Hunter was out for a late evening run when his Danger-Sense started screaming bloody murder. A heartbeat later, a cowled figure burst from behind a tree, sword in hand, charging straight at him.

  He didn’t even have time to register what was happening; he just dove aside on instinct. It was a good thing he did, too, because it was the only thing that saved him. Even midair, he felt the whisper of a long, slender blade slicing past him by a hair’s breadth.

  Just a few paces away, Fyodor was barking and growling, hackles raised. It was him that intercepted the second attack. Hunter was frantically scrambling to his feet when the assailant lunged again, but the direwolf barreled into the figure, slamming it off balance.

  The time Fyodor bought him was just enough for Hunter to draw his dirk and fall into a basic knife-fighter’s stance. But the cowled assailant was faster. Recovering from Fyodor’s tackle, he pivoted sharply and kicked at Hunter’s hand, knocking the weapon free and sending it clattering across the ground.

  Biggs and Wedge were circling over the scene, going apeshit. Hunter could feel their confusion buzzing in the back of his mind, their voices overlapping in a frantic chorus.

  “What we do? What we do? What we do?”

  “Well, do something, anything!” Hunter shot back, too busy trying to put some distance between himself and the advancing figure to think straight.

  Fyodor, still puffed up and baring his teeth, moved in to guard Hunter’s flank. Unperturbed, the assailant lunged again, sidestepping the direwolf’s snapping jaws at the last possible moment, somersaulting over him, stabbing at Hunter’s shoulder.

  It was a spectacular maneuver; it might have worked, too, if not for the two ravens launching two consecutive blasts of lime-colored witchfire at the figure, blowing him out of the air. He landed in a deft barrel roll, barely slowed, and immediately lunged at Hunter again.

  For once, however, time was on Hunter’s side. Thanks to his Adaptive Defense, each of the assailant’s attacks made the next one a tiny bit easier to dodge. Disarmed, that was his best bet; keep dodging until help arrived, or until Biggs and Wedge pelted the figure with enough witchfire to send him packing.

  “Help!” he shouted, hoping to get the attention of the Callanthines. “Help! I’m being attacked!”

  That didn’t seem to startle the assailant in the least. None of the spectral attendants showed up, either—which was unusual. They were everywhere. An inside job, then, Hunter thought. Was this the Sage’s doing? Had she sent an assassin after him?

  Deciding the snarling direwolf and the witchfire-wielding ravens were too much trouble to deal with, the assailant simply drew a pistol and fired, catching Hunter off guard. His Adaptive Defense couldn’t possibly have predicted such a shift in tactics. The blast of pellets hit him square in the chest, hurling him backward and painting the front of his jacket blood-red.

  “You died,” the assailant said, his tone flat and colorless. He put away his blade and pistol and drew back his cowl; Gauffrey, the weapons master. “What were your mistakes?”

  “What?” Hunter said, scrambling to his feet and wiping the sticky, foul-smelling crimson liquid from his chest. It was paint.

  “The mistakes that led to your death, Transient. What were they?”

  With the assailant’s identity revealed and his weapons sheathed, Fyodor, Biggs, and Wedge stood down as well. The direwolf padded over to check on Hunter, sniffing the red paint and wrinkling his nose at the acrid smell. The ravens, on the other hand, kept to Gauffrey’s flanks, ready to resume their barrage of eldritch fire at the first sign of trouble.

  “I don’t know,” said Hunter, sullen. “You tell me.”

  “No. What was your first mistake?”

  “Asking you for help.” Now that the threat was over, his hypervigilance was quickly curdling to anger. “What the hell is this thing you shot me with?”

  “Your first mistake,” Gauffrey droned on, “was being caught unprepared. Unarmed, even.”

  “What are you talking about? I was carrying—”

  “The dirk?” the weapons master interrupted. “You barely know how to hold it, let alone fight with it. And you were too slow on the draw. You’re wearing it on the wrong side.”

  “What was I supposed to do, run around with a seven-foot glaive strapped to my back?”

  “That was a question you should have asked yourself before choosing such an unwieldy weapon.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “What was your second mistake?”

  Hunter didn’t even bother to answer. He could tell when he was being lectured.

  “You assumed I had come unprepared, too. The defensive your allies launched was a commendable one. Were I a common cutpurse in some alley in Usdeneau, it would have sufficed. But you are not in some alley in Usdeneau. An Aspirant of the Iron Rung should hold himself to a higher standard of skill and vigilance.”

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  “Did I make a third mistake, too?”

  “A third, and a fourth, and a fifth,” Gauffrey replied coolly. “But discussing them at this point would be a waste of time. For now, focus on not repeating the first two. Death, one. Transient, zero. I will be keeping score. You are dismissed.”

  And with that, the weapons master turned around and walked away, leaving Hunter fuming.

  ***

  By the next morning, Hunter’s temper had cooled considerably. He’d asked for Gauffrey’s help, and the humorless weapons master had delivered exactly that. Unconventional though his methods were, they had their merits. Danger-Sense, for instance, was almost impossible to train without facing real danger. If nothing else, having to constantly watch his back in case Gauffrey tried to gank him again was a perfectly legitimate way to push it to 25.

  As for the mistakes Gauffrey had pointed out… Well, he hadn’t been wrong there either. Hunter had found himself in danger and out of reach of his glaive more times than he care to admit. It was an unwieldy weapon, cumbersome to carry around. That was one of the issues he’d need to address—and the sooner, the better.

  The obvious answer would be to store it in the Arsenal Bracer. Retrieving it from there, however, still required a few seconds of concentration. In a combat situation, that would simply not do.

  Judging from how quickly and easily Fawkes was able to store and retrieve objects from her own bracer, even mid-fight, told him it was a matter of practice. So that was what he should do: practice. His Artifact Handling was only at 11. There was plenty of room for improvement.

  He spent most of the morning in the guesthouse foyer, timing himself with an hourglass as he practiced storing and retrieving his glaive from the Bracer’s extradimensional space as quickly as possible.

  He’d been at it for two hours when his Danger-Sense went off again, just as a crossbow bolt shot through the open window. It hit him square in the chest, knocking the air out of him. It was tipped not with a head, but with a vial of foul-smelling red paint that shattered on impact, splattering across his chest and making a mess of his clothes.

  “You died,” Gauffrey’s voice called from somewhere outside, flat and matter-of-fact. “Death, two. Transient, zero.”

  Furious, Hunter reached through their shared mental link and ordered Biggs and Wedge to find the bastard and peck his eyes out. Even from a bird’s-eye view of the courtyard, however, the weapons master was nowhere to be found.

  Swearing bloody vengeance, Hunter headed to his room to change out of his ruined shirt. He handed it to one of the spectral attendants for cleaning, then went downstairs to resume his Artifact Handling practice. If he had to do it hidden in the pantry, he would—but that dead-eyed bastard was not going to catch him unaware again.

  He had Biggs and Wedge map out every possible vantage point and entry to the building, keeping watch for the rest of the day. Of course, Gauffrey didn’t so much as show his face again. He wouldn’t, not while—or even where—Hunter was expecting him.

  As it turned out, however, Geoffrey wasn’t done for the day. After two hours more hours of practicing, Hunter decided to take a break and log out for lunch. In the past few days,he’d made a habit of heading upstairs to his room and lying down in bed before logging out. For some reason, that was always where he’d find himself upon logging back in, after all. Logging out in the same spot made the transition less jarring.

  When he returned to Elderpyre a couple of hours later, however, a nasty surprise was waiting for him. Someone had painted a large red “X” across his chest with that same foul-smelling paint and pinned a handwritten note to his lapel.

  “You died,” it read. “Death, three. Transient, zero.”

  Biggs and Wedge hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave the guesthouse, and Fyodor was fast asleep downstairs, snoring merrily in front of the fireplace, the remains of a half-chewed goat leg beside him. Someone—Gauffrey—had clearly dosed him with something.

  That was what finally tipped Hunter over the edge. He stormed out of the guesthouse, stomped across the courtyard, and started pounding on the doors of the training hall. It didn’t matter whether the weapons master was inside or not; Hunter was far too angry to care about such trivialities.

  “Too far!” he roared. “That was too far! Do whatever the hell you want to me, but leave the mutt out of it!”

  “What is the meaning of this?” someone called. It was Sister Ursa, likely returning to Tor Taravus after finishing her shift at the Propylon Arch.

  “That bastard Gauffrey!” Hunter spat. “He dosed Fyodor with some kind of sleeping poison!”

  The fur-clad woman cocked an eyebrow.

  “Talk,” she said.

  Hunter talked, and then some. He told her about the weapons master’s assessment of his abilities, of his subsequent unconventional training tactics, and of the suspicious goat leg he’d found. Sister Ursa listened carefully, her frown growing progressively deeper with every word.

  “Let it never be said that the weapons master of Tor Taravus lets empathy get in the way of efficiency,” she said at last, sighing. “The man’s a stone-cold killer. I’ll have a word with him. And I’ll send for Antonetta to drop by and have a look at the direwolf, though I’m sure he’s fine. Gauffrey knows his poisons, and I doubt he meant any real harm.”

  She summoned one of the spectral attendants and sent her to fetch Antonetta, then walked Hunter back to the guesthouse.

  “I don’t mind him pulling these stunts on me,” he said, half-apologetically. “I asked for it, after all. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay for him to put Fyodor in harm’s way.”

  “I understand,” Sister Ursa said again. “Worry not, I’ll have a word with him.”

  Antonetta arrived at the guesthouse less than five minutes later, a satchel of medicinal supplies slung over her shoulder. Fortunately, Fyodor turned out to be fine. All it took to wake him up was a pinch of smelling salts—though he was decidedly unhappy about having his goat leg taken away.

  “Make sure he drinks plenty of water,” the medic told him. “And if I were you, I’d try teaching him to be more careful about what he eats.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” Hunter said. Fyodor was already back in the kitchen, nosing around the pantry.

  He thanked Antonetta, gave Fyodor a piece of Aether-infused mutton to get him to stop complaining, and settled down by the fireplace, notebook in hand. He had some well-deserved retribution to plan.

  It didn’t take Hunter long to find himself in the same place he always went whenever he had a conundrum to work through: the old-timey speakeasy that served as his personal Shard.

  "Good evening, Mort," he said, and this time headed straight for the small bookcase by the reading nook.

  "Good evening, sir. Drink?"

  “Whiskey, Mort. Irish, neat. I’m in the mood to learn how to build bombs.”

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