Chapter 32 (Patreon)

Harold took the inner stairs at a steady pace, counting each step beneath his heel. His palm skimmed over the worn stone of the central column; the ridges pressed grit into his skin, cool and unyielding. His breath came slow and measured, ribs tightening on the inhale as he dropped down another step. Sounds carried differently at this hour. Voices from below rose in broken strands. There was the hollow thud of someone moving crates in storage. A burst of laughter stopped in the administrative corridor. He let the faint tremor in his calf settle before he moved on.

Two sets of boots fell in behind him.

He didn’t need to look. He knew the rhythm.

He glanced over his shoulder briefly, then closed his eyes for a second, composing himself.

“Elroy. Jenkins.”

Both men straightened at once as if the sound of their names had yanked a cord through their spines.

"My Lord." Elroy puffed his chest out, only making the strap of his scabbard ride up under his arm.

Jenkins stood beside him, smiling, clearly struggling to suppress the smile into a professional expression.

Harold turned on the stairs and leaned one shoulder against the wall, blocking their way down for a moment.

He paused on the step, eyes steady, and let silence stretch a heartbeat too long. "How," he said, letting the word hang, "did the two of you end up on the same shift?"

Elroy’s grin broke through first.

"Won it." Elroy grinned.

“You won a duty assignment.”

"In a dice game," Elroy said, as if that improved the situation. "Traded with Kessler. Went all in. Clean sweep."

Jenkins nodded eagerly. “We will protect you, my Lord.”

Harold stared at them long enough that the smile started to slip off Jenkins’ face, and Elroy’s shoulders came down a fraction.

“Of course you will,” Harold said, and turned back to the stairs.

Behind him, they fell in step. Chins tucked, eyes forward, hands pressed tight to their sides. Elroy's finger twitched against the hilt, just once, as if he nearly saluted. Jenkins' lips flexed, a smile threatening to escape before he pressed them flat again.

For all their impulsiveness and noise, Harold had seen both on the training field. He'd watched Elroy dismantle a man with three movements, so efficient it seemed an accident, and Jenkins held a mana edge steady through a full rotation of opponents without his breathing changing.

Tier two was close for both of them.

He heard Elroy inhale as if to speak and cut him off without turning.

“Not a word.”

“Yes, my Lord,” they said in perfect unison.

The lower hall opened in front of him.

Afternoon light came in through the high windows, laying long bars across the stone floor. People waited. The space hummed with layered noise: low conversation, gear shifting, metal clinking, the restless shift of boots. The tension in the room seemed to fall in time with the barely audible pulse of movement.

Sarah’s team had claimed the space near the long table.

Robert stood with his back to the wall, one hand moving as he spoke with Theo, both of them bent over a rough sketch scratched into a wax tablet. Theo had a stylus between his fingers and kept adding short lines, then wiping them away with the side of his thumb as Robert argued a point.

Jace and Mira stood a little apart, their heads close together. Mira spoke with sharp, quick gestures, two fingers marking positions in the air while Jace answered in shorter motions, the hilt of his blade resting against his palm as if the weight of it helped him think.

Sarah stood alone, her blonde hair falling around her face loosely.

She had one foot up on the bench and the bow across her thigh, a small cloth in her hand as she worked oil into the wood with slow, deliberate strokes. The weapon caught the light differently than the older ones; the finish was still new enough to show the grain where it curved into the grip.

It was Landing made.

There were only a few so far. The limbs came from new laminations the bowyers experimented with: horn and wood pressed and bound after several attempts. They lacked the kobold bows' clean cast, but kept their tension and didn’t crack in the damp. She wondered if she was built like this bow—patched together from things that did not quite belong, still untested in the world, but holding strong where it mattered.

She ran her thumb along the inside curve, checking the surface by feel more than sight, and Harold slowed without meaning to.

She had tied her hair back for travel, the short knife at her hip sitting where her hand would fall without looking, the quiver already slung over her shoulder.

Elroy and Jenkins moved past him half a step, caught themselves, and retreated to position, both fixing their faces into deep, unwavering professionalism—until Mira noticed and rolled her eyes.

Theo looked up first.

“My Lord,” he said, straightening.

Robert followed a second later, then Jace.

Sarah finished the stroke she was on before she lifted her head.

The hall settled, the sound drawing inward the way it always did when he entered.

Harold let his gaze move across the group, taking in packs, straps, and the way their gear sat on their shoulders.

“Ready?” he asked.

Robert opened his mouth.

Theo cut him off.

"We were just arguing about whether we’re taking the ridge line or the lower trail once we clear the outer markers," Theo said, cutting off Robert.

"We’re taking the ridge," Mira said flatly, not missing a beat. "He just doesn’t want to climb with a full pack."

"I don’t want to climb with a full pack because it’s stupid to climb with a full pack if there’s no reason to climb with a full pack," Robert shot back.

Jace said nothing, but the corner of his mouth moved.

Sarah set the bow across her knees and carefully wiped the remaining oil from her fingers onto the cloth in her palm.

Harold felt Elroy and Jenkins shift behind him as if they had just remembered they were supposed to look like statues.

He stepped forward into the space with them, the smell of oiled wood and travel gear rising around him, and the day moved with him into the hall.

Harold stopped a few paces from them and let the argument about the ridge and the lower trail run for another breath. Robert had started using both hands now, Theo had that patient look that meant he was about to dismantle the entire plan point by point, and Mira had already turned away in theatrical disgust.

A sound slipped out of Harold that lived somewhere between a groan and a word.

“Children,” he muttered under his breath.

Elroy choked on a laugh and turned it into a cough so violent Jenkins had to thump him once between the shoulders.

Harold looked at Robert. "You’ll take the ridge. I listed some crafter perks here that help with stamina and endurance; they can become very powerful if you learn to manipulate them. The heavier your pack, the better." Robert's jaw dropped, shoulders sinking a fraction, as if the air itself had turned heavier.

Robert groaned. Theo smiled triumphantly at him.

“Do you know where I’m sending you?” he asked Sarah.

She set the bow on the table and leaned her weight against it, fingers resting along the curve of the grip.

“Yes,” she said. “Or I think I do. You’re sending us to the Blackjaws.”

He gave a short hmph that might have been approval.

“Yes. I am.”

He stepped to the long table and pushed aside the cluttered wax tablet Robert and Theo had been using. From the leather tube at his side, he drew a rolled map and spread it flat, weighting the corners with whatever was closest to hand—a whetstone, Mira’s spare knife, the pommel of Jace’s sword.

The Blackjaws rose in inked ridges along the western edge of the peninsula, teeth biting into the land where the forest gave way to broken stone and narrow valleys.

“There are things I need done there before the year turns,” Harold said, one finger touching the first mark. Theo leaned in while Robert stopped talking.

“These,” Harold went on, tapping a series of small circles along the approaches, “are staging points you can use to delve deeper into the range. There's high ground and water access. Defensible approaches. I need them scouted, cleared, and made usable. Kill anything that claims them. Mark the routes in and out. Establish supply caches for the follow-on teams if you can do it without drawing attention. In general, explore and tame it. “These couple of points—" He pointed to areas that looked like waterfalls. "You will love.”

His hand shifted to a shaded region farther in.

“These you avoid. Anything further into the Blackjaws, you’ll have trouble with. There is a gorge there, marked by a ring of collapsed trees and a constant echo, even when there is no wind. We called it Widow's Sound. Every evening, you hear screaming at dusk like metal grinding under stone. No one who tried to cross there returned.”

Mira bent closer, reading the notation written into the map.

"For a few years at least, don't go to these points," Harold warned. "You walk into those now, and you die. The monsters in that area are more threatening than the Thresher King, and they aren’t the region boss or the relic guardians."

Jace blanched, committing the shapes to memory.

“The Blackjaws become the spine of the peninsula in about six years,” Harold said, voice steady. “Everything that moves north or south has to pass within reach of them. Whoever holds them controls the interior. That needs to be us.”

He unrolled a second, smaller sheet and laid it beside the map. This one was covered in tight script and crude sketches.

“Known monsters in the region,” he said. “Movement patterns where I remember. And perks associated with them.”

Sarah’s eyes flicked to the list despite herself.

“You’ll see some I marked for you,” Harold went on, tapping one line with the back of his knuckle. “This one in particular. Increases damage with speed. You built your entire style around it before. You take that again, and everything you do when you get faster will be increased.”

She didn’t look up. “Kinda a pain to take down though,” Harold said.

The others had gone still, reading over her shoulder.

“There are tasks in this region I need done beyond these couple of staging areas,” he continued. Robert shifted, absorbing the scale of it. Theo’s thumb hovered over one of the approach lines, tracing the elevation without touching the map.

“You’re going a little sooner than I planned for you to go, but you also have a broken perk,” Harold said, looking at each of them in turn.

Sarah finally lifted her head.

“At the end of the year, or maybe the beginning of next, I will be pushing a full campaign into the mountains with the goal of this point.” He pointed to a circled area near the center of the Blackjaws.

“That point is where one of the dungeons for the region is; unfortunately, the blackjaw goblins have built a city on top of it. I need to claim that city as they are holding a couple of objects I need to claim.”

Theo leaned closer, eyes moving between the contour lines and the note scratched beside it. Mira shifted to see past Sarah’s shoulder. Robert let out a low whistle and then caught himself.

The hall had drawn in around the table without anyone calling for silence. Even Elroy and Jenkins had stopped trying to look important and were reading the map like it might move if they blinked. Harold wasn’t worried about it; anyone who was in the hall had taken more stringent oaths and had been vetted by Margaret.

“I need the staging areas cleared and usable,” Harold went on, then slid a second packet across to Sarah. The parchment was thicker, tied with a strip of dyed thread. “And while you’re doing that, you will act as my voice to the Lords in this belt.”

She untied it and spread the sheets. Names. Crests. Distances marked in the margins. Short notes in Margaret’s hand about temperaments and past dealings.

“A few of them traded with us before,” Harold said. “You should be able to buy supplies there if you need to. I want you to speak to them in person. Tell them a campaign is coming. Tell them to start setting aside grain and to bring their troops to readiness. If they ask what they get in return, you have the authority to make that decision.”

Theo’s head came up fast. He looked at Sarah, then back at Harold, and the color drained out of his face as the scale of it settled.

Harold kept his eyes on Sarah.

“These plans only work if you and I move together,” he said. “There are pressures building on this peninsula that will break it apart if we let them grow. I watched it happen once already.”

The words sat between them with the weight of something neither of them needed explained. It held for a moment, stretching between them as distant footsteps echoed up the hall, fading into the hush. The thick air pressed in, carrying a conversation neither dared voice aloud.

Sarah’s grip on the parchment loosened. Her mouth curved in a small, rueful line.

“I just wanted to explore,” she said.

“I know,” Harold answered, the edge gone out of his voice. “So I’m giving you time to do exactly that. Eight months before the first column leaves the Landing and starts walking toward you. Eight months where you move at your own pace, take the routes you want, chase whatever ruin or ridgeline catches your eye.”

He tapped the monster list with two fingers.

“And while you’re out there, you collect these. The Blackjaw range holds things that will push you harder than anything inside the peninsula. You always did your best work when you were moving too fast for the enemy to keep up.”

Sarah turned to Mira, who looked at her and nodded while Jace was attempting to hide his excitement. Robert approached from behind Sarah nodded to Harold. His time in the scout program had matured the young man. Violence and responsibility had a way of doing that.

Harold let them have that moment, then lifted his hand and crooked two fingers.

“Elia.”

She had been standing near an alcove with a knot of smiths, speaking in low tones over a rack of wrapped shapes. At his gesture, she broke away and started across the hall.

She crossed with the smiths at her back, but Kers walked at the center of them, and the others matched his pace to his without thinking about it. He carried his bundle tucked against one forearm as if it weighed nothing, beard still tied in the leather thong he used when he worked the big hammer, soot ground into the lines of his hands, no amount of washing ever quite removed.

Robert saw him first.

“Kers—”

The word turned into a bark of laughter as the big German closed the last steps in two strides and caught him in both arms. Robert’s boots left the stone before he could protest, lifted clear as Kers crushed him in a hug that knocked the breath out of him.

“You are still in one piece!” Kers boomed, voice rolling up into the rafters. “They did not break you in the woods.”

Robert got an arm free long enough to pound him once between the shoulders. “Put me down, you mountain.”

Kers set him back on his feet with the same care he used when he lowered a hot billet onto the anvil, hands lingering on Robert’s shoulders while he looked him over, pride plain on his face.

“Good,” he said, nodding to himself. “You stand differently now. Less hesitant.”

The other smiths had already reached the table and laid their wrapped items down in a neat line. No one spoke. They stepped back as soon as the weight left their hands and waited, eyes shifting to Kers in the way men did when someone they respected was about to speak.

Elia moved to one side, wiping her palms on her apron, watching the exchange with an expression that held both impatience and satisfaction.

Kers finally turned from Robert and faced Harold, giving him a short, formal dip of the head that still somehow carried the same force as the hug.

“My Lord,” he said, then glanced at the line of leather-wrapped shapes on the table. “We are ready.”

The smell of oil came off the bundles as he stepped up to them, the hall quieting again as every eye shifted to his hands.

Kers shifted his weight and hooked a thumb toward Elia, then rattled off something in a thick braid of German that rolled across the table like a cart over cobbles.

“Die schöne Frau kann anfangen, ja? The beautiful woman, she begins,” he said, and threw Robert a wink the size of a hammer blow.

Elia’s mouth tightened. The look she gave him carried the promise of a thrown tool later, but the corner of it lifted anyway as she stepped forward and dropped the small chest onto the table.

“Try saying that again when you’re asking me to heal your burns,” she muttered.

Kers only grinned wider and folded his arms.

Elia flipped the latches and pushed the lid open. Glass caught the light.

Rows of stoppered vials lay nested in padded compartments, the liquid inside each one holding a faint, steady glow that shifted toward amber when the sun from the high windows struck it. The smell that rose from the chest carried crushed leaf, bitter root, and the sharp, clean edge of distilled alcohol.

Robert let out a low sound under his breath. Mira stepped closer without realizing she had moved.

Harold came around the table and leaned in, one hand braced on the wood. He did not touch the potions. His eyes lifted instead and fixed on Sarah.

“I trust I don’t need to tell you these aren’t for careless use,” he said. “That chest is a caravan’s worth of trade.”

She met his gaze and gave a small, single nod. She knew the value of this chest well after her time in the mountains.

Elia reached in and lifted five of the vials, setting them apart from the rest with deliberate care. She looked to Harold, waiting. He tipped his chin once.

“These are for you,” she said to the team, her voice steadying as she moved into explanation. “Drink them now. You’ll feel the change in your chestfirst. Strength, speed, endurance, all of it increased by roughly a fifth.”

Theo picked one up and held it to the light, watching the glow cling to the glass.

“The ingredients came from Dalens Hold,” Elia went on. “Adventurers brought them from a quest into the Verdant Forest. Every component costs us quite a bit because they are hard to find, and I've failed more than a few times in making these. These are the only successful batch so far, and the first uncommon physical augmentation potions produced here.”

She rested her palm lightly on the open chest.

“The Lord walked me through the stabilisation process himself,” she added, glancing once at Harold. “Without that guidance, I would still be burning the mixture at the binding stage.”

Harold said nothing. He watched the team instead, the way their hands caressed the vials with more care than they ever showed their weapons.

The first time he had managed the brew, the increase had held at fifteen percent, and the mixture had fought him every step, trying to separate under its own potency. Elia’s version carried a deeper color, the suspension cleaner, the mana signature steady even to his untrained senses. She had reached twenty percent already, weeks earlier than any projection he had allowed himself.

The final version he had made allowed up to 50%, but the ingredients were infinitely rare and the potion devilishly hard to make. This version here had been the one he had made in the thousands.

The World-first perk for the first uncommon potion he had earned added a stabilisation factor that had settled into her work, then her own world-first perk had piled on.  She would become a potent alchemist, and Harold was investing a serious amount of time into her.

Kers made a low, pleased sound deep in his throat as he looked over the chest, the kind of approval he usually reserved for a clean weld or a blade that rang true on the anvil. Elia shot him a glance that tried for irritation and landed somewhere closer to pride.

Harold kept both palms on the table and moved his eyes across the five of them, then tipped his fingers in a small motion for Elia to go on.

She reached back into the chest and lifted out a row of thicker glass cylinders, their contents clouded with a dull, restless glow that pulsed when they shifted in her grip. She set ten of them down in a line separate from the others.

“You’ve seen these before,” she said. “From the Verdant Forest raid.”

Robert’s mouth pulled into a tight grin at that, because he hadn’t seen them, and who didn’t like explosives. Theo leaned closer, reading the faint etching along the neck.

“They’re stronger now,” Elia continued. “With the same base reaction, but the components came out of our own plots this time. The garden stock carries the relic’s influence. We’ve tested them against targets, and the blast radius increased by nearly a fifth.”

She slid them slightly apart so no two touched.

Her hand went back into the chest and came out more slowly.

Five vials this time. The glass looked almost smoked; the liquid inside was a dark purple, and it almost swallowed the light instead of holding it. When she set them down, her hand seemed to shake a little.

Elia stared at them for a moment longer than she had at the others, then looked up at Harold. He gave her a small, steady nod.

“These…” she began, and exhaled through her nose. “These are poison.”

Mira’s head came up. Jace’s fingers stilled on the table.

“I couldn’t brew this,” Elia said, frustration threading through her voice. “I tried every technique I know. The components refused to marry. The suspension collapsed every time. It would not come together for me.”

Harold stepped in beside her and reached for one of the dark vials, holding it up so the light from the high windows slid along the curved glass.

“I brewed these; they are strong enough to affect the Thresher King,” he said.

“It won’t kill him, though. It is a weak anticoagulant paired with a neurotoxin. What it does is slow the body and keep wounds open. Anything that bleeds will keep bleeding. Anything that moves will find its coordination slipping.”

He turned the vial slightly. Inside, a fine mechanism of pale metal and glass could be seen nested in the core, a tiny spindle with etched markings and a knob outside the vial.

“Rimi built these, special,” he said. “One charge at a time. You twist the base to measure a single dose. Five uses in each vial.”

He lowered it back to the table with care.

“I do not have an antidote,” he added. “Don’t let this touch your skin. Don’t break these near you, as the fumes are also dangerous. For best use, it needs to be released inside the target's body.”

Theo swallowed and nodded once, committing that to memory.

Elia folded the chest's lid partway down, her hand resting on the wood as she looked at Sarah and the others.

“The rest is another 30 healing potions,” she said. “This represents considerable wealth and effort from Lord Harold, and we insisted on paying for all of this from his own wages.”

Kers stepped in before the weight of Elia’s words could settle too deeply, one hand coming down across Robert’s back in a blow that rang like a mallet on a shield. Robert rocked forward with a grunt and then planted his feet, grinning as he straightened.

Kers said with approval, then moved to the table and pulled the wrapping from a long, narrow bundle.

A row of arrows lay inside, their heads unlike anything the Landing had produced before. The tips held the dull sheen of steel, but behind them the material shifted into something darker and thicker, a glass that carried a faint clouding through its core as if smoke had been trapped inside.

Kers lifted one and held it between two fingers, all humor gone from his face.

“Composite,” he said. “Steel point for entry. The body is glass, but not your window glass. Rimi and I worked on the structure together. We designed this with the Lord's input. This will penetrate thick hide and maybe plate.” He shrugged, “depends on whether you can send an arrow like how Vera can throw a Javelin.”

He tapped the swollen section just behind the tip.

“Inside is a chamber. Your poison. When the glass fractures, it releases into the wound.”

He set it back with care.

The next bundle came open under the hands of one of the other smiths. Short swords, their edges so clean they seemed to draw the light toward them.

“Fine-edge work,” Kers said, nodding toward the craftsman. “His perk holds the line where others lose it. They cut deeper, and they hold the edge. You will not spend your nights with a whetstone every time you draw blood.”

The smith gave a short, embarrassed shrug, but his eyes never left the blades.

Kers reached for the last wrapped shape himself, not rushing as he stripped the leather away.

The axe came free into the light.

The head carried the long, bearded sweep of a northern style, the line of the blade curving down into a narrow hook while the back flared into a weight that promised leverage in the cut. The metal held a layered tone where different treatments met, the edge bright and cold, the body darker with a faint pattern running through it. The haft had been shaped to Robert’s grip, the leather binding darkened with oil and worked until it would not slip even in a wet hand.

Kers turned it once and then faced Robert directly.

“This,” he said, “I made.”

Another Smith cleared his throat and lifted two fingers.

“I did the edge.”

Kers nodded without looking away from Robert.

“He did the edge,” he agreed. “Best edge we can make now. Best weapon we can make now.”

Robert’s hands hovered for a second before he took it, the weight settling into him as if it had been waiting there. He looked up, and the thanks never made it into words. He stepped forward and pulled Kers into a hug that was returned just as hard, the big smith’s laughter rolling through the hall.

“Family,” Kers said into his shoulder. “Different roads, same blood.”

He bent his head and added something lower, meant for Robert alone.

“Go find your inspiration. Go see the things to inspire the art you love. You make me something next time, Ja?”

Robert pulled back, eyes bright, and nodded once.

The final bundle opened under Elia’s hands.

Leather armor, cut and fitted in matched sets. Thicker pieces sewn into a flexible backing, reinforced at the ribs and shoulders, and the surface treated to a low sheen.

Theo ran his hand along one of the breast pieces, testing the give.

“About time,” Mira said quietly.

The table had become an armory, the work of the Landing laid out in steel, glass, leather, and light.

​

Harold watched the understanding move through them as their hands passed over new leather instead of stitched goblin scraps, as Robert kept testing the balance of the axe as if it might vanish if he stopped touching it, as Mira turned one of the fine-edge blades just enough to see her own eye in the steel. The noise in the hall had thinned to the small sounds of gear being lifted and set down, the creak of straps, the soft clink of glass back in Elia’s chest.

He drew a slow breath and stepped closer to the table, forcing them to look up from their work.

“I am putting a considerable amount of labor and material into the five of you,” he said, voice even, hands resting on the wood between the maps and the weapons.

Their attention came fully onto him now.

“The Velthari will come at the end of the second year,” he continued. “Last time they claimed half the peninsula before they were stopped, and it wasn’t even by us. They just woke up the wrong monster.”

Theo’s fingers stilled on the strap he had been adjusting. Jace’s expression lost its trace of excitement and settled into something harder.

“This basin is not my objective,” Harold said. “I could control it now if I moved. I am preparing as best I can to stop thousands of humans from dying.”

He let the words sit with them.

“What you are carrying out of this hall,” he went on, “is not a gift. It is an investment in the ground we will be standing on when that happens.”

His gaze moved from one to the next and came back to Sarah.

“Go have your fun, explore. But I need these things done if we are going to repel them.”

​