Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

It was a dark and stormy night.

Detective Fenrir, Private Weyevern, looked morosely out at the storm. It was a good storm, raging against mankind, raging against the arrogance of civilization, a thousand million raindrops pattering against the window like his emotions raged against his beating heart.

Ahh, his life was a lonely one. His great flame flitted in and out of his life, a free flying spirit that could never be captured or tied down. Not that he’d want to, no. She’d lose all the shimmer, the shine, the raw burn that she had if she was caged like a songbird.

Fenrir lined up eight shots. His teeth wrapped around each one, shattering the glass to give the bourbon a little extra spice. The sharp glass grated on the way down, the taste lingering of bad decisions. The night was still young, ripe for many more.

The clicking of heels on the floor was a rhythm he’d come to both love and dread.

Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and his door slammed open, revealing the dame in the door.

Trouble, the shadows whispered. Trouble, every line of her body communicated. Trouble, the smoke-filled pipe burning at her lips shouted.

The dame was a vision of beauty. They always were, somehow. She was short and lithe, with a deadly walk and deadlier legs. Her eyes twinkled like star sapphires, undimmed and unshattered by the harsh realities of life. Her hazel hair was woven with secrets and smoke, cascading down her back like a waterfall. Her body whispered of late-night rendezvous and broken promises.

She was his landlord’s main squeeze, and the wyvern was sure his rent was paid up.

“Case?” He rumbled out. He already knew the answer, but he liked the sound of his own voice too much to leave it unsaid. Unlike the many things he could say, should say, to a bright spark many years and miles away… but ah, that was the past, and he was ruminating again. “Detective Fenrir! You’re the only one who can help me. I’ve heard many tails of your exploits, and I’ve stumbled upon a thread for a critical case! Please, will you do it?”

Fenrir knew she was laying it on thick, trying to butter him up. Butter him up for what, though? He knew the score. He was good, but not that good. Fenrir smelled a rat.

Fenrir ate the rat, and continued to contemplate the case as the rain hammered on his window.

She knew he was going to take it. He knew he was going to take it. What else was he going to do, drink and watch the rain as the bills stacked up? He barely had any in his office yet, it wasn’t properly decorated.

“Yes.” He agreed, knowing that taking the case without hearing all the details was going to come back and bite him.

“In the Guild, there’s a bounty for finding Thraximundar the Immortal.” The dame said.

Fenrir pulled a face. Thraximundar was bad business, and he wanted nothing to do with the old crime lord. People poking around to figure out what slammer he’d been sent to? That could only be a prelude to people trying to break him out, and the city had enough crime without that demon being added into the mix.

“I want to know who is looking for him. There’s a bonus if you can… gently dissuade them from continuing.”

That was more up Fenrir’s alley, and he heard a world of pain and violence in the pause. Sending a message? He knew how to send a message to everyone except his flame. He’d always been more eloquent with tooth and claw than words.

“Accepted.” Fenrir said.

The dame promptly paid upfront in full, and Fenrir knew there was a reason she was his third-favorite. She dropped a folder filled with all the papers and notes she’d already compiled, and Fenrir briefly did some mental math to see if she should be moved around in the rankings. He nodded to himself.

Yes, she certainly deserved a promotion to his fourth-favorite dame.

At the bottom of the stack of notes was a letter. The Letter. From his one and only, to be delivered now.

The contents were between the two of them, and nobody else.

It was late, the Adven - Union’s place was probably closed. All the better. They didn’t like it when he came in with questions. Everyone had something to hide, a festering underbelly they didn’t want overturned to the light. Whenever he poked around with questions it was all screaming and shouting about monsters, bounties posted on his head, and the local guards rustled up something fierce.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Corruption. It always ran deep.

No time like the present to get started. He flew over to the Union’s building and landed in front of the door. Fenrir didn’t do dramatics. He simply shouldered the door open, and if the subpar construction and shoddy lock broke, well, that’s just what they got for cheaping out and stiffing the good men and women who built the place.

There was one person left in the Union, probably trying to find a way to skim a few more arcs into their pocket. Fenrir got right up in their face, and delicately placed the posted bounty in front of them.

“Who. Posted?” He asked with a growl.

The man went remarkably pale and slumped into his chair.

“I, uh, can’t tell you. The Adventurer’s Guild doesn’t release the information about clients to uh, anyone.” He stammered out.

Fenrir snorted.

Of course they did, everything had a price. It looked like the price on this information might be more than the fee he was paid though, and the wyvern wasn’t running a charity. There were always other levers, other means of finding out the information he wanted to… acquire.

The man passed out, the coward’s way out, and Fenrir’s wings carried him into the night the same way they hadn’t carried his dreams. It was time to find a weak link the hard way. He drifted up into the clouds, and let his sharp eyes watch the scurrying of people down below, the city slowly waking up like a kicked ant hive.

A day of stakeout and reconnaissance was nothing new, usual fare for the Private Weyevern. This was a nice break from jilted lovers and scorned spouses, although why they’d expected anything different continued to baffle Fenrir.

He watched, he listened, he stalked. Within a day he knew the Union Master was having an illicit affair with one of his receptionists and union members, promising both that he was going to leave his wife for them any day now. Two of the union teams were skimming, handing in counterfeits instead of the real deal. A different receptionist was posting a lower reward than what the clients wanted, pocketing the difference.

A wretched hive of scum and villainy, and Fenrir unsurprisingly found himself spoiled for choice. So many levers had presented themselves, so many pressure points and weaknesses to choose from.

He played a drinking game with himself, taking a shot from a fresh bottle of spirits every time he spotted an activity that could get him the information he needed. When he finally polished off the entire bottle, the last employee was the one he picked.

Fenrir waited until the man left for lunch - his 64 shot bottle hadn’t even lasted that long - and descended down, landing heavily in front of the man to a chorus of screams. The same chorus that tended to arrive whenever he went out in public. The Private Weyevern knew he was ugly, there was no need for people to hammer it in like that.

“Come with me.” He demanded, grabbed the man, and hauled him off.

One quick interrogation later, with a bevy of evidence ripe to ruin the man’s life laid out before him, and Fenrir had the name of the client.

Along with an address.

Well, he was being paid to break kneecaps and send a message. As dark and dismal as the city was, he did enjoy his work. Fenrir busted through the roof, and landed in front of the Client in a shower of splinters and debris. A quick crack of his tail against the client’s kneecaps broke them, and then Fenrir started the interrogation.

Once upon a time, when he was younger and more naive, when he still believed in the power of light and sunshine, Fenrir would’ve started with the questions, then moved onto the kneecaps. Years of bitter, hard-won experience taught him that questions were only answered after the kneecap stage, and he prided himself on being an efficient Private Weyevern. Good value for his customers. These days, he’d seen the truth, his philosophy improved, and went immediately to the broken knees stage.

It was rare that he needed to include the elbows.

“Talk.” Fenrir growled eloquently. “Thraximundar. Quest. Why?”

The client started to babble.

“It wasn’t me!” He pleaded. “I was paid to post it! Oh gods, please don’t eat me!”

Fenrir rolled his eyes. The ‘oh gods please don’t eat me’ line was a surefire way of indicating that the interrogation was almost over. Why people thought he’d eat them, he was never sure. He only averaged one elvenoid a year; they were pretty safe from him.

Plus, there were no gods here in this armpit of a city.

“Who. Where.” He growled out with his best winning smile, wrinkling his nose at the acrid smell that assaulted him.

The man blabbered out a time and a place.

The docks, naturally.

It was always the docks.

Fenrir stalked the client while observing the docks, and soon enough, trouble showed up, in the form of a beautiful woman with a clingy red dress. The sort of dames he usually expected to see in his office. Her dress didn’t belong in the place at all. A pair of bodyguards escorted her.

Like anyone would be foolish enough to attack her. That outfit, in this place, at this time? Anyone with two working brain cells would see TRAP emblazoned on the entire thing. Which, Fenrir reluctantly concluded, was generously overestimating the average number of brain cells in the general population.

She went to the docks at the meeting time, and the contact obviously missed it, having a prior urgent date with Ms. Morphine and Nurse Full Body Cast.

She looked around the meeting place, a cigarette dangling from her lips. The only shred of fading light in the night. It died along with her hopes for meeting the contact, and Fenrir shadowed her back home.

It was a brightly lit mansion, with laughter and partying going on. As subtle as a brick, Fenrir slipped in, following the woman to the basement. She put on a heavy robe, and walked into a room with other hooded cultists.

“Sister.” The head of the coven said. “How goes the quest?”

“Poorly.” The lady Fenrir had followed answered. “Our contact missed his regular check in.”

The head of the coven tsked.

“A shame. A setback. But never fear! The difficulty of the quest merely proves its righteousness! We shall free Thraximundar, then rule the world by his side!”

Fenrir covered his face with a wing. An honest to goodness ‘let’s take over the world’ plot. The secondhand cringe he felt at the whole thing was the closest thing to killing him yet.

A blast of cold, as frozen as his heart felt, radiated from him. The temperature plunged, and Fenrir went through the wall.

“FREEZE!” He yelled, a little extraneous.

Everyone in the room was already a frozen statue. Fenrir looked around and nodded to himself.

Case closed, world saved. The trail had gone cold for the cultists.

And ah, the end of the world was a good reminder. He could talk with everyone else. He could gab with the worst of them. And yet, no matter how time went, no matter what seedy office he found himself in, he still found his thoughts drifting off to her. The prettiest dame he’d ever seen, the only woman for him. The one that still sent him letters. What type of coward would he be to continue ignoring her? What type of coward couldn’t face up to the music?

Fenrir winged his way out of the house, ignoring the screams of the hoity toity partygoers who were vaguely implicated in the coven’s actions. He smelled the wind and turned towards where he always knew she’d be, and took off with a toothy smile.

After all, he’d been paid for this one.