Seasons of Heroes: A D&D-inspired Adventure!

[NemoMarx]

So, I'm going to be keeping this to Lotte's understanding, which is decent? Not everyone in the village would know as much. But definitely not what a priest in training would know, or anything.

You have Wilfhuld, who you've already heard mentioned. His domain covers teamwork in a general sense, the sense of community that people see envisioned in the pack that hunts together but also raises wolf pups together. Prayers to Wilfhuld are simple and generally done while doing whatever you want his blessing for, so starting a project, going out to hunt together, or so on? It's not quite to the Orime's level of having a worksong, but it's an invocation more than offering, a lot of the time. If you do offer something, it could be a sacrifice of blood shed together, or part of some work done together? A scrap of cloth from a quilt that the women of a village were working on, or if many blacksmiths were turning out weapons for an army, one sword might be set aside for his pack.

There's the Nachtmater, a goddess of the night, who's animal icon is the moth. She has less of the folk hero qualities that some other gods have, and you wouldn't meet her, but you might see or feel her presence, or see one of her many children on a dark night, and know that your faith is rewarded, in some sense. If you're guided by a convenient star at night, or happen across a clear path, or the moon suddenly breaks out behind clouds, this could all be her favor? But she's a fickle goddess, transient just like her children are, and so no one Lotte knows is particularly faithful about the offerings. But it is traditional to leave lanterns lit in the woods, and burn offerings of fragrant smoke near houses, and so guide her children and in return receive guidance. When you wake at midnight, especially, it's important to leave something for her. And there are certain rumors of people who venture further out into the woods at that hour to do things that her mother refuses to explain to Lotte.

The Waldherz is a very important one for Lotte! It's said that once, long ago, a traveller planted a little bit of themselves in a tree in every forest across the continent. There are many variations, and sometimes the traveller is a woman, sometimes a couple on a long trip doing this together, and probably other variations besides, if you travel to the west. But Lotte certainly knows that you can see movement, deep in the woods, and although she's never met the Waldherz herself, many people have come across a walking tree, or heard it's voice, a deep rumbling that almost penetrates down to the bone. The traditional offering is to make a figure from sticks and branches and twine and leave them out in the forest, and try to make it resemble yourself or someone you're worried for. The idea is that this way the forest might see you as something closer to an adopted child, and that you're leaving something for everything you take from it's home.

Lastly, a foreign god, a somewhat new one to the people of this area, who didn't spread stories so much as come south on the backs of bogeyman stories and percolate through harsh winters and the wind that carried them. (To wax poetic, a bit.) Everyone has felt the bite of an unseasonable blizzard, occasionally, and it's said that these are the dying screams of Snefriid, the beautiful snows. She is not really worshiped, not down in the central lands, but more warded off or spoken about. If you travelled further away, you might hear rumors that Lotte hasn't, about people who walk too long in the cold, entranced by the beauty and pain of her voice, and what happens to them. The Kurzk speak better of those stories than the Nelklands do, generally.

The theme with all of these is that their domains are stuff Lotte deals with day to day. Certainly they're all practical gods, in some sense, and not necessarily as idealized or far off as other religions might be. There are others that priests in villages nearby would know, and ones that Lotte's Ma has tried to explain to her in litanies and stories that have simply slipped her mind. But these are four prominent ones that Lotte could be said to be pious about, or more aware of.

 

[The Laurent]

1:3

Lotte woke to pain and confusion. She kicked out, grunting, feeling teeth at her ankles. Argh, where was…

She blinked into alertness, sitting up and grabbing her knife.

She could feel the rats on her, nibbling and squeaking, driven by some song she couldn't hear. Lotte slashed out at one of them, which went flying from the force of the blow, but the others kept on going as she crawled over towards the ladder down. She was glad she hadn't taken off her clothes last night, because now she had no time to get dressed.

Hilda had lit the fire, and was trying to use a broom to sweep them into it. Luckily it wasn't winter, or they wouldn't have the wood for it, but even so it didn't seem to be working. The darkness was inky and complete, and it was just before midnight. The first sleep was just about over.

Lotte had planned to pray and leave what offerings she had to the night in the sacred hour around midnight between the two sleeps. She'd also thought about talking to the couple, but they might be busy, though she'd prefer if they were not busy in certain ways.

Aldrich, on the other hand, had clearly decided to use the time for different purposes.

"Lotte!" Hulda called, her voice hoarse. "We need to…"

"I know, I know," Lotte said. "Do you have a log?"

"I… yes."

Lotte ran over towards her, seeing that her husband had begun to get up too, writhing in pain. She picked up a medium-sized chunk of wood in one hand and brought it down on a rat scurrying past. It squished quite admirably, leaving a smear of gore on the floor as she brought it down a second, and a third time.

Lotte had a keen eye, and she hadn't missed once in all three times, though she missed the fourth swing. She climbed up the ladder one-handed, and began swinging somewhat wildly at where her bed was, making sure to avoid the bow. When she was sure the rats had all run, she grabbed her bow and began to string it, glaring down. "Keep sweeping. Don't let it get on fire."

"Argh!" Freidrich said, dancing about, still trying to dodge the rats.

Lotte carefully worked to restring her bow. If you kept a bow strung all the time, it'd go bad, and so she ignored the few rats that tried to bite at her, only occasionally swiping them aside.

"Keep them off balance. They're still animals."

"They can hear what we're saying!" Freidrich claimed.

Lotte had no idea whether or not that was true, but she also understood that it didn't matter. If you panicked then you were lost. The advantage hunters had over animals was that they could think, they could wait as patiently as an ambush predator, and yet also use tools, and their own ingenuity.

Animals, on the other hand, were given to panic and fear. So were people, sometimes.

So Lotte kept calm, and strung her bow as fast as she could, without making mistakes. Then she climbed down, stretching a little as she threw open the door and stepped out into the cool darkness of the night.

The moon was high overhead, and in the forest there was light that reminded her of Nachtmater. But it was, in truth, a lantern held by Lisbeth, who was standing next to her Master, who was playing a tune that even out here, Lotte couldn't hear. Perhaps it was made only for the ears of rats to hear?

Either way, Lotte had grabbed an arrow, and she drew her bow and took aim… at a tree a dozen feet to the right of Aldrich. A rat tried to bite at her heels, but her keen eyes and steady hand didn't let her register pain as she loosed the arrow.

It soared through the air before hitting the tree. Lotte then looked right at Aldrich, clearly aiming her bow now in his direction. She didn't get ready to loose. It should be one smooth motion, not something held at pain. But she could put an arrow through him, at this distance. She could miss, but there was a decent enough chance she wouldn't miss. He had to know the threat she meant.

Lotte wasn't sure whether it was a true threat or not.

She hoped she didn't have to try to put an arrow in a human. Not that she thought it'd be any easier to do it in a Sepult.

But it seemed like she might not have to decide. The rats swarmed her, but Aldrich looked like he was backing up. Casually, Lotte stomped on one of the rats as it tried to crawl up her leg. Her bare feet crunched the rat, and its death squirms were bizarre beneath her heel, but she kept on walking forward, into the mud of a field at midnight, still staring out into the forest. Lotte glanced at Lisbeth, saw a stiffness of her movements, and wondered how she could approve of it.

Finally, though, they turned away.

But oddly, the rats didn't stop trying to bite and attack, even though rats weren't like that. She'd dealt with rats before, there were traps you could make, though for the most part they were, if not harmless, than not exactly terrifying. They could even be cute, when they weren't getting into larders.

These rats weren't cute, and it was another hour before they finally seemed to remember they were animals and fled, desperate and afraid, breaking in one wave, most of them already dead.

Lotte tried to wipe her feet on the ground inside the cottage, glancing over at Freidrich. "This… is how it usually goes?"

"Worse," Hulga admitted. "They stop about now, but usually there's so many they can't escape and we can't sleep."

Lotte grit her teeth, still wiping her feet on the ground. "How does it continue after he's gone?"

"I'm not sure." Freidrich sighed. "We might as well get to sleep, I guess. You're going to kill him tomorrow, aren't--"

"No," Lotte said. "First, I need to pray. Second, I'm going to go to the Headman."

"I don't take no help from--"

"Dear, you've already hired help. If she wants to…"

"I am going to pray," Lotte said, glancing out towards the night, lips already beginning to form the words. "You can make your decision."

The fire was doused, and she stood in the darkness.

She prayed to a half-dozen Gods, her voice low and careful. There wasn't anything in particular she wanted, not even that Aldrich be waylaid, and yet the act of whispering the words, of sending them up in the air towards where the Gods were, felt as if it soothed something in her. Lotte smiled once she was done, dragged herself up to sleep.

******

Rolf was the village Headman, a red-bearded man whose distant ancestors might have come from up north, for how large he was, and how impressive his beard was. He had a huge nose, and small, beady little eyes, but his lips were wrenched into a smile when he saw Lotte approach.

Lotte knew that he was well-off enough that he had tenant farmers for the chunk of common and uncommon land he held, and thus he didn't have to work himself to the bone every day. Still, he was out there amid the dung and the crops, examining everything with a careful eye. He was available for anyone who wanted to come up to him, and indeed a village woman was consulting him as Lotte approached.

"I don't know what to do. He's made his pledge, and yet will he keep it?"

"If he does not, he disgraces himself in the eyes of all the women and men of the village. You can tell him I said that, Nette." His voice was a rumbling boom, like a falling tree. Whenever one fell in the forest, everyone knew, whether in the moment or afterwards. So too did his words have similar weight.

"Thank you, Rolf." The young woman gave a slight bow and hurried off, no doubt to her own duties.

"Ah, Lotte! I knew this day would come." He turned to face her, the smile on his face wide and eager.

Lotte's impressed admiration for the man only grew, to have known so much. "I'm surprised, but… it's good that you knew. There's a lot to discuss."

"Yes, of course. For one… is it my son, or my daughter? I have both, I'm sure you know." Rolf leaned in. "I always told your Pa that you were the wandering type, not the sort to want to press a claim in the same village you'd always been born in."

Lotte flushed, "N-no. Not that your children aren't perfectly good. I think." She hadn't met either of them, or if she had, only in passing without even a word spoken. "No, it's about the Rat Piper!"

"I think he already has an apprentice, that awful beast-woman," Rolf said, with a shake of his head, as if he were a priest informing someone of their coming demise. "But if you want for a profession, I am sure there are people in this village who could use with an apprentice--"

"I don't," Lotte said, thoroughly flustered by now, wishing she could start this conversation all over again. "I've become an adventurer, and Freidrich and Hulda hired me to help them with their Aldrich the Piper situation."

"Help with?" Rolf looked suspicious.

"I don't intend to hurt him, but he's tormenting them. He went out at midnight to have rats attack them in their sleep to keep them awake when they could be praying or preparing for second sleep." As Lotte spoke, her voice firmed up, hardening as it did. It wasn't right, what had been done to them, and not merely because Lotte had suffered through it too. "Even though you paid for them, he's still attacking them, and humiliating Freidrich."

"Gods know all the man has is pride, and not enough to cover himself in winter," Rolf said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But… this is disturbing. He's dealt with the rat problem caused by… well, perhaps by a spell gone awry." Rolf twisted his lips thoughtfully. "The Witch says that of course rats would gather, they always do with the right… but either way." He perked up. "What do you want me to do?"

"Tell him to stop it. He has to rely on the village to eat, at least if he stays there and doesn't want to eat rats. I doubt he's much of a hunter of anything else," Lotte said.

"I don't know if I can do that." Rolf admitted. He frowned deeper, though it was obscured by his bushy beard.

"If you talk to him, you'll see it. His own pride is strong enough that he'd rather make someone suffer or even die than take even a small insult. Could Freidrich have paid the price?"

"Probably. But barely. It wasn't a hard price, but he's never been a lucky man. He's no worse a farmer than anyone else, but if you told me he'd been cursed by the Gods for some unknown ill to have his seeds die, his body ache, for rain to hit especially hard on his poorer lands…"

Lotte winced. The life of a farmer was hard, the work of taking from the ground what you could. Lotte knew she had very little skill at it, but she also knew that skill was less important than luck. When the starving times came, everyone suffered. "Oh."

"Yes. But if you want me to talk to Aldrich, I have… thoughts about how I could keep him from getting into too much trouble or causing too much of it either." Rolf gave a laugh. "If you'd be willing to stick around. He knows you're involved, right?"

"He does now," Lotte admitted. She could still feel the pain from the few bites she'd taken. Lotte had bandaged them, but no doubt if she ran too much or worked too hard, they might bleed through and open up.

Lotte stuck around. She helped haul a few things around when asked, and kept an eye out for trouble, but it was as boring as working on the farm had been before. Still, it was just after suppertime, the sun high in the sky, when Aldrich came into the village.

Lotte had had breakfast, as only those who worked and those who were young or sick did. But she was looking forward to a large supper, and hopefully she'd have some sort of answer before dinner.

Either way, Aldrich seemed in a surprisingly good mood, right up until he saw Lotte.

At his back was Lisbeth, who was crouched behind him, her ears drooping and her whiskers surprisingly straight.

"What is she…" Aldrich begun, then coughed. "And what are you doing calling me here? I was merely going to purchase a few things and be gone."

"It's just that, Aldrich. Why don't you go back to my house," Rolf said, his voice soft and even wheedling. He leaned in. "It's a private talk, very confidential. But important."

"I… understand," Aldrich said, nerves showing in the way he looked at Lotte.

'Did you do this?' is what his gazed asked.

Lotte didn't reply, simply breathed in the air and the smell of dung and mud and grass, glancing over at Lisbeth.

"Girl. Go to the blacksmiths, you know what to ask for. I'll meet you there," Aldrich said. "Got it?"

He loomed over her, until at last Lisbeth nodded. "Yes, Master," she said, quietly.

Lotte, for her part, waited until Aldrich was out of sight before turning to Lisbeth. "May I walk you? I doubt there are dangers, but--"

"To a human, perhaps not," Lisbeth said. Her voice was carefully controlled, but Lotte had to guess she was alarmed. But even though Lotte had heard people speak against beast-people, surely it wasn't that dangerous to walk through a village, harming nobody.

"Either way, may I come along?"

"I suppose you may," Lisbeth said, and she began to walk, her tail's posture loosening a bit as she did. She wore a long, old looking dress, with a hole in it for the tail. It was different than what she'd worn before, but only slightly nicer.

They walked along the path into the village, moving rather slowly, all things considered.

"I saw you, holding the lantern," Lotte said, quietly.

"I didn't know," Lisbeth insisted. "I really didn't know that he was going to do that. He just told me to get a lantern and follow him." She was animated, her ears curling back but still flinching a little sometimes and her tail curling and swishing with a similar rapid pace.

Lotte watched it all, wishing that she knew more to be able to understand just the emotions being offset. "I believe you," Lotte said.

"Thank you."

"But I have to ask, why did the rats keep on going even after the piping stopped?"

"If you're skilled you can give orders that last hours. I've heard there's more you can do, and the more skilled you are, the more precise the orders can be." Lisbeth shook her head. "I'm only good enough to control rats while I'm playing. You'd think, being a rat-person, I'd have some special gift for it? But it feels mean, to make them do things. If you're good enough and know the right songs, you can get scared, miserable rats to fight to the death." She shuddered at the thought of that, her voice going lower. "It just seems a little… but I like piping, anyways. Sometimes."

Lotte wasn't sure she understood liking and hating something at the same time, but she didn't know what to say. "So, is there any way to block the rats ears?"

"If you block them, they can't hear. Supposedly. But rats have very good hearing."

Lotte opened her mouth to ask if Lisbeth had good hearing as well, but she realized that perhaps that was a little bit rude.

Lisbeth seemed to relax, as if she'd seen the question coming. "But what about you? You keep on asking about me."

"Well, my name is Lotte, did I already say that? And I'm a hunter. I like animals, and hunting, and I'm pretty good at tracking. I'm from the next village over and, uh… I like whittling." She gave a smile, feeling startlingly nervous.

Lisbeth laughed softly, for just a moment, her poise and reserve disappearing as her ears made a happy looking motion that was oddly… cute. "Well, what do you whittle?"

"I could give you an icon. For the Waldherz. There is probably one in that woods too," Lotte said.

"Oh, right. You know, that'd be pretty sweet of you, considering we're sort of enemies."

Lotte waved her hands, "Not really. I don't think you want to hurt anyone, and neither do I, not unless I have to. Even then, I've never done that before. Hurt someone. Animals, yes, but even then… never just for fun."

Once or twice, when she'd not been too desperate for another kill and yet more meat, she'd refrained from wounding shots because of what she imagined. She imagined the arrow entering their leg, and the slow, limping death that followed.

Only, Lotte didn't have that great of an imagination. It was hard for her to imagine things she hadn't seen, except by taking bits of what she had and just dressing them up like a straw doll. She'd done it before, and sometimes it was the only shot you could get. Sometimes you needed the animal.

"I understand." Lisbeth shrugged. "You don't have to justify yourself. Aldrich… sometimes he makes the rats dance for him. It's cute. But sometimes he gets really drunk, and he keeps on making them dance, not just for a few minutes, or an opening of their mind, or… but instead just on and on until they collapse."

Lotte shuddered. "That's…"

"It's what his Master always did, and his Master's Master," Lisbeth said. "He follows tradition. It keeps him steady."

"I suppose…"

Lisbeth stood up straight, a confident pose, but her whiskers were raised too in a way that reminded Lotte of hackles on a wolf. "You can't suppose. You can't know. You can't just show up and, what. Try to say he's bad." She lowered her voice yet further. "You're working against him."

"Yes," Lotte admitted openly.

Lisbeth blinked, slowly.

"I am working. It is against him. But I don't want to hurt him, and I don't want to hurt you. If he just leaves now, then nobody gets hurt, nothing bad happens."

"I couldn't stop him if I wanted to," Lisbeth protested.

From the smell of urine, they were awfully close either to the village pits or to the blacksmith. "Do you want to?"

Lisbeth took a long, long time to answer. In fact, she was about to step into the hut when she said, "...Yes." Then she turned, tail swaying, and was gone.

******

"Three days after today, Lotte," Rolf told her, as soon as she'd checked back in with him. "If he's not gone from this village by then, we start to call in the lords, we take up the pitchforks, we don't serve him or his vile apprentice anything. How about that? We drive 'em out, then, and you just keep him from doing anything too much to the farmer."

"Thank you," Lotte said.

It was more than she'd feared he'd be able to do.

What next?

[] Talk to some of the villagers, try to convince them to refuse Aldrich service early, try to carefully and politely convince them that something had to be done. Now, not in three days.
[] Try to find a way to get Lisbeth alone again. She seemed as if she was being talked around, though her power to stop Aldrich seemed low. But… she was in distress, and Lotte didn't want to leave her in that state.
[] Stalk Aldrich. Follow him just out of his sight. Be sneaky, be cunning, figure out what he has planned, and perhaps do something to let him know he's not welcome.

*******

A/N: Lotte is a dork.

 

[The Laurent]

1:4

Lotte loved to walk in the woods, and loved to hunt as well. This surprised few people about her. There was something about being in the woods, doing a physical task. It was as if she wasn't Lotte, daughter of two parents, with all sorts of duties, all sorts of fears, all sorts of expectations. She could be anyone, anyone at all, she didn't have to be Lotte, she could just be some hunter out of some story. When she was younger, when she wandered the forest with rather less purpose, she'd always liked to play pretend, thinking she was one of those folk religious heroes her mother told her about with breathless enthusiasm.

She'd pretend to be Maurice of the North, a priest who had warned of a coming invasion and saved thousands centuries ago, or Tancred the Tall, a brave warrior who had been as pious as he was--in her mother's rather gleeful tales--skilled in violence, or--

Lotte blinked, realizing that another hero she'd pretended to be, especially when she was younger, was Aldrich the Ant, noted for being a dwarf and yet stronger than any man. He'd wrestled other men to the ground and gained their submission by his strength, and since she'd been a child, she'd liked to imagine that she had some sort of kinship with him. Which was silly, because he was a warrior, and a man, and she'd been some scrap of a girl.

Still, she wished that this Aldrich was anything as honorable and amusing as that Aldrich.

She wandered a little, noting the sound of birdsong, mapping out where they were if she wanted to hunt them. She didn't think she'd have time, not after last night had gone so well. She'd been able to pray, and she'd carved out a whistle, just in case Lisbeth wanted it. It was a small one, more something you'd blow to alert someone of trouble, but she'd tested it out, gone south of the village instead of north, and given it a blow.

It had sounded...fine. Lotte liked music well enough, but she wasn't going to pretend to know much about it.

She smiled and almost whistled, though she wasn't going to. Not when she was getting so close to Aldrich's camp. She wanted another chance to talk to Lisbeth, and not just because she hoped to convince her to stop Aldrich from hurting anyone if need be. No, she thought that she and Lisbeth could be friends, and she even felt faint stirrings of…

She knew it was attraction. But just because she hunted and knew the birds and beasts didn't mean she had to act like one. She barely knew the other girl, and it was rude besides, as rude as if Lotte had been trying to get Lisbeth to hurt Aldrich. Rude and selfish.

Lotte wasn't rude, or selfish… or at least, she tried not to be! She was supposed to be a good girl, and even if she'd fallen down in so many areas, tripped and stumbled on all the deep-rooted requirements in the human forest…

She could do that much, at least.

As she got closer to the camp, she ground to a stop, wondering if Aldrich would have found a way to guard the camp, now that he knew there were people working against him. So she thought about rats, wandering the area, ready to run and squeak the moment they saw, or even more importantly, smelled, anything.

She frowned and rolled around in the grass and dirt for a moment.

Lotte had stared in naked envy when a merchant had come by with a bottle of scent-blocker, specially enchanted for hunters. But the cost had been egregious, and she'd been far too skilled to need it, at least against the regular animals Lotte had set herself against. It'd been enough to make sure she wasn't blowing her scent on the wind to the deer, and to watch their patterns and learn how they thought and acted.

After a moment, she decided to go from tree to tree, and climbed up one, moving from one middle branch to another, glad that the forest, even this short in, was thick enough for it. She suspected the rats would all be on the ground, after all.

She occasionally had to walk, but for the most part she kept as safe as she could. It wasn't too windy today, so the tree wouldn't sway enough to hurt her accuracy, if it came down to that.

When she reached the camp, she saw that Aldrich was up and about. So was Lisbeth. Both of them were going about their routines, Aldrich yawning and stretching every so often.

Which would make sense, since it was barely half an hour past daybreak.

Aldrich looked a little less impressive in the morning, a bit less like a hero, and Lotte thought she could see the signs of age slowly gathering in his face, like the forest in the late fall, where every day brought a little more of winter's chill.

It happened to everyone, but Lotte had to admit she was not feeling particularly charitable towards Aldrich.

They had a light breakfast, bread and some cheese and little else, and then Aldrich announced, "Lisbeth, make sure there's not an attack. I have a matter to look into, and will be back for dinner at noon."

"Yes, Master," Lisbeth said.

"In the meantime, practice your scales, I suppose," Aldrich said, already distracted by whatever he had planned. There was an odd sort of look on his face, closed up and yet triumphant.

He left in quite a hurry, and Lotte almost went after him. But what if he had better defenses than expected, or some way of telling where Lotte was. Certainly, whatever he was doing would have to be as secretive as possible.

As soon as she was sure he was gone, she dropped down. Lisbeth's head snapped over, and with wide eyes she backed up a few steps, glancing over at the tree Lotte had jumped from as if it had betrayed her. Lotte resolved not to hide in that same tree again, in case Lisbeth was on guard for that.

For the moment, it was enough to hold up her hands as she walked forward. "Lisbeth, I wanted to talk to you."

-She was stiff, and that was reflected in her ears and tail, both of which seemed far too still for their own good. Lisbeth finally nodded, "What is it?"

"I just wanted to… talk. And give you this." She pulled out the tiny little whistle and handed it over. It was rough, she knew, but it worked, for all that.

Lisbeth looked down at it, tail starting to move again. "Thank you. So, what do you want to talk about?"

Lotte's mind was startlingly blank as she tried to figure out what. "Oh, well. Did you have any questions for me?"

"I suppose I want to know if you were behind the headman's declaration… but of course you were," Lisbeth said. "Aldrich was hopping mad."

"He… hops?" Lotte asked.

"No, he doesn't," Lisbeth said. Her face was blank, but her ears were oddly pink, like a blush, and her whiskers were twitching.

"Oh. It's a figure of speech," Lotte realized, feeling silly. But then, she wasn't sure how she was talking, because her brain wasn't quite engaging right at all. Instead, she wanted to… impress Lisbeth somehow. "Well, so, your Master…"

"I hope nobody gets hurt," Lisbeth admitted. "But I don't know anymore. I haven't seen him this angry in a long time. He wasn't that angry even when I stole his pipe to try to practice."

"You stole his pipe?" Lotte asked.

"Just to practice. He had it made just for him," Lisbeth said. "It can play notes that humans can't hear."

Lotte's eyes widened, well aware of just how valuable that would be. It'd make it possible to stealthily control rats, as long as nobody could see you. "And…"

"I dropped it. It was fine, but he was so angry he whupped me so hard I couldn't sit for a week," Lisbeth said. Her whiskers flared up, like hackles. "But it taught me a lesson."

"It still seems cruel. I'm sorry I made him angry, and I hope it doesn't… doesn't hurt you as well."

"Do you? Why?" Lisbeth asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Because I think you're a good person," Lotte insisted. "I don't want you hurt. But… even bad people, it's hard to imagine wanting to hurt them."

"You're something," Lisbeth said, thoughtfully. "How did you get to be such a good shot, and so sneaky?"

"I spent much of my childhood and teenage years in the forest," Lotte said. "It's familiar to me. Comfortable." Lotte bit her lip, deciding against talking about how it was the only place she felt entirely comfortable, as if people weren't expecting too much from her. She didn't know whether it'd make her sound odd.

She adjusted her hat, not sure what to do about the instinct that told her that it wasn't something she should talk about. It wasn't unusual, but that's just… how she felt.

"I suppose I get that," Lisbeth said, with the barest hint of a smile. "There's not a place like that for me. There are moments I feel comfortable, but I travel around a lot."

"Then you carry your heart with you," Lotte said, repeating what her mother had said. "There is nothing wrong with that, either."

"Maybe. Aldrich says Rat Pipers are outcasts, but they can make good coin."

"Do you want to be a Rat Piper?" Lotte asked.

"What do you mean, do I want to be a Rat Piper?" Lisbeth asked. Her tail was swishing back and forth, and her ears curling back against her hair dangerously.

"You said that Aldrich hurts the rats he controls, sometimes? If his Master did that, what if that's just what… Rat Pipers do."

"Then I'll be a Rat Piper who doesn't," Lisbeth said, cooly, looking at Lotte with suspicion. "I can do that, you know?"

Lotte nodded. "I'm… I'm glad. And I'm sorry that you're caught in the middle of all of this. Aldrich, and the farmer…"

"Both so stubborn," Lisbeth groused, face scrunching up.

"Yes. But one of them… one of them's doing more," Lotte said. "Aldrich's gotten his coin, anyways. He could just take it as a little annoyance in life, like being shorted a little on occasion by a traveling merchant."

"Did you get many, if you're around here?" Lisbeth asked, relaxing. "This place is in the middle of nowhere."

"No, not many. And some had the oddest things. Witch offerings. Potions. My father bought one that was supposed to help thicken his hair, and it didn't work. He didn't lose anything he wasn't willing to throw away on a guess, but--"

Lisbeth giggled. "Are you sure it just didn't work on guys?"

"Mom tried it in her hair, and I dabbed some on my face," Lotte said, feeling the grin steal across her, though also an uncertainty. "Just to see what it did. I don't even know if Witches can do something like that--"

"I think they can? Aldrich had some for a while. Has some, actually," Lisbeth said. "If it's the sort of tonic you're talking about. But then, he lives well."

Lotte looked around the rather normal looking campsite skeptically.

"He just ties it up in small things, and favors," Lisbeth explained. "He's known for that. He always keeps his word. He knows what he's owed."

Lotte tried not to say anything, or let it show on her face, but Lisbeth looked at her skeptically. "That's a good thing, in a mixed-up world. So many are cruel. They'd have hurt me if it wasn't for Aldrich. I'm a rat-girl, after all."

Lotte nodded, though she wasn't sure. She knew there was cruelty, but surely nobody could want to hurt someone like Lisbeth, who hadn't been doing them any harm at all? "I'm sorry."

"You haven't done anything to hurt me. Not yet," Lisbeth added, as if that were important to say.

"I hope I don't," Lotte admitted. "And... "

"What?" Lisbeth tilted her head, just slightly, her ears twitching forward a little as if straining to hear.

"Is there anything else I can do?" Lotte asked. "While I'm here."

"Well, I have to practice music," Lisbeth said. "Or I should, at least. You could listen, I suppose. But you have to leave here before he gets back."

Lotte nodded, eager to hear her voice. She had little doubt it was beautiful. It was hard to imagine it being otherwise. So she found somewhere to sit down on the grass, somewhere already pushed down by footsteps, so that there wouldn't be any sign of her presence.

She had to look up at Lisbeth, which was a different perspective, to say the least. Her nose looked different, at once more prominent and… cuter. Especially with the whiskers surrounding it, like the delicate movements of the priests' quill, writing things she could barely understand. They were like call...i… grafy. Or whatever it was. Lotte was well aware that her thoughts weren't entirely coherent, but she'd managed to string words together so far.

So that'd have to be enough.

Lisbeth sung at first, and then played the whistle, as inadequate as it was. In neither case were there words, just humming and noises, some higher and some lower. Lisbeth's voice was clear and rather pretty. It wasn't as beautiful as some of the best birdsong Lotte had ever heard, but then again, what singing could be? It was enjoyable, and Lotte allowed herself to relax through a half-dozen songs, before just as suddenly Lisbeth stopped.

"It… doesn't always help me, but the more complex the song, the more complex the magic you can do with it. I want to learn to do magic that lets me be a Rat Piper without… hurting them."

Lotte nodded, pulling herself up. She realized that she had to leave soon, even though she didn't want to at all. She was just sorry that she had far less to show off than Lisbeth. She worked with her hands, she hunted, she didn't exactly… even the whittling wasn't nearly as impressive as singing. But Lotte didn't say that. That'd be rude, it'd be whining of the exact sort her parents would have been ashamed to hear from her. So instead she stretched for a moment. "I should be going. But your voice was nice."

"Nice?" Lisbeth asked, her face a little flushed.

"Very good," Lotte corrected, embarrassed.

"I… I'll try to trust that you mean it. Do you want to… meet again?"

Lisbeth hesitated with each word, but Lotte didn't at all. "How about tonight, after he's asleep?"

Lisbeth thought about it for almost a full minute, her tail and ears twitching every so often. She reached up to scratch one of them for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes. I don't think he's going to be doing much tonight."

"Should I come four hours after nightfall?"

"Three," Lisbeth said. "If that is okay with you?"

"I should be able to do that," Lotte said, stepping carefully so as to leave as few signs as possible of her arrival.

On the way back, her mood was good, and she whistled and left a small stick offering to the local Waldherz.

********

"Thank you for helping out," Hilda said.

Lotte looked at the stream, the same stream that kept on going all the way to her village. That itself was frustrating in a way, that she was still doing some of the same chores she'd done before. It hadn't changed yet, and these weren't the kinds of adventures that people liked telling stories about.

But Hilda had laundry to do, and she was afraid of being attacked. So Lotte had come, in full gear… but then decided that the real odds of attack were pretty low. So instead she was helping to hold the wooden board flat, or doing the work of washing and scrubbing it with the flat, stick-like washing bat. It was all hard work, but she'd done it plenty of times before. Life was hard work, and she didn't shy away from it. There was less than there might have been with a larger family, and once she got into it, she looked over at Hilda, who was half-distracted glancing at her.

"You're not like most young girls I see," Hilda added, biting her lip. She didn't have soap, not even the rough kind that Lotte was used to, and so they were just hoping that the cool water would do enough. "You're rougher. But nicer."

"Nicer?" Lotte asked.

"I… I was a young girl, not that long ago." Hilda looked older than ever, hunched over her work, though she was clearly in better health than her husband. "My father was… can you promise not to judge me?"

"I promise," Lotte said. "We're in this together, a Wilfhuld's pack trying to keep this from falling to pieces."

She believed it. She wanted Aldrich to leave, without hurting anyone, including Lisbeth. Even if it meant never seeing Lisbeth again, it was better than imagining Aldrich killing someone, and then the village trying to hunt him down. He could do it. You had to have keen eyes, when you hunted. Lotte was sure she could see the signs that he'd kill if he thought he had the right reasons, all over him. The dismissive way he acted, the violence he'd already inflicted. Maybe he wasn't all bad. Surely he wasn't some monster who hurt others because he liked causing misery. But his pride was going to get someone killed, and it probably wasn't going to be him.

Or not him first.

"Well, my father was the village drunk. He wasn't anyone worth knowing, and I had nothing worth having. But Freidrich married me. He didn't have much, but he had more than I did. And he's hard sometimes, but he's more the man to sulk or yell than to beat his wife bloody," Hilda said, in a quiet voice. "It's more than I have any right to ask."

Lotte wondered at it.

Lisbeth felt about the same.

Lotte… never had, not quite? But then maybe if her parents were crueler she'd have to make excuses for them. "Oh," Lotte said.

"Those eyes, though. They're familiar." Hilda kept on working, and it was almost a minute before she said. "But everything you're doing, I'm thankful for it."

"You're welcome," Lotte said. "I've been trying to… figure out what to do. I'll protect the house, but Aldrich has only two more days after this before he's expected to be gone. He's going to do something soon, and when he does I don't know how I'll keep everyone safe."

"Oh, dear. You see, it's, you know… nobody's ever safe." It was as if Hilda had been trying to chew and swallow the words, but like a bad piece of meat, finally had to spit it out.

Lotte nodded. "I know."

Life wasn't safe. People died every year, and it was remarkable how an oxen could step on a foot, or a person could stumble drunk into a ditch one winter night…

And she hadn't seen the worst of it in her eighteen summers.

"You're good, though. Or at least, polite, to listen to an old woman blather."

Lotte smiled. "Not that old."

"Maybe." Hilda sighed, and got back to work.

There was always plenty to do.

*******

You had to go slow through the woods at night. There was no way to rush it, and rushing would just get you killed. So instead, you walked, and enjoyed the night.

Lotte certainly did. Sometimes she'd wonder at where the line was, between boldness and stupidity. The forest at night was no place to go, as deep as she'd gone before.

Now, though?

It wasn't much. She crept up and around, careful to make sure not to be easy to find, and eventually came upon the camp. Aldrich was nowhere to be seen, but his tent was pinned up, so no doubt he was inside.

Lisbeth, on the other hand, was waiting where the fire had been, her foot poking at the ashes from the fire.

There was a break in the tree cover, and the half-full moon spread down its silvery rays on her, highlighting her tense ears, her stiff body, but also her dark, powerful looking eyes and the control she held herself with.

Lotte's heart raced to look at her, even though they'd known each other for… no time at all. Perhaps Lotte fell too easily, as the moon falls upon all who are within its gaze, no matter who they were.

The tail was at once strange and yet… something. Lotte blinked, shook her head, tried not to wax too poetic, considering there was nothing of poetry in her soul any more than she could stand to read for more than a few minutes at a time.

Lotte slipped down, hands out again, repeating the same actions she'd done before, but from another direction. That was to say: hands up, out of the way, waiting.

Lisbeth nodded, the gesture stiff, and moved. This time they were going to go off a little.

Lotte should have noticed that something was wrong. It was all about instincts: sometimes she just knew when a hunt was going to go badly. There was that same feeling about Lisbeth, but Lotte didn't even really notice it, not until after the fact.

Once they were far enough away, Lisbeth asked, "What do you want?"

"What? You said to meet," Lotte said, tilting her head.

"I mean, what's all this for, pretending to be nice to me. You want something. I already know some of it, warning of my Master's plans. My Master, who has raised me for eight years, but what else?"

Her voice was calm, but her ears were flat, her tail flicking like a whip, threateningly.

Lotte bit her lip, "I… I don't know. I didn't really have anything much planned, just trying to get your help to stop this from falling apart."

"You were hired by that farmer who hates me," Lisbeth said. "That's surely not all he wants. How can I trust anything you've been saying?"

"I haven't…" Lotte began, though she understood where this was coming from, almost. "Were you… how…"

"I thought about it. Then thought about it some more." Lisbeth had this tendency to spread out her emotions, to show them in ears and tail and whiskers as much as in face, and never in voice.But in that moment her voice grew cold and raised, an angry, killing wind. It was enough to let Lotte know that somehow she'd really messed up. "He plays for me sometimes, you know. I can hear the pitches only rats can hear. I helped him practice, but then sometimes he'd just play for me and I'd almost fall asleep, the music was so nice. He's not… what do you think about Aldrich. Tell me?"

She wasn't yelling. Not quite. But her voice had raised up a bit, and Lotte took a breath. "I think he's proud, and his pride lets him be cruel and justify it. Cruel, if not to you, than to Freidrich and Hilda." Lotte gulped, aware that this wasn't going to be a popular answer. "He's not necessarily a bad person, but if he lets his anger and hurt drive him like that… someone's going to suffer, and it might be you. Or the family, or myself. And it probably will be him as well. If he just left, with you, moved onto the next place, none of this would be necessary. I don't want it to come down to violence, or heartache."

"You… you're lying," Lisbeth said. "Or… you're aiming for something else. I'll keep on trusting you and you'll tell me to steal his Pipe." She wasn't listening, didn't seem ready to, and Lotte didn't know what to do about it.

It hurt her, that Lisbeth didn't trust her, but why should she?

Lotte had been kind so far, but…

"Lisbeth, I know it doesn't mean anything right now, but I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to turn you against Aldrich."

"Don't you?" Lisbeth asked, pointedly.

The truth was, she had a point, Lotte thought, leaning against the tree. She hadn't intended for Lisbeth to betray Aldrich, but she had wanted Lisbeth to realize that Aldrich's goals were going to hurt everyone and that he needed to back off. But she'd seemed to agree before, and Lotte wondered at the 'thinking' she'd done.

It reminded her of Arndt, the way he'd sometimes seem to build up a head of steam in his own head, until at last it exploded outwards in drunken rants. It hadn't been his fault, she had… she hadn't gone with him, and if she had maybe he'd be uninjured. There was truth to his anger, just like there was to Lisbeth's. But there was that same isolation, that same lack of feedback that allowed the hurt to build and build and build--

It was like a sprain, some debilitating pain, to realize that there was nothing she could do. She had no idea how to help Arndt, and she couldn't help Lisbeth with this. They shouldn't feel the same, after all she'd known Arndt for years, not days. But there was that same inability to…

And of course, Lisbeth couldn't read her mind, saw the pain and assumed that it must be guilt. "That's what I thought."

"No," Lotte said. "That's not why I--"

"You should leave," Lisbeth said, quietly, making up her mind.

"I will," Lotte said. "But it's not because you're right about this. It's because your fears aren't anything I can... "

She trailed off, and Lisbeth opened her mouth to speak, but Lotte, her heart torn in two, spoke first. "I can't make you not afraid, I can't stop you from distrusting my intentions, even when I know they're not what you think they are. That's why I… flinched."

Lisbeth nodded, though as if she'd merely written down her words somewhere, as if she were some scribe in court, ready to read them back to prove Lotte's guilt.

Lotte should have gone back.

It'd be the right thing to do.

But Lotte… was an Adventurer, and had a mission. So instead she looped around and snuck into somewhere at least a little close to the camp.

Lisbeth was there, pacing, her tail swishing as she did. She glanced over at the tree Lisbeth had been at before, and then in the direction she'd come from, and then she knocked on the tent.

Aldrich came out groaning. "What is it, 'beth?" he asked, blinking. Then he seemed to see her guilt, or something, because his eyes narrowed. "What. Is. It?"

"The adventurer came to talk to me."

"She… came to," Aldrich said, but then saw something on her face. "Not for the first time. And you talked back?!"

"I… a little," Lisbeth said.

In a sudden fury, Aldrich wrapped a hand tight around Lisbeth's throat. Lotte moved to grab an arrow and… and do something, but Aldrich stopped himself, and let her go.

She was breathing heavily, though a second of constriction couldn't have left her breathless. But she had to be shocked.

"I'm sorry, 'Beth. You just made me so angry. I thought you'd betrayed me, but you could never do that, right?" He asked it in a voice as sweet as sap, stroking her hair as he did.

"No, Master," Lisbeth said, her voice trembling.

"So what did she talk about, this adventurer? What lies did she tell you?"

"That… she said that your pride would get someone hurt, that there had to be some way to stop anything from dying, or… she was worried, but she was also lying," Lisbeth said. "I know she was lying. You'd never hurt them for something like that!"

"Of course I wouldn't," Aldrich said, though his face was a mask, and his voice so sweet that Lotte thought it sounded fake.

Yet Lisbeth relaxed, seemed to take some comfort from the words, from proof in her mind that she was right to distrust Lotte, to trust Aldrich.

"I thought so, Master," Lisbeth said.

"Yet you doubted me."

"I'm sorry Master."

"There will be a punishment waiting for you, later," Aldrich growled. "But I'm just glad I didn't lose you."

This time his voice didn't sound as fake to Lotte's ears. She even heard some of the same tone she heard in her father's voice, there. Was she imagining that?

"You couldn't," Lisbeth said.

"You should go talk to this girl again, tomorrow morning," Aldrich said.

"What?"

"Lie to her. Tell her about an attack that's not going to happen, find a way to distract her. Perhaps set her up for some sort of ambush, so I can get her out of the way." Aldrich said it with glee, but Lisbeth was clearly nervous and clearly failing to hide it. "I think you can do that. I won't kill her. I just need to not have to deal with some crazed hunter for a while. She threatened me, you saw it. So, just go to her tomorrow morning. I'll have lies for you to tell, and we can… deal with her. Together. Master and Apprentice."

Lisbeth nodded, clearly trying to push through her doubts.

"Now," Aldrich finished. "You should probably get to sleep. I've got to set up better guards if she's found out where we are."

As soon as her back was turned, Aldrich's face slipped into something darker and more frustrated as he looked at Lisbeth. Then he sighed, shook his head, and went back to his business.

Lotte…

Lotte didn't know what to do.


What does she do about Lisbeth?

[] At the meeting tomorrow morning, confront her about having overheard it. Perhaps it won't make her like Lotte. After all, Lotte would have to admit she spied on Lisbeth. But, she had to do something, couldn't let Lisbeth do this to her. And herself.
[] Don't confront Lisbeth. Instead, pretend to be fooled, try to get information out of her, knowing all of it was going to be false. Perhaps it could make Aldrich think that she was fooled, that she wouldn't be a threat.
[] Tell someone about Lisbeth's plans. It'd be… betraying her, in a way, but perhaps backup could help Lotte captured her, or… something. Find a way to get people involved, and aware of the attack that would no doubt come soon.

*******

A/N: Well, this was pretty long by the standards of this Quest. Hopefully not too long.

 

[The Laurent]

1:5

Lotte looked at the rising sun and had no poetry for it, nothing special to say about it. She hadn't slept well last night, had been trying to imagine what to say. But no matter how one toiled all the night long, the sun came.

Lotte's mind had gone over and over the betrayal. But the more she looked at it, in the light of the moon and in the facts she knew, the less it seemed like betrayal. Not really. Lisbeth hadn't promised not to tell Aldrich, even if that'd been implied, and she'd known him for eight years, and Lotte for a matter of days. She pushed down her doubt, her fears, and thought about what Lisbeth had done so far, and what Aldrich had done.

Lotte was sure that Lisbeth had made a mistake, but mistakes happened all the time without feeling personally betrayed. She couldn't help the way she felt, but she could help reacting badly to it.

Lisbeth was a good person, and so what she needed to do was remind her of that.

But she could dream of that all night long with her eyes open, and still she didn't know how she was going to confront Lisbeth.

She prayed to the Gods, not just the ones she most often did, but to others still, even when all she had were names.

Adalet was some goddess of wisdom. The priest who'd tried to taught her had told her, once, that she was a God far from the south. He invoked her often, especially when begging her to give him the strength not to be angry at Lotte's stupidity and lack of ability when it came to reading. Whether she answered or not, Lotte didn't know, but he'd kept on teaching her despite his frustration, so maybe.

Perhaps Adalet, whatever she looked like and whatever she was like, would have pity on her.

So Lotte prayed to her too. "Give me the strength to do what's just, and not what's selfish. To do the right thing."

She didn't know what it was.

"I don't know what I could give you, in payment. I don't know a lot of things. I'm too stupid to ask you for anything," Lotte admitted. It was true enough. She took to book-learning as a fish did to a bush. Which should be an odd comparison, but one time Arndt had been fishing in a stream deep in the woods, and a fish had flopped around and wound up in a bush, no doubt slowly dying, as a fish did, staring balefully up at them in general and the cruel world in particular.

Or perhaps Adalet liked the laws, which were… vague, or so she knew, when it came to the forest. It was at once property and not-property, and she'd heard that what in one area was poaching was in another perfectly acceptable. Luckily enough her village was one of the latter, for the clouds were high and the Lord was far away.

"But still. Still I ask. Better to ask than not ask."

That was her prayer, and there wasn't much of it, but then there wasn't much of her wisdom.

By dawn, she felt terrible, her heart as ragged as a wounded animal. Her chest flopped around when she got up, annoyingly in the way of everything. It didn't make her a worse archer, but she knew that ol' Gunther had never had to deal with anything like them in the way, and it felt like her heart was buried under a bunch of fat that was, supposedly, a sign of… something.

That morning it felt as if nothing was quite right, and nothing she could do was right. But she ate what she could, and then said, "I'll be going to patrol around, see if there's anything else."

"Of course, Lotte," Hilda said. "There's not long now."

She wished that it was true, but she didn't know how long this would take, let alone how long it would last.

As she wandered outside, she waited for a sign.

Lotte got it when a rat hurried up to her and then stopped, looking up. It was a cute rat, all things considered, fat and well fed, and cleaner than she'd expected. Someone had taken some time to care for it, and somehow that's what told her that it was Lisbeth's. If she didn't feel so terrible, she'd almost be touched by the care.

As it was, she followed the mouse, wary for an ambush. Would Lisbeth… no, Lotte couldn't believe it.

Lisbeth was just beyond the start of the treeline, leaning against one of them. Her posture was stiff, her body still.

"Hey, Lotte," Lisbeth said.

"Hello, Lisbeth," Lotte said, and decided to lean against the same tree. "Should we sit. To talk? We… didn't part on the best terms. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" Lisbeth asked.

"You must love him a lot. I think I'm right, but could I... "

Arndt. Would Arndt have tried to choke her in rage? No, surely not. He was angry, he was bitter, but it was words. Talk talk talk, that's how it felt sometimes, and yet her heart ached to see him hurt, and she'd never believe the worst about him. Who could, when he'd lost so much because of… because of many people, her included.

"You could?" Lisbeth asked, suspiciously.

She shouldn't have to do this. When an animal was wounded, it didn't spread itself wide to take another arrow. Hurt once, it didn't beg to be hurt again, it didn't offer to trust someone with its life, with its secrets.

There was piety and then there was senseless martyrdom.

It was exhausting, thinking of telling her something so personal.

But it was the only way she could see forward. To trust, and hope to be trusted in return.

Lotte let herself sink down against the tree, and watched Lisbeth do the same. Then she closed her eyes, and heard the sound of wind through the trees, and birds in the distance. "I was friends for a long time with a boy named Arndt. I might have been… I might have had some interest in him. Either way, when I was sixteen, I wanted to run away and be adventurers with him. My parents convinced me to wait two more years before doing it, he went out, and returned, bitter and tired and angry and drunk half the time, and when he was drunk he'd yell at me, for ruining him. I hadn't been there for him, after all. Maybe he was right."

"He, he sounds like… like he was terrible," Lisbeth. "Blaming you not for being there."

"But, I wasn't there," Lotte said. "I could have kept him company, and maybe he wouldn't have been so badly wounded. Maybe he would have been better. But even so, he hurt me, even though I cared about him. Even though he was far from all bad. There were moments when he was… sweet."

It was true.

If Ardnt had only been angry, Lotte would have… would have not know the truth, which was that he had reason to be angry and that she'd hurt him.

But he'd hurt her back, and on purpose.

"So, what. Are you saying that Aldrich's like that?"

Lotte kept her eyes closed. It was easier to feel like a soul that just happened to have a bodily prison when she could see nothing. She could smell dirt, and not far from there some animal had gone. She could track them by spoor, if not by scent, which would be rather more impossible.

"He could be. I feel like he might be, but I could be wrong," Lotte confessed. "I'm not very good at these things, but I'm not lying. I'm even worse at that."

"Are you?" Lisbeth asked.

Lotte opened her eyes to glance at the rat-girl. "Yes, I'm terrible at lying, so I try to tell the truth. There's less chance of getting tripped up. My brain isn't built for curves. Or much thinking at all." She tapped at her head, as if it was a joke, seeing the look on Lisbeth's face.

"Well… I… I figured out Aldrich's plan." Her ears were flat, and her voice was toneless. If Lotte was a terrible liar, Lisbeth was even worse.

Lying. To her.

A part of her wanted to lash out. She hated it, hated how she felt today, betrayed in too many ways, some of which she couldn't quite name.

"He's going to be attacking the Headman, since it's the Headman who is backing up his enemy. Just rough him up a little and leave, and he knows just how to do it. It's hard to… hard to… notice rats until they swarm on you." Lisbeth was stroking the fur of the rat she'd used to bring Lotte over, but that was the only soft, gentle thing about her at the moment. By the end of the words, she was all but mumbling.

"It's strange," Lotte said, feeling the chill in her voice. But beneath it, she churned. She wasn't betrayed but she was angry. She was furious. Blood, as it left the body, was usually warm.

That's how it felt.

"What?"

"I'm furious at you. Yet I don't, I really don't, feel any desire to strangle you for it. Nor would I act on such an impulse," Lotte said, quietly.

"You…" Lisbeth began.

"Followed you back, out of instinct. Saw all of it. Saw him hurt you, saw him furious, saw him sweet too, and kind. Saw him lie to you, tell you he meant to do nothing, but if he truly did, then has he told you what his real plan is?" Lotte spoke fast, not standing up because she didn't want to loom over Lisbeth, but also aware that she had only so long to speak. "I don't think he's evil, but he can be cruel, and he knows you wouldn't approve. But if he hurts the farmer family, afterwards, would you abandon him, or would you reluctantly accept that… that what's done is done?"

Lisbeth's mouth was gaping, and she blinked. "I… he hasn't told me. You knew that I was going to lie to you?"

"I hoped you wouldn't. And I wanted to talk to you," Lotte said, aware of how desperate that sounded. "I wanted to confront you with it, talk to you, be honest instead of…"

"Lotte, I only did what I…" Lisbeth began, but Lotte could see that she was teetering at the edge of breaking.

"What you thought was right," Lotte said. "So am I. That's what I'm asking you to do. Consider whether or not there might be a right thing to do that isn't this. If you want to leave, want to go back to him and tell him I wasn't fooled, you can." Lotte spread her arms wide. "I'll do what I can to protect them, and you will do what you think is right. But we could stop this."

"Stop this? How?" Lisbeth said.

"I'm… working on that. But if we can just take his pipe and everything else, he can go on. Maybe he'd want to get revenge, but more likely he'd have other things to do," Lotte said. "Nobody has to get hurt if we can get those pipes, and even if it comes down to a fight, there are ways to… ways for there to be less risk."

"Not… not take him for the Lords' peace?" Lisbeth asked.

"If he's truly planning something terrible, yes," Lotte admitted. "He should be. But I don't want… I don't want to hurt you any more than I have."

Lisbeth stared at Lotte, and Lotte had no idea what she intended to do until she said. "I… won't stop you."

"You won't?"

"I… don't know if I can come. I could… I can try," Lisbeth insists. "But only if you don't kill him. I'll never forgive you if you kill him. I don't think… he'll hate me forever. One way or another, this is the end of my apprenticeship, the end of everything. But I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sleep and this time I thought about all the truths you've told me, and how much you cared. And how could he get revenge without hurting them? What more could he want?" Lisbeth said it slowly, staring at Lotte as if she were anything special.

Lotte felt like a mass of ugly flesh and doubts, exposed and vulnerable. She wondered if her flux was going to come soon: she always felt worse just before and after it. Perhaps her mood was a sign?

She couldn't tell. But she knew that there was hope, and that somehow that was what was shining along with tears in Lisbeth's eyes.

This could end. Today.

Nobody had to die, nobody even needed to get hurt, though they might.

Today was a bad day, but it'd have to be the right day for all of this.

What's the plan?

I'm going to try to see how write-in votes go. A few things. First, any vote that has killing him as something intentionally part of the plan is automatically vetoed. Lotte won't do it unless as the absolute last resort. Second, know your character. Lotte will do some things but not others, so just, y'know, ask.

Third, bringing Lisbeth or not is probably the biggest and first decision anyone making a plan should consider. Not bringing her along keeps her out of it and might keep her safe. However, just as an obvious one, Lisbeth could theoretically serve to lure him out, distract him, or even help Lotte be the distraction while doing something else. Plus, with her whistle, the one Lotte got her, she could in theory serve as a counter-force to rat control, get the rats a little confused.

Finally: no plan has to be detailed. It doesn't need contingencies. Things might well go dramatically wrong in the first few minutes of any of the plans. Hell, they might go wrong even if the plan is good, because that's tactics for you.

*******

A/N: So, yeah. Lisbeth was already wavering.

 

[The Laurent]

1:6

Lotte tried to gather herself, to focus. She has the ghost of a thought… or not a ghost, more like a bird, flitting through the forest, and she chased it, tried to imagine what she was supposed to do with that thought.

It was a simple one: Aldrich was prey. That thought felt discordant, but it didn't have to be cruel, it didn't have to be anything but a way to look at things.

Lotte coughed. "I have… questions," she said, aware that she was in no position to ask anything of Lisbeth, that she was unworthy of even the trust Lisbeth had placed in her. She was some pathetic, miserable (what reason did she have to be sad?) woman who was probably going to hurt Lisbeth's Master at least a little.

"You can ask them, then," Lisbeth said, and she at least seemed to be under control, her tone of voice again cool and formal, but not as bad as it might be.

Lotte licked her lips, trying to figure out how to ask it. The thought of hunting Aldrich did remind her that this was her job. It wasn't pleasant, but… but the truth was, as as much as pigs were thoughtful animals and far smarter than some humans, she'd rather be here, even as miserable as she was, than back home and trapped.

"Where did Aldrich want you to lead me? What did he expected from me? What did he say, in general, about what was going to happen?"

"Oh," Lisbeth said. "I… he had this grove he said would be a good ambush spot. Plenty of places for rats to hide." She stroked the rat in her hands, so softly and gently that Lotte wondered how she could love a Master who used them so callously.

How, for that matter, she could trust someone who had hunted animals for a living.

"There was a place. I could show you, but… I was supposed to go and tell him, first. I was going to suggest it as a meeting place to plan… strategy to stop Aldrich's attack on the mayor," Lisbeth said. "Aldrich had this whistle he'd played while in the area. I don't know what it did, but the grass all dried out around there."

Lotte didn't stiffen, even though he had already begun to have certain suspicions. "When?"

"Sometime after noon. The idea being, you'd be out of the way for a night attack," Lisbeth said. "Which I assume would be on the farmer couple."

"What does he think about me?"

"Not much. He thinks you're… sweet on me, and he thinks you'll trust me no matter what I say. He thinks you're foolish."

"I do trust you" Lotte said, and despite how terrible she felt, the ghost of a smile on Lisbeth's face was a warm fire on a cold, dark night.

"...I'm surprised. I haven't done anything to deserve it," Lisbeth admitted.

"I want to think I have an instinct. But. Maybe not." Lotte flushed a little. "Can you show me where it is? He won't expect you back yet, right?"

"No. He thought I'd take a while buttering you up," Lisbeth said.

"Then, let's go. If you would," Lotte said.

***

"Fire," Lotte muttered, staring incredulously. All of the grass was dry and half-dead, the exact sort of grass that always lit up when lightning strikes, and the area itself was a slight depression, with trees on all sides making useful hiding spaces for both a man and any rats he might bring in.

"Fire, what do you mean?"

"Look," Lotte said, trying to think about it the way she would any other trap. "There's only one way out that's not through the dried out grass, a single route of escape." She pointed at it, leading up. "If you set an army of rats there to trip someone up, maybe made the path narrower, than the only choices I'd have would be to burn to death or surrender."

"He wouldn't--" Lisbeth began, and then looked down at the grass. "He would, wouldn't he?"

Lotte's heart was racing, because she knew it was more than 'wouldn't lay a trap.' No, would Aldrich think it served her right if she died? If she stubbornly let herself burn rather than surrendering?

He'd blame her for her own death, because he wasn't the sort of person who casually, happily killed others. If he was, he'd have long ago done so. No, instead he was someone whose pride and arrogance could take him to places so dark that they made the forest at night look like the fields at noon.

"Yes," Lotte whispered. "I… I have an idea. But it might be a little difficult."

"Difficult?"

"Yes. That's… a word for it."

Painful. Dangerous. Bold. Foolish. Those were words for it as well. But she had a feeling that this just might work.

She'd need time, she'd need luck, and she'd need an odd reserve of ruthlessness. It wasn't a plan to kill Aldrich, but it was a plan to fight as unfair as she possibly could, to take no ransom, to win at whatever the cost.

To trap Aldrich as he'd intended to trap her, and have him surrender.

****

"So, she bought it?" Aldrich asked, pleased that Lisbeth had done right this time. That girl could be so frustrating. It'd been his pious duty, to take in the daughter of a friend, but she had been such a bother at times. Like most children, she was in need of correction, and like most children, himself included, she started to learn her lesson after a few beatings.

Sometimes he didn't know how his old Master had stood him long enough to beat the weakness out of him. His Master had made a real Rat Piper out of f Aldrich of Nowhere, Orphan and Tramp. Rat Pipers had to be clever, vicious, powerful if they wanted to be anything more than second rate employees of the powerful.

"Yes, she wanted to believe me," Lisbeth said, as she stepped along, a little bit behind him.

"She's a fool, though her archery was quite dangerous," Aldrich admitted. "But she let her infatuation with you control her."

"Infatuation?" Lisbeth asked.

"I was surprised as well, but… you can't tell me you don't see it," Aldrich said, almost smiling. He hadn't bothered with such feelings since the man who almost became his husband. It was a distraction, anyways.

"She's infatuated with me?" Lisbeth asked, then she coughed. "Oh. I didn't know that. But she's so strange."

"Is she? Or are you just not used to such normal, boring people," Aldrich said, a smirk on his face. He'd had her figured out from the start: a blonde do-gooder, just good enough to not allow herself to hate a beastfolk without knowing them. A thousand stories had women like that as heroes, but he knew that it'd be best for her if she was hurt right now.

He couldn't tell Lisbeth this, but his plan was to catch her and burn her. Not all of her flesh, not anything that would keep her from living her life, but enough of an injury that she'd slink like a dog back to her village.

That arrogant child, threatening him, thwarting him, almost seducing Lisbeth! He couldn't let that go unchallenged!

"She's… I guess she is boring," Lisbeth said, uncertainly. Aldrich could imagine her biting her lip, doubting herself…

She needed more confidence and she needed more brutality if she was going to become a good Rat Piper.

"What's that smell, Master?" Lisbeth asked.

Rats, whether of the normal variety or rat people, indeed had good senses of smell. Of course, it didn't take that strong of a nose to smell the flammable oils he'd soaked so many rats in.

"It's how I'll defeat her. I've soaked certain rats so that they'll ignite like a bonfire when even a little flame touches them." He grinned. "Don't worry, Lisbeth, it's a few rats, and the results of this little trick will be the defeat of the farmer, of Lotte, and the completion of our just revenge. Then we shall go south."

"South?" Lisbeth asked.

"To get you your own Pipes, and enter the final stages of your training. Another year or two, if you can merely listen to what I say, and not let your feelings and compassion get in the way of doing what has to be done to maintain your pride. It's a harsh world out there," Aldrich said, overcome by passion as he walked through the forest.

If she didn't understand this, she'd die, and she'd be… she'd be no good to him, or to herself. "People are going to hate you because of what you are. They always will. They will hurt you, unless you are on guard, unless you repay every insult tenfold. Being nice will get you killed, and that's it." He let out a breath, paying no attention to the trail by this point. "A person stabs you, you kill them back. A person tries to kill you, you make them suffer. You have the skills to do it, and if you don't do it, someone else will first, you understand that Lisbeth?"

"R-right," Lisbeth said.

He turned, confused by just now nervous she sounded, as if she were terrified that he'd hurt her.

He was paying even less attention than before when he tripped over something and tumbled into mud. It wasn't mud that should have been there. It was a dry-as-bones day, even without the effort he'd put into preparing the ground!
***

Lotte had watered the area well, and helped cut the sticks so that they'd roll perfectly. She'd brought the lit candles she now sheltered as a way to perhaps trap Aldrich in his own scheme. Now, from a perch, she looked at the huge mass of rats and down at Aldrich, scrambling for his expensive looking pipe.

An arrow hit just inches past his hand, and he stopped, withdrawing it and calling out in song. But it seemed as if the rats were following it, up until Lisbeth took out her whistle and blew it once, twice, three shrill notes that sent many of the rats scurrying away.

"Surrender," Lotte said, as loud as she could manage without yelling. "Surrender and you won't be hurt."

"How dare you! How dare you turn my Lisbeth against me! If she's… if she's truly weak, then… La lah, lah…" he began humming, and Lisbeth's eyes seemed to lose something, her jaw growing slack as she leapt between Aldrich and Lotte. Lotte let her second loosed arrow hit the ground, unwilling to hurt her.

"You see… lalah de la… I trained this in her. It wasn't easy, but she's a rat-person, it affects her a little, and build it up, year by year, and I can control her if I...need. Run away now and I might not catch up to you, but you can't hit me without going through her first! She's… she's clearly been corrupted and tainted. I need to save myself. I'll just… let her take the fall. I… I won't like what you've forced me to do, Lotte!"

His voice grew stronger and weaker, as if even he wasn't sure of what he was doing. "You tore… you tore the girl that was like a daughter to me away from me." He picked up the pipe and began to stand up. "You hurt her. You made me unable to love her anymore. How. How dare you."

Lotte was a little like the grass beneath her. His words set her heart aflame. "How dare I? How dare you choke her, how dare you try to teach her to hate, how…"

But words weren't enough. She was seized with sudden, wild passion. She had to save Lisbeth from this, this… this vile man. So she did something that was probably stupid.

She leapt down onto the ground, discarding her bow and charging forward at top speed, eating up the ground as she shoved Lisbeth aside. "Lisbeth, wake up!"

Lisbeth hit the ground as Aldrich began to draw his sword, his pipes dropping once more.

Lotte wouldn't win a swordfight, even if she'd had more than a knife. So, she just tackled him, bearing him down to the ground and grabbing his arms to keep him from getting up. She wasn't that much smaller than him, and while he looked strong, she was strong as well, and they wrestled for supremacy in the mud.

"What's going…" Lisbeth said, sounding as if she'd woken up from a dream.

"Lisbeth, please!" Lotte called. "Grab the… ropes. Over by the tree."

"Lisbeth, she's lying to you!"

Lotte was winning, though her arms ached with the effort of holding him down in the mud, and there was no doubt going to be mud everywhere. She'd come prepared, and now it was paying off. It was a terrible feeling, struggling and scrambling in the dirt. But…

Lisbeth moved, to get the ropes.

"Thank you," Lotte said, as Lisbeth handed them over. It'd almost gone entirely wrong, and even now she was well aware that there was a lot of luck involved. But. She had him.

She began to tie him up, slowly and carefully, making sure the knots were neither too tight or too loose.

He was shouting, and cursing, and Lotte covered his mouth, holding it closed. "Please, a… I think I brought a cloth? If he can sing, he can control you again."

"Control me?" Lisbeth asked, sounding horrified. "I just thought I… drifted off. I do that sometimes. It's nice. But… but he was controlling me?"

"Yes. You… you reacted to the music as if you were a… a…"

"A rat," Lisbeth said, sounding miserable to have to say it. She looked down, as if suddenly terrified of Lotte, and her ears were perked up, her whiskers bristling in obvious anxiety. "So, what are we going to… what are you going to do?"

That was certainly a question (Choose 1)

[] Take his pipes, and all the goods he has, but then release him after that. On the one hand, even without all of that, he's still a Rat Piper and might come to get revenge, but it'd hurt him the least… and perhaps Lisbeth the least. Emotionally, that is.
[] Take him to the village with the accusations, to be tried (eventually) in a lords' court. But Lisbeth doesn't need to be involved. Part ways with her… and say goodbye, give her what she wants of the camp, and refuse to bring her up. On the one hand, that'd protect her and hopefully punish Aldrich, but if she does get brought up… there will perhaps be suspicions and aspersions cast her way. Then again… is she going to be back around here anytime soon?
[] Do the above… but take Lisbeth with you. She can testify as to his plans, yes, but just as importantly Lotte could emphasize that she's innocent of everything. At the same time… it'd put her at risk, in that drawing attention isn't a good thing, even if there's a good chance of it ending in some sort of vindication.

**

A/N: So, originally some of the problems that came up were going to be worse, but you chose not only the objectively best vote option of the ones proposed but one honestly rather better than anything I would have thought up if I were a voter?

 

[The Laurent]

Note: You May Have Missed 1:6 because of an error on SV. So if you're like, "What's going on" go back and read 1:6.


1:7

Lotte couldn't say for sure whether she was really that moral a person. Yes, she tried to follow the will of the Gods, and she tried not to cheat others, and she tried to provide for her family, but 'good' people in the stories did grand things that lit up the world around them. She knew she didn't do that, and she only sometimes felt bad for that fact. It was what it was. She tried her best, and her best wasn't particularly special: it wasn't hard to be honest, to be polite when she could, to do her duty as she saw fit. These were less matters of good or evil than… than just learning not to do something so terribly wrong that only a fool could…

All of this meant that she didn't deserve a choice, and the fact that she was tempted at all to make a choice, as if… as if. It was like being under the shade of a dead tree, that feeling in her guts. She'd won, she'd done all of that, but it didn't give her any special authority, didn't make her better than average, certainly didn't give her the right… didn't.

"No," Lotte said, trying to ignore the struggling man near her, muffled and tied up but still dangerous. "I will take him to the village so that they can charge him in the courts." She let out a long, slow breath. A sigh. She only realized in that moment how tense she was, how much the stress had been eating at her the whole time she'd prepared the ambush. "I will do that because it's the right thing to do, and I'm… I know the basic duties that… that everyone has to the world."

The Gods had duties to the world, and so did men, women, children. Everyone owed much. Everyday, ordinary decency was something that, just maybe, Lotte could manage, even feeling as she did now, like a bruise that would never heal, like a rotting carcass drawing flies.

Lisbeth was staring at her, but Lotte didn't let herself see whatever was in her eyes, in the set of her face, in her ears. She didn't want it.

"I… but I will not tell you what to do. I am not your Master or Liege, and even if I was, I wouldn't have any right to command you. I'm an eighteen year old peasant girl, nothing like an authority over right and wrong. You can do," Lotte said, reaching a hand out, almost touching Lisbeth's hands, which were trembling, "Whatever you want. You can come with me, to testify against him, or even to defend him, to accuse me of lying about it. You can flee, you could go into the village and see what they'd do, you could… I'll help you do whatever you want to do, other than freeing him. Even then, you could try to do that if you wanted." Lotte took a breath. "Please, don't do that. But it'd be me stopping you, not me forbidding you."

Lisbeth looked at her, and Lotte looked up to meet her eyes. Then she flinched away from the awe she saw there. Why? How? It wasn't deserved, either way.

"Oh," Lisbeth said, as soft as a prayer. Speaking of, Lotte would have a lot of prayers and offerings to give after this. "Then I want…"

They, all three of them, seemed to be waiting to hear it. Even Lisbeth seemed uncertain about what she truly wanted, but at last she spoke. "I want to leave. If… I'll take anything from the camp that you see fit to give me, but I want the pipes. I can't stand to go with him, to condemn him, save him, or neither. I can't face it, can't understand it, can't justify it." She looked back at the rats, what few of whom hadn't scattered in shock. They clearly had woken up themselves. She looked at them with soft, fond eyes that seemed to tell Lotte--indirectly--that everything was going to be okay.

Lotte hoped it was going to be.

*******

"You can keep all of them," Lotte said. "I don't need coin. That's not why I did this."

Lisbeth frowned, looking down at the pile of coins. They were in his campsite, and he was tied to a tree, unable to shout out, and blindfolded too. Even so, there was a feeling in the air, the knowledge that he was nearby.

It made Lotte feel like she was a bandit trying to split loot, more than anything else.

"Take one. Just one," Lisbeth said, holding up a silver coin. "To remember."

Lotte nodded, not quite willing to fight. She could use the coin, and it could be the brother of the first one, another memorial.

"Is there anything else you could want? Be honest," Lisbeth said.

"The cloth for the tent, but… you need it more," Lotte said. "Another knife, if he has one, just to make sure I have… spares." Lotte bit her lip. "That's it."

"What about his clothes?" Lisbeth asked.

Lotte suddenly felt as if she were trapped, as if her leg must have fallen into some sort of snare. She didn't even know why she felt like that, just that there was a chill down her spine. "What about them?"

"I was just thinking, you probably won't be as reminded of him, and they are nice clothes. You could have them done in for cloth, and make something nice to wear."

Lotte relaxed, though she again didn't know why she'd tensed up at all. She glanced through the clothes, while Lisbeth looked at the notes Aldrich had brought along, and the little trinkets, and then at the bottom of the pack, a few small gems that looked remarkably valuable.

"Oh, Aldrich," Lotte said. "Security?"

Security against what? Famine, perhaps, or a long run of bad luck. He hadn't needed the money here at all, not really.

Lotte didn't know how to process it, the way that a person could be so many things to one person, and yet also so terrible. The clothes were nice, and out of curiosity, Lotte slipped one of his shirts on, shifted so that her chest was less visible, squared her shoulders, and stood there for a moment.

"You know, it doesn't quite fit you, but you're a very big person," Lisbeth said.

Lotte had the presence of mind to smile, and even asked, "Or are you small?"

Lisbeth snorted, and went about her business. Lotte helped Lisbeth pack up, and Lisbeth gave a small bag to hold the clothes in, so that she could take them with her when she was bringing Aldrich to justice.

Finally, she stepped up in front of Lotte. "You know, yeah, the shirt… huh. It's easy to forget whose shirt it is, when you're in it."

"What?" Lotte asked.

Lisbeth stepped a little closer and whispered. "Master Aldrich said you were sweet on me. Are you?"

"He's not your Master anymore. You've… you've become a journeywoman," Lotte said, hoping to distract her. Hoping, even, to get into some sort of strange argument. She was standing there with clothes, a coin, and a knife in a bag. She'd done a lot and risked a lot, and at the moment that payment seemed far more than enough.

It even seemed generous, by the wounds of the Gods.

"Lotte, could you please answer?" Lisbeth asked. Her eyes were wide, her whiskers twitching. "It isn't easy for me to ask, you must know that."

"...perhaps a little bit, yes," Lotte admitted, quietly. The words had to force themselves out of her throat.

"It might be awhile before I see you again," Lisbeth admitted, looking up at Lotte, stepping even closer. But she moved slowly, as if Lotte were an animal that would spook easily.

Lotte frowned, looking at Lisbeth, head tilted downward.

"It will be, but I plan on seeing you again, someday. It can't be now, I need to go on the road, I need to prove that I can be a Rat Piper, even without Aldrich around to… to help me." Lisbeth whispered it. "And he really did help me, whatever else he also did."

"I'm not going to argue with you," Lotte said. She wasn't sure she agreed, but she also knew she didn't know enough about him.

"Good. Very good. I'm not going to see you for a while, but I will see you again, and I will miss you, I think. I can't know for sure," Lisbeth admitted, her ears carefully unmoving. As if she were fighting emotions. "But I can't imagine not missing you, and I can't imagine not being grateful to you, and all you've done. You could have easily hated me, easily fought Aldrich to the death. You did neither. You're the best person I know."

"I'm not," Lotte said, feeling her heart race as Lisbeth leaned up a little.

"You are, and I'd like to kiss you, just once. Before we part ways."

"I--"

Lotte looked down at her lips. They were soft and thin, pursed now into the ghost of a smile. But it wasn't hard to read Lisbeth, not really. Not now.

"Yes," Lotte confessed, feeling the tension go out of them as Lisbeth reached up and grabbed onto her shirt… Aldrich's shirt, that is. She tugged on it, her tail wrapping without thinking around Lotte's ankle as she leaped up.

They met in the middle, and it was… probably not the best first kiss on all of recorded history. No, Lotte couldn't get the angle quite right at first, and it was a little awkward, having the whiskers tickling at her chin. But then she leaned into it, a little more, and Lisbeth wrapped her other hand around Lotte's shoulder. The kiss continued, and they broke for a moment, panting.

Lotte felt fire roaring through her veins, higher and higher, her arousal almost stunning her. She usually wasn't this… it was hard, she didn't, she was--

Her thoughts were a chaotic muddle of pleasant feelings (her arm feels so nice, her fingers feel nice tugging at her shirt, I feel so warm, I feel okay), strange feelings (should be kissing her harder, why am I not, what am I), and even a few unpleasant (why am I not feeling wrong, shouldn't there be a moment, where…).

They made no sense, even to herself, but she lost herself in the second, and then the third kiss. But she pulled away before the fourth. She wasn't the best kisser, but… from the look on Lisbeth's face, she'd appreciate it too. Lisbeth looked flushed, her face red, her eyes blown wide, and Lotte had to keep from leaning in.

The fire in her belly had spread, and if she didn't stop, she had a feeling they'd do more than kiss. She didn't want that. There was no holy law (at least in the Gods Lotte knew), but it was custom to… try to keep such things to a minimum before marriage. Though that had far more to do with children than anything else.

But there was a growing sour feeling in her belly, to fight the… the lust. "No," Lotte said. "Aldrich is… he's listening."

Lisbeth paled. "Oh."

That wasn't the reason, not really, but now that she was thinking of it, that was weird, even if he might not be able to hear that much.

"Yes," Lotte said.

"I liked kissing you."

"I did too," Lotte admitted, with a flush. She wanted to do more than that, and not in the way they'd about to do. When she thought of it, she thought of romance, of going to harvest festivals together, of working close together, of paying a visit to her house… but then again, Lotte was an adventurer and Lisbeth was a wanderer.

How would that even work?

"I should go. But you should take some of the notes. I found the ones on fire rats. I won't be using it. And there's other bits of evidence of his fire plan."

"I will," Lotte said.

"Good luck, and may the Gods be with you," Lisbeth said. "I am glad I got to meet you."

"I'm… not that special… but I'm glad I got to meet you, too."

She was glad, too, that she'd learned something. How long would she have gone making wrong assumptions about Beastfolk?

Lisbeth smiled.

"Hey, may I ask: what do you plan on doing?"

"I'm going to be a real Rat Piper. I'll keep my prices as low as the fellowship will allow, and see if I can do it on my own."

"There's a fellowship?" Lotte asked. "Not a guild?"

"Rat Pipers are too independent. It'd be like an adventurers' guild," Lisbeth said.

Lotte nodded.

Today seemed to be a day for learning all sorts of new things, good and bad.

*******

They talked about it for months afterwards, and then stopped for a time, before restarting with even greater fervency. The way, in late afternoon, a girl some of them had seen around stepped out of the forest, Aldrich the Piper tied up and well in hand, wearing two shirts, one of them surprisingly nice. Her shoulders were straight, and even those who had seen her before had never noted just how tall she was. It was as if she were on parade, as if something had stiffened her spine. Every so often she'd stop, brushing down her overshirt with rather more care than expected.

This archer, this tall woman, looked so strange, moving with confidence. Aldrich tried to escape twice, but was caught instantly, tugged back.

It was only her hair, and her features, that even told her as much of a girl, obscured as she was by the second shirt, and the air of martial grandeur.

Afterwards they told stories of how she must have fought against impossible odds to triumph unharmed, but at the time they just noted how unmarked either of them were, other than a few tiny bruises, and a good deal of mud and dirt.

Stories, later, took out the mud and dirt, and changed many other details. It was first told accurately, though, by people in taverns, and then by men to their wives. Sure, a few details weren't correct, but did that matter? They caught the essence of it.

They caught the new Adventurer Lotte as she walked into the town center. They gathered, curious, those that could--which were few enough--abandoning their work to see what was happening.

(In retellings, the entire village was of course there, and perhaps people the next village over as well.)

She straightened up and announced, to all assembled. "I have captured Aldrich the Rat Piper in the act of ambushing me, and of plotting arson upon Friedrich and Hilda. As a freeholder under the Lord of these lands, I make this arrest, and ask all to hear the evidence I have, and ask aid that he be held and the Lord contacted."

The Lord, of course, would have dungeons for holding those accused of serious crimes, the kinds of outsiders that couldn't be kept on threat of village disapproval and little else.

She looked around as the headman came forward, gaping, but--or so the stories said--very impressed.

"He also comittted trespass by magic," Lotte said, after a quiet pause that they all interpreted as wise years later, and awkward days later.

"Of course, honorable Lotte, right this way…"

End of Chapter 1

******

Adventure XP!

Successfully Completing an Adventure: 2 XP
Completion with Style: 1 XP
Fight with Aldrich: 1 XP
As a Hunter, did you bring the wild's bounty back to your people? Did you protect someone or do the right thing?: Yes. Yes he did: 2XP
=
6/10 XP to Level 2

******

A/N: And thus ends the first adventure. Flip your holy books to Chapter 2, Verse 1 of the Book of Lotte next week!

 

[The Laurent]

2:1

Lotte had to stay for far longer than she expected, in order to give her statements not merely by telling others, but by giving oral testimony in a court of law. The local Lord turned out to be a Lady, short and slight of build, who turned over the court to a magistrate and then sat and watched. She didn't look bored, though she also had the sort of face, long and somber, which could look serious and attentive at all times. It could be a front for any sort of boredom, but Lotte would like to believe that she was interested in justice and punishment on her lands. Lady Gwenilde was certainly an imposing person to speak in front of when explaining her testimony, but Lotte managed not to stumble too much on what she was saying. It was just repeating the truth, but she was asked plenty of questions, and even made to present the documents from Aldrich. Luckily they didn't ask her to read them.

Lotte could read, but not well, and so they assumed she was illiterate. It was par for the course, and she had had every opportunity to read and yet lacked the intellectual rigor to read more than a little. There were dozens of illiterate people in her old village who, if given the opportunity, would have used it better than she had.

She did, once having been presented with her testimony, declare that it was accurate upon it being read back to her, and she signed her name clumsily, with the concentration of someone chiseling holy writ in a tablet--but with far less profundity.

Lotte the adventurer was what she wrote, of Valwald. Hopefully that would be enough to find her.

Aldrich was sentenced to be branded, whipped, and imprisoned. If he was found to attempt such offenses or any others--and all would know because of the brand, which burned with priestly magic and could not be hidden--he would lose his tongue. If he succeeded, of course, he would be executed. Only his failure saved his life. All would know, wherever he went, that here was a man who had tried to kill, who only failure had spared in any capacity. He, and his reputation, would be ruined.

It was cruel in a way. But Lotte couldn't find it in herself to declare it unjust, not when Aldrich was unrepentant and denying the facts all the way to the sentencing.

The only thing she was truly annoyed by was the week-long wait. The trial took several sessions, introducing the evidence, the first and second day of testimony, and then the sentencing. She spent a week hovering around an impressive looking castle. It was as tall as three people, and while Lotte had heard people say that their region was poor and its castles not much, how could it be when they were that big? Unless castles elsewhere were even bigger.

As it was, Lotte stayed around the area and earned her keep hunting for the Lady, who had a real preference for rabbits and birds, small things to make delicate dishes. She had a huntsman, and other such men, but they were all preparing for a feast. Her husband, a bastard warrior whose father had been about the rank of her father, was coming back from some tournament, all this way.

Lotte was told this, and other gossip--most of it the sort that slipped out of your brain the same way an average day of hunting did compared to the days of plenty or the frustrating days when you just can't quite find anything--by the maids who went down into the village because the castle was not large enough for all of them. The village was where Lotte stayed, and when she went to the alewife for evening socializing they talked to her like they would any other woman.

Of household mistakes and gossips and slanders, of the love between the Lady and her husband, yes, but also her emotional distance, the way she doted on guests as if she was annoyed at her husband's journeys. Lotte wasn't sure she liked it, and weirdly she appreciated the way that even the one girl who'd smiled and been friendly had acted differently in the castle, the two times she'd shown up with birds for the Lady's table. Maybe it was the blood, or maybe it was the act itself, but they looked at her as they would one of the men, which was to say that Lotte felt…

Suspicion?

Lotte wasn't sure of a lot of things, that week she waited, the week she was barely an adventurer at all. The only good news is, perhaps it was the stress, perhaps the fatty food or the hours of not eating between it, but her monthlies didn't come, as inconsistent as ever. That at least was a relief, since it would have interfered with at least some of the proceedings. So she was able to pray as best she could, and make offerings. Some were voluntarily, but some, like to Bluthund were compelled. They loved blood and punishment. They tormented the guilty and upheld the righteous, and licked the wounds from the backs of those punished justly for crimes. As a God, they of course knew which was which. It wasn't a deity that Lotte had ever seen any particular need to worship, not when there were other gods' who seemed to demand less bloodshed. Lotte had had to cut her hand to put her bloody seal on the testimony she'd made.

It didn't escape her that she'd bled more in the process of the trial than she had in defeating Aldrich.

But she endured, and soon enough something like justice had been served, and she moved on gratefully.

******

At last she could see fresh things with new eyes. She could stare at a long, wide river that she was passing by, watching the fish bob up and down, silvery and red and gold flashes on clear waters. It was beautiful, and Lotte regretted that she didn't fish, at least not with any particular skill. She liked water, and baths, but was hardly going to just dip in the river, so she watched it for a while and then moved on, eyes always scanning for both birds and ambushes.

She found the former but not the latter, and she wished she knew all their names. But she knew some, and knew what their meat tasted of, what their habits were, where they went (or didn't) in the dead of winter.

There was nothing new, to be honest, but there were variations on the old, different patterns of feathers and colors.

Lotte felt blessed by the Gods to be able to see such beauty. It was a lovely spring, the kind of spring that would be talked about for years to come, Lotte thought, in the way villagers did when they had nothing else to talk about. The spring when I was married, the spring when my father died, it'd be transformed as the world was constantly by the ebb and flow of life. The population of one sort of animal increased, and another sort decreased, the winter was too harsh and many animals that should have survived died, there was a forest fire, and the cycle of forest life continued…

Humans weren't that different. From Lotte's experiences, neither were beastfolk.

She thought about such things a lot better when there was an open road ahead of her, and while she could hardly like being tired and sore, she liked what she felt it told her, that she was hard working, that she was doing something with herself. Though she didn't see any trouble, the week that she went east along the winding roads past forests and plains, across streams and rivers, she made sure to hunt enough to keep her practice up. She'd have to do better in the future, be better, because Aldrich was just one man, as dangerous as he could be, harassing a single family.

Lotte would face greater dangers in the future, and when she did she'd have to be ready.

But that seemed so far off when she was traveling that she didn't dwell long on it. No, instead she let the road carry her, and let her heart sing with the first taste of adventure, now that she was on her way. She sometimes put on Aldrich's shirts, an extra layer the one evening it rained, and found herself untroubled that they were his, compared to the way they reminded her of her triumph.

She cooked her food carefully, checked all water down-river from a town, as she'd been told, and eventually made it to Lannheim, the largest town in the region.

It daunted her, and stunned her. It sprawled so much that, on the hill overlooking it--a hill with its own wooden watchtower, currently manned--there were two sets of walls, one half-crumbled but barely visible in the center of the town, as if it had been but a womb for some larger, sprawling beast. She could smell smoke, and animal dung, piss and refuse and shit and yet also steel, food, beer--

There was very little she couldn't see in the chaotic sprawl of the town, as she walked down towards it. It was large enough to swallow someone up, and she went through the front gate uncertainly, glancing at the cobbles on the street up towards the heart of the town. It all made her feel very, very small, just another visitor walking through a town in the harsh light of late afternoon.

There wasn't long before she'd have to find an inn. She intended to find a tavern, but staying at one would be foolish. They were not, or so she'd been told, always the safest places for new adventurers, especially women. There were taverns, in larger towns, for women, sometimes. They catered to those not interested in… male company. Lotte remembered Lisbeth's kiss, uncertainly, and yet also remembered how Arndt had looked in his shirt, shoulders tight after a long day. She could perhaps go to such a place, one day. But right now Lotte needed to find the biggest--not the most grand, the biggest--tavern in the town and head in. Her mother's advice should be followed, in such a case.

It took some questioning, but Lotte had a polite smile and seemed in earnest, and so she found her way to the Boar's Head, which was near the town center. It was a huge, noisy building, two stories tall, the second devoted to places to sleep. She tried not to look as nervous as she felt as she walked through the door, which slammed behind her. She also ignored the mud, feces, and food that caked the floor beneath the rushes. Her mother had told her that taverns were filthy places, and it smelled far worse than she expected, but that didn't matter. She'd been around animals all the time, and they were hardly clean.

Men were gathered here and there, with a few chairs sat out and a single table. That meant that most people stood and drank, and spilled a lot on the floor, of course. But it truly was huge, with a central area that could have fit a field in it. In the corner, standing up on a barrel, was a River Sepult woman, playing a tune on a fiddle. She was singing to it, though her voice was rough.

There was the tavernmaster behind his bar, with the barrels of beer. He was a big man, thickset in the way of someone well into his forties and never active, and he looked at her as she approached. "So, girlie, what's your drink?"

She wasn't the only woman in the tavern, actually, and those that were there were unevenly divided between local girls who seemed to look at the scene with distaste, women who wore the sash of prostitutes, and harsh, strong looking women who might well have been adventurers, or at least entirely willing to swap jokes and drinks with men without looking as if they particularly were enamored with them, the way some local girls tried to look.

"Whatever beer's cheapest," Lotte said, trying to sound like she knew what she was doing. "And…"

She'd waited so long to ask a tavern-keeper this, had heard it so many times in stories.

"Anyone around here looking for an adventurer?"

One of the 'jobs' draws her eyes. But which one?

[] A minor nobleman's son has been attacked by some sort of monster, and seeks aid in hunting it down and either capturing it or killing it. They're some ways away, but they've sent out the call far and wide, though this might well mean competition for the job.
[] A merchant would like to make a journey some way's south, and he's asked for at least two or three brave adventurers willing to escort his goods, which he feels might be vulnerable to a bandit group that has taken up residence along the roads.
[] Disaster! Somewhat to the north, a holy shrine to a martyr has been ransacked, and the goods stolen and taken deep into the wilderness of the so-called Roterwald. Now they need a team of adventurers to track down the goods and bring them back.

*******

A/N: So!

 

[The Laurent]

2:2

It was an outrage, and one that Lotte had to answer as a believer, especially since she knew, before even being told, which martyr it was. Ingeld had lived five-hundred years before, during the Great Troubles, and when his Duchy was threatened by a marauding band of mercenaries, criminals, and monsters, he stepped up to lead a guerrilla campaign that had protected the shrines of several Gods and had kept the peasants safe. A man who'd come out of the strange, dark woods of his home, and saved everyone, and then died towards the end of the war. Lotte's mother had once said that perhaps it was for the best, for he was a protector of the priests and the peasants, and while he had no grudge against nobility, neither had he seemed to think that they were any more important than the peasants. Such an attitude might have soured… considering he'd had a dedicated army at his back. It wasn't something she liked to think about.

Lotte didn't know if she shared her mothers' cynicism. Yes, nobles could sometimes be proud, but surely not so much as that…

Either way, he'd died in the last battle, defending a very important shrine, and after several visions from different Gods praising him, priests had pushed to have a martyrs' shrine built for him. And so it had been built, and existed untouched to this day, so great was the respect for this pious woodsman.

Until recently, that is.

Lotte had always liked to think that, in her own small. humble way, she could imitate Ingeld's fundamental goodness, the greatness of spirit that the stories always gave him. But this was the idle daydream of some farm girl. Still, when she'd heard about the thefts, she couldn't imagine not doing something about it. It didn't hurt that the bartender had mentioned that the martyr's shrine had sent the message that the pay would be equal to the task. Of course, they'd also petitioned various heroes far and wide, and if it wasn't recovered in a week or two, Lotte would have competition from heroes famous across all of Vikalean, at least in theory. But for the moment, they were reaching out to locals, in the hopes that this could be swifty resolved, and without the attention that more famous and skilled adventurers would bring.

Still, Lotte had very little time if she wanted to make it in time, for they had given a deadline of the next Holy Day, which would be the--she struggled for a moment to remember its name-- Feast of the Martyr Andreas of Calorn, though it wasn't much celebrated in the North.

Lotte didn't question how the man had known so much about the Feasts, since very few of them were celebrated in her village. There were other concerns, and the Gods themselves took enough time. Some were noted, of course, and the most major ones celebrated when there was time between one labor after enough.

It kept one humble, never truly running out of work, for all that Lotte shied away from the humility that housework would have brought. She'd watched the way her mother's work, just as her father's, never ended. It just renewed itself once the long day was done.

But she did know that it wasn't a lot of time, and so she hurried off right after it, and took to the road until the moon was high in the sky, and then set up her tent and slipped off to sleep, hoping she'd wake up if there were bandits. The dark of the night was a dangerous time to be out anywhere, but she couldn't afford to sleep as soon as the sun climbed down from its perch.

Then the next morning she continued at her pace, wishing she had the coin necessary and the skills required to ride a horse. It'd have certainly helped her, though she was a steady walker, the sort who could go in one direction for hours on end without slowing at all. The roads were bad, and at places muddy, but she forged onward, having no time to waste with cleaning up, not yet. Perhaps there'd be time, since she was sure there was a village near the martyr's shrine.

She made excellent time, by which it was to be admitted that she barely made it in time. She came into the somewhat small village overlooked on a lightly wooded hill, within which was the shrine itself, not particularly concealed by nature.

The village itself was lovely, clearly prosperous, its houses well-made and its people comparably well-fed. Lotte looked in admiration at the village as she walked through, getting many stares from people who no doubt wondered who this woman was. She had her bow on her back, unstrung, and her pack might have marked her as an adventurer, but she was like no story.

She was rougher and more worn, and she looked more like an itinerant than a hero, but there was a broad smile on her face as she took in the sights. A pig, wandering free, came up to her and snorted at her, looking her up and down. Lotte stepped aside to let it pass, wondering if there were any dogs. There were few enough in her home village, and while she knew that she didn't have that long, she did have long enough to slow and watch the village life.

At least until one of the women came up and approached her. "Traveler, are you an adventurer?" the girl asked. She was dark-haired, short and built like a bundle of sticks, but with wide, soft looking eyes.

"Yes."

"Then you want to follow me, if you're staying for the night to go up to the shrine tomorrow. The other adventurers have already come, and are staying at the local inn for pilgrims," she said, with a simple nod. "We are honored to have you here in our village." She gave a curtsy that looked like something out of a story. "I am Olinda, daughter of the local headman, the famed former warrior Paldrich the Bold. My father, in the interests of piety, has put up for all adventurers at the inn, with no charge. Though…"

She trailed off, looking Lotte up and down. "You are rougher than the other three."

"The other three?" Lotte asked, carefully. "May I ask who they are?"

"Well, one of them is a Sepult woman, a Speaker for the Ancestors, named Clemencia. Then there's Guilliam of Etone, he's a troubadour." She flushed, eyes going a bit wide. "A charming man, though I don't know how much to trust him. And of course, a nearby noble warrior, who has been Knighted in the west, Sir Oscar of Guttenvald. He's well known for his piety and bravery. Which brings me to ask, who are you?"

She smiled as she said it, but Lotte had the distinct feeling that she was being tested, given distant targets and told to aim for them. "My name is Lotte, and I was a hunter, and am now an adventurer. This will be only my second adventure, if I am accepted, but when I heard that a shrine had been desecrated, I had to do something. And I felt that since I knew something about navigating forests, I might be able to help." She took a breath, smiling a little. "I'm aware that I'm less experienced than some of the people who have come, but I hope I can contribute in my way."

Olinda smiled broadly at that. "It is true that someone to help navigate would help, and humility is a virtue indeed. I have always been much guided by Oshenkaron."

Oshenkaron, the ox-headed God who carried other Gods in the back of his cart, who labored and worked for others not because he was inferior, but because he was best at these tasks. It was said that one of the stages that the dead went through was a ride on his cart. He asked them about their accomplishments, and tested their souls for lies, for bragging and boasting beyond what one's deeds could justify.

Lotte had occasionally given tribute to him, but had felt a little strange about it, since she certainly didn't stick to her assigned place the way people said Oshenkaron liked. But she had laid out a few bits of animal skin in the back of one of the Oshenkarts that his priests sometimes sent around, to gather materials for the neediest.

Lotte returned her smile and said, "It is sensible."

"I do have one question," Olinda asked.

"Yes?" Lotte asked.

"Isn't Lotte a woman's name?" Olinda asked.

"I, uh." Lotte coughed a little. It was true that wearing Aldrich's shirt, and in rough clothes, spackled with mud and otherwise worn from work, she didn't seem nearly so much of a woman as Olinda in front of her. For some reason that didn't trouble her much, and so she took a deep breath. "I am a woman."

"Oh! Oh. I'm sorry, I merely looked at your hair and assumed." She looked Lotte up and down, and her face got even more red. "We should go to the inn. It is quite nice, and my father is paying for your stay tonight. It's an act of piety for our greatest hero."

Lotte didn't know how to feel about being mistaken, and so she tried to ignore it was they walked over towards the inn, which was… remarkable.

The walls were good, strong wood, and the whole structure, with two large floors, looked almost like a palace in miniature. Lotte knew that she was perhaps exaggerating, but compared to the tavern she'd been at, this was something else. And inside it didn't stink that badly, in part because the candles seemed to be burning some mild incense, and the floors were wooden boards. In fact, there were tables, chairs, and even dark benches in the corner, away from the unlit fireplace.

The walls were whitewashed, and behind the bar was a thickset middle-aged woman, and other girls, barmaids or perhaps prostitutes, brought drinks to rowdy men and women both. This was nothing like what she'd experienced before, and shrine business had to have been why everything was so nice.

"Hey, we have a fourth," a male voice said, melodic and lovely, from behind them. Lotte turned to spy a man in hose, breeches, and a tunic, all of which were brightly colored, with the hose especially showing signs that he must have changed in it before he went on the road. He was a slim, willow-tree of a man, but with a sharp nose, silky dark hair, bright green eyes, and a grin that showed off remarkably good teeth. "I am Guilliam of Etone, and you? You must be a huntress, or perhaps a dweller of the nearby forest?" He was looking at the mud on her boots and legs, though not with contempt so much as with surprise. Though he also didn't say 'huntress' and instead said 'untress.'

"Yes, I am," Lotte said. "My name is Lotte."

"Ah, good, good, so the other adventurers are down here too. First, there's that Sepult Speaker. A sharp woman, sharp tongued, sharp-minded. Her beard isn't sharp at least, but she's been winning for an hour." He pointed over to where there was a game going, with four players around a table. One of them, sitting on a large cushion, was a Sepult, the first Lotte had ever seen. She had a dark-brown beard, which looked oily and smooth, and ended in a curl like a ringlet of hair. The hair on her head was even longer than at her front, and went down the back of her head and halfway down her back in tresses, elaborate braids and twists that made Lotte wince just to think of how hard it must be to maintain. The woman herself was dressed in blue and red robes, and her face was obscured somewhat by the beard and the beer mug, as well as the cards she held close to her face. All that could be seen were eyes that looked like they might be flint grey.

"Oh," Lotte said, awfully intimidated.

"Let's go bother her!" Guilliam said, and gestured for Lotte to follow him.

Clemencia set down the stein of beer, delicately wiped her mouth with the cloth, and then played down a black card, decarling. "A trump. And a fool." She glanced up at Guilliam. "A fool and… his friend?"

"I'd like to introduce you to Lotte. She'll be the fourth player in our little game," Guilliam said, ignoring the glares of the other players, who no doubt were wanting to continue the real game.

Clemencia looked Lotte up and down, and then whistled. "You're more solid than most manlings, that's true. And a bow? Not a Sepult weapon indeed. I suppose we will get along, as long as you are not too big of a fool, like this one. Now--"

"You're cheating!" a big, dark-haired man declared. "Using your magic to cheat!"

"My magic does not work that way. Also, it is my religion," Clemencia. "Do you think I would defile it simply to win money from manlings who don't know how to play cards?"

"How dare you--"

"Yeah, we're stepping away from this mess before it starts," Guilliam said. "This way. Right by the fireplace. Oscar's changed out of the armor, at least."

Oscar wasn't as big as Lotte expected. In fact, he looked like he might be a little shorter than her, with blond hair and blue eyes, but a face that looked like someone had beaten him time and time again. He was thick with the muscle of a well-trained man, but he was too tense, the kind of tense that in an archer would have been disastrous. You couldn't fight while you were a bundle of nerves, Lotte decided.

"What does the blasphemer want?" Oscar asked, not even looking up. "I'm in no mood to listen to heresy right now. I was praying."

"O… kay. Maybe I should just… leave you two…" Guilliam began.

"Two?" Oscar looked up, taking in Lotte. "Ah. And who are you?"

"Lotte, I'm an adventurer," Lotte said, earnestly.

"Do you at least hold the Gods in your heart?"

"Yes, as many as I know," Lotte said.

"Then I suppose you are an acceptable companion on this quest." He looked her up and down. "A brave peasant and hunter who knows these woods?"

Lotte said, "I am from nearby, but not quite these woods. But I know how to make my way through the wilderness, and I know how to track others."

"Ah, very well." Oscar nodded. "This shall aid our endeavor."

But then he said nothing else, which was quite awkward.

What to do? (Choose 1)

[] Go over to Guilliam, who is carousing, dancing, and singing. Perhaps join in. He's strange, and the talk of him being a heretic is unnerving, but he seems fun enough.
[] Clemencia is winning at cards, again and again. Watch for a while, and perhaps once she's done, Lotte could talk to her a little. She's never met a Sepult, after all!
[] Oscar is clearly private and closed in, but perhaps Lotte could lure him out with talk of religion, and the task at hand.

******

A/N: Meet your first adventurer's party! A Speaker, a Troubadour, and a Knight.

Also, I had this done on Saturday, but what with the Council Nom QA Session, I just forgot about it.

 

[The Laurent]

2:3

"Good," Lotte said. "I will go to talk to the Sepult."

"Very good," Oscar said, eyes distant as if seeing something that wasn't there at all.

Lotte, however, didn't want to distract her, which meant that she had to watch the game until there was a chance to say hello. That meant that Lotte leaned against a wall and watched a game she didn't understand. It seemed to use a local deck, in that there were four suits: Shields, Flowers, Bells, Acorns. The game seemed to have two teams, though they switched around often enough that all three complained of the money they lost to Clemencia. They seemed to lay down cards by suit, and there were phases of betting, and then laying down of cards, again and again, until at some point, for reasons she didn't understand, one of them took the 'trick' and then played through again.

It made her head hurt, just to watch it. But she still watched, all the way until one of the players stood up and stormed away, yelling, "I've had enough of this!"

"Oh, it seems as if we're down a person," Clemencia said, with a frown. "Ah, the human there should do."

"I can't afford to lose anything else," a big, bearded man said.

"Then we shall play for fun, if that is what you wish," Clemencia said. "I have won more than enough." The Sepult smiled, though it was a sharp smile and certainly didn't reach her eyes. "So, what about it, archer? Would you like to play?"

"I don't know how," Lotte admitted.

"I can teach you, fool of a Manling," Clemenica said. Despite her words, she didn't sound particularly angry or dismissive of her. Lotte nodded, but only since it was for fun, rather than for coin. She couldn't afford to gamble, not if she wanted to have coins to spare. She'd been saving quite a lot by camping outside most nights, but sooner or later she'd have to either make money at a job or she'd run out of coins.

Yes, this mission would likely pay decently, but only if she succeeded, and she didn't want to bet on that. Lotte also knew that if it came down to it, and she was desperate and heartbroken and wanted to return home, she'd need the coin to do so.

Lotte didn't want to plan for failure, but then again she was getting into a card game with three experienced card-sharps. Perhaps it was a sort of practice the Gods wanted her to have.

Lotte had thought she would be terrible. She was wrong. Terrible was a rather understated description. By the end of the hour she almost knew the rules, but she'd also lost time and time again. There was the King, Overlord, Underlord (a rather sketchy looking Sepult in each of the pictures) and then numbers from seven to two. But the numbers had different 'effects' depending on when they were played, with seven, The Greatest Enemy (which depicted a gilded mirror, with the suit, such as a shield, around the edge), beating all if it came first, but none if it came anytime after that. She also didn't know how to read others movements, and part of the game was holding back certain cards for the right time. Suited to the starting card beat unsuited, and there were yet other rules.

But there was one rule she knew she'd remember: Clemencia almost always won. Even when she lost, it was just a single trick before winning the next three. Against anyone, in any situation, Clemencia won. It gave Lotte a chance to observe the other woman a lot, since there was less stress on her part when she knew she was going to lose.

Lotte never would have said that a beard could be feminine, but Clemencia's was braided carefully and colorfully, and it looked like it'd be impossibly smooth to the touch. There was also the smell coming off of her.Nobles, both men and women, wore perfumes, that much Lotte had heard. But the floral scent, strong and yet not overpowering, still made her think of that beard as a woman's beard. Clemencia herself was fierce, strong, and seemed to hold the world in contempt.

Perhaps she just didn't like humans?

She treated Lotte well enough, or rather she hadn't been cruel, which was more than could be said for the other two. When they finally stalked off, frustrated as could be, Clemencia turned and smiled. It was quite a smile, and she said, "Not bad for a Manling."

"I lost quite a bit," Lotte admitted.

"No, the fact that you kept on playing. You were terrible, but you kept it up. It's interesting. You're interesting, Manl… Lotte. So, why did you come over here?"

"I've never met a Sepult before," Lotte admitted. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"Ah, so what did you want to know? Question about beards? Or what about weapons? Or--"

"Speakers. Religion," Lotte said, firmly. "I wanted to know what being a Speaker meant."

"As a member of an adventuring party? Or as a religion?"

"Both." Lotte nodded, looking around at the crowded, noisy, stinking room. "Though, I admit this isn't a very quiet place to talk about theology."

"Is theology supposed to be quiet?" Clemencia asked.

Lotte blushed, because of course she was right. The Gods weren't for silent groves and airless rooms. They were for and of the world. "So, what are your beliefs?"

"Beliefs? It's a reality, in a way. Our ancestors, stretching back from before the Empire ended, are just at our reach. We venerate them, we honor their ghosts, their spirits, and their memories. In exchange, they bless us." She leaned in. "One of my ancestors was a card sharp, so I'm borrowing her skills." She said it quietly, and Lotte thought that was almost a little bit like the cheating she was accused of.

"Ah. What else can you do?"

"I can give myself the skills of a warrior, but the ghosts can also hold others, push them away, keep them at a distance. And with the vigor of the ghosts, of our ancestors, I can endure much. We are a robbed people. We have lost much, but if we let go of our ways, then all else is lost. It is my job to keep to the ways. It is not always easy."

Lotte nodded.

"The ways don't involve cards. But you learn so much about how we once lived, how we once thought. It's not so easy as it looks at first. I'm young still, and there's more time to figure out who I want to be." Clemencia laughed, soft and almost scorning. "I'm not doomed to quick death like you, human. I could live centuries."

Lotte nodded. "I've heard that. But what matters is finding your path, isn't it?"

"You're young, aren't you?" Clemencia asked.

"Yes. How old are you?"

"Thirty-five," Clemecia said. Lotte barely managed not to gape at that, the idea that someone could be almost twice her age and still consider herself young. Perhaps the Sepult had a point, though she'd heard many stories of their cruelty and arrogance, of the way they had treated all humans besides the few they chose as equals like they were so many flies buzzing around a carcass. Of course, those were all stories, and she thought about what people she'd known had said about Beastfolk.

This of course made her think of Lisbeth, and the softness of her lips, the scent of her skin, the warmth of her body against Lotte, even for those few moments.

"Coin for your thoughts, Manling? You're the least useless of them so far, if you're trying to get to know me," Clemencia said. "How many parties have you been part of?"

"None before this. But I know that getting along is important."

"Can be, can be," Clemencia groused. "I use magic, but I get up close, control things. That Troubadour, stupid and useless as he is, can stay back and work with you, like a magical archer. That leaves Oscar to stick with me."

Lotte blinked. It was true that that made sense, but it seemed as if it'd help if Lotte knew more about what each of them could really do. But there was no way to go around and ask everyone, not without introducing on their days. "Do you still want to hear my thoughts, ma'am?"

"Ma'am? And yes."

"The people of my village say a lot of cruel things about Sepult, but they also said cruel things about Beastfolk, and yet the only one I've ever met was a good person," Lotte said.

"There's something to be said about broad judgements, manling," Clemencia. "Humans are so petty-minded."

Something about that sentence wasn't quite right, but Lotte couldn't put her finger on it, so she nodded. "How long have you spent mostly among humans?" Lotte asked.

"I left my clanhold almost a year ago, and have been adventuring since," Clemencia said. "I'll probably return by the time I'm fifty or sixty, to learn more that cannot be learned merely by experience."

Lotte's eyes were wide. "How long do Sepult tend to live?"

"If violence or disease doesn't take me, I can expect to reach at least two-hundred and fifty, and might well reach three-hundred." Clemencia nodded to herself, as if satisfied by that fact.

Lotte, meanwhile, was bowled over. Eighteen years seemed to have lasted forever for Lotte, so imagining it stretching on that much longer… but she supposed it was about what one was used to. "What else have you noticed about people?"

"Well, you all look so similar. Look at that man over there. It's a man, right?" She was pointing to a tall, strapping blond lad with the start of fuzz on his face. He was red-faced and clearly couldn't hold his beer.

"Yes."

"You basically look exactly like him. Way too tall, blonde, strong. Sure, if I squint and look at the bow I can tell you apart, but it's sometimes a little frustrating."

"I… suppose so," Lotte said, unable to put into words the odd feeling that she didn't look so different from that man, or anyone else. A part of her didn't want to stand out, she decided. Lotte nodded again. "Also, anything I should know for tomorrow?"

"You should take a bath. You want to present your best self to the clients."

Lotte nodded. "I'll get on that right now."

"Good, manling. Because really, you stink."

********

It was an awkward process all around. Lotte needed help, since taking the water from the well, and heating it, weren't easy. But the first maid working there had winked and made it quite clear that she was going to enjoy helping Lotte for reasons besides a desire to be helpful. Lotte had seen plenty of looks like that, ones that lingered on her arms, and then slid up to her shoulders. It made her careful, in many ways, with where she herself looked.

So she instead picked the other maid, a girl a year or two older, and just as clearly not attracted to women at all. The woman provided her with the warmed buckets, but let Lotte pour it. Lotte bathed with her eyes closed, so that she wouldn't see anything, and once she was done, stepped out and toweled off with the woolen cloths, before setting those aside. She had a second set of her clothing--a sign, itself, of her family's status--and so she changed into those, knowing she'd have to find a river sometime soon and wash them. Finally, hair still drying, she was done with the whole humiliating process.

It felt almost pointless, since the bed she slipped into, while reasonably clean, did turn out to have a few mites. She was surprised she had her own room, and had almost expected she'd have to sleep with someone else, as was usual on the road. Instead, she slept in a small, rather dark room, and woke up at her usual time in the night to pray. There were more Gods to please, and she'd had a strange dream.

The problem with dreams was that you too rarely remembered them, considering how important they were supposed to be. All she remembered was the vague impression that she had been terrified.

At first light, they left for the shrine, the four of them, with only Lotte without mount. Clemencia had a pony, Oscar a stallion, and Guilliam a rather old looking ass. Lotte walked alongside all of them, not minding the dust and dirt all that much, though he tried to stay out of the way of it. Clemencia's advice was likely prudent. Finally, they crested a hill and saw it. The shrine was two floors high, and was roughly of a similar size to the castle Lotte had been in a week before, but was longer rather than wide. The gate had been knocked down, and the front-door was new. Lotte looked at the thatched roof, and then below that at the stained glass windows, two of them broken. Something had shattered them, leaving a hand cut off, a man dead on the ground, a thousand pieces of the whole left. None of them made sense on their own, and the violence with which they had been torn made Lotte watch them, as if they might suddenly fly at her.

The one that was untouched was the martyr amid a group of priests, left hand out in supplication, his right hand raising a crude looking spear. Why was that one untouched, and not others? The windows were high enough that it was clear nobody had climbed in and out through them. Windows with any glass at all were the province of the wealthy.

Before they'd even begun to head towards the stables at the edge of the property, behind the main shrine, a man had flung open the doors. He stepped out, tall, handsome, and in priestly robes, with an old man just behind him. The old man had only tiny tufts of hair sprouting out from beneath a tall black hat, adorned with tassel and braid indicating his very high rank.

(What rank that was, Lotte didn't know, but she knew that such signs, and the richness of the grey robes themselves, were not available to every priest.)

"So," the old man said, his voice carrying. "You are the heroes who will be the first to chase after these monsters, these defilers! You need not do more than follow their tracks, and you will see the dastardly villains!"

"We are not leaving yet," Guilliam said. "We need to look around. Talk to people."

"I find myself agreeing with the manling. Let us go inside, to talk," Clemencia said.

The priest glared at each of them and said. "The place is defiled, and we are trying to reconsecrate the grounds--"

"That is important, but we cannot shout at each other with dignity, and we must do all we can to save the martyr's relics," Oscar insisted.

Lotte would have given in to the priest, but she washed as instead they pushed him back, verbally and then almost physically, without quite being rude. Which is how they wound up in a side room away from the main body of the shrine, standing around.

"Well then, I am Lambert, Head Priest of this Shrine," the old man said. "Five days ago a dozen-odd ruffians, perhaps more, broke into the shrine at night. They had some sort of Mage with them, for our guards didn't wake, and those that did died like dogs, for they were cruel and ongodly. They stole the sacred shroud of the martyr, and his shield, and his hand, though we protected his body, the holiest relic of all. They also stole a number of scrolls, and his bloodied shirt. Each of these relics has a value beyond calculation."

"Oh? Can you tell is what that value is?" Guilliam. "How did all of this come to be? This shrine is bigger than many I've seen."

The others winced, and Lotte along with them, because this hostile attitude wasn't going to endear him to anyone.

"I am hiring you. All of you. You will track down the bandits, and if they are too numerous for you, there are other adventurers gathering, if you have to retreat and then chase after them later. But I will pay the most coin if you make it so that we don't have to hire armies just to protect the shrine. So, you will have twenty White Pfin, and a number of Black Pfin, to split between you. But we've gotten word that five others will soon arrive, and then you will have to split thirty White Pfin between the nine of you. You see why I encourage you to act so quickly."

The others frowned, and looked thoughtful at that, while Lotte tried to imagine the wealth that would be passing through her hands. A single White Pfin could get her a night at an inn even better than the one she'd roomed in down in the village, and the small handful could pay a blacksmith to forge an excellent steel sword. With five, and the Black Pfins, she could even buy a horse if she cared not for quality, but instead merely for a body to transport her where she needed to go.

It was no fortune, by the standards of Adventurers, but it was enough that if she returned home with it, they'd have thought her a successful adventurer, as far as such things were reckoned.

Now everyone started asking questions, and making polite demands, eager to do all they could to earn that silver.

Lotte had her own concerns.

What does Lotte ask about/for? (Choose 1)

[] To see the bodies. Perhaps she can tell something about what kinds of people she's looking for. Were any of the raiders killed? If not, then how did they fight? Bodies can show that too.
[] To examine the inner shrine itself, the site of all of the discord. Were certain things taken and not other things? Just what was the motive of the thieves?
[] What direction did they head? Yes, it's obvious, but more knowledge about that, and for that matter knowledge of the woods itself, is vital if they're going to find anything.
[] Write-in.

******

A/N: So there we go. I hope this is not too rough.

 

[The Laurent]

2:4

The questions flew. Could they talk to the monks, could they see the bodies? Could they examine the scene of the attack? Could they pray in the chapel for success?

But Lotte had only one question. "Which way did they go?"

"Which… way did they go?" Lambert asked, looking at her as if a village somewhere had lost its idiot, and he expected a reward for having found it.

Lotte flushed, but glanced over at the others. They seemed at least a little less judgemental, though Guilliam was looking rather blank.

"Not simply which direction, but did they have horses? And, if they went into the forest, do you have anyone who can tell me about the forest? Each forest is different, and has its own tricks," Lotte said. She was trying to sound confident. Animals reared up, always presented their best front, or ran away, they didn't shrink and apologize unless that's all that helped them live. Animals were very practical sorts of beings, for all that she had hunted them down.

"Oh," Lambert said, and he seemed furious that he'd been proven overly hasty. "Brother Boris spent some time in the forest, once. If you failed, he was going to guide the next group through it."

If they failed? Lotte shifted uneasily, but nodded. "I would like to talk to him."

"He's from far off. Doesn't speak like most people do. But he's a hard worker. Devout. They went North by North-West, straight into the forest, and seemed to have gone on foot, most of them. There were a few horses, but we lost their tracks entirely, by the time it reached the forest."

There were plenty of ways that could happen. There was also, of course, the question of whether the forests had room to easily navigate horses through. The forests around her home were difficult enough that you often had to dismount and take the animals on foot. It was still worth it, since horses and mules could both bear far more weight than a human could, but it was a different dynamic from the one the others might have been used to. It all depended on what Boris said, and so with a low bow, Lotte managed to excuse herself after just another few minutes.

******

"I saw them all," Boris said. Despite the Priests' words, he didn't speak badly, just in a thick enough accent that he had to speak with remarkable slowness so that he could be understood. His eyes were the grey of slate, and he was well over six feet. HIs rough face was the crumbling remains of a cliff face, and his voice was polished stone. He smelled of sweat and sunshine, and smiled through halfway shattered teeth.

"You know the Rotterwald?"

"It is hard to know it. Do you know every person in your village? Know them as you know themselves? The taste of skin their" Boris coughed. "Their skin. The look of their, the wrath of fists of theirs?"

Lotte said, "Can you explain?"

"The Rotterwald is haunted. The Rotterwald is dangerous, only the Black Forest is worse. You've heard of the Black Forest."

"Yes."

"But the Rotterwald occasionally has beasts that foam at the mouth. They bite and kill and infest people with hatred, acting not as any beast acts towards hunters. I came through the forest. Lost and desperate. Alone. I saw. I saw the martyr guide me out alive. It all." He shook his head. "It is all that saved me. It will swallow you up."

"Then how will they survive?" Lotte asked, stunned. She'd heard dark stories, of course, the kinds of things that you whispered at night. The kinds of things you prayed to the Gods would never happen to you.

"If you become a little wild. You survive. You take it into you. Like a… a venom." Boris shook his head. "The martyr preserve you, the Gods bless you, know that night is a time to hide from what lurks out there, but that the Gods will have to shine on you."

"Have to?"

"Or four will not be enough," Boris said, gesturing around the empty room he'd pulled Lotte into. "A room might be enough."

Lotte knew when she was being baited. Boris had his own experiences, yes, but she knew, in a vague sense, that there were trade routes through the forest. Though she'd also heard that many preferred to go around it. It was a dangerous place, of course. Forests, deep inside them, tended to be. People who had nowhere else to go went there, and desperation had an edge as sharp as a knife. "Tell me about the animals there. About the paths. About the people and places. I am afraid, but… but fear can be a whetstone."

"A truly pious saying," Boris said, with approval.

Lotte didn't remember much of what she'd read, but it was a common saying of those who followed the Nachtmater. Fear could sharpen the senses, and allow you to see what was truly there in the dark of the night, as long as you understood that the night would take what it would.

"Yes. So, what are the paths?"

"There are three main routes. But the main one runs past some wild territory, and even an area thought to be home to strange rituals and witch gatherings. The side ones are worse, one of which travels through corpse woods, which even the Waldherz cannot fully make living. The other goes through outlaw territory, and there is said to be a village of beastfolk around there, a den of liars, thieves, and blackguards."

Lotte's eyes went wide at that information. "And the animals themselves? I also need to know anything you know about how to follow the trail and what sorts of signs are common and uncommon."

"I can. Though it will take time. I know I speak slowly."

It was true. The conversation would have taken a lot shorter to relate than to go through, for even a simple sentence could take too long. But it did give Lotte time to think through what they were saying, and so Lotte simply nodded. "It will take as long as it takes."

******

In the end, Lotte was the last one to leave the shrine, and in fact had to be beckoned by the entire group. She had been right in the middle of talking about the birds of the forest, and how their calls might be imitated if she wanted to send a message. She had no skill at all at it, but she could perhaps learn enough to use.

Instead, she was led down the hill, until they were out of sight of the shrine, and near the forest, which stretched below and around them on two sides.

"What did we find out?" Oscar asked, still on horseback.

"They make a lot of money off this shrine. They have all of that, and if war and famine both struck, they might survive years based on what they already have. But… none of it was stolen," Guilliam said, with a shrug. "Yes, their store of money is hidden, but you'd think that they'd have turned the whole place apart looking for it, instead of just taking some of Ingeld's possessions. Mostly his, though some of his friends and allies."

"They could sell it, or wish to desecrate it as tribute to dark gods," Oscar pointed out.

"Coming remarkably close to heresy, aren't you?" Guilliam asked. "Aren't the Gods all supposed to be people, neither dark nor light?"

Oscar growled, but shrugged. His helmet was at least flipped up so that his face could be seen, but he made more noise than he should have, armored as he was. "Whoever did it, they have at least one Mage, or perhaps a Priest, with them. There were burns on the bodies that couldn't have been done easily with simple flames. Not without spreading further. Arrows, spears, swords, whoever did this was very thorough. Mercenaries, perhaps, looking to sell the relics."

"They'll have the whole world after them," Lotte pointed out, quietly. It sounded absurd in a way, to steal something that couldn't be easily sold. It was blasphemy to even think of it sold, but then they'd come and stolen and killed for it. She couldn't think that they'd shy from anything if it got them what they wanted, after that disgrace.

"I think I can tell when we're close," Clemencia said. "Ingeld was an ancestor. These objects hold a piece of his soul, of his fire. And the fire of your strange Gods. But all of the pieces that were left were faint ones, secondhand connections. I should be able to use them to know when we're at least within… some distance of it. I can't track it." Clemencia tugged on her beard. "If we had more, I could."

"So, what about you?" Guilliam asked. "What did you learn?"

"There are three paths. But they start as one. They might have gone off the path, but this forest is dangerous enough that I think they'd just try to mask their numbers and direction." Lotte frowned, trying to think through what she was going to be doing.

There were so many tricks if you didn't want to be caught. You could walk only across hard, dry ground, you could go in and out of rivers to hide your scent, you could double back and around, you could set the beginning of an obvious trail and then have it end on bad ground. If you then went around the other way, the average person, even the average tracker, would keep on going, since of course more often than not most people would keep on going. Then there was avoiding the thickets so that nothing got torn away, avoiding muddy ground, and making sure not to leave any more of your scent behind than you could.

Lotte knew it more as stories than reality, since the signs a human left and an animal did were rather different.

"So, you will track them?" Clemencia asked.

"Yes. We'll have to go dismounted. The forest will become too thick, and on horseback we'd be too visible. We can lead them, if that is alright?" Lotte bit her lip, nervously. The sun was shining, but the trees were dark, and she had a feeling that she'd be giving into their whims more than the other way around.

"Fine," Oscar said.

"Not fine at all, but I suppose my donkey will thank me for not burdening her," Guilliam said, and Clemencia was already climbing down from her pony.

They had, if not a destination, than at least a little bit of an idea of where they were going. "How many of them are there?" she asked.

"The people said anywhere from a handful to dozens and dozens," Oscar said.

Lotte paused at that. Four adventurers versus perhaps a dozen or more bandits? Even with their greater skill, those were not the odds anyone wanted to face. Lotte wasn't thinking of backing out, but she was thinking that if there wasn't some clever way to ambush them, she might advocate for going back once they'd found the hiding place of the enemy.

Anything else would be suicide. Even she knew that for every story of Gods-blessed adventurers defeating five to one odds, there were dozens of stories that would never be told of what usually happened: death.

*******

It wasn't red at first. In fact, the first mile or so was entirely typical. The forest was perhaps thicker than usual, but it was still easy enough to follow the path, and Lotte could even see signs that people had walked through the dry dirt trail some days ago. Their full size was hidden, but there were tiny signs. A footstep here, a footstep there. They were, if not impossibly skilled, at least familiar with the forest, and so there was nothing as obvious as a bit of cloth caught on a bush, not until almost two miles in, and then merely a brown piece of spun wool that could have come from anyone.

There were birds and beasts that seemed to live their ordinary life, and yet the deeper they went in, the thicker the trees. Some of them even had a reddish tint, and the ground and forest itself grew darker still.

Eventually, Lotte could barely see, though from what she'd been told, Sepult had better eyes than that. But Clemencia didn't seem to be much use, at least in the moment.

Onward Lotte went, just barely good enough to keep track of them. She wouldn't have been able to at all, except that it was in fact incredibly difficult to hide that many people's tracks. Of course, an army chasing down those numbers would have been as likely to destroy the signs as anything.

Afternoon passed, and then they came, at last, onto a fork in the path. Lotte went down each of the three paths, and saw equal signs of people going down them for at least a while, which meant that either they split up, or they went one way and doubled back to fool her. Or perhaps both, dividing into two groups, and having one double-back.

Either way, Lotte returned to the slight clearing in the forest, and looked at her other tired, footsore companions.

"So, which way? They all look pretty terrible," Guilliam said.

The left route was going to loop around, and there were said to be both bandits and beastfolk that way, and there was no guarantee that the Beastfolk would be nice. Just as they could be good people, so could they be terrible ones, and so they would possibly face a confrontation of one sort or another. Ahead, in the straight way, supposedly the safest, there were sometimes groves where the animals behaved quite oddly, and there were rumors of Witches.

There wasn't anything evil about them, but their talents could be turned to dark deeds, and few who went this far in the forest were entirely benign.

Then there was, through thickening woods, a path that eventually was supposed to lead through an area of Corpse Woods.

Corpse Woods were a thing of rumor and myth, for nobody knew quite why they happened, just that they were like blight on a crop, and could at times spread.

But which way? There was nothing obvious to recommend them.

Three Paths, and the party can only choose one:

[] The left route, which goes down at least a little bit, and is a little rocky and unsteady, as if someone had tried to build a stone road and given up, leaving it worse than if it was good, honest dirt. There were supposedly bandits (which they might be looking for) and beastfolk villages (which they weren't) in this direction. Neither are likely to be very trusting, even at best case scenario.
[] Go straight. There are strange groves, yes, and there's the wild animals that apparently attack people without sense, foaming at the mouths, and the witches, and--wait, what was your point? Oh, yes, but it's the straight path, and even more importantly, it's the main road. So maybe they used it?
[] Go right. You'd have to be insane to go through Corpse Woods, and anyone who steals the relics of a famous martyr has long since become unhinged. Plus, there are usually not... physical dangers from going through Corpse Woods. Usually, at least in stories, it's more about the mind and soul. Which is harder to shoot an arrow at, but at least won't outnumber you.

******

A/N: There we go.