They’d put up bunting in green and gold. He didn’t know where they’d possibly gotten bunting from, but there it was all across the railings of all the important buildings. Great green banners with gold trim hung from the temple walls. These portrayed Kyessy as a determined and fierce huntress with an awful version of his raven form either flying toward the viewer, or smashed up against the viewer’s face, like he had been flying toward you but smushed into a window. His wings and legs were splayed every which way, and he had the face of one of those medieval sharks or whales or lions, which basically looked like an angry, exaggerated dog with curving teeth and cartoonishly evil eyes. The banner makers had made it abundantly clear they had no idea what a raven looked like, given they weren’t native to this world.

He’d slept in a bit, and gotten some five hours of sleep, which felt wrong given it was now late afternoon. His sleep schedule could no longer accommodate the word ‘schedule’. The sun was starting to get low, and a chill was beginning to sweep through the place.

Cheers went up when they emerged from the tavern. A lot of cheers. It seemed impossible for the town to hold this many people… farmers had clearly abandoned their farmhouses to travel into town, and perhaps townsfolk from other nearby towns had made the journey as well. The streets were teeming. This left Corbin wondering about the other town names… Densbear? Densnook? Densrug? Denscabinet?

Prominent among those cheering was Serrell the super suspicious fae warlock. She stood with one hip cocked out farther than appeared comfortable, clapping with big, sarcastic, overwrought arm swinging claps, and smirking at them.

“We need a new transmutation specialist,” he said.

“We can travel to the Parley,” she said. “There’s bound to be someone there.”

“But you’re going to say ‘just as soon as we figure out what’s going on here and take care of it’ aren’t you?”

“We have to,” she said.

The soul-stealer, the assassination attempt, and the warlock added up to something very wrong. Either they were going to screw over the people of this town, or worse, and neither were okay.

“We play along then?”

She nodded, and did this thing with her face… oh that was a Kyessy smile. There was no smiling in fury mode or apathetic stoic logic mode, and it felt extra creepy all over her face like that.

Findell stepped forward, up onto a soapbox (or at least a crate) and raised a hand for silence. “Let’s have a cheer for the one who’s returned our protector to us!”

Another cheer went up, with Serrell clapping like an asshole. A sudden vision of the girl from Corbin’s past came to him, of the girl with the black hair looking up at him. She was laying her head on his lap, trying to smile, but she appeared troubled. The freckles gave her an adorable air. She explained about these kids in her history class who clapped like ‘total cuntwads’ in her words. Two of them really had it out for her, trying every which way to sabotage any good feeling drummed up by learning anything in her class. They were two sarcastic little pricks, one girl who deadpanned everything from fun into pathetic misery, and one boy who overdid literally everything. The clapping, for one.

“If I announce a fun project, he’ll be like ‘wow teacher, that is literally the most fun thing I’ve ever heard of, your mock trial project has changed my life completely.’ And then this other girl, her name is Dawn, she’ll go ‘Hey cut it out, Jez, this will be a defining moment in our lives. We will look back on this day forever as the day we learned and did absolutely nothing of value. And we’ll wonder why we didn’t kill ourselves.’ And then they turn on me, and laugh. The whole class just laughs at them. I can’t–”

And the black-haired girl cried then, while Corbin stroked her hair and wiped the tears away. And he’d consider offering to help disappear one of these two little pricks, only to play out the horror of her reaction in his mind, and decide against it.

Who was this girl? Just as importantly, where was she?

He had to transform back into himself, get his memories back, and save her.

“Corbin?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered.

“Now you wave at the people, and tell them thanks, and you’re happy to be of service.”

“Thank you, people of Densmeer!” she shouted, still waving. “I’m glad to be of service!”

“You almost sounded sincere there,” he said. “Did you finally swap your Agility with your Charm using that Versatility card?

“Shut up.” She stumbled and nearly fell, but caught herself and strode out to the center of the market, where a bonfire the size of a wizard’s home had been stacked up. Corbin had this sudden terrible image of Kyessy tied to the thing with flames lapping at her knees.

Streamers of light leapt out of Serrell’s hands and wound their way around the crowded square, looking like twin birds of water and fire with tails dozens of feet long. They wove together, climbing up into the air and circling one another until they finally met in a pyrotechnic explosion to rival anything from an earth rock concert. The sparks drifted down and began to catch on the exterior of the bonfire.

Corbin leaped up onto Findell’s head and engaged his Mimicry ability, grabbing from their first meeting with the magistrate. The result came out in a perfect imitation of the half-fae’s voice.

“I say, wizardry!”

The folk of the town laughed, with Findell perhaps loudest of all.

“I’m happy to say, it’s my job to muck about in other people’s business. Keeps life interesting, wouldn’t you know it.”

Much louder laughing this time, though less so from Findell.

“What are you doing?” Kyessy asked him mentally.

“I can sweeten the pot a bit,” Findell said by way of Corbin’s power.

The whole crowd roared with laughter.

“Just between you and me,” Findell said conspiratorially, with Corbin’s mouth.

“Don’t–”

Findell was looking a bit uncomfortable now, and the laughter kept on rolling. People nearby had tears streaming down their faces, and were shaking their heads, like if they laughed anymore they’d just die.

Corbin switched his voice, over to Kyessy’s this time. “I’m afraid my traveling companion was transformed into this hideous excuse for an avian.”

Findell seemed to deflate a bit, and afterwards exchanged glances with Serrell.

He and Kyessy had a weird telepathic back and forth for a few minutes, until he finally convinced her that Serrel, Grotok and Findell wouldn’t try anything today. They might do tonight, at bedtime… she would have to stay in the tavern room, or head out more obviously into the woods to do her sleeping there. But for now she was the star of the show, and was granted a invulnerability bubble. Plus, he told her, if they killed her, she’d just come back at her spawn point. Meaning she should probably have an inventory stash somewhere just in case.

After that, the town got swept up in a series of carols that were sung, seemingly, by district. Those in the northeast of town started singing first, something about Densmeer and the dragon Corbin couldn’t understand. It seemed to involve a maiden somehow getting her dress caught and ripped by bushes and trees as she went forth, only to appear before her beloved’s family with nothing on but her birthday garb. He couldn’t be sure, since all the tree names, the place names, the monster names and the people were called something he’d never heard before.

Their singing was awful, but not as awful as the people in the southeast of town, who apparently included dying animals by the quality of it. Those of the southwest took over after that, arms around shoulders and everyone swaying back and forth. Finally the last section of the city took over, and roared up to an incoherent, but deafening finish, followed by a huge round of applause and even more laughter.

From there, they entered into the ‘feast in your honor’ portion of the early evening, where several roast peacock buffalo things were hauled out, carved up, and put onto a line of buffet tables. Roast and raw vegetables of every sort came out, along with puddings, pies, baked goods, and carafes of what turned out to be sinterberry juice, fitherberry wine, and several types of beer he’d never seen before. Kyessy was herded to the tables, where the head priest of the temple, a dwarf nearly as tall as a human, blessed the whole feast. Corbin wasn’t really buying all the holy this and blessed that rhetoric, but the immaculate silvery white glow that enveloped the tables was real enough.

He might have to reevaluate his stance on God, or at least gods. Later, of course.

Kyessy kept ordering him to keep his eyes open, but there were far too many people to try to inspect to come up with the witch lady who had hired the gnomish assassin. He tried anybody with red-brown hair, but plenty of them had cloaks up against the cold, so he couldn’t make out any hair at all, let alone gender or character class. It could be that the god of obfuscation was working against him, or just that Grotok or Findell had hired the woman as an intermediary. She was very likely a patsy, and an effective one. Had that nellwynian pointed the finger at the magistrate, Kyessy would’ve just gone arrows first at him, found his bed in his house, and kept firing until he was low enough level that it didn’t matter any longer. Then she’d have gotten the truth.

There was at least a god of justice, surely, who wouldn’t like her filling the magistrate with arrows on a hunch, unless that hunch was proven true. Regrettably, Findell was too much a fop, and too good an actor. Kyessy seemed to believe that going full murderhobo wasn’t an option.

As dusk fell, it was up to the wizards (and a few artificers, gnomish to the last) to pepper the sky with exciting fireworks. He had no idea there could be black fireworks, but Serrell delivered. Along with glittering purple, color-shifting rainbow fireworks in the shapes of famous battle scenes Corbin didn’t know, various creatures in different colors that exploded or chased each other around first, ate one another and then exploded, he noted fireworks in the shape of Kyessy’s full name, just ‘Kyesiara.’ Afterwards a hooded ranger with her bow appeared in the sky, and the worst version of Corbin yet, which was basically a black phallus with wings. He sucked it up and said nothing, while Kyessy snickered in her mind. The ranger’s face and shoulders then shrank down until her full body appeared, dodging aside and releasing a dozen multi-colored firework arrows across to another part of the sky, where Fellwroth soldiers briefly appeared and were skewered by the arrows. An imprisoned Serrell also appeared, only to have the prison shatter into silvery explosions and free her.

Everyone clapped and cheered and sat on blankets staring up into the sky, with plates and bellies full of food, cups full of drink, and only a handful harbored suspicions about the others.

Serrell approached as the townsfolk were beginning to disperse toward their homes.

“We need to discuss your… whatever this thing is. Familiar I suppose.”

Kyessy nodded.

“Am I understanding correctly that he wasn’t always…”

“Nauseating to look at and listen to.”

Serrell nodded.

“I don’t deserve this!” he protested. “I’m the hero here. I saved your butt so many times–”

“Hush, I’m enjoying the ribbing,” Serrell said. “Sarcasm is how friends show each other they like each other without dissolving into puddles of sentimental mush.”

“I’ve decided I like her after all,” Kyessy said out loud.

“Lovely,” Serrell said. “Listen, the materials for a transmutation are rare and expensive, requiring us to head to Denspire with loads of coins… or rare and dangerous to collect, requiring a trip through the marsh woods that flank the South Fens. Which do you prefer?”

“A quest,” Corbin croaked. More swamp trekking would reinvigorate his sense of humor regarding Kyessy. He very much enjoyed uncomfortable, panic-stricken Kyessy, though blaskarands and angry rugnegs were a thing.

“We’ll head into the South Fens.”

Serrell nodded. “I’ll go with you. We can take a few of Grotok’s people.”

“She can’t go with us,” Kyessy sent him in a panicked telepathic burst. They had the two equally unappealing choices: have Grotok, Findell and Serrell all here, possibly plotting another assassination attempt, or have a party stab her in the back at the worst possible instance out away from witnesses. They could come back and hang their heads, perhaps have a short wake for the poor ranger who was in over her head, and promptly forget she ever existed.

He winced and thought, hard.

“That won’t be necessary,” he told the warlock. “You have work to do keeping the town safe… whatever that means. Kyessy and I work alone. Together. We’re a unit.” Gods he sounded so lame. What was next… ‘we’re the right tools for the job’?

The fact was, something about Serrell reminded him of the black-haired girl from his past. Now that she wasn’t being a dick, the few reddish, glowing freckles on her face probably did it, and the pale skin. Whether it was that or something else, she had a stupefying effect on him, as in he turned into a stupid person in her presence. Stupid raven. Whatever.

She turned to him. “Grotok’s constables are good in a pinch, and they can help with any of the heavy lifting. He usually has a few too many, and they lounge around the town and cause trouble. It’ll be good to have some back up.”

“I insist!” Magistrate Findell had appeared somewhere in the middle of Corbin’s ruminations on his mysterious past girl.

“Fine,” Kyessy said.

New Quest received! – Ritual Components

The warlock needs specialized materials to complete a ritual. A spooky, mysterious ritual, presumably to transform you into what you once were.

To successfully complete this quest, collect:

echocrystals 4/4 marsh yim hive wax 0/6 relk’s tail 0/2 dark quasid roots 0/12 frillux skull 0/1

Reward: 3,000 xp, 1 skill point

Hidden Objective: is not known at this time!

Hidden Reward: is also not known!

Isn’t it infuriating to know that you don’t know something? What could it be?

Un. Be. Liev. A. Ble. Honestly he couldn’t wait to have more relks shoot their tails at him, and the skill point sounded very nice. But more hidden objectives? More hidden rewards? He wasn’t sure if it was worse knowing that he’d missed some sort of important clue that helped explain the dumb conspiracy situation they’d fallen into, or the reward would be extra great, or that he felt stupid for not getting whatever he should’ve gotten when they were in the shardmage’s weird soul harvesting barrow thing. All in all it was just the worst.

“Please tell me marsh yims are adorable buzzy little things that tickle when they sting you.”

“They do not.”

“They only sting you once and then it rips their guts out and they die immediately.”

“Wrong again.”

“A frillux is made of lacy frills. It’s a doily monster. Tell me that’s true.”

“Not true.”

“It’s a monster composed of overhyped dubstep artists from the early twenty-tens.”

“No. Shut up.” Turning to Findell, she said, “Keep Serrell on protection duty, and the guards won’t be needed. We shouldn’t need a cart and pack beasts, given the list. We’ll leave in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t dream of sending you off without a security detail, not after what happened last time!” Findell insisted. “And you simply can’t leave before the festivities have wound down. Tomorrow should be even more fun than today! We’ll have carnival games, punch and judy shows, and an execution!”

Kyessy made an effort not to sigh. “Sounds like a day to remember.”

Findell grinned wide and spoke with even more exclamation points. “Exactly!”