Quest for the Gemgark

An unnoticed shadow stole across the roof of the Dragon’s Chest, a patch of black on the grey stone and dark pitch. An astute observer, of whom there weren’t any, might have noticed that they couldn’t see anything to cast that shadow, or in fact to look particularly hard at that patch of roof took considerable effort. To those well-versed in the world, that meant spitesprite, and spitesprites meant someone was going to die.

Not today, however. Today this spitesprite was listening in to a fascinating conversation between a confidence man clearly lacking in it, and his client, who had it all. Including diamonds, apparently, and a hot tip regarding mines and gems – and now Idealana had it too.

Any reasonable bounty hunter, especially a spitesprite, would have asked around, stocked up and taken off in a flash, not necessarily in that order – but vacation and the promising start to her quest had softened Idealana a little. Made the prospect of bed, food and rest attractive, if only by a tiny margin. On the other hand…

The landlord’s cold glare penetrated the crowd like a wizard’s fireball, landing squarely on her form silhouetted in the doorway.

“Spitesprite.” He spat on the bar, conspicuously close to the blackwood blackjack sitting next to him. “We don’t serve your kind here.”