Borne on a languid tide of music and light, the stones slowly began to rise.

“They need to move faster!” Duine Poldo cried as he stared at the Domovoy’s chalkboard. A Wood Gnome in a chipmunk pelt was coloring frantically as her colleagues squeaked numbers at her, yet the chalk graph showed that only half of the known shares of the dragon’s hoard had been exchanged. The Scribkin glanced up at the Pinnacle. Andarun’s top tier flashed and smoked like a waking volcano as blasts of sorcery and exploding alchemical potions flew about the palace. “We won’t have time if we can’t move the shares faster!”

“My employees labor with all haste,” Asherzu called back. “We cannot do more!”

She was right, of course. They needed more hands. And Poldo could only think of two. “Mrs. Hrurk!” he shouted.

The Gnoll looked down from her perch by the slate, still keeping perfect rhythm. All around her, swarms of Wood Gnomes sloughed their pencils across spreadsheets or ferried rivers of paper around her feet. Messenger sprites swarmed overhead, bathing the one-woman concert in a flickering rainbow of light. She looked to Poldo like a master of her element, a sorceress commanding the seas and sky. He smiled as he said, “I’m afraid I must impose on you to mind things yet again.”

“Why?” the Gnoll shouted down, her head cocked to one side.

Poldo grabbed a stack of boilerplate contracts from a nearby Warg Inc. clerk. “I thought I might try my hand at day trading.”

“You can lose a fortune that way,” she warned him, but he could see her tail wagging.

“That is the idea,” he said.

“Go,” she called down. “I have this under control.”

“Indeed you do,” he shouted with a wave. Then he drafted a quick memorandum delegating his signing authority to Feista Hrurk, filed it with a passing lawyer-monk, and pushed through the press of Warg’s brokers, accountants, and processors toward the front lines.

Further Baseward, Warg’s staff had managed to form a beachhead in the chaos. A vanguard of Orcs and Gnolls had established a small perimeter, a thin ring of flimsy transportable tables that, along with the imposing glare of Darak Guz’Varda, stood between the delegation from Warg Inc. and an army of desperate brokers and bankers. The crowds outside pushed and shoved and jockeyed for position, straining to get to the salvation offered by Warg clerks.

Every stool suited for a Scribkin of Poldo’s stature was occupied by a Goblin or Slaugh, and he could not reach the tabletop well enough to write without one. Poldo reasoned that if he had to lose his dignity, he might as well do it to good effect, so he found a spot between a Gnoll and a Naga and clambered up onto the table. Once he was situated on his knees, contracts and forms spread around him in a semicircle, he beckoned to the nearest banker, a stocky Human with a mustache the shape and color of a hay bale.

The man gripped his spectacles as he jostled forward, clutching a folio of papers to his chest. By way of greeting, he thrust a business card at Poldo and recited the neat text on it word for word. “Nik Demilurge. Senior Vice President of Investment Banking. Consolidated Acquisitions Unlimited LLC, a Goldson Baggs Company.”

“Duine Poldo,” the Gnome replied, handing the man his own card. “How many shares will you be trading?”

“Well, assuming we can negotiate a deal, we have over half a million shares of the dragon’s hoard, not including exposure from our other investments⁠—”

The Scribkin cut him off. “We can’t help you with your other investments, unless they’ve sent their own bankers here to divest themselves of the dragon. And there is no negotiation. It’s a one-for-one exchange in stock; you give us the Dragon of Wynspar, we swap back the Palace of Andarun with Warg Inc. retaining one point three percent as a transaction fee.”

“A hundred and thirty basis points?” Demilurge huffed. “That’s outrageous!”

The Gnoll next to Poldo began to wag his tail.

“That is the offer, and I doubt you’ll find better,” said Poldo.

The man’s face reddened, and his hay bale mustache bristled. “But that expense⁠—”

“Is cheaper than the cost of inaction, I’m sure. But if you want to go try and sell shares of the dragon’s hoard elsewhere…” Poldo looked beyond the man pointedly.

“No, wait!” Demilurge shifted to block the Scribkin’s view of the herd. “I just… I mean, they say it’s unlikely the Palace of Andarun has a third of what the Dragon of Wynspar was valued at. And now another fee on top of that—it’s a shocking loss for our firm. Investors will be furious.”

“They usually are, but I doubt they’ll find better options among those who didn’t take our deal,” said Poldo.

Demilurge tried again. “People will lose jobs.”

“Only if you take them away,” snapped the Gnome. “Sir, I am beginning to lose patience.”

Beads of sweat formed on the man’s crimson brow. “I… I’ll sign…” he said. “I just cannot believe the shares of the dragon’s stock would retreat like this.”

“Retreat?” said Poldo, starting to fill in details on the contract. “My dear Mr. Demilurge, the dragon has no hoard. It has become an NPC. There is no quest. This is not a retreat, sir. The stock is shattered. It is panicked flight. It is a total rout.”

“I prefer the term tactical repositioning,” grunted Garold Flinn. He kicked back off the wall and let the silk rope glide through his gloved hand for a heartbeat before his black boots touched the palace wall again.

“I bet you do, but it’s still running away,” Benny Hookhand growled through Flinn’s mouth.

“Postponing my victory in light of ongoing circumstances,” murmured the Tinderkin. A cacophony of battle cries, explosions, and clashing blades blared from the courtyard as he rappelled down the dark stone face of the palace. He kept one hand on the rope, and let the hook dangle in the other by his side. His line descended into a hidden corner of the palace gardens, a small nook where the queen’s tower met a wall in a tangle of dark ivy.

“You got a lot of euphemisms for the coward’s path,” Benny sneered.

“A little fear can be healthy, and excessive courage is a liability,” said Flinn.

“I’m sure many elite assassins think that way.”

“Only the ones that last.” Flinn wished, not for the first time, that he could drop the uppity weapon into the shadowy patch of bushes below.

“So you’re gonna just slink out of here?” Benny asked. “No stabbin’? No gutting anyone?”

Flinn shushed himself. “I’ll probably have to kill a guard or two on my way out, for the sake of passing as a guild hero. But yes, generally the idea is to be stealthy.”

“And you think it will work?”

“If you can keep my mouth shut!” hissed the assassin.

“Yeah, ’cause listening to you has done us a fat lot of good,” muttered Benny.

“Shut up!” Flinn growled. He glanced around for anyone who might have heard his outburst or seen his descent from the palace and, finding noone, moved out into the courtyard. The Tinderkin affected a grin and muttered through his teeth. “Honestly, it isn’t that hard to pass as a professional hero. One only needs to stalk around acting confident and murdering people. And given that we saw Ingerson and his party pass into the vault, I doubt anyone here will recognize me,” he added; a statement which, according to Novian philosophy, made what happened next practically inevitable.

“Mr. Flinn!” The voice didn’t so much say the Tinderkin’s name as rumble it, like thunder over the plains. The assassin froze, cursed all of the gods, and turned slowly to find his old associate looming over him from a doorway.

“Ah, Mr. Brunt!” said Flinn. “We meet again! What are the odds?”

The Ogre stared vacantly into the air several feet above the Gnome’s head. “Flinn… hero?” A touch of uncharacteristic uncertainty rumbled in Brunt’s voice.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Benny. “I’m a hero. Doing good, murderin’ evil chumps, all that stuff.”

The Ogre’s bloodshot eyes swiveled downward, clearly nonplussed.

“Ahem, excuse me.” Flinn cleared his throat as he reasserted control. “What I meant to say is that I am indeed pursuing your noble occupation.”

“Brunt?” A woman with olive skin and an eyepatch stepped out from behind the Ogre. She looked around, confused. “Do you know these… oh, sorry, I thought I heard two people.”