"It isn't conjured anywhere but here, I can assure you."

"So confident, yet you make certain to try to assure me."

"You understand my angst. I'm not certain that you believe me."

"I don't make any relative effort to believe you. I already know you to be a liar."

The young apothecary is beyond words. I pocket the vial that I purchased from his deceitful hands and shove off through his front door. The sidewalk is patchily covered with a cheap but hardy rock. Adjacent to and across from the liar's store are countless other shops and salons that strive for the same nonsensical commerce that the apothecary gets - the felonious bastard.

The morning is dull and cold. Bustling alike the crowds below is a whirling wind which makes no hesitation to annoy down the chimneys of the marketplace. Garbage holes of solid stone speckle the street corners and bored crowds flock to the ignited ones to keep warm as the snowy wind beats against their backs.

I take a look through the scoundrel's window and spit at his foundation. Down the street rests a frequently passed yet seldom visited tavern. It takes much time to carry on down this street. The mindless habits of the masses make sure to keep the streets as hideously engrossed as possible. Even moments later behind the rackety wooden walls of the tavern can I find no solace.

"Surely the cold's murderous out there."

"Not as deadly as the idiots who bear it."

The hearty old barkeeper laughs. "It's not often you see a day as forsaken as this. Must be some storm having a fit up in the mountains."

"Whatever the mountains are brewing up there has to be far less bitter than whatever black-water you have brewing in here."

The barkeeper laughs again. "Three years of your business and you'd expect someone a lot less sharp-witted."

We talk for a few minutes longer. Ginnis never determined to manage the most rustic and popular tavern of the town. No, the Splinter's Remorse is as crowded with people as it is jovial in name. The buoyant ambiance of the ornate and well-lit inns down either leg of the street draw enough drunken patrons to line through doors and down the sidewalks. And when the hour finally comes that those grandiose houses of the elegant close for the night, the comatose people lumber home. Yet the Splinter's Remorse remains open. Ginnis will rub tables and polish glasses in privacy for the majority of the evening.

"I've always warned about walking these streets at night." He shook a glass at me.

"Viridian hasn't reported an attack in many months."

"That only means one's bound to happen again."

"Even if the fools do come back, there won't be anything to raid."

"That doesn't mean they won't pillage like they normally do."

I paused for a moment. "The quarry."

Ginnis set the glass down and raised an arm in realization. "Of course, the quarry. Doesn't matter that all that's there is makeshift tools and heaps of coal. Doesn't matter that anything they can steal weighs more than the pitiful lot of them. They'll raid us anyway."

The town is a frequent vacation for the passing bandits of neighboring villages. Most common are the routine attacks launched by the haphazard rank of the Black Foragers. They seldom kill our people, but their visits are nevertheless an inconvenience, and the few caravans that do bother trading with us, who are inevitably attending such establishments as the liar's or the illustrious inns down the street, will steer clear of us for days.

Ginnis has by this time convinced me for a short glass of his bitter pumpkin cider. The taste at least works to wash out whatever nonsense had been roaming my mouth for hours past.

The fragile wooden door is thrust open. "Emilio."

I turn my head coolly. "It's been too long since your face has been in Viridian."

"You need to follow me."

By this time I feel his urgency. "Why, what have we developing?"

"It's the apothecary."

I leave my glass at the table and close the door behind me as I rush down the sidewalk.