Snorting, Badax tried to divert his thoughts from the stinging pain in his fingers. The fact that they bothered him so much was surprising; he’d been stabbed, sliced, burned, and – very briefly! – decapitated during his tenure as a Mini-Boss, and none of those had ever given him as much agony as did the angry red welts on his fingertips.

Well, the decapitation might have. He couldn’t really remember it, to be honest. Every time he’d tried to think about it in the years since it happened, it seemed as if his head had been elsewhere for the entire experience.

Ignoring the reason for his pain in the first place, Badax reached back to grab his banjo, frowning when his hands found naught but open air. He’d left the broken pieces of the instrument back where they’d killed the birds, which had felt poetic at the time but seemed kind of stupid now. He suspected that would often be the case when it came to poetry.

Stamping his hoof on the ground, Badax pressed on.

It was Sixthday afternoon when Seahorne finally appeared on the horizon. Or at least, part of it did. From this distance, all Badax could see were domed buildings sprouting from the side of the cliff like mushrooms on a log. They were made of bleached white stone, connected by a frenetic mass of bridges that looked like something out of a fever dream. Beyond the buildings, a cove filled with emerald water glinted in the sunlight. Ships sailed in and out, and even as small as they all seemed, Badax could clearly make out vibrant squares and triangles of color that must have been flags.

Up ahead, there were more mirrorgulls. A big group of them – Badax didn’t know what the proper word for such a thing was, though murder would have probably been appropriate – circled around another party of four adventurers.

Since projectiles didn’t work against the creatures, the adventurers were employing some creative methods of bringing them down to the ground. A woman with blonde hair dressed in blue – a spellcaster of some kind, if the wand in her hand was any indication – created a series of floating platforms that her companions climbed onto. Then, the spellcaster raised them into the air and the warriors battled the birds in melee. The fighting was swift and vicious, but now and then one of the adventurers would get knocked off their platform and tumble to the ground with a loud and angry crunch. Whenever that happened, the party’s Healer ran over to them as quickly as possible and prodded them with his staff, which glowed with golden light.

The adventurers were making a valiant effort, but they looked like they were struggling. They’d only felled a single bird thus far.

Pansy turned toward Badax, her teeth seeming to sharpen by the second.

“Can we help them out? I think I’m pretty close to leveling up!”

Badax thought about it for a moment. On the one hand, it was tough for him to look past decades of battling adventurers and seeing them as anything but the enemy. On the other, they had to be better than the fucking birds, right?

“Fine,” he grumbled.

With an excited cry, Pansy rocketed off to join the battle, while Badax and Urt looked around for things they could do to help. Without an instrument, Badax couldn’t use any of his Bard skills, and Urt wasn’t much use in a fight like this to begin with. However, the goblin ran toward the Healer to offer his assistance, and Badax discovered that he was good at catching people when they fell out of the sky.

Though the adventurers didn’t seem to have any problems with a minotaur, a goblin, and a pixie helping them out, the people of Seahorne proper seemed less open minded, as Badax and his companions discovered to their chagrin when the gate to the city was slammed shut in their faces a few hours later.

“Ain’t no fuckin’ gobbo or any other monsters getting in while I’m on duty,” the guard said. His beady eyes poked out through the little slat in the walls, and they were filled with hatred.

The adventurers smiled nervously at Badax, who’d clearly taken offense at being called a monster or mentioned as a threat after a goblin.*

“That’s just One-Eye Arathim ,” the Healer said by way of explanation. “He’s not a bad fellow, just has a bit of a…cultural problem the goblins. No hard feelings, okay? Heya, Arathim! Open the gate, will you? These three helped us kill the mirrorgulls!”

The gate remained shut.

“Wouldn’t give a shit if they helped kill every last one of those damn birds. You four are welcome to come through, but those three monsters ain’t getting’ in and that’s the end of it!”

Badax flexed his shoulders and stretched his neck while he examined the gate. His patience was far from infinite during the best of times, and this sure as hell didn’t qualify.

It was big and sturdy, made of blue stone and covered in jagged seashells and barnacles, but the minotaur was pretty sure he’d be able to break it down should it prove necessary. After all, there were few things in Creation that could withstand a Charge from an angry minotaur, and Badax doubted this was part of that venerated list.

“I’ll take care of this, give me a second,” the adventurer’s spellcaster said as she walked up to the gate. Reaching into her pocket, the woman produced a small card, which she held up to the slat.

“What does this say?” she demanded.

Arathim muttered something, but Badax couldn’t hear it. The spellcaster pointed to it and shook her head.

“You never even met my parents,” she said. “Now, tell me what this card says! That’s right, it means you have to open the fucking gate, you horrid little dwarf! What part of ‘any others we deem worthy or necessary to admit’, huh? Be quick about it!”

There was a muttered string of dwarvish curses – Badax didn’t have to understand the language to recognize that much – but the gate slowly groaned open and the adventurers gestured for Badax, Urt, and Pansy to follow them inside.

As they crossed the entryway, Badax saw that indeed, the gatekeeper was a small and surly dwarf. Oddly though, he wore no eyepatch, nor were there any other signs of him missing an eye. Strange, given his moniker.

When Badax mentioned this, the Healer turned around with a chuckle. “His name is pretty common among the dwarves, but they all spell it Arithim with an ‘I’ instead of Arathim with an ‘A’. They’re pronounced the same though, so we call him One-Eye to help tell them all apart. Get it?”

Badax shook his head and groaned.

Fucking wordplay.

Before him lay the sprawling streets of Seahorne. Possibilities and mysteries lurked around every corner, and Badax sensed that he was on the cusp of a great adventure. There was just something in the air here that made his fur tingle.

To be fair, it might have been all the salt, but Badax didn’t think so. Salt didn’t feel so…filled with promise.

The adventurers said farewell and left the trio to wander with nothing but a vague gesture indicating the direction of the Luthier’s shop.

“We have to hurry back and report that the job is finished,” the Healer said with a rueful grin. “Sorry about that. We’d be happy to give you all the full tour, otherwise.”

They vanished into the gloom of a nearby alley, and an hour later, Badax and his companions were lost. Probably. They were in an alley with cages everywhere, and most were filled with skeletons. It seemed unlikely that a Luthier would set up shop in a place like this.

Next to each of the cages was a piece of parchment, listing the name of the one inside and whatever crimes they’d been convicted of to end up there in the first place.

Most of the crimes were self-explanatory. Murder. Arson. Theft. A few were more esoteric: Fraternizing, Mapmaking, Soap.

Soap? How the fuck did that constitute a crime?

Despite these lists, one of the cages was noticeably unmarked. Inside, a big green frog was sleeping on a makeshift hammock. Unlike the gate guard, the frog was wearing an eyepatch, though it didn’t stop him from noticing Badax and his companions as they walked by.

With a mischievous grin, the frog beckoned for them to come closer. Even if there hadn’t been bars between them, Badax wouldn’t have been afraid of the stranger, so he did so without hesitation. Horns and hooves, it was just a frog! What danger could there be?

“What do you want?” Badax asked.

The frog hopped up and leaned up against side of his cage. There was something…greasy about him that Badax couldn’t explain.

“Hello beasties,” the frog said in a rolling voice. “Haven’t seen you three around here before. My name’s Eugene.”

He leaned forward, and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“How’d you all like to break me out of here?”

*Or both, as was actually the case.