"Lady Yvette the Cat-Eared struck down the goblin lord with her giant sword, thus saving the town and earning the love of the Viscount. They were soon married, and lived in the Empire until their death." Peter ended his tale with a flourish, while Richard just rolled his eyes.
"Peter, usually bedtime stories are told when people want to sleep. And despite it being so dark down here, I don't want to sleep!"
We had been traveling through the woods for over three weeks now, the trees stretched up over five hundred feet, and their leaves blocked out nearly all the light from the blue sun, leaving the path beside the river extremely shaded. Despite the darkness, the foliage beside the path was thicker than the amazon forest. With noises from various animals and monsters sometimes causing us to jump.
"Alright, I'll save the bedtime stories for tonight then. Would you like a glass of warm milk too?" Peter grinned as Richard started swearing at him.
"Enough with the stories, Peter." Newman said. "Besides, Yvette married a count, not a viscount. Whoever told you the stories had a few details off."
"How could they be wrong!? I got them from the ancient records!"
Before Peter could keep arguing though, a giant boar that was at least ten feet high burst from the foliage and charged at us. Its eyes were blood red as it bore down on us with its four tusks gleaming in the dim light.
"Ancestor's beard! That looks delicious!" Bekhi drew her sword with a grin, but before she could charge the beast, a whistling sound was heard and a dozen arrows appeared in the boar's flank and eyes. It skidded to a stop inches away from Bekhi's feet.
"Hjerouhrdinn's hammer! Who stole my fight!?" Bekhi glared at the trees, challenging whoever shot the arrows to come out and fight her. But the only response was a few rustling leaves from across the river.
"Fight would've damaged wagons." Kat said in a quiet voice. She had been very taciturn ever since leaving Zaihan, as if a part of her had been left behind in her homeland. "Meat is meat though. Should we stop, Newman?"
"Let's not be too hasty." Newman cautiously drew a hunting knife and slowly approached the slain boar. An arrow struck the dirt in front of his feet, causing him to put the knife away and back off. "Evidently our watchers consider it theirs. We need to keep moving, and don't touch the arrow if you value your life. The wood elves consider their arrows secret technology."
We eventually got the wagons around the corpse, but it wasn't easy. There was no road to speak of in the Eternal Forest, and we were just traveling along a dirt bank bordering the river that was heavily obstructed by roots and foliage. On average, we were only making around five to ten miles in a day, and that was if we were lucky.
"Gaah! This is taking forever! I'm starting to feel like I'm back under the mountains in school. The only difference is that I don't get to fight anyone who tries to insult me by calling me a surface dwarf. How much longer will we be in the forest, Newman?" Bekhi was shouting in an annoyed voice from behind a wagon she was pushing over a series of roots.
"It won't be for a long time yet. We should reach the edge of the Eternal Forest just as the harvest season has begun." This answer did not please Bekhi. With a yell and several dwarven curses that would've made an NYC resident blush, she pushed the wagon over the roots in rage.
After around ten minutes of swearing and pushing all the carts over the obstacle, she seemed to calm down and became a little introspective. I walked alongside her for a bit once she had quieted down.
"Are you alright, Bekhi?" I asked.
"Yeah, I'm just feeling a bit off. This place is all dark and imposing like Nurnwuhr was, but the ground under my feet is soft, and there isn't a single solid stone anywhere. It just feels all wrong to me."
I definitely could agree with that. It may have been that my dwarven body had extra senses that my human body did not, but I could somehow feel the hardness of the stone beneath my feet when in the mountains or walking through a city, and the more solid the stone around me, the more comfortable I was. But here in the Eternal Forest, I couldn't sense a single stone, just the sinking dirt and sand beneath my feet. It was the same sensation for me as if I had gone from top of the line sneakers to cheap knock off shoes that couldn't legally call themselves sneakers, it just felt weird and very uncomfortable.
"What do you think our families are doing back home?" I tried to change the subject to something more cheerful. "Do you think your dad found my father a wife yet?" My ploy worked, and Bekhi started giggling.
"My mom is probably coaxing him into meeting people at the bar first. She has her work cut out for her though in getting your father hitched. As for the rest of my family…" Bekhi's eyes took on a far away look as she pictured them back in Vesturhildrun. "My dad's keeping the town safe out in the woods while avoiding paperwork. My brothers and sisters are out in the fields and forests doing whatever they love. As for my mom, she's taking care of the baby born last summer. I'm sure he's very cute by now. But then again, all babies born in the summer are cute."
I let our hands intertwine as we walked along the path. It was comforting to have someone to be close to while traveling through the wilderness.
"Hey you two, enough flirting. You're making us single guys feel bad." Richard joked while looking at us with just a hint of jealousy.
"Speak for yourself, Richard." Peter said with a malicious grin. "I've got a sweetheart waiting for me back home. We're gonna get married once I get back from this trip."
"And my wife is waiting for me back in Handel." Newman said with a chuckle.
"Boyfriend in Vermogen." Kat said with just a little emotion.
"Wait, are you telling me I'm the only single guy in this party? That's just not fair!"
After a few minutes of gentle laughter at Richard's expense. Newman turned to me and Bekhi with a slightly more serious look.
"Just be careful in Tochka, you two. I know the time spent snowed in will be long and boring, but if you get pregnant then I'll have to leave you behind without paying you, and your rank in the guild will drop from not completing the job."
"What!?" Bekhi's face went red to her ears. "W-w-what are you talking about? Kvalinn and I wouldn't do anything so foolish. R-right, Kvalinn?"
I had a flashback to Dak threatening to throw me in my own forge fire if I got Bekhi pregnant before marrying her. So I emphatically shook my head. "Definitely not. I've got to find a good place to set down roots before even thinking about that. And this place already has too many roots." I tripped on a protruding root and started cursing to myself.
Richard was about to make another joke when we were interrupted by a herd of treefolk walking in front of us to drink at the river. Treefolk are basically walking trees that range from twenty to a hundred feet tall with faces that blend into the bark. So far as Newman knew they weren't sentient, or at least the legends didn't mention any of them communicating with humans, and they seemed to act on instinct in a herd. Seeing that they were now completely blocking the path forward, Newman had us set up camp.
"They should be done drinking by morning, and then we can continue. I'll take the first watch tonight, Richard, you take the second one, and Kvalinn can take the third. Everyone else, get the watchfire going."
It was a pretty well honed routine at this point, but Newman felt the need to give the orders anyway, so we got to work at our assigned tasks. Since I was taking the final watch, I unpacked my sleeping blanket to get some early shut eye.
I woke up around three in the morning to take my watch, and I sat down on the edge of camp to listen for any monsters. It was a boring job, but a necessary one. A couple times in the past, a lone wolf or other beast had approached the camp, only to be scared off when they saw someone was awake and keeping watch.
After an hour of listening, I heard the creaking of wood and splashing of water as the treefolk crossed the river in search of fertile soil. I mentally wished them well, and kept waiting for something, anything, to happen. What happened next was the absolute last thing I expected.
"Waah! Waah!" I cocked my head and cleaned out my ears. There was absolutely no chance that a baby was crying in the middle of this forest, right? Contrary to my expectations though, the sound was definitely a baby crying. It sounded like it had come from just a little ways up the path, around where the treefolk had stopped earlier.
Grabbing a branch from the fire for light, I went to investigate. Careful to watch my footing in the churned up dirt and mud, I made my way to the source of the crying.
Just as I was about to reach whatever was making the noise, I remembered a bit of Earth trivia about animals that made a crying sound to attract prey, so I drew my sword just in case it turned out to be a hungry beast.
With the tip of my blade, I turned over a few leaves and saw the last thing I expected. A human baby!
"What in the ancestors name are you doing all the way out here?" I asked the crying infant. Obviously I got no reply, so after putting away my sword I went to pick it up. Just as I was about to pick it up though, I remembered the arrows that came out of nowhere if you attempted to touch something the wood elves considered theirs. I also realized that the baby had no ears on the side of its head, but instead it had what looked like dog ears. "Are- are you a beastkin?" Once again I got no answer other than the piercing crying sound babies make.
"Come on, please stop crying." I pleaded. "Do you want food? Milk? Shiny keys?" My knowledge of babies was very limited, let alone beastkin babies. I searched my pockets for something resembling shiny keys or a rattle but didn't find anything, so I tried wiggling my fingers in its face to distract it from crying. The baby grabbed onto my fingers with a surprisingly strong grip and started chewing on my leather glove.
I remembered that if you touched baby birds back on Earth that had fallen out of the nest then their mother wouldn't touch it, so I relinquished my glove to the now silent infant and left it where I found it so that its mother could pick it up later. Putting the wood back in the fire, I resumed my watch over the camp.
"Grr. Yip! Yip!" The baby crawled into the light of the fire with my glove in its mouth and its tail, which looked like the tail of a wolf, was wagging cheerfully. It looked like a puppy who was bringing back a stick to its owner.
"What are you doing? You need to go back and wait for your mother to pick you up!" I tried shooing the baby back to where I had left it, but instead of paying attention to me, it just curled up against my boot and fell asleep. Leaving me very confused about what to do. It wasn't until a few hours later that someone else woke up.
"Good morning, Kvalinn. Anything happen last night?" Bekhi woke up first and sleepily walked up to sit next to me, but paused when she noticed the baby. "Um, Kvalinn? What is that?"
"I think it's a beastkin? I heard crying last night and found it over there. I gave it my glove to try and get it to stop, but then it crawled over here. What do I do!?" I was nervous about touching the baby, both because touching unknown things here could invite arrows to kill you, and because I had no clue how to deal with babies.
"Newman! Wake up!" Bekhi called to the sleeping adventurer.
"Wha-what? Are we under attack?" Newman grabbed and unsheathed his sword in one swift motion before realizing there were no enemies. "What's going on, Bekhi?"
"Com'ere, you've got to see this to believe it."
Newman cautiously approached the two of us, followed closely by the other three members of the party who had been woken by Bekhi's shout.
"I-is that what I think it is?" I asked as I pointed to where the infant was sleeping on my boot. The jaws of all four of them dropped in unison. Richard even went so far as to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things.
"By the beards of the dwarves." Newman muttered. "A tail, two ears from a beast of the forest, and a human body. It matches word for word for what the legends describe as a beastkin. I never thought I'd see one. But what is it doing sleeping against your leg, Kvalinn?"
After I explained what had happened last night, Newman gave me a tired sigh and a mild scolding for leaving my post without alerting anyone else. The others were kneeling around the baby and peering at it closely. Like me, they were all hesitant to touch it without receiving the ok from the boss.
"What should I do, Newman?" I asked in a nervous tone. "Is it safe to pick up?"
"How the blazes should I know!? No human has seen a beastkin for over a thousand years!" Newman tugged at his beard fitfully for a few minutes before coming to a decision. "Everyone back up, take several steps away from Kvalinn. You too, Bekhi. Now, Kvalinn. Very slowly, reach down, and try to pick the baby up."
Once everyone was several feet away, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and started leaning down at a snail's pace to where the baby was still sleeping. Keeping my palm flat just in case the infant had animal instincts to sniff any empty hand, I gently circled my hands around it and started picking it up by the waist.
"Not like that, Kvalinn! You've got to support the head!" Bekhi shouted at me from behind her shield. I corrected the position of the baby and lifted it in my arms.
"Well?" Richard looked out at the woods with a raised eyebrow. "Are you going to shoot him or not?" There was no answer to his question except a few rustling branches. Newman let out the breath he had been holding.
"I guess that means they don't mind you holding onto it for now." Newman and the rest walked back over to me to more closely inspect the baby.
"Aww, it's so cute! Here, let me hold it!" Bekhi gently guided me to transfer the baby into her arms. "Aww, it's a girl! A little baby girl!"
"A beastkin! A real live beastkin! Who's on the lookout for the boogeyman now, Richard!" Peter gleefully gloated over being right about beastkin existing.
"Yeah yeah yeah, I guess I owe my granny an apology when I get back home. Although this thing doesn't exactly inspire fear and terror the way my granny's stories did." Richard poked up the baby's lip. "See, she doesn't even have the sharp fangs my granny told me about."
"Teething." Kat pointed at the glove the girl was still chewing on in her sleep. "Fangs are coming soon. They'll rip you to shreds."
"All that aside." Newman interrupted. "What are you going to do with her, Kvalinn? We still have several months of traveling ahead of us and considering the dangers of the road ahead, it might be kinder to her to leave her where you found her." That solution caused everyone to scowl at him, so Newman held up his hands placatingly. "I'm just saying, you will need to feed her, change her diaper, bathe her, take care of her, and that's on top of protecting yourself from beasts and monsters. It will be nearly impossible to keep her alive!"
"I'll help, Kvalinn!" Bekhi said. "We can't just leave her behind, she's too cute! And if you even think about doing it, I'll beat you to a pulp and leave you beside her."
"I'll help too!" Peter said with shining eyes. "This is the first beastkin seen by an imperial citizen in over a thousand years! If I make it back home, then my name will go down in the legends as one who rescued a beastkin!"
"I'll help too." Kat said with just a hint of a smile. "It's cute."
"Gaah, I guess I'll help take care of it too." Richard said while rubbing the back of his head in annoyance. "But I'm not changing its diaper. Not even the gods can convince me to do that!"
Newman wryly smiled. "I guess all that's left to do then is to decide what to name her." This set off a long discussion of names, everything from family names, to names of great heroes and emperors, to popular minstrel names. Eventually, we settled on Gerde, since that was the name of an ancient beastkin warrior who fought in the war of the first demon lord.
"Now that everything is settled with Gerde. Everyone, get ready to leave, we're already behind schedule." Bekhi had me use one of my spare shirts to make a diaper, then tied up my blanket into a makeshift baby sling, and put Gerde inside.
"There we go, now don't jostle her too much, Kvalinn. I'll teach you how to feed her when it's time. I'm guessing she has been weaned, but I doubt she can eat solid food yet so we'll have to get creative when the time comes." Bekhi kissed the baby on the forehead before running off to get the camp moving for the day. It wasn't until several hours later that we had time to talk again.
"So, Kvalinn." Bekhi matched her walking pace to mine and walked alongside me. Peering at the sleeping Gerde. "What are we gonna do with Gerde when we leave the forest? Give her up for adoption, or keep her?"
"I'm… not sure." I answered after a pause. Back in my previous life, I had died before giving my parents any grandchildren and I felt a little bad about that. But in this life, I wasn't sure if I was ready to become a teen parent. Especially not while I was traveling the world to find a place to set up shop.
"Well, I guess we'll take care of her for now, and we can decide when we leave the forest. That should give us a couple months to make up our minds." Bekhi looked just as conflicted about the decision as I did. She was drawn in by Gerde's cuteness, and her own desire for family, but she knew as well as I did how difficult traveling was.
"So if we did keep her." Bekhi said after getting the wagons over another rough patch of road. "Would we raise her as a dwarf? Teaching her how to write the runes, and how to fight with a hammer and axe? I'm not sure if Elder Dworhick's combat lessons would work if beastkin grow taller than us."
"Well, that's the only way I know how to raise a child. So as soon as she can wield a hammer, I'm going to craft one for her and start teaching her weapon crafting like my father did."
I looked over and saw Bekhi glaring at me. "Kvalinn, you are going to wait until she is at least three winters old before making her a hammer. And you are going to wait until she is at least five winters before teaching her weapon smithing. Is that clear?"
"... Yes." Bekhi had a serious look in her eyes, so I quickly agreed.
"Good. I remember your dad seemed to get more gray hairs every time you made a new rune or experimented with a new gadget that did its best to destroy the school, and I don't want to receive the title Bekhi Grayhair when it's time for me to go before my clan."
"I'm sure that won't happen with Gerde. Probably." Bekhi just stared daggers at me.
"It better not!"
We were interrupted by Gerde making loud growling sounds and pointing towards a bush near the road. From out of the bush jumped a large cat that looked around the size of a puma. It charged at one of the mules, hoping for an easy lunch, but thanks to Gerde's warning Bekhi was able to nail it with a throwing hammer.
"What just happened?" Richard had an arrow ready the instant he spotted the predator, only to have Bekhi steal the kill.
"Heh, I guess Gerde is already trying to make herself useful." Bekhi grinned and gave Gerde an affirming pat on the head she seemed to nuzzle into. "You're gonna tell me where all the best fights are, aren't you Gerde?" Gerde just made happy noises while still chewing on my glove. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get that glove back.
The next few months went by relatively peacefully. As peaceful as things can be anyway when dealing with a baby. Gerde was mostly a quiet baby, only making a ruckus when hungry, or sleepy, or when she wanted to be near me, or when a monster or beast attacked. The usual things babies cry about. Whenever she cried during the night though, I was automatically elected to take care of it and stand watch for as long as it took. So needless to say, I was very sleep deprived by the time we exited the Eternal Forest.
"Thank the gods we are out of there before the first frost." Newman stretched his back as we passed the last tree in the forest. "The wood elves don't like it when people stay in their forest during the winter months and tend to hurry people up by shooting arrows at their heels."
"Tochka is the next land we have to travel through, right?" Bekhi asked. "Will we face anything as bad as Zaihan?"
"No. Zaihan is unique in the continent for its cruelty. Not even the human centric country of Alginall is as bad as Zaihan. Although they don't particularly like demihumans so I would not recommend visiting there."
I nodded as I listened and added a red X to my mental map next to Alginal for places to set up shop. Hopefully Tochka was a good place to stop, because I was very tired of sleeping on the ground and eating preserved food and drinking boiled water.
"So will we face any fun monsters in Tochka?" Bekhi asked with a grin.
"Around this time of year, our biggest concern will be wolves, ice wolves, bears and frost bears. They're either packing on fat for the winter, or are just hoping to gorge themselves before the lean winter strikes. Either way, they are all very dangerous, and will get more so as the temperature drops."
"If we run into a wolf pack then Kvalinn will need to craft me a few hundred arrows to replace my stock." Richard said as he instinctively reached back to count the arrows in his quiver. "Those beasts are relentless when they're starving and will even devour their fallen comrades, arrows and all."
"Doesn't fire work on them?" Peter asked as he idly twirled his staff. "Back home in the empire, I was able to repel more than one wolf attack with a few fireballs."
"Fire does work, kid." Richard replied. "But do you have enough magic to repel a hundred or more ravenous wolves? If you don't, the wolves just get to eat the charred corpses of their friends as well as our own."
"So what's Tochka like?" I asked in curiosity. "Are there any good cities to put down roots and set up a shop?"
"It's a decent enough place, but it suffers from an extremely spread out and sparse population. It's also extremely cold here, and the local language is notoriously difficult to learn." Newman then got into teaching mode and started informing everyone of the origin of Tochka as we walked along.
According to ancient myth and legend, over a thousand years ago a second demon lord appeared in the area. This demon lord was in the form of a dragon, and a summoned hero was called upon to stop him. The continent spanning empire sent little to no assistance to the far reaches of its empire, so it took ten years to finally defeat the dragon demon lord.
After the final battle that ravaged much of the land of Tochka, the summoned hero declared the country's independence from the empire and declared himself king. The entire nation fell in line behind him and even adopted the hero's native language as a way to further separate themselves from the empire.
"Do you know what the hero's native language was called?" I asked. Perhaps it was a language I had learned in my previous life.
"Legends say it was called Urssan, and it sounds something like this." Newman then spoke a few sentences in a language that was definitely Russian. A language I had never bothered, or even tried, to learn since I would have had no use for it. If the entire population only spoke Russian, then I would have to add a red X to Tochka for places to settle down. Dwarven lives may be long, but not long enough to learn Russian.
Looking out on the windswept plains that were only sparsely covered in farms and fields, I hoped that this land would be a little easier to get through then the world I had seen thus far.