Alric led them to a smaller building a few blocks north of the river. Hirrus would have entirely walked past it if he didn’t have Alric to point it out. It wasn’t that it was small or unadorned so as to be overlooked, but that it was nearly identical to everything else around it.

Hirrus didn’t know why, but he expected an adventurer’s home to be a complete mess. Something made of flashy, mismatched decorations, rather than reflect a more sensible, understated aesthetic.

“Hold a moment,” Hirrus said, before leading Alric past the building to the nearest alleyway.

Alric looked displeased. “Wait, why? Aren’t you a super were-dragon man? Can’t you just go in there and wreck up the place?”

“I don’t know,” Hirrus said, trying to keep his irritation to himself, “because I don’t know what I’m walking into. It could just be Juri Thorpe alone and asleep, or it could be the entire membership of the Last of the Strong crammed in there waiting for me. Let me take a moment and evaluate the situation.”

It took a few minutes for anything to happen. Alric grew progressively more impatient. For one who was so nice, he was surely as bloodthirsty as the rest of the adventurers. But once the door opened and a man emerged, his companion calmed down.

Hirrus recognized the man - a lanky fellow in fancy-looking robes - as one of the recruiters he’d roughed up earlier.

“Why is he here?”

“Because he lied to me,” Hirrus said. He thought about his encounter with the various recruiters earlier that day and felt betrayed. “Most of them must have.”

Alric peeked around the corner to get a better look at the recruiter, and Hirrus grabbed him to drag him back out of view. “Dude, come on,” he whined.

“Hold, just a moment more.”

The adventurer waved Hirrus away. “Fine. But alright, what do you mean they lied to you?”

“Every one of them kept pointing me to someone else who they said knew more than they did.” Hirrus rubbed at his eyes, suddenly tired. “In fact, that man in particular said he never met Juri, only that he knew someone who did.”

“Oof. Wild goose chase of lies.” Alric suddenly smiled. “Well, at least they weren’t smarter about it. They could have all told you a fake name. Or even the name of an enemy.” The smile grew a little wider. “If he’s here, then Juri Thorpe must actually be connected to the guild.”

“Hm.”

Despite the confirmation, Hirrus held his position in the alley for a few more minutes. Leaning against the wall as casually as he could. Two others passed through the house during that time. The first was a man in heavy armor, and then very shortly after that, an older man in a thick leather vest left.

“Rotating guards,” Hirrus guessed. “I wonder if that’s normal, or if they’re expecting me.”

Alric frowned up at Hirrus. “What do we do?”

“Way I see it, we have two options. Obviously, if they’re rotating guards, waiting isn’t going to get us any advantage. There will be the same or similar numbers for me to punch through. Alternatively, we could wait here a few hours. Once we see that man in the plate armor replaced, then we’ll know roughly the numbers of people inside.”

“Hours?” Alric grumbled. “But what if she logs off? Or what if she leaves, and you just think she’s another guard rotating out?”

Frustration grew in Hirrus. He knew that Alric was just being an adventurer. By and large they were impatient and unwilling to do things the right way if they happened to require more work.

But his fears were also well-founded here.

Juri could leave at any moment, and Hirrus would never know until the rest of her guards cleared out. If they even cleared out.

With a frown, Hirrus pushed himself away from the wall. “Fine. Either stay here or stay close. Your choice.”

Hirrus emerged from the alley and marched directly for the door. He didn’t have it in him to approach subtly or stealthily, so he didn’t even make the attempt. Having seen a few people enter and leave without trouble, Hirrus knew the direct route would be the easiest.

With barely a grin of warning to his companion, Hirrus slammed his boot into the door, kicking it open. It hit the wall next to it with a thunderous clap, revealing a large foyer. The building was tall enough to have a second floor, and off to the right, Hirrus did see stairs leading up to an upper floor. But this room had a ceiling that went up to the roof, complete with a skylight.

The door slamming open had the desired effect.

Every occupant of the room was stunned by his sudden appearance, leaving him open to make the first move. There was a man - the most recent arrival in heavy armor - standing next to the door, and he was so surprised, he didn’t move to block the entrance. Hirrus lunged, smashing his axe into the man’s ribs and sending him staggering out of the way with three thousand two hundred and twenty-two less hit points.

With that man gone, there were three adventurers in the room.

Nearest at hand was the man in the heavy armor. The armor looked more decorative than anything else, with a lot of artfully-designed flares and spikes in places where they would look good rather than actually provide a meaningful advantage. Slightly beyond that was a woman in more sensible brigandine with a polished steel bucket helmet. While the other two didn’t have their weapons at the ready, she was standing at the base of the stairs with an enormous pike ready at hand. The third man was wearing simple robes, though they were obviously made of finer fabric than what Hirrus had seen on other adventurers. For some reason, though, he was wearing heavy-looking iron bracers, almost resembling manacles.

“Where’s Juri?” Hirrus demanded. He had to consider that the adventurers in this room might have been complicit enough in what had happened to Yenon to be worth killing, but if these were Juri’s guards, they were farther down the ladder from her, rather than higher up it. He needed to get to the people who were responsible for this, not punish them by proxy by eliminating their followers.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man in the fancy plate armor demanded. He pulled an impractically fancy spear from his inventory and leveled it at Hirrus. “Why are you looking for Juri?”

“We’re not supposed to be questioning him,” the woman with the pike said. Her tone almost seemed bored. She readied her weapon and started storming her way across the room towards Hirrus, making clear her intent.

Her pike gave her enormous reach, and she was still halfway across the room before the sharpened spearhead of the weapon lanced towards his face. Hirrus was able to duck under the attack easily, but he wasn’t going to be able to retaliate with his axe without the ability to close the gap.

The man with the overly fancy armor was within reach though.

Hirrus lashed out quickly with his axe, catching the man on the shoulder for thirty-one hundred damage.

The man in robes thrust his hand forward, opening with an Arcana that sent a jolt of crackling energy across the room. It slammed into Hirrus' shoulder, doing twenty-one hundred and seventy-two damage.

Even though it didn’t have any additional effects he could detect, the big flashy blast moved the man up Hirrus' list of priorities. Opening the fight with a potent Arcana attack meant that it would only be a matter of time before a second blast came in to match the first.

Hirrus disengaged from the man with the spear - letting the weapon’s first strike pass right behind him - and charged.

The pike in the brigandine-clad woman’s hands was long enough that she threatened half the room, and Hirrus was unable to dodge her next lancing strike. It caught him across the lower back, where his new armor didn’t have thick defenses. He only took eleven hundred and five damage from the strike, though, which meant the man in robes was still at the top of his list.

Another bolt of energy came from the man before Hirrus could close the gap. This one was a smaller discrete missile, looking vaguely like a glowing green arrow.

However, Hirrus' approach had visibly unnerved the man to the point that he didn’t even need to dodge for the Arcana attack to go wide to his left.

Before Hirrus could close the distance to the Arcana-slinger, the man in the overly fancy armor employed his own Arcana. There was a sharp rattling sound of armor behind Hirrus, and a moment later, the spear-wielding adventurer dropped from above, placing himself in between Hirrus and the caster. The spear lashed out at Hirrus, the artistically flared edge of the spearhead lashing across Hirrus' chest for twelve hundred and seventy-eight damage.

“If you want to get to him,” the man snarled, “you’ll have to-”

Rather than listen to his demands, Hirrus elected to go through him.

His axe struck high, putting a huge dent in the shimmering armor pauldron on the left side, and dealing another thirty-two hundred and thirty damage to the man. The strike sent the man off-balance. He flailed his spear at Hirrus defensively, trying to ward him away, but another one thousand two hundred and seventy damage wasn’t enough to actually get him to back off.

Off-balance, the man with the spear couldn’t muster his defenses enough to stop the head of Hirrus' axe from slamming into his gut. There was a tortured crunching sound as metal creased beneath the blade of his weapon.

Three thousand and eighty-seven damage sent the man to the ground in a heap.

“Jesus Christ!” the robed man said. “He’s fucking dead already?”

“You’re surprised?” the woman with the pike shot back, but her attempt at an irreverent tone was undercut by a definite waver in her voice.

Hirrus let them talk, stepping over the dead man, apparently named Jesus, to approach the now-vulnerable Arcana user.

He’d originally feared Juri’s guards would be enough to threaten him, but it was clear from the first death that it would not be the case.

This would only take a moment more.