Fixed his eyes on the blue sky outside the window and bathed in the warm of the sunrays reached inside his room. Samuel took in the fresh morning air and reminisced on what had happened last night. Echoing from a far were the sounds of the local the temple’s bell, ding-dang, ding-dang, the bell tolled, ding-dang, ding-dang the bell cried. Cried for the funeral of the two men had lost their life to the hands of the lizardmen. Such tragedy, Samuel sighed and felt sorry for those men and especially their family, now there would be kids grew up without a father, some part of him wished he could, somehow, prevent what had happened. Washed his face in the basin and put on the tunic, Samuel get down stair and strode through the empty gloomy hall of the inn. Most of the guess had already checked at the first sight of dawn, obviously, who would want to stay any longer at the scene of two murders, only a few workers remained to run everything, while the inn owner’s widow and the family were at the funeral.

Elesil and Emma were already at the inn’s eatery and were waiting for their breakfast by the time Samuel joined the table, after Samuel sat down and bade them a morning greeting, Elesil discussed what their next plan of action was.

“So, the nearest town from here was two days away” –Elesil sipped his tea- “And with the current situation, those lizardmen definably will follow and wait for us along the way, I had discussed with lady Blanchardlette that from now on we will only take rest in town and refrain from set up camp in the wilderness, that mean we will have to travel through the night.”

“I’m down with it” -Samuel agreed- “But what about you? Are you up to it?” Samuel looked at Emma.

“I already spoke to her and she is confident that she is able to make the journey,” Elesil said and Emma responded with a nod

After their meal, Emma asked if she could go out to town for some errant, so while Elesil get prepare for their journey, Samuel accompanied Emma on her way to the jewellery dealer in the town to sell off some of her accessories so Emma could contribute to their travel’s fee.

“Are you sure about this?” –Samuel surprised at the girl’s offer.

“Oh, it’s fine, just a few necklaces and silver circlet, I can have new one when I get back to my home” –Emma smiled.

“Oh wait, Er… so… should I started to addressing you probably for who you are now, huh” –held his chin in thinking, Samuel humorously continued with a charming smile- “So… what do you prefer? Princess? Highness? Your Grace?”

“You’re not that charming, my sir” -with an amused smirk on her face, Emma spoke, “And yes, you should, but… for right now, with the situation at hand we don’t want to draw much attention to me, aren’t we, so for the time being I allowed you to addressing me as a friend.”

“As your wish, friend,” Samuel said.

“Wait, Samuel” –Emma halted her feet- “Should we do something about the inn owner’s family and the other victim, those men… you know, they lost their life because of me, because of something they had nothing to do with.”

“Well…” -Samuel gave of a long sigh- “To be honest, I don’t know what can we do for them… beside… well, the best I can think of was gave them some monetary aid,” Samuel shrugged.

“You’re right, how about we do just that” -Emma continued strode toward the jewellery dealer shop- “That the least we can do.”

After sold all of her jewelleries to the jewellery dealer, excepted for the white jade ring that she need for her duty, and the tattered dress she wore before at a pawnshop, even with all of its wear and tear, due to it was made from the finest of silk, imported from the Downer’s kingdoms and it excellent silver embroidery work, they had gained quite a large sum of money. After that they met with Elesil and divided the money for the travelling’s fee, the leftover money was arranged and donated to the Inn owner’s widow and the other victim family to their gracefulness.

Before they set out Elesil had carefully casted a protective spell on both Emma and Samuel, and instructed them to keep a close distain about three lias around Elesil so that his spell would have their full effect, as Elesil explained, the spell drawn a kind of magic energy, which Elesil called Quasum, from him, and if Emma and Samuel tray too far from Elesil, they spell would weakening and eventually dissipated and lost its effect.

“But also a word of caution” -Elesil continued his explanation- “I advise that, you two do not be too overconfident just because of the protection spell, as I had said, because the spell drawn energy from me to protect yours two from physical and most of magical harms, but if you two get hit too often the spell would drain me and potentially kill me.”

Soon after, they were on their way, with Samuel offered Emma to ride on his velelis while he travelled on foot. Initially, everything seemed normal, although Emma was quite anxious when they started to reach the outskirt of the town, sweat poured out on her forehead as the sight of civilisation started to wan, and her heart was drumming in her chest as pedestrians on the street become fewer and fewer.

When they were cleared off of the town’s vicinity and the wilderness beyond human settlement one again welcome them, they found no sight of being follow by the lizardmen. With the cool wind swept through the beautiful scenery before their eyes, Emma’s anxiety somewhat subsided, another fifteen minutes passed, sat on the saddle, Emma swept her eyes scanned the beautiful meadow dotted with some bushes, bushes that too small for a lizardmen to hide in, and still no sight of the lizardmen to be seen, some hope flared up in Emma mind, hope that maybe, just maybe, that they had given up the chase.

Their velelis were spooked and puffed up their feather as a loud crack, resounded right next to Elesil’s head when they were passing through a small hill, and fell to the ground near Elesil was part of a broken arrow. The lizardmen just announced their present. Samuel quickly swept his eye through the landscape around them, and quickly found a pair of big yellow eyes with vertical pupil staring at him, right on top of the small hill they were passing through, a lizardmen was squatting in some brush holding a bow. It was the same lizardmen with chin-length hair he saw last night, Samuel’s hand quickly grasped hold at his sword handler ready for a fight, but the lizardmen just squatted there, with his long neck poked his head out of the bushed watching them.

“Do not worry” -Elesil reassured the group- “That was all he could do right now.”

Thus so, under that watchful stare of the lizardmen, the trio continued their journey with the shadow of that lizardmen closely followed behind. Through hill and plain they walked, and through hill and plain that lizardmen stalked, his silhouette disappeared and reappeared behind bushes and trees, sometime he was behind and sometime he was ahead of them, but strangely the lizardmen seemed to have no intention to attack despite many opportunities for him to ambush the group. Also since morning to dusk, that and that lizardmen alone was the only one tailing the group, made Samuel wondered where were the other two. And when the stars were twinkling on the night sky above, those yellow eyes still watchfully followed the group.

As day break, Emma finally came back from her sleep on the velelis’s back, it amazed Samuel that how she could sleep the whole night on the velelis’s back without falling off. Hopefully she casted her gaze around once more, prayed that the lizardmen had gave up, but disappointment quickly came to her as her eyes caught that tall figure of the lizardmen watching them.

“Yah, he’d followed us the whole night, but still no intention to attack though,” Samuel spoke to Emma.

“It is because of me” –Elesil watched the lizardmen standing form a far- “With my magic, I can easily kill a few of them form a far, he must be tailing us while wait for the other two to bring reinforcement.”

When dusk settling in, the next town appeared on the horizon and the lizardmen disappeared from their eyes, for the time being. Samuel felt like a heavy load just had been lifted from his shoulders when the group finally settled to the table in the town’s tavern waiting for their order, but then something outside the window caught his attention.