Every time Tyrna came to Caltern, the city made less sense to her. The color and the noise grew more chaotic, the streets filthier, the nobles in their high palanquins more decked in gold. Beggars swarmed the outer gates like flies, unable to pay to be let in.

And if they did get any coin, they’d spend it on the gate fee, only to be kicked out for begging inside within the week.

There was something sick and dependant about the city. Something self-consuming.

That was why Tyrna didn’t trust it.

She carried a bundle of silver doe-skins tossed over her shoulders, a toothed pendant swaying from her neck as she bent. It was her lucky charm. In the wilds, skill was enough, but for the streets of Caltern, you needed luck.

The gate fee had gone up.

The market was so crowded, so full of human noise and stink, that Tyrna could barely think. Her mind came to her and left her in sudden waves, washed away by the clamour of the marketplace and creeping back in the rare moments of quiet.

She thought she’d been short-changed by the merchant, once she got free of the confusion.

She thought she’d have to find a way to live without Caltern, next year.

The sights of the city swarmed over her in waves, like the lashing of a strange and colorful sea, and before she knew it she had washed up on the steps of her favorite place in the whole city- the quiet little temple of the owl-prophetess.

Owls peeped and hooted from the eaves. Statues of forgotten saints, abandoned by their original temples, accumulated here, and here accumulated owls on their shoulders and heads, congregations of snowy, barn, desert, and horned. Owls from the world over.

The prophetess herself was sweeping the stoop clean, humming a little song.

“My lady Strix.”

“Tyrna!” Underneath the owl-beak of her painted wooden mask, the oracle’s face lit up, and she rushed down to squeeze the - much - taller woman into a tight hug. “I thought you’d be here tomorrow.”

“I saw the last sparrow of autumn perched on my hut, and thought, there’s no sense putting things off. I’d better go to Caltern.

“Sparrows!” She exclaimed with a laugh. “That explains it. I can never account for them.”

“Did you have a dream about me?” Tyrna asked. She came here every time she visited the city for supplies, to ask about the migrations of animals and the yearly harvest, but this was the first time Strix had expected her.

“I went looking for one.” Strix said, and there was something odd in her expression. “Tyrna, I have something to ask you.”

“Anything, my lady.”

Strix reached into the many pockets of her hand-stitched robes and brought up a silver token on a leather cord. “There is a Dungeon under Caltern.”

“I’ve heard.” How could she miss the rumors, the gossip, the street-oracles proclaiming doom? The whole city was looking over its shoulders to the rising of the black dome.

“This is a token to hunt there. You can take four others with you.” Strix let out a sigh, pushing the back of her hand through her smooth dark hair. “I need you to go there, and make what choices you will make.”

“Can’t you even tell me what you want?” Tyrna was confused. She trusted the little prophetess, yes, but she was a hunter and a trapper, a merchant of skins and teeth. Not someone known for wisdom.

“No. Because you’re the strongest person I know, and one of the most sensible. You’ll see what you need to. I am… too close to this.” She paused, and in a very small voice, said, “The Dungeon claimed the life of someone dear to me.”

Tyrna paused, and nodded. “Where do I find my four others?”

“The Nameless Cafe.”

The city of Caltern was getting stranger by the day.

As the prophetess Strix left her temple, the little building by the main road where owls clustered on the thatch of the roof and perched on the moss-lined crags of the sainted statues, a procession walked by. They wore a chainmail of sorts, pieced together from coins with string through the middle, clanking and swaying about their otherwise nude bodies as they walked through the streets. They carried many-tailed whips, and one by one, they would shout ‘repent!’ and strike themselves on their bare backs.

She waited a respectful distance, her little snow owl perched on her shoulder to see by, and pretended to be blind when one broke from the parade to shove a hat under her nose. It was an easy thing to pretend; her eyes were the clouded color of a storm at sea.

Walking along the dusty roads, she came to a place where an old man sat on an overturned barrel, telling stories to children and glancing to their parents with a crooked smile in hopes of coin.

“C’thain the Archer was distraught,” his story went, “For if he didn’t turn himself over to be executed, the giants would kill his family instead. Praying for guidance, he went to the cairn of his ancestors and shot seven arrows into the sky, asking the wind spirits to lead him.

“Not an arrow came down. He waited, and waited, and at last resigned himself. He would surrender to the giants. He saw his family just once, his wife clutching his hand through the bars of the cell. She fled to the wild places of the high wind-snarled mountains, taking his two children with, and their story is a myth of its own.

“That day, he was led from his cell and to the king of the giants, who gloated mightily, and asked where he would like to die. Answered C’thain ‘On the cairn of my ancestors.’

“The giants, seeing no reason to refuse him, led their hated enemy to that moss-tumbled hill. The king of giants himself lifted the executioners axe as C’thain was knelt across the butcher’s block.

“In that moment, the wind spirits finally let go of C’thain’s first arrow. It fell to pierce through the giant king’s one enormous eye, and as he howled in the dark, C’thain slipped away, running like a rabbit into the great forest.

“One by one, the arrows came down, guiding him away from the clever traps of elves and spiders, which the giants blundered into. The spirits of the wind guided to him to the Cave of Umber, but as for what he found inside, ahhh…”

“My throat is dry!” The old greybeard declared, clapping his book of stories shut. “Perhaps if someone could lend me a copper penny for an ale? Anyone? No?”

His expression was the epitome of hope, but quickly lost its luster as he realized none of the fish were biting. The parents took their children away, and he flicked his hand at the remaining street brats, shooing them off. “Oh, poo. No ale no stories, and them’s the rules.”

Across the street from him, Strix found an empty box and climbed atop it, lifting her hands wide into the air and beginning to proclaim nonsense phrases like a street prophet. The man’s expression dipped a notch lower into despondency. Street prophecy. That’s where all the coin was.

Climbing off his perch, grumbling to himself, the old storyteller made his way for greener pastures. Maybe this cafe he’d heard so much about. Adventurers were always loose with a copper penny. So he hoped.

Henri was just strolling the settling evening airs of Caltern, taking in the sights, feeling the streets beneath his worn-down boots. His head engrossed in the stars just beginning to gleam through the darkening sky, he walked directly into a small girl carrying a glass of fizzing drink. It splashed across his tunic and he startled backwards.

“Oh!” They both said simultaneously,

To his horror, she was blind.

“Oh, gods sight, so clumsy of me!” Hurrying to pat her on the head, he winced. Just his luck. “Let me get you another. Just hold on…” Henri paused, realizing this was the middle of the street, and he probably shouldn’t leave a blind girl standing there.

“Riiiight here.” Taking her by the shoulders, he steered her to the side. All the time, not a peep out of the girl, just a confused, blank-eyed stare. Henri pitied her. Without his eyes, what would he be?

Confused most of the time, probably.

Leaving her there for the moment, he headed inside of the bustling little shop, the smell of fresh pastries and something sweet he couldn’t place surrounding him.

And Strix smirked.

Tyrna was unsure what she was doing here. Surrounded by the bustle of people, by the sounds of their conversation, she was like a frightened rabbit. The silver token hung from her neck as she approached the countertop.

A man was leaning over the counter, gesturing excitedly. A cleft twisted his lip and his brow loomed prominently. “I’m telling you, Vaulder, I can do this. I almost made it through the third level, and look-”

He thrust out a golden locket, a tiny saint set in an archway of garnet.

“Mhurr-” The sandy-blonde haired twig of a boy behind the counter was saying, “It’s too dangerous. You don’t know what’s down there.”

They spoke over one another, a confusing font of words. Tyrna shook her head like they were flies.

“Are you okay?” A cute young woman with frizzy brown locks was staring at her. “Do you need to sit down?”

“I need… a drink.” She threw a handful of small coins on the counter, from which the girl diligently picked precise change and shoved the rest back.

“Something strong, then.” The young woman said definitively. She moved to the great machine at the cafe’s center, the gleaming pillar of brass with its winding inorganic viscera of pipes and rattling nozzles. It let out a great belch of steam and frothing milk liqueur, filling the slender glass to the brim.

By the time she turned around, Tyrna had been caught. The cleft-faced man had seen the silver token hanging from her neck.

“Mhurr. Nolan Mhurr, at your service. I can’t help but wonder if you’re looking for companions to brave the hunting grounds with? I know a little spellcraft, myself.” He eagerly pressed, holding out his hand. She reluctantly took it, grasping a single finger between two of hers, and giving the smallest of shakes.

“Excuse me.” Smiling at her was a man with a large head and an odd baldness where his hair out to be, a light peachfuzz covering the scalp. “If you’re looking for allies, could I present myself? Henri. Just Henri.”

Gods help her. It could have been one of her nightmares.