"Hey Lith, mind giving me a hand before we go get our dinner?" Friya asked.
"No problem. What's the matter?" Lith stood up, feeling a little light headed.
"Are you alright? You are way paler than when we met earlier." Friya cast her best diagnostic spell on him before he could even open his mouth.
"Just tired from almost dying. No biggie." He shrugged.
Friya was happy when her spell confirmed that he was perfectly fine, just a bit famished. Yet the dying part made her flinch.
"Forget about my problem. What the heck is going on here? How did you put yourself in trouble so fast?"
"Off the record? Because it's Ranger business, so I need you to keep it a secret." Lith replied.
'If I have to ask for her help, I need to tell her everything. Otherwise I could endanger her life for nothing.' He thought.
"Sure. I'm your friend before being an adventurer." She said while forcing him to sit on his bed and giving him some beef jerky.
Lith told her about his new mission concerning the Church and how an assassin had ambushed him while he was on recon.
"Good gods!" Friya blurted out.
"Your Skinwalker Armor is superior even to a Ranger uniform, yet you're saying this guy had poisoned weapons capable of piercing it?"
"Worse. Even the venom was enchanted and the Kingdom has very few alchemists capable of creating such a thing." Lith pointed out.
"You said you took one of them before retreating. Can I see it? If we identify its design or the venom, we could get some clues about the assassin's identity." Friya said.
"No. If I take it out from my dimensional item, I risk them learning my position. Tracking spells are common for precious weapons, not to mention the possibility of a self destruct spell. Assassins aren't supposed to leave clues behind." Lith shook his head while munching.
"True. How many people knew you are in Zantia? I mean, you arrived just a few hours ago and now there's a snowstorm. How the heck did the assassin made it here in time?"
"Good point." Lith nodded. "Only Kamila, the city guards, Count Cestor, Viscount Krame, and your men knew about me." He stressed the last two possibilities, making her turn pale.
"Why would Krame put a bounty on your head?"
"For the same reason he doesn't want me here. To get Zantia for himself. If I solve the problems with the church and the illness, he would lose the merits from exposing the Count's collusion with the church and with them the chance of becoming the next city Lord."
Friya was about to ask why Lith suspected her men too when she realized she already knew the answer all too well. Money. The idea of having a traitor in her guild made her furious, even more so since it wasn't the first time.
"Calm down, Friya. I'm just looking at all the possible angles. My main suspect is someone else." He said as she bit her lower lip out of frustration.
"The Count? After all, he turned off his communication amulet after requesting your assistance. That way, he forced you to come even if he wanted to cancel the mission and had all the time to call for an assassin." She said.
"My thoughts exactly. The only loophole in this reasoning is that he had no way to know the snowstorm would stop me from leaving. Anyway, what do you need my help with?"
"Duluth, the Viscount youngest son, has the Griever again. It makes no sense since we kept him home all the time and checked the preparation of his meals. I said the others it's just the flu to buy some time. I need a second opinion." She said.
"Fine. If you screwed up, you owe me dinner." After eating the jerky, Lith had realized how hungry he was. Between the adrenaline rush and his paranoia, he had forgotten that Invigoration was helpless to replenish the nutrients lost after healing.
"And if I didn't?"
"You owe me dinner anyway. You can't put a price on your pride as a Healer, can you? That would make you stoop to my level." Lith's reply made her laugh, yet she didn't yield.
"No way. With an assassin around, you need my help, so this makes us even at best."
She Warped them outside Duluth's door, making the two guards she had left outside point their weapons at their throats out of surprise. Lith caught both short swords between his fingers, locking them into place like they were just pesky flies.
"At ease, guys. No need to make a scene every time." Friya sighed as she took a mental note to kick them out of her guild. Them being on alert was a good sign, the rage in their eyes instead of relief once they recognized her, not so much.
'Having failed to learn dimensional magic even though they attended one of the six great academies seems to bother them to no end. If they get any sourer than this, I'm sure "accidents" will happen.' She thought.
"Sorry, boss." Said a blonde mage with a snarl. She could barely stand Friya casually flaunting her dimensional magic instead of walking as any normal person would. Lith blocking her swing with just three fingers added insult to the injury.
Yet Friya didn't Warp just for showing off. The Viscount's Mansion had many floors and extended for hundreds of meters. With an ill patient waiting for her, she had no time to waste coddling her subordinates' feelings.
When they walked through the door, Lith whistled in appreciation. Doluth's room was actually an apartment bigger than his own house. Every piece of furniture was made from the finest materials and had the Krame family crest engraved on it.
'I can clearly see the hand of a true artisan at work and the ego of a true self-centered asshole messing with him. He's so stingy that he preferred masterpieces to look tacky rather than risking them being stolen.' Lith thought.
'Oh yeah? What's the difference between the two of you?' Solus giggled at Lith criticizing someone for being stingy and paranoid.
'I don't wear glasses.' His reply made her laugh harder.
The hallway also served as a living room, with several padded sofas arranged around a square table with a cigar box and a tray full of flower petals on it. The wood of the sofa was painted gold, while the silk covering them was deep green, to match the pattern of the precious carpet covering most of the floor.
The walls were pristine white, emphasizing the gold of which were made or coated all the ornaments in the room, even the frames of the paintings decorating the place.
After entering inside a bedroom similarly decorated and with more gold than a jewelry store, Lith expected the king sized bed to host a profligate teen. Yet Doluth was barely ten years old, with black hair like his father and covered in sweat.
Lith chanted some gibberish and activated Invigoration, performing a full body scan of the child.
"Are you sure this is the Griever? It takes a tier one spell to cure it." Lith said,
"Yeah. It's the fourth time in less than two weeks, so I'm pretty sure. Fever, bloodshot eyes, weakness, and black spots on his chest." Friya lifted the bedsheets and the youth's nightgown revealing what looked like oversized blackheads.
"I have good news and I have bad news. Which do you want to hear first?" He asked after creating a Hush zone around the two of them.
