The Ranger's Shadow in Ashenveil

Story So Far

A figure wearing an enchanted shadow-drawing cloak dropped from a branch into a clearing where three men stood over a silver-furred creature held in a net. The lead man leveled a short sword, the hammer-man raised his hammer, and the boy gripped a hatchet while the lead man explained they held permits and planned to sell the creature alive to a merchant in Durn for forty coins or equivalent trade goods, warning the archer to match the price or walk away. The archer had only twelve coins and could not match the price, so instead drew and shot the binding rope, splitting the knot and opening the net so the creature stepped free.

The lead man raised his sword and ordered the hammer-man to circle around and the boy to fetch spare rope from the pack. The archer slipped back between the trees under the cloak's shadow, nocked another arrow, and shot the lead man through the throat as he advanced on the creature with his sword extended; the lead man fell without a word into the ferns. The hammer-man demanded the shooter come out, then stepped toward the creature, and the archer shot him through the right eye from behind an oak; the hammer-man's hammer dropped and bounced in the leaf litter and he fell dead. The boy stood between the two bodies staring, set his hatchet against a birch when told to, and walked away stiff and quick until the trees hid him.

With the clearing empty of people, the archer lowered the bow and studied the creature at close range, noting its silver-blue filamented coat, heron-jointed legs, amber eyes, and faint chest chime. The archer worked the remaining net cord loose with a hunting knife, freed the creature entirely, and raised an open hand toward the old-growth tree line; after a stillness the creature crossed the leaf litter, paused at the edge, looked back, and slipped into the dark between the trunks. The archer told it to go deep where no one follows.

The archer then crouched beside the bodies, searched both men, and found a folded paper in the hammer-man's boot sketching the clearing with the oak circled and approach paths marked, setting a deadline of three nights at the oak, no later. A key on a cord, copper and silver coins, and the folded paper were pocketed, and both men were buried in shallow trenches under leaf litter. The archer left Ashenveil on familiar paths and reached home at dusk, smoothed the paper flat on the table, then banked the fire and walked to Durn's trading post, knocking twice until Maren let them in.

Maren, a retired scout who ran the trading post, read the page twice and identified the handwriting as coming from the Thornfield Guild, which uses its licenses as a front to commission creatures. She warned that the two men in the forest were contracted, that a handler was waiting on an undelivered job, that the graves and left tools would expose that someone else had been there, and that the next arrivals would not be poachers, giving a window of a night, maybe two, before the Guild came looking. Maren unrolled an oilcloth trade map, pointed to an unlabeled mark east of the Greywood as the Guild's nearest field post, and said its records could identify the buyer behind the collection order. She told the archer not to run and said the field post had to be reached before a tracker was sent and before the deadline ran out, then held out the rolled oilcloth alongside the Guild order.

The archer took the oilcloth, thanked Maren, and left into the dark street, carrying the oilcloth, the folded Guild order, the shadow-drawing green cloak, a longbow, a full quiver, a hunting knife, and the iron key on a cord. Moving east through the Greywood, they reached the small field post, circled the palisade, and found at least two recent boot-print trails by an open gate, an empty hitching post, and lamplight burning in the larger hut. One fresh trail ended at the smaller hut's door; the other led to the ledger hut where a single seated person breathed with a low irregular scrape inside.

The archer followed the second trail to the smaller hut, found it ajar, and inside discovered empty crates, a rope coil, a cold unlit lantern, and an open traveling pack with half its contents on the floor. Crossing to the ledger hut, they lifted the iron latch, slipped inside behind the seated man before he could rise, locked an arm across his throat, and held him until he went slack. The man lay alive and unconscious on the floor, a stool knocked aside, with open ledgers and loose papers weighted by a small iron disc on the table within reach and no blade or purse on his belt.

Working fast, the archer traced the open ledger to an entry for an overdue silver-furred eastern Ashenveil specimen naming House Verath and Thornfield Guild Hall with a dispatched courier noted, and found three loose sheets including a sealed House Verath contract stamped with a coiled serpent over a tower. All three sheets were folded into the cloak beside the Guild order. The man on the floor woke with suspicion sharpening; the archer stepped closer, laid out the contract and buyer, and demanded to know who gave the order and how far up it went. The man tested his unbound arms on the floor, laughed, and said the archer needed something not yet named.

The archer crouched to his eye level and told him he would walk out of the post alive and unmentioned that night only if he gave the House Verath signer, and otherwise could be left on the floor. The man reluctantly named Soren, Verath's collector liaison, who held a sealed office inside the Thornfield Guild Hall, wrote the commissions, and kept the buyer's name off the public ledger. The archer then drew the hunting knife, said they had lied, and drove it below his jaw when his injured arm buckled as he tried to rise. The man died on the floor. The blade was wiped, the contracts remained folded in the cloak, the ledger stayed open on the table, the lamp still burned, and the gate remained unlatched. Soren did not know they were coming.