The trees moved again.
Nia caught Ren by the front of his coat and dragged him off the road.
He stumbled into the wet grass just as something heavy passed between the orchard rows. Branches bent. Leaves shook loose in sheets. Whatever moved beyond them was low enough to disappear behind the trunks and large enough to make those trunks look inconvenient.
Elara crouched beside the drag mark.
"No blood."
"That is not comforting," Ren whispered.
"It means whoever made this may still be alive."
Nia’s ears turned toward the orchard. "Or the pack wanted dinner fresh."
Elara looked up.
Nia raised her good hand. "Motivational honesty."
A distant impact answered from deeper among the trees.
Wood cracked.
Then someone screamed.
They moved.
Nia led them off the road at a low run, following churned mud between rows of apple trees. Ren stayed behind her and ahead of Elara, the Waywarden’s Cuff hot against his forearm.
Rain turned every branch into a reaching hand.
"What happened here?" Ren asked.
"Jessa’s wagon was bringing the late crew back," Nia said without slowing. "Four workers, her boy, and Mella Reed’s daughter. The bramblebacks came out of the drainage rows instead of from the southern woods."
"You said Amber Shield refused the request."
"They called it an unverified rural incident."
Elara’s voice went flat. "With insufficient guaranteed payment."
Ren ducked beneath a branch. "People being eaten had bad credit?"
"They did not know anyone was being eaten when they declined," Elara said.
"That makes it better?"
"No. It makes the paperwork accurate."
Nia glanced back at him. Rain ran from the tips of her lynx ears. "The watch would have come, but a ferry cable snapped upriver. Half a dozen people went into the flood."
"So everyone chose the emergency they could reach."
"Everyone except Amber Shield," Elara said.
Another scream cut through the storm.
Closer.
Ren’s body tightened.
Nia stopped with one fist raised.
The orchard went still.
Not silent. Rain hammered leaves. Water rushed somewhere below the ground. Ren could hear Elara breathing behind him and the faint metallic hum of the Cuff.
But the trees had stopped moving.
Nia pointed toward the left row.
Two amber eyes opened beneath a fallen branch.
The creature exploded from cover.
It was the size of a boar, but longer, its shoulders buried beneath layered plates of root and dark moss. Six hooked legs tore through the mud. Pale whiskers spread from its blunt muzzle like searching roots.
Ren saw all of it in one impossible instant.
Then it charged Elara.
He thrust out his right hand.
"Holdfast!"
Gold snapped from the Cuff.
A line of force struck the creature.
A second line struck the nearest fence post.
For one triumphant heartbeat, everything stopped.
Then the fence post ripped out of the earth.
"Oh."
The post flew past Ren’s face.
The released force spun him sideways. His boots left the mud. He hit the ground on one shoulder while the brambleback skidded, recovered, and came on angrier.
Elara stepped back, utility knife drawn.
Ren rolled to one knee.
The Cuff burned.
"Stable surface," he realized.
"That was a fence," Elara said.
"It lied."
The brambleback lunged.
A dark shape crossed Ren’s vision.
Nia planted one boot on the creature’s armored shoulder and vaulted over it. Her curved blade flashed beneath its jaw, but her wounded arm failed halfway through the turn.
The strike cut moss instead of throat.
She landed badly.
The brambleback wheeled toward her.
Ren surged up.
Nia slammed chest-to-chest into him, shoved his right foot back, and kicked his left boot outward.
"Stop standing like you’re asking permission."
"This is extremely close instruction."
"Your hips are wrong."
"I’m trying very hard not to respond to that."
Her amber eyes brightened despite the danger. "Feet wide. Weight forward. Don’t pull it with your arm. Make the ground win."
"Elara?" Ren called.
"I am deciding whether to save you or let the lesson continue."
The creature scraped one hooked foreleg through the mud.
Ren lowered his center of gravity.
The stance felt familiar.
Not because he understood magical bracers or six-legged dungeon beasts.
Because once, years ago, a boxing coach had spent an entire month knocking him over until his balance stopped being theoretical.
Shoulders loose.
Hips beneath him.
Feet ready to argue with impact.
The brambleback charged.
Ren slapped his palm against the stone lip of an irrigation channel.
"Holdfast."
Gold flashed.
This time, the anchor did not feel like a rope in his hand.
It felt like a decision made by the ground.
A luminous line caught the brambleback’s forward leg and drove toward the stone beneath Ren’s palm. The beast reached the end of its charge all at once.
Its front half stopped.
Its rear half did not.
The creature flipped sideways, exposing the pale seam beneath its jaw.
Nia was already moving.
She slid through the mud, caught one rootlike whisker with her good hand, and drove her blade into the seam.
The brambleback convulsed.
Gold strained between it and the channel.
Ren held.
Nia twisted the blade once.
The creature collapsed.
The anchor vanished.
Ren’s breath left with it.
He leaned against the channel wall while the Cuff pulsed hot enough to make his fingers shake.
Nia remained crouched over the beast. Rain darkened her short gold hair. Her bandage had bled through at the shoulder.
"You listen well," she said.
"When beautiful professionals give survival advice, I try to be teachable."
"Good answer."
Elara arrived beside them and looked from Nia’s bleeding bandage to Ren’s scorched sleeve.
"Excellent. We have survived one juvenile and injured both of our combatants."
"Nia was already injured," Ren said.
"That defense does not improve the total."
Nia cleaned her blade in the wet grass. "He did catch it."
"He also weaponized agricultural fencing."
"Versatile."
Ren looked at the dead creature. "Does killing one count as progress, or have I just created a second form of paperwork?"
"Both," Elara said. "A request is responsibility for the outcome, not permission to chase whatever looks dangerous. We account for witnesses, damage, recovered property, and whether the client is actually safe when we leave."
Her gaze flicked toward the uprooted fence post lying three rows away.
"That will be itemized."
"It attacked me first."
"The fence?"
Nia pressed a hand to her mouth, failing to hide a laugh.
Elara stood. "You wanted to know what makes a guild real. It is not the bell or the Artifact. It is being answerable after the exciting part."
Ren looked past her, toward the distant scream.
"Then we’re nowhere near the exciting part being over."
Elara knelt by the brambleback’s head.
Her fingers hovered over the pale whiskers, then pinched a brittle crust clinging near the roots. Blue-green residue gleamed beneath the rain.
Her expression changed.
"What is it?" Ren asked.
"Heartmoss resin."
Nia’s teasing vanished. She leaned closer and sniffed once. "Sweet metal. She’s right."
Ren looked at the dead creature. "Should that mean something to me?"
"It is harvested in Mossdeep," Elara said. "Carefully. In small quantities. Stabilized resin is used in expensive lamps, pumps, and certain Artifact repairs."
"And unstabilized?"
"Not sold on orchard roads."
Nia rubbed the residue between two fingers, then wiped them hard on the moss. "Bramblebacks track the scent. It excites them."
Ren looked toward the deeper rows.
The drag mark.
The pack.
The thing large enough to shake whole trees.
"So this wasn’t a hunting route."
"No," Elara said quietly. "Something brought them here."
A bell rang somewhere ahead.
Not a real bell.
Iron striking iron—three frantic blows from inside the orchard.
Nia was on her feet before the third.
"That’s the irrigation house."
They ran.
The rows opened onto a sunken channel crossed by a narrow stone bridge. On the far side stood a squat building of timber and brick, its windows barricaded with crates. An overturned wagon blocked half the yard.
Someone inside saw them.
"Elara!"
A broad-shouldered woman struck the window frame with a shovel head.
"Jessa!" Elara shouted. "How many inside?"
"Four! One can’t stand!"
"Your son?"
Jessa’s face broke.
"Under the gate!"
A roar rolled through the orchard.
The larger brambleback stepped onto the far bank.
It was twice the juvenile’s size. Moss hung from its armor in heavy curtains, and old roots curled over its spine like a crown. Three smaller shapes moved behind it.
The matriarch lowered her head between them and the irrigation house.
Then a child cried out beneath Ren’s feet.
"Help!"
He looked down.
A small hand reached through the broken slats of the collapsed channel gate below the bridge. Black water surged around it, climbing by the second.
Elara went white.
"The storm sluice is opening."
The child screamed again as the water rose over her wrist.
Ren manifested the Cuff fully.
"Tell me how to get down there."
The matriarch charged.