An Alliance of Convenience

The heavy doors of the Gilded Gryphon swung shut behind them with a dull brass thud, cutting off the warm wash of noise and smell from within. Outside, the city’s night pressed close—wet cobblestones shining in the lamplight, alleys breathing out cold mist, a faint tang of iron and sewage riding the air. Ronan’s boots landed like dropped stones with every step. Kael’s own tread felt tentative in comparison, his thin leather soles slipping slightly on the damp street.

The shortsword at his hip thumped against his thigh. Every movement reminded him how alien it felt. He’d worn VR headsets heavier than this blade, but the real thing had a way of whispering: this can kill; this can get you killed.

He exhaled slowly. Walking through a medieval city, armed with a sword, partnered with a giant barbarian, on my way to kill monsters for money. Right. Totally normal.

“So, Duskvale’s cellar is just past the market square,” Ronan said at last, his deep voice rolling like a cartwheel over gravel. “You ever fought anything that wasn’t nailed to a chopping board, Tricksy?”

Kael’s gaze stayed on the slick stones ahead. “No,” he said flatly.

Ronan barked out a laugh that startled a nearby alley cat. “Honest. Good. Stick behind my shield, keep your feet under you. Do that, and we’ll collect our coin before the taverns pour their last round.”

Kael didn’t reply. He could feel the contract between them like a thin, dry cord: business only. That was fine by him. Clean edges meant fewer surprises.

“This way’s faster,” Ronan grunted, peeling off down a narrow lane that ran between two leaning rows of shuttered buildings. The walls climbed high, blocking out most of the night sky. Trash skittered underfoot. It smelled of wet straw, pitch smoke, and something older, ranker. Kael kept his hand close to the hilt of his shortsword but didn’t draw it.

They’d gone maybe twenty paces when the hairs on Kael’s neck lifted. It was an old city instinct—his urban radar pinging off someone’s stare. He slowed. “Ronan—”

Something landed ahead of them with a whisper of cloth. A slim figure had dropped from a roofline and crouched, then rose in a single, fluid motion. Silver hair spilled down her back like poured mercury.

Kael’s stomach knotted. He knew that hair. “Wait. You—” He stepped forward, palm up. “I saw you at the Gryphon. You with the Broly Party aren't you?”

The elf’s expression didn’t change except for the faint lift of a single silver eyebrow. “Those dumb brutes?” she said, her voice as cool as snowmelt. “They mistook me for a desperate bow for hire. I explained the error of their assumption.”

Ronan shifted his weight. “We’re not lookin’ for company,” he growled.

The elf ignored him entirely and locked eyes on Kael, as though she’d already measured and dismissed the giant at his side. “I overheard your arrangement with the guild master. I will accompany you.”

It wasn’t an offer. It was a decision already made.

Ronan snorted. “Party’s full. Not taking on another mouth to feed.”

Her gaze sharpened like a blade pulled from a sheath. “A bargain struck between a lumbering oaf and a man who still smells of ink and parchment is not a bargain. It is a prelude to a funeral.” She flicked her gaze at Kael again. “I am Nira.”

She hesitated, the briefest crack in her glacial poise. Her hand strayed unconsciously toward her midriff. “I have… miscalculated. My purse is empty. I have not eaten in two days.” The words tasted like ashes coming from her. Pride still stiffened her shoulders, but hunger had etched faint shadows under her eyes.

Kael’s brain, ever the analyst, began slotting variables: highly skilled archer; probable mobility and stealth advantage; desperate but proud; unpredictable if cornered.

“You,” she said to him, voice cooling again. “You don’t carry the stench of alehouse and old blood. Different. That one—” her eyes flicked to Ronan “—has the smell of an honest beast, but still a beast. Bearable.”

Ronan’s face went blank in a way Kael had already learned to read as dangerous. His hand fell to the haft of his axe. “Are you telling me I smelled, pointy-ears?”

Her composure cracked like thin ice. "Do not,” she hissed, the word a blade in the quiet alley, “call me that, you lumbering oaf.”

“What then?” Ronan’s smirk widened. “A silver-haired rat?”

Her fingers twitched toward the bow on her back.

Kael cut in, his tone steady. “The quest pays two silver cirens. That’s two hundred bronze.”

Both turned to him. The numbers hung there like a spell.

“The guild takes ten percent,” Kael continued, voice calm. “Leaves a hundred eighty. Split three ways, sixty each.”

Ronan blinked. “Sixty? Our deal was a hundred twenty for me.”

“That was for a two-person team with a shorter life expectancy,” Kael said, meeting his eyes without blinking. “Add an archer and our odds of survival go up. Fewer wounds, fewer risks. Sixty each with her is smarter than eighty without.”

Nira tilted her head, considering him anew. Her lips curved in the barest hint of a smirk. “Acceptable terms.”

Ronan’s nostrils flared. He glanced at Nira, at Kael, then at the mouth of the alley as though weighing the merits of walking away. But the logic was iron. He spat to one side. “Fine. But if she puts one twig arrow in my back—”

“You’ll be dead,” Nira said softly. “I do not miss.”

Ronan let out a short bark of laughter despite himself. “Arrogant little—fine. Let’s move.”

The tension thinned but didn’t vanish. Kael had felt it settle into a new shape: the raw geometry of survival, risk and reward rebalanced in the cold dark of the city.

He adjusted the sword at his side and started walking again. Nira fell in step with him as if she belonged there, her bow shifting silently across her shoulder. Ronan took the lead, muttering something about “pointy-eared thieves” under his breath.

Kael didn’t care. For the first time since landing in this world, he’d asserted control. He wasn’t the strongest or the fastest, but numbers were a language everyone had to speak.

Behind them, the Gilded Gryphon’s windows glowed gold and distant. Ahead, the city narrowed and then opened into the market square where the real work awaited. Three strangers now bound by coin, hunger, and the faintest glimmer of trust, walking toward the place where monsters waited to be killed.

Kael kept his expression neutral, but inside, he noted the shift: a party of two had become a triangulated tension of three. A starving elf with a lethal bow, a barbarian with a shield like a barn door, and him—an off-worlder learning that here, survival wasn’t about heroics or destiny. It was about arithmetic. Cold, clean, unsentimental arithmetic.