“Axel!” Marcie called from her spot on the couch as he walked into the apartment. “Bring me some juice!”

“Why can’t you get it yourself?” he asked. “It’s only like fifteen feet away from you.”

“Cause I’m wrapped up and comfy,” she said smugly, raising her hands just enough to show him the blanket she was covered with.

“When I’m wrapped up like that, you make me get my own stuff,” he pointed out, “this could be a good learning experience for you. I’m going to try to get a nap before we go see Mom for dinner.”

“Screw you,” Marcie called after him without heat as he made his way through the small apartment toward his bedroom door. “For that, I’m going to turn my movie up until you can’t sleep.”

“Love you too, sis,” Axel said with a short cackle as he pulled earbuds from his pocket and showed them to her.

“Marcie, Axel!” their mother greeted them warmly with hugs as they stepped into her living room. “I missed you two!”

“Love you, Mom,” Axel said as he returned her hug.

“You just saw me yesterday,” Marcie pointed out as she hugged the older woman back.

“And that means I can’t miss my daughter?” her mother asked incredulously. “No one told me that!”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Axel assured her, “I haven’t seen you for eight days with how Astrana time moves. I missed you enough for both of us.”

“Suck up,” Marcie said as she moved past him toward the kitchen. “Since Axel’s driving us home tonight, why don’t you and I open up that bottle of wine from the other day, Mom.”

“That’s so nice of you to do that for your sister,” Axel’s mother said before he could tell either of them that he’d said no such thing. “That sounds great dear! You know where the opener is right?”

As Axel’s mother followed after his sister, Axel found himself standing alone in the living room of his mother’s house with nothing to do.

Sighing to himself, Axel shrugged and followed after the two of them to at least find out what was for dinner, before they got started drinking and talking and left all the remaining cooking to him.

“Axe-man!” Cain greeted Axel as he appeared in the AI helper’s cabin space. “Been a while since I saw you. How’re things Astrana-side?”

“They’re good I guess,” Axel told him. “Not sure how I feel about the surfer-style name though.”

“Can’t blame a man for trying,” the helper that still looked and sounded like Hulk Hogan in his prime said. “Gonna stick around here for a minute and talk, or are you going straight down?”

“Down this time,” Axel told him. “It’ll give us more to talk about when I come back up and leave.”

“Great!” Cain said with a grin. “Most of us helpers can’t do much more than talk with each other or watch our charges as they go through the game, but that doesn’t come close to hearing about it from you.”

“Aw shucks,” Axel said with a chuckle. “You’re gonna make me blush if you keep talking like that.”

“Get out of here already you little twerp,” Cain said good-naturedly as he waved his hand and Axel moved to where he’d logged his character out last time.

“See you soon, Cain,” Axel said as he blinked in the darkened room that couldn’t keep the bright midday sun from peeking through the closed shutters to barely illuminate the stirring Rockwolf and still sleeping hawk chick.

“I think I finally picked out a name for you,” Axel told the bird that began to blink sleepily as he spoke to her. “I decided to go old-school with this one, had to go way back to my days of playing Pokemon with the guys for it. Named my fire starter Ember and it took me all the way to the Elite Four. You got some big shoes to fill there, Ember.”

You have named your Burning Windy Hawk, Ember.

Creature Perk gained.

Creature Perk: Burning Windy Hawk: Hawk’s Sight: You can focus your vision at great distance. Your eyesight is greatly improved and your peripheral vision is wider and sharper.

“Another Sight Perk?” Axel asked as he visibly noticed his vision sharpen, colors becoming more vivid, small objects becoming more noticed, and his overall field of view became just slightly wider. “Any more of these and I’ll probably have a headache whenever I look around and six different spectrums shift with me.”

Uncaring at his musings, Ember opened her beak and screeched insistently in hunger, a demand that Drago took up with a whine.

Stolen story; please report.

“Alright you two,” Axel said as he picked Ember up and moved toward the door. “Let’s go see if we can get some food from the Innkeeper. There’s no need for any of that complaining.”

As Axel stepped into the stairway, his Rockwolf in tow, he nearly bumped into the Innkeeper, an older Orcish man with thinning hair.

“Sorry about that, mister,” Axel said as he steadied the older man with a hand on his shoulder. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

“It’s fine,” the Innkeeper said gruffly. “Just coming up to get your payment for today if you were staying another night. Since you cleared out before I sent my cleaner through, you don’t have to pay.”

“That’s a relief,” Axel said as he discreetly called his currency tab to appear and he checked his balance. “Don’t suppose you’ve got some food available for me right now?”

“Lunch is just about over,” the Orc told him. “Move fast and you might be able to beg a bowl of stew from my wife.”

“Thanks,” Axel said with a grin as he stepped past the shorter man. “Appreciate it!”

“Okay Drago,” Axel said as they walked into the Hunter’s Guild, “we need to look into getting some money today. That means finding at least one Job and one Bounty, maybe two.”

With a short shake of his head, followed by a sneeze, Drago answered his agreement to Axel as Ember slept soundly on the Rockwolf’s back, nestled in the thick fur and protruding rocks between his shoulder blades.

“Let’s see what we’ve got today,” Axel muttered to himself as he perused the Boards for a Job and the Bounties. “We can do some stuff around the city like we did last time. How does that sound?”

Drago snuffed in disagreement and pawed at his face at Axel’s words.

“Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of doing that either,” Axel agreed. “That Gremlin Alchemist was a real piece of work, tried to get out of paying me the full price because it took me more than a day to get back to her. Let’s find something else. Maybe one of the World Jobs?”

With a sharp, quiet huff, Drago pushed through the small crowd that had gathered around the Local Job Board and moved toward the World Job Board. With murmured words of apologies toward the other guild members, Axel followed after him and looked through the offered Jobs on the Board.

“What about that one to hunt down Kobolds in the Eastern Gray Mountains?” Axel asked his partner. “Gets us out of the city for a few days at least and it’ll let us work with Ember to figure out where she fits in our little Party.”

With a short wuff, Drago gave his agreement and Axel pulled the Job’s information from the board before joining the shortest line for a secretary.

“Hello,” the short Half-Goblin girl said as he stepped forward. “Have you chosen a Job?”

“I have,” Axel told her with a warm smile. “Can you put me down for this World Job?”

“Just a moment,” she said as she accepted the Job flier from him and grabbed a pen from her desk, making several marks on another paper before looking back at him.

“This Job is a World Job, as you’ve said, and since you’re Wood Rank I have to make sure you understand that a World Job isn’t redeemed at the Guild on completion and that you also know that you might not be the only person moving to complete this Job,” she told him seriously. “Do you understand that?”

“I do,” Axel told her with a nod. “But what happens if I complete the Job and I get to the client with the proof and they tell me that someone else already completed it?”

“In that case, the client will have placed some sort of demand for proof on the poster and they will only accept that proof,” she told him. “This Job, for example, wants the specific headdress of the Kobold Shaman that leads the tribe you’ll be hunting. If any other tribes have an exact replica of that headdress, then things will be difficult unless the client can tell you about other identifying marks on the Shaman. In that case, whoever has the correct Shaman’s headdress is the one who will receive the payment.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Axel said with a nod. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the secretary said as she lifted a stamp and heavily thumped it onto the paper she’d been writing on. “Good luck.”

With a groan, Drago trudged after Axel as the Wolf-man led him through the city on their way toward the Barfing Minotaur.

“Cheer up, buddy,” Axel told him as he scratched behind his ears while Ember nested on Axel’s head, having fluffed and bunched his hair to make a softer cushion for herself as she preened her fluffy down. “We’ll be on the road tomorrow and then we’ll be gone for at least a week, maybe two depending on where the client is. That’s not even mentioning the time it’s going to take us to get to the Eastern Gray Mountains.”

Clearly still upset about being stuck in the city for another night, Drago moved away from Axel and broke into an easy trot as he approached the door to the tavern and slipped by an exiting patron to enter the well-lit, warm room.

Sighing at his Rockwolf’s unsubtle emotions, Axel sped up and entered the tavern after him to see Drago resting his big head in Willow’s lap as she rubbed him and greeted him from her seat at a table with other waitresses clearly having their evening meal with her at one of the tables.

“Axel,” she greeted him as he walked up to her, “have you upset Drago somehow?”

“Probably,” he admitted. “I know he doesn’t care for the city that much, so he was excited to have the chance to get out into the forest again for the Job we just picked up, but I had to do some shopping for supplies before we could do that. Now, we’re stuck here for another night.”

“You’d best make certain that you keep him in mind as you make your plans,” she told him sternly. “I love seeing him, but if he’s going to be unhappy about spending multiple days in a city like this one, then you’d be better off staying outside the city.”

“I know that,” Axel assured her. “Unfortunately, I can’t get things like rations, spices, and Jobs in the wild. Sometimes that means that we’ve got to spend a lot of time in a city like this.”

“So long as you don’t take him for granted,” Willow said with a sniff. “Who’s your new friend?”

“Oh yeah,” Axel said, reaching up and carefully grabbing Ember from her nest in his hair. “This is Ember. She just hatched the other day and her, what is he? Father? Uncle? Someone wanted me to take her and look after her. She was kind of a gift, kind of a not.”

“She’s a beautiful little one,” Willow said as she carefully took the baby hawk from Axel and cradled her in her hands while they looked at one another. “She looks like a Windy Hawk from the Carnix Cliffs, so I assume the someone that wanted you to take her with you was King Burny?”

“That’s right,” Axel said with a nod. “Made me walk all day and climb a damn spire to get to the nest she was in.”

“Clearly you’re no worse for wear,” Willow told him with a sniff. “It was likely a good character building exercise for you.”

“I’d disagree,” Axel said with a sigh.

“And you’re free to do that,” Willow said as she stood up and held Ember out for Axel to take again. “I have to return to my work now, so if you’re here for food, find a seat and I’ll have it out for you soon.”

“Thanks Willow,” Axel grinned as he took Ember back. “You’re the best.”

“And don’t you forget it,” the Elvish woman told him as she moved to clear her plate away and returned to her work.