Newly Broke Heroine! [Book One Complete, Cozy Fantasy Adventure]

Five minutes turned into a few hours.

As it turned out, Jake had called every able-bodied Guild member to brief them on the situation at the hall, then booked it to the medical wing, along with Darla, Kali, Nick, and Cita.

There were many crushing hugs from Darla, sobbing that she'd missed out on the skull-cracking times, and Varith would burn with the rest of them. Fiona had to politely dissuade her from starting to burn things or using her magical cutlery to make Varith into a Ruler-a–la-King.

Kali also made his scolding loud and known to Doug, and accused him of not keeping Fiona safe. Doug spat back accusations of irresponsible youth, and occasional sparks flew from his nostrils. Even so, the young avian hugged him at the end of it. Fiona would have told the kid that this was past business hours, but he had been adamant about seeing her.

The next to show up were Nick, Cita, and Jake, all looking worried. Jake's muzzle was on edge, and he looked at Fiona warily while she sat at the table, dressed in something less vulnerable than her medical gown. Jake gave them the rundown of where they were currently. "After King Barrimeth came back, I informed Rikkard of the situation. He's…not happy with the way things went down. Or with you, Fiona."

"Oh, this is dragon crap," She fumed. "Y'all had the viper of Fiefdala hypnotizing Barry for who knows how long! And she's gone! Glados is likely cackling about all that gold she stole and duped everyone! Karlin, too, but I think he's got an insane agenda. And Varith was screwed by Karlin, sounds like. I kinda wonder if the deal was he'd use the pilfered gold to free Vale's people from the contracts, and then things went kinda sideways."

"Whoa. Why are you not resting, exactly?" Jake narrowed his eyes at her, arms folded gently, and his tail wagging with just a flicker of energy. "You look like crap, by the way."

"I'm doing great, Jake! Never better!" She gave him a leering grin and a thumbs-up, sarcastically, for emphasis on how not great she was feeling.

He wrinkled his muzzle and then shrugged.

"No seriously, whatever the legal limit is for murkvine, get me that amount. I'm making pain into an art form, and my body is the canvas."

"I don't even know where to go with that one," Jake sighed. "All I know, is that I'm glad I'm not presiding over a kidnapped or dead king. The crown guard should have been more vigilant about the scheming of Varith. Or, handing over alchemical reagents without vetting them," he scowled.

"Blame Barry! I told him not to send them any precursors for pyrogel in that agreement! Anything that can set things on fire should never be sent to Vale!" she fumed. "By the way, that pyrogel our alchemists make is top notch. It was fun to fight in a burning building. Make more, so we can take all the contracts in Vale and incinerate them."

"I think those contracts survive normal destruction," Bonnie sighed. "Where's Lani?"

Fiona chose to say nothing about the possible betrayal, and she bit her lip. "I don't know. I hope she's alright, though. Nick, Cita…anything from the forge we can use to find these guys, since Varith is currently MIA and Vale is in a holding pattern?"

Cita frowned and pulled something out of her bag. "Well, the shipping manifests I grabbed confirm that Karlin was bringing in gold from somewhere, but it wasn't Fiefdala. I had to use my schemer radar–no, really, it's a class skill," she emphasized when Fiona raised an eyebrow. "Every time you wanted to get a sweet roll at the guild past the mess hall hours, my schemer radar went off like a Wintrymas light display. Stop smiling, Fiona! You're an infectious troublemaker who I can't stay mad at," Cita said with a playful nudge.

She couldn't stop the sly smile. No one could.

"Ahem," Nick emphasized with a soft hoot to follow.

Well, except for that.

Cita cleared her throat. "Right, sorry. Karlin was importing gold or gold-laden ore from everywhere! But the biggest amount was taken from an archipelago between Relaina–our continent–and Aegortin, just across the sea. Plus whatever imports he could get from Fiefdala under the current trade restrictions register." She peered at the list, eyes narrowed. "Uh…I think Karlin was stealing gold from Aegortin. Hells, a lot of gold ore. Because the manifests don't all log the same amounts. Some of it disappeared in transit, or was supposed to go elsewhere."

"I checked. He cooked the books from those shipments," Nick added. "The brass of that dragon to poke the figurative dragon of the Aegortin empire. He must have been pretty sure no one would find out. And no one would have, unless they had the original manifests he kept in a drawer by his desk."

"Isn't that a little convenient for him to leave where someone could steal?" Fiona asked. "How much of that gold was Aurelium?"

"Uh…" Cita trailed off and looked at the list. She tapped the page on several spots, and let out a sound of confusion. "Almost…all of it. What was he doing?"

Doug sauntered over and examined the papers. "Fiona, I recall that you mentioned Karlin spinning some yarn about power and Aurelium. What exactly did he say?" He was reading the papers he'd pulled out of his own pocket.

"Uh…Okay, you want a trip to crazy town?" Fiona asked. "He told me some nutty story about Feo'thari. He said that, when she died, it rained golden myrrh across the planet. Specifically, here in Fiefdala and Vale. But it also fell elsewhere in lesser amounts. That was the Aurelium, sinking deep into the world like a golden meteor impact."

Doug tapped a claw on the page and frowned when his claw tip made a small hole. Cita wisely took it from his hand. "Oops. I miss having retractable claws. Or when I could borrow a human form for convenience," he grumbled. "What else did he say?"

"Doug, why are we taking anything he says at face value? He was obviously trying to spin a yarn to win over Fiona–" Cita started to say.

"There were some partial records of such an event. The night of golden starfall," Doug interrupted. "The Bar'dathi carry this story as do the citizens of present-day Vale, and some in the southern reaches of Fiefdala. There were large impacts of rocks from the sky. A meteor shower, I think we call it. Some made it to the ground. Some of it…in large quantities."

Fiona blinked. "Doug, why mention this now?"

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"I thought it was a historical curiosity. But…my mother told us that tale long ago," he said quietly. "When we were young. My father dismissed it as nothing more than cultural tales and myth. But Karlin held onto that tale. Even after what happened to her. That was our split point. He blamed me for our mom's death. What else did he say?"

"He said that if the oppressed and forgotten gathered all the Aurelium back together…they could revive Feo'thari. They could finally have a chance to seek their fortune and not be beaten back every time they came close to happiness or freedom. I might be paraphrasing a bit." She was still trying to reconcile that.

Karlin had come across as a bully and a schemer. Of those, she had witnessed firsthand. But there was something else driving him.

A wild idea came to mind. "What does Karlin want, Doug? More than money? More than ripping you down repeatedly?"

"If there's one thing my brother took to heart? A fervent hatred of the slavers. Though he was never bold enough to attack them directly." Doug tapped his snout, as if thinking. "Why would he be cozying up to the bank? The fact that he's been doing business in Vale has been bothering me the whole time. I don't think he likes their money more than he hates them."

"Why did you have a deposit there?" Fiona asked, eyes narrowed.

"I deposited it there–and the key–in the last place people would look for it. And I also did it when it was a slightly less oppressive town. That little reprieve from bad rulers lasted about three years." He was otherwise unapologetic. "I wasn't doing business with them, if that's what you're worried about. They just happened to have reasonably secure deposit boxes."

"Guys, there's something we're forgetting," Bonnie interjected. "What about Glados? What's her angle? She took the gold right out of Doug's lair and hoodwinked Karlin, too! And where does Varith fall? Allies? Frenemies? Partnership of convenience?"

"All questions we are woefully lacking answers for," Jake concluded. "Fiona, you're the one with the crazy gold powers. What's it all add up to?"

"Okay, call me crazy, but I think Karlin is crazy enough to try and bring all the gold to one location, and revive a dead goddess. Which may or may not be a bad thing. Feo'thari is kinda badass," she added with a contented sigh.

And yet, it didn't match what she'd seen in that world between worlds. That woman looked like all her hopes were on Wingding. And she had said nothing to confirm her theory on what she was. Wingding, am I the foster mother to a nascent goddess?

The lack of response from her winged companion was rather telling. You are not giving me the silent treatment, young miss! I need to find out something! Okay, let's think for a second. How do you go from a metric crapton of magical charged gold, to raising a dead goddess? It doesn't make sense!

Again, no reaction. Wingding fluttered and did her figure eight flight on her arm, but otherwise remained mute. "Fiona?" Bonnie said softly, after nudging her shoulder. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we don't need to chase gold. I think we need to chase where it's being brought to," she concluded. "Karlin has been doing this for…how long, roughly?"

"At least a few years." Nick tapped the papers. "The foundry was opened five years ago. But Fiona, I think this is the guild's responsibility from here on out."

"A guild I am still part of! Merchant or not! I just wear a different armor for the job–"

"Fiona, for real?" Jake folded his arms and looked her over. "You're beaten up more badly than you admit. You need to be scarce for a while. Run the shop, stay out of Barry's way, I'll smooth over things," he offered.

She could feel her ears tense in response. He was going to shut her down? "Look, I have feelers in Vale right now, and there is chaos. The contract houses are in an uproar, demanding why soldiers were firebombing their own building, because apparently someone saw what they were doing and didn't buy into the idea that Fiefdala would burn down one random building. More worryingly, no one knows where Varith is. Fi…I don't like to ask, but…"

"He was alive and well before we teleported out," she said adamantly. "And this does concern me, Jake. For more than one reason, now."

"Fi, not that I like agreeing with Jake here, but maybe bouncing around looking for piles of gold isn't such a good idea," Darla said quietly. Fiona couldn't help but notice they stood close together. They had arrived at the same time, along with Nick and Cita.

This clicked something in Fiona's brain. Darla? Big, strong, darling Darla, the darkling, following Jake's lead? Did this explain something she'd been pondering for a while?

Her thoughts were about half-baked when the door to the room opened, and Fiona saw Barry's bodyguards arrive with a metal lockbox. But the king was missing. "Where's His Highness?" Jake asked, gesturing to the two guards. "And what's with the box?"

"Panicking over Glados going missing," the guard replied unhappily. "When a future queen goes MIA, people tend to panic."

"Vick, shut it!" the second guard protested.

"She's been taking you guys for a ride, like I said a million times!" Fiona shouted, her voice booming in the tiny room. "Spoilers, she's in a secret lair plotting the demise of everyone. With an army of construct minions and neurotoxins!"

The awkward silence that filled the room was happening far too much for her liking. "Okay, maybe just a million construct minions, covered in magically enchanted gold! That's more achievable!"

"I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are on about. All I was asked to do was make a delivery," the guard said with little emotion. "Fiona, we got that thing you asked for, and no, you can't keep it."

"Got…what?" Jake's ears tilted in interest. "Fiona, dare I ask what this is about?"

"Well, Jake, we had a movie back on Earth. It was groundbreaking, and it was called The Wizard of Oz. And there's a song in it named 'Follow the yellow brick road'," she beamed as Vick handed her one gleaming golden bar. It didn't weigh more than a feather, and she could hear a whisper of power from it. Or a hum, to her sensitive ears. "Vick, how much of this is Aurelium?"

"Uh…" he pulled out a folded note from his pocket. "99% pure. This bar is probably more than I'll make in my life."

"More like a year," Greg grunted. Vick looked a little more hopeful. "Fiona, you moved the gold like it was an animated thing at the forge. What are you doing with this?"

"Well, obviously I need a baseline!" She took a sniff of it while everyone looked at her skeptically. "Treasure scent! I can smell gold! Get with the times, everyone, this is perfectly normal!" She scolded them.

"You are not normal, dear, but we still love you for your quirkiness," Darla assured her.

"I thought you could smell treasures," Bonnie emphasized, and tapped the gold gently after Fiona handed it to her. "Which sounds a lot more abstract. Jeez, this is heavy."

"Ten kilos," Greg commented. "Fiona, what exactly is the plan here?"

"Follow the yellow brick road! Obviously!" Fiona waved to the gold ingot, while everyone leaned in. "If Karlin is as insane and delusional as to try to gather all the Aurelium in the world to one spot, there's one place he can't get to: Fiefdala treasury. And there's a lot of it there. Vick, how much?"

"State secret. I can tell you there's…one."

Fiona's beaming smile sank. "Vick. Tell me the gold isn't missing."

"The gold isn't missing. It's still there." She breathed out a sigh of relief.

Unfortunately, she figured they had to start digging for answers, fast. "So, we can do one of two things, guys. We can use about a billion coins of gold as bait, for when Karlin has to come after it at some point. Or, we can use this to sniff out where the rest of the gold is going."

"I think Karlin is crazy, and that this is someone who took a belief in a myth to an unhealthy level," Bonnie pointed out. "But, Aurelium is…new. It didn't exist until about five thousand years ago. And it has some...unusual properties. Especially with you nearby. Doug, your take?"

"Bar'dathi settlers used it for trade going back thousands of years, but sparingly. It doesn't tarnish unlike normal gold, and you'll find gold inlays on their historical carvings in the ancient forests," Doug added. "I would say that he is crazy, but…maybe my mother wasn't wrong. Maybe it is the lifeblood of a goddess. It would not be the strangest thing on Cepalune."

"Isn't there about ten tons of gold currently stuck at the bottom of a ruined forge?" Greg pointed out. "That'll take time to get that out of there, even with a metalmancer."

Fiona put a hand up to interject. "Guys, I have a theory on Fiefdala's woes. The gold never left the mines of Fiefdala. It's been there the whole time," she answered as she hefted the heavy brick without a bit of effort, and smirked softly. "I mean, if you had to hide a metric crapton of gold… would you ever look at where it was dug up?"

For once, the silence in the room meant she had everyone on board. They all glanced at each other before nodding.