Dawn Assembly — Jalester arrives with a map
Grey light was coming through the windows of Trollskull Manor when Jalester Silvermane let himself in through the front door. He moved the way men move when they have spent too many years in places where being heard is dangerous — no announcement, no pause at the threshold, just a quiet settling into the room. Lif had a fire going. Jalester laid a hand-drawn map on the table without ceremony: waterfront, a staircase unmarked on any official chart, a tunnel running north into the dark.
Yagra Stonefist arrived right behind him. She dropped into a chair, looked at the fire, and said nothing.
"Underdocks to Skullport. Kenku sentries at the first junction, a watched corridor beyond that. Go quiet, go fast."
Caelith listened with his arms folded. When Jalester finished, he looked down at himself — chain mail, shield, the longsword at his hip.
"I'm not built for quiet."
Jalester accepted this with the equanimity of a man who has learned to work with what he is given.
It was Yagra who mentioned the tournament. Still staring at the fire, like the words were an afterthought.
"The Guild runs a fighting competition out of The Hanged Man. Three fighters, ten gold to enter. Win all three bouts, you get a face-to-face with Xanathar. Noska Ur'gray takes sign-ups. Ten minutes from here."
"Xanathar will see our abilities. Know our faces."
"It's a problem either way."
Jalester accepted this. He would come as support but not fight in the arena — too recognisable to the Guild. He'd wait outside. Lylnyler would fight. Caelith would fight. Corrin would work the gallery. Before they left, Lylnyler pulled Corrin aside.
"Find a Guild regular in the crowd. Drop a question — what must it be like to win and stand in front of Xanathar. Heavily guarded, awkward, terrifying. Let them fill in the blanks."
"I understand."
As Corrin peeled off toward the gallery stairs, Jalester caught him with a word.
"You're not on the team roster. Which means in that arena you're just another face in the crowd. Try not to make yourself memorable."
"I'll stay outside. Too recognisable to the Guild. I'll wait."
The five of them went out into the morning.
The Dock Ward smelled of salt water and old rope and something else underneath — a city ward that had been absorbing commerce and crime for so long the two had become indistinguishable. Yagra walked ahead. She did not slow for conversation, but she answered when Caelith asked what to expect in the arena.
Anything, she said. The Guild pulled fighters from all over — mercenaries, criminals, things they had caught and kept. The arena floor was open, oval, sand. No cover, no exits. You won by putting the other team down or making them quit.
"Don't bunch up. The crowd loves a fireball."
Caelith asked if she had ever killed a beholder. Half a block of silence. Then she pulled her collar aside — a pale scar from her left collarbone toward her shoulder — and told him no. She had fought one of its lieutenants.
"Beholders don't fight. They float in the middle of a room and take you apart from a distance, one eye at a time. So no. We're not killing the beholder. We're getting in, getting what we came for, and getting out before it decides we're a problem."
She glanced at Caelith.
"You planning on killing a beholder, paladin?"
Caelith shrugged is shoulders.
"I'm not excluding it."
Yagra stopped walking. Just for a moment. Then kept going, and said that Vajra had not mentioned the paladin was stupid. Two steps ahead, Jalester's shoulders moved. He was laughing.
The tactics for the bout came out on the walk. Yagra could play weak convincingly — she had been in enough fights to know how to lose on purpose until the moment came not to. She told Caelith to lose the soldier's stance and told Lylnyler to hold back longer than felt natural. The crowd needed to underestimate them, and it would be easy.
The Hanged Man was low-ceilinged, salt-damp, lit by cheap tallow candles. Near the back, a half-orc with a mechanical crossbow arm had a battered registration sheet on the table. Noska Ur'gray. He was already looking at them when they came through the door.
Corrin stepped forward before anyone else could speak.
"My companions are here to fight, they need some proper practice."
Noska looked at Caelith — full plate, sword, the bearing of a man who had never needed practice in his life — then at Lylnyler, then at Yagra. He looked back at Corrin. He said:
"Practice."
The word landed flat. He did not believe it. He picked up his quill anyway.
"Ten gold. Three fighters. Team name?"
Corrin paid the entry and said:
"The Wimpy Kids."
Noska wrote it down without blinking. Yagra stared at Corrin and told him she would kill him after the tournament. Noska outlined the rules without warmth:
"Three bouts, no leaving mid-fight, no targeting the crowd, no killing a surrendered team."
He tapped the mechanical arm on the table once.
"Xanathar watches every bout. Win all three and you get an audience."
He looked at Yagra. He said he had not expected to see her on this side of the table. She said Stonefist paid better than the Guild. He said it did until it didn't.
A teenage Guild runner — missing two fingers on his left hand — appeared and led the fighters downstairs. Corrin peeled off and found his own way up to the gallery.
The arena floor was sand, wide and oval, ringed by tiered galleries packed well above capacity. Torchlight. The smell of the crowd. The Bonegnashers were already in position when the gate opened — an orog named Charworl in heavy armour, a half-ogre called Groz with a greatclub, a minotaur named Umpok with horns that had been used before on this sand. They spread into a triangle and waited for easy prey.
What they got looked like easy prey. Lylnyler faked a stumble mid-entry. Caelith walked with a visible limp. Yagra shuffled in with her shoulders slumped and her weapons sheathed badly, the posture of someone who had forgotten they were here to fight. The crowd laughed and leaned back. The Bonegnashers did not adjust. That was the first mistake.
The act held through the first exchange — a miss here, a glancing hit there, Lylnyler staring at his hands in apparent bewilderment when one of his blasts connected. The half-ogre barely noticed the hit. Then Umpok charged Yagra, and the minotaur's horn found her and knocked her to the sand. Charworl moved in on the prone target and hit her twice before the round was done. The crowd was reading a straightforward beating.
At the start of the second exchange, Yagra rose from the sand in a single smooth motion. No wince. No stumble. She just came up, and the crowd went quiet — not silence, but the specific hush of people recalculating. Someone in the gallery said *oh.* The act was over.
What followed was brutal and long. Caelith kept the half-ogre busy, landing blow after blow while Charworl's armour turned Lylnyler's blasts away round after round. Lylnyler worked a different angle — not fighting Charworl directly, but throwing Umpok into him with successive bursts of concussive force, using the minotaur as a hammer against the orog. Caelith channelled divine power through his blade and brought Groz down with a single strike that shook sand from the arena walls. Then Umpok's horn found Yagra again, and she survived on nothing but will. Charworl followed it up and on the same round turned and crit Caelith too. Both of them hit the sand.
Up in the gallery, Corrin had been watching closely. He slipped through the crowd — his movement as invisible to the people around him as a shadow through grass — and arced a healing potion down from the stands in a clean throw. It landed right on Caelith's face. Caelith came back up, and the fight continued.
Lylnyler, still standing, still unscratched, drove Umpok and Charworl together twice with chained knockbacks. The orog was on his last legs and too proud to run when Lylnyler ended him. Caelith put Umpok down on the last swing of the eighth exchange.
The gallery erupted. Three fighters who had walked in looking like they had never held weapons. One of them was unconscious on the sand. But all three Bonegnashers were down.
Yagra was still on the sand when it was over. Caelith helped her up. He asked, quietly, whether she wanted to tap out. She looked at the two Bonegnashers felled on the sand and said *fine.* Then she looked up at the gallery, found Corrin, and jerked her head toward the arena floor.
Corrin dropped down. He asked how he had done up there. Meaning the acting. Caelith had no answer for this and did not try to give one.
The party rested. Caelith worked through what the break allowed — wounds bound, reserves drawn on carefully. He activated Sacred Weapon before Bout 2. His sword began to glow with quiet light. The gallery noticed.
Corrin had planted the conversation Lylnyler suggested during the first bout. He had found a Guild regular and let the question land — *what must it be like, to win this thing and stand in front of him, heavily guarded, must be awkward and terrifying* — and then waited. The regular had barely needed prompting. He was happy to hold court.
What Corrin brought back, shared quietly in the corridor before the second bout: the audience chamber had no additional guards — Xanathar did not need them in his own sanctum, the guards were everywhere else. No weapons check before the audience either; the beholder's own capabilities made the question irrelevant. He asked unexpected personal questions, watched how people reacted under pressure. The last team to win, he asked the halfling what she was most afraid of. She told him. She should not have. And — don't look at the big eye. The central one. People think staring back shows courage. It does not. It just means he has already decided something about you.
Lylnyler cast Guidance on all three of them before Bout 2.
Ahghairon's Few had three fighters: Arthright Grayfalcon, a swashbuckler who moved with the economy of someone who had trained since childhood; Xia Shung, a bard with spell components already in her hands when she entered; and Claudio Benzreck, a noble filling the third roster slot with the expression of a man who had agreed to this in better circumstances and was already regretting it.
They saw two fighters walk in. The glowing paladin sword drew Arthright's attention. He did not see the halfling tucked behind the paladin's shadow.
Arthright reached Caelith and threw two attacks. The first skidded off the pauldron. The second landed, and Arthright was already repositioning when Corrin stepped out from behind Caelith and hit him from a direction he had not been covering. Then Lylnyler threw him across the floor twice with concussive blasts — Arthright's positioning dissolved entirely. Caelith's sword came down in a single swing that ended the fight before Xia Shung had completed a casting gesture. The light from the blade flared on impact.
Xia Shung dropped her components and raised both hands.
"We yield. There is no shame in recognising a superior force. Your team fights well — better than I expected from a tournament entry. We won't waste anyone's time pretending this is still a contest. You have your win. Take it cleanly."
Claudio immediately followed.
"Yes. Absolutely. We yield."
He looked profoundly relieved.
Bout two took one round. The party walked off the sand barely touched. Corrin was still hidden when it ended.
Team Arena Fodder had been watching from the gallery. They had seen Lylnyler chain a minotaur into an orog across eight rounds. They had seen Caelith put a swashbuckler down with one swing. The weak act was long gone. Their drow fighter, Raelyn, had been preparing to open with a spell that would make every attack against the party trivially easier to land. She did not get the chance.
Caelith went straight for her. He missed. Lylnyler did not — he placed a cube of spinning blades in the air around her, and the blades bit into her before she had completed a thought, and she staggered. Then Corrin stepped out from behind Caelith and hit her twice as hard, and she went down before she cast anything. The halfling fighter, Samara Strongbones, avoided the blade-zone and went for Caelith. Miss. Then the ettin hit Caelith twice with battleaxes, and what little was left in him drained away — nothing on his belt, nothing in him except the blade still glowing and the refusal to fall. Corrin handed him a potion between rounds as he passed — an easy gesture, two people who had been doing this long enough to move efficiently around each other.
In the second exchange, Lylnyler critted on the ettin with a single blast and threw the creature into Samara, then drove both of them into the spinning blades. Corrin came out of hiding and hit the ettin for twenty-two more. Then the blade-zone did the work: when Samara and the ettin's turns came, the blades were still there. Samara went down on hers. The ettin went down on his.
Both of them had taken exactly zero actions in Round 2.
The duergar referee walked to the center of the sand and raised one fist. No speech. Just the gesture.
Noska led them deeper into the lair. The corridor was stone and unlit between sconces. The smell was damp rock, and something else beneath that — animal, or worse. Torchlight moved with them.
Yagra fell back. She stopped walking and let Noska's footsteps get a little further ahead, and then she told them she was not going in. She had been hired to fight in the tournament. Not for whatever was behind that door. She folded her arms. It was not fear in her face. It was a line being drawn, clearly and without apology.
Jalester was already in the corridor — he had found his own way through the underdocks route while they were fighting. He nodded at Yagra. They would wait here together.
Lylnyler stopped the group before Noska reached the door. He told them what he knew about beholders, speaking quietly but precisely: paranoid by nature, all of them. An offer of loyalty would read as intelligence, not weakness — but the offer would be tested. Inconsistencies, reactions under pressure, places where the story bent. They needed one version of themselves, clean, and they all had to hold it. He glanced at Yagra when he said it. She said she was hired muscle who had never been there. He accepted that.
Corrin fell back a half-step from Noska and murmured to Caelith and Lylnyler: no guards in the audience chamber, he had confirmed it. No weapons check either. Personal questions — unexpected ones — to catch people off balance. Do not answer anything you did not have to. And do not look at the big eye. Not to show courage. Not to show anything. Just do not.
Noska stopped at a heavy iron door. He looked back at the three of them and told them: do not touch anything, do not lie, Xanathar always knows. He said that last part like a man who was not certain it was true and was not willing to find out.
He pushed the door open.