{-Casrane-}

“Could I… get your real names..?” she asked. “I’m Casrane.”

The man shook his head. “It’s safer to refer to them by titles for the time being. Perhaps further along on your journey, they’d be willing to share…”

“Or maybe we just need to get to know each other better,” she offered with a smile. She knew it wasn’t real, but… she never could manage this kind of thing in front of real people. Even if she was ultimately talking to herself, she could at least imagine that they were real. “Where do you want to go first?”

Despite everything, she’d been expecting an answer other than the one she got. The Lord nodded and said, “We should head to the shopkeeper, Fininri, and collect supplies for our journey.”

“A-alright, we can head there.” She waited for one of them to step forward but neither moved. She’d had to be the one to take the lead—they were always meant to follow her.

“Do you need help figuring out where the shop is?” the Lady asked, walking up beside Casrane.

Finally, a tutorial she had the option of skipping. She smiled softly and shook her head. “I think I can figure it out on my own.” She opened up the map and moved through it until she found what she was looking for. Trying to commit the path to memory didn’t work, so she was constantly opening it and closing it again until something else caught her attention.

Or, rather, there was something else that she needed to do for the story.

“There’s a trinket here!” the Lady remarked, diverging from the group to pick up a little charm. “The owner must’ve dropped this.”

“We should find who it belongs to and return it to them,” the Lord agreed.

Casrane walked up to take the charm. She didn’t bother to read the pop-up that appeared when she took it. “Do either of you have any idea of who it might belong to?”

They were both silent for a moment. They weren’t supposed to do these kinds of things; her father had, for one reason or another, been stubbornly opposed to allowing them to have any say in what goes on around them.

“We’ve never left the temple,” the Lord said after a while. “We don’t know the other residents here or who might own something like this.”

“We should ask around,” the Lady decided. “The owner wouldn’t have been here too long ago, there has to be someone who saw them.”

Casrane, perhaps, took it a bit too literally. She asked almost everyone she came across, with one of three reactions: complete silence and confusion, a casual “I don’t know,” or an “Oh, yes! Wait, no, I’m thinking of someone else.”

Eventually she settled with wandering around and waiting for someone to realize she had it. Until then, though, she had intentions of filling in the silence. “You said you’d never left the temple before. That must’ve been pretty boring, all alone in a place so big.”

“We weren’t alone,” the Lady pointed out, “we had each other and Duuzlo.”

The Lord, meanwhile, shrugged. “It’s for the best. Duuzlo says there’s a lot of people who would take advantage of us.”

“Did you ever want to leave before?” Casrane asked, looking back at them.

“It’s never crossed my mind,” the Lord replied.

“I didn’t think of anything until you showed up,” the Lady agreed. “Now, I’m content with being able to explore the world with you and honor the sacrifice Emmyth made.”

With a sigh, Casrane acknowledged that there was nothing she was going to be able to do to get an actual conversation out of them. She’d get it eventually; she wasn’t going to stop until they could be considered just as real as any humans. The others could thank her later, once her father saw that it would do more for them than “cause trouble.”

She stopped when she saw two people talking to each other outside of one of the buildings. Her wandering had done her well—she’d been able to find the people they were looking for.

“Did one of you lose something like this?” she prompted, walking up to them with a confidence that she never could’ve mustered in the real world. She showed them the charm and watched as the shorter of the two glared at the other.

“You said you had it,” she remarked with a frown.

“I did, earlier!” the other defended. “I was going to go look for it, I swear. I didn’t want you to freak out over not having it.”

She rolled her eyes and walked up to take the charm from Casrane. “Thanks for finding this for me. I’m glad nothing happened to it.” She held her hand out and gave the most genuine smile Casrane had seen so far. “I’m Kiah, by the way, and that's Farrar.”

“She’s kind of a basement dweller,” Farrar interjected. “Comes around here whenever she wants, takes some food, gets some sleep, then runs off again.”

“I think you’re forgetting which one of us constantly brings the most money,” she returned with a smirk. She brought her attention back to Casrane. “I’m a mercenary, by the way. I travel around Masylm helping out those who need it. If you’re ever in a tough situation and need some help, just call me over… assuming you’ve also got a couple of spare coins. Here’s something that you can use to contact me when you need it. I’ll be there as soon as I see it.”

“Thanks.” Casrane took the offering and stashed it away in her Inventory. “If that’s everything, I think we should still try to head to the shop…”

“There’s one more thing.” Farrar walked up and handed her a bag of coins and an item. “This is for all the work you must’ve gone through to bring it back to us. It was my fault that it got lost, so it makes sense for me to be the one to properly repay you for it.”

“I didn’t do much, really,” she said quietly, even if she still accepted the rewards. She wouldn’t have been able to get away with denying them. “I just wandered around until I found you. Everything’s still unfamiliar to me, so it felt more like getting to know the place than a chore to find the right owner.”

Farrar laughed but said nothing else to her. Both he and Kiah walked back to where they were before, continuing a conversation that quickly became incomprehensible muttering. What they were saying wasn’t meant to be important.

Casrane turned to her companions. “I’m assuming we are still heading to the shop, right?”

The Lord nodded. “It’ll benefit us to make sure we’re fully prepared for the journey ahead of us. We can’t be certain about what we might face beyond the streets of Nafrius.”

She managed something close to a smile before taking the lead again. She was still constantly opening up the map, losing track of where she was after not looking at it for so long. Once she was sure she had an idea of where she was going, she once again tried to fill the silence.

An attempt that, this time, went completely ignored.

She looked back at the two of them, observing the blank stares they gave and the way they nearly mimicked everything that she did. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but mumble, “How come the two people we’re only going to see one more time seem to carry more life than the two of you..?”

Her only answer was an out-of-place comment by the Lady. “Kiah and Farrar seem like nice people. We should make sure to visit them later, they’ll definitely be able to help us on another part of our quest.”

How could anyone have thought this to be better?

When they got there, Casrane slowly opened up the door to the shop to be bumped into by someone rushing out.

“Thief! Get back here!” shouted the shopkeeper from behind the counter. He noticed Casrane and said, “My apologies for interrupting you, hero, but do you have a moment? That thief stole something from me and I’d appreciate it if you got it back for me. I’ll reward you for it, of course.”

Casrane walked in. “Sorry, but I don’t think that’s going to happen today. I’m just here to buy some things.”

The shopkeeper froze before proclaiming, “Welcome to the Nafrius Shop, how might I help you today?” The little menu that popped up as he said it confirmed his name to be Fininri.

She stepped up to the counter and looked through the items for sale. “I don’t have enough for any of this…”

The Lord walked up beside her. “Duuzlo had prepared for it. He gave us some extra coins before we left.” He handed her a bag of coins that greatly increased her spending limit. “I’d recommend getting several extra weapons for yourself and us, so we don’t have to worry about running out, and some [Heal Potion]s. Shields would be beneficial when we start fighting, but they aren’t necessarily a priority right now.”

She followed through with his recommendations, knowing there wasn’t anything else she could do besides that.