Caelan's plight only made everyone laugh harder, as the griffin moved its head away again, like he wasn't even worth eating.

  That’s when Alden noticed Lira walking slowly toward them with the help of a maid and looking at the beast with stars in her eyes. Unlike Caelen, she didn’t seem even a little scared of the griffin, and kept moving toward the beast until the maid started to get scared to move closer.

  “Is that… Lira?” Daelus asked. “She’s grown so big! I remember she used to be so small we could lift her in our hands.”

  Alden nodded, remembering times long in the past.

  Lira waved at the mage before she reached next to the griffin. She shrugged off the maid’s hands, and kept walking slowly, not fearing the beast at all. Alden immediately took a step toward her, thinking she would fall without support, but Lira reached out and hugged the griffin from the front with her relatively tiny arms.

  “He’s so cute!” she squealed.

  “It’s a she,” Daelus corrected.

  “I love her already!” Lira said while moving her arms over the griffin’s feathers. "What's her name?"

  "She's called Thuvara."

  The griffin brought its head closer and sniffed Lira once, before it rubbed the side of its huge head on her, making her giggle.

  “Hey!” Caelen stared at her. “Why's it only trying to eat me!?”

  “You must seem like a tasty snack to her,” Daelus joked, making Caelen glare at him. "She's probably still hungry."

  “And you're still just as annoying,” Caelen retorted as he stood up, dusting off his pants.

  Alden laughed, feeling happy seeing the cozy scene. The loss of their father had hit his siblings hard, and he had often seen them sitting alone, just gazing into the distance. But Daelus and Thuvara's arrival seemed to have changed the mood in the manor. He wished his siblings and the others could remain as happy as today, but the coming winter wouldn’t permit it unless he fought his best against it.

  He looked at his childhood best friend. “Is that griffin, uh... Thuvara, really yours?”

  Daelus grinned. “She is! Thuvara was a gift from my master for passing his final test.”

  “She’s huge, though,” Alden commented, looking at the beast.

  Daelus laughed loudly. “This must be the first time you’re seeing a griffin from up close. She’s actually a youngling. A full-grown griffin is like five times bigger than her, if not even more. There is no way I'd be able to land an adult griffin in this courtyard.”

  “Wow… that would be a sight to see. But you’re sure it’s safe with her here? She won’t try to eat someone, right?”

  Daelus chuckled. “Don’t worry about that. This village is my home too. I’d never have landed her here if there was any such risk. I’ve already bonded with her, and she knows that these people are friendly. Griffins are smart enough anyway that they know humans are friends, not for hunting.”

  “Well, good to know that,” Alden said as he finally moved to Thuvara and ran his hand over the feathers. Caelen still seemed like he wanted to touch the griffin, but looked way too scared of her to even try.

  He looked at his sister, who was still cooing at the griffin. “Lira, don’t overstrain yourself.”

  “But I don’t want to leave her...” she whined.

  Alden shook his head with a smile. “Well, at least remember to call your maid to take you to your room when you get tired.”

  Lira just nodded and began cooing at Thuvara, while Alden turned to Daelus with a serious expression. “Well, how are you here? Shouldn’t you be sent to Fort Raltra as a mage, especially since winter is coming close?”

  Daelus looked around at the gathered crowd. “Can we talk inside?”

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  Alden nodded, noticing that the majordomo was also looking at the beast from a safe distance, while most of the guards still looked nervous. On the other hand, Roderic was now patting his hand over the beast’s head, probably having met a griffin during his time working as a ranger.

  They walked to the main hall, with Vusato and Roderic following behind. Alden took the group into the small dining room on the right before the captain closed the door. After they took a seat, Daelus put his hand into a pocket of his robe, brought out a scroll, and handed it to Alden.

  It was an ornately decorated scroll made of some pretty good quality paper—real paper—and tied up with a gold-colored string. There was also a seal on it, bearing the stamp of the Duke. It looked soberingly official. Alden broke the seal and unrolled the scroll, reading through the foreign characters, which came to him as naturally as English through his inherited memories. The letter was short enough, and contained the Duke’s official decree appointing him as the new Baron of Sarnok.

  “Is it…?” Vusato asked.

  Alden nodded and gave him the scroll to read, before he looked at his friend. “Why do you have this? We had sent a guard with the news to Garitus, but it will take him days to return.”

  Daelus smiled. “Actually, he reached Garitus yesterday morning. I was present along with my master, the archmage, when the Duke read your letter. After a short discussion with his advisors, he dictated this letter and stamped it with his seal. He was going to give it to your guard when I suggested that I could bring it here. Then I flew on my griffin as fast as I could, and only reached here just now.”

  “Well, at least it’s official now,” Vusato said as he rolled up the scroll, and tied it again.

  Alden nodded, although he had already been performing the duties of a baron since his father’s death. But it did mean that his uncle hadn’t been able to reach Garitus in time to raise his own claim, or perhaps he was just not interested in it anymore—especially after looting thousands of gold from his older brother, and realizing that living in this village in the coming winter might just be suicide.

  “You said your training was over, so what’s next?” Alden asked Daelus, wishing there could be a resident mage even in Sarnok. “When do you need to return anyway?”

  Daelus grinned. “Actually, it's up to me. Now that I'm a full-fledged mage, I have a lot of freedom in choosing where to stay from now on. I'd also received an offer from the Rangers to join Fort Raltra, but I rejected it, for now.”

  “What are you even talking about?” Vusato asked. “From what I know, since your master serves the Duke, I think you'd also have had to take an oath to protect him before he even allowed you to become a mage.”

  Daelus chuckled. “Actually, that oath is to protect the Duke and his interests, which includes all the places in his duchy. So unless it’s an emergency and I’ve officially been recalled to Garitus to defend the city, I have a lot of freedom in how to serve the kingdom and the Duke’s interests. So now that he is charging people for giving shelter in the winter, I had an inkling that it wouldn’t be easy for Sarnok to pay that amount. So I wanted to visit here to congratulate Alden on becoming the baron and to find out the status.”

  “Well, the status isn’t really good,” Alden commented. “Sarnok simply cannot pay to buy safety in the fortress city. Father always spent all his savings to feed the villagers in the previous winters, and now I can’t even pay to get shelter for the manor residents for the whole winter. The rest of the villagers simply do not have the coin either. They barely have enough saved up to buy food for their families over the winter without getting any regular work. We have no choice but to stay back here.”

  “That’s… That’s not going to be safe at all,” Daelus said with a frown. “Without any kind of stone walls, even small monsters could break the palisade and overwhelm your guards…”

  “What else can we do?” Alden scoffed. “We simply don’t have the gold to satisfy the Duke’s greed.”

  “Why is the Duke suddenly charging for shelter?” Vusato asked, after he gave a pointed look to Alden. “Do you know anything about it? It's never been done before.”

  Daelus sighed as he ran a hand through his purple hair. “There are rumors of an impending war with Tuzalko, the other human kingdom in the west. So the king has recently raised the taxes to generate more revenue, which means the Duke also needs more gold to pay that tax. He hasn’t raised the taxes yet—although that might not be far away—but someone suggested to him to charge for giving shelter in the winter to generate more revenue.”

  “I can't believe these damned idiots who rule us!” Roderic growled. “Fighting amongst themselves when the real danger lies up north! And for what? Just a little more land? To get more gold in loot?”

  “Roderic!” Vusato scolded. “You can’t talk like that about your superiors!”

  Roderic scoffed. “And what am I saying wrong? I fear that the year when monsters overwhelm all the kingdoms—human or otherwise—is not far away. The kings and the dukes will have all the land and gold they want after that—just no people left to rule over. And that's assuming the monsters even leave them alive—which they won't. They don't stop to ask the title of a human when tearing into them in hunger.”

  Vusato didn’t have a reply to that.

  Daelus nodded his head at the captain. “Actually, I agree with you. I have no idea what the king is thinking, but my master had visited Fort Raltra a few weeks ago on his own griffin, and he told us that the fort’s scouts have seen a lot more monsters migrating southwards and westwards this year. We really cannot afford a war right now—or at any time in the near future.”

  “A lot of monsters?” Alden frowned. “Right in the very first year when we have to stay here?”

  ***

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