Dalthan Sol’Magor was a lover, not a fighter.

The reasons for this were manifold. As one of the most effective con men in Wavecrest, he’d rarely found himself in a situation that he couldn’t talk himself out of. Whether it was dealing with the city watch that roamed the Financial District or the Yola cartel enforcers that prowled the back alleys of Low Town, Dal had avoided broken bones and bruised ribs through a combination of a silver tongue and a set of swift feet. More than once, he’d even managed to turn his would-be assailants into investors in his next great business idea or convinced them to part with a sizable chunk of coins to donate to a needy charity.

The money never quite got spent the way they thought it would. But that didn’t make their contributions any less meaningful. After all, there could be no more deserving charity than the one that kept the thief’s belly full and his bed warmed by an eager companion. Sometimes, on the nights when he’d been particularly enthusiastic about sharing his wealth with the local businesswomen a single companion became two. Or even three.

Dalthan took his role as a facilitator of Low Town’s economic boom very seriously.

When he could glean such results with the deft application of a sharp tongue instead of sharpened steel, why would he ever lower himself to the barbaric practice of armed combat? He had better things to do with his time than clean the bloodstains out of his cloak. And that was the best-case scenario. What would happen if he were on the receiving end of some maniacal man with a short sword and an even shorter temper? He could get stabbed, that’s what. Stabbed and cut and mutilated. That led to scars and a scar on his face would be a national tragedy. He owed it to the good people of Wavecrest to keep his rakish good looks unblemished.

Unfortunately, for all the effort the [Rogue] went through to avoid bloodshed, there were times when conflict was simply inescapable. That’s where ol’ Sloefoot had come in. Where Dalthan fancied himself a manipulator, Sloefoot had been a much more ‘hands-on’ sort of thief before the Yola cartel had broken his legs beyond repair. ‘Assassin’ was the technical term for his previous job, but Dal was always reluctant to put labels on people.

Though the old man took most of his knowledge with him when the wraithbone habit finally put him in the grave, the way he taught Dal to wield a dagger would live on for as long as the young [Rogue] drew breath.

“The lizards must have some sort of commander, right?” Dalthan asked, his voice pitched to carry over the increasingly loud shrieks of the approaching mess of lizardfolk.

“Why?” Zaplixel snarled. The [Swindler] had produced a wand of slick redwood from some secret pocket. One of the rings on his left hand began emitting a sickly green glow while his pale blue eyes stared at the approaching horde. “Are you looking for someone’s ass to kiss?”

“I’m sure you think you’re clever,” Dalthan groaned, “but I’m not going to take shit from an old man who’s felt up more dead people than live ones.”

“There has to be someone to sound the retreat.” Keysha ignored the two men snapping at one another and lined up her shot. “A force that size is trying to do as much damage as it can before we can organize a response. When we do, they’ll have to fall back, or they’ll get slaughtered.”

Now that they’d decided to fight, nothing was staying her hand. Or her arrows.

The deadly thrum of her massive bow filled the air, immediately followed by the shriek of a javelin-sized missile hurtling through the air. It struck the approaching frontline of the advancing warband like a sledgehammer falling on a clay pot. The arrow punched clean through the first lizardman it found, burying itself into the one behind it with enough force to send the corpse hurtling backward into the advancing formation. Several lizardmen fell in a heap of flailing limbs, tripping a few of their comrades in the process.

But the small army continued to surge forward.

“Then that’s my plan,” Dalthan nimbly hopped over a ring of thorny plants that had begun to sprout from the ground in a ring around the band of evildoers. A glance toward Sylvia confirmed it was her doing. The beautiful [Druid] was whispering a hauntingly captivating song while she drew strange glyphs across the ground with the butt of her staff.

Feeling the [Rogue]’s eyes on her, the nymph turned to face him. She never stopped her chant, but her lips curled into a predatory smile to match the vibrant glow of her amber eyes.

“What are you going to do with the commander if you find them?” Keysha had to shout over the sudden commotion of the nearby mercenaries urging their dinosaur mounts into a headlong charge. The oddly feathered reptiles answered the shriek of the lizardfolk with a series of barking sounds as they rushed across the flat expanse that separated the two forces from one another. Their riders joined the wild cacophony, shouting their brand of battle-cry as they waved their spears in the air.

The lizardfolk were less than fifty yards away and the momentum they’d been building since climbing over the edge of the chasm was about to break against the caravan like a tsunami crashing against Wavecrest’s seawall.

“What do you think we’re going to do?” Dalthan shot the archer a lopsided grin. “We’re going to use them as leverage.”

The wall of bramble was waist high and still growing when Dal turned his back to his crew and took off at a sprint to follow in the mercenaries’ wake. The thief coughed as he ran, struggling not to choke on the dust and sand that the cavalry had kicked up when they’d charged across the badlands.

“Try to stay in my shadow, if you can, but don’t fucking let these assholes kill me.” Dalthan leaned forward to keep himself low as he approached the area of fiercest combat. “But when we find the one we’re looking for I want you to drag him into the shadow, alright?”

“And Vex,” the [Rogue] continued, “that means we want him alive.”

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Amazingly, Dal could still hear the unmistakable sound of a sullen gurgle rising from the pool of darkness that stretched out to his left. “The slaad collective does not take prisoners,” the abomination croaked, rising from the shadow just far enough to fix Dalthan with a disdainful stare of its coal-black eyes.

“I don’t give a shit, Vex,” Dal hissed, spinning his dagger in his hands as one of the nearby dinosaurs reared back. Its rider spilled out onto the stone and was mobbed by shrieking lizardfolk a moment later. He took advantage of their frenzy to rush through a gap in their lines. “I want one alive. Do whatever you want with the rest.”

The time for talking came to an abrupt end as Dal emerged from the dusty cloud to find himself an arm's length away from three lizardmen eagerly tugging thick ropes of entrails from the eviscerated stomach of a downed mercenary. As one, the three reptilian warriors snapped their triangular heads toward the [Rogue.]

For the first time, the thief was afforded a close view of the barbarians attacking the convoy. Their skin was a murky brown, the color of mud that’d dried out and cracked beneath the withering heat of a summer sun. The scales that covered their bodies were supple, more like a snake than an iguana, though their broad shoulders and slightly squat appearance reminded Dalthan of the crocodile he’d seen when he was a child. Even their lipless snout reminded him of the amphibious predator. Filled with short, curved teeth, Dalthan would have stumbled back in horror had he not already been desensitized to such things by Vex’s constant companionship.

The nearest one, wearing what looked like a necklace of chicken bones, flicked a forked tongue in Dalthan’s direction.

The thief responded to the rude gesture by lunging forward to bury his dagger into the lizardman’s neck. In the blink of an eye, he wrenched his blade free of the barbarian’s leathery skin, giving birth to a fountain of blood. The victim tried to stave off the spray of his lifeblood, but his clawed hand was a poor tool to staunch such a grievous wound.

“Uhm,” Dal said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he, and the remaining two lizardmen, watched the wounded warrior collapse. “Did you see the way he jumped in front of my dagger? He should really have been watching where he was going. I tried to-”

The shriek of enraged lizardmen drowned out his words as the other two leaped toward him. One lifted a bone club while the shorter of the two brandished a set of claws that dripped with the blood of the downed mercenary. With feral glee, the two set upon him like a pair of wolves closing in on a defenseless sheep.

Dalthan took a smooth step to his right, ducking low enough beneath the club wielder’s wild swing that the edge of his dagger kissed the back of the lizardman’s knee. The wounded leg buckled, sending the barbarian sprawling, snout first, into the dirt. The unarmed lizard shrieked with glee as it stepped over its downed companion to strike at the off-balance [Rogue].

The attack came to an abrupt stop when a blue, claw-tipped hand thrust out of Dalthan’s shadow to slice into the lizardman’s stomach. The slaad’s wickedly curved claws slid through the barbarian’s scaly hide like a filet knife gutting a fish. A torrent of blood and viscera poured out onto the dusty ground only to vanish a split second later when the entire lizardman was pulled down into the realm Vex had claimed within Dalthan’s shadow.

“Next time, don’t wait until I’m about to have my face eaten off,” Dal grumbled as he tried to ignore the disturbing squelching noises coming from Vex’s home. “And you better fucking clean up in there when you’re done.”

A searing pain flashed across his shoulder like a hot iron pressed against his skin. Reflex coupled with high dexterity let the thief avoid the bulk of the sword strike that would have severed his right arm at the shoulder. Instead, the tip of a lizardman’s iron sword carved a shallow red line across his shoulder and down his back as he threw himself into a forward tumble.

The [Rogue] scrambled back to his feet, but he knew he would be too slow. He could feel the hot flash of premonition engulf the entire right side of his head. Not only could he not avoid the inevitable sword stroke, but the cast of his shadow took Vex out of the conflict as well. The slaad was fast, but even he would be too slow to intercede.

There were, however, some things even faster than a blue slaad.

Things like an arrow the size of a javelin.

Dal got his feet underneath him and looked up, fully expecting to see the descent of the barbarian’s curved scimitar. Instead, the tell-tale wail of one of Keysha’s arrows split the air and the lizardman’s head. An explosion of brain matter rained down around him as the blade fell harmlessly to the ground.

“Whoo!” Dalthan yelled, leaping up and ripping off his hat to wave at the bramble fortress in the distance. Sylvia’s work had left a waist-high wall of lashing vines to act as a deterrent for the lizards that thought the adventurers were easier targets than the mounted mercenaries. For the intrepid few that braved the vines, Shale served as a gatekeeper who, from the looks of it, had yet to allow a single reptile pass.

Grinning from ear to ear, the thief placed his hat atop his head at its normally skewed angle. It was important to be fashionable at all times, after all. Especially when Sylvia was watching. And Keysha.

…And Zaplixel?

Dal’s grin turned to a frown as he watched the old prick’s distant figure make a broad, sweeping gesture in his direction. At first, he thought that the [Swindler] was trying to get his attention.

When he saw the three cantaloupe-sized orange orbs hurtling through the air toward him, he knew exactly what the wizard had been doing.

“Motherfucker!” Dalthan swore with feeling. “Magic is such bullshit!”

With an inarticulate scream of frustration, Dalthan turned and rushed deeper into the chaotic melee. He skidded around a riderless dinosaur fighting two lizardfolk and ducked beneath the wild swing of a club that was as thick as one of Shale’s arms. A flash of his knife slit the throat of a lizardman as he passed, tipping the four-on-four brawl between lizards and mercenaries in the mercs' favor.

When the trio of explosions filled the valley with a thunderous boom, he’d managed to put enough distance between himself and the fireballs that instead of being blanketed by flame he was instead showered in dust and gravel. For the second time, Dal found himself struggling to breathe as he stumbled forward in search of fresh air. Eyes watering and ears ringing, the thief finally managed to cross the outskirts of the battlefield and step into a comparatively calm section of the valley.

He wasn’t the only one who’d stumbled their way into this oasis amidst a desert of violence.

Less than ten yards from him, two of the biggest lizardmen he’d seen spun to face him with military precision. Both the heavily muscled reptiles had polished steel longswords gripped in their claws. One wore an outfit that was reminiscent of the rest of its tribe, a simple loincloth and a bleached bone necklace. The other wore a suit of chainmail and a red cloak that fluttered lazily against his back.

“Whew,” Dalthan said, blinking the grit from his eyes as he made a show of wiping the sweat from his brow. “I’m glad that I finally found you.”

The two lizardmen looked at one another before redirecting their attention to the human strolling toward them.

“I’m here to make you an offer that you can’t refuse.”