Dawn of the Last Dragon Rider - Chapter 065 - Someone on the Inside (Patreon)

“That was faster than I expected,” Kaen said with a droll as Hess climbed the stairs to join him at the top.  “I had wondered if you might make me wait longer.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Hess grumbled as he continued to pout about this course of action.  “I am going to do what I did the last two times and sit quietly while you two talk.”

Kaen shrugged and began moving toward Fiola’s office area, letting Hess stomp behind him like an angry child.

“Are you sure you want to go in?” the woman behind the desk asked.  “Guild Master Fiola has not been the kindest to those who have entered.”

Kaen nodded.  He could hear the trembling in the woman’s voice.  She was not the usual one who had been there the last two times.

“I guess I will have to depend upon my adventuring skills to dodge anything, Miss Fiola throws at me,” joked Kaen as he moved to the door.  “I’d say if you hear screaming, send help, but we both know sound doesn’t come through these things.”

The woman smiled for a moment, the first real look of something other than anxiety since Kaen had arrived.  She nodded and motioned for them to enter.

“Lissandra, I told you not to disturb me,” hissed Fiola from where she sat at her desk, not bothering to look up from the paperwork she was reading.

Shock hit Kaen as he took the first steps into the room.  Papers were everywhere, scattered across the couches, table, floor, and anywhere else there was a flat surface.  Fiola’s hair was a mess, her braid long gone, and an odor of some kind hung in the air.

“Guild Master Fiola, I am here to lend you any help I can,” Kaen announced as he dodged the paper strewn across the floor.  “From the looks of it, you could use some help.”

When Kaen spoke, Fiola’s head snapped up, and he saw the bags under her eyes, highlighting her bloodshot eyes.  Her ivory-white skin almost looked grey now, and exhaustion was written all over her face.

“What are you…” Fiola stopped the angry tone she was speaking in and took a deep breath.  “Why have you come, adventurer Kaen?”

“Rumor has it that twenty-three adventurers are dead since we left on our quest.  We almost joined them.  It appears the information about quests has been wrong lately and you have not found out how this has happened.”

Kaen smiled slightly as he spoke, gliding through the room to her desk.  Standing before it and gazing down at Fiola, he tapped the desk with his finger gently.

“I am here to lend aid to help you, as is adventurer Hess.  We know more lives are at stake, and something must be done soon.”

“Herb,” Fiola grumbled, her voice growly and curt.  She leaned back in her chair and tried to fix the hair that was splattered around her face.  “I must deal with that breach of guild hall details later.”

“That breach cares about the lives of the adventurers as well as you,” Hess informed her from across the room.  “He knows you need help, and apparently, we are the only two he can trust right now when you cannot trust anyone else.  So instead of complaining about him, why not accept the best help he can give and get on with solving this mess!”

Fiola grimaced and glared at Hess for a moment.  A few seconds later, she sighed, her shoulders sagging as the tension left them.

“You are right.  I have no one I can trust, and with you two being new and sent on a quest that was beyond what you should have handled alone, I must trust Herb’s assessment of you both.”

Glancing around the room again, Kaen shook his head in disbelief.

“What is all this?” he asked, motioning with his hands at the papers.

“Every quest we have offered in the last year.  Each with a report of success or failure as well as if anyone was possibly killed as a result of bad information.”

After rubbing her eyes briefly, Fiola glanced at the teacup on her desk and saw it was empty.  She sighed and then motioned to a large stack on her desk to the right.

“These are all quests where someone has died in the last year.”

“That many!” gasped Hess.  “There must be…”

“Yes, over a hundred,” Fiola interrupted.  “Most originally believed that deaths happened from mistakes or not being as far advanced as the adventurer should have been.  We often felt the report was a little off in the ones where people returned.  Usually, it has been the lower ranked quests, but this last few days, everything went wrong.”

Fiola grabbed a stack of papers that were all dog-earmarked on the edge.

“The last week actually had a massive number of quests that were offered where entire groups were killed.  Some experienced serious injuries but made it out alive.  All of those had one thing in common.  The number of monsters, creatures, or adversaries they would face was completely off.”

Fiola gave a weak smile and locked eyes with Hess.

“I am honest when I say I am glad that you and Kaen returned safely.  The loss of both of you would have been a massive blow to all of us.”

Opening his mouth for a moment, Hess ended up closing it.  The snarky comment he was going to make never left his lips.  He knew Fiola would have been blamed for both of their deaths, and losing Kaen would have ended her career.

“What is the common theme?” he asked as he approached the desk to join Kaen.  His body language had relaxed from one prepared to fight replaced with one who simply needed to solve a problem.

“I don’t know,” she answered with a sigh.  “I have read all these reports multiple times.  I have checked the scouting reports thoroughly.  So many different scouts signed off on them, which makes it impossible to find the source of the problem.”

Rubbing her forehead with a hand, Fiola could barely be heard when she whispered.

“For two days, I have done nothing but look, and I have no answer that shows how this happened.”

“I am assuming no more quests are being given?”

Lowering her hand, Fiola looked up at Kaen and nodded.

“We cannot, in good faith, give anymore.  I would be asking people to risk their lives, more than usual, to set out on a task I cannot guarantee was correct.”

She grabbed another stack of papers and held it out to Kaen.

“These six quests all have people currently on them.  One of them was one you were offered.  I sent Selmah, our highest token, in after a six-man team that is checking the number of orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins in the mine.  If there are more than fifty in there,” Fiola shuddered as she paused a second, “they could all die.”

Quickly flipping through the pages, Kaen found the quest she was talking about. Yanking the sheet out, he glanced at the bottom of it, and his heart sank.

Gertrude signed up for this one.

“How long ago did they set out?!”

“Three days ago,” Fiola grimaced.  “I only sent Selmah yesterday. If anyone could save them, it would be her.”

“Against that many? One person?”

Kaen stopped firing questions off at Fiola who winced at each one when he felt Hess’s hand on his shoulder.

“Selmah is unlike anything you can imagine,” Hess interrupted.  “If the little bit I know about her is true, she could easily walk into that mine and clear it all on her own.”

Glancing at Hess, Kaen saw that he was confident in his assessment of the woman.

Just how powerful is she?

Closing his eyes for a moment, Kaen took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Sorry for that. She and I had talked about grouping together, and I…”

“I understand. I feel that way for everyone under my charge.  Even Hess,” She added with a slight wink.

Hess grunted and then shook his head and chuckled.

“Perhaps we need to move on from the past for the future?”

Fiola’s eyes began to well up as she saw Hess’s face and realized he was not jabbing at her.

“Perhaps the exhaustion is getting to me, but I would like that.  I need to do something first before that can happen, though.”

Hess’s eyebrows scrunched as he watched Fiola stand from her chair.

“I owe you an apology.” Her voice trembled as she bowed her head slightly. “I may have… no, I have done things that were wrong in the past, and I acknowledge my temper did not help.”

Raising her head up, Fiola gave the best smile she could muster at the moment.

“Hess Brumlin, would you forgive me for being a foolheaded, absent-minded, angry, and pissed-off elven bitch who did you and others wrong just to advance myself?”

Hess’s eyebrows shot up during that declaration and apology.  He knew Fiola well enough to know that was not easy for her to say.

“I accept your apology,” Hess replied, “but I cannot promise I will behave myself all the time and hold my tongue when I probably should.  I can be just as stubborn even though I am not an elven woman.”

Fiola chuckled and nodded as a single tear slipped from her eye.

Wiping it off, she straightened out the dress that was completely crumpled and bunched up and stood tall again.

“Now, with that settled, Kaen, what do you want to know?  I could use a fresh set of eyes on all this.”

“Tell me how all quests begin,” Kaen said.

The three of them had been sitting on the couches for a few hours discussing everything known about the quest process.  Only the two stacks of papers from the last year and the current quests they were trying to get updates on remained.

Kaen was tapping his chin as he leaned back on the couch, watching Hess and Fiola drink their tea and glance at a quest sheet that had already been looked at dozens of times.

His mind itched, and his heart knew they needed to find the clue they had missed.  It just felt like they were looking at something wrong.

Kaen stood up and scratched his back as he stretched.  As he did, his hand brushed the pouch still on his hip from their quest.  He and Hess had not had a chance to change or drop off the loot they had procured yet from the corpses.

When he bent over sideways to stretch again, his left hand felt the other pouch on his hip.  He had the map and quest information in there.

Almost doubling over, Kaen’s lifestone pulsed hard, sending a bolt of energy and information to his brain.  He squinted from the surge, and both noticed his movement.

“You ok, Kaen?  Pull something?”

Standing straight up, Kaen reached into his pouch and pulled out both of the papers he had inside.  The map and a copy of the quest sheet he had requested from Mandy.  He wanted to have a copy since it was his first official one.  She had been kind enough to go and bring him a copy to keep.

“Goblin shite!” Kaen muttered as he moved to the table and started digging through the papers, looking through the quest sheets on it.

“Kaen, what is it?” Hess gasped as he noticed the fervor Kaen was searching with.

“I think I know how it's being done!”