“It’s pretty quiet.” Mayhem said. The five of them looked around the few trees of a dwindling forest. There were no sounds of birds or other wildlife along the path. The party paused, looking around the path. It was unnerving. Their ears all started hearing a buzzing, a sound that was only a hallucination. A sound their ears conjured in desperation for something to hear. Not even a breath of wind in the trees.

  A buck flew from the brush and into the path. The party all jumped and a few curses even jumped out. An arrow flew from the trees and hit the deer true. Killing it instantly.

  “Sorry,”called the hunter stepping through the bush. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” She was a tall snakelike ranger. With pointed features and long red hair.

  “No, no. It was a good clean kill.” Kilek waved. “You have skill and luck on your side, friend.”

  “I have to nowadays.” The hunter said, smiling. “The animals are on edge, they’ve been hiding and getting harder to find.”

  “Well best of luck to you,” Kilek called. The hunter took the deer and hoisted it onto her shoulders.

  “Safe travels to you,” She called before walking off with her kill.

  “At least there’s still things living in these woods.” Jiit said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something lurking around in these woods.”

  “Considering the manor?” Shaynen asked, “It's highly possible.”

  “If that’s true we should have run into trouble by now.” Thunder said. The party began walking again. The continued silence keeping them on edge.

  “This walk is going to be unbearable if we keep walking in silence like this.” Kilek announced, “So how about a story? I’ve got a good one from my youth.”

  “Sure?” Shaynen said with a shrug.

  “Great! So when I was a young man, I did a little trading. Strictly off the books if you catch my drift.” Kilek winked at the party.

  “Before you go any further, let's all agree to a legal armistice.” Jiit said. “So long as we are a party, any crimes committed or spoken of during our companionship cannot be reported. Once we part ways this truce dissolves, but until then our divulged secrets stay within the group. Can we all agree?” The party looked at each other.

  “I agree to that.” Shaynen said,

  “So long as we are not plotting to hurt any innocent parties, I can as well.” Thunder said.

  “Yeah, no tattling. We all are on board with the no tattling.” Mayhem eyed suspiciously.

  “No tattling, agreed. Or may the tattler lose their tongue.” Kilek said.

  “That is something I can get behind.” Mayhem agreed.

  “As can I.” Kilek nodded.

  “Good, then we all agree.” Jiit said, “Kilek you may resume your story.”

  “Right, where was I?” Kilek scratched his long neck. “Ah yes, so I was doing some trading, And we came into possession of a large shipment of moonshine and some other such things that the ruling parties weren’t keen on. It was a giant shipment and we needed a way to get into the city without the guards catching on. So we paid a large whaling ship to get us a whale. Once they’d caught the whale we transferred it to our ship, not an easy task let me tell you, and we spent nearly a day filling it with the cargo.” Mayhem’s face lost all color and her eyes widened.

  “Wait, a whale? On the surface? For multiple days?” She asked. Kilek nodded with a giant smile.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Don’t go getting ahead of me now.” Kilek said, “Don’t spoil it for everyone else.” Mayhem nodded but covered her mouth with both hands.

  “So there we were, bringing the loaded whale into dock.” Kilek said. “It’d had been a while since we traded and the bastarding thing was beginning to rot and that is a smell that never comes out. So they get the whale into the dock, we leave the ship since we didn’t need it anymore. We got our payment and we head off. And just as we make it to the ridge up over the city. The whale just damn explodes!”

  “What?” Jiit said.

  “For what? How? Why?” Shaynen asked, unable to help himself.

  “I wish I knew, I’ve been puzzling on that for a while now.” Kilek said.

  “I can answer that.” Mayhem said, “Whales are meant to be under the sea and as such the gas inside them isn’t mean to be up where the pressure is less. So when it rots and the gases release there’s nowhere for them to go. So it explodes.”

  “Is that what happened?” Kilek said, then let out a loud laugh. “Either way, the sound of the explosion broke all the windows nearby and sent fish guts and blubber flying everywhere! It rained down along with bits of wood and all the moonshine and ayahuasca down on the entire city and surrounding area. The entire shipment was ruined! We never skedaddled so fast in our lives.”

  “Oh gods.” Jiit sighed and covered his eyes. Shaynen’s mouth was just dropped. Mayhem broke out into hysterical laughter. Thunder started to giggle a bit herself. Mayhem’s laughter quickly moved to Thunder who laughed harder, then to Shaynen who began to laugh, even Jiit began chuckling.

  “Wait, wait. I have a story.” Jiit said, once the laughter died down. “So my usual work is as a bounty hunter. I track down people who break the law and bring them in for the reward.” Kilek gave a suspicious look to Jiit before shrugging and grinning again.

  “I was tracking down a sorcerer. Guy was a real piece of work.” Jiit continued. “He was accused of doing some real looney bin things. He’d turn whole buildings and carts invisible. Give people bouquets that then turn to fish. Nothing illegal, just absurd. Then he took a dive from a harmless old kook to a menace when he started stealing kid’s noses.”

  “I’m sorry?” Mayhem turned back, even Shaynen stopped to look at Jiit in disbelief.

  “Yup, found a magic way to take a kid’s nose right off their face and ran off with it.” Jiit said, shaking his head. “Guy wouldn’t even keep them. We’d find the noses in weird, random places. There were so many wizards following this guy and trying to put the kid’s noses back on. It was unbelievable. But anyway. I had to track this guy down. I followed him all the way to this old deserted castle in the middle of the desert. He was up on the tallest tower yelling down at us about this goddess and the fall of mankind and end times were upon us.”

  “Hah, the guy sounds like a real wackadoo.” Kilek said, “How’d you get him?”

  “The crazy old man shifted the ground to try and make it impossible for us to enter the castle but in doing so, shifted the foundation which was already built on sand. Ended up bringing the whole palace down on himself. We spent days trying to dig him out. Guy lived. For better or worse, he lived.”

  “Good?” Shaynen said, confused. “Is it good?”

  “He was stealing people's noses!” Mayhem blasted, then suddenly laughing. “Right off their faces!”

  “It’s not funny.” Jiit said, “it was serious.”

  “But it sounds absolutely wild! A wizard coming up to a person and stealing their nose and tossing it into a field?!” Mayhem’s laughter turned hysterical. She had to stop walking to double over laughing.

  “It isn’t funny!” Thunder tried, but she had a large smile over her face. Shaynen started giggling despite himself and even Kilek had a broad smile.

  “What about you? Surely you have something to share.” Jiit said, rolling his eyes. Mayhem straightened and cleared her throat.

  “Yeah, I think I got a good story.” Mayhem said. She wiped a tear from her eye. “So. Before all this, I was a sailor on the high seas. Sure there were tons of hijinks we got into. Lots of fun friends, I could tell you about people you wouldn’t even believe are real. But the one that comes to mind for me is the time we were sailing through this freezing part of the world during the coldest time of the year. Ice formed on the deck and we were skating around having the best time. At least until the captain came up and slipped on the ice. Fell flat on his ass. Bam!” Mayhem punched her fist into her palm to demonstrate how hard he fell. Her infectious laughter burst through again bringing chuckles from the rest of the party.

  “But man was he pissed. He looked around at the crew and settled on me, the racist bastard.” Mayhem said, she was steaming, literally. “Cause I’m a tiefling he had me clean up the ice, saying I should be able to make quick work of it. So I get to work trying to scrape the ice up. But as fast as I clean it up, more forms! The more I scraped the angrier I got until I burned a hole right through the deck.” She burst into laughter but the rest of the party only offered awkward chuckles.

  “Thunder? Shaynen?” Kilek asked. The two looked at each other.

  “I don’t travel much.” Thunder said with a shrug. “I tend to stay near my garden.”

  “I’ve lived in a monastery all my life. Orphaned by a forest fire.” Shaynen said. “There was a time when we cut class but I just remember it being really boring.”