Along the border of the dwarven kingdom of Colleria and a valley controlled by several different hunter tribes, was a line of several fortresses and watchtowers. The two sides had long since settled their differences and the defensive line had been abandoned years ago. That is, aside from a single tower in the middle of nowhere, where a group of twenty or so mercenaries had set up a permanent camp. Originally, they had been paid by the dwarves to monitor the situation on the other side of the border due to rumors that spoke of infighting between the tribes, but that well of income was quickly drying up as the situation among the tribes had calmed down. To make their ends meet, the mercenaries had started to do some work as highwaymen on the side. Nothing too cruel of course, just some occasional kidnapping and robbery. Trying their best to avoid catching the attention of anyone who might actually cause them issues, the mercenaries kept their ransom demands low and disguised themselves as common bandits.

In the barracks of the said watchtower, were Jaime and Mea, two mercenaries and now bandits that had been charged with keeping the fireplace lit, to ward off the first few cold nights of the autumn, while the rest of the group was either handling other chores or watching after the three prisoners they had.

Mea, a dark elf that joined the group slightly after they had taken over their current camp and was often considered to be a rookie by the rest of them. She had taken a liking to an old cat that had found its way to the tower when the weather started to get chillier and was now feeding it the leftovers from her plate.

“You need to stop feeding that thing, it was already fat when it got here and soon enough it won’t even be able to catch any mice.” Jaime said half-jokingly. As one of the founding members, the lizardfolk mage had taken the young dark elf under his wing and trained her in his craft.

Mea frowned. “We only have a few weeks before winter, it needs the fat to survive.” She argued and petted the clearly obese cat.

“If you say so.” The lizardfolk shrugged. He quickly peeked outside the door and closed it, seeming oddly nervous about something. “Listen, kiddo, I think it might be the time for us to leave this place.” He whispered and sat down with his apprentice.

“This is about the prisoners, isn’t it?” Mea sighed.

“Not just that, we’re getting too greedy and it’s only a matter of time before someone comes to shut our operation down. First we took some merchant’s son and didn’t even wait to get the money for him before taking a damn priestess and her guard! Do you have any idea how much trouble a church could cause if she turns out to be anyone important?!” Jaime explained. “We’re supposed to be mercs damnit.”

The dark elf leaned back in her chair and pondered her options for a while. “Yeah, I get what you mean. I didn’t exactly join up for this shit and I trust your judgement. If you’re bailing out, I’ll come with you – as long as you have a plan and the cat can come too.” She said and lifted the cat on the table.

The old lizardfolk seemed delighted hearing that. “I know a few places we can try, and mages like us are always worth something to someone. Besides, if nothing else works, we can always try becoming adventurers.”

“I hear that pays well, at least if you can pull it off.” Mea pointed out.

Suddenly a weird smell caught their noses. It was like someone lit an entire pile of hair on fire. Instinctively both of them checked the fireplace, but there was nothing wrong with it. Figuring that it was just some cat hair that had drifted into the fire, they returned to their conversation. However, when they started hearing screams from the entrance and hurried steps, first down the stairs and then quickly back up, they figured that something might be amiss. As the roaring sounds of flames and metallic clangs grew louder, the pair made a wordless pact of not joining in on whatever was going on outside. Jaime quietly moved to lock the door and only barely made it in time before someone started bang on it furiously.

“Guys, let me in! I know you’re in there.” A mercenary they recognized as Halfir pleaded from the other side and kept hammering the door with his fist.

The lizardfolk glanced at his apprentice before hastily opening the door, pulling their colleague in and slamming it shut again.

Halfir was a big man, even for a half-orc, and it certainly was not common to see him in such state. Out of breath, staring blankly in to the void and on the verge of panicking, he put his back against the door and did his best to stop himself from shaking.

“What the fuck is going on out there?” Mea asked and made sure all her gear was on properly, just in case the fight came to them instead.

At first Halfir didn’t answer and just kept staring, but Jaime snapping his fingers a few times woke him back up. “We… we don’t know. I think the priestess we caught must have summoned two demons to kill us all. They just appeared from the forest and… and… and…” He stuttered.

“Get a hold of yourself, Halfir!” Jaime ordered him. “Tell us about these demons.”

The terrified mercenary collected what was left of himself. “There was two, one as big as me and indestructible. We… we tried bows, axes, swords… nothing, not even being on fire stopped it. The other one we barely saw, it was small like a child and had antlers of a deer. The ground it walked on froze and everything around it caught on fire. A few of the boys got close to it, but as soon as they were close enough to strike, they just… stopped – nothing could move them anymore. There was nothing we could do…” He explained and clearly went through some kind of traumatic events in his mind.

Jaime did his best to calm the half-orc down. “There’s no such things as demons. You must have just gotten ambushed. Things can get awfully blurry in a fight and you can’t always tell what’s happening around you. We can just hold this room with Mea and wait for things to pass. If they are here for the priestess, they’ll just get her and leave, okay?” He said reassuringly and bumped Halfir’s shoulder with his fist.

As they were talking, the terror slowly spread to the dark elf as she noticed something. “Guys…. guys! Your breaths!” She said and pointed out the steam coming out of their mouths with every breath. The room had definitely been warm mere seconds ago, but now it was almost as cold as the air outside.

They all fell quiet and waited, hoping and praying to whatever gods they could name, that the demons would pass the room and go straight to the top floor of the tower. From the other side of the door, they could hear two sets of steps: one hard and loud, almost like whoever they belonged to had boots made of stone; and the other far lighter and included the sound of a cane or staff clanking against the stone stairs. When the sounds finally reached the door, they stopped, almost causing a heart attack for all three mercenaries.

The silence felt like it lasted forever, until finally it was broken by a stone arm punching its way through the door and grabbing the poor Halfir, who was still leaning against it. As he screamed, whoever was on the other side gave the door a pull, causing it to come off of its hinges and both the door and Halfir were dragged into the dark staircase outside. The remaining two mercenaries tried to act in the hopes of saving their comrade but found themselves unable to move at all. If they were to believe Halfir’s description of events, it surely meant that the smaller demon was approaching as more frigid air drifted in from the doorway and rime slowly formed on the stone floor.

From the shadows of the unlit staircase, stepped out the smaller demon: a small, frail-looking girl with bright turquoise eyes that glimmered in the light of the fireplace. Wearing some slightly charred clothes and some relatively normal looking armor, she didn’t exactly look demonic to the mages. Perhaps the most odd-looking part was her helmet: attached to a visorless sallet, were two antlers with strange patterns drawn on them and different small items, like keys and spoons hanging from the tips with metal wire. As far as weaponry went, the girl had a bundle of few spears on her back and was holding a staff. All in all, she looked remarkably undemonic when they finally got a good look at her. Especially the staff betrayed her identity, as the mages recognized it as a thermal staff; a basic piece of equipment used by ice mages. Combined with the charred clothes, it was pretty clear that the girl was simply an elemental mage, and the reason for their frozen state must have been magical as well.

The girl stepped forth and attempted to enter the room but was stopped by the antlers on her helmet hitting the doorframe. “For fuck’s sake.” She muttered and angled her head slightly to get through. After quickly scanning the room, she walked up to Mea and gave the cat on the table a pat on the head, allowing it to move freely again. “Evening to you two. You might have guessed already that I’m here for my friends and some bloke that has a rich father. Personally I don’t want to kill anyone here, especially people with an amazing cat like this, but you people keep attacking me, and King doesn’t like that.“ She explained while scratching the cat. “So here’s what I propose: I walk out of this room, walk up the stairs and release you two. While I rescue my friends there, you two take whatever equipment and supplies you can, grab this cat and fuck off as far away from here as you can, okay?” The girl said and turned away to leave. On the way out, she hit her antlers on the doorframe again and cursed the helmet. “Oh and by the way, I froze the stairs because I thought it’d be funny to have people slip on them, so keep that in mind when you leave.” She laughed and disappeared into the staircase.

Having earned some good person points by allowing at least two of the bandits escape King’s wrath, Anastacia pranced up the staircase towards the room at the top, where she could feel four more people, including Gilbert and Emilia. They had accepted a quest from a wealthy merchant family, to rescue one of their heirs. They only knew the rough area where he had been taken from and had to work from there, so instead of going through hundreds of square kilometers of forest and hills, Gilbert and Emilia had posed as travelers while Anastacia and King followed them from the distance for a couple of days until they were finally found by the bandits.

Ever since Anastacia had returned from Mournvalley, they had only taken short quests for a couple of months while she worked on her capabilities beyond necromancy. Though it would likely always be the ace in her sleeve, she had chosen to only use necromancy to protect herself and others, so instead she had focused on a couple of new types of magic. So the current quest was as much of a trial run for her ice magic as it was a new attempt at doing a quest that took more than a couple of days.

King was waiting for her by the door to the room at the top of the watchtower. Unlike his partner, the simulacrum had very little issues when it came to killing people on quests and he had more or less singlehandedly finished off the entire group on mercenaries that tried to stop them from rescuing their friends. Anastacia chosen not to interfere with the simulacrums way of getting things done, since it was hardly different from the rest of the adventurers, and if anything, she herself was the odd one out.

Anastacia knocked on the door and slowly opened it. On the other side was an almost empty room, where the only pieces of furniture were a chest, a chair, a small table and a lantern hanging from a hook above it. The last of the mercenaries guarding the prisoners had his sword drawn and pointed at the door, while the three prisoners were sitting against the wall with their hands tied behind their backs. Completely ignoring the mercenary, Anastacia stepped in. “What’s up?” She asked nonchalantly.

“Oh, thank Sylvia you’re here!” Emilia exclaimed. “My nose has been so itchy for ages! Just cut me free already.”

Gilbert tossed aside the rope he had been tied with and got up. “You should have said something, I’ve had my hands free for a while now.” He laughed.

While Anastacia used her knife with a still unknown enchantment on it to cut Emilia’s hand free. The mercenary started to get anxious. He took a step closer to the adventurers and pointed his sword at them, still somehow failing to get any reaction out of the three. “Hold it! I’m in charge here!” He shouted and shook the sword.

“Right… If I were you, I’d be in charge of running away right about now.” The necromancer hinted and nodded at the door.

The mercenary took a hard look at what he was up against and decided to use the chance given to him and flee. He sprinted past King and left the room in a hurry. Not long after the adventurers could hear a short scream that ended abruptly from the bottom of the staircase, followed by the sound of someone in armor thumbing down the stairs.

“Oh shit, the stairs!” Anastacia remembered and mentally drew a cross over one of the two lives she had spared earlier. Though saving bandits wasn’t exactly high on her list of important things, it was still nice to end the day having spared more people than she herself had killed.

Gilbert opened the chest in the corner of the room and took out the gear that had been taken from them. “Good work there, sounds like you gave them a bit of a scare.” He laughed and tossed Emilia her mace.

Anastacia frowned. “I did try to talk to them first, but they just screamed and started a fight.” She lamented.

“Anyone would if a simulacrum and some kind of horned child just appeared from the forest. I can’t believe you actually wore that thing in a fight.” The priestess pointed out and wiggled Anastacia’s helmet by one of the antlers.

“My people made me a crown, so I should wear it and be presentable whenever I can.” Anastacia said. The goblins had presented the helmet to her after Amaranth’s defeat, and she honestly thought it was cool, but no one else seemed to agree. “Didn’t we have like a hostage or something we were supposed to take with us?” She suddenly remembered.

In the corner of the room, cowering away from the adventurers was a boy, probably a year or two younger than Anastacia and obviously scared out of his mind. When Anastacia asked King to help him up, the boy screamed and kicked the simulacrum with all his might until King retreated.

“What the shit are you doing?! He’s just trying to help you.” Anastacia yelled and struck her staff at the floor.

“The machines don’t help anyone, all they do is kill and destroy!” The boy responded, looking more angry than scared.

Anastacia walked up to him and managed to slap the boy once before Gilbert and Emilia dragged her away and seated her on the table.

“Look, I didn’t put it together until now, but the people who gave us this quest are from Welcatia. There was talk about them losing a couple of cities when a machine fort near them activated about ten years ago. I’m pretty sure they’re still stuck fighting the simulacra every now and then and pretty much see them as the greatest evil there is. He might be from one of the cities or lost someone in his family to the war or something, so maybe don’t beat him up for it?” Gilbert whispered. “We’re going to have to drop him off too, so if you want to return to Valor with King now, Emilia and I can handle the rest.”

“Piss off, I’m coming with you and so is King. If they have a problem with us, they’re welcome to try and do something about it.” The necromancer scoffed, obviously still pissed about King getting kicked.

“Yeah, I’m with Anna on this one. King is part of the party and will come along if he wants to.” Emilia pitched in.

Gilbert sighed and rubbed his brow. “Fine, just don’t cause any more problems than you absolutely have to.” He muttered and turned to the boy. “I know about your country’s situation, but King is our friend and largely responsible for your rescue. So just stay away from him if you have to.” He explained while opening the boy’s restraints. “We have a wagon with some horses nearby, so let’s just head there and get this over and done with.”