The day we’d been waiting for had finally arrived. While Ryu and Kuro made their rounds saying goodbye to everyone in the village, I was checking in with the merchants to see if they sold anything useful for our journey. Layla had handed me ten gold coins to outfit us, which wasn’t much considering what we needed. Still, I was determined to make it stretch.

  After what felt like hours of negotiation, I managed to get everything we might need in exchange for all of the coins. At first, I bought a sword and a light chainmail for Ryu, and a short sword and a ring artifact that could store a small amount of mana for Kuro. They were far from top quality, but they'd get us started.

  Layla had given me a dagger to commemorate our training, so I spent a gold coin to get a sheath made for it. I also bought a pair of black boots, because I didn’t have any shoes that would be comfortable enough for an adventure. After that, I bought some supplies for the trip and was left with only one golden coin. Just when I decided to save it for later, a very specific merchant caught my eye. He was a tall elf, with very long ears and long blonde hair that glowed golden in the light of the sun. Apparently, he sold handmade bows and equipment related to them. I had Layla’s dagger, but a bit more firepower couldn’t hurt, right?

  After a long thirty minutes spent haggling, I managed to spend the last coin for a bow, a quiver with arrows, and a belt that allowed me to strap the bow to my back and still be able to draw it quickly. With the sturdy outdoor clothes that I had retrieved from what was left of my home, I felt pretty well equipped for now. Our caravan would leave town in approximately five or six hours, so I had still quite some time left to loaf around.

  My wandering took me to the heart of Greenwood, to the fountain where we used to play as kids. I could still picture Ryu and Kuro laughing as they splashed each other with water on hot summer days. Sitting by the edge, I glanced at my reflection in the still water. The face staring back wasn’t the carefree child I remembered, it was someone stronger, someone ready for what lay ahead.

  Layla’s and Kiyara’s training made me stronger in more than just one way. I thanked them quietly, even though they weren’t here to hear it. I spent the entire morning visiting places that held a lot of sweet memories, and returned to the caravan just shortly before they wanted to set out.

  My friends had already been searching for me, so I apologized and quickly showed them the carriage that we would travel with. The total number of bodyguards including us was around a dozen, spread over the whole caravan of more than thirty carriages. There were two familiar faces among the other bodyguards, such as the son of the guard captain of Greenwood as well as a girl from a neighboring town that my friends and I used to spend a lot of time with when we were young. The girl’s name was Hina, and even though she was very clumsy and often said the wrong things at the wrong time, we got along pretty well. I remembered her always wearing her long blonde hair in braids, but now she wore them in a high ponytail. Our gazes met for a second, and it seemed as if her vibrant green eyes were glowing. I smiled, turned away and entered the carriage with the others.

  Kuro and Ryu stashed all the stuff they brought from Kuro’s house into the carriage and equipped themselves with the gear I bought. Now that all of us were equipped, we started looking like real adventurers. I was a little sad that Layla wouldn’t come with us but apparently she planned to retire from adventuring. She did come to see us off though, together with Kuro’s mother Lisbeth and a few others from the village that knew us quite well. We waved goodbye from our carriage, until it started moving and we eventually got out of sight. My stomach was full of butterflies and I could see that the others were extremely excited as well. The ride was bumpy and made me a little nauseous, but I enjoyed the landscape that I could see through the small windows. The rest of the day went by without any special occurrences, and even the night was completely quiet. We had stopped next to the road and set up our camp for the night. Deeply buried in my sleeping bag to shield myself from the cold, I slept like a baby. If I had a dream, I couldn’t remember it when I woke up.

  The next morning, before the sun set out, we crossed paths with Chris, the son of Greenwood’s guard captain. At first glance, you’d never guess that he was a warrior. He was a bit shorter than Ryu, with short black hair and drowsy looking brown eyes. But despite his sleepy looking exterior, he was a capable fighter.

  “My father sent me out here to see the world,” he explained, a hint of pride in his voice. “Said it’s time I earned my name.”

  While we waited for the journey to continue, Ryu and Chris had a quick sparring session, which Chris only barely emerged victorious of. When the merchants finally announced that we would leave the night camp and continue our way towards the next village, we got into the carriage and searched our supplies for anything that would make a good breakfast. We had some dried meat alongside some bread, which wasn’t exactly a gourmet meal but filled our stomachs and provided good nutrition. I opened a small hatch to the outside and offered some of our breakfast to the carriage driver, a cute boy with chestnut brown hair and green eyes. He smiled happily and accepted the food with a thankful nod.

  I climbed back inside and closed the latch behind me. The seats of the carriage were soft and it was very comfortable, even though the road was bumpy and uneven. There was a table between my and Kuro’s and Ryu’s seats, and Ryu had placed a map on top of it. It was a very detailed map of the Sural kingdom, where he had marked our route. He drew a big “X” on the location where we had just spent the night. I didn’t have any idea how many times we would stop until we reached the capital, or how long the ride would take, so I just listened when my friends talked about that.

  This was a habit that I had since I was a child. If I didn’t know anything about the topic of a conversation, I would keep quiet and just listen. It was good to just shut up and be quiet if you weren’t familiar with a topic, and sometimes I wished more people would do that. I watched the scenery outside the carriage change from flowery hills to flat grassland. The others’ conversation got kind of boring for me and I only listened with one ear while I let my focus float outside and admired the view. As quickly as the scene changed from hills to flat lands, it changed again as we entered a deep forest. The beautiful change of scenery made me a bit drowsy, and I slowly fell asleep without realizing it.

  This wasn’t an ordinary dream, I knew it the moment it started. I found myself in a dark, windowless corridor, lit only by flickering torches. Cells lined the walls, their metal bars casting long shadows on the cold stone floor. It felt oppressive, like the air itself was too heavy to breathe.

  I couldn’t see into most of the cells, due to the lack of light. A quiet cough came out of a cell next to me. I squinted my eyes, trying to catch a look at the person inside. It was just a little girl, not older than eleven or twelve years old. Her small and frail body was covered in dirtied bandages and bruises, many of which were badly inflamed. But that wasn’t even the most shocking part of her appearance. Some parts of her body, such as her ankles and a part of her neck, were covered in scales, and a pair of horns and wings sprouted from her head and back.

  She was a dragonkin, the first I had ever seen. The old man Gilbert had told us many stories of the dragonkin, mostly to scare us when we were still young. He told us that they were cruel and ruthless monsters, and even the children among them would kill and ravage indiscriminately. I never had any reason to doubt his stories, but now… This child didn’t look like a monster to me. Whoever put her in this cell had tortured her, beaten her many times and I didn’t even want to know what else had been done to her. I could hear her silent cries as she rocked back and forth on the cold and hard floor, while she tightly embraced her knees. I wanted to extend my hand towards her, even though I couldn’t do anything, when I heard the sound of a door being unlocked behind me.

  I turned around just as the door was opened, and a tall man and a petite woman entered the dark corridor. Both were clad in black robes, with silver and gold ornaments on their neckpieces, and a golden symbol of a setting sun on their chests. While the man’s hood hid his face completely, I could at least see the woman’s face. She had an attractive face with cute feminine features, which was framed by black hair that reached down to her neck. Her eyes seemed to glow in the dark and looked just like yellow gems. They were talking to each other quietly, and I couldn’t understand much of what they were saying.

  “… we…this… dead… broken.”

  “We… extract… everything… vain.”

  I couldn’t hear enough of their conversation to make sense of it, but it couldn’t mean anything good. They approached the cell of the little girl and unlocked the door. The man positioned himself at the door while the woman entered the cell. Even though I was scared of what I was about to see, I followed her into the cell. The woman towered above the girl, and had a tight grip on one of her horns, forcing the girl to look up at her. Her voice was quiet and devoid of any emotion, as she talked to the girl.

  “Have you finally decided to translate the book? You know that I hate to make you cry.”

  The little girl’s eyes betrayed her fear and she looked like even more tears might spill out of her eyes at any moment. Now that her face was turned a bit more to the light, I could make out more features of her face. It had a round shape, and looked like she would be incredibly cute when she smiled. Her eyes were somewhere between blue and gray, and there was no light in them.

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  “I… I will not translate mothers Word for you!”

  She screamed in a high pitched voice, which didn’t seem to fit her at all. The woman slapped her across the face and a small cut on her lip burst open.

  I screamed at the woman, and tried to push her off the girl, but my voice didn’t reach any ears and my body just slid through hers.

  “Don’t be such a difficult child Stella… I will come back tomorrow. If you’re still so stubborn by then…”, she threw a glance at the man that was still guarding the door, “I will have to let Grudge handle the interrogation next time, I’m sure you understand.”

  She let go of the girl’s horn and kicked her against the wall. The girl let out a whimpering cry and didn’t try to move away from the wall. I watched the woman leave the cell and lock it from the outside. She and the man walked away, leaving the dragonkin girl behind in her cell. I felt a huge emotional pain from watching the girl getting treated like that. It broke my heart and made me want to cry and scream out loud. I wanted to grab the girl’s hand and tell her everything would be fine, but I was stuck without the ability to interact with what I was seeing. Eventually, the scenery around me vanished leaving me in an infinite, empty white space. I have had a few visions of the future in my dreams by now, though none of them were as vivid and long as this one. I desperately hoped that there would come a future where no one had to suffer like this anymore. I waited to wake up from this white space, but to my utter shock, another scene blended in.

  I found myself in a room full of people. They were seated on multiple rows of long tables, and drank something from large jugs. Behind the rows of tables were a reception counter and a blackboard with pieces of paper stuck to it. The door across the room from the counter opened, and five people entered the room. I recognized them instantly. They were Kuro, Ryu and me, Greenwood’s guard captain’s son Chris, And Hina, our old acquaintance from one of Greenwood's neighboring villages. They made their way through the rows of tables to get to the reception across the room. Just as they passed the last table, I saw a guy snatching something from Chris’ pocket. I stopped focusing on what we were doing at the reception and tried to etch every detail of this thief’s face into my mind.

  “You, my friend… are in for a lot of trouble.”

  Even though being robbed was a bad thing, I was glad that I saw this. I would make sure that this was the last time that guy stole from others. As the scene faded away, I didn’t return to the empty white space. The next time I opened my eyes, I had the sight of Kuro and Ryu playing cards before my eyes. I thought about whether or not to tell them about my visions, but ultimately decided against it. I didn’t want to taint their excitement for our journey with what I had seen. I would keep it to myself for now, and if it became of relevance later I could still tell them.

  In the evening, when we stopped and set up our camp for the night, I trained my aim with the bow on a nearby tree. I had Ryu and Kuro carve a few markings into it and tried my best hitting them. It seemed that I had some natural talent for this, as I had hit almost every mark with the first arrow. After I retrieved all of the arrows, I let Kuro and Ryu have a try. While Kuro hit at least half of the targets, Ryu terribly missed all of them.

  Chris and Hina had lit a campfire nearby and asked us to sit down with them, to which we happily complied. After talking for a while, I got the impression that Chris was fairly competitive, which made me worry that he might get into some beef with Ryu eventually. We exchanged a lot of information, including our skills and goals for the future. Apparently Chris’ skill allowed him to lock onto a target, even if his vision was impaired or blocked by an obstacle. From what he told us, I’d say his goal was to venture out into the world and make his father happy. Hina’s skill was pretty fascinating, as it allowed her to coat her skin with a thin layer of mana, protecting her from attacks to some extent. She didn’t really have a goal in life, just wandered around doing what she wanted.

  A few merchants came by and asked if they could sit down with us, to which Chris agreed. More and more merchants joined us, and in the end more than twenty people sat around the moderate fire. We chatted and laughed a lot, and the merchants told us many stories and ancient legends. If that was the life of an adventurer, then I would never want to go back. We chatted deeply into the night until all of us were too tired and went to sleep. Because the night was very cold, we decided to sleep in the carriage. We snuggled closely together in our sleeping bags, and even though I had slept during the day, I didn’t have any problems sleeping now.

  That is, I didn’t have any problems sleeping until a loud scream startled me awake. When I finally managed to free myself from the sleeping bag, Ryu and Kuro already grabbed their weapons and stormed out of the carriage. I quickly grabbed the dagger, fastened it to my hip and then grabbed the bow and the quiver, before getting into my boots and following them outside. While I climbed through the small door of the carriage, I fastened the quiver on my back and drew an arrow. I thought I was prepared for anything that might have happened, but the huge beast in front of my eyes was something that no one could have expected.

  The creature was massive, easily three or four meters tall and unlike anything I’d ever seen. It had the bulk of a bear but sported a scorpion’s tail, eagle-like wings and a twisted monstrous face that seemed to combine features of several animals. It was a nightmare brought to life. It took me a moment to overcome my fear, but once my knees stopped shaking I rushed forward to catch up with the others as I saw them group together with Chris and Hina.

  Chris was only armed with a sword, whilst Hina carried a mace in one hand, and a giant shield in the other. While most of us were extremely nervous, Kuro stayed calm and collected, presenting us with a plan.

  “Hina, you will be our frontline, shielding us from its attacks. Try to draw its attention and make sure that none of the merchants get hurt. Chris and Ryu, you will wait for the monster to focus Hina and attack it from the side. If it focuses on you, run and try to get behind Hina. Shizuka, we will stand behind and shoot everything we have at it. Is everything clear? Any questions?”

  Before anyone could say anything, he continued.

  “Good, let’s go.”

  None of us hesitated for even one second, and we immediately sprang into action. I just then noticed that the other guards were missing. We had been around ten guards, where were the others? I turned to a nearby merchant and told him to find them. We would need any battle power we could get. I readied my bow and shot my first arrow at the beast, aiming for its neck. My arrow found its target, and the beast screamed in pain. It lashed out with its tail, but Hina managed to tank the hit with her shield.

  The instant the beast’s tail hit the shield, Ryu and Chris attacked. Both of them managed to secure a hit against one of its legs, making it scream in pain and rage. Even though we had a good plan for our attack, we couldn’t take every eventuality into account. We had severely underestimated its speed, so when the beast turned around to Ryu and Chris in little more than a second, they weren’t prepared. The beast raised one of its muscular arms and slashed at them. I was sure that there was no chance they could dodge that, but I was wrong. Ryu shoved Chris out of the attack’s range and let himself fall to the ground to just barely avoid getting turned to minced meat.

  I shot a second arrow to draw the attention of this living nightmare, and hit one of its wings. Kuro hadn’t done anything yet, so I looked at what he was doing. He sat on the ground with crossed legs and murmured something I couldn’t understand. Then he pressed his palms against the ground and used a magic spell.

  “Earth spikes.”

  The stony ground under the beast broke apart and spears of stone buried themselves deep in its body. I heard someone running from behind and saw one of the other guards, who apparently was an adventurer, running at the beast as fast as he could. He knocked Hina down when he ran past her and jumped at the beast, trying to finish it off by cutting off its head. Even though it was severely wounded, it was still incredibly fast and dangerous. The adventurer didn’t even come remotely close to hitting the beast when its tail shot at him and pierced his chest, pinning him to the ground. He was dead before he could even blink. The beast now focused its attention on Hina, who was still laying down on the ground. Her heavy shield made it hard for her to get up, or dodge an incoming attack in any way, so she was an easy target.

  While her skill allowed her to block damage to some extent, I doubted she could survive a blow from this monstrosity. I dropped my bow and the quiver without thinking about it, drew my dagger and ran to save Hina. I had never run this fast in my life. I ran past Ryu and Chris, past Hina and past the corpse of the adventurer. The beast now focused its attention on me, and attacked with a low swing. I jumped into the air, and slashed at the monster’s face with my dagger, leaving a deep wound.

  “Don’t you dare touch my allies.”

  I said in a hissing voice, even though it could not understand me. The monster’s second attack came out of my blind spot and hit my left leg, knocking me off my feet and leaving a long scratch. As I laid there in front of it, it prepared to finish me off. I saw its claw coming down upon me, as Hina threw herself in front of me and blocked the blow with her shield and body. A fireball crashed into the monster’s face and Ryu’s and Chris’ swords were buried deeply into its upper body. It kept screaming for around thirty more seconds, before finally taking its last breath. The wound on my leg stung and burned, and made it impossible for me to get up. The other missing guards, apparently party members of the one that was killed, wrapped his body into a white cloth and started butchering the monster’s corpse. They didn’t seem like the death of their comrade had taken a toll on them in any way. They were typical mercenaries.

  Kuro and Ryu helped me limp back to the carriage, where Hina immediately inspected the wound on my leg.

  “It’s not too bad,” she said, wrapping the cut in clean bandages. “But you’ll need to sit this one out for a while.”

  She laughed at her own comment about me “sitting” it out. Very funny. I thanked her once she was done patching me up. Kuro came in and brought me the bow and the quiver I had dropped. It didn’t go exactly as planned, but we just won our first fight as a group. I was pretty proud of our accomplishment.

  When the commotion had finally died down, the merchants and we continued our way to the capital. Every bump on the road made my leg sting and burn painfully, a reminder of our fight. While I tried to rest and not move my leg, sleep claimed me once again. The throbbing and burning pain in my leg slowly faded away as I drifted off into the peaceful slumber I deserved. This trip had been so exciting already… I couldn’t await finally becoming a real adventurer. Without waking up a single time, I spent the remaining hours of the way to the capital asleep.