“We’re staying here?” Reya asked, her eyes nearly doubling in size as she looked from Arwin to Lillia. “Seriously? That’s awesome! What happened back there? I thought you guys hated each other!” “Wait, really?” Arwin blinked in surprise. “I mean, yeah. Anyone would have seen the way you looked at each other.” “Why did you keep trying to have me come along with you if you thought that?” Arwin demanded. “I thought you were oblivious!” “So you did hate each other!” “There was a misunderstanding,” Arwin said with a grimace. A misunderstanding might have been the biggest understatement of the century, but it wasn’t the right time to give Reya their full backstory. She had enough on her plate to deal with already. Reya arched an eyebrow and peered over their shoulders. “Interesting. Now I really want to know what you did back there.” “Don’t worry about it,” Arwin said. “What matters is that Lillia is going to be joining our guild, and we’ll be moving into her inn – at least for our night lodgings.” “The ones you barely use because you’re always working?” Time slipped away. Making utensils was far from a challenging task, and Arwin soon made a drawer’s worth of forks, knives, and spoons. None of them were magical – he had no idea what infusing a spoon with magic would do and he had no desire to find out. Someone would probably just steal it. The utensils were a bit rough, but they’d serve their purpose. A quick glance out the cracks in the walls told Arwin that it was still early in the evening, so he took a trip into town. It didn’t take much time for him to find a carpenter that had a door for sale. Arwin had never considered it, but apparently most doorways were the same size and shape. That made it considerably easier for him to purchase a door as well as some hinges and nails to secure it for just five gold. Arwin took it back to the smithy and hammered the nails into tight preexisting cracks in the stone. Once he’d finished, Arwin took a step back and studied his handiwork. The door wasn’t anything special, but it was a door. He had the key in his pocket, an item he wasted no time in applying to the lock, just to open and close the door a few times. It struck him that he probably looked insane opening and closing a door for no reason, but Arwin didn’t care. It was a step closer to his goals. Soon he’d have a proper smithy, and his guild was starting to come together. Sure, there might have been a potential horde of Wyrms just a few hours from town that could draw the attention of the Adventurer’s Guild and bring everything crashing down on their heads, but that was a problem for later. For the time being, Arwin just wanted to test out the new location of his bed. He headed inside and grabbed the utensils he’d made for Lillia, then stepped back into the street and locked the door behind him. Nodding to himself, Arwin set off down the dilapidated street and toward his new lodgings for the foreseeable future. He made his way into the back and up a set of rickety stairs, taking each one carefully. Lillia had assured them that the stairs were safe when they were bringing the beds up, but that didn’t make him any less suspicious of them. Never thought I’d be sleeping in the Demon – no. In Lillia’s house. Certainly a bit odd, no matter what I say. Reya had moved her bed into the room that Lillia had been using, so Arwin had a room entirely to himself. There weren’t any doors on the upper floor, but it was still more privacy than he’d had in the smithy. The bed took up nearly a quarter of the room, but he had a dirt-smudged window that someone had done their best to wipe down from the inside. It gave him a dim view of the city streets outside, but there weren’t too many cracks in the walls and only a little wind managed to slip through. Arwin covered a yawn and slipped into bed, setting the utensils on the floor at the foot of the bed. It sounded like Lillia and Reya had already gone to bed, and he didn’t want to wake them. I’ll give her the utensils tomorrow. It felt a little odd falling asleep without the proximity of the forge, but it was only a few minutes before he drifted off and darkness swallowed his vision. The next morning came before it was welcome and Arwin blinked awake as dull sunlight filtered through the window. Not much of it actually managed to make it through, but there was just enough to pull him from his rest. Arwin yawned and rolled out of bed, grimacing as he sniffed at his arms. I need to ask Lillia if her tavern has a bath yet. If it doesn’t, I’m going to invest in one. He scooped the utensils he’d made the previous day off the floor and headed out. He could hear loud snores coming from the room across the hall to him, and he poked his head into it to see that Reya was still fast asleep, her head buried under a pillow to avoid the sunlight. Repressing a laugh, Arwin headed downstairs. The sound of clinking metal led him into the kitchen, where Lillia was busy trying to mix a bowl of batter with a metal rod. She glanced up as he entered, then nodded slightly in greeting, her attention returning to her work before doing a double take. “Knives and spoons as well.” Arwin held the bundle out and she took it carefully from him, her eyes lighting up with delight. “This is fantastic. Thank you. Now I’ll actually have something people can eat with normally. All I have to do is actually get a few more customers,” Lillia said with a grin. She pulled the rod out of her bowl and claimed a spoon, sticking it into the batter and giving it a spin. “That’s so much better. How much are these worth?” “Probably about five silver,” Arwin said after a moment. “They were pretty easy to make and aren’t all that fancy. Maybe six?” “Six seems correct. That’s three days of stay for both you and Reya.” “Good. Is there anything else urgent?” “There’s nothing that I need right now, but I always need more cookware.”