Rider Displaced

Chapter 3

It has been over 2 days since Walker and his dragon arrived in the isolated village of Graydale, which he learned the name of by the man he was previously speaking to who happened to be the village chief. It was confident to say he had earned the respect and good graces of the entire village, if the chief giving him and his dragon honors wasn't evidence enough. After having killed off all the Order of Shadows, he and Amber assisted in fighting the fires before they could cause more damage. He and the villagers acquired buckets of water from their well, while Amber flew off to the nearest water source, being a lake, scooped a jaw full, and sprinkled it all over the fire. Within an hour they had stopped the fire from spreading any further and managed to extinguish it. After that they began stacking the bodies and remains in a large pile, allowing Amber to blast it with plasma to disintegrate and cleanup the corpses.

The large building which had been set on fire was a storage house and barn, fortunately however the animals were sent out grazing before the Order of Shadows arrived, saving them. By the time they had the fire under control the herders and shepherds had returned with their livestock of sheep and cows, having noticed the smoke and coming back early to investigate. They were very surprised by the presence of a dragon, initially believing they were under attack, but the chief was able to explain to them quickly what had happened to avoid any confrontation. After things were cleared up they came thanking Walker and Amber for what they've done taking on the Order of Shadows and assisting in fighting the fires. The barn unfortunately could not be saved as the fire had eaten through the primary supports and several sections had collapsed whilst trying to put out the fire. The other building, which was a house for a family of four, however was salvageable as the fire hadn't spread far and the damage was localized in a single area.

However new troubles had been brought up as the barn held most of the villages supplies of foodstuffs and medicine, meaning they wouldn't have enough to last them until the next harvest. They needed aid from the city further east beyond the mountains, but the trip was over three months to and back on horseback. There were other isolated villages throughout the forest, but they wouldn't be able to help as they likely only held enough supplies to last themselves till the next harvest. Amber was able to relieve the burden a bit by delivering fresh carcasses she had slain while hunting for a meal, but it wouldn't last them long enough and they had a short supply of salt used to preserve meat. In response. Walker promised to fly on Amber to the city to speak with the current king in their request for aid.

Right now, Walker had taken temporary residence in the chief's guest bedroom, where they honored him as a hero and allowed him to join during meals made from what was still available. However this also resulting in the chief's daughter trying to get a little too close to him, which brought up a snarl or hiss from Amber every time she caught the girl getting too comfortable with her rider.

Today was the final day Walker would be staying in the village before flying off to the city with Amber. The sun had started to set, so he joined the chief and his daughter for a final meal before he would be leaving in the morning. The two men had spoken a lot about each other, with the chief revealing he was once a roaming adventurer before he settled down and helped found this village using the spoils he earned.

Apparently there was an Adventurer's Guild that operated across the kingdoms, where people with the right skills and talents can take up missions and quests related to problems such as monster attacks, bandit raids, or exploring uncovered dungeons filled with monsters and treasure. He also figured out where he was, and the answer was not something he took very well. Apparently he was in an entirely different realm instead of his own. Transfer between realms wasn't unfamiliar to him as he had been deployed on another realm at least twice in his life, however they required passing through Realm Gates which linked two realms together. His transfer did not involve any realm gate, at least he didn't think so. His memory was still fuzzy around the time before he woke up in the forest, and Amber was still having the same issue.