Duskbound

Now panicking at the lack of cooperation Velik was displaying, the attendant rushed ahead of him to disarm the defenses on the stairway, something Velik was absolutely sure the man wasn't supposed to be doing. What if I'd been some sort of shape shifting monster or a body snatcher? You know those exist, right? he thought as he watched the attendant scamper off.

Well, whatever. If you hadn't been such a jackass about it to begin with and just delivered the message like I'd asked, you wouldn't be in this situation. I could have waited an hour or two if needed.

Velik took his time following the attendant up the stairs. Unlike a gold-ranked hunter, the attendant had a special badge that allowed him to pass through unfettered while requiring he still manually deactivate defenses for anyone he was escorting. Velik wasn't sure what the logic behind that was, but he didn't make the rules and didn't much care as long as he made his way to the guild master's door.

Thirty seconds later, he was in the administrative wing of the guild hall. It looked pretty much exactly like Velik remembered, which was to say it was stuffed full of boring offices and boring paperwork. Men and women who lacked the hard, clean, muscular physique of seasoned hunters staffed desks pushed up against walls to take advantage of the sunlight streaming in from the windows. There was a steady stream of traffic coming in and out of various rooms, as well as stairwells that led deeper into the guildhall and weren't available to non-staff members.

At the end of the somewhat daunting bastion of paperwork and bureaucracy was Velik's goal: a door made of thick oak, delicate lines of filigree carved around its edges and an intricately decorated brass handle situated on the left side. A small, rectangular plaque on the door read, 'Betrim Nelspir, Guild Master.' The attendant marched up to it, paused for a second to steel himself, then knocked on the door.

"What?" a grumpy voice called out from behind it.

"Sir, there's a… an iron…" The attendant paused for a moment and glanced back at Velik, who just stood there with his arms crossed and waited. "An iron-ranked hunter who says he needs to talk to you."

"The hell do I care about that?" the guild master yelled back. "I'm busy!"

"He, uh, he broke through the kinetic wall at the base of the stairs by pushing on it."

There was a pause, followed by some muffled swearing and an annoyed groan. Then heavy footsteps stomped toward the door, which was jerked open so fast Velik barely even parsed its movement. He didn't need [Apex Hunter] to tell him the guild master was strong. That speed sold the story well enough on its own.

"You," Nelspir said, looking over the attendant's head to stare at Velik. "You know we have protocol for a reason, right?"

"And if it was being followed properly, we wouldn't need to have a conversation about it," Velik shot back. "As it so happens, I'm having a hard time getting things done fairly and quickly, and I'd like to address that issue."

"Gods help me, what did those idiots do now?" Nelspir muttered. He gave the attendant a withering look and snapped, "Get back to your post."

Then, ungraciously, he gestured Velik into his office and slammed the door behind him. Nelspir was a big man, and high level, too, and Velik strongly disliked turning his back to someone with such a volatile temper, especially when he wasn't at all certain he could beat the man in a fight, but he walked with as much confidence as he could muster and dropped into a plush chair in front of the guild master's desk.

The office itself was fairly large, but stuffed full of so much furniture that there was barely any room to move around. The desk was huge, bigger than any bed Velik had ever seen in his life. Bookshelves lined three walls, all of them more than a foot thick and bursting with leather bound ledgers. There was a couch pressed up against the remaining wall, right next to the door. It was covered in stains, looked well-worn, and, to Velik's delicate nose, had a distinct smell.

Nelspir threw himself into his chair, almost sullenly, and stared at Velik. "Well, what do you want?"

"It's about Pevril," Velik started, only to pause when the guild master groaned.

"That asshole? What did he do now?"

"Well, he failed me on the iron assessment, for starters."

"What? That's it?" Nelspir laughed. "And what, you thought you'd come whine to the guild master about it? Did you think I'd overturn the decision? Gods, kid, you really don't know shit about guild politics, do you?"

"I performed my job perfectly," Velik said tightly. "If anyone should have failed on my team, it should have been the girl who decided to charge a split tailed bull from the ass end and the team leader who should have known better but instead ran in with her. But, of course, my team leader is Pevril's daughter, so she passed with a perfect grade and I got failed because the idiot who had no business being there in the first place got herself hurt."

Nelspir's incredulous laugh died out, only to be replaced with a grimace as Velik explained what had happened. It didn't take very long to relate the events of the trial back to him, or to point out a few other instances of catching hell from the head instructor for things that really weren't Velik's fault.

A few minutes later, Nelspir said, "So, I guess those etiquette lessons to teach you how to not piss off every single person you meet were a waste of money, huh?"
Experience tales at empire

"I'll admit I only attended two lessons," Velik said. "They were conflicting with my economics and finances time slots, and I judged managing my money to be far more important."

"Debatable," Nelspir muttered. "Look, like I said, guild politics are a thing. There are factions inside the guild that have different objectives, and Pevril's petty enough to spend political capital on this. He gets final say on those trials, and nobody gets to overrule him. If I try, I end up embroiled in a battle for control of the guild while his bloc does its best to cripple my ability to do my job."

"I'm not interested in being a victim to your politics," Velik said. "I came here for one reason only. I don't need a shiny pin that says I'm good at killing monsters. I already know I am. I need the information from your specialists and your archives. You get that for me, and I'll be happy to disappear and save you the headache."

"Giving you access to resources above your ranking is an even tougher sell than getting around Pevril's decision to fail you. That would piss off both his faction and the ledgermen's."

"Then what's your solution?" Velik asked.

The guild master just stared past him for a minute, his weary face creased with wrinkles and covered in two-day stubble. Abruptly, he stood up from his desk, reached over to the nearest shelf, and pulled free one of the books. The cover was stained with what Velik hoped was water, but which he suspected was spilled wine based on the color, and the leather was starting to split and crack on the spine.

Heedless of any need to handle the fragile book with care, Nelspir flipped it open and started thumbing through the pages. "The trials are about teamwork," he explained as he skimmed, "because all bronze ranks work in teams. They have to. It's too dangerous, otherwise. Even silvers need special dispensation to run solo jobs, and we only let them do it on bronze grade work. You have to get to gold before you're trusted to work on your own.

"Honestly, even that isn't because everything is magically easier at gold-rank. It's just because there are so few of us that we couldn't begin to cover all the work if we made golds group up into teams for every single job that comes our way. We just trust them to know when they're in over their head and retreat to get help."

"Fascinating," Velik said flatly.

"There are trials to advance from one rank to the next. When you signed on with the guild, I expected you to complete the basic training an iron goes through, the things you need to know just to function within the guild, and then immediately ascend through the ranks up to gold by knocking out the silver and gold challenges."

"You said there were no exceptions. Everyone has to go through iron-rank training."

"Technically, you did that."

"But I didn't pass," Velik protested. "That's the whole reason I'm here."

Nelspir waved away the objection. "I'm assuming you passed everything up to the final trial, all the classes and exercises and lessons."

Barely, no thanks to my team leader. "Of course."

"Then if you can pass the gold challenge, that proves you're capable of operating solo. You won't be able to work in a team, but what do you care? You're not here for bronze or silver jobs anyway."

"So… what, I did all the iron coursework, and I just go do the gold challenge, then I'm officially gold-ranked? Just like that?"

"Well," Nespir hedged. "Not exactly like that, but you're not the first person to join the guild with an advanced level. There's precedent for promising initiates skipping steps once they complete the iron trial. You did the stuff I needed you to do. I think I can finagle things to sidestep Pevril's authority if you can prove your competency in a solo trial."

That was exactly what Velik wanted to hear. He leaned forward with a grin. "What do you need me to do?"