Nick pushed open the heavy door to the Adventurer’s Guild and was immediately greeted by the sound of organized chaos.
Voices overlapped across the room—arguments over pay, complaints about assignments, the clatter of mugs from the small bar tucked into one corner. A long wooden board covered nearly half the far wall, layered with parchment slips in every imaginable state of wear.
Someone brushed past Nick on their way to the quest board, nearly knocking him into the door.
Ray leaned closer to him.
“Is it always this loud?”
Nick watched three adventurers arguing over a quest sheet. One of them was holding another back while the third flailed his fists in anger.
“This is what humanity looks like in its purest form.”
Ray tilted her head.
“So only humans are like this?”
“…I’m not sure about that.”
He let the door swing shut behind them and stepped aside just in time to avoid a broad-shouldered adventurer barreling past with a fistful of parchment. The man shoved his way toward the board, muttering something about the “last decent job of the week” as he disappeared into the cluster already gathered there.
Ray watched him go, her eyebrows lifting slightly.
“They seem very… motivated.”
“I’m sure they’re fond of putting food on the table.”
They made their way toward the far wall, weaving through the restless crowd. A pair of adventurers stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the board, each gripping the same quest sheet like two dogs fighting over a bone while a weary clerk tried to wedge himself between them.
“You can’t both take it,” the clerk was saying, his voice thin with exhaustion. “It’s a single contract.”
“We got here first,” one of the men insisted.
“We should have priority,” the other shot back. “We took the shit jobs last week, so we deserve it.”
Nick slowed just long enough to watch the struggle resolve itself when the parchment tore neatly in half.
The two men stared at their respective pieces.
The clerk closed his eyes.
They stepped past the argument and finally reached the G-rank quest board.
Up close, it looked even worse.
Considering their apparently late arrival, most of what could be considered the ‘good’ contracts had already been stripped away, leaving ragged corners where parchment had been torn loose. What remained were tasks nobody had bothered to claim, some showing age through curling at the edges or stained with rain and dirty fingerprints.
Ray began scanning them one by one:
Drainage Clearing – West Gate District
Assist Masonry Crew – Outer Wall Repairs
Waste Removal – Lower Quarter
Livestock Escort – River Farms
Lost Dog – Barracks
She glanced sideways at Nick.
“…These all look terrible.”
Nick nodded.
“That’s probably why they’re still here.”
A group of adventurers pushed in behind them, arguing loudly about whether escort work counted as ‘real combat experience’. Ray shifted slightly to make room, though the newcomers seemed more interested in complaining than actually choosing a job.
She reached up and tapped one of the sheets.
“This one.”
She picked the Drainage Clearing quest.
He looked from the parchment to Ray.
“Have you ever done manual labor before?”
She shrugged.
“Can’t knock it until I’ve tried it.”
He pulled the quest free from the board.
“Good,” he said, folding the paper once and tucking it into his hand. “Because I have a feeling we’re going to be doing a lot of manual labor in the near future.”
Behind them, someone shouted something about the last escort quest being taken while staring firmly at the ‘Livestock Escort’ quest that was clearly still on the board.
Nick glanced back once at the crowd before heading toward the counter to register the job.
Ray followed, her eyes still wandering over the guild hall as if she were trying to take in every detail at once.
Nick couldn’t blame her.
There were differences, of course, but it was all very nostalgic, reminding him of the days before he met his teammates.
For all the noise and chaos, these places had a kind of gravity to them.
People came here to earn coin and gamble on opportunity.
All it took was one lucrative contract to change a life—at least, that was the story everyone told themselves.
The rare success was enough to keep the rest believing.
The clerk barely glanced up when Nick set the quest slip on the counter.
“Drainage clearing?” he muttered, already reaching for a stamp. “West Gate District. Report to the foreman by the outer trench.”
The stamp came down with a dull thud.
“Bring the slip back when you’re done.”
Nick thanked him, and they stepped back out into the daylight.
The noise of the guild faded behind them as the door shut, replaced by the rhythm of the city streets. Cairel was already fully awake. Merchants were setting up their stalls along the roadside, guards walked their patrols along the wider avenues, and a pair of carts loaded with timber creaked slowly past them toward the eastern side of the city.
Ray took a deep breath, stretching her arms slightly.
“Have you ever cleared drainage before?”
Nick folded the parchment and tucked it away.
“In a sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s not that important.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“But it is a statement.”
She pursed her lips but decided not to push any harder.
They followed the main road west, gradually leaving behind the denser market streets for broader avenues where the buildings thinned and the walls of the city began to loom larger in the distance. The western gate stood open ahead of them, its massive wooden doors pulled back while a steady trickle of carts and travelers passed through.
Even from a distance, the wall itself was impressive. The stone rose several stories high, reinforced by thick buttresses and watchtowers that overlooked the plains beyond the city.
Ray slowed slightly as they approached.
“I thought so when we entered the city yesterday, but these walls are big.”
Nick followed her gaze upward.
“Makes you wonder what they’re trying to keep out.”
The scale of it spoke to the same reality they’d heard about since arriving—raids from the Wastes and monsters wandering too close from the borderlands. Perhaps there was a human element as well—walls were a symbol, and the ability to build such tall and sturdy walls spoke volumes about the power of humanity in this region.
They turned off the road before reaching the gate itself, following a dirt path that ran along the inside of the wall. The ground here had been churned up by recent work, and several shallow trenches ran parallel to the stone barrier where rainwater had begun to pool after some recent storms.
A handful of workers were already there.
Some were ordinary laborers dressed in worn clothing and wide-brimmed hats to keep the sun off their faces. Others looked like adventurers who had drawn the same short straw Nick and Ray had.
At the center of the activity stood a broad-shouldered man leaning on a shovel while surveying the trenches with the weary patience of someone who had explained the same instructions too many times already.
When Nick and Ray approached, the man looked them over.
“Guild sent you?”
Nick nodded and handed over the quest slip.
The foreman skimmed it once and jerked his thumb toward a line of tools laid out beside a cart.
“Grab a shovel. Trenches clogged up after the last rain. Clear the muck so the water can drain toward the outer ditch.”
Ray picked up a shovel and tested its weight, turning it slightly in her hands.
Nick noticed the foreman watching her.
“…First day?” he asked.
Nick smiled faintly.
“That obvious?”
He nodded toward Ray, who had already begun digging into the mud with surprising enthusiasm.
“Give it a week.”
Nick looked back at her.
In the short time it had taken them to exchange a few words, she had already cleared a noticeable portion of the trench.
He stepped closer.
“Slow down. Don’t finish the entire trench by yourself.”
Ray paused, glancing up.
“…Why?”
He tilted his head toward the rest of the workers.
“Because then we’ll get the next trench, too. We don’t get paid by the trench.”
She considered that.
“Even if it means I do more work, isn’t it better to just do the job faster? If we get paid the same either way, then we can use the extra time to do another job.”
Nick nodded approvingly.
“We’ll make a corporate slave of you yet.”
“…Huh?”
Around them, the work continued in a steady rhythm. Mud sloshed against the sides of the trench as workers scooped it out and dumped it into waiting carts. A pair of laborers nearby complained loudly about the guild’s pay rates, while another man insisted that at least drainage work was better than hauling stones.
Nick worked alongside them, but his attention drifted occasionally beyond the trench.
From here, the closest wall towers were easy to see. Guards moved along the battlements in slow patrols, their routes tracing predictable lines along the stone walkways. Every so often, one of the watchmen paused to look out across the plains beyond the gate before continuing on.
Nick leaned on the shovel for a moment, wiping a streak of mud from his sleeve.
Ray looked over from her side of the trench.
“Enjoying yourself?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve had worse jobs.”
She nodded thoughtfully and returned to digging.
And for the next several hours, that was exactly what they did.
The trench slowly widened as the workers cleared the thick, waterlogged mud from the drainage channel. Each shovel lifted another heavy scoop of muck before dumping it into the growing pile along the side of the ditch. The work was slow, repetitive, and unpleasant in a way that made time feel slightly distorted.
At some point, a cart rolled up beside the trench, pulled by a tired-looking mule and loaded with several large wooden crates meant to collect the removed sludge.
The foreman jerked his thumb toward it.
“Fill those up before the next wagon comes through.”
A pair of laborers groaned but set their shovels aside and climbed out of the trench to start dragging the crates into position.
One of them grabbed the edge of the nearest crate and tried to slide it toward the ditch.
It barely moved.
“Did they fill this thing with bricks?” he muttered.
His partner braced a shoulder against the side.
“Just pull.”
The crate scraped a few inches across the dirt before stopping again.
Ray watched them struggle for a moment before climbing out of the trench herself.
“Need help?”
The two men glanced at her.
One of them chuckled.
“Unless you’ve got the strength of three men, I think we’ve got it.”
Ray reached down, grabbed the edge of the crate with both hands, and lifted.
The box came up off the ground with a heavy creak.
The two men stared.
She set it down beside the trench and dusted her hands off.
“There.”
For a moment, nobody said anything.
One of the laborers blinked slowly.
“…Right.”
The other scratched the side of his head.
“Well.”
He looked at his partner.
“You think she’s one of them magicians?”
“Isn’t that the only thing that makes sense?”
Ray raised an eyebrow.
“Was that considered ‘heavy’?”
The first man stared at the crate.
“I’d say you’d need two or three strongmen to lift that thing. Or a magician like yourself.”
“Magician?”
“I’ll keep your secret, kiddo. If you’re gonna keep lifting those crates, I’m not going to complain.”
They went back to work, though the occasional glance toward Ray suggested they were still interested in what she’d accidentally revealed.
The man closest to Nick wiped sweat from his brow and nodded toward the wall looming overhead.
“This your first time working in the trenches?”
Nick nodded.
“New faces,” the man said. “You learn to spot ‘em quick around here.”
He jabbed his shovel into the mud again.
“Most people passing through are either adventurers or merchants. Adventurers come for the monsters. Merchants come because the monsters make adventurers rich.”
Ray leaned slightly over the edge of the trench.
“Are the monsters dangerous?”
The man laughed quietly.
“You’re standing under a wall thick enough to park a house on top of.”
He gestured with the shovel.
“What do you think?”
Another worker nearby joined the conversation without looking up from his digging.
“Depends where they’re coming from,” he said. “Out in the plains, you mostly see strays from dungeons. Wolves, goblins, the odd ogre if you’re unlucky. It’s the stuff that crawls down from the Wastes that you’ve got to worry about.”
Ray frowned slightly.
“I’ve heard a few people mention ‘the Wastes’,” she commented.
The first laborer nodded toward the eastern wall on the far side of the city.
“Dead land, mostly. Monsters breed there like flies on meat.”
He dumped another shovel of mud into the cart.
“That’s why the walls stay busy.”
Nick glanced up at the battlements again.
The patrol route was almost identical to what he’d noticed earlier.
It was almost sloppy how predictable the route was with just a few hours of observation.
Another laborer climbed out of the trench and stretched his back with a quiet groan.
“Still better than the old days,” he muttered.
Nick raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
The man wiped his hands on his trousers.
“You’re new, right? Didn’t you hear about the wars?”
Nick shook his head.
“Before the current duke took control, the border towns got raided every other month. Monsters pushed in, bandits hit our supply lines, the usual.”
He jerked a thumb toward the city.
“Now you’ve got one of the Lords of the East running the place.”
Ray looked up.
“That’s a fancy title,” she remarked.
The man seemed slightly surprised.
“You must be really new.”
He leaned on his shovel.
“The eastern border’s divided between three big lords. Each one controls a stretch of territory along the frontier.”
He nodded toward the city again.
“Cairel belongs to the Bishop of Tyranny.”
Ray blinked.
“Tyranny?”
A couple of the workers laughed.
“It’s a title,” one of them said. “Church nonsense.”
“Still fits him well enough,” another muttered.
The man continued digging.
“Duke Jantzen’s the one who pushed the monster lines back a few years ago. Folks started calling him the Bishop of Tyranny after he wiped out three warbands solo. They say standing in the same room as him makes your knees lock up.”
Ray watched him thoughtfully.
“That sounds impressive.”
The man shrugged.
“I’ve never met the man myself. I’m not even convinced he actually exists. He’s probably some elf wearing a human mask.”
Another worker nearby sighed.
“Again with that ‘hidden society’ nonsense. Elves don’t exist anymore. They all died a hundred years ago. Besides, the duke’s son just moved to the city recently, and plenty of people have seen him.”
One of the others snorted.
“Hard not to hear about that.”
Ray looked curious.
“Why?”
The man shook his head.
“Because the boy’s a priest.”
“…and? Isn’t his father a bishop?”
The man gave a humorless smile.
“Priests of Strength tend to take their lessons very seriously.”
Another laborer spat into the mud beside the trench.
“Especially that one.”
Nick kept digging, though his attention sharpened slightly.
“Does he have a bad reputation?”
The first man shrugged.
“Depends who you ask.”
He lifted another shovel full of mud.
“But if you’ve got daughters, sisters… or slaves…”
The man let the sentence trail off.
“Well, just keep them away from Jantzen’s boy.”
The trench fell quiet except for the steady scrape of shovels against wet earth.
Ray glanced at Nick.
He didn’t look up from the mud.
He couldn’t.
Some things children should never have to go through.
For a moment, the mud looked too much like something else that he didn’t want to remember.
His hands tightened around the shovel handle before he noticed.
Project Knightfall 