Velyan – 1st Harvestwatch 1383
Wolvsbane, Trifectorate Confederation
"Walls may be rebuilt and crowns recast, yet a fellowship tempered in shared scars endures beyond any ruin. Let this guild be that fellowship, a lantern for every wandering blade."
- Helena Dragonbreaker, written in Helena's Guide to the Vanguard
The first thing I tasted was iron.
I knew the flavor: the arcane residue that hangs in the air when a teleport circle tears itself open, the same metallic steam that vents from an overheated blaster on the Great Tifan Wall.
The circle spat us into the upper forum of some city in the Trifectorate Confederancy, and the chaos met us with disarming courtesy. Medical pavilions – bright silks rubbing shoulders with rag-stitched canvas – crowded the marble arches. Lanterns glowed from every arch, but their warmth couldn't drown the chorus of groans mixed withhe rust-sweet smell of blood.
I managed three steps off the rune-scarred dais, the mithril circuits melted from overheating, before my knees buckled. A brewer-spider no bigger than a thumb had nailed me during the retreat – a fiery sting first, then merciful numbness as the venom shut down every protesting nerve on its way to the heart. An antidote existed, but it cost more crowns than a townhouse in the M and I had spent every coin on gear for a battle now lost.
.
, their knowledge of the bite would not change my fate. Their time on the other hand, could change others. There were plenty of wounds on display: orcs with cauterized stumps, kobolds missing half their snouts, goblins holding stomachs with entrails leaking between fingers.
I braced a soldier with a gash from shoulder to mid chest, half-dragging him to a triage mat. Then I helped where other Concordant Priests needed help. I wrapped bandages until my vision blurred. Pain was distant; numbness crept up my wrist like an unhurried tide.
"Velyan?"
The voice was gravel wrapped in discipline.
An orc stood ten paces off; the same orc I'd fought beside for eight soul-grinding hours on the wall – sixty hours into the siege, if memory served correctly. We'd traded lives back and forth until a surge of flame breathing ants split us. I'd assumed him dead. Now he loomed alive, bleeding from a dozen slashes and welted with bruises
"Qapla. Good to see you," I said.
Qapla crossed the space in three strides and swept me into a rib-creaking hug that smelled of sweat, iron, and impossible luck. When he set me down, his grin was far too broad for a graveyard.
"Great to see you friend." He rumbled, "I thought you were ash. Turns out Valaris stands with you yet."
"Or laughs at me. Hard to tell." I managed, swallowing bile and the growing weight in my arm.
A hand like a smith's vice clamped my shoulder. I looked up into the stern face of a half giant cleric whose robe strained across mountain sized shoulders.
"If you can stand, work." He growled, already gliding toward a man with half a face. As the half-giant stood over him, words of prayer rolled forward. With it a chorus of screams from the man. The flesh on his face writhed in response to calls to the god of war, flesh knitted in a beautiful weave over bone. Healing by a priest of Valaris would get you back on the battlefield, but it feels like a brand hammered onto raw nerves. The air stank of ozone and fear.
I turned back just as Qapla knelt beside the legless woman I helped bandage mere moments ago, closing her eyes. Another casualty. He looked up and his expression shifted rapidly from grief to alarm.
"Velyan, your hand!" He almost shouted. At once he was in front of me, inspecting the now dead hand. The bite was somewhat swollen, but the story was told by the black lines of venom that traced an elegant filigree up my forearm. I wretched my hand away from his guilt-stricken eyes.
"Even if the cure sat in front of me, I couldn't afford it."
"How long?"
"Hour, maybe two." Three at most before the heart stops. Words best left unsaid.
"There are hundreds of healers here," Without waiting, Qapla cupped his hands to his mouth and let out a bellow befitting of his size. "CURE FOR BREWER SPIDER BITE! ANYONE?"
The camp around us stilled for a brief moment, the faces of those around us contorting into a wave of confusion before transitioning into one of grim pity. The half-giant looked up from his work, murmured a prayer he knew would go unanswered, and moved onto the next patient without a backwards glance.
Qapla took a deep prepatory breath.
"Qapla. Enough." I stated sharply, "The cure requires a Journeyman Alchemist, rare ingredients, and has a price neither of us can afford. Save your lungs."
His shoulders s, but he thumped his chest once, "Then I will remember you."
"Well, I'm not dead yet. Calm down."
"Pardon?" The voice behind me was low, warm, and wrapped in a northern accent. "You need cure, yes?"
I wheeled around, but before I had the chance, Qapla asked the question that I held.
"You have one?"
The man or rather animal that stood there was a white wolf standing upright. Blood and plants matted his fur in various places. He wore a tan robe cinched at the waist, at his hip a brown satchel that was filled with potion bottles. Many were filled, more were empty.
"Yes, my master has the cure." His eyes, were impossibly calm, "He lies at the blue tent. He will provide."
He pointed at a tall blue tent in the distance. Before we could speak, he bounded off, already seeking another soul to save.
My boots were moving before my thoughts had a chance to catch up-- the numbness diffusing throughout my veins, every movement a distant thud compared to the sputtering of my heart. As the chill spread past the blade of my shoulder, strength fled. I crumpled. Qapla's roar echoed through the lantern-lit forum, and darkness swept in like a closing gate.
Like a theater curtain between acts, darkness just enough to let sound seep through: the brittle clink of glass vials, the pop of resin on a brazier, soft feet padding over reed mats. Voices floated in and out of range, warped as though spoken underwater.
"--I don't think this is necessary." Qapla protested.
"Be still," answered a voice light as sifted flour, whose tone carried the gentle fall of stone-dust on its octaves. "Infection waits for no one."
I pried my eyelids open. Harsh daylight speared through a gap in the tent's entrance flap, striking a suspended whirl of incense smoke and turning it gold. Shelves sagged under clay jars, stoppered gourds, and bundles of herbs that perfumed the air with peppery sage and rot-sweet comfrey. Copper alembics hissed over colored liquids climbed their spirals like cautious snakes.
At a workbench stood a cobalt-blue kobold, mortar flashing between quick, precise claws. Qapla sat beside me on a three-legged chair – good wood, but it creaks under his bulk – his arms mottled with poultice-soaked bandages and narrow leaves slick against raw skin
The kobold hustled to a rack, a viscous amber solution into a fat-bellied flask, stoppers it, then spins as the white wolf from earlier bursts through the entrance accompanied by a gust of outside heat.
"Master. A green man is looking for you." The wolf spoke as he filled vials into his stuffed satchel, dropping the onto the clutter of the kobold's desk, "Calls himself Arson."
"Show him in." the kobold replied without looking up, already filling the newly emptied vials.
The wolf vanishes as fast as he appeared. Qapla pivoted, his eyes widening as his gaze met mine. "You are still breathing."
"Takes more than a spider to sign my death warrant," I muttered, though my arm pulsed in synchronization with my heartbeat. Black webs under the skin have faded to a smokey gray. It was progress, if not victory.
"Stay where you are," the kobold said without turning, voice clipped. "The antivenom slows the brew, it doesn't banish it. You stand too soon, you will fall again – and next time I won't waste a second vial."
"How many crowns do I owe you for the first one?" I braced for a number that would hollow my purse to bedrock.
Before he can answer,
"Humperdink, there you are. Wolfsbane's half on fire and you're hiding in here brewing leaf juice."
"Where else would I be?" The kobold—Humperdink, apparently—kept grinding, but one ear fin flicked in irritation.
The goblin dusted an imaginary mote from his lapel. "Helena's alive. Said to ready the old Vanguard House." His gaze finally lands on Qapla and me, "You two employable?"
Qapla's brow ridges knitted.
"Yes, yes, tragic." The goblin waved a dismissive hand, then seemed to catch himself, eyes widening. "Missing both? Hadn't heard that." He clears his throat, soldiering on. "Point is, Guild needs bodies. Roof leaks, bar's dry, monsters at the gate—business as usual."
"You asked about payment; Work off the debt. Help Arson refurbish the guildhall before Helena arrives."
I weighed the throbbing in my arm, the empty coin pouch hidden in my boot, and the image of that matronly orc holding the teleport crystal while death pressed at her back. My choice was already made.
"Done."
Qapla thumped his chest. "I owe Helena a warrior's debt. I'll work."
Arson's grin shows a glint of gold in one incisor. "Marvelous. Pack your grit and follow me."
He pivoted on his heel. Qapla offered a forearm—but caught himself, bandage encrusted hands hovering. I clasped his wrist instead and levered myself upright. The world teeters, then steadies. The
Humperdink tossed me a small linen satchel. "Three more doses if the numbness returns. Use sparingly; ingredients are rarer than humble princes."
"I'll stretch them," I promised.
Outside, the camp's clamor washed over us—the hammering of splints, the chanting of priests, the weeping of children; each living within their own world of turmoil. Clouds have thickened, and the sunlight was the color of tarnished copper. Arson strode ahead, coat-tails flicking, weaving through stretcher-bearers with balletic ease. Qapla shadowed him, spear haft lashed to his forearm like a bayonet, clearing a path by presence alone.
I cinched the satchel at my belt, rolled my shoulder, and followed. Whatever waited at the Vanguard House—
Two weeks blurred past in sawdust and sweat.
Arson's "guildhouse" proved to be a three-story ruin wedged between a derelict roofing shop and an abandoned candleshop that smelled like old tallow in hot weather. The ground floor tap room still had its stone hearth, but everything else – rafters, bar, and even the south wall was filled with dry rot. We started with triage: Qapla went to the teleportation zone and gathered a squad of volunteers. Around fifteen came in total, proving immensely helpful in hauling away rubble and fixing up the tavern proper. Meanwhile, I sketched a repair plan on the back of shipment ledgers and bribed neighborhood carpenters with the promise of future ale.
Children also appeared in the streets after a few days. Orphans, run-aways, the too-small and too-clever, who slipped through refugee camp head-counts. They came because I handed out bread heels and didn't chase them off. They stayed because I paid in supper and roof space for anything they learned on the street: which merchant shops had the cheapest grain, which guards were bored enough to accept a song instead of a bribe, where the city posted day-labor lists. Information for food, that was our contract.
Mornings began with Qapla's drill. He'd drag out the able-boded refugees into a courtyard and run them through shield-formations and exercises. The thud of practice spears against barrel lids echoed down the lane like festival drums. Even maimed, he was magnetic; men and women who'd never worn breastplate would peer through the alleys. Their presence only given to watch the orc bark cadence.
While Qapla forged soldiers, I helped Arson forge structure: ration counts, floor-by-floor supply lists, a rotating chore well. The youngest orphans – Penny, Quill, Nyx – slept in the balcony loft where an old chandelier sat. The older ones began to fix up the candle house next door, making the warehouse a home.
Afternoons belonged to repairs. Two orphans, Kor and Thistle – an orc and a kobold respectively - worked in tandem, winching beams into place while Seraph, an air aetherling, scampered along the rafters knotting rope stays. Qapla secured the help of the other volunteers by putting repairs under the guise of muscle training. But based on their smiles while helping, I suspected they were smarter than they let on.
Evenings were quieter. Seraph had a bone-flute he played softly in the evenings, that drifted through the tavern like smoke. The soldiers listening and joining in on instruments they knew. Some told stories of old adventures or kills they had. Kor, the eldest orphan, was entranced by their stories.
But all the work and bustle was coming to an end. Tonight the taproom smelled of fresh lime-wash and stew thick with barley and meat. The first floor was almost presentable: bar planed smooth, benches re-pegged, a crude sign painted above the hearth displaying, Vanguard Guild of the Silver Hunt.
Outside, rain muttered against shutter slats. In the back of the taproom lay a courtyard where Qapla ran the recruits through the last light drills. They were soaked, but their timing was crisp and their eyes bright. They saw their progress from the last two weeks, as did I. Qapla would be a good teacher should he ever retire.
I ladled stew into bowls where the nine kids who decided to call this place a home sat. They queued in a rough order of height, except Seraph, who preferred windowsills to chairs, and Ashra – a changeling – who slipped through the line under a borrowed dwarf shape just to make Penny, the youngest, laugh.
Qapla brought the trainees in to dry up for the night and eat a good meal. Quickly the taproom filled with chaos, but it was a good chaos. Although we would one day have to face the consequences of the Great Fall, tonight was a night of rest.
I was wiping ladles when the street door boomed, shuttering in its hinges as a forceful knock echoed across the room.
Silence rippled across the room. The trainee's hands drifted to their weapons, the kids retreating to the shadows. No calm reasonable person knocks on a door like that. As my hand touched my blade for the first time since I got bit, the knocking resumed. Three heavy beats, deliberate, made by someone confident the wood would hold.
I made eye contact with Qapla, nodded, and crossed the plank floor. My heart thudded as adrenaline began to race through me, and I opened the door.
Helena filled the doorway.
She was slightly shorter than memory had painted, but broader, carved from corded muscle and scar tissue. Iron bark braced the stump of her left arm. Her right braced a crutch that ended where her leg should have continued. Rain hissed off a travel cloak shredded by claws and acid burns. Her single remaining eye – a molten amber – swept the taproom, counting souls like a quartermaster tallying gear. When it landed on Qapla, something in the orc's granite face cracked; he dropped to one knee, fist to chest.
"Rise, soldier," Helena said – voice ground low, rich, unbroken. "Palaces are for kneeling. Halls are for working."
She turned to me, brow lifting at the flock of wide-eye children that had followed me when I opened the door. Damn brats.
"Velyan." I said, managing a mock salute, still feeling a slight ache in my arm, "We kept the hearth warm."
Her smile was a ruin and a promise. "Then light it proper."
Behind her, lightning stitched the clouds, framing her silhouette like a war-banner unfurled. I stepped aside. Helena, despite the loss of limb, moved forward as though a well-oiled machine. As she walked in, rainwater pooling where her boots met the new floorboards, and the guildhouse – our cobbled-together refuge – felt suddenly ready.
Tonight, the real work began.