“Finally, we’re finally here!” Penny exclaimed. Penny had been the most bored out of the entire group. I had Karif to talk with about skills and class progression while Garrus and George had one-track minds of getting there without needing to think much about anything.
We had finally made it there though and we could see Muldren off in the distance with the sun setting on the horizon.
“Alright, we’ll go in and find a place to stay the night, in the morning we’ll get down to business to figure out what’s going on around here. Sound good?” Garrus gave each of us a look before continuing, “I also want to set some ground rules. People have been disappearing so from now on we’re gonna have a buddy system. You do not go anywhere without a buddy, that means you, Penny.”
Garrus gave Penny an extremely stern look causing her to wilt under his gaze.
“I hear ya I hear ya.” She raised her hands defensively, “I still remember what happened last time and I don't exactly want to repeat that either.”
“Good, then I’ll go with George, you three can be a group together. I think this will be the most balanced way to settle things. Sound fair?”
We each gave a nod or a sound of affirmation before we continued on to the village.
Muldren didn’t have walls around it as Vinwood did. Instead, it just had a single road that ran through the center of the town, there was, however, still a single guard posted by the road. Didn’t make much sense to me since if anyone meant any harm to the town they wouldn’t be following the main road to get in considering there weren’t walls around the town. Well, village defense wasn’t my specialty so I wasn’t going to stress myself out over it.
As we drew closer to the village the guard gripped his weapon more tightly and called out, “Halt, who goes?”
Garrus, the leader of our group, replied to us. “We are the Earth Raiders, a sapphire party from Vinwood answering the request that was put in for the disappearances.”
Garrus pulled out a blue necklace to show credence to his words.
“Alright, you can come in, don’t be causing any trouble.”
We walked forward, and as we got closer though he stopped us again. “You!” He yelled and pointed his weapon at me.
I took a few steps back raising my hands, his sudden yelling and brandishing of his weapons startled me. Which honestly wasn’t a hard thing to do, but adrenaline was already flowing through my veins causing me to go fight or flight.
“Woah woah woah, what’s happening here he’s with us.” Garrus stepped in between me and the guard.
“He’s an elf, you know what they say about his kind. For all we know his kind could be behind the disappearances happening around here or he could be doing it himself!” the guard was practically yelling at this point.
“How could he be the one doing it if he’s been in Vinwood with us? And before that, he has an alibi for being south near the Ashen Vale while this has been happening.” Karif stepped up next to my defense.
I was very confused, I had never experienced anything like this before. Was this… Was this racism? Was I being targeted by racism? Huh… I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, but the best course of action right now was to keep quiet and let the others handle the talking.
Garrus stepped up again. Garrus was not a small person by any means. I was tall myself, sitting a little over 6 feet after my racial change. Garrus had a whole head over me. This guard was smaller than I was, probably about the same height I’d been back when I’d been human. All this meant that Garrus towered over him, so when Garrus stepped up to him this caused the guard to stop talking and look up, worry stricken across his face.
“Listen sir guard. Either the elf comes inside with us, or we turn back and tell the guild that Muldren guardsmen refused entry to a verified party. You understand the consequences of that don’t you?”
The Guardsman gulped audibly before taking a step back and putting on a tough face. “Fine, however,” He stopped and pointed at me, “One word of trouble about you, knife ears, and you’ll regret it.”
“Sure thing.” I gave a casual response.
‘Knife Ears’. I was kind of surprised to hear that term. Although I guess I shouldn’t since elf ears looked like they were something straight out of World of Warcraft. A little bit shorter, sure, but still pretty long. Considering what they used to be.
The guard waved us by, ignoring us as we walked further in.
“Don’t let what he said get to you, lots of people out here are extremely uneducated and extremely superstitious so they don’t know the first thing about the real world.” Penny had slowed down to walk next to me.
“Thanks, Penny. Thanks to the rest of you as well,” I spoke up a little bit once we were far enough past the guard, “It makes me happy that you all stood up for me like that.”
Garrus just snorted, “Bah, people like him don’t know the first thing about life. Anyway, we did it more out of a favor for him than you. I could tell you were about to put the fear of the gods in that man if we hadn’t stepped in.”
“It was also the least we could do, you’re a member of the Earth Raiders. We stick together.” Karif gave me a friendly smile. George off to the side was nodding approvingly.
“Well, it means a lot to me. So I’ll be sure to pay it forward one day. Out of curiosity what would happen if we had returned to the guild and told them”
“Ah, you know how the guilds are effectively neutral in politics? That’s not by choice, the guild has a lot of weight. In the form of very very very high-level people. As such governing bodies can’t force the guild around as much as they’d like to. There have been instances in the past where groups or nations have tried to force guilds to fight in wars for them and the like. One nation in particular was then torn apart by one of the masters defending his guild members.”
“Huh, so how does that carry over to this?”
“I’m getting there laddie so listen patiently. So the guilds are neutral and as such can decide who and where they take requests from, in turn, they also protect their guild members from harassment, attack, mugging, and anything you might imagine. So if we had told the guild that Muldren guards turned us away at the gate because one of our members wasn’t human the guild would’ve made Muldren a dark zone and turned all requests from them away. And as far as I’m aware they’ve never gone back on that, once you’ve been rejected by the guild it’s permanent. Muldren would’ve never received help from an adventurer or guild ever again.”
“Wow, that’s pretty hardcore. That’s a lot more than I would’ve expected from here.” I genuinely was surprised, maybe it was just because I was used to where I was from where the average business didn’t seem to care about its employees. I’d had some good bosses who cared for me and would accommodate me as best they could and try to look out for me. But the big-time executives didn’t give a rat's ass about the bottom-tier workers.
“It’s only natural, we’re out here risking our lives for these people. The least they could do is show us some respect. And what self-respecting person would work for someone who doesn’t respect them? The guild knows that and they look out for us in turn. In return, they can mobilize us for emergencies if they need it, but that rarely happens.”
I chuckled a little to myself, “If only the people from my world held that perspective. Although I guess magic really makes a difference in the mindset when you realize the person you’ve been treating like dirt now has the strength to topple a nation and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. You’re more likely to treat people with respect or just kill them outright.”
Garrus shrugged in response, “Come on. Let’s go find somewhere we can stay the night. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
We woke up early the following morning. We were all sharing the same room together in the inn, sleeping on the floor was not comfortable. I had a sore neck and had slept pretty fitfully, but such was the woes of living in a fantasy world. Garrus had wanted us all to be together. In his words ‘Since we don’t know what’s making everyone disappear we should stick together where we can to minimize risk.’ Can’t say I disagree with him on that either.
We ate a meager meal at the inn we were staying at, and we talked idly together for a bit before leaving to get to business. We walked out of the inn with the promise to meet back there every hour just to make sure everyone was safe.
We stepped out onto the street, the skies were clear this morning and it looked like it was going to stay that way too. I was happy about that, I didn’t want to be wandering around in the rain trying to figure out what was going on around here. Garrus and George walked towards the western end of the town which left our group the eastern end to deal with.
“Well, should we get started then?” I glanced over at Karif and Penny before we started moving.
On our way down there I glanced around at the people around the village trying to get a feel for how everyone looked. Not a single person would meet our group's eyes, I would’ve figured they’d be eyeing us up and down but instead they just methodically went about their business without even glancing our way. I guess they didn’t want too much to do with outsiders, our case probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I was an elf. After the guards' reaction, I didn’t hold much hope for a conversation with the other villagers.
“I think one of you two should handle talking with the villagers, after what happened with the guard I don’t know if it’d be a good idea for me to do the talking.”
“Hmmm…” Karif intoned, ” That’s understandable, I think that’d be a good idea too. Penny and I will handle it on a case-by-case basis. Is that agreeable Penny?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.” Penny replied being her usual angsty self in regards to doing things she didn’t like. She’d rather just have a clear-cut enemy that she could attack, none of this sniff-them-out nonsense. Which I could get behind, I’d rather just know what was going on and cut the root of the problem out. But it is how it is when you have to be the one doing your own legwork.
We got to the end of the town and Karif walked up to the nearest house and knocked on the door and took a step back. We waited for the door to open. And waited. And we waited for a while longer before he looked back at Penny and me before shrugging.
“Guess they're not home, on to the next one then.”
We went down one door and repeated the process. And waited for the door to open. But no one answered this one as well. We repeated this for several doors until we got to a bakery and went inside.
“Welcome to Alistairs Bakery! How can I– Oh, it’s the party that walked in last night.”
The man running the counter had started off pretty friendly before getting a complete tone change when he noticed who we were. His eyes lingered on my ears, but he didn’t say anything about it thankfully.
“Hi, my name’s Karif, and we’re the Earth Raiders. We came to answer the request about people disappearing around here and wanted to know if you knew anything about what was going on.” Karif stepped forward and put on an easily trained friendly smile, it looked extremely natural on him and I could only assume this came from his merchant background. Well while that smile might’ve worked practically anywhere else, here it didn’t seem to do us any good. The man I assumed to be Alistair just looked at him. It was a completely neutral expression, he didn’t seem annoyed or amused. He just looked and had practically no reaction to what Karif said.
The silence between us got awkward before he finally responded, “I don’t really know anything and I don’t care to talk about it either. If you aren’t planning on buying bread or talking about buying bread I’m not interested.” He then turned around and got started with some busy work which gave a pretty clear indicator that he was done with this conversation.
We sidled out of the store before huddling together slightly to keep other people from listening in on our conversation, “That was strange. So far we’ve gotten ignored at every house even when we know people are inside and the one person we actually manage to talk to completely blows us off and isn’t even remotely interested in talking about a situation that could really affect him or his life.” Karif stroked his chin idly while he spoke.
“That seems to be the mood of everyone in town,” Penny said, “Everyone I’ve gotten an eye on has seemed completely neutral, not even remotely interested in anything going on around them. Which seems just completely unnatural. I’ve come through Muldren before, the townsfolk here were pretty friendly the last time I came here. This isn’t to say they should be friendly now, considering the people they probably know have disappeared. But you think someone would care. Maybe a mother has lost a child or a husband his wife. Something.”
Penny was right, this seemed strange. You’d figure at least one person would have come up to us to talk, ask us about what we’re doing, if we were here to answer the request. Something. But we got nothing.
“Well let’s keep going and see if maybe we can find someone who wants to talk, let's go the one hour and then meet back up with the other two,” Karif said before moving on to the next house.
We got the same results no matter how many people we tried to talk to. Every single one of them brushed us off, walked away, and straight-up ignored us. Not a single one told us anything that we could make use of. Not a name or anything that we could use.
“You don’t suppose that guard went and talked to everyone about Alex being an elf and is trying to get them to not speak to us do you?” Penny said, glancing between me and Karif.
“No, I doubt that. I don’t believe every single person would side with him. Maybe they don’t trust elves, but they would still care about their family and would want help so it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t talk and try to help us figure out what’s going on. Either way, our time is nearly up, let's head back and see if Garrus and George have had a different experience.”
Walking back towards the inn we could see that Garrus and George were waiting out front for us already. Garrus had a stormy look on his face and generally looked to be in a pretty unpleasant mood, George looked about as impassive as ever.
“Judging by the look on your face I’m guessing you’ve had the same luck we’ve had with getting the villagers to talk,” Karif said as we approached.
“Yes, every single one of these boneheads refuses to say anything that could help us narrow down what’s going on. It just doesn’t make sense that they’d hide anything from us.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like the villagers are going to be any help with solving this problem so we’ll just have to find everything on our own. Let's split up again and look through the surrounding area. There are lots of trees towards the north, so if people are disappearing somewhere it’s most likely going to be there. Let’s meet back up in two hours.”
With our orders from Garrus, we moved out again. About a quarter of a mile away from the village you could see the forest Garrus had been talking about. The trees were pretty tall and thick so if someone was going to disappear around here, that forest would be suspect number one. Walking through the forest looking for clues was Penny’s specialty. There wasn’t much Karif and I could do to assist her as she walked up to the tree's observing marks and turned over leaves and bushes.
I activated [Electric Sense] but I didn’t expect it to be of much help here. We took a few more steps forward before Penny suddenly whipped around pulling out her bow and nocking an arrow aiming behind us. Karif and I both froze at the sudden movements from Penny, I slowly moved my hand towards where I kept my sword slung across my back. We waited a full minute before Penny slowly released the tension in her bow.
“It felt like something was watching me, and I didn't want to take any chances. Sorry.” Penny’s tone was extremely serious, a strange dichotomy from how she usually acted.
Karif and I just nodded without saying anything, adrenaline was pumping through my body and my arms felt a little sore from suddenly getting tense combined with the adrenaline. We carried on looking for anything that would help us figure out what was going on around here.
After two hours we didn’t find anything significant so we started moving back to the inn.
“What the hell is going on here?” Penny exclaimed, she was starting to get extremely frustrated with the situation while Karif just seemed to fall into deep thought.
“Something is definitely strange, I’m just not sure what exactly is happening,” Karif spoke softly, seemingly unsure about himself.
I didn’t have much to add, unfortunately, I just didn’t have any information to piece together an idea in my head about what was happening.
“We should go meet back up with Garrus, maybe see if we can head out to one of the nearby villages and see if they know anything. That’s the only thing I can think of at this point.” It was the only lead I could think of, if we couldn’t get anyone here to talk we needed to source information from outside then.
This time we got back before Garrus and George. However, it didn’t take long for them to show up at the inn.
“Nothing?” Garrus said as he walked up towards us.
“Nothing,” Karif affirmed.
Garrus heaved a sigh as he came to a stop before us.
“Alex suggested heading out to one of the nearby villages, seeing if maybe they had anything we could use,” Karif said.
“Yeah, that’s about all we can do at this point besides running around in circles here. We aren’t going to find anything more without someone talking to us and the villagers seem to be allergic to the idea.” Garrus said grumbling. “Let’s eat something and then we’ll start making our way further west. There’s a village about half a day's walk from here, they might know someone who’s vanished.”
We didn’t spend a lot of time eating and quickly packed up our things and moved out. The sooner we got to this next town the sooner we could try and figure out what was going on. Hopefully, someone in the next village would be more willing to talk with us.
“Finally, we’re finally here!” Penny exclaimed. Penny had been the most bored out of the entire group. I had Karif to talk with about skills and class progression while Garrus and George had one-track minds of getting there without needing to think much about anything.
We had finally made it there though and we could see Muldren off in the distance with the sun setting on the horizon.
“Alright, we’ll go in and find a place to stay the night, in the morning we’ll get down to business to figure out what’s going on around here. Sound good?” Garrus gave each of us a look before continuing, “I also want to set some ground rules. People have been disappearing so from now on we’re gonna have a buddy system. You do not go anywhere without a buddy, that means you, Penny.”
Garrus gave Penny an extremely stern look causing her to wilt under his gaze.
“I hear ya I hear ya.” She raised her hands defensively, “I still remember what happened last time and I don't exactly want to repeat that either.”
“Good, then I’ll go with George, you three can be a group together. I think this will be the most balanced way to settle things. Sound fair?”
We each gave a nod or a sound of affirmation before we continued on to the village.
Muldren didn’t have walls around it as Vinwood did. Instead, it just had a single road that ran through the center of the town, there was, however, still a single guard posted by the road. Didn’t make much sense to me since if anyone meant any harm to the town they wouldn’t be following the main road to get in considering there weren’t walls around the town. Well, village defense wasn’t my specialty so I wasn’t going to stress myself out over it.
As we drew closer to the village the guard gripped his weapon more tightly and called out, “Halt, who goes?”
Garrus, the leader of our group, replied to us. “We are the Earth Raiders, a sapphire party from Vinwood answering the request that was put in for the disappearances.”
Garrus pulled out a blue necklace to show credence to his words.
“Alright, you can come in, don’t be causing any trouble.”
We walked forward, and as we got closer though he stopped us again. “You!” He yelled and pointed his weapon at me.
I took a few steps back raising my hands, his sudden yelling and brandishing of his weapons startled me. Which honestly wasn’t a hard thing to do, but adrenaline was already flowing through my veins causing me to go fight or flight.
“Woah woah woah, what’s happening here he’s with us.” Garrus stepped in between me and the guard.
“He’s an elf, you know what they say about his kind. For all we know his kind could be behind the disappearances happening around here or he could be doing it himself!” the guard was practically yelling at this point.
“How could he be the one doing it if he’s been in Vinwood with us? And before that, he has an alibi for being south near the Ashen Vale while this has been happening.” Karif stepped up next to my defense.
I was very confused, I had never experienced anything like this before. Was this… Was this racism? Was I being targeted by racism? Huh… I wasn’t sure how to feel about this, but the best course of action right now was to keep quiet and let the others handle the talking.
Garrus stepped up again. Garrus was not a small person by any means. I was tall myself, sitting a little over 6 feet after my racial change. Garrus had a whole head over me. This guard was smaller than I was, probably about the same height I’d been back when I’d been human. All this meant that Garrus towered over him, so when Garrus stepped up to him this caused the guard to stop talking and look up, worry stricken across his face.
“Listen sir guard. Either the elf comes inside with us, or we turn back and tell the guild that Muldren guardsmen refused entry to a verified party. You understand the consequences of that don’t you?”
The Guardsman gulped audibly before taking a step back and putting on a tough face. “Fine, however,” He stopped and pointed at me, “One word of trouble about you, knife ears, and you’ll regret it.”
“Sure thing.” I gave a casual response.
‘Knife Ears’. I was kind of surprised to hear that term. Although I guess I shouldn’t since elf ears looked like they were something straight out of World of Warcraft. A little bit shorter, sure, but still pretty long. Considering what they used to be.
The guard waved us by, ignoring us as we walked further in.
“Don’t let what he said get to you, lots of people out here are extremely uneducated and extremely superstitious so they don’t know the first thing about the real world.” Penny had slowed down to walk next to me.
“Thanks, Penny. Thanks to the rest of you as well,” I spoke up a little bit once we were far enough past the guard, “It makes me happy that you all stood up for me like that.”
Garrus just snorted, “Bah, people like him don’t know the first thing about life. Anyway, we did it more out of a favor for him than you. I could tell you were about to put the fear of the gods in that man if we hadn’t stepped in.”
“It was also the least we could do, you’re a member of the Earth Raiders. We stick together.” Karif gave me a friendly smile. George off to the side was nodding approvingly.
“Well, it means a lot to me. So I’ll be sure to pay it forward one day. Out of curiosity what would happen if we had returned to the guild and told them”
“Ah, you know how the guilds are effectively neutral in politics? That’s not by choice, the guild has a lot of weight. In the form of very very very high-level people. As such governing bodies can’t force the guild around as much as they’d like to. There have been instances in the past where groups or nations have tried to force guilds to fight in wars for them and the like. One nation in particular was then torn apart by one of the masters defending his guild members.”
“Huh, so how does that carry over to this?”
“I’m getting there laddie so listen patiently. So the guilds are neutral and as such can decide who and where they take requests from, in turn, they also protect their guild members from harassment, attack, mugging, and anything you might imagine. So if we had told the guild that Muldren guards turned us away at the gate because one of our members wasn’t human the guild would’ve made Muldren a dark zone and turned all requests from them away. And as far as I’m aware they’ve never gone back on that, once you’ve been rejected by the guild it’s permanent. Muldren would’ve never received help from an adventurer or guild ever again.”
“Wow, that’s pretty hardcore. That’s a lot more than I would’ve expected from here.” I genuinely was surprised, maybe it was just because I was used to where I was from where the average business didn’t seem to care about its employees. I’d had some good bosses who cared for me and would accommodate me as best they could and try to look out for me. But the big-time executives didn’t give a rat's ass about the bottom-tier workers.
“It’s only natural, we’re out here risking our lives for these people. The least they could do is show us some respect. And what self-respecting person would work for someone who doesn’t respect them? The guild knows that and they look out for us in turn. In return, they can mobilize us for emergencies if they need it, but that rarely happens.”
I chuckled a little to myself, “If only the people from my world held that perspective. Although I guess magic really makes a difference in the mindset when you realize the person you’ve been treating like dirt now has the strength to topple a nation and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. You’re more likely to treat people with respect or just kill them outright.”
Garrus shrugged in response, “Come on. Let’s go find somewhere we can stay the night. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
We woke up early the following morning. We were all sharing the same room together in the inn, sleeping on the floor was not comfortable. I had a sore neck and had slept pretty fitfully, but such was the woes of living in a fantasy world. Garrus had wanted us all to be together. In his words ‘Since we don’t know what’s making everyone disappear we should stick together where we can to minimize risk.’ Can’t say I disagree with him on that either.
We ate a meager meal at the inn we were staying at, and we talked idly together for a bit before leaving to get to business. We walked out of the inn with the promise to meet back there every hour just to make sure everyone was safe.
We stepped out onto the street, the skies were clear this morning and it looked like it was going to stay that way too. I was happy about that, I didn’t want to be wandering around in the rain trying to figure out what was going on around here. Garrus and George walked towards the western end of the town which left our group the eastern end to deal with.
“Well, should we get started then?” I glanced over at Karif and Penny before we started moving.
On our way down there I glanced around at the people around the village trying to get a feel for how everyone looked. Not a single person would meet our group's eyes, I would’ve figured they’d be eyeing us up and down but instead they just methodically went about their business without even glancing our way. I guess they didn’t want too much to do with outsiders, our case probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I was an elf. After the guards' reaction, I didn’t hold much hope for a conversation with the other villagers.
“I think one of you two should handle talking with the villagers, after what happened with the guard I don’t know if it’d be a good idea for me to do the talking.”
“Hmmm…” Karif intoned, ” That’s understandable, I think that’d be a good idea too. Penny and I will handle it on a case-by-case basis. Is that agreeable Penny?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s fine.” Penny replied being her usual angsty self in regards to doing things she didn’t like. She’d rather just have a clear-cut enemy that she could attack, none of this sniff-them-out nonsense. Which I could get behind, I’d rather just know what was going on and cut the root of the problem out. But it is how it is when you have to be the one doing your own legwork.
We got to the end of the town and Karif walked up to the nearest house and knocked on the door and took a step back. We waited for the door to open. And waited. And we waited for a while longer before he looked back at Penny and me before shrugging.
“Guess they're not home, on to the next one then.”
We went down one door and repeated the process. And waited for the door to open. But no one answered this one as well. We repeated this for several doors until we got to a bakery and went inside.
“Welcome to Alistairs Bakery! How can I– Oh, it’s the party that walked in last night.”
The man running the counter had started off pretty friendly before getting a complete tone change when he noticed who we were. His eyes lingered on my ears, but he didn’t say anything about it thankfully.
“Hi, my name’s Karif, and we’re the Earth Raiders. We came to answer the request about people disappearing around here and wanted to know if you knew anything about what was going on.” Karif stepped forward and put on an easily trained friendly smile, it looked extremely natural on him and I could only assume this came from his merchant background. Well while that smile might’ve worked practically anywhere else, here it didn’t seem to do us any good. The man I assumed to be Alistair just looked at him. It was a completely neutral expression, he didn’t seem annoyed or amused. He just looked and had practically no reaction to what Karif said.
The silence between us got awkward before he finally responded, “I don’t really know anything and I don’t care to talk about it either. If you aren’t planning on buying bread or talking about buying bread I’m not interested.” He then turned around and got started with some busy work which gave a pretty clear indicator that he was done with this conversation.
We sidled out of the store before huddling together slightly to keep other people from listening in on our conversation, “That was strange. So far we’ve gotten ignored at every house even when we know people are inside and the one person we actually manage to talk to completely blows us off and isn’t even remotely interested in talking about a situation that could really affect him or his life.” Karif stroked his chin idly while he spoke.
“That seems to be the mood of everyone in town,” Penny said, “Everyone I’ve gotten an eye on has seemed completely neutral, not even remotely interested in anything going on around them. Which seems just completely unnatural. I’ve come through Muldren before, the townsfolk here were pretty friendly the last time I came here. This isn’t to say they should be friendly now, considering the people they probably know have disappeared. But you think someone would care. Maybe a mother has lost a child or a husband his wife. Something.”
Penny was right, this seemed strange. You’d figure at least one person would have come up to us to talk, ask us about what we’re doing, if we were here to answer the request. Something. But we got nothing.
“Well let’s keep going and see if maybe we can find someone who wants to talk, let's go the one hour and then meet back up with the other two,” Karif said before moving on to the next house.
We got the same results no matter how many people we tried to talk to. Every single one of them brushed us off, walked away, and straight-up ignored us. Not a single one told us anything that we could make use of. Not a name or anything that we could use.
“You don’t suppose that guard went and talked to everyone about Alex being an elf and is trying to get them to not speak to us do you?” Penny said, glancing between me and Karif.
“No, I doubt that. I don’t believe every single person would side with him. Maybe they don’t trust elves, but they would still care about their family and would want help so it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t talk and try to help us figure out what’s going on. Either way, our time is nearly up, let's head back and see if Garrus and George have had a different experience.”
Walking back towards the inn we could see that Garrus and George were waiting out front for us already. Garrus had a stormy look on his face and generally looked to be in a pretty unpleasant mood, George looked about as impassive as ever.
“Judging by the look on your face I’m guessing you’ve had the same luck we’ve had with getting the villagers to talk,” Karif said as we approached.
“Yes, every single one of these boneheads refuses to say anything that could help us narrow down what’s going on. It just doesn’t make sense that they’d hide anything from us.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like the villagers are going to be any help with solving this problem so we’ll just have to find everything on our own. Let's split up again and look through the surrounding area. There are lots of trees towards the north, so if people are disappearing somewhere it’s most likely going to be there. Let’s meet back up in two hours.”
With our orders from Garrus, we moved out again. About a quarter of a mile away from the village you could see the forest Garrus had been talking about. The trees were pretty tall and thick so if someone was going to disappear around here, that forest would be suspect number one. Walking through the forest looking for clues was Penny’s specialty. There wasn’t much Karif and I could do to assist her as she walked up to the tree's observing marks and turned over leaves and bushes.
I activated [Electric Sense] but I didn’t expect it to be of much help here. We took a few more steps forward before Penny suddenly whipped around pulling out her bow and nocking an arrow aiming behind us. Karif and I both froze at the sudden movements from Penny, I slowly moved my hand towards where I kept my sword slung across my back. We waited a full minute before Penny slowly released the tension in her bow.
“It felt like something was watching me, and I didn't want to take any chances. Sorry.” Penny’s tone was extremely serious, a strange dichotomy from how she usually acted.
Karif and I just nodded without saying anything, adrenaline was pumping through my body and my arms felt a little sore from suddenly getting tense combined with the adrenaline. We carried on looking for anything that would help us figure out what was going on around here.
After two hours we didn’t find anything significant so we started moving back to the inn.
“What the hell is going on here?” Penny exclaimed, she was starting to get extremely frustrated with the situation while Karif just seemed to fall into deep thought.
“Something is definitely strange, I’m just not sure what exactly is happening,” Karif spoke softly, seemingly unsure about himself.
I didn’t have much to add, unfortunately, I just didn’t have any information to piece together an idea in my head about what was happening.
“We should go meet back up with Garrus, maybe see if we can head out to one of the nearby villages and see if they know anything. That’s the only thing I can think of at this point.” It was the only lead I could think of, if we couldn’t get anyone here to talk we needed to source information from outside then.
This time we got back before Garrus and George. However, it didn’t take long for them to show up at the inn.
“Nothing?” Garrus said as he walked up towards us.
“Nothing,” Karif affirmed.
Garrus heaved a sigh as he came to a stop before us.
“Alex suggested heading out to one of the nearby villages, seeing if maybe they had anything we could use,” Karif said.
“Yeah, that’s about all we can do at this point besides running around in circles here. We aren’t going to find anything more without someone talking to us and the villagers seem to be allergic to the idea.” Garrus said grumbling. “Let’s eat something and then we’ll start making our way further west. There’s a village about half a day's walk from here, they might know someone who’s vanished.”
We didn’t spend a lot of time eating and quickly packed up our things and moved out. The sooner we got to this next town the sooner we could try and figure out what was going on. Hopefully, someone in the next village would be more willing to talk with us.
