Edited by: Flubbykin

We stayed in the resort for the night, and I must admit that – I have never slept in THAT comfortable bed in my whole life. It was both soft, so you would sink an inch or so into the featherbed, yet after that, your bones would rest on perfectly hard material. Oh, the bliss.

And even though my heart belongs to the wild, even though I missed the breeze of night's wind on my skin and voices of thousands of animals around me… I could get used to sleeping in such conditions.

Next morning we ate a light breakfast (or together with Lanele we ate a light breakfast because even though Giselle limited herself, she still ate amount which could keep two grown-up men full for a whole day long), and resupplied all the food and materials we have used during our recent travels. The group of maid insisted to hand over to Gis few bags with oils, creams and dozens of different cosmetics – for as they said: “they didn’t want all their efforts to go in vain just because someone would neglect taking care of her body”.

- “This one here is for hand, that is for nails – so they would be polished and shining, these oils will smoothen wrinkles on your face…”

- “B-but I don’t have any wrinkles…” dragoness whined overwhelmed by the cascade of information

- “YET!...” said maid with a strong accent on that single word “… don’t you know you have to take care of your beauty as long as you are beautiful!? Sure, it is easy to take everything you have for granted! But all it takes is a few years and your beauty will be gone just like your youth! If you will take care of yourself, then you have few, maybe over a dozen of years more till the first wrinkle would appear – if you won’t, you will have the first one in a year maybe two!”

- “I think you are exaggerating…” dragoness really got worried hearing the last part

- “Is that so?...” maid squinted her eyes “…of course, you may expect them to appear later, but, the more you laugh the greater chances of wrinkles appearing around your mouth. Do you change your expression a lot? Areas of cheeks and forehead! Oh, the exposure to the sun? Same!”

The woman, half of the warrioress size, kept raising her voice with time, her aggressive posture kept rising over Gis, which actually started curling her whole body under verbal assault. In the end, the little maid was actually looking down on fearsome berserk.

- “Teresa…”

- “WHAT!?”

- “… I believe you are scaring our customer.” Maid’s colleague at work noted

- “What?! Now, that’s a bullsh…” Teresa looked at red hair woman with watery eyes “…I… beg your pardon, Madame. I think I got carried away. I wish to apologize.” She humbly lowered her head, yet in her eyes, same fire of passion kept burning.

Soon after we moved out. Well, not quite. Madame Agnes (after recalling I was not sent as an auditor, but I entered as a mere tourist) handed me the bill. Seeing the numbers written there I choked on my own saliva.

- “Now, I believe your accountant made a mistake…” I said after inspecting the piece of paper “… I believe she added one additional at the end of the…”

- “I double checked it and I wish to ensure you that no mistake was made.”

She disturbed me with a pleasant, almost radiant smile.

I looked at the bill again and grimaced.

- “You know what? I am not charging fellow Syndicate member with such ridiculous fees… wait, I am actually not charging them at all…” I throw a glance at the older lady, but her face didn’t even flinch.

- “It must be wonderful to be rich enough to perform such acts of generosity, unfortunately, we barely manage to make ends meet.” She made an awfully sad expression, though I had no delusion – it was nothing more than well trained act.

- “And here I thought I could organize a bigger party here, sadly, you are such a cutpurse… Are you fine with notarial notes? I don’t carry such a ridiculous amount of gold by my belt.”

- “Now! I feel deeply offended! We charge a fair price for fair services! Actually – the money we requested will barely cover the expenses of materials we used! Have you got any idea how much oil was needed to smoothen your companion skin? How tasking was it to pull off every flaw off her body!?....” she started furiously “… Oh, and we are more than fine with notes. Of course, our main guests are nobles, and they hate carrying chests of gold either.”

She finished with a pleased, calm tone.

Groaning I quickly filled a bank check formula, which almost magically appeared in hands of one of the maids as she passed it to me.

- “It was a pleasure to make deal with you…” elder woman said bowing her head.

- “I wish I could say the same thing… unfortunately…”

- “… we wish to see you again…” woman continued her monologue as if she paid no attention to what I just said.

- “I doubt it, even my company would struggle to send anyone here regularly…”

- “…as well as we hope that you would say a word around and recommend our facility to other people.” She finished

- “Unfortunately, I have very few enemies, so that would most likely not happen.” I finished too.

Regardless of what I just said, I was in a really good mood. That woman did impress me. Not only with her negotiation skills… but also with what she did to my little Gis. Damn, I could barely stop myself from staring at her.

God damn it, look how cute she is! LOOK! I just want to frame her and hang over the fireplace at my home, then keep showing her to everyone who would enter telling em.: “See this beauty over there? She’s mine!”.

- “Zari, do I have something on my face? You are staring at me with awful… intensity.” Gis noticed that I just admired her beauty.

- “Actually, yes, don’t move for a second…” I approached her carefully.

- “What is it? WHAT IS IT? It’s a spider right?! I hate those little fucking pieces of…”

I kissed her on the cheek.

- “Wait what?”

- “It was my affection to you.” I said with no shame.

She needed a good four or five seconds.

- “Bloody idiot.” She blushed a little as she puffed her cheeks angrily.

Though her tail started twitching a little to the sides.

After small, cheerful banter between the two of us and after saying our farewells, we moved onward. In direction of the horizon. To infinity – and beyond.

A few hours later, the sun was mercilessly scorching us down. Something I noticed recently - there is no year’s season here. It can shine or it can rain, but during my whole stay at Neira, there was no such thing like Spring or Winter. It got a bit colder or warmer every now and then, but nothing as hardcore as in my previous home in the other universe: from -20 at winter to +40 at summer. (Ok, maybe not +40, but I really saw once 37.5 Celsius during summer).

If you wanted to see snow, you had to travel very far north, even further south (like, much. much further). We were supposed to go West, but… did we actually took a detour to the South? I didn’t study map that much, we could actually travel by path which curves a lot…

- “Don’t you think it got surprisingly hot?” Lanele raised her brow “... even if we crossed the climate zone we should barely notice the difference.”

- “Yes, but I thought I was just sweating because of trauma caused by these devils.”

Giselle grimaced as memories of things she experienced in the resort were still fresh in her mind.

Still driving the cart, I tried calming down and focusing my mind - the inner part. My spirit left my body though it was still grasping the reins controlling the movement of horses. I went ahead in my spiritual form to check for the source of abnormal temperature.

The cause was magical, lots of thread-like mana trails were leading into one particular place not so far away, yet hidden from our view by dozens of tall trees and boulders. Near the epicenter I spotted two groups of people, guessing by their life forms and mana transfer in their bodies I guessed they had heated argument. One group were made completely out of mages. Many weaker one, two so-so and one stronger. The strongest mage noticed my magical presence, turned in my direction, kept appraising me for a moment or two before making welcoming gesture slightly. It would look weirdly if suddenly one person started waving at the thin air for the rest of the group, yet this gesture alone ensured me that the group had no hostile intentions.

I couldn’t hear what they were talking about - I mean, my body was far away so I had no ears nor mouth to partake in their conversation. All I could sense was flow of magic alone.

I returned to my body just to notice that Giselle was holding me why Lanele was maneuvering the cart, both ladies were shouting loudly.

- “Are you trying to kill us?” Lana yelled

- “You could always let me drive if you felt tired!” Gis said with a sparkle of hope in her eyes

- “Meditating while driving? There is a limit of how irresponsible one can be!” Priestess which correctly guessed what I was doing scolded me with a tone of a harsh teacher lecturing extremely stupid student.

- “I think I spotted the source of the heat...” I said calmly as if I didn’t notice the state of my companions.

- “Let me guess - some magician screwed and caused anomaly?” Elvish royalty didn’t have to guess at all “... we had our own little academy in the forest, such things happened twice-thrice per week. Young elves love experimenting with magical formulas and…”

- “Which weapon should I take?” Giselle wasn’t particularly interested on learning the ways of living of young elfs.

- “I believe that none. They are already dealing with the matter.”

With a light strike of reins, I urged horses to speed up a little. Despite my words, Giselle did prepare her twin axes, she didn’t pick them just yet, but she double checked she can bring them in a split of a second.

We kept riding till eventually, we entered an entrance to the canyon. Or even two of them - we faced the pitchfork-like crossing. In front of one group of mages was being yelled by someone that could be called a sergeant of the local city guard. He almost had “I am a sergeant” printed all over his face. Not too tall, a huge mustache covering half of his punchable face and mouth that never stopped yelling.

- “Do you know who I am?! I am a sergeant of city guards!!!”

Bingo.

- “And I am telling you that I don’t care. It is our mess and we will take care of it.” mage around his 40-ties, the one that spotted me, was answering calmly.

- “Not if your action violates the public peace!”

- “Public peace? Here? We are in the middle of nowhere, we got as for from every city, village and settlement as only we could in order to… how did you say it? - Not violate the public peace.”

- “This middle of nowhere is one of the main traveling routes between…”

- “One little village and another little village. We have studied people movements in this area. The probability that someone would have used it these days is almost non-existing…” he said last words with a little grimace on his face, for we have just approached the gathering.

- “I would love to welcome you, dear travelers on Kingdom’s Route number 27b…” sergeant said while turning in our direction “... or as Sir Magician would prefer to call you - dear non-existing chances of traveling.”

- “Road is closed, I guess.” I said looking in direction of warning signs that were being raised in front of the path we wanted to travel by.

- “As you can see, experiment didn’t go as planned and…” wizard started yet was rudely disturbed by city guard

- “...and we have a devil rampaging in the canyon.”

- “A devil?” I said rising my eyebrow

- “Tsh. Sure. The Bahoru himself came to challenge our brave knights in shining armor…” after hearing those words, Sebastian, which was sitting on my shoulder raised his head “... no. nothing that serious, not even close. We have messed calculation while creating sub-dimension funnel and… well, rift was opened. Some medium and lower rank fire spirits crawled through it. Now they wish to turn this place into a desert.”

Eyes of mustache man almost popped out.

- “Will TRY TO, not will do. Just because you wish us to get out of here so you and your little squad could write in report that you have slain hordes of gehenna and get promotion, doesn’t mean we will move an inch away from the place we stand right now. You see, because to want to do something, and to actually have the measures and tools to achieve it are two completely different things. All they can do is to make it is to heat up the area and be annoying little pains in the ass… speaking about being annoying heating mood pieces of shiet… didn’t you perhaps crawled out of that rift to?”

- “Just because you have higher status doesn’t mean you can offend everyone as you please, witch! Right now I represent the crown! I should have arrest you and throw to jail for the mess you caused!”

- “When the mess would be over?” I asked calmly “... don’t get me wrong, I just wish to know how long we will have to wait. If you will be done in few hours we could wait, if not, we would take the other route so…”

- “I am sorry to say that, but as magician yourself you have to know that during wild rifts being opened it is important to both shut the portal, then get rid of spawnlings and finally check if there was no permanent corruption left in our reality which could reactivate the rift after delayed time… spirits are clever, they always leave the backdoor open. It will take two or three days at best.”

- “We will take a detour then.” I tried changing the direction we were supposed to travel for next few days, when Giselle almost jumped on her spot.

- “M-maybe we could help? We are adventurers so…”

- “Oh, sorry, but we are a formal organization, first our office would have to write the request, then sent it to the guild… the bureaucracy would take more time than the actual time to deal with the problem as we are here…”

- “We won’t charge you for that!” she was very quick to make a decision for the entire team “... you know, we are traveling just to help as many people as possible. Getting paid for that is just a bonus!”

Her hero syndrome kicking in or what?... No, it’s not that. she was… Afraid? Scared? My Gis? Afraid of anything that is not a spider nor an empty bottle of vodka?

- “Sorry, I can’t ask you for that. If you are not requested help, we have to treat you as civilians, and that gentleman over there is only waiting to report back that we got defenseless civilians put in danger. I am very grateful for your generous offer but…”

- “No need to. As an alchemist myself. I know that sometimes things just don’t go as planned…” I turned back to knight “... and then you should leave the one who made a mess to clean it up. If some unqualified person would try to clean greatly reactive potion spilled over the floor, it could cause ever more chaos.”

- “Why you little…”

Knight wasn’t happy I took a side. Well, I didn’t.

- "Don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you what to do, just speaking my mind. You should have to reach conclusion who should have priority in dealing with this situation, best on the legal way… and I will leave it with you alone. Ladies, we will have to travel for two additional days, but there should be another village so we won’t have to sleep on road all this time.”

Giselle tried protesting, but, the more she was protesting the more eager I was to drive right through that nightmarish for her place. It was obvious she was here before. Maybe she screwed a quest here? People didn’t like her or what?

I vocalized my thoughts looking in her direction.

- “People not liking me?...” she asked more herself then answered me “... I guess you could say so. That village… well, is the place where I was born.”