2. The Mystery of the Old Barn Mushrooms (Patreon)

Tales From The Guild

"You haven't got your Class yet," Theresa Dyne stated.

"I have," Aly insisted. "I'm a ~Fighter~… you saw me do a Quick-Draw just last week. You yourself said I'm a lot better in practice the past few days, too."

"I don't know what I saw," the wisp insisted.

It was late afternoon and the two of them were alone on the guild's practice field, a clay tile field about half the size of a rugby pitch. Depending on what you were doing, you could fit up to forty students on the clay at a time, plus room around the edges and on the balcony for spectators. But now it was just the two of them… well, them and about a hundred pigeons, who took the lack of an active class as implicit leave to crap all over the southwest corner of the field. Theresa was leading the new apprentices on their first real mission… her and Old Reagan, who was already Level 7 and would be a full member within a few months.

"I promise I can Quick Draw," Aly said… which, of course, she couldn't. However, she had practiced Stash again and again, and eventually the ability had leveled up, which meant she could Stash and un-Stash a weapon in a way that looked virtually identical to a first level Quick-Draw. Virtually identical…

Theresa crossed her arms - she was a few inches shorter than Aly, but was a lot stronger. An angry Theresa Dyne could squish Aly like a bug. "All right, let's see it."

Aly nodded. She took a deep breath. She un-Stashed the practice sword from her side. It appeared in her hand in a flash, perfectly ready to block or swing. She watched the wisp paladin, expectant…

"Again," she said.

Aly did. And then again. After three tries, the wisp was convinced that it wasn't a fluke or a trick… which it technically wasn't… and agreed to let Aly come along with them. Well… so long as she also agreed to wake up early to prepare their horses for the trek to the Nuss Farm.

The city of Corvona was in a unique spot - not quite on the edge of civilization, but not far from the Grevic Wilds, the expanse of sparsely-populated wilderness stretching hundreds upon hundreds of miles beyond the frontier. The wilds weren't quite uninhabited, but they were certainly uncivilized - no major towns or cities lay out there, and what small settlements could be found were occupied by strange races not cowed by the occasional monster attack or surge of wild magic. Needless to say, the wilds were not a good place for starting adventurers to whet their weapons.

However, between Corvona and the wilds were about fifty miles of increasingly sparse farmland and homesteads, some of which dated back to the founding of the modern city some three centuries before. There were ruins older than that, of course, and the ruins that Corvona had been built upon were said to be elven ruins dating millennia back, from when that strange and nigh-mythical race had disappeared.

The Nuss Farm was one of the larger homesteads, sitting about half-way between Corvona and the wilds. You could reach it in two hours by horse, down the increasingly patchy and poorly-maintained Grevic Road, which eventually petered out into a wild trail about ten miles beyond. Being where it was, the farm was pretty safe, but it still suffered from the occasional strangeness, whether that was monsters that managed to wander in without stopping at the outlying farms or weaker versions of the strange magics you found in the wild - for instance the random and temporary appearance of ghostlands, where the dead became restless and occasionally rose from their graves. If you saw a scarecrow out at the Nuss Farm and it appeared to be moving… there was a good chance it wasn't a scarecrow.

"I'm not fighting dead things," Aly stated.

"I will," Absko said. He swung an imaginary sword about, as if he didn't have an actual sword sheathed on his back - a big well-used two-handed sword on loan from the guild, as the only weapons he actually owned were a second-rate cutlass and a buck knife.

"Reagan and I will fight anything undead," Theresa stated. "I doubt it will come to that. Maybe there's a haunting, in which case I just need to exorcize the ghosts… most likely, it's wild animals, and it might just be overactive imaginations."

Theresa had passed around a description of the job. The head of the Nuss Farm, Yava Nuss, wanted to buy the fallow land north of the homestead, an older farm that had been abandoned for twelve years. Only, when she and her two sons went to check the place out, they'd seen strange lights inside the old farmhouse, and her youngest boy reported that something dark and snarling had chased him when he went back the next morning to investigate.

"Sounds like a bear," Hryz observed.

"He said it ran at him on two legs," Aly said.

"Bears can run on two legs," Hryz said.

"They cannot," Theresa stated. "Though a panicked man might well think a bear shuffling on two legs was running."

Aly didn't want to fight a bear, either - mostly because she didn't want to kill a bear. She had yet to adjust to the bit of the adventurer's lifestyle that involved occasionally killing things. Killing a bear before it killed you… well, that was one thing. Killing it for getting cozy in an abandoned farmhouse? You couldn't fault the bear for that. She hoped it was ghosts.

They rode through the morning, a field of corn stretching far into the distance to the east, a tract of soggy meadow to the west stretching into hills. They spotted hares, groundhogs, plenty of birds, and even a small herd of deer, but no bears. The sun beat on Aly's back and her hands were sore from saddling and provisioning six horses close to sunrise. Her butt and thighs were sore from riding for almost two hours… she hardly ever rode in the city. And bugs kept bothering her, swarming in to pinch at her skin - at least until Theresa handed her a little packet of sharp-smelling cream to dab on herself. It neither smelled nor felt pleasant, but it sure kept the bloodflies at bay.

"Theresa's a human name, isn't it?" Hryz observed.

The wisp nodded. "It is. My parents are human - adopted, obviously. I was born in one of the little wispen villages in the wilds to the north of here, but my brother and I were one of only two survivors."

"What can kill a village of people who can turn into incorporeal clouds?" Old Reagan asked.

"I turn into a corporeal cloud, thank you very much. Huge difference - you can hurt a corporeal cloud, even if it's tricky, and we're still affected by things like temperature. And most of us never learn to control it and, frankly, it's more trouble than it's worth in anything but a life-or-death situation. I mean… you just turn into a big cloud and your clothes…" she gestured vaguely. "They flump to the ground. Anything solid you were carrying on you. That includes piercings. One time, I saw a man who'd had an arrowhead stuck in his abdomen for years have it just drop out when he clouded… he thought the recurring pain was just from a scar. In any case, we can only manage it for short periods since you can't breathe when you cloud, either.

"As for what happened to the village? I'm told it was attacked by the snow beasts that live further up in the mountains, but I was too young to remember. My brother was old enough to have his Name Day, but I never got one, and so my human parents gave me the only name I've got. My brother uses his wispen name as his middle-name, but it's virtually unpronounceable in the Trade Tongue."

"What is it? His middle name?" Aly asked.

"Klyzh'bwrb." She said the name like it rolled right off the tongue.

"Virtually nothing," Absko said. "That's a garble."

They rounded a bend in the road, crickets chirping in the jumble of weeds to either side, butterflies flitting about the wildflowers. An old, weather-worn sign read: Nuss Farm. In truth, the farm was close to a small village with ten housing buildings housing about fifty people in all. Apparently, none of them were brave enough to check out the abandoned farmhouse, though, after Paylor Nuss got chased of by a… whatever he'd been chased by. It was a job for adventurers.

"Okay, let's check in with Yava and get started."

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The Nuss Farm might be out on the edge of nowhere, it was still within the borders of the Republic of Cerennia, and so you couldn't just go out and settle land, even if it was abandoned. Before she paid whatever modest amount the republic wanted for the land rights, Yava wanted to make sure there was no ghost on the land, and the Adventurer's Guild was authorized to venture onto abandoned property and get to work, so long as that work involved killing or expelling anything that didn't belong there.

Aly didn't ask how much the guild was getting for the job but, judging by the state of the farm, it probably wasn't much. Everything was in good repair, maintained over decades by people who took care of their equipment but didn't have much coin to upgrade. The purchase of new land was their chance to get more, but they wouldn't get anything but headaches and nightmares if there were ghosts, ghouls, or gibbers roaming about the property.

They stabled their horses and went to the main house to visit the Nuss matriarch to make sure the contract was still on. Yava was a dark-skinned human, almost as dark as Absko, around seventy but in good health. She offered them tea and fielded their questions while her sons argued over field rotations in the other room.

"Any problems with ghosts or undead in the area?" Theresa asked.

Yava Nuss shrugged. "Not as such. We get one or two wandering in from farther out every year, but I don't reckon we've seen a dead raised in these parts going on three decades." She thumped her chest. "We're too civil for 'em."

It was common knowledge that the dead only stirred in places that living folk no longer frequented. And, in Aly's understanding, this was basically correct, if a bit simplistic. For instance, an underground catacomb thirty feet beneath the city's busiest street might be crawling with the undead if left alone for long enough, and yet if a dozen people passed within a hundred yards of an old battlefield once or twice a week, you were unlikely to get any dead rising there. The rules the restless dead followed were well-documented, but not well-understood.

"How much are we getting for this job?" Absko asked.

"You're getting nothing," Theresa said. "As an Apprentice, you get room, board, access to the guild's armory, and a half share of loot. And I wouldn't bet on there being much loot in a farmhouse that's been abandoned since you were about yea high." She gestured to mid-thigh.

The fighter sighed, his brow furrowing. "I thought I was going to make a lot of money as an adventurer."

"Yes… well, at the risk of stating the obvious, you're not an adventurer yet. What level are you?"

"Level 1… I'm a fighter, obviously."

"Obviously," Theresa agreed. "So, if you factor three months per level, which is about the average early on, then you'll make level five right around the time your one year apprenticeship is over, which is about how it's supposed to work. What about you, Hryz?"

"Level 1 ~Mage~."

"No big surprise, there. And you, Aly?"

"Level 1 ~Fighter~ also," she lied.

"Right. So you're all looking at about a year before you can start making contract money. Until then, get to know your local pawnbrokers and get used to pawning off low-quality loot."

Obviously, Aly had lied about her level - last week, when they'd been cleaning out Mrs. Cafree's basement of rats, she'd told everybody she didn't even have a Class yet. You couldn't just jump from no Class to a Level 4 anything overnight… at least she didn't think you could… but the way early leveling worked was obscure, even to assessors.

Most people… probably the vast majority… started at Level 1 at around seventeen years old. Sometimes, a person jumped right to Level 2 instead, and there were a few theories as to why this might be. The one that Aly favored was that this meant you were equally qualified and advancing toward multiple classes. And, of course, some saw this as a sign of high potential while others considered it a sign of indecisiveness. And Aly? She'd started out on Level 3! Level 3 ~Thief~, Alysonna von Knurr reporting for duty. She'd never even heard of somebody starting out at Level 3… what did it even mean?

And now she was Level 4. If she didn't shape up and soon, she'd get something disastrous like ~Burglar~ for her upgrade, and it might be years before she could correct course. Years of being eyed with suspicion wherever she went because she'd cheated bastards and schemers out of their money a few too many times. The people she'd swindled deserved the thief moniker far more than her. It hardly seemed fair.

Theresa took Aly's inward indignation to be fear. "It's nothing to be afraid of, Aly. Ghosts are mostly harmless," She said. She nibbled at her lip… well wisps didn't really have lips, but it was still the edge of her mouth. She corrected herself: "Most ghosts are mostly harmless. But the ones that aren't really aren't."

"Good to know," Aly said. She forced herself to smile, and the five of them crunched down the dry road toward the abandoned farm.

Even in the golden light of mid-afternoon, with butterflies and bumblebees flitting among the wildflowers and birds chirping in the distant copse, the farm came across as a bit creepy. The wood was shabby and dilapidated, the paint on the barn and the shacks desaturated from years in the sun. Most of the windows were broken, and even the ones that weren't had a strange darkness to them that suggested the light was not welcome within. And, despite the day's heat rising to a pleasant warmth, Aly couldn't help but shudder.

For a moment, she wondered what her life would be like if she'd born a princess instead, spending the day being fawned over as she lay in the lap of luxury. No worries about her Class. No worries about anything. But Aly had to admit: she hadn't exactly been born into adversity. She was the daughter of moderately successful shopkeepers. Her older sister, Miranda, was already a Level 4 ~Seller~ at age nineteen and might well become a ~Merchant~ if she kept up her studies. Their parents would be overjoyed if that happened, as they were both mere ~Shopkeepers~, a respectable but lower-prestige Class. And their youngest daughter, the black sheep of the family, was a bloody ~Thief~. Wonderful.

"Reagan, why don't you go check out the barn with those two while Absko and I check the main house?"

Old Reagan nodded. "Got it. All right, you two. Let's search the big scary barn. A quick heads-up, though, I grew up on a farm and there'll probably be rats."

"If you hadn't heard, rats aren't a problem," Hryz said, glancing toward Aly. "Though not dropping them all over the avenue just might be."

"Har har," Aly said.

They crunched through the dry grass and over to the barn. Getting in wasn't a problem, as one of the doors hung loose on one big hinge, creaking back and forth in the breeze. Aly ducked past it and waited for her eyes to get used to the darkness within. It was… actually a lot less bad than she'd been worried about. It was tidy and didn't smell like much. She'd assumed there would be mouldering wood, ancient hay, and perhaps an infestation of mice or worse inside. Instead there was… well, not much of anything. The dirt floor could have been swept yesterday, and not a single dilapidated farming tool hung from the rusty wall hooks. The whole bottom of the barn was completely empty, no sign of anything.

"Hmm…" Old Reagan said. She crouched low and ran her fingers along the compacted dirt of the floor. "Looks like something's been dragged through here recently. Well… more recently than fifteen years ago."

Old Reagan knew her way around a farm. She paced the floor, checked the walls and the troughs, and shone her lantern up into the rafters above. "It's extremely rare for a barn not to have birds up in the rafters, even on an active farm. You've got to chase them out," she said.

"So you're saying you think somebody chased the birds out," Hryz said. His red eyes pulsed with an inner glow - Aly wasn't sure whether jinns had dark vision or he was doing something else entirely. She thought it might be insensitive to ask. A minute later, it didn't matter - he cast a mage light up to the rafters, startling the one raccoon that had apparently made its way up there to sleep.

"Chased out or scared out. I wish we could get up to the loft… looks like somebody's taken the ladder."

Old Reagan didn't look like much of a climber and Hryz had fine robes because he'd rather look like a mage than wear job-appropriate clothing. Reagan wasn't actually old, obviously… in fact, she was probably two or three years younger than Theresa, though both women were certainly in their twenties. She was a stout woman, though very little of that was fat, with short brown hair that managed to come across as both tough and feminine due to its excellent upkeep. Aly briefly wondered what products she used, because she could use a bit less frizz, herself. That wasn't the point…

The point was that Aly was the climber in the group by default. She fancied herself a pretty good climber, and she took the moment to demonstrate just that, scrambling up a support beam, clinging to a rafter, and then leaping across to the loft.

"Be careful!" Reagan shouted. The sentiment was appreciated if a bit too late to be of any good. In any case, it didn't matter - Aly hit the side of the loft belly-first, nearly flopped back to the ground, but managed to grip the ledge and pull herself up. "Uh… anything up there?"

Aly pulled a splinter out of her thumb and sucked at the wound for a moment as she paced the barn's loft. There were… seven big wooden crates stashed up there. They were unmarked and sturdy, each of them about the height of Aly's belly button. They didn't look all that old, either.

"Crates," she said.

"Rats?" Reagan called up.

"Crates! Seven of them!" she called back. "Have we got anything to open them with? Your sword?"

"Don't be foolish, girl. You'd break my sword if you tried to pry a wooden crate open with it. You don't see a pry up there?"

"No pry…"

"There was an old water pump outside," Hryz observed. "I think the handle would double as a pry."

He and Reagan ventured back out. Aly paced the loft, noting that some of the rafters did have crusted bird shit on them, though there were no birds. The raccoon glared at her from the rafters at the opposite side of the barn. She examined the crates, running her fingertips along the rough wood, giving them a tap with her boot, and then a full body shove. Her best efforts could barely nudge the things… Absko could probably push the things right off the loft with minimal effort.

"I'm tossing it up," Reagan said.

"Don't toss it… ahh!" Aly shouted, flattening herself against the loft floor to avoid getting brained by a tumbling pump handle. It did look like it would double as a pretty good pry.

She got to work, jamming the thinner part under a gap in one of the looser crate tops and prying the nails out. She worked a corner at a time and eventually cracked the top off. Inside was sawdust and… little paper packets of something carefully tied with twine. Aly opened one with her knife and was immediately assaulted with the overwhelming smell of… mushrooms?

"They're full of mushrooms! I'm tossing a pack down!" she called back.

"Don't toss it… ahh!" Reagan shouted. "Ow!"

"Sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No, I was just surprised," Reagan said. "This is… uh… this is a lot of different kinds of mushrooms. I'm pretty sure some of them are poisonous…"

"I notice they aren't driedmushrooms," Hryz observed.

"Good point. That means they haven't been here for that long if they're not rotten to shit," Reagan said. "All right… I guess this is officially the Mystery of the Old Barn Mushrooms… let's take this back to Theresa and see what she thinks. You need help getting down?"

"Nope!" Aly said. She tucked another packet under her arm so the others could observed how they'd been packed and hopped down from the loft.

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"I told you one of us should have helped you down," Reagan said.

"No, you asked if I needed help getting down. That's an important semantic difference," Aly said. Wincing, she limped after them. She'd twisted her ankle upon landing… not badly. At least it didn't feel broken or badly sprained… but she probably should have lowered herself and then dropped. But she'd wanted to look cool in front of Reagan for some reason. Mission very not accomplished.

The shadows had grown long and the sun was setting out over the distant trees to the west, out beyond the weedy scrub of field that Yava Nuss wanted to buy. The plan had been to ask to stay somewhere at the Nuss Farm for the night, but they might as well sleep in the abandoned barn, which seemed like a pretty decent place to set up shop for the night. But, before that, they had to do a ghost hunt and, depending upon what they found, perform an exorcism.

This was made possible by Theresa Dyne's ~Paladin~class, which was a sort of hybrid between holy and fighting classes. While the wisp didn't come across as a devout, she was apparently pretty serious about her religious commitments and knew a whole host of blessings and holy techniques, which made her a huge asset for any mission involving evil spirits or the undead. Aly was excited to see what a paladin's holy magic might entail… she stayed excited about it for almost two hours. Only then did she conclude that it was really bloody boring.

"Being a ~Paladin~ is the greatest honor I can imagine," Theresa gushed.

Then she'd proceeded to lash a white crystal to the front of her sword. She swept the tip back and forth, casing every last inch of the barn, the farm house, and the several smaller shacks on the property. They followed her in the darkening gloom as she paced, scrutinizing her little crystal for any trace of… well, Aly assumed it would glow or something. Really, she had no idea.

"Is it supposed to glow?"

"No. Shh," Theresa hissed. Her prehensile tail smacked Aly in the side of the thigh.

They found nothing - no strange creatures, no signs of people, dead or otherwise, no signs of ghosts… well, except for one spot in the basement of the farmhouse that Theresa declared to be ambiguous. To be safe, she set up an exorcism ritual down there in the basement, and everybody agreed it would be interesting to see how an exorcism worked. It turned out that exorcisms were pretty boring, as well.

Theresa drew out a holy circle on the ground, sprinkled it with holy water, and proceeded with a holy chant. A very, very repetitive, droning holy chant. Sure, the setup had been a bit fascinating, but that had been an hour ago. Everything since then had been chanting, sprinkling a bit of holy water, and more chanting. Apparently, it would get a bit more exciting if and when there was an actual ghost to deal with… but so far, no ghost.

Aly shifted back and forth, hoping to keep her feet awake. She shared a glance with Absko, who shot her a worried frown - he was bored, too, but he didn't want to say anything. Aly leaned in close to Old Reagan and whispered, "This is boring."

Reagan glared at her and held a finger to her lips. Theresa had insisted that they should be absolutely silent throughout the exorcism, unless she requested them to join in with the chanting. Aly hoped she'd request something soon, or else just ascertain that there were no ghosts to be banished. She sighed. Reagan glared at her again. Eventually, Aly gave up on the ritual and padded up the stairs to the main floor of the farm house. Then she froze and nearly screamed, for she found herself face to face with a ghost…

No, that wasn't a ghost. It was just a faint light being reflected through the window and illuminating the ratty brown window shade as it wavered in the draft. In the otherwise-dark room, it looked like a glowing spectral thing. Aly crept up to the window, moved the deteriorating shade to the side, and peeked out. Out in the night, out near the old barn, were several lights… and one of them was approaching the farm house. Aly raced to tell the others, freezing in her steps at the top of the basement stairs. Theresa had been pretty insistent about having zero interruptions during her exorcism. If Aly charged into the basement screaming about lights in the old barn and it turned out to only be the Nuss brothers, Theresa would probably be really mad. No, she'd better check this out… Aly was on thin enough ice as it was.

Aly slooowly opened the side door and crept out into the night, trying to blend the sound of her footsteps in the dry grass with the hush of the wind. Yes, there was a light - an oil lantern, from the look of it - bobbing its way toward the townhouse in the dark, swaying with somebody's footsteps like a buoy in choppy seas. Soon enough, Aly could make out two men and, as she flattened herself in the tall grass, she could strain to make out their voices.

"Yeah, I know it's a foul-up," one of the men said. "But what are we going to do about it?"

"You said there were five adventurers? Do you think they're the ones who found the mushrooms?" the other said.

"Don't see who else it could be."

"Shit. That's bad."

"Maybe. But… well, I think there were four of them. Two men and two women, and only the one big fella looked like he'd be any good in a fight. I say we go in there, take 'em by surprise, and take care of business."

Aly gasped - she was pretty sure 'take care of business' was a euphemism for killing people. From killing her… well, friends was an awfully strong word. Colleagues whom she was slightly fond of. Aly had to wonder about the competence of these men, though, since they couldn't tell the difference between four adventurers and five. She wondered who'd been left out of the count. It didn't matter.

Part of Aly told her to run inside and alert the others, but that would almost certainly alert the two approaching men, as well. They might well run back to fetch their colleagues in the barn, and then they might surround the house and trap all five adventurers inside. No, it was better if Aly seized upon the element of surprise and took care of business, herself.

She drew her bow and waited in the darkness, waited to get a good shot. The lantern bobbled. The men approached the house. Twenty-five yards away. Twenty yards. She could see their faces… the closer one looked vaguely familiar… Aly loosed her shot.

"Ahh!" the man screamed, suddenly knocked to the ground with an arrow in his shoulder. Aly hadn't been trying for a deadly shot, or he'd have been dead.

The other man hefted a hatchet and stormed in Aly's direction with the lantern. She fired again, sinking an arrow in the man's belly and, when that didn't down him right away, she sank another in his thigh. The first man screamed in pain - if Aly wasn't mistaken, she'd just shattered his shoulder, and he might well be dying if he didn't get medical attention. But that would have to wait, as now there were at least four people sprinting out from the old barn with weapons at the ready.

And Aly only had three more arrows… six was all that Theresa had let her requisition from the guild armory, and at the time she'd insisted that Aly probably wouldn't need her bow at all, as they weren't all that effective against ghosts or the undead. Against people? Clearly, they were pretty effective. Aly banged on the side door to alert the others and, when Reagan and Hryz came bounding up the stairs, she tapped on the window and motioned them to come out.

"Four guys coming our way from the barn… I already shot two…"

"You shot people?" Reagan gasped. From a woman who'd single-handedly bested a small gang of cattle-rustlers, the response was a bit unexpected.

"Yeah, bad guys," Aly explained. "Come on."

The four people from the barn were already checking out their downed friends. One of them had a directional lantern, which she used to scope out the nearby field. The beam fell on Reagan and Hryz…

"Hey!" the woman shouted. With her free hand, she leveled a crossbow at them… but she hadn't spotted Aly.

Aly took a shot, striking the woman right in the belly and making her drop both crossbow and lantern. Two arrows left. Meanwhile, Hryz unveiled a new spell, casting something that sent ice shards and clumps of snow hurtling at the others. The irony of a jinn casting ice magic as his first offensive spell did not escape Aly, but she had more important things to deal with. Namely, stopping whomever was loading crates back at the old barn.

As Hryz and Reagan engaged with two of the remaining three, Aly raced toward the man who'd split off and was running back toward the barn. He was reasonably fast, but Aly was faster… unfortunately, she had a twisted ankle that was doing her no favors, and the wobble she took with each landed footfall threatened to make the injury far worse if she took a misstep.

"Stop or I'll shoot!" she shouted… and, amazingly, it worked. She approached the man at a fast walk. "Drop your weapon."

"Look… I don't know what you think is going on here…"

"You're smugglers," Aly stated. The man didn't bother to refute her. "I'm not sure why you're smuggling, apparently, mushrooms… but I don't really care, either. We're just here to help Yava Nuss with her farm trouble, and that's apparently you lot. How many have you got back at the barn?"

"Two… just two," the man said. Slowly, he lowered his knife. The instant his grip on it loosened, Aly's hand shot out and she Stashed it in her belt. "They're just loading the cart…"

"Okay. Well you and I will walk over there and you'll tell them to stop, and then we'll get this all cleared up. Nobody else is getting hurt. Right?"

The man slowly nodded. "Right."

The two men loading crates of illicit mushrooms onto the carts were beefy farmhands from the Nuss Farm. Both were close to the brawn and sheer size of Absko, but neither was a fighter, and both were content to sit peaceably until a very worried Theresa Dyne stormed in out of the night, a faintly-glowing mace in her hand, her pale wisp eyes wheeling around with fury until she spotted Aly up in the loft, her bow drawn, her feet kicking back and forth as she waited.

"Are you insane, girl? What if there'd been more of them? What if you'd been hurt? Your aunt would crucify me!"

"Sorry…" Aly said. The adrenaline of the fight had faded and, suddenly, she had problems. Much bigger problems than the moderate annoyance of Theresa Dyne.

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Fortunately, the cart the mushroom smugglers had brought with them was large enough for ten crates plus the four smugglers who were too injured to ride well. For the rest, Yava Nuss lent the adventurers her son, Paylor's, horses since he was one of the ringleaders of the smuggling operation. They would be sold at auction back in Corvona to pay the fee for his release. The remaining smugglers were on their own in that regard, including the two farmhands - though they would likely get off with lesser charges in any case, since they'd just been loading crates and could easily plead ignorance.

"So… you made up the story about getting chased by something big and dark?" Absko asked Paylor.

Paylor shrugged. "I didn't know ma was going to call in adventurers to deal with it. We just wanted her to leave the old farm alone - that operation was worth far more than whatever scraps the new land will bring in… a few years of that and we'd have been able to buy ten times more land."

"Really? You can get good money for mushrooms? Why not just bring them in legally and pay your tax?"

"The really valuable ones are also really poisonous. You're not allowed to bring them in at all, but alchemists will pay out the nose for them. Or at least that's what our contact says. Look… we didn't mean no trouble by it. Why don't you, you know, take our shipment, sell however much you like, pretend you killed the smugglers, and we'll call it even?"

Theresa Dyne glowered at him. "We will do no such thing. We are people of our word, and our word was that we would deal with the disturbance at the abandoned farm. It isn't dealt with until the criminals have been brought to the law… I will urge leniency, though I'm not sure how much weight my word has. I am not offended by mushroom smuggling, however illegal it may be, but you cannot use threat of danger to persuade people away from their business. And I am definitely offended by feeble attempts at bribery. I suggest you consider it a lesson learned."

Paylor nodded slowly. "I'll do that."

The whole ride back, Aly hardly said a word. She had bigger issues to deal with. In the heat of the moment, when she'd been running through the dark, firing off arrow after arrow to incapacitate dangerous opponents, rushing to stop the smuggling of illicit mushrooms… she'd felt like an adventurer. She'd felt like a hero, even. She understood the appeal, and it sang to her. This was her calling! And yet… when she concentrated… when she reflected inward and assessed her true self in the instinctual way that all people could, she discovered something very… troubling:

The rush of power she'd felt in the immediate aftermath of the battle had been just that - Aly leveling up. Now she was no longer Alysonna von Knurr, ~Thief~. She was Alysonna von Knurr, ~Bandit~. And she would remain so until Level 10… and there was no guarantee that things would be better after that. Aunt Vi was going to kill her!