//------------------------------// // Gilda IV // Story: A Journey in Griffonstone // by RangerOfRhudaur //------------------------------// The old knight looked down at his map, Griffonstone and the surrounding area drawn with care, down to the dead-end allies and the nearby hills' hidden caves. He'd retired his miniatures years ago, switching to digital battle planning, but he refused to retire the map, saying that he appreciated being reminded of where he was fighting, and fighting for. At the moment, all Gilda was being reminded of was just how much of it was blue, enemy territory if their friends from Aris were right. "You're certain these Athangan are what's been attacking us?" the knight broke his silence. "Do you have any proof, evidence?" "The attack at Gemerelli," Sky Beak replied. "Pirates don't use there as a base because it's too dangerous for ships, the rocks and narrow passageways-" "I understand, sir," the knight curtly cut him off. "Anything else?" Sky Beak hesitated, then weakly shrugged, "It fits. All the kidnappings happened at sea or along the coastline, most of them happened at night, nobody human's claimed they did it." "It does fit," the knight nodded, "and, however much I hate it, it's the best we have to go on. But now that we have any idea of who we're fighting, a new question; how do we fight them? We can't march into the Sea." "I'm not a military expert," Sky Beak admitted, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. "My plan would honestly be just keep doing what you're doing; try to stop the disappearances, catch any of them you can, wait for their next move." The knight's mustache swished from side to side. Looking back at the map, he began tracing a path with his finger, from the docks to the Grand Exchange. Tapping the market, he murmured, "We can't risk it," before turning to Gasiy and saying, "Gather the Council. We need to discuss this." Gasiy nodded, then quickly left to obey. As he did so, the knight turned back to his Arisian guests and said, "I would have you present as well. I'm not the only one who's been expecting you, and your presence might help the idea that we're being attacked by fish-people go down." They nodded in acceptance, and the knight turned to Gilda. "Keep our guests safe," he ordered. "It sounds like our enemies might have a hard time with dry land, but until we receive confirmation I won't risk anything. Your prior orders remain in force." "Yes, sir," she bowed. He curtly nodded back, then grunted, "Dismissed," and turned back to his map. Gilda, meanwhile, turned to her charges, and gave them her best disarming smile. "Come on," she nodded at the door. "Let's let Sir Cloudfloor get back to work, and you back to your kid." Lady Ocean Flow swallowed, the worry she'd put aside returning in full force. "Yes," she whispered. "Let's." She knocked on the door. The intercom beside it buzzed. "Are the clients safe?" Gilda pressed the button beneath it, allowing her to reply. "No, I failed them." The clients took a cautious step back as the door opened. "How have you failed us, exactly?" Sky Beak asked warily. "I didn't," she replied. "That's just the password Sir Cloudfloor gave us. All quiet here?" Her comrade on the other side nodded. "All quiet on our end. Meeting go well?" "I'll tell you inside," she said, ushering the wary Arisians in. That wariness vanished, at least on Ocean Flow's part, when she saw her daughter, chattering Gallus' ear off worse than the messenger did. He was managing to control himself, though, looking like he was at least half-listening to the girl, and the look of relief Gilda saw cross his face when the girl's mother scooped her up in a ferocious hug couldn't be seen from across the sea. The Sea... As the door closed and locked behind them, Gilda cleared her throat. "Honored guests," she said, "if I could have your attention." They all turned to look at her, the mother's arms still wrapped tightly around her daughter. "While you're here," Gilda explained, "our job is to protect you. That means that, you needing to wake one of us up in the middle of the night because you need to go somewhere? Not a problem. Asking us to go on errands for you so you can stay in here? Not a problem. Going anywhere without us because 'you didn't want to bother us?' Big problem. Sir Cloudfloor is paying us to keep you safe. If we're not keeping you safe, he's not paying us. Keeping you safe is not a problem for us, and even if it was, what he pays us makes it go away. What will be a problem is you trying to ditch us. Even as a relatively fresh face, I can tell you, trying to ditch us won't end well for you; either whoever's after you will find you, or we will and you'll end up with double the guards. You won't be able to escape us; we know Griffonstone like the back of our hands, and the pay losing you will cost us won't let us stop until we find you. Try to sneak out the window, we'll jump through after you; try to lose us in the bathroom, you'll find us swimming up through the plumbing; try to slip away in a crowd, we'll check every face in it until we find you again. Us finding you is as sure as death and taxes. Am I clear?" All wide-eyed, the Arisians nodded. She nodded back, then continued, "From here on out, none of you are leaving this room alone; wherever you're going - Council chamber, store, bathroom - at least one of us is going with you. You aren't entering any rooms we haven't swept three times, meeting with anyone we haven't checked three times, or opening any new packages until we've gone through them with a fine comb three times. Again; none of this will be a problem for us, it is literally what we signed up for and what Sir Cloudfloor pays us to do. "Now, I don't think whoever's after you will be dumb enough to try and attack you here, but if they do, or if they try somewhere else, we're most likely going to tell you to do stuff. Let me be perfectly clear; what we tell you will not be a 'suggestion' or 'advice,' it will be an order, one meant to keep you safe. If you don't obey, you will get hurt or killed. You can question us here or offer ideas you've thought of, but when it's life or death, there is no rule by committee; if we have good reason to think there's a threat and we tell you, then we tell you to jump, you ask 'How high?' Do you want me to repeat anything I just said, or do you have any questions?" The Arisian girl raised her hand. "What do we do if one of us sees something but you don't, and then you tell us to run towards it? Do we just try to avoid it but still go that direction?" Gilda slowly nodded. "That's actually a really good question," she replied. "Ideally, that should never happen, and if it ever does and you survive, you tell me or Sir Cloudfloor. But that second part, about running in whatever-it-is' direction without running right into it, that actually reminds me of something one of my teachers used to tell her clients; 'Just because I'm here doesn't mean you can leave your brain at the door.' Think about why we want you to do what we tell you to; don't just blindly obey - or disobey," she added with a meaningful glare at the girl, "orders. Try to do what we want you to, even if you don't do it exactly the way we ask. Make sense?" The girl nodded, then lowered her hand. Gilda nodded, then turned to the girl's parents. "Either of you have any questions?" "I'm guessing Sir Cloudfloor will send someone to grab us when we need to meet with the Council?" Sky Beak said. "He'll let you know, yeah," Gilda nodded. Sky Beak nodded back, then sighed, leaning into the rest of his family. "In that case, no further questions on my end," he murmured, almost sleepily. "Nor on mine," Ocean Flow shook her head. "Great," Gilda replied, clapping her hands together. "In that case, Iron Fangs, do any of you have any questions?" Several of her comrades stood up and prepared to speak, but found themselves preempted by the door guard asking, "Did the meeting go well?" "Mixed," Gilda replied. "We have a good guess about who we're fighting now, but we still need to figure out how to fight back." "And who are we fighting?" another voice spoke up. "Strange as it sounds, there's a good chance it's fish-people," Gilda answered. "Trust me, it seems as dumb to me as it does to you, but Sir Cloudfloor bought it, and we all know how good he is at buying threats." Faint disbelief and greater discontent spread through the ranks at that. "Fish-people?" one of them scoffed. "We're supposed to fight story monsters, now? Is he sure it's the suruhu we're after and not the Winged-Men of the mountains?" "If you have any proof it's the Winged-Men, he'd be glad to hear it," she shot back. "Our guests were able to give us a few scraps pointing at the fish-people, so unless you have any better ideas-" "That's why it felt so clammy!" the Arisian girl blurted out. As the room turned to stare at her, she continued, "When-When Allegiance was attacked, one of-one of the attackers tried to grab me, and they felt clammy, and-and they looked like they were drowned, but they weren't, they just live underwater." Gilda's eyes widened. "What?" "I mean, it makes sense," the girl stammered. "If you live underwater all the time, you'd be clammy and cold, and they-" "Not that," Gilda cut her off. "You actually saw whatever it was that attacked?" "You managed to fight them off?" Gallus whispered in awe. The girl blushed at Gallus' awe. "Only thanks to Celaeno," she murmured. "If it hadn't been for her..." Her mother squeezed her tighter, trying to crush the thought. "It's in the past," Gilda waved dismissively. "You can help us in the present by telling me whether or not you saw what attacked you." The girl bit her lip, looking around the room in thought, her eyes eventually coming to a stop in the corner. Then, to Gilda's shock, iron flooded them, and quickly turned on her as the girl said, "It was dark and I was scared, but I did see them." "What did they look like?" the door guard asked, Gilda momentarily too stunned to. "Is Gilda right? Were they fish-people?" "I don't know about that," the girl faltered, before finding her iron again and saying, "but I know they weren't just regular people. Regular people don't look like they drowned." "What do you mean by that?" the Winged-Men theorist asked as the girl's mother tightened her grip again. "You say they looked drowned, but what does drowned look like?" "Cold," the girl quickly answered. "Washed out, like their skin color's paint that mixed with water." "Dull colors're usual over here," another one of the Iron Fangs muttered. "Not everyone's colorful as a Homestrian." The glare the girl shot at them was sharp enough to cut their armor. "I know the difference between 'dull' and 'washed-out,'" she retorted. "What I saw wasn't dull." Regathering herself, Gilda managed to cut in, "Skin color's one thing, not being human another. What else did you see?" "They didn't have noses," the girl replied. "Either that, or they were the smallest noses I've ever seen, and my cousin has a really small one. And-and their eyes, they were way too big, and they had fangs for teeth-" "Did you get a look at their legs?" Gilda pressed. "Did they have legs or fins?" "I," the girl hesitated. "I wasn't able to see their legs, no. But... but I don't think I heard any footsteps, if you think that helps." "Even if it doesn't, the rest of what you said does," Gilda reassured her. "We've got more than scraps to go off of, now." Turning to Ocean Flow, she smiled and said, "Looks like you'll get to stay with your daughter for longer than we guessed; you should bring her with you when you meet with the Council, they need to hear what she saw." It looked like Ocean Flow would protest for a moment, but then she looked down at her daughter, brushing a lock of hair away from her forehead. Sighing, she kissed it, then turned back to Gilda and solemnly nodded. Her heart squirmed as she nodded back; it felt like she was watching something big, something important, but she couldn't see what it was. A kiss on the forehead? What was so significant about that? Probably still shaken at almost losing her, she thought. That made sense; kissing someone you thought you'd never get to kiss again was big, even to a rock-hard heart like her. But even as she pulled a chair up to the door and sat down, beginning the wait for the Council's summons, her heart still squirmed, shaking at the sight of something it said was stronger than a mere unexpected kiss. The father was sleeping, the daughter talking with (not at? She was impressed) Gallus, and the mother still holding her when a knock came at the door. Gilda rang the intercom. "Who's there?" "A messenger," crackled back. Gilda smirked. Time to see if Gallus really has grown up. "What message do you bear?" "One of bad news," came the password. Nodding, Gilda unlocked and opened the door, finding the messenger who'd interrupted her sparring session with Gallus waiting on the threshold. Gilda ushered her in, smirking at the faint squeak she loosed at the sight of Gallus while she closed and locked the door. Turning back to the chamber and the blushing messenger, she asked, "What brings you here?" The messenger shook her head, then shakily said, "T-The Regent's Council r-requests the p-presence of Miss-Miss Ocean Flow an-an' Sir Sky Beak." "They'll be there enkissur," Gilda reassured her as Ocean Flow began shaking her mate awake. "And their daughter'll be there, too." The messenger blinked, then said, "Er, Sir Cloudfloor only asked for the two'f'm." "I know," Gilda replied. "But Silverstream has something he wants, something big; info about who we're fighting." The messenger gaped, first at Gilda, then at the girl, before turning back to Gilda with a big grin on her face and saying, "I'll let'm know, miss." Before she could bolt away, though, Gilda's arm fell down in front of her, and its bearer said, "Hold on, there. We can tell him ourselves, and make sure that he knows it's us inviting her, not herself. Besides," she tried to hide her smirk, "there's someone else, someone here, who needs your help. Look at Silverstream, Gabby; looks like she could use a friend, huh?" Gallus tensed; he knew where she was going, and the frantic gaze he threw Gilda's way let her know that he would do anything not to go there. The stare she threw back at him was simple in meaning, something taught to every Iron Fang at the very beginning; "Why don't you help Gallus keep her company until we reach the Council chambers?" The only way you're getting out of here is through. His knuckles were definitely turning white with wrath under his gloves as the messenger murmured her acceptance and scurried over to the girl, but then regained their color as he turned to look at her, at the promise he'd made to her mother. He turned back to Gilda, and she inwardly smiled at the stony glare in his eyes, and the message the embers of his anger spelled out: Bring it.