Testing My Luck in the New World

"Stay away from this one, boys," Tillmann said, his voice hard. "None of ye are a match for her..."

"Hoho? How sweet of you, Rock Muncher. Long time no see."

"Elane Bellenfort... What in the hells are you doing here?"

Elane cocked her head, smiling with nothing but her lips. Her cobalt eyes took a lap around the camp, sizing it up.

"L-Lady Bellenfort?" Yua said, wide-eyed.

Elane pointed to her, but didn't let Tillmann out of her line of sight.

"Don't call me that. To you, my name is Elane. Just Elane. Kitty can call me whatever she wants, though. Speaking of, where is she?"

Unconcerned with her surroundings, Elane turned left and right, tracing the camp again for signs of the cat girl we failed to find.

"She's somewhere in the forest," Yua said, trying and failing to use the distraction to worm out of Gawin's hold. "And Alex has been poisoned."

"Poisoned?" Elane repeated with a grimace. "Tch. And I just used my last Cure Poison potion yesterday... Now it feels like I wasted it. Least it kill him, right?"

Deciding this on her own, Elane tilted her head in my direction, now looking me over. She clearly didn't like whatever it was she saw. At least, it brought a furrow to her shapely brow.

"Don't ignore me, Map-Fucker!" Tillmann shouted. "Why are ye here and how did ye get past my barrier?!"

"What do you mean, how? You always use the same passphrase, dumbass. Saint Mejula, blah blah blah. I mean, really? How many years has it been and you never bothered to change it?"

"..."

Unable to refute her, Tillmann's grip on his hammer tightened hard enough to make it shake.

Wait. Do... – coat –, do these two know each other?

I must have managed something akin to a confused expression, because Elane looked to me with a laugh pulling on her lips and explained.

"Tillmann used to be one of my bodyguards back when I traveled the world. This barrier to protect us during the night. Gods, I can't tell you how hard it was to sleep under this thing. Might as well always be daytime.

"Anyways, when you mentioned a dwarf and a barrier back at the tavern, I had a hunch you might have meant him, but I shrugged it off as just a drunken thought. Figured old Rock Muncher here was too proud to let himself fall to thievery. Once I sobered up and got some sleep, I thought to tell you. Just in case, you know? I had Erika track you down again and her nose led us to your inn. There she said your trail up and vanished. You were nowhere in the city. So, I figured that, if you left the city, then you must have headed into the forest. Then we tracked you down again. And then I saw the barrier myself and tried that Saint Mejula nonsense on a whim and, well, here I am."

After her long-winded retelling of her day, Elane levied her axe over her shoulder and set her palm casually on her hip. Tillmann's eye twitched.

"Ye still haven't said why you're here!"

"Uh, yea, I did. I wanted to talk to Alex. And I had nothing better to do."

"Gods... Ye always were recklessly narrow-minded. If all ye wanted were ta talk, why bring the axe?"

Elane shrugged. "I bring it everywhere. Old habits, ya know?"

"Old habits, aye? And here I thought ye gave up those habits and settled down in a big fancy house."