Chapter 3: The Charter¶
Prologue - Elroy¶
I still smell smoke in the beard. Not the clean breath of a forge, but the sour stink of carpet, lacquer, and old wood. We pushed into the western wing with cloth over our mouths and eyes stinging. I planted my shield and moved benches—smothered flame with weight while Rust watched our breaths and Perry muttered about a shrine’s blessing. When Grotdor’s heat turned to control, the last blaze died like a bellows closed. We took our miracle of a rest beneath Milani’s gaze. I set my gear in order, ran a thumb along the hammer of Torag, and stood again.
The gallery held the purple‑haired gnome on a couch, playing dead. Rust pricked the lie; Perry’s eyes told me the rest. We let the gnome go, and the next room answered our patience with blades—Nishkiv the Knife leaning over a billiard table, his cutthroats holding an elf bound as hostage. I took the doorway. He came to meet me.
Later, above the dueling floor, the air burned with Grotdor’s columns and the red‑haired axewoman’s hate. Dravyn fell like an anvil dropped, and then I did. Rust raised me. We kept moving. When the hall fell quiet, Jamandi still stood. Morning brought the charters. We have our work—the Stolen Lands to steady, a name to clean, and a shield to keep between our people and whatever comes.
Through the Portcullis¶
The Great Hall still smelled of blood and smoke.
Lieutenant Ivenzi’s surviving guards had barricaded the doors and lowered the portcullises, holding the heart of the manor like a besieged keep. He had told them what lay ahead: Black Tear assassins in the west wing, fires spreading, and Lady Jamandi herself somewhere beyond, battling giants and mercenaries in the dueling hall at the far end.
“Her goal was to retake the dueling hall at the far end,” he’d said. “So I’ll wager you’ll find her there.”
So the five of them slipped beneath the iron teeth of the portcullis at the central stairs, leaving the relative safety of the Great Hall behind.
Past a small side door lay the west privy, surprisingly orderly amid the chaos: a simple chamber with a brass oil lamp filling the air with the thick scent of cinnamon, utterly at odds with the ringing of steel and distant screams.
Beyond that, the manor changed.
The hallway ahead was a choking throat of smoke. Billowing, acrid clouds rolled along the ceiling and pooled thickly in the center, obscuring everything beyond a few strides. Further ahead, open doorways on either side pulsed with orange light as fire devoured the west-wing guest chambers, each doorway a flickering mouth into an inferno.
“The hallway leading from the Great Hall and several of the guest chambers next to it are ablaze,” Ivenzi had warned. “Getting to the rooms further west is risky, but certainly possible.”
Now they saw what he meant.
Rust tugged a bit of cloth up over his mouth, squinting through the haze. Elroy lifted his shield, more out of reflex than use in a place where air itself was the enemy. Grotdor’s eyes reflected the flames ahead with an unnervingly appreciative light.
They exchanged a few clipped words, then stepped into the smoke.
Breath burned immediately. Even those who tried to hold their breath felt the bite of it in their throats and eyes. Shapes vanished into gray; the party became shifting silhouettes to one another. Rust and Perry started coughing almost at once, stomachs lurching as their lungs tried to reject the poison air. Linzi bent double, eyes watering, clutching at the strap of her lute.
They pushed on anyway.
Elroy’s voice came from somewhere in the murk, rough but steady, guiding them, keeping them from scattering. Dravyn, cloth wrapped tight over nose and mouth, seemed to weather the smoke better, eyes narrowed, one hand held out toward the heat ahead as though feeling for currents in the burning air. Perry, smaller and low to the ground, bumped along beside Elroy’s greaves, blinking soot from his lashes.
Behind the smoke they found the true source of it.
The Burning Rooms¶
The west-wing guest chambers were furnaces.
Doors stood partly open or hung askew from burned hinges. Within, beds, curtains, and carpets had gone up like kindling. Flames crawled hungrily along beams and licked at the ceiling; smoke boiled out to join the choking clouds in the hallway. The bodies of adventurers who had come to Restov for glory lay within, charred and still. Volodmyra’s agents had done their work well: lock the doors, light the fires, and let the west wing fill with corpses and smoke.
They could have hurried past. Lady Jamandi was somewhere ahead, facing frost giants and a Black Tear commander. Time mattered.
But Rust’s gaze lingered on the burned figures. The little goblin swallowed hard and turned toward the nearest doorway, lifting his hands as if in prayer. Whether out of piety, stubbornness, or sheer refusal to leave the manor to burn, the group moved to fight the fires.
They smashed windows with chair legs and shield edges, sending a rush of smoke and sparks out into the night. Elroy and Grotdor hauled smoking mattresses away from doorways and kicked apart blazing furniture, clearing paths to help the heat vent. Perry darted in and out, light on his feet amid falling embers, dragging aside smoldering curtains before they could collapse on anyone.
Grotdor, for his part, treated the inferno as something half-alive and half-familiar. He gestured sharply, coaxing flames to leap upward instead of sideways, starving them of fuel where they threatened to block the hall. His power never truly quenched the fire—he was not that kind of mage—but he shaped it, pulling tongues of flame away from doors and toward already-devoured sections where only blackened beams remained.
They could not save the dead. They could only deny the flames more victims, prevent the smoke from thickening into a killing fog that would claim the Great Hall as well.
One by one, the worst of the fires were beaten back. Furniture lay scattered, beams scorched but standing. The smoke thinned enough that they could move without gagging, though their lungs still clawed with every breath and their eyes stung.
Rust doubled over near the end, hacking up soot, his small frame quaking. Linzi’s voice, usually so quick to song, was down to a hoarse croak. Even Elroy had to lean briefly on his shield, breath hissing between his teeth.
And that was when they saw the door at the end of the hall.
The Rejuvenating Shrine¶
Beyond the burned rooms, past the worst of the smoke, a narrow door opened into an unexpected pocket of serenity.
Inside, the air was cool and clear. A small chapel lay untouched by flame: polished stone floor, simple wooden benches, and at the far wall a marble statue of a woman with a rose carved over her heart and a sword held point-down before her. Someone had draped a crimson scarf around the statue’s shoulders. Candles guttered at her feet, casting soft light that seemed to push the smoke back from the doorway.
Rust stepped inside first and felt the difference like a physical thing. The weight on his chest loosened; the ache in his lungs eased. He drew a slow breath and did not cough.
Milani’s shrine.
Perry’s keen eyes noticed faint traces of soot streaked toward the statue’s base, as though others had staggered in here before them, desperate for relief. The air smelled faintly of wax and crushed petals instead of ash. Even Grotdor, who normally seemed to shrug off discomfort with a grin and a joke about fire, let out a long breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
They took what rest they could. Rust murmured a quiet prayer, laying a hand against the stone rose. A subtle warmth flowed back—cooling burns, settling stomachs, easing the pounding behind their eyes. The goblin’s divine gifts knit a few of their wounds; the unseen blessing of the shrine did the rest, dimming the sickly green of smoke-poisoned faces back toward something like health.
They could have lingered. No guards, no assassins, no roaring giants—only the soft crackle of candles and the faint, impossible sense that someone watched over them here.
But beyond the chapel, the west wing still burned. And Lady Jamandi still fought.
They stepped back into the hall.
The Gallery and the Coward¶
Past the shrine, the smoke thinned to a gray haze. A wide gallery opened up, its walls lined with paintings: duels beneath stormy skies, sweeping landscapes of Brevoy, portraits of stern Aldori swordlords whose painted eyes seemed to follow the intruders. Many of the canvases were slashed or scorched; the smell of smoke lingered even where open flames had not reached.
On the floor lay a familiar figure in a purple coat, curled like a dropped doll.
Tartuccio.
The gnome’s face was streaked with soot, his curls damp with sweat. He lay on his side near an overturned bench, one hand theatrically flung toward the doorway as if reaching for salvation. For a moment, he looked almost pitiable.
Then he opened his eyes.
With a little sputter and cough, he launched into explanation—how he had bravely tried to defend the west wing, how the treacherous assassins had overwhelmed him with sheer numbers, how only a noble and selfless hero could have survived as long as he had. He claimed he had nearly turned the tide single-handedly before the smoke took him down.
Perry listened with that particular brand of polite silence that meant his mind was working. Rust watched the gnome’s darting eyes and remembered charred guest rooms full of bodies Tartuccio had not lifted a finger to save. Dravyn’s lip curled, ever so slightly, at the gnome’s tone of imperious command as he tried to tell them what to do next.
Someone tested his story, prying for details. The answers stumbled. His knowledge of the attackers’ tactics was vague. His memory of where, exactly, he had been fighting didn’t match the smoke patterns or the scorched threshold they had just crossed.
In the end, they pulled him to his feet anyway.
The gnome swayed dramatically, leaning heavily on anyone nearby, but when they pointed him back toward the safer corridors leading toward the Great Hall, he didn’t argue. He blustered about warning the others and coordinating defenses, but his steps were quick and eager, carrying him away from the burning wing with suspicious haste.
Let him run, they decided.
They had other lives to worry about.
The Parlor and the Knife¶
Beyond the gallery lay an armory—racks of weapons, a barrel bristling with crossbow bolts, a few battered suits of armor. Perry, eyeing his nearly empty quiver, couldn’t resist taking a handful of bolts. Elroy grabbed a replacement blade, but refused to be drawn into full-scale looting.
“There’s a battle going on right now,” he reminded the others, glancing toward the shuddering walls. “Let’s save the looting till after.”
They moved on.
The parlor beyond might once have been a cozy sitting room for guests. Now its furniture had been shoved back to make space in the center of the room, where a pale elf lay bound and gagged on the floor. Her armor was dented and scraped, but her eyes blazed with a cold fury that said she was far from broken.
Around her stood three figures in dark cloaks and steel: two Black Tear cutthroats and their leader here, a lean man whose hands danced with daggers. Nishkiv the Knife, the mercenary lord of this room, grinned when he saw the heroes.
Blades flashed.
The fight was brutal and intimate, fought at arm’s length amid overturned chairs and scattered playing cards. Nishkiv darted in and out, his daggers flickering like silver fish. He struck at Perry, the halfling investigator’s sharp mind not quite quick enough to keep his body out of harm’s way; cold steel drew blood, and Perry staggered back with a hiss of pain.
He tried to recall anything useful about the assassin—the man’s reputation, his methods—but came up short amid the scramble. The Black Tears did not advertise their rosters.
Elroy interposed himself with grim determination, shield up, taking Nishkiv’s double strikes on the steel rather than on flesh. One dagger blow hammered against the shield so hard it almost drove Elroy to his knees, but he gritted his teeth and let the impact ring up his arm rather than into his companions.
Rust’s divine power lanced out in answering fury. Three glimmering metal needles coalesced in the air between his fingers, then streaked through the parlor like a swarm of angry wasps, punching through a cutthroat’s chest and dropping the assassin mid-step.
Grotdor’s fire lashed out, a focused blast that caught another mercenary squarely, turning him into a screaming, flailing torch before he collapsed, smoking, on the rug.
Nishkiv pressed hard, sensing that if he could break them here, he could hold the parlor against any further intrusion. He slipped past Elroy’s guard just long enough to draw more blood from Perry, then whirled back with a cruel, knowing smile.
That smile did not last.
Dravyn stepped into range, eyes hard, staff held in both hands. With a muttered word, the metal along its length shimmered, edge brightening to a razor’s gleam. The wizard’s strike came down like a guillotine.
The blade bit deep. Nishkiv’s head snapped back; for a heartbeat he stood there, shock frozen on his face. Then he crumpled to the floor, daggers slipping from numb fingers. His surviving men shouted in dismay—Boss!—and redoubled their efforts, but the tide had turned.
Moments later, the parlor was quiet save for the crackle of a small fire in the hearth and the rasp of the heroes’ breathing.
They cut Jaethal free.
The elf’s gratitude was a cold thing—controlled, almost distant—but genuine. She had listened while her captors talked; she knew what their leader had planned. Quietly, she informed them that the lady of the manor had been cornered in the dueling pit by the boss and two giants.
Lady Jamandi was still alive.
For now.
Jaethal, rattled from her ordeal, chose to withdraw to the Great Hall to gather her wits. The group, bloodied but resolute, turned toward the last rooms of the west wing.
The Trophy Hall¶
They passed into a broad, white-tiled trophy hall.
Heads stared down at them from the walls: a stag with a rack of antlers fit for a king, a tusked boar frozen mid-snarling, the hook-beaked head of an owlbear, a dire wolf with its lips peeled back from yellow fangs, reptilian jaws from both a forest drake and a sinuous tatzlwyrm. Jamandi Aldori’s victories, turned into decorations.
Tonight, the trophies were not the only dead.
The floor was strewn with bodies: guards in the colors of House Aldori, cloaked corpses of Black Tears, and here and there the immense limbs of slain giants and hulking ogres. The smell of blood was thick, metallic and cloying.
Perry’s gaze flicked briefly over the trophy heads, mind noting some tucked-away trinket in a monster’s mouth, but there was no time to stop. Somewhere ahead, beyond the double doors, the real battle still raged.
They took positions, weapons readied, spells on their lips. Elroy checked on everyone’s placement.
“Are we all in position?” he asked, voice low.
Then Dravyn threw open the doors to the dueling chamber.
The Dueling Chamber¶
The doors swung wide onto a scene torn straight from a war song.
A great rectangular pit filled the floor ahead, recessed several feet below the rest of the chamber. Racks of practice blades lined the walls, and stands of padded dueling armor stood like headless sentinels. But what drew the eye were the bodies. The dueling court was carpeted with the dead: eight of Lady Jamandi’s guards, a scattering of cloaked Black Tears assassins, and the massive shapes of two dead ogres, their blood pooling in the low stone ring of the pit.
To the north, beyond the pit, Lady Jamandi Aldori herself fought.
She danced with a pair of frost giants—Thurvulf and Vragnar, undersized by their kind’s standards but still towering, their blue-white skin streaked with blood and frost. Jamandi’s Aldori dueling sword burned with fire along its length, every swing leaving a lick of flame hanging in the air for a heartbeat before it vanished. Her cloak snapped behind her as she sidestepped one giant’s clumsy swing and answered with a precise thrust that sent sparks and blood flying.
At the same moment the heroes opened the doors, another set of doors to the south slammed open.
Five Black Tear assassins strode in, blades and crossbows ready. They were led by a woman with waist-length auburn hair and a crooked scar on her chin, a jagged little notch missing from her left ear. A long black leather coat flowed over chain mail, and in her hands she carried a wickedly curved greataxe that seemed almost too large for her—until she hefted it with practiced ease. Volodmyra, commander of the mercenaries.
She sneered when she saw them.
Across the chamber, Lady Jamandi spared the briefest glance. Her eyes widened, then narrowed with fierce satisfaction.
“Just in time!” she called, her voice somehow clear over the clash of steel. She jerked her chin toward the red-haired woman. “That’s their leader; take her out while I deal with these oafs!”
Even as she spoke, her sword drove into one giant’s belly. Fire roared along the blade; the frost giant’s guts spilled out in a steaming cascade as he toppled. Jamandi stepped over his falling body like it was part of her footwork and turned on the second giant with a predator’s focus.
The heroes faced Volodmyra and her cutthroats.
Volodmyra’s Charge¶
The assassins came on in a loose wave, trying to flank and thin their enemies before the axe-wielding commander joined the fray properly.
Linzi raised her voice, hoarse but resolute. Magic threaded through her anthem, a web of sound that tightened the heroes’ grips on their weapons and steadied their aim. Courage swept through them, a shimmer of resolve that cut through lingering fear as surely as any sword.
Rust whispered a prayer, a faint, luminous circle expanding around him as a quiet blessing settled over the battlefield. Attacks felt surer, steps more certain, as if unseen hands guided them.
Grotdor stepped forward, hands already wreathed in heat. With an upward gesture, he called a scorching column of fire into existence—a roaring pillar ten feet wide and thirty feet high that engulfed part of the southern end of the pit. One of the cutthroats flinched, cloak catching alight as he scrambled away, badly burned.
Dravyn’s fingers crackled with electricity. He pointed toward a pair of assassins, and an arc of lightning leapt from one to the other, dancing across their bodies in a jagged blue chain. Both cried out, muscles seizing, smoke rising from their armor.
The Black Tears answered with blades and bolts.
A dazzling cutthroat darted in toward Grotdor, daggers flashing in a quick, showy pattern that belied their lethality. Steel bit into the fire-wielder’s side; he grunted, heat rippling around the wound.
Another assassin, eyes narrowed in near-sighted squint, leveled a crossbow toward Elroy. Bolts rattled harmlessly off the marshal’s raised shield as he advanced with a disciplined step, using his shield-led advance to close the distance and strike down the most flamboyant of the knife-fighters in a single, hard blow.
Perry moved like a ghost at the edge of the chaos. He took in distances, angles, the rhythm of each enemy’s movements, then chose his moments with surgical precision. His crossbow chirped quietly in his hands, bolt after bolt threading through gaps in armor or catching exposed throats. When he focused on a single foe, studying them, his shots rarely failed. Nishkiv had already learned that in the parlor; now other Black Tears discovered it the hard way.
Rust’s magic needles flew again, this time forming out of scrap metal at his belt and streaking through the fray to punch through a cutthroat’s chest. The assassin toppled over the dueling pit’s edge, vanishing into the bloody tangle of bodies below.
Grotdor’s elemental blasts hammered the enemy lines—short, vicious lances of fire that left assassins reeling and smoking. One particularly impulsive cutthroat rushed him, only to be engulfed in a burst of searing flame that ended his charge forever.
And then Volodmyra reached them.
Overhand Smash¶
The Black Tear commander moved with the brutal efficiency of someone who had survived many battles and expected to survive this one. She waded through her own men without hesitation, greataxe swinging in broad, sweeping arcs that forced the heroes to give ground or risk being cut in half.
Elroy stepped up to meet her, shield raised, sword ready, the very image of a guardian. For a moment, the two leaders stared one another down: his eyes hard with duty, hers alight with cruel amusement.
Then she struck.
Volodmyra’s axe rose above her head, both hands gripping the haft. She brought it down in a single, devastating overhand smash that crashed against Dravyn instead.
He had moved in to flank, adamantine-touched staff ready, lightning still crackling around his hands. The axe bit through that preparation like it was nothing. Steel and fire slammed into his chest; the impact ripped him from his feet and drove him to the floor in a spray of blood.
For Dravyn, there was no time to scream.
The world went dark in an instant.
On the battlefield, the effect was immediate. Rust’s breath hitched. Perry swore under his breath. Elroy’s eyes widened in horror.
The fight did not stop.
Volodmyra’s axe swept again, catching Elroy with a lesser but still brutal blow that smashed against his shield and slammed him to the ground. He barely had time to realize he’d fallen before everything went black.
Rust scrambled toward his fallen friends, but he knew—deep down and with cruel clarity—that there was nothing his magic could do for Dravyn in that moment. No amount of healing would knit that kind of ruin back together on the spot. The bitter truth of it burned almost as much as the smoke had earlier.
But Elroy still hovered at the edge. Rust’s hands flared with greenish-gold light as he poured life into the marshal’s battered body, dragging him back from the brink with a ragged, gasped breath.
They fought on around Dravyn’s still form.
Turning the Tide¶
If Volodmyra thought the wizard’s death would shatter their resolve, she misjudged them.
Linzi’s song did not falter. If anything, her voice grew fiercer, the notes raw with grief and fury. Jamandi, still dueling with the last frost giant to the north, redoubled her own efforts, the flaming dueling sword carving burning arcs through the air.
Grotdor, bleeding and scorched, lifted his hand once more.
A globe of flame detached from the scorching column he had conjured earlier and went hurtling across the battlefield—flying flame flickering and weaving over the dueling pit. It burst among Volodmyra and her remaining cutthroats, setting cloaks alight and drawing curses from the mercenaries as fire crawled up their legs and sleeves.
One frightened cutthroat, already wavering under the barrage, bolted, only to be cut down by Linzi’s arrow as she seized an opening in the chaos.
Another assassin, shortsighted and wild-eyed, fired blindly at Perry, repeatedly misjudging where the halfling was ducking behind debris. Bolt after bolt thunked into wood and stone instead. Perry slipped from shadow to shadow, almost untouchable.
Perry picked his moment.
He studied Volodmyra as she pivoted, tracking the rhythm of her swings, the slight favoring of one leg, the way she lifted her axe a fraction higher just before committing fully. When he finally squeezed the trigger of his crossbow, the bolt flew true, driving into a gap in her armor and staggering her with a grunt of surprise.
Blood soaked into Volodmyra’s black coat. Grotdor’s flames scorched her again, licking up from the floor and blackening the edges of that long leather garment. Rust’s needle darts skewered another cutthroat who tried to shield her, leaving the commander more and more exposed.
Elroy, ribs aching and head ringing, forced himself back to his feet. Shield up, he waded once more into the fray, taking hits on steel and answering with heavy sword blows on anyone who dared step between him and his friends. When a dazzling cutthroat tried to impress Volodmyra with a flashy strike at Grotdor, Elroy cut the assassin down in a single cleaving blow.
At last, surrounded by fire, arrows, blessings, and cold steel, Volodmyra faltered.
Her breath came ragged. Her pale blue eyes, once bright with confident cruelty, flicked between the surviving heroes and the distant form of Lady Jamandi, who even now planted her flaming sword in the heart of the last frost giant and wrenched it free in a spray of steam and blood.
One final volley—Perry’s bolt, Grotdor’s flame, Elroy’s sword—drove the commander to her knees. She tried to raise her axe again, lips peeling back in a defiant snarl, but her strength failed her.
Volodmyra collapsed onto the blood-slick tiles of the dueling chamber.
The last cutthroats, seeing their leader fall and Jamandi stride toward them over the body of a dead giant, broke or died in moments. The chamber fell into an exhausted, ringing silence broken only by the crackle of small fires and the groans of wounded men.
Aftermath¶
The battle was over.
Grotdor and Perry, ever practical, moved quickly among the fallen enemies, stripping them of weapons, armor, and anything else that might be of use later—chain mail, a finely made greataxe, a set of strange goggles, potions, the glint of jewelry at Volodmyra’s throat and hands.
Elroy, still pale from his brush with death, looked toward Dravyn’s body.
He blamed himself. He replayed the moment he’d used his reaction to block another blow earlier in the fight and thought, with a cold twist of guilt, that if he had saved that effort for Volodmyra’s strike, Dravyn might still be standing. The thought stung as much as any cut.
Rust, kneeling beside the wizard, could only confirm what they all knew: there was nothing more he could do tonight. Not at his power. Only the priests of the Aldori, with their greater resources, might return Dravyn from the edge.
Still, there was work to be done.
Elroy, jaw tightening, took Volodmyra’s head with a clean, practical stroke. He told Jamandi—and perhaps himself—that they owed that grisly prize to Ivenzi, who had held the Great Hall while they fought. The swordlord agreed; the lieutenant would no doubt be glad to see the proof that the Black Tear commander would threaten Restov no more.
Then Lady Jamandi turned to them fully.
She thanked them—haltingly at first, her attention still half on the wounded and the smoldering tapestries, but with growing clarity as the reality of their aid settled in. “You lot have done more than was asked of you,” she told them. “By all accounts, you saved my life here.”
They watched as priests in Aldori colors arrived, tending to burned guards and dyeing their hands red with efforts to save those hovering at death’s door. One group of priests bent over Dravyn’s body, voices low and urgent.
At first, there was only darkness for him.
Then—sound. A high, piercing ring in his ears, rising behind the muffled thud of footsteps and the distant roar of flames. Hands pressed against his chest in rhythmic, desperate blows. Someone yelled for a medic. Pressure against his ribs. A surge of pain that felt like being dragged backward through a keyhole.
His heart lurched.
Again.
Again.
Then his lungs seized, and he coughed up a gurgle of blood and smoke as his eyes flew open. The world crashed back in: priests leaning over him, their hands and vestments streaked in his blood, one of them exclaiming that he was alive.
Around him, his companions gathered.
Perry joked weakly about “correcting that” on the field himself, trying to turn the horror into humor. Grotdor, eyes still a little wide, asked if Dravyn had seen the spectacle of his own fiery handiwork before the axe came down. Elroy, voice low and heavy, apologized for failing to protect him.
Jamandi’s words cut through the chatter.
“The day has been saved, heroes,” she said at last, once she was satisfied that the fires were contained and the most wounded tended. She advised them to get what rest they could—the ceremony at noon would still go on, and the following days, she warned, would be very, very busy indeed. They had earned their place among the company she intended to send into the Stolen Lands.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she finished. “You will be compensated in the morning.”
Nightfall¶
Later, long after the bodies had been moved and the fires fully extinguished, the heroes returned to guest quarters that no longer felt like rooms in a noble manor but like barracks after a siege. Rust and Perry, in particular, collapsed into sleep with the bone-deep weariness of those who had poured everything they had into survival.
Somewhere else in the manor, priests finished washing Dravyn’s blood from their hands and garments. His chest still ached where the axe had struck and where they had pounded him back to life, a deep bruise that would fade only slowly, but he breathed.
Grotdor, never one to waste an opportunity, inventoried their newly acquired gear with Perry, tallying potions and coins while the others slept. Elroy cleaned his shield and sword in silence, the motions methodical, eyes far away.
Outside, dawn crept slowly over Restov, light touching the repaired walls of Aldori Manor.
Inside, five weary would-be barons slept, not yet knowing that the fires they had just braved were only the first test—that the wild, tangled Stolen Lands awaited them beyond the city, with dangers that made even frost giants and Black Tear commanders seem small by comparison.
For now, though, they had survived the night.
And that was enough.