"Malcorona would never laugh off the near-death experiences of his employees." - No one ever.   After reading the comments on the last page, I have come to the conclusion that if the Alpha Lupine Guards had not shown up, Cloaker probably would have stung Lyric, who would have succumbed to his poison while choking the life out of Cloaker. Draconis would continue his journey completely unaware that his adversaries had finished each other off, but Flight would have sensed a vague disturbance. Malcorona would eventually get suspicious when the letters stopped coming and would put a bounty on Draconis and all known accomplices. And then our tale would have a much darker ending. So, yeah, you can finally thank that mean guard for something. And he'll never know how failing to catch the intruders changed the path of the story.