“We just think that you aren’t a good fit for the team.”

Andra von Ekko’s heart sank. She shifted on her uncomfortable wooden chair and shot a glare at the three people across the table. It was a quiet morning and the only other sound in the Adventurer’s Guild common room was a mage seated in the far corner turning a page in her book.

“You’ve worked, what, six or seven jobs with us now?” asked Friedrich, the team’s fencer, a slender blond man whose immaculate mustache was suddenly the most annoying thing in the world to Andra.

“Seven,” Andra replied, trying very hard not to pout. “Is this about the thing with that renegade mage’s pet owlbear? I told you, I thought it was asleep.”

“Its eyes were—” Friedrich paused, taking a deep breath. “Look, I’m just going to ask directly. When you registered with the Guild, did you randomly sign up as a thief?”

Andra could feel her face heating. Her sadness was quickly turning to anger. “Of course not,” she replied sharply. It was true enough. She had known that she would thrive in any role, but she had chosen thief because it was clearly the best one. Thieves could take whatever they wanted, after all.

“It’s just that you don’t seem to actually know anything about thievery,” said Aleph, the team’s mage and a bitter, wrinkled man who was perpetually frustrated with his inability to forge a strong reputation in all of his years of adventuring. “I mean, look at the way you’re dressed.”

“What? I wore black this time,” Andra replied.

“Yes, but you’re also wearing an awful lot of frills and lace,” Aleph explained. “It isn’t the most practical outfit for stealing.”

“I don’t see any problem with looking my best while adventuring,” Andra shot back.

The team’s final member, Bessen, was giving Aleph an incredulous look. She was another fighter, an enormous woman who Andra suspected had some orc ancestry. Her huge battleaxe was currently propped against the table.

“We, uh, didn’t really discuss your fashion choices when we were planning out this conversation,” she said hesitantly, “but you haven’t exactly demonstrated a lot of talent as a thief.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve succeeded every single time you asked me to do thief stuff.”

“What about when we were hired to recover that stolen figurine?” asked Friedrich.

“Yeah, I got it back,” Andra replied.

“You burned down the mansion it was in!”

“It wasn’t flammable! Finding it in the remains was much easier than sneaking around would have been.”

“What about when we were trying to ambush those goblins?” Aleph added. “You just marched out into the open and announced our intention to fight them.”

“And I’ve never seen a goblin so surprised! Also, we beat them, didn’t we?”

“You tricked me into opening that trapped chest!” Bessen said accusingly.

“Setting off the trap was the easiest way to disarm it. And you’re the toughest.”

“Look, this just isn’t how it’s supposed to be done,” said Friedrich. “Thieves are supposed to be subtle, sneaky, and quiet. And you’re none of those things.”

Embarrassment fought with frustration in Andra’s mind as she absorbed this. Frustration won. “You know what I think? If anything went wrong on our past jobs, it was because the three of you couldn’t keep up with me. You’ve been holding me back this entire time.”

She stood. “You’re worthless! You’re annoying! Aleph can barely even conjure enough fire to light a candle. Friedrich has broken like five different swords this month. And Bessen is more interested in playing with her friends than in actually finding a job.”

“Training,” Bessen said quietly, but Andra kept plowing ahead.

“I could do so much better without you. Why am I wasting my time hanging out with you wash-ups when I should be working big jobs? I am done with you three.”

She started to storm off, then paused at the door for one final word, “And a four-person party with two fighters is a stupid idea!” then left the room.

She made her way to the bathroom where she sank to her knees against the polished stone wall and cried for a few minutes. How was she going to keep going as a solo adventurer? These days, everyone wanted teams. A solo mage could always leave the Guild and start teaching. A priestess could return to her temple. But a thief’s only other option was to join the secret Thieves’ Guild, and Andra flat-out refused to associate with those low-lifes. She would sooner go crawling back to her wretched family.

She could try to join another team, but none of the idiots in this Guild seemed able to perceive her greatness. Like her former teammates, they sneered at her techniques and mocked her when they thought she wasn’t listening. The only other possibility was to try to start her own team. But that would mean joining up with unsigned adventurers, and those were usually the absolute dregs of the Guild. Of course, Andra realized, she really just needed them around so that she could get jobs. As long as they could follow orders, she could take care of the actual work, and once she had made a name for herself she could ditch them and join a real party.

But who to recruit? Andra remembered hearing that Fiona Atalan had recently been dropped by her party. If she was going to form her own, she might as well at least try to find worthwhile allies. Resolved, Andra wiped her tears, puffed her well-tailored sleeves, and stepped out of the bathroom, heading for the dorms.

As luck would have it, she didn’t have to go that far as she caught sight of Fiona in the training yard—if you could call the tetanus-ridden playground that—swinging a practice sword at a training dummy. There was an effortless beauty about her that was rare among fighters. If Bessen looked like she belonged covered in furs and huddled by a fire in a snowy wasteland, then Fiona looked like she belonged in a chainmail bikini fighting a dragon. Unfortunately, she was wearing a shirt and breeches that looked like they had been tailored for a man. The sleeves were rolled up, revealing multiple battle scars on her arms. Those, coupled with her immense height and muscles, made her an intimidating figure, leaving Andra to wonder why she didn’t last long on teams. She also had a pair of cat-like ears, an earring in one, a cut in the other. Part fairy, most likely. Maybe part demon.

“Fiona!” Andra called out as she got close.

Fiona yelped in surprise, dropping her sword. She spun to face Andra.

“Oh! Sorry. A-Andra, right?” she stammered.

“Yep! Meet me in the common room. I’m starting a new party,” said Andra, then she turned and walked off, leaving the confused Fiona behind.

She would need more than one person, so she continued to the dorm. Surely there would be a loser or two she could grab there. As luck would have it, as soon as she entered the building expletive-marred shouting echoed off the stone and timber walls and assaulted her ears.

“Fine! Drop me! We’ll see how you handle a job with no healer!”

A group of adventurers rounded the corner and brushed past Andra; one of them paused to shout back: “We’ve been working without a healer since you joined!” then continued out the door.

This was perfect! Andra followed the voice to its source. Around the corner she met the gaze of Kaylen Arac, standing in the hallway looking furious. She was a slender girl with tightly curled hair and dressed in the red and white vestments of whatever god she worshiped. Andra didn’t bother to keep track of which god was which.

“Would you believe that? I find a job and come all the way down here from the temple to tell them about it, only to have them kick me out of the party and take the job anyway,” Kaylen said with a groan of frustration.

“Believe it or not,” Andra replied, puffing her chest out slightly; “today’s actually your lucky day because those losers were nothing compared to the party you’re about to join. My party.”

Kaylen blinked. “You’re starting your own party? What, did you just get kicked out of yours and now you’re starting your own because you know no one else will take you?”

Andra could feel her face heating. “Just come to the common room, okay?”

Reluctantly, Kaylen followed Andra to the commons where the pair joined the bewildered-looking Fiona at a table.

Leaning back, Andra sized up her recruits. Fiona, apparently trying to rub a smudge out of her blade, had nicked her thumb. Kaylen, seeing Fiona’s now-bleeding thumb, frowned and gazed longingly at the door. 

Why weren’t they more excited? “Alright, any ideas of who could be the fourth member of our party?” Andra asked.

“Wait, is that what we’re doing?” asked Fiona.

Andra sighed heavily. “Yes, Fiona. What else would we be doing?”

Fiona winced, her ears folding down, a strange gesture from such a powerful-looking woman. “Sorry.”

“Hold on, I never said I’d join,” said Kaylen. “You don’t exactly have the best reputation around here.”

Andra rolled her eyes. “Your reputation isn’t any better. And at least you deserve what they call you, Kaylen the Fool.”

“I’d rather be Kaylen the Fool than Andra the Narcissist!” Kaylen shot back

“Uh…” said Fiona.

“You really are a fool if you don’t see what an opportunity this is. All you have to do is whatever I tell you, or are you so dumb you can’t even do that?” Andra shouted, leaning forward and causing her chair to slam down with a loud thud that punctuated her anger.

“I’m smart enough not to join a team with you and Fiona the Coward!”

“Um…” said Fiona.

Both of the others turned to face her. “What?” they shouted in unison.

“Sorry! Um…” Fiona pointed and the two followed her gaze to find another girl standing at the table. She was short and pale and dressed all in black with way too much eyeliner. A small pair of spectacles sat on her nose.

“What is it, Raven?” asked Andra, her voice dripping with irritation.

“It’s Riven, actually. Riven Circe,” the girl replied. “Did you say you were forming a new party?”

“Not with you,” Andra said firmly.

“Not with me, either,” added Kaylen, looking away from the other two which unfortunately meant staring directly at the increasingly-nervous Fiona.

Riven’s expression sank. “Too bad. I think the four of us have just about the worst reputations in the entire Guild. It would really be something if we joined up and discovered that we work together much better than we ever did with any of our old teams.”

Kaylen’s eyes lit up. “I didn’t think of it like that, but you’re right. We could discover that our flaws somehow balance each other perfectly and that together we’re the best party in the entire Guild. You know what? I’m in!”

Riven leaned close to Andra. “You have to know how to talk to her," she whispered.

“Hold on,” Andra said. “It’s one thing for me to team up with these two idiots, but there’s no way I’m working with Raven the Traitor.”

“It’s Riven, actually,” Riven repeated, carefully enunciating the name. “Riven the Traitor.”

“Well, if Riven’s not on the team, then neither am I,” said Kaylen.

Andra stared at Kaylen for a moment, trying to understand what she was thinking. “She’s betrayed her last three teams.”

“‘Betrayed’ is a strong word,” Riven interjected.

Andra slammed a hand onto the table. “Lina is still stuck at Giant’s Peak. Did you know one of them adopted her?”

Riven folded her hands politely. “I did not.”

“We need four people for a team,” Kaylen said, once again over Riven.

She wasn’t wrong. People expected a party to have four adventurers. No one would hire a party of three. “So? We can find someone else.”

“No, it has to be the four worst people in the Guild,” Kaylen explained. “That’s how it works in the stories. No one tells stories about three terrible adventurers and one pretty good one who start working together and find they balance each other perfectly.”

Andra blinked at her. “Are you talking about the trash they sell next to the cashier at the grocery store?”

Kaylen gave her a haughty look. “You mean the brilliant works of modern literature they sell next to the cashier at the grocery store.”

The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Andra could see on Kaylen’s face that she wouldn’t budge. It was either accept Riven or try to find two more unsigned adventurers. Stories of Riven’s betrayals were always muddled at best, but they didn’t happen on every job and she had never actually killed any of her allies. Rather, it seemed that occasionally, when facing down an evil witch or scheming alchemist, Riven would suddenly turn against her teammates and attack them, usually leading to confused chaos until the team managed to defeat their opponent or flee. Riven would then show up at the Guild the next day as if nothing had happened. Andra sighed heavily again. As long as she knew to keep an eye on Riven, it would be alright, wouldn’t it?

“Fine. But, Raven, you had better do exactly as I tell you and no betrayals.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Riven replied mischievously. Andra did not find it reassuring.

She stood up once more and re-puffed her sleeves. “Alright, let’s go register with the office.”

She stood and marched off, the others in tow.

“I never actually said I would join,” Fiona said weakly. 

Nobody heard her.

 

---

 

Anyone with money could hire a team from The Adventurer’s Guild, from kings to farmers. While everyone had an image of adventurers fighting dragons and rescuing maidens, there was no specific guideline for what type of job was appropriate for the Guild. This meant that people often seeked help from the Guild for any problem they didn’t know how to solve, from lost pets to the aforementioned dragons.

In the minds of both clients and adventurers, the system seemed to operate on its own. People came with problems, and adventurers solved them. No one ever questioned who actually ensured that rookie heroes weren’t battling giants or that veterans weren’t pulling weeds.

This task fell to Marian Merrick, the Guild’s receptionist. Technically, it wasn’t part of her official duties, but she had worked for the Guild for so long that she was a fundamental part of it. In fact, it could be said that she held more power than the council who ostensibly ran the Guild. Marian controlled the rank and reputation of every party. She controlled which new rules were put into place. She even controlled the opinions that other groups in the city held of the Guild, through carefully placed rumor and gossip.

For as long as anyone could remember, Marian and a rotating group of assistants, never more than two at a time, had handled all of the Guild’s administrative work. She registered every adventurer and party, she recorded every job request, and she decided which of each was matched up. She could give a team multiple high-profile jobs to improve their reputation, or she could let them languish with miserable jobs like cleaning out sewers for the city or collecting herbs for alchemists. It was not a good idea to get on Marian’s bad side.

Andra had gotten on Marian’s bad side. The young woman’s impatient, huffy attitude when she had registered a new party named, of all things, Lady von Ekko’s Glorious Adventurer Brigade, had quickly worn down Marian’s nerves. Worse, her party seemed to be made of the worst adventurers in the entire Guild. All four members had been kicked off of multiple teams, forcing Marian to repeatedly perform the tedious paperwork of registering and unregistering each of them. Still, she had to give Andra a job. After all, if a team went too long without one they came to Marian to complain and that was too much of a nuisance for the receptionist to handle. 

It didn’t take long for her to find the perfect job. A merchant arrived the very next day, demanding a team of adventurers to clear giant spiders out of his warehouse. He took on a condescending attitude when Marian explained that he couldn’t immediately walk out with a group of hand-picked adventurers, and started talking to Marian’s assistant instead. This put him on Marian’s bad side, too. She only hoped that Lady von Ekko’s Glorious Adventurer Brigade destroyed every piece of merchandise in that warehouse.

 

---

 

The warehouse district wasn’t nearly as filthy as Andra had expected. The roads were nicely cobbled, and were as clean as the streets around the Guild. There weren’t swarms of beggars or thieves hiding in the alleyways. There was something eerie about the sprawling one-story buildings, but Andra didn’t find them particularly threatening, just unusual. The party stood before the doors of the warehouse they’d been hired to clear. They had picked up the key from the warehouse’s manager, a man with rat-like features who seemed entirely disinterested in the fate of his warehouse and who had elected not to supervise their work, saying that he hadn’t been hired to deal with spiders.

Andra unlocked the door, then looked to her allies.

“Ready?”

Kaylen nodded. “Should be an easy job. The perfect debut, to show off how amazing we are.”

“At the very least, I can’t imagine how we could screw it up,” Riven added.

Fiona made an uncertain noise. She had already drawn her sword and was holding it before her protectively. Curiously, she had chosen to wear chain mail, despite the fact that it would do little against dog-sized spiders who were most likely to attack the legs.

Slowly, carefully, Andra pushed open the door and was greeted by a musty, damp smell.

Shouting like she was facing down an army, Kaylen drew her flanged mace and charged through the door. Her howl stopped a moment after she was inside. The other three shared a confused glance, and followed her in.

Inside, the warehouse was lit from a row of windows high up on the wall. The shelves and stacks of crates, all labeled with letters and numbers, cast a web of shadows where it seemed anything could be hiding. The warehouse manager seemed to have a policy of “put it wherever it fits,” and instead of the easily navigable rows Andra had expected, the entire warehouse was laid out like a maze.

Kaylen was standing there, looking confused. “There aren’t any spiders here.”

“Yeah, they aren’t going to come charging out as soon as we walk in,” Riven explained. “They’re ordinary animals, not mindless killing machines.”

Andra laughed nervously. “Yeah, Kaylen. Geez, you really are a fool.” She, too, had expected the spiders to come pouring out.

Together, the group rounded a corner and found themselves in a long row of shelves with many branching paths.

“There.” Fiona pointed at a shelf. Before Andra could make out what Fiona was pointing at in the shelf’s shadow, she had taken a few running steps forward and stabbed her sword into it. When she pulled her sword back, something came tumbling down from the shelf, a huge spider, nearly the size of a dog.

There was a flash of light somewhere behind her. Andra spun and saw Riven firing a bolt of magical energy from her hand, hitting another spider approaching from behind. Kaylen was swinging her mace at another. More spiders were crawling off the shelves and out of crates all around them.

Andra looked back down at the spider Fiona had killed. It was laying on its back, a leg still twitching. Green-colored blood seeped from its wound. In that moment, Andra decided that she couldn’t lower herself to fight such disgusting creatures. That was fine, she determined; after all, wasn’t that why she had recruited these idiots? It was better to just let them take care of this mess while she supervised. And so her dagger stayed in its sheath.

Things got a little hectic. A spider came very near to leaping on Riven in between her incantations, but Kaylen saved her, crushing the monster in midair with her mace. Another spider came dangerously close to Andra, and she was unfortunately forced to dirty her boot by kicking it to Fiona, who sliced it in half.

Eventually, however, the team came through unharmed, and the spiders all lay dead. Andra estimated that they must have killed at least a dozen. She nodded with satisfaction.

“Alright, I’d say we did pretty good.”

Kaylen shot her an annoyed glare. “You mean the three of us did pretty good. You just stood there.”

“Exactly! You all did such a good job that I didn’t even need to step in. Small note, you did let one of them get a little close to me, Fiona, but otherwise great job.”

Fiona winced. “Oh, uh, sorry about that.”

“Don’t apologize to her!” Kaylen said sharply.

Riven, who until this point had been leaning against a shelf, trying to catch her breath, spoke up. “I think I’m almost out of magic.”

“In that case, let’s hope there aren’t many more. Lead the way, Fiona,” Andra said.

“Okay,” Fiona replied, looking down the pathway ahead of them, with its many intersections. “Um, which way should I go?”

Andra sighed in exasperation and pushed her aside. She led the party a short way down the row and around another corner, where they discovered a large, open area. It looked as if crates and shelves had been pushed aside to create this area. In the center of it, paper and packing material had been piled up to form a nest. And on that nest, there was an enormous spider, larger than a human, its back turned to the party.

Before anyone could react, the creature pushed itself up on its legs and spun to face the party. To the shock of everyone, it became clear in the dim light that it was not simply a spider. Rather it was a woman, or the head, arms, and upper torso of a woman attached to the body of a spider. The woman had long black hair and curves like a model, and she wore a black leather bra. Her eyes were bright red, and when she snarled she revealed sharply pointed teeth.

“An arachne,” Riven whispered, her voice full of wonder. “An actual demon.”

She waved to the creature and started to call out when Kaylen shouted “Die, demon!” and charged forward, brandishing her mace.

The arachne swung a leg, sending Kaylen flying into a pile of crates. The demon looked down at the rest of the party, her face full of fury, then pointed at Fiona and spoke an incantation. Riven leapt in front of Fiona just as a bolt of pink-colored magic shot from the arachne’s finger and hit Riven in the chest.

For a moment, everything seemed to freeze as the possible results of this spell ran through Andra’s mind. Riven wasn’t being blasted away, nor did she crumple to the ground, dead instantly. In fact, the spell didn’t appear to have any effect at all. Had the arachne messed it up?

When the moment passed, Riven began trotting forward. It wasn’t like Kaylen’s mad charge, more of an excited approach. When she reached the arachne she knelt before it.

“Beautiful and powerful mistress, please grant my life purpose by instructing me!”

Fiona stared at Riven, her face full of shock. “It’s a charm spell. She took a charm spell for me.”

The arachne spoke in a language Andra couldn’t understand.

“Yes. Thank you. At once,” Riven replied, bowing her head with each word. She stood and turned to face Andra and Fiona. Her eyes had a dreamy look in them, and there was a blissful smile on her face.

“Sorry, guys, it looks like I’m working for her now.” She gestured with a thumb, indicating the demon behind her. “And she wants the two of you dead, so I’m afraid that’s going to have to happen.”

Andra frantically turned to Fiona. “Quick! Attack!” she shouted.

“Right!” Fiona replied, but she didn’t move. “Uh, which one?”

Before Andra could respond, Riven raised her hand and whispered an incantation. A sigil appeared in the air before her hand and from that emerged a fireball. Andra leapt aside, but Fiona was too slow and the fireball hit her in the chest, exploding with a deafening crash. She flew backwards, crashing into the shelf behind her, which collapsed on top of her.

Andra drew her dagger and dashed forward, staying low in hopes of making herself a smaller target for Riven’s fireballs. Riven already had her hand pointed at Andra and was saying another incantation. Andra braced herself, ready for another explosion.

But no fireball came.

Riven looked up at the arachne, eyes filled with terror. “Mistress, I am so sorry, but it seems that in my eagerness to serve you I have depleted my--”

Her groveling cut off as Andra plunged her dagger into the arachne’s spider body. Andra, being the genius that she was, had had the foresight to study anatomy before joining the Guild. She knew that an arachne had two hearts, but that both were needed to survive. Stab one of them and the creature was dead.

She withdrew her dagger and took a few steps back as the creature collapsed. For a moment, the arachne held up her head and right arm, as if trying to reach for something, but then the life left those, too, and they went limp.

Riven blinked and frowned, looking first at the arachne and then at Andra. “Hey, why’d you kill her?”

“She was controlling you,” Andra explained. “But it’s okay. I saved us all.”

Riven sighed blissfully. “She was. Isn’t it wonderful? I was in heaven. Ah, but it ended so fast.”

“Wait, what?” Andra asked flatly. She recalled Riven leaping in front of the spell. Was that something other than a selfless act to protect a teammate? “Are you saying that you wanted her to control you?”

“I love charm spells. There’s nothing more wonderful than the feeling of someone twisting my mind, molding it into whatever shape they want.” Riven sighed again, quivering slightly. “That was a simple one, just designed to make the target loyal, but sometimes the basics are the best.”

She looked around, blinking. “Wait, I shot a fireball, didn’t I? We should get out of here.”

Andra followed Riven’s gaze and saw that there was indeed a rapidly-growing fire engulfing the area where the fireball had exploded. The collapsed shelf started to move unexpectedly, and suddenly surged upward, debris showering around a surprisingly-unharmed Fiona.

“Fiona, grab the demon,” Andra ordered. “Alchemists will pay a ton for its parts.”

Fiona looked around, quickly noticing the spreading flames around her. Frightened, she half-limped, half-ran to Andra and Riven.

“Wait, wait, but who’s going to carry Kaylen?” she asked

Andra sighed. That was right, Kaylen was still lying unconscious by the crates. “Fine, carry her. Raven, grab a box or something. If this stuff’s all going to burn anyway we might as well take some of it.”

Andra returned to the corpse of the demon while the others carried out their tasks. She selected a leg, and lifting it with one arm, she chopped it off with her dagger. Maybe it’d be worth something. Together the group quickly made their way back through the maze of shelves and out of the rapidly-heating building.

Once they were outside and clear of the building, Kaylen stirred in Fiona’s arms and moaned quietly. “What happened?”

“We fought a demon. You got knocked out,” Fiona explained. 

“Yeah, why did you just charge at her instead of using your…divine powers or whatever it is that being a priestess gives you?” Andra asked.

Kaylen looked around, still regaining her consciousness. “I was saving my power,” she explained.

Andra was unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Saving it? Saving it for what? We were fighting a demon! That’s the situation you should be saving your power for!”

“A-anyway, at least we were able to defeat her,” Fiona said, looking at Riven with eyes full of gratitude. “She tried to cast a charm spell on me, but Riven protected me.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Riven added, grinning. “I’m pretty much a hero.”

“Liar!” shouted Andra, stamping her foot in frustration. “You just wanted to be hit with that spell because you’re a pervert with a mind control kink.”

She looked Riven up and down. Something was missing. “Wait, I told you to grab a box.”

Riven shrugged. “They all looked really heavy, and I’m exhausted. Otherwise I would have just used a spell to put out the fire.”

As one, the group looked back up at the warehouse. The flames were already visible through the windows.

“Wait, I’m confused,” said Kaylen as Fiona set her down and helped steady her on her feet. “Are you saying Riven only joined the Guild in hopes of being hit with charm spells and other types of mind control and that’s why she has a reputation for being a traitor?”

“You don’t understand,” Riven replied passionately. “Charm spells are super illegal, even more illegal than transformation spells. No one will use them, even on a willing participant, because they don’t want to risk execution. So the only way to get hit with one is to work as an adventurer and hope you run into a demon or witch or something who uses them.”

“But…why do you even want that?” asked Kaylen.

“Because it’s amazing.” Riven was nearly shouting now. “Having someone take such complete and utter control over you. Having your very mind become hers to play with. Thinking only what she wants you to think, knowing only what she wants you to know. It’s absolute ecstasy!”

She moaned with excitement.

Andra rolled her eyes. At the very least, she now knew what led to Riven constantly betraying her teams. As long as she was kept far away from charm spells she could be kept under control.

“I think the more important question is why a demon would be in the city,” Andra said.

Riven suddenly turned serious. “Yeah, that is weird. I mean, demons show up in human countries all the time, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of one being found in the capital. I wonder if she was a spy.”

Kaylen thoughtfully touched a finger to her lips. “Those are all good questions. And another mystery is those other spiders. I mean, were they her babies or what?”

Riven gaped at Kaylen. “What? No, they weren’t her babies. They’re just regular animals. She probably just knew how to command them.”

Suddenly Fiona groaned loudly. “Oh no, I left my sword inside!”

At that moment, part of the warehouse’s roof collapsed.