The hearing chamber was nothing like Wallen's office. No decanter, no soft chairs, no pretense of comfort. It was a long, high-ceilinged room built for exactly one purpose — a raised dais at the far end where five officials would sit in judgment, rows of hard benches for everyone else, and the coldness of a space designed to remind you that whatever happened here was not a conversation.
A clerk read the names like she'd done it a thousand times before, each one landing with the flat, practiced weight of ceremony rather than meaning.
"This Disciplinary Hearing of Alara Veyne of the Dungeon Janitors Guild will now come to order."
I had to breathe deeply to fight the urge to throw up.
"Presiding: Guildmaster Osric Wallen, Dungeon Janitor's Guild."
The white-haired man looked exactly as he had the last time I'd seen him. Clean pressed suit, immaculate coif, the chain of a pocket watch dangling from his breast pocket. His expression was cool. Bureaucratic."Guildmaster Perrin Calloway, Adventurer's Guild."
The man sitting beside Wallen could not have been more of a stark contrast. Broad-shouldered and imposing, even while sitting, the large human had a long beard wound into a disciplined plait. He wore ceremonial armor, all silver and gold with tassels and a cape. Hask had told me about him. He was a retired adventurer himself: an A-rank who was known as the Crimson Lion. I could tell from the slight twitch in his eyebrow that he was taking this quite seriously.
"Administrators Colm Herrick, Priya Nashett, Baldric Fen, and Rowan Ashcombe."
The other four on either side of the Guildmasters were about as forgettable as you could imagine.
Five strangers, sitting in judgment of someone I cared about.
I looked around the chamber while the clerk finished her recitation, because looking too long at the arbiters of my companion's fate was difficult.
The room wasn't full. This hearing wasn't open to the public, which meant the benches held only the people who actually had business here — us, on one side, Hask sitting closest to the aisle like he intended to physically intervene if he had to.
Silver Fang across the way: Varkas, still favoring the shoulder Alara's spell had opened, his expression unreadable in a way that felt deliberate. Veyla beside him, hands folded tightly in her lap. Duran, still and silent as always. Uld, arms crossed, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else and had decided to be here anyway. And Stevie, seated slightly apart from the rest of them, watching the proceedings with the same unhurried attention she gave everything.
A woman I didn't recognize sat at a small table near the front, papers arranged in front of her with careful precision — Alara's advocate, presumably, assigned rather than chosen, the way everything about this process seemed to be happening to Alara rather than for her.
Nobody spoke. The room had the particular silence of people who'd all agreed, without discussing it, that nothing they could say would help.
They brought Alara in through a side door, under guard, like she was dangerous. I had never wanted to hit anyone as badly as I wanted to hit whoever decided that was necessary. She looked exhausted. And her expression when she saw us was an equal mix of hope and fear. She was seated at the table beside her advocate. The guards remained nearby."Alara Veyne." Calloway's voice was deep and commanding, but not unkind. "You are being formally charged with using a magical Skill to injure Sir Varkas Aureyn, an S-rank Paladin and the leader of Silver Fang. Do you understand?"Alara's voice was quiet. "I do, Guildmaster."
He nodded. "Good."Alara's advocate rose first. She had a kind face, the kind that had probably been chosen deliberately for exactly that reason, and her voice, when she spoke, was gentle in a way that felt almost out of place in a room built to be cold.
"Miss Veyne. For the record, could you describe, in your own words, the events that led to the injury sustained by Sir Aureyn in the Grimwater Swamp?"
Alara's hands were folded tightly on the table in front of her. I watched her take a breath.
"He confronted me. About breaking formation to save a teammate."
"After concluding a narrow battle with the Boss of the dungeon, correct?""Yes."
"And what happened next?"
"He was angry. He came toward me. I—"
She stopped.
The advocate waited, patient, giving her room. "Take your time."
Alara tried again. "He raised his — I thought he was going to—"
Her breathing had changed. I could see it from across the room, a shallow catch that told me she was no longer fully present.
"Miss Veyne?"
"I couldn't move. I couldn't — there was nowhere to—"
Her voice cracked entirely. Her hands, still folded on the table, had started to shake, and when she looked up, I don't think she was looking at anyone in that room at all.
"Please don't," she said. Quiet. Not to the advocate. Not to anyone present. "Please, I didn't — I didn't mean to, I just wanted to go home, please—"
The advocate glanced toward the dais, clearly recognizing what was happening and unsure how to proceed without making it worse.
"Miss Veyne, I understand this is difficult, but the panel requires a coherent account—"
"I can't." Alara's voice had gone thin and young in a way I'd never heard from her. "I can't, I keep trying and it just — it's not letting me get through it, I'm sorry, I'm trying—"
Wallen's expression didn't change. Calloway's eyebrow twitched again, harder this time.
Tessa's hand found mine on the bench. I hadn't realized I'd been gripping the wood hard enough to hurt.
From across the aisle, a chair scraped.
Stevie stood.
"If the panel will permit," she said, in the same calm, unhurried voice I remembered from a room under a laundry, "I have a suggestion."
Every head in the room turned toward her.
"Sir Aureyn was administered Veritose to establish the truth of his account, given the severity of the allegations and the discrepancy between his statement and the physical evidence." She let that sit for a moment, then continued, mild as anything. "It seems only fair, for the sake of consistency, that the same standard apply here. Miss Veyne is clearly unable to provide a coherent account through ordinary questioning. Veritose would resolve that difficulty."
Wallen's eyes narrowed slightly. "And you are—"
"Representing Silver Fang's interest in a full and accurate accounting of the incident," Stevie said smoothly. "Given our own member's involvement."
It was, I realized, a completely reasonable thing to say. Nobody in the room had any grounds to object to it. It sounded exactly like institutional fairness.
I looked at her. For just a moment, her eyes found mine across the chamber, and something passed between us that had nothing to do with fairness at all.
She looked away first.
Calloway leaned toward Wallen, murmured something I couldn't hear, and Wallen nodded slowly.
"The panel will allow it," Wallen said. "Miss Veyne. Do you consent to the administration of Veritose for the purposes of this hearing?"
Alara looked toward us — toward Hask, toward the row where we sat — and something in her face was asking a question none of us could answer for her.
Then she looked back at the panel.
"Yes," she said. Small. Certain, underneath the smallness. "Yes. I consent."
A physician was sent for, and arrived swiftly, a small vial in hand, the liquid inside a pale, unremarkable amber that looked nothing like the danger it apparently represented in sufficient concentration.
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"A standard dose, for the record," the physician said, "consistent with the concentration administered to Sir Aureyn."
Alara didn't flinch when the vial was uncorked and placed in front of her. She picked it up herself, looked at it for a moment, and drank.
I watched something change in her almost immediately — not dramatically, not like a light switching on, but the way tension leaves a body that's finally been given permission to stop holding itself together. Her shoulders lowered. Her hands, still on the table, stopped shaking. When she looked up again, her eyes were clear and strangely, terribly calm, the way water goes still right before it freezes.
"Miss Veyne," the advocate said gently. "Can you describe the events of the Grimwater Swamp incident now?"
"Yes." Her voice was flat. Even. Nothing like the voice that had been begging "please don't" a few minutes ago.
"Sir Aureyn confronted me regarding my decision to break formation and save a teammate from being absorbed by the corrupted Boss creature. He raised his voice. He advanced on me. I retreated until my back reached a tree and there was nowhere further to go. He raised his sword, likely to sheathe it, though I did not perceive it that way at the time. I used Arcane Art: Sever in self-defense, striking his shoulder."
The room was utterly silent.
"Why did you perceive it as a threat," the advocate asked, "rather than an ordinary movement?"
And there it was. The question I think everyone in that room had been quietly avoiding since the moment Stevie stood up.
Alara answered without hesitation, without inflection, the words coming out of her with the same flat clarity she might have used to describe someone else's life entirely.
"Because it wasn't the first time a man larger than me had cornered me against something I couldn't move past, with a weapon in his hand, and no one to stop him."
Nobody in the room breathed.
"I was assigned by the Scholar's Enclave to study the Ebon Maw for potential reopening. I was sent with an adventuring party for protection. The adventurers attempted to assault me on the second night of the expedition, believing I would not be able to prove otherwise, or that no one would ask. They told me that I should, 'be a good girl' and that they would 'take good care of me'."I couldn't breathe. I listened with rapt attention, as did everyone else. All that could be heard was Alara."Rather than be forcefully violated by three men, I fought back. I killed all three of them in the process. There were no other witnesses."Tessa covered her face with her hands."When I returned and reported what happened, the Enclave determined it looked, on its face, indistinguishable from murder. Thanks to the timely intervention of Foreman Hask Morian, I was given a choice between formal prosecution or quiet removal from the Enclave's records, with a placement arranged at the Dungeon Janitor's Guild in exchange for my silence. I chose the Guild."
She said all of it without a single tremor. Without a single tear. The horror of it arrived entirely through the words themselves, with nothing in her voice to soften or dramatize what they meant, and somehow that made it very much worse.
I heard Tessa make a small, broken sound beside me.
Kael looked quietly furious.
Hask didn't move at all, which told me he already knew, and had known for a long time, and was only now watching the rest of us catch up to something he'd been carrying alone on her behalf.
Across the aisle, Varkas had gone very still.
"Thank you, Miss Veyne," the advocate said quietly, and even she sounded like the words cost her something to say.Calloway spoke, picking his words carefully, "I helped preside over that case. I'm ashamed to say that I had forgotten it until now. If memory serves, we were unable to administer Veritose due to a shortage of supplies in the Alchemist's Guild. Miss Veyne was punished anyway…" He looked like his composure was difficult to maintain. "I see now that this was a gross miscarriage of justice."
The silence held for a long moment after that. Even Wallen, whose face I had never once seen do anything other than professional composure, seemed to need a beat before he spoke again.
"Sir Aureyn." His voice was careful now, in a way it hadn't been before. "Given what has just been established, does Silver Fang have anything further to add regarding the incident in question?"
Varkas stood.
He didn't stand the way he usually did — that easy, practiced authority that filled a room without effort. He stood slowly, minding the shoulder still healing beneath his armor, and for a moment he just looked at Alara across the chamber, and whatever was on his face, I didn't have a name for it.
"I have something to add," he said.
The room waited.
"I confronted Miss Veyne in a state of considerable personal distress that had nothing to do with her actions and everything to do with my own history. I raised my voice. I advanced on her in a manner that any reasonable person, let alone someone with her specific history, would have perceived as threatening. When she defended herself, I responded with further aggression rather than restraint, and if not for Foreman Morian's intervention, I cannot say with confidence what I would have done."
He paused.
"I take full responsibility for what occurred. Not partial responsibility. Not shared responsibility. Full."
Calloway leaned forward slightly, watching him with an expression I couldn't fully read.
"That is a significant admission, Sir Aureyn."
"It's an accurate one." Varkas's jaw tightened. "I have spent my entire life believing certain things about necessity, and about what a person deserves when they get in the way of what needs to be done. I was wrong about a great many of those things a long time ago, and I was wrong about this one too."He was not looking at anyone in particular, staring at the wall behind the administration."I am not necessarily a friend of the Janitor's Guild. I have never been unclear about that. But I believe in what's right. Miss Veyne acted to defend herself against a threat I created, in a moment that echoed something she had no reason to trust wasn't happening to her all over again. That is not her failing. It is mine."
He sat back down. Nobody in the room said anything for a moment, including, I noticed, Veyla, who was looking at her brother-in-arms with an expression that was somewhere between shock and something that might have been the beginning of respect.
Wallen and Calloway conferred quietly for several minutes, heads bent together, voices too low to carry. The rest of us sat in a silence that had a different texture now — not dread, but something like a held breath. Finally, Wallen looked up.
"Given the testimony provided, the panel finds that Miss Veyne acted in justified self-defense in both the incident under review and the historical incident disclosed during these proceedings. All charges against her are dismissed."
I felt something in my chest unclench.
"However," Wallen continued, and I felt it clench right back up again, "given the sensitive nature of Miss Veyne's history and the operational complications it presents, the panel recommends reassignment to a Guild posting outside of active field rotation, effective immediately, for her own—"
"No."
Hask was on his feet."She will not be reassigned.""Foreman Morian. I would strongly urge you to sit back down," Wallen warned."And I would strongly urge you to listen to what I am about to tell you. Alara Veyne is the best healer I've ever had the pleasure of overseeing. In every single situation we have ever encountered up to this one, she has remained calm, level-headed and capable. I will not stand for this administration punishing her in any way, shape, or form for something that is in no way her fault. And should you choose to do so anyway…I will make my grievances known."I saw Calloway look at Hask with an almost amused face. The rest of the room seemed to shrink back from him slightly.Wallen looked to Varkas. "What say you, Sir Aureyn?"The paladin stood tall. "I stand with the Foreman on this matter. Should Miss Veyne be reassigned, my displeasure will also be known."The Guildmasters looked to the other members of Silver Fang."And the rest of you?" Calloway asked.Veyla stood. "I stand with Foreman Morian as well."
Stevie didn't get up. "I'm on his side too."Duran remained silent, merely nodding his head in Hask's direction.Uld grunted. "I follow Varkas. She stays."
Wallen looked between the two Guildmasters' chairs, then out at the room — at Hask standing, at Varkas standing, at Veyla standing, at Stevie sitting with the calm certainty of someone who'd never once doubted the outcome, at Duran's silent nod, at Uld's crossed arms and flat refusal to entertain any other option.
Five members of one of the most powerful adventuring parties in the Empire, and the most frightening man in the room not wearing any armor at all, all standing on the same side of a line that had, moments ago, seemed like a foregone administrative conclusion.
Calloway leaned toward Wallen and murmured something. This time I caught the shape of it, if not the words — something short, something that ended with a small, tired shake of his head, like a man conceding a point he hadn't particularly wanted to make in the first place.
Wallen was quiet for a long moment.
"The panel," he said finally, "will reconsider its recommendation."
He didn't look pleased about it. He didn't look angry either. He looked, more than anything, like a man recalculating the cost of a fight he'd assumed would be easy and discovering it wasn't.
"Miss Veyne's assignment will remain unchanged. She will continue her duties with Foreman Morian's team."
I felt the breath leave my body all at once.
Beside me, Tessa made a small sound that was half sob and half laugh, and grabbed my hand so hard it hurt.
Alara, at the front table, hadn't moved. The Veritose was still working through her, I realized — she heard the ruling, and something in her face responded to it, distant and delayed, like watching good news arrive from very far away.
"This hearing is concluded," Wallen said. "Miss Veyne is free to go."
He rose. Calloway rose beside him, and for just a moment, before he turned to leave, his eyes found Hask's across the room, and he gave him a small, deliberate nod — not quite respect, not quite warning, something in between that I didn't have a word for.
Then the officials filed out, the clerk gathered her papers, and the room that had been so carefully, coldly built to remind everyone that this was not a conversation, finally let us have one.
Tessa was already moving toward Alara before I'd fully processed standing up.
Kael followed. So did I.
Hask stayed where he was for one more moment, watching all of it — Alara, still half-lost in whatever calm the drug had left behind, being gathered up by two people who loved her — and something in his face, just for that moment, looked like it might actually break.
Then he followed us too.