“Names, party status, oathholder level if applicable, reason for inquiry. Quickly, please.”

“Alex of House Varga, Lukas Noben, Jasmine of House Rayes, Lily Syashan,” Alex said, the brown-skinned noble our chosen representative for this visit to the TAG. “Party of four, I’m class one, Lukas is class seven, Jasmine is class four, Lily is…”

“Class two, for now,” I said. “I might need a reevaluation soon, though.”

“We’re looking for a job posting that fits,” Alex finished. “Preferably one that departs as soon as possible.”

We hadn’t booked a job ahead of time, but it wasn’t a problem because Alex and Lukas were both already 2nd level members and we now had four, both of which greatly expanded the selection of jobs available.

“There are twenty-three available jobs in the next three hours,” the receptionist droned. “Here are all the available ones, arranged from the earliest to the latest.”

In one smooth motion, he passed his hands over the counter, and a stack of papers materialized almost out of thin air.

Alex flipped through them and grabbed one. He showed it to Jasmine, who nodded. Lukas and I hadn’t requested inclusion on the process of reviewing jobs— all we really cared about was getting the job done and doing it well.

“It’s an already active mission that nobody’s taken yet,” Alex announced. “It’s an ongoing capture quest for a renegade scientist and his Altered. Departure in SG-11.”

“Are we going to be joined by anyone else?” I asked.

I’d only been on two jobs, both of which had involved other adventurers. So far, those other people tended to die at a disconcertingly high rate.

“No,” Alex said. “Four person job.”

“Let’s get going, then.”

The four of us walked out, the receptionist acknowledging us with a nod and putting away the papers. The building was still unfamiliar to me, so I just followed Jasmine.

As we approached a hallway wide enough to drive two trains through side-by-side, I noticed an almost comically large notice posted up on a nearby wall, bright red and yellow.

“Inbound lower-calamity-class event, one to two months,” I read. “There’s a new uncontained primordial in Tayan.”

“We might be called in to fight that eventually,” Lukas said, making a face. “They’re not easy to put down, I’ll tell you that.”

“That’s a problem for the us of then,” Alex said. “We knew what we were signing up for. Besides, I’ve got you to keep me safe.”

“I don’t think you really get it,” Lukas said. “I’m powerful, but primordials have absorbed the essence of their god rather than simply touching them like we do. If we get drafted, there is zero guarantee I can protect you.”

“Then I’ll make sure we don’t get sent to the front lines, if for some reason we’re chosen,” Alex said. “It’s a little cowardly, but I would prefer being a coward than a corpse.”

“I’ll go,” Jasmine said, quiet. “If it comes down to that or the death of millions of innocents.”

“If I get drafted, I’ll go,” I said. “Or if Jasmine does. Other than that, I’m not going.”

“It’ll be fine,” Alex said. “The membership level of our party is only ML 2, and not super high in oathholder class at that. What are the odds of us even being in the pool to be drafted for a lower-calamity-class? They should be bringing in the big guns for this.”

“The odds that ML 2 adventurers are in the pool is not high,” Jasmine said. “But if ML 2 adventurers get drafted, any party at that level has somewhere around a one in five to a one in ten chance of being drafted, if I remember my numbers right.”

“Let’s just worry about that later,” Alex said, repeating his earlier sentiment. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. All we can do is get stronger.”

It didn’t really feel real, like a news report about a hurricane in a distant coastal country. Maybe that was why we were acting so numbly towards something that would potentially threaten a sizeable chunk of the nation.

Just a fact of life, I supposed. I took my mind off it. Like it or not, Alex was right. There wasn’t anything we could do about it for now.

“Let’s go,” I said. “We can bring this topic up with someone later, but I want to pick out some better weaponry for this job and we’re not going to get that done just standing here.”

The group agreed, and we got going. The TAG building was more of a maze than I had remembered it being, a seemingly endless group of hallways intersecting at ninety degree angles and departure points dotting them, uniformly built in steel-reinforced concrete. It would have been a little foreboding if not for the oathlights providing heat and warm illumination at regular intervals.

Everyone else seemed more familiar with the TAG building, so we made it to the departure point without getting turned around too much.

The departure point had a few more frills this time than it had the last two times we’d been here. The basic gear was still there, ropes, bags, oathlights and other adventuring gear, some that could be purchased and others that could be borrowed. Now, though, there were tools that were aimed at specific jobs— birdcages, chains, climber’s kits, and the like.

“We won’t need those,” Lukas said, catching me glancing at the chains. “I’ll restrain them once you weaken them enough.”

The rest of the party were perusing the expanded item selection as well, but it looked like they were looking more to pass the time than to actually find something of use. Lukas and Alex had matching medium armor, sections of platemail reinforcing dyed leather. The former had a bandoleer of knives attached to his waist, and the latter handled a gilded longsword that was almost as tall as me with casual ease. He’d kept it strapped to his back earlier, and he hadn’t used it during our spar, so I hadn’t seen him use it before. Alex looked like he’d been born to it, hefting what had to be a fairly heavy weapon with seemingly no effort.

For her part, Jasmine was wearing a similar outfit as last time— dark leggings, a chainmail breastplate dotted with gems, leather bracers, and one of the pleated skirts she favored, this one in Tayan purple.

“I think you stole the princess’ skirt,” I said, walking beside her. “Looks good on you.”

“Thank you,” Jasmine said. “You look good too.”

I blinked at that. I didn’t even own anything particularly fancy, and my outfits almost always leaned hard into the practical end. Right now, I was wearing a practical pair of brown pants, a loose collared white shirt that I’d bought secondhand, and a thin black jacket. Nothing that would warrant a second thought, though at least it didn’t look bad.

“Uh… thanks,” I said, after realizing that I’d been staring off into space like an idiot for a little longer than was necessary.

“No need to thank me,” Jasmine said, a cheeky smile on her face. “Will you be picking anything else up this time?”

“Probably,” I said. “If we’re going on a capture quest, I’m going to be next to useless with my magic. I want something ranged so I can help without either doing nothing or murdering our target.”

“Makes sense. What were you thinking?”

“We’re capturing an Altered and a former researcher, right? I was thinking that I would go with a crossbow.”

“Not a gun?”

“Guns fail against shielding and armor produced by Aedi oaths unless you individually enchant your bullets, right?”

“Ohhhh. I’d forgotten. My revolver was made with a battery that takes magic power from me and feeds it to the bullets.”

“I don’t think any of the weapons available to ML 2 level adventurers are nearly on that level. I’ll make do with what I can find.”

The selection of weapons we had this time were wider than it’d been before, the enhanced status granted by Alex and Lukas ensuring that our shopping options were a fair bit broader than they had been before.

The same array of daggers, shortswords, maces, and other basic weaponry was still there, but I noticed on closer inspection that a handful of the blades were more expensive— two moons apiece, twice their regular price.

Attribute: Unbreaking. Attribute: Freeze.

Each of the daggers and shortswords had similar tags, each of them mass-produced enchanted weapons built by Aedi oathholders. All of them were marked with the former attribute, while the latter one varied from Flame to Freeze to Poison to Shock. I decided to buy a shortsword with the Freeze marking. It wasn’t my favorite weapon to use, but it would be better for close-range fights than a measly dagger would be and the enchantment would mean that it outperformed my flail in those situations where I wasn’t able to use my magic.

“Thought you said you were going to buy something longer range,” Jasmine commented.

“I will,” I said. “But I don’t have a shortsword yet, and I have a bit of money to spare from the last job.”

As long as we follow through with this job so I have money to pay for food, I added silently.

“And you should be getting some more from this,” Jasmine said. “A whole sun and a half per person, and thirty MC points. The rewards really do get so much better when you go up the ranks even a little.”

“That’s true,” I admitted. “With these guys, we’ll be making triple what we did alone. Enough to afford more than one weapon, at least.”

“The sword looks fine, if a little simple,” Jasmine said.

“Not all of us have unlimited money, noble girl,” I said. “Can’t all be casually carrying legendary artifacts into battle.”

She had the decency to look embarrassed, at least.

The rest of the weapons were less exciting in terms of magic. I supposed that since we were partying with people that were ML 2, we still had a relatively limited selection of equipment to choose from. This departure point held a number of additional mundane weapons, and among those I found the ranged weapon I needed.

It was a bog standard compound crossbow, black steel and dark polished oak with a pull weight high enough to put a hole through a sheet of metal if fired correctly. One and a half moons for the bow, half a moon for a quiver with three dozen bolts. If all went well, I wouldn’t need to use them all.

“So who’s this researcher we’re looking for?” I asked, pitching my question higher so that the other pair could hear me. “Any knowledge on capabilities?”

“Lauren Kay,” Alex said. “She was the head of an Altered research subcommittee of the Yaguan branch of the Tayan Special Defensive Force. One week ago, she destroyed a significant chunk of the lab she works at and stole the Altered that they were working on. Her last reported position was in the Shuti Woods, closer to Yaguan than the next city over.”

“So we don’t know where she is,” I said. “Shouldn’t we have brought a tracker, then?”

“Tayan Altered are built with a magical signature in them,” Alex said. “This departure point has four location devices sent by the Kingdom that will direct us at this Altered’s signature.”

“Convenient,” I said. “Have you ever used one before?”

“I have,” Jasmine volunteered. “House Rayes uses them all the time.”

Right, she was from a noble house that literally focused on designing and manufacturing Altered.

“How useful are they?”

“They’re consistent, and the markers are strong. If the Kingdom does it the same way we do, which they should, it’ll be accurate to within a few meters.”

“How do they work?”

“It’s similar to how a Caethus stone transmits information. If you push a little magic into it, an image of your target will pop up into your mind.”

Alex was already holding all four devices, so I walked over and took one. It was simple, really, just a steel square with runes etched around a blinking red oathlight in its center.

“It should be keyed to our target already,” Jasmine called out. “All you need to do is add a little magic.”

I gently tugged on the lines of power running through the world, allowing a drop or two to pass through me into the tracker.

An image popped into my mind, vivid like I was lucidly dreaming of the location I was looking at. A shallow cave, surrounded by trees higher than most Church spires. With that image came a sense of direction, of distance. It wasn’t something I could really quantify, but the enchanted tracker had instilled an intrinsic sense of the target Altered’s location into my mind.

“It works,” I confirmed. “Looks like our target’s still in the Shuti. It’s not moving, at least not right now.”

“Then let’s stop wasting time and get going,” Alex said.

“You done shopping?” Jasmine asked me. After I nodded, she spoke up to agree with Alex.

“Off we go,” I said to Lukas, the two nobles leading the way out of the TAG building to the train that would take us to the outskirts of the city.

“Nobles these days are so impatient,” Lukas said with a grin, shaking his head.

“You can say that again,” I chuckled. “You ready?”

Lukas nodded, replying to me with mock seriousness. “Once more unto the breach, I suppose.”

The Shuti Woods, more commonly referred to just as the Shuti, had once stretched across a significant chunk of the nation, wholly enveloping the region that was now Yaguan. According to the continental religious texts, the expansive woods had been partially obliterated by the aftermath of the unusually messy ascension of a god and its exit from baseline reality during the Final Departure, clearing space for the birthplace of the Kingdom of Tayan.

I had always thought the story to be a simple fairy tale told to avoid the reality that the Kingdom of Tayan had simply established by chopping down the majority of a majestic forest, but as we entered the woods ourselves, I began to feel that maybe there had been some truth to that myth.

Beyond the trees, which seemed to reach halfway to the skies themselves, there was still magical residue of something other, here, a sense of weight to the still air. It wasn’t overwhelming in the way my oath was when I overused my magic, not nearly, but there was enough of the effect left that there was an almost tangible sense of pressure. It had been nearly a thousand years since the Final Departure, and any effect that lasted that long must have come from a truly catastrophic event.

That, or there was something else causing the effect.

“Do you feel that too?” I asked.

“The pressure?” Jasmine said, answering my question with one of her own.

“Yeah,”I said. I took a second to examine my crossbow before asking another question. “Is that something we should watch out for?”

Jasmine shook her head. “I’ve been into the Shuti a number of times, and it is always like this.”

“Huh. Alright, then.”

So the myth wasn’t much of a fairy tale after all. Interesting to know.

All four of us had a tracker apiece now, our destination firm in our minds. We were only a couple kilometers or so away from the clearing where the Altered researcher was hiding as the crow flew, but the trees were dense and they shed a good chunk of their leaves and needles, making the terrain fairly difficult to navigate. We weren’t going through the beaten path, either, since our target was hidden away in a particularly dense part of the forest, far from the part of the woods that catered to tourists, so there wasn’t a conveniently cleared trail for us to run down.

On top of all of that, this area was populated by local fauna, both Altered and not. Jasmine had assured us that the majority of them would stay away from a group of four oathholders dripping with magic, the truly dangerous Altered living far further into the heart of the forest. Even then, though, the scattering of animals before us was liable to alert our target to our presence.

“This place looks like it’d go up in flames if you cast a single spell,” I said, stepping into a dry patch of leaves, my boots crunching the dead foliage beneath the. “Is the latent magic stopping it?”

“Yes, as far as we can tell,” Jasmine said. “House Rayes came out here a number of times to test our new Altered, and we’re fairly certain that there’s a dampening effect that prevents any damage to the forest from spreading beyond a few hundred meters.”

“Interference from a millenia-old miracle?”

“We believe so.”

The two of us were closer to each other than we were to the other two, but they were still well within earshot, bringing up the rear right behind us.

“I feel like I should clarify,” Lukas said. “I’m not going to be fighting unless it’s an emergency.”

“Why not?” Jasmine asked. “You are indisputably our strongest oathholder.”

“Yeah, I am,” Lukas agreed. “But we’re not doing this for money. We’re doing this so that Alex here can level up his oath and get better at fighting, which won’t happen if I steamroll every job we do.”

“Makes sense, I’m doing it for basically the same reason,” she said. “Alright. As long as you’re there for backup.”

Nobles. All three of them were acting like I was there to do the same thing when I so clearly wasn’t. Alex had even decided to make the job harder on us, leaving his longsword behind—ostensibly because its reach was too great for the forest, but their words made it sound awfully like he’d neglected to bring it in order to train up his spellcasting ability.

Then again, having an opportunity to increase our power wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Furthermore, building connections with powerful nobles— both Rayes and Varga were notable names, if my decade-old knowledge of nobility was still right— would be critical to elevating myself past their level, so it wouldn’t do to alienate them.

“I’m alright with you not participating,” I lied. “We’re not facing something that we’re supposed to kill, so I’m probably also not going to be very impactful.”

“That’s fine,” Jasmine said. “You were the single most impactful member in the last two jobs we were on, and that’s putting it lightly.”

“Wow, you sound like you really got the short end of the stick with adventuring,” Alex said. “And you two are both still doing it?”

“I’ve been through worse,” Jasmine said. “As long as I don’t actually die, anything that assists me in my path as an oathholder is beneficial.”

“Same, for the going through worse bit,” I said, readjusting my grip on my crossbow. “And also, the military is way too structured for me and besides killing, there isn’t much else I can use my magic for. Thus, adventuring.”

That, and the magical heritage check required for entrance into an official military force would detect that I was of House Byron, and that was a can of worms that I wouldn’t be ready to open until I’d built an actual name for myself. A paramilitary organization like the Tayan Adventurer Guild was a good deal more discrete with the background of its members, especially with the notorious danger of adventuring driving application rates down year by year.

“Fortunately, we haven’t had any of those problems yet, mostly thanks to Lukas here,” Alex said. “Hopefully, this job will be more of the same.”

“Give yourself some more credit,” Lukas said. “I’ve barely had to intervene.”

“I-“ Alex didn’t finish his sentence, letting the thought die on his lips. “It’s moving.”

I could feel it too, the image in my mind flickering and changing. The sense of distance that had buried itself into my subconsciousness was slowly changing.

“It isn’t moving very quickly,” Jasmine said. “It might be waking up to eat.”

“Whatever the case, we should speed up,” Alex said.

Nobody disagreed, and we picked up the pace, our party becoming silent but for the crunch of dry foliage beneath our boots.

“We’re getting close,” Jasmine said.

The four of us slowed down, bunching up together around a thick trunk. We’d made our way here without much further incident, Lukas utilizing his magic to create a small earthen path over less traversable sections of terrain where there were major drops or fallen trees in our way.

Now, we sat only meters away from our target, hiding behind a particularly thick trunk.

I peered to one side of the tree. The clearing that I looked into, maybe thirty meters across, wasn't natural. A number of the great trees that had once been in this area had been torn down, wood scattered around and shredded like cheese through a grater. Some of the clearing looked like it had been hastily burnt, an area of the wood blackened and disintegrating, but the fire hadn’t taken properly and it was largely still an intact field of wood and bark.

In the center of the clearing stood the Altered. It had once been a Shuti bear, but according to the file we had on it, the Altered now held a class two oath to Caël, greatly increasing its speed and power. It was a lower end Altered, and it looked like a normal bear, just a little larger and with a bright blue circular pattern on its back. At the moment, it was just standing there, presumably to await orders.

“It was in a shallow cavern initially,” I said, returning to the group. “I don’t see researcher Kay with it, which means she might still be in that cavern.”

“Let’s capture the Altered first,” Jasmine suggested. “We’re in the deep forest. There’s dangerous fauna in this part of the Shuti. If her Altered gets taken, she’ll have little choice but to come with us since she doesn’t have an offensive oath.”

“I agree,” Alex said. “Lukas, Lily?”

“It’s your plan,” Lukas said. “As always.”

“I have no arguments,” I said, loading a bolt into my crossbow. My shortsword was sheathed by my side, and I made no movement to draw it. I would use it when the time for it came, no sooner.

“I’ll do some damage to it, you inhibit it with your oath, and Lukas finishes the capture. We’re in agreement, yes?” Jasmine looked towards Alex.

“That was the plan, yes,” Alex said. “On three?”

“Three… two… one…”

Jasmine sprinted out from cover immediately after finishing her countdown, a flash of sunlight catching her revolver as she drew it. Alex walked out at the same time, a colored hexagon comprised of more hexagons forming in front of him.

“We just learned that,” I commented. “Guess he’s practicing putting it to use.”

“That’s my Alex,” Lukas said affectionately. “Always growing.”

The Altered bear roared, the sound marred by an odd static-like sound that made its cry sound like a flickering broken oathlight.

“It noticed them while looking in the other direction,” Lukas noticed. “It has some sort of perception ability.”

The bear’s oddly machinelike roar rose to a peak, and the blue circle of runes on its back flared bright.

Jasmine fired her revolver once, the bullet leaving a trail of flaming red energy behind it. By all means, it should have been a hit, but the bear flickered and suddenly it was within arm’s reach of her.

I shot my crossbow at it, my aim honed by years of practice both from House Byron and the fields of Syashan, and the bolt flew true.

I saw a spark of blue, witnessed the bear’s arm become a blur, heard the sound of metal against metal, and then the bear was once again attacking Jasmine. The bolt had embedded itself into a burnt piece of wood.

I didn’t miss. Had the bear batted my godsdamned bolt aside? I knew Caël oaths were fast, but it was hard to reconcile the enhanced power of a normal Altered bear with the blinding speed that this new brand had.

It had bought Jasmine time, though, and the light of the sigil on its back had faded in intensity. She formed the basic shield spell, knowing it without having taken the same class as me, and a circle of flaming force scorched the air as it popped into existence in front of her, and the claw swipe bounced off.

Its attack had been no faster than a regular Altered bear’s, even if it still swept with speed befitting a monster of the Tayan kingdom. Was there a limit to how frequently it could use its bursts of speed?

All we had to do was capture it before it could blitz us again, then.

Jasmine rolled backwards, letting her shield dissipate, smoothly transitioning to a kneeling position. She fired again, one hand on the revolver, and this time I saw her cast a spell with her left hand. Two lines of flame lit up the clearing, leaving trails of light that stayed hung in the air even as the projectiles found their mark.

The spell—she had silently cast a magic missile, having apparently practiced it enough with her noble house that words and gestures were no longer required— travelled slightly slower than the bullet infused with Igni’s power. Blood geysered from the Altered bear’s snout, far more than should’ve come from a revolver bullet passing through an animal, and when I looked closely I could see embers of flame licking at its lifeblood.

A moment later, the magic missile touched down as well, landing inside the bloody mess that was the bear’s snout now. The spell detonated on impact with a sound like the rage of a campfire after gallons of gasoline were poured on it. Chunks of flesh flew from the point of impact, the missile having apparently gone off inside the Altered, and the bear was thrown back a meter or two, falling onto its side.

I was worried for a second that Jasmine had killed it, but the bear was back on its feet in a matter of moments, albeit a lot slower than it had been earlier.

The Altered roared, still managing that odd distorted quality even when the front half of its snout had been torn apart, and the runic circle on its back began to light up again. Its upper jaw had been destroyed by the missile, and I could see the magically enhanced fangs that had replaced its teeth through the bloody ruin of what had once been a mouth.

Jasmine fired another magic missile, this one aimed at its body, and it fell over, its cry cutting off before it could finish whatever arcane process was being assisted by its roar.

I shot another bolt, wanting to add some form of contribution when Jasmine was the only one fighting, and I hit it in the center of mass. It was too dangerous to shoot for the head now, too likely that I could accidentally kill it.

The bolt barely penetrated the Altered, the majority of the shaft still visible, and it seemed to care a lot less about this than it had about Jasmine’s magic. That’s a class four oathholder for you, I guess.

Belatedly, Alex finished whatever he’d been casting. It must have been something he’d learned with the resources of his family, because it was certainly more complex than the spells we’d received in class.

His shield dissipated into wisps of magical residue, and dark green fumes emerged from between his cupped hands. They didn’t fly with the wind, instead floating with the guide of an intelligence, moving towards the fallen bear.

The Altered roared again, this time without the static-like sound. A cry from the bear it had once been, not the killing machine that it was supposed to be now.

“This should paralyze it,” Alex shouted to be heard over the sound. “Or at least slow it a lot.”

His smoke settled onto the prone form of the Altered, seeping into its body through every available orifice and the gaping mess of its snout. True to his word, the bear stopped struggling to stand up, its legs locking into place.

From start to finish, the entire fight had taken less than twenty seconds. I whistled. Jasmine was really competent when her oath wasn’t weakened by darkness.

“Good job!” Lukas called out, walking into the clearing. “And I didn’t even need to get involved.”

Contradicting his own words, chunks of earth rose around the bear’s limbs, preventing it from moving even in the case that Alex’s Voci-powered smoke wore off.

“Is it going to survive?” I asked, joining the rest of the party in the clearing. “That’s half our job here, right?”

“It’ll live,” Jasmine said. “I cast a diagnostic on it. The Altered is tougher than it looks.”

I looked at the bolt I’d fired, the tip barely penetrating into the skin. “I can buy that.”

“Alright, now what?” Alex asked. “We just… wait?”

“If she’s been relying on her Altered for protection, she’ll need to come to it soon,” Jasmine said. “So yeah, we just wait. If she’s not here by nightfall, we’ll just take the Altered and leave. Less pay, but it’ll still work.”

“There’s still hours until nightfall,” I pointed out. “I hope she shows up earlier.”

As if it wanted to enter the conversation, the still-paralyzed Altered let out a strangled cry, the sound this time distinct from before. I looked over at its back, confirming that the magic circle wasn’t illuminating.

Instead, from the woods around us, answering growls sounded, low and filled with static.

“She made more of them!” Lukas shouted, assuming a defensive stance. “Get ready!”

That hadn’t been a last dying breath, nor even an effort to start its magic again.

That had been a cry for help, and as the light of more rune-carrying bears began to flood the clearing, it became clear that it had been answered.