“Oh.” Meira said in a small voice as what Bjorn just said to her sunk in. She was quiet for a few minutes as she sorted through her thoughts. “I have never heard of anything like this before. You must never tell anyone you have this power.”
Bjorn looked at her with interest. “Why is that?’ He asked.
“Think about it. You told me that there was something you could purchase that increased your lifespan correct?” He nodded. “And that you could purchase it multiple times right?” He nodded again. “Well if you could purchase it enough to where you never died of old age you could easily become the most powerful being in the Eld. People have killed for much less. There are those who would kill you just to prevent you from obtaining that power.”
“But I have never wanted that power.” Bjorn objected.
“Whether you wanted it or not, you have that power now. I know you have never wanted power, but believe it or not you have done so far as long as we have been together has been done to gain power. Adventuring with us, gaining skill levels, even becoming a professed alchemist. It isn’t all the same type of power, but regardless it is all power.”
“I see where you are coming from. But I wouldn’t use the power I gained for ill, I would use it for good.”
“I know that. And you know that. But that wouldn’t stop many from doing just that. People fear when someone gains too much power. I don’t know everything about the world you come from, but from what I have heard from you it is a soft world, with soft people. There are many people and monsters alike who have gained power and then abused it to kill thousands of people. There are many here who would kill you just in the chance that you might become like them.”
Bjorn grew somber. “Believe it or not, Earth has its own share of monsters. There was this one guy who wanted to be a painter, and then got rejected. So the way he decided to deal with the rejection was to murder over 11 million people, 6 million of which were a special sect of people. He was trying to kill off an entire race of people.”
Meira’s eyes had drifted down to the fire throughout their talk. When she heard 11 million people died on Earth her eyes snapped back up to Bjorn’s face searching for something. “Surely you exaggerate on that number. 11 million is an extreme number.”
“Trust me I know. If anything, 11 million is a conservative estimate, it was probably higher.”
Her eyes drifted back down to their small fire. “How? You have told me that your world does have magic. How can 1 person do such things?”
“It is quite simple really. He used words. Magic is nothing in compared to the power of words. Words can stir a large host of people into action. When those words are used to give people hope, they are that much stronger. If you give a hopeless man hope he will do anything, even great atrocities to keep that hope alive.”
Bjorn paused as he put another stick from their meager pile onto the fire and sat back down. “As to your second question. Earth in many ways is more deadly than the Eld is, just in different ways. They have weapons that are beyond even your wildest dreams. There is 1 weapon that everyone says is the most powerful. It is capable of leveling entire cities and killing its entire population in a matter of seconds. It also can be fired from the other side of the earth to hit its target.”
“What kind of sorcery is capable of such acts?”
“Not sorcery. Science. It doesn’t end there, the area in which the weapon strikes makes being in the very environment deadly for anyone to enter for a good portion of time. There is one site on the earth where the science behind the weapons went wrong and 70 years later it is not safe to enter, anyone who does without the proper protective gear dies.”
“That is the kind of thing that people would kill you for, for fear of you becoming something like that.”
“I wouldn’t become something like that. Not even close.”
“Are you so sure about that? Think about it. You told me you have 18 points to spend right? You said that you could have purchased a single stat per level giving you 8 guaranteed stats per level. That plus the 4 you now get per level, each level you gain would have given you double what I get. You would only have to be level 13 to have the exact same amount of attributes that I would. And I am level 29. That kind of power is scary. Honestly, if I wasn’t dating you and I didn’t know you personally I think I would try and kill you right now.”
“Well that is nice of you.” Bjorn said jokingly
“No seriously, I think Alaric, Tayla, and Rickie would have all said the exact same thing.”
The mood instantly became dark once again at the mention of their dead friends. With that conversation for the night was over as they both began to mentally go in different directions thinking about their dead friends. After a few minutes Meira began to scoot around the fire and she moved over to where Bjorn sat. She sat in between his legs and leaned her body back into his. “I miss them already.”
Bjorn found he couldn’t speak and a lump formed in his throat. Hot tears began to flow freely down his cheeks once again. Instead of answering he just wrapped his arms around Meira and nodded. His tears dripping off his chin and falling onto the top of her head. They stayed like that for long hours as eventually they drifted off to sleep.
The next morning they woke up early, packed up the few things they left out overnight and took to the road. As they traveled, Meira handed his map back to him. Which he began to examine in further detail.
The map itself was really quite basic. It was written on a simple sheet of parchment paper. It was 12 inches by 12 inches in size. There were no controls that allowed them to zoom in and out on the map. Through his exploration he found that there was a small black dot in the lower right hand corner of the map. He was able to put his hand there and move his finger and the area that the map was showing would move around. Exactly how a TrackPoint from an early 2000’s laptop worked.
Even with its simple design there were a few benefits to the map itself. It seemed to show everything in a 2 mile radius of them. Which had the limit of what Bjorn could actively see. They found that if he was looking at something then the map would get updated in real time. If not it would freeze in place, only updating when his eyes fully fell on whatever then it would update on the map. Through simple tests they found that the map would still update even if he wasn’t the one holding it. Even if the map wasn’t possibly within his line of vision.
While they were exploring with the map itself they found that it would make a pure colored copy of where Bjorn’s vision fell. Areas that he hadn’t been for a while had the colors starting to leech away giving it a weird look to the map. It seemed like the colors continued to leech away until it was all in greyscale. They quickly deduced that it was a gradient of how long it had been since he had been there.
The map itself did however show everywhere Bjorn had been in the Eld up until this point. So a small portion of the map itself was filled in. It allowed him to actually appreciate how far he and his friends had traveled. One thing that he couldn’t find out was how to show underground. So that part of his travels in the Eld was inaccessible for his map.
The main benefit right now is that he and Meira could see where they were in relation to Vanta and Blackrock Bay. They were currently almost right in the middle distance wise between the two major cities, just considerably further south from them. This made it very easy for them to pick their paths going forward, and know rough distances until they reached civilization once again.
True to what the upgrade said it would do, Bjorn gained a minimap in the upper right hand corner of his vision. It was easy enough to ignore, but easily enough to focus on and pay attention to his surroundings. It was a small round circle that gave him a perfect view of what he was seeing in front of him and where he had been. When he wished for it to be bigger his vision was filled with a copy of the map they were looking at, it was opaque enough to where he could clearly see what he was looking at, but transparent enough to not block off his vision. He also could chance that setting making it more solid or just a light overlay over his vision. Honestly the entire experience was a little jarring to see what he was seeing from the top down the exact same time he was seeing it in a 1st person perspective.
Last thing that they found out about the map was that he still had full function of his minimap and map overlay no matter how far away the map went. Even when Meira stored the map itself in her portable pocket.
With the map they finally had a heading, even though they didn’t exactly know where they wanted to go they did know that they wanted to find shelter so they could figure out their lives. As they traveled through the mountains it was slow going as Meira’s single leg slowed them down, as well as Bjorn’s low stats. It was mostly Bjorn who slowed them down though, as he had to stop frequently throughout the day to rest as his stamina would drop dangerously low.
Throughout the next week they would slowly travel throughout the day and try to find a place to stay for the night. It was getting hard to get comfortable at night as it was starting to get towards fall. This made them have a sense of urgency as they went, they didn’t want to get caught out here when the weather finally turned and started to snow.
Their travel was further slowed down as they tried to avoid dangerous animals and monsters as they went. It was galling to Bjorn as before he had been reset to level 1 he would have likely not dodged half of what he and Meira hid from. Even though she was a powerful mage they still didn’t risk it. Bjorn was currently not going to be any real help in a fight.
His skills were still there and all of the benefits that came with that. So as they traveled Bjorn would occasionally come across small animals here and there that he would use his bow to kill. This netted him slow but steady xp, and after a week he was near to level 2. What changed though was each time he killed something he got a feeling in his gut of being sick. He always pushed it aside, but the feeling still happened each time, it made him worried.
Regardless, at the end of the week he had finally reached level 2. Without hesitation he dropped 3 points of his now 4 to distribute into endurance. The last point he put into strength. The other change that happened was around the last day he gained 1 to strength and 1 to endurance naturally bringing his base stats closer to the cap. This gave him 11 strength and 14 endurance.
The points that he got from his natural growth and the ones he got from his level vastly improved their speed. It probably wasn’t the smartest move to make him more likely to survive, but their distance traveled daily doubled just by those 6 attributes. Going from 4 miles a day to near 8. This increase in speed made it so they were able to crest the last mountain two weeks after the level and slowly make their way down into the foothills of the serrated mountains.
As they traveled the pain of losing their friends slowly started to dull. At first it was debilitating, stopping them from communicating, making it so they lost precious hours crying over their loss. By almost a month after their deaths they could think about how Alaric would swear under his breath as he tried to climb up a steep incline without crying. Or how Tayla would oftentimes use her tail as she was walking next to someone to try and annoy them without sobbing. Or how Rickie would pick grass and slowly shred it as they walked without getting depressed.
It was as if their pain had finally run their course and they could finally remember all of the joys they had. The pain would still be there and would strike without warning, but even then the sadness would be fleeting.
One thing had become apparent to Bjorn though, for some reason the thought of taking a life made him sick. He had no idea why that was the case. Maybe it was because his loss made him appreciate lives again. Or maybe it was because the sight of blood gave him flashbacks of Alaric’s blood coating his hands as he cried over his dead family. Or maybe it was because losing his family made him regret taking things away from their families.
Whatever the reason was he hated killing, so as they traveled he slowly stopped doing so. They were fine. Before they left Nontorum he had stocked up on travel food, so they were plenty fine for food. Especially seeing how he had been carrying enough food for 5 people, now he only had to provide for 2. Water was never an issue as between him and Meira she could create water, and he could purify it.
On the last evening before they were finally free of the mountains Bjorn decided it was time to broach the topic they had been putting off. “What do you want to do when we finally make it back to civilization?”
Meira grew a little quiet. “I don’t know. I have no idea what we should do. I have 1 main goal though.”
“Oh and what is that?”
“I want to find a way to either replace my leg or regrow it. I am sick of having to hop along. I want to be able to travel once again without having to lean on you.” She gave him a warm smile. “I know that you are more than willing to let me lean on you as we travel, but there is something that just feels missing when I have to rely on you to get me places. I am thankful, but I want that freedom again.” towards the end her eyes started to well up with tears of frustration.
Bjorn scooted around the small fire sitting between them and wrapped his arms around her. “Hey, hey, hey. I know that it is rough, I don’t know what it is like, but I understand what you are saying. I am sorry that this happened, and I swear to you that I will find a way to regain your limb. It might take a while, but I will find a way. Have you heard of anyone doing exactly what we are going to try to do?”
Meira shook her head. “Only in stories. There are stories of people regaining their limbs. But unfortunately I don't know of anything related to regeneration. I know there are certain monsters who if they survive they will regrow their limbs. Trolls are one such monster.”
Bjorn pulled her head into his chest as she was talking and started to stroke her hair like she liked. “Back on earth we believed that behind every story there is a kernel of truth. I am willing to be there in the Eld, with all of the magic, wonders, and miracles, there is more than a kernel of truth. I am sure that it is possible, it is just a matter of time before we are able to find a way to let you regain your lower leg.”
Meira just nodded weakly pressed against Bjorn’s chest. “I just, I hate it.”
Shhh. “It’s okay, we will figure it out together. In the meantime though, we can find someone to craft you an artificial foot.”
She pulled away from Bjorn and looked at him confused. “What? What is artificial?
Her saying artificial was a little jarring. Normally after he learned how to speak common to him everything just sounded like it was being spoken in English. At least that is how his mind translated the words he was saying so that he understood what he was saying. Every once in a while if he concentrated hard enough his mind registered that he was actually speaking common and not English. He became very aware that he actually said the word ‘artificial.’ Which to him could only mean one thing. And that was that there was no word for artificial in common.
“Oh. Artificial is a word that we used to describe something that was made to copy something natural, but isn’t natural in and of itself. Probably not the best word there. Basically I was insinuating that we could make you a peg leg or something of the sort.”
Meira scrunched her nose up in the cute way she did when she didn’t like an idea. “That is a gross thought. Having to walk around with a peg leg.”
Bjorn laughed and pulled her in close to him again. “Well it doesn’t have to actually be a peg leg. We can probably make something for you out of carved wood. We could carve it into the shape of a foot to let you actually walk with it. Also that way it doesn’t look like a peg leg.”
“We shall see.” Meira said, sounding skeptical.
“I have faith. Anyways, there is something I want to tell you. I think that I don’t want to adventure anymore. I kind of just want to settle down, and have a nice little life wherever we go.”
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Meira relaxed in his arms. “You know. That is actually exactly what I want. I have wanted it for a while now. Actually, I have wanted it ever since we got the land from Dornan. I know I said I didn’t but the more I thought about it the more I longed for us to live peacefully on our land with our friends. I was just kind of afraid to say it.”
“Yeah, I was feeling a little fatigued after our fight with those fucking spiders.” Bjorn pulled away and spit into the dirt. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“I wanted it, but Alaric and Rickie didn’t. I can’t say fully but I don’t think Tayla truly wanted to settle down either. I didn’t want to split the party. Who knows what would have happened to them. Not that it really matters anyways, as they died either way.” A note of bitterness crept into her voice. She sighed. “But now that they are gone I don't want to go back to adventuring. But I also didn’t want to lose you. So I just bided my time and resigned myself to go wherever you go.”
Meira leaned in and bumped her shoulder into Bjorn’s chest lightly. “Afterall. You did save my life in that gnoll slave camp. And as I see it, I still owe you my life.”
Bjorn spoke sweetly down at her. “At this point, you have saved my life more than I have yours. I think if anyone owes anyone anything it is me owing you my life.”
Meira got a mischievous look on her face. “You know. I think I like the idea of you owing me your life. I think I shall take it.”
Bjorn brought his head in close to her ear and spoke softly. “You can have it, and everything else that I own. I am yours fully and forever. I love you.”
She moved her head around and gave him a long full kiss.
An hour later they were putting their clothes back on as night had fully fallen and there was a chill in the air tonight. “So it’s settled then?” Meira asked.
“What?”
“That once we find me a new leg, even if it is a peg leg. We head to our land and work together to eek out a living there.”
Bjorn nodded at her as he moved around the clearing that they had picked for their home for the night. He was setting up the only tent that they decided to keep from the pile they owned before the fight with the mauler. It was the smallest one, barely even a 1 person tent. It was the spare that they kept. Even Alaric’s tent could have slept 2 or even 3 people.
As they had been traveling they hadn’t dared set up a tent in case they had to fight back or flee in the middle of the night. Tonight though they had little fear, and with the cold they wanted the extra layer of thick canvas to help retain some heat. The little clearing they had found was surrounded by thick jagged boulders. The boulders had many shaped stony spikes that jutted out which were surprisingly sharp. They agreed that nothing would get through there without hurting itself. The opening to their little clearing was small enough that they had to crawl to get inside. The problem was that the boulders were far enough apart that wind could sneak right past them and made the evening quite chilly.
“Yes. I agree with that plan. I think you and I could create quite a life there for the two of us. I could become a farmer. You could sit around and be beautiful.”
She threw a small bundle of clothes at Bjorn as he chuckled. “I will not just sit there and be beautiful. If you are going to be a farmer then I will become one too. We are in this together, we will do this together.”
Bjorn just nodded trying to act sagely. “Yes, yes, very good.” This earned him another smack with a bundle of cloth. “You have surprisingly good aim with that.” Bjorn said as he bent down to pick up the clothes. “I do think I would like to avoid trying to kill things though for the most part.”
“I know. I noticed your hesitation when you killed that baddit the other day. It is a bit ridiculous. It is unfortunately the way that the world works. You will have to kill things, if at the very least to help provide meat to our diet.”
“Aren’t elves supposed to be hippy tree huggers?” Bjorn said to himself under his breath.
A third ball of cloth shot through the early night and pelted Bjorn in the head. “Do you forget that we have excellent hearing?”
“How did you even hear that? I barely said it. I mainly just mouthed it.” He complained.
Instead Meira just glared at him. “Some are. I am not. I understand that we need to eat what we can to survive. I have total faith in your ability to grow crops. We just need the meat just in case. Besides, I know you like the taste, you bloodthirsty savage.”
Instead of replying to her prodding instead he crawled into the tent and held the flap open for her. “Are you going to come to bed or not?”
Meira pushed herself to her feet and hopped over to the tent, falling back to her knees she began to crawl into the tent. “That is of course if you are willing to sleep with a bloodthirsty savage.”
She finished crawling into the tent and Bjorn pulled out a spare blanket and draped it over the two of them. “Of course I am. You are my bloodthirsty savage. How could I not be willing to sleep next to you.” She gave him a soft kiss before they both fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning when they got up there was a thin layer of frost on everything but the tent. Their combined body heat was enough that the frost wasn’t able to form on the tent. “It’s a good thing that this will likely be our last day this high up.” Meira commented. “It is starting to really get cold at night.”
“Yeah.” Bjorn said stretching. “But you can’t beat this view.” He stood looking in between the rocks looking down on the kingdom of Escar. At the top of the mountain they could see for miles, and all that they could see was rolling hills and a sea of emerald green trees.
Meira looked over to where Bjorn was looking. “Yeah, the view is very pretty up here. I need to get down from here. So stop gawking and let's go.”
“Alright, shesh, no appreciation for the little things in life.”
They very quickly packed up their camp. It wasn’t even worth restarting a fire, so instead they ate a quick meal that came out of Bjorn’s bag of holding. From there they made their way down the mountain, picking their path carefully. Up until this point there wasn’t really a nice path that they were following. They were a little lucky though, as with how high up they were, not many trees, and shrubs grew. This made it much easier to navigate their passage.
As they climbed lower and lower on the mountain though the bare rock gave way to small patches and tufts of grass here and there. Then it turned into small shrubs dotted across the mountain face, as they drew lower the shrubs became more common, denser, and taller. Then they started to walk amongst trees. It was once again slow going, but they very quickly made their progress downhill.
It was a week later that the under bush started to grow a little thin. Which was very uncommon as for the last week they had mainly been trekking through the forest, trying their best to avoid monsters, as well as avoid stepping in the many streams and creeks.
They soon found themselves staring at an obviously maintained path cutting through the middle of the woods.
“What do you want to do?” Meira asked.
“I think we follow this path one way or another. It isn't much, mote like a hiking trail than a path, but it looks humanoid made to me. I still think we should be cautious though, as we don't know if whoever is on the other side of this path is friendly or not.”
“Well obviously, but which way do we go?”
Instead of answering right away he pulled up his map and took a look at the area around him to make sure he wasn't going to lead them astray. Keeping their ultimate goal of heading to their land in mind as he looked at it.
“Well that way leads us more towards Lief's Crossing. And that way leads us more towards Blackrock Bay.” Bjorn pointed on each side of the path that seemed to run mostly east west, cutting through the northward direction they had been heading.
“What about that seeker enchanted paper that points us towards our land?” Meira asked. Bjorn pulled the deed out of his bag and took a look at the direction the page was leading. It pointed roughly northward.
Without any real complaint they took the left route heading more northward. They followed the hikers trail for a few hours and as they traveled it slowly grew wider and more and more clear of plant growth.
Eventually they stumbled upon a clearing with a single hut sitting near the middle of the hut. It was a small building, smoke curled out of the small chimney. The doorway was around 3 and a half feet tall. A window was built into the side of the half stone half wood wall that they were looking at.
Bjorn looked at Meira and she just shrugged. He leaned over to her and whispered. “You stay here, keep an eye on me. I doubt whoever lives here will give us any trouble, but better safe than sorry.” She nodded her assent.
He slowly made his way through the clearing and past the small foot and a half tall fence. He was careful with his foot placement as to not disturb the plants that were contained within the fence. When he got to the door he knocked on the wooden door.
A sound of rustling could be heard within the hut and pretty soon a small head poked out from the window before briefly retreating back into the hut. There was a few seconds in between the head and the sound of multiple locks being thrown back on the inside of the cottage.
The door opened just a crack and the same small head could be seen just past the inside of the door. The occupant opened it just wide enough that Bjorn could just see one eye peering out at him. “Yes?” The surprisingly deep voice said.
Bjorn was taken aback by the voice. He cleared his throat to avoid laughing at the absurdity. “Hi, yes. My name is Bjorn, and my elf friend over there.” He pointed to where Meira was standing. “Her name is Meira. We have been lost in the woods for a while now and are looking for a town to stay at for a few days. Could you point us in the right direction?”
The eye looked a little skeptical out at Bjorn. Eventually the man behind the door just closed it in his face. Bjorn was just about to comment on how that was rather rude when the sound of something heavy scraping across the ground could be heard from the inside of the hut.
A moment afterwards the door swung open and the man stepped out of the inside of his house. He was three feet tall and had the exact proportions as a human, just miniaturized. His first thought was gnome, but that wasn’t right. As gnomes tended to have longer than normal arms and kind of gangly arms. To sate his curiosity he inspected the man.
When he saw the age of Milio, Bjorn did a double take. As the age of the halfling didn’t match the face that was looking up at him. The halfing looked roughly middle aged, maybe even a little past middle aged. If Bjorn had to guess he could have guessed that Milio was actually late 40’s or early 50’s.
Milio cleared his throat to regain Bjorn’s attention. “I was saying before you zoned out there for a second. The nearest town is that way. There should be a path leaving this clearing out that way. Now if you would be so kind as to go on your way. Please be careful in the garden, I don’t want anything ruined.”
Bjorn just nodded down at the halfling. “Yeah, we can be on our way. Thank you.” By the Milio’s posture he obviously didn’t want them there so Bjorn began to slowly pick his way out of the garden and stepped over the low fence again. The entire time Milio was staring daggers at Bjorn’s back as he walked back to Meira.
“Who was that?” She asked.
“A halfling. He doesn’t want us here, let’s get a move on. He didn’t tell me how far it is to the next town. Just that we can follow a path on that side of the clearing, it should lead us to the nearest settlement.
Without preamble the two of them made their slow hopping/supporting gait that they had adopted over the last few weeks. As they walked the halfling just stood there and watched them go. True to his word they easily found a path, and started down it. The last he saw of Milio was the halfling standing there with his arms crossed watching Bjorn’s and Meira’s retreating backs.
They followed the new path for a few days and eventually stumbled into a small sized town. It had roughly 10 houses splayed around the inside of the small town. They had made their house walls out of stacked stones. In Between the houses they had placed wooden planks held in place by the two walls. This made a crude, but effective wall.
Once they entered the clearing everything that was happening stopped as people that were working the ground around the village stopped to gawk. To them a visitor was rare, let alone two, on top of that they were coming from the halfling's hut.
Bjorn got a good look at the group that was standing before them. They all had pointed ears, labeling them as either elf or half-elf. The long pointed ears was only natural to elves. Making them very very easy to identify. They all had rough homespun clothes that fit them surprisingly well. On their hips hung some sort of weapon, some had bows and quivers attached to their hips, a few had large scary looking knives, and one even had a mace.
As they walked into the clearing they got looks of distrust from everyone that they passed. But no one moved to stop them. They slowly made their way around the outside of the small village, as they went they accumulated a small crowd of people eyeing them. When they made it around the outside of the village they were met by a single man standing in their way with his arms crossed.
The tall elf said something that Bjorn couldn’t understand, he was looking at Bjorn. It was Meira who replied in the exact same language. After she did so he changed. “Sorry, I didn’t realize that he wasn’t gifted with the sylvan tongue.” This time he spoke in common.
“It’s alright, I haven’t had the chance to teach him our fair tongue yet. As to answer your question. We are here hoping that there is someone here with sufficient skill that could provide me with a temporary leg for the time being. We have spent weeks traveling through the serrated mountains after we had an unfortunate encounter with a mauler.”
At the mention of a mauler there was a sharp intake of breath that collectively sounded out from all of those surrounding them. The elf gave them a more discerning look. “And all that you had happened to you was you lost the lower part of your leg? Was there more than 1 of them?” Meira shook her head. “And you are doing as well as you are? Especially after traveling through the mountains for weeks. How?”
Bjorn was about to say something but Meira tightened her arm around his neck. It wasn’t so much of a tighten as it was the muscles flexing. Either way it was enough that Bjorn understood the message and he kept his mouth shut.
“I have a little skill with life magic. And my travel companion is a bit of an alchemist. We used our combined skills to fight infection and save my life. Getting back to my earlier request, is there a wood worker here who could provide us with a temporary leg?”
Her pronouncement of their skills made the man relax ever so slightly. As if he finally understood how the two before him were able to survive a run in with a mauler. Even though magic was prevalent in the Eld it was still something that the average person didn’t understand. So Meira being a life mage made perfect sense as to why the two bedraggled wanderers were able to survive.
After a few moments the elf nodded, he turned to the only small child that they saw in town. “Taredd, fetch Hagred for me if you would please.” When he talked to the boy the gruff sternness that he addressed Bjorn and Meira in was gone. In its place was softness and care.
The boy nodded and took off in the same controlled/wild sprint that only children were capable of. Instead of heading into town like they thought that he would, the boy actually made his way into the forest near the way that they had come.
“When Hagred gets here he will evaluate your leg and see if he can do anything. Wait here until he gets back.” True to his word they waited. It was nearly half an hour before the boy returned with a grumpy old looking elf in tow. That half an hour was awkward. Everyone stood in silence. As they stood waiting a few elves came and went. So far the number of elves that he was able to count numbered at 12.
Eventually the two made it over to where they stood. “What do you want?” The cranky looking man said more to the elf that they had been talking to than to the newcomers.
“Hagred, the girl here lost her leg fighting a mauler, they were wondering if you would be able to make her a peg leg.”
“We would appreciate a fake foot, instead of a peg leg.” Bjorn interjected.
The old man turned his withering stare away from the tall elf and focused on Bjorn, as if it was his first time seeing him during this conversation.
“You’ll get what you get. Now shut up and let me look at it.” He looked over to where Meira stood, leaned against Bjorn. When he had been talking to Bjorn and the other elf Hagred’s voice had been harsh like a whip. When he addressed Meira it was smooth, calm, almost charming. “Now stand up to your full height dear. I want to get a good measure of your height. Can’t be making you something that isn’t the right height now. That will just lead to your hips hurting.”
She gave Bjorn a quick glance before she stood to her full height. She basically was already doing so, but in this case she took her arm off of Bjorn’s shoulder but kept her hand outstretched. She used Bjorn to balance as she stood to her full height.
The old man came in close and knelt down. Instead of pulling out something to measure with he just looked at Meira and her dangling leg. He tutted to himself and rather rudely reached out with both hands and grasped her by her hips. He tugged down with his right and on her left hip, he held her in place with his other hand.
Bjorn was once again going to say something, he didn’t like someone touching Meira in such an intimate area. But again he was stopped by Meira. She squeezed his arm with her hand. After a few seconds he let go of her hips. He stood once again and turned walking into the town, all the while tutting to himself.
“Can you do it?” Bjorn called out to the retreating elf.
He stopped and turned around, his eyes were not fully focused. As if he was deep in thought, and his mind was elsewhere. “Hmm? Oh yes, I can, come back in 5 days. I'll have something for you.” Without another word he ducked into a house and was gone.
The tall elf looked back at the two. “Well you heard him. 5 days, and he will have something for you.”
Bjorn and Meira just stood there not entirely sure what to do.
“You heard me. Go on, be gone. Come back in 5 days and he will have something for you. You aren’t welcome here before then.”
“Okay? But what about payment?” Bjorn asked, confused.
“We will settle up when you come back in 5 days.” He pointed past where they were standing. “There is a small defensible clearing that way for about 15 minutes. You can stay there, you shouldn’t have any issue while you are there.”
They took the not too subtle hint that they weren’t welcome and left the way that the elf had pointed. They traveled along in the direction indicated. They were able to find a small clearing that was surrounded by large stone rocks. On one side, the way they walked in, was filled with dense trees. They determined that the area was as good as a place that they found as they walked and decided to make camp there.
Meira set up the tent while Bjorn collected wood for a fire as well as dug a small fire pit for the fire to sit in. As he was collecting good burnable fire wood he stumbled across a small stream, which was probably another reason why the elf suggested it.
He returned to camp and the two of them began making a simple dinner, it was the first time in a long time that they were able to have a fresh hot meal, and the two of them savored the experience, before they settled in for a 5 day wait.
