The pins were barren, their soils a mix of grays and bcks, the few grass bushes that dotted the nd brown and lifeless. Despite the clear blue sky that they had experienced all day, simply stepping out of the forest and into those fields made it feel like the weather itself had ged in an instant, to a gloomy ambiance g in color and even the usual sounds of nature.

  Along the barely noticeable road path ahead of the crab’s party, they could see vague remnants of civilization through the toppled sign posts and broken pieces of wooden fences.

  Whatever that pce was, it was long gone, leaving nothing but a bleak memory behind.

  “Druma don’t like this pce,” said the agitated goblin, clutg his staff tight against his chest as they walked into the pins.

  “Me her, buddy,” Balthazar said, his frownialks sing the area for any signs of life. “You traveled around a lot, haven’t you, Rye? Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “No,” the ed adventurer responded. “I’ve seen ruins, I’ve seen abandoned buildings, I’ve even seen a burned vilge retly, but nothing so suddenly out of pce as this. It’s like a plete dead spot in the middle of the nd.”

  The crab looked over to the edges of the forest around the pins. They were full of greens and the normal autumnal golds and es, with abundant foliage and life all around them, up to the exact point where the woods ended and the clearing began, barren and devoid of color.

  “It’s like something very bad and very specific happened here, but only here, up to a specific point,” the mert ented.

  Rye rubbed his neervously. “Are you sure this is the pce we want to be in? I ’t imagine anyone living here, and I’m getting a really bad feeling from it.”

  “No, we have to be on the right track,” said Balthazar. “Let’s just push a little further and see if we find a signpost that is still legible.”

  “Couldn’t you send Blue flying ahead to scout the area from above?” suggested the archer.

  The crab g the drake walking alongside them. “I… no, it’s best not to. I don’t know what dangers might lie ahead, and I don’t want to send her in alone. We should stick together as a group.”

  The azure creature looked at the crusta with a hint of surprise in her golden eyes for a brief moment.

  As the four of them advahrough the wastend for a few more mihe outline of a building appeared in the distance, past the remains of a low fend a loy field.

  “There’s a house over there,” Rye announced, holding a hand over his eyes as he sed the horizon. “Looks like a farm.”

  “Or at least what’s left of it,” said Balthazar, approag the openiween the fence posts, where a path once was.

  The house at the end of it was a ruin, most of its roof gone, and the pce where windows once were now merely open holes on the walls.

  “Let’s see if there’s anything or ahere.”

  “I ’t imagine someone living in that pce,” said the human, but he followed all the same.

  As they got closer, something took them by surprise.

  On one of the empty fields he colpsed house, past a broken well, was a man.

  Just an average human being, dressed in worn out farmer clothes, wearing a straw hat full of gaps and holes, tilling at the barren soil beh his feet with a rake.

  “What in the…” said Balthazar.

  “Oh, heya there, friends!” said the farmer with a big smile on his dirty face, as he tio rake the dirt. “Didn’t see ya ing.”

  “Uh… Hi there,” the crab hesitantly said. Something about that man was making him feel uneasy. “How’s… how’s it going?”

  “Oh, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? Just wonderful! Perfect day to tend to my fields.”

  “Yeah… sure?”

  “Looks like the harvest will be good this year!” excimed the farmer, in an out of pce joyful mahat gave Balthazar the creeps.

  “This guy is weirdi. There’s something wrong with him,” the adventurer whispered to the crab.

  “Really, Rye?” Balthazar whispered back. “What tipped you off? The fact that he’s tilling a dead field, or the fact that he’s thrilled to be in the middle of this wastend?”

  The archer rolled his eyes. “I’ll go take a quick look around while you talk to him.”

  “How am I supposed to talk to this—”

  “Oh, heya there, friends! Didn’t see ya ing,” the farmer suddenly blurted out again, with the same wide smile.

  Balthazar winced unfortably. “You, uh… you're feeling alright there, pal?”

  “Never better!”

  “Mhmm, sure,” the mert said tentatively. “We were looking for a town, dor. Would you happen to know where that was?”

  “Oh, of course! dor is right down the road that way,” the man said, pointing the opposite way the group had e from. “I’ll have to visit the market there myself soon, once we harvest all these chestnuts!”

  The crab looked behind the farmer, at the barren field with nothing but one small shriveled dead tree without a single leaf to it, only a broken branch hanging off of it, slowly and creepily swinging in the wind.

  “You’re so… lucky,” he said to the farmer.

  “Ah, it’s a modest living, but I ’t pin,” the cheerful man tinued. “I’ve got my farm, my wife, and my daughter. That’s all I o be happy.”

  Balthazar gnced back at Rye, who eeking ihe seemingly empty house through one of the broken windows. He turned around and shrugged.

  “Alright then,” said the weirded out mert. “I think we’ll just be on our way now.”

  The farmer stop tilling again and turo them. “Oh, heya there, friends! Didn’t see ya ing.”

  “Keep walking, guys,” Balthazar hurriedly said to Druma and Blue as he skittered back to the road. “Eyes forward, don’t look at the strange man.”

  As they returo the main path, Rye caught up to them as well.

  “What was that all about?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, but that guy was clearly not pying with a full deck. Hopefully he’s just the local loony, and we’ll find someone else more… sane.”

  “This pce…” the worried archer said. “I don’t know, it’s givihe heebie-jeebies. I think we should just turn around and leave.”

  Balthazar shook his shell.

  “After we came all this way? No. I won’t leave until we get some answers.”

  “Until you get some answers, you mean,” said Rye. “I still don’t see any reason to be here at all.”

  The crab rolled his eyes. “We’re not doing this again.”

  “I just hope I’m wrong, but I really ’t shake this feeling deep down that I’m going tret ing here.”

  As the group reached a desote crossroads, with a piece of broken stone wall around a hole in the ground where a water well might have once been, they found a woman in an old and dirty dress, carrying two buckets in her hands and walking fast.

  “Excuse me, do you—” Balthazar started.

  “Sorry, ain’t got time to fp my lips with strangers. Got t water to the cows before my pa starts yelling for me,” the woman said loudly, as she walked past them.

  As she did, the crab noticed both of her buckets were pletely empty, one of them even having a rge hole at the bottom.

  They watched on, dumbfounded, as the woman walked towards a barn, or at least the skeletal frame of what once was a barn, now just a few support beams and a broken roof standing over nothing but dead weeds.

  “Is everyone in this pce just mental?” Rye said, still staring at the ruined barn with a baffled expression.

  “e o’s go, the town has to be close,” said Balthazar.

  After just a couple more minutes of walking, enjoying the sights of deg shrubbery, broken fences, and decrepit farmhouses, the group was suddenly startled by a small figure that ran in front of them out of nowhere.

  “Hello, mister!” a young girl carrying a basket said to the crab. “Would you like to buy some flowers?”

  “W-what?” said the mert, taken aback by the flirl’s sudden appearance.

  “Some flowers,” she repeated. “Would you like to buy some? I just picked them!”

  She leaned forward, presenting her basket to them, which had nothing in it, save for a few dry strings of brown weeds and roots.

  “No, we’re good, thanks,” Balthazar hurriedly said, as he walked around the girl with a nervous look in his eyes. “We don’t really like flowers.”

  “F out loud, Balthazar,” muttered the archer, moving up closer to the crab, “does any of this seem normal to you?”

  The crusta grumbled to himself.

  “Fine,” he said to the human. “If we find one more weirdo like that, we’ll go, alright?”

  Up the road, near a half broken stone n, Balthazar noticed anure. A hooded man, tall and wearing maraveling clothes over what he knew well were pieces of sturdy armor, thanks to all the many months spent dealing with simirly dressed adventurers at his pond. What also stood out about him was that, unlike all the other locals they’d seen so far, this one was not doing anything, just leaning there against a pilr, watg them.

  Hmm, there’s something different about this one.

  The crab skittered towards the man. “Excuse me? Hello there. Would you know where dor is?”

  The hooded figure gnced down at the crab briefly, his face covered by a Shemagh scarf that left only his eyes exposed. “I’m just a farmer. Never heard of it. You probably took a wrong turn somewhere.”

  And with that, he bounced off the stone n and started walking away from them.

  Balthazar frowned. He knew he was on the right track. That was the right pce. And that guy was defihe right person.

  With a jump of his eyestalks, the crab quickly reached into his backpack, searg for Ruby’s letter.

  Retrieving the piece of part and unfolding it, his eyes quickly sed through it for the part he wanted.

  “There is a small abaown called dor to the southeast, halfway between your pond and the sea, uhe shade of a hill. You won’t find it on most modern maps, but if you ask about it to the right locals from that part of the ti, they will know of it. Find it and look for any farmers dwelling around its outskirts. Tell them you are looking for the local birdwatg club. They will point you in the right dire to us. Again, I am sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger, but circumstances require extra care.”

  The mert shoved the letter ba his pad skittered forward to catch up with the hooded man.

  “Hey, you, hold up!” Balthazar said. “I o know where dor is.”

  “Told you already, I ’t help you,” the supposed farmer said without stopping or even looking at the crab. “Never heard of it.”

  “I’m looking for the local birdwatg club,” the puffing mert added, as he tried to keep pace with the man.

  The hooded figure suddenly stopped, turning to him with an intense look in his eyes. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Balthazar,” said the crab, as his friends caught up behind him.

  The man pulled his scarf down, and a small hint of a smile appeared on his face.

  “We have been expeg you. e with me.”