Melusine glanced down at her hand and grimaced. It wasn't just splattered with the Wolf-Spider's foul smelling blood, it was coated in the stuff. She went to wipe her hand on her skirt, only to find that it it was covered in cream colored ooze as well.

"Urgh!" Melusine gagged in disgust. "How much blood can one monster have?!" Melusine glanced down at the mess she'd made on the floor and felt bile rise up in her throat. The monster had been turned into a pile of mince meat, nary a single chunk bigger than her head to be seen.

"Truthfully? Depending on the size, it can be much worse." Baugulf chuckled, and gestured to the exit. "Let's get you cleaned up. We can find something to use as a bucket."

"Hold on, I need that," Melusine pointed at the torn burlap parcel on the counter. "I also need to check if what's inside is damaged."

Baugulf glanced from Mel to the parcel for a second before he silently stepped around the mess on the floor. The knight unwrapped the tunic from the burlap cloth and held it up. His head tilted as he observed her mother's handiwork. After stepping closer so she could examine the tunic for any cuts or tears and finding none, Melusine was able to breathe out a huge sigh of relief. "Lucky that nothing ripped."

"Why did you bring this with you?" Baugulf asked.

"I was worried about it getting caught in the crosshairs. It was only during the escape that I realized that thing seemed to only be coming after me."

"That was strange. Normally they aren't so singularly focused on one person." Baugulf carefully put the present back and wrapped it up.

"How many of those things have you fought?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps half a dozen? I've only managed to kill one by myself, and that was beginners luck."

"So I had beginner's luck?" Melusine turned her head to peer down at the fleshy pile, but Baugulf shielded her eyes with the parcel.

"Maybe, maybe not. You aren't a regular knight like me. There's no need to dwell on this any longer. One thing's for certain, you did exceedingly well. A Wolf-Spider might be hard to kill, but they aren't immortal. It's dead. Let's go." He shepherded her out the door, his hand hovering behind her back. Melusine allowed herself to be led away, suddenly exhausted. "Where'd you get that sword?"

"There's a couple more corpses behind the counter in there... one of them had it. Should we put it back?"

"No, it's a good weapon, and this sort of age is easily restored. If you could cut apart a cursed creature with it rusted to such an extent, imagine what you could do with it at its best."

"I think it was more in thanks to the brute force of my strength, but if you say so..."

"You're not wrong." Finally leaving the abandoned village, Baugulf's laugh came more easily. Melusine glanced back at the ruins they were leaving behind.

"Was a single Wolf-Spider the cause of all this death?"

"Most likely. But I've never heard of this place before. I'll have to include its discovery in my report."

"A lot of places in the outskirts go unnoticed. There are more ghost towns than villages here."

"You've been to places like this before?"

"Only once... my father was selling one of our pigs to a farmer in a village a days journey away. I begged him to take me with him." Melusine chuckled at the memory of how she'd whined and cajoled her parents into letting her tag along on a trip. "He'd been in correspondence with the other farmer for several months, and gotten an offer he liked in the last letter. Everything seemed fine until we arrived. It must've moved in shortly after the correspondence was sent." Melusine hopped over a log to relieve some stress and landed on the dirt road.

"What had moved in?" Baugulf stepped over the same fallen trunk.

"A banshee. Our pig got frightened and ran away. The silver lining was that it served as a distraction and my father was able to pick me up and make a run for it."

"That must've been terrifying..."

"It was," Melusine admitted. "I was eight at the time, so I only remember the mist that covered the entire village clearly, and the banshee herself."

A frail female figure wearing mourning clothes, her visage completely obscured with a heavy black veil. She'd drifted through the village streets, quietly weeping. Then the poor prize pig had squealed and took off down the foggy street. Her father had tried to hold onto the lasso around its neck, but couldn't risk being pulled along. The spirit had turned with a supernatural speed and shrieked loud enough to make Melusine's ears bleed. The banshee chased after their pitiful livestock, gliding along the ground. Her father had scooped her up and ran for the hills.

"About your father..."

Melusine's feet froze, and a frown fell upon her face. She turned her head halfway to glare at Baugulf. Her eyes glowed faintly, and her pupils were draconic slits.

"What about him...?" Melusine asked, daring him to say one wrong word about the subject. Baugulf hummed and pursed his lips but didn't flinch under her hard glare.

"My information told me that he was executed for murder... but you speak about him with fondness. Do you believe him to have been innocent?"

"Of course I do." Melusine continued walking, keeping her back to Baugulf. "That man couldn't even kill his own pigs. He just wanted to shepherd them, feed them... give them ridiculous names like Flumpers the Sixth. But he was poor, and he had a homely face. That made him a convenient scapegoat. And he wasn't executed. He never had a chance for a hearing or trial, let alone a fair one."

He'd never been able to recover fully from the loss of his reputation and their old home in the village, so he'd taken to spending his nights drinking at the tavern. Her mother had collapsed to her knees by the front door when one of the village men came to tell them the news. Her father had been found late in the night by a dead body, knife in his bloody hand. He ran from the guards and was killed by an arrow to the back.

"I will admit, the bookkeeping in the royal civil records left much to be desired. For what it's worth, you have my condolences for your loss."

"Thank you," Melusine replied in a quiet voice. A gentle smile was directed Melusine's way. They reached the riverbank and Baugulf took the opportunity to grunt and stretch his arms above his head.

"I'm going to update the carriage driver on what's happened," Baugulf informed Melusine. Mel nodded her head to show that she'd understood, and watched as the knight jogged up to their carriage driver. The teenage girl picked up a bucket used to feed the horses during breaks, and strode to the riverbank. She hitched up her skirt in one hand and scooped up some water in the bucket with the other. "Miss Melusine, wait!" Melusine turned to see Baugulf hurrying towards her while waving his arms about.

"What is it? I'm not going to wash in the river itself if that's what you're worried about. The idea of someone drinking all of this downriver is... disgusting."

"No, no. That isn't it. You don't have to use that bucket, we can find something else."

"Where?" Melusine gestured around them and their limited camping supplies. "The leftover kernels of grain can be easily dusted off. Dried monster blood cannot. But to make you feel better, I'll rinse it out." Melusine made a show of dumping the water from the bucket and back into the river, staring at him dead in the eyes with a quirked up eyebrow.

"But surely you'd prefer to use something for humans, not livestock," Baugulf insisted.

"Why are you so hell bent on this? It's a bucket, who cares what it's been used for? I certainly don't, because right now, it's the easiest way for me to get clean." Melusine dunked the bucket back into the river, and scooped out a fresh pail of water. She hauled it up the bank, stepping around Baugulf. "Are all knights this precious and prim?"

"I am not prim." Baugulf held up a finger as he trailed after her. "Now, I might be precious, but not in the context you're using." Putting a hand to her forehead, a short and quick laugh passed Melusine's lips.

"You are prim. You're more worried about fighting me on what I use to wash monster guts off of myself than," Melusine paused and trailed off, trying to think up something more 'knightly,' "securing the perimeter, or hitting trees with a stick."

"I've already done the former, and the latter suggestion is utterly ridiculous. Stop trying to tell me how to do my job, you rascal."

"Rascal?" Melusine set the heavy bucket down on the ground near some bushes, then faced Baugulf with an affronted gasp. "I am not a rascal, goodly knight!"

"Where'd you pick up that phrase? Nevermind... you win. I won't force you."

"Thank you." Melusine rolled her eyes once more and spun her finger around in the air. "Then if you're done, either turn around, or leave. The sooner I can get some privacy and clean myself up, the better."

"Ah, right." Baugulf's back was quickly turned to Melusine, his cheeks slightly pink. "I'll keep watch."

"From who? The coachman who's more interested in his equine friends than a good place to sleep?"

"Just in general..." Baugulf waved his hand in dismissal. "Elmar is fine, I swear. He's a bit odd and obsessive about his horses, but he's a decent sort. However, I'd still rather stick around and have a conversation with you instead. You must be tired and worn out."

"That doesn't begin to cover it..." Melusine's clothes peeled off of her, the sticky yellow substance drying and beginning to fuse the ruined fabric to her skin.

"I arrived after you'd already killed the Wolf-Spider, but you kept hacking away at the body. You didn't even respond immediately after I called your name. What brought on such a rage?"

"I wasn't in a rage," Melusine lied. "I was terrified. Those things were the boogeyman my mother would tell me about when I was a child. People thought there might've been one in the Dragon's Labyrinth."

"I've been meaning to ask about that too. Why did you enter those caves? How did you even manage to get to Ekaitz?"

"Who?" Melusine deflected with her best impression of an owl. She ripped her skirt apart and cleaned one of the rags in the bucket.

"Ekaitz, it's the dragon's name. Did he not tell you?"

"Maybe, I was a bit preoccupied with not getting eaten," Mel begrudgingly admitted. A grimace marred Mel's face as she struggled to scrape all the congealed blood off of her body with the rag. It felt and looked like a layer of vanilla pudding had been slathered all over her, but smelled of heated grease and fat. "So it's a he, hm?"

"Fair enough... but how did you not know Ekaitz was male?"

"For all I knew," Melusine briefly put on a low-toned mimicry of the dragon's voice, "the deep, gravelly voice was a universal trait of all dragons regardless of gender. Are you sure that Ekaitz is a male dragon?"

"Quite sure indeed," Baugulf laughed. "Although I've never met him personally." Mucky yellow water splashed onto the earthen soil of the forest.

"Trust me, he isn't as grand as he legends make him out to be. Now, unless you plan to put us in any more life threatening danger for this trip, I'd like to wear the tunic my mother gave me." She traipsed out of the bushes and returned to the river to get fresh water again.

"Alright, I'll get it for you." Baugulf hurried back to the carriage, not hearing Melusine's sigh of relief to be done with the subject.

Hugging herself, Melusine took a seat next her knight escort. Her chin buried under the leather trimmed collar of her tunic, her muscles were able to relax. The smell might someday fade, but for now it retained the earthy scent of home. In the eerie silence of the chapel, the feeling of being close to her mother and the shack was exactly what Melusine needed.

"We'll have two stops on the way to restock on supplies," Baugulf informed Melusine. "The cities of Belozer and Ardes are en route to the capital."

"You mean that we won't just be traveling through monster infested forests? We'll see a real live city?" Melusine sat up straight, excitement making her heart race.

"Yes, a real, living, breathing city. Two, even." Baugulf chuckled and patted Melusine on the top of her head. Her smile turned into a pout, and the teenager lightly smacked the offending hand away. Baugulf only rubbed at his stinging skin and snickered more. "I thought that you'd traveled before."

"That village with the banshee was the only time I've ever left Hathorn. It didn't make my parents inclined to take me anywhere else."

"I can see where they're coming from. Apparently you attract all sorts of trouble."

"I do not..." Melusine objected, but deep down in her gut she knew his assessment to be true.

"I think you'll like Belozer and Ardes. They're both some of the most prosperous cities in the kingdom of Adellias. Belozer is even built partially inside a mountain." Baugulf laughed when he saw how Mel perked up like a turtle sticking its head out of its shell.