[IC] The Delivery Quest, Part 1

Beartrand thinks a little, he seems eager to continue

On your map on which direction is the Dark Forest ?

While Yarbi looks he mutter in his beard

Hurry, hurry, I don't want bears to come. Please, no bears !

Ivario takes a deck of cards out of a pocket of his long coat and shuffles it. Then he carefully picks a card at random.

"Ah. Very interesting." He stares at the card for a while. "I have a feeling we should take the path on the left."

Vincent pauses to contemplate the fork in the road. He was only vaguely familiar with this particular part of the wood. . . "Left you say Ivario?" Vincent bends down to study the ground leading down each trail. "Hmmm, perhaps. . .either way they both seem to lead deeper into the woods and in the general direction of our goal."

"What makes you say left, Ivario?" Esther chimes in, trying to get a good look at the man's cards as Vincent kneels to look for tracks and such. "What does the Hermit mean?"

"Ah, an excelent question! Uhm, Esther, was it?" He hands Esther the Hermit card. "You see, the Hermit is showing us the way with his lantern, and he's obviously pointing to the left. The light shows us that this is a positive sign. Aside from that, the straight staff tells us that we should not doubt. A straight line means determination!" He tells all of this in a showman's voice with a smile on his face. Ivario is good at making the mundane sound mystical.

He then turns over the other cards in his hands and spreads them for Esther to see. "You see, I could have picked any of these cards and they all would have had their own outcome." He points to a card with a man with a bow on his back pointing to the right. "For instance this one, The Scout, would have lead us the other way."

Ivario puts the cards away and confidently starts to walk towards the left path.

"Yes," the jumped-up apprentice answers, "Esther. Esther the App... the Spellbinder!" Correcting herself as she goes, the young woman walks along beside Ivario, thrilling to the sensation of being out in the woods, in the wild. Adventure awaited!