Chapter 126

A black wooled Lyra stepped through the upper class and quite posh streets with a little hop of excitement in her step. It wasn’t that she was afraid, of course she was afraid, a bounty hunter or gang with no scruples could come for her at any moment! But it was Florens. Florens! Her home city! Being here was special, in her opinion Florens was the greatest city in the world, although admittedly she might have been a little biased since she had grown up here.

She tried her best to not think of how much her view of the world had changed since she had first left the city. Goblin slaves were once something that her eyes passed over without even registering, now they were eye catching blemishes on her city that caused a squirmy feeling of guilt deep in her gut.

The small Kobold at her side was slightly less joyous, giving the well dressed levelers they passed surly looks, his claws resting on the sheathed blade on his hip, hunched and wary.

The edges of vast manses could be seen over the roofs of the busy streets they were wandering through. They were on the edge of the noble quarter, as near as could be without actually entering it. They found themselves in a street of stalls and shops selling the kinds of luxury things the elite were likely to spend their money on.

She stopped by a stall that a mouldy grey scaled Drake smoking a pipe was watching over, seated comfortably in an armchair.

“Hiya!” said Lyra brightly.

The Drake eyeballed her, a wisp of pipe smoke curling around his head.

He nodded toward the tables, and Lyra looked over them and bit her lip. She needed to buy at least something, what better way to get a merchant’s lips flapping?

After a moment of hesitation, she picked something out, a bottle of wine.

“Is this the wine that’s like really popular amongst the nobility?”

The Drake lifted a lip revealing gold teeth, sharp teeth.

“Aye, it be. Enough the stuff goes through those many golden gates to drown a dragon. Ain’t hard to get a claw on a few bottles these days if you gots the know how. It’s all yours, the real deal noble experience, all for a beggerin’ twenty five gold coins.”

“WHAT?! That’s daylight rob- aheheh I mean, that’s uh, nighttime gifting? Like, WOW, what a ... generous price. You are a very kind and handsome Drake.”

The Drake squinted at her.

“If you don’t like the price then I reckon maybe you don’t belong here. This isn’t a place for paupers and trash, girl.”

“I’m sure it is a great and very reasonable price, and I am. very. happy. to. pay. that.” said the sheep girl, struggling to get the words out.

It was kind of like a bribe right? She found thinking of it that way helped a bit. A little bit.

Lyra instinctively dipped her hand down to grab a fistfull of coin from the dimensional bag on her hip. At the last possible moment she recalled that it was currently filled with nightmarish shadow things that would very likely dissolve her entire hand if she were to put it inside. She jerked her fingers away with a shudder

Instead, she carefully reached for a regular purse she had hung next to it in preparation for brib- paying for goods.

A pair of claws latched onto her hand as she was fiddling with the purse and she looked down to see Red glaring up at her.

“I’m the treasurer and I say no.”

She reacted quickly.

“Get your filthy claws off of me slave!” She slapped Red in the face, gently of course, but it still provided an impressive stage sound.

The Kobold looked at her flabbergasted.

“This is the last time I buy a dungeon fresh slave. You forget your place! Do not deign to talk to me again.” She waved him away and turned back to the Drake.

The Kobold rubbed his cheek vaguely and glared at her. Were the dramatics really necessary?

Lyra grabbed a fistful of coin from the purse and waved her closed hand in the air showing she had the money for the popular wine.

She of course had been well aware that the bottle was a favourite of the nobility and in limited supply. It was the reason she had stopped at the stall in the first place.

“Soooooo. I suppose you have to be quite well connected to get your, aheh, Drakey claws on one of these bottles. Know the ins and outs and the comings and goings and the ups and downs and the insides and outside and the things that happen?” she lifted an eyebrow suggestively, then her other eyebrow too, doubling down on the suggestiveness.

The Drake blew smoke. “If by that you mean do I have friends amongst the staff. Sure. nothing wrong with that. I know many young maids, old too, you know how it is.”

He gave her a weird leer, mouth opening and revealing that every one of his teeth were gold, smoke curling between them as he chuckled.

“D-do I? I-I mean, yes? And, good?”

The Drake paused then snorted through his nose. “You know nothing. Pay up or piss off.”

“I can pay, I can pay!” she dumped her fistful of coin onto the table, less than the total. “You know how it is, gold is very heavy and I’m only a little sheep. If you would take pity and help relieve me of some of it? Perhaps by telling me a little of a certain noble house? The Fenhorns? I’m sure it would be of no trouble, no trouble at all.”

“You could have gone with that from the start you know.”

Lyra paused. “Well in that case I won’t buy this ridiculously over priced wine.”

“Too late now, if you don’t buy the perfectly reasonably priced wine you’ll have been wasting my time and that makes me less than inclined to be talking with a nosey one like yerself.”

“That’s-!”

It was the Drakes turn to raise a brow

Lyra let out an agonised sigh and scowled at him. But she still slammed down more fistfuls of gold onto the table.

“S’good wine, no need to get in a huff. So good that I fancy it’s aged into a finer vintage just as we been speakin.”

Lyra’s scowl deepened and she slammed down another fistful of gold, practically punching the table.

“The Fenhorns?”

The Drake tapped ash from his pipe, speaking as he refilled the bowl.

“Can’t say I know much about ‘em. They’re the soft in the head sort, the sort of folk who spendthrift on charity, helping out stuck low levelers, feeding the starving, all that kind of useless shit.” He relit the pipe by snapping his claws together, some Skill or other creating a shower of sparks. “ ‘Course I do know of one of ‘em more than the others. Their so-called golden child. Hard to not know about that, when a family is angling for the top they crow and parrot about their spawn havin’ explosive growth at every chance they get.”

“Brax Fenhorn right?”

The Drake nodded. “Aye. Bugger came back to Florens and practically got a parade. The prodigal son returned! Look how strong and mighty he has become! Our star is rising!” The Drake turned and spat to the side. “Bunch of cunts if you ask me.”

“Were there others with him? Did he return alone?”

“He had a few girls hanging off his shoulders if that’s what you mean. One a noble like him by looks, the other I don’t know. They’re living on the Fenhorn estate. I hear a lot about that cause the maids ain’t particularly happy about it, and by that I mean talkin’ my ear off with complaints. Trashed rooms, won’t stop rutting on the furniture, oh and the wailing, waking them up at all times.”

“Uhhh, okay that last bit I really didn’t need to know, but ... thank you?

The Drake leered at her in that way again, gold teeth on display.

“If you want to meet them I can tell yah that there’s a party, a celebration celebratin’ the golden boy’s jump in levels. You know how it is, you got that vibe about you, nobbity nobles treating leveling as an excuse to splurge huge amounts of coin and binge themselves shitfaced.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I have never heard of such a thing.

“Sure. And I’m a sopping hatchling. In any case you’ve heard what that wine gets ya, if you want to get past all the guards and magic and that then wait til the party and get in all sly like as one of the guests. You’ll pass, as I said, you got the vibe, noble like.”

Lyra glanced between the Drake and the bottle of wine.

“ ... I can’t help but feel you just told me things that were absolutely not worth all the coin I just spent on this wine.”

“I don’t know what yer talkin about girl, I was just havin’ a nice chat, ‘ad nothin’ to do with the wine, that was your own separate purchase. Not my problem if you are a wine lover who can’t help but go for a good vintage.”

Lyra gave him an outraged look, but after a moment she snatched up the wine and turned on her heel.

“I frankly don’t appreciate the way you have treated me as a customer. Good day sir. Red come!”

“But-”

“This is no place for honest and honourable folk like ourselves!”

She marched away with Red hurrying to keep up in her wake.

“Outrageous. To think that kind of unscrupulous conniving merchant makes his home here in the upper quarters.”

“Weren’t you trying to sort of bribe him for information?”

“No! Maybe! That’s completely beside the point!”

Annoyed, she stopped at a few more stalls and shops, even a butchers, but few others could tell her more, and only a little of that was useful. At least she now knew for certain that all of the ones Rain wanted were on the estate, further confirmed by their descriptions, an erratic elf girl, and a human mage, supposedly a water mage of some kind.

Most interesting was the coming party however, and it did give her food for thought. Could she...?

After a half-hour of learning nothing more, and a brand new collection of expensive junk plus a now empty purse, she decided not to push her luck on her first information foray any further and steered Red into an alley, the fastest way back to the library.

It was as they were making their way through it that a large blue scaled Drake stepped from a door and blocked their path.

“Ah, sorry, just trying to get by?”

The Drake didn’t move.

“Did you think passage was free? This is private property you are stepping on. There’s a toll to pass.”

“ ... In that case I’ll just be going back the way I came, uhm.”

She glanced over her shoulder to find two more large Drakes had appeared and were blocking the way back.

“If you would just let me by? maybe?”

The very muscular blue Drake was over a foot taller than Lyra and loomed at her threateningly.

“You’ve already stepped hoof on our property, that means you’re using it. You wouldn’t take a bite out of a baker’s muffin then put it back without paying for it would you now?”

The Drake took a step forward.

A flash of red scale and a Kobold darted between them, blocking the Drake’s path.

Red lifted his golden sword, the point waving wildly as he aimed it up at the Drake’s abdomen.

“Stop where you are leveler!”

“Red ... y-you’re protecting me...?” whispered Lyra, eyes wide.

“Don’t come any closer to my portable hoard!

“Oh.”

“She and all the stuff I shoved inside of her are mine!”

“C-can you please not put it that way...?!”

The blue scaled Drake sneered at Red, then in a flash of motion, that was likely Skill empowered, his claws darted forward and ripped the golden sword away in the same motion as a leg kicked out.

The sandal caught Red in the gut and he was tossed into the air, limbs flailing as he was brutally winded. He crashed against the stairs of a nearby porch, body limp.

One of the Drake’s behind grabbed Lyra’s wrist and dragged her to the side. The other snatched the black knife from her that had appeared in her hand, and then the dimensional bag from her hip.