This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn. This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn. That sentence played over and over in Barron’s mind as the group worked their way through the labyrinthine hedges that encircled the keep at the top of the hill; the party delicately stepping over pods and flowers that had the horrifying predilection of exploding underneath them, spraying them with acid, or grabbing and clawing at them if they passed too close. This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn. Stupid. Stupid.
He had thought himself too clever by half for coming up with the idea for the wager with the caravan guardsmen; a bet that would earn each of them two Guilders for spending a solitary night within the confines of this supposedly “Cursed Forest”. Barron had scoffed at that name, marking it up as a just another good branding campaign to keep trespassers at bay. He had seen gangsters use similar naming devices, bestowing upon themselves terrifying nicknames in an effort to make themselves seem more powerful and dangerous: Black Bergan, the Nightblade; Simone the Bloodwitch; Barron the Butcher. Nicknames, from his experience, were typically just a self-ascribed signature designed to elicit a specific response in someone who doesn’t know you well. Unless, that is, these names happened to be earned honestly and given as a mark of respect or contempt - looking at you, Ryka the Rat. Regardless of the origins of how this specific place had come by its moniker, it was quickly becoming evident that the Cursed Forest had earned this appellation with every living tree monster and bizarre animal hybrid that roamed underneath its dark canopy.
This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn. By all accounts, it should have been easy money, but on that very first night the forest itself had come alive and tried to kill them, as unnatural brambly trees limbs clawed into their soft flesh while they tried to sleep. Barron still had stubborn splinters embedded deep in his skin from where the abnormal creature had torn into him with sharp wooden claws. The next day brought hybrid animals, unholy mixtures of the mundane that result in terrifying monstrosities when combined with one another; a duck-lion hybrid; owls crossed with bears, crickets with birds. This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn.
The next day, they should have left the forest and collected their coin, but the group instead felt a draw to go investigate the strange keep that kept watch over this twisted place. Perhaps it was Sinikka’s youthful exuberance and a desire to make a name for herself; or perhaps it was her fanciful stories about vast treasures and riches that such a place might hold – a tale that resonated directly with Barron’s empty coin purse; or, more likely, it was because returning to the caravan meant a return to the drudgery and dull monotony of life on the road. At least here, in the midst of this damned forest with unnatural creatures trying to kill them at every turn, there was something to do. Something to fight. Something to discover. There was a story.
When Barron had ‘retired’ his blades upon arriving in Eadwald, he had tricked himself into believing that he was capable of learning a trade and making an honest living for himself. But here now, in the thick of a world where everything was trying to kill him, he felt strangely at home. Stillness is death, his old partner in crime had used this phrase as a mantra to keep their small gang pressing forward and challenging the territory of the more established Manean duster gangs. The unspoken continuation of that mantra would be and movement is life, and so they pressed on, moving through the traps and tricks and tangles that threatened them at every turn; their hearts beating loudly with exhilaration and with fear and with life.
This will be the easiest coin that I will ever earn. No, far from it. By the time this was done, they would have earned every ounce of gold contained in those two coins with their blood and sweat and tears; but right now, there was no place Barron would rather be.