I notice pretty much all of the civilians heading into various tents, with the more drunk ones being dragged into their tents, instead. After that, and after chuckling at Dorisma knocking out the drunkard, I overhear Miles asking if he was a part of this. At first, I assumed he was asking me if he was a part of Birchvale moving, to which I would have obviously said 'yes', but after thinking about it for more than two seconds, I realized that he was really asking me if he was a part of my group, specifically. I didn't know him, at all, and had no idea whether or not he actually was, and I had to keep thinking about it for a while before actually answering "Yeah... I guess. I mean, right now my group just sort of consists of anyone who wants to join. I guess that means you're in," after that, I notice that the goblin archer turned his back to me, as if I offended him somehow. "Speaking of... erm, sorry about earlier, Rou. I'm not used to the whole 'leader' thing, but everyone seems to think I am one... unfortunately," I then just sort of sit there, not really wanting to wander off somewhere, and being a little too awake to head into my tent at the moment. A few guards passed by, and the moment one of them yawned, a second one escorted him to his tent, and took a replacement back with him to patrol the poorly-defined area of land that we're calling our camp at the moment.

The cold was starting to effect me to the point of me having to create a small fire spell in my hand just to warm up. Said fire spell was too weak to actually light anything on fire, but it did provide a tiny amount of heat... which felt like so much more due to my species' natural hatred of cold. Speaking of fire, the campfire was actually still lit, and a few guards were sitting around it, but, unfortunately, I was closer to the 'edge' of this poorly-defined area, so I didn't really feel any of the campfire's heat... no matter how much I wanted to. Another guard walked up to me, and looked at Rou suspiciously, and even asked "Hey... who the heck is that? Is he a thief, or something?" I then answer with "He's Rou... um, he's with me, I guess," the guard then opts to leave us both alone, and that's just about when I remember something... he really WASN'T here until just now. If he wasn't careful, the guards might have attacked him, well, they might have if it was night, which, I guess it was by now.

Before Trey had a chance to fall asleep, Deravan asked him about the dagger he found. He took it out, and began to examine it.
"I prefer to fight from a distance, so I suppose this will be more useful to you than it is to me." He said, handing the dagger to Deravan. "It would be nice to have a backup plan if an enemy gets too close, though. You probably won't be using your old dagger now that you've got a better one, so do you think I could use it?"

I got a response, and it was a rather light-hearted one. I didn't want to be a part of this considering the dangers involved, but I guess if it meant some sort of purpose in this world and a degree of protection, then I'd probably stay with these lads. We also had some new guy join our group, an archer of sorts. Guess I wasn't so new anymore.

It got dark very quickly. Soon, I put away my card and decided to lay on my back, ignoring the empty landscape and open skies with stars twinkling in the darkness. I'll admit I was quite alarmed at the appearance of guards, but I kept a straight face as they only seemed to mind the archer and not me. "Well, this is more boring than expected." I said to no one in particular, shortly after their departure.

Deravan looked at Trey and smiles a bit.
"Sure, here." he says, giving the old dagger that he had from the start to him, then taking the new enchanted dagger. He then stretch a bit.
"I think we need to get a bit of rest, and hope that no humans come and attack us during the night..." he says before going to head to one tent, and then hear Robert and a guard talk about a new goblin that entered the camp. Well... a goblin archer. He might be useful to attack from a distance. He then headed inside a tent.
"Well, goodnight, gonna keep a eye open in case something comes. I am a light sleeper anyway." he says, before going to sleep, hoping that next day would be better, and hope for god that his fur dosen't catch on fire like it did last time... That was something that was unexpected and god dang painful.

Dorimsa's eyes flew open as sunlight streamed through the entrance of her tent, warming her body. She quickly dressed and walked outside popping her neck casually and looking around. Well it seemed that nothing was on fire and from what she could see no one was dead so somebody did their job right. Dorisma sighed and looked around, it seemed from what she could see that breakfast was a do-it-yourself deal. So she packed up her tent and threw it in one of the wagons and grabbed a piece of jerky from a bag and chewed on it as she waited for the rest of the camp to get up and moving.

Somehow, I ended up falling asleep at some point, and I didn't want to get up as soon as the sun rose, again... which meant that for about an hour or so, the guards went into my tent just to wake me up. Finally awake, I got out of my tent, and looked around, noticing a complete lack of a specific goblin ally... maybe he just wasn't interested in joining us, or something, odd. The morning air was still frigid, and the campfire seems to have been recently doused. I would have conjured up another small flame, but I figured that I'd need to conserve my magic for the road ahead. I clutch my chest, reminded of my mild, but annoying injury, and as a result, reminded of the goblin thieves who raided our first camp, and even stole from Dorisma... well, they didn't escape with her coins, and she got them back, but if they didn't fight us, we'd be that much poorer because of it... of course, I'd be healthier. One of the ogres from our camp noticed that I was in pain, and handed me what appeared to be a health potion. "You're injured, right? Bones all messed up? This will fix that," I hesitantly opened the bottle, and the smell of rot poured from it, almost causing me to vomit. I... really didn't want to drink this anymore, but unfortunately, it wasn't up to me anymore, as the ogre literally took the bottle and forced its contents down my throat. It tasted worse than it smelled, if that was even possible, and I actually tried to spit it out, but the ogre was too strong, and he made absolute sure that I drank it... oddly... it actually seemed to work. That annoying pain in my chest faded until it was completely gone, somehow... but now I had to get the taste of that potion out of my mouth.

Thankfully, I still had a few loaves of bread, and eating one not only served as breakfast, but got that horrible taste out of my mouth. I honestly hoped to never come across another 'ogre potion' again. Strangely enough, the ogre who gave me the potion was scratching his head, and mumbling "I thought these tasted good, like fresh meat... lizard guy doesn't like fresh meat?" I decided against answering him, as the mayor ordered the villagers to start packing up the tents so we could continue on, towards and then into the mountain looming in the distance. Its cliffs looked jagged, and massive, with no easy trails upwards, however, there was a cave mercifully low on it, meaning that we were probably going to have to go into that cave, and just hope that it exist out where we need it to... of course, this probably wasn't this group's first time entering that mountain, as several of the kobolds started commenting on it, one of whom apparently lost her husband to a ninja in that cave while they were moving to Birchvale, or, rather, whichever village was built in Birchvale's general area some number of years ago. Somehow, the trolls and ogres enjoyed this cold morning air, as, thankfully, they only smelled of alcohol, rather than sweat and alcohol like they did yesterday... the kobolds, however, were a different story, as they could be heard complaining and shivering... I guess it won't be easy trying to find a temperature that's at least bearable to the entire group when it contains this many different species.

I didn't know what happened last night. I just... kinda blacked out. If I remember correctly, I almost stumbled over a few dry roots of a dead tree, making my way to a supposedly empty tent and lying inside. It was definitely empty, it just wasn't comfortable sleeping on my clothes than on an actual bed.

So, aside for a sore back, I guess that was a nice departure from what happened previously. (To which I mean fighting.) Everyone was getting wide awake, but the sun still hadn't even rose and all we could see were clouds being illuminated from the horizon. I figured it would get rather bright very soon, but for the time being the absence of sun left us all a little cold and bitter in this dawn. "Alright, welcome to 'the middle of nowhere.' Population us, and hopefully we get somewhere by the end of today." I wish I said that, but I just kinda murmured said speech once it turned out not everyone was awake to hear my rambling. Only Robert and a few people suffering from hangovers were awake. I guess I REALLY needed a bed for myself, considering my tent had none.

Dorisma yawned, too much walking for her tastes. As they traveled she began shadow boxing, lightly dashing back and forth, by the time some of the kobolds spoke about rumors of a ninja she had worked up a decent sweat. Figuring that was a decent enough warm-up Dorisma simply continued walking keeping an eye out for trouble and half hoping it showed up. She needed to punch something...

Deravan woke up the next day, and stretched. He then heard something about a ninja and how someone lost her husband to it. He looked towards where that talk was and sighed. If there was another creature that ended up as a ninja, and that he would attack the group... Deravan though he would be the perfect guy to go and counter him, using ninja skills against ninja skills. But if he were to lose... that would be bad, cause maybe the other guy would be a better ninja then him... He sighed and then looked down, before fallowing the group. He then started to feel the cold of the mountain. His fur had grown back a bit during the night at least, so he still felt better, but it was still cold for him. When his species were use to cold places... geez.

Luckily for them, no humans showed up in the middle of the night. If anyone wanted to attack them, they would have done so while everyone was asleep. There must be some reason that they hadn't run into anything yet, though. Maybe there was something going on that was preventing the humans from traveling on this road, or maybe they just happened to get lucky. As soon as the group started moving again, Trey flew into the air once again, in order to keep an eye on the ground. Just like last time, he couldn't find anything that posed a threat to the group.

Eventually, they came to a mountain. Normally, Trey would simply fly over it, but that wasn't an option for everyone else. Trying to go over would create more problems than it would solve, so they had to go through a cave that was conveniently located at the base of the mountain. Judging from what the civilians were saying, this cave was dangerous. They would probably get into combat at some point while going through it.

I finally stop gazing at the mountain, and start heading into its cave, but, before I could take my first step, I hear someone shouting "HEY! RED GUY!" a goblin quickly runs up to me, and stops me in my tracks, adding "I think ya left these back in camp," he then hands me that weird potion from the knight, as well as the bag of holding that R'lyeh used to have. I decided against telling him that these weren't exactly my items, as they were useful, and I'm sure neither of us wanted to go into the sea to look for one specific sahagin, no, instead I took the items, putting the potion in the bag of holding, as well as my old rapier, which was only going to weigh me down, anyways. The princess then decides to start talking again, unfortunately for everyone, and she ends up saying "So, you're just stealing those items from your friend, then? And here I was thinking that the goblin was the thief," I ignored her and just continued towards the cave in the mountain, with her incessantly talking about how we should go find R'lyeh, and how we should try to convince him to rejoin us, all of this before we actually got to enter the cave. By that point, everyone was complaining about the princess constantly talking about this and that, changing the subject on a whim, and never really saying anything positive about anything. The cave, itself was damp, somewhat colder than the outside, which had warmed up a bit since we got here, and it smelled like mold. Oddly, Backstabs seemed to be at home, though I couldn't even think about living in a place like this, she was just wandering around, and for the first time in a while, she was smiling, and she looked refreshed, as if this was some sort of paradise, rather than the cave that it was.

The civilians started talking again until we started to hear some heavy, metallic footsteps up ahead. They went quiet that exact moment until one of them, an ogre, whispered "Humans... armored humans... this can't be good," everyone started picking hiding spots, as well as telling myself and my party to 'go on ahead' or to 'show our strength! FIGHT!'... leaving me, as well as those unlucky enough to be traveling with me as allies without a place to hide from them. All we could do was wait as the footsteps approached us, coming closer and closer. Soon enough, we could overhear some chatter about how the dragon was too tough for them to beat, and how they were lucky to get away, and find shelter in this exact cave. I looked around, and the princess was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she didn't really consider herself a member of our party? Of course, I would prefer it that way, but she seemed to enjoy following us around like a lost puppy... and annoying us twice as much as one. I braced myself as the footsteps grew closer, and honestly hoped that everyone else in my party was ready for an attack in basically a hallway as the footsteps continued to approach us, eventually revealing four humans. A fighter, wearing what appeared to be steel armor, a white mage, a black mage, and a ranger, all of whom stopped as soon as they saw us. "Hey, free experience!" one of them, particularly, the fighter called out to his friends, possibly noticing that I was already shaking from fear, and didn't exactly look capable of doing anything to them.

Deravan moved forwards, before hearing the metalic footsteps that were coming their way. He moved quickly and hid in the shadows, moving silently. When he heard the fighter talk, about free experience, he quickly moved. He then noticed the heavy armored fighter. He might end up a problem for the group if no one does anything. He suddenly swooped down and then arrived behind the fighter, before suddenly using his first dagger strike and hitting right at his neck, actually hitting flesh and bypassing his armor. A swift strike hit the fighter, who fell on the floor, dead, blood spilling all over the floor, before the others noticed their comrade having fallen. He quickly moved, aiming for the white mage now, before doing a quickly dagger slash, only for him to move away quickly to dodge the attack, scared as heck of what just happen to his human friend. At least it was one guy down, now they had to go and take care of the others.

I was initially unsure of what to do, taking a light stroll and inspecting the mess that was our camp. Robert seemed to have some idea of what was to come decided to walk off towards a giant mountain with a bunch of party members. Considering I was now a part of their team and had nothing better to do, following was imperative; I picked up a bunch of items I left in my tent (namely a dagger and a few darts - "Why do I still have these for weapons?"), running off in the distance towards the dots that were my new party members.

For some reason, we decided to explore a new cave. Even though the last one proved to be quite evil for these people and ended up releasing an evil... I can't keep saying 'evil', can't I? They apparently released some infection across the land, which has caused us to move. I'm not really sure whether to be angry or to stifle my emotions for now, but I decided to keep quiet since... well, it's a welcome break from my life, I guess.

After a while of roaming the same landscape, the ground began to be littered with rocks from the sizes of pebbles to boulders. Eventually, we came across a huge dark void, illuminated only by several broken shafts in the mountain. The cave itself was quite creepy, and in fact the mountain and darkness should have contributed to a potentially grim atmosphere - had that princess have ANY sense of the word 'fear.' Either way, we continued on into the cave, damp and as if another infection was beginning to set in (which was unlikely, but you never knew). Although, unfortunately for us, we had bigger problems than a slow-moving ground corrupting evil. (Again, with the word evil...)

We found ourselves fighting. Not amongst ourselves, no. Rather, it was against a bunch of human adventurers... humans... they seemed somewhat weakened by their earlier encounters with a dragon, but otherwise this was still going to be a tough fight. "Oh, bugger!" I scrambled for anything useful as the rest of my team bought out swords and and other weapons. Jamming my hand down my pockets, I felt a brief amount of sharp pain which made me re-evaluate the meaning of life. Eh, no - what really happened was I just clenched my teeth and felt around again, pulling out three glowing darts. Better than nothing I guess.

Considering these were humans, I didn't exactly feel sorry for them. Heck, I was furious that we were considered experience fodder and nothing else useful. We had damned lives too! Some of them were probably just pansies hand-reared from a young age with massive amounts of tutoring. "You are not worthy of my mercy, bitches!" Sure enough, I took one of my darts, wrenched it as far back as possible and began leering at this one human with black robes. He looked like he was dead already, but I intended to ensure he'd go to hell a lot more quickly.

With that, I just let myself go: a burst of strength and a feeling of control made my dart fly across the battlefield. It left behind an intense trail and line of green, zooming across the hair of another human before... piercing. Yes, literally piercing through the black mage's neck. He tried to laugh along with the others, but they didn't even chuckle once he just dropped dead. I just pretended as if I did those for breakfast, smiling briefly like some gimp. "Oh just bugger off you cunts." I groaned, my smile quickly fading.

Dorisma charged forward eager to smash some heads in, she found the fighter's words amusing as her thought had paralleled his. The heavy amour they wore gave them away before they came into view and Dorisma viewed it with a bit of avarice. The armor would look better on her anyway. The fighter was brought down by the troll in seconds and she ignored the robed ones going straight for the guy with the bow, her sudden assault leaving him surprised as one fist smashed heavily into his gut sending him stumbling backwards.

Dorisma lunged forward swinging for a knockout uppercut but the human recovered surprisingly quickly dodging the blow. For some reason the nagging voice that belonged to the princess had vanished as soon as the humans had shown up, interesting. Did she not want other humans to see her? And if so why not? This girl was interesting for all kinds of reasons. "Come back you stupid human!" Dorisma called out intent on breaking the stupid ranger's puny bones.

I noticed that Backstabs just suddenly went missing, that is, until I see the ranger dodge something, and she comes back into view with an empty hand. Apparently, she tried and failed to steal something from him, probably his arrows, given that they allowed him to use his bow, and that, of course, allowed him to attack me before I could get to him, with an arrow finding its way right into my armor. That isn't to say that it didn't hurt, it just didn't hurt as much as I felt it really should have. I simply continued getting closer to the ranger, hoping to force him into close quarters combat, where his bow would almost be useless, and once I got close enough, I tried to pierce through his armor using my rapier, but, he was too quick, and jumped right out of the way... and somehow managed to put space between us, again. Thankfully, and hilariously, he and the white mage were the only ones left, though, the white mage somehow managed to dodge an attack from Deravan... and annoyingly, he started healing the ranger who we just damaged. These two weren't even the biggest threats on their team, no, that would probably have gone to either Mr. "Free experience!" fighter, or the mage... but, both of those went down in one attack, yet, this ranger not to mention the white mage seem to be more than ready to dodge whatever we throw at them, and heal whatever they don't dodge. Of course, even I knew that the mage only had a limited supply of magic... and once that was done, he'd have to resort to hitting us with that stick, which obviously won't do too much, at least, not compared to the fighter's sword, or the ranger's arrows.

Trey's hunch that they would get into combat turned out to be correct. There were four humans - a fighter, a black mage, a white mage, and a ranger. Trey glared at them, particularly the one who considered them "free experience".
"I'm really going to enjoy killing you." He said, taking out the wand he looted from the zombie yesterday. He hadn't really had a chance to use it until now.

Before he knew it, the fighter and black mage were dead. He tried to hit the ranger with a fire spell, but the ranger jumped out of the way, and the spell did nothing but leave a scorch mark on the wall. The two remaining humans were dodging a lot of the attacks that were aimed at them. He hoped that the remaining two wouldn't be instantly killed by his teammates. He'd been waiting his whole life to kill a human.

Deravan, in a quick move, targeted the white mage, knowing he might be big trouble if he were to be left alive. He had to act quickly, or else this could end up with him healing the ranger constantly. He quickly moved and then slashed the white mage once, hitting him right at the side of the chest, hurting him a bit with his dagger, but not enough to finish him. He then quickly moved and attempted another attack, only for the white mage to not only dodge but block his dagger, making him lose balance with his dagger and making it fall... right on his foot, making him scream from the pain of being pierced like that on the foot. Deravan quickly pooled out the dagger from himself, and then backed away, swearing a bit.

Strangely, these humans had no concept of the word 'surrender.' Just as well, we continued slashing and pecking at the rest of them, knowing retreat isn't an option. All we had now was a ranger and a healer, no more warrior or black mage. Both survivors were determined to fight on 'till death, and so did we when they declared their intentions with a sword. Barely any time had passed between us killing those humans and dodging their attacks, but it felt like a grievously long time since we started the fight. Either way, Robert swiftly moved in and tried to slash at the ranger, while our thief also attempted to steal an arrow or two from the ranger. That failed quite miserably, and anything we had dealt to the ranger was quickly negated by the damn healer. Our... shinobi? Ninja? Well, whatever foreign warrior noticed this and tried to stab at the healer, though the coward jumped and barely got away.

Time to finish this, or else things would likely get messier. After one of my darts reappeared in my hand like it had just phased through space and left a purple afterglow, I took another dart and aimed carefully at the healer. He seemed more worried about himself than the ranger at this point, Deravan slashing several times but missing the finishing blow. My best response to that was tossing another dart, this one without any particular glow or velocity to my disappointment. Even more disappointing was that it just seemed to jab him in his shoulder, before reappearing in my hand like I never threw it. Well, I probably shouldn't have thrown it in the first place. He covered his wound but seemingly ignored it, straightening his face while I was thinking that black mage was too old for life anyway. Well, supposedly better than doing nothing, but it didn't help that I still looked like a fool afterwards.

Dorisma kept up her furious assault intent on not allowing the ranger to attack anyone else. He once again managed to avoid one of her punches but her kick caught him right as attempted to dodge into it. Dorisma gave a grin at the grunt of pain he let out and continued pressing her attack. It seemed the others were focusing on the mage so as long as she could keep the ranger's attention the rest of this fight should be simple. He wouldn't get another bow shot off unless he wanted to get a fist to the face.

I look back at my team, wondering if anyone else can heal me, and... looking at Dorisma, Trey, Miles, and Deravan told me that no, nobody else can heal but me. I almost hated the thought of being the team's only healer, but, I figured that's what had to be done, so, I healed myself before anyone else could attack, and felt much better from my own spell. Speaking of medics, and healers in general, Backstabs attacked the enemy's white mage, and managed to just slit his throat, leaving his corpse to fall down between myself and the ranger who decided that now was a good time to practice his accuracy against me rather than just run away... I might have run away if I was the only one of my team left alive, and I wasn't protecting villagers, or doing anything else important. Unfortunately, my thoughts made me pretty much forget to dodge the arrow, as it went right into my chest, thankfully, my armor did enough to stop the arrow before it hit anything vital. I just healed myself and I already feel as bad as I did before I did that... why does he have to keep going after me? Oh... wait... I shouldn't have healed myself, now I know what's going on... he's trying to get rid of the medic first, and that means me now! I thought as I looked for a place to hide so I can continue to heal everyone, rather than just get struck down by arrows and turned into some sort of reptilian porcupine as a result of that. Interestingly, the ranger seemed to just figure out that he should probably run, as I notice him glance at a path that led upwards, and probably out of this cave for a brief moment... why didn't he use that path right now? Why wait?