Sweet Bun trotted quietly in her approach to Mouse. He looked out towards the rice fields, mindlessly watching a couple people bent down amongst their stalks. Sweet Bun’s feathered tail whipped, catching Mouse’s attention, to her dismay.

  He spun around, grinning from ear to ear, spreading his arms open to her. Sweet Bun’s head reeled back, her eyes bouncing between each of his outstretched hands. He took a step towards her, and she chirped in annoyance before turning away from him and running the short distance to Taiga instead. Mouse visibly shrunk.

  “What did you expect? That she’ll jump into your arms, making a complete personality shift to a loving companion?” Taiga ignored her nuzzles into his shoulder.

  “I can hope.” Each word Mouse spoke increasingly dampened in spirit. He fell back to walk beside Taiga. As he did, Sweet Bun jerked her neck around Taiga and pecked Mouse’s head.

  He jumped back, which pleased Sweet Bun greatly. A few short chirps translated to laughs, and Taiga shook his head at their nonsense. “Didn’t you pack some treats for her?”

  At the reminder, Mouse dug through his bag. After a few moments he pulled a grape bunch from his pack. A few fell off in the scuffle, which he picked out of his bag and plopped in his mouth.

  As Mouse approached Sweet Bun with such mouth-watering treats, Taiga picked up his pace. The black haired mercenary walked a short ways ahead with a couple other mercenaries he recognized from the celebratory meal after the battle.

  He joined them, ignoring the chirps and laughs behind him. “Did you hear any word about the sort of help needed?”

  The black haired mercenary turned to him, shaking his head. He stepped to the side, giving Taiga space to join their stride. “We sent a messenger overnight, but they didn’t respond back before we left.”

  “I’m telling you, something’s weird about this!” A tall, muscled woman pointed a long finger at the man before turning to Taiga. “I’m Telania, by the way. That there is Ku,” she waved towards the black haired mercenary before patting another man on his shoulder, “and this is Field.”

  It was the first time Taiga saw Field sober, and nearly didn’t recognize him with a combed beard. He nodded to them. “Taiga, and that’s Mouse.”

  “Yeah, we knew your name. Your friend there calls you it all the time. But by how he calls us ‘hey’, and ‘beard’,” she tapped Field again, “we realized you probably didn’t know our names.”

  Taiga’s face heated a bit, and he apologized. Mouse once spent three years calling another knight in their squad by the color of his socks. He’d told Taiga he saw no point in remembering unimportant humans. “He struggles with names.”

  “It’s no worry, we shoulda introduced ourselves sooner.”

  “So,” Taiga cleared his throat, “what’s weird about the messenger?”

  Telania mused for a long moment. “About the one Winolin sent. It’s a two day’s walk to the Bearthatch area. So for a speedy messenger on a horse, they shoulda arrived with more details on the job by now.”

  “Not if he took a rest along the way,” Ku pointed out, his eyes lazily watching the clouds over their heads.

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  “Okay fine. But we’ve been walking for hours now.”

  “So?”

  “We still haven’t passed the messenger.”

  They talked over each other a moment with unimportant nonsense. Taiga looked out over the road ahead of them, the mountains barely visible beyond the horizon. “Could the messenger have chosen a different path to Winolin?”

  Ku stopped bickering with Field and looked at Taiga, “see, that’s what I’m saying. This isn’t the most direct path to Bearthatch. If the messenger took a break, then cut through the woods,” he drew a line with his finger across a huddled bunch of trees past a field of rice to the right, “he could pass us by and we’d never know.”

  “On a horse? Through a field of rice and mud after hilly woods?” Telania laughed in disbelief, “let’s see you drive a horse in the middle of the night through that.”

  “All I’m saying is, it’s possible.” Ku side-eyed her, before returning to watch the clouds. “Besides, maybe there was some confusion with the mission. Might take time to sort out and would’ve delayed the messenger.

  “Confusion? Beyond the information you requested?” Taiga looked over his shoulder, catching Sweet Bun bite at Mouse’s head. He yelped before Taiga turned his attention back to the issue at hand.

  “The mission just said Bearthatch, right?” Field grumbled, taking a bite out of some sort of biscuit. Ku nodded.

  “Is that wrong?” Taiga asked. He didn’t know the region well enough to make judgement.

  “The Bearthatch mountains are mostly devoid of people, aside from the few tribes living on the mountains themselves. At the foot of the mountains, there’s a cluster of mining towns and villages. The whole region is referred to as Bearthatch.”

  Taiga considered it a moment. If the whole region was the location of the mission, he could see the trouble. “So we don’t know exactly which town or village needs help?”

  Field nodded. “Or, more importantly, who’s responsible for paying out.”

  “So what exactly did the mission request?” Maybe they agreed to this mission a little too hastily.

  “Mimi!” Field called out ahead of them. The shyer woman of the group who seemed more focused on their horses than the conversation turned around. “ You got the mission sheet?”

  She nodded, pulling a rolled up paper from a pouch on the horse’s tack. She handed it to Field, who passed it to Taiga. He unrolled it, revealing a hastily written letter marked with ink splotches and accidental markings.

  Simply stated, it requested a large amount of help dispatched to Bearthatch to handle a sudden occurrence. Compensation at the guildhall’s standard rate would be paid out. Nothing else of substance was added to the request. To Taiga, who’d served the court and her royal knighthood, it seemed, well, inadequate.

  “Is this… normal?” He handed it back to Mimi. “I mean, there’s a huge lack of information on it. I’m surprised it was offered as an official mission at all.”

  Field gave him an odd look up and down. “It was addressed directly to the hall master. She vouched for it.”

  So someone in Bearthatch had connections to the guild master. Fair enough. “The person who delivered the message didn’t know anything else?”

  Ku and Telania made eye-contact, holding it long enough to concern Taiga. “It was sent by bird. Which, before you ask, is common.” Something in Ku’s voice sobered.

  A request for multiple mercenaries. Payment unspecified. Employer unspecified. Location unspecified. Request through a bird messenger resulting in no further details. Mission approved by the guild hall master despite the missing information.

  All this, not even a full week after the demon’s launched an unprecedented attack on the wall of Winolin. Though he couldn’t specify what exactly bothered him, the unknown was becoming more common. Taiga didn’t appreciate it.

  Screaming, Mouse ran out ahead of them, crossing the road before tripping. Sweet Bun was on him, biting down into his tunic and dragging him back off the road. “It was only grapes! Why do you hate meeee!”

  Taiga paused, the idiocy breaking the somber atmosphere in an instant. Ku and Telania broke into laughter, Field shook his head with a sigh before biting back into his biscuit. “You, uh, consider getting a better tempered linlao?”

  “It crossed my mind.” Unfortunately, her damages made it impossible to save enough to replace her. And well, despite how she treated him, Mouse adored her.