In a town called Prent Hill, there was a house. Picturesque. Children giggled outside as they chased each other with sticks, just barely skirting the flowers planted in the yard outside the window. It wouldn't do to make their parents upset by stomping all over them. They'd learned that lesson the hard way. The terror of the memory would have sent shivers down their spines if they weren't so busy having fun.

Nat wasn't in this house. She was in a run-down shack a few doors across from the house, lying on a pile of thin, frayed sheets laid across the floor. This place wasn't as picturesque, but you had to make do with what you got in life. Even if the only reason you had to sleep on the floor in a termite-ridden shed was that your adoptive 'father' was a stingy bastard who couldn't find it in his black heart to book a proper room in a proper inn, when he could easily afford to.

Nat clutched her head as she woke to the sound of the children hollering and shrieking, and decided she was feeling lousy. No—lousy wasn't strong enough of a word. Miserable. That was more like it.

“Everything hurts.”

She mumbled. And it wasn't just physical pain, either.

She'd had time to consider a few things last night after Pale had hauled her here on his donkey. The fact that Pale came to find her at all meant that Buck had known she was going to the forest on her own, and he hadn’t stopped her. That might have been flattering, but the fact that he'd sent Pale to bail her out meant he'd never trusted her to make it out on her own in the first place.

Somehow, that hurt more than the aches all across her body ever could. She almost did make it back on her own, too! But that fact did little to lighten her mood. She knew she would likely have collapsed of exhaustion if she tried to make the trek back on her own.

All that, and nothing to show for it. So much for proving herself good enough to be more than a trainee. As if things weren’t bad enough.

The door to the shed clattered open. Pale stuck his head through the frame.

“You done snivelling yet?”

“Leave me alone, Pale.”

Pale snickered as if she’d cracked a joke.

“Get up, it’s time for work.”

Nat rolled around the floor to face him, scowling. She winced as her muscles croaked in pain.

“What work?”

“Who knows? Buck told me to call you out once you were awake. I’d drag you out myself, but you don’t look like you need my help beating yourself up.”

Nat snorted in indignation.

“Aren’t you charming today.”

“Enough of that. Come on, put these on and get up.”

He threw her boots at her feet and strutted back out the door. The boots rolled past her and slammed against the wall on the far side of the room.

Nat sighed and pushed herself up. This would be a long day. She pulled her boots on and walked out into the sun.

Prent Hill wasn't too bad of a place, by her reckoning. A bit rustic, sure, and the town was sitting on the edge of one of the most terrifying forests in the known world, but she’d seen worse things in her life. Namely, the terrifying forest itself. She just wished the children would stop gawking at her every time she came near them.

She could hear them whispering to each other as they snuck glances at her. One sharp look from her and they’d freeze up and pretend to act normal. About as subtle as a brick to the foot, they were.

All because of that tiny incident when she first came into town. A bear was rummaging through the streets, so she gave it a little whack across the nose with her stick to scare it off. It wasn't even that big! But that was all it took for the rumors to start spreading. A disciple of Mangler Buck, the second coming of the terror of Oldbridge himself. Nat always knew the rumors about the man had to be exaggerated, but now she saw how quickly a benign story could morph into a local legend. Some of them were even saying she’d wrestled with the bear one-on-one and buried its head into the dirt. One such person was throwing even more fuel on the fire just to torment her.

“Feeling better now, great bear-slayer?”

Pale said. He was sitting on a chair outside the shed, carving away at a wooden charm with a knife.

“No. I would feel better if I broke your nose a little bit, though?”

“You couldn’t even if you tried. Besides, don’t forget who makes your charms for you.”

Nat scowled at him.

“They didn’t even work! I wouldn’t have gotten into that mess in the first place if you could make anything worth half a penny.”

Pale stopped chipping at his charm and looked up at her, an incredulous expression on his face.

“I made those to trap barn sprites, Nat. It’s not my fault you tried to use them on something that would eat my charms for breakfast and then some. What were you thinking? Don’t tell me you thought you could catch one of the things just like that?”

Nat didn’t have anything to say to that. She sniffed, looked down at the ground.

“Just tell me where Buck is.”

Pale raised an eyebrow, but didn’t push the subject.

“Down by the river. Didn’t look too happy. You sure you’re alright?”

“...I’m fine.”

She turned around and trundled away.

Pale shook his head and turned his attention back to his carving. He called out one last time.

“You’re going the wrong way!”

She turned around and trundled the other way. Toward the river.

Nat could see a figure standing by the water as she approached. A huge, bearded man with a staff and a bag slung across his back, his head so bald and shiny it could blind you if you looked at it from the wrong angle.

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Buck Bandwood cut an impressive figure across the scene, only dampened by the fact that his clothes looked as though they were cut from potato sacks and haphazardly stitched together. Ever the utilitarian. Fashion wasn't top priority if your job sent you wading into the muck every other day.

Nat shuffled up to him, shoulders hunched, bracing for the inevitable earful she’d get for what she tried to pull yesterday. She opened her mouth to speak, but Buck held up a hand to silence her.

“See that?”

He nodded at a boulder sitting by the river.

Nat squinted, confused. This wasn't how it usually went when he chewed her out. He’d normally quiz her on the most mundane minutiae for half an hour before making her practice with her staff for the rest of the day. She looked at the rock, craning out her neck.

“What about it?”

“Rock sprite infestation. They’re all over town, not just here. Mayor says they’ve been wrecking the fields.”

Now that she looked more closely, she could make out a pile of pebbles rolling and jumping about at the foot of the boulder. Rock sprites were a common sight anywhere you went, but this many in one place?

“An infestation? How does that even happen?”

“Figuring that out is my job. Your job is to clean them out.”

Nat paused, took a moment to process that. A warm breeze tickled at her cheek, and she felt a chill. A sudden premonition of bad things to come. She languished for a brief moment, then broke the question.

“Clean them out how?”

Buck leaned down and grabbed a bucket and a broom off the ground. He pushed them into Nat’s hands.

“With these. Sweep them up and dump them into the river or something. You’ll get the hang of it.”

He smiled, and walked away.

Nat stood watching his back as he disappeared into the town. She blinked down at the broom in her hand.

“...Do I get paid?”

The silence was answer enough.

Nat slumped in defeat, picked up the bucket and set to work.

As the hours passed, the sun crested across the sky, the morning gave way to noon, and Nat’s limbs gave way to pain and exhaustion. No amount of strength or endurance training could prepare you to chase moving rocks across the town and then lug them back and forth for hours on end. Though she had managed to borrow a wheelbarrow from a sympathetic farmer, which helped. She had a knack for finding kind souls to help her out in her darkest hours—of which this wasn't one, but a bit of hyperbole never hurt anyone.

She’d drawn a small crowd of children as she worked. They too understood the pain of punishment in the form of grueling manual labor. They recognized the scarred look in her eyes, empathized. But that wasn't enough for them to lend a helping hand. They’d rather watch and gloat, as sensible children did. Inwardly. You didn’t mess with someone who could kill a bear with her bare hands.

Nat’s efforts until now had barely put a dent on the infestation, but she’d noticed a few things about the rock sprites after a few round trips with the wheelbarrow. If there was a big pile of rock sprites—or even just a large boulder like the one Buck had shown her—it had a luring effect on any nearby sprites. The bigger the pile or boulder, the stronger the lure. The downside was that the things always wandered away after a minute or two, seemingly losing interest. She had to cram the sprites together hard to make them stay.

The wheelbarrow slowly clattered to a halt as she stopped in her tracks. She frowned and scratched her cheek, pondered for a moment. What if she could—but she couldn’t hope to do it on her own...

Nat paused, turned around and stared at the children following her. The cogs in her head slowly clicked into place. She put on her best winning smile, reached for something at her side.

The children held their breaths and stared back, their eyes wide in unease.

“You kids want to make some money?”

She jangled a pouch of coins at them.

If there was anything Nat Bandwood was guaranteed to have at all times, it was a plan. The last one hadn’t worked out quite as well she’d hoped—and the plan before that too, for that matter—but what were terrible, broken plans if not opportunities to form better plans in the future?

It had to work out this time, surely. Throw enough darts at a wall, and one of them would eventually stick. If there was a hornet’s nest behind the wall—that was a problem for later. Buck always said adaptability was the most valuable skill one could have.

——-

Two men sat at the edge of a wheat field by the river, faces scowled in frustration. One of them, a man in a hat, picked up a rock sprite and threw it at the river, trying to make it skip across the water. It sank straight down. He sighed, and turned to face the other man.

“Perry, my friend. I’m rather beginning to believe fate itself is conspiring against us.”

The other man, Perry, stared out at the river. The sun reflected against the ripples in the water, making him squint to keep his eyes open. His pale skin would get sunburnt if he stayed out in this heat for too long, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. His scowl grew deeper as he spoke.

“Get me in a room with fate, Roni, and I’ll shank its balls off. Why can’t we finish one tiny job before one of them comes to fuck it all up? I’ve half a mind to go and off him tonight.”

Roni tipped his hat down to shade his eyes from the sun.

“That’s the Mangler you’re talking about. His reputation is well-earned.”

“I could take ‘im.”

“I don’t believe you could, Perry.”

“Get me in a room with him and I’ll give his balls a good shankin’ too. That’ll sort it out real nice.”

Roni shook his head at the thought. He shared his companion’s frustrations, but the man could be so juvenile at times. He threw another rock at the river, and it sank straight down again.

“It occurs to me, my friend, that we may be out of options. The Mangler will surely rally the local forces and thwart any of our attempts at furthering our work, and we currently don’t have the capacity to...dispose of the threat. Certainly not with only the two of us here.”

“Sure occured to me too. You thinking we just cut our losses and get our asses reamed by the boss?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but I’m considering it.”

Perry lied down on the ground and stretched out, his arms folded behind his head. He wasn't scowling anymore. He looked—melancholy.

“How’d we get here? Our lives, I mean. I had a wife, a daughter, a home to come back to every night after work—all of it. Then one day I wake up and I find myself doing this crap every day.”

He sniffed, wiped at his nose.

“I want to go back, Roni. I miss my little girl.”

Roni sighed. He felt sorry for his friend, but there was nothing he could do to help.

“You know that isn’t possible.”

Perry groaned. He lay on the ground, his arm covering his eyes from the sun overhead.

“When did I become such a sucker, Roni? You look at me and you see a big guy with a face like a troll, but all I do is let somebody else order me about.”

Roni fiddled with a rock sprite as it bounced about his hand. He started calculating the losses he would take if he were to withdraw from this job. He’d have to do at least two more years of work to pay off his employer’s resource investment alone. High-grade stones of concentrated magic didn’t come cheap—let alone the sacks of them they’d brought here. He rubbed at his temples as he felt the headache building. Perry’s babbling didn’t help.

“—this job, I tell you. It’s killing me. Killing me from the inside. I hate it.”

Suddenly, he spotted something odd out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look. A group of children were crowding around a pile of...something. Rocks? Rock sprites. Likely trying to clean out the infestation the two men had caused. The infestation was merely a side effect of their work, but it was conspicuous enough to warrant the attention of Buck Bandwood. A costly oversight.

“— feels like I’m suffocating, you know? My girl should be all grown by now and I can’t even—”

Roni ignored him, frowned as he stared at the pile of rocks. Rock sprites were magical creatures, even if they were among the weakest and unassuming. Such a large pile of them—the pile was still growing, even—would have the same effect as…

His eyes widened as he realized something. He turned to Perry and shook him out of his gloom, pointing.

“Perry, look there!”

Perry grunted at him, and followed his finger to the pile of rock sprites. He stared at it for a few seconds, paused, then turned to look at Roni.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I believe I am thinking what you’re thinking, my friend.”

The two men slowly stood up, looked at each other, and grinned. Perry slapped his friend on the back. Hard enough to make him stumble.

“That’s why I always say I love this job, Roni. Just gotta have a good attitude about it, is all.”