I followed Renn out into the daylight. The birch trees swayed in the wind. The farm was visible below, peaceful, quiet.
"Ah. Visitors."
The voice came from our right.
Renn’s swords were out before the second word finished echoing. I stepped beside him, my hand dropping to the haft of the hammer at my belt.
A man was sitting cross-legged on a flat limestone boulder near the cave entrance. He wore a patched canvas jacket, trousers tucked into muddy farm boots, and a wide-brimmed felt hat pulled low against the sun. He didn't look like a necromancer. He didn't look like much of anything, except maybe a farmhand taking a long lunch.
He was casually carving a piece of dried apple with a small knife.
"I hope," he said, popping the apple slice into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully, "that you wiped your feet on the way out. I just swept in there."
"Who are you?" Renn asked. His voice was flat, professional.
"Siles," the man said. He pointed the small knife toward the dark mouth of the cave. "You broke my dog."
"It was already broken," I said.
"True. But it was my broken dog." Siles sighed, tossing the apple core into the brush. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to tune a necrotic tether? Three days. Three days of adjusting resonance frequencies just so the damn thing wouldn't walk into walls. And you just marched in there and snapped the thread." He rubbed his temple. "I literally felt it. Gave me a migraine."
Before either of us could respond, Siles hopped down from the boulder. He dusted off his trousers and walked toward us. Just... walking. Like we didn't have weapons drawn.
"Still," Siles said, stopping ten paces away. He looked past Renn and focused entirely on me. His eyes were pale green, sharp, and entirely too alert for a farmer. "I suppose I can't be too angry. It's not every day a Mercenary grunt from the Fourth Company walks into my living room and throws up a deflection shield."
He smiled. A bright, genuine, slightly unhinged smile.
"I saw the blue flash from..." he continued, gesturing vaguely at the air. "Very crisp. Very sudden. No incantation to speak of. No robes, no staff, no shiny Academy badge telling the world how important you are. Just a guy in a leather coat doing four-hundred-silver magic on a forty-copper farm contract."
He took another step closer. Renn shifted his stance.
"I can offer you a deal," Siles said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "Let's say you didn't see anything in there. You go back, you say the trail went cold. In return... I can teach you things. Real things. I found a way, you see. A way to bypass all the Academy nonsense. All the tribunals. I can put magic into someone who has no talent for it. And for someone who does have talent? Oh, the things we could do."
"I'm not interested," I said. "And what you're doing is illegal."
Siles laughed — a sharp, barking sound. "Illegal! Oh, my apologies! Am I breaking the rules? The same rules written by men who charge five gold pieces to heal a dying child? Those rules? Forgive me for not weeping over their ledgers."
"That's enough," Renn interrupted. The edge in his voice was diamond-hard now. He hadn't lowered his swords an inch. "I don't care about your philosophy, and I don't care about your magic. We're walking away from this. But you are going to stop taking those sheep. Today."
Siles stopped laughing. He looked at Renn. Then he looked at me. He blinked twice.
"Taking?" Siles asked softly.
"The livestock," I said. "Four sheep in four days. Stop stealing them."
Siles stared at us for a long, quiet moment. Then he reached into his patched jacket. Renn tensed, shifting his weight to strike, but Siles just pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment and held it up by two fingers.
"Stealing," Siles repeated, his voice dripping with disbelief. He tossed the crumpled paper on the ground between us. "I bought those sheep."
I stared at the paper. It was covered in dark scribbles. I couldn't read the words, but I recognized numbers. Forty.
Renn didn't lower his swords, but he risked a glance down. He squinted at the paper. Then his frown deepened.
"Forty coppers a head," Siles said, crossing his arms. "Paid in advance. To a man named Harsk. And you're telling me that sun-baked son of a bitch took my money, handed over the sheep, and then filed a predator claim with the Guild to get your money too?"
Renn read the scribbles again. He looked up at me and gave a short, tight nod. It was a receipt. With Harsk's mark on it.
"He got paid twice," Renn said quietly.
"And sent heavily armed men to my front door!" Siles threw his hands up in exasperation. "The absolute audacity of the man! A necromancer tries to run a quiet, ethical, localized research operation, paying market value for his materials, and he gets scammed by a sheep farmer! I should go down there right now and —"
Siles stopped. He didn't finish the sentence. His head snapped toward the treeline to our left.
A second later, I heard it too.
The low, vibrating growl of something large pushing through the underbrush. Not one something. Several.
"Speaking of predators," Siles muttered, taking two rapid steps backward, putting himself directly behind us.
They came out of the birches in near silence. Five of them. Timber wolves, massive and heavily muscled, their coats entirely grey. But unlike the thing in the cave, these were alive. Their eyes were bright, focused, and unnervingly synchronized. They didn't fan out to surround us like a normal pack. They moved together, a singular tactical unit, locking onto us with a chilling collective intelligence.
(I didn't know it then, but this was Siles's real experiment. Not raising the dead, but networking the living. A hive-mind. And right now, the hive was testing us).
The largest wolf lunged.
"Left!" Renn shouted.
Renn didn't attack. He couldn't. Three wolves hit him almost simultaneously. He dropped low, bringing his heavy steel left bracer up to catch the first wolf's jaws while driving the pommel of his right sword into the second one's skull. He was instantly pinned down, using his armor exactly as it was designed — letting the beasts ruin their teeth on castle-forged steel — but he was trapped, completely isolated from me.
I didn't have time to help him. The other two came for me.
The first leaped for my throat. I pivoted, dropping my center of gravity, and drove the heavy oak haft of the practice hammer upward. The wood caught the wolf under the jaw with a sickening crack. It yelped and tumbled past me.
But the second was right behind it, low to the ground. It ignored the hammer, diving straight for my leading leg.
Teeth sank into my left calf.
Pain flared — white-hot and absolute. The jaws locked, tearing through the heavy leather of my boot and into the muscle beneath. It yanked backward, trying to pull me off balance.
I stumbled, raising my right hand.
Sagatta Ignis.
A bolt of compressed fire blew a hole through the wolf's shoulder. The smell of burning fur filled the air. The beast released my leg and collapsed, thrashing.
I hit the ground hard on one knee. My calf was screaming. The first wolf, having recovered from the hammer strike, was already circling back, its lips curled over its teeth. It crouched to spring. I couldn't swing the hammer from this angle.
From somewhere behind me, Siles let out a terrified, high-pitched scream.
He threw his hands up in a panic. But as he did, his fingers flicked.
The wolf mid-jump suddenly spasmed. Its eyes rolled back, its head snapping sideways as if struck by an invisible hammer. It landed awkwardly, entirely disoriented, snapping at empty air.
Instinctively, I brought the head of the heavy iron hammer down on its skull. It stopped moving.
I looked over at Renn. He had managed to throw off two of his attackers, but the largest wolf still had him pinned against a birch tree, its jaws inches from his face, trying to find a gap in his gorget. Renn's right arm was pinned.
I had to get it off him. But my leg wouldn't bear my weight.
I couldn't reach him with the hammer. I couldn't risk Ignis — fire was too unpredictable at that range, I might burn Renn's face off. I needed something precise. Something fast.
My mind raced back to the market square. To the quiet, precise man from the Seventh Company. Idris. Lightning.
I aimed my hand at the wolf on Renn. Extended two fingers. Pulled back hard.
There was no magical glow.
Just a deafening CRACK that sounded like the sky tearing open.
A fractal branch of blinding blue-white lightning erupted from my fingertips. It struck the wolf square in the ribs. The concussive force of the impact threw the beast ten feet through the air, where it hit a tree and slid down, smoking.
But the spell didn't stop at my fingertips.
The energy grounded itself. Through me.
It felt like someone had driven a red-hot iron spike into my chest and out through my spine. All the air vanished from my lungs. Every muscle in my body locked simultaneously. My vision went entirely white.
I didn't fall. I tipped over rigid, like a felled tree, hitting the dirt with a thud.
For five seconds, I couldn't breathe. My teeth were gritted so hard I thought they might shatter. My right hand was twitching violently, completely out of my control.
Slowly, the white faded from my vision. The smell of ozone was thick enough to taste.
I looked up. The clearing was quiet. The remaining wolves had fled into the woods. Renn was pushing himself off the birch tree, breathing heavily, checking his armor for breaches.
Siles was standing near the limestone boulder, brushing dirt off his patched trousers. He looked completely unharmed.
He looked down at me, still paralyzed in the dirt, and his eyes glinted with immense, undisguised amusement.
"Well," Siles said, adjusting his hat. "It's certainly been a pleasure."
I tried to speak, but my jaw was clamped shut.
Siles turned and began walking casually toward the thickest part of the forest. He raised a hand in a lazy, half-hearted salute without looking back.
"Well, anyway..." he called out, pausing mid-stride just before the shadows hid him. "...we'll bump into each other again sometime."
He stepped into the trees and vanished.
It took me another minute before I could unlock my jaw. I sat up, wincing as the torn muscle in my calf screamed in protest.
I reached into the pocket of my coat to find a piece of cloth to bind the bite.
My fingers brushed against something smooth. Hard. Cold.
I pulled it out. It was a smooth black stone, the size of an acorn, absorbing the daylight.
We'll bump into each other again.
I closed my fist around it and shoved it deep into my pocket.
* * *
The walk back to the farm was miserable.
I limped, blood soaking the leather of my boot. My right hand was still experiencing phantom tremors, the nerves misfiring every few steps.
Renn walked beside me, wiping wolf blood off his swords with a rag. He had been quiet for a mile. Finally, he stopped, sheathed his weapons, and stared at me.
"You know some other combat magic tricks too?" he asked. "And what the hell was that kickback? I've never seen a caster drop themselves like that."
"I don't know," I said, my voice hoarse. "I saw Idris do it in the market. I tried to copy him."
Renn stopped walking completely. He stared at me for another five seconds.
"You..." Renn blinked. "You copied a spell. From watching a guy do it once. From across a courtyard. Last week."
"I copied it badly."
Renn looked up at the sky, letting out a long, slow breath.
"Right," Renn said. He let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh. "If magic is that easy, maybe I should give it a try." The laugh faded, replaced by a grimace. "Actually... to hell with that. Between whatever that necromancer — and people like him I've met before — were doing, and the politics of the Mages' Guild... I think I'll stick to hitting things with metal."
He shook his head and kept walking.
We reached the farm twenty minutes later. Harsk was waiting by the wooden fence, looking expectant.
"Well?" the farmer asked, crossing his thick arms. "You find the beast?"
Renn didn't say a word. He walked straight up to Harsk, reached into his tunic, and pressed the crumpled, dirt-stained piece of paper flat against the farmer's chest.
Harsk looked down at it. His tan face went the color of old milk.
"That's forty coppers a head," Renn said, tapping the scribbles with one armored finger. "Paid in advance. For the sheep you sold to the weird hermit in the woods."
"I— I don't—" Harsk stammered, his eyes darting between us.
"Shut up," Renn said calmly. He leaned in close. "You tried to use the Fourth Company as your personal, free extermination service so you could pocket a bounty on top of your sale. Here is how this is going to work. You are going to go into your house. You are going to bring me forty copper pieces — our contract fee — right now. And if the Guild ever receives another contract from Dunnfield Farm, I will personally come back here and show you what an actual predator looks like."
Harsk swallowed hard. He turned and practically ran toward the farmhouse.
Renn looked at me. "I hate people."
"Me too," I said automatically. And only after that did I start wondering what part of me had said that...
* * *
We stood in Veyra's office three hours later.
She read the two reports we had placed on her desk. She read them twice.
The first report detailed the fraud. Harsk, the receipt, the extortion of forty coppers, which now sat in a neat pile on her desk.
The second report detailed the cave. The butchered remains, the black stones, the ritual circle, the dead zombie-wolf. It omitted Siles entirely. According to our report, the cave had been empty.
"A necromancer," Veyra said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Less than three miles from the city walls. Living in a dirt hole."
"Yes, Captain," Renn said.
"And you're sure about the workshop? The remains?"
"Absolutely sure."
Veyra sighed and tossed the report into an iron lockbox on her desk. "Fine. I’ll send a runner to the main Guildhall. They can bump it up to the Academy if they feel like it. I'm not sending my people into the woods to hunt a rogue death-mage. Not our problem anymore." She glanced at the forty coppers. "As for Harsk... good work. I've already blacklisted his property across the entire Mercenary registry. Let him fight off the next pack of wolves with his receipt."
"Anything else, Captain?"
"Get out of my office and get Marshal to the healer. He's bleeding on my floor."
We left.
I didn't go to the healer. Maren’s magic would just make me sick anyway. I went to the barracks, cleaned the bite out with alcohol and boiling water, and stitched it myself. It hurt, a deep, pulling ache, but it was a familiar kind of pain. Manageable.
When I was done, I sat on the edge of my cot. The room was empty.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small black stone.
I turned it over in my fingers. It caught no light. It reflected nothing.
It was my first real secret in this world. And sitting there in the quiet of the barracks, listening to the distant sounds of the training yard, I realized something.
"The more you question, the more you suffer. Whether the question is 'what am I living for' or 'what do I eat today', they are the same."
* * *
Two days later, in a polished office overlooking the Ashford market, Greyve poured himself a cup of imported wine.
He was reading a copied transcript of the Fourth Company's field reports. Guild clerks were notoriously underpaid, and Greyve was notoriously generous with silver.
He read the report about the necromancer's cave. Then he read the report about the fraudulent farmer.
Greyve set his cup down. He tapped his finger against the parchment.
"A necromancer was buying sheep from a farmer," Greyve murmured to the empty room. "The farmer files a fake predator claim. The Mercenaries go out, find the cave, find the dead wolf... but they don't find the man buying the sheep?"
Greyve smiled his perfectly polished smile. He pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward him, dipped his quill in black ink, and began to write.