Drip-Fed

There were two ways Reysha contemplated on how she could learn the truth of the matter.

One was to simply get lucky and overhear a conversation. When she approached the house of village leader, her ears picked up nothing, so that route was out. The second route was slightly more complicated: break in and check whatever correspondence she could find. If she had any favour or disfavour, tokens of it should be found. Nobles were in the habit of keeping letters, especially in a place like this.

Getting to the house unseen was easy. ‘If there was any lie amongst what she said, them needing helping was not one of them,’ Reysha thought. ‘The security sucks.’

As the sole Rogue of her level in the entire village, the only people that could have reliably spotted her were the same three that waited for her to return from this mission. Even when she pulled out her lockpicking set, the little clicks and clacks of manipulating the springs within when unnoticed. Once the door was open, she hurried once. With it closed, the hard part had been done already.

‘Except for that,’ Reysha thought, after scanning through the building.

The issue with poor places was that everything was condensed. Regularly, nobles had their sleeping arrangements in entirely different sub-apartments within their lavish mansions. This house only afforded a single door’s separation between the bedroom and the living room, within which the work desk was also located. No second floor. There was a pantry and a kitchen that was it.

The Mobile Estate was larger than this house.

Reysha kept watch on the sleeping dark elf for a full minute. Exhaustion was a perfidious thing, as the redhead knew from experience. People that were stressed and incapable of full rest for several days on end often times did not get the proper sleep they were looking for when the opportunity first arose. The body needed a couple of nights to return from the alerted state to regular activity. As such, Reysha expected the dark elf’s sleep to be light.

It wasn’t. She laid on her back, unmoving, save for her chest’s up and down under the expensive bedsheets.

Reysha found that state perplexing and caution made her assume it was a trick. She Stealthed a little closer, to trigger the trap. If it existed, she wanted to find that out on her terms.

Instead, she found that the woman remained sound asleep, even when Reysha stood by the bedside. She raised an eyebrow. Her eyes fell on a cup on the bedside table. She raised it to her nose and took a cautious inhale. The scent of mild narcotics was easily recognized. ‘Not the worst idea,’ Reysha thought and put the cup down.

Judging poisons by scent was a part of Rogue’s base training and Mai had re-drilled that knowledge into her when they had time. Reysha was able to recognize that the dosage was too mild for someone who used it regularly. She really had needed the help and was making the most of it.

‘So that at least clears the intention, now does she have what was promised?’ Reysha asked herself. Despite the proof that the woman was out cold, the Rogue did not drop her efforts of being sneaky. It was bad craftsmanship to get complacent.

She made her way back to the work desk. It was the first sign that something was off here. They had been told it took time to create the letter of recommendation, but there seemed nothing meaningfully different about the desk between their visit earlier that day and now.

Reysha quietly opened the drawers one after another. She found a stack of clean paper, a seal ring, melting wax and other items used for the creation of such letters. What she was looking for, however, wasn’t proof that a letter could be made, but that it would mean anything.

The Rogue’s guidebook suggested to always check the open places last. This was not because the desired items were least likely found in those open places, but because it was difficult to put things back in place. One may not raise an eyebrow at the altered state of a drawer’s content. The placements of objects on a desk, however, was swiftly noted by basically anyone, even people with poor memory.

That was why Reysha found what she was looking for only after some time.

It was a stack of correspondences, lying at the back of the table. Scanning through it lightly was all that Reysha needed. Demands for payment on one side and dissuading diplomacy from the other. At first, it sounded like the leader of the village herself was in hot water, but it became swiftly apparent that her whole family had come across difficult times. Demotion in the social order was even being threatened.

Reysha had found what she was looking for.

___________________________________________________________________________

“So, what do we do with that?”

Reysha wrapped up the sharing of the intel. At that moment, it was only Apexus on the wall. Aclysia was sniping enemy wings up in the sky, while Korith was involved in a melee with two of the insects.

The answer to that was difficult. After being lied to, selfishness was an appropriate reaction, one that Apexus considered and dismissed. He could not bring himself to be self-centred enough to leave these people in the middle of the night with monsters constantly streaming down from the north. Even if he had wanted to awaken the protection party, he doubted he could.

Korith and Aclysia returned while he was still contemplating. He let Reysha give the quick rundown while he remained quiet. Other people would have mistaken his prolonged silence as a lack of investment. His ladies knew better.

“We will until the morning,” he stated.

__________________________________________________________________________

The head of the village was wary when they appeared on her doorstep. She had not yet changed into her day clothes, wearing a nightgown that was acceptable to be seen in but not the appropriate image. The sleep had notably improved her looks, yet she was not recovered from recent deprivations. Her mind was sharpened enough to immediately pick up on the fact that something was wrong.

Apexus halfway muscled his way inside. He had considered his approach to this carefully these past couple of hours. The dark elf stumbled back into the room. She was as little used to being shoved around like this as Apexus was to leverage the fact that he was the strongest singular creature in a several days radius. Korith, Aclysia and Reysha all were his equal in level, but none of them could have defeated him with his unique biology and the lesser adventurers certainly would have stood no chance unless they all banded together with proper coordination.

“Sit,” he stated, pointing the woman at a chair.

Her lower lip trembled at the indignation, but she was too proud and too smart to go for a swing. Arms and legs crossed, she positioned herself on the chair.

Apexus had no interest in hiding his knowledge. He marched over to the table and picked up the letters that Reysha had described. He quickly scanned through the contents to verify the intel for himself. “You were right,” he stated.

“Was that ever in doubt?” Reysha grinned, back leaning against the door. Her smile did not reach her eyes. “Someone’s been making promises they cannot keep.”

“One promise,” she carefully corrected.

“That is one too many,” Apexus stated, back to her. He was still checking the details of correspondence. “I appreciate your situation is difficult. You look out for your community. That is admirable. Yet, you put me in a difficult position.”

“I know that,” she answered. “I was going to tell you the truth tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Korith weighed in, voice laden with sarcasm. She put her hammer down with a heavy thump, before climbing onto the chair opposite of that of the village head. This was the part of the conversation where she was supposed to take over and she did so swiftly. “Obviously we’ll be leaving,” he blonde stated.

The dark elf pressed her lips together, but nodded. She had wanted that extra night’s sleep, but she would take the one proper night that she had gotten for what it was worth. It was what would come next that worried her.

“Obviously we will complain to the Lady Freshina about this incident,” Korith began. That made the greyish blue skin of the woman lighten.

“That would be a drastic waste of her time,” she said swiftly.

“She has requested we check out these areas and report back to her. Wouldn’t want us to spare the highborn any details, would we?” Korith crossed her arms. “Or do you think it should not be part of our report that we have found your situation so desperate that you need the support of a second noble plus their guard?”

The woman opened her mouth in reflex. Only after a few seconds did it dawn on her that what had been said was not necessarily bad. “You… aren’t really here to punish me, are you?” she asked very slowly.

“Yes, we are! You tried to swindle us out of shinies!” Korith responded forcefully. The shortstack was not the most impressive sight on the regularly sized chair, but it did not take an adventurer to feel the mana radiating from her. Her golden eyes almost seemed to shine with anger. “I really tried being nice here! We are on a stupidly low paid Quest, taking a stupidly long time and taking stupidly many side jobs on the way for stupidly low rewards! Its… yeah!”

Korith stopped there, having already ranted on the matter enough to air her grievance with it all. Her red-scaled tail smacked the legs of her chair in agitation.

“I don’t mind being nice, but I hate being taken advantage of! Therefore!” Korith jumped off the chair and wandered towards the nearest shelf. Without another word, she began to randomly stuff items that looked even the slightest valuable into her bag.

The dark elf was shocked at first, but quickly resigned herself to this being what happened. There were some family keepsakes there, many items of memory, and very little of actual value.  This was very little about the Inevitable party getting their worth out of this and very much about making a statement.

“I desire to know this,” Aclysia spoke, doing her best not to look at Reysha, who joined Korith in the plundering. “Were we known to you beforehand?”

“Word of your party has reached me, yes,” the leader of the village answered, unable to suppress the edge to her voice. “I read that you were good people, ready to do the right thing first and foremost.”

Apexus put the letters back on the table. “Because of that you thought you could enlist us. That we would help you because you needed it.” He beheld her with a stern gaze. “You took our time for granted.”

“Believe me, to fuel cynicism in your heart was the least of my intentions. You can judge my situation yourselves for what it is.”

“I do not blame you for what you had to do.” Korith inspected a peculiarly shaped piece of chitin as she said. “Still though, it was shitty, so… yeah, uhm, you can’t exactly blame us for what we do now either. If we’re gonna get punished for our good deeds by people willing to take advantage of it, then we have to punish you in kind.”

“It’s easier to ask for forgiveness then to beg from the disinterested,” the village head responded with an adjusted saying of her own.

“What is wisdom?” Apexus suddenly weighed in.

“A word too large for all of us,” the village head responded, to the mild surprise of the humanoid chimera. “I have read on the journeys of Maltos on this Leaf. Under other circumstances, I would have been humbled to be in the presence of one of his students.”

“Under other circumstances, I would have loved to help you,” Apexus answered. “However, I have to bow to the wisdom of my Korith.”

‘Awwww, I am his Korith,’ the shortstack thought, impulsively. Then focused back on the situation. “I love to eat and be rewarded for my efforts and we are not being rewarded enough for this!” She stuffed a last couple of items in her back, then wandered over to the desk, and took some of the empty papers for good measure. “Good day, madam! We will be on our way!”

The village head watched them leave with only another sigh.

If anyone else in the village had an inkling of what had just transpired, they did not voice it or stand in the party’s way. Inevitably, they marched out of the northern gate, then continued their trek up north.

“Was that too mean?” Korith blurted out after some time.

“It was what needed to be done,” Apexus responded. “No one was in the wrong here. She had her people to consider. We have our reputation to consider.”

“Which, as much as it pains me, has been too altruistic,” Aclysia admitted with heavy heart. “Even the Church can not afford to Mobilize for the sake of help alone and they are afforded resources by the divine.”

“It is a lesson to take to heart, to not forsake the responsibility we have to ourselves.” Apexus smiled at Korith. “You reminded us of that very well.”

“Well, uh… thanks?” Korith answered, bashfully.

And they continued northwards.