ABL: Always Be Looting

Aspen Village spread out before them. The same collection of wood and thatch homes, pubs, shops, and little people yelling at each other that they had seen over and over and over on their journey.

This one was important.

The horde was coming. On their backs. The entire way across the Panaplor Fields and through the Windy Forests they had heard the terrible sounds behind them, snarling, yelling, cursing, awful laughing. If they could stop the horde at this town they might be able to stop them for good. If not, Aspen Village would be only the first to be mowed down.

“We must cross the village to the mayor,” Sammi said, pointing across the village toward the oddly large manor planted on the other end, looming over the rest of the buildings. “We must convince Mayor Stoubbourne to raise the fortifications and ring the warning bell. If we cannot save the town, we can save the people.”

“Right!” Sammi’s partner, Di, said. “We’ll make our stand here, and show those hordes that they cannot relieve the Plentiful Lands of their light so easily!”

Sammi nodded, uplifted by Di’s words, and started down the Main Street of town. He was not quite running – he did not want to frighten all the people and start a panic without having some sort of plan in place – but he moved quickly, with purpose. And a scowl hard enough to keep out of his way.

“Hopefully this Mayor Stoubbourne will be willing…Di?”

She’d been right behind him, and now she was completely gone.

“Di?” he called louder.

“Just a second!”

Sammi backtracked until he could find where her voice had come from. A dead-end alley between two houses. Clearly used by the villagers for storage, there was no way through, and nothing more than random boxes and a rat nest to find.

Di was flipping through the boxes, dangerously close to the rat nest.

“Um…Di?”

“Yeah, hold on,” she said, not looking up from the rags she was pulling out of the box.

“Did you…uh…hear something? Back here?”

“No, I just saw this dead end and had to check it out. So far…bullseye!”

Di stood up, her face beaming, over her head she triumphantly held…

“A potion?”

“A high potion!” she said, squirrelling it away into her bag. Where Sammi knew, for a fact, she had thirty-seven other high potions that she never even used. The oldest one had been in there for three weeks.

He shook his head. “Well…great…but we must be going. The horde will be here any minute!”

Away they went down the main road of the village, the mayor’s home inching ever close. But would they reach the home with enough time to-

“Di!”

He’d lost her again.

“Just a second!”

She was down another alley. Picking up barrels. Peering into the space underneath. Finding nothing. Of course she as finding nothing.

“Score!”

Di moved a barrel and picked up what she had found underneath – a cheap dagger, really nothing more than a silver butter knife.

“Do you really need that?” Sammi asked.

“Um, duh,” she said, shoving it into her bag.

“You already have much better daggers, Di. Several, in fact.”

“Yeah, but this one I’ll be able to sell for some coin!”

Three or four coin, from the look of it. And Sammi knew Di had more than enough money to walk into that tavern over there and buy the place out.

Which, apparently, was exactly where she was going.

“Di! We are in a rush!”

“I know, I just need to go inside and talk to everyone real fast!”

“…what?”

But she was already gone inside.

Sammi refused to follow her. She had always been a distracted woman, prone to wandering off path when she saw a cluster of berry bushes or a cat she wanted to pet, but this was too much. The hordes were right there. Surely less than a field or two away from town. He had believed that this sort of urgency would keep her from wandering too far.

Ten minutes later Di came out of the tavern, waving to the people inside.

“I promise, Roderick, I will find your missing cows!” she called to someone inside. There was blackberry smeared on her face and the smell of alcohol on her breath. She grinned at Sammi.

“I just found us, like, five new jobs,” she said. “And a couple of high potions, and this gold sword everyone swore I could take with no issue. This is a great town. Lovely people.”

“Yes,” Sammi said through gritted teeth. “It is. They are. Which is why we have to hurry.”

“Hurry over to that blacksmith to see if I can get my armor and gear upgraded.”

“We’re going to die here,” Sammi muttered to himself as he watched her hustle over to the fires.

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