Goodbyes with Oma and Opa would be bittersweet, but Hallvar was reassured that the pair would certainly see them again.

In his letter, Viktor informed the old elf that "Stella and her dog" would be in attendance as a proxy, since the Guildmaster was Amnasín-bound.

There were rising tensions between Kovatelli and Amnasín due to the de-royaling of Cyciphos, which meant the guildmasters' meeting would be moved.

Brigavalé, Staareaux, and the Qhai Republic were the primary options since it was ill-advised to send the "dog" through Kovatelli.

Hallvar hated to be the center of this controversy, but it wasn't like Viktor said anything outright.

He simply suggested, in his acerbic tone, that inciting violence by sending Amnasín guild members through Kovatelli, when such guild members were involved in the dethroning, was a terrible idea.

A dozen guildmasters could easily reroute, Oma noted, even if they complained on paper about it. She didn't know about Hallvar's involvement with Cyciphos; she was stating facts to the hero since they would be the one traveling.

It was Oma's hope that Stella and Hallvar would come to Brigavalé, but she knew it would probably be relocated to Staareaux.

A pity.

The old elf and the beastmaster hadn't become best friends in their time as translator and foreigner, but Oma gleaned a little personal information from their interactions.

Not that Hallvar was secretive. Quite the opposite.

The hero enjoyed spending time with Opa Lenz – "grandfather" Lenz – in their little free time.

The mage Tyrus was kind enough to deliver some personal effects, so the beastmaster had access to their notebook and pen. While Opa Lenz worked, Hallvar would draw or otherwise take notes.

There were nights when Oma would finish her duties and go to check on Lenz, only to find Hallvar deep in a one-sided conversation with the man.

Oma eavesdropped, as was the hobby of most people over the age of seventy, and learned a few things about the hero.

That they were nervous about how they looked.

Hallvar queried the Brigavalé guild members as best they could, holding up a leather half mask or nothing at all, trying to get them to pick which they preferred.

The half mask was a frequent choice; most Valiens could not look past the hero's berggeist introduction, so the occasional glimpse of fangs was unnerving.

So, Hallvar began wearing the mask, tying it on the side with a quickly released knot instead of straps, in the event of an emergency.

It was a simple thing, found in one of the markets that resold foreigner's gear. That day, the hero asked the guildmaster for more quests, hoping to buy something else from the market, something much more valuable.

Oma overheard the answer to this mystery while eavesdropping once more.

Stella was not merely the guildmaster-in-training. She was Hallvar's partner. She was also an elf.

The hero was scared of the aging issue. It was something Oma was deeply familiar with, but she couldn't address Hallvar directly about the matter. No, if anything, she could nudge this Stella into a conversation in the future, at the guildmaster's meeting.

But it was endearing to hear the hero discuss their partner openly, even if they knew Lenz didn't understand most Sínisch.

Hallvar wanted as much time as they could get with the elf. They knew that marriage was largely symbolic in Aestrux, but it was something that felt important to the hero regardless.

They'd found a hiwode brooch.

It was too early, they said. Way too early. Irrationally too early.

Yet…

It was the style, Hallvar claimed half-heartedly. The brooch was a style Hallvar knew Stella would love and they didn't know when they would be back in Brigavalé, so it was only smart to get it now and have it for later.

That was the reasoning, of course. Nothing more.

Hallvar wanted as much time as they could get with Stella, and the one way they could guarantee that their existence with her would be more than a few seconds of time was to provide a tangible object as proof that they were together.

Lenz didn't need to understand the words to commiserate. He examined the brooch with interest and looked at Hallvar's sketch of the elf in the journal, when shown.

After a grandfatherly pat on the shoulder, Lenz left to fetch an object. He gave Oma a kiss on the cheek as he passed the eavesdropping elf, having no qualms about the petty snooping.

When Opa Lenz returned, Oma was required to step in.

There was no hand gesture or drawing that could translate the complex meaning of the small, tooled gold ornament Lenz showed the hero. He held it up to his ear, indicating that it could be attached on the rim, where Lenz had a nearly hidden hole punched out of the cartilage.

"It is a good luck talisman," Oma said, causing Hallvar to nearly fall over as they went from peering at Opa Lenz' ear to standing upright, trying to find the location of the guildmaster.

"It is a shared tradition in the mountainous north. Once married, you wear the talisman on your ear to protect you from the ill wishes of others."

Hallvar was bewildered, lost for words at being exposed to someone who actually understood what they were saying, and the implications of it all. They turned a beet-red in embarrassment.

Opa Lenz was quick to hide a smile from the poor child, though Oma caught sight of it.

"Was the hiwode brooch expensive?"

The guildmaster was curious. She provided several high-paying quests to Hallvar when asked, since the weather and seasonal conditions prevented regular adventurers from performing normal quests – but not the berggeist.

Hunting elk was difficult in Valien springs and summer due to the mountainous terrain, but in winter it was practically impossible. The same could be said for finding vetta root and other herbal components that didn't rely on green forage.

So, normal quests that would ordinarily have normal pay became high value when the snow was more than a few inches deep.

Hallvar also received a bonus for investigating the dragon situation, as the shadow of not one, but three dragon's flights spooked Valiens across the country.

"Er," Hallvar said, trying to do the mental math of their expenditures when a second currency was involved. The furious embarrassment did not provide a clear mind for doing math.

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"I think so," they conceded.

They listed out the Valien monetary amount for Oma; she held out a hand, asking to inspect the brooch since it was indeed expensive, and Hallvar was a kind but ignorant foreigner.

It was of good quality, excellent even.

The hiwode shape was like a horseshoe, and in this instance, it was a horseshoe made of gold. The hiwode had geometric engravings along the full length with a black patina inlaid.

In the center of the bottom curve was a diamond-shaped emerald. On either side were flowers made of petal-shaped pearls and leaves made of gold.

The flowers were repeated at the top of the hiwode, cleverly hiding the fastening pin mechanism.

A strand of black-patina metal crossed the center in a matching arch. Since this was a more elegant, refined version of the brooch, the beads were mounted separately from the hiwode so they could be interchanged easily. It allowed the hiwode shape to be purely decorative and detailed.

Oma approved.

She doubted the hero had enough cultural context to realize this, but Hallvar choose a hiwode brooch that was considered classy and elegant, a style suitable across central and western Aestrux.

It was Valien in design, yes, but it would not look out of place in Amnasín.

The pearls were the primary indicator – Brigavalé's freshwater pearls were typically white or iridescent in nature, whereas the Qhai Republic only had saltwater pearls, but golden in color. And Amnasín was known for pink and grey pearls.

Oma handed the brooch back to the very nervous hero who was doing their best to read into the stoic, unmoved expression on the guildmaster's face.

"She is much loved," Oma stated matter-of-factly, correcting herself almost immediately. "That is poor Sínisch, I am certain. Is it accurate to say you are in love with her?"

The elf's question was linguistic; Hallvar's understanding was confidential.

Hallvar could list the reasons why they loved Stella:

- She was kind and thoughtful, in the way that partners should care about each other; - She genuinely cared about strangers and their well-being, as evidenced by the months of Hallvar's communication barrier; - She was painfully, wonderfully clever in fields of study that Hallvar could only guess at; - She was competent at her job, and competency was always hot no matter what job; - She knew what she wanted and how to communicate exactly that, even when Hallvar lacked the awareness and charisma to be smart; - She was very affectionate with Pipkin, and Hallvar was a sucker for a sweetheart who loved animals; - She was Viktor's choice for future Guildmaster for a reason, in that Viktor may be a sharp dagger wielded at anyone who stepped out of line, but that didn't make Stella a soft, little flower in comparison, as she was more akin to a blade that was persistent and functional and wielded when necessary, not at all times.

And that was a brief analysis of their feelings, summoned as a quick justification for buying a hiwode brooch.

There was her laugh, the little gap between her front teeth, how she smelled, how she hummed, how cute she looked when she was focused on penning a letter.

How open and willing she was to change, especially change made on Hallvar's end. How she did not fault the hero for the machinations of the fates or the system, despite that their luck provided equal parts horror and wonder to them.

They answered with a bit of stutter. "I mean… yes, of course? It– I'm sure people marry for lots of reasons, but I guess I'm a romantic at heart."

The unreadable stare Hallvar received from the old woman was familiar. It was either something intuitively shared between guildmasters and people of authority, or it was just a natural reaction to stupid shit.

"Lenz showed you the warding piercing." Oma touched the edge of her ear to illustrate the point. "If you wish to share in this tradition, I may write a letter in Valien to the artisan, for your convenience."

With that, she left. Opa Lenz squeezed the poor hero on their shoulder before following along.

–

The internal accusation of accidentally becoming a wannabe pirate/viking was not fading.

Hallvar stood along the ridge of a mountain, looking back across the white-capped landscape of Brigavalé toward where Alvgarten should be. It was hidden by distance, snowfall and fog clouding their view.

The wind was cutting, frozen. Even Queenie was keen to move, huffing as her kjerrborn dad inhabited the strange two-legged form for no reason other than to linger.

Although technically not yet a beast companion, the new arrival Kamin sat on the kjerrborn's back like a cat loaf, chilled by the cold but thickly furred to survive Valien winters.

He coped better than Pipkin, who was nestled in a fur-lined pouch attached to Queenie's collar. It was extra insulated and a much better travel option than a fat-fold in the young kjerrborn's neck – or Hallvar's, as they weren't consistently a beast.

Everything was accounted for. Hallvar had all their new treasures, plus a parcel of Valien tea for Rubert, neatly tucked into their bag which was close enough to their body to shapechange with them.

They went through a brief trial and error with Oma's permission. One of the more curious scholar-adventurers was Hallvar's escort as they rifled through the guild storage, trying on different armor pieces and changing forms.

Cloth and leather armor were permitted by the beastshaper subclass, but plate armor and chain mail were not. It was not about the material, as the leather armor's metal loops and buckles were unaffected, but instead about the rigidity of the clothing itself.

Hallvar's dagger and axe were completely fine during shapechanging, but they were not molded to fit around limbs like plate armor and chain mail were.

Q nipped at the hero's hand to remind them that the beasts were waiting to move off the ridge and get away from this biting cold. Hallvar grabbed her muzzle and wiggled their hand a bit, affectionately harassing the kjerrborn.

They chose to stretch out into the qitta form, spine splitting midway to grow a new ribcage, a new pair of limbs. The qitta needed more breaks than the kjerrborn, but it had much better senses in comparison.

And Hallvar refused to be caught off-guard again by a beasthunter.

With fresh eyes – well… eye – the world opened up to Hallvar. Before they appreciated the beauty of color and shapes in the distance; now, they could see what lay before them.

Drac Dumon spilled onto the landscape as a boreal forest, rolling downhill from the high elevation tundra perched on the edge of the Staargraven. In the far distance, the trees faded into an alpine grassland, flat and snowy in this winter, but undoubtedly colored with yellow green in other seasons.

The stretch of Drac Dumon that the beastmaster and their companions needed to cross was slim, a small fragment of the landscape, of the entire journey.

Yet, it was a stroke of luck that Hallvar was able to witness the exact reason why Drac Dumon was persistently unoccupied and labeled as a separate, ungoverned land.

The hero recognized the white dragon from before, when it helped Rodu with the head-ripping. The other two dragons were new, however.

A serpent with blue-flame hair sliced through the snow-clouds, the crack of magical wind breaking the sound barrier echoing across the landscape as the dragon attacked another.

The white dragon hovered with its back to Hallvar, an area of increased snowfall obscuring its activities.

And bound to the landscape, a massive ox-like dragon with curved tusks and horns roared, challenging the flying creature to come down.

Nothing happened outside of blustering and threatening, even though Hallvar watched for quite some time, even stopping to sketch the dragons as they… quarreled.

Was this just a territory thing? Or were they, uh, playing? Roughhousing? Maybe they were having a very physical argument or something.

When Hallvar moved on, the landscape shifted slightly. It became mostly pastoral lands, rocky outcroppings of tectonic shifts as the land crept closer to the Staargraven.

There wasn't much to see here. Hallvar spotted smoke in the near distance, but their eyesight was not so good as to see the source. That was a job for the fish hawk, and it was mostly just inconvenient for Hallvar to shapechange to spy on the locals.

They hunted small game like rabbits and chased down a mountain ruminant to feed the entire family. It was very large, like… small bear-sized and proportioned, but with a sheep-shaped head and horns.

Very hairy. Very tasty.

Their travel across Staareaux began to draw closer to the strange dragon's lair, the one with a square, monumental building instead of the typical cave that Hallvar would expect.

Well, Rodu had an entire island, but if Hallvar's judge of size was accurate across all these sightings of dragons, Rodu was the largest so far.

The threat radiated from the building

It was intense since the beastmaster was travelling just above its walls, out of easy reach but certainly within view of their beast companions – it was on Hallvar's right and largely hidden as they ambled along as a kjerrborn.

They pondered if dragons grew over prolonged periods of time, such as growing even larger after sexual maturity, or if they hit their size and maintained it much like humans.

That would explain why Rodu was comparatively large. Or maybe the big dragon was always that size.

Kamin stood upright suddenly on Queenie's back, alarmed by a motion downhill that Hallvar couldn't see. The alert was missed by the beastmaster, as they had no system connection with the augazaur and walked in front of the others, leading the herd along.

Hallvar did hear the alarmed huff from the other kjerrborn, in addition to the jangle of the cowbell on her neck as she bounded off to the side away from–

The hero turned suddenly toward the monument, the massive kjerrborn boar looking normal sized as the yellow dragon flared out her wings in preparation for landing on the mountainous ridge.

Hallvar had no choice but to face the danger head on, standing on their hind legs and emitting a bellow that might have been scary if the opponent wasn't a dragon.

They couldn't run. If they ran, the dragon might choose to go after the smaller kjerrborn instead. So, it came down to this.

While standing, Hallvar felt much more confident. Their head heights were comparable, only a foot or so difference from the dragon's horns and wings.

They could take the dragon. They might not win if the dragon was equipped with fire or magic. But they could defend themselves.

The sound of Queenie's posturing bellows and Pipkin's angry screes were drowned out by a bell-like voice in the beastmaster's head.

"You."

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