“What the fuck are we gonna do now??”

  It’s daytime and the fire is out. The horses are gone. Ulric’s got his hood up, looking pissy as usual. Gabriella and Tabitha are sitting against a tree, braiding each other’s hair like children and the wizard is staring impotently at his staff. I make my way over to him and ask, “Can you get that thing working again?”

  He lets out one of those raspy, old-man sighs that makes you really think about the direction your life is headed before gloomily declaring, “The Staff of Vanaheimr has had its power stripped away.”

  “Okay…I didn’t know it had a name. So, how do we fix it?”

  He motions toward the now-barren spot at the top of the staff. “I will need the magical gem that powers it back. Or another like it.”

  I launch a rock across the meadow with my boot and fold my arms over my chest. “Well, I’m pretty sure we’re not getting that one back. So it looks like we have to find you a new one. Where do we get a magical gem?”

  He drags his eyes off the staff to gape at me and I swear he looks twenty years older when he says, “I know of none.”

  I try the pissy vampire next. “Ulric, we need another gem. You know any more mystical creatures that are hiding one of those things?” He just shakes his head and gives me a little growl. I throw my hands up. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Whatever! Let’s just keep moving. We’ll save Piper and then deal with the wizard’s stupid staff later.”

  Ulric finally has something to say. “If Lilithene is anywhere near that palace when we get to it, we won’t stand a chance without this wizard’s magic. Come. I know of someone who may be able to help.” Then he just trudges off into the thicket away from us.

  “Uh, Ulric, you gonna tell us where the fuck we’re going? Ulric!” He just keeps trudging. I don’t know what the hell else to do so I just shake my head and kick my way through the thorny fucking mess behind him with the rest of the party.

  ***

  Walking and fighting. Walking and fighting. I’m so sick of this shit. Every time I think things are going my way, some silly bullshit like this happens and then I’m walking and fighting some more. Piper’s gonna die of old age by the time we get to her.

  I learn that Fallow can still do magic without the staff. He just sucks at it. He’s basically been reduced to doing parlor tricks and enchanting things like any other prick in the nobility. Apparently the only thing that makes him a wizard is his ability to tap into the power of magical gems like the one we took out of Cerberus. I get a long, annoying speech about how they come from some other plane of existence and still end up no closer to finding a new one to power the Staff of Viffeinhamnfer or whatever. So now Fallow’s more useless than ever.

  The only person who isn’t completely fucking miserable is Tabitha. And maybe Gabriella, but honestly I never know what the hell that woman is thinking. She is the definition of a closed book. At least towards me. She and Tabitha take a liking to each other and spend the rest of the trip up each other’s butts, interrogating each other about any and everything that either one of them has ever done or liked or thought about. ‘Oh, you like to eat things that taste good? Me too! What’s your favorite type of root vegetable? I love beets toooo!!!’ As obnoxious as it is, it’s fine by me because now I don’t have to talk to either of them.

  We make it over the mountains into Fornia and wrangle up some horses. Then we just keep going north. For days and days. We go so far north that it actually starts to snow. In the middle of summer. I don’t know who this friend of Ulric’s is but I seriously question the judgment of a person who would choose to live in a place where it snows in the fucking summer.

  We ride until we eventually find an actual village with actual people living in it. A good deal of them, actually. And they all speak a language that only Ulric and Gabriella understand. It involves a lot of hacking, guttural noises that make my throat feel itchy just listening to it. But if nothing else, I at least finally understand where the two of them get their terrible fashion sense from.

  Riding into this town is like traveling back in time. Archaic isn’t a strong enough word to describe the architecture in this place. I’m not sure how some of the buildings are even standing. From the look of the shoddy stonework, I’d guess that maybe they’d had the village children do all the stone laying. While they were blindfolded. And drunk.

  Ulric’s got his hood up, though I’m not sure why. There’s so much cloud cover over this place that I wouldn’t be able to guess the location of the sun if my life depended on it. I will say though, he does seem to be in a better mood here, despite having lost Hellstorm and now being about seventy percent less badass without it. But I guess everyone has to have some place that feels like home.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  We tie up the horses in the middle of town and then start making our way to this mysterious acquaintance of his on foot. While we walk, he explains even though I didn’t ask, “This was once a great civilization. But after eons of war and famine, the people were forced from their homes and ended up here.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, we all got our problems.”

  He continues his little history lesson, “They learned to live in a place where their pursuers could not follow. Out of necessity, they created a whole new way to live off the land. Nothing is wasted up in these mountains.”

  I need a rock to kick. “Ya don’t say. Well, that sure is neat, Ulric.”

  “Much of their history has been lost to the cruel passage of time. Buried like autumn leaves in an endless snowstorm. Now they have only fragments of legends to pass down to future generations. But within those legends, you’ll find secrets that no one else knows. Things that can’t be found in any scroll or tome that exists in the modern nations of the world. Forgotten things in long-forgotten places. Artifacts imbued with powerful magic that are said to have come from another world. Things that—some might say—don’t belong in this world.”

  “Wow, that is super interesting. How much farther is it?”

  A few village elder-looking types spare me any further torture by walking out and distracting Ulric. Thank god because I don’t know how much more of that I could take. After they do a bit of gladhanding with the vampire, they lead us to a quaint little cottage just outside of town that would look really nice in a fresco painted on the side of a jam shop or something. It sits all by itself like it’s too good to hang out with the other houses which, while it does look nicer than the rest of the buildings, that sure as shit isn’t saying much in this place.

  Ulric walks to the front of the cottage and presses a palm against the door to push it open. Then he just walks inside. Apparently, people don’t knock in this town. The door creaks open and inside sitting on the floor is the oldest woman I’ve ever seen. She makes that walking corpse back at Ulric’s manor look like a spring chicken. She has more beads than hair hanging off her head and her eyes are closed like she’s in some sort of trance. Or maybe she just sleeps sitting straight up on the floor, who the fuck knows. I tilt my head toward Ulric and ask, “Who’s the old hag?”

  He whispers as if she might actually hear him, “Alfa. A former concubine of mine. Very experienced in mysticism.”

  My gaze careens over in his direction. “Ulric, pal, we really gotta talk about your taste in women.”

  He shakes his head as he walks toward her. “She wasn’t always this old.”

  After spitting out a greeting and bowing his head, he sits in front of her and crosses his legs while the rest of us stand behind and watch. Then I fold my arms and listen to the two of them grunt at each other for I don’t know how long while my last nerve gets dangerously trodden upon.

  After it’s gone on for a good long while, Fallow turns around and starts eyeing the knickknacks on the wall while stroking his big, stupid beard. As that’s happening, Team Gab-Tab wander off to go giggle about god knows what over in the corner. When Tabitha tries to take something off the wall, Gabriella grabs her hand to pull it away, and then they both have an excruciatingly long ogling session while they caress each other’s palms and stare longingly at each other. I grumble out a sigh and wait for Ulric to hurry the fuck up already. Sorry, but I’m just not in the mood for this lovey-dovey sapphic horseshit right now.

  When the vampire finally stands up, I feel like I’m a year older than I was when we walked in. Everyone circles up and I ask, “Well?”

  “She knows of another gem. But before she’ll tell us where it is, she wants something from us in return.”

  “Okay…That’s kind of fucked up but, whatever. What does the old hag want?”

  Ulric repositions his feet and then takes a deep breath before explaining, “In a cave to the north there is an ancient tome that contains the instructions for how to brew a potion that will reverse one’s age. It’s an ancient faery concoction. None other like it in the world. She wants us to retrieve it for her. But the tome is protected by a powerful creature—The frost giant king, Baroken. We must defeat it to retrieve the tome. But this monster is formidable. Its breath will freeze a man solid where he stands. We will need protection to survive. In a kingdom to the east, there is enchanted armor that will keep the wearer warm in any temperature. It's a week's ride from here. We must retrieve this armor before entering the caves to fight Baroken to get the tome. Only then will Alfa tell us the location of the gem.” The room goes quiet after he finishes.

  A few seconds go by before I uncross my arms and tell him, “No.”

  Ulric cocks his head to one side. “No?”

  “Yeah, no. As in, the opposite of yes. As in—get fucked. No more fetchquests. No more wandering in the woods. I’m done with it. If you dipshits want to spend the rest of your lives searching through caves, looking for mystical mumbo jumbo, be my guest. Not me. I’m going back to Fornia to save Piper. Tabitha, let’s go.”

  I start toward the door and then stop when I realize Tabitha isn’t following me. “Tabitha…?” I turn around and see her glance at Gabriella and then back at me. Then she starts wringing both her hands together. “…Oh, come on.”

  She shakes her head and sniffs. “Sorry, Cap’n.”

  We all stand and stare at each other for several painfully revelatory seconds until I nod and tell the rest of my asshole party, “Fine. Great. Fucking Fantastic. I guess I’ll just save Piper on my own then. I hope you all have fun freezing to death.” Then I turn around and punch the wall before swinging the door open so hard that it knocks some of the knickknacks off the wall.

  And then I leave.