Message in a Fireball

[MadEmperor]

"Can we even afford not-a-dive booze?" Thrax smirked. "A demon made me spend all mine."

Kah missed a step and stumbled, throat growing dry. "Twins? As in two? Two babies?" His shock and confusion turned to joy. "We're having twins!"

He hugged her. "Oh my gods, I love you so much right now!"

[DragonSong]

River yelped, then laughed when he hugged her, returning the embrace tightly. "Twins as in two babies," she confirmed giddily. "And I love you too, and am choosing not to make a joke about how my apparent fertility seems to have impacted your affection," she chuckled teasingly.

Hana, who had paused at the sudden shouting and display of affection, found herself smirking and shaking her head at them. "Well, looks like all the drinks just landed on me, 'cause I can't make the expectant parents pay after finding out the kid's a twofer," she said quietly with a quick wink in Thrax's direction.

[MadEmperor]

Kah looked horrified. "No--I didn't--I... that's not...""

"Relax, Kah, she's teasing you," Thrax laughed.

"Oh." The hunter was just embarrassed now. "Ahem. Forget that ever happened."

"Not a chance." The bard laughed again.

[DragonSong]

River chuckled and gave her mate another quick peck on the cheek before she released the hug to take his hand.

"Come on then," Hana said cheerfully, starting off again.

She led them to her "not-a-dive", which was actually a fairly respectable sort of tavern a little further into the city, and procured a table near a window before disappearing to the bar to order their first round of drinks.

"So." River took her seat and propped her chin in one hand. "Anyone wanna tell me what actually happened out there?"

[MadEmperor]

Thrax looked down. "By the time she caught up to me, I was so far under the sway of the sword that I couldn't tell friend from foe. I... attacked her. I thought I killed her."

"I found her unconscious, about to be a grass drake's breakfast. I convinced it that it would be mine if it came any closer," Kahroan added.

They continued the story until the point at which they left the Serha on dragonback.  "So, yeah, I won't sleep soundly until that thing is out of our hands," Thrax sighed worriedly.

[DragonSong]

"Which will be soon," Hana said, approaching with a tray of drinks just in time to catch the end of the relation of the tale. She passed mugs around, then set a glass of something that smelled fruity and fizzed gently in front of River before taking her seat. "We figure there must be someone in the city properly equipped to handle it."
 
The wolf shifter took the drink with a nod of thanks and "mmmm"ed quietly. "We should stop by a temple if we want it to get to Moonspear. I'm sure the clergy have a system in place for this sort of thing..."

[MadEmperor]

Kahroan drank a large swig of ale before answering. "That was pretty much my thinking. None of us are without some dark chapter in our lives for this thing to latch onto."

Thrax scratched his ear in thought. "Sooo... once we get rid of it... what then? Do we find another job together to give the happy couple a last hurrah before River is too babied up to go questing and hope we actually get paid this time?"

[DragonSong]

"Babied up?" River repeated indignantly, and Hana laughed.

"I mean, we could always take an easy kinda job. Less bandits and monsters, more fetch-and-deliver. Not as much pay, but better for Mama." She patted River's back, earning a quiet, playful growl.

"Then...I dunno." The fox chuckled quietly and swigged her drink. "I don't hang around one group of people so long, usually."

[MadEmperor]

"Me neither." Thrax chuckled. "I'm usually just passing through, taking what work I can get and moving on."

"Neither did I. But then River's pack welcomed me into the family, so maybe it's all about meeting the right people," Kahroan responded thoughtfully.

The bard scratched his ear again. "Have you two ever, y'know, thought about making it official?"

The father-to-be nearly choked on his ale at the unexpected change of topic. "I,, uh--well... err..." He gave River a look that said, "a little help?"

[DragonSong]

River herself coughed into her glass. She gave Kahroan an equally baffled look.

"We, ah..." She blinked, then shook her head. "My people don't really...do that? Not in the way most folks do, I guess, with like a ceremony and all that. We just sort of..."

She fluttered her hand between herself and Kahroan with a little shrug. "We just...are, I suppose."

[MadEmperor]

Kahroan nodded in agreement. "Mine don't either. Hells, we don't even do monogamy." He chuckled. "Funny that I became a creature known to mate for life, and that that feels more like my nature that what I was born to."

"So, no, we don't need some official religious recognition to tell us what we already know."

Thrax gave Hana a quick look before saying. "My people—Serhan gnolls in general, not just my clan—do marry, but it's more of a... multiple wives sort of thing. The better your status, the more wives. Loss of status is, however, grounds for divorce."

[DragonSong]

"Hi, for the record: hate that," Hana said with a finger in the air. "I mean, unless it's also reciprocal. Like, if I was a gnoll lady chief I got to have six husbands. Or three husbands and three wives, whatever. In that case I guess, sure." She paused, then mused, "Wait. What do, like, chiefs who don't like women do? Do they get multiple husbands?"

River tried not to chuckle, but the suddenly scholarly focus on the kitsune's face was objectively entertaining.

[MadEmperor]

Thrax was thrown by her question and couldn't, for a long moment, figure out how to answer. "I mean... there was the one female Stormsong chieftain a few generations back and she had husbands. The other situations... I haven't heard of them happening. The strongest are supposed to pass on their strength to the new generation, so I can't say how that would turn out. We don't usually marry for love either."

[DragonSong]

"Mmm." Hana sipped at her ale and shrugged. "Hey, I can't judge. My mother was literally exiled for marrying the person she loved, so clearly my folks aren't great with this stuff either."

River, who had certainly not heard this before, shot Kahroan a quick, startled "Did you know about this?" look.

[MadEmperor]

Kahroan shook his head rapidly, as if to say, "Hey, don't look at me."

"You two really opened up to each other, didn't you?" he asked, smirking a little.

Thrax rolled his eyes at the look of "I smell love in the air" and said, "We both needed to vent that night in Zantaric. Don't read too much into it, Frosty."

Kah put up his hands. "Alright, alright, I'll stop playing matchmaker."

[DragonSong]

Hana chuckled and rolled her eyes. River laughed quietly too and leaned in to kiss her mate's cheek.

"One winter with the pack and my mother is already rubbing off on you," she teased lightly.

[MadEmperor]

Kahroan's eyes widened. "Oh gods... is that what's happening?"

Thrax laughed loudly. "Nah. It's just that you're so in love you see it everywhere you look.

"Yeah. That's probably it." The hunter nodded with a phew. "Let's just... get back to the subject of what we do next. I think a light job is a fantastic idea, considering how well our big job panned out."

[DragonSong]

Hana and River both voiced agreements. "We could probably ask around at the inn where I've been staying," the wolf shifter put in. "After we stop by a temple, of course."

[MadEmperor]

With a rough plan agreed to, the party set out to find a Moon Temple. With the meager reward given to them for turning in the evil weapon, the four had enough coin to last them as they set forth on one last job together.


The job had been to deliver an item to Cerenis for transport on a ship, where someone waited to pay them. It had been easy, only leading to a small skirmish with bandits one morning that ended up running away before Kah even had to resort to turning dragon. All in all, it was wonderfully anticlimactic.

Now, half-dragon Kahroan stopped to stare at something as they left the docks. It was a wanted poster; his wanted poster. "That looks nothing like me. Not even before." He frowned disapprovingly.

[DragonSong]

"Oh shit." Hana quirked an eyebrow and rocked on her toes fo read over his shoulder. "You been holding out on us, big guy? Why do you have a wanted poster?"

River moved to take her mate's hand, glancing around a little warily.