It’s been 2 days now, it’s the 5th of Alcoranth. At around five in the morning, Jökull arrives in Phontore. ‘Such a small little town for something so monstrous to occur,’ he thought to himself. ‘Well whoever’s doing this I will bring them to justice, and they will serve their time.’ With that he starts to wonder how he should celebrate the Feast of Heroes in a month. Usually he buys some wolf meat, a specialty in the mountains. Maybe the famous Brandenberry wine, a snow elf specialty. It was important to celebrate all of the victorious heroes of Joraglon. And maybe one day Jökull would be one. Someone the creatures can look up to, and say he was a defender of the innocent. He was the best. That’s always been his goal. The carriage slows to a bumpy stop, and Jökull shakes himself from his thoughts. As he gets out of the carriage, he assesses the pain in his legs. ‘Not too bad, I should be able to walk without it today.’ With that, he gets all his stuff, mainly just his wheelchair, and the go bag he always has on him in case of any immediate cases like this one, out of the carriage. With that he checks his crystal. It’s around 5:05 now.

It’s been 2 days since the bard arrived. Now the 5th of Alcoranth. If Esmera remembers correctly, it should be planting season for some of the farmers who worship Rae soon. While this planting season is seen as the best time to start growing crops by most people, the ones who worship Rae tend to always have the best crops during the harvest season. While she doesn’t worship any one overseer, she does respect those who do. Anyways, it’s been 2 days since Izosul came to her shop, and she’s been working ever since. They were helpful for more than just songs. If anyone came in to threaten or misgender her, they’d take care of it. And it was a lot less stressful to have someone in her corner, that wasn’t part of her guild that was scattered throughout the land. It felt nice to have a friend. Currently Esmera is waiting for her friend to get to her shop, when she notices a snow elf, in full paladin armor, walking around pushing an empty wheelchair. ‘To each their own,’ she thinks to herself, then she notices one of the village kids start crying and pointing to the wheelchair. ‘There goes my peaceful day.’ 

“Mommy, I wanna ride in it!!!!” The child screams. As Esmera pays attention to that, she notices the kid is human, and if she’s correct, the son of the sheriff in this town. Knowing that, she also knows that the mother is probably going to demand that her son sit in the chair. And surely enough, the woman who goes to pick up the little kid is the sheriff’s wife. Putting up the will be back soon sign on her counter, she goes out of her shop to help this snow elf. After all, they're going to need all the help they can get with the sheriff’s wife.

“Good sir, surely you’d allow my kid to ride in the wheelchair, since no one is using it.” Her voice was dripping sweet as honey, with a poisonous underbite. Esmera could tell what was coming next, “after all, I am the sheriff’s wife.”

“I’m sorry, but this wheelchair is actually for me, I use it on especially bad days for my legs. And I don’t let anyone take a ride in it.” The paladin answered, Esmera was almost there. She had her ears down and her tail was swishing a bit. Ready to tell the sheriff’s wife off.

“Your hearing must be as unreliable as your legs, I’m Lorian Cladsone. The wife of Girfith Cladsone. I demand you let my child sit in that wheelchair!” 

“Well that was unnecessarily rude. And I get that you’re the sheriff’s wife, you’ve said that twice now. That has nothing to do with your child riding in my wheelchair, which the answer is still no.” Seeing the tense position that the snow elf was in, and hearing the shock and upset in their voice, made it clear to Esmera that they’ve probably never dealt with rudeness like this before. Before Lorian can say whatever it is that she opens her putrid mouth to say, Esmera speaks up, hissing a little as she speaks.

“Shut it Lorian, they said that they don’t want your grimy little Koluaok spawn. And honestly, no one likes to hear whatever it is you have to say. You’re an entitled, arrogant brat, and so is your son.” Esmera hears this woman gasp, and winces a bit when Lorian practically shrieks her next words.

“How dare you! How dare you call my son a Koluaok spawn! He is nothing of the sort, He is a little angel. If anything he’s the spawn of Joraglon-”

“No offense mrs, but if your son was the son of Joraglon, he’d be a lot more behaved. The principles of Joraglon would be more instilled to him at a young age. Not only that, but Joraglon is one of the gods who doesn’t lay with mortals. However, I also doubt that he’s the kid of Koluaok, because as much as your kid needs to learn respect, he is in no way evil.” Esmera looks at them confused, have they never heard of that saying before? Okay then. 

“Hey, snow elf, we should go.” Esmera states, wanting to be done with this. Although, if she has to deal with more of the sheriff’s wife, she would. They look at her, and just nod. 

“We’re done here.” They say turning around their wheelchair and following Esmera. “Ah, I should introduce myself, fair creature, for my name is Jökull, and I use he/him pronouns.” 

“Esmera, she/her. Sorry about them, I wish I could say that it wasn’t normal.” Esmera looks at the time on her crystal real quick, it’s 5:10. If only Izosul was a morning creature, but they aren’t for some weird reason. Leading Jökull back to her shop, she sighed a bit. Jökull looks around the shop a bit, before he notices the banner. 

“Are you part of Ashkoroth?”

“Yeah, I’m a member of the guild. Why?”

“I was just wondering if you could tell me a bit about them.”

“Sure.”

With that the two start talking about the guild for a few minutes. It takes about five minutes before Izosul shows up at the shop.

It’s about 5:00 and Izosul has barely woken up. Slightly annoyed that this whole town is up at around 4:30. But that’s how small towns work, especially more farm based ones. They know they’re from a small town like this, but they’ve lived in the city for so long that they aren’t used to waking up this early in the morning anymore. It takes ten minutes for Izosul to get ready, and they start to trudge up to Esmera’s shop. 

As they walk up there, they notice a new creature, what looks to be a blue elf, talking to her. Izosul notices that it starts out looking friendly, but then Esmera starts looking more and more stressed. They go over close enough to partially listen in.

 “This is starting to sound more like an interrogation than anything, ha ha.” Esmera states, with the look on her face saying she was not okay with where this was heading.

“Well it’s not an interrogation per se, but I am trying to figure out more about these people because of my investigation.” The blue elf-like creature says, obviously nervous, about what though, Izosul didn’t know.

“Investigation into what?! What could they possibly do? There is nothing suspicious about them!” Obviously upset, she was practically yelling at the creature.

“Murder.” And now would be a good time to make their presence known wouldn’t it. With that, Izosul purposefully steps on a twig.

“Hey Esmera, and whoever you are,” gesturing towards the blue creature, “what’s going on?”

“Well I’m Jökull, he/him-”

“He’s accusing my guild members of murder, Izosul, murder! Can you believe it, who does he think he is!” Esmera cuts him off, agitated with what this Jökull had been saying.

“Ah, I was hoping to keep the investigation on the downlow.” Jökull explains, a little annoyed. “Look, all signs point to them currently, obviously this is still under investigation and we could be looking in the completely wrong place-”

“You are definitely looking in the wrong place.” Esmera hisses, cutting him off again.

Before this goes any further, Izosul decides to do something about the fight that will happen if they both don’t stop.

“Hey, what if we went and investigated the murders, figuring out the culprit or culprits together. If it turns out to be a guild member, then we’ll deal with that then, same thing if not.” Izosul hopes they both agree to that. “Plus what murders are we even talking about?”

“I assume you’ve heard of the Mycelium Menace?” Jökull asks, seemingly unsure of what else to say.

Esmera pales a bit, and takes a minute before she says, “if you’re looking into something this dangerous, you’ll need back up, plus I need to prove my guild members aren’t responsible for this.” 

Jökull nods, understanding the commitment to prove someone you hold dear innocent, hoping it’s a misunderstanding. “Of course, however if I allow you two to tag along, I need to know that you won’t look into my case file, as it’s purely confidential.”

It’s early morning, and Vraefnael is just waking up. Fae are filled with content, just looking up at the fading stars in the sky. After surveying faer surroundings, Vraefnael starts faer walk around the place fae live in. It’s too bad faer wolf pack is gone, most had died years ago the rest had left to another part of the forest, but Vraefnael still lives in the cave that they had left behind.

After a while fae heard some footsteps, and the crunching of leaves. As Vraefnael goes to investigate, fae hear noises in different pitches. However, fae can’t understand what it means, and it’s annoying faer. As Vraefnael walks towards the noise cautiously, fae start seeing creatures. Fae notice as one of them, with ears and a tail, pulls back the one with two different colors of skin from falling in Vraefnaels giant mushroom friend’s footprint. And also one of them is blue. Wondering if they’re here to destroy Vraefnael’s home like the others, fae get closer watching them carefully as they all communicate with each other in a language Vraefnael doesn’t understand.

It takes a few minutes of all three of the creatures looking around, before it happens. Vraefnael feels something tackle faer, even though fae haven’t heard or seen anything other than these creatures. Giving a loud shout fae immediately regret everything, fae should’ve just killed these weird creatures, not giving them a chance. 

All three creatures venture towards faer, and then look at Vraefnael with confusion and a bit of fear in their eyes. As all of them draw their weapons, Vraefnael casts a spell, a spell that shakes everything around them. The one with ears and a tail and the person that they pulled are pushed away, taking a bit more damage than the blue one who braces themself and stays where they are. The blue one shouts something at faer, but Vraefnael can’t understand what they’re saying. However Vraefnael does try to repeat what is being said.

“What is adest?” All three creatures look at faer confused. Then the blue one speaks again, but again, Vraefnael doesn’t understand. Then all of them start speaking to faer again, but in obviously different languages. And again, Vraefnael doesn’t understand them. That’s when the one with two different colors of skin comes over and leans down and holds out a hand to faer. It takes a minute, but Vraefnael eventually understands that this creature isn’t trying to hurt faer. Taking the hand, Vraefnael is pulled up from faer position on the ground, and all of them start walking away from the forest. 

It takes a few minutes for Vraefnael to realize that fae are being led to the tiny civilization that fae got the tiny crystal from. Feeling a bit confused, fae look at the one whose hand fae are holding, and they offer a nice smile. All four of them walk towards this weird looking place, made of wood, and having a closed opening thing. Fae doesn’t understand why one would have an opening that can be closed, but then again, small civilization place is weird. Fae meet another two leg walking creature inside. This one is greenish-gray in color. The one who is holding faer hand, turn and gesture to Vraefnael, and it takes faer a minute to realize that this creature wants faer to talk. 

“Who are you?”

“I am Galroth, the village linguist.” Then Galroth turns to the other three and tells them something. Vraefnael on the other hand is confused.

“What is village and linguist?” 

“I will tell you more in the morning. If you stay the night, of course.” “Okay.”

Taglist:

@hyperfixated-homo

@cryingrainbowsandrocksongs

Transcript of the bullet points:

Chapter 3 bullet points

That Night

Vraefnael looks around room

Sleeps on floor

Doesn’t like how cramped it is

Curious as to what everything is

Breaks something

Cuts to Esmera waking up from a dream

Dream is of fires and unearthly screaming.

Wakes up in cold sweat and sees patron

Patron is a small fae with wooden skin, leaf green hair, and river blue eyes.

Patron warns of danger to come, saying that this is the price that Esmera pays for her power, the protection of the other fae.

Tells her to head to Alboraithe forest as soon as she can

Cuts to Jökull starting to plan things out.

Takes out and opens a notebook. 

Starts writing down different meals he could have while on the road.

Maybe planning to stop somewhere that day and eat the finest of meat and drink the finest of wine there

Hoping to be able to buy some food to prepare, and maybe some efler berries to make snow elven wine. 

Takes out another notebook and writes down information found

Giant footprint, like nothing they’ve seen before

Vampire that they have to look into

Why is random villager okay with talking to a vampire

Is the vampire a murderer (do they know what murder is?)

What if the vampire is the killer, but isn’t a murderer? What then?

Blocks the thought from his mind for now but does jot it down

Legs start hurting more, for no reason.

Cuts to Izosul practicing their instrument

Practicing a new song. (make up finished song for chapter 7)

About hometown

Very emotional

Starts off happy, ends up sad

Flops on bed thinking about life, and how they got to this point.

Next morning

Jökull’s POV

Gets up and puts on paladin armor

Legs hurt badly, gets in wheelchair

Makes sure to gather books before going 

Meets Izosul and Izosul asks about wheelchair.

Head to living room as Jökull talks to them

Ends up eventually talking about traditions in the mountains to Izosul

Food, drink

Religious things

Goes on a tangent about his god

Buildings

How everyone is treated there

Then goes on a tangent about the Endless Guards

Biggest deal in the kingdom

Ten major factions in different areas

35 minor factions in more areas

Takes over when problems are too big for the guards in an area

Tend to be more inclusive than most(at least his minor faction is)

Literally have a ramp for him

Most morally correct group of guards there is, even been studies on it

However most are not religious, the ones who are do have to answer which god goddess or overseer they follow(just in case it’s an evil one)

Esmera meets up with them

Esmera’s POV

She, Jökull, and Izosul meet up in the living room of the guy’s house, only for her to freak out as she didn’t tell her parents where she was going.

She rushedly says she has to go

Jökull and Izosul tell her it’s okay, they both have to go to the market.

Jökull is in his wheelchair.

Esmera makes note to ask about that later.

Izosul briefly asks her to bring vampire clothes.

Gets to her house and grabs some clothes.

Ends up talking to parents, giving a v brief info on what’s going on

Parents nod, worried for daughter, but trusting her to make the right decisions in the end.

Doesn’t know she’s about to go on the adventure of her life.

Izosul’s POV

Thoughts on the convo’s they’ve just had

Thinks about the vampire they brought in

Realizes that this vampire has probably never been in a house before

Goes to check on them with Jökull

Find vampire freaking out and hissing clawing at the window

Realize that they’re going to spend a lot of time teaching them to be a civilized person

Try to calm them down

House owner enters the room confused by the commotion

Also tries to calm the vampire down

Finds out vampire isn’t fluent in draconic but is even less fluent in common

After calming the vampire down, they take the time to learn draconic with the linguist

Vampire picks it up the easiest.

Very curious, asks a lot of questions

Jökull and Izosul struggle a bit

Also ask lots of questions

Vraefnael’s POV

Wakes up and realizes fae are trapped

Starts clawing at the clear barrier trying to get out

Starts hissing at it too, mostly out of frustration

Barrier that trapped faer in is opened by trespassers

Fae tense up, hissing at them

They start trying to say things to Vraefnael, but fae can’t understand.

Eventually weird small civilisation dude who can talk comes in

Takes a bit to calm Vrae down.

Given new(big) clothes

Struggles to put them on

Person helps faer

Learns more draconic

Starts to learn some common as well

Creature with panther-ish ears appears

Joins them in learning draconic and common

Watches as person who speaks same language hands panther person a book.

Person says gibberish, only some words making sense