“This is the place, “ I said. “Ready to do our first real job?”
“Ready when you are,” the blue stallion next to me replied.
I gave the door in front of us three good raps and took a step back. “Coming,” came a faint voice from inside a few moments later. The sound of footsteps grew increasingly loud as someone inside approached the door. The door swung open and a frowning face peered out. The white unicorn stallion with a short lime green mane, upon opening the door, came face to face with my stomach before his spectacled eyes followed my body up to my face. He blinked once before glancing at my friend, then back to me. “Can I help you?” he asked tersely. He didn’t seem the slightest bit phased at my height, but that was to be expected given that I wasn’t the only comparatively tall creature walking the streets of this town.
“Yeah, we’re here about that quest you had posted yesterday," I explained, producing a copy of the poster the quest was written on. His frown seemed to deepen slightly.
“You don’t look like you’ve done much adventuring,” he said.
“We haven’t. This will be our first C Class job,” I said.
The stallion, named Data Point according to the quest poster, deadpanned.“I don’t think you’re cut out for this job,” he said. He backed into the house and began shutting the door, but before it could fully close a blue hoof was wedged in the door frame.
“Excuse me sir,” My companion said in a friendly manner. “I may be mistaken, but didn’t your quest have a “time sensitive” stamp on it?”
Data Point glared daggers at my friend. “It does,” he said simply.
“Then do you intend to wait on other questers that are more qualified than us for the task of retrieving your stolen goods?”
“I do. Now good da-“
“Just another moment of you time sir,” Frostbite interrupted as Data Point tried to close the door again. “Why wait for other adventurers that may not come? Your quest was posted yesterday and we seem to be the only ones interested in the job,” Frostbite explained. Data Point looked bitter at hearing that others may not come. “Sir, we may be new C Class adventurers, but we are still C Class. We need the experience, and you need your stuff back. It’s a win-win for everyone involved!” Data Point looked skeptical, but was clearly debating something in his head. “But if it makes you feel better, if we fail you don’t have to pay us a single bit. Plus, even if we die it’ll be no fur off your back, and you’d get the added benefit of never seeing our ugly mugs around here again,” Frost finished, giving the stallion a winning smile.
Data Point glanced between us, mulling something over in his head. Finally, he let out a frustrated sigh and grumbled a “fine” to himself. “Come inside and I’ll sign the contract.”
The door opened wider and we stepped inside. The room we stepped into could only be considered chaotically organized. Stacks of books lined the walls and towers were randomly erected around the room, the small space between the stacks making it hard to navigate. Of coarse, Data Point didn’t have any problems whatsoever weaving effortlessly through the book maze. I would’ve been amazed at the sheer number of books, but the ’Silver Oaks Library’ sign outside gave the hint that there would be a lot of them in this particular building. The only strange thing was that most of them were not on the shelves. There was a small table in the center of the room with a few books strewn about along with a globe and some other doodads. Data Point walked over to the table and turned back.
“Well?” he asked irritably. As he had been walking, Frostbite and I had stood in the doorway to take in our new surroundings. The question roused us and we began carefully weaving between the book towers. I was especially careful going down the single step by the door. Something gave me the impression that knocking one of the stacks over would not end well with our host, so I took it slow and steady.
We reached the table and Data Point used his horn to remove the books from the table. He floated them down to the floor next to him, creating a smaller version of the other towers around us.
I pulled the contract out of my satchel and placed it on the table. Data Point lit up his horn again and a quill and ink well popped into existence in his levitating white aura.
“Before I sign this, let me make it crystal clear what I want done here as I did not specify on the contract beyond the fact that I was stolen from,” Data Point started.
“I don’t know who stole my belongings because I was asleep at the time, so I can’t give you information on species or the like. I don’t know what way they went. That will be for you to figure out. I do know that they came and left through that window,” he said pointing his hoof at a window behind him. “I also don’t know why they decided to steal from me as most of my belongings have no real monetary value.”
He turned and looked at Frostbite with a very serious look in his eye before he continued. “However, the thief or thieves, among various other things, took the one extremely rare and expensive item I had here. I believe they were just taking things at random and happened to come across this item and took it too. The item was an egg I was researching. It is red and has a flame design on it. The reason why I emphasize it so much is because it is the only thing that you need to bring back. I don’t care about whatever else was stolen as long as you bring back that egg, got it?”
Frostbite simply nodded his understanding. Data Point looked up at me and I nodded as well.
“Good.” he said.
He dipped the quill into the ink well and quickly scratched down his signature on the contract. With that out of the way he floated the paper back to me, and I put it back in my satchel. We all headed for the door and Frostbite and I went outside. The two of us turned to leave, but Data Point spoke up again.
“One last thing.” he said. “Don’t let the egg touch direct sunlight.” Before either of us could ask why, Data Point slammed the door shut.
”Well,” I said. “He seems nice.”
Frostbite gave a humored exhale before responding. “Let’s check the window he pointed at. Might have something I can use to track down our target.”
I followed him over to the window and watched as he conducted his little search. It’s not like I didn’t want to help the guy, but tracking was something that he was infinitely better at than I was and I would most likely only get in his way if I tried. After a minute he came over to me and listed his findings.
“Looks like there were multiple beings here. Prints and markings have me thinking a griffin went inside and did the actual stealing while something with hooves stayed outside and played lookout. Number and size of hoof prints suggests pony. Not sure how many there actually are though.”
“Well, at least we have an idea of what we’re up against,” I add.
He nodded and pointed to the North, towards the forest a few blocks down. “I’m pretty sure they went that way, which doesn’t surprise me. If the burglary happened yesterday, we can still probably catch up to them fairly quickly.”
“Alright, let’s gear up and head out in an hour.” I told him.
—————
We walked up to the edge of the forest about forty minutes later. Frostbite wore a pair of saddle bags with an expansion enchantment on them that allowed for multiple days worth of supplies to be stored inside something that would normally only hold a few smaller items. I wore a light backpack with the same enchantment. I also wore a belt around my waist that held eight throwing knives and two daggers. There wasn’t anything in this forest that would call for heavier weapons, which suited me well considering I didn’t have enough money to buy any heavier weapons.
“Alright,” Frostbite said. “I’ll track, you follow and keep an eye out for anything.”
”Got it,” I replied.
He took his first steps into the forest with his head pointed at the ground, looking for signs of previous activity. It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for and then we were off.
—————
Nothing interesting had happened in the four hours since we had entered the forest, but I kept an eye out anyway. I’d seen enough movies to know that bad stuff happened only when someone let their guard down.
The going was slow but steady. Frost had lost the trail once or twice, but it had only taken him a minute to pick it back up. As I watched him work I couldn’t help but think a bloodhound would be jealous of his tracking ability.
“How we lookin’, boss?” I asked jokingly.
“The tracks are looking more fresh the further we go.” Frost said. “It looks like they’re not in much of a hurry. Maybe they thought they got away with it and are enjoying their stay in the forest.”
“All the better for us then.” I replied. “Though I hate to say it, we should probably stop for the night soon.”
Frostbite lifted his head and looked around for a second. “You’re probably right.” He said. “I hadn’t noticed how dark it was getting. Let’s go another twenty minutes before we set up camp.”
I nodded and we continued onward.
An hour later camp had been set up and Frostbite and I were eating around a fire. We didn’t bring a tent since the weather here was much more predictable than back on Earth. The weather schedule said it would be nice for the next week. Setting up and taking down a tent would also slow our progress. Instead, we just had a couple sleeping bags with built in pillows that we stored in my backpack.
Frostbite thought we had made good time, and at our current rate we would catch up with the thieves sometime the next day. We decided that I would take first watch while he slept.
—————
I was bored. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly wasn’t good. Nothing had happened on either watch during the night and nothing had happened all morning and afternoon. We were supposed to catch up with the thieves soon, but there was still no sign of them late into the afternoon. Frostbite assured me that we were close, but that didn’t alleviate my boredom.
It was just a few minutes before I was going to suggest we set up camp that I heard something. It sounded like uproarious laughter. I asked Frostbite if he had heard it too and he replied in the affirmative.
We waited until we heard it again and carefully made our way in the direction of the sound. We came upon a small clearing in the trees. The clearing had everything one would think of when they thought of camping. A couple of tents took up a good chunk of the available space and a few feet away a fire burned with a fresh log for a fuel source. Two griffins and three earth ponies sat around it seemingly exchanging stories from their pasts. This was clearly the source of the laughter we had heard earlier.
Frost and I had hidden in a bush at the edge of the clearing. I looked at him with my an eyebrow raised and a tilt of my head in the direction of the campsite. He gave a quick nod in response. We had found our targets.
—————
Frost and I had set up our own camp a little ways away from the thief camp. Far enough away that one of the camp’s inhabitants wouldn’t stumble upon us if they went to take a piss. Our setup wasn’t much, since it was just meant to be a place to rest until it got dark. We had used the time to come up with a basic plan of action.
A few hours after the moon rose into the night sky we packed up and headed back to the other camp. We sat in the same bush from earlier in the day to scope out the situation. The camp was the same as before, the only difference being that most of its previous inhabitants were nowhere to be seen. They were most likely sleeping in the two tents. One of the ponies from earlier still sat by the fire, playing lookout. Luckily his back was turned to us.
My lack of hooves allowed for a more stealth oriented approach, so I silently slipped out of the bush, a dagger in one hand, and carefully crouch walked to where the pony sat. My slow approach turned into a quick lunge as I threw my free hand around the pony’s neck and pulled him into the air as I held him close to my chest. I made sure to close off his windpipe so he couldn’t call for help. The pony struggled for a second before thinking better of it when I held the point of my sharp dagger to his throat.
“Struggle and you die.” I whispered into his ear. His muscles tensed in fear at my words. Before anything else happened, Frost made his way up to us and cast a knockout spell on the stallion. He relaxed in my arms and I slowly lowered him to lay on the ground. With that out of the way we made our way to the entrance of the left tent. I moved the cloth flap just enough to peak inside without letting much of the firelight in. I spotted the two griffins laying inside.
I pulled my head back and indicated how many were there to Frost. He nodded and cast the knockout spell on the already asleep inhabitants of the tent. We quickly repeated the process for the other tent. While usually used to put someone to sleep, if the spell was cast on someone who was already sleeping it just made them much harder to wake up.
Once we were sure nobody was going to wake up while we were still here, I went to search the first tent while Frostbite stayed to search the second one. I made a beeline to the bags in the back of the tent, careful not to step on a griffin. While I would normally hate to steal from someone, these guys were thieves and I didn’t mind dishing out a little karma to these assholes.
I opened up the first bag and started rummaging through it. There wasn’t much of interest, but the bag of bits hanging off the side definitely caught my eye. I took it and added the thirteen bits to my backpack. I had left my own currency back in town just in case something like this happened to us. Moving on to the only other bag in the tent, I opened it up. Sitting inside was the egg we had been sent to retrieve. I added it to my bag and continued to loot the bag for anything worth anything. The only things of note were a few low quality gemstones that I pocketed to sell later. They wouldn’t be worth much, but every bit counted.
Satisfied that I had everything worth taking I made my way outside where Frostbite was waiting. “No luck on my end.” He said. “How about you?”
“I got the egg, along with a few bits and some cheep gems.” I replied. With our prize within our grasp, we made like the bandits we left behind and disappeared into the night.
—————
We had made good time back to the town of Gotia. We had made it far enough that the thieves hadn’t caught up with us, if they had even tried to. We stepped out of the forest to be greeted with the mid morning light. Frost and I were in a great mood. We were about to finish our first C Class quest and it had gone off without a hitch. Once we turned in the contract and got paid it would be time for a celebration.
We made our way down the street and up to the front door of the Silver Oaks Library. Surely the library’s only resident was up by now. I gave it three good raps and waited for a response. It came quickly in the form of footsteps approaching the door. It opened and Data Point’s frowning face peered out. When he saw the two of us he quickly opened the door and beckoned us inside.
“Do you have the egg?” He asked.
“It’s right here in my bag.” I said. “You said to keep it out of the sunlight. That was the best I could do.”
“It should be fine. It’s not that fragile. Before we do anything else, let me close the blinds. You go wait by the table.” Data Point told me as he started weaving through the book stacks once again.
While Frost decided to see what tales the local book towers held, I waded my way over to the table just as Data Point closed the blinds on all of the windows, making the room much dimmer than it already had been. He made his way to the table and sat to my left. “Okay.” He said. “Take it out.”
I took off my backpack and set it on the table. I opened the large flap on top and reached my hand in. It came back out with the red egg we had been sent to find. It was roughly the size of both my fists together. Data Point’s eyes lit up as he saw it. I placed it on the table carefully before putting my bag back on.
“Excellent work you two!” Day Point said excitedly. The grin on his face showed nothing but the purest joy at having his egg returned. “I’ll let the guild know that the quest was finished and to have the payment sent to yo-“
He didn’t get to finish his sentence as a yelp from Frostbite cut him off. He had tripped down the single step by the door. I looked over just in time to see the first of many book towers fall. The ensuing domino effect was the stuff of legends. No one tried to stop the disaster happening right in front of us because we all knew there was nothing we could do to stop it. The last book tower in the chain tipped over, dropping books like deadly hail just as all the towers before it. The unique thing about this particular stack was that it was topped with an especially thick tome, most likely a dictionary of some sort, that caught on the blinds as gravity took hold of it. The blinds were torn from the window, letting the mid morning sun look straight into the library from the East.
“No!” Data Point shouted.
There was a small cracking sound behind us, hard to hear after the loud crashing of books meeting wooden floor. I turned to the table where the egg was now bathed in sunlight. There was a crack in the egg. Before anything else could be said, the crack grew larger until it encompassed most of the egg’s red surface. Suddenly the top half of the eggs shell burst into flame, causing me to back up a step in shock. The fire burned out quickly and in its place was a small bird with fiery red feathers. It stared directly at me and tilted its head slightly.
Everyone in the room stood completely still, too shocked at the series of events that had led to this. Data Point sat slack jawed. Frost had been the first to recover. “What was that!?” He asked.
The question must have broken Data Point out of his statuesque stupor because his face had contorted in rage. “Get out.” He said quietly. “And take the bird with you.”
I didn’t need anymore prompting. I knew the longer we stayed, the higher the risk our bodies would never be found. I carefully picked up the bird and what was left of the egg shell and high tailed it to the door. Frostbite followed close behind. As we went through the door Frost turned one last time to look into the building. “Um... sorry for breaking your egg.”
His only reply was a book sailing past his head at Mach 5. Frost shut the door and turned to me. “So... what now?”
[End Chapter One]
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