The Horned Child of Reaver and Baroness

JOURNEY TO THE WEST

A few weeks passed, and we arrived at a farming village. It was peaceful being surrounded by flatland instead of forests in all directions. There were livestock farms in the distance and a small lake to the south.

By this time, I was more comfortable with the group and was slowly becoming one of them. Vera was a charismatic and capable leader, but she had more than a few suicidal tendencies. Jefford was stoic but caring, and he always seemed to listen when anybody had something to say. Cyrus had mood swings, but he would only come from stoic seriousness to comedic idiot and nothing in between when it happened, nothing too crazy. Sandra was normally a mediator whenever members of the guild would fight, but when she got angry, no one could stop her. It's best to stay on her good side.

We entered the town and went straight to the guildhall. There, we found out that the town was being harassed by bandits nightly. The town guard was too understaffed to deal with them and no adventurers willing to take the job came through recently.

As soon as Vera heard 'bandits', she said, "We'll take it."

"That sounds about right," said Sandra, sipping a mug of tea.

I asked, "Why does she sound so excited about bandits?"

"Are you kidding me?" said Vera, "Bandits mean loot." She put her arm around me. "And we get to see what you're really made of."

"Flesh and bone," I said with a giggle.

"We'll see." She was handed a piece of paper by the guy behind the bar counter, and she looked at it, wide-eyed, and laid it out on the counter. "Here we go."

Aside from a few stamps of approval, the paper said that the bandits numbered somewhere between fifteen and forty. Because they only came out at night it was impossible to tell exactly how many there were. In accepting this mission, we were also contracted to stay in town until it was completed. After all, none of the attacks happened beyond the outskirts of town.

We set up our base in an unused shack at the lake and waited until nightfall. Once the sun fell, I had to wake up Jefford who fell asleep by the stairs leading to the exit. The others left the task to me as they all headed out and I happened to be the last to get to the stairs. He was resting against the wall next to the stairs when he fell asleep. I woke him fairly easily, but due to his helmet, I couldn't tell if he woke up until he made a sound as if he was gasping for air.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"I'm fine, just started breathing through my gills on accident." He stood away from the wall and wobbled a bit.

"Oh yeah, you're a merman, right?"

"Yes," He said, jovially waltzing up the nearby steps.

"It's just that I never saw your face or even your skin for that matter. You're always in that suit of armor." I followed him up and outside.

"I suppose I am. If you're lucky, you'll never see it." His tone never shifted.

We met up with everyone else outside and Jefford packed up the door. Leaving it behind was a bad idea when dealing with bandits. Sandra and Vera were arguing about how to deal with the bandits whenever they'd show up. The only thing they could agree on was using bait to lure them in and storming their base after capturing a few to lead us. Vera wanted to use herself as bait and Sandra was insistent against the idea, also proposing that we sneak in instead of going in all gung-ho. We ended up going with Sandra's idea.

As we walked towards town and barely out of sight of the shack, both Vera and Sandra suddenly disappeared. They were both in the front and now they were gone. Upon closer inspection, the ground where they were had also disappeared and Jefford's halberd was sticking into the hole. He lifted it and Vera was on the other end nonchalantly holding onto the pole.