8. Fenric
Fenric took over dinner duties that night after they’d managed to get enough of the house put back together that they didn’t have to worry about it falling down around their ears.
His cooking wasn’t anything to brag about, as he could only reliably make about four things, but most of the time, no one cared as long as they weren’t cooking.
And the food wasn’t likely to kill them.
Since he had access to an oven for once, he made something he normally didn’t, namely blueberry muffins.
He and Hapi might have come up empty on the elk, but they had managed to stumble across bushes of the fruit and filled their pockets as best they could.
With the muffins, there was thick-cut bacon sizzling in the pan, omelets made from a few more of the neighbor’s “borrowed” eggs, and potato pancakes, which should be enough to fill even this gathering of stomachs.
Rain took a large step sideways to suddenly lean into his space, nose working like a bloodhound on the scent. “Are those muffins I smell?”
“They are,” he answered, turning the bacon over.
“You can make muffins?”
“Clearly.”
“Years I’ve known you. Years! And just now you’re revealing your muffins?” Rain put a dramatic hand to his heart, stumbling back in a theatrical way. “I feel betrayed!”
Fenric flipped the last piece of bacon and regarded his friend with exasperation. “We’re either camping out, staying at inns, or on the ship—which doesn’t have an oven—which means I wasn’t able to make them before today. Dumbass.”
Rain paused and then gazed at him hopefully. “So, if I get an oven on the ship, I can have muffins?”
“Yes, Rain, if you put an oven on the ship, I will regularly make muffins.”
The grin spreading across his face was not to be trusted. “I can do that.”
Fenric was one hundred percent sure, without even asking, that Rain would be stealing an oven from somewhere. As long as he wasn’t caught and didn’t ask Fenric to help him move it, it was also not his problem.
“Everything’s done. Rain, get the muffins out of the oven.”
“Sure!” Rain was all too happy to help.
“Dinner’s up,” Fenric called out, hearing assenting noises from the others.
Food was set on the table, people dug in, and Fenric felt pleased everything had turned out as intended. He even got three strips of bacon, which was a miracle because Malfas was, in fact, a large dog in disguise.
Maxie gave everyone a curious look. “Um, Rain, you said you’ve known Fenric for years?”
“Right, right, about…” He paused, brows furrowing. “Three? Four?”
Even Fenric wasn’t entirely sure. “Three sounds right.”
Malfas snagged the last muffin. “You’re curious how we all came together as a group?”
“I am. Very much,” Maxie admitted.
“Well, some of it isn’t that exciting.” Malfas jerked a thumb to indicate Belstrom at the head of the table, to his immediate right.
“Me and Bel are childhood friends, from around the Ringager Mountains. Have you ever been there? The area is just gorgeous, with jagged, snowy peaks all year long and this cute little green valley where people have herds of sheep and goats. In fact, the very best goat milk and goat cheese in all of Moorwood come from the itty-bitty town of Bowen. But that’s not where Belstrom and I are from.
I grew up in the village of Caster, while Belstrom grew up in the village of Longbourne.
Our villages were side by side, basically, only a valley and a river separating the two, so we played a lot together as kids.
Neither of us wanted to stay there once we grew up, so we became adventurers together. ”
“Ah, splendid times,” Belstrom said with a sappy sigh. “That was a good twelve years ago now.”
“Looking back, we were still so young and full of ourselves. I was barely sixteen when we left, and Bel was a strapping eighteen. We were optimistic and na?ve about how that would go”—Malfas grimaced—“and almost immediately got ourselves on the wrong side of the law through no real fault of our own. We came through a town where the sheriff was forcing a younger woman to marry him, and she hired Belstrom to beat him up so she could escape. But the sheriff was wise to her plan, hired on some men as temporary deputies, and set them on both me and Belstrom. It ended in a bloodbath, with nearly all of them, including the sheriff, dying in the process.”
“To be fair, he was a vile man.” Belstrom didn’t look at all bothered by this memory. “It was the catalyst for our wanted posters, though.”
“But you saved the girl!” Maxie looked outraged on their behalf. “Your actions were those of a hero. I cannot understand why either of you would be regarded as villains.”
Belstrom shook a finger. “The appearance of good is more important in society than actual goodness. Anything that goes against the norm is evil by default. Standing up to a person of the law will always get you branded a villain, which was a hard lesson for our young selves to learn, but necessary.”
Fenric winced. Damn, he was spot on. Then again, leave it to Belstrom to summarize the great injustice of the world so succinctly. A wordsmith, that one.
“While we were on the run, we ran into Rain,” Malfas said, continuing the story, still happily tearing into his muffin. “He’d been scuttled, and his crew had mutinied—”
“Damn faithless, sister-kissing rat bastards,” Rain snarled, expression dark.
“—and he was in a fine pickle. We wanted to get out of the area in a hurry, of course, and figured we could help each other out. We told him the story as we got his ship free. Outraged on our behalf, he offered to band together with us for a while if we’d help him with the ship.
I thought it was great to get some experience with something I was ready to learn, and Belstrom loves to learn things, so he was on board—on board, get it?
Ha!—and anyway, that’s how we gained Rain as a party member.
Still adjusting to the whole bathtub thing, though. ”
Maxie tilted his head as if he weren’t sure if that last comment had been a joke.
It hadn’t been.
But he’d see for himself shortly.
“Anyway, we’d been traveling around for several months when we ran into Hapi.”
Hapi let out a long, pained groan that ended with a sigh of resignation. “Yes, so you did.”
Maxie gave him a searching look. “Was that not a good thing?”
“Well, it ended up being one,” Hapi acknowledged. “But the reason for it wasn’t.”
“Hapi’s family discovered him with a necromancy grimoire,” Malfas said, “and he was found to have necro power within his core, so his family threw him out. You have to understand, elves are creatures who celebrate life and all that nourishes it. They don’t do necromancy under any circumstances.
It is the very most taboo thing any elf could do. ”
“Thank you, Malfas,” Hapi cut in, grinding those three words out between his clenched teeth. “Necromancy works well with the magic naturally existing within me and is also my own form of celebrating life. I’m bringing it back to things that have lost their life. What’s greater than that?”
Fenric reached over and patted Hapi’s tense shoulder. “Nothing. You’re better off without those close-minded assholes.”
“Anyway,” Malfas said, picking up the rest of his tale as if Hapi hadn’t spoken.
“He was just trudging along the shoreline when we spotted him. We thought he’d been shipwrecked or something, so we stopped to say hi and see if he needed help, especially with a storm brewing and all.
He said he wasn’t lost, but he was a necromancer and to leave him alone, and that’s basically all it took because Belstrom heard interesting new person and saw a book he hasn’t read yet, so he insisted we take Hapi on board—”
“It was not just for those reasons!” Belstrom protested, but he was grinning.
“Uh-huh, sure it wasn’t.” Malfas rolled his eyes.
“And with the storm coming and all, we talked Hapi on board just until we reached the next town, but by the time we reached it, we realized we all got along rather well, and here he was, a brand-new necromancer who didn’t have the right level or knowledge to really raise the dead or create his own skeletons, so it really wasn’t safe for him to be out and about on his own, he needed a party for protection.
So we talked him into staying for a bit longer. ”
Hapi seemed amused, judging by the way his blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. “I recall the conversation going something along the lines of ‘Just stay,’ with my answer being ‘Fine.’”
“Didn’t take much to convince you,” Malfas agreed cheerfully. “And I’m glad, as you’re a buddy.”
Hapi inclined his torso in a seated bow, his earlier irritation with Malfas vanishing. “I too am glad. Even if you have the habit of talking to thin air.”
“Hey! I’m talking to my constellation, that ain’t talkin’ to thin air, you’re painting me like I’m crazy—”
“If the look fits,” Fenric drawled, mostly to get a rise out of Malfas. Which was admittedly easy.
Malfas reeled back in his chair, clutching at his heart. “Betrayed! Betrayed on all sides!”
Maxie cleared his throat and said politely, “I find it very interesting that the god of booze and chaos would choose to communicate through a club.”
Oh, now that was interesting. Ezlan wasn’t one of the most well-known constellations.
Not like Mineas or Rasoi. Ezlan was widely known among brewers as their patron god.
Most people focused on Edur, god of wine, spirits, and just about anything that could make a person drunk.
He was honored in nearly every tavern and celebration.
It was a custom to set aside the first mug of wine or mead for Edur at the start of the party for his blessing.
What was even more interesting was that few knew Ezlan was also the deity of chaos. In fact, Fenric hadn’t even known that before meeting Malfas, and he had been given a more comprehensive religious education than most.
Which meant Maxie was highly educated in religion to know this information off the top of his head.