Arthur was damp, exhausted, and—worst of all—bored. Such a dreadful state of affairs had few upsides, though the ability to also make it everyone else’s problem might act to ease the suffering, if only by a small margin. Arthur’s suffering, to be exact. Perhaps he should give the others the courtesy of a small reminder. It was the least he could do before committing his following plans.


    The five of them had been trudging along the current trail for well over twelve hours. Well, Sean claimed it was a trail, and Arthur had, at the very least, the good sense to keep his skepticism on that matter largely to himself. While Sean had authority to match Andric, he tolerated Arthur at least as well as Millie. Arthur was more than wise enough to recognize the value in that—so he wouldn’t antagonize the man, if that’s what it took to keep it that way.


    But still—twelve hours of nothing but walking through snow, trees, thorny bushes, more snow, also ghouls now too. One might suppose the last item to be the worst by far—but no, that was definitely still the snow. It really said something about the current state of affairs that Arthur would be happy to run into another of the foul monsters. It would do something to break the monotony.


    “Hey Archie. Hanging in back there?”


    Arthur lacked the energy to roll his eyes at Andric’s comment—it was a miracle he could still move his legs. “Sure. I would consider ‘hanging in’ to be an adequate assessment of the situation.”


    Millie snorted from behind him. How the rural girl managed to stubbornly remain both his most dependable ally and his greatest nuisance, Arthur hadn’t the slightest idea. Perhaps it helped that she was the only one to take him seriously. Well, his magic, more accurately. As for the other three…


    Lily punched her retainer in the shoulder. “Andric, what did I say about bullying our resident archmage? One of these days he’s going to turn you into a newt, you know.” Now Arthur really did roll his eyes. A newt? Really? If such a thing were possible, it would no doubt fall squarely within the alchemical domain. That was already Andric’s specialty, not his own.


    “And with all due respect, my lady—you started it.”


    Arthur couldn’t see if Lily rolled her eyes as well, but she did flick her long black hair away in a dramatic flourish. “And I fail to see how my continued harassment of little Archie is of any concern to the matter of your actions.”


    Gritting his teeth, Arthur solidified his coming plans at the forefront of his mind. So it’s little Archie now, is it? It seemed that the Heiress Von Gershenfeld was no longer content to merely mock his class—she had to belittle his advancement as well. Whatever. She already thought he hated her—he did—but he suspected that she suspected that he suspected her for the entirely wrong reason.


    She thought that he thought that she was to blame for his whole ‘tragic life story,’ as she would probably put it. He thought that thinking that was ridiculous, because she would only have been nine years old at the time—and that was without accounting for how little he cared anyway.


    As the truth often was, things were far simpler than that. Liliana Von Blodmane—yes, he knew who her real family was, and he knew that she knew that he knew. Simply put, Lily was an annoying brat. This, however, could be forgiven—especially with the urban nobility. No, there was just one slight complication to her aforementioned personality. It was one which made Liliana Von Blodmane more worthy of damnation than the vilest Demons her ancestors had ever summoned.


    She was also frustratingly beautiful and intellectually competent.


    Not that her real family wasn’t slightly famous for the whole Demon worshiper thing. Also the blood magic, and the necromancy, and—anyone would get the point here. That particular bit of drama wasn’t actually drama, because it wasn’t even a secret.


    Not that Arthur cared about that either. Hell, he would give almost anything for access to the Blodmane archives. The only reason he didn’t do much to hide his dislike towards her was because it was better that no one suspected anything—not even them.


    But more importantly—now was as good a time as ever to enact his devilish plans. Stumbling forward—on purpose, mind you—Arthur spun on his heel, teetered dramatically, and collapsed to the side of the supposed ‘trail.’ His back sunk at least a few inches down into it, and he lost his grip on his thin metal staff.


    “Wait—hey! Where’s Archie?”


    Arthur groaned. It had the side-effect of alerting the rest of the party to his new location, but mainly it was an expression of his immense disappointment. It had to be Lily of all people to take first note of his absence, didn’t it?


    “Man down!” Sean’s gruff voice boomed from above. It was hard to miss the bulky paladin recruit looming over him, and harder still not to hear him. When people frequently described their Hallowed companion as ‘quiet,’ it was only because he didn’t speak much.


    As the rest of their party gathered around, Arthur did his best to look sick and exhausted. It wasn’t very hard, given that he didn’t have to pretend. Still, it never hurt to present your best impression.


    Snapping his fingers—how does that work with metal gauntlets—Sean made sure to get Andric’s attention specifically. “Let him have a potion.”


    The alchemist crossed his arms. “No.”


    It took conscious effort for Arthur to refrain from grinning. Ha! Yes! The esteemed babysitter of Liliana Von Gershenfeld had walked straight into his trap. Did it count as a trap if it wasn’t intended? Arthur didn’t mind taking credit, and he certainly wasn’t going to complain.


    The alchemist had unwittingly given Arthur the perfect opportunity to divert attention from his own antics—now Sean would direct his anger on Andric. The alchemist’s unwillingness to ‘waste’ his precious potions on someone as ‘insufferably useless’ as Arthur would surely overshadow the archmage’s own refusal to keep walking until nightfall. It couldn’t be more perfect.


    “Andric…”Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Sensing a small opportunity from their de facto leader’s tone, Andric heaved a hoarse cough and struggled to sit up. “It’s—ugh, I’ll be okay.”


    Predictably, the trumped up bodyguard couldn’t resist cutting himself with his own wit. “See? He’ll be fine. I know that other mage types sometimes struggle with the more strenuous activities such as walking.”


    And of course, Arthur had perfectly timed the moment he let his shuddering arms give out. His upper body whumped back into the snow just as Andric completed his clever little remark. The alchemist really was becoming far too predictable.


    “…feel—weak.”


    A pitying look washed across Lily’s perfect features—an unwanted one, Arthur might add. Predictably, her bottle-toting babysitter glowered. while Millie made no attempts to conceal her knowing smirk. Sean looked like he was coming to a decision.


    “Well if that’s how it’s going to be.”


    Oh? Arthur couldn’t truthfully say he wasn’t feeling a little excited. He was almost starting to forget how thoroughly exhausted he was due to the tiny little drama unfolding. He didn’t know what would be more interesting—what Sean was about to say, or if the whole group experienced a sudden ghoul attack when all their backs were turned.


    Things, as was typical, did not go as expected.


    Rather than Sean, it was Arthur who spoke next—if that’s what you could call his undignified yelp as the mighty paladin-to-be lifted him wholesale into an effortless princess-carry.


    They made it about five strides before Arthur’s metal-clad mount had to stop to turn around. “Stop gawking, the lot of you, or we won’t make it to the cabin before nightfall.” He paused again. “And can someone please go get his staff?”


    _____


    When Sean told the group that they would be spending their first night in an ‘irregularly maintained’ cabin-turned-supply-cache, Arthur hadn’t exactly left with high hopes. Knowing their benevolent sponsor back in Verdanport, the place would either be utter shit or a bizarrely located luxury resort.


    Let no one think that Lord Darius Loch was wildly inconsistent, however. Their Rank A patron was anything but. Whatever their lodgings turned out to be, something about it was going to be terrible, and at least half of them would wind up miserable for some reason or other.


    The usual question simply ended up being who.


    Given how the little “field trip” Lord Darius had set up for them was going so far, Arthur was justifiably confident that the ‘misery group’ would include him. And it turned out he was right—if only because this was going to suck for all of them.


    “I thought this supply cache was supposed to be an actual cabin. You can’t be telling me this is the right place.”


    Lily, thank you so, so much for complaining right now, you glorious annoying bitch. After the humiliating incident several hours earlier, Arthur wasn’t too keen on being the one to speak up about how obviously horrible this was. Honestly, little miss ice-princess being the one to say it was just about the second-best possible outcome.


    Andric glanced between Sean and the—the cabin. It was really more of a snow-covered pile of collapsed planks, with a few pieces of what might have once been a fence around it. There was also a chimney on the side—walls not included. “You know, I actually agree with them on this one,” the alchemist began—glancing between Lily and Arthur.


    What? Arthur felt offended. He hadn’t even said anything, for Heaven’s sake. He couldn’t stay mad for long though, because that was now the first best outcome.


    Sighing, Sean sort of waved his hands around helplessly. “Look, I didn’t know it would be this bad, alright? It should still beat anything we could put together ourselves in these woods.”


    Even Andric didn’t look too convinced. “I suppose that may be the case. I do hope that these ‘provisions’ are more…”


    Waving his own hands, the alchemist seemed to be experiencing an uncharacteristic loss for words. It was Millie, of all people, who came to his rescue. “Not shit. That it would be more not shit. ‘Least that’s assuming there’s anything there at all.”


    Everyone looked at Sean. The not-paladin looked like he was looking for help, but everyone who might have come to his rescue was already mad at him. “Okay, look—you uh, you all do realize that I know basically as much as the rest of you? I only repeated back exactly what Lord Darius told me. If you have a problem, take it out on him when we get back.”


    He didn’t wait for any sarcastic responses before marching off towards the place that might have been a cabin, once. Not that it stopped Millie. “If we get back, you mean. Can’t say I’m liking my chances.”


    Arthur couldn’t help but notice she had strung up her bow. Was she expecting trouble? Millie would have the most experience with sparsely inhabited wilderness out of all of them. Obviously this dreary wasteland was even worse than whatever pond the rural girl had crawled out of—but still.


    “Yeah, this is honestly a bit far. He’s not usually this bad about things,” Lily said. “I swear to the fucking lost gods, if anything on this blighted trip is worse than this…”


    “Seems to me he thinks being all rich and fancy means he can just treat us however he wants and we can’t do nothing about it.”


    “Millie…” Arthur at least had the energy to chit-chat now—courtesy of the stamina potion Andric had finally relented to offering him half an hour prior. “You do realize that means he very much can?”


    They finally made it to the remnants of what used to be a collapsed wall at one point. Strangely, there was no sign of their big shiny ‘officially I’m not a paladin yet.’ It was hard to imagine how he could simply disappear, which meant that he probably went down into the open trap-door tucked inside the chimney itself.


    Clambering down as well revealed that Sean was, in fact, already inside what turned out to be a delightfully warm basement full of barrels and crates. A moment later, the rest joined them, everyone taking their own time to have a look around.


    “This is surprisingly not awful,” Arthur said first, lazily reclining against his Luminium staff. “Also wait, where does the smoke from the fire—oh, that’s clever.”


    Obviously it couldn’t go up the chimney the normal way, because that’s where the hidden entrance was. Not to mention that the real fireplace was in a completely different spot. It looked like a small duct piped the smoke all the way across the ceiling, where it joined the above-ground chimney—presumably running through the brickwork and opening up at the top.


    “I wonder how it prevents people from still seeing any smoke though.” They hadn’t seen any on the way in.


    Embarrassingly, Arthur had been so engrossed in studying the layout of the hiding spot that he failed to notice how uncomfortably silent everyone else was. “What?”


    Lily was the one to answer—though not directly. Her eyes flicked from the crackling fireplace up to Sean’s. “Sean… did you light the fire?”


    “No. I did not.”


    Oh. So that’s why everyone was acting strange—Arthur couldn’t help but tense a little as well. It seemed like Lily was going to continue. “Well, maybe someone just left…”


    But Sean wasn’t finished either, and whatever he had to say was important enough for him to interrupt her. “Whatever was just here, this—this place reeks of an infernal presence.”


    _____


    Of course the first ragtag band of scrappy young adventurers would have a guy with fucking Demon-smelling powers. Zoe mentally cursed as she continued to pump energy into keeping up her mirage and disguise. It wasn’t easy, especially not after just barely recovering from what Lilith had called “self-inflicted soul damage.”


    Seriously, world? Zoe had already used identify on all of them, and the big armored guy apparently being an Acolyte of Faith or whatever did fit with this new ‘infernal presence’ bullshit. At least he was only Rank D. But still! The dude looked like a value-pack paladin. He probably is, actually.


    As for the others—well, what little info she already had raised a lot of interesting questions.