The linen was clean, the bed was made, and everything was in its proper place. Candice looked at her handiwork with a smile. She’d relocated a bed frame and mattress to the room then went about making it. It had taken a little longer than she’d hoped but guests were finally making it to her inn. It was now necessary to start converting some of her single rooms to double rooms. A few guests staying in singles had opted to take discounts for sharing rooms giving her more rooms to rent out.
This particular room was one of those having been recently occupied by a winged girl and her dog. Candice was normally leery about having animals in her inn. One could never tell if the animal in question was properly potty trained and cleaning up after an animal was rarely fun. The group of girls had showed up in the middle of the night and the innkeeper didn’t have the heart to turn them or their dog away.
Her impulsive decision had worked out well. The trio and their dog caused no problems and were willing to vacate one of the rooms they paid for in exchange for a discount on another. Candice didn’t even need to haggle with them. That said, the dog did shed. It wasn’t as much as Candice expected but it was enough to warrant sweeping the room out. Thankfully there were no other surprises waiting as she cleaned.
Once the room was spick-and-span, the innkeeper went downstairs. Her cook was working on dinner and her waiters were serving dinner. During slow times, the innkeeper could do everything on her own sans assistance. During busier times, it was better to get assistance. It galled her to admit that she needed help, especially since just a few days past she’d been lamenting her inn’s misfortune. Fortunately, Candice always paid well so she had a short list of folks willing to pitch in when she needed the manpower. This was quickly becoming one of those times.
What had been a sad, empty sight was now a decently bustling common room. The smell of cooked meat wafted through the air while guests chatted amongst one another. There was no music still. There weren’t enough bards or minstrels to go around and other inns paid better, had more affluent clientèle, or both. That was fine. The Siren’s Alcove was warm, cozy, and the food was good. That was how Candice liked it.
“Miss Candice,” a deep voice called out as doors to the inn opened, letting in a cool draft of wind. The brown-haired innkeeper looked up and delighted in who she saw.
“Gerard!” she replied while hustling over to the door. She leaped into the arms of a stocky lephori man and was promptly squeezed against his armor in a hug.
“Oh lass, it’s good to see you. We’ve missed you and your inn,” Gerard said while lowering her to the ground. Gerard’s hair was gray as was the fur that covered his two, large rabbit ears but it was his natural color as opposed to a sign of aging. It none-the-less gave him a distinguished appearance which he used to good effect. “Our favorite innkeep wouldn’t happen to have a few rooms for me and the boys, would she?”
“Oh, of course I have rooms if you’re willing to share. Space is at a premium now as the city fills with people here for the hunt,” the human girl said while peeking past the man. Two peshmari, the frilled lizardfolk of the south, came in alongside a gaborn. She recognized the lizardmen but the boar man was new to her.
“Where’s Ataru?” Candice asked. Gerard’s smile wavered briefly.
“We went after a nest of flare slugs in the south a month and a half back. Ataru had his moment. Lamond here joined us to round out the group,” Gerard explained.
Candice understood immediately. Gerard Bantal was the leader of Tooth and Nail, a silver rank adventuring team. One might have thought that the further up the ranks one went the less turnover among adventuring teams there would be however it was the opposite. A lot of men and women were one brush from death away from retirement. For some it took only a single moment of seeing how close they were to death to decide adventuring was not for them.
“Nice to meet you,” Lamond, the boarfolk fellow, said in his rumbling tone.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Lamond. And welcome Mr. Murado, Mr. Eslit,” Candice said to the gaborn then the two peshmari.
“I’ve told you before, just Murado is fine. None of that mister stuff,” chimed in the first peshmari whose yellow and cyan coloring gave him an exotic look compared to Eslit’s more earthy combination of dark and light greens.
“Two rooms are fine. And, yeah, we’ve heard of the hunt. We’re here at the behest of Baron Sorenson. We’re to be in his lordship’s honor guard during the hunt or that’s the hope anyway.” Gerard spoke as Candice led them to a table and they took seats.
“We were paid a modest sum to travel all the way from the region of Sheffield to attend the pre-hunt gathering,” Murado interjected while pulling his heavy traveling pack off to sit it down next to his chair. “Be a damned waste of coin to come all this way and then get told to go on home.”
“I’ll not say no to some easy coin and a chance to come home to Velk after so many months away,” Gerard argued. Candice had known the lephori adventurer for years. He’d been a bronze rank adventurer for a long, long time. Her inn was his home away from home back in those days. He and his team made the trip back to Velk from time to time but now it was years between visits rather than months or weeks.
The next couple hours were spent catching up with old friends. Gerard and his teammates had stories to tell of adventures gone wrong, adventures gone right, and everything in between. His team, like many others, had a colorful track record of ups and downs. Candice laughed alongside her old friends and then took them up to their rooms as the dining hour wound down and yawns began to mingle with the tales.
She put Gerard and Lamond in the room she’d cleared before coming downstairs and the two peshmari in the room across the hall. Candice went back down to clean up and then lock up. Everyone was either in their rooms or gone. With a yawn of her own, the brunette headed upstairs using a mana lamp for light and went to her own room. It had been a good day.
Candice was enjoying a very restful night’s sleep when a scream rang through her inn. She sat bolt upright in bed and grabbed a staff from next to her bed. She wasn’t a warrior, she was an innkeeper, but it was better than nothing. In only her pajamas, she charged out into the hallway and toward the direction of the scream.
She emerged just in time to see a figure in dark clothes stumble out of Gerard’s room clutching a dagger dripping with blood. Candice’s room lay near the stairs leading down to the common area so she moved to block them. At the far end of the hall a guest door opened and Candice saw the lamia slithering out. The dark figure started running toward the innkeeper as the lamia hurled a yellow bolt. The intruder sped down the hallway but the yellow bolt hit one of their legs. The leg immediately stiffened and the shadowy figure lost control only to begin careening toward Candice.
Candice raised her staff and thrust it toward the off-balance intruder. She may not have had a combat class but she was high enough level to have a physique of note and had a skill to make herself even stronger within her inn. The staff hit the figure squarely in the chest and they stumbled back. Gerard and Lamond were out of their room instantly with Gerard pressing a hand to his own bloodstained side. The gray lephori was pale as he took in the sight.
The dark figure now had only one functioning leg but they were raising their thin blade in preparation for an attack. They weren’t surrendering. Gerard made a decision and lifted his sword. He activated one of his skills. An image of the lephori warrior leaped forward with a sword raised. A second image darted forward but this one jumped up and to the left, angling to bounce off the wall to come down at a different angle. The second image was followed by a third and then a fourth. One image after another emerged from the motionless lephori.
The would-be assassin brought up their blade to block the first image. It vanished after the strike. They spun their blade to block the second then the third. They moved with extraordinary speed managing to fend off the phantasmal assault one image at a time. Suddenly the images were joined by a catfolk warrior. She nimbly sped down the long hall and past the lephori man blocking the corridor and into the melee. Her claws cut through the air but were easily deflected. She moved slow compared to the assassin and the silver rank warrior. Fending her off was trivial for the assassin but the images weren’t giving the intruder time to retaliate with a lethal blow against the cat.
Candice watched at first but couldn’t stand idle while guests were fighting in her inn. She attacked the figure from behind with her staff. There was no skill being used nor any visible magic. The innkeeper simply put all of her strength into a simple thrust, just as she had before. At the same time two images from Gerard were striking down toward the assassin as well as the catfolk girl. The black-clad figure had to make a choice. They could stop all but one attack. The silver rank warrior’s two images were a given then the dagger flashed to turn aside the innkeeper’s powerful thrust. The would-be killer let the amateur catfolk girl’s attack land, trusting it and her to be the least threatening of everything present. The intruder had made a terrible mistake.
The catfolk’s strike was impossibly strong, surprising both the innkeeper and the silver rank adventurers filling the narrow hallway. The intruder was bringing their dagger back around but the catfolk’s claws met the arm at the elbow and tore a bloody line from elbow to hand ending with a thumb and said dagger flying down the hallway.
The cat’s strike and the ensuing scream marked the end of the fight. Blood fountained from the long laceration even as the System spent the assassin’s precious health to counteract the artery that had been cut. He, and it was a man beneath the baggy, black clothes as the scream confirmed, dove past Candice for his lost thumb. The lamia’s paralysis spell had worn off giving him use of both legs once more.
Candice struck at his back and got a solid hit but that only pushed him toward the severed digit and the end of the hall. Gerard’s images followed at speed. One image drove the sword it held through the assassin’s back only for the man to wisp away like smoke revealing the intruder a couple steps further and picking up his missing thumb.
“Stop him, he’s going to,” Candice shouted but it was too late. The intruder jumped out of the second story window at the end of the hall. The wood shutters were not strong enough to stop someone of his level. “…jump out the window,” Candice said with a sigh.