While we walked, I struck up a conversation with Alloha about how adventurers made money. She told me it was usually only the bronze ranked or higher that earned enough to adventure full time, but that the Beast Breakers made most of their money between fledging seasons by doing annual sea serpent contracts. They also used those contracts to scout out new talent from among the local bronze ranked adventurers. Grant was apparently hoping to make bronze before this coming year’s serpent contracts were posted so he could get recruited. It seemed the usual route to steel included joining a dragon coterie, then sometimes a few would leave and try to start steel parties of their own after working for the coterie for at least a year.

“So they’re professional bullies?” I clarified, careful not to let my voice travel to the front of the line where Grant and Jay were chatting.

“How do you mean?” Alloha asked.

“Well, they sit on their rank and force anyone that wants to make steel to work for them for a year, plus they force lower ranked adventurers to pay them tribute if they want the good contracts. Why would I want to work for them?”

“The pay is pretty good at steel,” Torra replied. “Even dealing with everything to get there, they make more than most artisan craftsman.”

“And you don’t have to work off contracts,” Alloha said.

“You don’t?” I asked. “How so?”

“Well, monsters are monsters, right? The main reason to take contracts at our rank is to rank up so we can take better contracts, but once you’re at steel, you don’t need rank anymore. So you can take contracts if they pay well, but the rest of the time you can just go find monsters to kill. Take pursuer beasts, for example. Anytime you want, you can walk into the Maw and kill a few. There are a few steel ranked parties in Haemir and New Kamenor that do exactly that. Then they sell the bones.”

“It’s the same for us, mostly,” Torra added. “For instance, aside from the danger, I think we’re all hoping there will be more than four spiders. That’ll mean more venom sacks to harvest and sell.”

“Which means more pay,” Alloha finished.

“Is that the same for other contracts? You mostly want to kill the monsters for what you can sell their parts for?”

Torra groaned. “Not goblins,” he said.

“And not ogres either,” Alloha added. “The only reason to take goblin contracts is to rank up, but there’s always low-ranked adventurers like us to take care of them. We had a contract last week that was about as bad as they get. We had to wipe out a nest, but it turned out to be twice as big as estimated.”

“Then they spotted Jay when he tried to scout them out,” Torra growled. “I had to save him when he came running out of their camp with all of them right on his heels.”

“And we had to pay for a healer for those bites you got on your legs,” Alloha said. She frowned across at Torra sympathetically. “It was a mess.”

“I was fine,” Torra insisted. “We didn’t have to pay for that.”

“You weren’t fine!” Alloha insisted. “You were limping the entire way back home, and the bites were festering.”

“We could have waited until Saints Day and the church would have healed me for free,” Torra said. “It was a waste of money.”

“And what would we have done until then? Stop taking contracts?”

“Hey, uh,” I interjected, “how long have you guys been adventuring together?”

“Only a few months,” Alloha said. “But Torra and I grew up together. And we’ve known Grant and Jay for years, even if we weren’t exactly friends.”

I lowered my voice. “And Victoria?” I asked.

“Oh, she’s not from around here,” Alloha said. “But she’s nice. Grant recruited her. We’d been trying to get our party together for a while and she even agreed to help pay for the last bit of the registration fees we didn’t have yet, didn’t you, Vick?”

Ahead of us, Victoria just grunted. I wasn’t sure where Alloha got the “friendly” idea from. Probably she just hoped if she said it enough, it would become true.

“She’s from Gaelmir, like me,” Torra said.

“Where’s that?” I asked. “Is it nearby?”

Torra chuckled. “Not even close. It’s a mining town clear on the other side of Kalador. Don’t ask me what it’s like, though, because I only remember a little bit from when I was young.”

I asked a few questions about geography for the next hour or so. Torra and Alloha weren’t the most knowledgeable subjects, but they were able to at least give me a foundation of basic information. I learned that the church of Marketh controlled an island to the South and that beyond that was the nation of Dileth. Kalador was apparently friendly with Marketh and currently engaged in open war with Dileth. Nobody seemed to have a straight answer about the reason for the war. Torra and Alloha thought it was because of religious persecution, but then they asked Grant what he thought and he insisted it was because of a territorial dispute and the religious thing was just something they said to rile up the commoners so they’d join. Most of them thought the war was because of Dileth, but Victoria actually spoke up to explain that Kalador was unequivocally the aggressor. I wasn’t sure what was true and didn’t want to pick sides.

After that, I was able to pivot the discussion back to geography and away from politics. As I did, our trail left the woods, and we started across an open plain with more of those stags I’d seen the last time I was out this way. It was nice to see them, since that told me there probably weren’t any pursuer beasts around. Starting by asking about the FSR, since I’d visited it before, I got Torra and Alloha to tell me how the FSR was a collection of three island nations—Falon, Sten, and Raith—that had joined together and there were two other sizable islands they’d once owned as well during the peak of their power. The first of those was called Hosynth and was a desert island known best for being the founding location of the Adventurer’s Guild. The other was a tropical island ruled by a confederacy of pirates that primarily exported simi-simi tea. Apparently Jay was addicted to the stuff and needed to drink it every morning, but it was no surprise to me to learn the church didn’t allow their members to consume it.

The topic changes from there got pretty convoluted. Talk of Jay’s simi-simi addiction had him accuse Torra of eating more food than anyone else, which I guess was supposed to mean he should be allowed to spend money on tea, which didn’t make sense when Alloha ate the least and didn’t drink tea. But rather than getting baited into an argument, Torra turned the discussion to ways to save money on food. I made the mistake of asking if the spiders we were going to be hunting were edible, which elicited groans from everyone, including Victoria.

“Why would you eat spiders?” Torra demanded. “I know we’re kind of broke right now, but we’ll never be that broke!”

“I didn’t say they would taste good. Or that I wanted to eat them, I only asked if you could. What’s the big deal? I thought you could just squeeze some ‘Torra Juice’ on anything and get it tasting fabulous.”

“There are limits. If I juiced a pinecone, I promise it’s still gonna taste like a pinecone, man,” Torra said.

“The general rule is, you don’t eat monsters,” Alloha finally explained to me. “Some of them just taste of bile, like spiders, but a lot of them will kill you. Take goblins, for instance. Did you know they—”

“Revenants,” Victoria said.

“Sorry, what was that, Vick?” Alloha asked.

“The most deadly to consume. Revenants.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Because of the finger in the throat thing.” I was still monitoring her, and she was still not doing anything remotely suspicious. All I could tell about her was that she didn’t seem to want anyone to think she was involved in any conversations, but she was always listening, even when she looked like she certainly wasn’t.

“I don’t even know if you need a bone in the throat to kill you, honestly,” Torra said. “They say to be careful to cover your face with a rag when you’re smashing their bones so you don’t breathe in any dust. They are evil incarnate. The church recommends thumbnail size pieces when you’re transporting their remains.”

“Interesting,” I said. “They certainly sound pretty scary for such a low threat. Were they really all made by one guy?”

“Yes. Fayden,” Torra confirmed, nodding. “It’s been an age since Lucius sacrificed himself to kill Fayden, but his creations still roam the land. They are cursed, unable to die. It is the worst fate a soul can suffer, and there’s nothing we can do for them. In the end, they were the real victims of his conquest.”