The pair, Alric and Cherry, jumped out of the rock. The two bandits, who had just been conversing, pulled out a knife.
"Who's there!"
"Yeah, man, who's there! Like, show yourselves!"
"Whoa! Easy!" Cherry raised his arms. Alric followed, confused.
"Who are you? You're either lost or stupid if you think you can come to the Mistress Hound Handler Den."
"I'm from." Cherry closed his eyes, lowering his tone, "The Flower."
The two bandits immediately dropped their knives. Fear was evident in their faces; whatever Cherry told them was enough to immobilize them.
"Wha-what's someone from The Flower doing here?!"
"We didn't do nothing! We swear!"
Cherry lowered his hands and crossed them; each action he took seemed to make the bandits even more nervous.
"I heard you got a Caravan stashed in there? How come we didn't hear from you?"
"The boss was about to report! We got goods, engine's good too!"
"They aren't stupid!" Alric snapped.
The three of them look at him, dumbfounded, especially Cherry. The bandits seemed to notice that something was wrong with the pair.
"Wait a second, you're not really from The Flower, are you?"
Cherry clicked his tongue, knowing their deception was failing, and shifted his expression and tone back to his earlier persona. "You don't want to do this."
"Ugh-, Fine then! You! Big guy, which branch of The Flower are you from?"
"What?"
"The Rose! He's from The Rose!" Cherry blurted.
The two bandits looked at him, shaking their heads. They drew their knives again, pointing them at the pair.
"Liar! The Rose won't have some meathead in their ranks, I bet that's the only one of the branches you know!"
"Diversity hire?" Cherry said with a crooked smile.
"Enough talk, get ready to-"
BAM!
Without as much as a warning, Alric punched the bandit in the face. The impact was so strong that the bandit was sent flying a few feet away from their original position. His face was caved in and his jaw dislocated.
"Lester! I'm outta here!" The other bandit screamed as he scrambled to run back to the cave.
Cherry sighed, drew a crossbow, and shot the bandit's knees. The man collapsed, foaming at the mouth—the bolt was poisoned.
Cherry retrieved his bolt and quickly patched the man's wound as blood poured from his leg.
"Why are you helping him?"
"He doesn't need to die, bucko. The other guy wasn't so fortunate." He looked up at Alric. He couldn't sense any Aether activity; that was just raw power.
'Scary kid'
"What now?" Alric asked.
"Well, since someone ruined my plan," Cherry said, tossing bandit clothes to Alric, "We're bandits now."
Alric gave him the same look as before, as if he were insane. The shirt reeked and wasn't even his size. He definitely wasn't going to go along with this plan. Yet before he could complain, Cherry had already changed into his own bandit disguise. That was so fast it was almost unnerving.
"Well? What are you waiting for? Do you want the caravan or not?"
Alric let out a sigh. It seemed like he had no choice if he wanted to blend in and recover the caravan. He quickly took off the metal parts of his armor and put on the bandit shirt. Somehow it didn't break apart. The chest part was already ripped, though.
Cherry stifled a laugh and motioned for Alric to follow. Inside, the cave branched in many directions, full of bandits—Alric counted at least 20, not including their boss.
Mistress Hound Handler owned the cave. Alric expected to see dogs, but found none. After a few minutes, he and Cherry regrouped at a utility closet.
"How are we supposed to find the Caravan? This place is massive!"
"Plan was to have those idiots lead us, then someone bashed them!"
"I'm sorry, okay! I just- the merchants are honest people. The bandits have no right calling them stupid!"
"I'd say leaving a Caravan on the side of the road is pretty dumb," Cherry whispered.
"They were injured! What else were we supposed to do?"
"Fine, my bad. Let's focus on getting to the caravan, cool?"
Alric let out a sigh of defeat, "Cool."
The two continued deeper into the cave when they suddenly saw a ravager wolf with a scar across its face. The wolf noticed the two and braced itself, but once it saw Alric, it changed its demeanor. It instantly became afraid and ran deeper into the cave.
"That's the ravager wolf that attacked the merchant!" Arlic said.
"Let's go after it! Maybe it can help us find the caravan!" Cherry said as he ran after the wolf.
Alric and Cherry followed the wolf to a clearing. A dozen sleeping ravager wolves surrounded the caravan.
The injured wolf was preparing to let out a howl to wake the rest of the pack when suddenly-
SWISH
A knife struck the wolf between the eyes. It fell without waking the other wolves. Alric and Cherry exhaled in relief.
"Well, bucko, good news. We found the Caravan," He whispered, "Bad news is-"
Cherry saw wolves sleeping around the caravan. Getting it out wouldn't be simple.