“I don't know what to do,” Threadbare sighed.

“Well that's what the mission briefing is for,” Garon said, his voice booming from his metal throat.

“No. Not about that. About Celia. Something's wrong with her, and she won't tell me what it is.”

Garon gazed at him through the glowing green lights that were his eyes. Then he rose and shut the window.

Some caution was understandable. They were at the guildhall in Cylvania City, the central headquarters for the Reclaimers Association of Generica. (RAG, for short.) It was a large keep, with several smaller buildings around it... Garon, acting as Guildmaster for the only non-dwarven Guild in the Republic, had amassed quite a lot of wealth and used it to purchase a good chunk of the surrounding city.

The end result was somewhere between a university campus and a mercenary training facility. New recruits, support staff, and customers of the guild wandered the streets around the headquarters at all hours. It was also a popular gathering spot for a significant portion of Cylvania's golems and doll haunters, even those who weren't in the guild.

The downside to this was that there were always plenty of sharp-eared sorts coming and going, and that most secrets had a shelf-life somewhere between day-old milk and freshly-baked bread. For Garon's part, he figured that shutting the window would buy them an hour or two.

Threadbare shook his head. “I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed it, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

“I hadn't noticed it,” Garon said, folding his looming form back into his seat. He'd switched bodies, recently, upgrading from a wooden minotaur to a horn-helmed armor golem. His new body was a black metal suit of mixed chain and plate, seven feet tall, with green, glowing eyes and a moveable jaw that ground as he spoke. Threadbare supposed it would be very fearsome if you didn't know him well.

But Threadbare had met him when he was much younger and still alive, one of the half-orc brothers who had befriended him and Celia and taken them on their first dungeon run. And later on, he had become one of the first doll haunters, after Threadbare had figured out a way to bind his soul to a golem body, and give him another shot at repairing an old family tragedy.

He'd done all that, and decided to stick around afterwards. And Threadbare was grateful for that.

“Celia is doing a lot, all the time,” Threadbare waved his paws. “She's trying very hard to manage Council business, and keep politics from hurting Cylvania. I think she doesn't focus on herself as much as she needs to.”

“She has been doing a lot for us. Especially with you gone... ah, that came out wrong,” Garon folded his gauntlet fingers together. “You had to go. I understand why. But the repercussions are still working out. Maybe she's just a little angry at the people who are trying to capitalize on your departure? Easterlynn-Proudsmythe and Longcroak are being assholes about it lately. That's a good reason for stress. Gods know they piss me off enough during regular times.”

“She's been like this for at least a year,” Threadbare said, looking down.

“What? Oh. Oh shit. That's not good,” Garon said. “What changed?”

Threadbare shook his head. “I don't know exactly when it started or what caused it. I only started noticing it a year ago. She's... fading. That's the only way I can describe it. The things that used to make her happy don't seem to do much anymore. She's getting more quiet and more sad, and I don't know why.”

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Garon pondered the matter. “Here's the more important question, and I'm a jackass for not asking it sooner. How can I help?”

“I don't know,” Threadbare scrunched his paws up. “I would ask you for help if I knew how you could help. But I don't know what the problem is. Celia won't tell me. And when I try to ask, she gets angrier.”

“Hoo boy. Bad situation. Ah...” Garon stood up, and paced around the room, hands folded behind his back as he thought. Threadbare watched the pauldrons that were his shoulders tense up, then slump. “Do you want me to cancel the quest?”

Threadbare could hear the note of pleading in his friend's voice.

“No,” the teddy bear said, shaking his head. “Even if I thought it was a good idea, Celia would know you'd done it so I could stay home and try to help her. She would be upset. And all that aside, we are not going to give up on Madeline. She's our friend too.”

Garon turned, working his jaw into a rough smile. The effect was still overly menacing, but Threadbare knew that was just his friend's style. “Thank you. That means a lot. I'll... I can't promise much, but I'll try to keep an eye on her while you're away.” the armor golem sighed. “I wish I'd known this was going on a week or two earlier. I would have postponed my bodyswap. My charisma's behind the curve, it'll be weeks before I can grind it up again.”

“I don't think it's a problem that raw attributes can solve,” Threadbare said. “I'm probably one of the wisest things in this valley and I'm at a total loss.”

Coming from anyone else it would be a boast. From him, it was simply stating a matter of fact.

“Yeah,” Garon sighed. “I wish that Mom was here. But I'll do what I can. I'll get the others from the old crew involved, too. Pretty sure Kayin's between assignments. And Beryl's been bugging Jarrik about a vacation for months now. I'll send him a yell-o-gram and see if they can spend it at the Capital.”

“Oh, that might be good. We haven't seen Beryl in a long time.”

“She's still working on the perfect glider, from what I hear. But I don't hear a lot. The dwarves have been pretty quiet, lately. But that's what dwarves do, now and then, is tell the rest of the world to fuck off while they go and be dwarves.”

“I've noticed that too, but I haven't had time to look into it. Or any reason to poke too deeply into their business,” Threadbare shrugged. “To tell the truth, aside from some business in the Rumpus Room that I had to tend to, I've been spending all of my time trying to help Celia.”

“Well now you're not alone,” Garon told him. “We've got your back, my bear. And speaking of backs...” he knelt down and stretched out a hand. “Want a lift over to the meeting room? I'm feeling the urge to run.”

“You know, I think I'll take you up on that.” Without another word Threadbare scrambled up his arm, used the spikes of Garon's pauldrons to boost himself up, and perched between his old friend's horns. “Lead the way, please.”

Heads turned and golems and humans and more exotic species stared and laughed as Garon sped through the halls of the headquarters, his clanking footsteps letting everyone in his path know that he was coming. A few people cheered him on, and he just snapped a wave or salute as he passed, grinning widely. Garon enjoyed life... well, technically unlife, to the fullest. He had nothing to prove to anyone, especially here in the heart of his power.

Threadbare rather enjoyed the trip, even though he had to hold his top hat on with one hand. The pins were threatening to rip free again.

The briefing room was at the very top of the building, a large, round chamber with a skylight that had a one-way enchantment on it to prevent snooping from the outside. Banners flew from the walls, everything from Cylvania's flag to the old Brokeshale dwarven banners, to the hastily-drawn-up crossed forks over a garbage can that the Raccants of the southern reach had adopted as a clan symbol. A massive table stood in the center of it, bearing a map of the known world, with Cylvania in the center.

They'd had to make the table bigger over the last six months. Discovering the city-state of Belltollia in the east had vastly expanded that side of things, even more so after embassies and trade had been set up, and Belltollia had happily turned over their own maps. Though through some trial and error the RAG had learned that not all the maps were completely accurate, so there had been some fast adjustment and repainting, and now the table only displayed what the guild had personally confirmed.

But it wasn't the east that they were worried about today.

And as the rest of the selected adventurers came in and took their seats around the massive map, Garon took out a collapsible rod, flicked it open, and pointed to the western part of the map. “Welcome aboard, you lucky lot. We've got a high-profile, very important mission for you today. You folks are going to be exploring the Forest of Final Boss...”