The two passengers aboard the carriage stayed silent until the smooth ride from the castle keep turned to the bumpy cobblestones of the masses. They sat in patient, comfortable silence, though there was a burning question hovering between them.

They faced each other in the carriage on opposite sides, diagonal to maximize distance, yet they gazed out the windows into the moonlit city together. Occasionally, their knees would accidentally touch, but the lingering was intentional.

No, that wasn’t the question. That one had been answered decades ago, when they were still sworn enemies.

The court mage raised a hand to cast a spell. The rumble of the outside world faded to a quiet hum. No sound could escape this carriage without the court mage’s permission.

“Well?” He questioned lightly, pretending that the stakes were much lower than his career and his life.

There was a long, pointed silence. A statement of nonresponse.

“You think that poorly of them?” The court mage sighed from disbelief. “I had hopes that one might pique your curiosity but… for none of them to inspire you is disheartening.” He scratched at his short beard, white with equal parts age and stress.

“I don’t hate them,” the guildmaster stated bluntly.

“Oh, grand,” the court mage replied, sullenly. “Let me pen that to the Queen. Surely she won’t mind if we wasted her dynasty’s sole Summoning on four middling heroes and an empty pair of boots.”

The guildmaster attempted to stare a hole into the court mage’s forehead. That failing, he continued. “It isn’t their potential. Their cards are above average for adventurers of the same age. With good guidance and freedom to develop, they could be excellent assets.”

“But?”

“But what? Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?”

The court mage huffed loudly. “If I wanted to be coddled, I would have asked my subordinates. I expect more of you.”

“You expect me to be cruel?”

“No, I expect you to be you. And you hate it when there’s no challenge or obstacle to face. This time it is the physical embodiment of my potential failure; if that calls you to cruelty, do so. So, tell me, guildmaster, what do they lack?”

In the dim light, the flickering smirk on the guildmaster’s face could barely be seen.

“They are rotten already,” he said, with the finality of a butcher’s knife.

“How?” The court mage was irritable, glaring with both his flesh and glass eye at the stubborn ass of a creature that dared share a carriage with him. “I will waste my magic on a rule of truth and rip it out of you if I must, guildmaster.”

The pause said everything it needed to. Every baiting quip condensed into a beat of innuendo-laden silence.

The guildmaster licked his lips and replied. “Every moment within the sanctuary of the castle, they become more willing victims of the King-Consort’s hubris. If I were you, I would fear heroes like that.”

“Viktor,” the court mage hissed. “You know as well as I do to watch your tongue.”

“Or? Will the spymaster take me away?” The guildmaster leaned forward to challenge his colleague, steadying himself with a scarred hand placed between the court mage’s legs.

The head of a staff caught the moonlight as it pressed against the guildmaster’s neck, forcing him to sit back. The dagger-shaped crystal was like a blue blade against the man’s throat. A dull blade, but it had potential…

Another few beats of silence as the men returned to their original positions, a pretense of calm.

“You know I am right,” the guildmaster said. “I would rather five mercenaries than heroes who serve valor and gallantry above all else. Honest selfishness is preferable to righteous valor-seeking.”

“Four.”

That was right. Four heroes. The dark cloud over the entire affair. The court mage was the summoner who spent years learning and practicing the specific ritual that brought the heroes to the kingdom.

The guildmaster didn’t rub salt in that wound. It would be cruel.

“What chance do I have?” asked the court mage, softly.

“Of success?”

“Of keeping my head on my body.”

The guildmaster snorted at his companion’s theatrics. “We both intimately know that the Queen prefers second chances to the ax, court mage.”

“And the King-Consort?”

That didn’t need answering. Some evils you didn’t speak into power. They spent the rest of the ride in silence, knees pressed together in quiet reassurance.

The rest of the night was expected to be as normal as the pair could manage. They were an odd couple in many ways, standoffish if not outright cold in public, sharp but caring behind closed doors.

They had too much history to let their partnership be known to the world.

The guildmaster Viktor had long ago earned the Crown’s forgiveness – he possessed the Queen’s Blessing to prove it – but it took decades of work for the members of the court to tolerate the former enemy spy, a known liar and suspected assassin.

He was leashed to the court mage as a precaution, both literally and figuratively, but the court mage had been clever and conniving in his own time. He, too, was once a spy, one who clashed frequently with the guildmaster.

Their fights were heated, violent, thrilling.

The court mage – then solely the mage Anton – had been the one to injure Viktor’s arm, a deep slash from pinky to above the elbow that rendered the limb weak, severely crippling the guildmaster’s specialty of duelist melee.

Even still, the struggling man had confessed – blood dripping from his aquiline nose, dripping from his dangling arm which was numb from damage, pinned to a wall by magical force – that he cared little for the tensions of kingdoms and only chased the challenge of the mage, his rival.

Anton could sense there was more to this confession than intellectual competition. The spy was his prisoner, and though the mage used summoning as his primary offensive method, he was a “rules” mage, the Inquisitor subclass.

Viktor was exposed and forced into the mage’s control, humiliated as more than a confession passed through his lips. He was left bleeding and stunned, trapped until the mage was out of spell range for the bindings to dissipate, yet… yet there was a spark in Viktor’s eyes that was absent before.

The next time they met, Anton found himself hunted.

The duelist subclass was primarily used by knights or nobility who felt the need to specialize. In single opponent combat, it gave buffs to the fighter and debuffs to their opponent. A perfect subclass for those engaged in jousting or other feats of showmanship, impractical on the battlefield.

When paired with the stealth subclass, the unseen, it turned a challenger into a hunter, a predator. Stealth and deception through illusion helped Viktor force Anton into a gauntlet of traps, from the city to old ruins. There, Anton was forced to contend with beasts – blixhund, a fox-like creature that lived in packs and generated magical lightning by absorbing magic through physical contact.

The mage survived the close quarters fight through narrow, underground passageways, emerging victorious with a damaged eye, optical nerve cauterized in the socket by magical lightning. Every touch of those damned creatures’ fur, paws, teeth had sapped away his magic until he couldn’t maintain his summons and had no magic left to use, not even to heal himself.

In his rush to survive, Anton forgot about the real peril. He was captured by Viktor, slammed face first into a wall and immobilized, debuffs and duelist skills making the mage easy prey. The assassin toyed with Anton, leaving bruises from bite marks and the sense memory of leather gloves behind, along with a single lesser health potion, dropped with a practiced negligence.

No mercy between enemies, after all.

Another year passed with no contact. Then Anton found a thrill in carelessness. Declaring his travel plans. Loudly repeating which room he was staying in. Making a show of being seen in public places before walking to the inn for the night.

Viktor observed this bizarre behavior from a distance over six different instances in multiple cities before the curiosity tempted the cat.

A cat with the lockpicking skill.

The mage’s possessions were laid out neatly. Magical staff against the wall by the door. Outerwear, belts, and bags of various sizes on coathooks. Boots against the wall. Clothes folded neatly on a table.

It looked innocuous and normal, but Viktor’s awareness was his best attribute. Next to each set of things there was room for another. A second pair of boots. An empty armorstand near the staff and robes of the mage. Plenty of room for another folded set of garments on the table.

Viktor listened. He could hear the mage breathing in the dark. Measured but with weight, as if a spell had woken the mage from his slumber and he was straining to hear signs of intrusion. Not asleep. But not panicked.

There was a clear, unspoken invitation here.

Viktor calmed himself with a few heartbeats of subdued meditation, weighing risk with benefit, what this would mean for his job, his life, what kind of threat it would pose for the future.

He accepted the invitation.

Viktor was the last to arrive and the first to leave when dawn broke, before daylight laid their decisions bare. No words were spoken between the sworn enemies, not unless you counted the occasional chorus of yes or please. Bruises, bite marks, hickeys, and scratches conveyed everything necessary, as did lingering mouths and gentle touches.

Another year passed. The court mage was promoted, privately, to spymaster. The assassin lurked but was otherwise absent from conflicts.

Anton was called to the audience chamber, given orders by the Queen to assess their new visitor in the dungeon. The mage obeyed with a mixed sense of duty and dread, magical light spilling into the ink black cell. It was designed to be intentionally dark and cramped with little room to stand to encourage cooperation.

The figure was bloodied, broken, but it was Viktor. The scar along his arm was verification. He stumbled out when the chains were tugged, kneeling on the open floor, grateful for a glimpse of breathing room.

The mage said nothing, years of this occupation tempering his emotional responses. Viktor looked blankly downwards; his face covered by messy black hair tangled by dried blood.

“Rule of Truth,” was the mage’s decision as he snapped the metal ferrule of his staff on the floor. A ring of dim blue light surrounded the pair, hovering at the kneeling man’s eye level.

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“Attempted omission or obfuscation of truth is automatically punished. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” came the flat reply.

“Do you remember stating, in paraphrase, that you enjoyed challenging me and serving Fyrmann was a means to an end?”

“Yes.” Viktor had no strength left to find hope in this line of questioning. He had long passed the stage of bargaining and had sunk into acceptance.

Silence again. It was their language, their expected state of being.

Anton turned to leave to discuss things with the Queen. The assassin was left chained but no longer tormented in the cell.

“Mage.”

Anton stopped, tilting his head at Viktor in curiosity. The man hadn’t moved, still staring downward, but he did speak.

“I don’t deserve your mercy, but if the judgment is lifelong imprisonment—”

“Kill you. I know. I will.”

To anyone whose drive originated from mind games and mental challenges, torture and humiliating death were much preferred to a life in confinement without stimulation.

It was a matter of camaraderie, to ask another spy for that mercy. Kinship in chains.

The negotiations took several hours. The Queen was joined by her King-Consort and several advisors, who had strong opinions about the court mage’s suggestion. Her Majesty listened to arguments from every involved party, even the protests of her husband, and to the complaints about how this decision was taking too long and was ridiculous in the first place.

Her judgment was final. No matter who disapproved.

A broken sword was of no use to anyone. A newly forged one placed in the right hands, however, could be invaluable.

Anton returned to the dungeon where the prisoner was uncomfortably asleep on the stone floor. He tapped the manacles with the end of his staff, a simple manipulation spell unlocking them.

Viktor awoke with a start, though his movements were rough and wobbly from his injuries. He sat upright, still unwilling to look Anton in the eye.

“Rule of Binding,” the mage declared with another clang of ferrule against stone. Just like before, a ring of blue magic appeared around the pair, the color mimicking the cold blue of the staff’s focus.

“Binding?” Viktor moved his head slightly, not understanding what a binding rule had to do with execution or imprisonment. This form of binding was conceptual, not physical.

“Do you swear to protect this kingdom as you are able, upon pain of death?”

The magic did not need exact verbiage, though it did allow interplay with loopholes. It understood this kingdom meant Amnasín and no others. It also understood kingdom to be symbolically distinct from the Crown (the current matriarch), the royalty (anyone with the correct bloodline or marital tie), and the dynasty (past and future monarchs and heirs of the current reigning bloodline).

The kingdom was Amnasín and its people, not necessarily the ruling class. Anton was very aware of this fact. Keeping an assassin on retainer seemed like a stupid choice until a tyrant appeared.

It took Viktor some time for his thoughts to filter through his aching head, but his face snapped upward to look at the mage once he understood.

A second chance.

“I swear it,” he replied, tears of relief forming at the edge of his amber-brown eyes. Viktor could feel a pool of magic embed itself in his chest, proof of the binding.

“Do you swear to follow my direct orders, when it is demanded of you, upon pain of death?”

This was the true cost. A loss of freedom and choice was tolerable to Viktor, in comparison to the more fatal options.

“I swear it,” Viktor stated with much more confidence, looking the mage directly in the eye.

Anton glanced over his shoulder pointedly, gazing at the doorway. Viktor couldn’t activate his skills in his current state to check, but he would bet money that someone was observing the mage to ensure he followed through with the judgment.

Once Viktor was on his feet, the mage muttered a spell, the crystal on the staff flickered dimly. Viktor couldn’t detect any changes as his senses were dull, but Anton knew sound was now trapped within this small ring of magic, unable to get out or in.

They only had a few seconds to spare.

Anton leaned in close, placing his hand on Viktor’s cheek. He glanced fervently between the man’s eyes as he spoke clearly but quietly.

“Upon pain of death, I swear that as long as I have your loyalty, I will protect and keep you.”

The rule of binding pushed magic into Anton’s chest as Viktor inhaled sharply, as close to a gasp as he could manage with broken ribs.

He was expecting this judgment of servitude to be just that, a prison sentence in the form of guarding the mage or otherwise serving as Anton’s staff. What the mage declared in hurried privacy was mutually beneficial, service without shackles.

Marriage, basically.

They pressed their foreheads together for a stolen heartbeat before Anton pulled away.

He dismissed the magic and made a show of giving directions in an unkind tone. That he would have one of his spirits heal the prisoner, then make travel arrangements to the mage’s study (and home), and a bath for the dirt and grime.

The court mage kept his promise. Decades later, the two men did not share the same home for fear of retaliation, but over time they both chose to wear the symbol of married folk.

Viktor was not permitted in the keep without express invitation from the Queen or King-Consort, so Anton visited the Adventurer’s Guild with claims of business a few days a month. In the present, this was one of those nights.

They were expecting a normal quiet evening, interspersed with further discussion of the heroes. As the carriage slowed to a stop, the pair heard a loud thump against the door, loud enough to bypass the minor Rule of Silence.

They exchanged glances before the guildmaster took the initiative. He was a finesse fighter, but even injured, his strength and agility far outclassed the court mage’s. He was better suited for dealing with the strange thump, especially if it was a rowdy adventurer or something else.

“Guildmaster, please, come quick!”

Stella greeted him, looking harried and distraught.

The Court Mage stepped out, but the woman paid him no mind. She was certainly upset if she failed to apply formalities to this situation. He paid the carriage driver while the guildmaster followed the frantic elf around the side of the building.

There was a courtyard garden here, surrounded by walls made of arched entryways. It was a privacy fence without a true boundary. The guild used it for parties or recreational events, though most of the guild staff used it for mealtimes when it was warm.

“I was helping him earlier but lost him somehow—” Stella explained frantically, pointing at red-haired figure slumped against a wall. “—and when I was going home, I spotted him here. He doesn’t understand language, so I don’t know what happened. I can’t wake him. But he—”

“Stella, breathe.” The guildmaster ordered.

The woman gulped down a breath, trying to steady her shaking hands. “Sir, I swore I would help him only a few hours ago and if I—if I am stressed, it’s because I don’t want to fail him. He seemed so hopeful earlier when we tried to help.”

The elven woman was easily the guild’s best employee. In fact, it was no secret that the guildmaster was preparing Stella to be his successor, when the time came. If there was someone who the guildmaster would bend the rules for, it was Stella.

He didn’t want to set a precedent for helping strangers at first glance, reaching out to people on the street to involve them in guild business. If someone wanted to earn money or seek advice, they could come in and earn their place like everyone else. The guild only healed or guided or celebrated their members, not outsiders. Anyone was welcome to join, but Viktor’s guild would not be recruiting on the streets or forming a charity organization anytime soon.

Honest selfishness was preferred, as the guildmaster said before.

A quick glance at the unconscious figure told the guildmaster that this was out of his wheelhouse.

“Court mage,” he called lightly over his shoulder. “Could you assist us, if you have the magic to spare?”

The stranger wasn’t dying. His skill, Bitter End, would have registered if the man’s health was draining at a dangerous rate. Skill aside, the guildmaster would know at a glance. He was practiced in the art of death-dealing; some signs were unmistakable.

“Should I create a guild card for compensation or is this a show of my benevolence?” The court mage appeared from around the corner, where he’d been politely waiting at the guild entryway.

Stella inhaled sharply, realizing what she’d done. Insulting a member of the court could make your life very difficult given their standing, but the court mage was quite literally the strongest mage in the kingdom, both politically and magically.

And Stella outright ignored him.

“Ser Morozov, I apologize for not greeting you.” She pulled herself together and addressed the court mage formally, bowing deeply to try and reclaim her dignity. “I was—”

The court mage waved her off. “We make mistakes when it is late in the day.”

Stella stuttered, her planned apology shut down instantly.

“Isn’t the girl’s gratitude compensation enough, court mage?” The guildmaster missed no opportunities to strike. “Or shall we prepare a feast in congratulations for serving your kingdom at long last?”

“A banner would be nice,” the court mage added, pointing his staff at the unconscious man. His magic halved to pay for the summoning. “From bounty to sacrifice, Sarkos.”

From the end of the staff, a spirit emerged. It left behind glowing hoofprints on the grass which faded quickly. The spirit was shaped like an herbivore, prey instead of predator. Not quite a deer, nor an elk, but something undeniably hunted. Its antlers were the shards of bones, tied together with pearl-string vines and clover growths.

While the trailing footprints glowed softly, the spirit did not. This was the case for all magical spirits. They existed in the same way finely blown glass did – light and sight bending gently around subtle suggestions of a form. In the daylight, spirits were dazzling, breathtaking, beautiful. At night, however, they were deadly, a mirage as visible as a whisper on a windy night.

Summoners could be worse than assassins, in the right circumstances.

Sarkos – the spirit of life, death, rot, and rebirth – approached the slumped figure. Anton received a fast-compiling list of injuries and conditions from the system as the spirit made its assessment.

Cut foot, infection. Scratches, embedded thorns. Left ribs, broken. Nose, broken. Cut chin. Overall bruising. Concussion.

“Heal as you are able, Sarkos. We can manage the remnants on our own.”

A white fog of magic seeped from around the spirit, settling onto the foreigner and absorbing into his body.

Stella knew better than to interrupt a healing, but she wanted to ask if he would be okay. It was obvious that he would, as neither the guildmaster nor the court mage rushed to the man’s side to stabilize him.

But her guilt at literally losing the foreigner among the crowd was weighing on her. She could have prevented the damage. All this could have been avoided.

Viktor patted the woman on the shoulder to provide a little comfort, nodding his chin toward the foreigner for her to look. He was stirring.

The stranger felt like death warmed over, but they were slowly coming back to consciousness. The day’s events felt far away, too difficult to wrangle a thought to the front of their mind, but they did remember being attacked and ending up in the woods.

They struggled to push themselves upright. The cold wall of stone as a pillow did nothing for neck support. They ached but not as bad as before. Maybe they needed to sleep it off. Sometimes that worked for hangovers. Not usually assault and battery, though.

The stranger finally looked up, making what could be described as eye contact with the spirit lingering no more than a foot from their nose.

They froze. The spirit was unperturbed.

The… thing was close to a deer but nearly invisible. Just beyond the surface of its “skin,” the stranger could see its anatomy. It flickered in and out of view – a barren skull one moment then full, eyeless musculature the next, then the worst yet, a rotting, decaying corpse.

A ghost of a ruminant with fragmented antlers that the stranger noted as various bones: humerus, radius, ulna, carpals, phalanges. Multiple arms’ worth of broken bones, rearranged in a macabre craft project and tied together with moss and those cute little drippy pearl plants they sold in garden centers.

“It isn’t interested in hurting you,” the court mage offered, watching patiently. “Quite the opposite.”

In his periphery, injuries were crossed off the list one by one, resolved by the healing magic. A final condition popped up, denoted with a redacted name. The court mage narrowed his focus to that point, distracted by the mystery.

The stranger heard the unhelpful noise of someone speaking but didn’t look away from the creature. They knew what happened in horror movies. They were determined be the final girl, if anything.

Stella took the lead, assuming that the summoned spirit had no interest in her either. She stepped forward into the dim light of the courtyard sconces, holding her hands out as if nearing an injured animal.

“We’re trying to help. Do you know what happened?”

The stranger glanced to the side, seeing movement from people, but they refocused onto the creature with sudden concern. It hadn’t moved. It didn’t breathe or waver with motion. It wasn’t even alive.

The person approached the stranger from one side, the creature in front, but there was a slim opening to the opposite side. They stood quickly, tripping over themselves with aching muscles and stiffness, and sidled along the wall, doing their best not to move any closer to that thing.

“Wait!” Stella tried to follow along with the foreigner, gesturing for him to come closer. “You were hurt badly and—”

“Do you intend to chase him down, Stella?” The guildmaster asked, bemused.

The sound of a third voice startled the stranger. Don’t get it wrong – they were still horrified by the Thing over there, but it wasn’t following them, so they took stock of their surroundings.

A nice garden with stone tables and benches. A few sconces providing some dim lighting in the night, enough to watch your step but not enough to read by. The stranger must have collapsed here on the walk back to the city, seeking shelter.

Three figures and the creepy glass deer. Okay, well, the deer would have been amazingly fascinating in any other circumstances except for potential death. Now, it was a massive threat.

The people. They were… a man in dark clothing who… loomed despite being of average height, a cape thing over one arm. To the cape man’s left, a mage with a pointy blue staff and a long robe. Definitely an RPG cleric, except the robes weren’t white.

Then, the closest person was a lady with a formal looking blouse and a ribbon bow tie and a flowing skirt. That was a uniform, clearly.

Wait. The stranger had made that connection before. She was the lady, the one from earlier.

The foreigner’s eyebrows shot upwards in recognition and Stella sighed audibly in relief.

They talked past each other with zero understanding but at least there was an attempt at communication.

Stella initiated the sort-of discussion. “If the guildmaster permits, we can go inside and talk, but you were very injured, so please do not run. We can help.”

The stranger gestured to the monster whose head swiveled horrifyingly to track their movements. “Did you see that fucking thing? What the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

“Inside, please!” she pointed toward the front of the building, waving her hand to beckon the stranger.

The guildmaster was resisting the urge to laugh. It really wasn’t funny; this man was obviously cursed, and with an incredibly strong curse at that to be able to rid him of any language skills. But… still, watching Stella attempt to wrangle someone shouting nonsensically – someone who was previously out cold at their mercy – was very amusing.

He glanced at the court mage to deliver a witticism but stopped short. The court mage had his eyes locked on the foreigner, gaze wide with shock and… fear. Or something close.

“Anton?”

The court mage shook himself and waved a hand, dismissing Sarkos with a polite thanks. The spirit wavered back into nonexistence.

“Inside,” he ordered the guildmaster. “Bring everyone inside.”