The entrance to the ruin was hidden behind a large raspberry bush, and I stayed behind the dense bramble for several minutes to listen for any activity outside. The ruins were located three days’ walk from town, which wasn’t really that far, especially for someone with access to a Horse Shape, and I really didn’t want anyone to learn about this place. Especially now that I’ve actually found something worth scavenging.

After making sure that I could hear nothing other than normal wildlife sounds, I made my way carefully out of the ruins. There was a very narrow path around the large bush that let me enter and leave, but any misstep will result in a very painful encounter with the thorny plant.

The sun was setting by the time I made my way to the exit from the ruins, sparing my dark adjusted eyes from having to adjust, and I took advantage of the remaining light to walk away from the hidden ruin before making camp for the night. I was traveling as lightly as possible, since I wanted to be able to carry more materials and artefacts back with me, and a bedroll was certainly not in my list of necessities, so I made myself a bed from fallen leaves next to a large tree, and ordered the Hounds to guard me as I slept.

The journey back to town passed quietly. I’ve been a little overly greedy back in the ruins and filled my backpack with more whitesteel than I could easily carry, which forced me to move slower than I was used to and take more frequent breaks, so it was four days before I walked through the gates of the town of Gerald’s Rest. The walls surrounding the town were barely twice the height of my own one hundred and seventy five centimeters, and made of local hardwoods. The nearest quarry was a week away by wagon, and getting enough stone for a wall was far too expensive for the frontier town. I knew that most of the buildings inside were built from the same woods, with the one exception being the Forrester mansion, which was located right next to the wooden town’s hall.

The town wasn’t large enough, or central enough, for there to be a line waiting to enter the gates, and the bored-looking guards waited patiently while I unloaded my arquebus before letting me pass. I knew precisely where I wanted to go when walked onto the cobbled main street of Gerald’s Rest, and less than five minutes later I approached Darren Forrester’s preferred hangout, the Boar and Barrel. The two storied inn was made of unpainted sturdy oak planks and had a large sign depicting a boar dancing on top of a beer barrel.

I got back to town a little after mid-day, but the tavern’s common room was almost full. The proprietress, Agnes Dale, was widely considered the best cook in town, and it was a rare day when she didn’t have a full house during meal times. I ordered my Hounds to stay out of the building, waved at Henry, Agnes’s husband and bartender, on my way in, and made my way to Darren’s usual table. The heir to the Forrester fortune was almost always in the Boar during lunch time, and claimed that he had a marked preference to Agnes’s cooking over his family’s live-in chef. There were at least some rumors, however, that Darren was unwilling to pay a cut of his profits to his family, and used the Boar to make his own deals out of sight of the house’s matron.

Locating Darren never took much effort. His personal Shaped bodyguards, a pair of identical rank III Sentinels, were standing near the corner of the room, and I knew that Darren himself would be, as always, sitting between them.

As I approached his table, the gaze of the humanoid Shapes almost immediately focused on me. They were a head taller than me, wearing chain armor and carrying tall spears, and would have been an imposing sight even if I didn’t know just how capable they were in battle. As it was, I knew that they would utterly annihilate my Hounds, and that a shot from my arquebus would barely even faze them. As I got closer to the corner and Darren saw me, however, the Sentinels visibly relaxed at his inaudible order.

Darren Forrester was shorter than me, maybe a meter sixty or sixty five, and had the lean physique of a highly trained swordsman. He was dressed in an immaculate suit made of spidersilk and dyed a deep forest green, and his blonde hair was perfectly cut and combed. Bright blue eyes looked up as I approached, and he swallowed a bite of roasted hen from the plate in front of him before greeting me.

“Jack Wilson! Been a while since I last saw you, hasn’t it?”

“Darren,” I smiled and clasped his offered hand. “Been out of town for the past two weeks. I just got back from the ruins.”

“That does explain the cobwebs and dust,” he smiled back at me. “I take it that you being here before even taking a bath means you’ve got something for me?”

Before I could answer, he waved at me to take a seat, and signaled Henry to send over one of the serving girls. “Eat, my man. If you’ve been living on jerky and dried bread for two weeks, you need to get some actually edible food in you.”

I definitely couldn’t argue with that. I did have some silver left after buying supplies for my previous trip, and some of it I set aside in advance for a decent meal and bath. I sat down, and Darren and I were both quiet as we watched Mable, one of the Boar’s serving girls, approach us.

Watching Mable was always a treat, and deserved a man’s full focus. She was somewhat older than me, maybe in her mid-twenties, about a hundred and fifty five centimeters tall, and gave the term “buxom” a run for its money. Glossy black hair caught in a simple braid fell down to her delightfully plump rear, leaving behind a single artful curl to frame her heart shaped face. Bright green eyes sparkled over a cute button nose, and her full lips were curved in a welcoming smile. She wore a simple blouse with a plunging neckline that revealed a large part of her generous chest, which caught and held my gaze when she leaned in to take my order, and a skirt that I just knew stretched tight around her aforementioned rear.

“Hey there, Jacky. What can I get you today? We’ve got roast hen with potatoes, stewed rabbit and bread or serving wench au naturel, all accompanied by Henry’s house ale.”

By then, my mouth was completely dry, and I had to take a drink for the mug of ale she set before me before I could talk again.

“I’ll have some of the hen,” I managed to say eventually.

“Coming right up,” she pouted in theatrical disappointment and swayed a little to jiggle her large breasts. “Let me know if you want something extra.”

I couldn’t look away from her behind as she turned and walked back towards the kitchen, and it was only after she was completely out of sight that we resumed our conversation.

“You should take her up on it sometime,” Darren smiled. “That girl is a delight any day of the week, and she seems to have something going for you.”

“You know I can’t afford her,” I answered regretfully. “Being a Shaper is too expensive for me to indulge in anything, really.”

“I’d tell you not to let your goal cloud your sight to life’s little joys, but I’m probably the one who’ll be getting your gold, so I’d be working against my own best interests.”

“I get your point, Darren. I do. And maybe I will take her up on it soon, since I’ve had some luck lately. But not this time, I think. I’ll need most of what I’ve got for the Patterns.”

“Oh?” Darren raised his brow. “Do tell.”

I reached into the backpack and pulled out a piece of whitesteel to show him. “I found some sort of machinery room. I took as much as I could carry out, and there’s still more where this came from.”

“Nice haul, man,” I could hear the disappointment in Darren’s voice. “But not something I’d need. You should go down to Owen Smith’s place to sell it. I know that he’s in need of some ‘steel, so he’ll probably offer a good price.”

“Thanks. I figured you wouldn’t be interested, but I did promise to give you the first shot. I do have something that might be more up your alley though.” I handed over the few old-world coins I had on me, and his eyes lighted up at the sight.

“Not bad. The collectors are always after those. I’ll give you a gold for the lot of them.”

“Come on, man. I know the markets almost as well as you do, and these are worth at least five for the collectors.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have the contacts for it, and I need to make a profit too. One and a half.”

By the time we settled on two and a half gold coins, Mable was back with my lunch, and our conversation paused as I settled down to enjoy my first real meal in two weeks.