“It spoke with you? Wait, it could speak?” It seems Quinn is as incredulous with what Millson just said as I am.

“Yes. Although it was sparse with its words and it was incredibly difficult to understand, it spoke to me in Informal.”

Everyone around listening to his story is silent as we process this information. Millson gave us a pretty detailed description of the monster but even then it’s hard to imagine it because none of us have ever seen anything like the creature he described. Derriv is the one who breaks the silence as he asks solemnly, “What did it say?”

“It spoke with a hissing sound like snakes make when you intrude in their space. It said, “Riches…” I was a bit stunned hearing that as you can imagine. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant but when I took a look around at the countless gemstones on the ground, an idea popped up in my head and I remembered all the stories I heard as a kid about hoards of riches and their protectors.

“I slowly reached into my pocket and grabbed a few copper coins before taking them out and laying them down in front of the snake. When the coins were on the ground, the snake leaned its head closer to them, like it was scrutinizing them carefully. After a moment, it raised its head and looked at me oddly, as if it was pitying me and my abject poverty. It was quite a peculiar ordeal, having a monstrous creature like that taking pity on me but at least it wasn’t devouring me.

“Before long, the snake spoke to me again, it said, “More…” I didn’t have any more coins on me and I was terrified it would eat me but when I tried leaving the cavern, it didn’t stop me. When I got back outside the mine, the bandits surrounded me with their blades pointed at my face, questioning me how I was the only one who got out unharmed. I went ahead and spilled nearly everything that happened: what I saw, what I heard, and how I offered the snake copper coins for my life. None of them believed me and I didn’t blame them one bit. If I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t believe me.”

I’m with the bandits on this one too. Even now I don’t fully believe him. It honestly sounds like a children’s make believe story. The Talking Snake and the Gemstone Cavern. That could be the title of a children’s book I’d read to the girls before bed.

“They all decided to enter the mine, bringing me with them like I was some sort of protection charm but I refused to go back inside without going to the bathroom first. They finally relented after I moaned and whined for a few minutes straight and let me go back to my house as long as someone followed me to make sure I didn’t run away. I went ahead and grabbed 2 silver coins from my house and stashed them in my pockets before walking back outside. When we got back into the cavern, the same thing happened as before and the bandits lost their inhibitions, throwing themselves into the piles of gemstones.

“I might have left out a few details when I told them what happened in the cavern, especially regarding how their friend died. I told them how the snake devoured him and how it let me go after I offered it a few copper coins. I didn’t tell them how their deceased friend was stuffing his pockets with gemstones before the snake killed him exactly like they did once they got into the cavern. After a few moments, the snake appeared again and this time since we had more torches, I got a better view of it.

“Its body was still as long and thick as before but I could see that it wrapped its body around a cavern pillar to keep itself elevated as it watched us from high above. Each individual scale on its body was as large as my palm and it had hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. This time I could see the snake more clearly but that wasn’t a good thing as it only deepened the dread I felt toward the creature. The snake didn’t say anything this time and it only watched us coldly from the pillar where it wrapped itself around.”

It seems Millson isn’t quite the honest man he wanted us to believe he was at the beginning of his story. But it’s not like I can’t see from his perspective regarding this whole thing. In the end, it was likely those bandits would hurt his friends and family if he came clean about everything and left them to their own devices. Besides, it takes an outstanding amount of courage to weaponize a monstrous being like that snake against your enemies and gamble your own life on a hunch you had. Millson at least has my respect in that regard.

“Eventually, the snake lowered its head toward the bandits who in turn held their hands together high above their heads, offering copper coins with both hands. Even to this day, I still remember the stupid smiles on their faces as they thought they were tricking the snake into giving up its gemstones for their pitiful coins. The snake responded to their offerings by ripping their bodies in half. Their agonizing wails I heard that day still haunt me in my sleep.

“When it was finished with them, it came before me again and this time, I offered it my silver coins. It scrutinized the coins and accepted them as payment for my life, still dissatisfied with my meager wealth. But once again, it looked at me and said in its strange hissing voice, “More…” I was surprised by what it said but I also realized it wouldn’t matter because I, and the rest of the village, would never enter the mine again after that day.

“In all likelihood, our village would close off the mine and maybe even build a barricade to keep the snake inside. I really thought as long as we left that snake alone, it would leave us alone. I was wrong, terribly wrong.”

Millson takes a moment to compose himself as he stares blankly into one of the nearby campfires. With the way he ended that part of the story and with where we are now, I can only expect tragedy to befall them next and I was right.

“One night, about a week after the incident, the snake slithered its way out of the mine. Our barricade did nothing to stop it in its horrendous wake and it reached our village in seconds. It didn’t stop to speak with us and immediately destroyed one of the homes closest to the mine, devouring its inhabitants. When the rest of us heard the noise and rushed out to check what was happening, we saw the horrible creature bathed in moonlight, enthusiastically gulping down the bones of one of the village’s families.

“I knew that family. They lived in the village for generations just like mine. I witnessed their children grow up alongside my daughter. And they were gone, just like that. The snake took a look at us and it said, “Riches… More… One… Week…” And that was the start of our nightmare.

“Every week we had to deliver valuables to the snake or else it would attack our village again. If our offering for the week wasn’t greater than the offering from the previous week, the snake would select one of the villagers to torture. That’s right, you heard me correctly. The snake would torture that villager in front of us and it would make the whole village watch.

“Have you ever seen a half eaten woman crawling towards you, begging for death? I have. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I still see her mutilated body and I get an urge to bash my head against a stone to get that image out of my head. Over the past month the snake had us working for it, we learned its name: Vreemdwurm. Not sure what it means or what language it comes from but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters anymore. The only thing that’s been on our minds this past month is our weekly offerings and how we can fulfill it.

“Someone came up with the idea of finding Penne’s encampment and using the fortune he’s amassed from his rule here over the years for the snake’s offerings and it worked, for a while. But that fortune ran out too eventually. Our situation became so dire to the point our village had to resort to robbery because we couldn’t keep up with the weekly offerings anymore. Please, you have to believe me. The next offering is due tonight and if we don’t get the goods in that tent to the snake, it’ll kill us all horrifically.”

There’s a moment of silence as everyone digests Millson’s story. A lot of it sounds unbelievable and something straight out of a fairytale but at the same time his serious demeanor and the rest of the prisoners’ bleak, exhausted faces speak volumes toward what they’ve gone through if not outright the veracity of the story. The desperation he’s showing right now seems genuine enough that I don’t believe he’s leaving out anything from us like he did with the last group of bandits.

But what does it have to do with us? The only reason we’re here is because they attacked our caravan and the caravan leader sent us to deal with them. As long as they stop attacking merchants then it should be cleared up but if what Millson said is true, and they’re basically being extorted by a monstrous snake, then the moment we leave, they’ll resume the attacks.

I guess it all depends on what Derriv wants. Derriv speaks up after a few minutes of pondering, “Why didn’t you leave then? Why not gather your family, pack your things, and leave?” Isn’t that what we did?

Millson doesn’t answer immediately but stares off into the distance to gather his thoughts, “And where would we go? All of us have lived in Mudrock our whole lives. We don’t know how to live anywhere else. Mudrock is where our homes are, it’s where we grew up, and it’s where our bloodline is laid to rest. My parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, everybody who came before me rests in Mudrock.

“You speak as if abandoning what you’ve spent your entire life working towards and building is as simple as flipping your palm over. For you, it might be. But for us, it’s impossible. For better or for worse, Mudrock is our cradle as well as our grave.”

Derriv listens to Millson speak with a blank look on his face as he stares off into the distance. I wonder if Millson’s words and his situation resonated with how Derriv felt when he made the decision to leave Midriver. He did spend quite a few years building up that place and being forced to leave his home due to external forces couldn’t have been easy for him.

Regardless, Derriv makes his decision about what to do with Millson. “The whole reason why we came here was to stop the attacks and make sure the route stayed secure for any future treks. As long as you promise you won’t target the merchant route anymore, we’ll let you go. We’ll be taking all your weapons to make sure this doesn’t happen again, however.

“What you end up doing regarding the snake isn’t our problem and thus we’ll be taking half of the wealth in that tent. It’s a fair enough trade in my opinion. You obtained those valuables illegitimately yourselves, you can’t fault us for doing the same. Robbing a robber isn’t really robbery, is it?

“Whether you end up scrounging for enough to make your next tribute or you decide to leave, that’s your choice. I’ll only say one thing regarding that: home is where your family is, not the other way around. Let’s get moving boys.”

Everyone gets to work, renewed by Derriv’s words but probably more so by our newfound wealth. Bertrand sidles up next to me and whispers with a grin on his face, “Hey, you want to check out that snake?”