Having returned to Valor on a merchant’s carriage, the party celebrated their first quest together. Anastacia felt slightly bad about ditching her job as a waitress so quickly, so she helped with the preparation of the celebratory feast while Gilbert stayed behind in the guild office to deal with the taxes and Emilia checked out the room on the second floor of the inn she could finally afford to rent. By the time everything was ready, the whole party had returned to the tavern happily dug into their plates when Anastacia and Rosie laid them out.

As they ate, Anastacia recounted what happened during the quest to Rosie, and hearing that Emilia had actually proven useful by saving the entire party improved her opinion of the drunkard – very slightly.

“You know, if you toned down the drinking a bit, you’d almost be pleasant to have around.” The innkeeper said and flicked Emilia’s forehead.

“Aww, does the mean miss tigress like me now?” The priestess laughed and leaned towards Rosie. “Truly, I’m honored.”

“Don’t make me change my mind again.” Rosie snarled.

The drunken priestess had lost a considerable portion of her survival instincts and decided that it was a good idea to hug the innkeeper. Normally it would have meant a swift flight through the inn’s door for almost anyone, but for some reason Rosie almost felt bad for Emilia and simply pushed her chair over.

They were interrupted by the door creaking open and Xamiliere walking in with a massive crab leg triumphantly held above her head. “Craaaaaaaaaaaab!” The spriggan declared and threw the leg on the floor.

For whatever reason, this warranted a round of applause from the adventurers in the tavern, though no one was sure why exactly. Soon after the spriggan, the rest of her party entered, holding two equally massive crab feet each. They hauled them to the kitchen and negotiated a deal with Rosie about cooking them for everyone in the tavern, which didn’t take too much convincing as the innkeeper herself loved some crab meat and garlic butter.

Anastacia was awed by the size of the legs. “How did you even kill something this big?” She asked and tried to lift one of them.

Dammar laughed. “We killed fourteen of the buggers! At first, we had some trouble getting through the hard shell, but then ‘borrowed’ a cannon from one of the nearby ships and then it was just a matter of Xammy just tying them down with roots and us shoving the cannon in their mouth. It was a blast” He explained and seemed proud of his pun.

“Ah man! That just makes our quest seem boring now…” The necromancer frowned.

The dwarf seemed surprised. “You lot were on a quest? Let’s grab a drink and tell this old dwarf the full story. New adventurers going out is always hilarious.” He laughed and patted Anastacia on the back.

Stories were exchanged, and the celebration continued late into the night. At some point, Holly the night waitress appeared into the tavern and seemed confused by the unusually loud start for her shift, but gladly accepted the crab meat given to her. As the night progressed, the celebrations died down. Anastacia fell asleep at the table and had to be carried to her room, Emilia passed out under a table after drinking too much and had to be dragged to her room by Rosie while Xamiliere left for a walk in the fields around Valor to recharge herself. Gilbert, Maximillian and Dammar were left in silence to smoke their pipes until the morning sun started to peek over the city walls again.

The sun was already at its highest when it woke up the young necromancer. While still a bit groggy, she dug out some of her new clothes from her wardrobe. Trying to figure out a matching pair of socks proved to be too much of a hurdle so soon after waking up, so Anastacia headed to the baths with one white and one light blue sock. The warm bath did wonders for waking her up and gave her a chance to think about what she would do with her share of the reward money while soaking. The old rusty dagger she had taken from Mournvalley had briefly caught her eye while she had combed through her wardrobe. It was dull to the point of uselessness and Anastacia hadn’t even bothered to take it with her on either of her quests, so getting a useable one would definitely be a good use for the money – and hopefully within her price range.

After begrudgingly leaving the warm bath, Anastacia ran into Emilia in the corridor. The priestess seemed to be deep in thought while staring at the door to the innkeeper’s room.

“Do you need Rosie for something?” The necromancer asked after sneaking up on her friend. “She has probably been in the kitchen for hours by now.”

Obviously startled by the question, Emilia flinched and took a second to gather herself again. “Oh! Tiny- I mean Anna! Good morning to you. Did you sleep well?”

Anastacia noticed immediately that something was off about the priestess. She seemed somehow unusually hesitant and sober. The necromancer squinted and glared at her before sniffing a couple of times. “You smell weird, are you actually not drunk right now?”

“I uh… did some thinking and I’m going to try and not drink anymore.” Emilia said and smiled awkwardly. “Let’s just get some breakfast okay?”

They had missed the brunt of the lunch rush and had no trouble finding an empty table. Anastacia could see Emilia glancing at the bottles on the nearby tables, and eventually the priestess got so frustrated that she pulled her hood up. On top of that, Emilia kept staring at the table every time Rosie stepped out of the kitchen.

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Rosie brought out their meals with some leftover crabmeat, she was amused by how obviously the priestess was trying to avoid looking at her and pulled down her hood to mess with her. “What, did a cat get your tongue?” The innkeeper asked and laughed.

Emilia just pulled her hood back up and quietly thanked her for the food.

“Do you know where Max is? I need to know where I can get a dagger.” Anastacia interrupted them.

“He was still up when I woke up, so probably still upstairs.” The innkeeper shrugged. “But I know that he buys his weapons from the dwarven blacksmith on the other side of the market. In fact, most of the folk here do.”

“Nice. I’ll head there once I’ve figured out how to eat this… cooked rock?” The necromancer said and held up a boiled egg that had been served with her spinach soup.

Rosie sighed and shook her head. “As much as I’d like so see how this goes, I have a kitchen to run.” She said, collected some dishes from other tables and disappeared back into the kitchen.

While rolling around the egg and considering just biting into it, Anastacia kept an eye on Emilia and her weirdly silent behavior. Every time Rosie brought out some plates, she’d pull on the hood of her pure white robes and hid her face more.

“I know how you feel” The necromancer said and tested the eggshell with her teeth. “Rosie seems really scary at first, but she’s actually the nicest person here. You don’t need to be afraid of her.”

“What? Oh, right! Hey, you know her well, or at least better than I do. Do you think she hates me?” The priestess whispered and took the egg from Anastacia before she had the chance to bite it.

“Nah. You’d know for sure if she did.” Anastacia pointed out and watched in awe as the priestess peeled the egg and sliced it up into the soup. “She’s straightforward like that, you’d be out of here already if she actually hated your guts.”

That made Emilia feel visibly better, but not enough for her to pull the hood back down. They enjoyed their meals while chatting about daggers and the priestess’ new conviction. She had figured that if she was going to help Anastacia and Gilbert, she had to use her gifts to their fullest, even if it meant listening to the voice of a goddess in her head all the time; not that she would ever even consider denying Sylvia, but it was simply a lot to deal with. When the time came for Anastacia to leave, she asked Emilia to tag along, but the priestess chose to stay behind and, according to herself, try to figure out what to use her share of the reward on.

The blacksmith’s shop was visible from the inn, though only barely, thanks to the merchant stalls filling the market square. On the way to the other side, Anastacia stopped by a couple of them that had some weaponry on sale, but nothing caught her eye. The blacksmith’s forge was outside of the shop itself and she could see a dwarf banging away on a piece of metal next to it. Compared to Dammar, the smith was obviously very young and lacked any beard. Anastacia disagreed with the fashion choice, since dwarves should always have beards as far as she was concerned but figured that it would probably catch fire quite a lot when working at the forge.

The dwarf noticed the necromancer staring at him judgingly. “What can I get you, young lady?” He asked and put down his hammer.

Anastacia snapped out of her judgmental thoughts. “I was told Maximillian gets his weapons from here, so I came to look at some daggers.” She explained.

The blacksmith tried to connect the name to a face for a bit before remembering. “That prissy elven wanker? Aye, he comes here every now and then. Let’s head inside and I’ll show you the best daggers you’ve seen in the five minutes you’ve been alive.” He said and showed Anastacia the way inside through the side door.

Inside the shop was probably the biggest collection of weapons Anastacia had ever seen, every single wall was lined with swords, axes, bows, daggers, maces, flails, spears, halberds and other weapons she didn’t even recognize. The dwarf wiped his hands on his apron and pointed at a wall with thirty or so daggers hanging on it, most of them paired with an identical twin.

“You the sneaky type or what? You don’t look like a fighter.” The blacksmith asked and measured Anastacia with his eyes. “A bit lanky for that too, a mage maybe?”

“Neither, I just need something in case everything else goes wrong and I need to stab things. I’ve literally never held a sword so it’s probably safer if I just get something small.” Anastacia explained.

The dwarf looked at the daggers on the wall while glancing at Anastacia every now and then, until finally picking a pair and handing them over. “Then I think these two would suit you. Even if you only need one, I’ll give you a discount on the other one, they don’t really sell without a pair you see.”

Anastacia weighed the daggers, waved them around and took a better look at the craftmanship. As far as she could tell, the blades were immaculate and razor sharp, but what interested her more were the hilts. “Say, what’s under the leather in the hilts?” She asked to confirm her suspicion.

“Troll bone. A good material for hilts, absorbs blows like no other, a bit on the rare side though.” The blacksmith explained.

“Though so.” Anastacia grinned as the daggers floated up from her hands. She spun them around and slashed through the air before shooting both at a training dummy in the corner of the shop. One of the daggers bounced off due to bad alignment but the other one sank deep into the wooden head of the dummy.

“What in the world was that?! What sort of devilish mage are you, child?” The dwarf yelled before connecting the dots in his head. “You’re that damn necromancer I’ve heard about, aren’t you?”

Anastacia shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. If I draw you some pictures, would it be possible to carve them into the bone parts?” She asked.

“Don’t worry about it, she says.” The dwarf muttered and pulled the dagger out from the dummy’s head. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.” He said and unwrapped the leather covering the bone hilts.

The blacksmith handed the daggers and a piece of charcoal to Anastacia and told her to mark the patterns down. It didn’t take long for the competent weaponsmith to chisel out the markings and wrap the hilts in leather again. Anastacia kept a close eye on the dwarf and was impressed by his bone working skills.

“Perfect!” The necromancer exclaimed and shot them at the dummy again, this time crashing them both all the way through. “I’ll take them. How much are they?”

“I’ll give them to you for three and a half thousand gold, if you tell me why I carved the patterns.” The blacksmith offered. “I’m always looking for ways to improve my work and I sense that you might be a returning customer.”

Anastacia poured some coins from her purse onto the counter while the dwarf fitted the daggers into their scabbards and made sure they would be attached to Anastacia’s belt.

“Yeah, I can afford that much, I think.” The necromancer counted the coins. “The patters are-“ She started but was interrupted by Emilia storming into the shop.

“Anna! The guards are looking for you at the inn!” She exclaimed worryingly. “Did you do something?”

“What, again?” Anastacia asked, took her new daggers and left her money behind before rushing out of the door.

The blacksmith watched them run across the market before taking his portion of the money on the counter and hiding the rest under the counter. “Well she seems like a fun lass.” He sighed and returned to his forge.