It had been a full two, almost three, months since Kerii's mom had suddenly passed away. Nobody expected it. When Kerii heard that her mom had a medical emergency, she rushed to her family. Being a healer, she wanted to help out in any way she could. But when she got there, there wasn't anything she could do. To the best of her abilities, she couldn't heal her mother. Within two full days of her trying to heal her mom, she passed away. Not only did she lose someone very close to her, but she also lost a huge portion of her self confidence. During those (almost) three months, Kerii couldn't bring herself to do the things she normally did as a mage. A few times, actually, she came close to taking a quest, but something, some sort of fear, inside of her told her not to. But today, she decided that enough was enough. She was still a member of Lamia Scale. She was still a mage. It was time she started acting like one again. Just like she did when she was just starting, she would take an easy request. She decided that it was best to start off slow and not dive straight into the deep end with a request on the more difficult side.

Dragging herself out of bed, she stripped off her clothes and hopped in the shower. The warm water gave her a comforting but refreshed feeling. It was just what she needed to get her even more motivated to return to her duties as a mage. After doing that, she put on a fresh, clean set of clothes. Now that it was autumn, she couldn't dress the way she did when it was summer. She wore a pair of light washed jeans with a crimson sweater. She slipped on a pair of sneakers that she wore quite often and set out.

Opening the door, a gust of wind briefly gave her the chills and made her cheeks flush with a light shade of pink. Albeit not having used it for quite some time, the location of the request board was still fresh in the elf's mind. She was actually sort of surprised that she didn't forget how to get there. Although she knew that she would remember at least roughly where it was, she still expected to take a wrong turn somewhere. For some reason, she just expected herself to slip up somehow. If she didn't slip up on the way to the request board, she was sure that she would while on the quest.

Kerii tried to get herself out of that negative mindset as she approached the request board. Looking over all the possible requests, she eliminated the ones from her selection that gave too high of a reward. As all mages knew, higher rewards meant higher difficulty. So, she limited herself to choosing from the requests with the lower rewards. She finally decided on one that was put out by Joachim Messer. It didn't look too hard.

WC: 507/1000

It was titled "Family Crest." Joachim Messer's family crest was missing so it was Kerii's job to find it. Whether it was stolen or not was not mentioned, but considering the fact that the reward was relatively low, Kerii highly doubted that she would be encountering some sort of bandit. There was a picture of the family crest on the request already. It depicted two swans with their necks intertwined. It was evidently made out of a rare metal. Kerii couldn't help but smile at the beauty of it. The Virrel family crest had one of the symbols for magic along with another symbol on top of it that was clearly of the elven language, but it stood for something other than the letter it meant. It basically embodied the Virrels' affinity with magic relating to the cosmos, so Kerii had to wonder what the swans meant to the Messer family.

Kerii decided that it was best to start asking around town to see if anyone had seen the crest. As expected, the first few people Kerii came across had never seen the crest in their life. However, the fourth person she talked to claimed that someone tried to sell him the crest. Evidently, that person was a criminal. Kerii felt a lump of fear arise in her throat. She didn't want to deal with a criminal. She couldn't; not yet at least. The citizen instructed her to go to a man by the name of Gaud. If it was anyone who would have bought the family crest, it would be him. He told her where she could find him and what he looked like. After thanking the citizen, she set off to find Gaud.

Singling out one person in a town as large and as crowded as Era sounds harder than it really was, especially when you had a description of the person you were trying to find. Gaud was a collector of sorts, but instead of buying something to keep, he bought things to then again resell for a higher price. It was no surprise that he would be found around vendors or even near sketchy looking places. Generally, sketchy places generally sold rarer (not to mention illegal or stolen) items that would bring in a larger profit. Kerii came across someone who seemed to fit the description the citizen of Era gave her. She asked him if he was Gaud. He seemed a bit skeptical at first, but ended up admitting that he was. Kerii quickly explained to him most of what she knew, safe for a few details here and there, but it was enough for Gaud to know what he had gotten himself into for purchasing that family crest. Not wanting to get into trouble with the Rune Knights, he handed it over to Kerii who thanked him for his cooperation. Since Joachim Messer was busy, Kerii was unable to give it to him directly. However, she did hand it off to one of the guards at the gates who paid her with the reward Joachim provided.

WC: 1019/1000