Merdon enjoyed the rest of the night, and the breakfast they had the morning after. Their trip back to Bereth was quite unique with Sarel traveling on wolf-back and grinning the whole way. It seemed she had gotten more than used to riding the wolf. The kobold was comfortable on top of it, fully understanding that it was more an extension of herself than some pet. Skyeyes did his best to focus on the road, and ask Merdon questions about meeting Quickclaw. He found it a good way to pass the time, talking about how they met, him freeing her, their walk through the mucky forest of Sedra, the first time he got injured. Their cleric listened with rapt attention, like a choirboy at church.

On their second day of travel from the ruins, Merdon recalled Sarel's antics in the tavern the first time they stopped into town.

“The lycan gives her an absolutely filthy mug of ale,” Merdon starts. “We're only acquaintances at this point but I'm ready to deck this wolf. As we're staring each other down she slams her empty mug on the counter and demands another drink.” The knight grinned and laughed. “Neither of us were expecting it, we're like goblins with loaded crossbows pointed at us, just staring in fear. So the bartender recovers, goes back, gets her another dirty mug, and she drinks it again. And again, and again. I'm worried her stomach is going to explode or she's going to get sick from these twigs in the drink, but finally he brings her a clear cup, and the whole time she's just smirking at him.”

Skyeyes didn't laugh nearly as much. “Yes, our kind is subject to such treatment even if we're free. I can see you admired your verakt before the two of you became such,” he mentioned.

Merdon blushed but nodded. “Yeah, I mean, it may sound kind of odd, but you don't find that kind of strength very often. She didn't complain about the mistreatment, even though she could have, she didn't boil over or threaten him, she found another way to get what she was after.”

Sarel laughed. “Violence against him would have only made him angrier,” she told Merdon. “Though, the lycan has still won. We've not returned to that tavern since.”

“Nor will we,” Merdon said sternly. “There are other taverns in Bereth, ones that aren't bothered by you. They can have our coin, and his can suffer for it instead.”

Skyeyes beamed at that. “Yes, a nonviolent protest.”

The blue kobold sulked, however. “The point is to prove we are not deterred by their insults, not run away like cowards.”

Merdon gave her a smile though. “You don't need to prove yourself to anyone that thinks like that. His mind isn't going to change no matter what you do.”

“We shall agree to disagree, verakt,” Sarel said, turning up her snout in an overly dramatic fashion.

Merdon chuckled and let the subject lay. It was a nice day outside, he was alive, and he cared a surprising amount for the kobold girl. He wanted to keep her away from situations that endangered her needlessly. A job was a job, danger was to be expected. Rude tavern owners were a whole other problem. One easier solved by not putting themselves in that position.

The town of Bereth came into view shortly after, and Skyeyes stared at it for a moment. The various buildings, the mixture of thatched and shingled roofs, businesses and homes almost side by side, crops outside the city walls being worked on in the midday sun. It was nothing like a kobold village, scavengers that they were forced to be. He had seen many cities and hamlets but rarely had he ventured into a prospering town such as Bereth. Quaint, he felt, was the right word. Perhaps that was owed to the lack of slavery he saw as well. Humans here seemed content to work their own jobs. In bigger cities, it was unavoidable to find enslaved kobolds.

They kept a casual pace as they approached town and walked in without so much as a funny look from the guards since Quickclaw dismissed her wolf. Skyeyes seemed to perk up at that. He walked a bit lighter, a bounce in his step. Every human town he'd passed through so far had something to say about him, even if he was in a group, which was rare. Perhaps it had to do with Bereth's position in the kingdom. It was further away from the central powers, bordered by mountains and a forest, even if a road ran through them to the town, they were still on the fringes of the kingdom. It was certainly nothing like the capital city.

Merdon led them to the guild straight away. He wanted to get paid and find out what had transpired since he was unconscious. The knight did notice more eyes glancing his way. Though, he brushed it off as the fact he was traveling with two kobolds now and it was obvious neither of them were his property. It was a nearly unheard of position to be in. Even Cath, knowledgeable as she was, stared at the white kobold when they entered the guild.

“It's true,” she muttered, just loud enough.

Merdon raised a brow. “What is?”

Cath coughed and looked around. “Well, those guys you helped came back through to drop the cleric off, and ever since then he's been saying things.”

“Things?” Quickclaw crossed her arms.

“Yeah. He's been saying Merdon is a 'kobold whisperer,' someone that can control kobolds,” Cath told her.

The two kobolds in the room laughed.

“I'm not controlling them,” Merdon refuted with a face red with embarrassment. “Quickclaw went and found the other one, to heal me.”

Cath shook her head and dropped a pair of coin purses on the counter. “Either way, you survived and succeeded. The coin is yours,” she said with a smile.

Merdon, still red, took his coin pouch and promptly left. Twenty silvers in Bereth would keep him afloat for a couple of weeks to let this whole “kobold whisperer” thing blow over. Sarel grabbed her cut and followed after him. She wasn't going to let it blow over, not even a hint. It was perfect teasing material. Both kobolds followed the human as he walked to the local blacksmith, a dwarf with a shaggy red beard in a thick leather apron. His forge was just off the market, not all that far from the guild in fact. It was boiling hot inside and made the two lizard creatures open their collars for air.

“Merdon,” the dwarf greeted him, quenching a heated sword as he turned. “What brings ya here, lad?”

The human smiled and hefted his armor up on a stone table. “I took an arrow to the gut and had to patch the hole myself with some scrap. Figured it was best to get it done professionally before I left town.

With a grunt, the dwarf set his current project aside and looked at Merdon's armor. “Aye, sloppy workmanship that is. Ya oughtta learn better if you're going to wear plate,” he chastised the man.

Merdon shrugged. “I can't carry a smithing hammer and good quality ore around with my armor and shield too.”

“Well, repairs will cost ya three silver.”

Merdon paid upfront and without complaint. “Think it'll be ready by the end of the week?”

“End of the week?” the dwarf laughed. “Stop in tomorrow. I'd hang up my hammer if this took me more than a day.”

Merdon thanked the smith and led the kobolds outside, the two of them thankful to be out of the hot smithy. Quickclaw had thought the day warm but pleasant before, now it was like standing in a cool brook. Skyeyes was still tugging on his robe to pull air through it and cool off. They were sweating, which Merdon mentally noted. Lizards didn't sweat, but kobolds did? On top of the breast thing and it made him wonder how much closer to mammals they really were. It might be a question worth asking sometime.

At the moment, however, he sat a hand on their shoulders and suggested they relax a while. Curious at what he meant by relax, the kobolds followed. Merdon led them first through Bereth's marketplace. Sarel was aware she could afford things now rather than steal them and stopped at a weapon stand. The males watched her debate and haggle with the dwarf over a bow that was significantly fancier than the one she had crafted. Their dealing went back and forth for nearly five minutes, Merdon impressed with how much the kobold knew about bows. She argued the tightness of the string, the quality of the wood, but gave praise for the craftsmanship overall. It was a shrewd dealing that ended with her trading her personally crafted bow and two silver coins for something that had been marked for four.

“Thieves and businessmen are much the same, verakt,” she told Merdon later with a grin. “When we meet in sales it is fierce combat where the one who gets the better deal is the winner. And Quickclaw never loses.”

After making a quick note that he should let Sarel purchase anything they needed in the future, Merdon guided them to the biggest sites in Bereth. A fountain near the marketplace featuring a statue of Avant's king, which the kobolds were very cold towards for obvious reasons. Then to the second biggest building in the town, the Holy Mother Church, the largest church in the kingdom apart from the grand cathedral in the capital, as well as the reason Bereth had gotten so large in scale. Before the church was built the town was small, struggling, dealing with bandits and well on the way to becoming like Sedra. That was until a priest came to town and established the church to the goddess Ethral, Avant's patron god.

With a priest of such high caliber in town healing people, the town found the strength to drive the bandits off. Priests of many kinds flocked to the town to study under the original priest. Walls were erected to protect them and the citizens. Many stayed, started families, and slowly the town of Bereth expanded. The church even kept a statue of the founding priest, decades deceased, out front. His pose kneeling before the statue of the goddess signaling his eternal devotion, even in death.

Skyeyes stared at the church, and statue, in wonderment as Merdon explained this. Sarel, of course, looked bored to tears with the religious stuff. The white kobold insisted on going in. He wanted to see and learn more, as much as he could. Merdon shrugged and followed him in with Sarel grumbling to herself as she tagged along. Even if Bereth was better about kobolds than other towns it was still better for her to stick with her group.

Inside the church, which Sarel had never actually entered, matched the grand visage of the outside. The ceiling was high, supported by arches, and sported stained glass reliefs of various Avantian history. Crowning their first king, the king receiving the blessing of the goddess, the Avantian army fighting some war. All of these were next to more personal depictions such as the creation of the church and the founding priest healing many humans. Sarel was not religious, few kobolds were, but even she could see the pleasing artistic value in these windows. She also found the reflecting lights to be very pretty. It reminded her of gemstones.

Merdon had been inside the church many times so the grandiose nature of it all was completely lost on him. Even the large main hall, filled with dozens of pews long enough for several people to lay head to foot in, each one ornately carved with religious iconography, was just another view he had taken in one too many times. The church was large, grand, and the town would likely shrivel without it, but it was such a permanent fixture in Merdon's eyes it took Skyeyes' gawking for him to realize how impressive it must have seemed. Especially to kobolds who had to live in small, secret towns. They couldn't build anything half this grand or permanent. He suddenly felt ashamed for taking the place for granted.

Skyeyes didn't care about Merdon's internal regret though. He walked right up to the nun on duty and fished out a pendant of some kind. The nun examined it curiously, and then with an expression like she was being forced at knifepoint, led the trio into a back room that Merdon hadn't seen before. This time he was genuinely impressed. Everyone knew the church was larger than just the nave most people saw. What was unknown to many was just what they kept in the back, and it seemed whatever Skyeyes showed the nun had given them begrudging access.

It was a library with bookshelves that stretched to the high vaulted ceilings in a room that was nearly the length of a tavern. A lot of people could fit in between the shelves and they would all have room to move around. Contrary to the space, the library was empty, save those four, and it dwindled to the three when the nun excused herself in a huff. Sarel looked around, her claw touching the spines of several ancient books while her eyes examined the room. There were more statues in here, and it was well lit. Rumors abound about the studying that clerics did but few ever got to see the rooms in which they studied. Skyeyes was also getting handsy with the books, picking several choice ones out and taking them over to a desk that was pressed against a wall, of which there were several desks to choose from. He opened the book and started flipping through it.

Merdon kept staring at the room. He couldn't believe it, or rather, he didn't know why the nun had let them in. These texts were sacred to the priests. Yet Skyeyes had been given ready, if not entirely willing, access to them. It had to do with that amulet he had shown her, of that Merdon was certain, but what was it and where did Skyeyes get it? Merdon was about to ask that when the door to the library opened and the head priest of the church came in.

The Father looked at Merdon curiously and then to the kobolds with surprise. He walked with a gait that said he was intimately familiar with the room right over to Skyeyes and placed a hand atop the stack of books the kobold had been reading, causing the white kobold to jump.

“Who gave you that?” he asked the kobold cleric simply.

Skyeyes blinked and responded, “My teacher, Father Reing.”

The human went pale. “Impossible,” he muttered and tried to snatch the amulet away from the kobold. In his attempt to do so the amulet shined and singed his hand, the light bright enough to make everyone in the room recoil. He muttered something and then fled the room.

Merdon looked at Skyeyes and asked, “What just happened?”

“These amulets are special,” the kobold explained. “They can only be given freely, and they are given to apprentices.” It was proof that he was a proper cleric, but something bugged Merdon.

“A human gave that to you?” he asked, to which Skyeyes nodded in return. “So you were chosen as the apprentice to a human cleric.”

Again, the white kobold nodded. “Father Reing found me in his travels, took me into his home, cared for me. He impressed upon me his ideas for the future, and the more I learned the more I wished to help.”

Merdon let it lay there. Even if Skyeyes had permission to be in the library though, Merdon decided to stick around. He sat at one of the long tables along the wall and relaxed. Sarel was walking around the room, checking out the books. None of them held her attention beyond the titles. Before long she was sitting next to Merdon and waiting for Skyeyes to finish just as much as her verakt was. Minutes turned to hours and the sun was setting before the cleric stood and put the books back on the shelf. He blushed at the two still sitting in the room, mentioning that they could have left him alone. The human simply shook his head in return and suggested they find a meal and a place to stay for the night.

The next week progressed about the same way. Each day they visited a new place in town and Merdon gave them a bit of background on it. None were as important as the church, and few were even close to as old. Only one thing bothered Sarel about the whole experience; the lack of time alone with her mate. Rooms at the inn were cheaper for their usual two bed set up. She and Merdon would take one bed, Skyeyes the other, which meant nothing could be done in the ways she wanted to. Still, she liked having downtime. It made her remember the days in the ruined town, working on the stone house, hunting, not worrying about stealing or getting killed. Not by humans at least. Merdon had expressed similar feelings about the place before they left it after all. Perhaps she was just thinking about it from his perspective.

Their vacation came to an end after Merdon picked up his armor. Cath was standing outside the forge waiting for them. She told Merdon there was a job to be done and that he had been asked for almost by name.

“Almost?” Merdon asked with a raised brow.

Cath nodded. “Someone came in a few days ago and she just recovered. A red kobold saying she has 'dire news for the kobold whisperer.'”