For a second, Dain felt like he was tumbling through a void.

  Not falling. No, more like… sinking. The water around him was thick and clingy like oil—cold and chilling as well—but then the sea of oil around him lurched, and he fell onto something hard and very much solid.

  Cold stone floor.

  He groaned as he sat up on shaky legs, and his breath steamed faintly even though the air didn’t feel cold.

  … The hell?

  The place was dark—perhaps a bit too dark—but a handful of purple torches smoldered along the walls around him, burning without smoke. Their glow revealed rows upon rows of display cases, cabinets, and glass-topped chests around him. Each one was locked, chained, and double-bound in iron with heavy plaques bolted above and below them.

  He squinted at the letters etched on those plaques.

  The letters shifted. Crawled. They didn’t stay still long enough to form words. The moment he tried to read them, they seemed to wriggle under his gaze, and nausea pooled in his gut like sour wine.

  A… museum?

  It wasn’t a proper museum, though. What museum would keep its relics locked and chained behind iron? The place reeked of wrongness, and it wasn’t just the chains or the stale air—it was the loud, deafening silence that made him itch.

  Even stone halls should have echoes. Even an old and boring museum should have a curator. These halls swallowed sound whole, except for…

  One sound.

  A faint, feathery set of footsteps behind him.

  He scrambled onto his feet, spun towards the noise, and held his prosthetic out. His chest tightened. Hell, he didn’t even bother waiting to see who was coming at him. He poured mana into his prosthetic and fired five windspheres in a volley, watching them rip into the darkness to absolutely no effect.

  They didn’t hit anything.

  The torches didn’t illuminate far. There were only four of them close by, so the end of the hallway in front of him eluded his sight.

  He gulped.

  Soft chimes. Bells twinkling. The rush of wings—countless wings beating in the dark—made his body prickle with heat, and with fear so sharp it felt like he was about to burst apart.

  And from the shadows, a figure poked their head into the light.

  Just her head entered the light. The rest of her body stayed back in the shadows, so it looked like she was just a floating head—and she was a great white owl with feathery horns and three eerie, orb-like eyes.

  She stared at him quietly. That was all it took to lock him in place.

  His heart pounded.

  His breath sawed.

  His legs wanted to run but wouldn’t.

  Then she spoke, and her voice was many voices at once.

  “????W??????h??????a????t?????? ?????a?????r?????e???? ????y?????o?????u????? ??????d???????o???????i?????n??????g?????? ???????h??????e????r???e??????????”?????” she said. “????THEY ????a?????r?????e????? ???c????o?????m?????i????n???g??????.?????”?????

  Dain snapped awake with a violent jolt.

  He was in his bedroom.

  His chest heaved. Sweat beaded his forehead. He clutched at his quilt like it might hold him steady, but outside, autumn sparrows were chirping, cheerful little things utterly unbothered by nightmares.

  Sunlight poured through the window, painting his floorboards gold, and his eyes weren’t blurry anymore. Not even a little bit.

  … Morning.

  He sat there for a while, just breathing, trying to laugh it off.

  “Gods,” he muttered, putting his face in his hands—his hand—and trying to rub the sleep off. He should’ve known it was a dream when he had his prosthetic with him even though he didn’t sleep with it.

  But he didn’t dilly-dally long. He rolled off the mattress and knelt immediately, prying it up. His eyes quickly fell on the wrapped bundle hidden at the foot of the bed.

  The Altar.

  It’s still there.

  He exhaled, slow and shaky. For a moment, he even smiled. Then his gaze lingered too long, and as the wrappings around that plank of wood suddenly felt thinner than before, he considered what it really was for the first time: an Altar to a Curator God who only dealt in cursed relics.

  Maybe it wasn’t just his relics that were cursed. Maybe he was, too.

  … Maybe don’t think about that right now.

  I won't know the answer anytime soon anyways.

  He pushed the mattress back down, swallowed, and forced his thoughts elsewhere.

  Fortune tellers. That was what he needed. Some hedge-reader with a deck of polished bone dice relics or an orb that at least pretended to glow. Trinket-Class relics existed—rare ones—that boosted luck or warded curses. Some even prevented mental interference, giving people more peace of mind. If he could find one of those, maybe he’d sleep just fine without owl-headed women telling him doom was knocking.

  He went over to his desk, slung his prosthetic over his shoulder, and swept his gaze across the room. Bed, desk, closet, floorboards, window. No signs of intrusion. Everything was exactly where he’d left them last night, even the magic materials he’d stuck inside his drawers.

  Paranoia was good to have a little of in his situation.

  Bathroom first to wash up.

  Then it’s money-making time.

  Granamere in daylight wasn’t a bustling market-town he’d read about in brick-thick travelogues, but it wasn’t a village of five goats either. It was larger than Corvalenne. Doors opened, carts rattled, and iron rang thinly from half-sheltered forges, the sound folding in and out with the wind.

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  Dain, of course, kept his head down and his eyes busy. The first thing he checked were the two shops that could change his life by a margin of exactly one relic apiece.

  Both were shuttered.

  The materials merchant had a politely furious placard wired to its barred door: ‘Out for purchases, back when back’. The relics dealer right next door had one with a chalk scrawl: ‘Open later’. The chalk looked smug. He stood in front of that one a full ten seconds just to make the point to himself that he could be patient.

  “How annoying,” he muttered.

  Browsing would’ve told him what grades of relics and materials the town were dealing with, but he supposed he could wait until afternoon.

  He found the herb street by smell. There were six stores, three lined on each side of the street, and he stopped by every window to do a bit of imagination shopping. In particular, he noticed hanging ropes of fever-fern—good side offerings to increase the natural temperature of a relic—and bundles of winter-piths sitting on shelves—side offerings that’d decrease the natural temperature of a relic—which he wanted to buy incredibly badly. Unfortunately, each of those relatively uncommon herbs would cost coins he didn’t have, so he shouldn’t delay it any longer.

  Money first.

  He threaded through alleys that felt narrower than they were, asked a pair of smiths for directions, and finally found what he was looking for: a gold-ornate building near the northern edge of town with the Seeker’s Guild’s sigil carved above the doorway.

  The golden five-pointed star with a clenched fist in the middle.

  The Seeker’s Guild building was small, yes, but it still made him lift his chin and stare in admiration.

  Two hundred years ago, after the War of Era Nakri and the death of the Vyrmgaard Tyrant, Everbright decided that people who loved rummaging through dangerous places for magic materials should just die less and earn more by working together. To that end, he formed the Seeker’s Guild, which had since opened countless branches across most of the world for warriors, rogues, travelers, adventurers, and—of course—relic seekers to unite under a common banner for proper jobs.

  ‘Ad Altiora’, the motto of the Seeker’s Guild.

  Anyone who calls themselves a seeker embodies the spirit of ‘unto higher things’.

  The Guild ran on rules people could bet their fingers on. Anyone could post a job, and anyone could accept one, but payment was held by the Guild till the work was done. If an employer didn’t pay afterwards, the Guild would bare its teeth and bite down hard enough to bleed. If an adventurer tried to cheat an employer out of a proper job well done, the Guild would also do the same… on top of mediating disputes, consolidating local requests, and about a dozen other things most people wouldn’t even think about when it came to running an adventuring business.

  Was it restrictive? Sometimes. Was it safe? Relatively. But the Guild wasn’t the most trusted free organization in the world for no reason, and ‘relatively safe’ was what seekers called a warm bed.

  He pushed the door open and, unsurprisingly, stepped into a quiet hall. It really was as Wenna said. With what’d happened to Corvalenne, most travelers had hurried home already to hunker down for what may or may not be an imminent war, so considering most locals worked in the mines, there weren’t really any adventurers in the Guild at this time of day.

  The common tables sat empty, and the long, gold-lined job board took up the right wall like a small temple. The only other occupant stood at the very end of the hall: the receptionist behind the gold-lined wooden counter.

  … Well, it’s a receptionist alright, but I’d hardly call it another person.

  It was an Implement-Class automaton. Its whole body was bronze, and its chestplate was open so the little cogs and springs and chain-links inside could whir happily at anyone who wanted to be impressed. The face was a white metal plate with two black circles for eyes, and that was about the extent of its facial features. It had two arms, two legs, and it stood perfectly upright with its hands clasped before it, staring straight at the front door.

  Of course, he couldn’t help but stare at it. The ‘implement’ in Implement-Class meant the relic was simply something with an ingenious physical mechanism—like transforming mining tools or multi-purpose satchels—but in the upper grades, Implement-Class relics also included things like automatons and pigeon constructs, like the ones that delivered messages across the continents.

  The automaton in front of him was probably at least Rare grade, making it the most powerful relic in the entire town. Guildmasters from other branches—high-ranking members of the Seeker’s Guild—probably only had to come by once a month to pour mana into it to keep it active for the entire next month. In terms of mana consumption to activation time, he’d heard automaton-type relics were basically second to none.

  A stupid part of his brain immediately started thinking about how he could steal it and repurpose it for his own uses.

  Don’t even think about it, he chided himself. The Guild owns these things, and they don’t fuck around.

  Auraline, Obric, and the Curator Church already wanted his head. He’d rather not add the organization that specialized in finding things that didn’t want to be found onto that list.

  Work first.

  Focus.

  He wandered over to the giant job board and stood in front of it, scratching his back. On the left of the job board, there was an ascending list of grades—Common, Uncommon, Rare, Exquisite, Masterwork, Epic, Legendary, Mythic—but the only grade that had a checkmark next to it was Common.

  No requests above Common grade, huh?

  He skimmed the paper slips pinned onto the rest of the board. There were ‘Fix a stone wall for forty curons’, ‘Escort a herbalist to a fungi harvesting spot daily for a week for fifty curons a day’, and ‘Draft and deliver contracts for a local mine manager for ten curons apiece’.

  He read each job with all the seriousness of a starving man staring at soup he couldn’t eat.

  Then he finally found the one that made his eyes light up.

  ‘Extermination request, Common-4.’

  ‘A nest of silverplume owls have gone wild in the northern end of the Elderhush Forest, attacking livestock and messenger pigeons alike. Exterminate them before they can hurt anyone.’

  ‘Reward: eight hundred curons upon proof of extermination. Any material harvested from the extermination belongs to the adventurers.’

  He grinned as he read the slip. Eight hundred curons straight into his pocket if he pulled this off—and better yet, the request let him keep the spoils. The silverplume feathers alone were worth the effort. As their names suggested, they were made of silver but light as feathers, which meant they’d be good side offerings used to lower a relic’s weight, or they could even be used as main offerings to obtain garment-type relics made out of silverplume feathers.

  If he wanted clothes that were both resilient and wouldn’t weigh him down—and maybe give him a few mobility-related abilities in the process—then silverplume attire would be perfect.

  And the request grade is only Common-4.

  It was a bit higher than his Common-3, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.

  He pulled the slip down and strode to the counter. The bronze automaton immediately turned its head, black-lens eyes whirring as it tracked him.

  “I’d like to take this request,” he said, pushing the paper forward on the counter. “I’m Dain Sorowyn, Common-3 grade.”

  The automaton’s eyes brightened. Two pale cones of golden light shot out its eyes, sweeping him from head to toe, then from toe to head. He winced as the light burned right into his own eyes.

  “Grade confirmed,” the automaton intoned in a soulless, mechanical voice. “Recommendation: form a party of at least five adventurers before attempting a Common-4 extermination request. Silverplume owls attack in packs from elevated perches. Risk of surround: high. Risk of injury: high. Risk of death: moderate. Please form a party of at least five adventurers.”

  “Not interested. I want the curons and the materials for myself.”

  The automaton’s voice didn’t shift. “Final recommendation: please form a party of at least five adventurers before attempting a Common-4 extermination request. Silverplume owls attack in packs from elevated—”

  Before Dain could cut it off and confirm he did, in fact, want to take on this request alone, another voice slipped in from behind.

  “You should listen to the automaton, you know.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  There they were again: the two girls from the inn. The taller one, the swordstaff maid, looked perfectly steady, but the younger, wavy-haired one wore a small smile that was just a little too pretty for an establishment like this.

  “After all, the two of us nearly got killed in the forest yesterday,” she said, brushing her hair back. “We didn’t have a proper party, and now we’ve learned our lesson. How about it? Want to form a party with two beauties?”

  Dain smiled.

  Then he turned back to the automaton, tapping the paper slip with a finger once more.

  “No thanks,” he said. “I’d like to do this alone, please.”