“Gods, what happened to you two?” Sam asked as they reappeared back in the portal.

  “Oh man, I just fought his hideous be- ow.”

  “Gavin and I had a sparring match because our contracts were all duds.” Val said, striding through the enchanted circle inlaid in the floor conspicuously missing a boot.

  “That sounds fun, we just had a bog monster and a spider infestation.”

  “Well, I don't feel so bad about our ones now then. Gav, want me to fill out the contracts?” Val said, trying to keep her voice cool.

  “And I'm gonna go buy some supplies, thanks Val. Anyone coming with?”

  “I was going to do some training with Sam.” Judy said.

  “Same.” Sam agreed.

  “I'll see if I can find something for dinner while I'm out, we’re running low on our pre prepared dinners.”

  “We've got a year's worth of ingredients in here.” Sam said.

  “Yeah, but most of it hasn't been cooked yet.”

  “It's not like you aren't just going to do whatever you want anyway, could you try not to get into trouble though?”

  “I can try.” Gavin said, his tone clear that he wasn't hopeful on that front.

  Minutes later his portal opened a little outside the city of Nyümbakka and he stepped through eating the second half of his steaming hot bacon and egg pie with experimental chutney lathered across the top.

  He strode into town past the guards impressed with the speed which the makeshift city was coming together. He'd passed through once or twice and each time there seemed to be twice as many people. At first it was mainly locals, but now they had become heavily outnumbered by guild officials and all the various people necessary to support a network of mercenary monster hunters.

  The guild compound was smaller than the one in Edomont, but larger than the one in Wildenesse. It was heavily ensorcelled with defensive magic an order of magnitude more impressive than the stuff he'd helped set up. Seeing the expert level quality set a new flag in the back of his mind, he was happy there were people better than him to learn from and compare his own work to, he just needed a pathway to becoming better. Some day he'd be the best enchanter on the planet, he just had to get there.

  “Hey you.” a voice said, breaking him out of his contemplation as he walked up the steps into the guild courtyard.

  He turned around to see three people, two women and a man, all dressed in similar off white robes. He didn't immediately recognise the colours, though as their leader stepped up into his personal space he got a hint of the divine power she wielded.

  “You're the one that nearly killed one of my congregation in a sparring match.”

  “Nope, sorry, not interested in doing this right now, I've got things to do and people to see.”

  He turned on the spot and began to walk away when a vice clamped on his shoulder and threw him back around. He rolled his eyes at her indignant expression and sighed, preparing himself to get involved in other people's business.

  “Go on, say your piece so I can go about my day.”

  “You are a blasphemer and a coward, and I challenge you to a trial by combat.”

  “Blasphemer yes, coward, ehh, I don't think so, which might be a bit hard to believe given I decline your duel.” Gavin said, vanishing in a puff of smoke.

  He reappeared deeper into the guild compound just inside the administration building entrance. Warily he made his way to one of the officials sitting behind a long wooden counter.

  “Hey, just wanna give someone here a heads up, there's some religos from the church of Paragon out there threatening me, ordinarily I'd just fight them and be done with it but my team wants me to keep a low profile.”

  “Threatening you?” the bookish man said, reaching a hand up to adjust glasses that weren't there.

  “Yeah mate. Names Gavin, I'm with the Knights of the Round Table, I-”

  “Oh, you're that one.”

  “What one?” Gavin asked, confused.

  “The church has been petitioning the guild to turn you over for blasphemy, it's been the talk of the guild for several days now.”

  “So, uhh, is anyone going to tell them to kick rocks or do I have to go shut them up?”

  “I would advise against taking any action there Master Gavin.”

  Gavin visibly cringed at the title, turning the corner of his mouth in a grimace.

  “Just Gavin mate, drop the honorific. But seriously, I'm all for just ignoring my problems until they go away, but that lady out there put hands on me while I was just going about my day off to buy some books.”

  “She? Who was it? Where did this happen?” he said, seemingly interested as he started taking notes on a sheet of parchment.

  “Didn't get her name, I was just walking up the steps over there and she grabbed me and started saying something about a trial by combat. I bounced right the fuck out of there, and now here I am, trying to do the responsible thing and let the adults sort it out.”

  “She grabbed you on the guild grounds?”

  “Well, I don't know exactly where the grounds start, but we were both on the stairs.”

  “Oh, well this is most exciting.” He said, scooting his chair up and bustling from the room “Wait there, actually just go about your business, this may take a while, we’ll contact you through your local guild liaison.”

  “Yeah, okay mate.” Gavin said as the man all but jogged from the room.

  He shrugged and walked back out of the addmin building towards the guild markets. Putting the incident into the back of his mind.

  The markets had a dozen wardens browsing the open air stalls in the cavernous building. The wares weren’t great, mostly weapons, armour and consumables the average person might need for finding and killing monsters. There were a precious few books on offer and Gavin found himself missing the markets back in Edomont.

  “Can I help you sir?” a young whip of a woman asked, adjusting an enchanted monocle as he looked up from her array of trinkets.

  “I’m looking for skill books, ahh, treatises, on enchanting, and call me Gavin.”

  “You might struggle to find anything like that here Gavin, not a lot of demand for treatises, let alone ones on enchanting. I could get some ordered in through if you didn't mind waiting a few days.”

  “Could you?” Gavin asked, suddenly interested.

  “Give me a list of what you're looking for and I’ll see about getting it brought in with the next resupply.”

  “Well, I'm after new level two and three enchanting architecture recipes and advanced theory. Just, whatever you can get your hands on.”

  “Whatever I can get my hands on? Sir, I assure you, that may be more than you can afford.”

  “I’d be surprised, the guild pays us a lot, and I've got a looting power, and I can make money by deconstructing my own enchanted items. I want comprehensive, and I'm not super fussed about the cost, if you catch my drift.”

  “Gavin, I think we have an understanding. Where are you stationed so I can deliver your purchases at your earliest convenience?”

  “I’m out at- oh, shit, that's not good.” Gavin said, looking up to see a host of clergy striding into the room.

  “You, come with us.” Said the fridge like middle aged man at the front of the congregation.

  “No, I don't think I will.” Gavin said, regarding the man with disdain.

  “Come on lad, take your lumps and you can be about your day.”

  “Look at you lot, there's five of you, all level three or above to come give a lowly level two a kicking? You should be ashamed of yourselves, you know Paragon once intervened on my behalf after I stood up to another bully? Why don't you lot jog on before you get yourselves into trouble with the man upstairs.”

  “I suggest you listen to mister Pēne's advice Clergyman Mistran.” Said Kalista from behind them.

  She took a step into the room to allow her comically large sword slung over her shoulder to clear the door frame. She radiated an aura of caustic malice that felt like it was eating away at Gavin’s skin, and he was only peripheral to her attention. The clergy before him wilted under her glare, they seemed to struggle to even stand as she bore her will down on them.

  “You are all on extremely thin ice. If I hear one word that you or any of your church is even entertaining the idea of interfering with any of my wardens you won't like the consequences. Do you understand?”

  “I- yes.” Said the leader of the group.

  “Good, not get yourselves out of my sight and don't let me catch you or any of your subordinates on guild grounds unless they are members.”

  “But, commander, we need to access the portals to resupply.”

  “You have guild members within your church, they may do your busywork so long as it doesn't interfere with their duties.”

  “But-”

  “Go.” Commander Kalista ordered, her words carrying the weight of the ludicrous power at her disposal.

  The assembled priests of Paragon all but fled the room, Kalista watched them go with all the cold indifference of a pillar of granite watching dust on the wind. When they were out of sight she slowly and inexorably turned her gaze back to Gavin who was doing his level best to appear innocent.

  “You, follow.” She said in a flat neutral tone as she stalked from the room, her heavy ensorcelled armour grinding and grating like a living machine of death.

  “Order me those books yeah?” Gavin said tossing a small sack of coins out on the stall with a reassuring thumbs up.

  “If you say so.” She shrugged.

  Gavin followed commander Kalista out if the guild hall, back to the administration building. They ascended a set of stairs and down a corridor of black obsidian walls covered in glowing silver runes that terminated in a self contained room so heavy with protective enchantments that he felt the air was almost alive with layered wards and traps.

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  Inside her office was even more imposing than walking into a dragons lair. One entire wall was a collection of books stacked neatly on an ornate book case. She had a solid wooden desk that looked like it had been machined out of an entire ironoak tree either side of which were two minimalist wooden chairs. The entire room was full of a diffuse light from the glowing runes carved into every available surface.

  The room took on a spectral appearance where nothing looked quite right. This coupled with the flood of high rank mana pressing in on all sides made Gavin feel like a very small fish in a very big pond.

  Kalista took her seat behind her desk, and Gavin followed suit without waiting for an invitation.

  “You are an oddity mister Pēne, of should I just call you Gavin?”

  “Kinda depends on what sort of chat this is gonna be commander.”

  “I'd like to keep it informal, you can call me Jane.”

  “Ahh, okay, so what's up?”

  “I just want to monologue for a bit, I don't get to do that much anymore.” Jane said, her voice carrying a razor thin edge. “I've seen your file, your complete, un-redacted file it's quite the read for someone of such a low level, you should be impressed.”

  “Cheers.” Gavin said brightly.

  “Your team is solid, not the most efficient contract clearers we've got out here, but also not the worst. What you might not know is that contract completion rate wasn't the primary metric we were using to select teams, we were mainly looking for teams that do things by the book, don't create conflict, they just do their job and don't ask questions.”

  “Good little soldiers?”

  “Exactly right. Now, there's always a certain amount of politicking with these sorts of assignments certain people like to spend their political capital to gain a small amount of influence over the expedition. Your team has thrown up a fee red flags, would you like to guess why?”

  “Well, there's the whole no asking questions, not creating a conflict thing-”

  “It was rhetorical dear, but yes, you very specifically are not the sort of person we want out on these sorts of contracts. If Samania was your leader and you had a few more Valerie Westharts or Judith Hawkthornes then you wouldn't attract any attention whatsoever. Instead we have you, an outworlder who walks around acting ten levels above his station. At first I thought your team was put here by Alana Starbourne, but that's not true is it?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Gavin agreed.

  “You're political poisson, I don't believe someone would work to get you out here believing your conduct would reflect well on them, so my next line of reasoning is that you are out here specifically to create a chaos and make sure this whole operation fails, except that's also not true, you've certainly been at the centre of every problem we've had out here, but so far as I can tell you've done your best to do your job thoroughly without complaint. You haven't actively sought out trouble, though you also don't go out of your way to avoid it either. Which leads me to the third hypothesis I have as to your purpose here, do you know what it is? This time it's not rhetorical.”

  “Well I guess I could spitball some ideas.”

  “By all means.”

  “Someone wants my team and I to bite off more than we can chew. Most of the contracts have a low chance of failure, but there's been a couple of contracts that have been pretty close calls, the extradimensional pockets are hilariously more dangerous than ordinary monster contracts and we're obligated to take them regardless of how tough they are. I also came across a dire chicken one time, if there wasn't just one it would have been touch and go.”

  “There is only ever one dire chicken, if the maana saturation is high enough to spawn additional monsters it will just get stronger rather than spawning more.”

  “Huh, good to know.” Gavin said thoughtfully.

  “I'm also aware you like to misdirect people Gavin.”

  “Yeah, it's pretty great.”

  “Did you have know why you were selected to come out here on this expedition?”

  “Because of my team's reputation to get the job done and get it done right regardless of the cost.” Gavin boasted.

  “Yes, how prescriptive. I saw the transcript Venom oversaw, you very neatly dodged her questions there too. It's impressive you know, being able to deceive a truth seer and show almost no sign of stress under the influence of someone as powerful as myself.”

  “Cheers. I gotta ask though, what's up with this chat? Seems to me that if you were suspicious of me it'd be easier just to surveil my team, which means it's not that right? Are you just screwing with me?”

  “I do notice you have never claimed ignorance of the questions you've been asked.”

  “I'm sure you can appreciate that claiming I don't know what you're talking about, I'm innocent sounds hella lame and makes me seem like a useful idiot, instead of a cool covert agent.”

  “So you are a covert agent?”

  “I have motivations other than just doing what the guild wants me to do, obviously, I was mainly just saying that I prefer to appear more mysterious than I am. Keep them guessing, ya know?”

  “Why didn't you kick up a fuss over Lady Alana Starbourne? You had a lot of leverage over her.”

  “Yeah, no one likes a nark. I clean my own dirty laundry.”

  “Like you did with the Paragon clergy.”

  “Yeah, that's different.”

  “How so?”

  “They want a fight with me, that's their business not mine. In that situation I'm just a warden being harassed by someone outside the guild for something that isn't a crime. I said worse things about Paragon to his face than I said to that guy who got his knickers in a twist. Me fighting them only gets the guild super pissed off at me and gains me nothing.”

  “You seem to have put a lot of thought into this conflict, you don't strike me as that introspective.”

  “If I'm being honest, I mainly justify my actions after the fact.” Gavin said truthfully.

  “I think-”

  Kalista broke off her train of thought as running footsteps broke their privacy. A young man barged into the office his eyes wild, Gavin recognised him from the delegation that had come to investigate his experiment.

  “Ma'am, there's been another-”

  “Understood.” Kalista said, cutting him off. “Gavin, I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this chat short. See yourself out, and don't touch anything.”

  Her words tingled with the tone of authority he'd come to associate with high rankers exerting control over the ambient magic. She stood to leave, her runed armour and sword materialising as she rushed past him with inhuman speed.

  Gavin stood, then slowly turned in a circle opening his mind to imprint the room into his memory. He cast his gaze over the desk and across The bookshelf before leaving the room entirely undisturbed.

  His portal power didn't want to work in the corridor outside the room but he was able to teleport back out towards his home base the second he was outside the enchanted section of the administration building.

  “Gavin?” A nearly frantic Sam called through their telepathic link when he appeared in range.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank the gods, we thought something had happened to you. Judy and Val are in the city looking for you”

  “I'm okay, I was just in a null zone. I'll go collect the gang.” Gavin said, backing up through his still open portal.

  A few tedious minutes later he was back in the fortress, an image of kalistas office projected around the team. They were going over it with a fine toothed comb while Sam grilled him about his time in the city. Their anxiety had not diminished when he told them how he'd come to be inside the commanders office as she'd interrogated him.

  “It was weird.” Gavin said, concentrating on the minute details he'd stored in his memory. “I don't know what she wanted with me, I think we should assume she knows or suspects why we're actually out here, but she didn't seem especially interested in getting me to tell her.”

  “She probably just wanted to get a feel for who you were.” Judy suggested.

  “Why would she care?” Sam asked, then apparently realising what she'd said gave Gavin an apologetic look.

  “No offence taken Sam, I'm pretty much just an ant wandering across the counter top to her, she's got no reason to learn my motivations.”

  “Maybe she wants to recruit us.” Val said.

  “Maybe it doesn't matter what we do, that's the point.” Judy said, thinking out loud, “she's going to be able to act much quicker than we are unless we stumble on it ourselves, and even if we do she can get there in minutes. Maybe she was trying to demoralise us into giving up on that plan so we just do our Jon's and go home.”

  “If that's the case then she made a mistake.” Gavin said grinning confidently. “If she needs to go through the effort to demoralise us it means we could have a real shot at getting the sword.”

  “Just because she wants to get us to stop investigating doesn't mean we have a chance.” Saam interjected.

  “If that's even why she wanted to talk to you.”

  “It's something to think about. The thing with the priests felt a little performative, there's a non zero chance it was all a setup.”

  “Wow, I'm surprised your ego can fit inside this building.” Val said, laughing at Gavin's taken aback look.

  “Yeah, that was a dumb theory.” Gavin acknowledged.

  “So, what did you get us for dinner?”

  “Uhh.”

  “You did buy food right?”

  “I did get a bit sidetracked.” Gavin said, scratching his neck.