Second yells and swings his sword wildly, slicing through half a dozen monsters only for a score more to take their place. Mordecai watches for a moment, dark creatures surging around him to get to the human in their territory, paying him no mind.

Shadow imps aren’t particularly hard to beat, but they can’t truly be killed by non-holy weapons. Regular iron swords just dissipate them; they’ll reform a few hours later. Fighting a bunch of them with an iron weapon is basically a war of attrition.

Second looks to be doing fine. Mordecai leaves him to it.

When he returns, First is nowhere to be seen and Achillea is waiting for him. She looks up as he approaches, with what might be concern on her face. “Where’d you run off to?”

“Taking care of the other guy.” He bows his head sheepishly. “I couldn’t pull a knife on him, so I lured him into a den of shadow imps. I followed the rest of the plan though. He knows they got played and they’ll probably go after Rhoth as soon as they regroup.”

Achillea nods. “Good. ‘Bout time that rat got what’s comin’ to him.” She then tilts her head, looking at him contemplatively. “But what do you mean you couldn’t pull your knife?”

Mordecai falters. If there’s one thing he knows about orcs, it’s that they’re prideful. Would Achillea be disgusted with him if he admits weakness? Though they’re not quite close, he enjoys her company. She went out of her way to get him his new gear even though she keeps pushing for them to hurry, and she always answers his questions honestly, when she does answer them. Bantering with her is fun, and it makes all the…undead weirdness easier to deal with.

He’s not sure she considers him a friend, but he considers her one.

“That woman…” he says, deciding to be honest. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t want a repeat of that?” Achillea’s voice is surprisingly gentle.

He nods.

Achillea sighs, running a hand through her hair. “Look, this may surprise you, but I get it. I do. When I was young, I—” She cuts herself off with a grimace, glancing at him to gauge his reaction. He doesn’t know what she could possibly get from him, but after a few seconds she relaxes. “Let’s just say I found myself in a similar situation and leave it at that.”

Mordecai desperately wants to pry, but he doesn’t. “Okay.”

She punches him lightly in the clavicle. “Good thinking with the imps. Though you know that’s not always gonna work, right?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Yeah, I know.” Then, hesitant, “I’ll work on it.”

“Good,” she says with finality. “Now, let’s get back on track. We’ve already wasted too much time here.”

--

Rhoth carefully packs some of his rarer and more expensive elixirs into padded crates for safe traveling. He’s already folded and packed his clothes back in his chest. There’s an old cart behind the cabin ready to receive his belongings and be hauled away at top speed at first sign of angry orcs or humans headed his way.

He hopes he won’t need to. He’d put a lot of effort into making this area suitable for an elf and it’d be a shame to leave some of his other luxuries behind. He grumbles to himself about having to start over, grow a new house from scratch near a new village of unwashed idiots.

Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe he won’t even need to set up near a human village. He may have been run out of his home village, sure, but no one’s saying he can’t find another elven settlement to set up shop in. He could even find his way to Mirion-El, cozy up to some High elves. Surely they would sympathize with his plight.

His fantasies of opulent towers and aristocratic socials are cut short as the door swings open, an armored figure striding into the storefront. Rhoth shrieks and ducks below the counter.

“Whatever they told you, it’s not true! Please don’t kill me!”

There is an audible pause, before the intruder utters a succinct, “What?”

A woman’s voice, and not Achillea’s. Rhoth dares to peek over the counter at the figure. It is female, as he’d surmised, and wearing plate armor. She’s shorter than Achillea, though, and holds herself in a more refined manner. Not an orc, then. A human. Perhaps even a soldier.

Her helmet rests under her arm, allowing her dark hair to spill over her shoulders. He watches her collect herself, confusion being wiped away to make room for steely determination.

“I’m tracking some suspicious characters. If you’ve seen anything, please cooperate by telling me everything you know.”

Rhoth pulls himself to his feet, putting on his best salesman smile. “Nothing suspicious here! If you’re not going to buy anything, would you kindly leave? You’re obstructing business.”

The woman’s eyes glance around the store, empty but for the two of them. “Clearly,” she notes drily. “I just want to know if you’ve seen anything supernatural in the area recently. You’re a couple weeks from the border, but there’ve been sightings further south—”

“Supernatural?” Rhoth perks up, suddenly interested. He lowers his voice. “As in…undead?”

She nods. “A boneman to be exact. Either alone or traveling with an orc woman. They caused a massacre in a village a few days from here.”

A shiver runs down the elf’s spine. Achillea and the boneman did that?

He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, given what they are. The wisest course of action would be to tell the woman what he knows, but all things, especially information, must come at a price. “Well,” he purrs, “I might know something about that.”

Her eyes narrow, unamused. “Don’t play coy with me, elf. You’re going to tell me everything you know.” A smirk plays across her lips. “And I’m not letting you out of my sight until we confirm it.”

She steps forward, wrapping a gauntleted hand around Rhoth’s bicep, stopping him in his tracks. His aborted attempt to dash into the storeroom ends with him flailing and slamming his ribs into the corner of the counter. He lets out a violent wheeze.

“I-I have to come with you?” he asks with tears in his eyes. From the pain. Mostly.

“Of course.” The woman’s grin widens into something terrifying. “It’s a serious crime to give false information to a member of the Sunblades. If you were to lie, we wouldn’t want you to escape punishment, now would we?”