There was a moment of silence as we and the creature stared each other down. Too afraid to fuck up our first move, we stayed still and waited for it to begin. Yet, it didn’t move either. We were stuck there, just looking the thing in the eye for almost a minute. It was making me antsy. And just as I got ready to cast a spell, Vyth was ripped under water. I looked back at the creature, which was showing it’s small, sharp teeth. The gesture almost looked like a smile.

A beam of ice shot out of my hands and hit it square in the face. It didn’t let go of Vyth, though. Through the hazy visage I could still see him struggling underwater against its long tail. While looking at his battle down there, I was caught unaware when the lizard jumped at me and bit into my shoulder. It hurt like hell, but I fought through the pain and released a splash of acid point blank on its stomach. The creature let go of me and reeled from the pain. The acid burned through its skin and part of its flesh, leaving a leaking, bright red wound.

Behind the creature, Vyth emerged. The lizard quickly turned its head to look at him and whipped its tail, but overshot. Before it even saw its attack completed, it lunged back at me. Its claws slashing the air in front of me. Dodging its attack, I tripped over a rock as I fired my ice ray again. The beam flew into the air and dissipated. Panicking that I left myself open, I quickly stumbled back up. Blood splattered in my space, as Vyth brought his sword on the things back. It screeched a horrible sound. Thrashing, it flailed its tail and claws around. It gave me a nasty scratch across my chest and smacked Vyth’s face.

The thrashing ceased as it escaped back into the water. It had given up the fight. I’m sure we hit it hard, but we weren’t staying around to see how long its fear lasted. We quickly made our way back, holding each other up. We smiled warmly at each other. Our teamwork has gotten better. And we’re only gonna get more and more in sync.

As we got back, the village seemed empty. We walked further in, but still saw no one. As we walked past the house we were staying in, I suddenly got grabbed by my neck and lifted up to eye level with Eidechse.

“There you are, ya little thief!”, he yelled in my face. His voice even more booming than usual.

“W-what?!”, I blurted out, “Thief? What do you mean?!”.

“Don’t play dumb! You broke into the house of knowledge!”.

“No, he didn’t! Let him go!”, Vyth yelled back, “We were fighting this weird lizard thing!”.

“Yeah, he’s right! I haven’t been to it today yet”.

Eidechse squinted his eyes, trying to take a good look at my face for any signs of lying. It’s then he noticed the still slightly bleeding wounds on me. He looked back at Vyth, who had a large bruise on his cheek.

“Sorry”, Eidechse said as he put be back down, “We just thought that you did it, since you’re so obsessed with it”.

“We?”, Vyth and I asked.

“Yeah, the whole vi…”.

A spear made of pure fire landed in between me and Eidechse and dissipated. I turned to where it came from and saw Turasjir walking fast and furiously towards us. To say she looked pissed would be an understatement. Eidechse, seeing this, put himself in front of me and held up his hands towards her.

“Wait! Wait! Wait!”, he quickly yelled in an attempt to stop her, “He didn’t do it! They just came from a fight”.

“Yeah, he’s right”, a familiar voice shouted from our right.

It was the guy we’d spoken to in the morning. On his shoulders was his daughter, the same little Dragonkin we saved from that creature, and next to him was what I presumed to be his wife. The first blue Dragonkin I’d seen.

“I asked them to help find my daughter, Charis. It seems they’ve suffered greatly in order to rescue her”.

“You two have my deepest gratitude. If there’s anything I can do to repay you, just ask”, the blue Dragonkin said.

Turasjir looked at them for a second, not saying a word. Vyth elbowed me to grab my attention and pointed at her face and that of Eidechse. I looked closely and saw what he meant. Turasjir no longer looked angry. She looked agitated and surprised. Her attention solely focused on the woman. Eidechse on the other hand had his head slumped down and looked a bit sad. A sort of accepting sadness.

“Alright”, Turasjir said quietly. “I take you’ll be leaving soon”.

“Yes”, the green Dragonkin answered.

“Well, if there’s anything you wanted to do for these boys, you best do it now”.

“Right”, the blue ones said.

She bent down and handed each of us an amulet from her satchel. Each was a copper coil surrounded by two circles. The first and smaller one was gold and the second one silver.

“Thank you”, she said quietly.

The family of three left without saying another word. A silence hung in the air. For me and Vyth, it was one of confusion and questions piling up. But we could see that there was an air of regret hanging over the two Dragonkin beside us.

“Well, with that out of the way”, Turasjir began, “If you two didn’t have anything to do with it, then we need to figure out who did”.

“Couldn’t it have been those kids from before?”, I asked.

“No. They like to pull pranks here and there, but they’ve never gone so far”.

“Well, how about we check the house out. Maybe we’ll find something”.

She took us back to the other side of the village, where the church/library looking building was. The house of knowledge as they called it. On our way there, we saw multiple villagers looking around for us. Turasjir waved to them, showing them that we’re good. There were two more villagers who stood guard by the house. The blacksmith and another green Dragonkin. She explained everything to them and then let us in.

It was immediately clear what this was all about. One of the larger windows on the ground floor had been broken into. Glass still laid strewn about on the floor. Several chairs and tables had been thrown about and a few books were haphazardly thrown to the ground. Yet, None of them were missing. The only things missing were a few of the candleholders and their candles.

I remembered them being made of silver or just being well polished iron. Either way, they were a bit shiny. That would explain their disappearance. That would also eliminate the rugrats as suspects. Everyone who lived here seemed to live well enough and they all held this place in high regard, so it wouldn’t be any of them.

“The Dwarves that visit every now and then maybe?”, I asked Turasjir.

“Why’d you think that?”, she retorted.

“Well, only those shiny candleholders are gone”.

“They’ve got more than enough shiny gems and precious metals back home. A few iron candlesticks wouldn’t suit their fancy”.

“Then I can think of no one else”.

“Look over here!”, Vyth yelled.

He pointed out a dirt footprint right behind one of the thrown chairs. The print was small, but definitely larger than our feet. It was wider as well and had 5 toes instead of three like ours. Whoever this was, was more humanoid.