Follow-up of THIS -- wherein a grim, dark fantasy world is turned light-hearted and friendly after a team of grizzled mercs stumble into an evil cultist whose world-destroying spell went... different than they intended.
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Text reads:
"uh... e- excuse me? miss...?"

"Hm? Oh! You're Missus Hannigan's girl, aren't ya! Well what'll it be? Got some darn good brunchberry juice in today!"

"ah, i-is that so... well, actually, could I get a... uh, a- an ale?"

"Ale? Hahaha! Nah no can do 'lil lady-- 'n' I'm sure you know well why!"

As expected... but still, Mason had to give it a shot...

"y-yeah... I just, I dunno... I was curious, I guess..."

"s-sorry..."

Mason was always a heavy drinker.
He needed a good drink to get him through the day-- Any day, really.
Everything was just so difficult to cope with, be it the desperately monotonous struggles him and his team went through to survive on the daily, to the aches and pains and scars from his fights, to the unending gloom of his own subconscious -- Mason found a solution to it all a long time ago: Blot it all out with some mind numbing liquors.
His favourite was always a warm whiskey distilled from a mountain root -- He'd always have a flask on him.

This had been, as he'd say, "One of those days"

So when the opportunity presented itself, Marzi couldn't help but slink away from her group to a nearby tavern- only to run into the first, most obvious roadblock -- a bartender with even a modicum of responsibility.

Seems those drinking days are over for Marzi.
This had been such a rough day for her -- ever since the change she felt unusually... sensitive to things.


Sure, even when she was Mason she could be plenty sensitive. But those were the times where he most longed to numb the feeling with a good drink, and just care about nothing and no-one for a good while.

This- this was a whole other level though. Everything felt big and scary and way too loud and way too out of her control...
at it's worst she felt like she could cry...

It was constantly difficult for her to keep any kind of composure, and she was supposed to pretend this whole world changing thing wasn't... scary! But she was scared!!

She was never a fan of change, and now... well, things couldn't have changed more... She'd flinch at even an unusual sound or smell, even the unfamiliar ruffle of her fur was distressing her... At least Mason had liked animals. But why animal people...

"...But hey, ya know what" The barkeep said

Marzi looked back up, startled -- she hadn't realised how saddened she must have looked

"Triss at t' bakery next door's got a whole lot o' goodies that'll need throwin' out by tomorrah-"

The Barkeep felt sorry for the poor girl -- lacking in confidence, she'd heard, and so easily overwhelmed. Kids do and say silly things all the time, that's not odd, she figured. What this girl clearly needs is patience. Empathy.

"Why don't you tell 'er I sent ya, and I bet she'll let you and yer friends 'ave some!"

"Oh? That'd... be nice?"

...It would, yeah. Yeah sure, why not. At the least it's an excuse to leave here. Quickly.

---

Bit of a delay on this one because of getting lost in the sauce on the background -- and taking a break from it once it was half-done for some reason. My head's out of the game smh...
For real though when you spend a long time away from a story it gets harder to think like how the characters do, and that's really important to me. Not much of a writer, never have been, so I'm constantly trying to find ways to express these characters' headspaces -- lowkey I have a bit of a worry that their internal thoughts haven't been as clear as they could be with these, so i'mma try convey that more with later pages.
I've gotten much better over time at not worrying about how weird my art or ideas are, but just for transparency, there is the occassional thing that I upload where I think... "Is this too weird? Is this a bit much" This is one of those times for some reason -- I simply choose to assure myself that people don't care as much as I think they do. So It goes.........

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