“Finally! I can see the city wall!” Rob exclaimed happily, pointing to the horizon where, indeed, a tall wall could be seen. Robin didn’t like this wall; it looked hostile. Compared to the other two cities in walls that she had seen, this one was cold and unforgiving. The wall of Neoma was accepting and protective, the wall of the city with the overly complicated name was also protective, though harsh. But this wall… This wall was unforgiving, cruel and powerful above all. No, Robin didn’t like it one bit.
“Do we have to go inside the wall?” she asked Rob. To her relief, he shook her head. “The city is so huge that only the royal family and some bigger merchants can afford to live in the walls. Most of the city is outside it, protected by a moat filled with water. That’s where we are headed!” he explained swiftly. Robin nodded. It made sense that only richer people could live inside the walls with protection. Human society was built that way. “What’s our first stop there? We should be in the city within the hour,” she continued, curious to see where exactly they were headed.
“The Adventurer’s Guild of course! We’ll get a cool quest and help out the guild!” Rob declared. Anna cheered along: “Yeah! We’ll help out tons, no doubt!” Robin wasn’t so sure about that but she allowed the kids the moment of the doubt. “Sure. You do know where the guildhouse is, right?” The two humans instantly quieted down and averted their gazes. Robin sighed. It was going to be an exhausting day.
They arrived in the supposed town not too long after that little conversation. None of them had any idea where anything was so Robin was forced to ask locals which way the Adventurer's Guild was. It took her a couple people to realize why everyone was giving her looks - not necessarily hostile ones, but definitely curious glances. She had forgotten to pull up her hood. She knew that just a couple months ago she would never have allowed that to happen, but it looked like she was comfortable enough around humans to not start panicking about reactions an hour before reaching a village now. Robin, proud of her achievement, decided to try out how long she could go in public without pulling up the hood of her coat.
It took quite a few people but finally, after twenty minutes of asking around, they located the Adventurer’s Guild building! Mostly thanks to Robin, but Rob and Anna weren’t about to admit that. They tied Poppy and Thunderbolt to the small stable outside, clearly meant for public use, and headed into the tall white building. It stood out, to say the least, from the norm of single-floored wooden houses around the town with its three floors, white stone walls and beautiful engravings decorating the entire building. Robin especially liked the stone lizards on the windowsills near the entrance.
The inside was just as fancy as the outside of the building. The floor was made of dark wooden panels but the walls were the same white stone as the outside. A giant desk was seen on the left and a questboard bigger than the one in Neoma by far, spanning almost the entire wall next to the door. People were crowded next to the board - it was rush hour for adventurers it seemed -, everybody looking for a suitable quest for them or their party. Rob decided to first check into the guild and walked over to the giant desk that several workers were behind, all handling paperwork of some sort and giving out quests. The trio took the first free person near the door, a blond female with shoulder-length hair. “Welcome to the Adventurer’s Guild! How may I assist you today?” she greeted them with a smile.
“We’d like to update our guild cards and register a temporary party,” Rob replied with no hesitation in his voice. Anna already stretched out her hand with a small wooden slate - a familiar slate. Robin remembered, she also had her guild card with her, did she not? She had placed it behind her ear all those years ago, was it still there? Or had it fallen? Robin lifted her hand to check. Sure enough, she could feel the outlines of the wooden object still behind her ear. Robin decided to figure out how things stayed behind her ear, of all places, without her even noticing them in the first place later. The worker behind the counter was already picking up Anna’s card to check it over, with Rob’s sitting on the counter as the next one up. Robin confidently placed her card on the countertop as well, gaining surprised stares from the two kids. “I didn’t know you were an adventurer!” Anna said. Robin smiled mischievously. “It would be boring if you knew everything about me, would it not?”
The girl behind the counter ignored their conversation and handed their cards back to them. Robin swiftly slid hers behind her ear yet again. “Register all three under a single party? Do you have a name?”
“Party name? How about... Thunder’s alliance!” Rob suggested enthusiastically. Robin cringed. “No way.” Anna shot out her own idea: “Fairies unite!” Robin facepalmed mentally. The two kids were left quarreling about their individual choices as Robin tried to think of an alternative name that didn’t sound like it was from a children’s storybook. “How does Wooden Wind sound?” The two took a couple seconds to think it over.
“Yeah, I like it,” Rob admitted. Anna nodded along as well. Robin presented the name to the worker: “Our party name will be Wooden Wind.” The girl nodded and wrote it down. “You’re free to go on quests as a party from now on. Good luck!” The three of them headed over to the quest board, the kids struggling to see anything written on the board due to their lack of height. Considering that most adventurers were grown men, Robin wasn’t really faring better either. They had to wait a couple of minutes for the situation to clear up to step closer to the board. Since a couple more people entered the guildhouse just seconds later Robin opted to just take the closest non-threatening quest and call it a day. She saw one mentioning a forest and grabbed it off the board, dragging the kids after as they went back to the girl by the desk to register the quest as theirs. Rob and Anna got no word in as Robin did it as quickly as possible and was left with a set of instructions. Just two minutes later they were back by Poppy and Thunderbolt with Rob protesting about the quest choice. “You got us something so boring! We can’t even fight a monster! We just have to-” He grabbed the sheet of instructions from Robin and read it over quickly. “-gather some stupid herbs in the forest! It’s listed as medium difficulty! Robin, you’re so boring!” he complained. Robin, not caring about the child’s opinion, shrugged. “I was ordered to keep you rascals safe. I am only fulfilling my duty.”
“I bet dad roped you up in something, didn’t he?”
“Not exactly. Now, if we want to get this reward quickly then we have to move. The forest is that way,” Robin continued, not bothering to explain how she knew, “so we better get going now.” When Anna went to untie Poppy, Robin’s want to slap her hand to her face doubled. “We aren’t taking travel horses into a wild forest. Nu-uh. You’ll just tire them needlessly. Take your most important belongings and that’s it.” Rob and Anna complied and followed Robin out of town. Without her noticing, Robin had become the temporary leader of the group.
“We’re getting a small flower-like herb called dewbell. It has small white bell-shaped blossoms so look out for that. It shouldn’t be that tall, a bigger bush reaches just about to your knee, so keep your eyes on the ground,” she instructed as they walked deeper under the shade of the tall trees. At some point Rob managed to get ahead of Robin a little bit and was running around looking at all the bushes he could find. Anna decided to climb trees by the roadside. Robin just wondered where she went wrong as she ran around trying to keep up with the other Robin and at the same time not lose sight of Anna. The task was made even more difficult when she almost stepped on a snake. Robin wondered what it was doing there, usually snakes could feel human footsteps miles away, why was it still laying by the road? But she didn’t have long before she again rushed to catch up to Rob. “Would you stop climbing trees for five minutes!” she shouted at Anna who had again climbed to the lower branches of a nearby oak. With a sigh and a mighty inhale, Robin managed to catch both the kids. “OI! Will you just LISTEN?” The two stood quiet, staring at Robin. She took it as a sign to continue: “This forest is dangerous. There are wild animals here and snakes that I’m pretty sure are venomous. I don’t want either of you to die here so stick close to me. If I see either of you wandering away again I’ll tie you to me myself. Am I clear?” Robin’s voice was stern and left no room for arguing. With the two humans nodding at her, Robin let go and walked off down the pathway of the forest at a low pace, making sure the two could keep up and stay near. She could hear movement in bushes nearby, animals scooting away but some select few the opposite way - closer to the trio. Robin had never seen such behaviour in wild animals before. She set it down on her mental shelf of things to look into at a later date, right next to “how do things stay behind my ears for years without falling.”
They made their way through the forest with Robin doing her best to remember the path they came as well as make sure that nothing was out to attack them. The forest was much thicker than her own had been with bushes covering all ground other than the thin pathway. Roubin hadn’t found any moister places in the shade yet - that was where this plant they were looking for, dewbell, was supposed to grow best. Robin figured a stream covered by trees or a cliffside would be best for the plant, but she couldn’t seem to find either. Robin couldn’t hear water flowing and neither could she see hills or any sort of higher places. Robin almost wanted to give up and head back, but she knew that the two humans she had with her would not agree to that choice. They would most certainly just head forward on their own and Robin didn’t want that.
It took quite a while, but Robin managed to finally find a river. At first, she couldn’t see it at all. She pinpointed the source of the sound of water flowing and just walked off in that direction. The river wasn’t a big one, but the flow looked enough to carry quite big chunks of wood - not entire trees, but logs at the very least. With the source of water being nearby, Robin needed to find a shaded place. That didn’t take too long either since a couple bushes covering up a patch of grass was exactly what dewbells needed to grow. Robin pointed the two humans to the spot and the three of them started picking the flowers with the gentle sound of water flowing echoing in the background. They decided to store them in Anna’s backpack since it had the most room. Rob’s was full of stuff he decided he might need and the spirit didn’t have a bag to begin with so nobody really complained.
They were just about to start walking back to the capital when Robin heard an odd sound reminding her of a very big bird in the distance. Unsure of what it was, she stopped to listen, attracting attention from Anna and Rob. The sound seemed to be coming closer. “What is it?” Suddenly the entire nearby area was covered in one giant shadow. Robin reacted fast, pushing the two children behind her back as she turned around to face whatever giant creature must be producing the sound she had heard just moments before and now identified - wing flaps. Whatever Robin had thought of as a solution, the sight that greeted her still took her off guard. A blue dragon faced her head on, its cyan eyes staring into Robin’s blacks with a curious sparkle and a glint of caution. Robin stared back with determination. But she was the one to break eye contact since the dragon’s blue scales looked much more interesting to her. The creature’s head seemed to be a lighter colour of sky blue, the wings a little deeper, maybe the tone of water, and the tip of its tail was the colour of the night sky, almost black, but not quite. The enormous creature landed on top of the river with a loud thump, its body mass causing it to land harshly. It didn’t block the flow of the river, instead it stretched over it with a pair of legs supporting it one either side of said river.
Robin wanted to talk to the dragon, but this was not the time to do so. From experience, Robin knew that the dragon was probably defending their territory, in which case the intruders should show no aggression if they wanted to leave with their life intact. Well, that’s how it worked for humans most of the time, Robin wasn’t so sure about how forest spirit lives would work in this situation. In either case, she pulled out her dagger. The dragon’s eyes immediately turned to slits as it started growling. Robin made eye contact again and waved the dagger in her hand. Then she promptly threw it into the grass a couple meters away from where the trio was standing. “Don’t pull weapons,” she urgently whispered to the two humans. Rob, who had already started pulling his sword out of its sheath, placed it back and let go of it as quickly as he could as if it was burning him.
The dragon eyed the blade in the grass cautiously and then turned to look at Robin closer. The spirit stepped forward. “We are not here to harm you in any way! We simply came to gather flowers. We come in peace!” she declared, hoping that the dragon understood her. “My name is Robin! This is Anna,” she said, gesturing at the girl behind her, “and this is the other Robin. We apologise for any disturbance!”
The dragon seemed to accept their peace and responded with only their name: “Nalin.” Anna and Rob looked at the dragon in wonder as Robin nodded her head in a deep bow. “Thank you.” The dragon nodded back and flew off, leaving the trio alone yet again. Robin took a deep breath before going to retrieve her dagger from the grass. The small party headed back to the capital without any more fuss, the kids being tame and not running off like they had at first.
Rob only spoke when they were all the way back to their horses. “That- Was AWESOME!” he cheered, Anna quickly going along. “Robin, you spoke to a DRAGON! How cool is that? A real life dragon! I’ve never seen one alive before! How did you know what to do? Oh, this is so awesome! I must tell everyone when we get back home-”
“Hush!” Robin scolded. “I don’t want attention like that. Don’t spread it around.” “it’s bad enough that you guys saw a dragon, don’t go blabbering about it.”
“How did it tell us its name? It didn’t speak!” Anna exclaimed suddenly, looking at Robin for an answer. Robin just sighed. “Dragons can do that. It’s like talking straight into your mind or something. Edhyr did it too.”
“Who’s Edhyr?” Rob wasted no time asking. Robin shook her head. “Let’s go get that quest reward.” She entered the Adventurer’s Guild before either of the children could protest and headed up to redeem the reward for the flowers they gathered by the counter. They emptied Anna’s bag of flowers and set them down on the counter. The worker weighed them and handed them a small bag of coins in return before going to put the plants away somewhere. The kids headed over to the quest board to find something else to do the rest of the day.
☯
The next morning at breakfast Rob had decided rather quickly and without letting Robin weigh in her own opinion that they should split up. Apparently Anna had a pen pal somewhere in the capital and Rob wanted to try something that he wouldn’t tell Robin. Basically, they wanted time to themselves. Robin could understand that and decided to spend the day alone without much protest after all. It took her a while to figure out what to do with her whole load of free time, but she decided to still be useful to the two humans and complete a few other quests for them in the forest now that she could explore more freely. Who knew, maybe she could meet that dragon by the river again? Either way, Robin didn’t have any better ideas so she settled for doing quests. A quick trip to the guildhouse in the morning had her three unique quests, all to be done in the forest nearby. Without lingering around for much longer, Robin wandered over to the forest border. She pondered on what way she should go - the pathway walked out by humans or just through the forest itself, straight through the bushes? Since Robin had taken the human route the last day she decided to see what the forest was like on the inside and just walked right through the bushline and into the tall grass. It was a lot slower and Robin feared she couldn’t manage to complete all three of the quests walking so slow so she decided that her best option would be to climb the trees. Since she was immortal on human standards she had no fear of falling other than the inconvenience of climbing back up to the treetops and she prided herself on being a fast climber. Without further thought, Robin climbed up the nearest tree, all the way up to the top, and started making her way through the woods by climbing tree to tree. Since the trees were huddled so close together, she had no trouble with jumping - she could just step from one branch to another.
The manmade pathway had been lighter, the spirit noted. It wasn’t all covered up by trees, though it was in shade most of the time. But this forest was really thickly packed with trees and almost no sunlight made it down to the ground, only a couple sunnier patches being present overall as far as Robin could see. Most of the ground was covered in moss or small bushes or the occasional berry plant popped up here and there.
Robin managed to find the plants she had a quest for totally on accident - she noticed the familiarity from the corner of her eye. Not wasting any time, Robin hopped down to gather some and resumed her climbing with a handful of maryleaf plants, only slightly slowed by the fact that one of her hands couldn't be used to grab trees anymore. One of the other quests she had was to bring back a dead squirrel for some sort of potion making that the Adventurer’s Guild was apparently researching. She did feel bad about killing animals, especially since this wasn’t even her forest, but she grabbed it off the questboard anyway. If she couldn’t find a squirrel, she would just return it to the board.
The last quest was to find a riverstone. Robin had never heard of it before and had queried about it from the workers at the guild. Apparently it was a special blue rock that glowed in water and was only found near rivers. It was odd to Robin since there certainly were no riverstones by her river for the full thirty years she lived there. She supposed it was a local thing - maybe it had something to do with the dragon? Robin hoped so since it would give her an opportunity to find said dragon and she did want to meet it again. Nalin seemed like it would explore and move around instead of staying in one cave as Edhyr had - after all, gem dragons belonged in caves but if Robin’s assumption was correct, Nalin would be flowing like the river from one place to another constantly. A river dragon - how exciting!
Lost in her thoughts, Robin almost managed to fall from the treetops. She only narrowly managed to grab a hold of another branch since she wasn’t looking where she was going and misplaced her foot. The three-meter drop didn’t look very inviting so Robin did her best to regain her balance and move on quickly. Robin was headed to where she remembered the river to be and hoped she didn’t already manage to get lost - this wasn’t her forest, it wasn’t familiar to her like the old one had been. In any case, Robin pressed on until she had no tree to grab onto. The sound of the river flowing met her ears from afar and she hopped down to the ground. She walked the rest of the way with a spring in her step, managing to make it through the bushes without any problems. The treeline continued further than the bushes and the grass switched over to small and smooth pebbles not too far from the river. This one was indeed more powerful than Robin’s had been.
With a curious look around, Robin wandered forward, only stopping when the water hit her toes. It was cold and Robin stepped back a little bit, away from the splashing river. She spent a couple of minutes watching the water flow and listening to it before returning to the quest at hand - she had to find a riverstone. It was described to her to be about the size of her palm and a shade of deep sea blue. Some reported that it had a sharper edge on one side and a smooth curve on the other, which Robin found curious since random rocks by the river aren’t all the exact same shape. She suspected these riverstones might not even be rocks. Robin kept her eyes on the ground, scanning the pebbles for any sign of blue disguised in the mere grayness of usual rocks. After about ten minutes of scanning the shore, she found nothing. No sign of blue stones anywhere. Maybe somebody had already picked them up from this region? With a sigh, Robin walked downstream, hoping to have better luck there.
Better luck indeed - just a hundred meters over she almost tripped on one of these blue stones that the humans were searching for! With a small whoop, Robin bent down to pick it up. She grabbed ahold of the riverstone and was surprised to feel a smooth surface. Not like any of the other rocks that had been sanded by the river flowing. Instead, water seemed to slip off the riverstone effortlessly as if it was waterproof. To test out this theory, Robin went ahead and dipped it in the river, pulling her hand away from the cold water as soon as possible. She placed the maryleaf plants to the ground and, with her other hand, touched the riverstone. It was completely dry, unlike Robin’s fingers that had been holding it. Sure enough, the stone was waterproof. Robin looked closer at the shape of it, hoping to find some resemblance to anything else that could give her a clue about what the riverstones truly were since, clearly, they were not just regular rocks. With a couple of moments of staring, it clicked. The colour was eerily close to what remembered Nalin’s scales to be. And the shape reminded her of what Edhyr’s scales looked like. To confirm, Robin pulled one from her coat’s inner pocket and placed the two side by side. The shape was similar, but not exactly identical. It was proof enough for Robin. Combined with the fact that the riverstones could only be found near the river, as the name suggested, and Robin suspected Nalin to be a river dragon, it matched her diagnosis. The riverstones were nothing more than Nalin’s scales. For what reason the dragon had dropped them, Robin did not know, but they for sure were connected to the dragon in a direct way, Robin knew that much.
Robin slipped both scales back into her coat pocket and picked the bundle of plants up from the ground. Now all she had to do was find and kill a squirrel. But Robin didn’t manage to make it far back into the forest - a familiar sound of truly heavy footsteps made her turn back to the river with excitement.
