The ride back to Valor was somber and quiet in comparison to the banter-filled departure earlier in the day. Obviously, both of the necromancers were exhausted, one from everything she had gone through during the trip and the other from a budding hangover that was beginning to mount up – but even if they had had the energy to speak up, neither of them was in the mood for it.

Before returning to the village, they had been tasked to save, while Anastacia cleaned the blood off her precious simulacra and made sure there was noting wrong with them after they woke up, Iris gathered some loose branches and dry plants to create a small fire they could burn what remained of the elf’s corrupted body. They didn’t know if it did any good, but it didn’t feel smart to leave it behind for animals to scavenge.

The lich had repeated its original request to Anastacia, who was similarly hesitant to grant the undead sorcerer its rest, but also knew it was likely for the better. For a while, she conversed with the lich about the nature of the corruption and the violet sect, but it didn’t take long for the symptoms to begin showing up. While still coherent and lucid, the lich reported of voices in its head, but that would only last so long. It soon began forgetting everything but the most recent topics and the memories ingrained deeper than any others. It ceased to recognize Iris entirely, despite the brief connection they had, and Anastacia’s name soon followed. It only kept recognizing Anastacia for what she was, the closest thing to a white necromancer that existed, lamenting over her supposedly inescapable fate numerous times. By the time the lich was beginning to forget that it had died hundreds of years ago and started to ramble about having to prepare the ritual, Anastacia decided that she couldn’t watch it happen again anymore. She had been unable to help the spider-like simulacra in the machine fortress, and so decided to grant the lich its wish before the corruption would make it impossible. Turning a single skeleton into dust was a triviality to her, and in a blink of an eye, all that had been left of the lich were its armor and the clay talisman it seemed to cherish.

Citing goblin tradition and the fact that Iris was officially member of the court, Anastacia told the inquisitor to take the amulet and tie it onto her bag, as she had been the one to get to know the lich and should be the one to take some kind of a memento with her. For much of their quiet ride back to Valor, Iris absentmindedly stared at the runes drawn on it and allowed her thoughts to wander.

“Anna.” She suddenly spoke out after a good while. “What would have happened if you hadn’t killed the lich? Was there really nothing we could do to help it?” The inquisitor asked, not really questioning what they had done but hoping there was a justification at least.

Anastacia didn’t open her eyes and tried to stay as still as she could while answering. “Can’t say that I’m completely sure, but I would guess that eventually its mind would have been gone to a point in which it would have started to listen to the voices – no idea how long that would have taken either. Are you thinking it was a mistake?”

“No… This is certainly what it would prefer if that’s true.” Iris sighed. “Life is complicated when you don’t have orders, isn’t it?”

“Orders are just someone else telling you to make their mistakes for them. Don’t know about you, but I make enough of those even without the help.” The adventurer uttered and groaned as their ride hit a bump.

Neither agreeing or disagreeing, Iris didn’t say anything in response and returned to her own pondering to not bother Anastacia further. Whenever she wasn’t thinking about the lich or the violet sect, her thoughts strayed to the strange feeling of warmth and sheer joy she had felt when the elf had chosen her as his target. There would have been almost nothing she could have done, but yet it felt like she was perfectly in control of what was happening and it was the elf who was mere steps away from death. While she was obviously against whatever the sect represented and did, there was a much deeper, full-blown personal hatred hidden in the excitement she felt – one she knew she didn’t possess, not yet anyway. Trying to intentionally reignite the feeling of warmth didn’t bring any results either. She would have liked to ask about it from Anastacia, but struggled to put it into a form of a question that made any sense and honestly doubted the adventurer knew any more of it than she herself did. It was more of a problem Emilia may have held better answers to.

“Only a bit longer, ladies. We should be seeing Valor’s wall as soon as we hit the crossroads over yonder.” Said Lucian, their driver and the person paying for the quest they had successfully completed, despite it getting wildly out of hand. “I can drop you off at the guild office, if there’s snow on the roads.”

“That works, might as well get it over with.” Anastacia groaned and started to very slowly build up the will to move.

“Get what over with?” Iris asked, unfamiliar with how the guild worked.

“We need to go tell the nerds at the office that we didn’t die, pay taxes and whatever. It’s a pain but what can you do.” The adventurer briefly explained.

The inquisitor frowned. “Will it take long? I was kind of hoping that I could just go and lay down for about a week – possibly in a warm bath.”

“You and me both. I won’t be able to sleep before I get King and Leggy properly cleaned too.” Anastacia sighed and painedly levered herself up from the bench to lean against Iris instead. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes if I don’t start a fight with the officials… I’ll do my best to behave, this time.”

Not long after, the city of adventurers did indeed appear in the distance and the trip came to an end. Lucian stopped in front of the guild office to let the necromancers off his sleigh, agreed upon payment was made and farewells were exchanged before both parties departed to continue their evening, Lucian by returning to his shop with fresh hides and the rest headed inside to deal with the more boring aspects of adventuring.

As soon as they entered the guild office, the annoyance over Anastacia’s audacity to bring both the simulacra and the inquisitor along with her was visible on the faces of every single official working in the lobby. The guards were considerably less bothered by them, and received a few glares from their employers as well. Being the only actual adventurer in the group, Anastacia suggested that she’d be the one to handle any business at the counter while Iris and the simulacra busied themselves with looking through the seemingly endless amounts of quests available on the boards lining the walls, just in case there was anything funny to be found – and simultaneously avoid giving the officials any excuse to make things harder than they needed to be.

Iris watched for a while as the now clearly hungover adventurer leaned her forehead against the cool glass separating the sides of the counter, causing the collective blood pressure of the officials to spike massively. She may have been trying her best, but even then, Anastacia was taxing to be around for even moderately orderly people, and it was safe to assume the procedures would take a bit longer than just the couple of minutes that had been predicted. The inquisitor sighed and asked for the simulacra to follow her as she headed for the wall of quest notices.

Stretching for over fifteen meters along the wall, was a massive arrangement of countless paper slips, lowest ones being around knee-high and the highest ones well above where Iris could even reach. Each one was about the size of one’s palm, and contained some key information such as the location, payment, any requirements and the general gist of the quest offered. Iris figured that more details would be available from the officials keenly observing her from their seats behind the counters, as some of the descriptions were vague at best and almost cryptic at times. The locations listed on the notices showed much of the variety in scenery available for the adventurers. While a lot of them were reasonably close the to admittedly central location of Valor, plenty would have taken several weeks to reach and some would require over a month at sea. Remote, almost tribal, communities far up in the north seemed to have their share of trouble, as did the coastal trade hubs as well as cities carved into jungles far south of where Iris’ job had ever taken her. Several of the notices had seals of nobility or other important factions stamped onto them, suggesting their payments were at least backed by some official entity from whichever nation the quest came from. Iris would have enjoyed seeing one of the crests used by Mournvalley among them, but the it was not yet time for that – if it ever would be. One thing that struck the inquisitor as odd was the apparent randomness of the order the notices had been pinned onto the board. The order didn’t follow the date, location, reward amount or any other obvious detail, nor did it seem to make sense when considering more subjective measures such as complexity or difficulty. Almost identical tasks about hunting trolls or other common nuisances were strewn all over the wall and at the same time could be right next to each other. It was entirely possible that there was no intended order for them, but Iris found it hard to believe that the painstakingly systematic officials would allow such a thing under their own roof.

Iris wondered if she could inquire about the filing system from one of the nearby officials but decided against it when she saw that they were all busy watching in horror as Anastacia was now trying to wiggle free from the grasp of one of the guards while throwing coins at the official behind the counter. The official called Strawberry had been alerted to the scene and was trying to fruitlessly explain to her why taking Iris and Leggy on a quest caused additional paperwork that needed to be filled. So instead, the inquisitor decided to ignore the commotion and further inspect some of the notices.

“Assist in research, protect camp, survey area… Clear snow off roof?” She read a few of them out loud. “Who hires an adventurer for that?... They really do everything here.”

Everything from babysitting royalty to spying on researchers to getting rid of various ridiculous creatures was fair game, and the turnover rate for quests must have been quite rapid as it was hard to find a quest that dated even a month back – which raised the question of how the guild managed to collect quests from such faraway places and not have them take months to get done. The inquisition held some knowledge on the guild and its officials, but even their archives were filled with little more than theories.

As Iris continued to peruse the selection, her gaze landed on a notice that seemed odd in several ways. Not only was the location listed as Valor itself, the name listed as the client was familiar. “Xamiliere? Isn’t that the spriggan I’ve been warned about? I wonder what- ohh…” A realization about why she had been warned came to her as she continued reading.

The description of the quest was simply stated as ‘Escort’, which was very suspicious on its own – and not at all made better by the hyper specific requirement of ‘Necromancers only’, which effectively limited the people in Valor who were able to accept the task to one: Anastacia. Apparently, no equipment would be needed as a suitable outfit would be provided too.

“Do… do I take this to her?” The inquisitor asked from the simulacra accompanying her, but neither had an answer to give – nor could either of them read in the first place. “Something in me is screaming that I should just tear this and never mention it to anyone.” Of course, she couldn’t really do that without risking a great deal of trouble with the guild, but she did seriously consider just not mentioning it to Anastacia before begrudgingly grabbing the notice and heading to the counter, where the situation had started to cool down and Anastacia had agreed to scribble something on a form that had been offered to her.

Strawberry and the poor official Anastacia had originally chosen to deal with immediately gave a knowing look at Iris when they noticed the piece of paper in her hand. “So, you’ve found it, huh?” Strawberry said, sounding almost disappointed that now someone knew the guild had to deal with such a thing.

“Found what?” Anastacia asked, taking the first chance she could to stop filling the forms and snatched the slip from Iris’ hand. She took a moment to study it and with a smirk slammed it onto the counter. “If this is a real quest, I’ll take it.”

“Unfortunately, it is a very real quest. Try as we might, we can not find a basis for rejecting it since it can plausibly be construed as a normal quest. There is nothing to stop adventurers from setting up quests within the regular acceptable limits. Maybe it is a failure on our end that we did not take frivolous use of double entendres into account until now.” Strawberry sighed and took over the counter to begin handling the work regarding the quest, all of which seemed very mysterious to Iris. “For perhaps the first time ever, because of who is behind it and who it is obviously targeting, we don’t want to know what any of this really means. If you choose to carry out the quest, do not speak of it to us, do not explain anything. Simply come in, register it as done and spare us all from the details.”

After a moment of almost machine-like work with the strange equipment guild used to keep tabs on things, Strawberry turned around to open one of the many small doors in the enormous set of cabinets behind all the counters and retrieved a single letter. He then placed it in front of Anastacia and gestured for her to take her adventurer’s pearl from the small slot it had been kept in. The adventurer immediately took this as a sign of their business being concluded, grabbed her things and shuffled out of the office, leaving behind the half-filled paperwork and a fair number of coins on the floor. The simulacra were quick to follow her, briefly leaving Iris behind to awkwardly stand around before she escaped the situation as well.

Once she was a safe distance away, Anastacia stopped to lean against a wall to recuperate her strength after moving far too quickly for how hungover she was and allowed Iris to catch up to her. The inquisitor leaned against the wall as well and offered her friend a canteen of water from her bag.

“So… Can I ask what’s up with this quest? Is this like a thing or…” Iris warily asked once Anastacia was done chugging the entire canteen dry.

“It’s not like that.” Anastacia chuckled. “She’s probably just lonely and bored out of her mind. Being a plant during winter can’t be great, and then there’s the whole lack of gravity issue – and I’ve been away a lot lately, being busy with your wings and such. She knew someone would tell me about the quest sooner or later and this is probably just a convoluted way to tell me she wants to hang out.”

“Oh… Have I been in the way after all? You should have said something.” Iris immediately worried.

“Nah, I don’t mind and I’m sure Xammy doesn’t either. You’re only going to be sticking around for a few more days after all, and she’s at least some level of immortal.” The adventurer shrugged and waved the neatly folded and sealed letter. “I do kind of want to check this out though, I don’t think she’d go through this much trouble unless she has something special in mind.”

“Of course! I have stuff I need to figure out for myself anyway, so take as much time as you need, the wings won’t be ready for a couple more days either.” Iris said, thinking it would be wise to figure out what was going on inside her instead of ignore it. She could try speaking to Emilia or contacting Sylvia herself – or even the mysterious owlfolk priestess who had given her a supposedly important but vague task some days ago.

Curious about the contents of the letter and with just enough light coming through the nearby shop window, Anastacia decided to open the letter then and there instead of waiting to get back to the inn, similarly intrigued, Iris leaned in to read it as well. As soon as the adventurer folded open the paper, a sweet floral scent wafted from the paper, not a perfume mimicking one, but the exact scent of roses that had been freshly picked just a moment ago. It was immediately obvious that a massive amount of effort had peen put to the penmanship as well, as each letter was flawlessly inscribed in such an extravagant manner that it almost made some words harder to read.

To my beloved Lady Anastacia.

To bless a day, a mere glimpse of your fair beaty. A passing vision that robs the rest of the world of its beauty. To call you a radiant rose among the weeds that fill the world is an understatement.

To venerate a month, a glancing stroke across your marble skin. Its smoothness caressing my willow bark turns the softest of silks into thorns in comparison.

To give meaning to my ageless life, a whisper in your silvery voice. Hearing you call my name but once has ruined the songs of birds and bards alike, as they are but pained groans in comparison…

“Anna…” Iris interrupted before either of them was able to read further. “I may not know much about this sort of stuff, but this is most definitely a thing.”

Anastacia declined the idea. “No, this is just how she is pretty much all the time.” She said and continued reading.

These are the joys your absence has robbed from me, and left nothing but dark and loneliness behind. My bark has grown rough and thick in the frigid winds, the long nights have shriveled my once bright green leaves and without you, the sap of life within me slowly dries. But though I long for you so, I understand that the brilliant flame that is your presence is direly needed by others as well. Think not that I blame anyone for this, for this is but a sign of admiration, longing – and desire.

To remedy my abhorrent state, physical and otherwise, I have planned an escapade – a quest for you to come and save me from this dreadful loneliness and decrepit body. A chance for us to grow closer, more intimate. A chance for me to teach your ever curious mind about spriggans, about things better left unmentioned and maybe even about yourself. You need not worry about anything, for I will give you everything you need for our little “adventure”. For how many days and nights we will spend with one another, I can not say, it is something we will find out together…

Eagerly awaiting you

Xamiliere

Iris frowned and stared at the quoted word ‘adventure’. “Are you sure this isn’t a thing? It pretty blatantly looks like one.”

“It’s just a joke she does because she knows it annoys Rosie.” Anastacia again dismissed the idea.

“If you say so…” Iris agreed to disagree without talking back about something she didn’t know much about. “But if she is a spriggan, doesn’t that mean she’s your ‘type’ or whatever? Like these two.” She asked and pointed at the simulacra.

The adventurer looked like she was about to say something for a moment, but instead folded the letter into her pocket and started heading towards the inn. “Let’s just get to a bath, I’m getting cold standing around here.”