Moments later, noise carried in from the rest of the hall. Voices echoed faintly, overlapping in a way that suggested raised tempers rather than simple conversation. The sound was uneven, not the steady noise of drills or practice, but sharp bursts of speech that rose and fell too quickly.

  Myrda tilted her head, listening more closely. “Sounds like the others are back,” she said. “Or at least someone is.” She glanced toward the doorway. “Do you want to go see what’s going on?”

  I looked at Meka. She nodded immediately, enthusiasm written all over her face, ears flicking as if she had already decided. The three of us left the back room and headed toward the main entrance, expecting to meet the rest of the martial class returning from practice.

  We did not.

  Instead, we stepped directly into the middle of an argument.

  A group of Iron Rank adventurers stood clustered near the center of the hall. Their voices were sharp and agitated, words cutting over one another in a way that made it hard to follow who was saying what. The tension was thick enough to feel even before anything truly escalated. Then one of them drew steel.

  A man pulled a sword and leveled it at an archer standing opposite him. She froze, eyes wide, clearly aghast at how quickly the situation had turned.

  “If you’re not going to give it to me,” the man snapped, “then get the hell out of here.”

  The archer straightened, her shock giving way to anger. Her jaw tightened as she lifted her chin. “I found it. It’s mine. You wanted to go the other way. I did the work. I found it myself.”

  “It was my quest,” he shot back.

  “And I completed it,” she said, her voice rising despite herself. “You did nothing. You went the wrong direction and ignored everything I tried to explain.”

  The argument spiraled from there. Voices overlapped, accusations piled up, and the small crowd around them shifted uneasily, until Myrda stepped forward.

  She had a hammer in her hand. I had no idea when she’d picked it up.

  “What seems to be the problem here?” she asked. Her voice was calm, but it carried easily across the room, cutting through the noise. Her gaze settled on the man first. “Dael.” Then she turned to the archer. “Rowan.”

  The rest of the group fell silent almost immediately. Some of them looked like companions who had come together as a party. Others might have just arrived at the same time. All of them looked deeply uncomfortable with the direction things had taken.

  “Dael,” Myrda continued, her tone even, “do you have a weapon raised against a fellow adventurer?”

  He whipped his sword around slightly, more gesture than threat now, though he made no move to sheath it. “What about it, Myrda? Go back to your forge. This one stole from me. And you know what my father will do if he finds out a reincarnator used their luck to steal from his son.”

  Myrda raised an eyebrow. “Did you just say that Eldris Silverskin’s daughter stole something from you?”

  She turned fully toward the archer. “Rowan Silverskin. A Seeker Elf. Daughter of one of the finest hunters in the region.” Her eyes flicked back to Dael. “You’re saying she stole a quest item from you.”

  “Yes,” Dael said. “How else would she have known where to look?”

  Myrda’s expression hardened. “Get out.”

  “What?” Dael said confused.

  “Leave,” she said. “Go to the Topswood Iron Guildhall.”

  “That’s three hours from here.” He protested.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “I don’t care,” Myrda replied. “You’re not welcome here.”

  “You’ll hear about this,” he snapped. “My father…”

  Myrda laughed. “What’s your father going to do to me in a backwater trainee guildhall?” She rested the hammer against her shoulder. “I can’t be demoted. I already run the lowest posting available. There is nothing he can threaten me with that hasn’t already happened.”

  Dael scoffed, shoved his way through the small crowd, and stormed out. Two of the adventurers followed him after a moment’s hesitation. The rest lingered briefly, exchanging awkward looks, then dispersed back into the hall.

  I realized belatedly that I had stopped paying attention halfway through the argument.

  Another reincarnator.

  It was not unheard of, but I had never actually spoken to one of my own peerage. Hearing that the elf in front of me might be one was distracting in a way I had not expected. She was older than me. Higher rank. None of that meant much when measured against the span of time I had lived through before, but it still mattered here, now, in this place.

  I wanted to talk to her. Doubt crept in just as quickly. What if she really had taken the item? What if the anger from that situation turned outward and landed on me instead?

  I shook the thought aside and stepped forward anyway.

  “Hello,” I said. “My name is…”

  “Don’t care,” she said flatly, pushing past me without slowing. “I’ve got a quest to turn in.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Um. Sorry. I just wanted to say I’m a reincarnator.”

  She stopped, glanced down at me, and sighed, the tension in her shoulders easing just a little. “Good for you. Welcome to the club. Very exclusive.” She gestured toward the counter. “Now can you move? I need to hand this in.”

  Rude, I thought. Then again, she had just dealt with a sword being pointed at her. Maybe this was not her best moment.

  She walked up to the counter. Myrda circled around and gave her standard greeting. “Welcome, adventurer Rowan. How can I help you today?”

  Rowan produced a sack and set it down with care. “One Letmon Empress flower and root. Iron-and-a-half quest. I’d like the reward.”

  “Of course,” Myrda said. “Let me verify.”

  She opened the bag, checked the quest slip, and examined the contents using a set of tools I did not recognize. They looked like tweezers fitted with a small gauge. When she applied them to the root, I finally got a clear look.

  It resembled a skinned rat that had somehow become a root. Violet, green, and deep purple, complete with a tail-like extension, but no limbs or ears. The flower itself had a single eye at its center, unblinking.

  It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen. And I had seen a lot.

  “That will be four Iron cores,” Myrda said after a moment.

  She set the bag aside. “I’ll need to step into the back. Azolo, I’ll grab your mana vials while I’m there. If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll get to you next.”

  So, we waited.

  The elf leaned against the counter, pulled out a knife, and began cleaning her nails with practiced motions. After a moment, she looked down at me.

  “Are you going to stare the whole time?”

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “You’re the first reincarnator I’ve met besides myself.”

  She blinked, then let out a short breath. “Oh. Sorry.” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m not great with words. My dad says I was dropped a few hundred thousand times. Too many for my head to end up right.” She snorted softly. “So instead of training me himself, he sent me to this shithole. He didn’t know that I had been Genkai, Bandit Lord of the Eastern Winds, in a life before this. I was a damn good tracker once."

  I looked at her. She looked at me.

  There was no recognition on my eyes, and I watched the moment land anyway. Her expression faltered, the disappointment sharp and immediate, as if she had expected her name to mean something more.

  "Damn, I thought maybe... But it really has been that long. Long enough that no one remembered Genkai, the Scourge of Talmor, or the Plunderer of Entomoc, or any of the other titles I had once worn." She sighed.

  “I know how you feel,” I said quietly.

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Do you?”

  I met her gaze. “Rowan,” I said. “When I died, I was a wizard who had lived for five hundred years.”

  Her eyes widened just a little. “Oh,” she said. After a moment, she nodded. “Then maybe you do.”

  “I think I have a fair understanding of your situation,” I said. “Bandit Lord, you say. What was that like?”

  Her mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “It was fun,” she said. “Really fun. But I thought maybe this time I’d try doing the whole goody-goody side of the law this time round.” She paused. “The way I died was gruesome, but it was epic.”

  I stayed quiet, letting her continue.

  “There we were three hundred of my boys,” she said. “We were lined up, ready to crush some random lone wizard who wandered into the wrong place. He cast something strange. Some kind of magic that made everyone’s pants explode.” She made a small, helpless gesture. “Everything below the waist went with it.”

  I went pale. Not from the imagery.

  I remembered doing that.

  I had been the wizard. I hadn’t known who she was, or that she was famous, or that she would ever be remembered. I’d taken a quest to destroy a bandit camp and carried it out while testing a new explosive spell. It had gone sideways in a way I had never fully forgotten.

  “Oh,” I said aloud. “That sounds terrible.”

  Inside my head, a name echoed, distant and mocking. Thunderpants. I could almost hear Grog Strongbow saying it for the first time, laughter rolling forward through the centuries.

  What were the chances that I would run into someone I had ended so long ago, standing here in a backwater guildhall, pretending we were strangers?