The Sky Demons Part Two: Quest

Chapter Three- Rabbits and rice cakes

Tenmar- Rabbits and rice cakes

I followed Kayira into the guild building and stayed behind her as she strode up to the desk and leant over it.

A pretty brown spectrumosa sat on the other side, rustling through notebooks and papers, but she looked up questioningly as we approached. The phoenix, which was still hitching a ride with Kayira squawked with delight and fluttered onto the desktop, sending papers everywhere.

“Oh, I’m very sorry!” cried Kayira snatching the phoenix off of the desk, while I laughed quietly in the background. The young woman smiled ever so slightly at this and held an arm out to Kayira.

“That’s quite alright, may I?

Kayira let go of the phoenix, which hopped back onto the young woman’s arm and perched comfortably there, while she returned her attention to us.

“Now, if you could tell me what your business is here?”

Kayira recollected herself and stood over the counter once more, “We returned early at the request of a summons to sign up for a new mission.” At this she held up the letter that Anthony had earlier claimed to be forged and held it out for the brown deishani’s inspection. I watched her closely, wondering why her voice had seemed to strike such a familiar chord with me, as if I could remember it from somewhere else, until Kayira nudged me with an elbow.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re staring at her you creep, people don’t like it when you lock onto they’re faces like you’re hunting them,” she hissed.

“Who are you calling a creep?” I hissed back.

“You, eyeballing strange women.”

“I just thought her voice sounded familiar, I was trying to place her face!”

“You were staring,” added Firah, “it makes people uncomfortable.”

“I-!”

“Excuse me.”

We all turned to the secretary, suddenly remembering that she was in fact still in front of us.

“Yes, this letter is all in order, I remember sending it myself,” the secretary told us.

“You sent it?” I asked, “that’s a relief because the postal guild just told us that they had no record of any letters being sent to us by a red-hot, we were worried that someone had worked out how to forge the guild’s sigil.”

The woman’s smile went thin, “that’d be because this phoenix is with me, I’m thinking of asking if she wants to be my familiar soon.”

Kayira frowned, “Don’t you think that’s somewhat irresponsible? Guild policy is that only white and blue-hots are used to send messages, to limit the risk of interception.”

The brown spectrumosa’s smile turned so thin that her mouth almost seemed to disappear.

“She’s actually a white-hot, she just has a high calcium diet,” the woman snapped quickly.

Kayira eyed her, doubt plain in her expression, but neither of us could be bothered to take the issue further for now.

“Can you just tell us what our next assigned mission is please?”

The lady’s smile returned to a more a genuine one and she handed us a blank file with the words ‘burn when read’ written on the cover.

“We have received reports of smugglers operating nearby, they’re capturing animals of the forest- both sentient and not- and keeping them alive and captive somewhere. We don’t know their goals, though we’d guess they’re sending the creatures through portals to be sold for profit in other worlds and we don’t know where they’re based other than that it’s probably insultingly close by. We want you to find them, free any animals you find and close any further operations down.”