Fodder Squad- Chapter 21, 22 and Epilogue (Finale)
Warrior Wednesday/Tamalaria's 4th Age/Fantasy
Jack winced as the lizardman warrior applied a fresh coating of the salve to his wound, trying to ignore the heavy thumps and clangs of weapons on armor and shields not a hundred feet from their position. Every couple of hours, Pel Droma was sending a group of his heavies out across the castle’s drawbridge, themselves able to pass harmlessly in and out of the barrier the sorcerer had erected around the area. In this way they were able to bring a squadron of lethally effective greenskin warriors out every couple of hours to assault the unified Royal forces, depleting their numbers and sowing chaos among them before retreating back beyond the barrier to regroup. It was infuriating.
Jack almost swatted Jarek’s hand away as the warrior applied the last swab of the healing salve. “It really would have been helpful if Toka knew some healing magic,” he quipped.
“The elf can barely control the magic he does know,” Jarek answered with a snort. He twisted the lid back onto his salve jar, shoving it into his rucksack roughly. “With our luck, he’d have you growing a third arm out of your neck here if he tampered with it. Magic,” he snarled.
“I thought your people’s shamans used all sorts of spells,” Jack said, rolling his neck to work out some stiffness and rising from his spot beside his field tent. Jarek Ko stood as well, towering over the hume swordsman by nearly a foot.
“They do. I have never liked it. Or them,” the blunt lizardman warrior commented. “Jack, I should join the soldiers,” he said, pointing to the current fray on the end of the drawbridge, mere yards from the edge of the barrier’s bubble-like surface. “They are being forced back.”
“Go, do your thing, and then come back,” Jack said with a nod. “Toka and Talya want to discuss some ideas about dealing with this barrier.” The lizardman took up his spear and darted away, a killing machine stampeding in full motion toward the fulfillment of his design. Jack watched him from his vantage point in the camp as best he could, wincing as the lizardman leaped into the fracas and rammed the point of his weapon into the exposed throat of a troll that had just swept three fully armored Royal Army soldiers aside with a simple iron club. The massive greenskin fell forward, dead in an instant, and Jarek was already weaving death into the other troopers of Pel Droma’s forces.
Jack turned away, trying to spy any of the commanding officers of the battalion. Talya and Toka stood beyond the picket line of guards to the battalion’s west, a gaggle of mages, wizards and sorcerers gathered with them in conversation. Jack didn’t know exactly what they were discussing, but he had a suspicion he wasn’t going to like it.
Finally, Jack caught sight of a sergeant coming out of the main command tent, a serious looking fellow wearing armor that had been beaten, dented, and broken open by axes and blades in enough places to make Jack wonder what was holding the armor and/or the man himself together. Approaching him, Jack snapped off a smart salute, but received no reciprocation as the sergeant stopped just long enough to square himself up with the young swordsman.
“Jack Ressling,” Jack said by way of introduction.
“Sergeant Trent Acker,” replied the sergeant evenly. “We’ve met.”
“Have we?”
“What do you want, Ressling,” the sergeant said, somewhat more stridently than Jack thought necessary. “And make it quick, I’ve got people to bring support to on the castle’s north side. The rebel has archers taking pot shots on our diggers.”
“Diggers?”
“I have people trying to dig under this barrier dome, but they keep finding it extending below the surface. The bottom has to be down there somewhere, and we are going to tunnel under it and get this whole rebellion taken care of. Now, what do you want?”
“I want myself and my friends to be the first ones through,” Jack said, still not quite sure he could believe he was saying this. Yet, Talya and Toka had convinced him and Jarek that this was how things had to be. Though none of them had any experience as a professional or career soldier in any officially recognized capacity, Toka pointed out that the four of them had displayed far greater skill against Pel Droma’s people than any unit in the Royal Army.
“With one notable exception,” Talya had said during that discussion. Jack thought back on that now, and realized that the haggard, beaten man whose unit she had brought up was the man right now before him. Sergeant Acker, hands planted on his hips, just stared at him for a long moment.
“Fine,” Acker finally said. “I’ll tell the captain and lieutenants, and they’ll have the directive passed out. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” said the soldier, swiftly moving away. Jack peered toward the drawbridge, watching as the last of the Royal forces and Jarek withdrew, the greenskins having themselves pulled away back behind the barrier.
Jarek said nothing, but joined Jack as the swordsman led him toward Talya and Toka, whose own gathering of spell casters were heading back into the main body of the Royal encampment. When they were huddled together, Jack opened with, “So? What kind of plan have you guys come up with?”
“An amplified and unified ritual, split and wrapped around the barrier,” the elven mage said. “The particulars will take a day or two to develop, and Talya had to make certain promises to mages whose skills are suspect at best, but we all believe that the proposal is, possible.” The mage didn’t seem to want o meet Jack’s gaze, which put the swordsman ill at ease. Whenever Toka wouldn’t look right at him over the two months since they’d taken up arms together, it ended up being because the mage was unsure of himself. And whenever he was unsure of himself, bad things happened.
Things like Harip.
“What aren’t you telling me, Toka,” Jack asked in a rasp. “What are the risks here?”
“The biggest risk is a backfire,” Talya replied for the mage. “I didn’t understand everything they were saying, mind you, but it seems that some of the more senior sorcerers in the King’s forces here believe that if the ritual they propose is somehow fudged, the collective magical force they’re going to pour into it will snap back on us. All of us.”
“How far would the damage spread in a backfire,” Jarek asked, glowering at the elven mage.
“Not far,” said Toka. “Only five or six miles,” he added under his breath.
“Far enough to kill everyone in this camp, and to ravage the castle town,” Jack said, running a hand through his sweaty hair. He paced back and forth, arms folded over his chest. “We can’t have that kind of fuck up again, we won’t be able to hide it. Not like before. We need another option, something that,” he began. He was halted mid-sentence by Jarek grabbing him roughly by the elbow and turning him roughly, his eyes naturally falling on Pel Droma’s barrier.
The magical force was dissipating, fading out of existence. The barrier that had held back the forces of the Royal Army of Graneck would be gone in moments.
**
The quartet was surprised to find that they had been utterly enthralled by Ressling’s recitation, and when the goblins who had been holding bows on them came to the fire pit from beyond the wheat with bowls of stew, they collectively came out of a kind of fugue. “I feel strange,” Bruce commented as he nodded to the goblin who handed him a bowl and spoon.
“The work of Gortat,” said an unfamiliar voice through the wheat, a tall, broad hobgoblin joining them and sitting beside Jack on his log. The newcomer’s bare chest was covered in various tattoos, vine and spike patterns that Azira recognized from his times as a member of Clan Batang. The newcomer pointed toward one of his fellow hobs, now standing beside the roadway. “He commands some simple magics, and one of the spells he has studied allows him to infuse a storyteller’s voice with the ability to guide mental imagery into a listener’s mind. It is a very useful talent for training warriors.”
Azira took a bite of his food and nodded toward the seated hobgoblin. “Clan K’To, of the North-Central Mountains,” Az said. The newcomer smiled at him and nodded.
“Yes indeed. I am Oblat K’To, formerly the war chief of Pel Droma’s warrior corps.
“We were going to come try to speak with you at Fort Ruby,” Melissa chimed in. “I thought you had been imprisoned for the remainder of your days.” Oblat and Jack exchanged a glance, and the hobgoblin war chief nodded.
“I would have been,” Oblat began. “But Jack made an appeal to me, one whose logic strikes true. You may not understand it, but you must listen to what we have to tell you, and leave it go, for the good of both the Kingdom of Graneck, and the Greenskin Nation. We are entrusting you with the truth of what happened in the last days of Pel Droma, the truth of the Saviors of Graneck.”
Azira slurped the last of his stew and set his bowl aside, shaking his head. “Chief, I’m not certain I understand. You have to know why we’ve been doing what we’re doing, exposing these frauds. The people deserve to know what they are.”
“Mayhap this is so, oh skirmisher and last survivor of Clan Batang,” Oblat replied sagely. “However, when I am done sharing my own part of this tale, if need be, I will explain why you must cease.” Oblat cleared his throat then, and proceeded to weave his portion of the tale.
**
“We’re starting to take some heavy losses, sir,” one of the orc warriors reported as he helped drag one of his comrades into the main antechamber of the castle keep, finally dropping the bulky man to the rough stone floor. “Does Lord Droma have more reinforcements coming through the portal soon?”
“Aye, irregulars released from the service of High Chief Morkan,” Oblat replied, leaning against the base of a statue dominating the antechamber. It was a highly detailed sculpture of the goddess Renala, a minor goddess of the harvest who was much revered across the whole of the Kingdom. King Treyarch was known to be a patron of her faith, as were the rest of the members of his family. It was one of the only things that Oblat had found throughout the castle that he didn’t want to set fire to, the goddess also worshipped by certain denizens of the Greenskin Nation. “What of the Royal forces?”
“The thorns are with them,” the orc reported, referring to the quartet who would later become known as the Saviors of Graneck. “The lizardman tears through our best people with barely a scratch on him, and the young hume swordsman doesn’t seem to even break a sweat against our people. I think we need to send out a torcher.”
“We can’t afford to do that,” the war chief grunted, pushing off of the statue and making a few gestures toward some of his people standing at attention nearby. They hustled forth and retrieved their wounded allies, helping them off toward the west wing of the castle, where the wounded were being tended to by Droma’s healers and medicine men. “We have only three torchers remaining in the keep, and no more that we know of coming. Lord Droma wants them kept within the keep in the event the Royals somehow break through his barrier.”
The orc soldier seemed to accept this, and started to make his own way toward the west wing. Oblat tried to consider the logistics of their situation; they needed not only more warriors, but more supplies, and soon. He would confer with Lord Droma, find out when more food was going to be delivered, he decided. He turned toward the towering arched passageway that led from the antechamber straight back toward the Royal apartments within the keep, and was perhaps ten strides along when the pounding of metal booted feet echoed through the chamber behind him.
“Chief K’To! Chief K’To! The barrier,” someone shouted behind him. Oblat wheeled toward a panic-stricken goblin, pelting toward him with terror writ large across his hook-nosed face. “The barrier is fading! The thorns are coming!”
Oblat didn’t wait for more information. “Berserkers,” he shouted, his voice booming through the nearest chambers. “To arms! The barrier falls! To arms!” Not waiting to see to their preparations, Oblat charged through the keep toward the apartments, bursting into a beautifully appointed and decorated central hub room that led off through numerous doors to the King and Queen’s private quarters. “Lord Droma,” he called out. “The barrier has been broken! Lord Droma!”
The hobgoblin sorcerer was not in the main hub room, where he normally resided. The floor-length mirror which he had manipulated and altered with his magics into a portal to bring through troops and supplies stood still, a simple glass reflective surface once more. Why would Lord Droma release the spell upon it?
It took an effort of will to still himself and listen, and Oblat heard faintly the sound of running water, coming from the bathing chamber. He stalked over to the door and banged on it hard three times. “Lord Droma, thy barrier has been breached by the Royals, and the thorns are storming the keep! We need more men, or one of thy spells to aid my people! Lord Droma!”
With no response coming, Oblat risked the volatile sorceror’s wrath and threw open the door of the bathroom. The scene before him caused his entire body to stiffen, his breath to catch in his lungs, and his mind to transform into a canyon through which echoed a scream of denial.
The rebellion was over.
**
“Lord Pel Droma was, as you know well, a somewhat older man,” Oblat said, using an iron poker to stir and rearrange the burning logs in the pit. “And the end he met, well, it did not befit a man of his greatness. But the truth is the truth; he had slipped and fallen in the shower, and broke his neck. I found him dead within, his head turned halfway around from true.”
Silence fell over the company, the quartet from Bronze Pot staring in disbelief at the war chief and young Savior of Graneck. Ressling broke the quiet after a minute. “We found Oblat dressing the sorcerer in the King’s bedchamber,” said Ressling. “He told us what had happened, and begged us to take credit for killing him. Pel Droma’s rebellion had to have a noble ending, for the sake of his people, and the people of the Kingdom as well.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Bruce with a shake of his head.
“High Chief Morkan would have gotten involved if the truth came out,” Azira suggested, familiar with the logic of greenskins as a collective culture. “Pel Droma had made it well known that he was trying to take control of Graneckian lands to reclaim them for the glory of the Greenskin Nation, despite the High Chief’s refusal to acknowledge and support the sorcerer. At least, he couldn’t support Droma publicly.”
“Very good,” Oblat said with a gentle grin. “You are clever, for a man of Clan Batang.”
“Thanks,” Azira said, his voice sounding hollow to his own pointed ears. “If word reached the High Chief that Droma had died ingloriously, he might take pains to officially support a renewal of his efforts, with the backing of Nation military forces. It would become a full-on war between the two countries.”
“And that’s what Oblat explained to myself, Jarek, Talya and Toka,” said Ressling evenly. “If Pel Droma was said to have been felled in honorable battle, it would be a concrete and final end to the conflict. Even his own people would accept their defeat, and surrender their arms. Say what you want about the greenskin peoples, they hold fast to their traditions, and their own sense of honor.”
Azira shook his head, quirking an eyebrow at Oblat. “You committed to this deception immediately?”
“I did,” said the hobgoblin warrior. “For the good of our peoples. A war with Graneck would have invariably brought the city-state of Ja-Wen into the fray, being so nearby to our nations, and they would have destroyed High Chief Morkan’s forces handily. What I did was not personally noble, but was the right thing to do to protect all goblins, hobs, orcs, trolls, ogres and kobolds living under Morkan’s rule. Would you not agree?”
Azira thought back on all the lessons he had learned at the hands of his mentors and instructors in Clan Batang, the tactics and techniques they had tried to drill into his and the other skirmishers’ heads. What Oblat K’To had done was a long-game determination, a stratagem that relied not on immediate confrontation, but upon guile and subtlety. This was not the forte of any normal skirmisher.
Then again, Azira of Clan Batang, last of his people, could hardly be described as a normal skirmisher.
“I get it,” Azira finally said. He rose from the log he had been sitting on, his hands resting on the grips of his daggers. “Honestly, I do. It doesn’t make me any less angry at you, Jack Ressling, or any of your companions,” he declared, narrowing his eyes at the human swordsman. “But I comprehend the importance of what you did. Bruce? Melissa? Steve? I think we’re done.”
Bruce rose then with a heavy sigh, head hung down, eyes closed. “I concur. But I need to say this, Ressling,” he added, pointing at the younger man. “When we return to Bronze Pot, I am going to speak to some of my old colleagues about your friend, Toka Mano. I want him tried for the destruction of Harip.”
“You know no jury in this Kingdom will convict him,” Jack replied.
“I don’t care,” Bruce said. “The wheels of justice must turn, and a warrant for his arrest must be issued. I doubt he’ll even return to the Kingdom, and that suits me just fine, so long as it is acknowledged for history that what he did was wrong. Will you interfere?”
“I will not,” Ressling said. Bruce nodded, and stepped away, back toward the trade road past the trampled wheat. Finally, Melissa rose from her seat, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet.
“I think, I don’t know what I really got out of all of this,” she said, her voice slightly off, confused. “I did a lot of reading through all of it, and I learned plenty. I think I want to go to university when we get back home. Jack?” He looked up at her. “I don’t think I ever want to see you again.”
“Fair enough,” said the swordsman, himself getting to his feet. “Is that all, then?” A moment later, the Savior of Graneck’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed in a loose heap, almost falling into the last flickers of the fire. The other humes and greenskins all gasped, finding themselves staring in shock as the rat clambered up onto Ressling’s hip, a small syringe in his forepaws.
“Sorry, but I wasn’t really satisfied,” Steve quipped. “This stuff just puts him to sleep, right, Az? Insurance, I think you called it?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Easy there, lad, easy,” said the gnome before him, putting sturdy hands on Azira’s shoulders to steady him. “It’s always a little bit of a bother in the head when someone comes through. Alchemical teleportation tends to leave one’s senses a bit muddled, if they’re not used to it.” The goblin skirmisher felt his gorge rise, and he was quickly turned to one side, his breakfast coming out in a violent, retching stream into a wooden bucket. It seemed this was commonplace enough that the guild’s people had set up the bucket in preparation. When he was able to bring himself back up to an upright position, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he thanked the gnome quietly. “No worries, friend. Welcome to Desanadron.”
It had taken a month for Azira to square away all of his affairs in Bronze Pot and then return to the sprawl of Ja-Wen, seeking out the guildhall of the Freelancer’s Guild of Tamalaria. The recruiters within had explained right away that all new members were presently being sent via teleportation to Desanadron, and that Azira had best be ready to just accept that if he really wanted to join. The goblin skirmisher had accepted, and started the process of signing up for the guild.
Paperwork had taken a couple of days to get through, and once he was cleared, he was given an appointment and sent here, to the lower level of the Desanadron guildhall. The gnome who received him gave him a quick clap on the shoulder, and stepped away toward a long, low desk, several dense books laid open upon it. “I’m going to take down some information from you here, and your orientation guide should be here in a couple of minutes,” said the gnome, taking up a pen and pulling a register book of sorts toward himself. “Your name?”
“Azira Batang,” the goblin replied, making his way toward the desk, his sense of balance creeping back toward normal.
“Specialization, if you have one?”
“Skirmisher, though that’s not quite as accurate as it once was,” Azira said.
“I’d say it still applies,” Steve chimed in, popping his head up out of his pocket in Az’s bag. The gnome peeked up at Steve, and made a quick note.
“Familiar?”
“No, I’m just a talking rat,” Steve replied.
“That’s an interesting little bit of help to have on hand,” said a new voice to Az’s left. He spotted in the doorway of the room a tall, narrow man, a vulpesin dressed in soft blue leathers and a green travel cloak, a heavy black gear bag strapped to his own back. He stepped over toward Azira and extended one furry hand to him. “Welcome aboard, newbie. I’ll be your tour guide. Digby Nerrick.”
Azira took a moment, smiled, and took the offered hand. “Bruce Swinton says ‘hello’,” he said.
**
Bruce paused, the coffee cup held against his lips, his entire body locked up. The fellow who had simply sat down across from him without a word struck him as oddly familiar, though he couldn’t quite place him in his memory. There seemed to be a hole in his recollections, a hole with a silhouette shaped like a man. Wearing a long black duster, dotted here and there with buckles and bangles, his face covered with some kind of mask in the shape of a golden screaming skull, the stranger folded his hands on the table before him, covered in thin brown gloves.
“Can I help you,” Bruce asked calmly, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Mayhap, my friend, mayhap,” said the masked man. “I’m looking for someone you have recently traveled with, a young woman by the name of Melissa.” Bruce nodded, set his cup down.
“She’s at university,” Bruce answered. “She was going to go to a school in Howlie, but apparently, someone at the college detected magical potential in her, and they sent her on to Palen.” The mention of the ‘Capital of Magic’ kicked the retired constable’s memory into gear, and he stared wide-eyed at the masked man. “You were on the train,” he rasped. The masked fellow chuckled softly and nodded.
“I am always pleasantly surprised by the ones who can resist my efforts to make them forget. Simon,” the masked man said, offering his hand. Bruce looked at it skeptically, remaining still. “Don’t you trust a man’s handshake?”
“Not when he admits that he can somehow make people forget him,” Bruce replied.
“Fair point,” Simon said, withdrawing the hand.
“What do you want with Melissa?”
“Actually, it is precisely that potential for magic that brings her into my field of interest,” the masked man responded. “I had initially hoped you might also be someone I could select from, but sadly, your fate is tied to this realm, officer Swinton.”
“I don’t take kindly to cryptic nonsense, Simon. Do you mean my friend harm?”
“No.”
“Are you some sort of freak planning world domination?”
“No.”
“Is your intent to damage this fine Kingdom, to whose protection I have dedicated my life?”
“Again, no,” said Simon, drawing his hands into his lap.
“Then we have nothing to discuss,” Bruce said plainly. “I’m a simple man, Simon, with simple goals. The machinations of the gods, of kings and chiefs and elders and councilmen, are no concern of mine. I have served, I have protected, I have traveled, and I have done battle with foes in the physical and the conceptual. All I want now is to enjoy my retirement, and live out my days in some semblance of peace.”
The masked man nodded and rose from his chair, looking down at the old officer. Dressed simply in a gray tunic shirt and faded blue jeans, Bruce Swinton didn’t strike the eye as someone extraordinary. Yet he had within his mind knowledge that could send three nations to war, knowledge that would be devastating.
“I envy you, you know,” said Simon with a sigh. “I would love to live a simple, quiet life. But fate has decreed elsewise for me. May you have peace the rest of your days, Bruce Swinton,” he said, putting his hand gently on the officer’s shoulder. A few minutes later, when he was gone, Bruce found himself wondering if the freak with the mask thought that would work to make him forget that screaming skull mask.
Because if that was what the strange fellow had been trying for, it hadn’t worked.
**
The High Chief stomped back and forth in his audience chamber, clutching the sides of his head. “They are going to be furious, Oblat K’To! They will assume you have come here, and if they ask, I am going to have to tell them the truth,” the massive orc snarled, unwilling to look the hobgoblin warrior in the face. His reappearance in the capital had caused a stir, and news of his arrival and intent to seek audience with the High Chief had traveled swiftly to Morkan’s ear. He’d sent an honor guard to retrieve the war chief, and spirited him into the compound that served as his ‘castle’, as it were.
“They won’t ask, my chief, because they won’t care. All my absence means is that they don’t have to keep paying to feed and shelter me,” Oblat observed. “And besides, none of that is why I sought audience with you.” Morkan halted in his tracks, waggling his round-headed mace at the hobgoblin.
“I will not support a resurrection of Pel Droma’s rebellion in Graneck,” Morkan barked. “If that’s your request, you had better just forget it. Our country is not in a good state right now. We owe money all over the place.”
“You probably shouldn’t just admit that to anybody who strolls in here, my chief,” Oblat observed dryly. “Anyhow, that’s not why I’ve asked an audience.” Morkan angled himself to K’To, and the hobgoblin stood as straight as he could. “Sir, I am not a citizen of the Greenskin Nation, not officially. I was born and raised in Graneck. I should like your blessing to count myself as a citizen of this great nation.”
Morkan just blinked at Oblat K’To, seeming not to comprehend what was being asked of him. After a minute, he snapped his fingers, and pointed at the hobgoblin warrior. “Right, right. SCRIIIIIBE!” A tiny kobold in the simple brown raimants of a clerk scurried into the chamber, parchment scroll held ready, along with quill. “Take this down, scribe; I, High Chief Devin Morkan, current ruler of the Greenskin Nation, do hereby recognize that Oblat of Clan K’To, hobgoblin, is a citizen of this nation. He is granted full rights as a member of my citizenry, and pledges himself this day to the betterment of this land.” Morkan paused then, and gave the kobold a nod, the scribe then rolling up the scroll and scurrying away just as swiftly as he’d appeared. “Is this well enough, then, Oblat K’To?”
“It is, my chief,” Oblat replied. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to my wife. She didn’t even want me coming here, she’s missed me terribly while I was imprisoned in Graneck.” As he left the audience chamber, Oblat K’To spotted her in the doorway, waiting for him with naught but adoration in her eyes as he returned to her side.
“Shall we head home, then, my love,” she asked, wrapping one densely muscled arm around his waist. In the time he’d been gone, she had become a warrior in her own right, and now was even more menacing on first glance than the long-time war chief.
“We shall,” he replied. “It is good to be home.”
Epilogue
Jack set the bag on the sturdy oak table, giving the rogue woman a curious stare. “If you had already looked into it, then why ask me to snoop around?”
“Because you still have a clean reputation,” Talya snapped back, opening the bag and taking a knife to start cutting up the carrots and onions he’d grabbed for her. “I hate living like this, Jack. Almost all of my contacts have burned me, and I don’t trust that any of them have kept quiet.”
“Well, the Bounty Hunters’ Union has nothing new on you,” he replied. “And without a huge reward to entice them, there aren’t many people tracking you.” He hitched his own bag up on his shoulders and headed back toward the door of the hut, the last of Talya’s safehouses, nestled deep in the forests of the Elven Kingdom. “You know how to reach me,” he said as a farewell.
Talya didn’t even respond to him, and Jack Ressling exited the hut, hoping this would truly be the last time he saw her. When he was a few hundred yards back down the path to her home from the trade road, he paused, eyes fixed straight ahead at nothing in particular.
“Will you kill her,” he asked aloud.
“We’re not bounty hunters,” replied a soft voice from the underbrush to his left. “The terms of the contract were changed when it came into the guild’s hands. We have to try to keep her alive.”
“So, you’re hoping she’ll resist, then?”
“Not really, no,” said Azira as he stepped out of the brush, painted and dressed to blend with the environment. “I’ve learned to let that bit of myself go. I’m just happy enough to travel around.”
“It’s true,” said Azira’s companion, a vulpesin fellow in dark leathers who remained in the brush, stepping out from behind a thick oak. “I’m glad this is my last tag-along assignment with him, because this goblin prick likes to go pretty much frickin’ everywhere. I haven’t been able to enjoy my house for weeks.” Jack nodded, and looked down at Azira.
“Best of luck to you then, Azira Batang,” he said.
“And to you, Savior of Graneck.”
-Fin