> Quote:(something that you'll understand after reading the chapter a bit)The amount of trouble I've gone through to make the emphasis visible is quite annoying. At first i started with just adding another S but it became horrible to read so I just settled with Italic which apparently doesn't transfer from my word document to the forum text area and looks a lot worse than I imagined. If someone has a better way of emphasizing the S's then please do let me know and if you think the Italic S's make it too hard to read let me know as well. Reverted back to adding another S for emphasis in appropriate words. Opinions still very welcome.

"Nothing too interesting huh.."

Aleyn was looking at the wall of requests in the Adventurers hall.The requests in the big city turned out to be quite different to what she had seen last time. The higher rank requests were a lot more prominent than the lower rank ones and even the lower ones seemed more technical.

Since she had ignored the requests for a very long time she thought she could go and have a look but to her disappointment the current ones she could do weren't too exciting. She should probably raise her rank a bit more aggressively once she is done with her current problems.

""Supplier in need of bear skulls, bones, pelts, claws, meat in said order.Only accepting large quantities.""

How would a single person with no experience gather something like that in large quantities? You would need a small group to guarantee your safety and efficient gathering. Maybe that was exactly it though? Maybe the requests in the city focused more on group work as the shops and merchants required larger quantities.

""House in need of a thorough cleanup. 14Gold.""

"Woah"

Having noticed the reward she immediately grabbed the request. 14 gold for cleaning a house? It couldn't really be a joke since it had been put on the wall since the adventurers hall had standards. Either way 14 gold was overkill for any normal house, maybe the trick was that the house was actually a mansion? There weren't many huge houses in Dvalfgar and even the ones she knew of would probably just have maids cleaning them. 14 gold in the end wasn't a huge amount of money to her but easy money was always welcome and she was trying to find things to do anyway.

She brought the request to the main desk where the receptionist was waiting. It was the same dwarf woman she had seen the day she had entered Dvalfgar and had a look around.

The receptionist was about the same height as Aleyn and her body and face were quite plump. She had long red hair that was braided and hanged loosely over her chest which was quite visible due to the huge open neck shirt she wore which highlighted her assets.

The clerk watched her approach and place the request on the desk. She took a quick look at the paper before starting to process it.

"Ooh someones finally biting."

"Huh?" Aleyn said in confusion.

"This ones been up for a day or so and a lot of people have been having a look but not taking it. It does seem quite strange to be paying this much to clean a house. My guess is that the house is huge!"

The receptionist made a huge motion with her arms and then smiled.

"See.. that right there was my first thought. Still I don't think it can be that bad or people will just refuse to do it."

"Well suit yourself. If you do manage to finish then come and tell me how big the house is." The receptionist stated and smiled again.

Having had the paper work done and enough of the requests, she was about to leave but then Aleyn noticed a single paper nailed on the wall near the entrance door. It wasn't exactly hidden but due to her height she had missed it when she entered the building. Usually requests were put up on the designated part of the wall but this sole paper was at the entrance, was it special in some way? Having had her curiosity peaked she approached the paper and when she got close enough to read it, it became very clear why it wasn't amongst the others.

"All drinks at half price for this week at Broken Horn. Featuring Singers and dancers."

Aleyn smiled and sighed, suppose that qualifies as special in Dvalfgar. If there was one thing that people here loved then it had to be alcohol and entertainment, dwarven culture. Usually the sight of jolly drunk people was quite prominent when ever her day of working came to an end in the past. Especially since Broken horn is right next to Camedyrs workshop as the place usually turned from a restaurant in to a bar after the evening got darker. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to go and see the entertainment but that would have to wait until later.

The request lead her to a large house amongst the other houses near the library building. She had not really paid much attention to the buildings before but now she realized that the houses around the library area were slightly different. As much as most if not every building in Dvalfgar had strong traces of dwarven architecture, the houses around the library seemed a lot more crude compared to the rest of the city. Still people seemed to be living here so it must at least be fit for living even if they weren't as pleasant on the eyes as rest of the buildings in the city.

The house itself was around twice the size of a normal one. Noticeably different but to Aleyn it didn't really explain the reward amount as it wasn't that big of a task to clean up a normal house in the first place.

She walked to the front door of the house and raised her hand to knock on the door, but before she even got the chance she was surprised by a low gruff voice.

"Yess?"

Slightly startled and confused she answered with the only reply she had.

"Ermm I'm here for the cleaning request?"

A moment of silence followed. It only lasted for a few seconds before the person replied.

"The doorss open."

Aleyn nudged the door and sure enough it wasn't even locked. After entering the house she took a look around the unusual house.

The first thing she noticed was that there was only one big room in front of her, just one huge room with what looked like a path or stairway up to a second floor.

The room itself was quite eye catching. Smooth grey rock walls which had a slight curve to them as well as a lot of holes which were used as storage space and a bigger hole for a wooden window. There weren't many pieces of furniture inside the room, only one wooden shelve that almost reached the ceiling and a wooden chest on the opposite side of the room. The only decorative thing about the room was the fur rug on the floor which covered almost all of the floor.

"Sso then."

Sitting cross legged on the fur rug with a parchment in front of him and his back towards Aleyn sat a large figure in a robe which covered everything a part from his head.

Dark Scales and a two quarter of a meter horns sticking out from his forehead which curved backwards. The person wasn't a human that's for sure. Aleyn stepped closer towards him and introduced herself.

"Hello, I'm Aleyn and I'll be cleaning your house."

As she got closer she had a better look at the person. She had to assume the person was an older male dragonkin with a strong dragon inheritage as he had no human characteristics other than two legs and two feet and even those were slightly questionable. The mans head itself was lizard like apart from the horns on his head as well as a couple of spikes which stuck out of his cheeks.

She was admiring his unusual physique when she noticed his eyes. His eyes were completely white, the usual indication of either going blind or complete blindness.

"The housse hass only two roomss. I would like for you to sstart on the ssecond floor where me and my sson ssleep. Clean up the dusst and dirt in every hole you can find and then do the ssame here."

He seemed to put a lot of emphasis on his s's, was that a thing with his species or did he have a speech impediment? Who knows, but every time he did his long lizard like tongue popped out of his mouth for a moment. Entertaining to look at to say the least.

"Usse the broom if you like."

The man pointed towards the start of the passage upstairs which did indeed have a broom lying next to it.

"I'll be starting then."

Without anything else to ask she walked to the broom, picked it up and headed up the passage.

The passage itself was a nightmare, it felt more like a vertical ramp with some badly made steps on it. Luckily enough who ever made the monstrosity had enough brains to put in holes which to put your hands in so you could actually climb the damn thing.

At the top of the passage she could see the bed room immediately. It wasn't much different from the room below in anything other than contents. In the middle of the room there were two sturdy looking beds next to each other which were basically the highlight of the room.

Other than that for some reason there were five swords of different lengths and sizes scattered on the fur rug which raised some questions. She got curious as a blacksmith and picked up the closest sword around her.

The sword was almost twice her size and required some effort to hold. The strange thing wasn't that it was huge, but that it was also very wide. Usually if you used a large sword the blade needed to be quite wide, but ones blade was a few steps further compared to its length.

She took a look at the rest of the swords and they were all unnecessarily wide, it was obvious that they had have to have been made like so, but why? It seemed silly to her but she wasn't here to evaluate someones weaponry. She moved the swords next to a single wall, opened the window and started cleaning.

It took a bit of moving furniture but in the end she only had the fur rug to deal with after cleaning the room. When she had started she planned to pile all of the dust and dirt on the rug then tie it up and take it out to dust it.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

She picked up the rug as best as she could and pushed it down the passage way as carefully as she could to not cause any harm to it. The rug dropped the passage and made a lot of noise but it was perfectly fine and still tied up.

Aleyn felt slightly amused as her plan hadn't gone wrong but after descending the passage way she remembered something.

"Oh crap what about the man?"

It was quite a loud noise and he might have been confused at the suddenness of it, but it was quite the opposite actually, he didn't seem to care. The man was still sitting in his same spot with his parchment in front of him and to her surprise he was painting on it with Inky colour.

"A blind man painting?" Aleyn thought.

She had a distant look at what he was painting. On the parchment there were a few lines which didn't look like anything. It wasn't much of a surprise to her as sad as it is, being blind is a huge problem if you want to do any painting for obvious reasons. Maybe he was painting something only blind people would understand?

Well as interesting as it might be to watch, she still had a rug and another room to clean. She picked up the rug and brought it outside where she unrolled it and started dusting it.

The rug was clean and back up on the second floor. It had taken her quite a bit of effort to get it back up the passage but in the end she had succeeded in pushing it up there. After unrolling the rug and placing the furniture she returned to the first room.

The man was still painting on his parchment on the same spot. Curious on his progress she took another look at his results and was met with something unexpected.

The drawing of few random lines had turned in to drawing of a room which closely resembled the room they were in. In the middle of the room there was still some random lines which didn't really form a picture of anything to her. Still it was quite something for a blind man, quite admirable. Her art appreciation only lasted for a few minutes before it was interrupted.

"You sstill have thiss room."

The man knocked her out of her absent minded staring.

"Oh, right."

The bottom room was slightly more trickier for her as it had a huge bookshelf which needed to be moved when she had to take the rug out. She decided to leave it for last and started brushing the storage holes in the walls.

It took slightly longer than on the second floor but with the storage holes and shelves done most of her problems were over. The only thing left was clean under the rug and bring it out. Problem was moving it from under the huge wooden bookshelf.

The bookshelf itself was in quite good condition compared to most of the apartment, it had five shelves on it and it was mostly filled with old leather covered books, urns and plates. Luckily enough the bookshelf wasn't completely on the rug so she could probably lift and tilt the whole thing while pushing the rug out.

Aleyn took hold of the book shelfs corner and started lifting the bookshelf. It was quite a tedious process as if she lifted too fast or wobbled the bookshelf the contents might fall out but with a little patience she raised the bookshelf enough to push the rug from under the bookshelf. With the rug now free from the bookshelf she lowered the bookshelf itself and was about to start working with the rug.

Then she heard it.

"Fuck..."

She rushed in front of the bookshelf in panic and quickly looked over the whole thing before spotting the culprit just as the one thing she didn't want to happen was about to happen.

On the second last shelf of the bookshelf. An urn which was quite tall was wobbling and just about to tip over the edge. Aleyn was set and ready to save the urn from its dive but the urn had no lid on it so what ever was inside would scatter all over her and the floor around her. Though that was the least of her worries right now as the only thing that mattered was that the urn didn't break, so as long as what ever was inside wasn't irreplaceable she could always clean it up.

Aleyn concentrated on the urn as it was about to topple over the edge, there was no avoiding it.She was ready to catch it as best as she could. But the urn instead stopped and got pushed back and stood still without moving. Still on high alert she was confused on what had happened as an object fell in front of her.

It wasn't the urn, the urn was completely safe on the bookshelf, instead on the rug in front of her there was stick. She picked up the stick and gave it a look and came to realize it wasn't just a stick, it was the brush the man was painting with. Aleyn turned to look at the man who was sitting across the room still looking at his painting.

He had his left arm extended towards her, or rather towards the urn.

"Clean it up." he ordered.

"Clean what up?" Aleyn thought.

She took a look at the brush, it didn't need any cleaning although the head of the brush seemed to be quite flat. With a little thinking she figured it out and took a look at the wall next to the bookshelf.

On the wall there was a large splatter of ink. He had thrown the brush to stop the urn from dropping and it had then traveled with the rest of its momentum and hit the wall, there was no other reason for him to throw the brush after all. Aleyn first brought the brush back to the man who took it back and started trying to repair the brushes head.

"Is he blind or am I just assuming?" She thought.

With a little bit of water and scrubbing the splatters disappeared from the wall and its proximity. It was extra work but she didn't complain since it was all due to her in the first place and with the distraction out of the way she proceeded to roll the rug and clean the floor before bringing the rug outside for dusting.

Aleyn sat cross legged next to the man. She had finished cleaning and afterwards asked if she could stay and watch, the man didn't have any objections.

Currently his painting was looking quite impressive. The room now had shadows and more detail like content on the shelves and storage holes, but the smudge in the middle was the most interesting development. The random strokes and lines had turned in to more of a figure. There wasn't many distinct features on the figure but it was starting to shape up in to something at least.

"So how do you actually paint. From memory?" Aleyn asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well.. You know.. You're blind aren't you?"

With a quick motion he raised his arm and put his brush between Aleyns eyes just inches from her face and answered in a slightly annoyed manner.

"I've never had issuess sseeing."

Surprised at the demonstration and slightly covered in ink she wiped her face while the man returned to his painting.

"That doesn't answer my question though."

He paused for a moment and gave a small smile.

"You're right. It iss true my eyess are blind."

"So how do you manage to throw a paint brush across a room and hit an urn hard enough for it to stop moving. Painting I would imagine someone could paint from memory with enough practice but that throwing I find more confusing."

"How did you know the urn wass about to fall?" He asked.

"Well I heard it obviously, it was making a distinct wobbling sound." Aleyn explained.

"What elsse."

"What else?" she repeated.

The man didn't explain further so she had to think it through. When she had put the bookshelf down she had definitely heard the distinct sound coming from the bookshelf where a pottery or something similar was scratching on wood as it wobbled around in a circle.

Going back in her head to the moment she tried to relive the moment. She had just gotten the rug from below the bookshelf and was putting it down and when she did she heard the noise and rushed in front of the bookshelf, those are the facts but what else was there? Retracing steps, she had just gotten the rug out and was lowering it when nothing was out of the ordinary. As she put the bookshelf down she heard the noise and..

"I felt it." Aleyn answered.

"That'ss right. You felt it." the man answered.

When she had put down the bookshelf the noise was coupled by vibrations which she could feel from the floor and the bookshelf itself as she held it. It was very hard to notice if you took it for granted and she had spent quite a lot of time with feeling things through walls and other barriers when Nancy trained her.

"So you're saying you felt the urn moving across the room due to vibrations through the ground."

"Not at all. I felt it in many more wayss than jusst that." the man answered.

He paused and made a few brush strokes on the parchment.

"Vibrationss in the air, vibrationss in the earth, ssound, magic energy. All of thesse have molded together in me and given me ssight better than one can perceive through their eyess. In return for thiss my own eyess became usseless."

It sounded unusual but rather than surprised Aleyn was curious.

"That sounds very useful for a painter. You can feel all of the details, but what about colour?"

The man made a brush stroke before answering.

"Ssadly, that iss the one thing I lack."

"So you're not just a painter then right? No painter would sacrifice their sense of colour that freely. Even with those sort of gains."

"Ohhh. You're quite clever." the man said and paused for another brush stroke.

"You're right. I'm not a painter, it'ss jusst a hobby of mine."

"So what are you then to need a better view of the world than your eyes can give you."

"You're a curiouss one aren't you." The man said in a questioning manner.

"I find it interesting. You don't need to answer if you're unwilling."

"Then l will not."

An awkward silence followed as the man kept working on his painting.