The First Mission Part 3 - An Adventurer

Oleara spilled her beer onto her crusty Jaquet. “Damnnn idd.” But it actually didn’t bother her, sitting there all alone in the darkest corner of the countryside tavern that couldn’t even serve onion soup, her favorite meal. Not that anything that minuscule of a problem would concern her at the moment, or at any moment over the past two weeks.

Somehow, she made it to safety. Her friends didn’t. She couldn’t even count those that definitely didn’t make it with one hand anymore. No one survives in this forest, wasn’t that right? There was no mushroom that wasn’t poisonous, no wild game that didn’t want a bit of you in return, and no berries that weren’t covered in thorns. But those who may have made it probably weren’t as lucky as she to actually get to leave the cursed woods, even less unscratched.

First of all, the treants that lived there were evil. They would either keep her friends as living reservoirs of fertilizer or tell the chasing demons where to find them. In the nights between the running – the feeling of aching legs, the growls of empty stomachs nuzzled with moss and the rasping, burning, thirsty throats – they could hear the whispers, the bickering over who was the largest and most powerful, and the arguments about who was going to become the most ancient and towering of all of them:

“You may be right about the efficiency of Neramor’s leaves, but the poison of my fruits is more potent than those of you combined.”

“Did you hear what Lerona did? She attracted a horde of giant boars with her mind controlling spores. They return to her every night – that is, after she send them to graze off someone’s bark!”

“I hear that someone at a hidden cliff steered their growth to block the sunlight from reaching the neighbors. They withered away because they were already too weak to move due to a fungus infection. And now, don’t ask me who infected them…”

It would go on like this every night. Only exhaustion could make the party sleep. Once, one of them vanished with sunrise. No one dared to search after him. The monsters that hunted them played mind games like cats do.

It sent a shiver down Oleara’s spine and she calmed her soul by drowning her feelings in another bottle of wine… or was it beer from a mug? Whatever… She couldn’t pay for it. She didn’t care.

After she got lost when the vampire showed up…

She gulped down the rest of whatever she was gulping down. I just want to pass out…

We hit the tavern for dinner, as well as to prepare Sarran for the job. It wasn’t until our soup arrived that I would feel a pressing emptiness behind me. We heard a “thomb”. I turned around and saw a girl lying square on a round table; three bucks of beer and more spilled on the floor. Lia went to check on her. After all, we were here on a duty to help.

“Guys, help me get out of this!”

I picked up my bread, pulled it through the spinach and stood up. Sarran was faster than me. I saw him grin, his head tilted when I finally arrived, taking a bite while I was at it. The girl – hair as fatty as the melted cheese on her plate, with the smell of an ox that was cursed to crumble to dust upon touching water or let alone soap – had clutched on to Elana to sleep on her lap.

“I can’t get out of this, seeing her like this…”

“Maybe she is simply into girls or something, taking advantage of you going near her.”

Sarran scratched his head. “No, idiot. She is obviously not feeling well. Must have been through something.”

Elana considered pocking her into the face to wake her, but hesitated. “Let’s bring her to our rooms.” Then she signaled us to get closer and lowered her voice: “It could be that I am wrong, but she fits the description of one of the adventurers Minister Jared told us about.”

I could remember this ‘description’ quite well: “Look out for monsters and ruined lives while you are this close to enemy territory.”

Before we proceeded, Sarran paid the bills from our travel money; not only ours, but hers as well. She was lifted onto my back, I noticed that she was so lightweight that I started to worry about her. Her size didn’t add up to her mass. Despite this, when her hair fell into my face, I had to suppress the reflex to vomit. There were pieces of mold in her curls.

For some reason, she was still capable of dreaming despite the alcohol levels in her blood probably exceeding all limits. She murmured: “I kneaw you wouldn’d not leave me arone.” For a moment I thought I would get drunk from her breath.

When I let her down onto the second bed in Lia’s room, I said: “Don’t tell her this when she wakes up, but I am going to take a bath. By the way, once she wakes up, she should take two.”