The Dragon Queen of Thelvadore

At first glance the last member of the trio who had entered his office appeared to be a Lizardkin of some sort, with the long, thin tail covered in obsidian scales, and the four horns decorating her head. But those same features also made him doubt his first estimation. He wasn’t an expert in Beastkin heritages, but he knew enough to know the primary ways to identify at least the more common species. And no Lizardkin he knew of had two sets of horns, much less horns this long and majestic.

Additionally, her jetblack hair, and almost glowing purple irises, didn’t fit the assumption of Lizardkin either. In the same vein, her face was too human for that as well. Most Lizardkin had a slightly slanted face, hinting at the presence of a snout, even if there was none. The last detail that didn’t fit was the lack of any visible scales on her face.

That said, he couldn’t think of any other logical explanation than Lizardkin. Really, the only other option he could come up with would be her being a dragon, but that just seemed far too unlikely, even this close to the Dragonfang Mountains. Dragons typically kept to themselves north of the mountain range, and only very rarely made their way deeper into Fendalyr.

He did get a strange feel of… presence, for lack of a better word, but far, far too subdued to belong to a proud dragon. The two times he had seen a dragon, both of which had been at significant distances, he had been nearly flattened by their presence alone.

Shaking his head, he dismissed his contemplations. They didn’t matter, in the end, and he had business to attend to.

After only a brief moment of silence, one that hadn’t yet stretched long enough to be awkward, he turned his attention to the woman in the lead and got up. Walking around the desk, he gave her his best warm smile, and held out a hand for her to shake. “Welcome to Dussel, adventurers. My name is Raul Simmens, mayor of this lovely town. I hear that you have arrived with the delivery we’ve been waiting for?”

The Catkin returned his smile in kind, eagerly taking his hand and giving it an energetic shake. Not enough to be considered rude, but definitely more than he’d expected from her. “Mayor Simmens, a pleasure. I’m Lucy Kallen, the courier sent by the guild. I have with me the delivery intended for your people, as well as a message I was asked to deliver to you, although I wasn’t given any information on what the message was about.”

He nodded, letting go of her hand. “Thank you, Lady Kallen. Allow me to extend the gratitude of everyone here in Dussel for your hard work. Your arrival has been awaited with baited breath by quite a few. May I have the message before I show you where you can complete the rest of your delivery?”

“Of course.” With a swirl of… something, a neat envelope appeared in her hand.

It took Raul a moment to digest this obvious display of magic. Dussel did have a few folk who were able to use some minor magics, most of them demi-humans with inborn abilities. Never before, though, had he seen storage magic this… effortless. Even the merchants who sometimes came to visit had, at best, expensive storage items, although to his untrained eye it appeared as though Lady Kallen used this magic herself, without the aid of any such items.

Today was truly far from the ordinary. Even for the mayor, meeting not only one but two adventuring groups was a rarity, much less one consisting of someone capable of storage magic!

Doing his best to keep his surprise and wonder in check, he graciously accepted the envelope. Giving another nod to Lady Kallen, he made his way back to sit down at his desk. Within a moment he had retrieved a letter opener from one of the drawers, and opened the envelope, quickly unfolding the paper within.

The message, or rather report, was about what he had expected once he had seen who had sent it. Even with all the reports from the different villages that he had received over the course of the last few months, it hadn’t been enough yet for the guild to agree to an emergency quest. And the fee required to post a quest asking for assistance covering multiple villages was just far more than he could ever hope to spare.

In part he could understand the guild’s reluctance. Emergency quests should be handled with care, given that every able bodied adventurer was expected to assist with them. If they were to just post one whenever someone expected help anywhere, most of the adventurers would probably get annoyed and leave the guild behind.

The reason he had been given also made sense. For all his reports, nothing malicious had yet happened. Even the villages where people had supposedly gone missing, hadn’t yet extended a request for help to the guild, even after the guild itself had started to inquire about it. It was a large part of why Raul wasn’t sure how much stock he could place in those reports.

At the same time, though, he didn’t like the idea of keeping the status quo until something happened. Suspicious people stalking the woods around multiple villages wasn’t the sort of thing that could have any positive outcome in his mind.

Well, whatever. He could only do so much. And if the other mayors didn’t see the need to ask for help, he could hardly make that decision for them.

At the very least he had kept sending summaries of the events to his contact within the guild. Something that the guild had, at the very least, taken note of, according to this message. He read through the short summary that Fhin had put together for him, detailing the next steps the scholar was planning to take in this regard. The man was certainly trying his best to help in whatever way he could, something that Raul would be forever grateful for.

Once he was done, he skimmed over it a second time, just to be sure that he hadn’t missed anything important, before he placed it on his desk.

“Again, thank you very much. May I ask if you could deliver a reply for me on your return? Of course, I will compensate you for the additional task.”

The beastkin gave him a warm smile. “Our next destination is Vastell, so as long as that works for you, I don’t see why not.”

He nodded with a smile of his own. “Yes, that is acceptable. It will take me a moment to write out the letter, so if you wouldn’t mind until the evening, I’ll have it delivered to your accommodations. You are staying the night, yes?”

“Oh, definitely,” she replied with a bit of a laugh. “After weeks in the wilderness I’m ready for a night in a proper bed and a nice meal to end the day with.”

“Very well.” Leaving the letter where it was for the time being, Raul got up once again. “Then allow me to show you to the warehouses so you can complete the rest of the delivery.”

The trip to the warehouse didn’t take very long. For logistical reasons the central storage was, as the name implied, located relatively close to the village center. As was his office. For all that he had resisted the majority vote at the time to move the mayoral office into the village center, mostly because that meant relocating the shop that had called this building its home previously, the people had overruled him in the end. He had only truly relented after Wilyan, the store's owner, had told him that he wanted to retire anyways, so it wasn’t like he was hurt by the entire ordeal.

He smiled at the memory.

“Pretty quiet place you have here.” The one to speak was the supposed Lizardkin, and Raul gave her a glance. The woman was busy admiring the village, a small smile playing on her lips.

“That we do. Although, that is likely to change sometime soon. We are right along the main road crossing the country, so it was inevitable that we’d have to expand some day. And since the guild decided to open an office in our little village, that only expedited the entire thing.”

“I’m still surprised by that,” Lady Kallen said absently, a small frown tugging at her features.

Raul nodded his greetings to some of the townsfolk as they walked past, before he returned his attention back to the courier. “How so? You delivered things for them too, no? At least that’s what the guild told me. It was part of the reason I agreed to the quest, since they offered to combine the entire delivery into one.”

She didn’t reply for a moment, the three adventurers busy glancing around as they neared the main warehouse. “I mean, yeah, I did deliver stuff, but I hadn’t realised it was for the guild. When I accepted the quest, it was merely marked as a delivery for Dussel. It didn’t say anything about the guild.”

“Likely to keep the costs for the guild down,” the last member of their group offered. “Quests marked as offered by the guild have a whole host of paperwork attached to them, not to mention the increased reward. By combining the two deliveries into one quest handed out by the village of Dussel, instead of one handed out by the guild, they were able to save on a lot of red tape.”

“Huh…” Lady Kallen seemed thoughtful. “I hadn’t known that that was a thing. Makes sense, though.”

They turned a corner, the warehouse now coming into sight.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” the Lizardkin woman added absently, seemingly amused by something. “If what you told me about the guild, and my assumption about it, are correct, then I’d bet good money on the fact that Tizanta has made sure they only hire the most competent folk. She is the type of person to pull shrewd stuff like that.”

Raul didn’t know what to say to that, given that he was obviously missing a bunch of context, so he decided to keep quiet. And given that neither of the other women commented, there might not be the need for much more to be said.

When they finally arrived at their destination perhaps a minute later, the warehouse was just as quiet as he had expected. So far nobody had bothered thinking about setting up guards, as it hadn’t been needed before, although the topic of protection had been raised during the last village meeting. If more outsiders were to arrive such things had to be taken into consideration.

“Well, I don’t know anything about how the guild operates, but I am still very grateful about the delivery,” Raul finally said as he unlocked the small door next to the main entrance. “I don’t doubt that things will speed up once the guild is finished settling in, so being able to prepare properly for that will be a boon.”

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