The Dragons Bedtime Story (Tea Time with Granny Job)

"Behold, the intricate and subtle weaving of my cunning arcane . . . ah, screw it. Burn a lot!"

- Haretsa

The sun was beginning to slowly hide itself behind the mountain peaks as Haretsa made her way down the trail; finally setting her eyes on the Sabertooth guild tavern after a long adventure in Magnolia. Together with Triatath, the first member of her newly formed team the Swat Kats, Haretsa had rescued a rescued an innkeeper’s sister from the clutches of a bunch of perverted Vulcan’s. Once that was done, Haretsa went off on her own for a bit to do some various things, which included ending up as a mailwoman and delivering a man’s letter to a Fiore pop idol. Needless to say, Haretsa had accomplished quite a bit more than she had originally intended to when the two Sabertooth mages decided to head to Magnolia and she was perfectly ok with that.


   However, little did the young Slayer know that her adventures weren’t quite over just yet. When she placed her hand on that aged wooden door of the tavern and pushed it open, Haretsa’s eyes fell upon two women standing in the tavern whom she had never seen before. The first was quite an elderly woman who wore an elegant gold necklace overtop her royal purple sweater. As for the other girl, she was quite young in appearance with light purple hair. This woman bore the crest of the Sabertooth guild and from where Haretsa was standing, the woman was oozing an immensely powerful magic aura as well. The younger woman turned to face Haretsa, seeing the Sabertooth crest on her shoulder and giving the young girl a welcoming smile.


 The purple haired woman introduced herself as Raven Kurosaki, explaining to Haretsa that she was in fact the current guild master of Sabertooth. Given the immense magic that she could sense coming from this Raven girl, Haretsa didn’t doubt her claim in the slightest. Once Haretsa had properly introduced herself, Raven then proceeded to tell Haretsa that her timing was perfect. The guildmaster explained that something important had come up and that she was needed in Era immediately. However, Raven couldn’t just leave the elderly woman unattended after she had come so far to visit her. With many of the other guild members currently busy, Haretsa was the only person Raven could ask to look after the woman while the guildmaster attended her emergency meeting. Haretsa didn’t even have to think twice about her answer, of course she would help! It wasn’t as if this was something out of her capabilities.

    Thanking Haretsa for her cooperation, Raven ran into the back room to reconfigure the teleportation lacrima for Era. Walking over and taking a seat next to the elderly woman, Haretsa remained quiet and listened as the woman would introduce herself. ”Thank you so much for agreeing to help my dear Raven, Haretsa. She’s been ever so busy since she took up the role of being Sabertooth’s guild master that I’m surprised she even had enough time to spend with me that she did. Ah, but where are my manners. My name is Claudia. We may not be related by blood, but that girl and I are practically family. You wouldn’t happen to like stories, would you dear?” Claudia asked politely. ”I love stories!! Especially ones about dragons, unicorns, werewolves, clowns, magical fairies, guns…. That kinda stuff!” Haretsa responded enthusiastically, which then garnered a small laugh from Claudia.

”Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of stories to tell involving quite a few of those things. I know that I don’t much look like one now, but I used to be quite the mage back in my day.” Claudia began as Haretsa fidgeted around until she became comfortable. ”I can remember the very first job my husband and I ever completed back when we first joined Sabertooth. He was quite a proficient user of various different Gun Magic’s while I was a Re-Quip mage; using all kinds of different and unique weapons and armor. The first mission we undertook was to hunt down some werewolves that had been reported stalking the River Village way up to the North West of here. We didn’t have a lot of the convenient ways of travel that you youngin’s have now a days, so getting there was quite a long journey. Of course, none of those things probably would have helped much considering how sick Jerry ended up getting on mere boat rides, but I digress. After a rather uneventful week or two, we finally arrived at the River Village and spoke straight with the village’s elder. She told us that the attacks were oddly enough becoming more and more frequent despite a lack of full moons in the area. While werewolves can transform without a full moon, they only forcefully transform during those times and become extremely ferocious; which matched the explanation of the beasts that the elder had given to us. Jerry and I both came to the conclusion that someone, or something, had to be forcefully manipulating the people to transform against their own wills.”

Haretsa quickly adjusted herself in her seat, swinging herself around so that she was upside down in the chair; her eyes glued on Claudia as she continued to listen intently to the elderly woman’s story. ”We spent the entire day planning our countermeasure to the werewolves. Whether it was due to his blatantly obvious hero complex or he actually believed that it was a good idea I still don’t know to this day, but Jerry suggested that it would be best if he stayed and defended the village while I went out to try and find who or what was manipulating the werewolves. I was naturally concerned for his safety at first obviously, taking on an unknown number of mentally unstable and moody werewolves was practically suicide; but we weren’t some weak greenhorn mages either. He did explain that beast manipulation magic was still extremely unexplored even by the most knowledgeable mages of our time, so the one controlling them would have to be relatively close to the town in whatever direction they came from. After a bit of a verbal dispute, Jerry somehow managed to convince me to go along with his plan and we went our ways; Jerry setting up as the distraction in the middle of the town with me hiding out in the bushes near the villages east gate.

   Luckily enough for me, that just so happened to be the exact direction that the attack came from. The very moment he saw the werewolves, Jerry began firing off his guns and hoppin’ and hollering like a damn fool to keep their attention on him at all times. Miraculously, the whole thing worked perfect and all ten of the beasts began chasing him around the village as if he was their dinner. I hesitated for a brief moment, wondering if I should go help him or not, but I quickly shook the hesitation out of my head and took off towards the east in search of the culprit. Sure enough, I felt a magic power roughly about a half a mile or so away from the town and headed straight towards it. As I got closer and closer to the source of magic power, I realized just how weak the mage I was approaching was. The little bastard was no where near as strong as I was, which was incredibly confusing because it made me think as to how exactly he would be controlling ten werewolves at once. When I found him hiding out behind a rock, I got my answer to that question. He was holding in his hand a rather odd, moon shaped rock that was glowing blood red as he looked up at me; his face instantly changing from a smug expression to one of complete and utter fear. I didn’t even have to use any of my magic to subdue that stupid little shithead. I just walked right on up to him, grabbed the stone from his hands and planted my foot firmly into his face and pinned him to the ground that way.

  I stood there for a few moments, wondering how exactly I could use the stone so that I could calm the werewolves down and transform them back into humans. Having no clue how to use the damn thing, I simply went with the first idea that popped into my head. I held the stone up high above my head and poured my magic into it; simply thinking for the werewolves to stop in their tracks and calm down. A few seconds later, all the commotion that had been coming from the village stopped entirely, so I rushed back as fast I could with the little brat Dark Mage slung over my shoulders. Sure enough, the first thing I see when I get back to the village is Jerry with claw marks all across his chest, standing ‘triumphantly’ on one of the now unconscious werewolves and waving to me with the most ridiculous smile on his face. After I yelled at him a bit more for being reckless, we got our money from the elder and brought the werewolves and the punk ass Dark Mage all the way back to Era for the Rune Knights to deal with.

  I know it wasn’t the most exciting story ever, but that’s how our first mission went.” Claudia said, receiving a surprising response from the young cream haired girl before her. ”I thought it was freaking cool!” she exclaimed, repositioning herself once more so that she was sitting upright. ”You made that little punk ass bitch rot in a jail cell for what he was doing, which is a good thing ‘cuz he just wanted to hurt people. I wanna go protect people from werewolves too someday. Can you tell another story!?” she asked enthusiastically. ”You remind me a lot of myself at your age! Alright, another story it is! I remember this one time when Jerry and I...“

  The tavern clock rang midnight by the time Raven managed to return to the guild. Much to her surprise, the first thing she saw was Haretsa asleep like a rock at the bar and Claudia with a pint of ale half gone in her hands. The elderly woman turned her head towards the young guild master with a smile. She went on to explain that Haretsa was a very good listener and that all of Claudia’s stories finally managed to make the young girl tired. Claudia wasn’t even sure which of them would get tired first the story telling was going on for that long. With a sigh, Raven walked over to the unconscious little Dragon Slayer, noticing the incredibly happy smile that was on her face as she slept. The guild master then sat down next to Claudia and continued their visit where they had left off several hours earlier; letting the sleeping Dragon lie.

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