Artefact Hunters: Draikfang

     It was sometime in the mid-afternoon when Brynn found herself, Hanso, Rallon, and Laelia meeting with the Qasalan monarchs and a Moehog explorer in one of the palace’s meeting rooms. The Moehog, a lean Desert-coloured man by the name of Gamal, was leaning over a map of a desert region some ways west of them and pointing out a cluster of ancient tombs.

     “These ruins have been known for ages,” Gamal explained, “and everything of value has already been cleared out by treasure hunters and archaeologists. The tombs themselves are considered a historic site, but between their distance from any valuable water sources and their treasures having already been looted or preserved, none of the nearby kingdoms have bothered to claim their land.”

     “Except the tombs aren’t all cleared out, because this Draikfang thing is in one of them,” Hanso guessed.

     Gamal nodded and pulled out a withered-looking scroll from his pack. “Exactly. I came across this by chance while researching for an expedition into a different part of the Lost Desert, and thank Fyora I did. The tomb of the great King Heru –” here he pointed out the largest of the buildings on his map – “had a hidden chamber full of treasures and magical artefacts. If this scroll is to be believed, the most dangerous of the artefacts is still unaccounted for.”

     King Jazan folded his arms. “Draikfang was a legend even in my childhood, back before Qasala’s curse. By now I suspect it’s regarded as a little-known myth,” he said. “It’s said King Heru was gifted the sword by a powerful Fire Faerie as a reward for defeating an ancient evil, because he was the only one she trusted not to misuse it. The sword empowers itself with fire magic, but not by a simple enchantment. It is said to channel its power directly from the sun.”

     Rallon sucked in a breath, and all four members of the artefact retrieval team shared uncertain glances with one another. Hanso cleared his throat and asked, “So… Just so we’re all on the same page, exactly how much fire magic does it get out of that?”

     The frown King Jazan had been wearing all meeting deepened, his ears twitching. “If the legends are to be believed? Enough to dry up a critical oasis or sear half a battlefield into glass. So if you find it, don’t use it.”

     Hanso squeaked a little at that. “Okay, duly noted.”

     While this discussion was going on, Brynn had started scrutinising the map that Gamal had laid out. A small tributary of the Seeral River that cut through the Lost Desert was near the edge of the map. It was too small and too far from the cluster of ruins to make their land desirable, but she thought she recognized the area.

     “This is near Khamtef, right?” she asked, pointing out the tributary. “Queen Fyora mentioned an enemy nation you didn’t want to alert – that must be the Mentu Empire.”

     Gamal scowled and let out a low snort, but nodded. “Good eye. Khamtef is just northeast of this region, where that river joins the Seeral. And I’ll be cursed if I give the so-called ‘Emperor’ Heksas or any of his cronies an excuse to ransack King Heru’s tomb.”

     Laelia snorted as well. “Uhf, Mentu. I had to run some official mail there once, so I know where you’re coming from. The guys who work for Heksas are the biggest pieces of work this side of the Haunted Woods.”

     Hanso, meanwhile, just looked lost. “Okay,” he said, “let’s just pretend for a moment that we’re not all trained diplomats, scholars, or Brightvale nerds here. I’m gathering so far that Heksas is a jerk, but what exactly does that mean for us?”

     Brynn scowled a little at the ‘Brightvale nerds’ jab, but before she could point out that as an officer of the Guard she was a trained diplomat, Nabile spoke up.

     “Simple,” the Queen said with a shrug. “Emperor Heksas is an expansionist jerk. Qasala and Sakhmet are too big and too far east for him to try his army against ours in a full-scale invasion, but Khamtef isn’t the only territory he’s conquered out west. His big dream for when he grows up is to rule all of the Lost Desert. If he finds out that a magical weapon of devastating power is on his doorstep, he’ll see it as the next step towards that dream and tear every last one of those tombs apart to get it.”

     “There’s no guarantee that the scroll Gamal found is the only clue to the artefact’s whereabouts, so we can’t just hope that it will stay hidden,” King Jazan added. “But sending a Qasalan guard contingent to retrieve it would be a sure way to draw his attention. And sending ordinary scholars after such a dangerous artefact, while easier to disguise, would carry a whole slew of other risks. A small crew of mostly foreign adventurers checking out the historic site, on the other hand, would not be at all unusual.”

     Brynn frowned. “But, we’re not just explorers or ordinary adventurers,” she pointed out. “We’re specialists in dangerous artefact retrieval. Wouldn’t that raise even more red flags?”

     Nabile smirked. “Not if they don’t know you’re involved in any of that. You two are still new to the hero scene, and what you’re doing with it isn’t public knowledge yet. The only reasonwe know about the artefact missions is because you worked with Jazan during the Fall.”

     “There is a degree of risk involved,” Jazan admitted, “but so long as we act quickly, this will be the best chance we have. There aren’t many people I’m willing to trust with the kind of power Draikfang may contain, but Hanso and Brynn have already proven themselves in that regard, and I doubt Queen Fyora would send anyone with you who isn’t equally capable.”

     Hanso’s brows shot up, his ears twitching. Brynn bit back a sigh and braced for the inevitable.

     “Did you just give me a genuine, straightforward compliment?” he quipped. “This must be serious.”

     Jazan shot him a glare and snapped, “It is serious, so don’t test my patience.”

     “In that case, let’s head out as soon as we’re ready to go,” Brynn cut in before the two of them could get to bickering. She wouldn’t trade Hanso for the world, but there were times when the man did not know to keep his mouth shut. “Would this evening be at all possible? The sooner we start, the less of a chance Heksas’ forces have to realise something’s up.”

     Gamal nodded. “I can be ready by then if you all can. Morning and evening are the best times for desert travel anyway, to avoid the worst temperature extremes.”

     Everyone seemed to be in general agreement about that, although Hanso muttered something about their fancy palace stay being cut short. Brynn gave him a warning look, but he seemed to be done snarking for the moment and nodded along with the others.

     “Very well then,” King Jazan said, stepping back from the table. “Our staff will help you with any final preparations when you are ready. I’m sure you don’t need a reminder to be careful on this mission.”

     Hanso waited in an alcove just off to the side of the palace’s throne room, studiously ignoring the guards standing sentry around the corner. He had changed into a light-coloured Qasalan robe and trousers that were suited to desert travel and less conspicuous against the bright sands than his usual jacket. The others were still getting fitted with light desert armour that would similarly dissuade undue attention. Seeing as Hanso was in the habit of packing quickly in case he needed to make a sudden getaway, he suspected he would be waiting for some time yet.

     The object of his attention now was a little ring, set neatly in a case on its own pedestal in the centre of the alcove. Banded in red and yellow, it was claimed by the plaque just beneath it to be a magical artefact that had been instrumental in the restoration of Qasala. Hanso stared at it intently, the hands at his sides itching for action.

     “You know that’s just a replica, right?”

     Hanso stiffened for a moment, then turned to find Nabile watching him with a calculating gaze from the hall corner that led to the throne room.

     “The real Ring of the Lost is secured in a vault, and not one that even a ‘Master Thief' could break into easily,” she went on. “I should know. I tested the security myself and helped close any gaps.”

     Hanso raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were more of a ‘swipe food from the local vendors’ type of thief than anyone who could crack open a palace vault.” The statement was a little flippant, maybe, but Nabile didn’t strike him as the type to be easily offended.

     Sure enough, she just shrugged. “The other Desert Scarabs and I focussed on doing what we needed to survive, but we were good at it. Very good. I’d challenge you to give the vault a try yourself if it wouldn’t give Jazan a heart attack.”

     After a brief pause, her ears twitched and she raised an eyebrow. “And don’t take that as an invitation to try anyway, or I will deny ever bringing it up and leave you to his tender mercies.”

     Hanso snorted and smirked. “So, Jazan has been telling you about me.”

     His smirk faded as he turned back to look at the ring. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to steal it. I’m not that stupid, not when your husband expects me to pull something like that and his guards are all on alert.”

     Nabile walked up to stand beside him, and he folded his arms in thought – and maybe to quiet some of that instinctive itch in his hands.

     “It’s more like… I’m daring myself not to take it, you know? To just… leave it and all the other treasures of Qasala alone without thinking twice about it, and to not even care because that’s not who I am anymore.” He frowned. “I haven’t figured out whether it’s working yet.”

     He wasn’t sure why he was telling her all this. Maybe because her own criminal background meant she couldn’t judge him for it much.

     Nabile nodded thoughtfully. “That makes sense.”

     “It does?” Hanso blurted out before he could stop himself. Thief or no thief, he honestly hadn’t been sure she would really get everything that had been going through his head lately. From what he understood, Nabile used to steal because she had to, not for the complicated myriad of reasons he’d gotten into it. Now that she was royalty, she didn’t exactly have to anymore.

     Nabile shrugged and lifted the cover from the fake ring’s pedestal. Something flashed in the wedding ring she herself was wearing, probably a spell that recognized her as someone who was allowed to do that.

     “Of course,” she said, picking the decoy ring up nonchalantly. “This is all a big change for you, and you’re already dealing with enough impostor syndrome without all the extra pressure to change the lifestyle you’re used to. You feel like you still need to prove yourself somehow, even though you already have. And the most obvious way to do that is to prove you’re more than just a thief.”

     Her expression darkened for a moment as she turned the replica Ring of the Lost over and over in her hand. “There are still days – not often anymore, just those inevitable times when everything seems to go wrong – that I wonder if the Qasalan people are going to wake up and realise that I’m just a stubborn street thief who knows a few clever tricks. And then I wonder if once they realise that, they’ll decide they don’t need me anymore. I’ve gotten better about it over the years, but sometimes that’s just a part of being someone people look up to. I like to think it keeps me humble.”

     Hanso stared at her, gobsmacked. “You worry about that kind of stuff? You’re royalty! You helped fulfil an ancient prophecy, for crying out loud!”

     Nabile gave him a pointed look. “And you took down a powered-up mad sorceress and broke a world-altering curse without even needing a prophecy. What’s your point?”

     Hanso blinked, finding himself for once with no witty retort whatsoever. “Okay, that’s fair.”

     Nabile chuckled and held out the replica ring to him. He took it from her absently and rolled it around in his palm, thinking.

     “You know,” Nabile said. “I bet Brynn is going through something similar right now. You should talk with her about it sometime. It helps, trust me.”

     Hanso frowned and shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t…”

     But then he stopped himself as he realised she kind of did. At the table in her cousin’s tavern, at that campsite in the Haunted Woods… He’d figured she was just not used to the other guards being jerks to her, and that her dismissal of her own contributions during the fight with Xandra had just been modesty or something. But maybe he should have been paying closer attention to what exactly she was saying about herself.

     Nabile shrugged, unaware of his derailing thoughts. “Try talking to her anyway. Getting the opinion of someone who really knows and likes you helps, too.”

     Hanso nodded absently. The two of them stood there in companionable silence for a couple moments, simply taking the time to think through the experiences that had shaped them both.

     Presently, their attention was drawn by new voices beginning to trickle in from the throne room. “Hanso?” Brynn called out among the hubbub. “I know you’re ready by now, so please come out from wherever you’ve wandered off to so we can head out!”

     Hanso replaced the replica Ring of the Lost on its pedestal before he’d fully registered what he was doing. “Whelp, that sounds like my cue.”

          He started for the throne room, then paused to look back at Nabile while she returned the glass case to its position over the ring.

     “And Nabile? Thanks for the pep talk,” he said.

     Nabile smiled back at him. “No problem. I might still be keeping some of my old skills sharp, but that doesn’t mean I can’t pick up a little diplomatic wisdom, too. You all have fun out there – I’d probably be joining you if I wasn’t too much of a public figure for this.”

     Hanso returned the smile, gave her a playful half-salute, and then turned back and jogged off to join the rest of his crew.

     The oppressive heat of the Lost Desert day was finally starting to recede by the time Brynn and the others passed back through the Qasalan city gates and began the long trek west. Gamal, as the one who best knew where they would be going and what to expect, rode at the front of the group on an Apis of a large riding breed. Rallon and Laelia trotted just behind him, nearly as sure-footed as the humpbacked desert petpet despite the loose sand.

     “Let me know if you need a break,” Gamal called out to them. “I don’t know how much experience you have in sand dunes, but they’re more tiring to move in than most people expect.”

     Laelia nickered casually. “Thanks, but we should be fine,” she said. “This isn’t all that different from faecloud.”

     The Faerie Uni slowed for a moment as the words left her mouth, and her expression tightened at her own mention of the soft enchanted cloudstuff that had once been a common sight among Faerieland’s floating islands. Rallon didn’t break his stride, but Brynn thought she felt a brief wavering in his movement over the dunes. Her grip on his reins tightened a little, and she wondered whether it would be wise to say something.

     Gamal beat her to it. “I’m sorry about what happened to your home.”

     Laelia snorted. “Not your fault. And I’ve heard the person whose fault it was is now doing time as a statue in Queen Fyora’s personal garden, so, y’know. There’s that.”

     “The Fall was… hard,” Rallon added, “but right now, I think we’re mostly just happy that the faeries are back. Buildings can be rebuilt. We’ll manage, even if it takes a while.”

     “What was it like?” Brynn found herself asking. “I never got a chance to visit Faerieland before the faeries were petrified, and by then the city was mostly evacuated and we were only there for a short time to investigate.”

     “It was very… pink,” Rallon replied, a rare note of amusement in his voice.

     “Pink and magical,” Laelia added wistfully. “And I’m not just trying to be quaint or stating the obvious. It was like the faeries’ magic had infused itself into the buildings and plants, and sometimes even the air around us. You could feel how alive the land was, even though it was less of a land and more a big hunk of rock and crystal in the sky.”

     “Maybe that’s part of the reason we Faerielanders are managing as well as we are,” Rallon mused aloud. “The city is broken, but the magic is back, even if it’s a little weaker than before. In a way, Faerieland feels more alive now in a crater than it did right after that Faerie Festival.”

     After a moment, though, he let out a low sigh. “But it’s still hard to see it like that. Truth be told, I practically volunteered to be a part of this mission. I needed a break from the stress of rebuilding.”

     The group was heading further out into the Lost Desert as they spoke, and now they approached a particularly high sand dune. The Unis let their conversation fade so they could focus their energy on the climb. Brynn leaned forward a little to keep her balance as the incline of the dune steepened and took a moment to think over their words.

     Faerieland – the faerie nation itself, the half destroyed home of Rallon and Laelia – was going to be her home now, too. She was to be one of its protectors, and so was Hanso in his own way. It was still more than a little surreal to think about. She’d been born and raised in Brightvale, and now… Now everything was changing, and she almost felt more swept up in the current than anything else.

     She stole a look at Hanso, who’d been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the trek so far. He looked lost in his own thoughts, though whether he was worried about something or just thinking hard she couldn’t say.

     Finally, he said, “Well, good thing we’re doing this then, right? Now we can stop people from messing around with dangerous artefacts and making something like the Fall happen again.”

     Laelia lifted her head and flicked her ears as she made a final surge to crest the top of the dune. “It sure is. And, hey, there’s rumours about a little piece of Faerieland that’s still up there. So who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to feel faecloud beneath my hooves again sooner than we thought.”

     Rallon reached the top of the dune a moment later, and the group took a minute to breathe and catch their bearings. Down below, the Lost Desert stretched out before them in every direction. Ahead of them and perhaps a half mile away at its closest, the Seeral River wound its way toward the sunset-dappled sky of the distant horizon.

     To be continued…