“Don’t get him started,” the younger man interjected. His tone was sullen, but his expression was one of good-natured teasing, and the older man rolled his eyes. Now that he was looking at both of them, Adrissu was certain they were father and son. “He’ll never shut up.”
“Don’t talk to me like that when I’m helping a customer,” the older man chided, laughing and shaking his head before looking at Adrissu again. “Don’t listen to him. My son just loves to make me sound like an old man losing my mind. He thinks he’ll inherit the inn faster that way.” He leaned in conspiratorially to Adrissu, but whispered loudly, so the other man would hear. “He doesn’t know I’ve already written him out of the will.”
The man snorted, rolling his eyes as he walked past, disappearing through another door. Adrissu forced a smile.
“Charming,” he sighed. “So what have you heard about this dragon, then? Have there been any recent sightings?”
“Oh, the sightings are often enough,” the older man sighed, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “Usually a few times a year, we’ll see it passing overhead, or someone will go too far into the woods and say they saw the dragon or heard it warn them to leave. Sometimes, though…” He sighed, looking away uncomfortably. “Well, sometimes it will come into the city and take people. Just one, usually. They never come back, but, well, you can imagine what would happen if a dragon snatches you up off the street, so…”
“I see,” Adrissu murmured, taking down notes. “When would you say was the last time it was spotted?”
“Hmm, maybe six or seven months ago was when it was last seen from the city, I think. More recently, I had someone come in saying they heard it in the woods and managed to escape. But it’s been a few years since it snatched anyone, thank the gods,” the man answered.
“Is the person who heard it still around? Or a traveler?”
“Oh, they’re usually travelers and adventurers, to be honest. People who live here know better than to go looking for it. Better to let sleeping dragons lie.”
“Do you know anyone in town who’s seen it? I’m hoping to learn more about it, so anyone you know who might have any insight at all would be of great help.”
The man was silent for a long while, looking pensively down at the cleaning rag he held in one hand. Adrissu waited, watching him think, until finally the man sighed and rubbed a hand over his beard.
“A few,” he said. “Your best bet is probably Daiana. She comes around here a few times a week when she’s in town, so you’re bound to run into her if you’re here long enough.”
“And who is this Daiana?” Adrissu asked, noting down her name.
“She’s a... hunter. A mercenary, sort of,” he said.
“Sort of?”
“Well, she’s not associated with any mercenary guilds, or organizations, or anything. She usually works alone and takes odd jobs, but fighting or hunting sort of jobs, you know? Mostly she hunts monsters. I guess she’s closest to a trophy hunter.”
“That sounds promising,” Adrissu said, grinning at the man. “Do you know if she’s around? Is she a resident of Wintergrove?”
“She was born here, yeah. She lives with her mother in town. I haven’t seen her in a week or two, so she’s probably due to swing by soon. She’s almost never gone for longer than a month.”
“Excellent. What does she look like?”
“She’s tall for a woman, with dark hair that she keeps back in a braid. She has a, uh, scar on her face. So, you know, pretty distinctive. You’ll recognize her when you see her. She has a certain... aura.”
Adrissu chuckled. “I can imagine. Well, thank you, sir. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Happy to help,” he said, smiling in return. When he grinned over at Adrissu, the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, making him look all the more world-weary. “I’m Luc, by the way. Shout if you need anything.”
Adrissu ended up staying in Wintergrove for several more days, waiting for the huntress to show up. In the meantime, he scoured the city’s single library, looking through its historical archives for any signs of the dragon within the city council meeting notes and announcements of major events, even through its collections of fiction and lore. There was very little to glean there, but he noticed that if the records were accurate, the red dragon had never gone longer than three years without coming into the city and taking someone away. It was always just one person, so Adrissu was sure there was no purpose behind it other than keeping the populace afraid of him—and if the pattern held, the city was due to have its next visit from the red dragon within the next several months, but he kept that to himself.
Aside from that, he asked around at the tavern, and a few of the other places in town that seemed promising, but he walked away from each of them with the same message: talk to Daiana.
On the third day, he was speaking with a burly, one-eyed man—a retired mercenary who claimed to have seen the dragon once, but his story turned out to be unremarkable. He had been deep in the woods hunting boar, when suddenly through the darkness of the trees, bright yellow eyes and blood-red scales glowered at him; and a deep, rumbling, frightful voice told him to leave before he was devoured. He had, of course, obeyed and escaped with his life.
“I’m always hoping Daiana will finally make her move against the damn reptile,” he concluded, shaking his head with a self-deprecating laugh. “I’d help her, you know. She’s a tried-and-true dragon hunter. Supposedly, she’s got three kills under her belt.”
It took every ounce of self-control Adrissu had to not physically recoil away from the man. Daiana had been described as a hunter, yes, but no one had mentioned that she’d actually killed a dragon before, much lessthree. The very thought evoked a deep, instinctual revulsion within him—after all, there were very few things capable of killing a dragon, so anything that could was met with immediate blind hate.
“Three kills?” Adrissu repeated in as mild of a tone as he could manage. “That’s... significant.”
“Well, it’s a group effort, of course, as it always is. No one could take down a dragon alone,” the man explained, scratching his bald head. “But, yes, she’s got the scale necklace and everything. No red scale yet. I keep telling her, whenever she wants to add it on, I’d join the fray. The town would think of us as heroes!”
“Of course,” Adrissu said absently, already checking out of the conversation. Was it worth it to keep waiting for the chance to speak to this woman? Did he really want to get so close to a dragon hunter? He did not think she wouldrecognize him for what he was—in fact, he was all but certain she wouldn’t—but if she had killed a dragon before, there was always the chance that she would know one when she saw one.
