Next thing Andres knew, he was waking up on a soft bed of grass, the sun having just risen over the horizon. Shaking the fog from his mind, he got up and quickly made his way back towards the town. Entering the inn, he was greeted enthusiastically by the mercenaries who saw fit to knock him down and form a big pile on top of him. Under the mass of bodies, Andres saw a pair of boots walk up slowly and stop before him. He tried his best to crane his neck and look up at whoever stood in front of all them.

Amongst the loud voices of his comrades, he heard his older brother talk. “Well, look who decided to show up. We were just about to send a search party.We don’t have time to save two damsels now do we?” The men roared with laughter but Andres just stared blankly. Hollow used his foot to push a few of the men on him away and held his hand out to pull Andres up.

“Whew look at those arms!” Amethyst whooped in the background. Cassandra tuned her out, observing Andres intently as his brother teased him.

Hollow turned a little more serious. “Well, since we were in a rush to find you, we haven’t briefed our new recruits on the situation. And frankly, we’ve wasted too much time thanks to your antics Andres.” Hollow fixed him with a hard glare. “My men know what’s going on,” Hollow started, turning to Cassandra and Amethyst, “but you two don’t. Long story short, we’ve been hired by Her Imperial Highness, Princess Valena to rescue one of her maids who’s been kidnapped.”

Amethyst gave a low whistle. “Wow, an Imperial princess, that’s gotta be a lot of coin.”

“Funny, I didn’t think you would be the money-loving kind…” Cassandra said, nudging Amethyst lightly with her arm.

“I’m totally not but requests with high rewards usually means high difficulty. There’s nothing quite like a good challenge!” Amethyst replied.

Hollow sighed, “Ladies please, back to the issue at hand.” He motioned for his men, now standing, to start gathering their belongings.“My men, myself included, will be doing any sort of fighting we may need. Andres does our cooking and cleaning, Cassandra, you’ll be watching for danger or giving us guidance, and Amethyst, uh,” he stalled, not sure what job he could assign to her.

Amethyst jumped in with enthusiasm. “Like I said, I’m pretty good at gathering intelligence! I also know enough languages to be a decent translator.”

“What do we need a ferret for? We’re plenty capable of getting people to tell us what they know,” someone yelled in the background. A few men nodded along with him.

Amethyst turned in the direction of the voice. “Well your approach isn’t entirely wrong, but you never know if that’s all there is to it. You see, I absolutely love secrets and when you’ve lived on the streets for as long as I have, you learn that everyone has them. Just because you want a situation to be exactly as it seems, doesn’t mean it will. You can’t make assumptions.” She then turned back to Hollow. “And you never know what this mission may actually entail. This situation is way too fishy.”

This last statement caught Hollows’s attention. He and his men had received this mission from Princess Valena herself, and this woman he had just met was already questioning everything. But as he thought about it more, Amethyst’s suggestion started to make sense: the rushed nature of the assignment, the inordinate amount of resources dedicated to retrieving a lowly maid, the princess’ similarly low status within the palace. Hollow cursed himself for not seeing it earlier. Their job just got a lot harder.

“As smart as you are beautiful, Miss Amethyst,” Hollow said with an appreciative smile. “It’s settled then, you’re in charge of intel and translation, although I also want you to be present for decision making.” He turned to his men, “We’ll wait here until the ones who left to get supplies return before we depart.” With that, everyone waited until preparations were complete before they set on their journey into the nearby forest, hoping to catch up to their targets quickly.