A peel of thunder rattled the inn and caused its occupants to awaken. Trixie was the first. The golden sunchaser squirmed and got to her feet on the bed. She turned in the bed until she found her target. Trixie’s pink tongue flicked out and began giving Brivaria’s face long, slow licks.

  “Trixie,” the angel pleaded. Her eyes were closed as the dog’s pink tongue dragged itself over her cheeks. She cracked open one eye to see Giselle was also awake, standing on the pillow, and bending down to sniff curiously at the pair.

  In a moment of evil brilliance, Brivaria snagged the miniature deer and put her between herself and Trixie’s relentless tongue. It was Giselle’s turn to make a distressed sound as Trixie licked her by mistake. The golden looked confused for a moment then licked Giselle again. The little deer squirmed and made little noises of protest as it was suddenly her turn to endure Trixie’s good morning routine. Eventually Brivaria sat up and Trixie collected her good morning hug. It was their favorite part of the morning and Giselle shimmied into the embrace to be part of it, as was becoming tradition.

  “Whoa, what happened to your eyes?” Nyx asked as soon as the angel’s morning routine was through and everyone started getting ready for the day. The angel paused and gave Nyx a curious look.

  “Nothing happened to my eyes,” the winged girl said in apparent confusion.

  “They’re all black. That’s not normal.” Brivaria stopped and sighed. She had shifted to demon eyes to better see through the gloom on her way back to the room then forgotten to shift them back.

  “Oh! I changed them last night to see in the dark. I’ve got 30 minutes on my Rest skill so I’ll change them back once I’m up to full mana,” the angel explained.

  “That’s so unfair. I want to see in the dark…” Nyx muttered while getting dressed.

  While Nyx and Giselle got dressed, Brivaria began brushing Trixie. The angel periodically gathered all the fur off the brush and stuffed it into her inventory. It took up very little space on its own and the angel had no wish to fill the entire room with it any more so than Trixie’s natural presence already did. Her burgeoning collection of dog fur would be something she needed to handle at some point. Until then, it would steadily grow in size but that was fine. That was the way of her inventory skill. Everything came and went.

  Giselle realized she could enlarge and shrink her own clothes to make dressing herself, even over her horns, very easy. Nyx wished the land spirit had realized that sooner but what was done was done. Giselle was getting smarter and wiser every day. The angel wondered if being in proximity to people was speeding up her growth. It sure seemed that way. The morning’s preparations were interrupted as Kseniya knocked on their door and was let in.

  “Alright, we need to get downstairs and eat. We’re meeting the Seasoned Steel at the guild then heading to the castle. Count Dancarlo and Baron Felio will be arriving this morning and we have a meeting with them. The Count is our new employer, if by proxy, so let’s try to make a good first impression,” the snake woman said while looking around the room. Brivaria was gently playing with Trixie’s soft ears by lifting them up and letting them flop down. She nodded as the sorceress spoke.

  “Sounds good. I imagine we’re not the only ones in line to meet with him so let’s try to be early,” Brivaria replied. She kissed her beautiful dog’s head and got up.

  “Is this the man who is hunting me?” Giselle asked with a note of fright. All three other girls looked to her.

  “Yeah,” Nyx said in a low voice, “but he’ll never get you. We’ll be here in town, eating a nice lovely meal with his coin while he’s out searching the forest for something he’ll never find.” Nyx grinned at the idea.

  “Exactly. Also establishing yourself as an adventurer and member of our team to the guild, the watch captain, and the Count means no one will suspect who you truly are,” the angel added, hoping to reassure the deer girl.

  “While all of that is true, you should show a little disgust for the hunt,” Kseniya mused, “you are to pass as an iveskan and it’s expected that you might harbor some resentment for the hunting of your bestial kin, you know? Don’t make a scene but if you can make some displeasure known quietly then do so.”

  "I can do that.” Giselle’s voice held a note of conviction and Brivaria had no doubt that some disgust for the man who wanted to hunt and eat her would be shown.

  The group finished getting ready and headed downstairs. The inn’s common room was bustling with activity. The Siren’s Alcove was steadily getting more and more busy. Barton was flooding with people and they all had to go somewhere. Even if Candice’s inn wasn’t their first choice, it was one of the few remaining choices.

  Given the number of people coming in, it wouldn’t remain that way for long. Brivaria was certain Candice would have the inn filled to the brim soon, if not by the end of the day. Her gaze stopped as she looked across the large common room. It settled on a familiar man wearing nice, if well-worn, traveling clothes. He had a neat black beard and wore a brown beret. He was talking with some others but his green eyes snapped to the angel and her party almost immediately.

  “Hey, Silas!” Nyx shouted, immediately running across the common room toward the reporter. Brivaria and the others followed after her, weaving around the crowd. The nimble cat girl had the advantage over the lamia, deer, and angel in the agility department. She used that advantage to hug the human man as soon as she was within striking distance but soon they were all reunited.

  “Giselle,” Brivaria began, “I’d like you to meet Silas. He’s a reporter from Pemburne, a town to the north. He was part of a group that helped rescue Nyx’s older brother and some others from a bad situation. Silas, this is Giselle. She’s a copper rank adventurer and the newest member of our team.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Silas said while extending a hand. To Giselle’s credit it took her only a single, awkward moment to realize he wanted a handshake and put her hand in his. “And I mean that. Your teammates are good people so I’m certain you are as well. What are you all doing in Barton?”

  “How about we have some breakfast and catch up?” the angel suggested. The bearded man grinned and they found a table.

  The next half hour was spent catching up. They told Silas somewhat of the adventurers in finding the missing Terrance Grand as well as being hired by the Count. Silas’ eyebrows rose at the last part. They left out a few things like Charles Wodan’s cult and Giselle’s true nature. Brivaria trusted Silas to be a decent person but not enough to gamble Giselle’s life against the reporter’s ethics. Plus, even if she had trusted the human that much, they were still in a public place without a privacy ward. There was no point in being careless.

  It warmed the angel’s heart to see a friendly face. She liked the fact that there were friendly faces for all that went. There were people on Zlithia who knew her face and her name. She wasn’t just a summoned angel fighting monsters who would disappear and be forgotten after her task was done. Brivaria reflected on just how nice that felt while Trixie successfully begged for pets. The dog was getting scritches from the reporter when Kseniya coughed politely to get their attention.

  “We should be going. We’ll need to hike across the city. Actually, maybe we should take a carriage to the guild. It will be faster,” Kseniya said while looking around the table.

  “I wouldn’t count on any carriages from here on out,” Silas interjected, “we tried to get one from the northern checkpoint to the Alcove and found none. I imagine it hasn’t been too bad so far but with the hunt being just a week or less away, the city will be completely full.”

  “Have you covered one of these before?” Brivaria asked, uncertain of exactly how old the reporter was.

  “I wasn’t a reporter at the time of the last hunt. The paper was brand new when I was a teenager so I was apprenticed to Ferdinand Shaw, a reporter who was helping the town set everything up. I was here in Barton ten years or so ago to accompany him as he covered the Hunt for the Golden Hind. That was the first time I met Count Dancarlo and Baron Sorenson for that matter.”

  “What’s the Count like?” Nyx asked. Silas winced as though recalling a bad memory.

  “That bad?” Brivaria asked, suddenly uncertain about their upcoming meeting. Silas shook his head.

  “He’s an appointee of the crown. The Dancarlos are distant cousins to the royal family. It was only a hundred years or so ago when they were appointed to oversee the region of Velk. The family historically spends most of its time at the royal capital and only gets dragged back to our little corner of the world when something like this occurs or when something goes wrong,” Silas explained.

  “The Count doesn’t live in the region he… counts? Rules?” the angel asked.

  “Governs,” Silas helpfully added. “Though the barons do much of the actual governance and the Count is best seen as a crown representative. The barons of old resented being ruled by someone not of their ilk and it created a rift between the local baronies and the crown that exists to this day. Bartholomew Dancarlo is, as my old mentor put it, kind of a jackass. It’s not his fault that the enmity between his family and the others existed before he was born but he’s a product of the hostility. I am told he can be quite congenial when he wants to be but his unique brand of charm only seems to turn on when he’s outside of Velk or among other, non-Velk nobility.”

  “This is going to be painful.” Kseniya frowned as she spoke then blinked her orange, slitted eyes. “And we need to leave, now.”

  They said their goodbyes to Silas and rushed out the door. They should have departed a full 15 minutes earlier but no one felt the need to speak the obvious. Just as Silas said, there were no carriages to be found. They were running or slithering to the adventurers guild. Brivaria activated Current Control to give them all a little more speed as they zoomed through the streets.

  “You’re late,” was Alden Porter’s immediate chastisement the moment they entered the adventurers guild.

  “They’re not late-late,” Isolde argued while making shooing motions back toward the guild entrance. “They’re late in the sense that we’ll only be 5 minutes early if we leave now or, perish the thought, exactly on time.”

  “Let’s go then. We’ll talk as we walk,” Alden commanded and the Divine Blessing adventuring team was directed out of the guild almost immediately after entering.

  Alden went into explaining a little bit of etiquette and the expectations for their team. From what the angel understood, etiquette meant “don’t say or do anything” and expectations were “blend in with the furniture.” That rankled Brivaria’s senses, just a little bit. She also noted that Alden had polished his armor and that even Isolde looked to have cleaned her admittedly dark leathers. Tobias’ bald head didn’t exactly shine but also it kind of did. Edison Kor was still with the other team and looked to be filling in for Lucian as best a lowish level rogue/fire mage could. Even Edison looked pretty good in some freshly laundered clothes and after a haircut. Brivaria’s team looked good enough but the Seasoned Steel looked better.

  It didn’t help matters when they reached the castle and the staff looked at Brivaria’s team as though they were the dirt dragged in by Alden’s boots. It wasn’t the warrior’s fault he looked good. He was handsome, well-built, and, most importantly, his armor was shiny and intact. Brivaria’s armor had yet to see an armorer for repairs and had a few choice holes in it which made her continued existence a rather impressive feat. At least, that was what she told herself every time someone’s eyes drifted down to her beat-up armor.

  “Little angel, stop looking down at your armor. You’re your own worst enemy,” Kseniya chided in a whisper before turning to Nyx.

  “Nyx, stop looking at the most expensive thing in the room like you’re trying to figure out whether or not it’ll fit into your pocket. Giselle…” The lamia stopped to look at Giselle who had smoothed out the light gambeson they’d bought her and smiled pleasantly at everyone they passed. “Actually Giselle, keep doing what you’re doing.”

  Everyone save for Trixie was a little nervous. The golden hound meandered from one girl to the next getting pets and attention. She also sniffed around the hallways and rooms they shuffled into and out of. There were a lot of those. The two adventuring groups were getting quite the tour as they were handed off from one branch of castle staff to the next. Empty stone halls and functional, if uncomfortable-looking, wood furniture greeted the two groups at first. Rugs gradually appeared as well as paintings and seat cushions until they were finally led to a richly decorated waiting room with plush carpeting, expensive furniture, and elaborate mana lamps.

  Trixie padded around, inspecting the cushions of waiting room number three. Upon deeming one with a pleasant green color the most comfortable, the golden flopped onto it. Trusting the dog’s sensibilities, the angel sat down next to her dog and sighed in happiness as she sank into the cushion. The group hadn’t rested on anything this comfortable since visiting Cordelia Westlake’s estate. Sadly, it looked like only she and Trixie were enjoying it.

  Nyx was inspecting a silver floor lamp which rose into the air in the shape of a question mark. The catfolk girl was telling Isolde that it looked incredibly tacky and the lephori was agreeing that the nobility had questionable taste. Tobias was whispering something to Alden and Brivaria thought she caught Lucian’s name.

  Kseniya was regarding the whole room with a frown. The winged girl couldn’t tell whether the sorceress was upset at the room’s decor or their treatment of being passed around constantly. The angel wanted to ask which it was, if either, as the only thing Brivaria could tell was that the paintings seem to get larger relative to how important the area was. The ones in this room were as tall as she was!

  Trixie was being steadfastly ignored by the staff and only received a few pets from the Seasoned Steel. So it was that the golden always came back to Brivaria. The angel was an endless fountain of scritches and attention. Plus while everyone else was tense or nervous about the upcoming meeting, Trixie was enjoying the plush carpet and comfortable chairs. Brivaria decided that the golden sunchaser had the right idea in enjoying the offered comfort so she did the same until they were called upon.

  “The Count will see you in the sparring room,” a manservant announced upon entering the little waiting room.

  “Count Dancarlo is back already?” Alden asked. Count Dancarlo was supposed to arrive this morning or afternoon.

  “The Count arrived late last night. Please follow me,” the manservant said before immediately turning to go. Once more they were led through the halls. Brivaria noted the presence of signs attached to various intersections. Apparently they didn’t want people getting lost in this part of the keep. Maybe that meant they were okay with people getting lost in the other parts?

  The two adventuring teams were directed to a large set of double doors. The manservant knocked once and stepped inside. They couldn’t hear anything from beyond the two doors but the angel was certain they were being announced. Seasoned Steel was in front with Divine Blessing’s members behind them. The group of copper rank adventurers exchanged nervous looks. It was time to meet the man behind the hunt. At once, both doors began to open.