It was daytime in Crocus and the streets were crowded with people. Seira had only recently arrived in the capital of Fiore and although she had been here before, it was always nice to return. She grew up in Era and as the daughter of a relatively wealthy family, she was fond of the luxurious and sometimes even flamboyant lifestyle which the citizens of Crocus seemed to live. There were no particular reasons for her to visit this place and although there was a lot going on in the world at the moment, she had to admit that she felt safer being in a large place such as this, with many people (and many Rune Knights) rather than the woodlands such as Worth Woodsea. Seira had been in the north recently and while she enjoyed it there, Oak Town itself had always been a strange place. She never really knew what to think of the people there and while she had certainly met nice humans, it was mostly the clients that were strange. Seira was used to traveling all across the country, constantly on the look out for quests, missions and jobs — although she didn’t exactly need money, the vampire much prefered a lavish lifestyle and from time to time she allowed herself to spend some money on some unnecessary things she didn’t needed but still wanted. There was nothing wrong with that, she was a girl after all, but at the same time this required her to constantly find work as well. Seira was a relatively strong and high ranked mage by now and although she didn’t really care much for magic itself, it was still something she practiced. Luckily, most missions didn’t require for her to attack anyone or anything. It was almost funny what people were willing to pay for and more often than not it was laziness or even the inability to do something themselves that helped her with finding jobs. Crocus, as the capital of the country, was of course one of the best places to find work that paid well. The people here had more money, better jobs and they were also generous. It was different on the countryside but more often than not Seira prefered being far away from anywhere were the Rune Knights were, at least ever since she became a vampire. As she walked through the streets of Crocus and looked around, she didn’t have an exact plan as to what to do yet, but that didn’t matter. The morning had been relatively slow and Seira (for once) slept through the night like a baby. The vampire had once again shifted her sleeping schedule around to match the general public and she found it much easier to converse with people like this as well. Espeon had stayed in the hotel. She always left the window unlocked in case her pet wanted to leave, but she noticed that Espeon prefered to stay at home when they visited large cities. That was fine with Seira, considering that there wasn’t much to do for the animal anyways.

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Seira stopped by a few stores and decided to take a look. She had to find work but the vampire was feeling lazy, so she decided to stop by the request board later. The day was still long, it was early afternoon and therefore there was plenty of time left. The shop Seira visited was a jewelry store. She rarely wore jewelry these days but she thought about trying it out again if she found something nice. Seira always liked earrings and after entering the shop, she went into the lane with the earrings first. There were quite a few other women and men here and most of them were busy with their own stuff, which is why Seira decided to mind her own business as well. She didn’t need assistance anyways and she knew what would look good on her, so the vampire began looking for some white pearl earrings — not too big since she didn’t want to over do it. She liked longer earrings as well, those that looked quite fancy and girly, but considering that she had long hair which she usually wore open, there would be no point in getting those since they couldn’t be seen and would go unnoticed anyways. After a while of looking around the girl eventually found a pair she liked and after holding it up to her ear and deciding that they did, in fact, look good on her, she went to the cashier and completed the purchase.

For a moment there Seira thought about wearing them right away but decided to wait until she had returned home before doing so. There wasn’t much going on in the town and the vampire went through a few more clothing shops before she decided to stop by a restaurant and find something to eat. She was craving pasta, weirdly enough, and once she found a place she ordered something and enjoyed her meal. Seira had a list of things she wanted to check out and items she potentially wanted to buy, but for today there wasn’t much else going on which she realized even after going through her notebook. She sighed, knowing that this meant that she had to get to work eventually, but she would stop by her hotel first to see how Espeon was doing before she left to find a client. After Seira finished eating and left the restaurant, she stopped by one of the many street vendors and purchased some grilled fish — Espeon’s favourite — before returning to her hotel where her pet was already waiting for her. Espeon was clearly more excited about the fish than Seira, but that was understandable. Seira placed all her bags of the things she had bought away and opened up the package with the earrings. She put them on and changed her hairstyle into a ponytail so they were more visible. Pleased with how it looked, the vampire jumped onto her bed and sighed, knowing that she would have to get to work soon.

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After a while of just being lazy and laying around, the girl finally got up and looked over at her companion. “I’m going to find some work now, I assume you don’t want to come along?” Espeon, who had already finished her fish by now, looked up to Seira and then turned her back on her owner. “I guess that’s a now then,” shrugging it off, Seira got out of bed and left the hotel room once again. It was time to head for the request boards to find work, but because Crocus was so big there were actually several of them. Seira knew that the one with the missions that paid much better than the rest were often related to noble families, and high ranking people who worked for the crown. Of course that was always interesting, although Seira had to admit she didn’t want to get dragged into the business of people like that without being able to defend herself in case something went wrong. She decided that, at least for Crocus and Era, she wouldn’t accept any bad quests like she did in Hargeon and Oak from time to time — those cities were incredibly far away from the capital however, and although the crown pretended that they had everything under control at all times, their influence didn’t reach that far (especially not with Oak, since Phantom Lord was the ruling power there). When Seira was making her way to the center of the capital, she couldn’t help but notice how distracting everything was. This was yet another benefit of being in smaller places.

Towns such as Marigold and even Hargeon were never this distracting and she usually went straight to business without wasting much time - sometimes even right after waking up. Even though Crocus had several request boards for the tons of mages that came across the capital, it still took her seemingly forever to find the one she was heading for and when she finally arrived there were many other wizards present. Although in most towns these request boards were for all sorts of mages, in most places that had a local guild only guildless wizards accepted jobs here since the guild mages could find work that was directly assigned to them, which was quite comfy and much easier of course. Here, Seira had to pick her very own quest without ever knowing much about the clients. Of course most of them were famous, especially if they had high ranks and whatnot but still, Seira wasn’t that familiar with the monarchy and the people that worked under it after all. She looked through the missions for a while before eventually picking one. The reward was strangely high and Seira was quite pleased by that, although she had to check first with the details if it was actually worth the trouble. The vampire picked up the flyer and began reading. In the meantime she stepped aside to make place for the other wizards who were crowding around the request board.

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The first thing she noticed about this particular quest was the location. The location it stated was Mercurious and even those who weren’t familiar with Crocus knew exactly what this place was for. Mercurius was an extremely large and tall building, appearing as one of the most visible elements in the valley where Crocus is located, and towering over all of the city's other buildings, with even the Domus Flau located outside paling in its comparison. As evident of its role as the King's residence, Mercurius is a very intricately decorated and designed castle. Seira had never been inside and especially now she couldn’t think of a reason to do so, yet the reward was kind of intriguing so she continued reading. The client’s name was Lady Merlin, which was a strange name to begin with and she would have sworn that Merlin was a male name. Besides that, Seira however knew that this wasn’t just anybody and she had certainly heard this name before. Seira looked around a little helplessly. She certainly didn’t want to work for someone she didn’t know in a place such as the Mercurius so she decided to gather some information first. There was another mage, a male who seemed to be in his mid twenties, standing not too far from her. He was holding a flyer in his hand as well and as he was studying it Seira approached him quietly and politely asked a question. “Excuse me, do you by any chance know who Lady Merlin is?” She asked and held up the flyer with the mission details on it.

The man, who was obviously startled by her sneaking up on him, looked up, scanned the paper and nodded slowly. “Yes, I do. Most people do. You are not from here, are you? She’s the king’s personal adviser, a real witch. She’s rumored to be incredibly strong and incredibly old, older than the king himself - but she doesn’t look like it at all. You’d never guess, she looks not a day older than twenty five,” Seira greatly appreciated this information and nodded at the man before returning to her old position and continuing to read. Lady Merlin is seeking out a person capable of reading cryptic tomes and enchanting an amulet as a birthday present for someone — Seira was interested in magics and books, she had experience in this field and was quite educated as well so she decided to accept this quest. Seira put the flyer away and looked up at the Mercurius. The building stood tall and Lady Merlin’s study was somewhere in there. When Seira wanted to enter she had to walk past the guards, but after showing them the request flyer that had Merlin’s signature on it, she was let in. It was huge inside out and the vampire was completely lost in the building itself. Luckily there were plenty of people around to help her find her way around and after climbing a seemingly endless amount of stairs, the girl finally had made it to the office of the king’s personal adviser.

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Seira knocked on the large door and was let in eventually. “Excuse me, I am looking for Lady Merlin,” as she was let in, she was brought into a room where the adviser sat on her table, working on what appeared to be a large chunk of paperwork. “Please, have a seat. I assume you are here for the mission that I requested to be done by someone who knows their ways around tomes, hexes and blessings, right?” She cut straight to the point, but Seira actually quite liked that. The girl nodded and placed the flyer on the table, “Yes, I have done work like this before and I can read many languages and cast magic. What exactly do you need me to do?” The woman reached into her drawer and pulled out a beautiful, golden amulet with a few gemstones embedded into this. “It is Luciel’s birthday soon,” she began to explain, “I want to make her a gift, however I am incredibly busy this year. Luciel is a girl I found when she was young and I have been taking care of her ever since. However this year I am simply too busy to do anything, so I need someone else to help me out. I want you to read through some of my spell books and put a blessing onto this amulet, which is what I want to gift to her,” Merlin explained and slid the amulet across the table. “There is a huge library here, I am sure you will find you way around. “I want you to enchant it with something positive such as good health, a long life, luck, beauty, stuff like that,” Seira nodded and looked down at the amulet. She could certainly do that, especially if she was provided with enough sources. She would have to dig her way through a massive amount of books first, but that could always be done and certainly wouldn’t present a problem for the female wizard. “How much time do I have?” Seira asked and Merlin shook her head, “Not much, Her birthday is actually today so this is more or less last minute. If you can figure something out soon I will pay you well, this much I promise,” she said. “The library is next door, please start now while I continue my own work.” Seira nodded, grabbed the amulet and immediately went next door, where she entered a large library. She had to start searching her way through a massive amount of tomes now and that in itself would probably take the most time out of this mission. It was an interesting task nonetheless however and Seira actually quite enjoyed this. She tried her best not to trail off and get lost in the amount of books and she was looking for something that could benefit Luciel. Seira didn’t think beauty was all that important and health and luck were much more of a priority for this gift. After about an hour she finally found something.

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The book was titled “Enchantments for Longevity & Perfect Health”, which was exactly what Seira was looking for. The title in itself was a bit strange because it was so straightforward, but after browsing through the pages for a good fifteen minutes Seira noticed that this was just what she needed. She picked the book up and carried it over to the table where she would then look for the perfect enchantments. There was quite a few and she had to make sure that they were compatible with Luciel, who was still a young girl. Some of them were specifically made for a certain type of person, such as an elderly person for example, but Luciel wasn’t like that so Seira had to be careful in what she picked. Of course enchantments were always a great way to improve, well, anything really, but if you messed it up those could turn into hexes real quick and no one really wanted that to happen. Another thing were the ingredients. Unfortunately, an enchantment couldn’t just be made by casting a spell onto an item and then it would become magical and great - you actually had to search for ingredients and collect a few items and put them together before that could be done. Seira made a list of everything she needed after she had her enchantment and brought it to Merlin, who told her that everything she needed could be found inside Mercurius. The building was large so there were many places that offered labs and whatnot where Seira could brew a potion out of the ingredients that were required to enchant the golden amulet.

Once Seira finished the potion, she brought it back to the library and placed the golden amulet into a large coup. Then, she began speaking the spell while pouring the liquid of the potion onto the amulet to enchant is. This progress alone took a good amount of her own mana, since this was a relatively strong spell, but it was fine with Seira who luckily had enough of it. Once Seira finished the spell, she picked up the amulet and dried and cleaned it before taking it back to Merlin. “I’m done, could you please have a look at it to see if it’s all the way you wanted?” She asked and gave the woman the item. She inspected it a bit using magic and eventually nodded. “Perfect, you’ve done a good job. This is just what I was looking for,” she then placed the amulet into a small package with a ribbon on it and handed it back to Seira. “Luciel is currently in the downstairs library, please give this to her together with this card from me,” she said and gave Seira both things, who then headed downstairs to the library. She found Luciel within a pile of books and handed her the birthday gift while congratulating her, but the girl didn’t seem to be fazed by her own birthday. She thanked her, however, and after returning to Lady Merlin Seira was finally rewarded and allowed to leave.

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