Novel Full Chapter 1669 Old Mate Drl
— Lily —
Turns out getting the door open was super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Lily first glided down to the ground, nervous but not overly worried about the few people watching her. Nobody moved to stop her or do anything upon seeing her slow lazy glide down to the ground, either due to her slow pace or small size. Once she was touching the stone pathway Lily considered moving into an alcove or onto another street for some plausible deniability with her transformation… Explore more at empire
But she looked nothing like the locals and even if they didn’t know she could transform into a cat they’d still know she didn’t belong. Which, by the same token meant that being able to transform would likely be written off as ‘just something she could do’ and not all that weird because of it.
So Lily did, she transformed in place while looking around. Conveniently, one of the people nearby had just finished talking to someone else, who was clearly in more of a rush. The second person sprinted away down the street and Lily moved to intercept the calmer one that was still leaning against the nearby house. They noticed her walking over with a raised brow and waited for Lily to say something. “Hi, I’m here as part of a group of demons. We’ve got a delivery for Snowy Mountain Mining Company we’re doing as a side gig and were hoping we could get someone to open the door,”
The man nodded, “Right… I’m guessing that fancy transformation you did isn’t something the rest of the group can do?” Lily shook her head. “Fair enough. Just so happens that my nephew is a gate guard so I can take you to him. Should be able to open the doors right up for ya. Do you know which one your friends are waiting at?”
“Um… no? But I can send them a message no trouble. So… if you tell me which gate your nephew works at I can make sure they’re at the right one,” said Lily.
The man nodded and Lily took a moment to take in his appearance. One of his eyes was clouded over for some reason but there were no other obvious injuries so she didn’t know if it was just a thing or if something had happened to the eye and it was unable to be healed like the surrounding area. He wore what looked to be a loose fitting set of overalls with the suspenders sitting under a jacket for some reason, resting against his scales. Maybe it kept the rest of the jacket off them a bit? Lily didn’t know.
“Well, follow me then. I can use the exercise. Since I’ve retired I’ve turned into a lazy blob so it’ll be good to have an excuse. Names Drl by the way, and the nephew we’re off to see is Dav, in case your wondering. Now we’re heading off to the gate that’s in the North. If ya friends are a bit turned around then that’s the one that follows the river upstream. Should be to the right of the river once you get into the mountains a bit. I’m sure they can find it,”
Lily relayed the information and got a signal of confirmation back. “Hopefully they will,” agreed Lily as she started to follow in behind Drl. Lily, being bad with new people and not really sure what to say… just didn’t say anything for a while. At some point Drl started to whistle, though it sounded nothing like the whistling she was used to. Probably the lack of gums.
After a few more minutes of silence Drl spoke up, “So, you said the delivery was a side thing, you want to talk about your main purpose at all?”
“Oh… um… I’m not sure if I’m allowed to?” said Lily. She could ask sure but she wasn’t sure what the answer would be. Then she realised that Drl was giving her a bit of an odd look… oh he was just making conversation. “Ah but um… I’m happy to talk about something else if you want?”
“Just checking. Though asking about your purpose here would be a safe bet. From what I’ve heard from the church you demons are normally pretty upfront about things because it saves you the hassle but I’m not gonna push. Though… I guess if we’re making conversation, what about the delivery? Can you talk about that?” asked Drl casually.
Lily thought about it for a few moments before nodding, “Oh… um yes I guess?” She wasn’t going to tell the full truth of course but… “You see the roads are all blocked and a merchant… she was called um… Julyn? Yeah that’s her name. She was stuck just waiting for either the snow to melt or the river to go down… and well… we didn’t have a great way to help but we DID need to come through here so the offer was made,”
“Ah that’s no good. There were a few mighty shakes a couple of a bit over a week back… maybe two… not sure how related the two things are. What’s the issue with the river though?” asked Drl.
*Um… would that have been around the time we killed the drake? Hopefully not… or maybe it doesn’t matter? I’m really not sure if we had an effect on the avalanche or not. I guess it depends on when it happened.* “Oh… um… didn’t I say? The river was flooding,” answered Lily.
Drl nodded, “You did imply at least… just a touch odd. I’m not sure I can remember the last time that river flooded so it’s quite strange to hear…”
“Oh… um… my guess was that the avalanche dumped a bunch of snow and ice into the river raising the water level and maybe melting into the river in the process? The bridge was almost completely covered. The railings were just high enough to catch some big ice chunks that were floating in it…” explained Lily.
Drl rubbed his chin, “Hmm… not sure that would be enough. Could be that one of the frozen lakes had a dam in it that collapsed somewhere? Might need to send some people to check it out. We’ve not had a truly excessive amount of rain, or even that extreme of a snowfall so the river shouldn’t be flooding,”
“Oh um… not really something I’d looked into all that much,” said Lily with a shrug.
It was true too. Sure she’d looked into flooding once or twice but that was mostly from heavy rainfall, not flash flooding or rivers in general too much. The closest was damns, but Drl was obviously talking about more natural creations here, as he didn’t seem to concerned. If it was a proper damn the kingdom made for some reason there would be a much bigger cause for concern.
Lily’s introspection had killed the conversation again… and this time Drl didn’t seem all that interested in restarting it. Perhaps he thought she wanted some peace and quiet? Lily didn’t know but soon she worked up the courage to ask her own question. “So um… your nephew. What’s he like?”
“Eh… bit of a lazy ass honestly. I mean, I didn’t get lazy until I retired but Dav? He took the gate guard job because it just requires you to sit around for basically the whole day. Sure he has training in the mornings and the pay isn’t great. The bonuses do make up for the times the guards see real action… but he tends to avoid those if he can find an excuse so…
“Yeah he pretty much gets paid nothing to just sit around and stare at a door. He makes enough to eat, drink at the tavern, and occasionally gamble though he’s not one of those people with issues. Clearly plays just to have fun and sometimes gets away with a bit of extra cash. Hasn’t moved out of his parents house… but then again those lucky buggers made some serious bank and got a huge plot of land so it’s not like he’s underfoot…” Drl trailed of wistfully just keeping silent for a moment…
Before he shrugged and continued “It is what it is I suppose. He’s the fourth son of some important people and lazier dumber fools have made much poorer choices in life. Guess I just feel like he could be doing more you know? Dav’s a smart boy and I could see him going places if he cared to. Just… didn’t care to,”
“Ah, yeah I sort of knew people like that. I’ve always loved learning and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do before I got mixed up with the whole demon stuff…” said Lily with a shrug. “Though I would want to do SOMETHING. I can’t imagine the boredom. It would be hellish to me, I think,”
“Eh, I’d like to say the same thing. That the lack of purpose would really get to me… but I wasn’t exactly much better when I was younger. Not sure I’d actually done some proper work if I had the sort of money my brother-in-law ended up with. No disrespect. The man did the work and got lucky with what he found. Still just… not sure what I’d have done in Dav’s position myself so I can’t bring myself to be too hard with him. And his parents well… they’re just happy he’s safe unlike of their other kids. Started an adventuring group you see…”