Skirts of ivy clung to towering trees. Leaves leftover from last autumn were in the process of decay, crunching under paw and foot. Called lilies of the wyrm in these parts, fingers of indigo flowers released a perfume that could knock a grown man off his steed. For this reason, the party of three concealed their faces in colorful scarves from the nose below. Over their eyes, they wore shaded goggles.

Breaths of pollen glowed like green dust, curtaining everything in the forest. Despite the late hour their path was well-lit, which is why they chose it to begin with. Bringing up the rear, Ira kept a close eye on the drunk taking the lead, a musical man equipped with a fiddle he loved to play around nightly fires.

The drunk was clothed so thickly Ira could not make out his figure from the folds. He wore thigh-high brown boots the same color as the tree-trunks surrounding them. When his head wasn't covered, he had a mysterious and colorful combination of hair. He hummed, and he did this a lot. Morning, noon, and night.

Ira was tempted to gut him here and now, string him up in one of the ancient oaks, and leave him for an unsuspecting man, woman, or child to find. Unfortunately, he had only a few coins to spare. Delivering the drunk to the agreed upon location would guarantee him meals for the next month.

His stomach growled to think of the bountiful dinners he would eat upon payment. Roast fowl, roast potatoes, roast carrots- hell, he would eat a roasted shoe at this point. Thankfully, his sponsor had been kind enough to send him off with purse filled with silver.

It was Ira's own fault for squandering his past earnings in a fools gamble, but under the influence of many, many pints of ale he made a few rash, adult decisions. The first was placing a bet on the world's slowest snail, who it turned out was living the fast life. The second was responding to a "help" column in the weekly newspaper: ESCORT NEEDED, EXPERIENCED TRAVELER A MUST. 

Easy enough, Ira thought. Even his thoughts were slurred by this point. He had built up a hefty tab at the bar to soften his loss while the snails were tossed in a frying pan in the back.

Grabbing another pint of ale, he left the familiarity of Babby's Brewery for the clay-covered wasteland outside. A series of rickety buildings constructed of slabs of metal and held together by the miracles of alchemy made up the entirety of the Outpost.

This is where a few deranged individuals like Ira chose to squander their short lives.

Pouring over the newspaper, walking in circles, zigzags, and other times coming to a full stop he tried to gather his bearings. Ira slowly made his way to the place of business mentioned three paragraphs below the bold header in the newspaper. A flashing, neon sign attached to the front door read: Mitz and Ko. His intention was to knock on the door, but he punched it instead.

Whack. It seemed like a good idea while he was inebriated.

This cleared his head, if only briefly. There was not enough alcohol in all of Outpost to cover the lightning-like pain shooting up his fingers.

"Shit- FUCK- ahh!"

The door to Mitz and Ko opened with a ding. A pair of bells dangled from the door frame.

"Good evening, Shit-fuck-ahh." a monotone voice replied, "A drunk, huh? May I escort you to the nearest police station?"

Looking up, Ira mentally filed this asshole on his shit-list.

"I'm kidding. We've done this before." The man appeared to be in his late thirties with clever, almond-shaped eyes, and umber-colored hair to match. He kept it combed back, with oil or gel most likely, and it was long enough to curl halfway down his neck. He was dressed like the wealthy alchemists of the inner cities with a charcoal coat that billowed to his calves and plain, but expensive sandals. His skin was smooth and bronze like Ira's. The sun in these parts of Outpost could be brutal.

Attempting to gather his senses, Ira lost his moment of clarity. "Ish ams heresh-"

"For a job. Yes, I know. You've said."

Did I? Ira wondered.

"So your willing to be a courier?"

"Thatsh whats I shaid." Or not. Ira was having trouble remembering.

A smile tugged at one side of the man's mouth. Up close, he smelled like cinnamon and incense. He towered over Ira by nearly a head and a half. Ira was quite tall, so this unnerved him. He was used to looking down on others. "What was your name again?"

"Itsh Ira-"

"Ira Norsmen. No need to repeat yourself."

"Buts Ish didn't-"

"-say. My goodness. You like to hear yourself talk, don't you?

"Do yous wants-"

"-to see your credentials? Hmm. Let's see. You're eighteen. A mercenary, and buried in debt."

"Well. Yeash."

"You're hired."

"Real-"

"No time to squabble. You won't stay tipsy for long. Please, come in. Make yourself at home."

Inside Mitz and Ko, the cinnamon smell was a thousand times stronger. Ira wanted to be sick on the carpet, circles of green and gold that moved ever-outwards through a trick of sorcery. The man gave Ira a warning look. The walls were fixed with obsidian candelabras that reflected all of Ira's movements on their polished surfaces. He crept close to one of them. Obsidian was rare in these parts.

The eyes that watched him through the candelabra were alert and verdant like the grassy fields of Northsea. His long hair was somewhere between plain brown and gold, braided down his back in a tradition as old as time among the Norsmen. The jewelry in his ears, and circling his neck and wrists were carved from wyrmwood.

Ira began to investigate his surroundings. The man had disappeared. Most of the room was heavily decorated with useless odds and ends: outdated maps, copper statues, and a spying glass. There was a table, black as the night and full of stars. A scrying table.

This man- whoever he was- wasn't an alchemist after all. He was an augur. That explained why he finished Ira's sentences.

Ira rolled his eyes with disappointment and dread. Before he could walk out the door, the man was standing before him once again. Clearly, he was talented at detecting the future. Most augurs were half as good. "The job pays 20,000 rubes."

For the second time, Ira was sobered. He replied, "I'll do it. I'll do anything."

"I expect so. Over this way- what was your name again?"

"Ir-"

"Oh, yes. Ira. One of the Norsmen. That explains the drinking."

Arrogant augur, Ira muttered to himself.

The rest of Ira's time at the agency was a haze. Before he knew it, he was a registered employee of Mitz and Ko. His first job? Babysitting a bumbling, lecherous idiot. Ira had taken to calling him the fiddler.

"Hey- you- fiddler- stay where I can see you!"

The better part of their journey through the Scalescape Forest consisted of Ira begging the drunk not to touch the poisonous flowers or wander off alone and get eaten by a beast. Ira led them through desert, leech-infested waters, and now this. All for 20,000 rubes.

His mouth watered to think of the money. "Fiddler- for crying out loud- be careful! There's a man-eating wyrm in this forest. Fiddler?" Focusing his eyes ahead, the path was devoid of human presence.

Ira only took his eyes off the drunk for a minute. One minute was all that was needed. He scanned the scenery. Green leaves- green leaves- green- shooting up into the sky were ivy covered tree trunks, but the thing before him wasn't covered in leaves. It was covered in scales.

Ira craned his neck, stretching so far back on his saddle he almost fell off the shaggy wolf beneath him. The white lupine face of his mount began to hiss, "Ira, up there!"

Fleshy scraps dripped from the mouth of a giant serpent, his head stretching to the top of the canopy of ancient oaks. The fiddler laughed until the last, when, with a deafening crunch, he was beheaded by the wyrm.

There went 20,000 rubes.

"Oh, fuck me!"

Fighting the wyrm? That was the easy part. Generation after generation, Norsmen have been famous for killing the wingless, legless dragon-kin. The runes covering his fists and palms were the same tattoos his great-grandmother, Roma the Great, used to slay the ice-breathing Moore wyrm of legend.

Ira had plenty of material in the forest to work with, transforming the trees into a massive cage. Branches and tree trunks twisted around the shimmering body of the wyrm, ripping off scales that fell around him with the weight of rocks. Chunks of dirt sprayed at his eyes as the serpentine creature attempted to slither free of Ira's hold.

"No use," Fal breathed, snapping her teeth at the wyrm's head as it peeked through the bars, "snake-meat. Ira here is descended from Roma the Great."

"Roma the Hated." replied it's lipless mouth.

The wyrm spit the fiddler free, spraying Ira with a red mist. The cage got smaller and smaller until the wyrm was eye-level with Ira. By the time the wyrm was pinned, Ira's hands were alight with alchemical energy and hot to touch.

The air smelled elemental, a common occurrence of alchemy as it both builds things up and breaks them down to their most basic forms. Ira pressed his maroon patterned scarf tight around his mouth as a plume of effervescent pollen shot up from the forest floor. Blinking behind his goggles, he began to access the damage.

What was left of the drunk was human pulp, an absolute mess of brackish blood that pooled onto a bed of weeds. Shoots and briars dug into the belly of the beast. Ira picked his way over knee-high foliage, stepping on a mushroom that exploded upon impact. The breath of the wyrm was foul enough that it wilted the grass before him.

"I curse you, descendant of Roma." a chorus of voices whispered from the wyrm. The giant serpents were famous for mimicking people, tricking them deeper into the woods under the guise of a fellow person until snap. The unsuspecting person was a midnight snack.

"Yeah, yeah, and 'all men like you.' Give up the gimmick, snake. I've heard it only about a hundred times before. That man right there-" Ira indicated the fiddler's corpse, "-was going to make me rich."

"Money- fame- you humans are all alike."

Ira nodded in agreement. "Maybe so."

The wyrm glared at Ira with ember-eyes, a forked tongue flicking between pearly fangs. Before it could utter another word, Ira pulled his rifle free. It was strapped to his back along with a leather pouch, a pair of silver-handled knives, and a shortsword, a sorry work of iron. Lining his barrel, Ira put two shots through one of wyrm's glowing orbs.

Thanks to Ira's alchemical trick, a plume of pollen surrounded them like a fog, filling in all the cracks and crevices of the woods. In all directions, there was low visibility.

Behind Ira, the wolf, Fal, bellowed, "20,000 rubes. You've done it again. You've screwed up, and now we're going to starve."

Ira was used to this sort of harassment. Fal was a bit like a mother to him, "Shut it."

"I need blood. Hot. Salty. Blood. I'm half-starved thanks to you gambling with our money."

"Quiet, mutt."

"Maybe I'll eat you. There's barely any meat left on those bones, but I'll scrape them clean. I promise there won't be a spot of you that goes to waste."

Fal was nearing seventy, one of the last intelligent creatures of her kind. Ira knew she didn't mean a word she spoke. She often reminded him that humans were the nastiest living creatures, not suitable for a woman of her taste to devour.

"There's plenty of wyrm. Eat as much as you like. We're going to need a little wyrmwood to sell in town, seeing that we're returning empty-handed."

Wyrmwood was a fancy word used to describe wyrm bones, a material stronger than most others, but very prominent in these parts. The population of wyrms was skyrocketing. Norsmen, like Ira, used to make good money off of their corpses, but now they sold for pennies at the local market.

The declining value of wyrmwood was one of many reasons hunters like Ira were being forced into odd jobs. Truthfully, he thought work as a escort would be easier. Ha.

The poisonous air had little effect on Fal. She shook free of her scarf. "You are fucked, my dear boy." was Fal's snarly reply as she ripped scales off the wyrm carcass and began to dig deep for the goods below. Speckles of black blood stained Ira's clothes as he stood back with a scarf-hidden sneer. Snapping up a piece of meat, she continued, "You signed the contract, remember?"

Ira didn't want to remember. Somewhere in a haze of beer, he recalled sitting at the starry scrying table of the augur at Mitz and Ko. The augur pointed to the lines and said, "Sign here, here, here, here, here-"

"And heresh?" Without a second thought, Ira dipped his thumb in midnight ink and left his prints all over a contract as thick as a book.

"Good boy," the man replied to Ira, pinching his cheek like he was a toddler and not a soon to be 19 year old man. Ira felt a bit like a pet- not that Fal would tolerate that sort of treatment. Ira was already missing a pinky finger thanks to her short temper. The stub that remained was capped with bronze; engraved on the stump were alchemical runes.

Dragging the fiddler's corpse to Ira, Fal dropped him and licked her gory chops. "You know what this means, don't you?"

Time to return to the augur.