Duskbound

The guild had a postal system it used to communicate between members who weren't regularly in the guild hall at the same time. Everyone had a mailbox, even the irons. Velik was expecting a notice for an appointment to meet with Guild Master Nelspir again to arrive soon, so the first thing he did when he walked into the building the next day was check his box.

Or rather, the first thing he did was inquire if there was anything for him. Golds and silvers got actual mail slots that were attuned to them and couldn't be opened by just anybody. Everyone else got a regular old box locked up out of casual reach and had to wait for whoever was manning the desk to go check to see what was in there.

He'd have thought a simple lock and key would have been sufficient security, but apparently it wasn't for whatever reason. While he was standing there waiting, someone walked up behind him. At first, Velik assumed it was just another iron or bronze waiting for their turn, but [Apex Hunter] quickly disabused him of that notion.

He was already turning around to face the threat when a voice said, "You're the guy that pissed Pevril off?"

She was a head shorter than him, with long, thick, true-red hair pulled back into a tail and a splattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Hard blue eyes squinted up at him, faint lines in the corners. If he were to guess, he'd put her in her late thirties or early forties, and probably gold-ranked according to [Apex Hunter]. She was dressed in full field kit, the same as him, and though he was no expert at judging the value of gear just by looking at it, he was willing to bet she'd spent a good deal of money on it.

"I suppose I am. He seems temperamental, though. Wouldn't surprise me at all if there's a few of us running around here."

The woman barked out a laugh at that. "I'm Aria. They dragged me in to be the evaluator for your gold trial. Gotta say, you're a bit young for the rank."

"It wasn't my idea," Velik said.

"So I've heard. Frankly, this whole thing stinks of bullshit guild politics, but what are you going to do about it, right?"

"Right," Velik said slowly. Even for his tastes, this woman was a bit brusque.

"Anyway, finish up whatever you're doing here so we can go find out what crap job they're pawning off on us," Aria told him. "Bertrim wants us in his office right now. We're already late."

"We are?"

Just at that moment, the mail room attendant came back with a card in his hand. Velik didn't even need to take it to see an appointment time marked for twenty minutes ago printed on its surface. Damn it. That's not my fault!

Aria glanced at the card and snorted. "Guild policy says you're supposed to check for your mail first thing in the morning when you're in the city."

"I just woke up twenty minutes ago!"

She shrugged. "Don't stay out all night in a cat house then." When he shot her a surprised look, she tapped the side of her nose and said, "Can't fool this thing."

He supposed the perfume was faintly clinging to him, but really, even to his senses, it was barely there. The fact that she could smell it on him was impressive, especially considering one of the skills folded into [Apex Hunter] was [Scent Tracking].

"I live there," he explained.

"You live in a cat house? Well, you're either extremely wasteful with your vast fortune or… I don't know… you just have screwed up priorities?"

"No, I mean, I rent a room there, like at an inn."

Aria's face screwed up at that. "Why? Get a girlfriend or something."

"No, not for—You know what, never mind. Let's just go already."

He was supposed to meet Jensen soon, and he wanted this surprise meeting over with before he was late for that appointment. One of the lessons that had stuck with him was that it was rude to make someone wait, even if it was due to an unavoidable delay. How exactly that was rude behavior still eluded Velik, but like most of his etiquette lessons, he'd focused on memorizing the rules and left worrying about the explanations for why they were the way they were for some other time.

He covertly studied the gold-rank while he followed her across the guild hall. She had a smooth gait, perfectly balanced and easy. High physical, but maybe not as high as mine. High mental, too. She didn't try to [Identify] me, though. If she's got something, it must be a passive like mine. Her class probably feeds both those stats and ignores mystic, or else her gear skews heavily towards physical and mental.

"See something you like back there?" Aria asked as they climbed the stairs.

"I—What? No, that's not—"

"Relax, kid. Morgus's hairy balls, you're easy to get going."

Please don't let this be a long assignment. I don't think I can deal with this woman for an extended period of time.

* * *

Nelspir gave them a look that could have peeled paint when they entered his office. "You're late," he said.

"Sorry," Velik said. "I just got in and—"

"I don't care about your excuses. Just take a seat so I can go over this."

Getting real sick of today already.

"You know how this works, "Nelspir said after they'd both claimed a chair. "Velik is trialing to skip bronze and silver and jump straight to gold. That means he's got to do the same thing every other potential gold-ranked hunter does: complete a gold assignment solo."

"Yeah, so which one's it going to be? Tell me we're sending him after those wyverns nesting up in the mountains. There's a town up there with a nice set of hot springs I've been wanting to get back to," Aria said.

"While it will be a reptilian monster, it's not the wyverns. Lavirack's team took that one a few days ago, anyway.

"What other reptilian jobs are left? There were those sand drakes, but I thought that job got pulled last week. Wait. No. No! Absolutely not!"

"What is it?" Velik asked.

Aria was livid. "No fucking way am I doing that shit job," she snarled, rising from her chair and leaning onto the guild master's desk. Part of Velik wanted to laugh at the sight of a woman who didn't even clear five and a half feet tall trying to loom over anyone, but the look on Aria's face strangled any appearance of levity.

Nelspir waited calmly until she finished speaking, then said, "You owe the guild an evaluation as reparations for the… incident… You acknowledged and agreed to this when we stepped in and smoothed everything over in Valmath. The evaluator does not get to choose the assignment."

"Anything else," Aria argued. "I don't care how far away it is or how long it takes to do."

"This was the compromise we all agreed on," Nelspir said. "You don't have a choice if you want to retain your rank, Aria."

"Son of a bitch," she swore, spinning around and giving Velik the evil eye. "You'd better be real fucking good at your job, newbie. I want this thing hunted down and dead inside a day when we get there, or I'm failing your ass."

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Velspir said, his voice cracking like a whip. "You will do your job as an evaluator, impartially and professionally. Do I make myself clear?"

"Does anyone feel like telling me what the job actually is?" Velik cut in.

"It's a gods damned hydra," Aria said. "A swamp hydra, to be specific. It's been open on the books for months because nobody wants to kill it. Going to be a miserable experience getting out there, a miserable experience hunting the thing down, a miserable experience killing it, and a miserable experience disposing of it so it doesn't come back."
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Hydras can come back after they die? That wasn't in the bestiary.

Aria cast a suspicious glance at the guild master, then back at Velik. Finally, she let out a frustrated sigh and said, "Get your kit packed up. We're leaving in an hour."

"I actually have another appointment in a few minutes," Velik said. "I was told this was going to take a few days to sort out."

"Fine, whatever. Take care of that. Be back here in four hours. I'm going to pamper myself into a drunken stupor before we leave. It might be the last time I'm truly clean before I die."

With that said, Aria stormed out of the office. Velik tried not to wince as the door slammed behind her. "Is the job really that bad?" he asked Velspir.

"I'm afraid it's not going to be a pleasant one. I didn't want this to be what you got stuck with, but… politics are politics. The silver lining to this whole debacle is that if you can kill this swamp hydra, there's no way anyone can deny your promotion to gold. Aria's mad now, but she knows it's not your fault and she'll calm down. You'll get a fair evaluation from her. Just follow her instructions and do your job. If half of what Torwin told me is true, this shouldn't be outside your capabilities."

"Right," Velik said. "How far away is this? I have some other things going on that are time sensitive and I need to plan around this trip."

"Let me fill you in on the details before you go," Nelspir said, reaching for a folder on his desk.