Lavender's First Quest!

Lavender felt herself be propped up like a board and pulled into the booth, every bit of her food returning to its plate with a wave of Hazel’s staff.

“As I was saying,” Hazel told the others at the table, “my sister will be joining us. She’ll be taking point.”

Lavender focused on her breakfast as she finally tried to look at the other people at the table. Thankfully, Hazel had placed Lavender on the outside of the booth and on her right.

To Hazel’s left was a brown-haired gnome with half-moon glasses slid partly down his nose. An orange scarf was wrapped around his neck while a pear-shaped string instrument – a lute – rested next to his plate of sausages. He was tall enough to eat at the table but only just.

At the far end of the table and across from Lavender was an elf with flowing grey hair. He was handling a fork with his left hand, while from where Lavender was sitting it appeared everything from the elbow down on his right arm was missing.

“Lavender, say hello to Enfield and Renthorn.” Hazel gestured to the gnome and one-armed elf in turn. “We’ll be in the same adventuring party for this quest.”

Lavender weakly held up a hand and waved.

Renthorn put down his fork and pulled in a cup of ale to drink. “Hazel says you’re a spellsword of some kind. Details, woman. What kind?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Admitting that she could cast magic without a focus seemed like a bad idea. But it was going to be apparent and quick that she wasn’t using a wand. Lavender put her gauntlet-covered hands on the table and tried to think –

The gauntlets!

“Ishootmagicwiththese.” Lavender held up her hands. She held her breath as both men looked at the gauntlets on them with an appraising eye.

Enfield chuckled. “It’s an unorthodox choice,” he admitted before delivering a playful elbow to Renthorn’s ribs. “But I don’t think either of us are in a position to question it, eh?”

“Hmph.” Renthorn polished off his ale. “I suppose not. Don’t make me regret teaming with you. The gold for this quest’s barely worth the trouble.”

“Now, Rethorn.” Enfield picked up his lute and jabbed the air towards his one-armed companion. “A job is a job. But I won’t deny he’s got a point. A lot of guild members don’t do quests with this low of a reward unless they’re new or they don’t have much choice.”

That made sense to Lavender. Both why Mina had offered this quest to Hazel and herself, and why these two members were taking them on. But everyone had to start somewhere. Better this than killing rats in someone’s basement.

-----

The journey took Lavender’s adventuring party three days north.

It was not a difficult journey. The weather was mild and Hazel had snuck away extra food from The Bee’s Knees for the trip ahead. It was quite nice. Lavender found the novelty of simple things like cool wind in her hair and sunlight unblocked by clouds of ash not to have worn off yet.

The ever-present smile on her face was enough to get Enfield to wander over to Hazel, who’d been using the staff she’d stolen as a walking stick. “You said that girl’s your sister, right? Is she uh… you know.” He tapped the temple on his head.

“She’s got all her marbles,” said Hazel.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.” Enfield immediately told her. “I know some guild members with lesser faculties and they can hold their own. She just seems 'different'.”

Hazel looked back to her sister, who had picked up a stick and was miming the act of fencing with it. “Even when we were kids she was always extra. I don’t know what happened while we were apart, but this is a new level.”

Her eyes lingered on the staff in her hand. What Lavender had done to acquire it and escape the city, Hazel wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. Frankly, she still wasn’t sure she believed it.

Lavender had pulled a set of iron bars apart wide enough to walk through, impelled the staff to fly into her hand, and pushed the bars back together in the span of a few seconds. That alone suggested a level of experience with magic that Hazel would have never expected. Then she had enough untapped mana to do… all of that insanity in their escape. And the cherry on top was that she had no focus when she did any of it. Only her hands and feet.

It was a smart move for Lavender to claim the gauntlets she wore were the focus. It wasn’t uncommon to see street entertainers in Westeron claim to cast magic without a wand, only for a glove or a bracelet or some other piece of clothing be the focus for the spells. That made for decent cover for whatever crazy garbage she was doing.

Renthorn joined Hazel and Enfield a little later. “That woman is practically a child in adult form,” he grumbled. “You’re sure she can hold her own?”

Hazel had to hold in her laughter. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” She saw that there was a metal prosthetic now on Renthorn’s right arm, an iron arm that was strapped tight around his elbow. The iron arm had a matching hand where one would expect, though the fingers were arranged in a manner where the index finger was pointed out and the rest were clenched together like a fist.

“Why did you agree to party up with us?”

Renthorn flexed what was left of his right arm. “I used to be an archer. A thumping good one, too. I’d compete at tournaments, do trick shots, whatever lined my pockets. Couple of months ago, I take on a quest to kill a dragon. Some jumped-up noble or other wants to feel like more of a man. Bastard took a piece of me with him, I was screaming my head off as the nobleman charged at him with a damn knife. This is my first contract since. And no one wants to take on an archer who’s lost his bowstring pulling arm.”

What he didn’t add (and what Hazel assumed was the case) was that this was the only quest he could find a party for.

Renthorn held out his metal arm and gestured for everyone to stop as the forest began to thin out in favor of fields of freshly harvested wheat. He made a show of sniffing the air. “Smoke.”

The peasant village was just visible in the distance now. Several buildings had caught fire and Hazel could faintly hear screaming. Had they taken the quest too late?

A streak of electricity screamed past Hazel, nearly knocking Enfield over and making Renthron curse outloud. “What in the nine hells was that?!”

Hazel saw her sister bolting through the fields at full tilt, lightning shooting off of her as she sprinted for the village.