The thick trunks of the trees surrounding Cadryn reminded him of the pillars of the Academy’s Arena, but there the similarity died. Soft leaves squelched under his boots and he was thankful for the cloying closeness of the fog for cover.

Gita winged from tree to tree, clinging to the bark half way to the canopy.

The path the cultists had dragged through the forest hauling their prize was easy enough that a blind man could follow. These people did not expect to be tailed, or simply did not care if they were. Both option worked their way through Cadryn’s mind, and he picked up the pace.

Only Gita’s hiss of warning stopped him from walking right into the clearing.

Ahead of them, without the canopy to protect it from the sun’s belated efforts, the fog was thinning. There, amid the remains of some time-worn ruins, moved heavily cloaked shapes. About a dozen cultists dragged and pushed slabs of corroded metal in an effort to create some kind of profane ritual site.

“I’ll get a better look,” Gita chittered from above, and before he could tell her not to, the Batsel was off into the ruins.

Cadryn waited, and waited, began to relax as he saw Gita sneaking along the side of an upright wall fragment. Then a cultist did something most people never did: she looked up, right at Gita, and before he could think to whistle, or shout, the cultist swung upward with her staff, swatting Gita to the earth. As he prepared to charge in, a voice like the wind itself licked along his earlobe.

“I wouldn’t, friend.”

Cadryn spun, blade rising, to find only empty woods. Then a human shape materialized in the crux of two gnarled oaks, seeming to step out of the empty air. Clad almost entirely in deerskin leather stained the colors of old bark, the newcomer moved with a fluid grace that belied great power. Above the earth-toned clothing was a face of sharp angles painted in grease the color of the mists. A pair of deep-set eyes studied him, two pools of midnight sky.

“Who are you?” he whispered, and the stranger tapped a sewn on badge at their shoulder: the Imperial Gauntlet.

“I’m a member of the Neeft’s Guards, this region’s Gamekeeper, name of Nine. You must be the new one Sefton was talking about the other night.”

“Cadryn,” he replied, nodding, “Now, Nine, we need to rescue one of ours.”

Nine tilted his head, the movement reminded Cadryn of an owl. “Do we? Gita is not human, so why care? The cultists are a threat, one we have a mandate to remove.”

Cadryn’s fist tightened around the grip of his sword. “I’m getting kind of tired of people telling me what is, and isn’t, important.” He said, “Now are you going to help me, or not?”

“You are a strange one, Cadryn,” Nine said, and smiling, readied a longbow. “I will aid you.”

For an instant, in that smile, Cadryn saw a lot more teeth than should have been present, and resolved to never be alone with Nine, if he could help it. “Good, I’ll distract them—” When he looked back, Nine was gone, but the same whispered words found him.

“I wouldn’t, friend.”

Taking a deep breath, Cadryn slipped into the clearing, the nearest cultist to him had his back to the forest and was shoving, with all his might, at a stubborn crescent of rusting iron. Even so, the man heard someone approaching him, and turned into the pommel-strike, crumpling under the blow, with a sharp crack.

Cadryn caught the man’s pry bar, but couldn’t stop him from crashing to the wet earth in a heap. The sound was painfully loud on the heels of the skull-crack, and he was sure someone would hear.

Someone did, almost instantly, a brute who could be the cousin of Wazo himself rounded a collapsed wall, and with a throaty shout, rushed in to attack, swinging a mason’s hammer.

Cadryn dove to the man’s right, flinging the point of the pry bar into his path.

Too slow, the cultist kneed it aside and swung in an overheard arc, to divot the sod where Cadryn’s head had been.

Rolling into a crouch, Cadryn lashed out with boot, folding the man’s knee.

Howling, the Cultist fell away from Cadryn, and as he shot out an arm to stop himself, Cadryn’s blade sliced out to kiss the inside of that elbow. Tendons snapped, and the man buckled to the earth atop his ruined arm.

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Leaping to his feet, again, Cadryn was met with the sight of three more cultists rounding the far end of the ruins. Nearer, a man, and the woman that had capture Gita (now tied to her staff and unconscious), joined them to encircle him.

They were all dressed in darkly dyed robes, blues, purples, and blacks, with bits of glass stitched into them that twinkled in the fickle light of the dissipating fog. They were all armed, with various craftsmen’s tools. The man wearing the most ornate of the robes spoke up, addressing him in crude Provalian.

“Halt, fool. We only seek to prevent the apocalypse!”

Cadryn swallowed on a dry throat, pivoting to put his back to the wall. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be sneaking around in the woods. Doing . . .” he pointed at the hunks of metal, “whatever it is your doing.”

“Restoring an ancient ward, asshole,” the woman with Gita on her staff answered. “We asked you Imperials for help, but your man at the tower laughed us off.”

The image of Sefton talking to these people left little doubt, that, if such a conversation had taken place, what the woman claimed would be the outcome. “Even if that’s true,” Cadryn said, “you still attacked, and are holding prisoner, an Imperial citizen.”

The woman looked confuse.

Cadryn began to flush with more than the heat of battle. “The, the Batsel! It’s ours.”

“Bullshit,” she scoffed and bent to help her companion lift the man Cadryn had knocked out, “This thing was just flying around out here, and you’re no mage or warlock. I could use a familiar, and I took this one, as fair game.”

The wind picked up, twisting the fog into what Cadryn was sure were faces. The cultists noticed it, too, and made the sign of whatever false gods they worshiped. Then the wind became the voice of Nine.

“Fair game? By your thinking then, you, too, are fair game . . . for these woods . . . are mine.”

“You should all leave,” Cadryn said, but the warning came too late.

An arrow whistled from the depths of the woods to transfix the unconscious cultist’s skull with a sickening crunch. Horrified, the woman let the man drop. “Run, now!” she screamed, and the cultists broke at once for the opposite side of the clearing.

Cadryn made to follow, but was tripped up by the grasping hand of the man he’d downed.

“No, Gita!” he yelled out, and Nine replied.

“Save yourself, friend. The Unfortunate will be fine, you have my word.”

Before he could say anything, the massive cultist lunged upward, covering half of Cadryn body with his own, and seized him by the throat.

Training kicked in, and he flared the muscles of his neck, preserving his windpipe. Maintaining his calm, Cadryn brought the pommel of his sword across the crash into the man’s eye socket, knocking him away and off of him. Before the enemy could recover, he laid the edge of his blade against the man’s neck and drug it backward in a quick cut, opening it with a squelch.

Wiggling free of the dying man, Cadryn searched for the cultist witch carrying Gita. Saw her near the far line of trees.

She swung the staff in a slow circle over her head, drawing in fog to cover their retreat with her gifts. As she turned to flee, Cadryn saw the terror writ plain upon her face, and despite himself, turned to see the source.

Nine stood less than ten paces from him, yet he had not heard or seen his approach. This time, there was no mistaking the smile for anything human, or the eyes, or the too-long arms that drew back a bow of living heartwood. The Gamekeeper loosed the shot, and Cadryn watched the gleaming tip lance across the clearing to take the juking witch through the heart.

The woman shot rigid, staggered three steps, planting her staff to keep her feet, failed, and fell into the underbrush, vanishing from sight. Her staff, tilted briefly at the breeze, its various charms and prizes swaying lazily, Gita among them.

Cadryn refused to look back, and after what felt like an eternity, Nine passed by him at a stroll, speaking at him. “My word, is as the Lobeski in the First Times, Cadryn Bence. Remember this.”

“Where are you going?” he asked, setting aside his confusion for something reassuringly mundane in nature.

“To hunt some fair game, in these woods, which are mine.”

Cadryn Bence watched Nine go, and only after he was sure the man, or thing, was gone, did he get up. It was then, looking over at the corpse of the first man he’d ever killed, that he became ill. Fortunately, for his pride, no one was around to see it. By the time he retrieved Gita and the staff, the Batsel was awake and chewing at the strap restraining her.

“Thank the Gods,” she squeaked, “Or whatever Nine worships.”

“What?” Cadryn said, breaking free of his daze.

“Well I don’t see you holding a bow,” she replied, then seeing the blood, and corpse in the distance added. “But I see you came for me . . . sorry. I’m, I’m not used to people caring.”

“Nine didn’t,” Cadryn said, trying, and failing, to not sound bitter.

“Oh she cares, just not about people.”

“She?” Cadryn asked, now quite confused.

“Of course, I’ve never seen anyone with a cock move that gracefully.”

“Then you’ve never seen the Dancers of the Assemblage.” Deafening Silence called out, from the nearby tree-line, Korbinian emerged behind her, clearly winded.

“Nine’s a she,” Gita insisted, “Now will you please look at my wing? I think it’s broken.”

While Silence examined Gita, Korbinian handed Cadryn a nearly empty flask. “Drink up, kid. Your first real skirmish?”

Upending the container, Cadryn nodded.

“Well, you’ll need more than that,” Korbinian said, and leaned over to Silence, “What you say to hitting up Amber’s instead of going right back, eh, Healer?”

Sil seemed about to turn tell the old alchemist off, but meeting Cadryn’s eyes she took a slow breath. Nodded. “Very well, it’s not like we’re going to be of any use out here. Let’s collect the body of the one Cad killed. We’ll bury him in the rockslide.”

“What about her?” Cadryn asked, looking and the supine form of the witch, now so much smaller without the staff. “She doesn’t look too heavy to bring.”

“Nay,” said Sil, “but she belongs to Nine,” she added pointing to the arrow. “And that is not someone whose kill you take.”

“Aye,” Korbinian added, and with that, the older Keepers of the Neeft went to help their newest member lift the weight of his newfound responsibility.