For some reason, Anastacia woke up slightly earlier than she usually did when there was nothing special going on. The sun hadn’t quite climbed over the horizon, but the sky was already bright red with light. Right away she noticed something unusual: she was alone. Typically, King would have been sitting on the floor next to her bed, just waiting for the necromancer to wake up, but this was not the case this time. After the initial groggy confusion, Anastacia figured that Rosie had probably asked him to help with something and she just hadn’t woken up to him leaving the room, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off as King had been acting weirdly for the last few days, ever since they had returned from Merfall. He would keep staring out of the window without moving for hours, both in their room and in the tavern. He would also disappear for a few minutes a couple of times every day and whenever Anastacia was busy with something.

But figuring out all that seemed like a lot of thinking before breakfast and a cup of hot coffee, so Anastacia prepared herself for the cold and counted to three before tossing aside her covers and stepping out of the bed to get dressed.

Suddenly she felt a sharp pain in her sole and let out a whole barrage of curses she probably wasn’t supposed to know. Poking out of the bottom of her foot was a tiny shard of glass, which she had to pry out with her nails while cursing some more. She was absolutely sure that she hadn’t broken anything in her room, so there was no reason for there to be broken glass there. After checking the floor for more glass, Anastacia carefully stepped out of the bed, sorted her hair, quickly got dressed and headed downstairs to see if King was there. She could have slept for a couple more hours, but the pain had quickly erased any trace of sleepiness she had had left in her.

She had happened to wake up in that brief moment between the usual night crowd leaving and breakfast, when the tavern was actually empty of patrons. The scent of fresh bacon wafted from the kitchen along with the warmth from the kitchen stove, together they helped to heal the emotional turmoil Anastacia’s sudden and painful wakeup had caused.

Holly was still at her post behind the counter, staring blankly at the window on the other side of the room and the still shadowy street outside. She hadn’t reacted to the necromancer’s arrival in any way and only turned her vacuous gaze at her when Anastacia waved her hand in front of the owlfolk’s face.

“Morning! Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be at… come to think of it I have no idea what you do when you’re not here.” Anastacia greeted the waitress. “Guess we need to hang out at some point.”

“Mm. The day shortens. Shouldn’t go out in the dark anymore, the night sky will get you, so good children wait for the sun.” Holly answered without a trace of emotion on her face.

“Well you’re not wrong, I suppose.” The necromancer agreed. “But have you seen King? He’s missing.”

The owlfolk stopped to think for a while before pointing at the inn’s door. “Outside, every night. Worried, nervous and angry, afraid something of theirs will be taken.” She said.

Anastacia frowned, Holly seemed to know quite a lot about what was going on with King, but perhaps reading the smallest movements and body language came naturally to birds of prey. “Okay then… If he has gone outside at night before this, he’ll return sooner or later, and honestly, I don’t want to go out into the cold if I don’t need to. I’ll just grill him about it later.”

The necromancer grabbed a chair and joined the owlgirl in staring through the window. She would have gone into the kitchen for a livelier early morning chat, but that always came with a risk of having to do the dishes. She also wanted to catch the simulacrum red-handed, not that she thought he was doing anything wrong, but because she wanted to see how he would react.

After about twenty minutes of silence and nothing much happening, a man wearing the green uniform of the courier service that worked inside Valor peered into the inn from one of the windows, checked something on the parcel he was carrying and then the sign above the inn’s door. After making sure he had found the right building, the courier knocked on the door and carefully opened it.

“Excuse me, but does either of you work here?” The young elven courier asked and took off his forest green beret.

Anastacia nodded towards Holly. “She does, I used to.” She answered.

The courier scratched his head and looked at the tightly wrapped paper parcel again. “Well, I have a package that’s addressed to this inn, but instead of an addressee, it just says ‘Thee One WhO Wields BOth Deth and The Arkane’, whatever that means. With all capital O’s and a couple of typos. So, do you know anyone like that who might live here?” He asked.

“I can think of someone.” Rosie suddenly pitched in and stepped out of the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron and pointed at Anastacia.

The necromancer sighed. “Yeah that’s probably me… I do have a name though!” She said and took the package. It was surprisingly heavy and whatever was in it wasn’t rigid in the slightest. On the corner of the wrapping paper was written the inn’s address and the title the sender had chosen to give Anastacia, but nothing else that would indicate who it was from. There was no seal on the piece of string it had been tied together with or anything like that, nor was the handwriting familiar looking. If anything, the writing seemed somehow artificial, despite the mistakes, the distances between letters and the lines in them were so exact that it didn’t look like it was written by a person at all. “Who is this from?” Anastacia asked and turned the parcel over to see if there was anything of interest on the other side.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but we don’t know. It was left in front of our door during the night, with some gold. Boss says that the coins weren’t from any country he knew, but the amount of gold in them checked out, so we decided to bring it here anyway.” The courier apologized and shook his head. “Maybe there’s a letter inside or something like that? But if you’re happy to take the package, I might as well take my leave.”

“There’s breakfast in the kitchen, go and ask the girl to make you something warm for the road, for your trouble.” Rosie suggested.

“Oh? Don’t mind if I do.” The courier said happily and slipped past the innkeeper into the kitchen.

Meanwhile Anastacia had cut the strings around the parcel and was carefully folding open the wrapping paper. “What the…” She muttered and took out a glass pearl, just like the one they had found a few days ago but she had since misplaced.

Rosie frowned. “Someone mailed you and adventurer’s pearl?” She asked and stepped closer out of curiosity.

“No… Someone mailed me like a hundred of them.” The necromancer said and opened up the package more, letting the dozens of glass beads roll out. “I have no idea if this is a threat or what…”

The innkeeper grabbed a few of the pearls and rolled them on her palm. “Yeah, you’re taking these to the guild offices today. They can probably tell you whose they are or what the fuck this is.” She growled and put the pearls back into the package before they rolled on the floor.

“But I hate the guild twats!” Anastacia protested. Her presence in the city and life as an adventurer was only really going on because of Coquelicot’s threat to destroy the city, and there really wasn’t anything the guild could do to kick her out without risking the lives of everyone in the Valor. So whether they liked it or not, they couldn’t stop Anastacia from picking up quests, and the necromancer was well aware of this. She wasn’t about to break any major laws just because she could, but she absolutely wasn’t going to take any shit from the officials either.

Holly was fascinated by the pearls, she picked up several of them and rolled them across the counter a few times. “Could Holly have some baubles? They’re pretty!” She asked and held up ten or so of them.

“I don’t see why not. I’ve got like a billion more anyway.” Anastacia shrugged.

The owlfolk picked out a few she liked and put them into a small pouch she carried on a strap that went over her shoulder. Looking strangely content about her newly acquired items, Holly hopped down from the stool behind the counter and turned to Rosie. “Safe to go now, the night went away.” She stated and put her hand out.

The innkeeper reached under the counter and took out Holly’s pay for the night, but before giving it to the girl, she quickly stepped into the kitchen to get a decent sized cut of pork and handed them both to the waitress. “Off you go, stay safe!” She smiled and waved as the girl rushed out.

Almost as soon as the inn’s door closed, it opened up and King stepped inside. He noticed Anastacia’s glare immediately and clearly hesitated to approach the necromancer.

“So. Where have you been then?” Anastacia asked, crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “Pretty weird of you to just disappear like that, makes me think there’s something going on that I should know about.”

The simulacrum shook his head and avoided looking at Anastacia, who stood up and reached up to his face. These was no way she could have actually forced him to look at her in the eyes, but King let it happen anyway.

Anastacia held her hands on both sides of the simulacrum’s head and squeezed as hard as she could. “You’re cold, I don’t like that.” She frowned and pressed herself against the freezing cold stone and metal body.

Rosie’s fur started to fluff up as the tavern’s room temperature took a sharp dive from Anastacia cooling it down and channeling the heat into King instead of her thermal staff. It didn’t actually drop by too many degrees, as air held a surprising amount of heat, but the quick change made the room feel far colder than it really was. The innkeeper would have protested, but it didn’t seem worth the bother, as the stove would heat the room back up quickly enough.

“It’s not that you have to always tell me what you’re doing, but I could probably help with whatever it is.” Anastacia muttered and ceased her ice magic.

Suddenly King’s lights flared up and he let out a distinct droning sound. He pushed the necromancer aside and grabbed one of the pearls from the package on the counter and stared at it for a second. The simulacrum then hastily gathered the rest of them, grabbed the entire package and rushed back outside with more haste than Anastacia had ever seen from him.

Feeling slightly ticked off that King had pushed her away, Anastacia dashed after him for reasons she wasn’t entirely sure of. She didn’t really care about the pearls all that much, but King so obviously trying to hide something from her was extremely frustrating to the necromancer. “Come back, you ass!” She screamed and ran into the cold in her indoor clothes.

It was nothing new that when there were no quick turns involved, King was far faster than Anastacia, and the necromancer stood no real chance at catching him. Nevertheless, she dashed after the simulacrum and screamed profanities along the way – probably waking up more than a few people with them. It didn’t take long for her to lose sight of him briefly, and when she finally found King again, he was standing next to a well with the empty wrapping paper of the package in his hands.

“What the fuck did you do?!” Anastacia yelled and stared down into the seemingly bottomless well. She couldn’t even see the surface of the water and much less even a hint of the pearls. Now considerably more annoyed than before, she slapped the paper from the simulacrum’s hands and paced back and forth. “Why?! What is so fucking important that you can’t tell me about it?!”

The simulacrum showed no resentment over what he had done, and simply stared at Anastacia while she huffed and puffed at him.

“You know what! I don’t care! Go do your dumb secret bullshit then, no need to report back!” She shouted and flipped the bird at King while starting to walk back towards the inn. “Stupid stone asshole, I’ve never kept anything secret from him either and now he pulls this on me?” She muttered and cursed while kicking a small pebble along the street.

As she angrily stomped past the shops that were opening up for the day, the cold air helped Anastacia to cool off slightly and resist the urge to just throw fire at everything until she was too tired to be angry. Despite his limited communication abilities, King had always told her everything he could – typically only after she had realized to ask, but still. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that frustrated her so much, nor could she tell if she was being bratty or self-centered. Feelings beyond anger and delight, and how they worked was still largely a mystery to her, and something she would need to speak to Emilia about, since the priestess at least seemed to have a better handle on those kinds of things. Regardless, right now Anastacia was feeling that she just wanted to distance herself from the issue and do something else, and because of that, she took the turn towards the guild offices.

Whether it was the nippy weather or her early timing, there were no lines to speak of to any of the counters that served adventurers with their official guild business needs. There were maybe ten other adventurers in the lobby with her and she didn’t recognize any of them, so Anastacia kept to herself while browsing the notices for quests.

“Bears… giant wasps… bandits… ve- what’s a vetehinen?” She listed the creatures that had been causing issues and unfortunate enough to end up on the wall of quests. But she wasn’t in the mood for a simple hunt like that, Anastacia wanted a quest that involved something that could distract her for a day or two and involved something more than going into a location and killing a thing. “Guarding a caravan… mapping… delivery…” She continued until a notice caught her eye. “Oh heck yes!” She exclaimed and ran to a counter with the notice.

The guild official behind the counter didn’t seem too happy to see the necromancer, which wasn’t anything new. Ever since Anastacia returned from Mournvalley, she had been regarded as nothing but a nuisance by the weird crystal-horned people that ran the guild. The clerk sighed as loudly as she could before speaking up. “So, you have yet to leave the city?”

Anastacia ignored the remark completely and slammed the notice against the glass panel separating her from the clerk. “One spooky abandoned mansion quest, please!”