QUEST WORLD

NOT QUITE ELSEWHERE ANYMORE

PRINCE THERTAN WATCHED other adventurers descend on Morine in great billowing clouds of smoke, their entourages of stewards, valets, bards, healers, and more stumbling after them, and all he could think was These morons.

It was no wonder so many adventurers stayed at the same level of fame and fortune—they grew complacent. They expected monsters to throw themselves at their feet and tremble at things like sweeping entrances and poetic introductions—Tan had heard Sir Ormon Drant's introduction before; it had gotten longer—and most adventurers lost their edge. They forgot what it was to be their own healer, their own steward, their own bard even.

Which was why none of these adventurers was a threat to Tan.

No—his threats would be much more subtle.

Tan bent back into the shadows of the dry goods store and looked at the talisman in his palm. While the largest types of magic were targeted by his father's quests and exterminated before they could be dangerous, smaller types of common magic were allowed. The traveling spells. Healing spells. Little things that most people could do if they had magic somewhere in their bloodline.

He'd spent the better part of the morning weaving together this talisman once he'd landed in Morine. No flourishing entrance for him—he'd popped up outside of town and walked in as casually as he could. He'd hunted for a few blades of local grass—had to be specifically taken from north, south, east, and west of town—and woven them with strands of unicorn hair.

Now, he whispered the enchantment over them.

He'd been whispering it for nearly an hour.

"Locale magick." He cupped his hands and exhaled down on the grass. "Locale magick. Locale—"

The grass bundle twisted in his hands. It squirmed like a worm out of dirt before spinning sharply and pointing out at the road, where the crowd had gathered around the adventurers. A local innkeeper was screeching for a serving girl to assist guests; the stablehands were jostling each other and pointing at the adventurers and no doubt dreaming of scampering off in service to Sir Ormon.

Tan followed the direction his talisman pointed: directly into the center of town.

He frowned at the talisman. He'd been lapping Morine for an hour, whispering the enchantment, trying to pinpoint which direction the sorcerer had fled in. No way was the magician still here—he'd have seen the parchment announcements, have felt the arrival of the adventurers.

But the talisman wasn't lying—the sorcerer was in Morine.

The sorcerer was one of the people standing around the adventurers.

Tan's frown tightened. This was both confusing and deeply horrifying—did the sorcerer have something planned? Was he hoping to lure everyone into a false sense of security before enacting some horrible spell to decimate the town?

The talisman twitched in Tan's palm. He looked down—it had pivoted to the left.

When he followed its path with his eyes, he saw a trio of people break off from the main crowd. They were edging closer and closer to the stables—a scrawny boy in an old nobleman's uniform, so likely a squire; a girl who wasn't doing a damn thing to disguise that she was a hedgewitch, which felt suicidal in the midst of all these adventurers; and a girl who had to be half-elven, or maybe half-brownie, with long pointed ears but the height of a human.

It was that last girl who led the group, walking with a fiery kind of determination for the stables. This was a girl on a life or death mission. This was a girl that, had they been on a battlefield, Tan would have thought "She's going to behead the first person she sees."