Author's Note: Because I love y'all, and because all three of these guys crack me up and I couldn't wait to share them.

Also, because I'm sitting in bed with a fever and I've got nothing to do lately but piddle around on the internet. #$(*$##.

10.

Gradually, other students began to trickle in.

Each arrival sent ripples through our little world. Then our habits shifted to accomodate this new addition, and life went on, as busy as ever.

Dorna was the first.

She was broad-shouldered, sinewy, sallow-skinned, and auburn-haired.

She was also a dwarf, the first female of that race that I'd ever seen aside from Toli. She seemed to be much, much younger than Drogan, and her accent was subtly different. His brogue was rough and abrupt, whereas hers was much softer. She spoke in a laconic, rolling drawl that was almost hypnotic.

Maybe that's why it took me so long to notice when she stole my coin purse.

That little discovery led to an interesting theological debate.

"Your god encourages you to explore undiscovered territory, just like mine does," she pointed out defensively when I confronted her about it.

I blinked. "My god?" I repeated incredulously. "Since when do I have a god?"

"Master Drogan says that you do." She arched an eyebrow at me. "Are you saying that you don't?"

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Privately, I filed the information away under 'something else to yell at Drogan about' and made a mental note to make sure that goddamned holy symbol was still hidden in my trunk. "Even if I did," I said finally. "Since when are my pockets undiscovered territory?"

"Hey," she said, and spread her hands in a gesture of helpless innocence. "They were undiscovered to me."

"They weren't to me. Besides, there's a difference between discovering new territory and making off with it. One is exploration. The other is larceny. See the difference?"

"Ach, there's no harm in it. A coin here, a coin there…who'll miss it?" She caught my highly skeptical stare. "All right, so Vergadain doesn't actively encourage stealing. So what? He doesn't mind it, either."

"That's pure sophistry."

She shrugged. "Vergadain likes that, too," she said easily. "Haven't you ever read a merchant contract? The language in there would make your head spin."

"I used to work for a politician. Trust me, honey, I know all about spin."

"Do you, now?" She grinned at me, her mahogany eyes gleaming with sly amusement. "Well, then, we should get along just fine."

I grinned back. "Just as soon as you give me my money back," I said pleasantly.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said grudgingly, her face turning dour. She pulled my purse out of some hidden pocket in her leather vest. "I was just trying to make sure you were paying attention."

"Mmh-hmm." I looked at my coin purse. Then I looked at her. "So…does that mean I'm not going to have to count this?"

Grumpily, the dwarven woman scrounged up a few more coins from various hiding places about her person. She handed them over.

Shortly thereafter, Riisi delivered a pair of pearl earrings to me, asking why it was that they smelled like me but had been in Dorna's room.

I thanked Riisi, headed down to the Bubbling Cauldron, talked Mara into giving me a plate of cloudberry pie fresh from the oven, and returned to the house.

For the price of a slice of cloudberry pie, Riisi was more than happy to fetch a wand of summoning from Master Drogan's lab. For another slice, she was overjoyed to sneak into Dorna's room and discharge the wand in the dwarf's wardrobe.

I didn't actually witness what happened when Dorna opened the doors to her closet. But I did hear that it took her a while to chase the gibberling down and get her underwear back.

Dorna and I never actually discussed the disappearance of my earrings or the gibberling incident that followed. Funnily enough, though, my jewelry stayed put from that point onwards, though I still made sure to keep a stash of sweets on hand for Riisi. The faerie dragon was the ideal covert agent – small, stealthy, and easy to bribe.

I liked Dorna. But I didn't trust her.

The next student to come was a little harder to like.

I was running laps around the lake when a snowdrift erupted in front of me.

After months of training and occasionally being dropped into combat simulations with angry ankhegs, my response was almost automatic.

Something had popped out of the ground unexpectedly. Therefore, I screamed and tried to hit it.

The screaming part went off without a hitch, but the hitting part didn't go quite as I'd expected.

My fist bounced off of the intruder as if I'd just punched a mattress.

I looked up. A gaunt, greenish-gray face sneered at me. Its features were almost bestial, and its lower canines were far too long, though the upper weren't too far behind.

"Move, you slack-jawed buffoon!" it roared. Green fire limned its hands and spattered to the ground, each drop flaring up violently and gutting a deep hole in the snow before flickering out. "Xanos must not be delayed in his quest!"

I stared up at the man – or rather, at the half-orc, because there was no escaping what he was. No other race I knew of could look that terrifying without even trying, not even a dwarf on a bender. The state he was in was what really caught my attention, though. His clothes were in tatters, his skin was scabbed and filthy, and I could count his ribs through a gap in his ruined shirt. "Holy shit," I said. "What happened to you?"

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the most tactful way to greet a complete stranger - especially one who was kind of huge and kind of green and had just kind of set the snow on fire.

The half-orc snarled wordlessly and stiff-armed me to the side. I didn't resist. This unexpected development had left me feeling a little off-kilter. "Insolent wretch," he spat. "Begone."

He trudged away. I collected my brain from wherever it had run off to and hurried after him. "Hey!" I called out contritely. "Look, I'm sorry. You caught me off guard, that's all." I looked at the way he moved. He was limping badly, as if he couldn't put much weight on his left leg. There was a bloody rip in the leg of his pants, and an equally bloody, inflamed gash in the flesh below it. "You really shouldn't be walking through this snow on that leg, you know," I pointed out. "Why don't you sit down and let me find some help?"

He rounded on me. "You dare to tell Xanos what to do?" he bellowed.

I grimaced and wiped a fleck of spittle off of my face. "If you're going to scream at me like that?" I said acidly. "No. You can limp all the way to Chult, for all I care." I was pretty proud of that little display of geographical knowledge. It might not have impressed a native to this world, but it felt like an accomplishment to me. "And may the gangrene set in somewhere around Calimport," I added. "I hear there's a wizard down there who builds artificial limbs. Have him build you a brain, too, while you're at it."

Then, my spleen vented, I turned away and marched back down to the lake, still fuming.

After a brief pause, I heard snow crunching behind me. "Xanos takes advice from no one," I heard the half-orc snap.

I didn't look at him. "Anyone ever tell you that no man's an island?" I asked. "Oh. Right. You don't take advice. Nevermind." I picked up Silent Partner from where I'd left it when I got to the lake. While I doubted an injured and exhausted man would start anything, you never knew, and I had just been pretty impolite to him - even though, as far as I was concerned, he'd started it.

Quarterstaff in hand, I started running, keeping a wary eye out.

I needn't have bothered. He was still standing there, swaying slightly, when I finished the lap. "Hold!" he bellowed.

I loped by him. "Yeah?" I shouted over my shoulder.

"Xanos seeks a wizard!" he called after me. "An old dwarf by the name of Drogan Droganson!"

I stopped. I turned around. "Why?" I asked suspiciously.

The half-orc's yellow eyes flared with temper. "Just answer my question, woman!" he roared.

"Did you ask a question?" I asked innocently. "Because all I heard was a demand – and we don't do demands around here." I resumed my run.

I finished another lap. The half-orc was waiting for me at the end. He stepped in my path and held his arms wide as I moved to pass him. "The wizard promised to teach Xanos the secrets of power!" the half-orc barked at me.

I stopped. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me," I said flatly.

The half-orc's forehead furrowed. "Excuse me?" he asked.

"Wow. That's the first reasonable thing you've said so far. Keep up the good work." I looked up at him, ignoring his scowl. He was big, but I saw the way his legs were trembling, and I saw the droplets of sweat beading on his forehead. I was ready to bolt if he tried anything, but something told me not to worry too much about an attack from that quarter. The guy looked one good sneeze away from total collapse. "All right," I said curtly, and swept my hand impatiently towards the path that led back to Hilltop. "Come with me."

His eyebrows snapped together in a suspicious frown. "What?"

I scowled back. "You wanted to see Master Drogan, didn't you?"

His frown changed subtly, from angry to perplexed. "Yes, but-"

"Then come with me, and I'll bring you to him," I told him, without bothering to elaborate. I'd take him where he wanted to go and see what Master Drogan made of him, but I'd be damned if I rewarded this jackass's demands with an explanation.

We'd never get to Master Drogan if the jackass in question collapsed halfway, though. I reached out to touch his arm, ready to give him a hand through the deep snow. "It's up that hill. Do you think you can make it?" I asked.

He yanked his arm away, bristling, as if my fingers had burned him.

O-kay, I thought. So somebody doesn't like to be touched.

After an awkward moment, I shrugged and let Mr. Prickly have his way. He made it up the hillside, anyway, and he even did it without my help despite the fact that he was obviously in pain. His pride seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright – which was sort of good, because I wasn't sure how I was going to catch him if he fell. Even as emaciated as he was, he probably outweighed me by a factor of two.

To my surprise, Master Drogan reacted as if he'd been expecting Xanos for quite some time. "Welcome, lad," he said calmly, after Xanos had marched into the gathering room as if he owned the place. The wizard was seated in an arm chair, a cup of tea at his elbow and a book in his hands. "'Tis glad I am that ye could make it." He gave Xanos one of his Santa Claus smiles. "Come on in, make yerself at home."

Xanos took Master Drogan at his word, which was kind of a problem, because Xanos and I spent most of our time arguing – mostly over politics.

It wasn't that Xanos didn't have a good grounding in political theory. It's that he took it to some really strange lengths.

"The best course would be to locate a city under siege, of course, and use my powers to rescue the populace from certain doom," he told me one day, in apparent seriousness. "Then the people, grateful for the salvation of their pathetic lives, will aid Xanos in displacing and executing their former ruler, and they will make Xanos their leader."

I snorted. "Yeah?" I asked skeptically. "And how are you planning on doing that, sunshine? I don't know if anyone's told you, but it's a little hard for one man to fight off an entire army."

He sneered at me. "Do you doubt Xanos's power?"

My voice was bland. "I doubt your judgement."

"Hah! Doubt is just another obstacle in Xanos's path! He will overcome it, as he has overcome all else! His might is the might of ten thousand men! His mastery of sorcery rivals that of the sorcerer-kings of old-"

My temper slipped its leash. "Right," I drawled skeptically. "So you're going to bury that invading army up to the eyebrows in bullshit, are you?"

His eyes went as wide as saucers. His nostrils flared. "Why, you little-"

Things started going downhill from there.

A couple of days later, Xanos cornered me in the kitchen.

"Good news! Xanos has given your words some thought, and has decided that they are not completely without merit," he announced without preamble. He had his hands on his hips, and he was smirking and looking down his nose at me.

I paused with one hand still in the cookie jar. I tried to remember what I'd said to him recently, and whether or not it could be considered incriminating. "What?" I asked warily.

He grinned smugly. "A-ha! You see, it is correct that it would take Xanos some effort to defeat an army. So…" He paused dramatically. "He will buy one!"

I pulled a cookie out of the jar and looked at it thoughtfully. Then I took a bite out of it. "Good," I said noncomittaly, and brushed crumbs off of the front of my shirt. "So, where are you going to find the money to bribe an entire army?"

"Why, from my extremely successful adventuring career, of course!"

"Okay. Let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that that works out for you. How are you going to keep the army bribed?"

"Bah! Once they have witnessed Xanos's true power, they will be like putty in his hands! Further bribes will not be necessary."

I rolled my eyes. "You'd better hope so. It'll just take one snitch to ruin the whole thing, you know," I growled.

He glared at me. "Explain," he ordered haughtily.

I decided that I didn't like his tone. "No," I said, with equal hauteur. Then I ate the rest of my cookie.

Things really went downhill from there.

A little over a week later, a big hand slammed down on the book I was reading.

"An army of orcs may tell the world of Xanos's grand plan, but they will never be believed," the sorcerer proclaimed. He leaned forward and spoke in a singsong voice that dripped honey and venom in equal measure. "Therefore, Xanos will not use mercenaries. He will entice an orc chieftain to attack this city of his, and make it equally worth the tribe's while to vanish forever afterwards. If they speak, well...none will take their word over that of a respected ruler, now will they?" He glowered at me triumphantly. "What do you think ofthat?"

I narrowed my eyes and stared at his hand. "Fine," I said flatly. "Then what?"

"Then what what?" he bellowed. Veins stood out on the sides of his neck.

"You've gotten your fake army to attack. Then you've gotten them to go away. Then what?"

"Then Xanos will have the former ruler executed, and he will assume the throne to rule over a grateful populace!" the half-orc barked. He threw his hands up in the air. "Cyric's Codpiece, woman! Why must you be so bloody difficult?"

"Why must I be so difficult?" I shouted back. "It's reality that's difficult, you imbecile! Maybe you should try it on for size!"

"Who are you calling an imbecile, you imbecile?!" The windowpanes shook in their frames from the force of Xanos's irate scream.

"This yammering retard who's standing right in front of me, that's who!" I yelled back, half-rising from my seat to shake my finger under his nose. "Oh, and by the way, if you knock off the old ruler, what are you going to do with all of his sympathizers? Any members of the military that're still loyal? Kill them, too?"

The half-orc stared cross-eyed at my wagging finger, a sneer curling his upper lip. Then he caught my wrist and forced it down, away from his face. "And why the hells not?" he barked.

I yanked my arm away. "Because it'll be a bloodbath, that's why, and you'll not only be killing off some of the best resources you've got if you start slaughtering senior staff - you'll have to empty the treasury just to keep the uprisings down, and there go civic projects and anything else that might keep the populace happy. Way to go, jackass! Now you've got anything from riots to guerilla warfare to industrial sabotage on your hands, so good luck holding on to that new state of yours!"

His face turned purple. "Then what do you suggest, you thrice-damned, bollocks-breaking harpy?" he roared back at me.

I slammed my book shut - with the half-orc's hand still in it. He screamed. I stood. "I suggest that you'd better work on your social skills before you end up assassinated, herr fuhrer," I growled.

We didn't talk for about three weeks after that one.

I complained to Drogan about it one evening. I paced the floor of his study, wildly waving a snifter of brandy in the air in my agitation. "I don't believe it! Of all the arrogant, entitled, boneheaded, bad-tempered-" I began my rant.

Drogan didn't look up from his scrolls. "Aye, lass, but ye make up for it in other ways," he said calmly.

I stopped in mid-step, my mouth hanging open. Then I shut it with a snap. "I was talking about Xanos," I rasped.

Drogan did look up, then. He smiled at me, his eyes as innocent as a lamb's. "Oh? Then I do beg yer pardon, lass," he said genially. "My mistake."

I took the hint and kept my complaints about Xanos to myself from then on.

Some months later, I came back from Farghan's to find a pale, ash-blonde girl wandering the slopes below Master Drogan's farm, looking lost.

I slowed. "Can I help you?" I asked mildly.

She spun. "Oh!" she said, and blushed. "I'm sorry," she apologized immediately, though I wasn't sure what she thought she should be apologizing for. It wasn't as if taking an afternoon stroll was against the law. "I...I was just looking for someone..."

"Well, fortunately for you, there aren't that many someones in this town," I replied easily. I propped one hand on my hip and leaned on Silent Partner, examining her speculatively. She was a gangly, big-boned girl - plain, for the most part, but her big brown eyes were very pretty, and they gave her an expression of almost doe-like sweetness. "Maybe I can narrow it down for you. Do you have a name?"

"W-what? My name?" she stammered. "Oh, it's-"

"No, not yours," I interrupted. "The name of the person you're looking for."

She blinked. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh! Right. Well, I'm looking for someone by the name of-"

A loud boom echoed across the landscape. It was followed by the crack of splintering wood.

The girl jumped. "What was that?!" she yelped nervously.

I looked around, narrowing my eyes thoughtfully. "Hmm. I'm not sure..." Then I heard an irate scream, and saw a wooden slat shoot into the air just beyond Drogan's house. It tumbled end over end before plummeting back to the earth. I blinked. "Oh," I said in consternation. "Oh, shit."

I obviously hadn't chosen my words well. They only seemed to make the girl more agitated. "W-what?" she asked, and sidled closer to me, wringing her hands. "What happened? What's going on?"

I squinted over the rise. "Dorna must have rigged the privy with a wand of missiles," I explained. There was another explosion, followed by another high-pitched scream and a mushroom cloud of green smoke. I sighed. "Again."

A short figure appeared on the horizon, arms and legs pumping frantically. It soon resolved itself into Dorna, who sprinted towards us with her head down. "'Scuse me, pardon me, thank you," she sang out nervously.

The blonde girl and I stepped aside to let her pass. Soon after, the dwarven woman vanished into a cluster of houses further downslope.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, wincing. "Yeah," I muttered. "Definitely the wand of missiles."

Another figure appeared on the horizon. This one was big, and angry, and there was green smoke pouring off of it like steam. Also, it was limping, and it seemed to be holding its pants up with one hand.

Xanos marched straight up to me, looking neither left nor right. His eyes were blazing as yellow as the sun. "WHERE IS SHE?" he bellowed. "WHERE IS THAT VILE, MONEY-GRUBBING LITTLE HINDLICKER?"

Briefly, I considered throwing Dorna to the wolves - because, really, a magic missile to the ass was harsh, no matter what Xanos had done lately.

On the balance, though, I figured I was better off not getting involved. Let the two of them duke it out, and hopefully they'd get it out of their systems before they took the whole house down. "Sorry. I didn't see her," I lied.

Xanos stared at me. He dropped his hands to his sides. "Ah, so you are foolish enough to take her side?" he growled. "Pah! The idiocy you both display on a nigh-daily basis makes Xanos mourn for the future of this world-"

I glanced down briefly, and then up, and then, as if my eyes were being pulled there on a string, down again. I blinked. Several times. "Is that why you've got your pants at half mast?" I asked bemusedly.

He looked down, too. Then he emitted a short, sharp scream and yanked his pants back up. "Bloody Hells!" he roared, his face flushing a deep purple. "Why does no one ever tellXanos these things?!" Then he hobbled away at high speed, holding his pants up and muttering to himself.

I stared after him. "Well, we've learned something new today," I remarked, my voice quivering with laughter. "Turns out that ol' Xanos goes commando." I blinked yet again. "Maybe there was no room in there for anything else? Dear lord..."

The blonde girl had her eyes squinched shut and her hand pressed against her mouth. From the sound of it, she appeared to be praying - fervently. "Oh, sweet Mystra," she said faintly, her voice muffled by her palm. "Oh, sweet Mystra."

I blinked again. "I'll say," I marvelled. "Wow. Pity he's so crazy. That was just...wow."

The blonde girl stopped praying. "C-can I open my eyes now?" she asked faintly. Her face had turned bright pink. "Is he gone?"

My lips twitched. "Yeah, he's gone. You can look." I cocked my head at her. "I hope he wasn't the one you were looking for," I ventured.

"Oh, gods, no," she squeaked, blushing even pinker. "N-no, I was looking for a wizard...his name is Drogan...he said he was looking for students, and I...I was hoping to speak to him, you see, b-because I'm a paladin...or, rather, I would like to be, and Mystra called me, see?" she said hopefully, and from her collarbone she lifted a little stone amulet with a circle of seven dots on its face. "B-but I'm afraid I'm not very good at it yet, you see, so I'd hoped-"

Most of the words after 'Drogan' washed right over me. "You're here to see Master Drogan?" I said sharply.

She blinked. Her fingers tightened around her necklace. "Well, y-yes," she stammered. "Why? Do you..." Her face brightened. "Do you know him?"

I stared at her. "Okay," I said. "Two things."

The girl returned my stare inquiringly. "Yes?"

"One - yes, I can take you to him. That's not a problem." Then I held up my hand to forestall any exclamations of delight and/or joy from her, because I could see them forming in her big, guileless doe eyes. "Two - wait, what's your name?"

"M-mischa."

"Well, Mischa...about that half-orc you just saw? The one with his pants around his ankles? There's something I have to tell you." I looked at her speculatively. "I think you'd better sit down," I warned her delicately.

She took the news surprisingly well, all things considered - though it took her weeks to stop turning red and scurrying into another room whenever she saw Xanos, and Dorna's unorthodox interpretation of the rules of private property just seemed to confuse her.

Mischa was sweet as pie, really she was, and, since she was also barely seventeen, hating her would have been like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe.

The thing was, none of that actually prevented me from taking a near-instantaneous dislike to her.

It wasn't that she was unpleasant in any way. As a matter of fact, she was almost too kind. Too selfless. Too blonde and unable to grasp the concept of moral relativity.

It had been after her little brother – an apprentice mage – and his master had been attacked and killed by bandits that she had sworn herself to Mystra's service as a holy knight.

"I couldn't let anything like that happen to anyone else ever again," she said softly, her soft brown eyes brimming with tears. "There's so much evil in the world, I just…I can't stand by and do nothing." She wiped her eyes. "I couldn't protect Tory, but maybe I can protect the magic he loved so much," she whispered.

She was a good girl - and she was painfully, even embarrassingly naïve. She wanted to save the world, even though she didn't really know the first thing about it.

Boy, was she in for a surprise.

I was only ten years her senior, but never before had a mere decade felt like such a vast and uncrossable gulf to me.

I avoided her as much as I could. She brought back too many memories.

And so we were four, and Master Drogan presided over us all, his hands folded over his cane and his blue eyes twinkling behind his spectacles.

Life, and our studies, rolled ever onward.