Three adventurers came down the forest path with the night contract still on them, filthy to the knee, arguing the same argument they had carried out of the trees.
"I am telling you, the best cut goes to me," Jonas said, shifting the pack higher on his shoulder, "because if I had not pinned that thing down, the two of you would still be running in circles."
"Pinned it down," Toby said with a short laugh, "you were thrown into it by the tail, so the credit belongs to the tail."
Jonas scoffed at that and walked faster, until Toby had to lengthen his stride to stay level with him.
"Earned it how," Jonas asked without looking over, "by swinging late once the hard part was finished?"
"Late," Toby said, turning to walk backward in front of him, "who spent the first ten minutes calling for help?"
They went on like that, each one talking over the other, while Cassie walked half a step behind them with her staff held across her body.
She had heard this argument before with different monsters in it, so she kept her eyes on the road and let the two of them run out of breath.
'They will do this until the guild counter,' she thought, stepping over a root, 'then split it evenly, the way they always do.'
"Cassie," Jonas said, glancing back at her, "tell him I am right."
"Go on," Toby added, grinning at her over his shoulder, "you watched the whole thing, so who carried that fight?"
"I think," she said, stopping where she stood when both of them turned on her at once, "that both of you did well."
"That is not an answer," Jonas said, pointing at her with two fingers.
"It is a kind one," she said, hearing how thin it came out even as it left her.
"That counts as a vote," Toby said, opening both hands wide at Jonas, "she put us level, so the cut splits down the middle."
"That is not the noise a vote makes," Jonas said, hitching the pack up again, "and she has been standing on your side of this since the river crossing."
She looked past them for somewhere else to put her eyes, then the path ahead gave her something better.
"Wait," she said, lifting a hand toward a shape lying beside a burnt-out fire.
Both men stopped where the argument left them.
"What," Toby asked, following her arm down the path, "the fire?"
Someone lay on his side in the ashes and the churned ground, one arm thrown out, not moving at all.
"Is that an adventurer," Toby asked, squinting at the shape, "or what is left of one?"
"Maybe," Jonas said, looking him over from where they stood, "but he is nobody I know."
"Have either of you seen him before?" Cassie asked, moving no closer.
"Never," Toby said, pulling the sword off his back without hurrying about it.
They came in on the camp slowly, spreading as they walked, until all three of them had a weapon out inside striking distance.
Jonas kept the axe low across his body while Toby held the sword out ahead of him, so Cassie ended up behind both of them with the staff braced.
She pushed a thread of magic over the body from where she stood, the way her instructors had taught her to read a man before touching him.
Toby saw the meat first, half of it eaten, the rest dropped in the dug-up ground near the fire.
"He was eating," Toby said, moving the point of the sword toward the food, "so something interrupted the meal."
Jonas looked at the dried blood down the front of the stranger's clothes, then at the mess around him.
"Maybe he finished the meal and then died of it," he said, lowering into a crouch to see the face, "it would not be the strangest thing on this road."
Cassie put her eyes over the camp again, the torn ground, the blood, the sword lying loose under one open hand.
"We should leave him where he is," she said, keeping her voice down, "if he is dead we cannot help him, and if he is not dead we should not be standing over him like this."
Jonas opened his mouth to answer her, then something near the dead fire took his attention instead.
"Look at this," he said, dropping into a crouch beside the ashes with the axe still in one hand.
Cassie followed his eyes down to two crystals sitting in the dug-up ground beside a pack, both of them still bright enough to catch what light came through the trees.
"Those are monster crystals," Jonas said with his free hand already going out, "so a dead man has no use for them."
"Wait," she said, the word leaving her faster than she meant it to.
Hajin opened his eyes before the hand reached the first crystal.
It was not the slow blink of a man surfacing out of sleep, more that his arm went for the sword beside him while his body twisted up off the ground in the same motion.
Jonas got his chin up in time to see the leg come around, so the back spin kick took him square in the chest.
The sound that came out of him was more air than voice.
He went backward off his feet, lost the axe somewhere in the air, then landed a few paces out in the churned ground.
Hajin came down in a low stance with the sword already up, breathing rough, keeping all three of them in front of him.
Toby did not go after his partner, did not look at where the man had landed either, since nothing in that low stance had moved since it arrived there.
Cassie did not move at all.
'He was dead,' she thought, both hands closing on the staff, 'a breath ago that man was dead.'
'I read him at the road,' she thought, holding the thread steady while he stared at them, 'his mana was low then, the flow was strange then, but now it is worse.'
The mana in him moved in a circle that came back on itself, not clean the way an adventurer runs, not broken the way a dying man runs either.
It answered some rule nobody had ever taught her, so her eyes started to sting from holding the thread on him.
Then he drew mana through the new path, and she saw the ring of light turn slowly around his right wrist, which stopped her breath where it was.
'What is that,' she thought, her pulse climbing into her throat, 'there should be a shard there.'
'Something here is wrong,' she thought, taking a step backward without deciding to take it, 'we should be gone already.'
Hajin looked over the three of them, then brought the point of the sword up until it rested on Jonas.
"Who the fuck are you people?" he asked, not lowering the blade an inch.
"Nobody," Toby said, holding the sword exactly where it was without stepping any closer, "we were passing on the road, and my friend was checking whether you needed help."
"He was checking my crystals," Hajin said, without any part of the blade dropping, "so try that one on somebody asleep."
"We should go," Cassie said without turning her head, "something is wrong with him, so we leave him and we walk."
Behind her, Jonas coughed once and got a knee under himself.
"Leave," he said, rubbing his chest while his face worked itself into something worse, "after that?"
"Yes," she said, turning on him fully, "I am serious, Jonas."
He had stopped listening somewhere in there, so power came off him in a push she felt through the ground while two shards lifted and turned around his arm.
'This idiot,' she thought, getting herself in front of him with the staff, 'he is going to bury all of us over a bruised chest.'
"You got one cheap shot," Jonas said, picking the axe up out of the ground and pointing it, "try that again."
"Stop," Cassie said, louder this time, closing a hand around his forearm, "I said leave him alone."
He pulled his arm out of her grip without any effort at all.
"Stay back," he said, already turning his shoulder away from her, "this one needs a lesson in manners."
Jonas came off the line hard with the axe swinging in from his hip.
Hajin watched the arc start and moved before it had finished arriving.
'That is interesting,' he thought, shifting his weight onto the front foot while the man closed, 'yesterday a thing like this put me through a tree.'