After long hours walking slowly with the help of the stick, Liza finally reached the end of the forest. She felt lucky she wasn’t attacked again. With her wound, it would be hard to deal with normal creatures, let alone monsters.

She had a suspicion of why that happened though. Following a little bit behind her were the young man she met in the forest and his pet. Even if monsters tried to ambush them, they would probably meet their end at that man’s sword.

“Hey, are you really going to keep following me?” said Liza. Her tone was strange; she didn’t know how to feel about the situation.

She felt it was similar to what occurs when you feed a stray cat or dog and they start to follow you around. Only, this was not a harmless pet, but one capable of killing a group of monsters with one attack.

The man, as usual, didn’t respond. He and his flying serpent-like creature just kept following her in silence.

Liza had tried many things to make them stop. She showed them she didn’t have any more food and explained calmly to them why they should not follow strangers.

She even tried the good old “No! Bad! Go back!”, but nothing worked. After that she mostly sighed and kept thinking what to do about the situation.

After leaving the boundaries of the forest and seeing the sun about to set in the horizon, Liza took a deep breath. The air in the plains was cool and refreshing, much better than the damp and stale one in the forest. She turned around to look behind her.

The young man was standing there, in the threshold between the trees and the grassy plains, with his pet floating to his side. They were looking at her. She stared back.

It seemed like both sides were making an important decision. It was an intense moment that felt longer than it actually was. Finally, the man walked forward, leaving the cover of the trees.

“Stop!” said Liza, hurrying towards him awkwardly with her injured foot and walking stick. “You can’t walk around naked outside. How should we do this?” she pondered.

After a moment of thinking, she removed her cape and tied it around the young man’s waist. She nodded her head seriously “Alright, that is step one, it is already much better.”

She then removed her gambeson, revealing her upper body. She had a lean physique, with well-toned muscles and barely visible abdominal lines. A wide strip of cloth was wrapping around her breasts, hiding them from view, but the volume was most definitely there.

Liza sneaked a peek at the young man, looking for his reaction, but his face had the same innocent look as ever. She closed her eyes, feeling defeated yet again. Although she still couldn’t tell what the competition was.

She held the gambeson in the air and compared their body sizes. “You are taller than me, but it’s good that you are not large, maybe this can work.”

Liza took her knife in hand and made a few cuts to the gambeson, turning it into a sleeveless vest. After struggling with the young man for a bit, she finally managed to make him wear it and not try to take it off.

The gambeson turned vest couldn’t be closed and the cloak tied to his waist was akin to a skirt, therefore he definitely looked strange, but that could be chalked up to style. At least they wouldn’t be branded as perverts.

They made their way towards one of the buildings that could be seen a little further away. After getting closer they could hear the sounds of cutlery and faint voices talking. Liza unceremoniously opened the door and went inside, going straight away towards the stairs.

The young man stood still after going inside. His pet was floating by his side and they both looked curiously at everything around them.

It was a typical inn, albeit on the smaller side. In the common room there were seven tables with chairs, a counter and the stairs to the second floor where the bedrooms were. There were a few people having dinner and the innkeeper was tidying up the counter.

Everything was poorly illuminated by the shimmering light of a scant number of candles, which gave the place an eerie feeling, specially knowing that the ancient forest was so close by.

Those that were having dinner, mostly rough and poorly equipped men, turned to look at the newcomers. They were about to laugh at the comical attire they just saw when they registered the flying serpent-like creature.

Their mouths hanged open for a moment. They then turned away and started to make meaningful signals with their eyes to each other.

The innkeeper, noticing everything that had happened, frowned for only a second before resuming his neutral and non-interested attitude.

Liza, who had already limped halfway up the stairs, realized that the young man wasn’t following her. She grumbled before going back down towards him. She held his hand and started moving upstairs again. She then shouted at the innkeeper.

“Uncle, make three servings of dinner for me, I will be eating in my room tonight.”

“Righto~, three servings of stew coming up!” shouted the pot-bellied middle-aged man before going to the kitchen door behind the counter.

Liza fumbled around one of her pouches, taking a copper key out. She opened her room, shoved the young man inside and got in before locking the door.

It was a simple room with a single bed in the corner, a stool and a window with wooden shutters. On top of the stool was a rolled-up bedroll and a linen sack with a cord, for carrying it over the shoulder.

Liza didn’t mind leaving the sack in the bedroom, one because it would only hamper her inside the forest and two because most of her more precious belongings where on her person.

She sat the young man in the bed whilst his pet was seating comfortably on the pillow. She pointed her finger at him.

“Okay, I can’t keep calling you ‘you’ and your pet ‘pet’ all the time. Since you can’t speak, or tell me your name, I will be calling you…”

She looked at him carefully one more time. His most preeminent features were his dark blue hair and eyes that looked almost black.

The first word that popped into her head was “alioth”, the elvish word for that kind of deep, dark blue. She immediately frowned and clicked her tongue.

“Ended up remembering something I didn’t want to. Anyway, your name will be Eliot from now on. And you…” she turned her raised finger to the serpent-like creature “You look like a Boro to me, so that’s who you will be.”

Suddenly, both Eliot and Boro jumped up (or floated) from the bed with a start. Liza was surprised; she was just about to ask what was going on when there was a low shout outside the door.

“It’s me, open up please, I can’t do it while holding three plates.”

[Ah, so it was the dinner. They could probably smell it from the corridor, hahaha how silly,] she thought as she unlocked the door and received the food.

She set two plates on the bed and cleared her stuff off the stool before setting her own plate there.

Eliot and Boro shoved their faces down the plates of stew straight away. Both spat out the food back on the plate and started to make weird sounds while flailing about. They had burned their tongues.

“Hey sonny, wait for a bit, the food is hot! Can’t you see the steam coming out from it? You could always use the spoon and blow on it too you know.”

Liza tried hard to contain her laugh. “He is just too hungry uncle, don’t mind him. Thanks for bring it up here, it would be annoying to use the stairs again for now.”

“No problem at all,” replied the middle-aged man with a kind smile. “Please lock the door and be careful,” he continued in a hushed tone as he closed the door and went away.

Liza smiled at the now closed door. [So, he noticed it too. It was kind of him to give me a warning, maybe I should leave a tip afterwards.]

She then sat on one corner of the bed, picked up a bit of stew with the spoon and blew on it before offering to Eliot and Boro in turns. She felt it was funny; it was like she was taking care of kids at Tirin village again.

It was a bit tiresome, but seeing the delightful expressions both made when eating made it worthwhile. By the time she got to her own stew it was already lukewarm.

Nighttime; the open window let the cool breeze and the faint light of the moon enter the bedroom, revealing the silhouettes of Eliot and Boro who were sleeping in the bed, tangled with each other.

Eliot’s stone sword was resting against the wall, its beaten and broken form looking desolate in the dark room, like an artifact of a bygone era.

Liza was seating on the stool near the door, but at a blind spot for those entering the room, with a long knife in her right hand and three throwing knives in her left hand.

She was staring into nothingness, most of her concentration focused on hearing things that might be coming from the corridor.

She was already feeling stiff when she made out the sound of footsteps coming towards their room. She gave a tired smile. Sure enough, trouble was coming.