The salt-heavy air of Limani tis Adelphótitas didn't just smell of brine; it stank of dead fish, tar, and the copper tang of a thousand different coins changing hands. Inside the Vanguard Guild Hall, however, the air was thick with the scent of stale Bēor and the ozone hum of active Sigils.
Squad Aurora, fresh from the Academy and sporting their pristine Orange Tier badges, claimed a circular table near the hearth. They looked less like a cohesive military unit and more like a jagged puzzle forced together by a bored god.
Aurora Aksnes was, true to form, horizontal. She was draped across a bench meant for three, her eyes closed, her heavy Battle Axe propped dangerously against the table edge. A half-empty mug of Luminara balanced precariously on her stomach.
"You're drooling," Persya said, not looking up from his gauntlets. The hybrid sat opposite her, using a rag to polish the Kayaçelik segments of his blade. The metal hissed as he channeled a microscopic pulse of Recomposere to push a speck of rust out of the atomic lattice. "And you're making us look like tourists."
"I am conserving mana," Aurora murmured, not opening her eyes. "It's a tactical slumber. Besides, Roui is doing enough posing for all of us."
At the bar, Roui Mirtout was indeed posing. The Earthling noble leaned against the counter, flashing a smile that could disarm a Kratodon. He was chatting with a serving girl, his polished Null-Plate catching the firelight. He laughed, a rich, heroic sound that made Persya grind his teeth.
"He is securing... discounts," Isla Hernandez whispered. The Una cum Aequor sat next to Persya, her large, dark eyes darting around the room, tracking the movements of a rowdy group of Jötunn mercenaries in the corner. She clutched her Heafon Wand like a lifeline. "We need the extra coin for potions. The sea-grain prices are up again."
"He's securing a date," Alyia Embrahem corrected flatly. The Pengdhudhuk Wedhi was wiping a smudge from her glasses, her amber eyes narrowed. She reached for her drink, knocked it over with her elbow, and caught it mid-air before a drop spilled—a flash of terrifying reflexes betraying her clumsiness. "Target locked. He's been staring at her necklace for three minutes. It's an imitation opal. He's going to tell her it matches her eyes."
"It does match her eyes," Roui said, sliding back into his seat with a tray of fresh bread and roasted Tauros strips. "And I did get a discount. Plus, a rumor."
Aurora cracked one bioluminescent blue eye open. "Does the rumor involve a bed? Or food?"
"It involves our payout," Roui said, dropping a scroll on the table. "The Kryopagon contract. The dockmaster is desperate. He says the ice is spreading faster than a D-Class should be capable of. He's doubled the bounty for immediate extermination."
Persya snatched the scroll, scanning the messy scrawl. "Desperation usually means hidden danger. Or incompetence. A Kryopagon is a glorified ice-crab. Why are they paying double for a pest?"
"Because it's freezing the trade routes," Roui said, tearing a piece of bread. "The 'Economic Lung of Elpis' is wheezing. If we clear it tonight, we're heroes. We get the coin, the reputation, and—"
"—and I get to go back to sleep," Aurora finished, swinging her legs off the bench and sitting up. She stretched, her joints popping. "Fine. Let's go melt a crab."
She grabbed her axe, the heavy weapon lifting as if it were made of balsa wood. The squad stood up, the mismatched collection of outcasts drawing stares from the veterans in the hall.
"Don't get cocky," Persya muttered, securing his scarf over the brand on his neck. "The map says the docks are a maze of underwater pilings. Perfect for an ambush."
"That's why we have Alyia," Aurora said, slapping the tall sniper on the back, nearly sending her stumbling into a waiter. "She sees the ambush, Isla floods the ambush, you punch the ambush, and Roui... well, Roui looks good while we do it."
They pushed out of the heavy oak doors and into the chaotic noise of the Port of Brotherhood. The sun was setting, casting long shadows over the water, but the section of the harbor marked on their map was silent. Too silent. A thick, unnatural fog rolled off the water, smelling of ozone and old frost.
The water in the basin wasn't just frozen; it was flash-frozen. Waves were caught in mid-break, sculpted into jagged glass.
Persya didn't move toward the main pier. Instead, he grabbed Roui's polished pauldron and yanked him back into the shadows of a shipping container.
"Walking down the center is how you get skewered," Persya hissed, his slate-grey skin flushing faintly orange as his internal furnace adjusted to the biting cold. "We aren't presenting ourselves like a buffet. We hunt it."
He turned to the squad, his voice dropping to the command frequency they practiced in the Academy. "Isla, the ice is thick, but the water underneath is still moving. Find the displacement. Find the nest. Alyia, I need eyes on the high ground. That rusted crane overlooking Sector 4. Can you make the climb?"
Alyia adjusted her glasses, her amber eyes already dissecting the structural integrity of the metal skeleton. "The ladder is oxidized, and the cross-wind is twelve knots. But... yes. I can see the entire basin from the counterweight.".
"Go," Persya ordered. "Roui, you're the bait—but don't look happy about it. Stand near the edge, look distracted, and keep your Stone-Skin primed. Aurora... try to look like a threat."
"I always look like a threat," Aurora yawned, leaning on her axe.
The squad dispersed. Alyia moved with deceptive speed, her lanky frame hauling her up the frozen crane lattice. High above the docks, she settled into a sniper's crouch, her Heafon Wand resting on a rusted girder. She began the slow, rhythmic breathing of the Pengdhudhuk, her mana cycling into the crystalline lenses of the weapon.
Down on the ice-choked waterline, Isla knelt. She removed a glove, placing her pale hand flat against the flash-frozen surface. Her eyes rolled back, the nictitating membranes sliding shut. She pushed a pulse of Hydro magic not into the ice, but through it, connecting with the liquid currents deep below.
"It's... huge," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It's not just sitting there. It's circulating the water to keep its gills from freezing. It's directly under the main cargo lift. Depth... twenty meters. Rising.".
"Roui, you're up," Persya signaled.
Roui stepped onto the creaking wood of the pier directly above the target. He didn't just stand there; he tapped the butt of his Aether-Glaive against the deck—a rhythmic, annoying thud designed to mimic the footsteps of a heavy loader. "Here kitty, kitty," he muttered, channeling Terrazation into his skin until his flesh took on the dull, grey sheen of granite.
The response was instant.
The harbor didn't explode; it heaved. The thick sheet of ice buckled upward as if a mountain were rising beneath it. Wood splintered with the sound of snapping bone.
The Kryopagon breached.
It was a nightmare of chitin and frost. A crab-like leviathan the size of a carriage, its shell was encrusted with centuries of glacial ice. Its eyes were multifaceted jewels of glowing white, and its massive pincer—one oversized, like a siege hammer—dripped with a supercooled sludge that hissed as it hit the air.
It ignored the "distracted" Roui entirely. With a cunning that betrayed its D3 Threat classification, it spun instantly toward the source of the magical ping—Isla.
The beast surged onto the dock with terrifying speed, its legs stabbing through the wood. It raised its hammer-claw, aiming to crush the fragile healer before the squad could react.
Persya didn't waste breath on a scream; he wasted mana on a solution. He dropped his center of gravity, ignoring the urge to draw his blade, and slammed his right palm onto the frosted wood of the pier.
Recomposere flared—not a warm light, but a sickly, jagged orange that illuminated the veins in his hand. His mind raced through the atomic lattice of the structure beneath him. White oak. Treated with tar. Frozen water content 12%. Structural integrity... irrelevant if the bonds are severed.
"Rot," he snarled.
The effect was instantaneous and revolting. The sturdy, frost-hardened planks beneath the Kryopagon didn't break; they liquefied. In a heartbeat, the solid pier transmuted into a thick, black slurry of accelerated decay and mulch.
The beast's momentum became its undoing. Expecting resistance for its push-off, its legs instead churned through the sudden bog. With a confused, high-pitched chitter, the D3 leviathan plunged through the hole Persya had carved into reality. It crashed into the freezing water below with a splash that sent a plume of slush and rotten wood spraying over Isla.
Isla gasped, scrambling back from the jagged edge of the hole, her uniform splattered with the black muck. She was alive, uncrushed, but she was staring into the dark water where the monster had vanished.
"Don't thank me," Persya grunted, shaking the rot-residue from his glove. "Move. You're still in the splash zone.".
But the victory was short-lived. The dock didn't stop shaking.
From the darkness below, a deep, grinding vibration resonated up through the pilings. The water in the hole began to churn violently, not from the beast thrashing, but from something else. The temperature plummeted further.
"It's not fleeing!" Isla cried out, her hands glowing with a soft blue Hydro light as she sensed the currents. "It's... it's gripping the pilings! It's flash-freezing the supports to shatter them!".
A loud crack echoed like a cannon shot. The pier listed dangerously to the left. The Kryopagon was smart; it knew it had the advantage in the water, and it was trying to bring the entire squad down into its freezing domain.
"Crazy," Roui breathed, his voice tight. "That is absolutely... beautiful."
He didn't argue. There wasn't time. Roui slammed the butt of his Aether-Glaive into the splintered decking, anchoring himself. The shadows stretching from the shipping containers didn't just lengthen; they detached. With a grunt of exertion, he whipped his left hand forward.
The Tenebrae coil lashed out, wrapping around Aurora's waist not like a rope, but like cold, solidified smoke. It tightened with a bruising grip.
"Don't let go, pretty boy," Aurora said. She didn't look back. She looked down into the black, churning water.
"Never," Roui strained, his boots grinding into the wood as he activated Stone-Skin, his weight effectively doubling to serve as the counterweight.
Aurora vanished.
There was no splash. One second she was on the dock; the next, she was a golden blur of Lumen velocity shearing through the surface tension of the freezing harbor.
The cold was not a temperature; it was a physical blow. It hit Aurora like a hammer, instantly seeking to freeze the fluid in her eyes and the marrow in her bones. The silence was absolute, broken only by the muffled, grinding roar of the Kryopagon gnawing at the piling.
She was underwater, weightless, suspended in the murk. The bioluminescent eyes of the beast shone like dead stars in the gloom. It saw her—a flash of intruder light in its domain—and opened its mandibles to scream a pulse of supercooled water.
It was too slow.
Aurora didn't swim. She burned. Channeling her entire reserve of Infusus into her arms, she turned her body into a kinetic deliverer of violence. She swung the heavy Battle Axe in a tight, fluid arc.
Impact.
The axe caught the beast directly between its glowing eyes. The Infusus energy detonated on contact, driving the wedge of sharpened steel through the layers of centuries-old ice, through the chitin, and deep into the soft, wet brain matter beneath.
The beast convulsed—a tectonic spasm that churned the water into a frothing cyclone.
"Pull!" Aurora screamed, the sound lost in the bubbles, but the vibration traveling up the shadow-tether.
Above, Roui roared. The veins in his neck bulged, glowing faintly with the strain. He hauled back, his Terrazation anchor cracking the pier beneath him. The shadow-chain pulled taut, singing with tension.
With a wet, explosive whoosh, Aurora was ripped backward out of the water. She flew through the air, coughing up brine, and crashed onto the rotting planks beside Roui. She was blue—literally blue—her lips trembling, her skin rimed with instant frost.
Below them, the massive shape of the Kryopagon stopped thrashing. It began to drift downward, descending into the abyss, leaking a cloud of black ichor.
"You... look..." Roui panted, dropping to his knees to check her pulse. "Terrible."
"I got... the brain," Aurora chattered, her teeth clicking together violently. "Did you... see... the brain?"
"I saw it," Persya said, stepping over them. He looked at the hole in the water. "But you missed the loot. It's sinking."
The adrenaline began to fade, replaced by the biting reality of the outcome. The D3 threat was neutralized, but the victory was messy. The pier was groaning, structurally compromised by Persya's rot and the beast's trashing. Isla was shivering, covered in muck.
However, Isla was staring into the water again, her eyes wide.
"The corpse," she stammered. "It's... it's falling onto the thermal vents. The Kryopagon... it wasn't just nesting. It was hoarding. I can sense... mana-crystals. Pure Blue Salt. Stuck to its shell."
"Two minutes," Isla said, her voice uncharacteristically hard. She stripped off her heavy Vanguard coat, revealing the sleeker, waterproof Sea-Leather under-suit. "I can hold the pressure for ten. But the pier won't last two."
"Isla, don't," Roui started, reaching for her arm. "It's just rock salt. We'll get another contract."
"It's not rock salt, Roui. It's Kristal Biru. Pure mana concentrate." She looked at him, her large, dark eyes devoid of their usual shyness. "One shard feeds my family for a year. A bag buys a new farm."
Before Persya could calculate the odds or Aurora could protest, Isla turned and vaulted off the splintered edge of the dock.
She didn't splash; she sliced. As soon as the freezing water closed over her head, the Una cum Aequor physiology took over. The Kaeloid Membranes between her fingers and along her spine flared, catching the water like sails. Her nictitating membranes slid over her eyes, turning the murky, debris-filled harbor into a clear, monochrome landscape of currents and thermal layers.
She kicked, a powerful, undulating motion that propelled her downward with the speed of a seal.
The cold was intense, but to her, it was just information. Temperature: -2 degrees. Salinity: High. Current: Turbulent, generated by the thermal vents below.
She spotted the Kryopagon. The beast had come to rest on a shelf of rock twenty meters down, its massive shell cracked open like a geode. Heat shimmered from the vents beneath it, creating a violent, boiling vortex that clashed with the freezing harbor water. The thermal shock was tearing the carcass apart.
But there they were.
Stuck to the underside of the chitin, glowing with a soft, azure pulse, were clusters of Kristal Biru. They looked like jagged stars frozen in the meat.
Isla didn't hesitate. She swam into the boiling slipstream, her Hydro magic forming a thin, insulating film over her skin to prevent burns. She drew her serrated diver's knife and jammed it into the beast's flesh.
Pry. Twist. Store.
A fist-sized chunk of blue crystal came loose. She shoved it into her belt pouch. Pry. Twist. Store. Another one. This one was the size of a dinner plate. Her pouch grew heavy, dragging at her waist.
Crack-BOOM.
The sound was muffled underwater, like a thunderclap wrapped in wool, but the shockwave hit Isla hard enough to rattle her teeth. Above, the structural integrity of the pier finally failed.
Isla looked up to see a nightmare of timber, iron nails, and concrete pilings raining down through the water column.
She kicked hard, aiming for open water, but the heavy pouch of crystals acted as an anchor. A massive, tar-soaked beam slammed into the seabed just inches from her left fin, kicking up a blinding cloud of silt. Another beam crashed across the exit route, forming a chaotic cage of debris around the thermal shelf.
Isla was trapped.
She floated in the small pocket of clear water near the vents, her chest heaving as her gills processed the oxygen-poor water. The silt cloud was closing in, reducing visibility to zero. The heat from the vents was rising—the carcass was blocking the main release, building up pressure like a bomb.
To make matters worse, she wasn't alone.
Through the murky silt, she saw movement. Not the debris. Shapes. Long, serpentine shadows attracted by the scent of Kryopagon blood. Abyssal Scavengers. They circled the cage of debris, waiting for the silt to settle, or for the intruder to make a mistake.
Isla didn't let go of the pouch. She didn't even consider it. The weight dragging at her waist wasn't just stone; it was the deed to her family's farm, the medicine for her sister, the seed for the next harvest.
"Sorry," she whispered into the regulator of her wand, her voice lost in the roar of the vents. "But I'm not leaving empty-handed."
She raised the Heafon Wand. The crystalline lenses at the tip, usually glowing with a gentle azure light, flared with a blinding, unstable white. She wasn't just channeling mana; she was forcing it, redlining the delicate Heafon filigree designed for precision, not siege warfare.
Target: Timber pivot point. Distance: 3 meters. Margin of error: Zero.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a fraction of a second, visualizing the water not as a liquid, but as a solid hammer.
She didn't cast a spell; she detonated a depth charge. A sphere of hyper-compressed water erupted from the wand's tip. The recoil was brutal—it slammed Isla backward into the jagged rocks, knocking the wind out of her gills.
But the effect was undeniable. The blast hit the massive, tar-soaked beam dead center. The wood didn't just move; it disintegrated at the impact point, shattering into a cloud of splinters. The remaining length of the timber, freed from the pile, was kicked upward by the shockwave, tumbling lazily through the water column.
The cage was open.
But the violence of the blast had consequences. The shockwave slapped against the thermal vents. The hissing stream of bubbles turned into a roaring geyser of superheated steam. The water temperature spiked instantly. Isla's Hydro shield flickered, the heat gnawing at her skin like invisible teeth.
She kicked. Her Kaeloid Membranes flared, catching the turbulent water as she shot upward, leaving the boiling death zone behind.
The Abyssal Scavengers—sinuous, eel-like shadows—darted in, snapping at the trail of blood leaking from her nose, but she was too fast. She was an arrow of blue and silver, powered by fear and adrenaline.
She broke the surface with a gasp that sounded more like a sob. The air was freezing, biting at her wet skin, but it was air.
"Got her!" Roui's voice.
A hand grabbed her harness—Persya's grip, iron-hard. He didn't ask if she was okay; he just hauled her up the slick, mossy stones of the sea-wall like she weighed nothing.
She collapsed onto the cold stone, coughing up brine. The heavy pouch at her waist clattered loudly against the pavement.
"You are," Aurora said, peering down at her, face pale and wrapped in a blanket Roui must have conjured, "the craziest person I know. And I date Roui."
Isla didn't speak. She just unbuckled the pouch and dumped it out.
The gloom of the Port of Brotherhood was instantly banished. A pile of Kristal Biru—pure, unrefined mana salt—spilled onto the stones. It glowed with an internal, rhythmic light, pulsing like a dying heart. The sheer magical radiation made the hair on their arms stand up.
"By the Quasars," Roui whispered, the noble veneer cracking. "That's... that's enough to buy a commission in the Argent Legions."
"Or a farm," Isla wheezed, sitting up and wiping blood from her lip. "A really big farm."
Persya picked up a chunk, his eyes scanning the lattice. "It's raw. Volatile. If we walk into the Guild with this, the Crystal-Wic branch will confiscate half as 'hazardous material tax'. We did the work; they shouldn't get the cut."
"But it is hazardous," Alyia pointed out, adjusting her glasses, which were fogged with salt spray. "And illegal to transport without a permit. If the City Watch catches us..."
"Then we don't let them catch us," Roui said, a familiar, reckless grin returning to his face. "I know a guy."
"You always know a guy," Aurora groaned. "Is this 'guy' going to stab us?"
"Probably not," Roui shrugged. "He's a disgraced Artificer in the Raimei-Gai district of the Ningen quarter. He pays top coin for raw materials, no questions asked. But... it's in the slums. And he hates Vanguard."
Persya didn't let the silence stretch. He reached into the pile of glowing salt, his gauntleted hand closing around the largest shard—the one Isla had risked the abyss for. It pulsed against his palm, a volatile heartbeat of raw potential.
"Dead heroes pay no debts, Isla," Persya said, his voice low and grinding like millstones. He looked at the shivering healer, then at the cracked blade of his own weapon. "We won that fight by luck and a structural failure. Next time, the pier won't be there to do the heavy lifting. We are Orange Tiers hunting in a Purple world. If we sell this, we eat well for a year. If we use it... we survive the decade."
Isla stared at the crystal, her hands trembling—not from cold, but from the agonizing calculus of poverty. "My family..."
"Will starve if you're dead," Aurora cut in, her tone unusually serious. She sat up, the blue frost on her lips fading as her internal furnace kicked back in. "Persya is right. We're soft. We need teeth."
Isla closed her eyes, letting out a breath that fogged in the salt air. "Do it. Before I change my mind."
They didn't go to a smithy. Persya didn't need a hammer; he needed a lattice.
He arranged the weapons on the flattest stone of the sea-wall: Aurora's Battle Axe, Alyia's Heafon Wand, and Roui's Null-Plate pauldron. He knelt, placing a chunk of Kristal Biru on each item.
"Stand back," he warned. "I'm about to force a covalent bond between steel and solidified mana. If I sneeze, we explode."
He didn't sneeze. He worked.
Persya placed both hands on Aurora's axe. His Recomposere Sigil flared, the sickly orange light struggling against the violent azure radiance of the salt. Sweat beaded on his forehead, instantly freezing in the wind. He wasn't just melting the crystal; he was unzipping the atomic structure of the steel, creating microscopic pockets within the metal, forcing the mana-salt into the gaps, and then sealing the lattice shut.
Hummmmm-CRACK.
The axe shivered. The dull steel turned a deep, gunmetal grey, veins of pulsating blue light running through the blade like a nervous system.
"Next," Persya grunted, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose.
He moved to Alyia's wand. This was delicate—glass and crystal. He didn't fuse it; he grafted it. He used the salt to coat the focusing lens, altering its refractive index to amplify thermal output without shattering the housing.
Finally, Roui's armor. He crushed the remaining salt into dust and Infused it directly into the plating, creating a composite alloy that would react to kinetic impact by discharging mana—a reactive shield.
When Persya stood up, he looked like a corpse, his mana reserves drained to the dregs. But the gear... the gear was singing.
Aurora picked up her axe. It didn't just feel lighter; it felt hungry. "Oh," she whispered, a dangerous smile touching her lips. "I like this."
Alyia adjusted her wand. The crystal tip now glowed with a predatory, stable hum. "Output potential increased by 400%," she noted, her voice trembling slightly. "I could melt a tank."
"We're broke," Roui said, tapping his glowing pauldron. "But we look expensive."
They walked back into the Vanguard Guild Hall not as the wet, mismatched novices who had left, but as something else. The air around them seemed to warp slightly from the residual mana radiation of their gear.
The hall was louder now, filled with the evening rush of mercenaries returning from the Titanwood and the Salt Flats. But as Squad Aurora pushed through the doors, a hush rippled outward from the entrance.
It wasn't respect. It was confusion.
They were still Orange Tiers. They still wore the novice badges. But their weapons hummed with the distinct, expensive resonance of Kristal Biru—gear that usually belonged to Gold or Purple rank officers.
They approached the quest counter. The Guild clerk, a bored-looking scribe with a monocle, looked up. He sniffed the air, smelling the ozone and the sea-rot.
"Contract?" he drawled.
"Complete," Aurora said, slamming the severed claw of the Kryopagon onto the counter. It was still cold enough to crack the wood. "D3 Neutralized. Payment, please."
The clerk stared at the claw. Then he stared at the glowing blue veins in her axe. His eyes narrowed.
"D3..." he muttered, checking the scroll. "With... novice equipment?" He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a suspicious whisper. "That axe. That's unregistered modification. High-grade mana-salt. Where did a squad of rookies get the funding for Artificer-level enchanting?"
A heavy hand landed on the counter next to the claw.
The squad turned. Standing there was a man who blocked out the firelight. He wore the heavy, scarred plate of a Purple Tier Vanguard. His pauldrons were made of Sköll-Bone, and his face was a map of old violence. Garrick the Breaker.
"They didn't buy it," Garrick rumbled, his voice like gravel in a mixer. He looked at Persya, recognizing the signs of Recomposere exhaustion. "They stole it. Or they scavenged it illegally."
He leaned down, looming over Roui. "New Earth noble. Tell me. Did you pay the 'Hazard Tax' on that salt before you cooked it into your pretty armor? Or are you smuggling?"
Roui didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. Instead, he did something far more dangerous: he stopped smiling.
The warmth vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, bored mask of porcelain indifference—the face of a man who had grown up watching executions from a velvet balcony. He brushed an invisible speck of dust from his Null-Plate, the gesture deliberately insulting in the face of Garrick's looming violence.
"Garrick, is it?" Roui said, his voice dropping an octave, losing its friendly lilt and adopting the clipped, nasal enunciation of the Paradise aristocracy. "I believe you are mistaking illegal salvage for strategic inheritance."
He stepped closer, invading the veteran's personal space. "I am Roui of House Mirtout. My family has been funding the Vanguard's supply lines since before you were strong enough to lift that hammer. Do you honestly believe a scion of New Earth would walk into a combat zone without... adequate insurance?"
He tapped the glowing blue composite of his pauldron. "This isn't 'scavenged,' Ser. It is custom-commissioned from the Goldsworn artificers. It arrived by courier this morning. If you wish to accuse House Mirtout of tax evasion, I suggest you have your Guildmaster contact my father's barristers in the Capital. I'm sure they would love a reason to audit this branch's funding."
It was a lie. A magnificent, suicidal lie. Roui was estranged; his father would sooner hang him than hire a lawyer for him. But Garrick didn't know that. Garrick only knew that New Earth nobles were petty, vindictive, and rich enough to buy a man's life.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Garrick stared down at the young Signifer, his eyes narrowing as he searched for the crack in the armor. Roui met his gaze, his heartbeat thundering against his ribs but his expression carved from ice.
Finally, Garrick snorted—a sound like a bulldog clearing its throat. He stepped back, the tension breaking.
"Goldsworn Artificers," Garrick spat, shaking his head. "Waste of good steel on a boy playing soldier. Just make sure your 'inheritance' doesn't blow a hole in the guild wall."
He turned to the pale clerk. "Pay them. Before his daddy sues us for wasting his time."
Garrick shouldered past them, deliberately checking Persya with his pauldron hard enough to rattle the hybrid's teeth, before vanishing into the crowd.
The clerk, now sweating profusely, counted out the gold with trembling hands. "Full payment. Plus the hazard bonus. Thank you for your service, Lord Mirtout."
Roui waited until they were outside the heavy oak doors and into the cool night air of the courtyard before he let the mask slip. He slumped against a stone pillar, letting out a long, shaky breath.
"I think," Roui wheezed, "I'm going to throw up."
"That," Persya said, looking at the noble with a rare glint of respect, "was the most impressive pile of bantha-dung I have ever heard. 'Strategic inheritance'?"
"If he checks the registry, I'm dead," Roui said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "My father disowned me three years ago. I don't have a lawyer. I have a half-eaten sandwich and you four idiots."
"We're rich idiots now," Aurora said, tossing the heavy coin purse into the air and catching it. The gold clinked with a beautiful, heavy sound. "We survived the trap. We killed the beast. We got the loot. I say we celebrate."
"Wait," Isla said, her voice quiet but sharp. She was looking at the mission scroll again, illuminated by the glow of Alyia's new wand. "We survived the trap... but who set it?"
She pointed to the bottom of the scroll, to the signature of the Intelligence Officer who had graded the mission as a D-Class Pest Control.
"Scribe Varrick," Isla read. "He's the one who authorized the intel. A Kryopagon doesn't just 'appear' in a harbor without someone noticing the temperature drop weeks in advance. Someone suppressed the report."
Alyia pushed her glasses up her nose. "Analysis: If we were sent to die, the person who sent us will be disappointed to see us return. If we go back inside and start asking questions, we make enemies."
"But if we don't," Persya added, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, "they might try again."