Against the Conditions

“Nona.”

“Yes, Vesper?”

“I just realized that I never asked you why you want to go to Hairur’s Fence.”

Nona’s jogging faltered for a moment when hearing the question. Pearls of sweat appeared in her covered forehead before looking at Vesper.

“Ah. My poor aunt is really sick and alone and has no one on her side but her small, grumpy kitty–”

“You said it was your uncle last time,” Adish interrupted from the horse he was finally managing to ride decently.

The animal had the annoying habit of leading the mage towards the lowest tree branches - which had caused the mage to be about to lose his glasses on a couple of occasions. Thankfully, Vesper’s ability to speak to animals had improved the horse’s behavior a bit, allowing Adish to control him somewhat better - though he still hit branches from time to time.

“...Did I? Really?” Nona said while sweating. “Well, my poor uncle is really–”

“Of course she said it was her aunt!” Thorny snapped, throwing a not-very-subtle look towards Nona that she interpreted as remaining quiet from then on.

“Are you sure?” Adish pressed with an amused smile.

“Yes, deadly sure.”

“And what is her aunt’s name?”

Nona was keeping an obedient silence when suddenly she received a small punch on the top of her head. “Ouch! What was that for, Thorny?”

“Four-eyes has asked you question!”

“Me? But you looked at me like this, as every time you want me to remain silent not to screw anything up with a bad lie!”

“...You know what, I give up.”

“So they do not want to tell the reason I assume?” Vesper ventured towards Adish, who nodded with an amused smile while looking at Thorny, clearly satisfied to see the imp exasperated.

Nona sighed and reached inside her bag for a bun, hoping that food would be enough to calm Thorny - so far it had worked 100% of the time. She had barely extracted one and was about to run after Thorny when the distant sound of grunts and swords clashing reached her ears.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Adish asked, confused.

“Yes, there is a fight taking place about 312 steps in the north-east of our position.” Vesper blushed a little when everyone looked at her, impressed. “I also have Animal Hearing besides Animal Speech.”

“And you can’t turn into big animals yet? What a waste…” Thorny whimpered.

Nona was about to rush towards the enemy encounter when she stopped and turned towards the rest.

“Are you ok getting involved?”

“Wow, so you asked first instead of directly rushing into danger!” Thorny clapped his hands with a mocking smile. “You have grown up so much.”

Nona smiled happily. “Thank you, Thorny. You are so sweet!”

“Maybe you should also give up on teaching her about irony, imp.”

“Yep, I’m starting to seriously consider it, four-eyes.”

The fight was taking place in a small forest clearing. Two knights, a man and a woman, were battling a rather big group of worgs and giant spiders. There were at least five of those beasts defeated on the ground, but the ones that kept standing were bigger and stronger and were avoiding the knights' unrelenting strikes.

Nona rapidly joined the battle and started fighting the worgs while Vesper and Adish remained in the back for the time being. Seeing that the knights were mostly focused on the spiders, Nona decided to focus on the worgs. She had barely unsheathed her sword to go after the biggest one, which also seemed to be the fastest and most dangerous, when one of the giant spiders threw a web towards the male Knight, immobilizing him.

“Thorny, do you think that you can burn those threads?” Nona asked, continuing to attack while easily avoiding the bigger worg’s bites and the occasional ones its companions also threw at her.

“I can, but it will take time!”

“Will it help if I summon spikes in the terrain to lower their advances?” Vesper timidly asked from the sidelines.

“Oh, that sounds so cool, I want to see it!” Nona said, smiling with anticipation while making one of her favorite sweep movements to send a couple of worgs - and also a distracted spider that had accidentally got in the way - flying against the closest trees.

“R-Roger!”

In no time, thorns and spikes emerged from the ground in the main area where the worgs and spiders were attacking. The female knight complained from time to time that it was annoying to step on them, but Nona easily avoided them while continuing fighting the beasts without having to put much effort into it.

Once Thorny managed to liberate the male Knight from the web with a mix of bolts and using his own little claws, they managed to outpower the monsters in no time, until all of them had been defeated with the exception of a spider, which was fighting with less motivation than the others, and Vesper managed to convince her to give up and run away by using her Animal Speech.

“We are in your debt, my lady,” the male knight said with an exaggerated bow in their direction. “If it was not for your courageous intervention, perhaps we would not have lived to see another dawn.”

“Oh, I couldn’t have done so without my friends’ help!”

“Pfff, don’t use plural. Adish didn’t do a thing.”

“Hey, we agreed that I would only interfere when strictly necessary!”

“And he did something, Thorny, see? He drew the worg…ah no, he drew the spider…well, he took some valuable notes for my bestiary, so he definitely did something.”

“Wait, can’t you see that I clearly drew a worg?”

“...Well, if I turn the page upside down it might be a bit clearer, yes.”

“Yep, it’s confirmed: besides useless, our mage is also blind.”

“You…”

“As Frederik has said, we are deeply grateful for your help,” the female knight added, making a reverence towards Nona. “My name is Rowena. We three were on our way to Hairur’s Fence when those monsters fell upon us.”

Nona blinked, confused. “Three?”

At that moment, a loud humming invaded the glade and a man with long, blond hair and a well-groomed moustache appeared in the glade while playing his lute.

“For the Glorious Cisum, what happened here?” The bard exclaimed while staring at the fallen monsters.

“We were ambushed, but these heroic travelers helped us,” Frederik said.

“My my, a talented musician cannot go to take a leak without a fight taking place. This reminds me of that particular time when I accompanied another group of paladins to fulfill their sacred mission. It was during a snowy morning; a cold breeze chilled my bones, and I could feel in the air that it would be by no means a normal mission—”

“A-Anyway,” Rowena rapidly said, just when the bard seemed to be about to sing a song about his past campaign, “won’t you happen to go in our same direction? It seems like these forests are more dangerous than we anticipated, and for sure travelling in a big group would benefit all of us.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Adish rapidly said while Vesper nodded. “I don’t think our leader has any complaints about it, right?”

Nona gulped loudly while starting to sweat again, which caused Adish and Vesper to look at her confused.

“Is something wrong, Nona?” Vesper asked with concern.

Nona gulped again before shaking her head. “I’m really sorry, but we cannot travel in such a big group.”

“BUT we are thrilled to have a paladin in our team,” Thorny suddenly suggested with hopeful eyes while looking at Frederik and Rowena alternatively. “Won’t any of you be willing to join us? We have adventures and glory guaranteed, so what do you say?”

Frederik and Rowena exchanged a glance that suddenly became loving right before Frederik spoke.

“Well, thank you for the offer, but we just got married and for my part, I wish to spend every second I can with the love of my life.”

“Oh, Frederik!”

The way Nona blushed when Rowena passionately kissed Frederik and the soft ‘Aww’ that Vesper exhaled contrasted with the way Adish awkwardly averted his eyes and Thorny’s loud, disgusted ‘yuck!’.

“Okay, let’s go before I start to puke.”

“Well, if you happened to be interested in a musician and storyteller, I would be thrilled to honor your group with my multiple talents and–”

“Shut up, we don’t want you. It’s obvious that you are a pest.”

“Ohoho, such a curious, little creature! I will definitely write about you in my next hit!”

“Have a safe trip back to Hairur,” Nona nevertheless said to the paladins before following the rest of the group, though they were so engrossed kissing that they didn’t respond.

Nona had barely reached the main road when Adish suddenly stopped in front of her, with such vehemence that she was about to bump into him.

“What was that?”

Nona felt her pulse skip a beat. “What was what?“

“Why did you refuse to travel with them when it was the cleverest, safest option?”

Nona tried to sustain the mage’s glare, but it turned out to be more difficult than expected, and she ended up averting hers. “Because it went against the conditions.”

The anger in Adish’s eyes turned into confusion.

“Conditions?” Vesper asked. “What do you mean?”

Nona gulped, looked at Thorny, and when seeing the imp’s defeated shrug, she sighed.

“Okay,” Nona felt her heart beating faster while she slowly pushed her bangs away, revealing her forehead, “I think it’s time to tell you the truth.”