“The treasure hunters will be at the inn,” Caliban said with certainty as they made their way through the little market, Aallotar walking stiffly at his side with Mara close to her back to offer comfort. “Drinking and telling tall tales of grand exploits.” The contemptuous curl of his lip told them what he thought of the adventurous types.

Mara tried to ignore the discomfort of cold in her healing arm as she moved. Her demonic mentor tended little to her pain, only scouring every wound for any hint of infection that might harm his precious pupil. As a result, the burns and incisions seemed to sting even more fiercely in the cold than they had inside, the flesh around her freshly metal fingers aching and burning the most. Once upon a time it might have been enough to make her faint, even with the experience of a childhood full of beatings, but after channeling sorcery, all other pains seemed merely uncomfortable.

Aallotar’s hand touched her good shoulder, the contact comforting even despite the weight of the wildling’s heavy leather and steel gauntlet. “Are you well?” Mara’s friend asked.

“Fine,” Mara promised. “Just can’t wait to be warm.”

Caliban gave her a lupine smile. “How fortunate that we are almost to the inn.”

“Have you been to Barri before?” the sorcerer asked, flexing her fingers inside their cloth glove to try and restore some body heat through motion.

“Upon occasion. Never with regularity,” the demon’s servant explained quietly, lingering near Mara’s ear even though it earned him a fearsome glare from Aallotar. “Too many visits would inspire too many questions. A lesson that you would do well to learn. No longer are you so...ordinary.”

“Trust me when I say that’s never been a feeling I enjoyed,” Mara said. “I’ve never experienced life as anything other than what I am, and I don’t see any other spell-breakers running about.”

The inn was a partially two story, half-timbered and half stone building. Caliban caught the large door and pulled it open for Mara and her wildling guardian, revealing a room dim except for firelight and the sunlight that streamed through the ventilation holes in the thatched roof. “Fair enough,” Caliban acknowledged.

Aallotar inhaled reflexively, taking in the scent of the air even without her bestial nose. Mara suspected her friend’s senses were still slightly keener than her own. The wildling made a face of disgust, though her expression was only half visible under her spectacle helm. “They need bathing,” Aallotar murmured.

“Most in the Red Mountains don’t bathe as often as we’ve been,” Mara said. She’d learned from her mother to be fastidious, and constant injury ensured that she kept to that lesson with rigor. “Especially not in the cold of winter.”

“It offends,” Aallotar grumbled.

Mara laughed, enjoying the faint hint of a wrinkled nose she could see under the steel nose piece that guarded her friend’s face. “Get used to disappointment,” she teased. “Let’s go in and get a drink before I freeze to death.”

Aallotar immediately moved to go into the building, almost colliding with a tower of a man who stood more than a head over Aallotar’s six feet. She looked up and her eyes widened as she took in his unusual appearance and smell.

His skin was a dull red, like the color of Sjaligr sandstone brick, stretched over a square face. The angular nostrils of his flat nose flared as they collided, the fearsome glare he leveled at them coming from eyes the same shade of feral gold as Aallotar’s own. He wore furs over his armor, dull grey steel without a shine. His breastplate was one solid piece instead of mail and the curved sword he wore looked like nothing Mara had ever seen. The man’s eyes narrowed as he looked over the three of them. For such a huge brute, the intelligence that gleamed in his eyes was dangerously present.

“You should watch where you’re going, foreigner,” Caliban said almost imperiously, apparently unconcerned by the obstacle in his path.

The foreigner’s bearing was rigid, his expression cool when he turned his eyes on Caliban. “Such a tongue does you a disservice, warrior of Barri,” he said, accented voice deep and sonorous. “Have a care or it will be cut out.” Instead of moving to attack, however, he brushed by Aallotar and shouldered Caliban out of the way.

Mara stepped out of his path, eyes following him to his destination.

A great, horrible beast waited for the stranger near the stables, spotted and round-eared, slavering jaws unmistakably carnivorous. It was larger than a draft horse, clearly meant to be ridden, given the strange leather saddle draped over the fence beside it. The fearsome man had a pack there and a long spear resting against it. His strange armor bore no symbol that Mara recognized from the Red Mountains, only painted green hands on his left and right shoulders, with a silver badge affixed to his breastplate just beneath his throat.

“Must you start a fight with everything, craven?” Aallotar muttered, glaring at Caliban.

“Just my little joke,” Caliban said, ducking into the inn. “Whatever he is, he’s a long way from home.”

“There’s another one,” Mara whispered to the wildling with a hint of nerves, her hand finding Aallotar’s sword arm, nudging in that direction without turning her head. Seated beside an ordinary-looking man in merchant’s clothing was another one of the red-skinned behemoths, this one with hints of short horns in two lines running backwards through his dark hair. “Who are they?”

“Danger,” Aallotar murmured back.

Caliban guided them to a table, catching the wrist of a nervous-looking barmaid as they went. “Drinks for my friends and I, if you’d please,” he said, flashing the young woman a disarming grin before she could snap at him. “And a pointer towards the gentlemen with trinkets from ruins to sell.”

The fawn-haired young woman was too jittery to scowl, probably from the same source of nerves that Mara was feeling. “There,” she said, indicating a group of weathered, hard-bitten men sitting at one of the bench tables near the center of the room. The sound of their boasting dominated the room. Even the large, red-skinned warrior was making relatively little noise in comparison, conversing quietly with his merchant companion as his golden eyes surveyed his surroundings.

“Who are those strangers?” Mara asked their server before she could scurry off, nodding her head towards the strangely dressed warrior and the merchant he was guarding.

“They came from Eskaldr.”

“Have they been trouble for a beauteous young lady like yourself?” Caliban asked solicitously.

The barmaid hesitated for a moment at that, collecting her thoughts before she spoke. “Haven’t laid a finger on anyone,” she said softly. “Nice enough manners, but ain’t ever seen them smile.”

“And the merchant?” Caliban’s questions were probing, but his tone stayed polite.

“He’s an odd one,” the barmaid admitted freely. “He speaks all fancy-like, but he dresses simple. I don’t like the way he looks at folk, but he ain’t done nothing.”

“Well, we’ll stop pestering you. Except for those drinks,” Caliban said, dropping a silver coin into her palm. Her eyes widened and she darted off to get them drinks and whatever meal was being served. Silver of that size and purity was a rare sight in a town like Barri, where people tended to trade in copper coins or barter. In actual cities like Sjaligr or Eskaldr, coins were minted even in gold, but on the fringes of civilization like Barri, seldom was such wealth seen except for on the occasional adventurer.

“Do you think they’re here about the items recovered from the ruins?” Mara asked in a low voice as they took their seats at a rough-hewn table.

“I suppose it’s possible, though more likely they’re just stopping here on their way to Sjaligr,” Caliban said breezily. “Barri, stunning metropolis as it is, hardly holds the attention.”

Mara shook her head slightly at his sarcastic description of the town. Barri had probably about fifty people who permanently called it home and about as many passing through, a little huddled hint of civilization bounded on all sides by wilderness. There was a reason Sammael had chosen to make his home within a day of the settlement: he was not likely to be disturbed, even if the villagers actively went hunting. There simply weren’t enough of them to pierce his protective wilderness or pose a true threat to a demon of his power.

Aallotar sat with her legs touching Mara’s under the table. “We should do business with the boastful swiftly and be gone,” she urged. “”They look to be thinking of trouble with the foreigners.”

Mara looked over at the treasure hunters, clearly hardened men even by the standards of the Red Mountains, but loutish when into their cups. One of the men was staring at the red-skinned warrior, a thoughtful grin forming on his face.

“Marvelous,” Caliban said with a touch of sarcasm as he sprang up to his feet. His eyes almost immediately found the heavy-looking pack on the floor beside the leader of the adventuring party. “If a fight breaks out, we take that and leave.”

Aallotar glared at him. “And join the fight?”

“I wasn’t suggesting being obvious about it,” Caliban said breezily.

“Theft is not the ideal,” Mara said as she stood up to follow Caliban. She winced when she saw two of the scarred toughs approach the red-skinned man’s table. The beginning of the conversation wasn’t audible from a distance, but it became audible as Mara followed on Caliban’s heels, Aallotar at his side.

“...ey, look Hansi, I think he’s blushing,” one slurred with a grin. “Not much of a guard for his fancy-man merchant.”

The line between adventurer and bandit was seldom clear and defined in this part of the Red Mountains, Mara knew. Still, even with numbers and ale-courage on their side, it seemed a foolish risk to take on the unknown to Mara. That was probably her own native caution, though.

The red-skinned man said nothing, his expression almost bored as he looked over at Mara’s group, pointedly ignoring the adventurers mocking him.

“Ey, I’m talking to you!”

“There is no need for trouble,” the merchant said in soothing tones, his speech every bit as silver as the coin that he no doubt carried. “We are simply travelers, the same as you.”

The leader of the troublemakers put a foot on the merchant’s table, shoving it back to pin the merchant against the wall. “I don’t like your looks, fancy man.”

Mara blinked and there was a tearing sound. The red skinned man moved in an instant, that wicked curved blade streaking out of its sheath to decapitate the man with his foot on the table in an instant, cleaving cleanly through his neck. She could see the weapon it its full, bloody fascination now: its curve was also weighted forward, that much easier to slice and slash. She had never seen anyone so large move quite so fast before, but the man was already on his feet, contemptuously shoving the body off the table with his foot. She had only ever seen one person escalate so smoothly from absentminded fascination to lethal violence without stopping at a single step in the middle: Gaius. Was this big, red-skinned man from that far south?

The dead man’s six companions let out a shout, pulling weapons that varied from swords and knives to axes. Caliban sidled around the rear of the group as they charged the red-skinned man, preparing to grab the pack of treasure.

“They’re going to kill him,” Mara observed, catching hold of Aallotar’s business. The lone guard could be fast and strong, but six against one was not even close to a fair fight.

“Perhaps we can separate them until heads have cooled?” Aallotar murmured, looking to Mara for guidance.

Mara shook her head. “He killed one of them. That’s blood feud material if ever I’ve seen it.”

The first to close the distance with the red-skinned man was met not by the guard’s blade, but by a fist that hit the assailant in the side of the head with enough force to drop him like a thunderbolt. Even as that movement happened, the red-skinned man was already flicking his wicked blade at the throat of a second attacker. The movements he made were strange and circular, clearly focused on always keeping that curved blade in motion so it had its full momentum. It was flashy, but it did an excellent job of keeping the adventurers at bay as well, as it could threaten anywhere in reach at any moment.

“It’s not our business,” Mara said, catching hold of Aallotar’s arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Caliban grabbed the bag even as they spoke, shouldering the pack now that attention was focused firmly away from him. He turned to dart for the door and collided with the second red-skinned man returning from outside with sword bared.

Instead of cutting Caliban down, the foreigner punched out into the thieving man’s solar plexus with enough force to drop him to the ground where he gasped like a landed fish. The red-skinned man stepped onto his prone body with one boot, pinning Caliban to the floor. Instead of drawing his sword, he hurled a javelin so hard it pierced one of the adventurers through the body.

“Two is fairer,” Aallotar said, grabbing Mara’s hand and pulling her back against the wall since the door was occupied by a potentially hostile force.

“Thief!” one man shouted. He pivoted and saw Aallotar and Mara, but before he could charge them, a bloody arcing blade caught him in the back of the knees, dropping him to the ground before the second rotation of the red-skinned man’s arm brought the blade down on his skull with a brutal chop.

The merchant seemed utterly unfazed by the actions of his guards, even as the other people in the inn scattered for cover and let out cries of horror. Aallotar pulled Mara behind the bar and down to the ground beside the barmaid who was cowering there, her shield arm circled around Mara so the large round shield protected the sorcerer from any danger. Together, they knelt out of view.

“They have Caliban,” Mara said in protest when Aallotar kept her down. She wasn’t tall enough to peer over the bar the way the wildling could. “We have to help him.”

“Caliban can care for himself,” Aallotar said firmly, watching the battle as it raged.

The adventurers, hardened and skilled at arms, were no match for the fury they had roused. Soon the last of their bodies hit the packed dirt of the floor, blood splashing into the covering straw.

The red-skinned warrior with a boot on Caliban looked down at the gasping man. He ground his heel harder into the sternum of the demon’s servant. “Where are you running to, little thief?” he growled out.

“Bring him to me, Ansigar,” the merchant said, silver voice commanding. “Let us see what he was stealing. Perhaps his companions will join us as well.”

Mara and Aallotar exchanged a look. That did not sound good.