A mile long metal snake wound its way through the ocean. Always keeping just in sight of the shore, it’s sinuous movements slowly propelled it towards the destination which had just come up over the horizon: Darazzo, the famous City of Dreams. Two more hours saw the great steel beast swim up to the city, passing the docks where more the mundane ships meant for longer journeys or else brought by visitors from distant lands weighed anchor. Instead, the serpentine vehicle headed for the entrance to one of the many canals which emptied out into the ocean, calming its winding movements slightly so as to fit inside without scraping against the canal walls with its undulations. Just as the tip of its body cleared the edge of the canal’s mouth, it stopped, its head rearing out of the water and turning towards the canal’s side to a platform, of size and shape clearly meant to support the thing’s skull. The bottom jaw came to rest on the platform, after which the creature’s mouth opened and the light in its gleaming blue eyes dimmed.

Down the snake’s gullet could be seen a staircase leading down and straight back, seemingly deeper into the metallic interior even though, thanks to the angle at which the head lay, the stairs ought to have led out the thing’s neck and into the water below. Nevertheless, passengers soon began to disembark. First to emerge were finely dressed people carrying no luggage: nobles, merchants, and dignitaries who stood by to wait as the porters brought their belongings up from the Shipsnake’s cargo chamber. Following them were the lower class passengers, carrying their own bags and packs with them up the stairs and out onto land.

Among these was a woman in plain brown traveling clothes, two packs slung over her shoulder and another carried in her hands. She was tall and curvaceous but with a toned, athletic body. She had blue eyes and her blonde hair was in a pixie cut. She followed the surge of emerging passengers, clearing the Shipsnake’s mouth and stepping aside to scan through the crowd of waiting families, gondoliers and guides hoping to find new customers, and food sellers hawking their selections of candy-fish, looking for…

“Kel!” A familiar voice rang out, and the woman looked over to its source: a thin woman with flowing red hair, nimbly weaving her way through the throng in her direction. Within seconds, the redhead was at her side, flinging her arms around her. “Kel, it’s so good to see you again! How’s Wreville’s own war hero doing?”

Dame Keloran “Kel” Beriss sighed, playfully pushing the other woman off her. “I’m great, Niva, but unfortunately I don’t think you get to call yourself a ‘war hero’ when you lose.”

“Pffft, that’s not your fault. Now where are we headed?”

“Barracuda Street. I should have a room set up at an inn there.” Niva nodded, grabbing the bag from her friend’s hands and shouldering it herself as they began walking away from the landing platform.

“This way’ll be the fastest without having to pay for a gondola ride. But getting back to you, I bet YOU did great, no matter how the war turned out. You must have so many amazing stories, and I have GOT to hear them all!” she said.

“Thanks, but I’m not really in a bragging mood.”

“Come oooooon, Kel! You were always the heroic one when we were growing up. You must have done so much good out there.” Kel began to eye Niva suspiciously. “...What? Something on my face or…”

“What do you want?” Kel said, her voice laden with irritation.

“What do you mean?” Niva replied with all the fake innocence she could muster. “I just want to help my dear childhood friend who’s coming into the city and…”

“Niva, you never butter me up this much unless you want something.”

“What would I want?”

“Money? And if so, you’re barking up the wrong tree, because I don’t…”

“I’m not trying to beg for money from you,” Niva sighed, just a tad too dramatically to be natural. “In fact, I was going to offer a way to make a little money.”

Kel rolled her eyes. “Great, here it comes.”

“You just said you didn’t have money to spare, right?” Kel nodded. “And I’m guessing you don’t have a job lined up, right?” Kel nodded, a bit more reluctantly this time. “And I’m betting you don’t really know what to do with yourself now that you don’t have a war to fight?” This elicited another resigned nod from her. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I know what kind of jobs you do. I’m not going to be tricked into standing lookout for you while you pick pockets in the market square again.”

“It’s nothing bad, I promise!”

“That just means you’re probably the one getting scammed instead.”

“Oh please.”

“You bought a ‘magic invisibility potion’ off of Davin Strekson.”

“I was eleven!”

“Not when you drug me out into the woods searching for buried gold you weren’t.”

“Urgh, just… look, I’m not a naive little girl any more. I promise this is all on the level and will get us a big windfall and MAYBE I would rather talk about this when we get you settled and get a drink, because I didn’t even want to bring this up yet. You just had to play little miss detective and drag it out of me right at the start,” Niva said, punctuating her statement with a playful swat to Kel’s shoulder. “Geez, you know I really did want to know how you’ve been doing all these years, right? Make sure you didn’t get anything cut off or eaten by zombies or anything.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry for jumping on you. I’m just not in the best mood with everything that’s gone on. I’ll even listen to whatever dumb scheme you’ve got cooked up.”

“Awww, don’t mention it,” Niva said, throwing her arm around Kel’s shoulder. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do. We’ve barely talked since you went off to become a squire. Now, tell me everything, right from the start.”

“Well, I…”

“Ssh!” Niva cautioned, prompting a glare of annoyance from Kel before she noticed a young man had popped out into the middle of the alleyway. A quick look over her shoulder showed her that two more, wielding bows, had snuck up behind them, blocking their way back out.

“You two, put the bags on the ground and empty out your pockets,” the man at the front said.

“I’ve got the two behind if things get violent,” Kel whispered as she laid the bags on the ground. No longer hampered by the heavy luggage they’d discarded, the two women stood back to back, Niva facing front. “You don’t want to do this!”

“I think we do, sweetie,” said one of the bowmen, who had a short black beard.

“Think about this,” Kel implored. “You’re trying to rob two unarmed women. Is that really how you want to live your lives? Do you…”

“Oh Depths take it, all the people in this city and we just had to rob a preacher,” the bearded man said as he raised his bow, pointing it straight at her. “Shut up and cooperate.”

Kel dashed forward, straight at the two thieves. The other bowman, shocked, yelled out “Stop!” but the bearded man kept his cool, quickly drawing back his bow string and letting an arrow fly straight at her. Her arm had already flown up in front of her, perpendicular to her chest, and before the arrow crossed the distance between them a flash of silver energy burst out from her, resolving itself into a silver shield with an engraving of a rose on its surface.

The arrow plunked harmlessly off the shield, as Kel yelled out, “I am a knight of the goddess Alvaelle, and I will accept your surrender!” The bearded man cursed, dropping his bow to draw a short sword from his belt and advanced, placing himself between her and the last bowman, who had recovered and uselessly fired his own arrow at Kel.

“Idiot!” the bearded man yelled over his shoulder as Kel reached him and he swung the sword down at her, only to be blocked by her shield. “Put an arrow in the other one’s back!” Another flash heralded the appearance of a silver sword in Kel’s hand, which she quickly swept up to meet the bearded man’s own sword. The surprise was enough to loosen his grip, sending the short sword clattering to the ground further down the alley. He dived to the ground to grab it, leaving Kel the time to interpose herself between the bowman and Niva.

A cry rang out from the other side of the alley, and the bowman screamed “Shit!” in response to whatever he saw as he glanced at Niva’s half of the fight. With only an instant of hesitation, he turned on his heel and fled. Kel turned around as well, facing the bearded man who was just getting back on his feet. She rushed forward at him, reaching his position just as he regained composure, his sword once again knocked aside by her shield as she bashed her sword’s pommel into his head, sending him back to the ground. She quickly spared a glance down the alleyway to check how Niva was doing. Niva was crouched over the third man, pulling a knife out of his leg as the pool of blood around him slowly expanded.

“Niva! What the hell?” Kel said as she dashed to his side, kneeling over him.

“Oh you are NOT going to give me shit over this,” Niva said as she stood up, beginning to wipe blood off her dagger. “He was the one who attacked us.”

“You didn’t have to stab him!”

“I use daggers. What is the non-stabbing activity I am going to use the daggers for in a fight?”

“And you needed to do it this many times?” Kel said, pulling the man’s shirt up. “Hey, hey, stay with us, okay? The goddess will see you through this.” Kel placed her hands over the man’s chest and began to pray under her breath, a calm pink light flowing out of her hands and into the wounds, which slowly began to seal themselves shut. In a few minutes, he was fully healed and shot up, trying to scramble away. Kel grabbed his shoulder before he could go anywhere. “Ssh, it’s okay. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Everything is okay.” The boy took deep breathes, still in a panic as his eyes darted around the alley, especially at Niva who still had a dagger in hand, then back at Kel’s gently smiling face.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Si… sixteen.”

“You got a name?”

“I… I…” he stammered, eyes locked on Niva. Kel turned to her friend, glaring. Niva, for her part, rolled her eyes, dropped the dagger back into her boot, and threw up her hands, sauntering off back down the alley to pick up their bags. Kel returned her gaze to the young man beneath her, her eyes stern but not angry, like a mother disciplining her son. “It’s Shavran.”

“Do you have a job? An apprenticeship?”

“I’m apprenticed to a cobbler.”

“That’s great! That’s a wonderful trade. Everyone needs shoes,” Kel said with genuine enthusiasm. “So how did a cobbler’s apprentice end up in this alley trying to rob us?”

“...I needed money.”

“What for?” Shavran looked away, refusing to look her in the eyes. “It’s okay if you don’t want to say. Some things are private, and I understand that. But you’ve got to realize how close you just came to dying. Whatever you need money for, it isn’t worth as much as your life. You were lucky that you tried to rob a knight of the goddess of love. You probably won’t be so lucky again. The next time you’re lying bleeding in an alley, you aren’t getting back up.”

The would-be robber was crying now, and Kel stopped to kiss his forehead. “Alvaelle loves you, and I’ll bet there’s other people in your life, friends and family, who love you too. Don’t throw all that away over a pouch of gold, okay?” Shavran nodded his head, and Kel hugged him. “Attaboy. Now why don’t you get out of here before the guy back there recovers? You don’t need ‘friends’ like him.”

With that, she stood up and walked back to down the alley to where Niva was waiting. “Gods, Kel, haven’t been here a day and you’re already healing bastards who tried to mug you,” she huffed as she picked up one of the bags and tossed it to Kel. “This city is going to eat you alive.”