“Do you think anyone’s following us?” Mina asked with a giggle.

  Gwyn said nothing to the elf girl as they shuffled down the darkening sandy shores. Behind them, the resort was growing smaller, and trees began to dot the path in an ever-thickening takeover of the shoreline. Even still, the signs littered about indicated that not only were they still on resort property but laid out on a carefully planned hiking path.

  Gwyn wondered how much the builder must have enjoyed the layout of the woods against the ocean background. Perhaps it was a sense of enjoying nature, or maybe a way of lighting some nostalgia for a world no longer gone by. Or perhaps he was just projecting.

  Realizing he had started staring at the ocean, Gwyn turned back to Mina. She leaned over to her side and stared at him with a crooked grin. “Lost in thought?”

  “I, uh, yeah, just a little.” She giggled some more. “You seem in better spirits now.”

  Mina ran forward and held out both arms as she twirled. When she was done spinning, she looked up at the moon while pushing her blonde hair behind a pointed ear.

  “Mistress Kako has granted me some free time, so I guess I’m a little chipper now.” She flashed a grin at Gwyn, who wasn’t sure how to respond. As he scratched at his bad arm, he thought he heard a rustle from behind. Upon seeing nothing, he figured it was just his imagination and looked back at the elf girl.

  Under the light of Resh’s twin moons, she seemed almost to glow with a strange aura. For a second, the fact that she was a story character brought to life became apparent, and Gwyn wondered how he must look through her eyes. Probably a boring loser if he had to guess.

  The elf girl looked at him with her big green eyes, “It’s such a nice night, calm and peaceful.”

  “As long as it stays that way,” Gwyn muttered.

  “Well, it's almost stormy season on Resh, but that’s not so bad either.”

  Gwyn and Mina stared at each other a moment before she furrowed her brow. “Is that not what you meant?” When Gwyn didn’t answer, she added frantically, “I’m sorry. I can be stupid sometimes, but I mean well!”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Gwyn replied. He tried to gesture with both hands, but only his right hand cooperated. “Uh, look, there’s a squirrel or something in the tree.”

  He had not paid attention to the woods but in desperate search for something locked onto a furry creature watching from a branch. It tilted its head as the duo stared.

  Mina laughed, “That’s not a squirrel; it’s a srofful.”

  “Sounds like a mouthful,” Gwyn shot back. The elf girl laughed again. She shook her head and held an arm out while pulling the other back in a pose of drawing a bow. The arrow and bow materialized in her hand and she let it loose. It was silent only a moment before making a thunk in the branch just below the creature. The squirrel look-alike jumped and scurried deeper into the woods.

  “It’s rude to spy!” she said before letting the bow disappear just as mysteriously as it appeared.

  “Oh, come on, it was kinda cute.”

  Mina crossed her arms like an ‘X.’

  “Not cute, not cute at all. Let’s get going from here!” she grabbed Gwyn by the hand and pulled him along. He didn’t mind it much, though he had no idea if the strange girl had a destination in mind or not.

  She let go somewhere just outside the woods, where they could see a large rock sitting in the sand. Every now and then, a wave would come and caress it, but the boulder remained unfazed. The duo settled up against the stone, and Mina let the occasional wave wash over her toes while Gwyn leaned against the hard support.

  They were silent a moment. To Gwyn, it was purely because of a lack of ideas about what they could talk about. He wondered if Mina felt the same way. There was no telling what went on in her mind. Fiona, he would worry about hearing so much silence. Harlan, he would have to pry words out by force if needed. It was strange how different they all were and how much he felt he knew them. The earthling wondered if the elf girl would soon be another person he knew in this strange world.

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  Or perhaps he was finally beginning to bore the elf girl. Maybe she was starting to think about what it would take to get away. He wondered if there was something he could say to run away from the awkward silence.

  Thoughts were interrupted by a gruff voice on the other side of the rock.

  “I got it already, I got it already!”

  “If you had it, we wouldn’t be here putting it together!” came after. This time, the voice was an icy female voice.

  Mina and Gwyn looked at each other. He shook his head, but she nodded and began to creep around the rock. The Nonpareil cursed silently to himself and followed after. He looked down at his Needaimus bonded arm. The metal creature had been strangely quiet for their whole walk, but he was happy he came somewhat prepared—though he hoped he wouldn’t have to need it.

  Mina’s head peaked out from the rock crouched near the ground, and Gwyn’s from standing level. In the distance, three figures were putting together some odd devices that looked something like a cross between scuba gear and a winged jetpack.

  A Hobusian with a jagged crown spoke in the gruff voice from earlier.

  “Ah, you should have let me get one smoke in before we came here; I’m going to be grumpy for this whole expedition!”

  “You were going to be grumpy anyway,” a white Bentalousian woman snapped back as she fiddled with fastening the pack onto her back.

  “You two need to calm down. Once we get our fortune, you’ll be happy we came.” The last to speak was a Zenotote woman with red scales. She was tall and slender, with a face elongated enough to look like a normal lizard. Gwyn realized for a second he had gotten so used to Harlan’s appearance that he forgot most didn’t look the same way. The lizard woman pulled a wet suit over her clothes and held a mask up to her face, turning the glass every which way in the moons light until resting it in one spot. “You two lovebirds, this isn’t a peep show,” she snapped before turning to look directly at them.

  Gwyn jumped. Mina didn’t reply, but her bow materialized once again.

  “Hey,” the earthling hissed, “Quit with the trigger finger. Just pretend that we stumbled on them.”

  “But we did stumble on them?”

  “So it will be easy to pretend!” Gwyn shook his head and held out a hand to pull Mina off her knees. They emerged from behind the rock. He ran some ideas of what to say through his head but didn’t get a chance to start.

  “Wooo, that’s a mighty fine woman for a Netzian,” the Hobusian hollered. “What are you doing with that limp idiot beside you!”

  Mina, who was posed ready for a fight to start earlier, slipped a step closer to Gwyn. A hand clenched around his own, and he couldn’t tell if she was uncomfortable or pissed by the iron grip.

  “Collin, stop behind such a poggly,” the giantess groaned. She smacked the grey man in the back of the head.

  “Ah, can you blame a guy when all I have around is you two!”

  The Zenotote woman approached while rubbing the side of her head like a burst of pain had appeared. Gwyn was surprised to see headaches could be so universal. Mina took a step forward but was halted as Gwyn held her hand firm. When she looked back, he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry about those idiots,” the scaly woman started. “You may call me Amaris. We are a survey team scouting aquatic life in this area for the resort. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening walk, but we will have to ask you to turn back so nothing gets disturbed while we are working.”

  Nothing about the situation suggested they were a survey team or up to any good even, but Gwyn didn’t want to get involved and was willing to let it slide.

  “Ah, my apologies; we seem to have gotten a little too far off the beaten path. Come along, dear, let’s get back to the others.” Gwyn tried to walk away, but Mina held him firm.

  “How are you going to make a fortune though?” She didn’t ask it maliciously or with a tone layered with double meaning. As far as Gwyn, and he assumed everyone else could tell, it was an honest-to-goodness, innocent question.

  “Dear?”

  The woman who called herself Amaris smirked.

  “Alright, kids, I wasn’t born yesterday. If you don’t want to play, we don’t have to.”

  “There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” Gwyn tried to interject.

  “I see that Needaimus on your arm, boy, don’t go thinking you can pretend to be a nobody.”

  “We just happened to meet one day; it’s really no big deal!”

  “You caught us then, the famous treasure hunter guild, Big Hunters. We’ve come to this beach to find a stache of Needaimus that is said to lie under the waves, and we won’t let whoever you two think you are get in the way.”

  Upon her final words, the white Bentalouisan flew into the air above their heads. Mina shoved Gwyn back just in time for both to avoid getting crushed under her attack.

  “Oh, come on!” Gwyn cried.

  “Amaris,” the giantess said as she stood upright, “you talk too much.”

  “Guilty as charged, Dasiy. Be a dear and hold them off while we get the rest of the equipment together!”

  Gwyn had always wondered what it would be like to face a Bentalousian. From what he saw and heard, their punches hit like trucks that could knock someone out of the world, and their fighting spirit was not so easily dampened. Rheba had never asked Gwyn to spar, and had she, he knew he would have refused it, but for a fleeting moment, he wondered if a practice match would have done him some good.

  The moment passed especially fast as a white fist came sailing to his face.