Adventurers’ Guild of Zarath part 1

The Board and the Badge
The wind had teeth that morning. It bit through my cloak and nipped at my fingers as I trudged up Valenhold’s main street, breath fogging in the air like smoke. The sign over the gate read ADVENTURERS’ GUILD OF ZARATH — VALERIA BRANCH, half-buried under frost, its lettering scarred and gouged by years of storms and sunburns.

Not the grand hall of legends I’d imagined as a child. Just another building weathered by work and war.

I pushed open the oak doors. The smell of leather oil, sweat, and stale ale hit me first — the smell of purpose, or desperation, depending on the hour. Inside, voices tangled in a low roar: adventurers haggling over contracts, scribes scratching quills, a dog barking somewhere near the hearth.

A wooden board covered half the far wall — The Contract Board. I stared at it for a moment, reading postings nailed in messy layers:
“Escort needed. Valenhold to Eltaret.”
“Missing lumber crew in the eastern pines.”
“Collect 10 sacred mushrooms.”
“Recruitment Drive — Bronze Applicants. Report to Quartermaster.”

That last one was mine.

“New?” a voice rasped behind me.

I turned. A man built like a fortress stood near the desk — gray hair cropped close, eyes the color of iron. His armor wasn’t polished, only kept. Every scratch had a story.

“Reporting for recruitment,” I said, trying not to sound too eager.

He studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then: “Name?”

I gave it.

“Any prior work?”
“A few hunts east of here. Nothing formal.” I showed him my recommendation .
“Then you’ll start as Bronze.” He turned, barking toward the inner office. “Kerrin! Another one for your ledger.”

A woman appeared — Quartermaster Lysa Kerrin, according to the plaque by the door. Sharp-featured, ink-stained gloves, and the kind of expression that made paperwork seem like an art of war.

“Fill these forms,” she said, dropping a stack of parchment on the counter. “Full name, origin, last next-of-kin. No pseudonyms, no poetry. If you die, we want to send the right corpse to the right family.”

I signed. Her pen scratched a final note. “Report to Captain Voss for evaluation. Through the west wing. Try not to make me regret wasting ink.”

The training yard was half snow, half mud. A handful of recruits stood around a wooden post where a thickset man paced like a wolf with boots. He had the posture of a soldier — precise, grounded, dangerous.

“I’m Edrin Voss,” he said. “Squad Leader. You’ll call me Captain, or Voss if you prefer fewer syllables before dying. Your test is simple: track, cooperate, survive.”

He pointed toward the pine ridges beyond the wall. “A trader’s dog went missing yesterday. Big, scarred, and stupid — much like some of you. Rumor says a dire boar’s nesting near the old logging trail. Bring back proof of the beast’s death or the dog’s return. Either way, I’ll know what you’re worth.”

Someone groaned. He smiled faintly. “Good. Complaining means you’re still breathing. Move.”

We left Valenhold’s walls by midday — four of us under Voss’s lead. There was Lira, the archer with an amused smirk that said she’d already measured my competence and filed it under “pending.” Her brother, Kael, towered behind her, greatsword slung over his shoulder like a lumberman’s axe. And Corven, a nervous apprentice mage who kept muttering about frostbite and mana efficiency in the same sentence.

Voss took point, silent as stone. Lira walked beside me. “You look like you’ve held a weapon before,” she said, stringing her bow.
“I’ve hunted.”
“Good. Then you know the difference between courage and suicide.”

We found the tracks an hour later — deep prints in the snow, larger than any ordinary boar. The path led us to a clearing littered with roots and broken branches. Something moved in the brush. The dog — mangy, limping — whined once before vanishing again into the undergrowth.

Then came the roar.

The boar burst out like a landslide — tusks black with sap and frost. Kael was already moving, greatsword slamming into its shoulder. Lira’s arrows whistled, striking its flank. I darted in with my blade, low and fast, cutting behind its foreleg. Corven’s spell fizzled once, then spat a gout of fire that nearly singed my cloak.

The beast fell after a brutal minute, steaming blood pooling in the snow. Voss approached, expression unreadable.
“Not bad,” he said. “Messy teamwork, but alive. I can work with that.”

He drew a knife, cut off one of the boar’s tusks, and handed it to me. “Proof of kill. Bring it to Kerrin. Tell her you passed.”

By dusk, I was back in the hall, dripping snow onto the floorboards. Lysa Kerrin didn’t look up when I placed the tusk on her counter. “Still breathing?”

“Barely.”
“Good. Bronze license approved.”

She slid a small metal tag across the desk — the guild badge, stamped with Valeria’s crest: a wolf’s head over crossed spears. It was cold to the touch.

“Welcome to the Adventurers’ Guild,” she said. “You’ll find out soon enough we don’t sell glory here. We sell endurance.”

That night, I sat by the guild’s fire, badge in hand, watching veterans laugh over ale and half-told stories. Outside, snow kept falling — silent, endless, and indifferent.

But for the first time since I’d arrived in Valeria, I felt I belonged to something that might just outlast the winter.

Wolves in the Pine
Snowmelt ran in silver threads down the pines when the summons came. Voss found me by the guild’s notice board, already strapped into his armor, voice cutting through the morning din.

“Pack your kit. We’ve got a patrol — Frostpine road. Reports of beasts and bandits raiding lumber convoys. You’ll see what a real mission looks like.”

He didn’t say “welcome aboard.” That was his version of it.

The team gathered in the courtyard: Kael tightening the straps of his greatsword harness, Lira checking the fletching of her arrows, Corven fussing over his spellbook, and Awen murmuring a quiet prayer to no god I recognized.

“Five of us,” Lira said, glancing at me. “Plenty to die with, if nothing else.”
“Optimistic as always,” Awen sighed.
“Realistic,” Lira replied. “Optimists are the ones who end up as cautionary tales.”

Voss ignored the chatter, unrolling a map. “Two convoys attacked this week. Both near the eastern lumber routes. Wolves, but smarter than wolves should be. Bandits too, probably taking advantage of the confusion. We’ll move at dawnlight, follow the tracks, and end whatever’s hunting our contracts. Keep formation. Speak if you must. Think before you do.”

By the second hour, the warmth of the guild fires was a distant memory. The Frostpine forest stretched endless and silent around us, every branch heavy with dew and shadow. The air smelled of sap and iron — and something faintly rancid.

“Tracks,” Kael said, crouching. His hand brushed the snow, fingers tracing wide paw prints that sank deep into the mud. “Too many. Too organized.”

Lira squinted ahead. “And look — campfire ashes, but cold. Bandits, maybe.”

Voss motioned for silence. We advanced carefully. I found myself watching Lira out of the corner of my eye — the way she moved was different from the others: light, precise, almost too quiet for someone trudging through frost.

We came upon the first wagon an hour later. It was overturned in a ditch, axles snapped, crates split open like carcasses. No blood, but drag marks in the dirt.

“Where are the bodies?” Corven whispered.
“Dragged off,” Kael muttered. “Or eaten.”

Then came the howl.

It rolled through the pines like thunder, followed by another, and another — surrounding us.

“Positions!” Voss barked.

Shapes darted between the trees — wolves, lean and gray, eyes burning gold in the dim light. But they didn’t charge. They circled. Herding us.

“Wolves don’t flank,” Lira hissed.
“These do,” Voss replied, sword raised. “Shields front!”

The first one lunged from the right — Kael met it mid-air, blade cleaving it down. I caught another as it lunged for Corven, stabbing deep into its ribs. The creature twisted, snapping at my arm before collapsing with a strangled yelp.

Then came the real threat: men in furs emerging behind the beasts, armed with crude spears and bows. Bandits — but their eyes glowed the same faint amber.

“Corven! Cover!” Voss shouted. The mage hurled a wind burst that scattered snow into a blinding veil. I heard the twang of Lira’s bow, then the thud of arrows finding home.

We fought in bursts — motion, breath, and instinct. When it ended, the clearing stank of blood and smoke. Two wolves lay still, and three bandits groaned on the ground, bleeding into the frost. The rest had fled into the pines.

Kael stood over one of the wounded men. “Orders, Captain?”
Voss looked at me. “Your call, recruit. You were closest to them.”

I hesitated. The bandits were outlaws — killing them was legal under guild mandate. But one of them might talk, and Valenhold’s guard could use the names.

“I’ll take what answers we can get,” I said finally. “The rest… if they draw steel again, we defend ourselves.”
Voss nodded. “Fair balance.”

Lira crouched beside one of the bodies, frowning. “Captain, look at this.”

On the bark of a nearby pine, someone had carved a sigil — a spiral surrounded by jagged strokes, blackened as if burned into the wood. It pulsed faintly, like embers cooling.

Awen made the sign of warding. “Demonic?”
Voss’s face tightened. “Don’t assume. But mark the location. We’ll report it.”

The captured bandits were delirious, half-mad. One kept mumbling through bloodied teeth:

“The forest listens now… the forest hungers…”

We dragged them back toward the road. Lira stayed quiet most of the way, eyes flicking to every shadow. Kael walked beside her, gaze low, the way someone watches a scent only they can detect.

By nightfall we returned to Valenhold, cold, blood-spattered, and exhausted. Lysa Kerrin waited at the guild gate, arms crossed.

“Alive, I see. Efficient, if messy,” she said. “Any complications?”
“Bandits,” Voss replied. “And something stranger. Wolves working with them. Sigils in the pines.”
Kerrin frowned, scribbling notes. “I’ll inform the Church liaison. You’ll get your pay in the morning.”

As we turned to leave, Lira brushed past me and muttered, “You handled yourself well. Most rookies would’ve bolted when they saw that many eyes staring back.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You didn’t look scared.”
She grinned — a flash of teeth that looked almost too sharp in the torchlight. “That’s because I wasn’t.”

That night, I couldn’t sleep. The bandit’s words replayed in my head — the forest listens now…

And when the wind howled across the rooftops of Valenhold, I could’ve sworn I heard wolves answer back from somewhere beyond the walls.

Ash Beneath Stone
The summons came before dawn. A courier from the Valenhold Mining Guild — pale, trembling, smelling of soot and fear — handed a sealed request directly to the adventurers’ desk. The ink still smudged when I read it:

“Assistance required. Loss of twenty workers in the Greystone shaft. Witnesses claim black smoke, whispers, and… movement in the lower tunnels.”

Kerrin didn’t even look up from her ledger. “Three squads. Voss, you’ll take the first. Retrieval and security. Bring masks.”
“Smoke?” Lira asked.
“Voices,” Awen murmured, tracing a circle over her breast.
“An ordinary day in Valeria,” Voss said flatly. “Gear up.”

The Road to Greystone Mine
The Greystone settlement was quiet when we arrived. No pickaxes clanged, no miners shouted over wagons. Just the wind, and the metallic tang of ash in the air.

The foreman met us at the barricade — a gray-haired man with hands like coal. “First collapse was two days ago,” he said, voice shaking. “Then we heard the screams. Smoke came up the shaft — thick, black. When it cleared, there wasn’t anyone left down there.”

“Any sign of demons?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Didn’t stay long enough to find out.”

The guild split into formation: Voss’s team for the lead, Captain Roderic’s squad guarding the rear, and a third — scouts and alchemists — to handle mapping and supplies.

Inside, the air turned heavy and damp, thick with the smell of burnt copper. We lit lanterns and descended the slope, boots echoing off stone walls etched with pick marks and miners’ initials.

By the third descent ladder, the air shimmered faintly. Corven whispered a warding charm.

“Magic residue,” he muttered. “But not cast — seeped.”

Into the Depths
We found the first body near the ore vein. Or what was left of it.

The man was half-buried in soot, skin cracked like pottery, eyes hollow and blackened as coal. Something glimmered beneath the ash — faint sigils carved into the flesh.

Awen knelt to study it, her voice trembling. “That’s not ritual carving. It’s… growth. Like the marks are pushing out.”
“Back off,” Voss ordered. “Corven, mark the site. No touching.”

A low rumble shook the floor beneath us — distant, like thunder trapped underground.

Then the whisper came.

It wasn’t one voice. It was hundreds, dry and hollow, sliding along the tunnel walls.
“...burned but not gone… ashes remember…”

Lira loosed an arrow into the darkness. It struck stone. Nothing moved.

“Forward,” Voss said. “We find the source and collapse it.”