Better you than me, dearest. 

Laila's next step after re-summoning Jay is indeed packing up her things, or more accurately, haphazardly scurrying around the cramped attic bedroom above her teacher's workshop and gathering up her small number of personal possessions. Gather coins and biscuits into robe pockets, check; strap knife to leg, check; shove notes and inkwell-case and half a block of cheese into embroidered satchel, check; don dramatic swooshy hooded travel-cloak, check; pick up painstakingly carved staff, check. Ta-da, a wizard prepared for travel. 

Probably. 

You look very regal, Jay says loyally, regarding her from his perch on the recently-cleared desk. Where are we going, again? 

Well, first, the guard post, the Captain said he had a couple other people who wanted in, but after that -  

She scribbles a note and pins it with a bit of clay to the bookshelf:

On a quest, paid the rent through Solstice, send if you need anything -- L 

- after that, we're getting on a boat. 

A boat! Gosh! What! So exciting!!! 

Laila loves her ridiculous tiny thrill-seeking fae creature very much. 

It's a short walk down the road from the market district to the guard captain's post, where she promised to show up around sunrise. Along the way, she fidgets with the straps of her satchel and her staff, trying to make them sit nicely and not shift too much when she moves her shoulders. Can't have your outfit falling apart while you're trying to look like a professional. 

"Good morning!" she greets the door guard sunnily, earning a vague, slightly sleepy wave in return as she glided by, and then stops dead in her tracks. 

Excuse me, is that - 

"Light be upon you," says the demon. 

She rather towers over the watchmaster, with broad shoulders, heavy-looking horns, and wings that, even politely folded, nearly brush the ceiling. However, she is smiling in a very sincerely friendly fashion, and has a bright golden sun-disc emblazoned on the front of her tabard. It clashes bizarrely with her faintly scaled red skin and short, acid-purple hair. 

Next to the big demon there is also a smaller one, almost offensively orange, wearing handcuffs with a chain stretching some distance and fastened to her belt. Unlike his compatriot (or perhaps jailer), he has cloven-hooved goat's legs, and is just about Laila's size, aside from the tall, spiralling horns. The distinctly less friendly way he is smiling makes it very hard to ignore the fact that he has fangs that could probably tear a small animal cleanly in half.

??????? pit fiend ?????????????

" ... and ... to ... you?" hazards Laila, blinking rapidly. 

"Delmirev Serra, sword of Lathander, at your service," with a polite incline of the head. "I am told there is a woman who may need to be rescued from pirates?" 

Jay has obviously never met a pit fiend in person, but this woman sure does look like the pictures in that one book. He flutters anxiously on Laila's shoulder. 

Laila has several questions, but the first one that comes out of her mouth, somehow, is, "Wait, isn't Delmirev the northern dragonkin clan?" 

" ... yes?" 

“She thinks she’s a dragon,” stage-whispers the prisoner.

Serra shoots him a glare only slightly less poisonous than her hair. “My parents were proud children of the clan Delmirev and so am I,” she insists, crossing her arms.

Okay! Great! Definitely not in any way questioning that!

"It's lovely to meet you, Serra. My name is Laila and I am a student of the arcane. This is my familiar, Jay. I don't know much more than you about the situation, maybe the watchmaster could enlighten us?" 

The watchmaster can totally do that! He is definitely not in any way freaked out about how he asked the church of Lathander for a paladin and they sent him demons. Nope. Totally fine over here. 

He explains at length that, a ways off the coast, there is an island containing a fairly well-fortified pirate town. This has historically been largely ignored by their local leadership - it's far enough away that most of their attacks are focused on other neighboring polities, and merchant ships mostly just sigh and price the risk of pirate attacks into the cost of sailing through the area. It was been rumored that the pirates have a young dragon working with them, and unfortunately, the rumors were confirmed at the same time as the situation abruptly became much more urgent: the mayor's daughter, always something of a free spirit, had apparently encountered the dragon and some of its minions, tried to seduce the dragon, and been kidnapped. Naturally, they now suddenly had funding to rally together a fleet, but scouts had reported that a direct frontal assault would be fairly unwise, because of the surprisingly well-manned signal towers. 

His clever idea, therefore, was to send a small strike team in first to disable the night watch on one side of the island, and then mount a surprise attack. 

"That kinda sounds more like an organized ... town ... than like a bunch of pirates," objects Laila. "How sure are we that they aren't mostly innocent?" 

"Kidnappers and attackers of merchant ships are not innocent." 

"Yeah, but that's just the people that leave the town, I mean, I'm not saying I think it's entirely ethical to live in a town economically based on piracy but the people who live there are probably mostly basically civilians." 

"Surely our honorable fleets would not harm civilians." 

"I really hope not!" 

Pointed look at the watchmaster. 

"Of course not," he assures them. "Enemy combatants only, and our primary goal is distraction and rescue." 

Suuuuuure it is. 

"Fair enough. When do we leave? I'm all set." 

"We are prepared to leave at once." 

Wait, we? 

Good question. 

"Er, is your ... prisoner ... joining us?" 

"She can't very well leave me here, can she?" 

"Alas, I very much cannot. Ashoc is my charge until and unless the Church is able to find a safer way of keeping him contained." 

The watchmaster politely shoos them in the direction of the harbor with instructions about which ship to board.

"Not that I'm questioning the Church's decisions or anything, but doesn't that seem like it would make it dangerous to do other things that might distract you?" 

Deep sigh. 

"They're a little under-staffed." 

"Also, I am totally not dangerous, at all, I don't know what you're talking about." 

Boarding the correct ship goes without incident.

The first mate, who has either been warned about the totally-not-a-pit-fiend or is so jaded he just doesn't care, perfunctorily assigns them bunks, recites the rules about mealtimes and staying out of the way until the boating part is done and it's time for them to do Adventurer Nonsense, and leaves them to wait. 

"So what'd he do," Laila wants to know, when they've settled into a reasonably out of the way corner. 

 Waaait a sec. 

Are you seriously thinking he might be innocent?? Look at his TEETH. 

Look, if there's anything I know about the Church it's that they jump to conclusions real damn fast about people who look like him. 

After all, sometimes nobody's quite as uniquely prejudiced as someone determined to prove themselves an exception. 

Serra tapped absently on the chain, as if to test its strength. Her prisoner could go no more than about six feet from her. "Killed somebody," she said shortly. 

"Just one guy, he wasn’t even important." 

Ah-huh. 

"And! I turned myself in, and everything! I am appropriately penitent and I do not deserve this treatment at all." 

"Yes, turning up in my temple with the dismembered remains of an innocent shopkeep and claiming you wanted to try jail because you thought it’d be fun was completely appropriate behavior." 

Jay will just be over here, further away than six feet, feeling highly justified in that thing he said earlier about teeth. 

... there's not a whole lot of chance this was just a misunderstanding, is there. "I see." 

Laila spends much of the trip going over her notes, trying to guess what she'll need to have on hand. Fire, much as she loves it, probably isn't her best bet for a stealth mission - she wants sleep charms, and shields. 

And she wants levitation, damn it, she's almost got that figured out, too...  

Serra, for complete lack of better things to do once she's polished her shield and sharpened her sword and done her morning prayers, tries to teach Ashoc to play the reed pipes. 

For some reason, instead of music, this inevitably produces hellish cacophony. Reed pipes shouldn't even be able to do that. 

Why this!! 

Jay gets his wizard to turn him into a petrel instead of a crow and flies around practicing catching small fish. This is way better than having to be around the not-a-pit-fiend and her alarming prisoner who doesn't seem to be able to sustain a non-bloodthirsty facial expression for longer than three consecutive seconds. 

Eventually, they are nearing the point where they must disembark into a rowboat and sneak up on an island full of hostiles. The scouts had suggested a particular angle of attack, and drawn a map of where to find the two signal towers, and now all that remains is to do the job. 

"So, do I get to help, or what?" wonders Ashoc, bouncing on his toes with anticipation as the rowboat is wrangled into position. 

"I'm not giving you weapons." 

Giggle. 

A wicked black dagger flows out of nothingness into his hands, and he hugs it, two-handed, like it is a bouquet of flowers. "You don't need to give me anything," he lilts. 

Wait, he can conjure weapons and she's not dead yet?? 

Serra shuts her eyes for a moment, reciting a silent prayer to bolster her calm. 

“I don’t suppose you’re ever going to tell me where you’re hiding those.”

"Maaaaaaaybe." 

"Okay, so, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I feel like I really can't in good conscience support you dragging a prisoner into an active combat zone without letting him defend himself," says Laila, who suddenly is way less sure that he's evil. 

Serra, on the other hand, is still definitely sure he's evil. "I will defend him if necessary. It is my job." 

"That seems like a great way to get distracted at an inopportune moment. What's he gonna do, run away? Off an island?" 

The wizard makes an annoyingly good point. 

And he hasn't tried to escape, actually. Not even a little. He just casually produces weapons entirely to punctuate conversational points. 

She frowns at the shackles for a long moment, and pulls out the key - 

- and he grins, says brightly, "no, no, that's all right," and flickers a few feet to the left, letting the shackles clatter loudly to the deck. 

What. 

What? 

What.

"What," says Serra, in a strained tone much like that of an elderly wizard whose apprentice has just brought home a lava elemental as a pet. 

Look, that was one time, and she was six. 

"Welcome to the team?" offers Laila. Now she's sure he doesn't mean them any immediate harm, whether or not he is capital-letter Evil.

"Why, thank you." Bounce, bounce. (Where'd the dagger go? Ashoc isn't telling!) 

Aaaaaa. 

Why! This is a very bad idea! Laila, come on, he's obviously super evil, what the heck. 

 I mean, yeah, but as far as I'm concerned, what matters is what you do, not what shows up when a paladin casts a detection spell on you. 

He murdered somebody! Actually! Recently!! 

Laila doesn't offer a reply, mostly because the actual answer is 'yeah, but it wasn't somebody I knew or have compelling reason to believe didn't deserve it, so I don't super care' and she ... doesn't feel great about that. 

"Okay! Smaller boat time!" 

And onto the boat they go. It's a little rowboat, painted precisely the color of the nighttime sea, that is just large enough for four ordinary-sized humans. 

Serra folds up her wings very tightly, sets her sword and shield carefully within immediate reach, and rows. 

Jay lurks. Unhappily.

(Laila would care if Ashoc ate him, right? 

..... right?) 

But he would be so delicious, though. All spellglittery.

"You got a plan, wizard lady?" 

"To be honest, my plans are usually not more complicated than 'set whatever is doing evil on fire until it stops'?" admits Laila. "But I figure our best bet for shutting down a watch tower fast is to split up and have those who can fly," gesture between Serra and Jay, "drop on top and disable whatever their first-line signalling mechanism is, and those of us who can't do crowd control on the front so nobody can attempt alternative methods. I was planning to just try to enchant the whole lot of pirates to sleep, but that doesn't reliably work on groups larger than five-ish and it would be great to have a backup plan if there's more." 

"Uh, I know very little about potential signalling mechanisms." 

"That's what you've got Jay for," grins Laila. "In the event that it's more complicated than lighting a signal fire or something, anyway. You're really much more likely to just need to knock out some guys so they can't do the thing." 

"Ah. This I am quite qualified to do." 

"Crooowd control," giggles Ashoc. "What a good phrase! I can totally control crowds." 

"How?" That's not a very clear question, Laila. "I mean, are there strategic considerations I should be concerned about? Like, if you were standing right next to a guy while I tried to enchant him asleep you might also fall asleep, for example." 

"Aww, don't ruin the surprise, c'mon." Beat. "Just don't stand in front of me maybe." 

Serra has several concerns. 

"I will be sure to do that," says Laila, who has been exhaustively taught that as a wizard in combat you stand behind people who are bigger than you, with only a tiny bit of a sigh. 

Admittedly, Ashoc is only taller than her because he has horns, but still. They're pointy horns. He could probably straight up gore somebody. 

They approach the darkened beach in the cloudy, ill-lit darkness. Off to the west, the northern watch-tower looms; their first goal will be to shut it down fast enough that it cannot contact its compatriot on the south side of the island. 

Serra moves slowly and carefully as she disembarks, trying - with limited success - to stomp quietly in her heavy steel boots and her chainmail. Her tail sweeps faintly agitated arcs in the sand. It slows, slightly, as she unslings her shield and settles it firmly onto her arm, but doesn't still. 

It's been a frustrating week. She is ready to stab some evildoers. 

Ashoc is also ready for stabbing! So ready. The most ready.

(He does not actually appear to be armed at all.) 

A sprightly hop out of the boat leaves him standing lightly on the beach, leaving strange indentations in the sand as he bounces quietly and gleefully from hoof to hoof. 

Then he turns to offer Laila a hand out, because he is a gentleman, obviously. 

Laila squints sort of suspiciously at him, wondering if she looks fragile. She does not take his hand. Instead she steps carefully onto the sand, keeping a hand on the side of the boat, and then murmurs at it for a moment; it glows faintly blue, briefly, and then stills strangely at the edge of the water, affixed in place to the ground beneath the sand. 

This is kind of a weird use of a spell originally designed to hold doors shut, and Laila suspects it won't work very well. It'd probably only take a bit of a sharp tug to disperse. Still, better than nothing.

The signal tower comes into view very quickly as they head inland, that being sort of its job. It is a surprisingly sturdy-looking tall stone building, with crenellations on top and the distant, vague shadows of men moving about behind them in the dim moonlight. From here there is no visible door, as the lower part of the tower is obscured by the treeline. It ought to be unsettlingly quiet, an ominous dark night in which to enact a dramatic heist. It isn't, though; it is only a normal evening quiet. There are scurrying insects, occasional movements in the underbrush, and the periodic hooting of a small local species of burrowing owl. 

As they approach closer, a small wooden door is visible on the bottom of the tower. 

Time for: flap! 

Serra is up a tree at a surprising speed for her size, wings flared and ready to jump into the sky at Laila's signal. She gestures illustratively at the door: it'll take you longer to walk. 

Yes!!! Murder time!!!! 

Ashoc, with an incredible effort of will, does not make any delighted noises out loud. You can see him thinking them, though. 

Laila creeps very carefully and slowly up to the door, doing her level best not to step on any sticks or anything, and checks to see if it's locked. 

It is not locked, but there's a distinct change in the tenor of the murmured conversation inside that suggests the slight possibility that she may have failed to be sufficiently stealthy. 

Well, she's never claimed to be a thief. She makes a go motion with one hand, and then turns the handle, recites the first 99% of her sleep charm, and swings the door open wide and throws the rest of it into the room without pausing to see what's inside. 

There's a sharp rustle of tree branches, the heavy thudding whumpf of twelve feet of spikes and sinew catching air, the echoing clang of metal on stone - 

- and then a great deal of shouting, as four of the ten people in the room at the base of the tower slump over asleep on top of their cards and the other six scramble for weapons. 

Jay, who has just stolen a terrified pirate's dropped sword and dropped it point-first on another pirate, would like to report that paladins are AWESOME and he feels SO COOL RIGHT NOW. 

That's very nice but Laila is slightly busy yelping and haphazardly swinging her staff through a doorway in an attempt to avoid being stabbed. 

This is also why she doesn't notice Ashoc is doing something. 

A hop, a skip, a leap, and he's hauling Laila out of the doorway by the belt, eyes glowing an ominous blue. 

"m͙̟̺̥̎̓͂i͈̜̬͔̭̗̞v͈ͦ̆̈́͢i̺͙̭̗͓̠̯̍̀͊͗ͨ̇́͡rͥ̒̓ ͯ̔̚҉̩͍m̶̫͈̤̽́̚̚f̮̻̗̮̮͕͉̉ͪ͝ḷ̭͙̺̟̥̂ͨ̓ͭq̳ͥ̃̎͑ͅy̪ͩͦ̈͐̋̓ͧr͈̪̓̔͐ͧͅw̼̮͍͔͎̳͓ͧͧ̔," he says, like those are words. 

Yes okay right she's a wizard she's not supposed to be hitting people with sticks what did he - "What did you just say??" 

The entire bottom twenty feet of the tower is engulfed in darkness. The darkness is audibly whispering and rustling. 

There are slurping noises, and then screams. 

Ashoc shuts the door. 

"What was that?" 

"The crowd," he reports cheerfully, "is controlled." 

And also the wizard totally did not get stabbed which is good because he feels like Serra would probably be mad about that and not in a fun way. 

The screaming of the devoured is audible through the door, but with the door shut they can also hear the slightly different screaming of the terrified from up top. 

Man why does she feel like they're super the bad guys right now. 

Evil pirates, Laila, she reminds herself firmly. They kill people, like, constantly. They literally just tried to kill me thirty seconds ago and I opened with something completely nonlethal. 

He helped. He is so helpful. 

Tail-wag. 

That's sort of cute, in a deeply concerning way. 

Shortly enough the screaming dies, however, and the darkness seeping out from the windows fades. 

The sound of slightly slower, more relaxed flapping heralds the return of Serra, with Jay flitting excitedly around her head in loops. 

Serra looks much happier, having successfully accomplished the simple, straightforwardly Good task of killing several Evil pirates. It's so nice to just be able to tell. 

"Success?" 

"No signalling appears to be in evidence, so I think yes!" 

Jay zooms over to his wizard and fussily brushes her hair back into place. She got way too close to a fight, in his opinion. Not that she's useless in a fight relative to an average human, exactly, he has definitely seen her lay out random rude townspeople, but she's a lot harder to fix than he is if she gets stabbed. 

That's a fair concern, Laila grumbles mentally, petting her familiar soothingly as he digs his claws into her shoulder and nitpicks her hair, but also, I am an Adventurer, we get in fights, it's like, the whole deal. 

Fights are admittedly pretty cool. He did just enjoy that one quite a bit. 

"Ashoc behaving himself?" adds Serra, frowning balefully at her ostensible apparently-teleporting prisoner. 

Doooooes she tell the paladin about the terrifying chaos darkness? 

... The terrifying chaos darkness did totally save her life, arguably. She could plausibly have held the doorway as a chokepoint with judicious application of firebolts once she'd got her bearings and only gotten slightly stabbed, and "slightly stabbed" is a lot less of a problem with a paladin right there, but six to one would've been a lot and Ashoc really had helped. Even if he'd helped in an incredibly alarming way. 

"Entirely!" she chirps. "He was very helpful and did not stab me even a little." 

Well, shoot, now he's tempted. 

"That's ... good." 

Laila isn't evil, she checked, so she has no reason at this time not to take her word for it. 

Their primary goal achieved, Laila glances at the sky, wishes not for the first time that she could cast sending, and sends Jay on his way. 

Zoom zoom zoom flap flap zoom man why is the ocean so big zoom glide zoom zoom ship.

"Hello!" says the seagull, alighting on the railing next to where the captain is peering through his spyglass at the island. "My wizard says they did the thing!" 

"Er," says the captain, feeling moderately underqualified on Talking Seagull Etiquette, "thank you," and then turns and begins shouting orders. 

... Jay could fly all the way back, ooooorrrrr ... he could ride this here boat that is going to go there anyway ... yeah, he's actually really tired, he's just gonna sit on the railing for a bit while the boats start to move. 

Meanwhile, the little adventuring party has discovered a tunnel under the watchtower, leading further inland. It is not lit. 

Maybe there's treasure! 

Maybe there's more pirates. 

"I would like to take this moment to remind you both that I cannot see in the dark." 

"Can you wizard yourself a light? I am putting something of a ceiling on our stealth capability in any event." 

"Oh, good point, sure - " A few mumbles and a gesture and the tip of her staff glows brightly, casting long shadows down the hallway into the ground. "Jay is now feeling accomplished in a way that probably means he successfully alerted the navy and not in a way that means he caught a fish or something, so we have achieved our primary goal and I don't see any reason we shouldn't explore while we're here." 

The tunnel goes pretty deep, to the point that it's weird that it's as dry as it is. There are multiple twisting tunnels, but it will be obvious fairly quickly to anyone with any skill at navigation that they more or less all lead to the same place, where the hallways widen and flatten out and are covered with a mildly concerning number of claw marks. 

Laila has never met a Survival proficiency in her life and is picking paths entirely based on the prevalence of cool rock formations.  

Serra spent her childhood with a tribe of nomadic mountain-dwelling creatures with claws and knows exactly what she's looking at, but it seems that one path is much the same as the other and watching the little wizard excitedly sketch rocks is charming. 

(Ashoc hops from foot to foot, fidgeting with a dagger and affecting an expression of disinterested boredom. This is fine. He's fine.)  

Eventually, the flicker of a light source is visible at the end of the tunnel. 

Out goes the wizard-light. 

They creep up the tunnel, stealthy-like. 

Well, as stealthy as Serra is capable of being, which is honestly not very, but it's, you know, theoretically possible that someone really unobservant might not notice. 

Or, perhaps, someone asleep. 

Like, say, this big red dragon. 

OH JEEZ

Also, incidentally, there's this girl over here chained to the floor, bruised and naked and quietly sobbing. 

She looks up, and sees demonic eyes glowing in the darkness, and yelps. 

The dragon, which is actually a pretty small dragon as dragons go but a small dragon is still considerably larger than a large bear, stirs and growls. Its prisoner makes a shrill, frightened sound of apology. 

Oh no! 

There's an evil dragon and a traumatized injured person? 

Both of these things are an emergency!! 

help how does she fix both those things at once she only has six limbs aaaaaa

Serra sort of freezes, unable to ignore either problem to fix the other. 

Laila, on the other hand, goes straight for the girl with absolutely zero regard for the dragon, sweeping her cloak from her shoulders and letting her staff clatter forgotten on the ground. "Hey - hey, it's gonna be okay, we're here to help - " 

This unsticks Serra, who leaves the ground about ten steps into a sprint while drawing her sword and shouts something in Celestial that rings off the walls of the cavern like a shower of shimmering crystal spikes.

Her eyes glow bright gold and, as she brandishes it, so does the sword, a rush of light running down her arm and reflecting off the blade like the rays of the rising sun. 

Ashoc beats her to the dragon, though, because he can teleport. 

Rude. 

"Um, ah, er, uh," stammers the kidnapped girl, huddled in wide-eyed shock under Laila's cloak. "He's - he's really dangerous, you should, I mean, I really should've run away too and not been stupid but it's kinda too late - " 

"Hey, no, shh, you didn't know, it's not your fault," soothes Laila, helping arrange the cloak to cover her and pinning it closed. "We're professionals, don't worry." 

Technically they haven't yet actually been paid and so the claim that they are a professional adventuring team might be slightly overstated but this isn't her first time being paid to mercenary things and she's sure it isn't Serra's either, although who even knows what Ashoc was doing with his life before randomly deciding to murder a guy, so she thinks that probably counts. 

Judging by the massive spiked glaive he seems to have conjured from nowhere and is now flanking quite competently for Serra with, ducking under the dragon's annoyed swipes and cackling, Ashoc has probably ever in his life fought something bigger than a person and lived. 

This situation traditionally calls for buff spells, Laila thinks, as she pats the girl reassuringly on the shoulder and sweeps up her staff and sizes up the fight going on behind her. 

She doesn't ... actually know any of those, though, so instead she hits the dragon in the face with a magic missile. 

This plan goes very well for several rounds, with Serra tanking most of the hits and Ashoc dancing out of the way of the few swipes the dragon takes at him and Laila throwing a little extra damage that the dragon's hide doesn't help much against, until Ashoc missteps. 

Contrary to nearly all of his life choices related to combat, Ashoc is actually a primary caster class, and he has about a quarter of Serra's hit points and no armor.

Now he is unconscious, and about three-quarters of the way across the room, and bleeding. 

Serra drops her shield and starts swinging two handed. 

This strategy is very effective! 

Shortly thereafter, Serra is also bleeding but the dragon has stopped dragoning. 

The demon is not really demoning either. Which, you know, arguably a good thing. 

No that's terrible he is her responsibility - 

Serra swoops down on Ashoc and thanks Lathander that at least the stabby weirdly helpful jerk isn't a vampire or something and lays a hand on his forehead. Out of her mouth streams the Celestial blessing she's practiced so many times the concepts only sort of pass through her actual brain on the way to the air, one extremely beloved and heartfelt long word. Glory-of-the-light-bless-and-keep-you-all-the-days-of-your-life-and-death-there-is-always-a-new-morning. 

He will awaken warm and with an unaccountable feeling of safety, like a cat curled up in a sunbeam. 

Aaaaaaa?????????

This is a very weird feeling and Ashoc feels very weird about it and he scrambles up and away and into a wall with a confused yelp.

"What - ow, wall, what - why am I all the way over here - what - oh! You healed me!" 

This is new and weird. Why did this happen. He is not necessarily upset about it but what. 

"Your sentence is prison, not death," says Serra steadily, "and it would be unjust to allow you to be punished for choosing to defend the life of an innocent." 

Puzzled frown. 

"That's just the paladin way of saying it's bad incentives," volunteers Laila helpfully. "If she didn't heal you when you got injured helping do a Good thing just because you're Evil then you'd have much less reason to do that." 

Oh, it's like bribery. Okay, he can get behind that. Nod, nod. "So, is anybody else super hungry right now?" 

"I haven't had anything to eat or drink in, um, several days," admits the prisoner, who has gotten to her feet now that things are significantly less terrifying and is leaning on Laila in rather the manner of someone who might pass out if she tries to stand under her own power but is super tired of being on the floor. 

Oh no! 

Time to immediately build a fire and make tea!! 

Does... does tea contain nutrients?

To be honest Ashoc is not sure. His diet has historically been things he either stole or killed. But don't people usually eat stuff with their tea? 

"I am pretty sure tea does not contain food but it's much safer to drink than just water and humans need water more urgently than they need food," explains Laila. Ashoc did not question this out loud using words, but she just made her Sense Motive check on the one thing it super didn't matter for, which is just the fundamental experience of being the party wizard, really. 

Oh. Legit. 

That said, she can produce food faster than Serra can boil water even if she helpfully lights the fire for her, so she offers their rescuee some bread and cheese while tea is in progress. 

Hmm.

What if ... he uses the fire ... to cook the dragon. 

He'll have to skin it first, on account of it is a red dragon, but dragons contain meat, sure. 

Amazing. Perfect. Totally doing it. 

This dragon was a lazy juvenile living off of tribute from the pirates, so it's fat and delicious. A very weird sort of delicious, though, rather unlike the taste of other edible animals. It's almost akin to some unholy combination of the ordinary taste of a cow and that sharp arcane buzz you get in your throat if you say too many magic words too fast in succession. 

This is the best day ever and Ashoc is now covered in grease and soot and grinning like a toddler who's just learned what chocolate is. 

The concept of eating dragon meat seems kind of weird and horrible to the ex-prisoner (what if it burns your stomach or something??) but she's happy to drink tea and eat bread and cheese and ration jerky. 

"So," says Laila once it doesn't seem like the poor girl is going to collapse any second, "you're not by chance the Mayor's missing daughter, are you?" 

Embarrassed giggle. "Um, yeah, I uh, I made some bad choices maybe, but I guess it's okay now - he's not too worried is he?" 

"He was actually quite worried! We were just supposed to be here to prevent the watches signalling for help when they saw the fleet and they were expecting to need to send soldiers to look for you less underground but then it turned out you were here."  

"Speaking of which, once everyone is prepared to move quickly we need to make our way back to the surface and notify the fleet that we've found you." 

First you steal the dragon's treasure, though, right? Jay is only like 20% sure what is going on all the way over there but he got the general impression of like, scales and fire and doom, and dragons are supposed to have shiny things. He is pretty sure. 

On inspection the dragon does not have very much treasure but it totally does have a small pile of coins, and some possibly valuable rocks, and a ring. 

Cool! Laila will pick up a handful of coins and the ring and suggest that perhaps Serra and her larger backpack could gather the rest for later counting and identification and division. 

Seems valid. 

Hey look, a hallway on the other side of this room that goes up! 

Upstairs, they will find that this cave is connected directly to the central fortress. 

It is weirdly empty, and outside the windows can be heard the sounds of both fighting and screaming. 

Laila would like to know what the heck, please. 

Oh! Oh! Jay knows this one! He has totally been hanging around supervising and not being lazy at all. 

The ships made landfall and there was a super interesting magic thing where the ships are enchanted to auto-repair themselves from the damage they take from encountering land, which maybe Laila might want to investigate later, and then they spat a bunch of people onto the shore, and then there was a whole bunch of fighting, and the navy people are having a very hard time getting the civilian pirate people to cooperate with an orderly surrender, partly because they are pretty uncooperative and partly because they're not terribly clear on the concept of "orderly." A whole lot of people have gotten a whole lot of stabbed, he is pretty sure. This may still be happening, there are a lot of people on this island and most of them seem to have weapons. 

Long-distance communication with one's familiar is not actually telepathy until she is a much, much cooler wizard, so from this Laila is able to derive approximately the general impression that the building she is in is probably empty because the people that were recently in it are busy trying to stab soldiers, but the situation is not at this time an especially impending disaster. And also something about the ships? She'll ask Jay later. 

She suggests that perhaps they might try to sneak the mayor's daughter back onto the ships before involving themselves in any of....... vague gesture at the window... that. 

"While I am hesitant to leave you alone, I ... suspect I would be more of a hindrance to a significant sneaking operation than a help?" 

"Nonsense! You can be very helpful to a sneaking operation, by being a big, red distraction." 

She can do big and red and distracting. 

The sudden appearance of an absolutely-nobody-present-is-capable-of-distinguishing-that-from-a-pit-fiend indeed produces a total absence of anyone having the spare attention to notice Laila and Ashoc sneaking by with the mayor's daughter. 

Laila shoos away the soldiers attempting to help her up the ladder from the beach to the temporarily grounded flagship, helps up her rescuee and hands her off to some servants with a pat on the shoulder, and wheels on the commodore. "Hello, yes, hi, what the fuck," she says, with a gesture at the massive battle scene. 

(Jay follows the mayor's daughter, partly because he feels like she shouldn't be abandoned quite yet and partly because she is still wearing Laila's cloak.) 

"Is something the matter?" 

"I was under the impression we were here to sneak. Which we did, very successfully I might add." 

"Oh, yes, of course, and you will be paid handsomely," the commodore assures her. "I imagine this will all be wrapped up nicely in a few hours and there will be nothing to worry about." 

"That is a lot of people getting stabbed." 

"People who attacked us first, m'dear. You're an adventurer, surely you're familiar with the concept?" 

I am not Evil and I am not gonna light this guy on fire for being a condescending dick, Laila tells herself sternly. 

Are you suuuuuuuure. It would be such fun! 

See, even if he's an asshole this does not mean he's not right, but - 

oh jeez, is Ashoc telepathic, what the unholy heck

He's just over here, whistling innocently and sitting on a barrel. 

oh, only a little, whispers his voice in her ear. I don't know your deeeeep daaaark seeeeecrets or anything. just enough to make helpful suggestions! 

Serra lands on the deck with a heavy thud and a slightly worrying creak of wood. Several sailors wince. "I see that you have succeeded in your quest, Laila!" she says brightly. 

Aw, man. She has just signed up for the most concerning adventuring party ever, hasn't she.

She could just leave, technically. Not everybody stays with the same mercenary group forever even if they make a whole career of adventuring. They've done their job, they'll get paid and she can go home and make a reasonable dinner containing no dragons whatsoever and not have to make apologetic faces at random stressed out sailors and reorganize her notes and do normal adventurer things like protect caravans from goblins and shit, and Serra can go back to her temple with her dubiously imprisoned prisoner and Laila will not have to - oh, who is she kidding. The incredibly concerning demons are delightful, she's keeping them. 

And so they return to port, and they get paid (several hundred gold pieces each, plus a bonus for killing the dragon as well as rescuing the damsel in distress). 

Lovely! 

Laila would like to know if her new friends would like to come by for dinner, meet her teacher? He's not the most exciting dude in the universe but he knows many interesting magic facts and she likes him. 

"I would be honored." 

"Although," glance at the sky, where the sun hangs in a friendly early afternoon fashion, "perhaps first I shall visit the temple, make a report, and become slightly more presentable." 

"That's very reasonable!" 

Laila gives clear directions to the small downtown apartment she shares with her teacher, and waves, and heads cheerfully off in the direction of the apothecary. She need more spell components, and to take another crack at seeing if she can figure out how to brew healing potions. 

Serra reports back to the slightly uncomfortable local head priest, tells him that the problem she was summoned to resolve has been resolved and also incidentally the wizard is very charming, and assures him that the the prisoner remains completely under control. 

(The prisoner is over here, encouraging small children to fold their choir music into pretty birds.) 

How suspiciously cute.

In any event, she will avail herself of the guest rooms the temple has available for visiting priests, and clean up moderately, and then, because she feels it would be rude to show up to a dinner invitation in worn traveling clothes, decides that perhaps some of this money is to be spent on nicer clothes. 

There's a seamstress downtown who'll do on-the-spot tailoring, one of the local priests suggests, although with an awkward warning that, he suspects, even with a sun disc on her chest to make her considerably less suspicious Serra will probably be charged extra for general, er, atypical body plan. 

Implications that this is probably actually a 'seamstress might be kinda racist' warning aside, that's honestly fair. Serra is just shy of seven feet tall and has wings and a tail, that's genuinely a lot of extra work where making clothes is concerned. 

She will pay the extremely professional middle-aged elvish seamstress, who might or might not be thinking racist thoughts, quite a few gold coins to make her a Special Occasions outfit that gracefully handles these facts, in lovely gold and purple silk. Since this is a predominantly Lathanderite city, there's already some fabrics available with delicate sun-patterned embroidery. 

And what does Ashoc want? 

He gets fancy clothes too?????

" ... yes? I'm not an expert on the social customs of cities but I am given to understand that it would be terribly rude to require you to attend a dinner invitation in the home of the local professor of magic without appropriate attire."

Ashoc is an expert on the social customs of the part of cities where appropriate attire is concerned mostly with whether you will die of exposure while sleeping in an alleyway. 

He does not say this. Instead he surreptitiously un-steals the handful of pretty needles and embroidery threads he'd swiped while Serra was talking to the seamstress and picks out a sturdy brocade coat that shimmers like it's full of little red stars. 

He can have that adjusted to his height and shoulderspan, with matching knee-length trousers since digitigrade legs don't really admit of long pants. A shirt? 

Eeeeeeeee. 

He bounces, petting his pretty new outfit and preening in the mirror. He looks so cool! He is going to have to make sure his Blade matches when next he summons it. 

"I don't really want a shirt," he says cheerfully, polishing the gemstone embedded in his left horn with a scrap of his previous one. 

That's fine, she supposes. He looks at least minimally presentable, in sort of a rakish daredevil teenager way. 

... He's so tiny in clothes that fit. He could ride on her shoulder like a messenger bird. It's alarmingly tempting to scoop him up and carry him, especially when he's bouncing around with glee like an apprentice who just cast his first cantrip. 

This is terrible. 

He has no awareness of this concern at this time. Too busy SPINNING in his FANCY NEW COAT. 

Serra is just gonna do what she does best and not introspect on that there cognitive dissonance. 

Time to set down her traveling pack and armor and weapons and so forth at the temple and go visit Laila! 

Laila is very easy to find, it transpires. The front door of her house is open, there's notes scattered everywhere, and she's standing on a chair rifling through notebooks at the top of a shelf, looking moderately panicked. 

" ... good evening, are you all right?" 

"Nope!" says Laila. She doesn't sound it, either. "When I left my teacher was a day late from plant-gathering and that's normal, he gets distracted, but," deep breath, set down the book, "now it's been more than a week more and he's not sent a message, he's not left a note, nothing in any of his notes suggests any latent arguments with fellow researchers or dangerous spells he was developing, he just - he just didn't come home." 

"I, um, sorry about this, but I can't very well introduce you to someone who isn't here and I haven't cooked dinner or anything. Rain check? I need to do ...... something." 

"Of course. But can we help? Not that can't take care of yourself, of course, but if you mean to go wandering the wilderness looking for a missing person, perhaps an extra sword arm ... ?" 

"I mean, I can't pay you - " she smiles, sudden and bright, when she realizes what Serra meant, " - oh, but you're a paladin. Yes, I would welcome your assistance in this quest." 

Pause. 

" ... 'we'?" 

"I'm not allowed to leave," chirps Ashoc, "so clearly I am coming too." 

He doesn't look the slightest bit upset about this. 

Wow she is going to have an actual for-reals adventuring party and not just a temporary mercenary team. 

... Okay, so technically a wizard and a paladin and another sort of arcane spellcaster - she's not sure, sorcerer maybe, he seems sorcerery? - is kind of a stupid adventuring party composition, but nothing bad happened last time, right? 

And so they gather their things, and head out seeking adventure.