Skye is the Limit by Phenomenal Pen (best ebook reader ubuntu .TXT) 📖

“To explore the map, yes,” Mage said.

Ranger fell quiet as he weighed all their options. Blacksmith, meanwhile, bounced over to the horn trumpet and picked it up. He offered it to his charmed satchel, which promptly gobbled the item and, amazingly enough, burped before announcing in a dour bass voice: “Inventory full.”

The others looked at Blacksmith with shock and indecision in their faces.

“What?” Blacksmith said sheepishly. “A bag’s gotta eat.”

“Well, you heard Mage, Dreamwalkers,” Ranger finally said. “Let’s start heading north. First stop, Birkwood Forest.”

****

Birkwood Forest was dark and creepy. From between two massive oak trees, a footpath ran through the middle, trodden by many feet and hooves but untouched by any road surfacing.

Inside, they encountered other unusual creatures. Blacksmith spotted a hairy frog which hopped away before he could tell the others, but everyone saw the warthog wearing yellow slippers as it scurried up a pear tree. Then they were alerted by the angry hooting of an owl that looked like it had just woken up, the ear-like tufts on top of its head clumped forward and its tail of purple foxgloves hanging down. 

There was an invisible mischievous entity that kept throwing twigs and branches at them, a feline with a dangerous club-like protrusion at the end of its tail, an ape that gave off an unbearable stench and had a constant halo of flies, a rodent that made a noise like the sound of a tea kettle, a jackalope, a hoop snake, a fanged koala, a hammerhead civet cat, a kangaroo with telescopic and springy legs, and stick insects that spun like whirligigs.

Just as Mage predicted, they saw no sign of the Lord Thorne who, from all their combined dim memories, was supposed to be this fat, grotesque goblin who ordered to have Blacksmith’s arm separated from his body on the first ever spawning. Apparently, goblins had an appetite for human flesh. The questers silently thanked whichever god was watching over them in that artificial world. 

Their trek through Birkwood Forest was much shorter than they anticipated: less than fifteen minutes in fact. Blacksmith wondered if it was another effect of the severed branch node but he looked forward to their next stop on the map: Hordo’s Wayside Inn.   

****

It was a two-storey timber-framed building with steep roofs. The establishment was announced by a sign swinging from a wooden pole in the courtyard and bearing the coat of arms of a boar’s head. 

Inside, the common room was open to the beamed ceiling and its walls were decorated with an odd assortment of escutcheons plus one well-preserved, splayed-out Nidhoggr skin. The floor was strewn with a carpet of rushes to, apparently, soak up the mud and horse dung from the boots of travelers. The whole place was dimly lit with a wooden hanging-wheel candelabra, rushlights on metal stands and hanging grease lamps.

<Good day give thou our Lord!> the proprietor greeted. He was speaking a form of archaic Scandinavian language but thanks to Mage’s telepathic abilities, the Dreamwalkers heard the original sound with an overlay of instant translation: <Thou art the first adventurers to wander thro’ this lonesome part of Erebus and thou art my first e’er patrons. I live to render thou a service.> 

The innkeeper bowed with a flourish. The Dreamwalkers remained quiet but it didn’t escape them that the unctuous proprietor, Hordo, had referred to the dream world as Erebus.

They were the only customers as far as they could see but there were more than enough Sylphian barmaids standing by in the shadows. There was a grand hearth with a roaring log fire, the skull and horns of an unidentified monster above it and a high-backed settle next to it. There was a bar with barrels of beer and ale and various tankards and bottles. To the left, makeshift tables had been set on sawhorses. There were benches, stools and a cut-down barrel used as a table for cards and dice.

Hordo looked as eclectic as his furniture. He was a Troll, according to the 5G-fast sitrep that all of them got mentally, as was common in dreams. He was a Troll, an innkeeper, a brewmaster, a fence, a loan shark and a pimp; and he looked every single one of his varied experiences. He had the odious aura of someone who had his finger in one too many pies.

Trolls had a similar complexion to Orcs. But while the second were moss-green, the first were closer to basil or pine. They also had this baby face – a small, round one with chubby cheeks which, in Hordo’s case, had been enhanced by the impression of someone who had grown up too fast. With his vertical reptilian pupils, pointy ears pierced and laden with gold, and high top hairstyle that was centuries ahead of its time, he looked like someone who’d write your firstborn as collateral in the fine print. For sure, the lettice trims of his robe had looked immaculate at one point but now they looked like the yellowed hair of a literal trash panda.

<We require lodgings,> Mage said. <Only one room. We can do without board.>

“Only one room?!” Elf echoed.

“No food?!” was Blacksmith’s concern. “But I’m starving!”