It was said the Free City drew all sorts, but mostly it drew all sorts of bad. Bright-eyed adventurers from all over Grandual came to Conthas with dreams of joining a band and touring the Wyld, and inevitably those dreams were distorted, like something reflected in a mirror made of shoddy glass. That, or they had the mirror broken over their heads.
You couldn`t throw a rock without hitting and adventurer, or a thief, or a thief catcher, a bounty hunter, a smoke wizard, a wandering bard, a claw-broker, a storm witch, a sell-sword — or else those who came to profit off this bunch: armourers and ironmongers, harlots and haruspices, dice men and card sharks. Scratch peddlers skulked in alley mouths, while the addicts on whom they preyed slouched in the mud with knives in their hands, bloody gouges on their arms, and blissful grins on their haggard faces. On every corner was a merchant selling magic swords and impenetrable armour, or an alchemist pawning potions of enchantment, or water breathing, or invisibility. Clay even spotted one labelled IMMORTALITY.
"How much for that?" he asked the old woman selling it.
"One hundred and one courtmarks," she announced. "No refunds."
Clay frowned down at the vial. "Looks like grass and water."
The woman glared at him until he moved on.

The last meal they`d eaten was two days earlier, when a sadistic old farmer had tossed them each an apple for doing push-ups on the road. Clay had found a turtle scrabblign up the muddy slope of a creek bed yesterday, but while he`d busied himself starting a fire Gabe had wandered off with the turtle and set it free. He`d placated Clay with assurances that Kallorek would feed them like kings once they reached the city, and Clay had passed those same assurances on to his growling stomach. Sadly, his stomach was less suspectible to bullshit than his head.

Clay let out a breath he didn`t know he had been holding and looked on despairingly while Gabrile knelt to collect the stones he`d emptied from his pack.
"Seriously? Is there a reason you`re bringing a handful of rocks on this fool`s quest of ours?"
Gabriel went to the roadside. When he found the stone Jain had kicked into the grass he examined it as though seeing it for the first time. "These belonged to Rose," he said. "She used to bring them up from the beach when we lived in Uria. I thought I`d bring them in case sh—"
"She won`t want them," Clay snapped. "She won`t care that you brought her a handful of rocks from halfway across the world, Gabe. She`s not a little girl anymore, remember?"
"—in case she`s dead," Gabriel finished. "I thought maybe I would put them on her grave. She`d like that, I think."
Clay shut his mouth. He felt, at this particular moment, like an asshole.

Before Gabe could answer, a woman sauntered onto the road ahead. Her long brown hair was a mess of loosely bound braids exploding into frizzy tangles. Her clothes were in little better condition, but what they lacked in quality they made up for in quantity, layered upon one another with seemingly no regard for pattern or colour. A longbow was slung over her shoulder, and a single arrow dangled loosely in one hand.
"Mornin` boys," she said. "Lovely day for a stroll, ain`t it?"
"Or a robbery," muttered Clay, scanning the forest to either side. Sure enough, he spotted half a dozen others hidden among the trees. All of them women, garbed in the same haphazard fashion as the one who`d blocked their path, and all of them armed, as it were, to the tits.
"Ya think?" she asked with the lazy drawl of a Cartean plainswoman. "I prefer rain for a robbery. Not a downpour, mind you — more of a light drizzle. Suits the mood, I think. You ask me, it`s a shame to spoil a sunny day like this with something so crass as petty thievery." She made a helpless gesture, and then leveled the arrow she was carrying at Clay`s chest. "Yet here we are: petty thieving."

"That`s just how it`s done these days. People want excitement. They want blood. They want to see their heroes in aciton, not just hear about it from some bard who`s probably making up half the story anyway."
Clay could only shake his head in disbelief. Didn`t people know that stories, nad the legends that inevitably sprang from them, were the best part? The gods knew that bards weren`t good for much besides getting themselves killed and telling lies, but they were undoubtedly masters of both. Clay had lost count of the times he`d bumbled his way through a messy, bloody, terrifying brawl, only to hear a bard convince a crowded tavern it had been the greatest, most glorious battle ever waged between man and beast.
In stories there were marches without weeping foot sores, swordfights without septic wounds that killed heroes in their sleep. In stories, when a giant was slain, it toppled thunderously to the ground. In reality, a giant died much the same way anything else did: screaming and shitting itself.