Titus squeezed his way through the crowds of the Underbelly piers. He had left his armor at home, instead wearing a dirty pair of brown trousers and a casual grey blouse with an open collar. His dreads were hanging freely around his face, adorned with beads and cheap gemstones, and around his neck was a necklace he had borrowed from Victoria. The outfit hadn’t been his idea, but rather some concoction of Autumn and Iris, who insisted it would help him look the part of a swashbuckling sailor. He wasn't convinced it worked, but he certainly blended in better with the crowds than he would have in his gleaming armor.
He made his way down to the furthest dock on the pier, positioned just under the very tip of the giant rock. There were fewer buildings in this section, and the seedy city broadway feel gave way to an industrial fishing and shipping operation with a panoramic view of the Giantrock Bay. The few buildings that did exist were more like small shacks, usually built on the docks themselves rather than along the main thoroughfare.
The last dock in the row had only one boat present, a small schooner positioned perpendicular at the end of the dock, flying the same flag as the Shark Titan's ship. There were notably few people coming and going from this dock compared to the others, and Titus felt apprehensive about stepping onto it. He expected someone to stop him and ask his business, and ran through the scripts he had prepared in his head for just such an occurrence, but it never came. He passed a building on his left that took up half the space of the wide dock, its purpose unclear, and then made his way down the final stretch of the dock towards an awning with a large desk beneath it, and a line leading up to it. He took a place in line, trying to act casual and look as if he belonged while nervously glancing around at the rough looking folk around him. At the front of the line, a man with a colorful bird on his shoulder and a stereotypical pirate's hat was getting scolded by the man behind the desk, who was obstructed from Titus's view.
"Can you breathe like a fish, boy?" The man behind the desk asked loudly, "because play pretend like that on the Maw, and you'll be swimming with them. What is it you think we do, exactly?"
The man with the bird and hat mumbled a response that Titus couldn't hear, and the man behind the desk laughed, "I'd ask if you learned about pirates from storybooks, if I thought you could read! The only good you'd serve on the Maw is as the captain's dinner."
Titus saw the man behind the desk gesture towards a pair of pirates off to the side, who promptly step towards the man in the hat and instructed him to leave before they threw him into the water. As the man scurried away back up the dock, the line stepped up and the next applicant approached desk. Titus watched as, one after another, the applicants were similarly derided and sent packing, until finally it was his turn. There were applicants for all manner of position, from general labor to cannoneer or carpenter, but the quartermaster seemed displeased with nearly all of them.
Titus got his first good look at Quartermaster Luo as he stepped up to the desk for his turn. He was thin with a tanned complexion, and had shaggy black hair and a short but unkempt beard that poorly hid several scars around his chin and mouth. His eyes were dark and harbored a sharp glare, which he leveled on Titus as he approached.
"You ever been to sea?" the quartermaster asked with a curious look.
"No sir," Titus said simply.
"Of course not," the quartermaster sighed, "for a second I almost thought you looked the part. Get on with it then, tell me why we should hire you."
"Actually, I have a letter for the Shark Titan."
"Ball it up and throw it in the water," the quartermaster said curtly, motioning for his guards to move in on Titus, "the captain doesn't have time for your love letters."
"It's about a man named Gerald," Titus added.
The quartermaster held up a hand to halt his guards and narrowed his eyes at Titus, "what do you know about Gerald?"
"Nothing, sir," Titus replied, holding out the letter, "only that the Shark Titan has an interest in the man, and that you'll agree he should see this letter once you've read it."
The quartermaster reached out and snatched the letter from Titus's hand, frowning as he read over it, "very well, I'll deliver this to the captain. For your sake, you should hope you're not wasting his time."
Titus nodded, and quickly hurried off the dock.
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It was late afternoon when Victoria returned to the outpost. She shared greetings with the other regulars she had gotten to know there, and checked in with Marc to find out the current status of the recovery efforts. They had found the remains of another adventurer in her absence, bringing the count down to five missing. She was about to agree to go join a search party that was getting ready to depart when Cameron Cole walked up and greeted the both of them.
"Victoria, you're wanted in the Dreamweaver's tent," he said after pleasantries.
She was surprised to hear that, and couldn't imagine what it would be about, but welcomed any face time she could get with the titan, "I'm guessing this is a 'right away' kind of invitation?"
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Cameron nodded, "I was told to escort you when you arrived."
"Oh, an escort?" Victoria mocked as she turned to walk towards the center of the outpost, where the Dreamweaver had set up her extravagant command tent, "I feel like royalty."
Cameron ignored her remarks and walked beside her towards the tent.
"Actually, I'm glad you're here," Victoria said, "there's something I wanted to talk to you about?"
"Me?" Cameron asked, his turn to be surprised.
"Yeah, it's about Eli. He's been... tense, lately."
"I thought he was always like that?" Cameron asked.
"Well, yeah," Victoria conceded, carefully crafting her demeanor as she steered the conversation, "but more so than usual. I think he's getting antsy with the whole party kind of scattered and doing our own thing recently, and being cooped up in the city at the same time isn't helping matters."
"What's this got to do with me?" Cameron asked, doing a poor job of playing dumb about the time he had been spending with Eli lately.
"I was thinking what he really needs right now is a good quest, something that'll take a few days and really get him back out there in the wilderness. Normally I'd take him, but my schedule's full here."
"You think I should?" Cameron asked, "I mean, do you think he'd want to?"
"Definitely," Victoria said, feeling her fish take the bait, "you'll be off this weekend, right? That's the perfect opportunity."
Cameron thought about it for a moment, "I'd feel weird asking out of nowhere."
"Trust me," Victoria said, stopping in front of the command tent and turning to face Cameron, "he'll say yes. Just ask."
Cameron stammered, "okay-- I mean, I'll think about it. If I'm feeling up to it."
Victoria held back the smile that threatened to creep across her face. She always loved it when someone had no idea she was reading them like a book, "thanks, you're really doing me a favor here."
She didn't wait for a reply before ducking into the Dreamweaver's tent. Her demeanor shifted instantly as she entered, changing from friendly acquaintance with a hidden agenda to a professional young adventurer in the presence of her betters. The Dreamweaver was leaning against a small bar at the back of the tent, Kerrick stood nearby, and a mage whom Victoria recognized from the Matriarch Expedition was seated casually at a small round table in the middle of the tent, his chair half turned to face the others. In the shadowy back corner of the tent stood a man in dark robes, wearing a brass mask with a black painted carving of a frowning face with a single tear drop under the left eye.
"Victoria," Kerrick greeted, "thank you for joining us. Have you been properly introduced to the Dreamweaver?"
"Not yet," the Dreamweaver answered for Victoria, pushing off the bar, making her way around the table and extending a hand towards her, "I've heard some good things about you."
Victoria tentatively shook the titan's hand while she struggled to find words to respond with, "I-- I've read a lot about you."
The Dreamweaver laughed, "please, forget everything you've read, most of it isn’t accurate. Kerrick tells me you're an auraseer?"
"Yes ma'am," Victoria nodded.
"Thread of Arcane?" The Dreamweaver inquired.
"No ma'am, Thread of Dreams. Like you."
"Really?" the Dreamweaver seemed pleasantly surprised, "that's even better. I think you'll do nicely."
"If I may ask, ma'am," Victoria hesitated, "do nicely for what?"
The Dreamweaver made her way back to the bar and picked up her drink, swirling it around and taking a sip before answering, "as I'm sure you've noticed, we're conducting an investigation here in these woods. Our goal is to determine anything and everything we can about the wizards who attacked the expedition, and what exactly the dragon has to do with it all," she motioned towards the mage, "Kieren has an idea, but he tells me we need an auraseer to make it work."
Kieren seemed surprised that the Dreamweaver was handing the explanation over to him, but quickly took it up. "yes, that's correct. The basic idea is to use the physical remnants of the wizards' apparitions to collect residual auras, which we can hopefully reconstruct into echoes and -- if we're lucky -- trace them back to their source. We have the perfect material for this, a kind of fulgurite that formed from superheated wood beneath each of the lightning strikes. The problem is, the only ritual I know for the process was designed with an auraseer in mind, as the echoes are too weak to detect with regular aurasenses alone."
"Think you can help with something like that?" The Dreamweaver asked.
"Absolutely," Victoria said, eager for a chance to work alongside the titan, "when do we start?"
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Iris was slumped over in her seat, resting her head heavily atop her crossed arms on the table and snoring ever-so-slightly. Her wizard hat had tumbled off her head and fallen sideways on the table, inside it was a curled up Littletooth napping peacefully alongside her. The door to the tavern creaked loudly before slamming shut.
"Huh?" she asked, sitting upright and blinking until her vision unblurred.
The Fish Wizard stopped in his tracks and spoke in his usual rude tone, "you people are still here?"
Iris glanced over and saw Littletooth in her hat. In a panic, she swept the hat off the table out of sight and onto her bottomless bag which rested on the chair beside her. A tentacle reached out and grabbed the confused and flailing baby wyvern, pulling him into the void as the hat landed upright atop the bag.
"Why wouldn't we be?" Iris asked casually.
"Grand Hunt's over, go home," the wizard said, moving towards the kitchen.
"Actually," Iris stood and blipped in front of him to block his path, "it doesn't end for a few more weeks, the big targets are finished but there's still lots of other quests to do."
The wizard harrumphed, "whatever, get out of my way."
He effortlessly pushed her aside and strolled into the kitchen, but she blipped in front of him again, "I need to talk to you about something."
"No."
He strolled past her again.
"It's about the Shark Titan."
He stopped with a step still lingering in the air, then turned to give her an angry look, "what about him?"
"He wants to meet with you about Gerald."
"Absolutely not," he said flatly.
"Autumn has agreed to cater the meeting to keep him happy and well fed so he won't try to eat anyone."
"I said no," he turned to walk away again.
"Well, he's coming here either way. The meeting is scheduled for dinner time in two days."
"He's-- coming here?" the wizard said nervously.
"Yep," Iris said, "and he's expecting you to be here too."
The wizard spun around with a nervous smile, "right, okay. Tell him I'll be here." As he spoke, the wizard stepped backwards until he stood near the hatch in the floor.
"Wait, really?" Iris asked, surprised.
"Yep," he stomped his staff into the floor and the hatch popped open, "trust me, wizards always keep their word," he hopped through the open hatch and disappeared into the dark water below.
"No they don't," Iris said skeptically to the empty room.