I spent some time cleaning out my kettle with a cloth and setting everything away in my pack. It was just me and Gunther on the first floor of the fort. Amaryllis had left with Throat Ripper to go to the top of the tower to draw a map of the region, something that Gunther didn’t seem to mind at all.

Gunther stayed in his seat and watched me work. It wasn’t an awkward silence; we had shared a meal and some tea together, which meant we were more than halfway to being friends already, and a little undeathiness didn’t bother me at all.

“You never said where you were from,” Gunther said. It was a question, but without the tone of one. I think he wanted to make it easy for me to back out if it was awkward to answer.

“I’m from Earth,” I said. “A place called Canada. It’s very cold.”

“Interesting,” he said. “Which dungeon did you appear with?”

I paused mid-motion. “Eh?”

“You’re not from Dirt, are you?” He gestured my way with a still steaming teacup. “I couldn’t pin it at first, but you’re not from this world.”

“How did you know?” I asked as I stood up. I... didn’t know exactly what to do. Fighting was out of the question, Gunther was a friend, or had the makings of one, and denying it was pointless when it was the truth. Still, of all the things I didn’t know, how people treated someone from another realm was... well it was somewhere in the big pile of unknowns.

Gunther coughed. “Every sentence I just spoke was in a different language and you didn’t bat an eye. I don’t doubt that even someone your age could speak four tongues fluently, but I do think that most would be curious about the switches.”

“You... what?”

“You didn’t even notice? Interesting. There’s a Skill called Tongues that at the expert rank does something similar. Though it’s an advanced skill, and a difficult one to acquire. I don’t have it, I learned to speak a few languages the hard way, but people like you, Riftwalkers, the rumours all agree that you have the gift on arriving here.”

“Wait, there are more people like me?” I asked.

Gunther shrugged his shoulders. “One for nearly every new dungeon. Not always people. Those that can speak usually talk of some difficult or impossible quest. Most go on to live rather mundane lives. I’ve heard of strange and unique animals and creatures appearing next to new dungeons as well, so perhaps it is not just the sapient who are summoned.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Ah, I don’t know what that means for me though.”

Gunther hummed and took a long sip from his cup. “Nothing, I suspect. You’re not the first, you’re unlikely to be the last. The world might bless you or it might not. I know little more than rumours, truly. Even if a new dungeon appears every day, they appear so far apart and in such inhospitable locations that it is unlikely that most will meet someone like you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks for telling me, I guess.”

He nodded over his cup. “I was merely curious. I have lots of time to wonder over things.”

I wanted to ask more, but Amaryllis and Throat Ripper both returned, the dog with a clatter of boney paws across the stone ground. “We’re done,” Amaryllis said as she waved a rolled up sheet around.

“Oh, good work Amaryllis!” I said.

She scoffed. “Don’t praise me for drawing something so simple.” She shook her head. “We should be off soon, we’ve spent a fair deal of time here. We need to get back to Green Hold.”

“In that case,” Gunther said as he stood up. “I’ll escort you ladies to the door.”

“Thank you so much for your hospitality, Mister Gunther and Mister Throat Ripper. I’ll cherish the memories. And I do hope we meet again.”

“It was nothing. A welcome distraction, in fact. And you, at least, were a welcome and interesting guest,” Gunther said.

Amaryllis snorted and crossed her wings at that. “This could have been worse,” she said.

Gunther, true to his word, escorted us all the way to the door. “Good bye, big boy,” I said to Throat Ripper before giving him a pat. Gunther only got a handshake because he was an older man and those were serious people that you weren’t supposed to hug. “We’ll see each other again!” I declared.

“Good bye, miss Bunch,” he said. “And you as well, miss Albatross.”

We left by skipping out the front gate.

Well, I skipped. Amaryllis walked like the boring no-fun person she was.

After taking our bearings for a moment, we aimed southwards along a well-trodden dirt path and started heading out. I soon stopped skipping, because even with my awesome calves bouncing around so much was taking a toll and I needed to even out my breathing if I wanted to be able to talk while walking.

“That went well,” I said.

“I suppose it did. A little unorthodox, but the results speak for themselves,” Amaryllis said. “Is walking up to strangers and threats and talking to them your solution to every problem?” she asked.

“Pretty much, yeah,” I said. “I was raised to be as nice to people as I want them to be to me. You know, do nice things for your neighbour and they’ll help you out in turn.”

Amaryllis made a strange trilling noise, almost like a hum but more... birdlike. “That wouldn’t fly where I’m from.”

I had to restrain myself to stop from skipping again. This was my chance to dig into Amaryllis’ past and learn all about her. If I knew more about her then I could become an even better friend. I was already breaking through her antisocial walls! “You’re from the Nesting Kingdom, right?” I asked.

“Most Harpies are. It’s our race's birthplace.”

“Birthplace?” I repeated.

Amaryllis sighed. “You really do need an education. It’s a wonder you know how to read at all.”

“Sorry. Where I’m from it’s pretty much just humans all the way.”

“Ah,” she said as if she understood, though I kind of doubted that. Unless knowledge of riftwalkers was more common than Gunther had suggested. “Well, regardless. If we do end up staying partners in the future, then I’ll have to make sure you read at least the basic history texts.”

A smile burst onto my face and I grabbed Amaryllis in a side hug that had her squawking. “You do want to be friends!”

“Not if you don’t unhand me right this moment, you damnable ape!” she screamed.

A few skeletons on a patrol nearby turned towards us and we both froze. Then they kept on trudging by without so much as a ‘rarr.’

“Sorry,” I said. “Um, change of topic then. What was it like in the Nesting Kingdom? Are you some sort of big shot?”

“I’m the third daughter of the Albatross family,” she said.

“So... you have two big siblings?” I asked. That answer had been sort of strange.

Amaryllis stared to the skies. “You know nothing. And to think I suspected you were a spy.”

“I wish I was a spy,” I said. “It sounds so cool.” I put on my suavest voice. “The name is Bunch. Broccoli Bunch.”

“You would make a horrible spy,” she said. “Unless this is all an act, in which case you’re being paid far too well to spy on someone like me.”

“Was that an insult?” I asked.

“You can assume that when I’m talking about your qualities it is in an insulting manner, yes.” She smiled as she said it though, and I didn’t feel any sting. “To get back to your earlier questions, no, I’m not important. My eldest sister Clementine is set to inherit everything. Which will make her a member of the ruling council of the entire kingdom in a few decades. My second eldest sister, Rosaline, has begun to run the family shipyards and she’s quite talented at it.”

I recalled her mentioning something about Nesting Kingdom airships being the best, and her family being big in that industry, so Rosaline’s position had to be important. “And what about you?”

“I’m the spare.”

We walked a little bit more in a silence that grew increasingly uncomfortable. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t get emotional on my account,” she said. “Spare me your pity. I merely mean that I was trained from birth to replace either one of my sisters if the need ever, in some nightmarish circumstance, arose and one of them needed to be replaced. The spare. Then I turned sixteen and I was let loose, so to speak. My sisters are both in good health, they’re wonderful people, in fact, and there’s no need for any sort of drastic measure. So I was told to just... mind my own business.”

“Is that why you joined the Exploration Guild?” I asked.

“Well, if I’m going to make my family proud it won’t be by sitting pretty in a mansion,” she said.

I really wanted to hug her and tell her that she wasn’t just a spare or something like that, but we weren’t quite close enough for that just yet. Instead I made sure to walk close by her side so that she knew that she wasn’t alone.

I was looking for something more to say when Amaryllis broke the silence. “Do you really not have magic rings where you come from? I thought they were common with humans, especially since you have fingers.” She brought her hand up to demonstrate the lack of fingers.

“Ah, well,” I said. I wasn’t quite ready to tell the whole world that I wasn’t from this place. “We had some. They were called mood rings. They told people how you were feeling and stuff. But mine were useless. All they said was that I was happy all the time.”

“That does sound useless,” she said.

I suspected that if she wore one it would be a nice irritated orange most of the time, but I didn’t say as much. There was a layer of sadness under her prickly exterior, and I suspected that deeper still there was a core of niceness that was just well-buried. I would need to dig for it if I wanted her to become an even better friend.

“Do you have any neat magic trinkets?” I asked.

“I have plenty of them, though I wouldn’t call them mere trinkets,” Amaryllis said. “You have a few yourself, that kettle and that collar you’re wearing.”

“Oh, they both came from a dungeon,” I said. “I think I got really lucky.”

“Lucky that you survived?” she asked wryly.

“Yeah. I really wasn’t as ready as I should have been for that one. But it’s done now.”

“I’ll buy that collar off of you,” she said.

I wrapped my hands around my neck. Sure, it was really ugly, but it would mean losing Orange. “No way,” I said.

Amaryllis made that trilling noise again and shook her head.

We were leaving the area around the fort now, our trek so far having been mostly downhill since the fort was built at the end of a chain of hillocks, probably for the better view they offered. I couldn’t imagine an army fighting around the fort, not with the amount of mud and swampland all around.

There was a small stone bridge ahead that ran over a river. It wasn’t a very deep river, but judging by the marks left on the banks it was fairly dry at the moment. I didn’t want to imagine what the wet seasons around the area were like if this was a dry spell. The trees around us seemed a little parched though, so maybe some rain wouldn’t hurt.

We were crossing the bridge, Amaryllis answering inane questions about growing up as a harpy, when the shadows of the deadened trees shifted.

Three creatures stepped out before us. They were tall, horse like beings covered in loose clothes that draped back over their long bodies and over their more human-like torsos. Not horses, I realized as I looked at them, deer.

“Cervids? Amaryllis asked.

She looked over her shoulder and I did the same. There were three more of them.

All six were armed, and I didn’t like the looks they were giving us.