"You didn't have to kill him," Remus said, still staring at where the man had fallen.
"Let's get your friend and go," Lilith said, already crouching to hook an arm under Leo's shoulder.
Between the two of them they half-carried, half-dragged Leo to Dinolfo's workshop, where a bucket of cold water thrown over his face finally jolted him into sputtering, blinking wakefulness.
"He smells terrible," Lilith observed.
"That's not the priority. I need something from him." Remus knelt beside Leo, ignoring the stench. "The procedure for making magic swords. Tell me where to find it."
"How would I know that?" Leo groaned, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.
"Think, Leo," Remus pressed. "Every piece of knowledge in the Kingdom passes through the Archive eventually. There has to be something about magic swords in there somewhere."
"If it's restricted knowledge, it'll be in the forbidden section, up in the High Lorekeeper's tower," Leo said. "Good luck getting anywhere near it."
"How do I get inside?"
"You don't," Leo said flatly. "I've only been up there once myself, when I was made to present my own research to the old man in person."
"What happened?"
"He tore it apart in about four sentences and told me to stop wasting his time." Leo scrubbed a hand down his face, some old, unhealed embarrassment surfacing behind his eyes. "I had a theory that magic's built out of tiny particles, aetherspores, the fundamental stuff magic's actually made of underneath all the flash and the incantations. Never had a way to prove it, though. Not without instruments nobody's ever built."
"What if I built a machine that could actually see them?" Remus said, already turning the problem over. "Something like a microscope, but tuned for magic instead of matter."
"How would you even begin building something like that?"
"If it works anything like the old experiments to observe atoms and molecules, I'd need rare metals to start. Platinum, gold, palladium."
"You can buy those from the high-end merchants," Leo said, "at a price that'll make your eyes water."
"I'll also need a light source, and something that can bend or manipulate light through magic itself."
"Something like a basilisk's eye, maybe," Leo said, warming to the idea despite himself. "Anyone who looks straight into one gets turned to stone on the spot, purely through the magic bound up in it."
"That could work perfectly."
"Give me the coin, and I'll go buy the metals myself," Leo offered, brightening. "I'll put a request in at the Guild for the eye too."
"I'm not putting a single coin anywhere near you and your thirst," Remus said flatly. "I'll handle the metals and the request myself."
"Fair point," Leo admitted, wilting slightly.
"Actually, I have a better idea," Lilith cut in. "Register the four of us properly as adventurers, and go collect the eye ourselves, as a party. There's something else you need to deal with, while we're at it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Remus asked.
"I watched you in that alley," she said. "The moment those two showed up, you handed over your purse without a second's hesitation."
"So they wouldn't kill me."
"If you'd stopped to think for even a few seconds," she said, "you'd have realized they were going to kill you regardless, purse or no purse. You're hiding your fear behind how clever you are, and one of these days that habit is going to cost you something you actually needed."
"What have we got to lose?" Gregory put in, arms crossed, and Remus noted, distantly, that this was the first time his older brother had sounded genuinely enthusiastic about anything since Remus had arrived in the city.
The next day, the four of them made their way to the Adventurer's Guild hall together. A young beast-woman with soft, twitching rabbit ears manned the front counter, and Remus stepped up ahead of the group to address her directly.
"The three of us would like to register as adventurers," he said. "I'm guessing Gregory's already on file."
Gregory nodded confirmation.
"Of course. Please fill these out," she said, sliding three forms across the counter. "Registration's ten silver a head, and then we'll need to check your class before we issue member cards."
"I'll need someone to fill mine out for me," Remus said.
"Why's that?" Leo asked, curious.
"He can't read," Lilith said, before Remus could answer for himself.
"That's not possible," Gregory said, startled. "We were all taught our letters young."
"I never paid it much attention," Remus said, which was, strictly speaking, true, though only because the letters in question belonged to a language he'd never once encountered in either of his lives.
"It's no trouble," Lilith said. "I'll manage it for him."
Once the forms were filled and returned along with three gold coins, the beast-woman produced a smooth orb from beneath the counter and set it down carefully between them.
"Time to check your classes properly," she said. "Mr. Leo, if you'd go first."
Leo pressed his palm to the orb. It glowed a soft white, and a status window opened for the beast-woman's eyes alone.
Class Check: Double Class; Scribe-Healer!
"A double class," she said, clearly impressed. "That's rare on its own. Mr. Remus, you're next."
Remus laid his hand against the orb, and it flared a rich gold.
Class Check: Artificer!
"I've never once heard of an Artificer," she said, eyes widening. "That has to be exceptionally rare. Lady Andrea, last but not least."
Lilith, still wearing Andrea's borrowed face for the moment, placed her hands on the orb, and it flushed a deep, saturated red.
Class Check: Nightblood!
"Another rare one," the beast-woman said, shaking her head in open amazement. "Isn't that unusual."
"You wouldn't happen to know where we might find a Basilisk?" Remus asked.
Her face went pale almost instantly, and she reached under the counter to produce a job posting so old and neglected it had gone yellow at the edges, thick with dust and one lingering strand of cobweb.
"Normally we don't hand new members anything this dangerous," she said carefully. "But every registered company's refused this contract outright. No one who's ever gone looking for that particular calamity-class monster has come back to report on it. The King himself ordered every restriction on the job lifted, and told us to offer it to anyone reckless enough to take it."
"Thank you," Remus said, taking the paper from her hand before she could reconsider.
They collected their Guild licenses and made their way out into the street, the four of them, an Artificer, a Nightblood, a Ranger, and a Scribe-Healer, an odd enough collection of classes that a few passing adventurers turned to stare.
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