“Yes! Officers! Help me! These ladies have abducted me!” The bandit yells at the two guards.

“Hush, why would we teleport into the Royal capital if we abducted you?” Carol puts her hands on her hip and turns around towards the bandit.

While that makes a lot of sense to me, the guards look even more on guard than before. The situation seems not to be de-escalating any time soon and it also seems like they don’t recognize me or Sam.

“Oh boi, we are totally getting arrested, aren’t we.” Max speaks softly and shakes her head.

“No we are not.” Sam states matter of factly and reaches for her pocket.

“Don’t move a finger!” One of the guards draws his blade and points it towards us. The shaking in his sword is rather obvious. Both us and our wolves aren’t very intimidated but it’s best that we don’t get into a fight, mostly to avoid the guards being in pain for however short of a duration it would be.

“Don’t do anything stupid.” Sam retorts. “I’m just going to hand you something, okay?” Sam does stop moving towards her pocket but she keeps her hand hovering close to it. “It’s a letter, you just need to read it.”

The two guards look at each other after which the guard who didn’t draw his sword yet mutters something to the other. I can’t quite understand what they are discussing, but after a couple of seconds the other guard nods and beckons to Sam with his sword. “My colleague here will take it out of your pouch.”

Sam thinks about it for a second or two before she nods back. “Alright, we can do that. So we just stand still?”

“Yes.”

After the guard says that, the other one also draws his sword and approaches us, with his left hand he then goes to Sam’s belt. “Is it this pouch?” He asks, pointing at one of them.

“Yes, that’s the one. There should be a letter inside.”

The guard starts carefully fishing around in the pouch while keeping an eye on Sam and us at the same time. It takes him ten seconds or so before he finally takes out a letter.

“Looks like you got it.” Sam smiles.

The guard gives the letter a quick glance over and then moves back towards his comrade-at-arms. Handing the letter over as they get back together.

While the other one reads what’s in the letter, he goes through a range of emotions rather quickly. “Wait, this can’t be right.”

“Whats wrong?” The other asks.

“This is the Empress’s seal, isn’t it?”

“Uhh…” The guy stops looking at us, lowering his sword as he does and then quickly looks over the letter as well. “I guess it kind of looks like it… But is it magically warded?”

“It should be, but I’m even less a mage than you are…” The first guard looks up from the letter, straight at our party. Squinting a little. “We should probably get this checked for its authenticity at the royal bailiff’s office.” Now that the guards are talking about it and I put my focus on the letter, I do feel a very very faint magical aura coming from the bottom of the letter.

“Would the royal bailiff’s office be close to the prison?” I decide to ask.

Now both of the guards start looking at me. The second one then gives me a cautious nod. “It is. It’s right next door in fact… Why?”

“We are looking to drop that man off there, he’s a bandit leader whom we have taken prisoner. So we can follow you to the bailiff and wait for your verdict there. How about that?” I offer. “That way we both get what we want.”

“Hmmm.” The first guard scratches his chin.

Stolen novel; please report.

“There’s also more reinforcements there if we need them.” The second one talks to the first.

“I suppose we take you up on your offer then. But don’t try to run away before we get there or we will track you down.” Again, not the most intimidating of threats, but we also don’t really have a reason not to listen to them now as they will guide us to where we need to be anyway.

One guard takes the lead while the other one closes the ranks behind us. You do have to recommend their courage to attempting to apprehend an entire adventure group with 4 direwolves as well. Not very smart, but very courageous nonetheless.

“Ami?” Sam whispers.

“Hmhhm?”

“Could you actually sense something from the letter I gave them?”

I nod. “Just a tiny bit. So I do think it does have a magical seal.”

“Huh, interesting.” My girlfriend replies.

“Did you know it was a letter issued by the Empress?”

“Not really.” She shakes her head. “I had only quickly read it before, I didn’t pay much attention to it since it was just a questletter Crystal had given to us after already explaining everything. But I did have the feeling it could get us out of trouble here, even if it were just written out by Crystal herself. She’s still a guild owner of one of the biggest guilds in the city.”

“I wonder if the Empress personally gave the quest to the guild.”

“I don’t think so but who knows.” Sam shrugs. “I’m just happy we didn’t need to trick them or something worse. That’s probably bad for our reputation.”

“Yeah, same.”

Sam smiles at me and takes my hand in hers, giving me a quick peck on the cheek.

A couple of minutes later we arrive in what looks to be the bureaucratic center of the city, pretty much attached to the outside of the big inner walls behind which the royal palace lies.

There’s some more guards there standing on the outside of, what I presume is, the Royal bailiff’s office. When they see us coming under guard of two of their comrades they look rather surprised. And a couple of them even start panicking, but from the looks on their faces I don’t think it is because they think we are going to do them any harm. It’s even more obvious when a couple of them close their eyes and fold their hands in prayer.

-Yeah… I’m pretty sure those guards know who I am…-

The two guards who are escorting us don’t seem to notice that though. “Is the Bailiff's mage present?” The first asks to the guard closest to the door.

“She is.” The guard replies and then looks over at us. “Do these people need her?”

“No, we would like to authenticate this letter.” The guard hands over the letter Sam gave him.

The guard at the door gives it a quick glance, looks back up at the two guards and then back at us. After that she hands the letter back over. “You two can go in, she should be in her sanctorum. We will keep an eye on your wards.”

The two guards who were escorting us both give a nod to the guard at the door and move inside swiftly. Once they are well and truely out of sight the guard at the door sighs, puts her hand to her chest for a moment, and then approaches us.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, my ladies.” She then looks over to her comrades who now outright look like they are praying to me. It's making me a little bit uncomfortable. “I think it’s rather obvious that most of us know who you are.”

“Please don’t blame your guards, we gave them quite a scare, unintentionally of course.” Carol replies. “They are just doing their jobs.”

“That’s very kind of you to say, milady.” She then looks back at the door. “However, I do not think that the court mage will share the same opinion when she lays her eyes on the letter our two guardsmen brought in.“

“I sure hope she won’t hurt them.” I bring my hand to my mouth.

“She won’t but she will give them a good stern lecture about interfering with quests directly coming from her majesty. Especially since they have forgotten their authenticator…” She shows the palm of her gauntlet to us. In the center is a very small gem, giving off a faint reddish glow.

“Ah, so that’s how you knew the letter was legit?” Max asks.

The guard nods. “Every patrol should have at least one of these along. They are rather new to the force so they might have forgotten. It will be a good lesson for them. In a way they are also rather lucky they stumbled upon a benevolent Goddess like yourself for their first error too.” She looks at me with a dignified smile.

“Alright, as that’s cleared up, can we drop off this guy here? It’s a bandit leader whom we’ve captured. We’ve destroyed his camp to the North of Getinium.” Sam nods towards the guy who still lay bound on top of the direwolf.

The guard nods and quickly beckons over three of the guards who were praying. They then swiftly take him away.

“He doesn’t seem to know that much about the entire bandit situation, but feel free to interrogate him. We’ve also got this map with a couple of locations of other camps.”

“We will make a copy of that as soon as the mage comes to greet you.” The guard nods. “That shouldn’t take too much longer.”

That’s when I feel a big flare up of magical energy coming from the first story of the building.

-Poor guards…-