princess Zena of Zendor

The morning went as well as it can with no amenities. Another sunny day, and plenty of foods and drinks from our inventories. Hans was happy that we shared some with him, in fact I carried pretty much all our food, so I simply fed everyone. James felled another tree yesterday to use as a bench, though I preferred my newly invented mana chair, even though I actually have chairs in my inventory. I totally didn’t forget about them until this morning, and decided to not tell them for the moment. I’ll tell them some other time. 

In the case of Jo’s mana, she has grown stronger. The exact amount is a bit difficult to estimate, but it is at least notable. This confirms that you can grow your mana by killing enemies, not sure if it counts everything living, or just enemies, or even anything not yourself. I will probably figure it out later, and I can help Jo get stronger. Asking her about her quantity of mana reveals that she doesn’t notice the difference.

After packing up, we set about on our travels again. The roads have now dried enough to not be considered muddy, so I don’t have to walk in the grass. I experiment more with magic today and Jo joins my experimentation with some practice.

Some time into our walk, Hans recognises some trees and goes off into the forest in the hope of reclaiming his sword and shield. The rest of us decide to let him do it on his own seeing as we don’t know what his things look like, though seeing a sword in the forest should not be that hard. Maybe we just cannot be bothered. It doesn’t take long before he comes back with his sword and shield. His shield is made of wood, and his sword seems to be a simple iron shortsword. I can’t tell exactly what metal it is made of by looking, but it is gray. At least he seems happy about reclaiming it.

It takes another couple hours until we get to a branch in the road, which according to Hans, leads to the town he came from. After another half hour of walking, the town comes into view. Its wooden walls are far less impressive than the walls of Draumr, though much more impressive than the nothing that is protecting Ulmsville. I don’t know why the town has walls at all, but perhaps they are here to protect the villagers from the occasional wolf.

There are a couple guards at the entrance, which look at me with a harsh expression. As we get closer, their expression softens as they greet Hans with a smile, but their grimace returns as soon as they look at me again. Hans beckons us to enter the village, but one of the guards stops us and says.

“We cannot let a fey into our village. The village elders have stated that they represent too much of a danger with their wild ways of using magic.”

I don’t know why that is, but I dispel my wings and explain that I am an elf, and not a fae. I’m also pretty sure that fae was not a thing in the game, though they might have been mentioned in the lore. 

The response from the guards are very different from the one Hans displayed. They explain that they will not fall for my trickery, and continue their refusal to let us in. No, correct that to refusing me in. They seem to have no problems with the others, just me. Maybe I should embrace the mischief of the fae and just enter anyway. Though if the guards are like this, it’s probably not very enjoyable to enter the town. It’s a bit of a dilemma, and while the others try to convince them to let me in, I ask them “Do you want to see this village?”

James responds that he kinda wants to see the village, but doesn’t care to stay. Jo also would like to see the village, since it will be the first settlement outside of Draumr that she visits.

“No problem then.” I say calmly, as I prepare a teleportation spell. A moment later, I disappear from before the guards and reappear inside of the open gate. Everyone except the guards who were facing away from the gate, see me on the inside. James is the first one to catch on and explain to the guard that since I was not welcomed, I went somewhere else. They seem hesitant to believe them, but they no longer have an excuse to prevent them from entering. They did eventually turn to look through the gate, but at that point I had hid behind a building.

The others leave the guards behind and meet up with me a little while later. James seems to be amused at my behavior and I appreciate his quick thinking with the explanation. 

Hans shows us around the village for a while, but there isn’t really anything of interest. No inn, just housing for the two hundred or so villagers. He treats us to lunch at his house, before we decide to leave. He thanks us for helping him get back safely, and we leave him to wait for his team.

On the way out, I smile at the guard that tried to prevent our entry while letting my wing appear. He doesn’t seem very pleased about me leaving despite not wanting me inside the city, and I chuckle a bit at the apparent hypocrisy. Sure, he’s probably more mad that he was unsuccessful at stopping me, but whatever. James joins in on my chucking, though Jo seems to be unsure of how to act between the angry guards and our amusement. In the end, the guards decide not to confront us about it.

The walk to the main road is pretty easy and we keep the slow pace we have done so far. Once there though, I check which direction is south. We know turning left is the correct choice, but I want to be sure. Once again there is a mysterious fifth direction, which causes me to stop and ask “new quest?” out loud. 

James stops for a moment before answering “Seems like it. Want to head towards it immediately or continue to the agate mountains first?”

“They are more or less in the same direction, and I’m sure David will tell us once he feels it to be necessary, so let’s just continue onwards”

Jo seems confused at our short conversation, prompting her to ask for an explanation. We simply tell her that it’s a long range messaging system, with limited capacity and that David is usually the person sending it. We also disclose that David was the one that informed us of the abomination, and that this one might be of the same caliber.

We don’t give her all that much time to think about it, as we increase our pace to a level that she is barely able to follow. Forcing her to focus on her spells.