Chapter 3: Withdrawal to Relief

Chapter 3:
Withdrawal to Relief

 

ULTIMATELY, their glorious bounty from the bandit camp was one small sack of silver coins, a few cheap decorations, some middling-expensive bottles of wine, and a few food supplies.

That was far too little reward for the effort put in, Lapis complained, but Loren didn’t know what effort she was taking credit for. Rather, on the topic of effort, he got the feeling there was a lot more of that to come. The likelihood of that was as evident as the elf child slung over their donkey’s neck.

A child in looks, at least, but Loren figured the elf might be far older than he appeared. According to Lapis, though, elves grew at the same rate as humans up to a certain age. After that, their appearances stopped changing, and they lived for many years as young men and women. Apparently it was safe to assume any elf from childhood through adolescence was about as old as they looked.

On the other side of the spectrum were elves who, no matter how young and beautiful they looked, were over ten times his age. Lapis insisted Loren must keep this in mind if he ever tried hitting on them.

Now Loren didn’t know if he was ever going to hit on an elf, but he filed that one away regardless.

“Still, what was the kid doing in a box?” Loren muttered as he led the donkey by its lead. Lapis couldn’t give him answer. There were riddles that even a priest to the god of knowledge couldn’t solve.

Loren was prepared to live with the riddle of whether the child was a boy or girl, but Lapis was easily able to make the distinction. Once Loren had carried the child out of the camp to where he had tethered the donkey, Lapis grabbed him by the wrist and shoved his hand into the child’s crotch.

“How is it feeling?” She didn’t seem bothered at all after casually doing something so terrible.

“You little…” Loren had to contain himself from cursing at her. “He’s a boy.”

“Oh, a boy then. That leaves the question of why the bandits would go out of their way to confine an elf boy in such a way… Well, everyone has their own tastes. I can’t say there isn’t a demand for that sort of thing.”

“Don’t just do something like that. Luckily, he’s a boy, so I get ticked and that’s the end of the story. What were you gonna do if he was a girl?” Loren said with a sour face. He was still reeling from the psychological damage he could have inflicted had the child been a girl, let alone remotely conscious.

“Let’s just say you were lucky.”

“To hell with that, you vile demon!”

Use your own hand next time, thought Loren. Although a beautiful woman shoving her hand into a little girl or boy’s crotch didn’t conjure up images of a better scenario on the whole. Ultimately, the only victims were himself and an unconscious child who’d have no memory of the incident. He told himself it was better that way.

Mister’s getting stained by the missus, thought Scena, but she made sure those words didn’t reach her host.

“So what do we do about him?” Loren asked.

They started moving before daybreak. Lapis thought they would be at risk of someone spotting them if they lingered, and Loren couldn’t argue. He was feeling far too guilty; if someone questioned them, he’d spill the beans about the whole fiasco. Lapis could easily pretend she didn’t know a thing, but Loren wasn’t so skillful with his words.

“I did consider leaving him there,” said Lapis.

Behind them, Scena’s summoned undead remained stationed around the camp. They would stay there until their final moments, if Scena was to be believed. If the elf boy were left with them, they would promptly devour him.

Loren believed that it was within Lapis’s moral capacity to choose that option. That she hadn’t meant she had something else in mind. When Loren asked her, though, her answers were steadfastly unclear.

“I just have this vague notion. It bothered me that we ran across an elf right on our way to a forest with elven settlements.”

“Acting on a hunch?”

“Well, something like that.”

“You won’t be cursed by the entire elven race if you kill an elf or something, right?”

“Even if that were true, it would be the undead who got cursed.”

This was by no means a justification, to Loren’s mind.

Lapis looked down at the elf boy. “I don’t know what the circumstances are, but it’s hard to believe this child was in that box of his own volition. I can only think he was kidnapped. I’m sure his family is worried about him.”

“You could get a sob story out of it, I guess.”

It was possible she was acting out of pure self-interest. Surely the elves would give them a warm welcome if they returned a missing child to his family’s loving embrace. Even so, there was nothing objectional about the plan. Loren patted his chest in relief, certain Lapis wasn’t devious enough to use the boy as bait to lure other elves out for catching and selling.

He didn’t know how the bandits had managed to capture the elf child, but that they’d dragged him all the way out here meant they likely intended to sell him. Good-looking elves fetched quite a hefty price; elves a tad older would go for even more.

“By the look on your face, you must be imagining something dreadful,” Lapis told him.

“Have a good look in the mirror someday.”

“Even I wouldn’t even think about using the boy to sniff out their hideout, pretending we’d saved him so we could infiltrate and capture their entire settlement! Not in the slightest!”

“So you were thinking about it.”

What’s more, her imagination was even worse than his. She waved her hands in the air, shooing it all off as a joke.

They carried on conversing as they continued their route parallel to the highway.

 

The elven boy finally awoke when a sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon. He rocked back and forth on the donkey’s back as he opened his eyes, rubbing the sleep from them. Then he started screaming.

“Hmm? Did you just hear a really shrill shriek?” Loren asked.

He stood before a handful of dead ogres, all sitting cross-legged and quite dead on the ground. After all, their original goal in journeying out here had been to collect monster parts and sell them to the guild at Kaffa. They’d found these ogres shortly before the elf boy awakened—a clan of giant man-eating orcs from who knew where.

Ogres were several times stronger than a fully grown human, and their blows, while sloppy, were incredibly powerful. Even shields and armor did little to protect against their might.

Any run-of-the-mill copper-rank adventuring party would have said their last prayers if they encountered more than one ogre. With sufficient numbers, they could make even an iron-rank party struggle.

There were around ten corpses in total. This was far more than a mere copper-rank should have been able to handle, but Loren and Lapis had dealt with them without suffering so much as a bruise.

The boy awakened just as they were busy cutting off the monstrous bits that would prove their kills.

“Oh? Did a traveler see us?” Lapis lifted her face, her hands bright red with blood from slicing horns and fangs off the lifeless bodies. She was surrounded by these bloodstained spoils, a merciless butcher. Some of the ogre bodies were completely covered in gore.

At the sight, the elf boy screamed again and toppled from the donkey, shuffling back, attempting to crawl his way to freedom.

“Hey, where do you think you’re running to?” Lapis demanded.

She quickly closed in on him, pinning him down with a foot on his back. She didn’t intend any cruelty by this; she had rolled up her sleeves to work, and she was covered in blood from her fingertips to her elbows. She couldn’t bring herself to grab him with her hands.

Yet from an outside perspective, there it was: a bloodstained girl stomping down upon a crying child trying desperately to crawl away. It was so appalling that Loren stopped his own dismantling duties and reached out to help the boy. Naturally, his hands were just as streaked with gore. The boy’s screams reached a more furious pitch.

“You’re making too much noise.” She leaned into the kid a bit harder.

Even that bit of pressure was enough to make the boy yelp as he kicked and squirmed to get free. The poor thing’s efforts didn’t bear any fruit, and after a bit of thrashing, he slumped in resignation.

“Mr. Loren, would you wash your hands, and look after the kid? I’ll continue the dismantling work.”

Loren doused his hands with water from the waterskin they’d set aside, then shook away the droplets. Suitably dry, Loren carefully removed Lapis’s foot, then lifted the boy up and placed him back on the donkey.

“Don’t be so scared. We saved you, for what it’s worth. You can at least remember who abducted you and how you were treated, right?” Loren said, but he wasn’t sure if the kid could even understand him.

That silver-ranked elf, Nym, knew the human tongue well enough to converse, but elves had their own languages. He remembered hearing stories about those who didn’t wander into human settlements because they found humans impossible to communicate with.

So which is it with this one? Loren wondered. While the elf boy had started out tense, now the difference between his current circumstances and the ones he’d faced before he lost consciousness seemed to dawn on him. The fear drained slowly from his face, and Loren let out a sigh of relief.

“You…saved me?”

Loren hesitated. How should he answer that? If he said no, the boy would go right back to being terrified. However, Loren could hardly say yes when he didn’t know what Lapis was planning for the kid. He glanced over at her where she’d gotten right back to the dismembering work; she must have noticed him staring, but she didn’t look up. Her hands didn’t stop, she just offered a little nod.

It was up to him, apparently. In the time it’d taken to do that mental math, his silence had already made the boy anxious.

“Yeah, we saved you. You were captured by bandits, and we got you out of there. I’m Loren, and that priest over there is named Lapis. We’re headed for the Black Forest. Is that where you’re from?”

If the kid wasn’t from the Black Forest, they’d be in for even more trouble.

The elf nodded. “That’s what humankind called the forest I was in. I heard it from a peddler who stopped by.”

So the boy’s settlement had some trade with humans, and he spoke the human tongue without issue. Maybe everything would work itself out. Even as she worked, Loren knew Lapis’s ears were homed in on their conversation, so he spoke on to draw out as much useful information as he could.

 

The boy introduced himself as Feuille, and it took nearly half a day to pluck out all the details Loren wanted.

At first, it was a trial and a half just to get a name out of him. Perhaps because Feuille was young, there were times where he didn’t quite understand Loren’s questions, or other times when his memory would lapse or scramble. As Loren listened to the kid ramble, everything started going in one ear and out the other.

Luckily, Lapis and her eavesdropping got all the facts tidied up into logical order. By the time Feuille fell back to sleep on the donkey’s back, she had a good grasp on the situation.

Apparently, Feuille was an elf who lived in one of the settlements within the Black Forest, and he was ten years old. He had been helping his friends gather fruit and medicinal herbs when they made a mistake and wandered past the forest’s borders. Unfortunately, this misadventure culminated in them being chased by multiple ill-mannered men.

The men managed to round up all the elven children and tried to lead them away. However, the brigands fumbled this job so badly that many children were killed, and nearly all the others managed to escape. Ultimately, their only captive was Feuille, who had tripped and twisted his ankle.

With his arms and legs tied, the men carried him for about a day, ending up back at their camp, where they stuffed him into the box Lapis eventually found him in. Feuille, of course, was worried about what would become of him. He’d cried himself out and fallen asleep, and he didn’t remember a thing after that.

Loren couldn’t tell whether the kid was lucky or not. Still, since he had been unconscious in a box at the time, he hadn’t seen the undead, and his life had been spared, it was hard to call him unlucky.

“We didn’t even learn anything interesting,” Lapis complained as she stared at the sleeping boy.

As far as the kid was concerned, his story was a series of close calls between life and death. Loren failed to see where being interesting was supposed to factor in.

When he told Lapis it would be dangerous to enter the Black Forest with Feuille in tow, she looked at him quizzically.

“Why would we be in danger?” she asked.

“The other kids were murdered. The elves might think we’re in cahoots with their kidnappers.”

“Would a kidnapper come straight back to hand over a child?”

“Maybe not.”

Rationally speaking, she was right, but misunderstandings made their own mischief. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that the elves would hear of a human bringing a captured child back, only to conclude that the culprit had returned.

“And it’s elves we’re dealing with here,” Loren added.

“Yes, well, I suppose it’s possible.”

Even if the elves didn’t pin the crime on Loren and Lapis, they might assume they were part of a ploy to use Feuille to infiltrate the settlement. Or that the boy had been brought home solely for the reward. There were more than a few possibilities, and not a lot of them involved someone delivering a wayward child home completely out of the goodness of their heart.

“The elves do have their share of weirdoes.”

“I’m sure even the elves wouldn’t want to hear that from a demon.”

Lapis went sullen at this biting remark but could offer no rebuttal. Sniping at each other about their potential murder-by-elf, they traveled the rest of the day without incident. By evening, they had reached the town closest to the Black Forest.

By sheer coincidence, the town had a branch office of the adventurers’ guild.

“It seems I was a bit lacking in information,” said Lapis. “I didn’t expect such convenience.”

Before even booking an inn, they headed over to turn in their monster parts. When Feuille regained consciousness, they had been butchering ten ogres, but they’d taken out a few monsters while he napped as well.

This resulted in quite a lot to carry. They were better off dealing with it before they headed into the forest.

“What do you mean, you’re not going to pay us?”

The receptionist’s smile didn’t waver as she took the ominous, bloody sack Loren had dumped on her counter. She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. At this location, we only have the facilities to assess and store your spoils. We can issue a written certificate, so please turn it in at your base guild to receive your money.”

“I see.”

It was a hassle, and no doubt Loren would be anxious about his pay for the entire trip back, but at least he could lighten their load. Even better, the branch office was attached to a bar just like the guild in Kaffa.

Loren cocked a thumb at Feuille, who stood fidgeting behind him. “I’ll take care of things here. Go feed him something. I doubt he’s eaten anything good for a while now.”

Captured, tied up, and sealed away, it was hard to imagine Feuille had received any proper care. It was hard for a young child to skip even a single meal, so Lapis nodded and walked Feuille to the bar. The bar served food as well as alcohol, and Loren was sure a child would be allowed in.

As he turned, the contents of his sack were spread out across the counter, and the receptionist paused in her assessment to raise a dubious eyebrow at their retreating backs.

“Something catch your eye?” he asked her, casual enough to invite idle gossip.

The receptionist, caught staring at her client’s comrades, hung her head in shame but nodded.

Are elves that rare in these parts? Loren wondered. The town was right next to the Black Forest where elves were known to live, and those elves traded with human settlements. It would be strange for an elf to be worth staring at.

“My travel partner?” Loren guessed. “Sure, she’s young and pretty. I’m sure she could’ve become whatever she wanted, but she chose to be a priest.”

But the receptionist shook her head. That wasn’t what had drawn her eye. “Your companion is beautiful…but, and I don’t mean to be rude, you have an elven child with you… And I just couldn’t help but look.”

She lowered her head, and he waved his hand to say he didn’t mind. The thing he’d doubted was true; he needed to dig to find out why.

“This town is right next to the Black Forest, right? Aren’t you used to seeing elves?”

“Yes, it was like that until a short while ago.”

That was rather ominous. If elves had been frequently spotted before, what had happened more recently? Had they all vanished?

“Well, I wouldn’t say frequently,” she said when he asked. “But they would stop by from time to time to trade their wood carvings and fruit.”

“And you’re saying that all stopped?”

“Not only that. The people who trade with the elves grew worried, so they hired some guards and ventured into the forest.”

The receptionist covered her mouth and beckoned him closer. What came next wasn’t to be made public. She placed her mouth close to his ear and whispered, “Not a single one has come back. It’s been a few days now, though the Black Forest is so vast that they might still be investigating.”

The receptionist didn’t pause in her work as they gossiped. She tallied up each monster part, sorting them into different subdivisions, and wrote quantities and estimated values on a slip of paper.

“If they don’t come back soon, we’ll have to post a quest for a search party,” she went on. “We’re only a small branch office, and we don’t have much money to spare. First, we’ll need to seek help from the nearby guilds.”

“Sounds worrying.”

“My thoughts exactly. All the way out here, there aren’t too many adventurers we can count on. Too few regulars at such a tiny branch office. It would be incredibly helpful if a well-meaning adventurer checked in on the situation.” She glanced up at Loren.

He answered with a wry smile.

A two-person party had brought in the bounty of ten ogres; that was more than enough to declare them competent. As far as ranks were concerned, they were mere copper, but those numbers were beyond the capabilities of your typical coppers.

As far as Loren was concerned, though, he wasn’t interested in fulfilling the duty the receptionist wanted to heap upon him. He had absolutely no intention of working for free.

“You might get some takers if you put out a quest,” he said.

“We won’t know how much money to offer until we have a clearer grasp of the situation.”

“So it’s an investigation into launching an investigation. Well, if I feel up to it and there’s money involved, I wouldn’t mind giving you a hand, but I’ve got a partner to consider. I can’t decide on my own.”

“You have a point. All right, I’ve finished your assessment. Here’s your certificate.” The receptionist let the conversation end there, her request casual and curious. She scrawled her signature at the bottom of their monster-harvest receipt.

Loren said his thanks as he took it. But as he turned to head back to Lapis, the receptionist whispered at his back.

“How about I make it a little worth your while?”

He turned to see her smiling and pointing at the board where all the quests were posted. He squinted his eyes to make sure he hadn’t missed her posting, but it seemed she was going to put it up soon.

“I’ll be counting on it,” he told her, acting as though it was none of his concern.

When he found Lapis, Feuille was stuffing his face with stew, bread, and greens. Lapis sat smiling at the kid.

“Welcome back. How was it?”

Loren knew she didn’t care much about the assessment sheet, but he handed it over anyway. She took it without a word, scanned it, and tucked it away.

“Very well.” Her tone demanded he present something more intriguing. He pulled out a chair, sat down, and detailed his conversation with the receptionist.

 

They had to book a room at the inn for the night, and Loren hesitated over how to handle Feuille. Booking three rooms, one for each of them, would be costly, but at first it seemed like the obvious answer. Then he began to doubt the wisdom of leaving Feuille on his own.

Feuille might have been an elf, but he was still only ten years old; it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave a child alone. But when he suggested having the boy stay with him, he felt the daggers of harsh glares stabbing between his shoulder blades.

He turned to meet a wave of mean looks from the customers crammed into the inn’s dining area. He knew this wasn’t hostility or malice—he felt enough of those on the battlefield to recognize them. Then what could it be? Loren didn’t have a clue, but it likely had something to do with how the eyes of the lady adventurers were especially cold.

Lapis stroked him on the nape and whispered, “I’m assuming here…but could it be that they think that Mr. Feuille is a girl?”

He looked down at the boy beside him. Elves usually had fine features—both the men and the women—but Feuille was especially delicate-looking and androgynous. It would be hard to identify his gender at a glance, and even after a long hard stare, some would conclude he was a girl.

Point being, it looked like Loren was trying to lead a little girl to his room. Once he realized that, he tried shoving the kid off onto Lapis, but she wasn’t having it.

“Appearances aside, Mr. Feuille is a boy.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You want a pure, unmarried maiden such as myself to spend the night with a man?!”

“Ah, right.”

“What was that pause for?”

Lapis tried kicking up a fuss, but Loren ignored her and started reviewing his options. Keeping Feuille in his own room would upset the other patrons. Lapis didn’t want to look after the kid, which left only one solution.

“How about one large room for the three of us?” he asked.

“What, are you a family or something?” the owner of the inn—a middle-aged man—piped up.

Loren considered this would-be family structure: a human, a demon, and an elf. That would really be quite the mess.

“Not exactly. It’s difficult to explain. I’d appreciate if you didn’t pry into it.”

“We have one large room up for rent that fits five. It’s three silver upfront for a night, with two meals included. You have to pay extra if you want more towels and hot water.”

It seemed the owner was trying to be considerate to their not-exactly-family situation, but this heaped more stress onto Loren’s plate. He pulled an exhausted face as he slid three silver coins across the table. That put a dent in the few silver coins he had left in his wallet. But it would have tarnished his image even further to have Lapis pay for it, so he put up the money before she could.

The owner checked the coins, then slid a key into Loren’s hand and gave him some directions.

This is costing more than I’d hoped, Loren thought as he led Lapis and Feuille to the second floor and into the large room. Loren lowered his bag and weapon in a corner, sat on the bed, and took a deep breath before he finally noticed Feuille was looking at him.

“What’s wrong?” he called out, as the boy was standing stock-still in the doorway.

There was concern on the boy’s face as he asked, “Umm…what’s going to happen to me?”

The question was vague. Lacking an answer for him, Loren turned to Lapis. She had also lowered her luggage and sat on a separate bed. Once she noticed Loren’s gaze, she placed her index finger to her chin, letting her gaze prowl the ceiling. She spoke hesitantly.

“Going about it the orthodox way would mean dragging you with us through the Black Forest to deliver you back to your people.”

“That sounds about right, but what do you mean orthodox? You mean there’s some other way?” Loren asked.

“Do you want to hear it?”

“If you don’t want me to hear it, don’t bring it up in the first place.”

There was no telling what Lapis might come up with. Loren ignored her for the time being and turned back to Feuille in the doorway.

“If you’ve got some way of contacting your family, we can go with that,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll have to guide us to your settlement. Sure, you’re an elf, but I don’t want to let a kid hike through the Black Forest alone.”

The moment Loren mentioned being guided to the settlement, Feuille tensed up, hesitant. Loren knew he should have phrased it better, perhaps as them guarding Feuille on the way home. Lapis glared at him, her smile a bitter twist.

The elves were a fair race, so fair that many scoundrels were out for their bodies. From the boy’s reaction, Loren could tell he’d seen his share of troubles.

“I don’t have any business with your settlement,” he said. “I just want to get you there properly.”

“Are you sure?” Feuille asked. “I don’t have any money to pay you.”

From their visit to the guild, Feuille must have picked up that they were adventurers. It would make perfect sense for adventurers to demand payment for taking Feuille home.

“Don’t worry, I never expected any money out of you.”

“Th-then my parents…”

I see, Loren thought. It would not be commendable to squeeze money out of a small child, but anyone could justify bringing a lost child home and expecting payment from the relatives.

Loren shook the thought from his head. “I didn’t take on a job to deliver a lost child home.”

“In that case…”

“The ship has sailed, as they say. There must be some reason we picked you up. We’ll deliver you home free of charge, and we won’t demand payment for the room either. Don’t worry.”

“Why are you going so far…?”

It was, apparently, incredibly rare to find an adventurer who would do so much for a stranger without any reward. Feuille seemed to find the whole idea absurd. Loren wondered what he could say to convince the boy, but he realized he had no obligation to be convincing.

Feuille could accept the proposal or turn it down at no cost whatsoever. Even if they parted right at the entrance to the forest, Loren wouldn’t be any worse off. In fact, that would be a lot less trouble for him—other than the trouble of many sleepless nights after setting a defenseless child loose in the Black Forest, which was a punishment Loren preferred to avoid.

“I don’t have a reason. I guess, if anything…”

“It’s because Mr. Loren here is nice to a fault,” Lapis interjected, cutting Loren off.

Who’s nice to a fault? Loren wanted to demand, but he could see how his logic might come off that way. He fell silent when Lapis stared at him.

“So why not take us up on that for now?” Lapis asked. “After you’re home safe, you can give us whatever payment you like, if you really want. That’s how I’m looking at it.”

“R-really?”

Assured by Lapis’s kind words, Feuille finally moved from his spot to the last empty bed. It was supposed to be a room for five, but Loren noted two long sofas that had apparently been included in the count. They had lucked into exactly enough beds.

Lapis interrupted his assessment of the room. “All right, Mr. Loren,” she declared as if she had only just remembered. “Then all that’s left is to eat, sleep, and enter the Black Forest tomorrow.”

“Okay, and so?”

“Well, did the man not say that hot water and towels were an additional fee? I’d like to freshen myself up before bed.” She let out a pronounced sigh. “What terrible, miserly service.”

Loren thought back to his conversation with the innkeeper. “No, he only said more towels. The lodging fee should include enough to get ourselves wiped down.”

Loren didn’t think he was remembering wrong, but Lapis looked rather vexed as she continued to press him.

“Does that mean he’s not going to prepare enough for us to get properly clean?”

That probably ain’t it, thought Loren. Even the cheapest inns he stayed at gave him enough water and a spare cloth to wipe himself down. Given that they were renting a five-person room for only three people, the staff couldn’t complain if they asked for enough water and towels for five. It was difficult to imagine that not being enough.

The only real hiccup was that Loren and Feuille would have to leave the room while Lapis washed, though that was hardly an issue.

“I don’t need much myself, and I doubt Feuille does either. We should get enough for five, and you can use whatever’s left, Lapis.”

“I see, I won’t say I’m not grateful… But then why did the owner bring it up?”

“Who knows? Maybe they get clients that use a stupid amount of towels and water? Or maybe he just wanted to make sure we knew the rules?”

Loren tried to play it off. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he did fully understand why the owner had brought up the water and towels. The innkeeper anticipated a mess because Loren was leading along a girl like Lapis, and Feuille who looked like a girl, and neither of them were family.

Loren thought Lapis would be able to solve the riddle without him having to spell it out for her, but it seemed she just didn’t get it. Maybe this was an issue stemming from demonic bathing culture. If three unrelated people ever needed more water and towels, they could just hop in the bath.

<What does that mean, Mister?> Scena piped up inside his head. <Please explain it to me.>

Loren nearly retorted, “You’re ten years too young to know.” But Scena, lurking inside him, was the astral body of the highest-ranking form of undead. She wouldn’t be an adult in ten years or twenty. A better answer might be “It’s too early for you to know.” Or maybe “I’ll explain when you’re an adult”? Loren weighed his options.

<Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?> Scena stammered at his hesitation.

Her voice brought him back to his senses. I’ll tell you if I ever feel like it.

Having successfully dodged the question, he flopped flat on the bed.