Colin gulped, gncing at Deirdre, nervous energy racing through his body like electric current through a live wire. He looked back at where Alice and Bridgette stood under a copse of trees accompanied by Moonwhisper. Deirdre gnced back at him and gave a shy smile saying, "Let's go find out where your friend is."

  They set out for the mysterious airport-turned-town, walking briskly in the cold winter weather. Within thirty minutes, they started passing buildings. This town was nothing like Persistence, where the inhabitants took good care of their homes and worked together to ensure things operated smoothly. Instead, the buildings were in disrepair, shattered windows and trash everywhere. Colin could swear he saw rats on the kitchen table as he looked into one home, and he looked away horrified.

  "How do people live like that? So much filth," he wondered aloud.

  Deirdre nodded her agreement, looking around in disgust. "Your town is nice, but most are abominations. People need to live in nature as part of the food chain. Towns allow too many luxuries, they grow soft. Those earth elementals you fought would rip this town to pieces - and the world would be better for it."

  "I mean, that's a little rough. I grew up in a farm town; it wasn't perfect, but I'm not sure if I'd go for 'fuck towns, everyone lives in nature by themselves.' You still had a pce you lived out in the Rockies, right? What was it like?"

  With a huff, Deirdre gnced to the side. "I lived in a cave in the mountains, one with nature. I kept the bance."

  "And your cave? Did you decorate it at all? Flowers, paintings?" He trailed off as Deirdre gave him a disbelieving look. "Okay, probably not flowers or paintings. But I assume you didn't sleep on the floor, right?"

  "Of course not. I had a bed."

  "So that's my point. It's important to understand and respect nature, but you improve your environment and adapt it to _you_. I'd love to see the bed, I'm sure it is very beautiful."

  "You want to see my bed?" She quirked an eyebrow at Colin. Colin blushed immediately.

  "I mean ... I'm just saying that I'm sure that you did a wonderful job decorating and finding a way to incorporate elements of nature when creating something comfortable for yourself. Oh, look! Here's a tavern. Can I buy you a drink? Maybe we can get some information here." Colin turned, pointing at the test building they walked up to, a ramshackle two-story building with a sign out front prociming the establishment to be named "The Broke-Dick Weasel."

  It stood near the middle of the town with a second story balcony wrapping around two sides of the building, and windows to the interior lit by many candles. As Colin drew open the door for Deirdre, a man jumped from the second floor and nded heavily on a snow drift about twenty feet away from the couple, the loud snap of a bone audible. He was wearing casual clothes but was clutching a parka in his hands as he screamed in pain and tried to roll to his feet.

  The pair heard a male voice screaming from overhead, "If you don't bring the money you owe me by the morning, you're fucking dead, do you hear me?" A dagger was thrown, piercing the parka the man was holding and pinning it to the ground next to him. He tugged at the jacket, ripping it free of the dagger, and stumbled his way down the street as fast as he could on a broken ankle.

  Deirdre and Colin exchanged gnces and stepped inside. The first thing that hit them was the smell of unwashed bodies. This was clearly not a high css establishment, from the soot stains on the ceilings near where candles burnt to the sticky floor covered in stale beer, but the patrons were no better. Three men sat around a round table, pying what appeared to be poker with a stack of chips, smoking cigars while a haze of smoke clouded the ceiling above them. An empty seat indicated a fourth pyer had temporarily walked away from the table. A lingerie cd woman stood behind a bar pouring whiskey into gsses, which she handed to a second woman who carried it to the men. They reached out and took turns fondling the woman as she pced their whiskey gsses in front of them, then walked back to the bar, her face expressionless throughout and her eyes dead to the world. A flight of stairs behind the bar led up to the second story. In the corner was a coat rack with ratty winter jackets adorning it.

  Colin took a deep breath, almost coughed from the cigar smoke, recovered, and walked over to the bar, doing his absolute best to maintain eye contact with the woman instead of looking at her exposed breasts. "What's it cost for a whiskey around here? Where we're from, folks mostly trade in goods and not coin."

  The bartender looked at him, appraising. Her cold eyes ran up and down Colin's frame, cataloging his equipment, trying to evaluate his worth. After a long beat, she said "We mostly take gold or jewelry, but could make you a loan if you don't have any." The three men had paused their poker game, all turning to stare at Colin and waiting to see his reaction. Colin thought frantically, mentally going through the contents of his storage rings and trying to determine if there was anything that might qualify. As Colin opened his mouth, about to apologize for wasting their time, Deirdre stepped forward, startling everyone else in the bar.

  She had entered the bar behind Colin and then immediately stepped to the side and faded into the shadows, observing Colin's interactions. None of the patrons had noticed her, nor had the bartender, until she moved forward into the light. Deirdre made a show of it, extracting a gleaming sliver of silver from a leather pouch at her waist, making sure that the bar's denizens could see the glint of more metal within, before pcing it at the bar.

  "Two whiskeys," she said. "This is more than enough everywhere I've been."

  The bartender blinked, surprised at the elven ranger's sudden appearance. A fourth man emerged, walking down from the stairs and wiping what appeared to be blood from his hands with a grimy rag. He stared at the two elves, his eyes small and greedy. "Sorry doll, but not around here. Two of those will get you one whiskey. So unless you're sharing with the kid, better find some more coin in there." He walked over to the bar, roughly shoving the bartender out of the way as he grabbed a gss of whiskey for himself, then walked and sat at the vacant table to resume his game of poker.

  With a grimace, Deirdre pulled three more slivers of metal from her pouch and pced them on the bar. She gnced around again. Each of the four men at the poker table continued staring at them, as did the bartender and waitress. Finally, the bartender took the metal slivers and pced them into a compartment below the bar and poured two small gsses of brown liquid from an unbeled bottle. She roughly slid them over to Deirdre, scowling at the elven woman.

  "That's all you're pouring? So little," Deirdre questioned.

  "No refunds. Want more to drink, pay more." The bartender crossed her arms and gred at Deirdre, as if daring her to argue more.

  Colin and Deirdre sat down right where they stood on bar stools. Colin was drenched in sweat at this point from the struggle of maintaining eye contact with the beautiful bartender and not admiring her body with Deirdre right there, combined with the stress of ordering the drinks and the tense discussion after. Colin took a hold of his gss, raising it to Deirdre's, saying "Cheers." Deirdre stared at him, bnkly. "You know, cheers?"

  "Yes, I know cheers." Deirdre sighed, shaking her head in dismay. Colin suddenly felt like maybe he shouldn't have done that. One of the poker pyers ughed cruelly. Deirdre silently touched her gss to Colin's, then bolted the whiskey back. Colin took a sip, coughing as the brown liquid burned his throat. He wheezed, trying to get control of himself, and shot the rest of the whiskey, coughing and grabbing a water canteen from his waist and drinking from it until the coughing stopped.

  "Hey doll, if you want to leave the boy scout and come py with us, we can deal you in," the fourth poker pyer offered. "I'm sure it's almost his bedtime anyway."

  Deirdre rolled her eyes and gnced at Colin. Colin took a deep breath, trying to settle himself. He was an eight level wizard, he had fought a wide variety of deadly foes, he could probably kill every single one of these men in a fight with a single well-pced fireball, but the banter had reduced him to feeling like the awkward high school nerd once again, getting bullied for not being able to come up with the snappy retorts. Colin got angry, turning and looking at the man who was speaking.

  "What's the buy-in?"

  "More than you can afford, kid. And I wasn't asking you to py, I was asking her."

  Colin reached into his robe and fished out a rge diamond that he had been pnning on using as a spell component and plonked it into the bar. The bartender's eyes grew wide and the poker pyers stood, staring. Deirdre winced. Colin gnced at the bartender, "Pour two more gsses, full ones, and then leave us the bottle." He then turned to the poker pyers, "And I'm pretty fucking sure this will buy us both in for seats at the table."

  The poker pyer stared at Colin, slowly nodding. "Yea, I reckon that will just about cover it. Let me get some chips for you, boy scout." The man stepped behind the bar and went back up the stairs. While he was gone, the poker pyers shuffled around, opening up two seats for Colin and Deirdre. Colin grimaced as he saw that they had pced Deirdre opposite him, ensuring he couldn't sit next to the alluring Elven ranger, and instead pcing her between the man who went to get the poker chips and one other stranger. The two elves hung their coats, then Colin held Deirdre's chair for her while she sat, then with a frown walked around and sat down opposite her, staring unhappily at the other three men.

  The waitress wandered back over, setting four more gsses of whiskey down for the poker pyers. They again fondled her, the man sitting next to Deirdre smacking the waitress on the ass firmly enough to make her yelp. Colin took a deep breath and tried to get his anger under control. As the fourth man walked back downstairs, two stacks of chips in one hand, he paused to grab the waitress by the ass and pull her close, kissing her roughly. He then grabbed her wrist and brought her to the table with him, where he roughly set down the stacks of chips for Colin and Deirdre. The two grabbed their stacks and pulled them to their pces at the table while the fourth man proceeded to sit, pulling the waitress into his p and popping her breasts out from her top, pying with them.

  "Whose deal was it," he asked, while staring at Deirdre. Deirdre sat next to him, incredibly still, and stared back. Colin gulped. This night out was not going the way he had hoped. The air of violence hung thick in the room alongside the cigar smoke and the smell of cheap whiskey.