Many misunderstood Elven physiology. Most Elves favored magic from birth—took on robes, studied runes, bent the weave of elements to their will. Almost always, Elves became practitioners of magic, aided by their race’s natural affinity for the arcane, which allowed them to grasp spells faster than most humans ever could. That led folk to think they were all slender, delicate, soft around the edges, and physically weak. That assumption was wrong–very wrong.

  Those like Vanya showed it plain.

  She was a Ranger, a path that Elves rarely ever took since the end of the Fourth Age, when magic became more abundant. Her bow was a length of yew that took a steady hand and a strong back to draw. Even with the [Ranger] or [Archer] Classes, the act of drawing and pulling a bowstring demanded muscle. Lots of it. Raw physical force was necessary to pull the strings of the strongest of war bows, requiring the sort of training that began in early childhood and the sort of dedication that many would consider to be insane. Vanya’s arms bore the fruits of that training. The left, wrapped in boiled leather and padded cloth, had the look of sinew tested by countless draws. The right was bare. She didn’t try to hide the shape of her shoulder or the roll of muscle along her upper back. Each movement spoke of that strength.

  Idly, he wondered what she was still doing as a Bronze Plate when Elven Rangers generally had the skills to jump right ahead to Gold Plate. Whatever her reason, at least she could be counted on to carry her own weight.

  Her torso was covered by a simple gambeson, plain stitching, no glyphs or wards. Likely bought from a smith who served common folk, the kind who couldn’t afford enchanters’ fees. It wouldn’t turn a lance. But it gave her the freedom to move. She wore no shoes—her feet bare on the ground, light as a wolf’s paws. Folk said Elves liked to feel the earth beneath them, the textures of root and stone. She kept a hatchet at her belt. A dagger beside that. The quiver rode high on her hip, arrows fletched with dark feathers.

  She gave him a look and that was it.

  Idly, he wondered how best to cook her, before deciding it really wasn’t worth the effort of having to subdue her. He knew, at first glance, that she was stronger than him.

  Syras turned his gaze to the man standing behind Vanya.

  Thrane.

  The warrior.

  He stood taller than most men by a full head and a half, broad across the shoulders, wide in the chest, the neck thick and unmoving beneath the steel gorget. He did not shift much when he stood. Didn’t need to. He looked like something carved from iron and left to weather, still upright despite the passage of time. Seven feet, maybe more. Heavy. Built like siege equipment.

  He wore full plate from boots to brow, but the set didn’t match. The breastplate was smooth and dull, no sigil, no crest. The pauldrons didn’t match each other. One was spiked and pitted. The other plain, almost elegant in curve, though scratched and dented. The vambraces were narrow, tight to the arm. The greaves were too long by half an inch and had been filed at the edge. The helm, which he held under one arm, had a narrow slit and a dent near the crown where something blunt had struck it hard enough to leave a memory but not a death.

  It wasn’t a suit crafted for him. That much was clear. The pieces came from different lives. Perhaps different battles. Perhaps different corpses. Scavenged. Reclaimed. Not bought.

  Smart.

  A full suit of plate—matched, fitted, well-forged—could cost more than a plot of land. The kind made by the smiths of the inner cities were priced by inch and polish. Add enchantment, add craft, and the cost climbed until only warlords or dukes could wear them.

  But Thrane had no noble bearing. No lord’s armor. What he had was worn. Broken and then repaired–again and again. Each plate bore signs of use. Weld marks, reworked straps, holes punched and patched. One gauntlet had been replaced with a heavier one, the fingers broader, the knuckles spiked.

  And then the boots.

  Syras noticed them last.

  Plated. Heavy. But different.

  Wider at the base than they should be, soles spread like shovels, reinforced with an extra layer of iron near the heel. Not made for grace. Made for ground that gave way. Swamp. Snow. Mud. A man that size would sink fast in soft earth. But not with those. The boots would keep him up, keep him moving, while others bogged down and stumbled.

  They were ugly. Crude. Functional.

  Like the rest of him.

  Thrane stood still through Syras’s study. Said nothing. Made no gesture. His arms stayed crossed, helm still tucked beneath the crook of one elbow. His breath moved slow beneath the armor. No steam at the seams. No tremor in the gauntlets. A man used to the weight. Worn it for long enough that it had become his second skin. Very strong.

  The only real trouble with men like Thrane was the cost of keeping them alive.

  Big men burned through food like fire through kindling. It wasn’t just muscle. It was scale. Every step, every breath, every lift of the arm—more weight to carry, more heat to keep, more hunger at the end of the day. Most folk ate when they could. Ate to keep moving. Men like Thrane had to eat just to stay standing. Miss a meal, and they felt it in their bones.

  Syras’s eyes dropped to the pack at Thrane’s feet.

  It was the largest he’d seen carried by a single man. Heavy canvas stretched tight by the shape of its contents. Bedroll strapped to the top. Rope coiled at the side. The seams bulged. One of the straps had been reinforced with wire. A few of the iron buckles were bent from years of strain. It sat on the floor like a dead ox, broad and low and immovable.

  He didn’t need to open it to know what was inside.

  Food. Rations by the dozen. Dried meat. Hard bread. Beans, lentils, maybe rice. Salted fish if he could find it. Enough to feed three men for a week. Maybe more. Thrane would burn through it in half that time, just marching. Just lifting that armor up a hill. No magic there. No class bonus. Just biology. Fuel to keep the forge burning.

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  And it was clear he carried his own burden. Didn’t ask to be fed. Didn’t expect others to share. Syras had seen the type before. Men too big for their tents, too heavy for their horses, too quiet for the mess hall. They didn’t complain. They planned ahead. They packed their weight in food and gear and didn’t ask for help getting it on their back. That was good.

  Syras cooked for himself, but he wasn’t selfish. Not on the road. Not when the fire was lit and the meat was clean and the pan was hot. If a meal came from something the group had hunted, trapped, or pulled from the earth, then the food was shared. That was the way of it. You don’t take from the land with others and eat alone.

  Syras wasn’t that sort.

  Whatever he cooked from the hunt was for the group. And there was plenty to hunt.

  The woods around Grahsbad were thick with Iron Tusk Boars. Not wild pigs, not the kind you could scare off with noise and smoke. These were big things, broad as barrels and longer than a man was tall, with bristled hides and tusks that could gut a horse. They moved in herds, sometimes in family packs with four or five sows and a dozen piglets, all of them mean.

  They’d eat anything. Berries, roots, carrion. A corpse didn’t last long in boar country. The Iron Tusks ate everything, even the bones.

  They were the reason half the green adventurers didn’t make it past their first contract. Too many went out thinking an Iron Tusk was just a pig with an attitude. They’d laugh when the trees moved, stop laughing when the first tusk opened their stomach.

  But the meat was good.

  Not tender. You had to work for it. Long cook. Stew or smoke. Anything fast and it’d fight your teeth the whole way down. But done right, it was rich. Savory. Left fat on the tongue and filled the gut like stone. The ribs were best. The belly, too, if you rendered it slow and spiced it proper.

  Syras had killed a few himself. Alone and with others. He’d field-dressed them in the brush, hands slick, blade moving careful around the gut sack. He knew where to cut. What to keep. What to toss.

  If the Red Sparrows brought one down, he’d cook it and everyone would eat.

  He turned to Kidu next.

  The Halfling—if he was one—stood a pace apart from the others, just as he had at the Bellringer. Small. Compact. Not delicate, but built low to the ground, narrow across the chest and shoulders, arms wiry beneath the folds of his coat. Could’ve been a Halfling. Could’ve just been a man born small. Syras didn’t ask. Didn’t need to.

  He wore the same clothes as before. Oiled canvas cloak, frayed at the edge, patched twice over near the right elbow. Dark trousers bound with cord at the knees. No armor. No plates. Just a padded vest over a long shirt, the kind of gear made for silence and flexibility. His boots were soft leather, dyed black, toes scuffed near flat.

  The pack on his back was half his size, near dragging. Looked heavier than he did, but he carried it like it was nothing. Straps cinched tight across his chest. Tools hung from it—hooks, clamps, a folding hammer, coiled rope, a length of chain, bundles of steel wire wrapped neat and tucked into side pouches. A dozen pockets, each sealed with buttons or buckles or little knots of string. It jingled faintly when he moved, not loud, but there.

  His weapons were the same. A short knife, more utility than blade, and a longer dagger, clean-edged, likely kept for last resorts. Both hung at his belt. Worn, not polished.

  Orlen had said plain enough that Kidu wasn’t a fighter.

  Didn’t draw blood. Didn’t break lines.

  He broke traps. Broke locks. Broke puzzles that stopped most others dead in the dark. Doors that whispered curses when opened. Chests that hissed with poison when lifted. Old things, ancient things, meant to kill the uninvited. That was his work.

  He was the kind of man you brought not to kill but to open what others couldn’t. What others wouldn’t dare. The kind of man who sat quiet while the blades were drawn, then stepped forward after the blood cooled to do the real work. To disarm what would’ve ended them in one step more.

  Useful. Very useful. Every single Adventuring Team, whether they were Bronze or Platinum and above, required a [Specialist] for all the problems that could not be solved with brute force or skill at arms. That was why they were highly sought after and handsomely paid. Similar to Vanya’s case, Syras wondered what Kidu was still doing as a Bronze Plate. If he applied himself with the rankings and stuck with elite groups, he could be as high as a Gold Plate.

  Lastly, there was Orlen, the leader.

  He looked the part of a man who had never sworn allegiance to any single way of killing. The kind who took what worked and left the rest behind. Not specialized. Not narrow. Just prepared.

  He wore layers. Padded cloth first, dyed a dull gray, sleeveless. Over it, boiled leather strapped across the shoulders and chest, molded to fit and darkened from age and rain. His forearms were armored in plate vambraces, steel bent to shape, scratched and scuffed. His shins matched—metal over leather, tied tight with cord. No full set. No matching pieces. Just what he needed where he needed it.

  An arming sword hung at his left waist. The sheath was red leather, plain but well-kept, with a single brass ring near the hilt. The grip was wrapped in cord, frayed near the pommel. He kept a one-handed crossbow slung across his back, stock worn smooth from travel, limbs bound with string to keep it quiet. A bolt case hung at his hip, tied with a loop of rope..

  There was a hatchet tucked into his belt on the right, blade dark, edge clean. Opposite it, a warpick, smaller than most, short-hafted, the spike worn down a little at the tip. For armor. For bone. Syras had seen wounds from weapons like it. Narrow and deep, hard to stitch, harder to live through.

  He carried a shield, too. Round, small. Strapped to the side of his pack. Made of layered wood—plywood, thick and crude. Iron lined the rim, hammered in with wide-headed nails. No boss. No paint. Just a grip and a surface wide enough to catch a strike or turn a blade.

  He wore a helmet of steel. Close-faced, open visor. No crest. No plume. Just the curve of the dome and the dull gleam where it had been polished by hand. A strap ran under his chin, buckled and tight.

  Orlen nodded as Syras approached them.

  “You look ready,” Orlen said. His tone was level. Measured. “Good. We leave now. Briefing first.”

  He reached into his pack and pulled free two pieces of parchment. He unrolled them both on the surface of a nearby crate, weighed them down with a belt knife and a flat stone. One was a map. The other a contract, official in every way—parchment creased and stamped with the Guild’s blood-red seal, still slightly tacky around the edges. The bottom of the sheet bore the signature of a ranking official and a stamped marker that denoted tier, location, and hazard class.

  “Guild-issued,” Orlen said. “Standard work. Terms are clear. Hazard pay applies if we find anything serious. Bonuses if we return with evidence. Penalties if we abandon without report.”

  He tapped the map with two fingers.

  “We’re heading southeast. The Craglands. Border country. Barren stone, bad footing. A prospector filed a claim there last month. Claims gold. Some think he’s right. Could be nothing. Could be a run of fools rushing in after copper veins, calling them treasure. Guild doesn’t care. What they care about is liability. Man flagged a mine. Said it goes deep. Said it’s safe. We’re to make sure it is.”

  He traced a point on the map with the edge of his nail. A red mark had been made there in chalk. The hill shape was crude. No contour lines. No legends. Just the hand of a man trying to show where he'd last stood.

  “Check the entrance,” Orlen said. “Check the tunnels. Every shaft, every split. All the way to the back. If there’s a bottom, we find it. If there’s something living down there, we deal with it. We don’t scavenge. We don’t dig. We confirm. We leave.”

  Every single member gave a curt nod. He turned his eyes to Syras.

  “That amenable to you, Mister Syras?”

  “It is,” Syras said.

  Orlen nodded. “Any questions?”

  Syras looked down at the map, at the contract, then back up. His face didn’t shift.

  “None,” he said.

  Orlen rolled the map and parchment both and tied them tight with twine. Slid them back into the tube and cinched the lid. He straightened and looked to the others.

  “Then let’s move.”