Grumbling with resentment, Tarvick clambered down a rotted staircase to join the dragoness, his handheld crossbow hooked back on the loop at his hip. He was a thick, oily-skinned man with hawk-like features and yellow, jaundiced eyes. Drachia suspected, as she had many times in the past, that he would have been a much more successful adventurer if he didn't waste so much of his treasure on drink and whores.

"I see that Sebastian gave you my message then?" he asked, eyeing the dragoness disdainfully. His scowl didn't improve when she gave a nod of her horned head and stepped with cautious feet towards one of the many hallways branching off the grand hall. 

"I got the message, Tarvick. And that message was that you didn't want me to know where you were going."

She could hear his heavy boots following her as she began to explore the castle. When he didn't respond she went on to say, "...and I find that disappointing considering how often you've benefited from my help. So what is different about this time, hm? Did you forget how to share? Is someone else paying you to bring them my share? Or were you simply hoping to collect everything and sell me what you know I'd want?"

No reply. She turned back to find the man with his arms crossed defiantly and a sneer on his face. In a flash of anger she lunged towards him and seized the front of his leather tunic. He was a sturdy man, equal in height to the red-scaled mage, but still she was able to hoist him rudely off his feet. 

"Do not test me, Tarvick. I know more than one spell that will loosen that tongue." Her sinister growl echoed down the muffled, dusty corridors.

"Alright! Alright!" Tarvick gasped harshly, his dirt-crusted boots scuffing against the stone beneath him. "Two men found me outside Mizzy's Tavern a fortnight ago. They told me where I might find some treasure, and that me an my boys could keep it all if we brought them any books or scrolls with this sigil on it."

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a piece of old blue silk with the symbol of the old kingdom, but it also had a ring of seven stars stitched in an arc across the top. Drachia stared at it as she lowered the idiot to his feet, struggling to remember where she had seen the halo of stars before. 

"So you thought that you'd be likely to walk away with more loot if you gave your new pals what they were looking for than if you brought me along, hmm? Well, I'm here and they are not. If we find anything, you can just tell them I cursed you into giving it to me instead."

As they moved deeper into the castle, Drachia began to hear clearly the sounds of picks and hammers chiseling into the stone. "It sounds like your lads have found something after all."

They followed the trail of smoky torches until they came across Tarvick's team. They had already broken through one wall into a chamber that was littered with the remains heavy chests and racks. Whatever had been hidden here had been looted long ago, probably when the treacherous winter weather had sent ruinous earthslides to wipe out not only part of the castle, but much of the kingdom around it. But rather than looking into the faces of disappointed treasure hunters, the half-dragon saw them busily working to widen a rift in the far wall, breaking into another space behind it. Her nostrils flared slightly at the cold, musky scent of ages that came rushing out. 

Grinning, with her wings lifted slightly from her back, she turned to Tarvick, and saw her excitement reflected in his human eyes. Whatever was behind that wall hadn't been touched in many long years.