No Class Found

While the Thornwick Rest handled its own troubles, Mazoga was already deep in Glasshold.

The Adventurer's Guild smelled like iron and old leather. It was a smell she knew well — one that hadn't changed no matter how many guilds she'd walked into over the years

Mazoga stepped through the entrance behind Lyss, her boots heavy on worn stone. The main hall stretched wide, lit by braziers mounted along the walls. Contract boards lined the left side, covered in notices for bounty work, escort jobs, and dungeon clearances. To the right, a bar ran the length of the room, staffed by a dwarf who looked like he'd seen his share of trouble.

Adventurers clustered at tables, talking in low voices over mugs and maps. A few glanced her way. Most went back to their business.

Lyss led them past the bar toward a set of stairs at the back. "Gar's office is upstairs," she said over her shoulder.

Mazoga followed, Rurrak silent at her side.

They climbed to the second floor, boots echoing in the narrow stairwell. Lyss stopped at a reinforced door and knocked twice.

"Come."

The voice came out flat, like someone who'd stopped bothering to soften it.

Lyss pushed the door open.

Gar looked up as the door opened, his hand instinctively moving toward the shortsword at his hip. A habit he picked up from his adventuring days.

The orc woman stepped in first—Mazoga, if Torven's report was accurate. Her armor caught Gar's eye immediately. Ravageboar hide, reinforced with metallic plating that showed signs of real craftsmanship. The kind of protection someone wore because they'd learned the hard way what happened without it.

Then he saw the warhammer.

It hung secured across her back, bronze and steel worked together in patterns that made his forge-sense ache. The runes etched into the metal pulsed with faint blue-white light—not the steady glow of standard enchantments, but something that shifted with intent. Gar had spent twenty-three years cataloging weapons from guild delves, clan forges, and Imperial smithies. He'd never seen anything quite like it.

Where in the frozen hells did she get that?

His eyes shifted to the gnoll beside her—lean, scarred, carrying himself with the quiet vigilance of a scout who'd survived bad terrain. Rurrak, according to Lyss. The relationship between them seemed easy. Not the wary distance most adventurers kept with hired guides.

Gar's mind began turning over possibilities. Had Mazoga delved some forgotten ruin? Found a cache the clans overlooked? The warhammer alone suggested resources beyond what most independent adventurers accessed, and if she'd leveled from thirty-five to forty-six in under eight months—

A quiet cough broke his focus.

Gar blinked and found Merl watching him from her desk, one eyebrow raised in silent reproach. You're staring.

He cleared his throat and straightened in his chair, forcing his attention away from the weapon. Professional and neutral. That was the role he needed to play until he understood what he was dealing with.

"Mazoga," Gar said, nodding to her. "I'm Gar Ironwood, Regional Commander for the Adventurer's Guild in the Northern Territories." He gestured toward Merl without looking away from his visitors. "This is Merl, my assistant commander. She handles most of the administrative side of operations."

Merl inclined her head, her sharp eyes already assessing.

Gar shifted his attention to Rurrak, keeping his tone even. "And you are?"

The gnoll met his gaze. "Rurrak Grey-Muzzle. Scout for Threeburrow."

Threeburrow. The goblin-kobold-gnoll refuge tucked into the northern ridges. Gar knew of it—most guild members did—but few bothered with outcasts who couldn't afford contracts. Still, if Mazoga had business with them, it suggested ties that ran deeper than coin.

"Lyss mentioned you had something to report," Gar continued, settling back into his chair. "Draugr activity, if I understood correctly."

Mazoga's expression remained steady.

"More than activity," she said. "A horde. Over a hundred draugr led by a Greater. They attacked Threeburrow a few weeks ago."

The room went still.

Gar's hand tightened on the armrest of his chair but he kept his expression neutral. A hundred draugr didn't just wander together. Draugr were territorial scavengers, rarely coordinating beyond small packs unless something—or someone—forced them to.

And a Greater leading them?

That changed everything.

"What happened to the Greater?" Gar asked.

Mazoga's posture didn't shift.

"We handled it," she said. "My companion and I. With Threeburrow's help."

Gar blinked.

Handled it.

As if taking down a Greater draugr was routine maintenance.

He'd fought draugr before. Seen what happened when a lesser horde overran a frontier settlement. The undead didn't tire. Didn't retreat. And a Greater coordinated them, turned mindless corpses into something resembling a tactical unit.

Most guild contracts for Greater draugr required teams of four to six adventurers—veterans, not greenhorns. Even then, losses were common. The fact that Mazoga stood here uninjured, speaking as though it had been a manageable problem, told him more than her words did.

Level forty-six.

He'd known adventurers who reached thirty-nine and stopped there, their bodies unable to sustain the next leap. After thirty-nine, every level demanded more than the last. The gap between forty and forty-five wasn't incremental—it was exponential. Power, endurance, resistance to effects that would kill lesser folk outright.

And Mazoga had gained eleven levels in under eight months.

That kind of growth didn't happen through routine delves or bandit skirmishes. It came from facing threats that forced evolution or death. From surviving challenges that redefined what the system thought you were capable of.

Gar knew what separated high-level adventurers from legendary ones. It wasn't just raw power. It was the choices they made when standing in front of something that should have killed them.

Mazoga had stood. And walked away.

He didn't let his surprise show. Instead, he nodded once, deliberate and measured.

"Understood," Gar said. "Thank you for the report. I'll pass it along to the Imperial commander and the clan council. They'll decide how to proceed from there."

Mazoga inclined her head, acknowledging the response without expectation.

Gar glanced at Merl. She met his gaze, her expression unreadable, then gave the faintest nod. Your call.

He hesitated.

Guild protocol was clear. Take the report. File it. Move on. Don't get involved in questions that weren't his business.

But protocol didn't account for someone like Mazoga walking into Glasshold after eight months of silence, carrying a weapon that shouldn't exist and claiming she'd handled a Greater draugr as though it were a minor inconvenience.

And it definitely didn't account for the armored figure Torven had described. The one who defied Identify and traveled with a void-marked wolf.

Gar leaned forward slightly, folding his hands on the desk.

"Off the record," he said quietly. "I'd like to understand how you ended up here."

Mazoga's eyes narrowed, just a fraction.

Gar raised a hand, his tone steady. "I'm not interrogating you. But you were last registered at Westridge eight months ago. Level thirty-five. Taking adventurer contracts on the western frontier." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Then you vanished. No contract updates. No guild check-ins. Most assumed the worst."

Rurrak's ears flicked back, but he stayed silent.

Gar met Mazoga's gaze directly. "Now you're here. Level forty-six. Traveling with a merchant caravan and reporting draugr activity near Threeburrow." He let the sentence hang for a moment. "I'm not accusing you of anything, Mazoga. But if you're operating in guild territory, I need to know what I'm dealing with."

He sat back, his voice lowering further. "So I'll ask plainly. What happened out there?"

Maz's jaw tightened. Eight months. Eight months since Rellan's raid, since the screams and the flames, since she'd woken in that cage with iron cutting into her wrists.

She'd survived. That was what mattered.

"We were ambushed," she said, her voice level. "Small village. I was passing through when Rellan and his crew hit. I fought back. Lost."

Gar's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture---a slight forward lean, attention sharpening.

"And then?" he prompted.

Maz exhaled slowly. "Woke up in a cage. Rellan kept us---prisoners, merchandise, leverage. Didn't matter which. We were stuck in the Hollow Vale."

Merl's quill stopped moving. The scratching of parchment ceased.

Gar's voice remained calm, but his knuckles whitened where they gripped the armrest. "The Hollow Vale."

"Yes."

"You were held inside the Vale?"

Maz nodded.

The room went very still.

Gar leaned back slowly, his weathered face unreadable. He exchanged a glance with Merl, who had gone pale beneath her professional composure. Nineteen years between them in the guild. Neither of them had ever taken a report from someone who'd been inside the Hollow Vale and lived to sit across a desk.

"That's..." Merl began, then stopped, her voice failing her.

"Rellan was operating out of the Hollow Vale?" Gar said. It came out quieter than he intended. "That's why nobody could find him." He paused, jaw working slightly. "How long were you held?"

"Weeks in the cage," Maz said. "Longer in the Vale itself."

Gar absorbed that without comment. The Hollow Vale's reputation reached even this far north. The kind of place veteran adventurers didn't enter twice — most didn't enter once. Nobody went in. That was simply understood. The idea of someone not only entering it but surviving long enough to find a way out was difficult to square with the woman sitting calmly across from him.

"How did you get out?" he asked.

Maz's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. "We had help."

Gar's eyes narrowed. "What kind of help?"

"A stranger," she said. "He got us out and killed Rellan."

The silence that followed was absolute.

Merl's quill clattered to the desk.

Gar sat forward, both hands now flat on the surface between them. "You're telling me," he said slowly, each word deliberate, "that someone killed Rellan Vex. A level forty-five Voidcaster. One of the most dangerous criminals in the Empire."

"Yes."

"And you watched it happen."

"Yes."

Gar stared at her. He'd seen adventurers come in with impossible stories, half of them exaggerated, a quarter outright fabricated. He knew how to read the ones telling the truth. It was in the stillness. The lack of performance.

Maz wasn't performing.

"Who is he?" Gar asked. "Class? Abilities? Guild affiliation?"

Maz shrugged. "No guild. His equipment is different---you'd have to see it yourself.”

Gar's eyes narrowed further. "Different how?"

"Just different," Maz said.

Gar stared at her for a moment, clearly expecting more. She didn't offer any.

"And where is he now?" Gar asked.

"Nearby," Maz said.

Merl had recovered enough to resume writing, though her quill moved slower now, more carefully.

Gar studied Maz for a long moment. "You've been straight with me," he said finally. "More than you had to be."

Maz met his eyes. "I don't lie to guild officials."

"Good." Gar's tone shifted slightly. "Because what you've just told me raises more questions than it answers. Rellan Vex dead. You walking out of the Hollow Vale alive." He stood, moving to the window overlooking Splitstone Row. "The guild will want to follow up on this."

Maz nodded once. "Expected as much."

Gar turned back to face her. "One more thing. This stranger---is he dangerous?"

Maz considered that for exactly one second.

"No," she said. "He's not a bad person."

Gar looked at Maz and knew she would not elaborate. That much was obvious in the set of her shoulders, the calm weight of her silence.

He exhaled slowly, leaning back in his chair. "You're leaving a lot out," he said. "How did you end up in the Northern Territories?"

Maz smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "I walked."

Gar sighed and nodded. Of course she did.

Merl cut in smoothly, her quill poised above the parchment. "If Rellan is truly dead," she said, "and this stranger was the one who defeated him, would he be collecting the bounty on him?"

Maz actually blinked. Her expression shifted—genuine surprise flickering across her face. "I honestly forgot about the bounty," she admitted.

Gar felt his brow rise. That was the first unguarded reaction she'd given them.

"I'll speak with him," Maz continued. "We'll most likely collect it, but for now you can hold onto it."

Merl wrote that in her notes with precise strokes, her handwriting neat and deliberate. She glanced up. "Are you willing to speak on a Truth Stone about witnessing Rellan's death?"

"No problem," Maz said without hesitation.

Merl tapped her desk twice. "Kael—Truth Stone, now."

Footsteps echoed in the corridor outside. A moment later, the door opened and a young clerk stepped inside carrying a polished crystal sphere the size of a fist. The stone pulsed faintly with dim white light, resting on a velvet cushion.

Kael set it on Merl's desk and withdrew without a word, closing the door behind him.

Merl activated the stone with a practiced touch, and the glow steadied.

"Place your hand on the stone," Merl instructed.

Maz did so without ceremony, her scarred palm resting flat against the smooth surface.

Merl's tone shifted into the formal cadence required for guild verification. "State your name and level."

"Mazoga," Maz said. "Level forty-six."

The stone pulsed steady blue.

Gar leaned forward slightly, his attention sharp.

"Did you personally witness the death of Rellan Vex?" Merl asked.

"Yes."

Blue light. Truth.

Gar felt something tighten in his chest.

"Was Rellan Vex killed by the individual you mentioned?"

"Yes."

Blue again. Unbroken.

Merl glanced at Gar, her expression unreadable, then turned back to Maz. "Did Rellan Vex die in combat?"

"Yes."

Blue.

"To your knowledge, is Rellan Vex still alive?"

"No."

The stone glowed steady and certain.

Merl withdrew the stone and deactivated it. The light faded to dim white once more.

Gar sat back slowly, processing. He'd seen liars, he'd seen thieves, he'd seen monsters pretending to be men. He knew what truth looked like when it came wrapped in silence and scars.

Rellan Vex was dead.

An elite-level threat. A Voidcaster who'd evaded strike teams, Imperial patrols, and every contract hunter foolish enough to try their luck."

And some unknown operative had killed him.

Gar met Maz's eyes. "I'd very much like to meet this stranger," he said quietly.

Maz nodded once. "I'll ask him."

"Soon," Gar pressed.

"Soon," Maz agreed.

Gar leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath his weight. His expression shifted from grave consideration to something more pragmatic. "That settles the verification," he said. "Now—would you like to re-register with the guild?"

Maz blinked. "Re-register?"

"You're not active in our system," Gar explained. "After Westridge was destroyed, we marked you as presumed dead. Standard protocol when someone disappears and doesn't report in for several months."

She supposed that was fair.

"Yeah," she said after a moment. "I'd like to re-register."

Merl didn't wait for confirmation. Her quill was already moving, scr

atching across fresh parchment with practiced efficiency. "I'll update your records," she said. "Level forty-six. Current affiliation?"

"The settlement I'm affiliated with is relatively new," Maz said. "No official name yet. Northwest of here, past Threeburrow."

Merl's quill paused. She glanced up briefly. "No name at all?"

"Not yet," Maz said.

Merl held her gaze for a moment, then resumed writing.

Gar folded his hands on the desk, his gaze steady. "Do you plan on taking contracts?"

Maz considered that. Contracts meant work. Work meant coin. Coin meant the settlement could expand faster, trade better, build more. But it also meant time away from the longhouse, from the people who'd survived the Hollow Vale alongside her.

"Once things settle," she said carefully. "We're still getting established. Building infrastructure. Making trade routes stable." She paused. "After that, maybe. Depends on what's available."

Gar nodded slowly. He didn't push. That was good.

"Someone at your level would be useful to have around," he said. "Elite-tier threats don't get handled by fresh adventurers. And with draugr activity spiking, Waste creatures pushing south... we could use people who know how to fight smart."

Maz didn't answer immediately. She understood what he wasn't saying.

The guild wanted her.

They always wanted high-level operators. Especially ones who'd survived the Hollow Vale, killed a Greater draugr, and watched Rellan Vex die.

Gar's expression shifted slightly—less recruitment, more warning. "With your level," he said, "you'll draw attention. Clans. Imperial operatives. Merchants looking for muscle. Be careful who you align with. People will try to pull you into their schemes."

Maz met his eyes. "I know."

"Good."

Merl finished writing and set her quill down. "Registration updated. You're active again in guild records."

Maz nodded once. "Appreciated."

Gar stood, offering his hand across the desk. Maz took it. His grip was firm, weathered, steady. The handshake of someone who'd survived long enough to recognize when not to ask more questions.

"Stay sharp," Gar said.

"Always do."

Maz turned and left the office, Rurrak following close behind. The door closed with a soft click.

Silence settled over the room.

Merl exhaled slowly, setting her quill down with deliberate care. "That," she said, "was a great deal to process."

Gar moved to the window, looking down at Splitstone Row below.

"Surviving the Hollow Vale," Merl continued. "Witnessing Rellan Vex's death. Walking out with eleven levels gained in under eight months." She shook her head. "I've been with the guild nineteen years. I've never heard anything like that."

Gar grunted. "That's not what concerns me."

Merl looked up. "What do you mean?"

Gar turned from the window. "The stranger," he said simply.

Merl frowned. "The one who killed Rellan?"

"She said he was nearby," Gar said. "And Torven mentioned an armored figure with Mazoga's group. Someone Lyss's Identify couldn't read."

Merl's eyes widened slightly. "You think that's him."

"I do."

Merl considered that for a moment. "If he can block Identify completely, he's either high-level Imperial, using rare anti-scan equipment, or something else entirely."

"Or something else," Gar repeated quietly.

He returned to his desk and sat down heavily. His gaze drifted to the reports stacked neatly to one side—draugr sightings, Waste incursions, missing caravans.

And now this.

An unknown who killed Rellan Vex and walked Mazoga out of the Hollow Vale

Gar sighed, rubbing his temple. "I hate when things get strange."

Merl didn't reply.

They both knew strange never stayed quiet for long.