Chapter 16

Wraine and I immediately throw our weapons to the ground and put our hands up. The town guards slowly approach us and when they reach our weapons, they kick them to the side. You know, we paid a lot of money for those. Disregarding our feelings on the matter, they come up to us and pat us down for any other weapons. Once we’re clear, they ask for identification and the reason we’re traveling to the main continent. We show them our adventurers’ guild licenses and I show them the guild quest paper Ylvise handed to me. That’s what it was! I remember now, this is what I found strange about the adventurers’ guild. It doesn’t make sense that the license let’s people travel. I’ll ask Wraine about this later. After confirming everything was fine, the guards let us pick up our weapons and they opened the wooden gate for us. After passing the gate, I asked a nearby guard about the gate since no one on the other side of the tunnel told us about this gate and the procedure to open it. The guard tells me the fence and gate were recently built and implemented because they just got news of the Ribierian attack on the Basteb colonies. The noble who’s in charge of this side of Mountain’s Toil enacted the fence and gate to check on anyone passing through the tunnel. He couldn’t allow himself to let a Ribierian invasion start with his side of the town.

Taking a look at the town, I feel like I’m dreaming. Everything that I see before me is the exact same as on the other side of the tunnel. The stone pavement, the big buildings on either side of the main street, and the busy people on the road are the same. It’s a bit eerie actually, but we don’t have the time for this. Wraine and I quickly make our way down the main road heading towards the stone gate at the end of the road. This isn’t easy for us because we need to maneuver our way in between the townspeople going about their days and the numerous street vendors hawking their goods. The weapons in our hands make things even more difficult and we have to be careful we don’t end up hurting anybody. Okay, seriously now. How do people do this normally? We have to buy leather fastenings to hold our weapons after we get our reward even if they’re expensive.

When we reach the stone gate, we’re stopped by guards once again and they go through the whole process, once again. After telling them we’re traveling to Lahrein for an adventurers’ quest, they open the gates for us. This really doesn’t make sense to me. Once we’re outside of the town, we’re greeted by green grass on both sides of the dirt road we’re standing on. In front of us is a huge, green field with a massive, sprawling forest on the other side. Even though we’ve only been in the city for a single night, I kind of missed seeing all this lush, natural green right before me. Wraine and I follow the dirt road for about a minute when it splits into two different directions, left and right. There’s also a wooden pole sticking up from the ground next to where the road splits and there’s three wooden signs on top of the pole pointing in three directions, left, right, and where we came from. It seems like there’s writing on the signs as well but we’re unable to read them and can only follow the dirt road on the left which should lead us east. We should be following this road for two days until we reach Lahrein.

Once we settle into a comfortable walking speed, I ask Wraine, “You know, don’t you think the adventurers’ guild and their licenses are weird?” Turning his head to look at me, he tilts his head as if he’s questioning me. “Normally, people aren’t allowed to travel around, right? To get into towns and cities, the guards will ask us for identification and either a reason for travel or traveling papers right? What I don’t understand is why the adventurers’ guild license works as both the identification and the traveling paper. It doesn’t make sense because for us, getting the license was really simple since Ylvise only needed our names and where we were born. The only hard part was the first time registration fee of 5 silver but even that’s not too hard as long as you work for a bit. Both Stanley and Ylvise told us the license works for most towns and cities right? Then what’s the point of needing traveling papers when you can just get a guild license? Ylvise even told us most of the guild’s members are just people who registered to get a license for traveling. Why do these towns and cities even need traveling papers then, when everyone can get a license as long as they have 5 silver? I thought the whole point of the guards asking people to identify themselves and finding out their reason for traveling was to keep dangerous people outside of towns right? But if it’s that easy to get the guild’s license, then wouldn’t everyone, including the dangerous people, just get a guild license?”

“Huh. If you put it like that then I guess it is weird. I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it like that before. Now that I think about it, it really doesn’t make sense. From what I’ve been told by my dad and the villagers, you can usually get traveling papers from the noble whose land you’re leaving for a fee of course. What I’m wondering is wouldn’t the adventurers’ licenses be taking money from the nobles’ pockets? The nobles aren’t getting the fees they’d normally get for handing out traveling papers and they’re also allowing people to come and go into their towns and cities with the guild’s licenses. Wouldn’t it make more sense if they didn’t allow people to get or use those licenses and only allowed their personal traveling papers? They should be making more money that way.”

“Yeah, right. I wonder why they do that? By the way, do you want me to start calling you Alain again? I already kind of fucked up with Stanley and if they do figure out we’re deserters, both of your names are already known. It doesn’t matter whether anyone knows you as Alain or Wraine anymore.”

“Nah, I’ve gotten used to being called Wraine now and every time I hear someone call me that, it reminds me of my dad which is nice.”

“Alright, fair enough.”

Traveling to Lahrein is a pretty pleasant experience. It feels as though we’re back on the peninsula going south towards Mountain’s Toil. The only real difference is the amount of people we see on the road. When we were traveling to Mountain’s Toil, we didn’t see many people at all until we reached the outskirts of the town. Here, on the main continent, we see people walking, people on horses, and even wagons being pulled. Even the weather is pretty similar and Wraine says I should appreciate the cool March breeze while I still can before summer comes which makes me think Aldore was too sensitive to the weather or he was complaining solely to complain.

The two days we spent walking to Lahrein passed by pretty uneventfully and we arrived in the village on the third day after we left Mountain’s Toil. Wraine’s knowledge of what is edible and what isn’t is starting to lose effectiveness because we came across a lot of berries and plants he couldn’t recognize. I didn’t think the local flora would be this different from the peninsula but apparently it is. Once we arrive in Lahrein, we grab a passerby’s attention and ask her where we can find the village’s elder named Tandy like Ylvise told us to. She points us toward a wooden house at the end of the dirt road and goes back to what she was doing. As we follow the dirt road towards the elder’s house, I feel nostalgic looking around at all the wooden huts adjacent to the road. Now this is what I’m most familiar with. Even if the time I spent in Abermock was mostly awful and something I’d rather not remember, it was still the village I lived in for 14 winters and seeing another village like this fills me with warmth and nostalgia. After knocking on the village elder’s door, an old man with white hair opens it and we tell him we’re from the adventurers’ guild. He nods his head slightly and tells us where the goblin den is and how we can get there. The den isn’t too far away and we should be able to get there within two hours.

Once we know where we’re heading, we leave the village and start heading north into the woods where the den is. On the way out of the village, I noticed a large woodcutting axe with its iron axehead embedded into a tree stump. There’s no one around the axe which makes me think it was discarded by someone. After walking north for about an hour and a half, we found the clearing Tandy told us about as well as the small hill on the other side of the clearing. Right in the middle of that small hill is a cave opening small enough that if two grown men tried walking in at the same time, they’d undoubtedly get stuck. However, neither the hill nor the cave draw my attention. It’s the 12 small, naked, green figures clambering their way up the hill and into the cave following a messy dirt path loosely covered with rocks. That’s right, 12. Ylvise told us back in town that a den should only have one or two. 12 meant that this quest could no longer be classified as a copper ranked quest and needed to be reevaluated as an iron ranked quest since we’re dealing with a nest now. Looking towards Wraine, he signals with his hand to back up for now.

Once we think we’re out of the goblins’ earshot, Wraine bends down to pick some berries he recognizes while saying, “Welp, we were unlucky this time. Really unfortunate. Let’s head back to Lahrein and tell Tandy that this isn’t a den but a nest. We’ll probably run into another adventurers’ guild before we arrive in Midriver and we’ll grab another request there.”

I don’t answer Wraine. Instead, I sit on the dirt and rest my back against a tree. Right now I’m just thinking about all of our possible choices and what we can do right now. The problem is we don’t have any more coins left. It’ll be hard for us to get into another town, let alone a city, with the amount of money we have right now. If we can’t get the reward for completing Lahrein’s quest now then the rest of our way to Midriver is going to be difficult. Probably noticing I still haven’t responded to him yet, Wraine asks, “Well, what are you thinking about right now?”

“We need this money really badly. I don’t think we even have enough to get into another town right?”

“We still have 8 copper which should be enough to get into one more town I think. Although Stanley did say the toll to get into Mountain’s Toil was lowered on account of the refugees. If the toll for one person is 5 copper then we’ll only have enough to send one person into town to grab another request while the other stays outside. Even if you want this reward, how will we get it? We just saw 12 goblins heading back to their cave and there could be more inside. I know you’ll be fine handling one by yourself, but if you get surrounded, then it’s over.”

Instead of responding, I close my eyes and lean my head against the tree trunk behind me. After taking a few moments to think, I start to accept that this quest might be impossible for us. Opening my eyes, I see a rabbit a few yards away from me, scurrying around until it gets scared by something and then it flees back into a hole in the ground. An idea pops into my mind but I immediately dismiss it. Wait, it might be possible with that axe I saw. “A cave is like a rabbit’s burrow right?”

“Hmm, that’s a weird comparison. Why?”

“Let me know if you think this could work. What if we blocked off that cave entrance with firewood, a lot of firewood. Then we set all of that wood on fire. The smoke from the fire floods into the cave and starts choking the goblins inside, killing a few if we’re lucky and for the rest we’ll be waiting near the opening with our swords ready to stab any of the goblins running out. Could we do that?”

Wraine doesn’t respond immediately but he closes his eyes and thinks for a few moments. “But the thing is we don’t know if there’s another opening to that cave like let’s say on the other side of that hill. There’s also no guarantee the smoke from the fire will spread all throughout the cave to make your plan work.”

“We can find out. We can walk there right now and find out easily. For the smoke, I think if we make the fire big enough and last long enough, the cave will get fully smoked over time. We can also make the fire a few steps inside the cave to try and make as much smoke go inside as we can. I’ll even stand close to the fire and use my shield like a fan to wave more smoke inside.”

“Even if there’s no opening on the other side of that hill, there could be an opening somewhere else that we can’t see from here.”

“I mean, I’m willing to take that chance. If it means we don’t have to go into that cave and risk getting surrounded, then that’s the best plan we have right now.”

“How are we even going to get that much wood for the fire? If we only pick up the branches we see on the ground, we’ll be here for hours until we can gather enough to fill up that cave opening. And then most of that firewood will burn away before we can even make enough smoke to do anything.”

“I saw a discarded woodcutter’s axe right outside of Lahrein. It’ll take a while but I can run back there and bring it here. In the meantime, you can stay here and start gathering the firewood into a pile. You only need to stay away from the clearing over there and the goblins’ shouldn’t see you.”

“Fuck no, there’s no way I’m staying here by myself.”

“Then I can stay here and pick up the tree branches and you can go back for the axe.”

“Dear gods, do you really think this is a good idea?”

“Not really, but it’s the only one we have.”

“Then what? We’ll just go back to Lahrein and tell Tandy the quest is done? This should be an iron ranked quest, not a copper one.”

“Yeah, but we only get the reward if it stays a copper ranked quest. Hells, I’ll even go into the cave afterwards and drag the bodies out and hide them by myself if I need to.”

“Fuck off. You know I’ll help you out regardless of what happens.”

“Sounds like you agree with my plan then.”

“I don’t agree with your plan but I won’t let you do this alone.”

“Close enough. Let’s circle around to the back of that hill first and check if there’s an opening there or not.”

For some reason, I feel really excited about this plan. If this works, then the rest of this trip to Midriver will go smoothly. It only takes us ten minutes to circle around the hill and there doesn’t seem to be another opening anywhere on the hill. After looking around for another ten minutes, we can’t find any other openings around the hill either and Wraine finally caves, heading back to Lahrein to grab the axe I saw. While he’s gone, I walk around the wooded areas surrounding the clearing and the hill, grabbing as many tree branches as I can see while keeping an eye on that cave entrance. I also make sure I grab a few handfuls of dry grass and leaves to use as tinder. After spending a month in the Basteb forests relying solely on the things we could find naturally, we’ve become quite proficient at making campfires and even I can start a fire by myself now. Although Wraine’s better at it than me and he can always get the fire started in less than five minutes while I’ll still mess up the drilling part sometimes. When Wraine gets back holding the axe in one hand and his longsword in the other, I’ve already built up a small mound of firewood that reaches up to my waist. It’s time to put this plan into action.