The Next Steps

Waking up, I found Luna no longer next to me. I spotted her sitting on the stool in front of the floor-length mirror. She was sitting with her tail wrapped around her to lay in her lap so that she could brush it. I watched her as she ran the soft-bristled brush through the beautiful chestnut coat of fur on her tail. She had her head bowed, a delicate smile on her face, as she had her eyes locked downwards on her revitalized tail.

After several minutes she noticed my gaze. She looked up to meet my eyes, the smile growing as she saw me awake. "Honey, I need your help. Can you hold this up for me?" She handed me a smaller desktop mirror as she stood with her back to the big mirror. I angled the mirror so that she could use the two reflections to observe her healed tail and back fully. Luna reached her hand back to rub along the alluringly smooth contour of her back. Smiling again, she stood and took the mirror from my hands, setting it aside on the dresser. She then got me to hold her as we stood locked in each other's arms, swaying gently.

After finally getting her fill of hugs, Luna helped me dress and put on my armour before we headed down for breakfast. We had a delicious breakfast of porridge and sausages, with some freshly ground coffee. I added milk and sugar to my coffee, and that seemed to amuse the locals as they all drank it black and had never seen anyone put stuff in their coffee before. When one of them replicated it with their own after seeing me enjoy mine, they realized how good it tastes. Soon enough, the whole dining hall tried it out with their own cups of coffee. Marcy asked if she would be allowed to start offering the premixed coffee to guests. "I am not the one who came up with the idea, so please, go ahead."

After the kerfuffle of coffee at breakfast, Luna and I headed over to the guild. We entered and spotted Kyana. She had already seen us and was heading over to us. "Follow me. I will escort you to the Guildmaster. He is not in his office at the moment." Kyana took us through the usual back door. Once in the back hallway, rather than heading straight through to the back of the building to the training area or right, towards the stairs to the upper levels, we headed to the left. I had yet to be down this hall. It had what looked to be classrooms and a few offices. We finally reached the door at the end of the hallway. Inside dusty bookshelves were leaning against every wall. Is this the archives? I used my mana vision to look around. My eyes were drawn to a bookcase at the back. I could see a faint mist-like glow of mana seeping from above and below the wooden shelf.

Noticing my eyes move to that part of the room, Kyana motioned for me to proceed ahead of her. "Can you find how to get through?" Luna looked a bit lost standing next to me. "I sensed that there is something behind this door. Now I am looking for a hidden button or mechanism of some sort to open it." She nodded her head at the explanation and immediately started looking through the shelf I indicated. While she searched the lower half of the bookcase, I looked through the books' titles. There it is. Brigg's Guide To Guild Management. "Watch out for a second, babe."

I tipped the book forward and was met with more resistance than one would expect for such an action. From the feel and clacking sound, the book was attached to a chain. The last click was louder than the rest and occurred when I rotated the book forward a full 45 degrees. At that, the bookcase popped open on a set of hinges. I grabbed the edge and pulled it the rest of the way. Behind it lay a set of stairs leading down into the earth. Kyana summoned a small ball of light to her hand and led the way.

I asked if I should close the door, and Kyana explained it would shut itself. I had Luna walk in front of me as we proceeded down the stone steps. After descending a hundred or so stairs, we passed through an iron-reinforced wooden door. The room we now stood in had a vaulted circular design, the walls and ceiling entirely made from stone bricks. It must have taken years to dig this and build the chamber. The antechamber walls were lined with shelving that held books, files, equipment and all sorts of things I was not sure of the purpose for at first glance. Sitting in the room's center was a round table, roughly two and a half metres in diameter. The table had a raised edge, and the centre part was a detailed 3d map of the surrounding area. Upon observing the diorama, my records were filled in with more detail for the places I had yet to visit in person.

Guildmaster Briggs was sitting on the far side of the table, reading through a dossier of papers. He finished reading the information, a blank expression on his face before he looked up to greet us. A big grin lit up his broad face, like a grandfather spotting his favourite grandkid. "John, Luna, take a seat." We sat down in the seats to the right of Briggs, with our attention focused on him.

"So, I have two main things to go over. First, I have to thank you for voicing your suspicion around the new adventurers you saw leaving the town. The Guild employee I put on the case was able to catch up and monitor the situation. Once they revealed their plan to abuse and sell the two of them, he could intervene and remove the problem. The two who your intel saved are staying in one of the recovery rooms upstairs, and they passed along a message that they want to thank you. Kyana can take you by them after our conversation."

I nodded to let him know we would.

"Now, most importantly, I have a quest for you. This is a Special Guild Quest for you two. Special Guild Quests are designated for a specific adventurer or group of adventurers, as the quest requires their particular skills or is best suited for them to complete. The quest has a few pieces to it. But to start..."

Briggs then explained to us what our tasks were. We had to travel from Moero to the westernmost city in the empire, Regrad. Once there, we had to meet with and deliver letters to three different people. The final of which is a dwarven Runesmith. Maybe we can finally get Luna's Slave Crest removed!