To my eternal disappointment, Liv avoids the high-profile weaponsmiths in favor of a small shop a couple blocks off the main road, one with a much more mundane selection.

“You’re going to want to replace this equipment,” she explains, “so we’re buying mid-quality gear from a journeyman smith.”

This does nothing to stop me from giving her my best puppy-dog eyes.

I end up with a small hatchet, a utility and eating knife, and a fighting dagger.

The hatchet is pretty much standard. It has a light head, a wooden handle a bit less than a foot long, and a flattened back designed for hammering. It’s indistinguishable from the hatchets I’ve seen at department and home improvement stores.

Liv has to do some explaining for my knife order, which is apparently unusual. For one, fashion isn’t a factor with this purchase. Liv also explains that most people either aren’t expecting fights or wouldn’t use their dagger in a fight anyway, so they’d combine the utility and fighting functionalities into a single item leaning more toward utility. However, I’ll be camping and will need to use my knife as a tool frequently, but I also need a weapon because I’ll be working with the BIA, and using my knife as a tool would dull it. So I get a utility knife and a fighting knife.

My utility knife is a simple hunting knife. More symmetrical than what I’d see at an outdoor store back home, but still definitely a tool rather than a weapon. The hilt shows none of the decor that I see on other knives in the shop.

The dagger is something else entirely. Keeping it from slipping is far more important than comfort, for example, so the grip is deeply studded and gripping it really wedges my hand in between the pommel and the guard. My hand aches even after the short test, but I figure that having a roughed-up hand is better than getting eaten by an undead tiger. The blade is thin and as long as my forearm, with a diamond cross section that narrows to sharpened edges on both sides.

The hatchet attaches to my backpack. The dagger and utility knife end up in parallel sheathes hanging from my belt and stabilized by a loop around my thigh, which should work for both my jeans and whatever the fashion people give me for pants.

Liv pays the journeyman weaponsmith about ten Bear, I get my backpack back on, and we head back to the office.

We arrive to find the team assembled outside the office waiting for us. They start donning their backpacks as soon as they see us.

I spot the likely cause immediately: Bob has returned.

That’s what I assume, at least. The guy I don’t recognize is picking up a backpack just like everyone else. Is there some badge or insignia I haven’t noticed any of them wearing, or are BIA agents intended to go unrecognized most of the time?

Presumably-Bob is a short, nondescript guy with a spear, sandy-brown hair, a baggy yellow shirt, and what look for all the world like a pair of purple velvet sweat pants.

“We have a lead,” says Heather. “He’s been assembling materials to raise the corpse of a powerful monster as an undead. Bob just got back with its location, just past Caulfield. We’re leaving now. We’ll eat lunch on the road.”

Then she looks around, confirming that everyone on her team has their backpacks on, and sets off toward the nearest gate. I end up just behind Heather, since I already have everything I own in my backpack. Minus the grimoire, of course, which Agnes hands me as I pass her.

As we’re starting off, Heather takes a moment for introductions.

“Bob, this is Whitney. Whitney is our new hard wizard. She’ll be freeing you from utility spellcasting so you can focus on healing.”

“Good to meetcha,” Bob says lazily. “You just Visited? Brought a Gift withya or picking one up just for us?”

It takes me a moment to understand him through his thick, blurry accent. Which of course reminds me of the profusion of questions about language and translation I’m very carefully ignoring right now. I’ll get to those later. Later. “Yep, new here. I’m a software engineer - I was a software engineer,” I correct myself, “and apparently that’s a relevant skillset for the Hard Magical Gift in Heather’s last-ditch grimoire, so I’m a wizard now.”

“Yer gonna be real useful, I gotta say,” he says. “Been annoyed at HQ ‘bout that. I’m looking foward to workin’ with you!”

“The same!”

“Whitney,” Heather catches my attention after a few seconds. “You’re in charge of watching our packs if we have to drop them. Do you know how to fight?”

“Step one, run away, Step two, pointy end into the other guy,” I laugh. “Seriously, my knowledge is entirely theoretical, zero practice,” I say. “My best guess right now is to bait them into overcommitting and then start stabbing. Knife out not toward me, focus on edge alignment, be careful about my off-hand, slashing is useless against armor.”

“Not terrible. Honestly much better than I was expecting given the kind of place I think you Visited from,” she says. “We’ll teach you more later, especially once you get into the magic.”

Right! I won’t have to knife-fight anyone! I’ll just be able to, uh, reduce them to salsa. Maybe I should have asked for a quarterstaff or something so I could beat people up without killing them…

“For now,” Heather continues, “you can draw your dagger if we get in a fight, you’re probably more of a danger to them than you are to yourself.”

“That’s an awfully reassuring evaluation,” I say.

Heather laughs and waves me away. “The road here is flat and well-maintained, so you can read while we walk. Learn that spell.”

“Yes ma’am,” I reply. I hesitate. “Uh, honestly, I’m not sure why you’re taking me with you at all.”

“You learned the Gift in under an hour,” she says. “I don’t know how long a real spell will take, but it’s going to take us four hours to reach our destination.”

“Ah.” I think. “I guess? I’ll get right on that, then.”

The buildings don’t change much as we get toward the edge of the town. Maybe a little bit smaller, maybe a bit less pristine, but ultimately still inhabited, clean, and doing business.

People do start to get out of our way, which isn’t too surprising. I’d gotten a couple weird looks when I was shopping with Liv, but now I’m in the center of what is very clearly a team of heavily armed adventurers. I don’t see any fear and nobody seems to vanish into alleys as we approach, but nobody wants to risk bumping any of us.

The gates and walls are interesting. Now that I’m closer, I can see that they’re not even stone all the way up; a sloped stone retaining wall makes up the first ten feet and the last five feet are just grassy hilltop. Presumably on the outside it’s a sheer wall all the way up. The gatehouse, on the other hand, is solid, the same dark grey as the street. The gate it holds is a huge slab of wood, as thick as entire logs, and bound in heavy metal bands.

The gate is just standing open today, and we aren’t stopped or even questioned on our way out of the town. Heather exchanges nods with one of the gate guards.

Must be pretty peaceful here!

We go through the gate and emerge into what’s clearly a cleared kill zone, a river of semi-feral grass several hundred feet wide at the base of the walls. The cleared zone is bounded on the far side by a well-kept hedgerow studded with twisted, bent-over trees.

The road changes under my feet, too. I look down to see that it’s still that grey stone, but now in closely-fitted polygonal chunks rather than rectangular brick-like shapes. The craftsmanship is excellent. I can’t feel any seams or ridges under my feet, not even any channels where cart wheels might have worn ruts in the stone. It’s maybe ten feet from curb to curb, much wider than I remember Roman roads being but not much bigger than a single lane on a city road.

Then again, the lack of ruts might just be because there still aren’t any carts. I move to the side to look around Heather and see the road continuing as straight as an arrow as far as I can see. It’s particularly impressive because the road is flanked by tall hedgerows the whole way, leaving the impression that I’m looking down a green and brown tunnel. The hedgerows aren’t tall enough to shadow the road, but they certainly make it feel more closed-in than any modern road. The road finally disappears over a hill maybe half a mile away. Nowhere along that length do I see a single cart. Instead, a long line of townspeople carry various bundles and crates, and in one or two cases I think I see a single person carrying an entire stack of logs.

Bob speaks up now that we’re out of town, apparently going back over his report for Liv’s benefit.

“Tailed ‘im to a forest ’bout two miles northa’ Caulfield. Offa the trails,” he says, “and into a clearing. ‘E landed his big flying zombie there, dug up a cache, started drawing a big spiky circle around a lil’ hill.” He scratches his head. “So I go scoutin’ around and find a ‘uge cave not two hundred yards away. I do the invisible thing an’ sneak in, just in case, and what do I fin’ but a big ol’ nest with tonsa bones.” He shakes his head. “Bad job that, dozensa humanoid victims and that’s only the ones that weren’t crunched. We’ll be updating lotta records.”

Heather grimaces.

“Stuck around long enough to figure none of the skeletons were anywhere near new,” Bob continues, “thousands’a days old at least. I figure the hill’s the corpse of a big nasty and ol’ zombie-breath wants it for himself.”

“Did you see anybody else?” Heather asks. “Any zombies?”

“Not a soul,” Bob replies. “No stiffs neither.”

“That’s a relief,” Liv mutters.

Heather shares her own information. “He’s been buying controlled alchemical reagents and symbolic items through the Sons for the last thirty-five days,” she says. “This was the handoff point for most of it and we were able to identify the clerk that was in the employ of the Sons. The Guards are following that up while we hit the zombie.”

“Unfortunately,” she takes a deep breath, “Bob believes that all of the items will be part of a single ritual invocation. Worse, he appears to have broken with the Sons by stealing this item instead of paying their price.”

“Well, crap,” Liv says.

“I assume that he’s resurrecting a high-end asset and just got the last piece of the ritual,” Heather says, “so he no longer needs the relationship. I’ve requested a combat team from HQ.”

“Tracking him down with a squad of meatheads in tow would be a nightmare,” Liv complains.

“Which is why we’re headed for Caulfield,” Heather counters, “to stop him before he raises his zombie. I’ve also sent word ahead and we’ll have their hunter team for local intelligence and backup.”

Agnes speaks up. “Can we not bolster our forces by levying the hunters of Calfort as well?”

Heather looks mutinous. “Guard has them all locked down, possible dragon sighting in the forest to the north.”

“Double crap.”

I’m with Liv. This doesn’t sound like a great situation.

The team picks up its feet now. Not much, but a noticeable amount. I’m only going a bit faster than comfortable, though, so some other party member or members - Agnes? Heather? - must not have much in the way of stamina or the like. I’m sure that I’d fall behind if we were going to be moving all day or doing it several days in a row, but for now I should be able to keep up.

And people used to make fun of me for wearing hiking boots everywhere. They said they were “crude” and “ugly”. Like there weren’t four or five other people in my department that I knew did the same thing.

Who’s laughing now?

Me.

I pull out my book, giggling for a moment as I realize that I’m already thinking of it as my book, and get to work.