"Now, my story does not start 'a few months' ago, but actually two years ago in one of the larger cities. Back then, I was a simple scholar, studying the 'great reset'...I believe you've heard about it? The complete loss of all historical records, of which only various mysterious ruins still bear witness to?"

"Yes, we've heard about it...and your time is still ticking," the emerald eyed woman proclaims impatiently.

The man sighs, takes a sip from his beer and starts talking.

Back then was my first encounter with the person who I would later learn to be known as 'The Zeaphyr fox'...I was just walking down the street during the evening hours, my mind on the latest theory regarding the great reset and on its supposed correlation to the supernatural force commonly referred to as 'Magic', when all of a sudden a shout cut through the silence of the onsetting night.

I did not know it at that time, but these three words changed my life.

Stupid as I was, I turned around to look at what was going on, when a shadow raced past me, jumping from one roof to the next, as if gravity did not exist at all...what really sealed my fate however was, that I watched the shadow toss something away, that glittered in the light of the rising moon.

While the guards of the mansion the shadow had apparently come from trampled past me in pursuit, curious and stupid me walked over to where I had seen the item fall, somewhere in the bushes near the roadside.

It did not take me long to find it, a ruby of the size of my palm, embedded into a golden fitting richly decorated with ornaments...now, I did not know the first thing about jewelry, but one glance at this beauty and I knew that it was worth more money than I'd ever see in my life.

Unfortunately for me, as I rose from the bushes, there were already a number of very brutish looking guys in heavy armor standing right in front of me...they also saw the huge gem in my hand.

I was subsequently accused of being the thief and all my attempts to explain fell on deaf ears.

Neither the guards, nor the judge listened to my pleas that I was innocent in all this...and want to guess what drove the final nail into the coffin?

My attire!

You see, back then, the rainy season had already started, so I wore a wide cloak to be prepared for sudden downpours...which the thief, according to witness accounts, also wore.

The judge proclaimed that, 'Only one who has to hide something, hides their face from sight.'

And thus I was thrown into jail for a crime I had never comitted, while the gem was returned to its rightful owner and the real thief disappeared without a trace.

"Sure sounds like you had it rough, but what does that have to do with us?" the talkative woman asks.

"Oh, nothing at all. As I said, this is the story of how I came to hunt the fox and nothing more...though I am also imparting a valuable lesson I learned that day...do not wear cloaks outside if it is not actually raining."

The last part gets a slight chuckle from the second woman at the table, but she's quick to shut up again.

"Anyway...as I am somewhat sure you've already figured out, my arrest and the subsequent trial were mere mockery...they wanted a scapegoat and they happened to find it in me."

"If you already know that, then why do you blame the Zeaphyr fox? All he did was throw away the loot in order to escape more easily...but it was you who picked it up. So that one's on you."

The man chuckles and replies, "That's the thing...he did not throw away the loot. Not at all."

You see, I was three weeks in prison, and yes, I counted the days, when the local interrogation specialist came to pay me another visit.

Now, while he did not explicitely say it, his questions hinted me in the direction, that the gem I found in the bushes was, in fact, a fake, which only leads to one conclusion...it was a decoy.

An expertly crafted decoy, which was meant to buy the thief enough time to make off with the real loot.

"Well, if they knew that, they could no longer think that you were the thief...right?" the woman asks.

"Oh, they already knew a long time ago that I was not the thief. A number of witnesses testified, that I had neither the build nor the ahem 'gracefulness' of the thief. They long since thought that I was an accomplice, whose task it was to take the loot to safety, while my 'partner' leads the guards away."

"But with the 'loot' being fake, that argument went out of the window."

"Precisely...so they had no choice but to let me go and look for another scapegoat."

"Well, all's well that ends well, I guess," the woman proclaims and rises from her seat, motioning her comrade to do the same.

As they start to move, the man asks, "But that does not explain why I sought you out, does it?"

Unnerved but also with a hint of curiosity, the robed woman returns to the table and asks, "It explains why you would hold a grudge against 'that thief', although you seem to avoid speaking the name."

"Very astute observation. And the thing is...it was not the thief I was angry at. It was a typical 'wrong time, wrong place' situation and while it would be easy to blame the thief for all the crap that had happened to me, I'd rather blame the guards who did not listen to reason and the judge who mocked me at the 'trial'...and as time passed, even that anger faded...until 6 months ago, when this article appeared in the paper."

The man pulls out an old paper and lays it out on the table.

The lead article was about the discovery of some ancient ruins which were found beneath a derelict mansion within the so-called 'Grapes valley'.

The woman looks at the article and just for a moment, she seems nervous, but quickly calms down again and asks, "What about it...?"

The man pulls out another paper, which features an elaborate crest and places it on the table next to the paper.

"...this crest was found within these ruins...and can you imagine my surprise, when I first saw it and recognized the very gem that had landed me in jail 2 years prior. Without a doubt, this gem and the ruins were somehow connected. Maybe they were are even both connected to the great reset. When I told my colleagues about it, they laughed at me and called me crazy, but I am not. The Zeaphyr fox stole something from the era before the great reset, leaving behind a carefully prepared faksimile...and only a little later, these ruins are discovered after a mysterious landslide in an area without any sort of tectonical activity. That was the day I started to hunt the fox. Not for something petty like revenge or some bullshit sense of justice...I want answers."