Though not as crowded as their previous visit, the Questing Hall was already quite busy by the time the party arrived in the late morning. Rather than peddling quests to passersby, the stall attendants were instead busy handing out rewards and stamping quest slips with approval. There was a heavy presence of Adventuring Corps guards throughout the building, usually standing near the large chests of coins from which rewards were withdrawn.
Before the party split up to turn in their quests, Iris retrieved three jars of wasp honey from her bag and handed them over to Eli. Next, with a grimace, she withdrew a small drawstring sack -- which was soaked through with blood -- and held it out towards Titus by the strings. These were the ears of the creatures they had slain in the ravine, to serve as proof of kills. Next, she followed Autumn to the booth for her quest, where she promptly unloaded stacks of Forest Octopus meat, being sure to leave some in the bag as Autumn had instructed.
Iris left Autumn behind to finish the paperwork of her quest and made her way through the crowd, irritably resisting the urge to blip past anyone who momentarily blocked her way. She didn't know for sure that powers weren't allowed in the Questing Hall, but didn't want to risk getting yelled at or arrested. When she neared the Giantrock City Badger's booth, she saw a small crowd of visibly annoyed adventurers surrounding it.
"Is this your first day?" One person asked.
"Just stamp the paper and give us the money," another said.
"One at a time, please! I'm doing my best!" a familiar voice pleaded.
Iris cocked her head to the side, then made her way around the crowd to the side of the booth, where she saw Milo the printing press mechanic struggling with a handful of quest slips and a stamp that was dripping ink. She smiled, and stepped up beside him behind the counter.
"Hey! She can't do that!" an adventurer shouted.
"I'm with the Badger," she said confidently, "I'm here to speed things up."
"Iris?" Milo said in surprise.
She nudged him with an elbow and whispered, "what do I do?"
"Uhh," he stammered, then handed her the stamp, "here, clean this."
She held the stamp away from herself to avoid the dripping ink while she searched for something to clean it with, but all she found was papers that looked important. She reached into her bag with her free hand and fished out a scrap of her tattered sleeping bag, shrugged, and used it to wipe the excess ink from the stamp.
"Here, stamp this one," Milo said, placing a slip on the counter, "20 gold to the one with blue hair."
Iris stamped the slip and blipped the coins from the open chest under the counter into her hand before placing them atop the slip and sliding it towards the roguish adventurer with blue hair.
"What are you doing here?" Milo asked, handing her another slip, "50 gold, guy with all the knives."
"I feel like I should ask you that," she said, taking the next slip and repeating the process.
"The usual guy is out sick, and the guy who was supposed to fill in quit last week, so I guess they thought 'Why not make Milo do it? It's not like he's never done it before and has no idea what he's doing, it'll be fine' and it has absolutely not been fine."
Iris laughed, taking a stack of paper from one of the adventurers in line. It was a series of descriptions and drawings of various scenes, including the construction of a ballista inset into a cliff side, a sketched portrait of the Commander, and a ground view of the Wyvern flying overhead.
"How're these?" she asked, spreading out the drawings for Milo to view.
"Good enough," he said with a glance, "standard rate on the slip."
Iris stashed the papers under the desk, stamped the quest slip, and gave the adventurer the amount listed on the slip.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
A short while later, the last reward was handed out and the crowd had finally cleared. Milo let out a deep sigh and plopped onto a crate at the back of the stall.
"Thanks," he said, still catching his breath.
"No worries," she said, leaning back against the counter, "don't suppose you could stamp mine for me?"
She held out her quest slip, notes and the sketches she had taken of the ancient temple in the forest, "I'd do it myself, but that seems like it'd be against the rules."
"Honestly," Milo said, taking the papers and adjusting his glasses, "everything you just did was probably against the rules."
"I won't tell if you won't," she shrugged.
Milo skimmed over the papers, then furrowed his brow as he inspected them more diligently. His eyes went wide when he saw the sketch of the dragon mural and read the note below it.
"This dragon was red? Like that one that landed in the forest?"
"Yep," Iris said, "there were wizards in the murals too, we're pretty sure there's some connections between it all. That's way above our rank, though."
"Oh, the editor is going to love this," Milo said with a smile, then stamped the quest slip and handed it back to Iris, nodding towards the chest of coins, "you can take double the standard rate, they won't complain when they see this."
Iris smiled with pride and blipped the coins from the chest into her hand, dropping them into her bag, then her eyes went wide with panic, "wait, they're not going to print those sketches, are they?"
Milo laughed, "no, we'll have one of our artists redraw them into something presentable. I mean-- not that these are bad-- I just meant--"
"Relax," Iris laughed, "I'm not offended."
Milo gave a stressed smile and nodded, "it's been a long day."
"It's not even lunch time," she pointed out.
He groaned.
"Listen, I have to get going, my friends are probably waiting on me," she pushed herself off the counter and stepped around to the outside, "it was good seeing you."
"Yeah, you too!" Milo said, hesitating for a second before continuing, "hey, do you want to hang out later?"
Iris was already walking away, but spun around to walk backwards for a few steps, "that sounds nice, come find me at the library when you get off."
Milo smiled and watched Iris disappear into the crowd.
"Finally," Autumn said as Iris blipped up to the group in the courtyard.
"Please tell me you weren't getting into trouble," Eli groaned.
"Nope," Iris said, "I was just... helping someone out."
"Please don't sound suspicious on purpose," Eli said, "I'd much rather not have to ask."
"Then don't," she said simply, "what's next?"
"Well, the Adventuring Corps Giantrock headquarters is just up the road," Eli said, "if you want to give them the--"
"Nope!" Iris interjected.
"Alright," Eli sighed, "then I guess it's lunch time."
----------------------------------------
Iris was seated at a table on the upmost mezzanine of the Giantrock City Library. Before her were two stacks of books, a few old newspapers, and a few more books splayed open. In her hands was her open journal, and just in front of her was a spread out map of the Emerald Empire.
She had meticulously reviewed the details of each of her mother's journal entries and pulled any and all material from the library that she thought might be relevant, and was currently plotting out the stops along her mother's journey. The Veiled Catacombs were a total loss, nowhere to be found on the map and so far nowhere even mentioned in the literature. The Towers of the Great Wizards weren't marked on the map, but she did easily locate the Shining Peaks where she knew the towers to be. Across the plains to the west of the Peaks she found the city of Calderan in the northwest corner of the Empire. Frustratingly, that was all there was from her mother's journal to find right now.
She took a moment instead to find her valley on the map. It was far south from Calderan and the Shining Peaks, near the center of the Empire's territory yet still somehow in the middle of nowhere. Her village wasn't marked on the map, but she recognized the shape of the mountains and the names of the closest cities. That little valley, the sum of her entire life until just a few weeks ago, was only a tiny, unlabeled blip on a massive map that was, itself, just a slice of the world. For eighteen years she had been just a speck scurrying around between two small rocks that no one had bothered to name.
She lingered with her thoughts for a moment, then moved on from the map to the one of the large tomes she hadn't gotten to yet, this one was about burial practices throughout the world. She hoped she would find some reference to the Veiled Catacombs, but after finding nothing in the table of contents she resorted to quickly scanning page by page. Her head was beginning to hurt and she was struggling to digest the words she read when she was startled by a chair being pulled out beside her. Milo plopped down into it and peered over the mess of books and parchment before her.
"What's all this?" He asked.
"A headache," Iris admitted, "I'm trying to find my mother."
"Is she famous or something?" Milo asked as he scooted up his chair and picked up one of the books to inspect the cover.
"Not exactly," Iris replied, "actually, I don't know. Maybe? She did undertake a grand quest when she was younger. I don't really expect to find anything about her here, though, that was on a whole other continent. I'm just trying to retrace her steps."
"Am I interrupting?" he asked, a worried look crossing his face.
"Yes," Iris said, "but that's exactly what I invited you to do. Good timing, too, because I think I'm forgetting how to read."
Milo laughed, "want to get out of here, then?"
"Definitely," she replied with a smile.
After closing up all the books and placing everything on the return carts for the various floors, Iris and Milo set off into the city to find dinner.