Achieve

“He took all of the apples, the whole basket! And when I tried to stop him, he ran away faster than I could chase him!”

Achieve listens to the testimony of the apple farmer. He’s been a part of the clan watch for a while now, and food theft isn’t new. But someone plainly stealing entire baskets of apples? That’s unheard of! He notes down everything the poor farmer can tell him about the thief, and promises him that it’ll be solved quickly. “Don’t worry sir, we will find the culprit. Your orchard will be safe!” The farmer thanks him about five times before letting him go, and Achieve leaves the farm to return to the watchtower.

His captain looks over his notes. “Doesn’t look too hard to solve.”, the older dragon says. Achieve agrees. “Who steals an entire basket of apples though, seems counterproductive. You can never eat all of them before they start rotting.”, he says. His captain shrugs. “Either the thief isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, or they’re selling those apples.”, he replies. Achieve nods. That does sound like the most plausible case.

The clan watch finds the thief quickly. But the apples, those are gone. The thief proudly tells Achieve and the others that she threw the apples into the river, so they’ll never return to the clan. But why? The thief gets locked up, the farmer thanks Achieve and the clan watch, but that question never leaves Achieve’s mind. Why would you waste food like that? It keeps him up at night, and eventually, he visits the thief to ask her about it. She looks at him, surprised, but answers his question. “Why don’t you feed one of that farmer’s apples to something?”

So Achieve gets an apple. By paying for it, of course. And feeds it to his familiar. The apple looks delicious, his familiar finds it delicious. Until Achieve wakes up the next morning to find his familiar deathly ill.