Steven’s cloak and rucksack were quickly draped over a mannequin to dry, his spear placed in its hand. After a guffaw at the entirely incongruous ‘Welcome!! :)’ mat, it was time to show Steven around. There was just one problem.

  “[——]”, Steven said, his false accent so similar to gargling rocks that I would struggle to transliterate it- even It ‘Can Talk!’s translation effect entirely gave up. There was no way speaking like this was good for his vocal cords. “[—~—]!” he observed, obviously oblivious to his own oratory obfuscation.

  “Steven…” I said pained, “would it been possible to reduce the accent a bit? You sound like you’re gargling rocks.”

  For some reason he looked pleased. “Really?” he asked- I gave a quiet sigh of relief- “I learned it from a stone elemental from the southern continent so I’m glad it sounds similar!”

  His real accent was a subtle thing, a clipped tone with ejective consonants: a distinctive click to his ‘t’s ‘k’s and presumably ’p’s.

  “I have no idea if it’s similar at all, but it definitely sounds fake,” I said, intuition telling me he’d prefer the truth over any unmerited praise.

  For some reason he looked pleased about that too, but he tensed up at my next question: “Is that your native accent? Where’s it from?”

  Steven didn’t answer, the silence stretching for a slightly awkward length of time, then he let out a breath and visibly relaxed. “In these parts a question like that could be considered rather prying. But if it’s you I don’t mind telling- you’re not too likely to go tattling,” his lip quirked up at that. “I’m from the Jeenk’aus, a sand tribe of Arakish Desert.”

  I had no idea who they were and by Steven’s chuckle it apparently showed on my face. The Arakish Desert on the other hand- that was the huge desert which sprawled over a large portion of this continent to the south of the Beast Forest. A harsh place to travel through, and harsher to live in, but the sand nomads did both. They were a people known for their incredible hardiness and strength in combat… though not always in a positive manner.

  “I’ve lost a fair bit of colour since I left the Arakish Desert, the tribesmen would call me a pale northern softie now!” Steven joked, waving a hand at his darkly tanned skin. I eyed his bulging muscles.

  “I bet the weather’s drier back home,” I commented, straightfaced.

  His smile faltered slightly and he cleared his throat, changing the subject. “I was saying what a nice place ya got 'ere,” Steven said, looking round the entrance hall, his smile regaining its genuine shine as his gaze passed back over the ‘Welcome!! :)’ mat.

  His fake accent was slowly filtering in, seemingly from force of habit, though fortunately not anywhere nearly as bad as it was earlier so I didn’t bother to mention it.

  “I do quite like it,” I understated, “shall I show you round?”

  A quick tour and 950 stairs later -Steven apparently not even noticing the climb, breathing remaining absolutely steady- I knocked on the door to Tear’s floor, her name now inlaid in the front in swirling gold lettering.

  “Tear,” I called, “we have a guest!”

  It took less than a minute for the catgirl to answer the door, which surprised me a fair bit, teenagers not being known for their promptness.

  “Well if it isn’t the young miss!” Steven said, kneeling down to talk to her.

  She eyed him with suspicion and ducked away from his hand when he reached out to ruffle her hair.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Oh,” he said, retracting his hand and instead pulling something out of a belt pouch. “Would you like a sweetie?”

  Tear’s ears flattened back and she vanished behind me in a flash, leaving Steven to leave his hand awkwardly outstretched.

  “I was just about to go and make dinner so you probably shouldn’t accept right at the moment,” I said, deliberately weaponising my ‘ignorance’ to cut through the tension. “Would you like to help, Tear?”

  A quieter than normal agreement came from behind me and then we were off.

  To break the silence on the way back down the stairs, I asked Steven about his trip through the Beast Forest.

  His reply surprised me but also made sense: it’s actually safest to travel through the Beast Woods and outer reaches of the Forest when it's raining since the monsters mainly stay out of the wet. I thought that was quite sensible of them. Then he went on to mention that it was the safest “despite tha reduced visibility, unstable ground, falling branches, quickmud pits, an’ encounters with Angry Nimbuses.” ‘Safe’ indeed, especially if you aren’t familiar with where you’re going.

  “Oh that reminds me. How’d you find where I live?”

  “I asked Lupia- she wouldn’t normally tell people where people live, don’t worry- I came out here to check up on you two as part of my local guard captain duties.” He paused then admitted “Also I was dodging someone I didn’t want to meet, ‘e’ll be gone by tomorrow evening.”

  It didn’t sound like he wanted to elaborate and I didn’t push, instead asking “Your duties?”

  “Ah, I was forgetting. I came out to let you know that the astrologers say the Pumpkin Moon will be rising this year.”

  That was… news. I knew about how the Moon Events manifested in this world but I hadn’t known it would be this year.

  In this world a full moon on All Hallows’ Eve would rise as a Pumpkin Moon, and the same for a full moon on Christmas Eve which would become a Frost Moon. This occurs more commonly on Reyath than it would on Earth due to the difference in the moons’ orbits- for Earth it would occur every 19 years or so but Reyath was closer to every 5 years.

  Powerful monsters manifest under the light of the event Moons; this resulted in All Hallows’ Day and Christmas Day becoming celebrations of survival which occur every year regardless of whether there was a Frost or Pumpkin Moon, but they are celebrated extra vigorously after one actually occurs.

  All Hallows’ Eve this year was only a little under two months away; I’d have to do something special with Tear. My musings were interrupted when Steven continued.

  “You might not know-“ he gave me a look “-so I’ll remind you: the monsters congregate around the strong, and are drawn to where others of their kind die so-” Steven paused. “Lyte, please pay attention.”

  “What? Oh, sorry!” I paused in my new musings, this time considering arena construction. With the right set up, you didn’t even need to move to constantly slay Pumpkings! “Yeah, I know that.”

  Steven sighed. “Just don’t collect a massive swarm of Moon monsters then kick the bucket and unleash them all on us, and I won’t mind at all.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t!” I promised.

  “Us over at the Outpost will be keeping our heads down and staying out of their way, just like everyone else on the continent.”

  The vast majority of cities don’t fight the monsters at all, simply relying on their walls or palisades to keep them out without having any active participation from the defenders. Nobody wanted to risk killing any of them and attracting the attention of the others.

  “You should listen,” Tear spoke up for the first time since leaving her floor, her clear apprehension at having someone untrusted around seemingly suppressed by his sensible speech. “Back in Durell they provided overnight shelter for us during Moons. They clearly didn’t trust us to not attract the attention of a monster.”

  “It’s likely they also wanted to prevent anyone dying of exposure and their deaths drawing the monsters in,” Steven added. He stopped on the stairs and locked eyes with me. “Lyte, I’m serious here. Don’t do anything stupid. I know from personal experience what it’s like to fight during a Moon. It was a stupid accident- a kid got lost outside the gate and was retrieved by his father. On the way back he cut down just one scarecrow.

  “We ended up having to evacuate the settlement; it’s fortunate they had an emergency underground shelter system prepared, we only just finished when the bosses started turning up. After that… they started flying in faster than we could kill them so we had to emergency recall. The settlement was levelled when we got back the next day- we had to dig through the rubble to get the shelters’ hatches back open again.

  “That town was gone and we got lucky. Many towns bigger than the Outpost have been obliterated without a single survivor, so we will not do anything to draw their attention.”

  I nodded, his serious words reaching me. I would have to be careful, set up my arena deep in the Forest away from my tower so that I could recall to safety without worrying about being followed.

  However… I was still going to fight. I had a Bestiary to fill out and also… I had massive stockpiles of everything from Terraria, but who knew what new materials would appear? I was getting excited already!

  awesome. Especially the bandana- I may well be giving it to a character in a couple chapters depending on how their designs come out in terraria.