Gale

Hello I’m Gale, and I’ll be taking over for a bit, now let's start with the morning after we all met. I woke up to a banging noise on my door, my clothes off, and somebody next to me, also with their clothes off. I was very hungover and very tired. I tried thinking of what I did last night before I went to sleep. I remember dancing with someone, I’m pretty sure it was Liz. I then realized that the someone next to me in bed was Liz. Before I was able to wake her up though I heard somebody screaming through the door which was still being banged upon.

“OY LOVEBIRDS GET UP WE GOT BREAKFAST AND WE’RE GOTTA LEAVE IN AN HOUR!” my mind still fuzzy tried to figure out who it was before connecting the name to the voice, Corrin. Those words were the last I heard from him, before I heard him being shooed away, next thing I heard was the sound of laughter and footsteps going down a staircase.

“Lovebirds, good joke, that was just a one time thing, right airhead?” Liz said, she was obviously just as hungover and tired as I was. “Well we best get up, before the others think we’re going for a fourth round.” She got up and out of her side of the bed which was facing the wall, climbed over me and got dressed. She left the room first and as she left she said “that was nice but don’t catch anything for me yeah Airhead?”

My face, which is normally as blue as the sky, must've turned the same color as a cherry. I have almost no memory of last night. The last thing I remember was dancing with Liz and watching Seethe gather the others up to their rooms before drinking more rounds with her. My mind started putting two and two together and I swear I was blushing again. I decided to put that thought away for now and started getting ready and headed down stairs.

“I understand you guys had fun last night, but you took so long you almost skipped breakfast.” Kellen said.

I looked towards Seethe trying to understand what was happening, he just shrugged as if to say “Can’t help you there sis.”

“Let’s just finish our meal, we have a long journey ahead of us.” Corrin said, before pausing and asking “Actually, where are we going?”

“Gale, Quarry, Monsoon and I were originally headed towards the capital.” Seethe replied, pulling out a map out of his bag. “Currently we’re here in Onstrend, if we wanna make our way to at least where we were heading, we’d have to go through Ryciden, and then Olonaron probably.”

“I’m game to do anything but I do think we should go to Alucaya.” Kellen added “The city is known for being the central point of the kingdom’s trade so we can use it as a jumping off point.”

“Okay how about this we just follow the main road towards the capital and see where it takes us.” Monsoon added.

“Worst comes to worst we can resort to mercenary work.” Corrin said “Nothing like getting hired to do random jobs in the middle of nowhere to help explore a continent.”

“Is… is that sarcasm or are you being serious?” I asked him.

“No I was being serious, I mean it’s not really a bad idea considering what we did together just yesterday.” Corrin replied

“True I guess, and I mean it’s not like any of us have anything too specific to do.” I said

Liz sat in silence for the longest, then she spoke up and said, “We all already agreed to go with you guys, so it’s really up to you where we go on our first stop. Though as a group we can all decide where to go later, for now you four are the majority.” She then paused before giving the group a look over, “Plus you guys seem fun, you in particular are more fun than I thought you would be.” She pointed at me, and everyone gave us a look. “I have nowhere to be, no one to meet, and frankly nothing to do, so going with you guys is more probably gonna be more fun than anything I didn’t have planned.”

“I have already agreed to join the group, so wherever you all shall go, I will follow.” NoName said.

“Okay so everyone’s agreed to go where we go, better question to ask right now would be how do we move?” Quarry asked rather bluntly. “I feel like we should buy a cart, possibly even ask if we could have one as a reward for the work we did yesterday.”

“We’re not going to get anywhere with plans alone. I’m done with my food so I’m gonna leave and see if we can’t get ourselves a cart.” Corrin replied and then stood up and left.

“One of us should follow him, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble right?” Monsoon said after he went through the door.

We all gave her a collective look as if to say “You said it.”

Monsoon sighed at the realization and shouted “Hey Corrin, wait for me!” glaring at the rest of us as she ran off.

Our table started laughing at the exchange, and after we quieted down we finished our food. While waiting, nothing much happened aside from the occasional small talk or thank you’s from the town's people. Eventually NoName was asked to play his last set before he went off and was paid 2 gold for his time. The two that went off came back in about an hour with good news.

“We asked around and the mayor of the town said they could give us a cart and a horse as a thank you for yesterday.” Corrin said.

“He said he can get them ready in about 30 minutes, and that was like 15 minutes ago.” Monsoon added. “We all better get our stuff and get ready to leave”

“Well let’s pay for our rooms and breakfast, and get ready to leave.” Quarry said, like the responsible adult he is. “Another thing, Corrin, horse as in singular or horse as in plural? Because no offense, looking at Liz’s equipment and well NoName a single horse would be stretching it.”

“GAH, I knew I forgot something!” Corrin snapped his fingers “I’ll run over real quick see if it’s plural or singular.”

So began another boring 10 minutes of waiting. We used this time to go to our respective rooms and pack up our stuff. We paid for our meals and lodging, Kellen paying for Corrin till he came back and waited outside. When he came back he was with a guard, two horses and a roofed cart. The mayor of the town was also with him, the mayor was an averaged sized gnome wearing a fitting cloak and a decent suit. They had black hair, brown eyes, and seemed to be fairly built.

“Hello I am Mayor Bitty Lock of Onstrend, and on behalf of the town I would like to personally thank you all, the group of adventurers known as…” Mayor Bitty announced, then they leaned in towards us and asked “What is your name?

“We don’t have a name yet,” Quarry replied “should we decide now or how do we come up with it?”

“Well we want to properly credit the heroes who assisted in the defense of our-”Mayor Bitty said before being cut.

“How about Chromatic Cardinals?” Monsoon asked “We’re a very colorful group of individuals and we met here at ‘The Kingdom’s Compass’ ” She said as she looked around.

“Very well, Chromatic Cardinals thank you, and as a gift and token of our appreciation take this cart and horses to assist you in your coming adventures.”Mayor Bitty replied, seemingly just trying to go with the flow

Seethe had this look of relief on his face and said “Thank you!” to Monsoon.

Both of us looked at him with a confused expression and I asked “Did your dad try to give you a bad idea? …Again?”

Seethe, obviously embarrassed, said “Of course he did! Would I ever have the confidence to name literally anything important?! He told me to name ourselves ‘Nos Heroicis’ which is y’know ‘Our Epic’ in Primordial, that’s so weird and pretentious sounding.”

“I like the name Monsoon unique!” Kellen came up and said, with a wide grin on her face. “Also I overheard ya’ Seethe, did you suggest a name in Primordial? How come you know it? Most consider it a dead language.”

“Genasi naturally learn primordial over the course of their childhood” I replied for Seethe “We don’t know how but we just do, probably something to do with our parents. All Genasi have at least one genie parent after all.”

“Excuse me, Gale, Kellen, Monsoon, and Seethe, everyone is ready to go now.” NoName said, interrupting our conversation. “By the way Monsoon, I agree with Kellen. I think the name you chose is rather unique in a good way.”

Like NoName said our entire group was packed up in the cart, with Quarry at the front to take care of driving, he looked quite comfortable up there. Everyone else was squished in the back sitting down, except Corrin who, for some reason, chose to lie down and take a nap on the floor. Monsoon seemed to be haphazardly messing with her alchemy bag, I could feel this would not be very safe. NoName was beside her, I didn’t really get what he was doing until I realized they were whispering to her, telling her their thoughts on her alchemy. Seethe and Kellen were talking, what about I had no clue I couldn’t hear them, how quietly were they talking? Those two seemed to be deeply engrossed in a conversation though, like they were in their own little world. Liz in the meanwhile amidst all this socializing, was rummaging through her bag til she found a book and started writing in it. It took a few minutes but I realized I was so entranced in thought and observation of my new group that I hadn’t noticed we had already started moving.