“He’s not going to get better like this,” Prisca said, her eyes boring into Therion accusingly. They were sitting on a small terrace at the back entrance of their home, watching their father cut white and red roses from the bushes that lined the back of the property. He carefully cut the stems to the same length and set them into a bucket of water for later.

  “What do you mean?” Therion replied, irritated. “Look at him, he’s way better!”

  Somedays, he was almost normal. He could take care of himself, help out around the house, even spar with Therion on the good days. He just wasn't like he’d been before.

  A year ago, Garius Treespeaker had been the second-highest ranked adventurer in the city and a living legend in the ranger’s guild. Now, he avoided leaving the house and when he did, his eyes flicked nervously from one point to the next, looking for danger that wasn’t there. He still barely slept as far as Therion could tell, and sometimes his hands shook like those of an old man. Gardening helped to calm him and gave him a chance to get outside without going out into public.

  He had improved, especially in the months immediately following the battle. Someone of their fathers’ station and reputation had a lot of important friends, not least in the Temple District. Besides Syrah, Therion’s father had been seen by priests of no less than seven temples, including three high priests. They’d helped – to a point, at least. By the time they were done, Garius was fully awake and talking, and he stopped waking up screaming as he had in the first few weeks. Some of them still came by on occasion to bless him and see to his continuing recovery.

  Prisca’s jaw clenched visibly at Therion’s words, and her voice dropped so as not to carry.

  “He’s a shadow of himself, Therion. You know we could get him more help.”

  “No we can’t!” he retorted, annoyed to be having this argument again. “I told you, we can’t trust the alchemists! They hate us after last year, and there’s no telling what they’d do if we gave them the opportunity to ‘treat’ dad.”

  “They don’t hate us,” she replied, glaring. “They have a professional grudge because you embarrassed them and got master Julian barred from the city instead of approaching the guild for remediation. If you just swallowed your pride, they would help. You know they would!”

  “Syrah could have been killed!” he hissed. “You think I should just forget that? That we should trust them with dad’s mind?” He sighed and sat back, suddenly tired. “Look, I’ve been looking through the guild library for months. There are things we can try – ”

  “If you believed that, you would have tried it already,” she cut in sharply. “You need to think about the here and now. Syrah is fine. Who cares what happened a year ago? Dad is the one who needs help now, and us. You should be a magister already, and I should be out getting my hunter’s marks! Most of my cohort already graduated to full rangers. Do you know how that looks – Treespeaker’s daughter stuck at scout for four years?”

  Therion frowned. “Prisca… they all know why–”

  She scoffed and stood up. “Just think about it, okay? Seriously, for once. You know things need to change." She retreated back inside, leaving Therion to grind his teeth in frustration.

  The problem was that she was right. Their father needed to get better faster. The world was changing. Things were getting out of hand out there and it was even worse up north, with orc and troll incursions over the northern border and centaurs raiding from the east up near Henfelden. Weaker adventurers were going to get ground up in an environment like that. He needed to be out there, getting stronger both for himself and to ensure that he could protect his friends and his party. More importantly, Garius Treespeaker needed to be out there. A rank 11 adventurer was always in high demand, and the way things had been doing, that demand would only become more pressing. Sooner or later, the guild or Count Narald himself would get to him, and he would try.

  He would try and he would get himself killed – and that was just the situation with the Adventurers’ Guild. It didn’t even consider the larger political situation, both here in Halfbridge and in Besermark overall.

  But the alchemists were part of that situation, and Therion didn’t trust them.

  He rose, grabbed another bucket and filled it with some water from the fountain before walking over to where his father worked. He swapped it with the full bucket, which he put near the door. Dad would use them to decorate the house for midsummer, as he had every year since their mother had died. He just helped, selecting and snipping roses with a tiny shearing cantrip while his father worked with actual shears. The work was calming and made him feel like he was doing something.

  Eventually, the older man sighed and broke the silence.

  “I don’t know the answer.”

  “Huh?”

  “The alchemists. I don’t know if we can trust them.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Therion swallowed. “You heard that?”

  Garius scoffed and smiled tiredly. “Come on, son. I can hear a goblin breathe a hundred paces away in the middle of the forest – do you really think I miss anything said in my own house?”

  “Ah.” Therion flushed uncomfortably. He and Prisca had spent a lot of time talking about their father’s condition. It had never even occurred to him that his father could hear him. Had always been able to hear him. Of course he could. He blinked. “Wait, that means…”

  “Easy, son,” the ranger cut him off, raising a hand. “I believe in respecting my children's privacy. There’s a reason I didn’t hang around the house all day when you had company over. Back, before…” he trailed off, staring at nothing.

  “Do you think I could get them to help you?” Therion said, hoping to change the subject. “The Alchemists?”

  “Maybe…” Garius shook his head uncertainly, collecting himself. “You can try talking to them. See what they want.”

  Therion grimaced. “What could they want from me? They were the ones in the wrong, and they got what was coming to them. Syrah survived, but there’s no way people haven’t died because they were too cheap to pay for hazardous waste management.”

  “Don’t be dense. They want to feel vindicated. Respected. It’s like your sister said. Sometimes what was right or fair last year doesn’t matter when you want to solve a problem today. I don’t know what they’ll want from you, and I won’t ask you to bend more than you’re willing for a pack of snakes on my account. I had to be… painfully pragmatic a few times when I was young…” He shook his head. “I don’t want that for you – or at least, I want you to have options. The priests can help me in time, and their methods are gentler. We don’t have to entertain this.”

  “But it’ll take time,” Therion said bitterly. “And we don’t know how much of that we have. I need to finish my augmentation and you need to be in fighting shape. You know what’s happening out there.”

  Garius hummed thoughtfully. “You could try to make the trip to Bronzeforge Hall with your friends. It’s not too dangerous, if you stick to the roads. You don't really need me.”

  “Maybe," Therion allowed, though he didn't agree at all, "but it’s not just me. If a horde of centaurs or a hill giant or maybe another dragon comes dropping in, the guild and the count himself are going to come knocking looking for Garius Treespeaker. Shouldn’t I be doing whatever I can?”

  His dad put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. “Son, it’s like I said. I don’t really know the answer. If you do go and talk to them, just make sure to get everything in writing. Use a mediator of some kind, so there’s a witness, and just… be careful, alright?”

  Therion nodded and went inside. He collected his things and cast a quick cantrip on a roughly carved gem in his pocket. Then he set out for the Lower City. He had some thinking to do, and he needed to get out of the house and out of earshot for a little while.

  ***

  The Gateside Market was a hive of activity when Therion arrived. Humans, gnomes, dwarves and now orcs mingled here, buying weapons, potions, protective equipment and information – everything an adventurer needed. The best-established suppliers worked out of proper shops at the edge of the market square while small artisans and less successful merchants set up stalls in its center. The Adventurers’ Guild dominated the square’s north side, an enormous four-story building that oversaw adventurer activity in the entire region.

  Right now, it looked like there was enough business to go around. Monster activity had spiked in the spring and continued to rise since. The guild now had so many open quests that they couldn’t get them all assigned, despite the massive influx of new amateur adventurers from among the Loamfurth refugees. Many of the newcomers weren’t powerful or experienced enough to deal with the nasty things that kept emerging from the wildlands, but they were desperate for money.

  It was a recipe for disaster. With too few ranking adventurers available, the guild would likely start to fudge the rank requirements and that meant a lot of those new adventurers weren’t coming home. Their quests wouldn’t be closed, and another amateur party would be sent to get killed. For the merchants here, though, it meant business was booming – even for the goblins selling rusty knives and half-disintegrated, bloodstained gambesons for coppers.

  Squeezing past the line of adventurers blocking the entrance, Therion entered the Adventurer’s guild and made his way past the quest boards, the counters and through an innocuous-looking side-door labeled “Lounge: Authorized Adventurers Only”.

  At rank 4, Therion wasn’t authorized, technically. The lounge was reserved for “ranking” adventurers, which were those at or above rank 5. But he’d been coming in here since he was a child, and having a famous father had its privileges. No one was going to stop him. Besides, the person he was coming to meet was authorized, which made him her guest.

  The place was mostly empty except for a few tired-looking people who looked like they’d just handed in their paperwork. Therion recognized one or two of them, but most were from out of town. Elyn sat at the bar with a glass of amber liquid in front of her, chatting with an exceptionally tall woman with red hair and tattoos on her face. Light shone out from under her shirt where she wore the pendant he’d given her. The gem set into it had been cut from the same stone as one he carried in his pocket. It served as a decent scrying anchor, and he could make them both light up sympathetically by casting a light cantrip on one. It allowed him to send a crude sort of signal, though he hadn’t meant to leave it on this long.

  Feeling briefly embarrassed at the oversight, he cut off the spell and let the light wink out.

  Elyn looked down and then back up, finding him standing in the doorway. She grinned and waggled her eyebrows at him.

  “Finally! Were you trying to get better light for your scrying spell, or what?”

  “Well, I notice you didn’t take it off,” he replied, lowering his voice as he approached to give her a peck on the lips. Then he turned to the tall human woman and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. You must be Estrid, right? I’ve heard a lot about you. How are you finding adventuring here in Halfbridge?”

  The druid shrugged. “It’s a lot more underground work than I was hoping for – I’m better suited to forests. I got to practice with the seeds I gathered from the Duergar Empire, which is something, I guess. Field testing is important with unfamiliar plants. I’m hoping to talk the others into taking a patrol quest up the northern road toward Henfelden. There are bandits, and a few reports that goblins started raiding villages up there two weeks ago. We need to take care of that, or people here are going to start turning on each other.”

  Therion nodded. “I’d go, but…” He sighed and turned to Elyn. “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I need to decide what to do about my father.”