Born From A Divine Gamble

The creature needed to be dismantled, the huntresses needed to be properly compensated for their hard work, he needed to properly give his condolences for their losses, he needed to go back to the monster"s den to see what it hid, go collect as much of that purple gla.s.s as possible as well as all the things they had left behind and see what he could do for his armor.

The list was too long, there was no way for him to do all that in a single day. He decided to first go ask Marcy about the dismantling. Once it was underway, he would look for the huntresses. He walked into the forge to see Marcy being lazy. She did not approve of him being there and showed it with a frown.

"My boy, ya should stay put for a while longer, even if ya ask me, I won"t have ya work."

"That"s not it mom, we still haven"t paid the huntresses and I"d like you to take a look at the monster so that I know what the corpse is worth."

"Oh, right. Sure, we should be able to handle that, nothing too hard there. Want me to get some experienced dismantlers or ya going to put yar friends to use again?"

"The corpse is too dangerous, the liquid in its back is deadly. I"d rather have some more careful people for this."

"Right I"ll get the hunters then, maybe the outsiders will help too. I"ll meet ya at the dismantling s.p.a.ce. Good thing ya thought of that today, I felt bored."

Emp smiled as she slapped his back and both went their separate way.

Walking towards the east gate, it wasn"t long before he came across Manley. The teen was carrying a seemingly heavy box of tools but when he saw Emp, he placed it on the ground with a sigh of relief and called Emp as he stretched his back.

"Emp, you"re up! I was wondering how long you"d stay in there."

"Well, I"ll go back soon, Marcy, I mean mom, won"t let me out until I"m fully recovered."

"Well, that"s what moms do don"t they. I"m glad you found each other, I think you both needed it. It"s not right for people to be alone all the time, it messes them up."

Emp wasn"t sure he agreed, Chinui was alone in the woods since a long time ago but he seemed fine. However, he would not say that he was not happy to have Marcy.

"I"m glad too I think. What are you doing with that box?"

That was a very sharp change of conversation but he really had nothing else to say about that and he was very curious about the box.

"Those are carpentry tools. The guys are teaching me how to be a carpenter."

"Really? I thought you wanted to be a hunter."

Most of Emp"s friends wanted to be hunters, the boys at least. Seeing him suddenly pick up carpentry was surprising.

"Well, you know... The wolves changed my mind. I understand it"s not always like that but that was too much for me. I don"t want to have that kind of stressful job. I"d rather stay behind the walls. I"m still going to listen to your advises to prepare for my first hunt next year but after that, I"m done with it."

"That"s a big decision, what did your dad say?"

"Uh, I think he was glad actually. He"s not a hunter either, he must have been relieved from my turnaround. In his place, I would have felt the same I think. Now he knows I"ll be safe and we can do construction work together."

Emp didn"t understand what he meant about the stress but since everyone was happy with that decision, he was happy as well.

"That"s great then. Now I"ll know who to look for if I need a carpenter."

It might be soon too if the roof really needed some repairs. It was made out of overlapping wooden tiles after all. Roofs had the tendency of being made from the cheapest material possible and there was nothing cheaper than wood in this empire. Even simple clay wasn"t as cheap, after all, you needed to remove the trees on top of it to access it.

"Haha, maybe in the future, right now, I"m just an apprentice. Speaking of being an apprentice, since Marcy won"t let you out, what are you doing outside?"

"We"re going to dismantle the thing, or rather, they"re going to dismantle it and Marcy will force me to sit down and watch. I"m going to the place right now."

"Hahaha, poor you. That"s what happen when you don"t listen to your parents. You get punished."

"Being in a family is hard."

"That"s why it"s so rewarding though. Everyone has to make an effort and in the end, everyone is better off. It"s because it"s challenging to keep everyone in a single piece that"s it"s so good when it works. When things are too easy, they are rarely fun. Well, maybe if they"re ch.o.r.es, those are better when easy."

Said like that, Manley made a lot of sense. Emp was familiar with efforts and he did feel like the end result was more satisfying when he worked hard for it. The archery was the best example of them all. He had felt so great when he finally hit a target for the first time.

Until now, he had not realized that families worked the same way. Now that he was told though, he felt the desire to improve in that as well. The goals weren"t as obvious but he knew he could do it. Everyone else did after all, there was no reason for him to not be able to do the same. The first thing he should do should probably be to call Marcy mom more often. It was hard to remember but if he did, it would surely make her happy.

"You"re right Manley, I"ll do my best."

"Right, just don"t overdo it. I feel like you"re the kind of guy who would do something extreme to resolve a tiny problem."

Emp just shrugged through his comment and asked him if he wanted to see the beast instead.

"Do you want to see the unnameable of chaos? Do you think the others would?"

"Yeah, I"m sure they"d be angry if they missed it, do you want me to get them or is your leg fine?"

"My leg"s alright but mom will complain if I walk around too much."

"Hahaha! Fine, I"ll go around myself, wait for us yeah?"

"Mhn."

He agreed with a nod, and pa.s.sed his friend to resume his progress towards the dismantling place.

Since the huntresses camp was close to the gate, Emp decided to stop by on his way. He wasn"t sure how well they all felt but he wanted to at least inform them that they were about to dismantle the creature.

He stepped into their camp and after a short search, he found where their three leaders were. When they saw him approaching, the three of them gave him a forced smile. They were clearly unhappy about how all of this turned out. Aside from their depressed air and the bandaged arm of Connie, they seemed to be in good shape.

"Jaska fixed your arm?"

Jaska answered in her stead.

"Yeah, I saved her arm but I couldn"t do anything for much for the crystal growth in the others."

"How many did you lose?"

"About a third." Connie answered with a grave tone.

"And my disciple got crushed by a crystal spike I had made myself." Jaska added while gritting her teeth.

"I feel really bad about this. I"m sorry for what happened." Emp told them. "If I had known it would end like this, I would have sided with Jaska back then."

Connie released a long sigh and shook her head in sadness.

"Don"t feel too bad about it. It had nothing to do with you. Not only did you almost die with us, you did more work on it than most of us."

"In fact, I feel like most of us would have died if not for you cutting down those two things on its back." Tacey said to raise the mood a bit.

Usually, she was the most depressed of the three but right now, she seemed to be the one in the best mood. Maybe once one lost almost everything, there wasn"t much that could affect you anymore. Emp didn"t really know how to cheer them up so he just told them about what he came for.

"I wanted to express my condolences but I"m bad at those things. Whatever I say won"t make you feel any better. Instead, I came to tell you that we are dismantling that monster today. We"ll check it and see what it"s worth. I understand that money won"t bring back the warner and the others who it killed but do you want to come and watch anyway? At least, you"ll see it cut in tiny pieces."

"Sure, I"ll even partic.i.p.ate if you"ll have me."

The perspective of cutting the beast to pieces seemed to be very enticing to her. Just killing it wasn"t enough to express how much she resented it for the loss of such a big part of her team.

"I think she wanted to ask for the help of your guys too but you"ll have to ask mom."

"Great, I"ll tell the others its happening today." She nodded before getting up.

"Then me and Jaska will follow him there." Tacey agreed.

"We"ll ask them to wait for the other before they start."

Now that they all agreed, Emp led the two woman to the usual dismantling spot while their leader gathered everyone else.

They were the first to reach the place so they sat nearby to wait for everyone else. In order to not let the gloom overtake too much of their time waiting, he racked his brain to find something to talk about.

"Before we fought it, you said something about losing your luck, do you think this will be enough to bring it back?"

"Nah, I think it"s hopeless."

"Tacey!"

"What? I"m sure you agree with me Jas. You were right from the start, this was part of our curse. Redemption my a.s.s, half of us died. You were the one against it in the first place, don"t tell me you feel like this is a success."

Jaska had nothing to retort to that. She just groaned and ma.s.saged her forehead to calm herself down.

Emp had wanted to lighten the mood a bit but instead he had made it worse. How should he fix it now? Maybe the words of Luck would help them?

"I was told once that one should make his own luck."

"What does that even mean?" Tacey said dismissively.

"I have no idea." Admitted Emp. "I couldn"t understand when he told me that."

"Why even tell us that then?" Jaska grumbled.

"You know I have the blessing of the G.o.d s.p.a.ce, meaning I completed his challenge, but when I got there, it wasn"t his challenge. The place was the trial chamber of Luck."

The other two were jolted by his words but didn"t interrupt him as he spoke.

"I failed his challenge and he switched place with s.p.a.ce instead as penalty. Before leaving though, he told me what I just told you. Remember, you have to create your own luck. I don"t know what it means but they were the words of Luck himself, they must have a useful meaning no?"

"They must..."

"Make our own huh?"

The two were instantly lost in thoughts, laying their heads on the palm of their hands, they stared into the distance searching for the meaning behind those words. Emp wasn"t sure it would really help them since he had no idea what it meant but at least, they weren"t moping anymore.

They pa.s.sed the rest of the time waiting for the others in silence. When his friends started to show up, he went up to talk with them instead, leaving the two woman to their thoughts.

In the end, a great amount of people showed up. It seemed that the whole village was rather curious about what an unnameable of chaos looked like. The news had spread to everyone that they were about to take care of it so most of them decided to stop what they were doing to go take a look.

Even those he didn"t really expect to see showed their faces. Calla who hated dismantling came to see the terrible monster, maybe she wanted to know what sort of creature could have hurt him so badly. Sophus too came to see, Emp felt he was probably there to find some way to badmouth him.

Finally, once everyone was present, Marcy asked him to get the monster out of the bag. He placed his hand over the container and dropped the creature in front of everyone.

The reactions were as varied as expected. There were many gasps and step backs in front of its size and fearsome appearance as well as many expressions of wonderment and cheers knowing that it had been defeated by the huntresses and Emp. That huge corpse was the proof that the forest would soon be as safe as it had been in the past.

Calla sat close to him with her sisters at her side and her jaw wide open in shock. Emp pointed towards the face of the creature and showed her.

"Look, your apple managed to blind that huge monster long enough for me to smack my hammer on its nose."

"Yay! Our big sis helped too!" Cheered the two small girls. (1)

After that, the crowd burst into many vivid discussions and the dismantling quickly turned into an eventful celebration. Seeing it, Emp started to understand a lot better the never-ending festival of the dismantling square in Red-water. The scene in front of his eyes was very similar to it.

The huntresses were treated as grand heroes and drowned in questions about the hunt and the creature. At first, they were all a bit downhearted but the admiration of everyone did manage to bring back some of their spirit. The story got told from many angles and perspectives, impressing the listeners around them.

While this was happening, Emp walked close to Marcy and the creature, pointing out things he had noticed about it and the dangers of the black liquid. Under Marcy"s instructions, the creature was slowly sliced in many different parts. The hunters took their task seriously but still took their time to teach the younger generations the tricks of the work.

Baskets were brought from all over the village and everything was slowly but neatly divided between them. Marcy, Emp, Connie and a few experts gathered around the baskets in order to evaluate the contents and negotiate their value.

Emp felt that the black liquid would certainly be the most valuable part since it could melt anything at all and turn it in crystal-gla.s.s but he was very disappointed to discover that now that the monster was dead, the liquid quickly turned into a large chunk of deep purple crystal. he had warned everyone to be careful about it but before the thing was half taken apart, there was nothing to worry about anymore.

Aside from the lost liquid, many other parts seemed to be worthwhile. Its horns were harder than stone and able to withstand strikes from swords and hammer alike so they were a very interesting material for Marcy. The bones were large and numerous, barely less resistant than the horns too. It had no claws but its fangs were large and sharp, as for its skin, despite the ugly and foul smelling fur, the skin under was thick and resistant and would probably make for some valuable protective leather.

The blood was drained and thrown away in the forest using a great amount of buckets. Monster blood was often used by mages but each creature had different effects so using the blood from a unique creature wasn"t a recommended thing to do. It would need many research to find a good use for it and by that time, there would be almost none of it left with no way to get any more of it.

As for the meat, a heated debate took place to decide what to do with it. Eating the meat from a sapient creature was not a well seen behavior in the empire for many reasons related to cursed-bloods. For example, they felt degrading to eat sentient creatures like they were a beast themselves and feared they might turn into curse-bloods for doing it. Others just felt the idea of eating something able to think with reason and logic to be repulsive, after eating a beast like that, the step wasn"t large before you started eating cursed-bloods or even other humans.

The villagers shared those feelings but there was another side to this as well. The root of the debate was that there was so much meat on it. For a small village like theirs, wasting such a large quant.i.ty of meat was disastrous and heart wrenching. It was so painful that some started to argue that the thing was clearly a beast, it had no resemblance to any sentient being at all and was even an unnameable of chaos, surely the usual rules couldn"t be applied to it.

Emp had no strong feeling for either side of the debate. He wasn"t even sure the thing was really sentient. It had made itself a door but did not wear any garment and used no tools, monkeys might have been smarter than it. Plus, he had been taught to not waste anything. If its meat found itself in his plate, he would not fuss over it but if they chose to throw it away, he would not complain either, he did not fear starvation.

All the internal organs were put aside with the meat for further discussion and all that remained were the back appendages and the large crystal lump. The tentacles were quickly done with because Marcy decided to keep them in case she found some use out of their elasticity. The crystal was harder to deal with, mainly because of its weight and because its properties were unclear.

Compared to the gla.s.s-crystal he had previously collected in the woods, that lump was both clearer and darker. There were no impurities in it so it had a much better transparency but the color was much darker because of how densely the black liquid had been held in that back lump. One could easily see through the whole thing but the world appeared purple on the other side.

The small crystals he had taken in the woods had been snapped easily but such a large chunk of it was way harder. Considering how the thing had broken all the bones in its hands when it punched the boulder turned crystal solid by the spell, it was obviously tougher than ordinary stones. He felt that this matter could be very useful but he had no idea on how to use it effectively.

Worse, the crystal chunk was covered in a layer of fur that had merged into it. The liquid had spewed from the almost severed tentacles and covered its back. The group of dismantlers had no idea on how to proceed to free the clear and beautifully smooth crystal from the messy crust covering it.

Emp ended up having to place the whole thing in his bag until they found some way to either move its impressive weight or cut smaller pieces of it.

Aside from this, the hardest and most tiresome part was to clean the bones, especially the skull. The valuable horns were obviously growing out of it but made the cleaning difficult by being in the way through the whole process.

Throughout the whole dismantling procedure, no one complained about how hard the task was, rejoicing about the good quality of the materials instead.

In reverse, Sophus didn"t say a word of praise or joy. He tried to blame Emp for the loss of so many huntresses saying that if they didn"t have to protect him, many more would have survived but all of them turned against him. They all shouted he didn"t know what he was talking about, pointing out that he was the one that had managed to disable its strongest weapon and booed the mage until he left.

Then, after the whole thing was done, while everyone celebrated and drank with the surviving huntresses, Connie, Marcy and Emp sat down away from the festivities to talk about the payment.

Estimating the value of the materials as well as the difficulty of obtaining them and the fact they had accomplished the task at a huge cost, he finally gave them five red dragon coins. This was more than three times the amount they had negotiated for the worst case scenario they had planned to confront.

Even after rewarding them generously for the task and the corpse of the monster, he felt that it wasn"t really worth the price they had paid to get it. He had paid a book last year for the same amount of money. To him, the fact that those two things could be compared felt very wrong, how could a simple book be worth as much as a creature that had brought terror to the wildlife and caused the death of more than a dozen experienced hunters?

He had wanted to give them even more but both Marcy and Connie opposed him. Marcy because she wanted to teach him it was bad for business to overpay for things and Connie because those five red dragons were already a fortune to her, getting anymore would only cause trouble for the group.

"You"ll let me pay for the critters you caught on the way though will you?" Emp insisted.

"No, ya"re done. I"m the one paying for the rest." Intervened Marcy.

"I"m okay with this." Nodded Connie.

Emp didn"t have any objection to that, who paid didn"t matter at all.

"What will ya do next then?" His mother asked.

"Dunno, we"ll stay for a bit more to tend to our wounds and go back there to collect the stuff we left behind and then we"ll go back to Bêtéclair I guess. Now that we have some money, we need to buy some new equipment, buy ingredients for Jaska and refill our ranks with new recruits I suppose."

Marcy rubbed her neck with a look of apology on her face. She hesitated for a few moments before she said the thing that was on her mind.

"... I"m sorry for how I screamed at ya the other day. Ya didn"t deserve this at all, I knew ya didn"t put Emp in danger just for fun. In the heat of battle, it would be crazy to not use all the good warriors ya have on hand. Yet, even though ya lost so many of yar own, I was inconsiderate and I lost my calm because my boy got injured. Really, I apologize for what I did."

Emp was happy that Marcy chose to apologize. His decision to fight was his own alone, being angry towards Connie was pointless, she didn"t deserve it. He gave a warm smile to his mother to show her he agreed with her actions.

Connie dismissed the whole thing, with a wave of her hand and half smile that didn"t fit the sad expression of her face.

"No worry madam, It"s already forgiven. I saw far worse in the past, trust me. A mother"s anger is boundless, I learned that already, you were right to be angry. Anyway, I"ll get a bigger part of that anger soon when I go around telling a bunch of them that their daughters died working with me."

Emp could tell this would be a very painful thing to do.

"I guess that"s true. In any case, ya can stay as long as ya want. Ya did good for us here, ya"ll always be welcome. Also, don"t call me all that madam nonsense, call me Marcy, everyone else does."

She shot a side glance towards Emp and he could only smile wryly.

"I"m doing my best, I"m just too used to it."

Connie made an amused snort while Marcy was telling him that he had already used that excuse more than once.

"Well then Marcy, I guess we"re done for now? I"m going back to camp."

"Wait." Interrupted Emp. "When you"ll go get back your things in the woods, I"d like to go back as well with Marcy."

"Why?" The two of them asked at the same time.

"Aren"t you curious to know what"s inside the cave?"

***

A few days later, a small group of people set off to the forest once more. Since they knew where they were going this time around, the way to and back from the place should not take more than a day.

Connie, Tacey and Jaska were in the group along with Marcy and Emp. If they used Emp"s bag to hold everything they came to pickup , there was no reason to bring any more people than that on the expedition to the monster"s den.

Everyone wore their armors except for Emp who didn"t have any left. On top of that, he still had trouble walking so he had to use Marcy as a pillar to hold himself upright. Marcy didn"t seem to mind it at all and helped him progress in good spirit.

As for the other three, they seemed to be in a much better mood than what they had been in the other day. Well, Tacey was just as down as usual but Emp had never seen her in a good mood so there was nothing different here.

"You seem to be in a better mood today." Emp commented.

He really wanted to ask why that was but he didn"t want to intrude in their personal matters because Blackbull said that was disrespectful.

"It"s all thanks to you, those two told me what you had said back then and after we thought about it for a while, we found out what we needed to do." Connie answered with a genuine smile.

"What he told ya?" Marcy asked, perplex.

"You have to create your own luck." Tacey clarified.

"We felt we had lost our luck since a while ago. We kept hitting bad fortunes upon bad fortunes. We all came to believe it was because of that cursed-blood." Jaska explained to Marcy and Emp.

"That"s a long story but essentially, we think we found a way to bring our luck back, all we need to do is find that cursed-blood again." Connie said to close the subject.

Since the first time he heard about it, Emp felt that this story was something they disliked to talk about so he did not push them for more details. Marcy shared his opinion and just nodded in understanding.

"Well, I"m glad ya found your way. I agree with the idea, ya need to seize every opportunity for ya.r.s.elf, waiting around for things to fall in place by themselves never works." (2)

"We"ll go do that soon but for now, let"s move, we"re not far off from our goal. Look, the purple gla.s.s is there."

As she had said, they neared the place they had fought the beast. Purple crystal-gla.s.s soon covered their surroundings. From that point on, Both Emp and Jaska kept pestering the others to break parts of the crystals for them. Apparently, that crystal was a very excellent catalyst for earth magic.

For Jaska all that crystal was a field of free spell components while for Emp, it was a mine of pretty trinkets and solid material that only needed to be studied.

The others helped as best they could with the requests but they were impatient to see what was inside the cave and urged the two collectors to move along.

Once they reached the site of the fight, Emp leaned against the large boulder at the entrance of the cave while the rest spread out to pick up the equipment that had been left behind. The whole operation didn"t take that long and soon, everyone was facing the gap between said boulder and the cliff side. Behind it, they all knew, a tunnel traveled downward in the darkness.

All five lit a torch each and slipped into the hole. In there, the swaying flame reflected on the perfectly smooth crystal surface of the tunnel and shone thought the darkness with an unnerving sheen. The tunnel only had a single circular surface as far as they could see, it was a cylindrical pa.s.sage. The whole thing propagated the light of the torches and gave off the impression there were dozens of them but at the same time, the darkness was swift to absorb the light after a few steps. It was as if the crystal making up the wall kept all the light trapped inside it instead of sending it further down.

The only way to see further would be to step deeper inside the den but none of them were really scared of the place. After all, they knew the creature had already been defeated, there was nothing here to fear aside from their own delusions.

Tacey extended the torch forward in the tunnel, revealing a few feet more of the very weak slope descending down under the hill.

"When that thing kicked you inside, how far down did you go?" She asked her leader.

"It felt like I was thrown really far in and it took me some time to get back out but it was dark and I didn"t see the end of it."

"Well, we"ll see it soon, ya watch yar step in there. We might slip if we"re not careful." Marcy told them as she dragged Emp forward.

With one hand holding Marcy to keep himself up and the other holding on to the torch, he understood easily why she gave them such a warning. If he lost his footing in here, it would be easy to lose the torch or drag the others down with him.

The floor wasn"t slippery but it was obviously curved as it morphed into the walls and it was smooth enough to deny their boots any meaningful grip on it. Fighting the creature in there would have been a true nightmare.

They progressed downward steadily, pus.h.i.+ng the darkness ever further down its nest. The whole situation reminded Emp of when he found the trial chamber on that tall cliff. Wouldn"t it be great if somehow, another G.o.d awaited them bellow?

What they found at the end of the tunnel however was no G.o.d at all. After a few hundred steps, they reached what they could only describe as a room. The room was exactly like the tunnel before it. It was smooth and round, giving them the impression they were inside a bubble pressed against the floor or a sideways chicken egg.

That room was the only thing at the end of that straight tunnel, there were no other chambers connected to it. Inside it, there was nothing to be found that could have been linked with the den of a terrible creature.

The group stood dazed at the entrance for a long time to get a feel of what they were seeing. The place was neatly divided in three distinct area. Along the left edge, there was a relatively empty s.p.a.ce devoid of any interest. On the right, there was an impressive collection of things the creature had acc.u.mulated over time. There were jewelry and coins reflecting the light of the torches, a collection of skulls, some turned into crystals, and many other things the monster considered treasures.

It was the center of the room however that caught the eyes of the group. There, in a small garden, a collection of flowers bloomed with an ethereal beauty. All of them were tulips, growing out of the gla.s.s floor in a way a chick would break its sh.e.l.l to be born.

Their refined stem was made of the very same gla.s.s, their pale leaves seemed to be frozen in time but their purple veins proved the thing was in fact alive. The flower was crowned by three pitch black organic petals and three equally dark crystal sepals. At the very center of it, a pure white pistil stood in between many light purple stamens.

In that out of place garden, a few dozens of those healthy yet bizarre tulips grew away from all light or water.

"Whwhat are those?" Connie blurted out.

"Tulips?" Marcy said, unable to find a better descriptor.

"Tulips are edible right?"

"Really Tacey, that"s the first thing that crosses your mind when you see that!"

"Why not? Should we try?"

"Obviously not! Should we even touch them at all." Jaska asked, much more cautious than her friend.

"Only one way to know."

Tacey walked up to them under the tense looks of everyone else and crouched in front of them. She looked back towards the other with a smile to let them know she was still fine and extended her hand to the stem.

Everyone tensed up as her fingers touched the flower, hoping nothing catastrophic would befall them again. After a light snap, the whole flower was freed from the ground and she brought it back to the others. Everyone relaxed and sighed in relief seeing that nothing strange happened to Tacey.

"Aside from its f.u.c.ked up appearance, it seems to be a normal tulip." Connie commented, looking closely at the strange thing.

"I"d still rather not keep it." Jaska told her. "It"s obviously related to that creature so there"s no telling what it could do if we keep it around."

"Then let me keep it." Emp intervened. "I"ll ask a great mage about it."

Connie looked towards him and Marcy with a serious air.

"Are you sure?"

"Ya doubting our contacts girl? As long as he keeps it in the bag, it won"t do anything so there"s nothing to be scarred about. Plus, I feel the same as yar mage, I don"t want to keep those flowers close. I don"t want them growing so close to the village. We"re plucking them all, I want even the bulbs dug out."

"All right, I can agree with that. Let"s be careful and try to keep them as intact as possible, if in the end they"re worth something, it would be a shame to damage them."

There were only a few flowers but because they grew from the crystal, it took them hours to dig them all out of there. Emp collected everything in his bag, thirty eight flowers in total. He would present them later to Heinrich in case he knew something about them.

As for the treasures piled on the side of the room, they sifted through it but found nothing magical. Everything there only had aesthetic value aside from the coins. They chose to split the lot in half, one part for the huntresses and the rest for Marcy and Emp.

With the cave emptied of everything it had hidden, they returned to the village and by hastening their steps a bit, they managed to get back as the night fell.

***

(1) That"s not important at all but "Yay". It took me the longest time to find how its written in English. In French, it "Yé", with some additional é to stretch the sound. Yay and yé are said the exact same.

(2) Words I should apply myself to follow but never do because I have some "good" excuses.