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Mira came back from the forest and headed for the living room, where everyone else was congregated: Aria on one chair, and Nora next to the short wolf-girl on the couch. "Food's taken care of."
"Well, what'll you do now?" the shifter said, sitting up. "More curse studies?"

"Ehh, I'm still feeling a little burned out from that. Maybe I'll practice Jacob's spells a little more, get them straight in my head. And you?"

"The commissions are out, so it's time for me to wait again. I dunno, maybe I'll go see what Loren's up to."

"Really no hunting at all today?" Lupa spoke up.

"Not if we can help it," Nora said. "It's nice to not have one's life in danger for a while."
"But this one wants some action! To stay strong, and show Master when Master gets back!"
"Don't go asking for trouble," Aria said. "That's how—" She paused, interrupted by some excited knocking on the door to town. "Yeah, see—that's how that happens! I bet you money it's some new emergency we've gotta deal with."
"You better not have summoned us another fire giant!" Mira said, hurrying back toward the door since she was the one already up.

Lupa looked between Nora and Aria, looking apologetic but slightly confused. "This one, cause trouble?"
"Nah, you just jinxed it," Aria said.
"There was no correlation between your desire for action and whatever visitor we have," Nora flatly reassured her.
"Aah! Visitor!" Lupa immediately clung to that thought instead, jumping up and running off to the door. The elf gave the shifter a small head-shake, and got a slight shrug back.

The witch scarcely had the door open before Lupa ran up next to her. "Kayriel?"

"Yo."

"Are you okay, after yesterday?"

"Oh, yeah. I mean I feel fine, but Cap's having me watched just in case. And I'm not allowed to fly or have my bow right now, but I can at least be trusted to deliver messages. Speakin' of! Weee got a situation, and I was asked to see if you'd all be willing to help—dragon included, if possible?" she rapidly rattled off.

"I—probably. What's going on?"

"Over the past coupla hours, a buncha dire wolves showed up from the west. At first it just seemed like some random stragglers, y'know, here and there scattered in different spots. One of my fellow Avian scouts went a little farther out just to check it out, though, and come to find out there's more of 'em. Way more of 'em! Recently they all started gettin' closer, and now they're all about as close as they can get without bein' in range of the wall archers. And they're stopping just short, like they know to keep away or somethin'."
"Beast monsters...don't behave that way. They're not meant to be that smart, most of the time," Mira said.
"Yep! Cap said the same thing. An organized, tactical act like this in't like dire wolves at all. Sure, they hunt and attack folks on the road, but they almost never join up into groups that big. Last time anything near that many came together was that bunch you lot broke up before."
"This one's old pack?" Lupa said.

"Huh? Uh—yeah, I guess so? And it's way more than that this time, by all accounts. The guard could still handle 'em fairly easy if we went out in force—they are just normal dire wolves after all—but Cap thinks that's the point. If they're being controlled or somethin', it might be a feint by whatever's doing that to draw us out."

"I suppose that's where we come in," the witch said. "Drive them off or take out as many as we can, while the guard looks out for whatever else might be coming."
"Yep. They haven't made a move yet when I was sent, and Cap thinks they may just stay hoverin' there for a while, so there's time to prep if ya need it."
"Well? You have any problem killing some of your 'former kind'?" Mira asked the wolf-girl.
"Nope! Even if from this one's old pack, doesn't matter. This one left pack to join another, and different packs fight and kill all the time," Lupa said.
"I'll see whether Rose can join us, too."

---

The caravan stopped for lunch an hour or so after noon, when they came upon a river with a sturdy, fairly new-looking bridge over it; they crossed the bridge first, then pulled around next to the river on the far side.

Rayna nudged Lynn. "Well, what do you think we should do today, hmn? Tell a story, perhaps?"
"Well, there's no targets for me to use, and I need to save my arrows, and you're the one who can sing."
"How about the witch and the soldier? You tell that one better than I do."

Lynn gave the fox-girl a look. She didn't need Katherine's help to know what the illusionist was thinking. "I don't feel like telling that one. What about the one with the dragon?"
"Hey, that's pretty good too. Kath?" Rayna waved at the catgirl.

"What?" She was curled up on top of a small pile of blankets, and didn't look willing to move. "I cook the food, you two can do the entertainment."
"Aww, but you're the one who heard it first."
"That doesn't mean one of you can't tell it better." I'll just give you what Ezra told me, and you put it in your own words.

Rayna gave her friend an expectant expression. "Oh, all right," Lynn said, heading for the center to tell the tale.

---

"Just some big wolves, right? Should be no problem," Rose said. "My forest's swallowed whole packs of 'em at once before! Uhmm..are you okay with us stopping for today, though?" she asked Vae.

One of the fox-girl's ears twitched. "It will be no inconvenience. Actually, I believe I was dangerously close to allowing time to get away from me. There are some projects that require my attention back at my residence. However..a thought occurs."

"Mm-hmn?" Mira prompted her.

"I am..by no means a tactician, but. If the wolves to the west are a feint, and whoever coordinated it further anticipated the guard being unwilling to abandon the city..is it not equally possible that they mean to draw attention away from the east? Put this forest in danger, possibly?"

"..Shoot, you're right. But Kayriel didn't mention that...maybe the guard's got scouts watching out this way, and they haven't seen anything? What do you think, Rose?"

"We should all go check with the guard," she said. "It's super quick and easy to get back here, 'cause of the doors."
"Ah!" The witch snapped her fingers. "The doors. They could let someone straight into the city."
"Buut..they don't work without the key, right?" Rose said.
"...Right. Okay, might not be a problem then. Wouldn't hurt to bring it up, though."

---

"If you're not familiar with the area—the mountains and plateaus in the far east of Jasinth are a barren and cold land. Home to only some of the hardiest hunters and nomads, and not at all the sort of place anyone could hope to farm. But they say there once was a town of humans in the area that lived as well as any in the most fertile of plains. They were an isolated group, not especially wealthy, but happy and satisfied with with they had. Their crops were unusually fruitful year after year, a mysterious blessing in the midst of those cold, barren lands.

"It was some time between the establishment of the town and their discovery of the reason for the blessings that allowed them to live so well, and at first they didn't even recognize it as such. What they saw instead was a great beast flying above: A dragon, with gleaming golden scales. After the first sighting, they spotted it a few times more: On a distant hill, or in the sky above, just..watching them. Of course their first guess was that they had trespassed on the beast's land, and that it was readying to attack, but it never came to pass.

"They made the decision to try and appease it with a sacrifice before it attacked, choosing a maiden by lottery and sending her out to the dragon the next time it appeared on a hill. At first it seemed disinterested, and when she got closer it simply fled. The next several tries were the same, until the people's scouts found what seemed to be the dragon's lair—a grand forest, just as impossibly fertile as their own lands, some distance off. When they brought the maiden there and left her before the dragon, he watched her cautiously for a while before coming close only to carefully loose her bonds and talk with her. She thought it had to be some kind of trick, that he would wait for her to try to leave and then kill her, but when she made to leave, he did nothing to stop her, even thanking her for her time.

"It was the same way with each sacrifice they tried to present him, for one generation after another. The dragon seemed shy but curious, interested in the lives of the people, what they enjoyed, what it was like to be them. He was always grateful for the visit, and seemed to want his guests to return, but they never did—always waiting for the next generation to send him someone new instead. He grew more attached to the humans over this time, and evidently to their young women in particular, as those were the only point of contact they seemed to allow him to have. Eventually he became interested in the study of magic, particularly some manner of forbidden, deep spells, but of course the people of that village knew very little about such things.

"...One day the town had a strange visitor. It looked at once like a young woman, and some kind of monster, with scales and horns, wings and a tail, razor-sharp teeth, and claws on her hands and feet. She acted as though she knew them, or at least wanted to talk with them, but the people feared and suspected this strange creature, eventually putting together a mob to attack her and drive her away. None of their attacks could harm her, and it was obvious that she could have killed them all in an instant if she wished, but instead she ran away, clearly unwilling to fight. They thought nothing of this strange event at first, feeling that they had driven off a clear threat to their town, but that was when their crops began to fail.

"The dragon was gone from the sky and the distant hills. After a couple of months, some scouts went out to his lair, and did not find him. The forest was frozen and decaying, a sign that his magic was no longer in it. The same was happening to their town—the dragon had left for good, because that was who they had chased out of their town before.

"The dragon had found some magic said to give the caster a form matching his deepest desires. He thought to use it to make himself human—or at least human enough to walk among them and speak at their level, without making them afraid. Because of his attachment to the maidens they had sent him so long, the dragon's new form was that of a woman, but she didn't particularly mind. However, the people didn't recognize her as the one who had helped them—they had only seen a stranger and a monster. So, seeing how the people she had cared after for so long hated and feared her, she fled—not in anger, but in sadness and heartbreak, feeling unwanted and loathed by the only people he had ever known. They never saw her again, and the town was abandoned for warmer climes not long afterward."

After a long enough pause to make it clear that Lynn's tale was over, the soldiers and prince gave a brief applause. "Where'd that dragon go after that, eh?" one of the former asked.
"Who could say?" Lynn shrugged. "As I understand it, it's a fable from a very long time ago."

"Fables are meant to have lessons," Peregrine said, "at least usually. What do you take from it, miss Lynn?"

"Me? Well, there is certainly the obvious—that you shouldn't judge someone immediately by their appearance, no matter how terrifying it is. Especially when they're obviously trying to be friendly."

"I'd say it's more like, 'don't try to farm in the mountains, dunce'!" another of the soldiers spoke up, getting some laughter from a few others.

"Some dragons can be surprisingly friendly," the prince pitched in, "and if one is, there is no reason to continue to fear it. But it's still best not to approach one out of the blue, with no invitation."

"I don't tink there's any reason to restrict that concept to specifically 'dragons', either," Rayna said.

"Perhaps not..."

---

After splitting off from Vae, the party made their way out to the guardhouse. The guard were on high alert out near the front gate, with Ezra overseeing them, so they went to her. "Glad you could make it on such short notice," she said.
"Sure, no problem!" Mira replied for the group. "But uh, we are a little worried that the whole point is to get us away from the east, y'know, and Rose out of her forest?"

The captain nodded. "I thought of that, but our scouts have seen no unusual activity to the east. If something comes up, I will immediately let you know and set out to deal with it personally."
"That seems solid enough, right Rose?"
"Mm-hm!" the dragon-girl nodded. "You wanna borrow some door keys to get out there faster?"
"..Could save some time. All right."

Once they were done with that, Ezra gave the order to open the gates to the five of them. Some of the guard cheered their way out, and others wished them luck. While everyone had more or less been aware of their reputation building ever since they came to the town, this sendoff made it clear that they really were seen as heroes now, at least by the majority of the town guard.