#ttob

The only things he took with him were his name, the clothes on his back, whatever he could fit into the bag he slung over his shoulder, and a book that was currently cradled in his arm.

The second step was to have a path to follow. 

That could be one of many things. 

Running in a line until you couldn’t any more. A literal path. A map. All that mattered was that you had to go away, that there was a running part of running away. 

Calamine had a path. It was loose, and rough, and the map he’d looked over before he’d left had been centuries old. But he had a path nonetheless. 

The third, and most optional step, was to have somewhere to go. 

Tarocco. 

The land of the mad king. 

They said the fruit there was so sweet it would turn your tongue to dust. That the mornings were shrouded in fog, the days were clouded over, and the nights were long and molasses-thick. 

They also said it was impossible to find, unless the king himself allowed you in. 

But there, Calamine knew, they were wrong.

Four days and three nights due north, into the forest. Bring a guide. Or two. The mad king hungers, and the ground itself might swallow you whole. 

Speak not of your destination. The mad king has ears throughout the trees, and eyes in every star that beams down upon you. 

Do not eat nor drink unless at dawn and twilight. The mad king is jealous, and he will curse you if you feast while he can not. 

On the eve of the fourth night, on the seventh change between day and night, you will arrive. 

It will not be pleasant. 

You may not survive. But you will be there. 

He’d found the instructions in the book he carried under his arm. Centuries old, the only one of its kind in the world. Drawings of the mad king, likely the most accurate found outside of Tarocco. Drawings of the kingdom, and its lore, and suits of armors in the margins. 

Lovingly preserved in a library for longer than Calamine had been alive. Until he’d taken it. 

He wasn’t going directly to Tarocco. He had no one to travel with. He couldn’t go alone. 

The book said that the Mad King would take bodyguards first, and let those they guard pass through. So Calamine had to get himself a bodyguard. 

That’s why he was here. He’d asked several people, and posted a notice on an adventuring board- “Vulnerable traveler seeks bodyguard skilled in slaying bandits, brigands, beasts. Travel to dangerous land. No payment upfront, you keep everything we find. High Risk, High Reward.”

He’d been pointed to a stone keep in the mountains, a day’s walk from the town. Monster hunters lived there, they said. Good people, who had trained for years to be strong. Who gave their services to those who sought them out, doing good for those who could not stand up for themselves. 

The exact kind of person who wouldn’t realize that the real monster was right beside them, guiding them to their death. 

So there he was. A shivering little thing, in the early autumn evening, wrapped in a secondhand cloak. He’d long since discarded the robes from his monastery, having made his own clothing. Which was currently doing a terrible job of keeping him warm. The cloak was given to him by a stranger on his journey- one who’d seen him trying to stay warm, and had given him a spare. It was a strange gesture, but an appreciated one. 

He’d been robbed multiple times, roughed up, slept in the woods, had to deal with weather and exposure and exhaustion. The wind carried a cold that slipped under his cloak, his sleeves, his skin, and wrapped itself in the core of his bones. His long braid was carried out to the side by the wind, and much of his hair had come loose, giving him a disheveled look. The thin brass frames of his glasses had been bent in one of the times he’d been robbed, and he hadn’t had the time to fix them. 

Or, in short, he looked awful. 

Calamine rang the bell by the door, looking and feeling a few seconds away from collapsing, exhausted. 

Luckily, the loud tolling attracted someone’s attention, and the door opened quickly. 

An older man, with greying hair and a carefully-trimmed beard, looked down at Calamine. Which was not an exaggeration- the stranger was nearly a foot taller than him. 

Calamine stared up at him. It felt like an eternity as they looked at each other, before the stranger spoke. 

“You’re here for a reason, I suppose?” “Oh. Um. Yes. I am.” Calamine took the notice he’d posted, now clutched to his chest, and held it out to the man. 

“I need an escort. Someone to take me somewhere dangerous.” 

“Mm. Makes sense you’d come here, then. Come inside, you look like death.” The man snatched the paper from Calamine’s hands before he could protest, ushered him in, and almost slammed the door behind him. 

He seemed fairly down to business. Cal looked around the hall as the man read the paper, trying to familiarize himself with it. 

Although made of stone, the place seemed unfamiliar to him. It was intricately decorated, with strange pelts and weapons hung up on the walls where tapestries and altars would have normally gone. Open torches provided light, and rugs covered the floors. The first room visible was a large meal hall, where several people ate and talked and were, generally, too loud. 

The man must have seen how hungrily Calamine stared at the hall. He must have done a terrible job of hiding it. He clapped him on the shoulder, startling Calamine. 

“Come. Follow me. I am Vidar. We can discuss your contract over food.” 

Calamine walked with him- well, he didn’t have much choice, Vidar might as well have been dragging him- and sat down near the most intimidating of the men in the hall- a mountain of a man with an angry gaze, long white hair in a messy ponytail and a beard to match, and a cloak of what seemed to be animal fur. 

He looked down at Calamine. 

Calamine tried to shrink into himself. 

Vidar had gone off somewhere, and so Calamine was left at this table surrounded by people who were far larger and stronger than himself, feeling like a mouse surrounded by cats. 

Some of them talked to each other. None of them talked to him. The one right next to him simply looked down at him while eating, almost studying him. He wanted to disappear. 

That cycle of anxiety and self-loathing was broken very loudly when a wooden bowl of stew, a plate of various fruits and breads, and a spoon were placed very confidently in front of him. 

Vidar then proceeded to push him out of the way, into the side of the terrifying mountain of a man, and step on the bench and over the wooden table. 

This was met with some laughter, and some slaps to his shoulders when he sat back down. 

Calamine put his cloak’s hood up. 

Vidar sat across from him, and watched Calamine take a cautionary bite of what he could assume was stew. He’d only read about it, so this was a hypothesis that needed to be tested. 

Vidar then proceeded to watch him eat the entire bowl in less than a minute. That first bite had reminded Calamine of how hungry he was, how sparsely he’d eaten on his journey. And now there was what was potentially the best thing he’d eaten in his entire life. The man beside him didn’t take his eyes off of Calamine, but he was past the point of caring.

He was one thick slice of bread into the plate he’d been given when Vidar spoke again.

“Your contract.” Calamine swallowed. He’d almost forgotten about that, in the raw euphoria of having an entire meal. 

“Right. Sorry.” “Don’t worry. First, I’ll probably need your name.” 

“Oh. Calamine.” Vidar raised an eyebrow. “And your last name?” 

Calamine paused. Took another bite of bread to give himself some time to think. Decided the truth would be the best. 

“I don’t have one.” 

“Parents must not have liked you much.” He shrugged. “Not terribly, no.”

Vidar snorted out a laugh. 

“So, Calamine. No last name. Wants a guard for a journey to a dangerous place. You’d be wanting an experienced hunter- that’d be me- for what you’ve described.”

Calamine nodded along, eating at what he hoped was a normal pace that didn’t betray how hungry he was. 

“You don’t have any money for a pay-ahead? I’m going to need something for collateral.” 

The way Vidar looked at him made Calamine think he wasn’t expecting much. He could play into that. 

“I’m sure I can come up with something.” Best not to show all of his cards. He might not have liked his necklace, but he’d barely come out of being robbed so many times with it still around his neck. He wanted to hold onto it. 

“That works. We can talk it out.” Vidar nodded, folding the paper. “You shouldn’t face anything too bad. Where are you going, anyways? You don’t look like the adventuring type.”

Calamine ignored the slight. Finished his plate, and put his bowl on top of it, utensils within. Force of habit. Answered after that. 

“Have you ever heard of Tarocco?” 

The silence that befell the little area around them was so sudden and so thick that the rest of the room looked over to where the pair sat, rippling out until the very edges had gone quiet and looked at Vidar and their guest. 

“Tarocco.” Vidar’s voice was colder now. Calamine nodded. He had the sudden, palpable feeling that he’d just done something wrong. 

“You are aware of the legends surrounding it?” Calamine nodded again. 

“And you are aware that- if it even exists- the chances of anyone going there and surviving is slim to none?” 

Again, a nod. 

“I’m sorry,” Vidar said, shock and rage turning slowly to sympathy. “I can’t take you there. No one else here will, either. I don’t know what you’re seeking there, but it’s a death wish none of us have.” 

“Please.” 

Calamine was surprised by how desperate he sounded as he leaned over the table. 

“I need to get there. I don’t have money, but I can find something. I could make you something. I can make it worth it.”

The sympathy in Vidar’s expression turned to something like pity. Something that made Calamine’s stomach curdle and rage well up in him. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ll make sure you can stay here for the night, and bathe, and I’ll send you off with food in the morning. But you’re on your own.” 

He went back over the table, and the buzz of the room resumed. Hand back on Calamine’s shoulder, he guided him out of the hall, deeper into the keep. Down to the empty rooms for guests, where he brushed away spiders and showed him to a bathroom, where he could bathe, and even explained how to heat the water.

As Calamine left the room, though, he felt the distinctive feeling of eyes on him. It lingered, long past when he’d heated the water, washed himself, his clothes, taken his hair out of its long braid and cleaned it, basking in the feeling of being clean for the first time in weeks. 

He dried his clothes by the fire he’d used to heat the water, and put them on to head to the stone bed he’d been given. As he’d done night after night his entire life, he put his hair back in its braid, and took the time to fix his glasses before he laid down. He’d figure out the next step to Tarocco in the morning. For now, he needed to sleep. 

Calamine’s sleep was cold, and murky, like being drowned in an ocean far below where the light reached. Typically, he woke from dreams like the one he’d had that night in a cold sweat, having to lay back down and rest. 

Tonight, though, he awoke to heavy footsteps outside the door. The sound of a hand in the handle. And the door opening, flooding his room with light from the hallway. 

Although, not much light made its way through. Because, to Calamine’s dismay, the man he’d been sat next to in the hall was staring at him from the doorway. 

This was it. This was how he died. At the hands of a monster hunter who’d correctly deduced the kind of person he was. 

The man made his way into the room, eyes glowing in the darkness. Calamine must have done a terrible job at hiding his terror, because he raised his hands, revealing that one held two bags in it. 

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

His voice was deep, gravelly, and calm. He sounded so sure of himself that Calamine almost believed him. 

“My name is Brynjar Bjornson. You can call me Bryn.” A little weird to introduce yourself to someone you’re about to murder. Calamine was about to speak, before Brynjar spoke again.

“You wanted to go to Tarocco.” “Yes.” He was trying very hard to sound brave. “I can take your contract. I can take you there.” 

Calamine looked at him suspiciously. This ‘Bryn’ had been staring at him all night, like he wanted him dead, and now he was offering to take him somewhere dangerous? 

“How do I know you won’t just kill me?” 

Strangely, Bryn looked almost hurt at that. 

“I can’t promise you will know. But please, trust me. I don’t want you to go alone.” He stepped forwards again, holding the bags out.

“I packed us each some money. And food. We can go now. They won’t notice if we leave before it’s light out.” 

Calamine had to take a second to consider it. At the end, though, he decided that if Bryn had a death wish, who was he to stop him? So he took his cloak again. Reached out, and grabbed one of the bags. Bryn nodded affirmatively, gesturing to the hallway with his head. 

“I’ll make sure you’re protected. I promise.”