Garban was an adventurer, and that was a rare thing for a Saloki. He had also been an adventurer for nearly thirty years now, and that was something that was rare for adventurers in general. This distinction was precisely why the Goldcrests had approached him about “mentoring” their youngest scion; something that the lad’s father had privately made clear to him actually meant “keeping the lad alive.”

So when Dorvo, young and brash and full of bravado, drew his sword, Garban was quick to hold out his hand and give the lad a look of caution. If there was one thing that Garban had learned in all his years adventuring, it was to never get into a fight without first knowing what exactly it was you were dealing with.

He did a quick count of the bandits. There were five visible, and he was certain that he saw some movement in the trees to his left. Six at the very least, then. Not great odds when he and Dorvo numbered only a single pair.

“Are ye the leader of this little group, then?” Garban asked the man with the burn-scarred face.

A smile spread across the bandit’s face. “I am,” he said. While the other bandits pointed their blades at the adventurers, their leader held his own sword almost lazily. He was bald, with dark eyes, and he wore an amulet about his neck with some kind of blue gemstone set in its center. “It’s not much, but at least it’s an honest trade.”

“Honest?” Garban asked.

The smile on the leader’s face widened. “Comparatively.”

There was a dangerous cunning to this man. Most bandit leaders Garban had encountered in his career had possessed some sort of cunning, but there was something about this one… he seemed smarter than most. More controlled. The way he spoke, it was easy to imagine that he was well-educated. Garban frowned and took another look at the scar on the man’s face.

“You’re from Keening, aren’t ye?”

“Did the lifebrand give it away?” the bandit leader asked.

“The what?” asked Dorvo. “Wait… is that the Glyph of Life on your face? Why?”

Garban had neither the time nor the depth of knowledge to explain to Dorvo the strange ways of the city of Keening, or the odd traditions of its priesthood. He himself tried his best to stay clear of that place. But he did know enough to recognize the Lifebrand of Neverdeath, which was given only to the greatest of heretics, those who had committed unforgivable crimes against the Heralds.

“What a storied life you must have led,” said Garban. “Do you truly need our horses?”

“They will be useful to have,” replied the bandit leader. “My men require steeds, and yet horses cost money that we do not have. Are you finished stalling yet, dwarf?”

Movement to his left again. Garban was certain that someone was there, hiding. If he had to put a wager on it, he would bet that the hidden bandit had an arrow pointed at him. He saw no evidence of anyone else, and so he became more confident that they faced only six enemies.

They were poor odds. But they were not impossible.

“I am,” Garban said. “Let’s begin.”

He stamped his foot on the ground, sending a pulse of Earth Magic into the soil. Garban directed the magic to the hidden bandit on his left, and was rewarded with a shrill cry of alarm from the bushes.

The slid out of the trees and stumbled on the churning soil, loosing his arrow into the air above them. The shaft plummeted uselessly to the forest floor. The ground beneath the bandit continued to move, and he lost balance and fell face-first into the dirt.

His fellows wasted no time in charging forward.

Garban noted that Dorvo was sliding into one of his fancy stances. The lad had been trained in swordplay ever since he was but a child, and all of his fencing forms had names like “Crane’s Eighth Flight” and “Crab’s Third Claw.” Garban had no idea what stance his charge was entering now—the dwarf was a student of neither swordplay nor formalized dueling.

No, he was a student of dirty street fights and hectic barroom brawls.

As the first of the bandits reached him, Garban ducked low and swung his hammer hard. The head caught his assailant in the side of his knee with a sickening crunch and the man screamed and collapsed, his leg bending in a way that knees generally should not bend.

There were advantages to being a dwarf in a world full of creatures who were unnecessarily tall. Humans, as a rule, were unused to fighting opponents whom they had to bend down to strike.

Garban tapped into his Ice Magic and brought up a layer of frost over his throat as he slammed his hammer down onto the unlucky bandit’s face. Blood splattered and skull shattered, and a thrown dagger glanced harmlessly off his protective layer of neck-ice. Garban grinned at the bandit who had thrown the knife as his shield of frost melted away.

He spun forward before the shocked bandit had a chance to react, and he cracked the side of the man’s leg with his hammer. As the bandit fell, he waved a free hand at Garbanm and a jet of water shot from his palm and hit the dwarf square in the chest.

It was not a powerful stream, but it was enough to force the dwarf to stagger back as the bandit attempted to right himself. But as he put his weight once more on his leg, the bandit winced and hissed in pain, and the jet of water ended.

Garban wasted no time in going in for another, lethal blow.

His hammer crashed through the bandit’s skull, and the man’s body went limp. Garban spared a quick glance at Dorvo to check how the lad was doing, and was pleased to see that the young man had already felled one bandit and was currently engaged with another.

Something less pleasing, however, was the bandit leader. The Lifebranded man was still hanging back, looking almost bored as he watched the fight. Then he noticed Garban’s attention was on him.

The bandit leader grinned, and Garban felt something shift in the ground beneath his feet.

At first, he thought that the bandit chief must be a fellow user of Earth Magic, but then he realized that the earth itself was not moving. No, something was rushing up through it. Garban flung himself to the side just a blazing hot geyser shot out of the ground where he had been standing.

He flung himself directly into the side of a man who should not have been standing there. Garban blinked up in surprise at the grinning face of the bandit leader, then looked over at the identical man still standing back and watching the fight. That bandit chief faded out of existence.

Illusion Magic, realized Garban. And Magma. He’s lightsworn, like Dorvo.

Then the very real bandit leader’s hand closed around Garban’s throat, and the dwarf felt himself lifted up from the ground. He tried to bring his hammer up, but the bandit was clutching the head with his other hand, keeping it still. The man was strong.

“I think that’s enough of that,” said the bandit leader as his fingers tightened around Garban’s throat. “Let us conclude our business, then, shall we?”

Everything began to grow dark.