna would 'sense' trouble before he did, but he was too well-trained a soldier to feel at ease in the wilderness like this without someone actively watching for threats. Not that he didn't notice what Peregrine was doing.

"May I join you for a moment?" he asked gently, coming up next to Zack.

"Suit yourself." He sat a polite distance to the side, and was quiet for a moment. This was mostly just annoying—he was obviously here to say or ask something, so why not just get it over with?

Seeming to sense the knight's negative mood, he said, "I..hope I don't irritate you too much by asking this. And—you shouldn't feel as if you must answer, but I wanted to at least admit to some significant curiosity."
"About?"
"Your..background, mostly. By my own observation, I believe that you have a noble's upbringing, and a great deal of training and experience as a knight, so I see no reason to suspect that you are not what you claim to be. Yet—how is it that a knight of your caliber is alone, in the frontier, without any order to answer to?"

Zack began to growl, but quickly stifled it. "You really want to know? Fine." He whispered, to guarantee the soldiers wouldn't hear: "I'm out here, because I am a failure. My order was more of a family to me than those I was born to. We lived and fought together for most of my life, and all trusted each other. But in the end, I couldn't protect any of them—many died right in front of me. I alone survived, and there was no point going back to a family or a country full of people who didn't know me. So I exiled myself.

"It disgusts me to hear someone like you compliment my bravery or strength, to talk about me like I'm some kind of hero, because I know that I'm not. I'm just a coward, afraid of losing everything again. I'd rather die myself first, so I put myself at risk even when I don't need to. Even when I shouldn't.

"...Is that enough for your curiosity?" The last sentence came out in kind of a hiss, decidedly more hostile and sarcastic than he'd initially meant it to. Most members of royalty would never tolerate a tone like that, but he had a feeling he didn't need to apologize—and was better off not doing so in the long run.

Peregrine was briefly taken aback, possibly even not by his rudeness but the entire explanation. And, indeed, when he recovered, he apologized. "That..I can hardly imagine such an experience. I am terribly sorry to have brought up such painful memories for you. It was not my intention."
Zack sighed. "Yeah, of course it wasn't. Anyway, I'm mostly over it these days.

"...Rayna put you up to this, didn't she? I'm gonna pull her ears off."

"Er—"
"Not literally," Zack said quickly, seeing his shocked expression.

"Oh! Right, of course," he nodded. But his reaction had basically confirmed Zack's suspicion.

"However, I..do not entirely agree."
"With what?"
"I think, to call yourself a 'failure' or a 'coward' is far too cruel," he explained. "From your own description of events, I believe you must have put forth all of your effort and will to save the other members your order. It cannot possibly be your fault if it wasn't enough—the enemy must simply have been too strong. That would rather be a failure on the part of whoever sent you without sufficient reinforcements."
"You could argue that, I guess, but..it doesn't change how I feel about it."

"And surely you would have avoided forming attachments with others altogether if avoiding the pain of losing loved ones were all that drove you."
"That's..the reason we go to know each other is..complicated. I can't explain it to you."
"But even if you must work together with them, you surely could have remained more emotionally distant," he insisted. "Instead, it seems to me that you chose to move on and forge new friendships—which appear to my eyes to have grown quite deep. I would even be so bold as to say you have a new 'family' now. Not that it could replace the old one, but..."

"Yeah, I guess I just can't help myself."

"I simply believe that you are a better person than you think you are," the prince insisted.

"You're not the first person to say something like that to me."
"Then..perhaps you ought to try to believe it."

With that, he finally stood up and walked away. Zack breathed a sigh of relief, but it was slightly insincere. He felt...less tense and irritated about that conversation in retrospect than he expected to. Or maybe it was just less than he wanted to.

---

Mira stopped just inside the door, looking over at Rose. "Headed back?"
"Um, yeah, why?"
"Aren't you..possibly forgetting something?"
"Wha—oh! The tree! Yeah, I'll go take care of that." The dragon-girl skittered quickly back out the door, and then the witch headed upstairs. If Nora needed her help with Lupa, she'd holler.

Genuinely eager to get back to tending her own garden, Rose took about as quick a pace as she felt wouldn't make other people in the town her feel threatened. A small part of her thought why don't I just fly there, but she resisted the temptation—and she reached the tree before too long anyway.

"Hello there~." She leaned forward, placing a hand on the trunk to feed it some more magic. While she worked, she whispered, "Sorry, I really almost forgot about you today...glad Mira's less of a scatterbrain than me."

After a moment, Rose tilted herself back upright again, lightly clapping her hands against each other. "Phew, all done!"
"Oi, flower girl!" The dragon-girl turned toward the source of this call to find Randall splayed back on a bench, raising his hand to wave at her in greeting.

"Oh..you're here again. Hi," she said, coming closer—but stopping a fair distance away, as the alcohol on his breath was already starting to overwhelm her.

"Awwh, don't gi' me that. Who saysIev..ever even left?"
"Since yesterday? You wouldn't be anywhere near that drunk still."
"Hah! Go' me there.

"Shhsssay, where's your fox friend?"
Rose headtilted. "Vae? At home, working, I guess. What, you want her to mix you a hangover potion?"

"Hey now." He sat up to point emphatically at her. "I don' get hangovers. Anyway, that's no' who I meant," he slurred.

"I guess you mean Rayna, then? She's out of town, helping escort a prince or something."

"Any idea when she'll be back?"
"Uhhmm..a couple more days, I guess? They were teleported pretty far away."
"Egchk." The incoherent sound he replied with seemed to convey annoyance, especially since he fell back against the bench with his head tilted skyward. "Gods, I am boooorrreeed!"

Rose had a thought. It probably wasn't a good idea to bring it up, but then again—he was apparently super bored...

"Say, would you be able to find, like...fault lines? Or volcanos, or other stuff like that?"
His reaction was to sit upright, sort of acting mock-insulted: "Would I be able—would I be able to find...! Wha' sort of novice earth mage you think I am, anyway?"

"I'd guess the drunk kind."
"Hhhaahah, sure! Anyway—what, are you worried about a quake bringing harm t'your forest?"
"Well, I am now. A little. But that's, uh. I was actually considering looking for a place some hot springs could be dug up or something. Maayybe not in my forest, but like, somewhere nearby? Or near the others' house?"

"And you thou' I might be able to sniff out if there's somewhere worth digging, eh?"
"I mean—if you're really that bored," she said, putting up her arms, "then it's something to do at least?"
"Ehh..sshure. It ought to kill an hour or so for me." He used his hands to lever himself up off of the back of the bench and forward to his feet, stumbling briefly forward before his tail seemingly caught him from falling over entirely, letting him recover to a fully upright stance. "Lead on!"

---

Rayna watched up until the prince got up and walked away from Zack, then quickly turned her head Lynn's way again. You see that? Progress!

Yeah, they've had a real, if brief, conversation, Lynn agreed. Though—he didn't get nearly as angry as I expected. Rather, I think he's in a slightly better mood than before. Tail's even wagging!

Looking again, the fox-girl replied, I dunno if that counts as a wag. I mean...it's in motion, but very slowly.

Well, I'm still taking it as a good sign.