I
The warren entrance looked deceptively modest — a single dark opening in a low earthen mound, ringed by trampled grass and the kind of scattered droppings that suggested regular traffic but nothing dramatic.
Tal crouched near it, studying the ground with the focused attention of someone reading a report rather than dirt.
A few stray tufts of coarse gray fur clung to the exposed roots near the entrance, more than Nivlac would have expected from a genuinely small population, though he kept that observation to himself for the moment, curious whether Tal would arrive at the same conclusion independently.
“Guild said three to five individuals,” she murmured.
“Small family group, easy cull.”
“And?” Nivlac asked, catching the note of doubt in her voice.
“And this much churned-up ground doesn’t come from three to five rabbits.” She straightened, her expression tightening.
“Something’s off.”
II
The broad-shouldered man had already drifted closer to the entrance, angling his greatsword down at a ready position without being asked.
“Could be an old estimate,” he said.
“Warrens breed fast if nobody’s culled them in a while.”
“Guild logs said the last cull was two months back,” Rowan added, checking the parchment again.
“That’s not enough time for this kind of expansion.
Nivlac said nothing yet, but he found himself doing the math anyway — an old habit, the same reflexive instinct that used to make him double-check account numbers even when a client insisted the figures were correct.
Two months.
A “small family group.” Ground churned up enough to draw Tal’s suspicion.
The numbers, whatever they actually were, didn’t seem to add up cleanly.
III
“Options,” Tal said, all business now, any earlier hesitation folded away beneath practiced calm.
“We can pull back, report the discrepancy, and let the guild reassess with proper backup.
Or we push forward carefully and handle whatever’s actually down there.”
“Pulling back costs us the commission fee either way,” Rowan pointed out.
“Guild doesn’t pay for reports.
Only results.”
“I’m aware,” Tal said, her tone flat.
“For what it’s worth,” the broad-shouldered man added, testing the weight of his greatsword in one hand, “I’ve cleared bigger warrens than this before without incident.
The numbers being off doesn’t automatically mean the danger is.”
“It doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t, either,” Tal said, though without any real heat behind the correction.
IV
Nivlac watched the three of them weigh the decision, and found himself, for the first time since joining, actually asked for an opinion — Tal’s gaze flicking toward him, not with any particular confidence in his answer, but with the pragmatic thoroughness of someone unwilling to skip a data point just because she didn’t expect it to be useful. Read this novel at novelping . com for the best experience.
He noted, with some private amusement, that this itself represented a small shift from an hour ago, when his opinion on anything would not have occurred to her as worth soliciting at all.
“What’s your read?” she asked.
He considered the question seriously, rather than treating it as a formality.
“If the discrepancy’s this obvious even to someone who just walked in from outside,” he said slowly, “it’s probably not a subtle problem.
Might be as simple as a second warren nearby that got missed in the original survey.
Might be something worse.
Either way, going in blind isn’t really different from going in cautious — the risk exists whether or not we acknowledge it first.”
V
“So you’re saying push forward,” Tal said.
“I’m saying acknowledge the risk out loud before we do, so nobody’s caught flat-footed if it turns out to be worse than a miscount,” Nivlac said.
“Knowing something might go wrong and planning around that possibility beats assuming it won’t and improvising when it does.”
Tal studied him for a beat longer than the answer probably warranted, something recalibrating behind her eyes — not agreement exactly, but the grudging acknowledgment that the answer had been more considered than she’d expected from someone she still fundamentally doubted.
“Fine,” she said finally, turning back toward the warren entrance.
“Cautious advance.
Everyone stays close, and the second this looks like more than a miscount, we pull out — no heroics, no proving points.
Understood?”
Three nods answered her, Nivlac’s included, and the party moved forward into the dark mouth of the burrow, the low, undisturbed quiet of the forest closing in around them like held breath.