My First Delivery Job

Jess had already wasted quite a bit of the morning. Once he'd settled the imp's work, he sprinted all the way into the Mage Quarter.

Ever since finding work there, he felt his stamina getting better and better. Every morning he ran a mile or two, then cleaned a room for an hour without stopping. He was training both his body and his patience. Wasn't that a kind of cultivation too?

He'd barely finished cleaning and sat down with a book when Marin arrived.

Seeing Jess holding a book while still panting, Marin said, "I've got a job for you. But you look exhausted. Shall we talk about it later?"

Jess closed the book. "I was just getting some exercise, Master. Go ahead."

"Where's the tea?" Marin looked at the empty teapot. "Forgot today?"

"Ah." Jess scratched his head. "Sorry. I got here late."

"Never mind," Marin said. "Let me tell you about the job. I need someone to take a letter and some materials to Stonewatch Keep. When would you have time?"

"Stonewatch Keep in the Redridge Mountains?" Jess asked.

"Yes." Marin pulled a large bundle out from under the desk. "Deliver these things, along with this letter, to the keep. It was meant for a mage, but he's never there, so I addressed it to his student instead. That should save you some trouble."

He tucked a sealed letter into the bundle. "Ideally, it should arrive this week. You've got about three days. If you leave right after your class this afternoon, there should be plenty of time. You'll probably need to stay overnight in Lakeshire and at Stonewatch Keep."

"No problem." Jess had already agreed to do extra work for Marin in exchange for another four silver coins a month. Something as simple as delivering a letter was hardly a problem.

Marin warned him, "But don't rush too much. Try to travel alongside the Stormwind soldiers on patrol. Don't go alone. The gnoll problem out there hasn't been completely dealt with, so there's still some danger."

"So can I borrow a horse for free?" Jess asked eagerly.

"Oh, right." Marin took a slip of paper from his drawer, wrote something on it, and stamped it with his seal. "Take this to the stable keeper. He's so fat you'll recognize him immediately. He'll lend you a horse."

Jess gripped the note, almost bursting with excitement.

Then, in the middle of that excitement, he thought of the imp.

Could Marin sense anything unusual about him? Maybe a demonic smell from contact with a demon, or dark energy lingering around him after the summoning?

After preparing Marin's tea, Jess sat nearby and watched the mage carefully, waiting to see whether anything about the tea would give him away. But Marin merely drank some, then went back to reading as if nothing had happened.

Was the imp really that impressive?

Or was it so weak that the energy it released was too faint for anyone to notice?

Either way, if Marin hadn't detected anything, ordinary people probably wouldn't notice anything wrong either.

Jess had been worried that summoning an imp would make it impossible for him to enter the Wizard's Sanctum for a while. Now it seemed the effects weren't as great as he'd imagined.

Then again, Dalaran had plenty of warlocks secretly operating even more boldly than the ones in Stormwind, and that entire city was protected by Antonidas's magical wards.

When Jess returned home at noon, Saeno was still translating without a break.

He looked through the pages. Progress was slow. The book was probably over a hundred pages long, and the imp had only translated the beginning.

Still, Jess understood how difficult translation could be. Sometimes a word in one language had no direct equivalent in another, and the best you could do was explain its meaning. This world didn't have a translation app that could handle everything with one tap.

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"Human pens are so hard to use!" Saeno complained.

"Be glad you've got one," Jess said. "Use it carefully. I can't afford to buy another if you break it."

He looked at his purse, now more than half empty, and sat down helplessly on the bed.

By his calculation, he wouldn't be paid for another week.

He'd have to get Gred to buy him lunch this time. He could eat, go to his Orcish lesson, and then set out.

They sat down at an Ironforge-style tavern in the Dwarven District. Gred had clearly been doing well lately. Jess eyed the new dark-yellow coat he was wearing.

"Going for the Bronzebeard look?"

Gred grinned. "The Bronzebeards and Ironforge don't have a monopoly on understated colors, Jess."

"Speaking of clothes." He took a breadstick from the server, tore a piece open, stuffed a length of blood sausage inside, and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. Chewing, he went on, "I made a set of clothes out of those wolf pelts from the Great Lake Farm. Had a dwarf tailor make it. Looks great. It's sized for you. Come by my place and try it on sometime."

"It's still warm out. No rush," Jess said. "There's barely room for another shirt in that tiny room of mine!"

"Oh, right," Gred said. "Have you thought about going to Aerie Peak for the Feast of Winter Veil? It's already October. I'd like to leave at least a month early in case something goes wrong. We'll have to start getting ready by mid-November."

Jess took a bite of blood sausage. He thought about what Gred had said, then about the imp he'd just summoned, the terrifying Fear spell, and the staff...

If he went on a long trip, he'd have to take that staff. There was no way he could leave something so valuable in Stormwind for a month.

But taking all these things carrying dark energy to Aerie Peak would be asking for trouble, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, refusing Gred like this would feel strange.

He wanted to find a chance to visit his parents in Lordaeron over Winter Veil anyway. The Hinterlands weren't far from the Kingdom of Lordaeron, with only the Alterac Mountains separating them. If he went back to Lordaeron without stopping in the Hinterlands, it would look as if he were deliberately avoiding Gred.

Besides, there were gryphons. Jess wanted to see gryphons—real ones. All he had to do was agree, and he'd get his chance.

"Of course I'm going." Jess swallowed the sausage and took a drink of grape juice. "No problem."

"That 'of course' took you a full minute to come up with," Gred said.

"Was it that long?" Jess asked. "I was thinking about the trip. We'd have to cross Baradin Bay and the Hillsbrad Foothills. You know those orcs..."

Gred picked his teeth with his dinner knife. "In Hillsbrad, Terenas II just appointed a new lord to Durnholde Keep. A war hero named Aedelas Blackmoore. Heard of him? He's got a system. People say he's been posting bounties all over Hillsbrad for orc fugitives, capturing them, and locking them up in the keep. Then he set aside an arena where the orcs fight each other or wild beasts, and nobles from Lordaeron pay to watch. He uses the money to keep hunting down more orcs. The bigger his operation gets, the safer Hillsbrad should become."

Jess knew exactly who Blackmoore was. The future Horde Warchief Thrall had grown up under him as a young orc gladiator.

"You really know the details."

"Of course. I have to think about how safe the road home is. You need to know these things. You'll be fine with me, Jess. I've looked into it all."

"Then I'm counting on you," Jess said. "Once I've been to Lordamere, let's meet in Southshore and head to the Hinterlands together. How's that?"

"Fine by me. I'm taking you to Aerie Peak and showing you my home no matter what," Gred said, taking a sip of milk. "The route doesn't really matter."

Jess glanced at the milk caught in his beard. "Got work today?"

"Yes." Gred wiped his mouth. "Tomorrow or the day after, I've got to head east. The Warriors' Guild has been given a job there."

"East? Eastvale, or are you going to Redridge?"

"Redridge."

"Then that's perfect."

Jess placed Marin's borrowing note on the table. "Why not go today? I'll take you with me. We can ride."

Gred picked up the note and looked at it. "You're going to Redridge too?"

Jess nodded. "I've got something to deliver to Stonewatch Keep. We can travel together."

Gred broke into a grin. "Nice. Save some travel money."

"Speaking of which, why didn't you ask me to come when you knew you were going to Redridge?" Jess asked.

The grin on the dwarf's face seemed to freeze.

"I don't even know what the job is. What if it's just delivering a letter like yours? Taking you along would be a waste."

Jess wagged a finger. "Your Warriors' Guild delivers letters now? You know perfectly well you're going there to fight somebody or catch somebody, not to carry things around. So why didn't you ask me?"

Gred set down his cup and sighed. "...All right. I'll tell you."

"After we came back from Great Lake Farm, I had nightmares for several nights, Jess. I'm sure they had something to do with your magic. If I hadn't started recovering these past couple of days, I think I'd have gone crazy. If we get in trouble again and you cast something even stronger, I really won't be able to take it."

"Didn't I promise to avoid using that kind of magic from now on?" Jess said. "Besides, I can't just cast it whenever I want. Those spells are hard to use. I was still figuring them out before."

"All right, then. Let's agree on this now. Unless we're about to die, you're not allowed to use that magic again."

"Fine. As long as you stop getting us into life-or-death situations all the time," Jess said helplessly.

The dwarf waved a hand. "Fine, I get it. Meet me at our usual spot by the city gate in an hour."

"An hour's too soon. I've still got a class. Make it three hours."

"You're still taking classes? All right, three hours it is."