At the end of a long, winding dirt road beneath a star-covered night sky, there stood a tavern. From its windows, light spilled forth and music, sounding both familiar and strange, drifted outside, welcoming all weary travelers, for the tavern was The Walker's Rest, and it sat at the end of all roads.

The dirt crunched beneath the feet of the two figures approaching the tavern. One stood on two legs and was dressed in a blood-red robe with a crooked hat in matching colors resting on top of his head. In his right hand he carried a body length spear, its gray shaft covered in fluid, orange glyphs and tipped by a blade the color of midnight.

Next to the robed man walked a creature of an entirely different sort. She stood on four legs, not two, and was more than a head shorter than the man. And unlike her human companion, her legs ended in equine hooves. On the forehead of the pony sat a horn, the same light blue as most of her body with the exception of her white mane and tail and the symbol on her flank in the shape of a wand over a crescent moon.

The two figures both halted their steps abruptly and looked around in surprise. After they had turned several times to observe the landscape–one that seemed to flow in shape and remain as ambiguous as possible–the man turned to his equine companion and gave her a cocky smile.

“Told you we’d find it. Who's the one with no sense of direction now, huh?”

The unicorn looked at him, clearly unimpressed, and instead cast a quick glance towards the tavern sitting at the end of the road they stood upon.

“What makes you think this is the right place? We could easily have ended up someplace else and the only thing that's waiting for us inside is a hungry monster,” she said with a voice that made the possibility sound like an annoyance rather than a real danger.

The man rolled his amber eyes, irises glowing faintly in the dark, and when he responded, he did so in a carefree tone.

“Have a little faith, Trix. It's not like I would, somehow, manage to stumble into some other omnipresent tavern that isn't as friendly as the one we're after.”

“Really? Because stumbling into trouble is what you're best at.”

“No, that's not the thing I'm best at,” he responded, wriggling his eyebrows suggestively.

The unicorn shook her head, bemused, but didn't actually refute the statement, which the man noticed and made him grin. As one, they both shifted their eyes to the tavern and listened to the music drifting through the night air. It was hard imagining that the place would offer danger when it called to them with such a welcoming feeling.

The unicorn must have conceded to this fact, for when her robed companion stepped forward and started to walk towards the tavern once more, she didn't raise her voice in protest; she only followed in silence.

However, when they arrived at the wooden door, the man hesitated. From inside, the sound of voices could be heard mingling with the music, and a kind of warmth emanated from the building. The door itself was made of a dark, brown wood and managed to look both sturdy and yet elegant in its simplicity. The rest of the structure gave a similar sense of having been made by a master craftsman, but one that favored warmth and comfort over luxury.

Yet they both hesitated at the door. Appearances were nearly always deceiving, a fact known especially well to the robed man as he often employed deception himself. Such was the way of a trickster, and that was what he was, among other things.

There was power that rested behind that door, and there was power in the land around them as well. Shifting like clouds in the wind, it never seemed to settle on any particular shape for more than a few moments, but the change was never noticeable unless one looked very carefully. It was a place that contained something that could create more than either of the two travelers could hold within their minds combined, and neither of them had had a pleasant history with authority figures, almost to the point that insolence was a calling card of theirs.

However, there were some things you just didn't do, and if even half of what the two travelers had been told about the place was true, then you respected your role as guest and respected the host even more.

With that in mind, the unicorn seemed to tire of her companion's indecision, so she pushed the door open with a hoof and stepped inside. The man blinked in surprise but, after a few seconds, he recovered and simply shrugged before heading in after her.

Inside, they were met with a golden glow, shining from within glass lanterns hung up on the ceiling and from candles that stood upon circular wooden tables spread around the tavern room. The light mixed together with soft smoke that swirled through the air and the room had the general feeling of delight and wellbeing.

Around the tables, creature of all shapes and sizes could be seen, nursing drinks or conversing with one another in quiet voices. Others kept to themselves, sitting in the shadowed areas offered by the many walled off sections along the outer edge of the tavern.

At the far end stood a wide bar where an old man, with white hair and beard, stood, polishing glasses with practiced ease. He looked up once at the newcomers, and both travelers squirmed uncertainly underneath the pressure of his gaze, but it lasted only for a second before the bartender returned his attention to the glass in his hand, and his new guests both breathed a sigh of relief.

They looked around and spotted an empty booth against the wall with two couches facing one another. It looked comfortable, and so they walked over and took a seat opposite each other. The man put his spear up against the wall, and a sense of sadness was felt from the spear for being put away, rolling off of it in waves of emotion and thought.

“Don't be like that. I know it's been a while since you saw some action, but it will come, probably soon now that we're on the road again,” the man said in a comforting voice and looked at the spear with an encouraging smile.

The unicorn coughed loudly, and the man turned his attention back to his companion.

“What? You know how it gets grumpy unless it gets to prove itself useful,” he said defensively and held out his arms.

The unicorn looked at him disapprovingly then nodded in the direction of the bar.

“We should probably go and introduce ourselves,” she said.

“I am pretty sure he knows more about us than I'm comfortable with. As soon as we stepped over that threshold, we entered his domain after all.”

“You don't know that. We don't even know who he really is and how much power he has, all we've got are rumors, and you know better than to trust those.”

“Hey, sometimes rumors can be a good enough source for information,” the man said and leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his folded hands.

“There are rumors that say you're a hero with a selfless heart of gold, and we know how ridiculous that claim is,” she said with a crooked smile.

“There are also rumors that say I'm a greedy, manipulative bastard and that you're an unpredictable danger to society, and we both know that's spot on,” he answered back with an even bigger smile.

The couches were little more than small cushions of leather over wooden benches, and the unicorn's bench creaked when she moved out of her seat and got down on the floor.

“Might be true, but I'm still thirsty and we came here for a reason, remember?” she asked and turned without waiting for a response and walked over to the bar.

The trickster remained in his seat for a few seconds, letting the sounds of the tavern drift over him with their pleasant murmur. He then turned towards his spear and said, in a completely serious voice, “I'll be right back. Don't kill anyone while I'm gone.”

He got out of his seat and walked over to the bar where the unicorn stood waiting for him, and where the bartender stood on the other side of the bar, still polishing glasses with utmost care. He didn't raise his eyes or even acknowledge that they were standing there, not until the unicorn spoke, “We would like something to drink.”

The bartender didn't take his eyes off the glass in his hand, instead he pointed with his left thumb over his shoulder to the many rows of bottles that stood there. The guests looked to each other with uncertainty in their eyes, however the robed man made a quick assessment of what he could see available on the shelves and then ordered two glasses of whiskey.

The bartender nodded and took two of the glasses he had just cleaned and poured an amber liquid from an old brown bottle into them. Without a word, he took the glasses and put them in front of the two travelers before going back to cleaning another glass, never once looking up.

The robed man dug around inside a brown shoulder bag that hung at his side and brought forth one small coin of what looked like silver and put it on the bar. He grabbed both glasses and turned halfway around, but stopped and turned his head back and asked, “I've heard that there are supposed to be many beings here who are able to make trade for a variety of things. You wouldn't happen to know where we could find one so well connected?”

The bartender stopped his polishing and looked straight into the man's eyes, and he in turn swallowed hard. Then, slowly, the bartender put down the glass in his hand and pointed towards a figure sitting alone at one of the tables where a large variety of items laid in a pile that the creature was busy picking through.

The robed man nodded in thanks and walked back to their booth on shaky legs, his unicorn companion following at his side and looking at him with concern. When they sat down at their table, he drained his glass in one gulp then sat with it firmly in his hands while the unicorn was slowly sipping at hers. The horn atop her head was glowing with a faint nimbus of light blue, and the glass itself was caught in a cloud of energy the same color, holding it aloft and moving as the unicorn willed it.

She kept her eyes on her companion the whole time, and when her glass clinked down on the table, empty, she spoke in a soft voice.

“Was it really that bad?”

“If he wanted to, he could simply will us all out of existence,” he responded and slowly drew his finger around the brim of his glass.

“But there was no hostility, right?” she asked with careful emphasis on the last word.

“No. Doesn't need to be. Honestly, I heard about the power of the owner but … just the sheer size of what is slumbering behind that exterior makes me think that there are only a few possibilities of who he really is…”

“Care to share them?” the unicorn asked and tilted her head.

“No. I don't want to think about it. I know it's not our style, but some things are best left unintruded upon. And Trixie… you can't have one of your outbursts in here okay? No blowing things up, no setting things on fire, no freezing of other people's body parts. Not under His roof,” he finished with a shudder.

The unicorn pouted, but after one quick look back at the bartender, she conceded and nodded in understanding before shuddering, herself. They sat in silence for a few minutes after that, allowing the situation to sink in, but once it did, a smile broke out on the robed man's face and he chuckled. Trixie raised an eyebrow in question and he responded with an excited voice.

“We're in The Walker's Rest, Trix. We found it. From here, we could set out for any road in our entire universe.”

The unicorn gave a smile of her own and her eyes shone with unbridled excitement as well when she realized the possibilities. The Walker's Rest, the tavern at the center of the universe. The place to which all roads led if one knew how to walk them the right way, and also the place from which all roads could be traveled. No matter the place or time, if there was a road, they could now reach it with a bit of luck and skill.

“Karon...” the unicorn said as her smile gradually grew into a grin.

“Yes, Trix?” the trickster asked, a shiver of delight running up his spine at the fire he saw burning in the unicorn's eyes and at the thought of what awaited them.

“This journey is going to be something special.”

Next Chapter: Four Suns (Part 1) Estimated time remaining: 12 Hours, 22 Minutes