They were in a ditch outside a four horse lane road. A merry fire made from cottonwood branches had helped give them all warm jasmine tea. Kriti had cooked and now seemed utterly content. Laural and Day less so. Ending the world by accident could be weighing on their minds. Tents had been pitched in a haphazard way on the ground. Not every stop could be a perfect campsite when in a hurry.

  “Why don’t we all show what we got from the shop?” Nettle offered.

  “Sure,” they agreed, “but you first! You have that hulking box. What is it?”

  “I’m not entirely sure of a mystery now. The side claims ceremonial armor.”

  All five of them gave him a look.

  “You bought something without seeing what it is?” Laural sounded pleased.

  Bodi even chimed in. “What kind of idiot does that?”

  “Really, Nettle do you like wasting money?” demanded Day.

  He huffed and admitted, “Well, I tried a new spell. Not one of my normal ones, but it claimed this was the most valuable thing in that area.”

  “How big of an area?” asked Spoon curiously.

  “I’ve no idea,” he admitted, “I didn’t translate the spell very well and unfortunately could never figure out a few letters in the language. I’m not a perfect translator you know not in every language anyway.”

  “So, you got a box that a spell you don’t know if works told you to. Does the spell find the most useful thing you need?” Day pressed.

  “No, it’s value as based on the monetary cost. I could have bought something very costly but not all that helpful right now.”

  “Wonderful well that being that,” Bodi showed them his new polearm. “I bought this and a shorter blade. I checked their nunchucks, but all they had were ugly ones.”

  The shorter blade was really not much bigger than a long knife, but they could all see the material of Damascus steal would be strong. It about doubled his arm reach. Hiltless, which isn’t common for a close weapon, but he seemed confident. They all appropriately oohed as he swished it about. The practice strikes sounded exactly like if you ripped off an old radio antenna and tried to beat your TV to death with it.

  Laural showed off her new spikes. Four slim shimmering green oblong spikes with each end sharpened. The shimmer of enchantment she explained. “The sign said good for grass. I’m going to imbed them into my whip. Once I get done with working it in, the spells on it should hold them in place. It’s not as good as getting an enchanted whip, but more useful all the same. I was looking at the whips themselves but then I ran into trouble.”

  They all gave frustrated sighs for her. Day showed them two smoothstones of various metal blended together in rusts, shapes, and blacks. “I can heat them and use them during messages. They’re quite hard to find ones that don’t get too hot.”

  The interest in hot metal stones waned quickly. To everyone’s surprise, Kriti produced her own items from under robes. “After what happened I was angry, so I decided to steal a few things. Here’s a crossbow, deconstructed, and a bunch of daggers, and throwing stars. More aglets for you Nettle. A few game pieces for everyone. Oh, and this drink, I got thirsty.”

  Nettle sighed. “I really was hoping that nobody had stolen anything. We might be murders but we don’t have to be thieves. But I see I can only wish.”

  Kriti scowled at Nettle. “You still have aglet sets in your robes. They deserve it for that they did. Or is making a deal and accidental burglary that much better?”

  Nettle shifted patting around his shirt front and pulling out the aglets. “What would you know about that? I got so nervous about my merchandise I totally forgot. How did you know?”

  She winked. “Easy enough to see you and I listened while I found my goods. You lot just crashed around searching for your own things, but I found the shop’s registry and then from there I could locate what you would really want. You know the strangest part? They were accusing me of picking up a paperweight that I didn’t even touch. None of them even saw me in the area of this stuff. Further, I found the records. Those lot steal off everyone on the road they can. There’s a ton of clerical mistakes. Even if they discover all we took, it’s unlike to be their main problem soon.

  “I suspect they’d have an issue with people stealing back their stuff. Good records won’t benefit them. Your little stunt with the box is more notable. They will accept it, but they don’t like us and keeping track of the box is certainly wiser than what I left them to work with. Assuming they don’t all die.”

  Her grin was triumphant. Nettle couldn’t argue that she’d stolen better than he had.

  “What you got in the at box anyway? What do you think is in there? Did you make a poor deal sight unseen?”

  Nettle shifted on his chair of piled dirty shirts. It slid down the ditch further. He kept from falling by grabbing into the dirt and then rearranged his shirt chair. But he got up and went to the very titled caravan cart. Hopefully, the door opened again.

  “The box says gold leaves not gold leaf. Gold leaf armor will just have a filigree on the top. Expensive flashy mostly useless and aim to maintain. Perhaps it has some weird application in niche sections of ceremonial ware shops, but you‘re hardly likely to find them on accident or out on a path.”

  “But I think it says gold leaves as in the leaves from Artemis’s Eris apple tree.”

  They stared at him with blank expression.

  “A who and want now?” This was eloquently put by Day. “I thought humans liked weird tales, but you lot got some too.”

  “Everybody got weird stories.” Spoon shrugged. “We cannot help ourselves. Mermaids have real doozie. The biggest fish they ever caught is a huge discussion topic and unsafe for an on landers.”

  Bodi raised his eyebrows. “Don’t they say sunfish can out weight whales?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “They also say seaweed can poison your soul. I wouldn’t believe everything they have to say or maybe even half of what they have to say. Their reliability to a none Mer is low.”

  “Spoon, are you part Mer?” Laural asked.

  “Naturally. Isn’t it obvious?” He pointed to his hair which didn’t have any Mer features that anyone else noticed.

  “Open the armor box. I don’t care about Spoon’s complicated family tree.” Kriti nodded at Nettle.

  He’d been struggling with the door, that obediently popped open and he fell back to the hill.

  “Next stop is not on uneven ground!”

  Bodi took pity on him and unloaded the large box. They opened the box the way they did with most heavy things. Making a general wave at Bodi and letting him use his new solid metal steal spear to shove the thing into the dusty wooden edge and turn to lever the sides. He did this work on every corner, letting the squeak of iron nails being ripped from aged wood punctate his unboxing video.

  One he got it loose, he put down his weapon and with the help of Laural on the opposite side, the two of them pulled off the lid to reveal their newfound treasure.

  Unfortunately for everyone involved, it’d been covered in an algae style aged cloth and thing then clearly rotted since its last placement. The smell that emanated made everyone pull away from the rotted apricot scent. It chased them from the fire and they scatted around the ditch trying to find a less odorous resting place.

  “You should have opened it, Nettle!” Bodi withdrew. “They would have given you a better price for rotted fish.”

  “I think that’s actually-“ Day broke off her comment, making a curious expression. “Do any of you know about the ancient art of embalming and preservation?

  Spoon covered his nose and made an extra nasal sound because of trying not to breathe and talk. “No. Is there some other way to make your graves extra good?”

  “Some human mortuary artists pull out the organs of their dead and wrap them up into covering materials. It’s called embalming. Only if you do it wrong, not so great.”

  “And you know about these obscure practices because?”

  “We chiropractors all practice on cadavers before we do any high level bone manipulation. I think the smell you’re getting is actually its normal preservatives. A very good thing for all of us because it means if something is alive in there, they arranged it for safer travel. We should take note of how we remove the materials themselves and consider if we can replace it. We need to avoid further disturbing the packing materials or putting it back in the same way so as to preserve the integrity of the system.”

  They didn’t need the information, but the Nettle could not hold back his excitement. “They say gold leaves are living things not dead, part of why the armor is considered so valuable. Of course, nobody was quite sure it even existed.”

  “Great, great,” complained Spoon. “Just who do you think is going to wear the living thing that stinks? I’m not particularly into parasites, you know?”

  Nettle began opening the layers of rotten algae papers. In seconds, he could see a beautiful gold glittering underneath it all. Rotten lavender poofed out as he reached in and pulled the whole thing up and then yelped dropping it immediately.

  He gave them all a sheepish look. “Whatever it is, I can’t touch it. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t be humanoid sets. Not a reliable fit for any of us then. None of you will get to wear it after all. We’ll need to sell it.”

  He couldn’t hide his disappointment. Laural grinned at him.

  “Who are you going to ask to get it out for you?”

  Reluctantly, Nettle sighed. “Any of you. Whoever wants to reveal the most expensive thing I own and can’t even touch.”

  Bodi and Laural reached for it together, then Bodi offered, “Together then just like the lid.”

  She agreed. The two of them lifted out a single plate. It wasn’t heavy even for one of them. The giant junk an extremely light weight. Both of them stared at it. The plaster was large and not at all the shape of either a breastplate, any gauntlets not any recognizable armor shape.

  “Do you think it’s like a piece of skirt or leftover materials?” Day squinted.

  Whatever it belonged to. The material was even more fascinating than the quickgold. It was sections of normal sized autumn leaves caught into gold and plated together in an overlaying manner, with a material over top that couldn’t be identified holding it in place. It created the impression of scaled leaves. It shivered in slight movements but made not a sound. A brilliant gold except for the whorls of deep black that mottled each section of the leaves and the darkened veins within them exposed.

  Even if you could not apply it, the plate itself would have made an excellent decoration or even an art talk piece. They took it out and placed it on the ground. The back had a completely different tone to the front, and black lines marked the inside.

  “Do you think that’s eclipse apple skin?” Nobody could really identify the material and they let Nettle’s guesses go unanswered. Laural and Bodi dove back into stinking green layers of materials. One could only hope they found something anything in there.

  They pulled out another strange shaped piece of armor and Nettle let out a groan of frustration.

  “I don’t think we can retool that shape very much.” He squinted. “Maybe if you wanted very pointy type horses and it connected with other pieces?”

  This smaller piece from the side had a high pointed part. Unlike the latter piece of plate, this plate had an airy arch and some type of a part of a puzzles scattered bits which might together turn into a creature. This time they spent less time showing off the colors to the others and both of them got into the smelly box with the excitement of fishing dinner out of a barrel. Both of them went quickly putting pieces outside together.

  The new revealed plates included more pointed areas and all sorts of strange pieces that would be like a giant assembly of a machine not that any of them knew how to do that.

  “Is there instructions in there somewhere?” asked Nettle with a bit of frustration.

  “I think the typical instructions,” suggested Kriti, “is that you have a proper smith tell you about each piece. Don’t a few kinds of material require the proper fitting of a smith to even wear it?”

  They reluctantly agreed to their point while the others keep digging out. Spoon harrumphed about it and finally overcame his resistance to the pungent scent and wanted to see it a little closer. He reached out for it, then pulled his hands back.

  Day didn’t go over. “If you paid as little as I think you did, you can make a healthy profit on the thing. If you can figure out what to call it so other idiots will buy it.”

  The pieces all lay scattered out on the ground now. There would be no denying that the materials themselves must be a unique one that none of them had seen before.

  Bodi handled each piece with the type of lack in knowledge only an orc could offer. He hefted it up into the air and then watched as indeed it floated down from his toss like a leaf. As light as the material. He sniffed at it even though the smell would be horrible. He opened his mouth, but that Nettle would not stand for.

  “Please don’t bite it. It’s been in that rotten stuff so very long and you might chip a tooth.”

  “Should we try heating it over a fire?” asked Day. “Maybe it’s flammable.”

  “And damage it with our testing?” Laural frowned. “Leaves don’t do well in fire.”

  “What we really need for this stuff is a proper appraiser of plate armor.” Bodi shrugged. “Probably a solid dwarf type.”

  “I’m sure that will appear in the middle of the forest.” Nettle threw up his hands disgusted by his haul. “Maybe we’ll fast travel to Greenrun and they won’t know we killed a whole pile of metal workers until later.”

  That brought the group up short. Laural spoke softly. “If someone finds out we did it, we’ll have to traveled far enough away from the rumor mill and that law bound place.”

  “Indeed,” Nettle muttered this subdued answer.

  “Let’s put it back in for now and think on it more later. Right now, we need to sleep and then to ride further away from here. If any of that lot does live, you can be sure they’d hold a grudge against us forever.”

  Bodi and Laural pulled weird faces, but then they started packing it back in, to his surprise he noticed that both of them had been paying attention and did a pretty decent job of getting the thing back in place. They only hammered in one of the nails before hefting it back into the cart.

  They bedded down but didn’t sleep well. In the morning, everyone loaded up their uncomfortable, uneven camp and got going again. The horses were much fresher in the morning after eating the grass and grain. They went at a smart pace, and more than one glanced back down the road. All of them wondering who exactly might be back there and if it would cause them any trouble later.