{-Llewel-}
“Thanks for helping me out. As promised, this is your reward.” It was a moment after Hannah gave their rewards to Zetai that she gained her own voice to continue, “And I’ll talk with that friend of mine. I’ll see if he can tell Dahasci anything he learns, since it sounds like you’ll be talking with him more.” She only waited for their collective nod of agreement before waving and walking away.
It only took another moment for Zetai to lead the way to the inn. Nearly as soon as she pushed the door open, however, she remarked, “There’s a lot more players here than I thought there would be.”
“No, I’d say it’s about the average for around this time,” Llewel mumbled. There were players all over the streets, too—whatever time it was for them in the real world, it was when they all came here. “Shouldn’t do anything to stop us.”
“It’ll probably be better,” Tinath pointed out. “The more people, the less noticeable the individuals get.”
Reynneak more nervously added, “Unless there really are a lot more people who’ll recognize us than we think there are, then having that many people around us will probably make things more obvious.”
“Well, we’re not going to find out unless we go, right?” Myr said. “Standing by the door like this isn’t helping anything.” Without waiting for anyone to say anything else, she walked in and cheerily greeted, “Good afternoon, Dahasci!”
As the rest of them joined her, they heard the tired, “Welcome to the Ilataesi City Inn. Please, make yourself at home, and do let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
“There is, actually.” Zetai casually—though there was a bit of caution in it, too—walked up to his counter. She continued like she was any other player simply trying to get some quest information: “Have you heard anything interesting lately?”
Dahasci glanced at her, the other two players, and the twins, then gave his answer. “I’m assuming you’re the ones that Kelfin told me to keep an eye out for. I recognize two of you, at least, and that’s more than I should for otherwise complete strangers. But no, I don’t think I do.”
“You either know something or you don’t,” Tinath remarked. “Which one is it?”
He nonchalantly returned, “No, I believe there’s room for a happy medium. I’m sure I’ll be able to come up with something if you’d be willing to do something else for me.”
Llewel sighed. “Come on, we’ve met before. Do we really need to do all of this..?”
“Well, it depends, is there really any reason you can’t help a shopkeeper out? I don’t see anything else that would desperately call for your attention.”
“You should know that this is serious…”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“And I’m just as serious! It won’t be too bad, I promise.” Dahasci, undoubtedly realizing that whatever he said wasn’t going to help anything, decided to change tactics. “How about I tell you what it is? It’s pretty simple, you know. Just run to Kulric’s shop and pick up some of those good chocolates. Look, you don’t even need to pay—this should be enough to cover it.” He pulled out a couple of coins from some out-of-view drawer.
Zetai wasn’t amused. “You’re not even showing a quest menu.”
“Of course I’m not—this isn’t a quest. I can’t create these kinds of things on my own, you know, and I doubt they’d approve of me sending players to fulfill my whims.”
“I don’t see the harm in it,” Reynneak said. “I mean, he’s probably not had a lot of time to go out on his own, right? And it won’t take us long.”
Seeing that that did nothing more to persuade them, Dahasci added, “That amount of money is probably more than enough. I wouldn’t mind if you’d like to give yourself a treat, as well—for the ‘quest reward,’ if you so desire one.”
Myr heard the four words she needed in order to be in support. “Really? You’d let us do that?” At Dahasci’s nod, she turned to the rest of them and practically demanded, “Well, what are we still sitting around here for? We’ve got to see Kulric!”
Llewel quickly took the coins from the counter before she could grab them. He knew there was little chance of persuading her out of it, so instead he glanced at Dahasci and asked, “And you’ll tell us what you’ve heard when we’ve come back?”
He laughed. “As long as you come back with some good sweets and something for yourselves? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know… as long as I know it, that is.”
Myr hadn’t even waited for that response to already try to get back out the door. “Plus, we can try to see what Kulric knows while we’re there! Hannah said he’d know a bunch about what’s going on in Ilataesi, right? It’s worth a shot. Do we all agree? Great! Let’s get going! No more time to waste!”
“I’ll hold on to these coins,” Llewel muttered as he went to follow her. “Players probably can’t carry them any more efficiently than I can, coming from an NPC for a non-quest-related reason.”
They seemed to hold no objections. Compared to Myr’s enthusiasm, they didn’t seem interested at all; of course the idea of seeing what he knew would be worth the slight trouble, but from the outside, it must not have looked like it.
After a moment, Tinath glanced at Reynneak. “Any ideas of what we’re going to do after we’ve done this for Dahasci?”
“First we see what he’s going to tell us,” he decided, though it wasn’t really confident. “For the most part, we’ll go from there. But I figured we could do one of those quests in the mountains—to try to find Esaphi for Llewel and Myr.”
Zetai shrugged. “It’s not like we have anything that would desperately need our time anyway. Isn’t that still where most of them are? We’d just kill two birds with one stone.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them was from her,” Llewel remarked. “Have you looked into any of the specific names of the quest givers yet?”
Reynneak shook his head. “I haven’t really thought about it. I’ll check, though, when we have the time. I’ll see if there’s anything from her parents, too. It sounds like they’re still in touch?”
“They should be. Even if we can’t find her on our own—there’s a chance we won’t, she likes hiding away from everyone—then her parents would know.”
They were all quiet for a little bit, before Tinath more cautiously asked, “Do you think we’re going to end up finding anyone else while we’re in the mountains..?”
“We… probably shouldn’t hope for it,” Llewel mumbled. “But I guess we’re not going to know anything until we look.”
Given what Tinath had told them earlier… he honestly wasn’t sure if it made him want to see her more, or if he was hoping that she wouldn’t be here. And if she realized what they’d learned without her, he had a feeling that she’d feel the same.