Petros felt it before he saw it, a thin skin of static forming around Jack, the air tightening like a drum. At the bar, Raven’s fingers traced a quiet pattern; a totem-summoning sigil flickered between them, coiled and ready. Petros let his breath settle in his chest. Jack had taught him to hold Myriad like a thought you could think forever. He was already there.
The trio dropped into the freshly vacated table beside them. By then, the Boar & Brew had emptied to three people: Jack, Petros, and Raven. Chairs rocked on their back legs where men had left them. The hearth hissed.
“Jack Hart,” the thick-shouldered one said, eyes flat. “You don’t look like much.”
Jack said nothing.
The man tipped his chin at Petros. “That your boy?”
Silence.
He sniffed, grinning. “The air reeks of your magic.”
Jack finally spoke, mild as rain. “You are C-tier.”
A chuckle. “Very astute, Jack. Did you think you were the only one?”
Jack’s mouth curved. “Not really. Thirteen have broken through this past year. Eight outworlders. Five Aerothanians.” He watched the man’s shoulders tighten, then added, pleasantly as a census, “Two out of Anjelica, one in Pendle, one around Jovish. Two hermits. And you three.”
The leader’s grin thinned, arms folding across his chest in a show that failed to hide the shift in his stance.
Jack kept going, voice still gentle. He lifted a finger toward the tall man, then the woman. “Claudia and Hank, Earth-born.” He turned his hand, palm open, to the thick one. “And you are Noble. Aerothanian. Guildmaster.”
The smile fell off Noble’s face. The two behind him glanced at each other, then away. Petros kept his own smile off his mouth and in his eyes. Anjelica did not guess at names like these; they confirmed them.
Noble unfolded his arms and gave a slow, mocking clap. He flicked a look at Raven, then at Petros. “Tell your woman to stand down, lad. We’re not here to fight.” A beat, the grin returning as he looked back to Jack. “Unless you want to.”
Jack raised both hands, palms easy. “We are here to celebrate. Rounds on me.” He tipped his head toward the bar. “Raven, please.”
Three mugs hit the table a heartbeat later. Raven set Noble’s down hard enough to kiss his knuckles with foam, then drifted back to her post without taking her eyes off him.
“As I said,” Noble went on, lifting his drink but not sipping, “we come in peace, with a warning. There is a price on your head. The guild has not taken it as a contract, but we allow our members to freelance. We have spread the word that Jack Hart is off-limits.”
“How kind,” Jack said.
“Not kind,” Noble replied. “Practical. My people know you are for me. I do not plan to take you for coin. I plan to take you for amusement. A clean fight, to see who stands on top.”
Jack shook his head. “I am not interested in thrones.”
“Oh, we will fight,” Noble said, finishing his ale in one long pull. “Today is not the day. The warning is given. I expect you already knew.”
Jack did not answer.
“I will be seeing you.” Noble stood. He set the empty mug down with care, as if respect could be placed like a coin, and turned for the door. Claudia and Hank followed after him.
The tavern breathed again. Raven exhaled, shoulders loosening. It was not that she feared losing; it was the ruin a clash at this level would make of her town.
“No worries,” Jack said, as if answering the thought she had not spoken. “I would have taken them away from Pendle.”
A broad shape filled the doorway. Henry leaned in, soot on his arms, eyes sharp. “If ye need me, I’m heading back to the forge,” he said, voice casual, promise not. He had been waiting outside since the three arrived, ready to back them if the room tipped. In Pendle, he was the only other C-tier Jack had alluded to.
Jack’s gaze had already drifted past Henry, past the square, past the wall. “They are out of the town and headed west,” he said. “At a decent clip.”
Raven nodded once and set about righting chairs. The room remembered how to be a tavern. The storm, for now, had chosen to walk away.
Jack finished the story of Freedom over stew and bread, trimming nothing.
Petros tried not to groan out loud. He failed once, then twice. By the end he just rubbed his face with both hands and peered at Jack through his fingers. “If I had been there, I… might have done the same,” he admitted, voice small and honest. “If someone threatened Abby. Or Asil.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Jack tipped his mug. “So we agree.”
“We agree we are both in trouble,” Petros said.
Jack’s grin went sideways. “Which means we avoid telling Asil and Abby for as long as possible.”
“We have to face the music eventually.”
“Future Jack and Petros can handle it.”
That earned him a full faceplant from Petros, forehead to tabletop. Raven snorted behind the bar.
They settled the bill, despite Raven’s protests, and took a slow lap of the square: first stop, Mara’s.
The tailor’s bell chimed them in. Bolts of cloth lined the walls, from sensible wool to something that caught light like water. Mara looked up from a mannequin pinned halfway through a traveling coat.
“Look what the river dragged in,” she said, eyes already on Jack’s satchel. “Please tell me you brought me something I cannot buy for coins.”
Jack set a bundle on her cutting table. Scales flashed. A length of spider-silk shimmered, near invisible. A neat roll of hardened leather from something that had too many teeth. “Odds and ends,” he said. “From my last run.”
Mara’s breath went sharp. “Oh, yes. This lives here now.” She traced the silk with a fingertip, then flicked a glance at Petros. “You still sending me apprentices from Anjelica?”
“As fast as you do not terrify them,” Petros said, smiling.
“I terrify them into competence.” She flicked Jack’s lapel. “And you. Still married to that… style.”
“Classic,” Jack said, smoothing his flat cap like it was a crown.
“Classic to whom?” Mara sniffed. “That hat says ‘minor tax collector at harvest.’ Bring me a proper cuirass next time, and I’ll cut you a coat that respects the steel beneath. Glamour-work is your Anjelica Transmogrifier’s art, not mine. I stitch what’s honest.” She, of course, was referring to Jack’s 1920s mafia shiek of suspenders, collared shirt, and flat cap.
“Deal,” Jack said. “And keep a few patterns aside for Anjelica’s Transmogrifier. We want them leveling too.”
“They get my notes and my mistakes,” Mara said, pleased. “Now go bother Hob before your wolves steal his breakfast again.”
Hob the butcher was elbow-deep in a side of boar when they arrived. He did not look up. “Tell Saul and Lucia I am armed with a cleaver and a bad temper.”
“They are in Anjelica this week,” Jack said, setting wrapped bundles on the block. “Peace offerings anyway.”
Hob sniffed, then grunted approval. “Forest-bred. Good marbling. You cooking any of this?”
“Not today,” Jack said. “I owe my wife a quiet week.”
Hob chuckled. “Then I will keep a pair of roasts cold. You look like the sort who breaks quiet weeks.”
Petros leaned an elbow on the counter. “He does.”
Hob finally looked up, took them both in, then slid a packet across to Petros. “Jerky for the road, councilman. Pay me with a story the next time you swing through.”
“Done,” Petros said.
They crossed to Henry’s forge last. The heat met them first, then the twin sounds of hammer and bellows. Henry stepped out, streaked with soot, eyebrows already up.
“Back so soon?” he asked, wiping his hands on a rag.
“Brought you work,” Jack said, emptying the last of his satchel’s metal ore in rough cakes, a bag of monster plates, and an unlucky helm that had more dents than dignity.
Henry’s eyes warmed. He hefted a plate, nodded at its weight. “This will sing again. I have three apprentices who need to learn to listen to metal. These should work for your custom job Jack, we should have it ready for you the morning after next.”
Jack nodded, he found a blueprint that can change how people can carry items. It would take a combination of a rune mage and a blacksmith to complete the transmogification, but in the end the item will be priceless.
“You grumbled when I sent those apprentices,” Petros said.
“I grumble when I breathe,” Henry replied. “They are good lads and lasses. They will be better when I am finished with them.” He tipped his chin at Jack. “You here long?”
“Long enough to cause trouble,” Jack said, light as ever.
Henry’s mouth twitched. “I will pretend I did not hear that. Go on. I will have something worth showing by dusk. If Raven lets you leave the tavern.”
“She does not,” Petros said.
“She should not,” Henry said, already turning the ore in his hands, weighing possibilities. “Off with you.”
They traded a few more easy lines about heat, steel, and the price of decent nails. Then Jack and Petros left Henry to his work and the square to its day.
They did eat at the Boar & Brew. Petros stole an hour in the back rooms with Raven, soft laughter under low lamplight, then he and Jack slipped out through the alley, cut between two newly built shops, and vaulted Pendle’s wall like it was a garden fence.
Once the town fell behind, the quiet found them. With it came the nerves. Petros had watched a little of Jack’s change long ago, enough to know it was not a simple thing, and Henry’s matter-of-fact “did it, went back to work” did not help. The smith’s blades had sung sharper afterward. His apprentices had taken over the lower-tier orders. And Petros had put his own turning off, and off again, until the pressure in his core felt like a knot that might burn if he waited any longer.
They traveled through the night. Jack did not need sleep. Petros needed minimal these days and had already had his share. Just after dawn, they stepped into a clearing where a great oak rose from the center like a spine.
Petros knew it at once. Two years ago, a door to the Shadow Realm had lived in its trunk. Now the seal held, tight and true, and the tree wore spring properly, leaves bright on every branch. The wood had also given up a single limb to become Zural’thuren, Jack’s staff. Jack had not called the weapon in a long while, not since the banishment; he did not need an ace when he had become one.
They made a small camp under the oak, morning light pooling along the eastern grass. Jack chose one of his better tents from the satchel, canvas unfolding to a tidy two-room shelter with a common space. He spread blankets and quilts in one sleeping alcove until it looked more like a bed than a floor.
“Here,” Jack said quietly. He set water to heat, checked the ward-circles, then sat opposite Petros. “Breathe in on five, out on seven. Think about the shape you want to be.”
“It is the shape I already am,” Petros said, surprising himself.
“That helps,” Jack answered, and let the silence belong to him.
They sat until Petros’ hands stopped shaking. Until his breath moved deeper than worry. When the steadiness came, he opened his journal. The page he had ignored for two weeks remained unchanged, displaying the same line it had shown him every morning.
Do you wish to begin your evolution? Yes
His quill hovered, then touched the paper. He circled Yes.