[i]Arcus...the village of Arcus...Why did my mother always insist that these kinds of villages are smelly?[/i] Cassarah thought idly while she walked down the dirt road through the main street, [i]If anything, cities are worse. Filth everywhere...[/i] She stepped over a fresh pile of horse dung reflexively after almost stepping it, momentarily reconsidering her opinion. [i]I suppose there are similarities.[/i]

Cassarah decided to keep an eye to the ground as well as the buildings around her for further obstacles. She was looking for a wise woman who apparently eyewitness to a large form of demon from a raid decades ago. No one had really gone out of their way to document the demon, so Cassarah had been following its trail for a while. Thankfully, no difficult institutions had caught wind yet. All she would need to do after this was take her material back to Savoyard and add the extra chapter to her secret treatise. It was really a shame that she could not gather more information, let alone see the demons for herself.

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the directions Cassarah was provided to find the wise woman were too ambiguous to follow. She wandered around for too long, wasting much of the day. Once she had looped back to the market for the third time, she sighed and resigned herself to asking directions. There was a guard nearby patrolling for pickpockets that would do. She tapped the man on the shoulder and he turned to reveal a thick moustache sticking out from the front of his helmet.

"Can I help you, miss?" He said in a friendly enough voice.

"I was wondering if you could help me find a residence," Cassarah said with an impatient frown at her lack of progress today.

The guard blinked and nodded despite Cassarah's expression. "Of course, who are you trying to find?"

Cassarah managed to cover her surprise at these villagers knowing where everyone is. She wasn't used to small towns. "A wise woman by the name of Sheera? I believe she reads fortunes."

"Oh, that old goat? She's got her hovel not too far from here, what you have to do is follow the road until..." The guard continued pointing and gesturing while he gave directions. Cassarah took it all in, but caught the eyes of another pair of guards watching on. One of them in particular seemed to be giving her the strangest of looks. After she had received the information she needed, she nodded curtly to the guard and started on her way. She pulled up her cowl while she walked past the guards. She hoped they had not caught wind of her business here.