The Innkeeper

While Tiffany slept, Lex went through the books in the small room. Most of them were children’s stories about heroic and magnanimous beasts helping and guiding the humans to safety. Others were on random subjects such as herbology or carpentry, to biographies of some Beast Alphas who had a great influence on humans, both for the better and worse. Naturally, Lex used the books as a database to feed his Fancy monocle with some knowledge of this world.

Furthermore, while a lot of the stories were surely fictional, Lex was able to piece out the history of this world, at least in regards to humans. They truly were at the lowest step of the food chain, living like nomads in the most desolate places to avoid wild beasts. At some point in history a few tribes either tried to domesticate, or rescued young beasts and raised them as a part of the tribe. The exact details could only be guessed, but the basic story was that the first time humans came out of hiding was when a Beast Alpha was born that considered itself a part of a human tribe.

It gave them territory and protected them, and allowed them to grow and prosper. Under their new found protection, humans thrived and prospered, and slowly started coming out of the stone age. They created villages and communities, and as their knowledge grew what they developed a symbiotic relationship with the Beasts that protected them. Their study of different environments as well as farming and medicine allowed them to aid the cultivation of not only the Beast Alphas, but Beasts of all cultivation stages. Slowly other Alpha’s also learnt of the benefits of letting humans manage their territories, and thus humans went from being an almost extinct species on this planet to coveted workers. Of course each Alpha had a different way of using humans, but the trend had been established. This same trend had been going on for thousands and thousands of years, and the positions of humans had been cemented at the bottom. Occasionally some lucky humans would encounter some spiritual fruits of treasures that would enhance and strengthen their bodies, making them stronger than mortals, but not only was such progress inconsistent and irreplicable, the benefit was not strong enough to give humans independent territory of their own.

All these details were simply what Lex had surmised from reading the various books, and could be wrong. He would have to investigate more to find out. And speaking of investigating…_.

“Hey Tiffany, wake up,” Lex said as he woke up the young girl. It had been a couple of hours, and though he had no doubt that she could sleep more, he didn’t want to waste anymore time. The quicker he helped her complete her task, the better his reward would be. And who knew how long it would take to get to the capital? Not to mention he doubted her pursuers would give up so easily.

Waking up the young girl was an ordeal of its own, but he finally managed to do it by telling her the longer they took the more danger the Lord Protector would be in. Then came an issue that Lex did not anticipate. The capital was likely far away so he asked if there was a place where they could get horses. That was where the issue came in, no one on this planet could conceive a human riding an animal or a beast. Even if it were a normal animal and not a spirit beast, riding atop it would antagonize any beast that saw it. Hunting for food was acceptable, enslaving or using for domestic purposes was not. That meant he would have to run all the way to the village, from where he could trade for a cycle. After some effort Lex convinced Tiffany to climb onto his back as he would be faster and departed at a light jog. Tiffany tried to guide him through the wild, insisting that she knew this place well enough to avoid any danger but Lex ignored her and directly returned towards the dirt road.

“Hey wait, head that way,” Tiffany said excitedly from Lex’s shortly after they left. They head towards a tree with its bark covered in some kind of vine. Not waiting to explain, Tiffany reached out and grabbed one of the vines, ripped one of the leaves in half and rubbed the sap all over her hands.

“You try it as well,” she said, sniffing her hands with a smile. Lex, curious as to her intentions, did the same. When he rubbed the sap from the leaf on his hands he felt a cooling sensation entering his body from his hands, relaxing him. In a few moments he was completely refreshed, and the slight fatigue he had accumulated completely disappeared.

“Smell your hands,” Tiffany said, still doing the same. Lex raised his hands expectantly and was welcomed by a pleasant aroma. It smelled similar to Night Jasmine, but more than the aroma Lex was enthralled by the cooling sensation he felt entering his brain. It lasted only a few seconds, but he was hooked.

“What is that?” Lex asked, breaking another leaf and squeezing the sap into his hands.

“I call it Tiffanys treasure, although I don’t know what other people call it. I love the smell and it feels so good, and look, it’s so good for the skin!” She showed him her hand where she previously had a scratch from last night, however the sap was visibly healing her hand. In a few minutes, there would be no trace of the wound having ever existed.

Watching her hand as if he was watching a miracle, Lex suddenly had an idea.

“Do you know what the seed for Tiffany’s Treasure looks like?”

The young girl nodded, completely ignoring the fact that she was on his back and Lex could not see her. But at the moment, neither of them cared. They both were distracted by their own ideas.

*****

In a dark room a large, brown fox lay comfortably on an equally large pillow. There were no torches in the room, and the few windows had curtains drawn in front of them. There was no other furniture or other decoration in the room, as if the fox was supposed to be the only and main attraction. The silence was broken, however, by the sound of an opening door followed by a man dressed in black entering and sitting on his knees before the large fox.

“My lord, there’s a report from the Eastern Temple in the Red Nation. All the priests have been captured, but a human child witnessed the event and escaped. So far we have been unable to capture the child.”

The fox lazily opened a single eye and looked at the man in front of her, before saying, “tell me, are human children traditionally faster than the adults? They must be, otherwise why would none of your people be unable to capture the child?”

“No my lord! The child was just lucky! My men chased after the child, but in the darkness they were slowed down in the forest. A couple times they almost caught the child, but they happened to run into wild beasts and had to fend them off. In the end the child ran into another human who we believe has taken a strengthening fruit. They were able to run away faster than my men could keep up. Fortunately the man did not know how to hide his tracks. My men are chasing after them as we speak. I believe in a few hours, both the child and man will be captured.”

The fox looked at the desperate face the man before her was making, and thought for a few moments. Finally she said, “send word to the Brown Bari Wolf pack. Tell them I want the entire pack after the two humans. Also send word back to the Iron Mountains, tell them moving forward they should assume that details of our actions in Red Nation have been leaked. Speed up the infiltration, and don’t hesitate to use drastic measures if necessary.”

“But my lord,” the man cried out, gripped in fear, “we can capture the two humans. We can! We won’t let the news leak!”

“Even if you capture them now, there’s no guarantee that they haven’t spread the news already, or sent some kind of message. Since you lost sight of them, assume the news has already disseminated. Do not try to cover up your failures, and do not be afraid to make changes to the plan. Now go, I want to continue napping.”

The man’s entire body trembled as he accepted his orders, and left the room to carry out his orders. Compared to other spirit beasts, this fox was very calm and didn’t bother with unnecessary details. But once news of his failure made its way back to the Iron Mountains, there was no way he would escape punishment, and in the Iron Mountains the lightest punishment for humans was death.

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