Back in Drassington…

“Dammit!” Elena shouted, smashing her fist into the desk in rage. On the desk, a steaming cup of tea shivered on its plate. “What do you mean you haven’t found him yet!”

Across from her an unfortunate soul, the guard captain on duty, could only tremble in response as he sat in his desk. “Miss Hero, p-please! We just need more time! We just don’t have the manpower right now to find that guy!” He had thought it was a little suspicious how easily he had gotten this position.

Elena crinkled her admittedly still angry brows in mock confusion. “Manpower? What the fuck? You’re the city guard! This is your job! How. Do. You. Not. Have. Manpower.” She growled, bringing her irritated face closer and closer to the trembling guard captain with every word. Every hair was standing on end before the intensity of her eyes. It felt like they had him fixed at the bottom of a great pool of water.

Behind her, a familiar hand patted the bandaged remains of her left shoulder. With a wince of pain, Elena spun around teeth bared, right to the sight of Clarkson.

“Clarkson… you better have a good fucking reason…” She spat out.

The unflappable man in question immediately held his hands up in surrender. “Easy now Ma’am, I’ve just been trying to get your attention for the past few minutes. We’ve got news.”

Elena let out an exasperated sigh. “Well why didn’t you say so earlier? What is it?”

Clarkson stood there for a second but managed not to say anything he would regret. “I did some digging. Seems like these boys in the city guard really are lacking manpower. Something about two of their lieutenants disappearing a day or so ago.”

This information gave Elena a slight pause and she turned to the captain. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The captain shivered, his head hanging in his hands. “I don’t know! They were here one day and gone the next! I just thought they had too much to drink and were sleeping it off, but then they missed the next day, and we were still looking for that halfie for you, and there’s even rumors now that there’s a demon sighted in the town!”

The final words of his stressed-out rambling brough Elena’s and Clarkson’s minds to a screeching halt. The two comrades looked at each other and saw deep concern in each other’s eyes.

“You don’t think..” Elena muttered.

Clarkson slowly shook his head. “I do. It makes sense.”

A gauntleted fist made a splintering hole in the captain’s desk. He shrunk a little lower as his teacup leapt into the air, spraying him and his mess of papers with tea. “That fucker! Did he actually ally with those lizard pieces of shit?”

“The events would make it seem so. Why else would they show up at the Bastille at the same time? Coincidence? Or something else.”

By this point, Elena’s vision was red. At the hero’s side, her faithful longsword began to drip with holy light, which pooled in jittering little droplets that tore themselves apart into nothing, like water on a hot pan. The captain didn’t dare look to see what they might be doing to his floor.

“CLARKSON! Get the men! We canvas this town again until we find something!” Elena roared as the very air around her began to fill with the faint sounds of angelic choirs.

Clarkson turned sharply and yanked open the door, bellowing orders to the dusty soldiers outside, numbering no more than a dozen. “You heard her lads! Find the halfie, find the lizard!”

The air filled with enthusiastic shouts and slurs, left in the dust by the heavily armed group and loud enough to vibrate the glass windows of the guard barracks.

Back in the barracks, just as the captain was beginning to sweep the splinters off his nearly shattered desk, the door once again creaked open, revealing two silent, but familiar shapes. The captain looked up, and his look of annoyance was immediately replaced with that of anger.

“Oi! Now you two finally show up! You lot have put me in a fine bit of trouble!” The captain yelled, heedless of the flecks of spittle flying from his lips. Opposite from him, the two AWOL lieutenants stared blankly at him.

“You pieces of shit! Not even a single thing to say for yourselves, do ya?” The captain furiously pointed back to the doors. “Get the fuck back out there to your squads and do your fucking job!”

The silent lieutenants simply stared back towards the captain, but just as the man’s patience was about to snap, they shuffled out the door. Behind the desk, watching them trudge out of the building, the captain spat in disgust as he noticed their uncoordinated, jerky movements. Bunch of limp-dick sods. They even came to work drunk.

He failed to realize that since the two men had entered the building, they had not spoken a single word.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

On one of the many dusty roads of the kingdom, an odd sight was to be seen. A half elf, who in between reading strange alchemical books spoke about deep matters to shirt pocket. This odd fellow was made even odder by his choice of companionship (if ignored followers could be called companions), an impressively brawny dwarf, who, if one would look closely, had a grubby-looking child holding a mildly dirty blanket hanging off his heard.

The dwarf in question, Bert, took that exact moment to give his ample beard another tug with his hands, swinging the child up and earning another slight smile, which the dwarf matched with a beaming grin.

Ahhhh, I had forgotten how much fun I used to have doing this with Lotte and Hugo. Bert reminisced, letting out a soft chuckle as the memories walked past one by one. It was too bad they were just too big now. If they tried now, they would just pull his beard off. However, a gasp of surprise and the lack of pressure on his beard jolted him out of his reverie. The dwarf looked to his side and gave a slight laugh. The kid had lost hold of the blanket to the wind. It had, of course, been caught just as it reached the boss, who was still muttering “IED, IED, IED, how shall I bake thee…” like it was a magic spell. Both Bert and the kid chose to ignore the strange musings of their companion. It was the usual by now.

The kid caught back up to the dwarf, who had purposely slowed his steps for that very reason. “Oi, kiddo,” Bert leaned over, “if you want I can keep a hold on it so it doesn’t blow away.”

A single head shake and a tug on his beard signaled immediate disapproval of that plan.

“Okay, no worries, no worries,” Bert laughed. He figured that would be the answer. “Well, how about this? My ma did it for me once,” Bert gestured for the blanket. Once it was in his hands, ignoring the small hands that still clutched onto the side, he wiggled his fingers in preparation.

“Right, so what we can do here so the wind won’t get it again, is we can just enlarge this hole near the middle by pushing these threads away,” Bert said as his dexterous fingers, refined from meticulous crafting work, made the slight hole in the blanket just a bit bigger. In fact, as the kid’s head perked up in understanding, big enough for a small head to fit through.

Bert threw his head back in laughter as a head poked its way through the newly created poncho, loud enough that even Tim paused his musings to catch a look, giving a quick grin of approval at the dusty kid, swinging from Bert’s beard even more enthusiastically than ever. Bert gave a small hum of joy as his goal of getting the kid to talk and laugh came closer and closer.