Redux: Lineage

I trailed a finger down Celana's nude form as I sat on the edge of the bed, neither of us being willing to end our little session together too early. As such, we'd remained together for a time longer, though I knew in the back of my mind that I needed to return to the inn, as the others would most certainly be waiting for me at this point.

"Well..." I said in a reluctant tone. "I must be off. Can I find you here when I need you for the dragon?"

"Of course," she nodded, sitting up straight and hugging her knees to her chest. "Am I going to be waiting long for you?"

"Depends how the others are doing," I shrugged.

"Others?"

"Yes, my friends Zane and Annerose are here helping me take the thing down," I nodded. "They went to the Barb Tail Mercenary Guild to get a little extra muscle, and I came here to get a little bit of magic... and, as it so happened, get a lot of ass as well."

She smirked in a proud manner, leaning forwards and kissing me once more before moving to get up off the bed.

"Then I'll speak to Elisyra about getting you that armour," she said, looking down at what was left of her torn leggings and the boots I'd never bothered to take off her. "And getting a new wardrobe sorted out. Thanks for that, by the way."

"Don't mention it," I chuckled, getting off the bed and beginning to get dressed as well. I tucked and fastened my clothing properly, tied my boost on, and strapped my gear back in its usual place before joining my cape around my neck and pulling the hood up.

"I should be back in a few days," I said to her as I headed towards the door. "But don't plan everything around it. We might be here a while if something fucks up."

"Fair enough," she said, wandering over to her wardrobe and searching through her clothing for something to cover her nethers. "Just don't make it ridiculous."

"I won't," I said, hand on the door handle before I stopped moving, having a stupid thought go through my head. "Hey... Celana?"

"Yes?" she asked, removing her tattered leggings and boots.

"Would you be okay with making this a semi-regular thing?" I asked her. "Me coming to visit every now again?"

"'Visit'," she phrased, chuckling to herself as she shook her head. "You want us to be sex friends, you mean?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Is that not an option?"

"I'm afraid not," she said in a neutral tone. "I'm not a woman that wants to tie herself into a relationship of any sort, be it sex or romance. So as much as I've enjoyed our time together today, I'm afraid we're going to go our separate ways from now on, at least, in the bedroom, that is."

"Huh," I said, feeling slightly stung about it, but by no means upset or angry. "Then I guess it's a good job I thought to take you up the ass while I was here today, isn't it?"

"Most certainly," she giggled. "What you did to me today is something most men would die for."

"Well," I said, opening the door and heading out of it. "I almost did."

With that, I closed the door behind me and headed out of the castle, contacting Grael over our connection and giving him a brief description of what had transpired.

"So, you're certain she'll help us?" he asked me.

"Positive," I nodded. "She's definitely going to be fighting her hardest and says she'll get the extra equipment for us."

"Good. Then you'd better get over to the Barb Tail camp," Grael said. "You're gonna wanna see what's going on over here."

I was confused at first, but after receiving mental directions from the Direwolf, I made my way over to the large, near-fortress-sized building with guards positioned around it, all wearing blue plate armour with a spiked tail as the insignia, almost resembling a cat's tail. I explained that I was here for a job offer for the boss of the mercenaries and they said my friends were already negotiating a deal with the boss, waving me in without a hassle.

"Rather polite for a bunch of hired killer," I thought to myself.

I wandered into the courtyard, my ears picking up the sounds of cheers and applause as I got closer and closer to a large arena-like area. I wandered over to its grounds, gently pushing through them all to see what was going on. Annerose was down there on her own, currently pummeling the teeth out of one of the mercenaries, smashing him hard enough in the face to knock him clean back and onto the scattered pile of at least twenty other unconscious beaten men and women.

I looked around to see if someone was in charge, wondering exactly what was going on here before I was patted on the back, alarming me from the contact.

"Finally managed to get here, eh?" the voice’s owner asked, guiding me out of the crowd and away from the arena. I looked to see that the person was Zane.

"I was a little tied up," I shrugged. "What's Annerose up to?"

"She got bored after about an hour and has just been doing that for most of the day," Zane shrugged, nodding to one of the guards as they opened the door and let us through. "She started to get really pent up during the negotiations and asked if there was a training room or something she could use to blow off steam. And, as it often does with her, she managed to turn a simple cool-down session into a one-against-all-comers fight club where she'll end up getting however much is bet on her if she wins. Here's hoping she wins as well, because we need the money."

"Negotiations not going well?" I asked.

"Oh, no. They're more than willing to do the job as soon as we put down the deposit," Zane said, holding a door open for me and allowing me to walk past him, getting a nod and a thank you in response. "And we've managed to convince them to take whatever's in the dragon's cave as payment once we're done here."

"So what's the problem them?" I asked.

"Their deposit is seventy five thousand crowns," Zane said in a growling voice. "And they refuse to lower it, no matter how much we say is in the cave."

"And how much is Annerose expecting to win from the bets?" I asked.

"About nine hundred gold, at best,"

"Fuck," I growled, not finding these circumstances the best. "So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Zane said. "The boss here said she wanted to wait to talk to you directly before making any sort of concrete arrangements. Said she had something that might help us get the money together, but that it's dangerous as all hell."

"She?" I asked in an intrigued manner.

"Try to keep it in your pants around her, Rick," Zane said, rolling his eyes. "Mostly because she'll cut if off if you don't."

"Noted," I nodded, seeing Zane come to a halt outside a door with a golden shield mounted on it, knocking loudly on the painted metal shield which produced a loud, hollow ringing noise.

"Enter!" a female voice barked.

Zane did as instructed, allowing me to follow him inside the room, and coming face-to-face with the boss of the Barb Tails, and she was not what I was expecting. In the chair sat a woman, appearing to be close to thirty in age, with long blue hair tied up in a thick ponytail. Her eyes were the same colour as her hair, but hers seemed to burn with a permanent anger, staring me down with a scrutinising glare that told me she was evaluating my worth as a person right now.

But her eternal fury and odd-coloured hair didn't surprise me. What did was the set of fuzzy cat ears that sat atop her head, twitching and flicking every now and again, as well as the tip of the swishing cat tail I could see hanging beneath her chair. She was a Nekomata, an extremely rare sight in this part of the world, as they hardly ever left the Eastern Continent. They were usually slightly air-headed and ditzy creatures that had a liking to warm houses, warm food, and sleeping, usually getting jobs as maids or cooks in this part of the world.

But this one held none of the standards of her race. She stood up to her full height, being an inch and a half taller than I was, and continued to glare at me. She was dressed in the same plate armour the rest of her guild wore, and even through that thick, well-forged armour I could tell she was hiding a set of tits that would make even the bustiest of human women feel a little inadequate. I could see the same with the curve of her leggings at her hips: they needed a lot of fabric back there to wrap up that big ass of hers and the armour and clothing hanging over that perfect curve didn't hide it at all.

"So..." she began in a rough voice. "This is him?"

"Indeed it is," Zane nodded, watching as the catgirl wandered over to me, being able to look down at me from her height of six-one.

"He doesn't look impressive," she said in a disappointed manner. "Though, I suppose if he was, he wouldn't be coming to us for help now, would he?"

I really wanted to snap back at her, to make some snide remark about her being so low on my list of preferred allies that she was practically hanging off the paper, but I held my tongue. I didn't want to make any enemy of this woman, nor make an ass of myself, as she didn't seem like the kind of woman I could mouth off to without her either completely retracting her offer of help or kicking the living shit out of me.

"I'm sorry you think that," I said in a quiet voice.

Great one, Richter. Really paint yourself as the beta bitch she thinks you are.

I could tell from the scoff she made that my statement had only cemented her opinion of me as some whelp that couldn't hold a sword straight. It seemed that while I'd been able to easily adapt and pick up my Aunt Luna's methods of intimidation and threats of violence, I completely lacked my other abilities to appeal to and request help from people without seeming like a simpering whimp.

"Never come across as if you need their help, and instead try to spin it that you can offer them something in return," her words went through my head. "The concept of reward will still be there, but you won't look desperate or weak, which usually makes them less likely to try and take advantage of you."

And I fucked that up royally.

"Tell me, this trial you’re doing," she said. "Is it to earn a crown or a set of testicles? Because I'm pretty sure that before you become a king, you become a man first."

This one got to me, and it made a retort leap out of my mouth so quickly that I didn't even have time to attempt to stop it.

"It is for kingship," I growled angrily. "And this part of the test is to instill in me the patience to deal with stuck-up, fur-ball pricks like you who don't have a clue about their place in the world."

I can tell that I pissed her off with that one, her eyes lighting up in a fiery manner, the likes of which I'd only ever seen in Luna. She immediately went for her sword, only for me to draw the small knife I'd strapped to my wrist, thanking Luna a thousand times over for this amazing trick, and brought the knife up to her throat, making her freeze in place.

"Go on," I snarled, continuing to bluff my way through this situation, hoping and praying that she didn't call it and escalate this to violence, or else this'd be a fight I wasn't winning without a lot of pain involved. "I've yet to put a Nekomata hide on my wall, and you're the perfect candidate. So go right ahead and draw that sword of yours, I promise I'll find a nice place above the mantelpiece for you."

There was a moment of silence between the two of us, her hand resting just above the hilt of her blade, her fingers twitching briefly, while I applied more pressure to the hunting knife at her throat, now pressing hard enough for it to cause her skin to go white. The standoff lasted for a long moment, the Nekomata clearly weighing up her options, casting her eyes to me, then to Zane, and then down to the hand that held the blade. Eventually she sighed, returning her hand to her side and stepping away me, nodding in acceptance.

"There's no way you'd get out alive if you killed me," she shrugged. "But I'm really not willing to get vengeance from beyond the grave, to be honest. So we'll leave it at this and start talking about business, okay?"

"I was told you had a suggestion to help us get ahold of the money we need for your deposit?" I asked, sliding the hunting knife back into its sheath on my wrist.

"Indeed I do," she said, walking back over to her desk, my eyes travelling down to that big kitty rear of hers, watching her tail swish and flick around as she moved.

She picked up a piece of paper off the desk and offered it to me. I took the aged weather notice and read through it briefly to get a basic description of it. It was a notice from the Royal Guard asking any group of hunters to track down and slay a manticore that was roaming around the forests outside the city and attacking merchant caravans that made their way through there. The reward was eighty thousand crowns, more than enough to pay the deposit with five grand left over for any other purchases we'd need to make for preparations.

A manticore was a dangerous creature, especially so to the unprepared and untrained, but was by no means an impossible kill. If we brewed up some anti-venom, made sure to wear decent enough armour, and focused on the wings and tail, it would simply become nothing more than a big lion. Now breaking it down like that was an oversimplification on the level of 'If you want to be the greatest swordsman ever, win all the time', and it would be, by no stretch of the imagination, as easy as hacking the tail and wings off. It was going to be a difficulty fight, even if we were prepared, and there was a hell of a risk with it.

But we really didn't have a choice. Even with the elemental armour and one of the strongest human mages alive, we still didn't stand much of any kind of chance against an ancient Narrowscale Dragon. No, we needed the mercenaries to help fight her, and we would be fucked if they weren't there. So risk or not, we needed to kill this thing and get the reward for it, or else this Rite would turn into a suicide mission, which is not what I brought my friends and family here for.

"Do we need to sign up for a hunter's guild to claim this?" I asked her. "They're usually really anal when it comes to unlicensed monster killing."

"You probably do," she nodded. "But do us all a favour: make it as quick as you can, or else somebody might come and offer us a job in the Arid Plains and make us disappear for two years."

I folded up the piece of paper and tucked it into a pouch on my belt, turning back to Zane.

"Let's go get the others, we're getting signed up and taking this thing down tomorrow," I said with a look of fierce determination on my face. "We're all going home by the end of the week."