22

A crowd had gathered since the fight had began. They were all interested in a beast that could appear human.

"Were you ashamed to be asking an archaic for help?" I crouched to meet his eye, making sure I suppressed the mesmerizing effect before locking eyes with him this time, "I'm not here to secretly help you, and you're right. My aid will be cheaper then calling the military, but I'm not going to slink around like I did something wrong by being born in the first place." I flared my wings suddenly, causing Erik to take a few steps back, "Now all I've asked for so far is the ability to leave as I please so I can take my short temper out on something more edible. I really don't care if you decide to lock me outside of these walls of yours. I don't need your protection."

Savannah, and Jax caught up about then. Savannah had taken the time to put her scale armor on. Her, and Ethan were now wearing matching armor.

"Nix!" her voice cut across the space between us, "Go cool your hot temper. I'll discuss things with our possible employer." her eyes went to Ethan next, "Ethan you go with him. I don't want him wandering to far, and scaring the locals more then he already has." {I don't trust this guy.}

I wasn't surprised by what she admitted to me privately.

{He probably wanted my presence here secret,} I agreed, {I'd be wiling to bet that he did something to piss off the military that he doesn't want his people knowing about.}

New Quest

Alpha flight

Erik Bird has made the mistake of attempting to raise, and tame a flight of wyverns. In his attempts to alter them to obey human orders he made them more intelligent. He created, and lost control of an alpha pair. These altered wyverns survived, and multiplied upon their escape. These intelligent wyverns are highly angered by the experiments performed on them as hatchlings.

Now he has a very big problem. Luckily not all the altered wyverns have inherited the enhanced intelligence of the alpha pair. Subjugation of the alpha pair could bring the entire flight under control.

Kill the wyvern flight

Optional - tame the wyvern flight

Bonus - Find evidence of Erik Bird's illegal activities

Reward - determined upon quest completion

I glanced over to Ethan who'd also seen the new quest. His mouth had quirked up slightly on one side forming a well hidden smirk only for me to see. Now it was time to put the pieces into motion.

{I think he's hiding something,} I spoke to Savannah, and Jax simultaneously, {Play nice, and see if you can find out what it is.}

I leapt over the downed men to stand right next to Ethan.

{Time to go,} I mentally whispered as Ethan jumped over my wing to sit on my shoulders.

My body had begun expanding at a rapid pace as I rushed out the gate. Ethan was prepared for the rapid change in body size, and proportions. I was completely in my dragon form by the time I landed on all fours outside the guild nearly a hundred feet from the guilds front gate. I looked to the south for a second before jumping into the air. Ethan didn't need as much air as he used to so I could go high.

I didn't want him getting cold, but I lacked the mana required to warm him as the cold winds of this much chillier planet hit us. Ethan did a good job of shielding himself from the strong headwinds with his telekinesis, but it wasn't a perfect wind shield. I could generate air for us to breath with minimal mana cost so I went as high as Ethan could bare as I head south. Hoping I could get a good look at these alphas the system had assigned me a quest for. I'd grown accustomed to my system rarely giving me quests.

It did occasionally encourage me to do things, but it was mostly save this guy, or this place. Not something like this. There were multiple options for completing this quest. I could kill all the wyverns. That was the most obvious option.

Killing them would be simple, and didn't require much thought. The only problem with that option was how little I knew about the flight itself. If I was heavily outnumbered subduing the alphas might be easier. Then there was the bonus part of the quest. That one was purely extra.

If it was anything like extra credit on a test then it would be valuable for me to get whatever I could for that part. I flew south for nearly two hours before I saw anything, and what I did see was pretty much useless to me. The splayed butchered corpses of the two that the guild had managed to bring down was a welcome, but worthless sight to me. I snorted displeasure as I looked down through the gaps in the clouds to the dead bodies. Carrion feeders had already started working away at the corpses so I was a little glad that I was far enough away that even I couldn't get a good look at the nasty rotting old meat.

I refocused my attention south where the wyverns had supposedly come from. Accelerating slightly as I focused back on flying as quickly as possible. The cold temperatures here were starting to really get to Ethan so I had to circle down, and land so that he'd be able to warm back up. I almost breathed fire over his body, but stopped myself because I couldn't remember if my magic affected his actual clothing. Ethan caught the gist of what I was thinking, and held his arm out to the side so I could test my flames on his sleeves.

My flames didn't appear to affect his clothes, but there was an unusual side effect of my flames going over the armor itself. The armor absorbed my magic greedily similar to the way that the daggers absorbed my lightning. Growing hot, and retaining the heat for as long as the mana lasted. Ethan, and I smiled at each other as the snow began to fall. We both knew how beneficial this side effect was on a cold planet like this.