They found the wolves a few hours out — three of them, closing fast across open ground.
"How many can you see?" Kaelid asked.
"Three. Maybe a hundred and fifty meters and closing."
Fuck, he thought, and then didn't say it out loud, because panicking in front of your first real party member seemed like a bad way to start a partnership. "I'll take the lead one head-on. You thin the other two before they reach me."
"Good luck."
"Gonna need it."
Aria's first arrow took the lead wolf high in the shoulder before it had covered half the distance, a clean hit that didn't slow it down nearly as much as he'd hoped. Her second caught the one behind it in the flank, and that one staggered off its stride hard enough to fall behind — but the lead wolf kept coming, faster now, like the arrow had made it angry instead of careful.
Here we go.
He met it with his sword already swinging, a wide cut aimed at taking its head off clean — and it wasn't clean, the blade skidding off bone at an angle he hadn't accounted for, deep enough to stagger it but not enough to finish it. It came in low a half-second later, jaws snapping for his knee, and he threw himself sideways on instinct, boot skidding in the snow, sword coming down again before it could fully recover its footing. This time it connected right, biting deep into the back of its neck, and the wolf went down thrashing and didn't get back up.
He didn't get more than a second to breathe. The second wolf — the one Aria had staggered — was already back on its feet and closing on his flank, and he turned into it rather than away, sword already rising to meet the lunge. Their momentum carried them both down into the snow together, teeth snapping an inch from his forearm before he got his other hand braced against its throat, holding it off just long enough to drive the sword in one-handed, awkward and ugly, but enough.
He shoved it off and scrambled back up, breathing hard, sword arm already screaming — and found the third wolf already down, an arrow buried in its eye, Aria lowering her bow a few dozen meters off with the kind of calm that suggested this hadn't rattled her nearly as much as it had him.
"You good?" she called.
"Define good." He checked himself over — nothing torn, nothing bleeding, just the ragged edge of adrenaline still working its way out of his hands. "Nothing's bleeding. I'll take it."
It wasn't clean. It wasn't easy. But when it was over, both of them were still standing. Before they left, they stripped what was worth keeping off the carcasses — hides, fangs, worth holding onto for a smith rather than selling outright — and packed it in alongside the three cores.
At the Guild's counter, the job paid out to forty silver once the completion bonus was added on top of the standard thirty for three Ordinary cores — split evenly, twenty silver each.
"Not bad," Aria said, catching her breath, something like genuine approval in her voice for the first time since they'd met.
"Not bad at all," Kaelid agreed, grinning at his share like it was actually something.
***
Aria was still waiting by the door, already talking about food loud enough that an invitation seemed less like a question and more like a formality. He fell into step beside her without much resistance — his stomach had opinions about skipping a meal after a job like that, and turning down free company on his first real day in a new city seemed like a bad habit to start.
They ate at the Boar Hat, plates piled higher than either of them strictly needed, trading the kind of easy, half-serious conversation that came naturally once neither of them had to pretend not to be starving anymore.
"So what now?" Aria asked eventually, wiping her hands clean. "Back to the inn to die a happy, full death?"
"Actually — I've got an errand. Smith, apparently."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're spending your first real coin on gear already?"
"Some of it. Figured it's worth doing right the first time."
"Suit yourself." She grabbed her bow off the back of her chair, already looking the other direction. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time tomorrow."
She headed off one way, and Kaelid turned the other, toward Ring 2 and whatever John's shop actually looked like up close.
***
The bell over the door announced him with a bright, cheerful jingle that felt almost comically at odds with the sound of hammer on steel coming from somewhere in the back — a small, homely sound for a shop built into a wall of black stone that looked like it could survive a siege on its own.
"One minute!" a voice called from the back, and true to word, less than one minute later a broad-shouldered, soot-streaked man emerged, wiping his hands on an apron that had long since given up looking clean. "What can I do you for?"
"Emma sent me. Said you actually know what you're doing."
That got a short laugh. "Emma says that about anyone who tips well. C'mon, let's see what you've got."
Kaelid laid it all out on the counter — the crabta core from his very first fight, the two cores off the wolves that had nearly killed him a week and a half ago, and the hides and fangs he and Aria had stripped off today's kills for good measure.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
John picked up the crabta core first, turning it over in thick fingers, holding it to the light the same way the shop by the gate had. "Huh. This one's seen some wear on it — held onto it a while before you came in here?"
"Bit of both, maybe. Sentimental, I guess. Killed it my second day on the road out of my village. Nearly gutted me first."
John grunted like that was an acceptable answer, still turning the core over, weighing it in his palm like he was listening for something. "You have a preference on any of these, or am I calling it?"
"You're calling it. I wouldn't know where to start."
"Good answer." He set the crabta core aside and picked up the two wolf cores next, weighing them together in his palm, already turning something over in his head. "These'll want to be a pair. I'll figure out the rest."
He glanced at the hides and fangs Kaelid had also set down. "These'll help — proper grips, maybe some reinforcement in the sheaths. Good instinct, bringing the whole kill instead of just the cores."
He named a price for the sword — most of what Kaelid had just earned, right there — and a smaller price for whatever he had in mind for the wolf cores, which ate up nearly the rest.
Kaelid counted it out coin by coin and came up two copper short.
He felt his face go hot. "I — can we work something out? I'm good for it, I just—"
John looked at him for a long moment, then waved it off like it was nothing at all. "Two copper. Keep it. Go eat something before you pass out in my shop."
Guess I really am back to broke.
Kaelid thanked him, more sincerely than the amount probably warranted, and stepped back out into Ring 2 with nothing left in his pockets but the memory of briefly, gloriously, not being poor.
"Come back in a few days," John had said on his way out. "Good work isn't rushed work."
***
The board had another frost wolf posting up within a day of the first — a bigger pack this time, sighted further out, worth more for the trouble. Kaelid didn't think twice about taking it. Neither did Aria, though she gave the listing a longer look than she had the first one before agreeing.
"Bigger packs get sloppy," she said. "More bodies, worse coordination. Should still be manageable."
Should be.
He didn't love how much weight that one word was carrying.
They found this pack faster than the last — seven of them, maybe eight, hard to get an exact count with how they moved through the snow, breaking apart and reforming in a way that made them look like more than they actually were. Aria's arrows opened the same way they had before, clean and precise, but seven wasn't three, and the ones she didn't drop outright reached Kaelid a lot sooner than the last fight had allowed for.
He held the line for the first two, footwork clean, blade doing exactly what he needed it to. The third came in wrong — low, from an angle he hadn't accounted for — and by the time he'd corrected for it, a fourth was already on him from the other side.
There's too many of them—
He took the hit meant to open his throat across his forearm instead, pure reflex, and felt teeth grind through leather and skin in a way that was becoming uncomfortably familiar. He drove his sword through the one latched onto his arm and didn't have time to feel any of it properly before the next was already closing.
Aria's voice cut through the chaos. "Fall back, I'll cover!"
He didn't argue. Two more arrows found their marks while he put distance between himself and the pack's remaining numbers, and between the two of them, the fight ground down to nothing over the next several minutes — messier, slower, far less clean than the first job, but they were both still standing when it was over.
Kaelid sat hard in the snow once the last one dropped, forearm bleeding freely through a makeshift wrap, breathing like he'd run a distance he hadn't even attempted yet.
That was too close. That was way too close, and there were only seven of them.
Aria crouched beside him, checking the wound with more competence than he expected. "You froze up on the third one."
"I noticed."
"You need actual training. Real training, not just — swinging until your arms give out." She said it plainly, no judgment in it, which somehow made it land harder than if she'd been unkind about it.
She's right. I got lucky today. I need to stop needing luck.
He thought, unbidden, of Emma's offhand mention two days ago — the Captain, the south tower, the rookies he sometimes said yes to. He'd been putting it off, telling himself the smithy and the jobs came first.
Tomorrow. Whatever this Yami guy actually wants from me, tomorrow.
They split what the wolves left behind while they caught their breath — seven cores between them, snow melting slow under the heat still coming off both of them.
"You should keep three," Kaelid said, nodding at the pile. "Toward a real bow. That thing's held up fine so far, but you said yourself power's the weak point — probably fixes itself with better material behind the draw."
Aria raised an eyebrow. "And what, you're just giving them to me?"
"Not giving. Splitting smart. We sell two — one each, straightforward — and I keep the last two toward something of my own down the line. You get closer to a bow that doesn't hold you back, I get a start on whatever I end up needing next. Seems fair."
She considered it a moment, then nodded, something almost like respect in it. "Didn't expect the guy who nearly lost an arm today to be the one thinking that far ahead."
"Someone's got to. Clearly wasn't going to be the arm."
***
The job paid out to forty silver once they turned it in — twenty of that a completion bonus for pack size, split evenly between them. Between that and what he'd already had left over, Kaelid found himself with an actual, real amount of coin in hand for the second time in as many days.
Made a small fortune today, all told — coin in one hand, two cores probably worth just as much sitting useless in the other. He turned the banked wolf cores over in his palm on the walk back, no real idea yet what he wanted forged from them beyond some vague, half-formed shape of an idea. Guess that's a problem for another day.
He didn't spend a copper of it on the way back to the inn. He'd learned that lesson fast enough already.
He and Aria split off at the fork toward their respective inns, both of them too worn down for much more than a tired "see you tomorrow."
Eve was behind the counter when he came in, and didn't ask any questions beyond how many nights he wanted the room for this time — two, he decided, since his arm wasn't going to stop throbbing just because he wished it would.
Dinner came up to the room not long after — something warm and simple that he ate slower than strictly necessary, same as the first morning, letting the ache in his arm settle into background noise instead of the whole of his attention.
The bathroom down the hall was the real luxury, though — a proper magic-fed shower, the kind his village hadn't had a single one of, water arriving already warm without any fire or bucket involved at all. He stood under it longer than he needed to, watching dried blood and a week and a half of road dirt finally wash off him in earnest, and let himself, for a few minutes, think about absolutely nothing at all.
Tomorrow. Yami, tomorrow. Tonight, this is enough.
He slept hard, arm wrapped tight, and didn't dream of anything he remembered come morning.