Jack Inqu: The whole weather thing will be explained later on. For now, I'll just say it has to do with the interaction of Earth-style magic and Gaia.

ABZB13: The Horcruxes will play no role in this story. Nor will Voldemort. :-)

Isa Lumitus: I may have to work on making this clearer, but humans don't change into other races when they become Adventurers. As far as anyone knows, you stay what you're born. I'll try to bring it up later in-story, but each race believes that the Transition brought them from a world where theirs was the only species to Gaia, where there are five races slammed together.

Chapter 5
Escort Mission

The arrow set in the back of the Grand Lich's skull faded away as it was summoned back into Hermione's quiver, and another moment passed before the bones sagged and started sublimating away. From its corpse fell a few pieces of golden jewelry as it finally disintegrated to nothing. Harry looked over at the Hunter and nodded. "Thanks."

She gave him a small half-smile.

"I'm all right, too, thanks for asking," commented Dudley as he crawled out of the fireplace the Grand Lich had thrown him into. "Not sore at all from the grate or anything."

"You're not dead, either, otherwise you'd be a lot less annoying," Harry shot back. His voice lacked any heat, however, and when Dudley stood up to reveal the soot staining his face he could not hold back his laughter. Dudley, too, started chuckling.

Hermione just shook her head. "Boys."

He picked himself up from the floor and walked over to the corner where he had thrown his sword. The hole in the wall where they entered had sealed itself over during the fight, but now that just mean they did not have to worry about being ambushed by any more undead for a while. "Let's grab what we can while we can, and then we'll unblock the door on our way out. With how strong that thing was, I can't help but think there's a wand in here somewhere."

"Hey, Harry?" He looked over to find Dudley twirling a long, thin rod of pale wood between his fingers. "Think I found it already. It fell off the mantle when I crashed into it."

"Glad to know your fat arse was useful for something for once."

"At least I wasn't the one dancing around trying to keep from getting squished."

"Yes, yes, you're both impressively manly men," Hermione said in a mocking voice as she walked over to the desk. "I'm more interested in what that thing was so interested in us not touching."

"The drawer is still locked, remember—" A sharp tug, and the drawer slid out with little effort. Hermione glanced over at Harry, who looked away and muttered mulishly, "I loosened it."

Rather than throwing out a barb at his expense, Hermione apparently decided to take a small measure of pity on him. "You two don't fight a lot of dungeon bosses, do you? It isn't uncommon, at least in my experience, for there to be a piece of magic or two that are tied to their lifeforce. Kill the monster, and you break the spell. My question is what was so important that it was locked up with that kind of spell."

Harry walked near to look over her shoulder at the contents of the drawer. More papers, but it was when she pulled them out and set them to the side that another rod rolled into sight. Unlike the one Dudley had found, this one was dark and tooled with silver on both ends of the bulbous handle. "The wand that belonged to 'Missus'?" he guessed.

"Most likely."

"On the plus side, it makes splitting up the treasure easier," Dudley said as he sucked up the painting into the pouch on his belt. "Harry and I keep the wand I found, and you get that one. We all come out ahead. Now let's pick up everything in here and head back to the client before we get attacked by anything else running around."

The velvet couch blocking the doorway leading out was more easily removed than Harry expected, mostly due to Hermione transferring it into her own pouch, and the door itself opened without resistance. Harry could not help looking at the scratches on the front of the door. "I guess that lich really didn't want anybody getting in."

"The door was probably locked with the same magic the drawer was," Hermione said. "Going through the wall was probably the easiest route into the room."

"Or out," Dudley grunted from behind them. "Don't think we didn't see you try to run and leave us in there with that thing by ourselves."

The Stellis Hunter spun around and jabbed a finger into Dudley's breastplate. "I. Did. Not. I checked on the hole you made to see if all of us could get out of there. I'm not the kind of person who would run away and leave allies, even temporary ones, to fight to their deaths."

Harry and Dudley exchanged looks before the latter spoke again. "Glad to hear it. It just didn't look that way from our side."

Hermione huffed and turned away to continue down the stairs to the ground floor.

Opening the doors revealed that somehow the hour or so they had spent in the manor had been long enough for the sun to move from its zenith when they entered to its new position at the horizon. "There's no way we were in there that long," Harry muttered.

"No, but it matches what little I've heard about dungeons like this." He looked over at their current companion. "Again, I've never been inside one before. All I know is that they are termed 'Underhills'. Time is supposed to move differently inside than outside. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster, and how fast or how slow is unpredictable. No one really knows anything more than that."

"As long as the guy's still here to pay us, I don't really care," said Dudley.

The client was indeed still present, sitting in the back of his cart among his piles of silver and gold. "Did you bring anything worth my while?" he asked, pushing his floppy hat out of his face. "The last few people hadn't found anything of value…"

His commentary trailed off when they pulled out the two wands they had found. Harry's satisfaction at rendering the blond man speechless faded when he realized the client was not looking at both wands. His attention was solely on the wand in Hermione's hands. The client actually reached out as though to take it from her when she pulled away and cleared her throat. "Our payment?" she reminded him.

That shook him out of his state of wonder. "Yes, yes, of course," he said instead. Pulling two boxes of coin closer, he demanded in the same pompous voice he had used when he first introduced himself, "Show me what else you found."

Perhaps he was feeling generous after having two wands shown to him, or perhaps they had been lucky, but the client seemed willing to purchase just about everything they had collected from inside the house. He did not truly inspect anything, either; at most he would run his hand over something or other before ordering his bodyguards to move it into the back of the cart.

"How do you know what you're looking for?" Harry asked, scratching his head in confusion. The paintings were obviously unusual, but the sofa and curtains and other things they had found? Not so much.

"Experience and a good eye," the client said, but then the blond man did a double take and started at Harry's forehead. "Where did you get that scar?" he asked after a long moment.

His scar? Harry fingered the jagged line that ran from his hairline down almost to his right eyebrow. "This? I got it when I was little. Before the Transition." It was a relic of the accident that had killed his parents, but nothing that a random stranger would be interested in.

"I see," whispered the client almost as though to himself. "I don't think I got your names before."

Dudley put a hand on Harry's shoulder and pulled him back a step. "I'm Dudley Dursley, his name is Harry Potter, and this is Hermione…"

"Hermione of the Riverland Grange," she threw in.

That was interesting, Harry thought to himself. The Granges were large plots of farmland scattered here and there across the face of Gaia, where fertile fields were readily available without the need to clear out thick forests teeming with beasts and monsters. The residents also had a reputation for being either poor farmhands or arrogant, self-centered, and self-titled lords and ladies. Somehow, he could not see someone from either group leaving to make a living as an Adventurer.

"Who are you?" he asked instead of the other man.

"No one important. Just a collector of the uncommon and unusual." The client counted out several bags of coins and handed them as well as the two boxes over. "Have a pleasant evening."

Once they had walked out of earshot, Dudley finally voiced what they were all thinking. "That wasn't creepy at all."

"If he wants to be creepy, that's his business. It's not like we're ever going to see him again," Harry pointed out. "I'm more worried about getting back to Glasgow. That wasn't an easy road in the daylight, and now it's turning dark."

A moment passed before Hermione cleared her throat. "You don't need to head out tonight. My party rented a couple of rooms in an old converted barn that is the closest thing there is to an inn back in the village. You could stay there tonight. The rooms are already paid for, and it isn't like there's anyone else who is going to use them tonight."

"You're sure?" Harry asked. Sooner or later, the shock of seeing her party slaughtered in front of her was going to catch up with her, and she might not feel quite so generous as did right now.

"They would go to waste otherwise. I know I'm ready to fall asleep already, and you probably need to rest and replenish your mana after all the magic you were throwing around fighting the lich. A spirit tonic isn't the same as a good night's sleep."

That was the kind of argument he could not fight against, and he looked over to Dudley with a shrug. It looked like they were staying in Scunth tonight.

Knock, knock, knock.

Harry glanced up at the door and then looked out the window to see the first light of dawn just beginning to crest over the horizon. Who in the world would knock on their door at the crack of dawn? No one with any sense should be up at this hour. Harry himself was only awake because he had been unable to get back to sleep a couple of hours earlier and decided to while away the time waiting for Dudley to awaken by sharpening their weapons and checking on their gear.

Another knock on the door, and then he heard a hesitant voice call out, "Dudley? Harry? Are either of you awake?"

That answered his question before he could worry that someone was about to barge in and murder them in their sleep. Although, that could still be the case. He strongly doubted it, but anything was possible. Lifting his rapier, he walked the dozen steps to the door and cracked it open to reveal a Stellis's eye staring back at him. "Yes?"

"Can I come in? I need to talk to you."

Shrugging to himself, he pulled the door open all the way to allow Hermione to enter. There was, just as he suspected, no one else with her, and he shook his head and shoved the paranoia that had accompanied his awakening back onto its mental shelf. He blamed the fight against all the undead for putting him in this frame of mind.

One of the two chairs in the room was already filled with gear he had been inspecting, so he gestured for Hermione to take the chair he had just vacated and settled himself on the edge of his bed. "Dud's still asleep, as you can see. What did you want to talk about?"

The Hunter did not immediately answer, instead glancing at the armor and weapons and then her hands for a moment. When she did finally look up, however, the hesitation that had been present in her voice was swept aside. "I need your help."

"I gathered that much. What I want to know is how and why."

"I have a… let's call it a time-sensitive job that I need to finish. There is a small town about three days ride south of here; the town itself isn't important, but its location is. It is next to one of the few mines where foslyrite can be found—"

"And that is what exactly?" Harry asked. He was no expert in gems or minerals admittedly, but he had never heard of whatever she was talking about.

"Foslyrite is a rare mineral with various magical properties. It was discovered a couple of years after the Transition, mostly because one of its main properties is that it will enhance the effects of spellcasting. What matters to me is that it can also be used in a small number of alchemical compounds, in this case one called Sandalphon's Sigh, which…" Hermione trailed off and cleared her throat. "Anyway, this is actually the reason my group and I were part of the job we just finished. We needed the money to help buy the mineral. None of us expected it would be enough on its own, however, so we planned on offering our services to the people of the town to make up the difference. Now that I'm by myself, trying to complete those jobs will be far more difficult. I hoped you and Dudley might be willing to help me with them so I can purchase the foslyrite. I don't know exactly what I could offer you in compensation yet, but I'm sure we could come to some kind of an agreement."

"Depends." The voice that answered was fully awake, not clouded by sleep, and Harry turned to find Dudley still lying in bed with his eyes closed. "What does Sandalphon's Sigh do? We aren't about to agree to anything without knowing exactly what we're getting into."

Hermione appeared reluctant to reveal that information, and Harry beat her to it with his own question. "How long have you been awake?"

"Since you got up. You were pacing around like you always do when you need to occupy your hands to get your mind off something, so I didn't say anything and let you look over our stuff. That normally works to calm you down."

Harry could not help but wonder just how many times Dudley had pulled this 'still asleep' ploy on him, and while he pondered it Dudley sat up and looked expectantly at Hermione.

"Sandalphon's Sigh is a medicine," the cat-girl finally admitted. "Probably the most powerful medicine in the world. It's said that anyone who drinks it, if they die within the day, will rise as hale and hearty as they ever were. Only once after drinking it, and it has so many rare ingredients that it's all but impossible to create even if you can find an alchemist skilled enough to make it in the first place. We – Geoff, Mikaela, a couple of others – have been hunting down the ingredients for the last several months. Foslyrite is the only one we're still missing." She hung her head. "Geoff's little sister is sick. The doctors think it is cancer of some kind, but without medicines from our old worlds, there's nothing they can do about it. We hoped that if we could get all the ingredients to an alchemist we know who can make it, we could give it to her and have her be healed."

That was a far better reason and a more complete explanation than Harry expected. Noble, really. His cousin was looking at him now, but even without asking Harry knew what Dudley's answer would be. It was the same one he had reached. "Okay."

"Okay?" Hermione asked, caution warring with relief on her face.

"Yeah. We made more money on this job than we were honestly expecting, and we don't have anything else that is exactly pressing. We'll help you out."

She smiled and dabbed at one of her eyes. "Thank you."

The sun had fully risen above the horizon when the three of them walked out of the barn where they had slept. Harry and Dudley led their mustids by the reins, the overgrown weasels already loaded with the supplies they had brought with them. Hermione, on the other hand, had a pack over her shoulder that was filled, but she was bereft of an animal upon which to throw it.

Come to think of it, Harry had not seen another mustid in the farm when they arrived the previous night, either. "Need a ride?" he asked. They would have to shift some of the gear to accommodate Hermione's, but it should be doable.

"No. I'm fine."

Before he could ask what she meant, Hermione shook out her left hand and muttered something too low for him to make out. A light breeze swirled around her for a moment before collecting into a swirling ball of gale-force winds. Harry had to cover his eyes to block out the dirt her spell was kicking up. The winds finally died down, and he looked under his hand and stared.

Mustids were the only truly useful rideable creatures on Gaia, but someone must have forgotten to tell Hermione that. What stood before them was without a doubt also the strangest beast he had ever laid eyes on. Its rear half was the more normal of the two, looking like a gigantic cat. On the other hand, it had a head like an eagle or a hawk, and steely feathers covered its body and taloned forelegs before smoothly transitioning into the grey fur on its hindquarters.

Hermione threw her saddle and saddlebags over the thing's back and tied them down. "It's called a griffon," she said in response to Harry and Dudley's dumbstruck expressions.

"Where did you find it? And how did you call it here like that?" asked Dudley.

"Nowhere important." Hermione hopped up into the saddle and gave the griffon a kick to get it moving. It became clear she had no intention of elaborating on her non-answer when she called back, "Let's get going. We're burning daylight!"

Harry shrugged his shoulders and urged his mustid to follow. Now they had a second reason to follow along and help the Hunter out: getting an actual explanation.

God, this chapter and the next one took so looooooooooong. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time writing this story right now.

Silently Watches out.