The sun had begun sinking behind the mountains. About the time the whole world was painted in orange, we were finishing up our early dinner.
“I never knew you were such a skilled fisher, Nissy Lina!” Ran declared with a satisfied smile as she polished off her third of the catch I’d reeled in. We were currently seated on some convenient rocks at the riverside.
“Ahh, it’s actually got nothing to do with skill. I used magic,” I responded.
Using strands of my own hair, an ordinary branch, and a fishing hook I carry around for just such occasions, I’d made an impromptu fishing rod. Onto this I’d cast my “bite-at-every-cast” (proper name pending) spell and gone to town.
The “bite-at-every-cast” spell is a Lina Inverse original I’d made up ages ago by toying around with some magic fundamentals. The key was that it made the fish think the empty hook looked super tasty. I’d initially conceived the spell in hopes that, if cast on a person, they’d be enchanted into finding even the diciest of trail rations delicious when forced to camp outside, although that had never quite worked out. I could trick myself into thinking the food looked good, sure, but fooling my taste buds was a different story.
I’d thus repurposed the spell into a nifty fishing number. That said, the fact that it was actually a recycled failure, plus the fact that it had the power to make river fish extinct if it got out, plus the fact that catching fish too easily paradoxically took the fun out of the endeavor... Yeah, that all made me not want to use it very often. Given our current situation, however—specifically being on the run as wanted fugitives—it was a handy way to get the three of us fed in a speedy fashion.
After Ran, Gourry, and I had escaped from Palbathos, we’d hiked a little ways north up the main road from the city, then entered a forest off the beaten path and headed eastward into uncharted terrain. The kingdom surely had a search party out looking for us right now, and we’d asked Captain Morgan about the land to the north. They were bound to assume we were traveling that way, meaning they’d station soldiers all along the roads and send fast riders ahead to put up wanted posters in every town.
But I’d heard that there was a ravine to the east of the capital with no major roads leading straight to it, so we’d headed thataway. And, lo and behold, while moving through the forest, we’d hit a ravine... not quite sheer, but pretty steep, with a large river running down the middle. There, I took my companions on a short flight to the other side courtesy of a Levitation spell. With that, even if our pursuers were using dogs to track our scent, they’d lose us at the ravine.
Following that, we kept traveling east until the first hues of evening began to show themselves. We then decided to stop for the night at the next river we hit, feast on fresh-caught fish, and sleep under the stars.
“By the way...” We were sitting among the trees by the riverside when I turned to Ran. “First off, sorry to get you mixed up in all this.”
“No prob!”
“That was fast! Do you understand the situation we’re in here, Ran?!”
“Think so, yeah!”
Really, that was way too fast... Does she ever give anything a second thought? I wasn’t sure if it was just her personality or if it was the way she talked that made her come off that way.
“I mean... to put it bluntly, Luzilte is most likely gonna be after you from now on too.”
“Sure will!”
“Uh...” I scratched at the side of my head but decided to drop it for the time being. “Okay then... Now, as for our next step, I’d like to hear how you feel, Ran. Do you want to keep traveling with us for a while or split up?”
“With—” she began to say with a beaming smile and a raise of her left hand, but I stopped her.
“Hangonhangonhangon! Will you please stop answering questions based on pure lizard brain? First, let’s say you come with us. I promise we’d do our best to get you out of this kingdom in one piece, but if our pursuers catch us on the way, they’re definitely gonna assume you’re in cahoots with us. On the other hand, say we go our separate ways. They’re a lot less likely to track you down if you’re on your own since we’re the ones they’re really after. The hitch is that if they do find you and you can’t talk your way out of it, you’ll have to bust out on your own. So, with all that in mind, what will you do?”
“Stick with you!”
Did... she even rrrrreally think about it?
While I looked at her suspiciously, Ran continued, her lackadaisical smile unchanged, “If I go with you, I can always say ‘let’s split up after all’ later, but if we split up now, that’s that.”
“Wait, you actually thought it through?!”
“I hear that a lot!”
“Okay, I guess we’re hanging out a little while longer, then. Once we get out into the next kingdom, our pursuers shouldn’t be able to move as openly, so Gourry and I will do our best to help you until then. But if you do decide you want to split up at any point, just say the word.”
“Thanks! But Nissy Lina...” Ran began with a joking tone and mischievous gaze. “You said you’re going home, but if you can use magic so powerful it gets a kingdom after you, why don’t you just make your own country here?”
“Ahaha. Heck no,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “I couldn’t do that, and even if I could, it’d just be a huge pain in the butt. It’s my style to brush off trouble that comes my way... then chase down the source of the trouble and make sure it never causes trouble again. I don’t cause commotions because I like it.”
“Uhhh...” For some reason, Gourry, who was sitting opposite Ran, sounded skeptical.
I slooowly turned to face him. “Hmmmmm?”
But the menace I exuded didn’t faze the big lug in the slightest. He simply sighed and replied, “Okay, I get it. You tell yourself you don’t like it. But this is why stuff steps past you out of clear revulsion, you know?”
“Don’t say ‘clear revulsion’!”
“Clear revulsion?” Ran cocked her head, not getting the reference.
“Ah, anyhoo...” I cleared my throat, then said, “We’ll spend the night here and continue east tomorrow. We should eventually hit a village or town, and if there’s a route north from there, we’ll probably take that. But there’s something we need to take care of before we get there.”
“Whazzat?” Ran asked.
I gave her a firm nod and answered, “Disguises.”
Houses lined a north-south road against a mountain backdrop. Behind them were rectangular fields carved into the gentle slopes, and behind those stood rows of well-tended trees. I couldn’t be sure since they weren’t bearing fruit at the moment, but judging from their leaves, they looked like orange trees of some sort.
It was now late morning the day after we fled Palbathos. We’d gotten around to the road that led into town from the north and followed it south to civilization.
“Hello!” I called cheerfully to the villagers farming in the fields.
The locals stared at us. For a minute, they looked suspicious. Which was fair enough, given how we were dressed.
Wanted posters would likely start circulating even this far out in the not-to-distant future. Such posters occasionally had likenesses on them, but they were more often just lists of key features. So, given said features they were likely to list, a simple disguise to make you just different enough would do the trick.
By that logic, I’d removed my cape and pauldrons. I’d then wrapped my pauldrons and other gear up in the cape, which I was carrying over my shoulder with the lining facing out. I’d also more or less swapped outfits with Ran. Gourry had also removed his distinctive armor, which he was carrying in a bundle at the end of Ran’s staff. And for the finishing touch, we’d braided our hair in a loop around our necks. I figured the hairstyle would be so weird that it’d distract anyone from paying too much attention to our faces.
“Ah, hello there,” one of the villagers, an older man nearby, responded to me after a pause.
Here I raised my voice and asked, “Would this be Midalka Village?”
He took a moment before replying, “Come again?”
“I asked if this was Midalka.”
The old man was silent a long time, then said, “No, this’s Moss Village.”
“Eh?” I blurted out. I made a show of pulling a parchment from my breast pocket, going into a huddle with Gourry and Ran, and whispering with them. Obviously, I was only pretending to be lost. “Midalka” was a name I’d made up, and I’d discussed this little act with Ran and Gourry beforehand.
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