Day 1: 2 individuals cataloged (0 new). Direction of lair (henceforth, DoL) undetermined. 3-D scanning of the mountains completed. Dinner: Garlic chicken. Gotta cram in the goodness while the vampire GF is at a safe distance. Despite that, I still had to share with a hungry, fanged little lady. Can’t escape the fact that it’s also one of Varia’s favorite foods.
I pushed a bite of chicken to the corner of my mouth and hit the button on my radio. “You know, gay dudes are fucking assholes.”
There was a solid 5-second pause before Matti responded. “Fuck off,” she groaned.
Cam followed a moment later, clearly stifling laughter. “Can someone really call themselves pansexual unless they’ve deepthroated an entire pan?”
We both cracked up again. “Wait, wait, I’ve got one. What’s the most attractive trait to a pansexual?”
“Heh-heh, uhh, what?”
“Non-Stick!”
Matti had probably turned her radio off by then.
……
Day 2: 4 individuals cataloged (2 new). DoL seemed to be southwest. Breakfast: Chorizo and egg tacos, which I still had to share.
Varia was chasing the shiny new opponent of the magic red dot from my laser pointer. Well, tactical laser, but it’s not clamped onto a picatinny rail so… eh, laser pointer. Another golden thought popped into my head, so, of course, I hit the radio.
“Can you really call yourself straight if you haven’t had gay sex just to confirm you don’t like it?”
Cam laughed a little, but answered pretty quickly. “I don’t know. But that’s definitely my new definition for ‘super straight’.”
I snickered. “Why?”
“Because anyone who identifies that way would be super-pissed!”
“Holy shit, you’re right!” I cackled.
Once we were done losing our collective crap, Matti radioed in with a sigh. “How long does this phase normally last?”
I took a breath. “Oh, about 5-to-10 days. Why do you ask?” I inquired, feigning ignorance.
“No reason.”
……
Day 3: 3 individuals cataloged, (1 new). DoL narrowed down to west-southwest, with a particular mountain being a likely candidate. Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper: Garlic bread. 5.5 pounds of toasted garlic bread. I would ask not to be judged, but after eating 5.5 pounds of garlic bread in a single day, I have ascended to a higher plane of consciousness that is beyond shame or criticism.
Something actually happened that day. Shocking, I know. We’d shrunk the search area for their lair down to just about a square mile, so Matti was going to mist on down there come nightfall. She strapped a ‘StayAmateur’ camera to a hat so we could get a live feed. That was the night where we got to find out what happens when a live-transmission is attached to a vampire in mist form…
It loses connection.
Fortunately, it does regain connection once she reforms, so we got a nice live-feed. It was a messy place, most of the taiga had been bowled over in what appeared to be windstorm damage. There were gnarled, thorny vines growing across thousands of downed logs. Moss blanketed the sickly-brown valley, barely surviving despite it being excellent growth conditions down there. Matti picked a spot on an opposing mountainside.
“Can you see that, down there?” she whispered into the mic.
I hit transmit. “No, I can’t. Let me go manual on the camera.”
“Already on it, Boss. Leave the cams to Cam,” my boy added, getting the settings right before I could.
The feed went thermal, showing a bright blotch across the valley. The image zoomed in on it. “Enhance,” I ordered jokingly as the shapes started to clarify. The lens brought it into focus and I could finally pick out the shape of a sleeping wyvern.
“Ohh yeah. That’s money right there. Matti, get the remote observation kit set up. While you’re there, pick out a good vantage point for our final assault.”
“Yeah, emm… shit!” she hissed as a large form flew over.
A fire wyvern we’d named Pot Roast blew past overhead, going full-flat into the wind as he/she air-braked for landing. I heard Matti sigh with relief as she poked her head up. (And for any who wonder, you can’t sex a wyvern without smelling its pheromones, or shoving your hand up its cloaca. Do neither.) I hit the radio again.
“No jokin’ around. Get those tasks done and GTFO.”
“On it.”
Matti was out of there in record time, leaving us a teleportation point right outside the wyverns’ den in a little clearing, and a camera to surveil them 24/7. Surveil is a nice word, great way to not say ‘spy on’. I was heading to bed in that mediocre bunk by the surveillance desk when the radar started beeping.
“Fast mover!” Matti called on the radio.
I rolled out of bed and sat at the desk in my undies. “I see the signature. 0.6 mach, that’s a slipstreamer or lightning wyvern for sure.”
The signature was entering my coverage, so I acquired a triple-lock and squinted at the dark picture on the screen. “Yyyup. That is, in fact, a wyvern.”
She sighed over the radio. “It is rather indistinct. I am leaning toward lightning. A priority target?”
“Mhm. Add it to the list, I’m going back to bed.”
……
Day 4: 3 individuals cataloged (2 new, including the lightning). DoL: Determined. Breakfast: Full English.
Cameron took the initiative and, with a little help, prepared a nice briefing for us. “I’ve gone through most of the footage from the camera Matti set up. It must be a big enough cave, because all 12 individuals have been spotted going in and out. I say all 12 because it seems highly likely that we’ve now seen all of them.”
I kicked my feet up on the desk. “Fantastic. What else you got for us?”
“If you turn your attention to the screen, you’ll see a slideshow of all the denizens, along with their subtypes and names. This particular red-and-black one is our last newcomer, she’s big, and looks like a shadowflame. More importantly, she’s gravid. A prime suspect for the nest matriarch. Her and the lightning are the priority targets.”
“How mobile is… Big Momma?” Matti asked, taking a moment to process the quality naming.
“Well, the video didn’t capture much, but I have a short clip of her flying. Barely. In all likelihood, she will die in the final assault, as long as we don’t fuck it up.”
I nodded along. “Alright, great. I’m going to boot up the doorman script so we can have a live tally on who is in or out of the den. We are moving on to phase 3, people. Unbox those Javelins, we’re looking for the prime moment.”
“Excellent,” Matti gleefully declared. Oh, that sweet summer child, thinking that meant we would actually fire at anything anytime soon.
We disbanded and I headed for one of the few other things in my canvas-lined bunker: The shitter! After that, I went to the shelving unit of doom to get my sacred armaments. First, Stinkers, which is a Stinger anti-aircraft missile but… magiteched. It uses a shaped-charge warhead with some super-substance that bumps up the explosive power to be on-par with 115 lb of tnt. The name change being that the post-explosion fumes are about the nastiest thing you’ll smell. 2nd place for me, shoggoth stink is worse.
Then the stationary emplacements. The missile-of-3-names (that being the first one), also known as Javelin or Spearstreak. Personally, I dislike all 3 of them, but you can’t argue with the effectiveness. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but the TL:DR is that it ends up with 3 laser-guided solid-steel literal-javelins hurtling at your target at mach 4.5. Eat your heart out, Brits, some guy from the Philippines made your missile go faster. Even though he cheated and used magic.
And to answer the question of ‘why 2 different missiles’, it’s quite simple. A Stinker weighs 35 lb with the tube, and a same-config Spearstreak weighs 63. This is why the very next thing I opened was the tripod-mount that holds 3 Spearstreaks. Cue skippable montage of me setting it up outside and running missiles up 1 at a time. Then I set a Stinker by my bed and waited.
Day 5.
And waited.
Day 6…
And waited…
Day 7…
There are only so many things to do in a bunker. No more wyverns to count, no more routes to plot. We knew where they went, what areas they preferred to hunt, how many mountain goats they had yoinked at 300mph. (Said video is either disturbing or oddly funny, depending on how long you’ve been cooped up.) Plans were made, everyone was rarin’ to go. We just… needed… to have 5 of them (including the lightning) in missile range at the same time. There’s 12, it’s not supposed to be hard.
The real issue was ensuring that all the rest of them were in the lair and not outside our range.
It was going so well too, we were on-track for a top-20 on the leaderboards for fastest successful wyvern hunt. Not anymore. We’d even hoped for 6, settling for 5 after a while, but it always topped out at frickin’ 4! I’d love to wipe them off the face of the Earth Nassur if it wasn’t so goddamn tedious.
“Hey, Dennis?” Matti called over the radio.
I reached up and nabbed the radio from the desk… without getting up from bed. “What’s up?”
“You know these packets of hot chocolate?”
“Yeah, what about ‘em?”
I heard the clinking of a spoon against glass. “I put a packet in my glass of blood and it’s superb. Do you know how we could get more… legally?”
I paused for a moment. “Umm, it’s just… like… milk powder, cocoa powder, and sugar. We can mix that up at home.”
“Ah, wonderful. Now you have a single dish that you can make for me.”
“Hey, in all fairness, it’s not easy to cook for a vampire.”
Cam’s voice crackled to life. “Didn’t you say she can still eat regular food?”
“Shush, I’m trying to get away with being lazy here!”
……
Day… 11. (Sigh.) 5:38 am.
I awoke to a loud beeping and Cam’s voice over the radio. “5 signatures, 5 signatures! Lightning is confirmed, the rest are home; drop your cocks, grab your socks, move, move!”
Let me tell you, there is no motivation greater than knowing you can leave a boring old bunker after being locked inside for days. I bolted out of bed and ran to the door in my long underwear (and scarf), jamming my feet into my shoes, and barely holding onto the radio and the sling for the Stinker. I burst out into a cold, clear night, hoofing it to the Spearstreak emplacement.
It thrummed to life the moment I touched it, the attached screen showing the radar telemetry. One wyvern was entering my range, another was about to leave. I didn’t see either, but I swiveled left and depressed the tube until I saw it on the thermal imager.
“Lock, lock, lock, lock,” the system repeated, displaying a diamond over the target.
With a little click, the trigger snapped back. A hiss of air ejected the missile forward and the motor ignited. Moments later, the missile broke into 3 steel projectiles, spiraling around an unseen center. The sonic boom washed over me as the spinning doom careened for the unsuspecting lizard. I kept the illuminated targeting diamond in my scope as it went, then, with a flash of light, I saw the wyvern jerk. Its left wing went limp and it spiraled downward.
“Splash 1!” I barked into the radio as I spun the system around to re-engage.
“Splash 2!” Cam called back as I spotted the rotter making a U-turn.
I sent the 2nd Spearstreak hurtling for him before I even got a lock. The system quickly picked up the fleeing wyvern and redirected the missile in-flight. He shrunk and shrunk into the distance before there was another flash of light, another jerk, and he started to plummet. But then, he righted, began to glide down, maybe even started to have a little hope of surviving.
So I fired the 3rd.
As I watched the kill shot close in, Matti came onto the radio. “The lightning wyvern is down.”
“Splash 4 as well,” Cam added.
A few moments later, I saw the flash of light as the spears impacted, blowing its right wing clean off. “Splash 5! Move out! Matti, bring the gun.”
I dashed for the porta-portal and appeared in a clearing about 50 feet in front of the wyvern lair. Cameron and Matti poofed in a moment later. I immediately took command, repeating the plan we’d already hashed out, but with the forceful tone needed to kick them into gear.
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“Cameron, slow-nade in there, now. You’re on stragglers. Matti, deploy the gun. You’re loading.”
Both of them snapped into motion. Cam pulled up a M79 40mm grenade launcher from its sling and took aim, sending a bright-blue orb into the mouth of the cave with a THOOP. As he did that, Matti produced a metal box small enough to fit in one hand. She tossed it onto the best patch of flat ground. It unfolded and, in a flash, a Pak 40 anti-tank gun appeared. I ran to the gunner position on the left, and Matti to the loader position opposite me.
“One’s coming out!” Cam yelled.
I stole a glance upward and indeed saw a wyvern running full-tilt at 10% speed from the time nade. “Load!” I called, working the knobs to get the gun on-target. As I trained the sight, I also hit the spotlight mounted on the gun shield, illuminating the cave entrance.
Matti worked like a blur, throwing open one of the ammo crates that spawned next to the gun. The lid flew off and she pulled a 75x714mm armor-piercing-high-explosive round free. I grabbed the lever and yanked it, opening the breech for her to jam the round in. I dropped and lined the scope up on the first of two wyverns escaping out the front. With a clunk, Matti shouted ‘UP’. The post was right on its chest. I smacked the trigger button on the elevation wheel and…
DOOM
The results can be summarized as ‘an awful lot of offal flying about’, but I was more focused on the next target. I turned the wheels to line up my next shot as the ejected shell clattered across the rocky ground behind me. Matti jammed another round in and shut the breech. “UP!” she cried, so I hit the button again.
DOOM
There was no time to celebrate, as the 2nd wyvern wasn’t quite dead, and 2 more were squeezing their way out. I took aim for a healthy one and fired the moment Matti gave me that glorious 2-letter word.
DOOM
As I lined up the other healthy escapee, the injured ice spiker got free of the slow-zone and bolted for the skies. Cam locked a Stinker on and let it loose. I heard the explosion in the distance. Heard him celebrate and reload too. Speaking of hearing, my ears instantly blanked as a wave of sonic pressure washed over us. The thundermeister wyvern had loosed a booming shockwave from his gullet. It seemed that he was hiding behind his mates. The ones that were either dead on the ground, or out of the way by then.
DOOM
That solved the problem. Just in time as well, because Big Momma reared her ugly head, those black and red scales and ghost-white eyes, and all that angry mother energy. On either side, she was flanked by the last of the nest, Pot Roast and an acid wyvern. “Cam, kill the right!” I yelled, completely unsure if he heard me. I took aim for the fire wyvern on the left, leaving the slowest for last. I couldn’t hear Matti’s callout, but in the end, I didn’t need to.
DOOM
Pot Roast was dead, and I was taking aim at Big Momma next. I glanced right, seeing Matti getting the last shot from the 6-round case. It went in, I aimed, Big Momma aimed too.
DOOM
I saw the tracer of the round deflect up and impact the stone roof of the cave as it bounced off her thick neck scales. Bad impact angle. Big Momma had finished inhaling and was coming down on her stride to plant in place and breath-attack us, luckily in slow motion. “Move it!” I screamed, grabbing one of the rearward extensions of the gun and lifting. Matti grabbed the other and we turned the gun aside to start booking it left. Adrenaline, superhuman strength, vampire GF, I was grateful for all of those things as we managed to jog with a 3,000 lb artillery piece in tow.
Big Momma’s head came down and it got really, really hot where we just were. We couldn’t see it, because shadowflame wyverns spew invisible ethanol fires. Do not fuck with invisible ethanol fires. I took constant glances at Big Momma, trying to figure out when she would run out of breath as she very slowly tracked us, ensuring that we couldn’t stop. We were running out of favorable terrain. I was on the brink of abandoning the gun and going with Stinkers when an explosion slammed into the side of Big Momma’s head.
She stumbled, losing her breath, then faced Cam. Big cues. I stopped and got the gun pointing towards her again. Matti and I dropped both ends and I jumped onto the sight, getting it lined up before she could get loose of the slow-zone. “Load up!” I called, seeing the breech was still open. Matti looked left and right, seeing that we had no ammo cans. Then she spotted the shells… right where we left them in the ethanol fire.
I probably should have stopped her, but she cast some levitation spell and a shell floated towards us. Just by the radiant heat, I could tell that it was on fire. My face turned into about the nastiest grimace ever as she magically slid the round in and shut the chamber. I took one last look through the sight. Big Momma was sticking her neck out… and looking away from us. Perfect side shot. And I didn’t want that fucking burning tank round anywhere near me.
DOOM
The Queen of Hearts would be proud, because that was a DE-capitation. Big Momma went down hard and before we could celebrate, the acid wyvern bolted into the air. Seeing Cam only just starting to reload, I simply passed my Stinker to Matti, who quite happily blew it out of the sky. It was real quiet, all of a sudden.
Everybody took a breath as my tinnitus rapidly faded out (thanks, silent-drums, one of the best buffs out there). I regarded the slowly-spreading flame, as the invisible fire was catching other things alight, which burnt more visibly. Like our ammo cans filled with artillery shells, just over there spluttering and fizzing. Varia jumped off my neck to go frolic in the invisible flames. I crouched behind the gun-shield on the cannon.
“Well, that was something. HEY, CAM, GET AWAY FROM THE COOK-OFF!” I hollered.
Matti had noticed the flame too, but decided that she could do something about it. She grabbed her cloak by the inside and dragged it across her front, then, she dramatically flung it open, sending a wave of energy that instantly snuffed every last ember. I snuck a peek at the no-longer-burning ammo crates and nodded. Varia ran back, all puffed up and angry, but I let her… cool off.
“Nice. That was some Castlevania shit right there.” I offered a high-five. “Good job on the hunt. We really took ‘em down hard and fast.”
She looked at me silently for long enough that Cam moseyed over, at which point, he spoke first. “That was awesome, but how are my ears not bleeding?”
“What?” I asked, both joking and genuine.
“Let me put it this way; how the fuck was that thunder wyvern louder than a damn cannon?”
I dropped the high five, slow-nodding. “Ohhhhhhh, right. Umm…”
I reached toward the muzzle brake on the cannon, then stopped. I then grabbed for my tomb sword, only to remember that I was in my undies and carrying the literal bare essentials. So, I sidled up to Matti, threw a hand around her waist, and… appropriated one of her nice daggers for my demonstration. With a little flourish, I reached out and… tapped the air around the front of the gun. It tinked against metal.
“A big ol’ invisible silencer.”
Cam raised an eyebrow as I slid back over to the GF and returned her weapon. “That’s dumb as hell. I love it.”
“Yup, mhm,” I responded, snapping a finger in front of Matti’s face. “Earth to Mattirina, everything good?”
She seemed to... snap out of her daze. “That’s… that’s it? Nearly 2 weeks of preparation, of sitting around doing nothing, and it ends after a measly 10-minute bout of ‘combat’?”
I crossed my arms. “That’s… what hunting is, Matti. You sit around in your tree stand waiting for a deer to show up. 6 hours later, you go ‘oh shit, a deer!’ then bang, it’s over.” I popped my back. “What were you expecting anyway?”
Her posture sagged. “I don’t know. These modern weapons seemed to rob the glory from it.”
Cam patted her twice on the shoulder. “Blue balls,” he stated plainly before walking off.
We both stared at him in varying amounts of disbelief. For the sake of my wellbeing, I chose not to laugh. Instead, I jerked my head towards the carcasses. “Fifteen minutes before those corpses start going rancid. If you want any trophies, now’s the time,” I explained as I thought of how to plug my nose.
That perked her up. We were off to the races of preserving Big Momma’s head so she could mount it on the wall of a future evil lair. I mean come on, a massive black and red wyvern head? That’s a score! We had to work quick, jumping back and forth, to and fro the bunkers to bring the right equipment. It took about a gallon of formaldehyde injections, then dropping it in an E-D sack filled with the stuff in order to be sure it would last until taxidermy. Then, we spent what little time we had left prying off good-looking scales with Cam. Had to soak those in a different preservative too…
We didn’t harvest any meat, because 1 serving is enough to give you fatal prion disease, and it starts rotting in less than an hour. Something-something curse on all wyvernkind. Really puts a damper on salvaging the cool stuff from their carcasses. After the 15 minutes were up, the scales left on their bodies went soft, turning black at the edges as the corpses swelled. It was a blessing to all of us that we’d already plugged our noses due to Stinker fumes.
That really only left 1 thing to do. We stood over a collection of 6 eggs, roughly the size of small beanbag chairs. Cam fidgeted uncomfortably. “Uhh, why didn’t we go over what to do with these?”
I pulled a sledgehammer out of my bag and offered it to him. “Shock value.”
He froze up a little. “I… uhh… I’m not sure about killing little baby wyverns.”
“I am,” Matti interjected, snatching the hammer and immediately going to town.
Oh god, the splortchy… crunching. I’m not forgetting that noise anytime soon.
……
It’s always a bit of a haze after that. You go back to your bunker, gather your things, and meet back on the closest mountaintop to your exit. Once there, you use a little crystal ball to scan the surrounding area with a magical pulse. When it—hopefully—finds no wyverns, the Moderator’s Mark on the back of your hand will mostly fade away, leaving only a tiny sliver for your return teleport. At the same time, it also de-spawns all the illegal equipment provided, warping it all back to the Big Boy Bunker (Triple-B). Oh, and it patches up all the parts of the mountaintop you drilled into like they never happened. I quite like that part.
We came back down the mountain the fun way. Cam went first. I cast featherweight on him and, with Matti’s cooperation, yeeted him clear off the mountainside. He made some hilarious noises on the way down, too. Then Matti cast the same spell on herself and used her cloak to glide. A real batgirl… in more ways than one. I followed suit, possibly using hyperdash to take 1st place.
After a surprising lack of kerfuffle when landing, we were over to Irunox’s lair in about 2 hours. I hit the button and looked into the hole that opened up.
“Job’s done. No more wyverns trying to hunt you down… for now.”
Wordlessly, the stone shut and the door opened. We shared a shrug and marched in. Irunox greeted us with a semblance of joviality.
“Thus return the prodigal sons and daughter. How went the hunt?”
I gave a firm thumbs-up as we approached. “The world is 12 wyverns lighter, and a better place for it.”
They hopped up on their hoard and stretched. “Ahh, it should feel good, but alas, it is only another day. Did you salvage any scales? I have a collection going.”
Matti stepped up. “We did. How many do you want?”
Ironox reappeared from a brief dive into the hoard, carrying a footlocker-sized chest. “Just one, as always.”
They opened the chest and Matti was given pause. At a guess, there were 300 scales already inside, neatly arranged in rows. She quickly recovered and picked a scale that was about the right size to neatly fit in. Irunox closed the box and nodded a thanks. They were back in a flash, carrying a large pouch that clicked like only gemstones could.
“A tip, for services rendered. And for the pizza. A handful for each of you,” they offered, miming an outstretched hand.
Cam immediately accepted, and Irunox dropped a generous spread of an emerald, a rainbow tourmaline, a set of opal dice, and a sky-blue fine-cut diamond of about 60 carats. He was baffled, dumbfounded! Flabbergasted!
“Wow… thank you very much.”
Irunox gave a quick nod and moved on to Matti, who was in the process of raising her hand to decline when I backhanded her in the arm.
“Matti, a dragon has decided to part with some of their hoard out of appreciation; the kindness of their heart. Accept.”
They smiled on hearing my stern recommendation to Matti. “It’s alright. Blame my late parents for raising me well, with human manners. If you don’t want…”
Matti raised a finger. “Actually… one. For the sentimental value.”
“Alright,” Irunox conceded, digging into the pouch and finding a nice jade statuette about 2 inches tall. It looked like a traditional lizardman carving. She admired it as Irunox moved on to me.
I received a set of 4 carved hematite rings, a rather fiery carnelian, a clear-as-glass prism made of amethyst, and an aquamarine arrowhead. I gave my thanks and put them away in a pouch of my own. Then followed some quick handshaking before Cam stepped up again.
“About the uhh, about the woodworking stuff you lent me.”
“Oh, and here I thought you’d forgotten,” Irunox conferred as they set the remaining gems on the hoard. “What came of it?”
He rubbed his hands together. “Rather than say, how about I show you?” he offered, receiving a gesture indicating approval. “Cool. Matti, would you help me get it out of the widemouth?”
“Sure.”
They were off into the depths of the former bunker, leaving the entrance leaning against a wall, propped open with some poles. I heard furniture-moving noises coming from within as I sidled up to Irunox.
“Hey, uhh, you’ve actually given me an idea, but I’d need to make a request of you, if that’s alright.”
They kept their eyes on the entrance. “Asking is free.”
I took a moment to organize my request into maximal politeness. “Well, those rings made me realize that I might be in the market for a good gemstone to inlay on one. Would it be alright if I exchanged one of the ones you gave me for something of… 2 or 3 carats?”
Irunox frowned, then chuckled. “Huh. I should feel upset, but that is too adorable to spark anger. Very well, I think I know where that box is.”
With a leap, and a flap of the wings, they landed further into the hoard, returning moments later with a smaller treasure box. It took 1 second to pick. Right in the middle was a 2.6 carat blood ruby with a semi-rectangular geometric cut. I made a happy face and selected it in a heartbeat.
“This for the carnelian and the amethyst prism?” I offered.
“Done.”
The exchange went down just in time for me to pocket my goods before the gang showed up. And oh boy was it a project they dragged in.
“Oh my god, Cam, for real? Air hockey?” I asked with so much disbelief that my voice cracked.
He nodded emphatically. “Yeah!”
I didn’t know whether to facepalm or to be super impressed. It may have been scuffed as hell, but he had indeed made an entire air hockey table, complete with tiny air holes, a smooth, low-friction painted surface, and some goals. Irunox walked over to inspect.
“A games table of some sort?” they asked, seeming more interested in it than everything prior.
He grinned ear-to-ear. “Totally! It’s a game I played quite a bit as a kid. It’s just missing one thing: That bellows of yours.”
Eagerly, Irunox summoned said bellows and Cam jammed it into a hole in the side. Air did flow, the puck did slide, and oh boy was the gauntlet thrown down. Being the only other person in the room who knew ‘what do’ and ‘why happen’, I was the prime candidate to demonstrate. Thus, I was challenged to Cam’s favorite childhood game… and promptly trounced him.
…
I’m just kidding. I couldn’t do that to my man. On the contrary, I deliberately didn’t apply my major speed advantage in what could be considered throwing the game. Made him work for his goals, though. Matti found it childish, but amusing. Irunox, on the other hand, was quite fascinated. After 20 minutes of teaching them the ropes, they were trading goals and quips with Cam over the table. Matti and I exchanged looks and I approached him between games.
“Hey, Cam, it’s about time for us to go.”
Cue instant kicked puppy mode. “Aww, already?”
I shook my head. “I said us, not you. Your compass will show you back to the portal we used, and the mark is good for… like… a year? Come back whenever; I’ll debit it out of your sick days.”
Then I addressed Irunox. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you. Please don’t eat my employee after I leave.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
……
Matti and I were heading down the mountain slope come early afternoon when she decided to break the quiet streak we had going.
“He’s pretty cute, the way he just fits in with whatever he wants to do.”
“Cam? Yeah, he’s adapting pretty well. It’s the starry-eyed phase after the shock and fear. I’m lucky to get to show him so many cool places while he finds everything neat.”
She hopped down what I had to climb, lording the perks of her vampirism over me the same way I lord my speed and other things over Cam. “It was nice of you to let him stay.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been wanting him to make some friends, some people he could call on for help or hangout or whatever-particularly instead of me. And come on, a dragon? Meeting a dragon is hard enough, and he’s up there befriending one? That’s a damn ace up his sleeve if I ever saw one.”
Matti smiled. “Assuming he could convince them to take action on something.”
“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He’s starting at friendship, and if that’s as far as it goes, I’m still happy.”
She looked at me, both serious and joking. “Dennis. You sound like his dad.”
I stopped walking a moment. “... Shit. Well, it explains the jokes.”
……
We poofed back into the Ratcave™ and doffed the lent equipment. I sent Matti off upstairs and started the end-of-hunt paperwork. About a minute after she left, I heard something slide off the table. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed nothing, so I looked back at the after-action report I was filing.
“It went fine. Nothing major happened. Hopefully, you don’t need more anxiety meds.”
I felt the wind flick the back of my head.
10 minutes later and I had the summary scratched out in a more or less legible print. I left a note for Cam to write his side of things, then put something glowy on it. I then proceeded upstairs to knock on Pokle’s office.
“Come in,” I heard her call tiredly.
When I opened the door, she livened up immediately. “Oh, Dennis! My savior. Can you help me catch up on things soon, please?”
I strolled over and underhand-tossed Varia onto the desk. “Sure. I’ll start on it with you tomorrow. Let me guess, lots of little, mundane jobs now that the harvest is starting?”
She sighed, petting the ferret in all her favorite spots. “Precisely. The customers are cranky too, lots of complaining.”
I nodded sympathetically, then got the aquamarine arrowhead from my pocket. “Well, I’m sure we can sort it out. I’m just here to drop off your bonus,” I stated, placing the gem in front of her.
Pokle picked it up, perplexed. “Wow, it’s… what is it?”
“Don’t know. It’s definitely worth money, though. Black Sapphire guild will appraise it for you, and you can go ahead and have them bill the company.”
She looked at it deeply, then her brow creased. “Are you sure? You might be giving away… a lot.”
I shrugged. “That’s the adventurer life for you. Money comes and goes in surprising clumps. Take care of yourself, I’ll be in tomorrow. We'll get the papers all sorted then. C’mon, Varia.”
With that done, we headed out. There was some daylight left, and I had a horse to check on.