Eresthanon was left with little choice but to follow Aaliyah through the door. She might be all brashness and bravado, but she was also his partner; he couldn’t let her go into the dragons’ den alone.

“Excuse me,” he said to the guard as he slid past.

The room beyond the door was, in fact, a well-appointed lounge. Reminiscent of something you’d find in a large corporation, all the furniture was sleek, made of glass, steel, and black leather. The only other occupants were a quartet of people, sitting around a low table.

There were three men and one woman, all in their twenties or thirties — not that appearances meant much with drakus, which he assumed these people were, as their aging was slowed significantly. They were the source of the loud argument.

Or they had been, until Aaliyah marched up to them, a scowl plastered to her face.

The drakus woman stood up from one of the couches. She was barely taller than Aaliyah, and not nearly as wiry, with dark red hair. She put her hands on her hips and scowled right back.

A large man held up his hands and called back to Aaliyah, “Ah shit! Look who it is!”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the redhead demanded.

“Didn’t you hear?” Aaliyah replied. “They made being a bitch a violation of the First and Second Pillars, since it’s so draining dealing with them it makes you want to die. Naturally, they sent me to haul your flat ass in.”

Whatever rocky history Aaliyah had with these drakus and despite Khaldun’s warning, Eresthanon hadn’t thought she’d go so far as to provoke a fight. Still, he reminded himself that she had ripped the arm off a draugr after a fairly mild provocation, so he wasn’t entirely confident in his conclusion.

He stepped up beside her, a number of spells in the back of his mind joining the partially-formed intent to call his glaive to hand should any of them be needed. The two women glowered at each other with the kind of scorn that could only grow in the fetid soil of broken fondness.

The men around the table remained impassive, although one of them seemed uncomfortable with the confrontation. He kept it hidden from his face well enough, but Eresthanon saw the lines of his muscles against his clothes; they were taut and ready to move. That kind of nervous energy rarely boded well if your goal was to avoid a fight.

Then the entire group — drakus and Quaesitor — burst into raucous laughter, except for the tense fellow, but even he chuckled awkwardly after a couple seconds.

“No, seriously,” the redhead said. “What are you doing here? Did one of ours do the dumb?”

“Kiara, please… you must have heard something about what’s going on.”

Kiara, apparently, shook her head. “You know we don’t really do all that society shit. And we just got back into town a couple days ago besides.”

“Yeah?” Aaliyah said, drawing the word out into a question. “Then what are you dinks doing back in the city?”

“We got us an intern,” the smallest man said, laughing. He had dark hair, a surprisingly deep voice, and a wheezy kind of laugh. “Or maybe an apprentice is the right term since we’re paying him and all?”

The first man who’d spoken — the largest of the bunch by quite a margin — stood up and ran a big hand through his sandy brown hair. “Maybe we should do introductions, seeing as Aaliyah got herself a new friend, too?”

“Friend?” Aaliyah scoffed, blowing air through her teeth. “Nah, this is Tribune Eresthanon, my new partner.”

Kiara gestured to herself, then each of the men in turn. “I’m Kiara, the big lug’s Griffin, the little weasel is Albert, and the normal-sized one is Aaron. Aaron has been a numbers guy, but he petitioned the higher ups to try his hand at delving, so we’re giving him a trial run. That’s what brought us back into town.”

“So they finally saddled you with a partner, eh?” the big man, Griffin, said.

“Wait,” Kiara interrupted. “If he’s your partner, does that mean you’re actually here on official business?”

“What? You mean old man Barrett finally took my advice and started diversifying us into crime?” the smaller man, Albert, asked. “Finally, one step closer to my dream of being a goon in the dragon mob!”

Kiara smacked the small man on his shoulder with the back of her hand. “Don’t say shit like that when the fuzz is standing right there.”

“So is it true?” Griffin asked. “Are you here on the job?”

Aaliyah took a moment to look at each of the drakus in turn. “Come on, surely you guys have heard about what’s going down out there?”

The apprentice, Aaron, raised a hand halfway to his shoulder. “Uh, is there some kind of trouble going on? Was this a bad time to try delving?”

Kiara grunted, exasperated. “How the shit would we know? Do they tell you accountants what the spies are up to?”

“I’m sure we have some forensic accounting people who-” Aaron began, then cut himself off. He shot a furtive look at the two vigilum then quickly made sure he was looking anywhere else.

The other two men chuckled while Kiara rolled her eyes. She turned back to address Aaliyah again.

“If there’s something going down, it’s news to us,” she told them. “I take it you’re here to see the old man?”

“At least one of them,” Aaliyah replied.

“Either way, it was good to see you again, Aaliyah,” Griffin said, punching her softly on the arm before making his way to one of the other doors in the room.

Albert rose from his own chair and went to join him. “I’d wish you luck, but for all I know we’re betting against each other here so, uh, I just won’t wish you bad luck. I guess?”

“It was nice to meet you,” Aaron said, lifting a hand in a half-wave and making his way over with the others.

That just left Kiara, who held up a finger to the other drakus, indicating she needed a moment. As her compatriots filed out through the door, she took a step closer to the vigilum, lowering her voice and speaking in a conspiratorial near-whisper.

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“Is there some kind of trouble we should be on the lookout for?” she asked. “Me and the boys can take care of ourselves, you know that, but we have a newbie with us who’s never really been in the shit.”

“I can’t tell you anything specific, obviously, but I think y’all should keep your heads on a swivel and a close watch on your six,” Aaliyah said. “Now you tell me something: what was that argument about when we walked in?”

Kiara exhaled through her nostrils, a clear sign of frustration in Eresthanon’s opinion. “Griffin has all these Okie-ass, weird-ass, bullshit food things he picked up in the trailer park or wherever. I have no idea why but lately they keep coming up.”

Aaliyah lowered her head and looked at Kiara from under her brows, clearly not satisfied with that answer. Kiara held her hands up in surrender and rolled her own eyes.

“Last time it was how he flays chicken nuggets and eats the skin separate,” she said. “This time it was about how he adds pasta sauce to mac and cheese. Real psycho shit, y’know?”

“I’ve heard of that,” Aaliyah said. “Marinara mac and cheese. It’s supposed to be pretty good.”

Kiara grunted derisively. “Sure, with the right ingredients, maybe; if you use the right cheese and the right sauce. But that loppy asshole wasn’t talking about gruyere, mozzarella, and parmesan, he was talking about pouring Ragu into a pot of Kraft dinner!”

Aaliyah’s face scrunched up, not in disgust exactly, but in the same way a child’s might when trying to figure out how an airplane stays up.

“I’m not sure if that’s brilliant or horrifying,” she said. “And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I have the courage to try it so’s I can find out.”

“It’s real mad scientist shit,” Kiara replied, solemnly. “He’s ignored the laws of god and man to forge a culinary abomination.”

Aaliyah laughed. “Well, whatever the case, I’m glad to see you three are doing alright. We won’t keep you if you have shit to do, but it was nice to run into each other.”

“There’s nothing stopping you from keeping in touch, Aaliyah” Kiara said.

Aaliyah’s mouth thinned into a wry smile and she tilted her head into a kind of shrug, but offered no other response.

Kiara seemed to consider saying something else, but in the end she remained silent, as well. With a final wave, she departed through the same door her three friends had used, leaving the vigilum alone in the lounge with the masked doorkeeper.

“Someone should be along shortly,” the masked drakus said, doing nothing to alleviate the air of awkwardness that lingered after the departure of Kiara and the others.

Rather than stew in the discomfort, Eresthanon decided that a bit of light conversation might help pass the time. As a bonus, he might learn more about Aaliyah and her connection with the Drakon.

“I must confess, Quaesitor,” he said. “I’m not sure I’m familiar with what the term ‘delving’ means in this context.”

Aaliyah cocked an eyebrow at him. “Delving, you know? As in dungeon delving? They seek out, explore, and loot dungeons and shit like that.”

“Aha, adventurers are they?”

“Not really. They focus pretty much exclusively on dungeons, rather than drifting around looking for whatever trouble they can get themselves into,” she said. “It’s higher risk, but supposedly more stable and profitable. Plus they rarely have to contract with anyone — no saving a town from monsters, complicated heists, or love triangles — so it provides a level of autonomy a lot of bog standard adventurers don’t enjoy.”

Before Eresthanon could ask more about what this strange, hyper-specific profession entailed — and how Aaliyah knew so much about it — a new person joined them through one of the other doors in the lounge. He was young, Latino, wearing a nice suit, and a diamond stud earring in one ear.

“Excuse me, vigilum,” the young man said. “If you’ll just follow me?”

He led them through the door and into a wide hallway made of cement painted a pale blue. The walls had a feeling of weight to them, a density that was both sturdy and vaguely ominous. Eresthanon, having no real way to gauge how thick the walls were, wondered if he was imagining it. Perhaps he was experiencing a kind of sense-memory from time spent in a chthonic underkingdom in a past Cycle.

They followed the plain corridor through several turns, enough that they should have doubled back on themselves yet never seemed to. Whether it was some trick of architecture or dimensional magic, Eresthanon couldn’t be sure; a faint sense of magic was pervasive in the halls, but it was distorted and masked by the presence of two deep wells of aetheric power, one above him and one below.

From his sense of the currents coursing around him, Eresthanon’s best guess was that a nexus of ley lines rested in the earth beneath the building and a massive aetheric engine resided in the floors above. Building atop a confluence of aether currents was perhaps one of the oldest hallmarks of civilization. While there were many nexuses more powerful than the one below, Eresthanon didn’t know of any that were so masterfully contained. He hadn’t felt anything until he was inside the confines of the structure itself!

After passing more than a dozen unremarkable, identical doors, their guide chose one seemingly at random that turned out to house a conference room. Other than the lack of windows, it was basically indistinguishable from a modern corporate meeting space.

“Would either of you care for something to drink?” the young man asked, gesturing for them to take a seat.

When they declined his offer, he sat down at the table across from them. Eresthanon hadn’t known what to expect from this meeting with the Drakon, but the look on Aaliyah’s face when the drakus sat down suggested she, at least, hadn’t expected this.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“My name is Samuel and I’m hoping you could help me figure that out,” he replied with a benign smile. “We were unaware representatives from the Vigiles Creaturae would be coming today, so please tell me: how can the Drakon help you?”

“How can you help me?” Aaliyah asked. “By telling one or both of the old men to get their ass in here so I can talk to them, that’s how.”

“I’m not sure what you mean, Quaesitor Dean,” Samuel said.

Aaliyah took a deep breath, blew it out through her teeth with a slight hissing sound, and laid both of her hands flat on the table, the fingers splayed wide.

“Listen here, Sonny Jim, I don’t have a chain to yank. If I did, I’d be inclined to yank back harder,” she said. “So what are you going to accomplish trying to yank me around?”

Samuel offered an unctuous smile. “I’m afrai-”

His statement was cut off when Aaliyah flexed her fingers slightly and the heavy wooden table top creaked beneath them.

“If I wanted to talk to gophers and middlemen, I’d have gone to one of your stupid q-banks. The fact that I, of all people, am here should’ve made it clear to the old coots that this was going to be a serious conversation. So why’re you busting my balls and wasting everybody’s time?”

The door of the conference room opened and another man joined them. He looked to be on the older side of middle-aged — probably in his fifties or sixties — with graying hair around his temples. He was wearing an immaculate four-piece suit in midnight blue, though he’d replaced the jacket with a cream-colored cardigan.

Samuel stood up as he entered but Aaliyah kept her seat and simply glowered at the man. Eresthanon followed her lead, at least as far as seating was concerned, and remained in his chair.

The new arrival beamed at Aaliyah, not put off in the slightest by the clear dislike emanating from the Quaesitor.

“Well look who it is,” he said. “Good morning, all, good morning! Now, listen; nobody’s trying to yank anyone’s chain, it’s just that your visit was unexpected and it took me some time to get here. I ain’t exactly a spring chicken.” He turned his warm, friendly eyes to Eresthanon. “And who’s this handsome fella?”

If the gritting of Aaliyah’s teeth was any indication, she didn’t plan to make any proper introductions, so Eresthanon took it upon himself. He rose from his seat and offered a hand to the older man.

“I am Eresthanon, Tribune of the Vigiles Creaturae.”

“Well butter my biscuits,” the man replied, taking his hand in a firm shake. “So they finally saddled Aaliyah with a partner, eh? I’m sure it’s been a cavalcade of roses and professional bliss so far.” He winked at Eresthanon, then continued. “I’m Barrett Freeman, Cordus Draconis of the Drakon.”

“You are the second of the Drakon?”

“Something like that,” Barrett replied. “So, what brings two inquisitors of the Vigiles Creaturae to see us this morning?”