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Alicia was quite adept at making preparations, Milo noticed. She didn't hesitate to get them a good pair of riding horses and a pack beast for their personal items. Since they were both mages they both tended to require at least one more large bag of stuff each. Alicia was much more able to let off spells by a blink or a snap of her fingers, but Milo sometimes still required a few feathers or a book spell to read.

Milo inwardly begged Alicia to be practical - she had an almost infinite supply of dresses and frilly clothing that he dreaded her wanting to bring along. Mostly because that poor pack animal wouldn't be the only one carrying it all. Fortunately, Alicia had some experience in the field and knew better than to bring nice expensive clothes when she ought to be packing leather armor and cooking gear.

Milo's posessions were already few, but precious. He had a pin which he'd found among the old discards while his friends were busy searching the older portion of town - a mage's retirement home apparently. Alicia didn't speak much about the magician who had lived there, but she never stopped them from getting in and out of it. The pin and a couple other things they found had magical properties. It would prevent a certain amount of elemental wear - mostly keeping the bearer warm in chilly weather and cool or dry in hot or wet conditions. It didn't keep everything out, and certainly seemed to have limits, though. But he would wear it knowing that it would make a long journey more bearable.

He also had a flute, carved with an eye for beauty as well as detail - it had three wonderfully carved images of birds along its side, and was enchanted so that when played out of doors, it could call or command birds. Milo hadn't really gotten the chance to practice with it, but hoped that perhaps on this trip he would get to.

One thing he considered leaving behind, was a strange object indeed. While it looked so delicate as to be a bauble, Milo suddenly realized that if it were magical - which it was, he'd known that for years - it might just come in handy where they were headed. It was a semi-spherical smoothly polished dome of crystal, but in it was set a perfect large snowflake. When the light hit it right, it dazzled the eye with faint colors. It was far more than just pretty though. When he had shown it to Mistress Cane, she went silent. Perhaps she would tell him if she knew what it was for, now.

Alicia could easily enchant her own items on the way to wherever they were going. She chose to take journals, and old items that she had almost tried to forget: maps and notes she had kept for the ... many many years since her adventuring days.

An item of considerable value to anyone was a whistle she had made. Shortly after becoming more adept at her arts, Alicia had made a promise to her companions. They would not have to deal with the undead again. She wore this now, around her neck on a sturdy black cord. The whistle itself was fairly large, and dark. She explained to Milo in curt words that if they were accosted by anything even remotely not-dead-anymore, this whistle should keep it at bay long enough to get away.

The way that she sounded, the way that she clutched the whistle, told Milo that she was terrified of these undead things. He tucked that away in his mind and readied himself for the journey.

The whole group of the inhabitants of her magical school's Tower gathered. There was some concern that with the mistress gone, they might get in trouble. But, with a sweet smile and a faintly detectable spell, Alicia put an end to that nonsense. The servants would busy themselves helping out at the local taverns and the Bath house, and the students could use this time to either get ahead in their studies, or finalize projects they might have been working on. It wasn't as though there were more than two or three other students beyond Milo. How much trouble could they get in? They weren't like him.

So after a day and evening of preparation, Milo and Alicia had their last meal with the Tower attending them, and both tried to sleep well. The next day would bring adventure.

Or at least, dusty travels and saddle sores.

***

"It's a good thing I memorized that 'clean' spell, huh?" Milo said, grinning broadly and helping Alicia up out of the mud. Three days away from Fork, heading north along the single road, they ran into what could only be called a disaster of dirt. Milo suspected a fey-taint in the area, which caused some mole-like creature to grow out of proportion and into a monster. It looked to him like a mole hole, anyway.

Of course, it was about sixteen feet across... and right across the road. Their horses didn't like skirting it, and even though both Milo and Alicia were adept horsemen, nothing could stop the steeds from prancing around. In the soft dirt, Alicia's horse slipped and fell to its knees, toppling his rider overhead, and into the muck.

"Yes," Alicia said, teeth gritted, "it is. Exercise it. Now."

For once, Milo was amused to see that it wasn't actually himself getting that angry scowl, but instead the horse which had stopped running about on the other side of the hole. Their pack animal was placidly waiting there too, along with Milo's mount.

"Don't you get the feeling," Milo said, while waving his hands and performing a very simple - and very useful - spell to clean Alicia's entire wardrobe and fur, "that this just shouldn't be here?"

"What, this dreadful pit? Why whatever gave you that idea, young Milo?" Alicia said, mockingly sweet. "Your powers of observation are stunning."

"You're just angry because you've fallen into it. Let's ... well, did you want to find out what caused it, or should we leave that to the good people of Fork, yonder?" He waved at the town which was of course, three long days away.

"Frankly, I would rather leave it to anyone but you and I."

"Well then, my mistress," Milo said, holding his elbow out and offering to step lively over the soft dirt, "let us leave them to their fate. Moles and all."

"It is not a mole!" Alicia grumbled.

"Then what is it? It's a big soft hole. Dirt everywhere. There are no trails from people digging, no cart tracks, no foot prints."

"There are no moles this far north," Alicia said. "Not even fey tainted ones."

Milo slumped, but helped his mistress onto her horse, and they got back on the road.

***

There were no rooms available in the small township that Milo and Alicia located, and it didn't look as though the locals were interested in hosting a pair of travelers.

"We have been traveling for two weeks," Alicia said, too weary to be her normal imposing self. "Isn't there something? And what is it at this time of year, that's got every room in the town full up?"

Milo watched this interaction carefully. The tavern keeper was a warthog of a large size, and his eyes glinted with some distant anger. The locals weren't eyeing them as kindly as Milo liked. He almost wanted to take Alicia outside and get back on their horses - when a dark-furred feline in the nearby booth slammed his ale tankard down on the heavy wooden table.

"They kin have my bunk. This madness'll stop any time now, missy." He said, standing. A black panther with a missing eye, every bit as imposing as the warthog barkeep. Milo stepped back a tiny bit, gently bumping into Alicia.

"And you're very kind to offer," Alicia said, turning her muzzle to rest barely over Milo's shoulder. It seemed to Milo that she was almost happy to have him between her and the big cat. "Might I ask what you would want in return? We have traveling to do yet, but we greatly appreciate the kindness."

A broad, nasty smile spread across the cat's muzzle. "Aye... Travelin'll keep ye safer than stayin here. There's a rumor bout the town, tha' there's some kind'a attack brewin'. I ain't seen hair nor wing of any such thing," he almost continued, but someone else in the tavern snarled that he ought to keep his mouth shut.

"Strangers aren't welcome jus' now," the panther assured the pair. "Even though we're all strangers in'ere." He gave a long dark glowering look at the others in the tavern, who turned away and back to their own muttered conversations. "As fer what I'd want in return? Th' tab fer th' bunk, maybe a toss wit'ye," he smiled most unpleasantly but only for a moment, "but wit'dat as yer companion," he indicated Milo, who looked all offended at being called 'dat'... "I kin see yer not that type."

Alicia didn't even bother to ask the barkeep how much a room might cost. She handed the panther two gold coins and held her hand out for the key if there was one.

"It's room three," the panther said, "y'get my bunk, as I said." He picked up an axe and a pack that had been resting beside the table where he sat, and nestled them over his huge shoulders. "I'm done wi'this. Ain't no attack comin, why would it come 'ere?"

He exited the tavern, and shortly the sound of his steed's heavy hoof beats were heard outside, headed away from the place.

Alicia and Milo walked to room three. There, they found four cots, three of which already had angry looking mercenary type inhabitants. They looked up, and one of them made a bit of a catcall when he looked Alicia over. Milo wanted to either dive for cover or wait for Alicia's spiteful remark that ought to be coming any moment now... Any time...

Instead, she ignored the mercs. There were two badgers and one female cougar. None of them seemed likely to offer to turn out the light, or to stop their arguing. One of the badgers continued to look at Alicia with a nasty gleam in his eye. Milo finally had enough.

"Don't waste your time," he said, attracting the slightest tilt of Alicia's ear as she assembled the bed. "My ... sister's... been afflicted with a filthy disease. She's hardly the catch she seems."

Milo gulped - hoping that the merc believed him, and moments later hoping that Alicia wouldn't kill him while he slept. Her ears were both back, and she had a scowl on her face, but as the mercs turned their attentions back on one another Alicia's eyebrow flickered up and the curl of her lip told him he'd done well. It would get them to leave her alone, at least while they slept.

In the morning, after a long difficult night's sleep, Milo woke and stretched. His long back cricking and his left ear pinned oddly back from the way he'd had to sleep on the floor. The mercs were all but cleared out - either for the day or the duration.

"Go back to sleep," Alicia said, "if they are gone we might as well enjoy a bit more rest."

"... And if they're gone because they're fighting something off?" Milo's voice wavered a bit, but mostly because of the yawn that threatened to overtake his speech.

"Then we get to leave while they're fighting..." Alicia said, "it hardly matters."

"Unless they're fighting something in the direction that we're headed," Milo said, half asleep already. Alicia continued to putter about briefly, enchanting the doorway and leaving the last of the merc's gear outside the doorway. Perhaps they'd just pass on by, now that she left a spell not to disturb the door.

"You could sleep on a -" Alicia said, but Milo was snoring already. With a little grin on her muzzle, she created a wafting levitation spell and moved him onto one of the other cots. Immediately, he stopped snoring and fell into a much nicer sleep. That at least meant that Alicia could get her own better sleep this time around. She had barely snoozed for hours, the night before, but was so exhausted that she couldn't muster a decent spell to keep them protected.

By the mid morning, it became too light and loud outside to really justify sleeping further. Milo got up and woke Alicia, whose slumber was quite deep. Milo loved it when he could wake his mistress, because she always looked so groggy.

"I think we've bamboozled the barkeep into thinking we're paid up," Milo stated as they walked down to get breakfast. The place was largely deserted, it looked as though the mercenaries had in fact moved on to the fights. Perhaps at the outskirts of town, that was the low murmur of rumors and whispered fears.

As long as the fighting didn't get too close to the town itself, it seemed, most of the locals were a bit more open and friendly looking than they had been the night before. Of course, that might all change at the whim of battle. Alicia and Milo took a few hours to buy supplies, and make sure their horses tack was all in good condition. Even wizards would need saddle blankets, after all.

Alicia's teaching always related how no wizard could survive without a good hot bath at the end of the day. Of course, that always led Milo into a deep fantasy about bathing and the Mistress... It didn't much look as though they would be getting a nice hot bath any time soon out here. But they spent one more night, privately this time because the mercenaries didn't come back to the inn, in this little village.

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