“To be honest, I didn’t expect you to be so quick and efficient!” said Bose. It was two days later after the ‘heist’, as he called it. Again, there were no customers at this hour and Bose could do with the quartet at his own disclosure. “Marvelous, handywork, I must say! But...” he put his hands behind the back and moved the gaze up at the ceiling, as if he was daydreaming. “...I was expecting a more delicate approach”.

Once again Felia looked at the paper on the table before. From it, a picture of her with a big sum of 200PP was staring at her real self. It wasn’t a perfect recreation: a hair was a bit shorter, bigger eyes, even the face seemed to be a bit slimmer, but general features were recognizable enough to be of significance. Just yesterday, a few elves approached her and started reassuring her that she did the right thing, and that they were sad that she only killed one of the guys, and that she should’ve snapped all of their necks in their sleep. Felia didn’t really understand how the murder comotion came into being, but the rogue doubted she wanted to even know.

She looked back up at Bose. “Herr Bose, I...”

“Didn’t know, tried my best, got the job done, bladi-bladi-bladi-bla!...” The elf accompanied his last few ‘words’ with a hand mimicking a mouth. “I heard all of it, dearie. Still doesn’t excuse, that you are now wanted by the whole city guard!”

“I’m sure, it’s just Butovo guard...” she started, but was quickly silenced by the death glare in front of her. All of them were silent, as Bose looked her up and down, no doubt in anybody’s mind that he was sizing up what torture he wanted to get her through first. He then took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“As I was saying...” He put his hands wide accompanied by an even wider, but still unnatural, smile, emphasizing his words. “You have still done a great job! And now I have come to give you another one. This time, however, it won’t be as easy!” For a moment Bose glared at Felia. He pushed his hand into the bosoms of his long brown coat and took out a parchment. He looked at it with a much more genuine, but now terrifyingly small smile and passed it to Syln, who was escorted by two of the bodyguards. The dwarf took and eyed it for some time. Then he pushed a finger at the bottom of it, accepting the quest.

You have accepted the quest ‘From Dellier with love’ from ‘Bose Dellier’

Steal the Vunger family spear and plant it in the prince’s public estate 0/1

Steal the Vunger family shield and plant it in the prince’s public estate 0/1

Reward: 1000XP

That was insane, Felia thought, but kept her mouth shut, as not to provoke Bose murdering them and their friends. Not that it was a written rule, but it was common knowledge that the Vunger family, who worshiped Resma, the god of war, generally had insane numbers of soldiers around them. Always ready to strike anyone and anything that had the audacity, as to come close to any of its members. Not to mention, that their most prized possession, the spear and the shield of Vunger Krat passed from generation to generation, would surely have all the security they had, armed to the teeth and maybe even to every single hair. What kind of other jobs did Bose even have that the most recent and, let’s be honest, most incompetent recruits had to take up a suicide job like this? Killing both Tohcraft and Vunger families on sight? Designing a bomb to destroy the Human Republic? Killing a Deity? At this point, she wouldn’t be surprised, if it happened to be one of these things. And trying to keep her best at being calm, collected and not showing any signs of resistance, she was severely disappointed that one of her companions knew exactly what kind of mission this was turning out to be.

“Steal from Vunger?! Did you lose your mind?!” yelled Hudal in protest. “They will obliterate us!”

Bose was calm and smiled quizzically at the halfling, his head on one of his shoulders. “To be honest, that was one of the outcomes I was looking for”.

Hudal half-sneered half-growled, spit flying off his mouth. “I thought you were trying to achieve something here! Surely, we are not fit for this”.

“Just like I said before! My other compatriots have other business to attend to!”

“Like what?! Jerking you off in the bathtu...”

His last word was cut short by fittingly sharp dagger, which was put to his neck. Behind him, out of nowhere and in blink of an eye stood the elven rogue dressed in all black, from the two nights before. At this dim lighting, Felia could tell that it was all leather. He slowly moved his cloaked mouth to one of Hudal’s ears and purred in it: “Just like herr Bose said, my small friend. It’s none of your business”. Then he smelled his hair and let out a satisfied sigh. “I just love the smell of fear in the morning. Gets me hungry”.

With a knife to him, Hudal was finally silent. Bose approached them and looked satisfied. After that, he snapped his slim wrist, and the dagger went away, as did the rogue holding it. “It’s so nice to have a level 50 rogue on your side. What do you think?” dreamily whispered he. “Ah! Don’t answer it. You wouldn’t know… and you won’t, if you keep questioning me, you little smartass gnome!”

Hudal fell on his ass, when the elven face got in 10 centimeters distance from his own. His face was a fascinating view to behold. It simultaneously managed to show off all five stages of grief with a pinch of resentment. Then Bose and his escort started leaving. But just before exiting, he turned around and said: “This time try to be more discreet”. And then he closed the door.

Cervella, who had been silent until this moment said from the stairs. “I guess you have the location of the stuff he wants in that paper of yours?” Syln looked up at her and waved the parchment at her. “Good. You do that, and I’ll catch you later”.

She went down the stairs and was met by Syln looking at her questioningly. “And where are you going?”

“I have arrangements to attend, Syln”.

“What kind of arrangements?”

“Yeah, what kind?” Hudal wedged into the conversation.

“None of your business, shorty”.

“Hey! I am your employer, don’t forget!”

“And I can shoot your ass from two blocks away! Don’t forget that, you dipshit!”

“Who are you calling?!...”

Before the fighting could start, Syln stood between them. “Calm yourselves! We are all here to do one thing! And that’s to save Bokh and Muscolo from that crazy bitch”. Torik threw a glance at them, but quickly went back to cleaning an already shiny cup. “I don’t want any of us to kill one another before that. So, I am just going to tell you”, he turned to Cervella, “to be careful. We don’t any of us to die”.

Cervella’s angry face curled, as she digested the words. “I will”. And then she stormed out of the building.

************************************

The sun was setting. Felia, Syln and Hudal were outside the Vunger house in the north part of the city. A set of guards on guards stood at the front and back entrances. If she squinted hard enough, Felia could say that she could see even more guards right behind the grey dim glass of the windows. Four more even stood on the roof of the building, readying their bows at anyone, who approached closer than their arrows could fly. All of them were wearing bright red armour with metal eight packs on each, sharp helmets fitting their heads so well, it wouldn’t be too far off to say they were born wearing them, with dragon talon replicas on top. Each, except for the four on top, held a spear and a full-body shield, with short sword on their belts and long ones on their backs. Felia wondered how they managed to walk wearing all of that, but later she realised, she didn’t see one of them move.

“Well, we can’t enter from the front”, Syln leaned towards the back part of the house, “nor the back. The roof is out of the question, for…” The dwarf looked at 15 meter gaps between the near buildings. “...obvious reasons”.

“Is this even possible? I mean, I didn’t believe that we could do it, in the first place, but this”, Hudal raised his hands to show the scene before them. “This is Tarrasque level difficulty of breaking in”.

“We do have time to think about it”, said Felia. “We should be able to come up with something”.

The sun set, and the two moons were starting to creep up the horizon, easily outshining the surrounding stars, and they were still watching the guards standing and watching their watch. Felia managed to hear quiet steps behind them and turned to see Cervella approach them. “How’s business?” she asked jokingly.

“None of yours”, the woman replied and set herself next to Syln. “What’s the situation?” she observed the building in front.

“Not much”, answered the dwarf. “Just the most secure building in the whole city, that’s all”.

“I see”.

The midnight started to creep up, like loger creeps up its unaware lunch. Their eyes were starting to slowly close, but each of them dealt with that in their own way. Syln screwed his eyes shut and opened them wide open to let the cold night air kick the sleep out of them. Felia’s head drooped from time to time and shook it as soon as she realized her current state. Cervella slapped her face so loudly that it helped the others stay awake. Hudal just decided to let the nature take its course and was happily and quietly snoring on the empty bags others recently got.

At this point Felia was happy to see some movement in the guards as well. Not that they actually moved from their places, but their heads were starting to nod to the unheard lullabies.

“Wait who is that?” Syln asked. Felia looked the way he was pointing, as well as Cervella. A group of the same dressed elves approached the the guards, all the way accompanied by the distant sound of rattling metal. Half of them stopped at the front entrance, the other half continued going right to the back one, while the first continued to march in place. Four elves from both groups, who were overarmed as the entrance guards, looked particularly sweaty, the water droplets slowly forming a wet line behind them. Then all of the guards saluted and switched places. The rest went into the building. When the building was full to the brim, the elves who spent all day inside rushed outside, still in perfect queues continuing to march. A square of metal, weapons and sweating bodies formed two squares in front and in the back of the residence. They noisily turned, saluted, as well as the rest of them, turned one more time and marched off.

Syln’s eyes widened and he started patting the two women on his either side. He was about to say something, when Cervella gave him a small slap to his face. He looked at her quizzically. “You just pat my breasts, idiot”. Felia tightened her lips as her face went red with embarrassment.

The dwarf’s eyes widened a little more and quietly apologized. “Sorry… Anyway, you two gotta follow them”.

“I gathered that”, said Cervella over her shoulder and ran into the same direction, the Vunger guard marched off. Felia followed her as fast, as she could, slowly, but steadily falling behind. She did manage to catch up fairly quickly, due to the fact that the elves they followed weren’t actually running. Sure, they walked efficiently, each step echoing in the silent night streets, startling a bunch of drunks walking away from some bar. Few very angry elves opened up their windows to see what the commotion was about, but all closed their windows back, when they saw who had caused the noise. Well, there was one elderly elven woman, who damned the guards, their ancestors, their kids and the their next five generation or so, but Felia was almost sure that she was blind. Or not right in the head, because the cat piss smell came and went along with the window opening and closing.

They walked for so long that even Felia and Cervella, wearing no more than two leather shirts and pants started to sweat. The guard walked out of the city, rogue and ranger following them. The notification ‘You left City of Boremar’ reminded the two women of that. Shortly after that the two dozen or so elves finally arrived at their destination.

That destination was seen way before, they actually arrived, so Felia and Cervella stayed at the safe distance watching the small, but sturdy wooden fence surround an area of a tiny district from a hill nearby. A big sign above the gates read ‘VUNGER FORT’. Besides very unimaginative name of the place, everything else about it screamed war camp. War hashtags, which were usually moved by the horses, dotted it all the way through. Soldiers went from one to another Bright red flags rose from the fort, bearing the insignia of the Vunger family: One single dark-red shield with black edge and dragon claw drawn at the center.

“What’s with the dragon stuff anyway?” Cervella asked no one in particular.

This obsession with dragons came from a legend that the first elves, of whom Vungers claimed they were descendants of, living right at the elven-dwarven border in the North, had a dragon living in the mountains on that border. The dragon terrorized both sides, burning the villages and destroying the dwarven stocks outside their cave towns. The two opposing nations had to put their differences aside and together defeat the dragon. Somewhere around this point, the stories of the two sides differed from each other. Elves told that it was Vunger Elef, who striked down the beast, by bringing throwing a spear right through its eye. Dwarves were reassured that it was Joron, father of Hogrin the Uniter, who killed the dragon by using the ‘Early Winter’ spell while in its stomach, and beating his way through the frozen remains.

Both of these versions, as is the tradition with such stories, were both truthful and lies at the same time. What actually happened was that the two nations literally swarmed the beast by throwing spells, weapons and doing anything they could to damage or, at least, irritate the dragon. After it had no more than 200HP left of its 2500, it decided to use its fire breath to kill them all. When the dragon opened its mouth, Joron, being the dwarven prince’s crazy son, decided to jump right inside. Elef, who saw that bold act, accidentally stabbed the beast in the eye trying to close the mouth shut with his spear. That surprised the dragon and dropped the fire breath idea decided to flee, but it just couldn’t get rid of the irritating feeling in its throat. And, as the spell hit him, it was too late for the dragon to do anything about it. The frozen neck snapped from the head’s weight and Joron startled by the event fell from it. And so, up to that day, elven Vunger family and one of the smaller dwarven regions bore the dragon as their symbol.

Of course, Felia only could tell the elven version of the story, which she herself didn’t believe in. That doubt wasn’t from her recent shift in nihilism, however. It was due to the fact that being raised in the Tohcraft’s East of the Prinzessin, all attempts at gaining popularity from other families were swiftly placed under the metaphorical rug, which had risen several feet since it was first laid. And even if some of the stories made their way to the Tohcraft elves, they were severely distorted up to the point that no details made any sense. But that didn’t mean that other families didn’t use such tactics.

For now, however, it didn’t matter. In front of Felia and Cervella laid one of the Vunger private army divisions. The army bore the insignia of a dragon claw for obvious reasons. It was the force Vunger struck all of their enemies with.

The two women watched the camp for some time, but nothing else of interest happened. The soldiers went from one tent to another. They passed food and water to each other, talked, laughed, enjoyed their lives. “Most likely,” Felia voiced her thoughts, “these is just the estate guards”. She turned to Cervella. “It doesn’t look very secure, does it?” She talked, of course, about the lack of guard around the fort.

“I agree”. Cervella stared at the camp for a second or two more and added: “If they switch the guard like that at least every night we could try and pass as them”.

“We should talk about that with the guys first”.

“We don’t have to. We can try and do it now...”

“No”.

“All right. That’s your call”. Cervella stood up. She was shivering as the night cold in mix with sweat pierced her all the way through. Two pointy nipples stared at Felia, and she reddened. The woman looked down and pushed her breasts together leaning towards her. “What? Too jealous of me, huh?”

“No!...” Felia looked down at her feet and started to walk away. “Let’s just go...”

*********************************

Half-way through the city, Felia realized that she didn’t know where to go and started following Cervella. Even if she didn’t know where Syln and Hudal currently were, her spell ‘Follow his steps’ would. While pursuing the faint direction her spell gave, they met a couple of drunks who immediately started to flirt with them. Which meant they followed them, whistling and making very suggestive hand gestures. After two minutes of this, Cervella spun on her heel. She stopped their pursuit with a twist, a crunch, a broken nose and probably a childless future for one of the bastards.

Felia was a little bit disappointed, when they followed the spell back to the Butovo inn. Not that she expected anything else, but there is no harm in wishing for a better place to stay. Torik was kind enough to let them stay the two nights they payed for, but after that, the best he could give them were two bunks and a torn hashtag in the back room. Or, he was just being greedy, because Felia couldn’t hear a noise coming from the three rooms upstairs, besides an occasional overlong wooden banging of people, who sounded like pigs. She didn’t even want to think what was happening up there, but she had a good idea what it was. The others, she thought, did too.

Syln sat at the counter drinking a pint of beer standing in front of him. Somehow, the two dwarves got along pretty well, considering the circumstances and the fact that one of them barely talked. Syln told them that it was the deep dwarven instinct to stick together, back from the days, when they lived deep inside the mountain caves. Hudal told him that it was bullshit, because no one could survive long enough in those caves without any food and Torik was just being a dick to others by being nice to him. Syln would interject by saying that one only had to know where to look to find the food. The argument at that point would stop, because no party had anything more to say. Especially, where that food was actually found.

“So”, Syln turned to them expectantly. “Any good news?”

“Well...” Felia started, but was overtaken by Cervella.

“There was a soldier camp outside the city”.

“We think”, Felia took the initiative back by shoving Cervella aside, “that if they switch guard every night or so, some of us could sneak in and disguise ourselves as them”.

Syln nodded in thought. “That might work, sure”. He then looked at himself and his gaze glazed over nearby halflings. “But I guess, Hudal and I aren’t ‘some of us’”.

“Why not?” innocently asked Felia, as Cervella put her face in her palm.

Syln took one more glance at himself and gestured presenting himself. “Probably, because we are a dwarf and a halfling?”

“Oh... right...” she said realizing her mistake.

“Anyway,” ranger got back into the conversation, “I think that the only good enough person for the job is our young signora Felia”.

“I’m not doing that alone!” “She isn’t doing it alone!” Syln and Felia said simultaneously.

The woman in front crossed her arms. “Well? And who should join her?” Syln pointed the beer pint at her with no hesitation whatsoever. Cervella put a palm on her chest shocked. “Me?!”

“Who else? Hudal and I are too small to pass as elves, and you just need some gray paint and you’re ready to go!”

“I will not let you paint my face!”