[2414] The Queen's Baby

I write a low-brow fantasy-comedy series about two adventurers who go on little quests but almost always screw up somehow. The r/writingprompts sub is having a novellette contest, so I am using the contest as an excuse to try and write the origin story for how the two adventurers met. This is the first chapter of my contest entry (which isn't finished). (The r/writingprompts mods confirmed that participants in the contest can seek critiques here.)

While I welcome all comments, I am trying to accomplish the following things in this chapter:

1. Introduce the reader to Dale and Luke (the adventurers), as well as Sophia (the character whose agency is actually going to drive the key parts of the story).
2. Introduce the story's main conflict.
3. Introduce the world a little bit.
4. Differentiate Dale and Luke as characters. (My earlier stories in this series were not great at this.)
5. Get the reader interested enough to finish reading another 6k - 10k of this story. The contest judges will be other participants who have to read the whole story anyway but I want the first chapter to successfully hook my readers or else the rest of the story will suffer.

Here is the link to the story:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eo6bfYTaaEuwctfxN9s68fO6mzc-av58PHcTsJFYph4/edit?usp=sharing

Mods: here's a link to my spreadsheet of critiques and posts here, which contains word counts and links to the relevant threads: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_U4m3U8tLWjYVuhvxR3NRqDEWpT8P3zVcqOhntndKDM/edit?usp=sharing

Mods, this is the first time I've posted a link to my spreadsheet, so if you have any suggestions or comments on that, let me know and I will make changes as necessary. I hope the spreadsheet makes it easier to verify non-leech status.

Thanks everybody!