A sign hung over the Nameless Cafe - RAT FREE.

Slightly above it was another, crossed out - SORRY ABOUT THE RATS.

Tyrna pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing slowly. She settled into a chair outside the cafe, blindly bumping the rim of the glass to her teeth and taking a sip. It was sweet, sweeter than anything she’d tasted since she was a child, with a burnt caramel flavor beneath the milk liquor. The frothing mix clung to her tongue and tingled.

Across the street, children sat spellbound as an old man told stories. Crows cawed on the rooftops, rats scuttled through the gutters.

“Alright.” She opened her eyes again. “Henri-” The peach-fuzz bald man with his big, curious eyes and overly kind smile. He kept glancing around looking for someone. “Mhurr-” Squinting and scholarly. She’d give him three days in the wilds. “Why should I take you with me?”

“Well, not to brag, but…” With the confident grin of someone definitely about to brag, Nolan Mhurr traced his fingers lightly through the air, scoring out a ring of letters in golden fire. He pressed his clenched fists together, knuckle to knuckle, and rotated them in opposite directions; the runic circle began to turn. A floating blob of water materialized in the center, droplet after droplet peeling from the moisture in the air and rolling together to form a shimmering, wavering glob of blue.

“I do know a little spellcraft.”

“That’s not much use to me, is it? Unless you can make weapons…” Tyrna was doubtful that parlor tricks would count much against a Dungeon that defended itself with tooth and claw.

“Well.” He twisted his fingers together, forming a complicated knot of golden lines, a spell-diagram. Turning the water-sphere skyward, he flicked the diagram free from his fingers - and the blob of water shot forward in a spray of pressurized foam and froth, jetting high into the sky with a force that flung a thin mist of water in all directions. The strength behind it only lasted a second. The people on the streets below ducked and the children rushed in as a sudden scattering of shining raindrops came falling down, splattering the muddy street.

“Ta-da!” He shook his fingers out, wearing a grin.

“It’s enough.” She said, slowly. A mage would probably be handy. “And you?” She turned to the bald man.

He held up a finger, and cupped his hands to his mouth, breathing a pale mist that glowed with incandescent sparks of white. It conglomerated into a little floating sphere of ghostly light.

With a flick of his finger, he directed it to circle around his head.

“I can see through these. If I put enough of them together, I can even make them do some harm. I’m a scout by trade. First to have a map of the Dungeon’s western front. I hope to be the first to map the whole thing.”

She nodded. “Useful.” Thankfully, she didn’t have to waste breathe on social niceties; they were eager enough to accompany her to ignore that she could have had the manners of a grunting bull.

“How do you do that?” Mhurr inquired, lifting a small lens of rune-etched blue glass to his eye and examining Henri.

“Born feytouched.” Was all he said, with a small and secretive smile.

“Pardon me.” A middle-aged man with a sword on either hip laid his black-gloved hand on the table. He was wiry, vaguely handsome, with greying hair in a swirled coiffe. “Are you recruiting for the hunting grounds?”

“Only by accident.” Tyrna griped, settling back in her chair with her legs crossed, her arms folded. She studied him carefully. Here was a warrior on the decline. His body was still lean and muscular, but his eyes were rimmed with crows feet and he wouldn’t be as quick on his feet anymore. She didn’t like his clothes; a foppish little half cape and high, expensive leather boots marked him as a rich man. “But I suppose you should tell me your name and why I should bother with you.”

“Caiorre.” He introduced himself, pronouncing it with a care, kay-or with a roll of the tongue at the end, that said he was used to it being mangled in the mouths of Caltern’s citizens. Tyrna could sympathize. “And you should give me your attention because you will not find a better swordsman in a hundred miles.”

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Tyrna flung her glass at him.

His left-side sword made a beautiful, resonating sound as it left its scabbard, striking the glass in half as it sung through the air. More impressive was the dancing step that took him out of the way as droplets of sickly sweet milk sprayed out from the neatly halved tumbler.

“You know, you have to pay for those.” Mhurr put in, as the crash of glass hitting the ground faded.

“Sure.” She shrugged. “He’s in. One more.”

And she waited. A prophetess had sent her this way, and with prophecy, sometimes you just had to wait.

Noting the long silence, Mhurr glanced about. “Well, we should advertise…”

“Shhh.”

“We could put out a sign, or ask around...” He continued.

“Just. Wait.” She hissed.

And like clockwork, the old man on the other side of the street finished his story, shooing off the urchins. He rose, dusting out his faded blue robes with faint memories of gold thread. With a gleam in his eye, he stepped forward.

“You can’t be serious.” Mhurr said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I present, from far-away lands, none other than Draig Eldrikson!” Striking a pose with one arm behind his back and the other lifted to the air, he bent at the waist, surprisingly spritely, bowing in high fashion to the lot.

Even Tyrna was taken aback. And the more she thought about it, the more Strix maybe hadn’t meant she had to take the first four who offered.

“And why-”

“- why choose me? What do I have to offer, old and grey that I am?” He cut her off, stroking the sharp point of his beard. Ragged though he was, his hair was expertly combed, and there was something about him that age had yet to fade. “Because I am a spiritist, madame, a binder.”

“A shaman?” Henri lifted an eyebrow.

“You have to be kidding me.” Mhurr stated bluntly.

The swordsman kept quiet. Good. Tyrna decided she’d like him despite his money. Theirs would be a friendship of mutual silence.

A silence the old man happily took to filling up with the sound of his own voice. “Now, you young adventurers, bold of blade and heart, seek the Dungeon’s core. But once you get there, ah, once you get there, you still need to strike a bargain. To make a Contract. Now-” He reached to his side and took up a book that hung from a leather strap, the cover cracked and crumbling. Flicking it open, he pressed his splayed fingertips to the ancient, yellowed page. “I happen to specialize in making deals with spirits, of all sorts.”

As he drew his hand back, a grey mist clung to his fingers. Within the billowing cloud that blew up, making the edges of the pages flutter, a spectral rabbit danced. He waved his hand through the air and it followed, hopping along.

And when the book snapped shut, mist and rabbit broke apart.

“I’ll be.” Mhurr was speechless, but only for a moment. “A real spiritist. I thought you all died out. You’ll have to explain to me-”

The old man coughed suddenly, cutting the young scholar off with a wrenching, dusty hacking. “Oh my, how dry my throat is. I worry I might cough up a stone if I keep talking.”

“Wait one second, I’ll get you a cider and you can tell me all about your craft, old fellow.” She almost laughed despite herself. Mhurr was as easy to pull along as a puppet on a string.

“Here. She’s gone anyway.” With a last glance around and a sigh, Henri offered the glass of sparkling cider he’d been holding on to. Ribbons of Kathe’s elixir tinted the drink a sunset amber.

“Ah, thank you young man.” With a weary groan, he sank into the chair opposite Tyrna.

“I never said you could join us.” She glared him down with a look of steel, but Draig barely bothered to meet her eyes.

“But you were going to.” He said curtly.

And to that, she had no response but silence and anger. Even she could see he’d folded himself into the group with or without her say. Like a cuckoo invading a nest.

Sometimes she thought she’d like to see the world the way others did, but on days like this, she wondered how they didn’t see something so obvious.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” the swordsman finally said, “What is it you do? It’s your party, of course, but I have to know you’re qualified.”

She smiled, a thin cold smile. Rising from her chair she drew the bow from her back. It was made of supple blood-red wood, with short, blunt thorns that sprouted from the ends. She bent the bow, feeling the tense resistance build within, strung it expertly, and lifted it skywards.

Three little specks flew above the city. Pigeons or thrushes. At this distance, they were inkblots on the canvas of the sun.

“No way.” She couldn’t be sure who said it. Only that the hum of her bowstring spoke louder.

The distance was staggering but the wind was calm. She let loose, and the arrow took so long to find its mark that they all breathed out, expecting she’d missed. Surely she’d missed. Nobody could make that shot.

And then there were only two little inkblots, scattering in fright as the third fell and fell and fell.