>>5842066>>5842087>>5842089>>5842100>>5842328>>5842342>>5842449There was no good reason not to follow the direct route, you reasoned. What you had here WAS important, and obviously so. Why SHOULDN’T the Queen wish to meet with you?
You smoothed out your robe, shaking off the bits of grass and leaf-litter clinging to parts of it as the Royal Guardsmen approached—Paladins, of the Holy order of Hawksong, blessed by the Gods Above. You’d headed straight to from Old Maple Hill to the Royal Palace, and suddenly you wished you’d returned home first, for a bath and to change or clean your clothing. At least as a half-elf, your natural body odour was negligible and—you’d been told—faintly floral.
(You doubted, somehow, that the Paladins would be as affected by this last detail as was Izirina Henzler)
“Halt! Stop right there. What’s your business, mage?”
“I’m here from the Tower,” you answered. “I’ve come with… A solution to the dragon-pox, which I‘ve devised. I need to speak with the Queen urgently.”
The two Paladins who had approached you, exchanged a glance, and some murmured words. Your eyes drifted past them to their great chimera—a gryphon, one of the Archmage Henzler’s inventions and a staple of the paladins which had almost become synonymous with Hawksong itself. This wasn’t one of the winged exampled, but even so, it could not fail to impress you. It awed with its great bear-like size, fierce and staring eagle-eyes, its curved and deadly beak, its grasping front talons and raking hind-claws, and the whipping lion-tail… Though the way it lashed implied irritation, or discomfort. You wondered if something was bothering it, beyond merely your presence?
(It kind of reminded you of Muffins, who you hoped was enjoying his weekend with ‘Uncle Pearce’.)
“We weren’t given any missives to expect you,” the older of the pair of Paladins noted.
“I came right from my, ah, researches,” you said. “I had a breakthrough, and had no time to go through the Archmage.”
You stumbled over your words a little, stopping short of bringing up the True Fey. The Bonum Chaoticum and Bonum Legale—what the human race called ‘The Gods Above’ or ‘Gods of Order’—was not hostile or oppositional. Quite the opposite! Still, the philosophies and faiths of your mother’s race and of these warrior-acolytes were rather different, and there WAS what some might call a ‘friendly rivalry’ of sorts there. Ringing up teat you were here as a practitioner of Feycraft might not be wise, if you wished the process to be smooth, swift, or simple.
