Tamarin was yawning in the early morning hours. The sun hadn’t quite made its way up past the horizon so she was carrying a small magical lantern to navigate the streets of Keaton. She was the first one to open the adventurers guild each morning and the last one to leave. She’d arranged for an extra long break in the middle of the day to attend personal matters. Sometimes she regret the odd schedule but adventurers were often a lazy sort so the early morning hours and late evening hours were some of the most peaceful ones at the guild. It worked out most days.
Tamarin stopped mid-yawn when she noticed someone had beaten her to the guild. It was the winged girl from the previous day. She was sitting on the ground next to the main guild entrance and rubbing the stomach of Rake’s dog. At least, Tamarin thought it was Rake’s dog. Now that she considered it, the dog had been following the winged girl around exclusively. Maybe it was her dog. Either way, the dog noticed Tamarin before the girl did and let out a happy bark.
The winged girl looked over, noticed Tamarin, and stood up. She straightened her clothes. Between the light of Tamarin’s magical lantern and little orb of light the girl held, Tamarin could see she was wearing new clothes. More normal ones than the unusual silver armor she’d worn the day before.
“Good morning. Do you need something from the guild this early in the morning?” Tamarin spoke as she walked over to the door. The large ring of keys which held the key that both unlocked the door and deactivated the magical wards on the guild jingled as Tamarin withdrew it from the satchel she carried.
“I was a little restless,” Brivaria admitted sheepishly. “My kind don’t sleep like most do so I spend most nights training skills. The Second Sword decided to entrust the chalice to the guild for safekeeping. The plan is still to sell it through a third party but no one wants to be responsible for the damage a curse could do.”
“Oh? I didn’t expect a change of heart. Come on in and tell me how that happened.” The lock clicked open as Tamarin turned the key and the two entered the guild hall. It was very quiet without the rowdy adventurers talking and making noise. Tamarin was going to activate the small magic lamps in the corners of the main hall when they activated themselves. She looked back at the winged girl with a curious gaze.
“My people are naturally good with light skills and magic. Some like to call us beings of light in our natural forms,” Brivaria answered. The door shut behind them. The guild hall felt cozy with the dark of night still outside but the soft light of the mana lamps filling the interior. “As for the change of heart, I told them I wasn’t keeping the chalice in my inventory until it sold. It was either coming here or going into one of their packs.” Tamarin laughed and shook her head.
“That’s about what I’d expect from that lot. Bit too greedy for their own good but they’ve a little bit of common sense when you put the lot of them together. A little. Follow me. We’ll get it tucked away before we do anything else.” The two went further into the guild and made their way toward one of the storage rooms. “So why not keep it in your inventory? Not planning on sticking around or joining the Second Sword?” Brivaria gave a thoughtful sound as she considered the question.
“I’m not certain. Their intention is to delve into the dungeon. From what I saw here yesterday, Keaton will be able to contain the dungeon at its current threat level. I could stay and delve with them. It would be faster levels for certain but I don’t know if that’s the best use of my abilities. I’d like to look at the available requests before I decide.” They arrived at the storage room while winged girl was speaking.
The storage room was filled with mundane-looking crates that functioned similarly to Brivaria’s inventory. Rather than storing objects in a physical space, the crate was a magical container. It was similar to the enchantment that went into bags of holding but, where those focused on storage capacity, this one focused on storage security. Anyone could place items into it but only authorized guild personnel could withdraw them. The crates were used to contain and transport dangerous magic items, specifically the kind that adventurers recovered from dungeons. Keaton didn’t have many of them since there hadn’t been a dungeon nearby until just recently but all guilds were required to have some on hand for when the need arose.
“Sounds like a good choice. Direct combat, inventory, healing, light magic, wind magic, and flight is a pretty strong set of skills. I’m sure there are a lot of requests that would be happy to have someone with your abilities fulfill them.” Tamarin walked Brivaria toward one of the crates near the entrance of the small room. “Okay, put the chalice in here. Normally you have to touch the object to the crate and will it to go inside but you should be able to directly transfer it from your inventory by touching it.”
To Tamarin’s surprise, Brivaria walked over to the crate and transferred it immediately. The few times she’d needed to have an adventurer use one of the storage crates quickly became headaches. There were a lot of smart adventurers in the world and few of them graced the Keaton adventurers guild with their presence.
“Transfer complete. Please verify it. You can give me the Writ of Storage and I’ll give it to Rake the next time I see him,” the angel’s words were a second shock to Tamarin.
“How do you know about the Writ of Storage?” the rabbit girl asked, her brows knitting together in a mixture of surprise and confusion.
“I read the adventurers handbook last night.”
“The whole thing?” Tamarin asked with incredulity.
“It was a long night and I had nothing else to do.” A sly smile worked its way onto the angel’s face. Tamarin laughed and Brivaria laughed with her.
“That’s fantastic. I’m not used to adventurers knowing what they’re doing. The ones who make it to gold rank or higher usually do but I’m pretty sure most of the manuals we hand out get used as campfire kindling. I’ll get that writ drawn up and show you the request board.” Tamarin shut the door to the storage room while speaking and the two went back to her office.
On the previous day, Tamarin’s office had been crowded with her, the Second Sword, and the guild receptionist. The angel had been too preoccupied with recounting the week’s events to look around. This time she had nothing better to do so her eyes wandered the room while Tamarin sat at the desk working on the Writ of Storage. The office was the same size as Gretta’s with similar furniture but it didn’t feel as suffocating. It had a welcoming atmosphere. Little wood carvings decorated the furniture while framed notes hung on the walls. One wall had a large quilt which depicted the town in beautiful colors—blue sky, green trees, and brown buildings. Brivaria was looking at a couple of little people in the quilt with rabbit ears when Tamarin coughed politely.
“All done and magically stamped. Normally the head of our guild would do that but they’re away so I’m filling in for now,” the rabbit girl explained. She offered the note to Brivaria and the angel took it. “Shall we go take a look at the request board?”
“Yes, please,” Brivaria nodded and the two left the office to return to the common room of the guild. They passed a human woman who looked more asleep than awake.
“Morning Mare.” Tamarin’s words were given a yawn by the other woman. The angel moved aside realizing Mare was on the staff rather than an adventurer. The brunette gave the two a sleepy wave in passing.
“Morning,” and with that lone word she moved toward one of the back offices.
“We’re still a good hour away from anyone showing up. Mare is going to get the new requests out and we’ll start moving them around.” Tamarin talked while they moved to the end of the request board closer to the front desk rather than the entrance.
“Moving them around? The manual didn’t say much about how requests are displayed.” Her words got a knowing smile from Tamarin.
“That’s because all guilds do it their own way. Things work differently in a big city with thousands upon thousands of people than for a small town like ours. Even more so when it’s a frontier town like this one since we only display requests you can reach with a couple weeks of riding. This is our method,” the Lephori girl flung her hands outward at the massive board that ran all the way across one wall of the common room. Dozens of notes were pinned to the board all the way across.
“We organize all requests by two factors, age and pay. Newer requests are closer to the front desk, older ones are closer to the entrance. More lucrative requests are at the top of the board and lower paying ones are near the bottom. We belong to the region of Velk and the Velkan king has an agreement with our guild so we offer an increase in pay based on the age of the request. The goal is to incentivize taking the older requests that are otherwise getting ignored. The crown will reimburse us for the amount added due to age.” The two women walked along the board with Brivaria looking at the notes. She could see tally marks that were seemingly added well after the note had been written, likely the pay increases though she didn’t know the scale.
“What happens if the note isn’t picked up by an adventurer?” the angel asked. She was noticing that the end of the board was home to a few requests.
“Nothing. It’s up to the adventurers to take them. We don’t give orders and there’s a limit to the amount of extra money we can pay. If no one takes a request then…” Tamarin shrugged. That was a real issue. If a request was too much of a hassle or the pay was too low for the danger then it would sit on the board for months. Some even went completely stale. The guild assistant didn’t like thinking about those.
“I think I’ll start looking on this end then,” Brivaria said as they reached the far side of the board where all the oldest requests were.
“Start? Rake was looking doing more dungeon runs, I thought.” The rabbit girl eyed the angel curiously.
“He is. Is that the best use of time though? It sounds like there’s a lot of adventurers waiting for a chance to explore the dungeon. How many of these have people in need who are waiting on someone to come help them? Or who have lost hope in getting help at all?” Tamarin went quiet.
There were a lot of notes on the board. The far end had quite a few, in fact. Many of the requests were of no interest at all to most adventurers. Behind every single note was a person or a family who was counting on help arriving. Every day they sat on the board was another day it got closer to being too late. Angels intervened when summoned. This was a calling, specifically it was her calling. If she was going to be on Zlithia for a time then she wanted to make a difference and these notes could be the way she did that.
“Do you have a map of the Velk region? Or the country of Flynnette proper I could look at? I don’t know the area and would like to see where each of these is on a map.” That got Tamarin moving again. Her growing frown disappeared and her smile returned.
“Yes, we have a couple but if you don’t have one of your own then you should buy one from a merchant. Good ones are very expensive but there are less detailed ones with major forests, towns, and landmarks that sell fairly cheaply since they’re so easy to make for anyone with cartography skills and an existing map handy.” The receptionist was already making a beeline for the counter before she finished speaking.
The darkness of the early morning faded as the sun rose into the sky. Brivaria took the table closest to the far end of the request board and sat herself there as she looked between the map Tamarin provided and the requests. She pulled a few from the board and was working out a potential route between them. The angel had taken the oldest and lowest paying requests on the board. They’d been sitting on the board for weeks. No one was going to handle them but maybe she could.
Trixie took up residence on the bench next to Brivaria. The dog was perpetually curious about whatever the angel was doing. More than once the winged girl had to rescue the map from the dog or placate the golden with aggressive scritches. More than that, Brivaria talked to Trixie. She went over her plans out loud. Since Trixie was coming along, the dog had absolute veto power on any of the proposed missions the angel was going to take. However Trixie was a very wise dog and chose to exercise great restraint by approving all plans in exchange for pets.
With afternoon growing closer, Brivaria finished her planning. She delivered a handful of requests to Tamarin. The rabbit guild assistant was mildly concerned about giving the solo copper rank adventurer a stack of requests to handle. She went ahead and approved them regardless since she realized two things. First, the winged girl was probably going to attempt to complete them regardless of whether or not the guild approved. Second, the odds of anyone else picking up one of the requests was negligible. They’d been sitting around for weeks.
“Okay, I’ll register these as taken. Come back tomorrow morning and I’ll let you know if anyone else picked one up. It’s guild policy not to give the same request out to multiple adventurers if we can avoid it. Sometimes adventurers work together and choose to split the reward but the guild has no part in that. In the case of there being multiple adventurers trying to take a request, we default to whichever team or adventurer is most capable of handling the request. Since you’re a newly-made copper rank adventurer, it probably wouldn’t be you,” the rabbit girl finished.
“I wouldn’t mind that. If there’s someone else with more levels wanting to help some of these people then that would be to everyone’s benefit.” Brivaria and Tamarin chatted a little longer as the Lephori put away the map then the angel was off.
Brivaria had three things to do before her departure from Keaton. First, she wanted to buy a map. That would be very important in the coming days. Flying would help her navigate but Zlithia was a large planet by multiverse standards. She could easily foresee a time when a forest stretched out in all directions and only the landmarks on her map would let her navigate.
Second, Brivaria wanted to stock up on provisions for the trip. Her rations would do in a pinch but she’d learned how bad they tasted in comparison to local food. She would alternate between local food and rations if she could. More importantly, Trixie needed food. Brivaria liked the dog and couldn’t consign Trixie to the terrible fate of angelic rations so they needed a lot food the dog could eat. Thankfully, the angel’s inventory solved many problems. Not only could she store plenty of freshly cooked food for Trixie but also for herself. Brivaria could buy a dozen nice meals from the tavern she’d eaten at the previous night and store them in her inventory for eating whenever she wanted. She was absolutely going to do that with whatever coin she had left.
Finally, she needed to tell Rake, Meia, and Penry that she was leaving. That fact had been in the background of the discussion to let the angel have Trixie last night but it was time to be explicit about it. She liked the Second Sword but she wanted to help people and she wasn’t going to do that by fighting monsters in a dungeon.