“The band of thieves consists of seven men, one woman, and a child.”, reported the Invisible Stalker.

“Location?”, asked the Jerek Holdfast, Specularum’s ship loaner.

“The Isle of Dread.”, replied the Invisible Stalker. The magical humanoid failed to mention the ship the band of thieves now had was no the same one they took from one of the ship loaner’s clients. But the Invisible Stalker didn’t take to divulging information to those that summoned him to do busywork, especially for those that had him crossing seas for information reports.

“A child? How old?”, asked Jerek, surprised. But being a banker, he was close to the town council and was told of the large amount of criminal youth that plagued the poorer side of Specularum.

“Around 30 of your seasons.” replied the Stalker.

“Then I want you to go back, kill the men…. and the woman, and bring my ship and the child back here.”, ordered Jerek, seemingly to nothing but thin air. He detested the filth and crime that plagued the city and felt he would do the world a favor by getting rid of these hoodlums.

The Invisible Stalker could hardly believe it. This human had just forced him to follow a ship that had been stolen over two of their lunar cycles ago just to bring back information and he was planning to kill them all along! What abuse! He privately swore to create a device that would force a human into the plane of wind to obey his every command. “One job per summoning.”, relayed the Stalker, leaving only a short flash to mark his departure.

“Damn.”, grumbled Jerek. He would just have to ask his friend Falchonwind to borrow the magical incense that summoned the powerful creature for another day. But within time, the thieves would learn it wasn’t smart to steal from Jerek Holdfast. *****

“You better be joking.”, retorted Kage adamantly.

“I swear, I don’t have it.”, said Greegan.

Nearby, Stalfor was training ‘tenderfoot’ in some fighting tactics. Billard didn’t care for the title.

“Damn it! Fuck! Shit!”, Kage continued his loud and profuse cursing while jumping and kicking.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kirby, knowing something was terribly wrong if Sir Kage would be acting like this.

Stalfor walked away from the training session he was giving Billard during the brief rest period.

“Greegan lost the second bag of rations! It has almost all the food we had left! Fuck!!!”, continued Kage.

“WHAT?!?!?”, shouted Stalfor.

“We left that village in a hurry. It’s not like I-” “Why the hell didn’t you check?!?”, scolded Kage, “Why didn’t you think about it!?!”, screamed Kage, “Now we’re in the middle of an island with three tribes hunting us and we have no food!!!” “Hey, orcfucker, it’s your fault those apes are after us. Why didn’t you-” An axe chopped into the ground a few inches from Greegan’s feet. “DIE!!!!”, Stalfor bellowed in his hoarse voice, and grabbed Greegan by his leather collar and began to shake him violently, attacking Greegan with longer, more drawn-out curses than Kage had been using.

Kirby walked a few feet away and kneeled on the ground, covering his ears.

“Calm down! Look, we’ll just have to cut back on what’s left of our and see if we can forage as we go along.”, said Denier.

“I can do that.”, said Everett.

Greegan pushed away from the dwarf’s grasp and turned his back, but not attention, away from Stalfor. Stalfor shouldn’t mess with like that if he knew what was good for him, he thought, patting his dagger.