The men spoke for a while. Their plan, as it was, was absolutely terrible. I was just going along to see what would happen.

  "You realize that you basically only have a concept of a plan. And only that because of the blood maidens company," I said.

  "Ollie. It's going to be fine. This is what we call an easy win."

  "There are easy wins in the military?" I was skeptical.

  "It will require a bit of preparation, but then you'll have a long term client. Or rather the company will. There are a lot of these things. Once you get known for it, you'll be raking it in."

  I didn't doubt that there would be job security. This whole place was teeming with terrible magical ideas and the byproducts of those. Humans couldn't be trusted with their own safety.

  Most of the intelligent races couldn't be trusted by themselves. But it wasn't like I was going to be a babysitter. I would just come by and take a look and see how things are going and then enjoy it. There's something so satisfying about being able to watch a event happen that you knew was going to happen and you could do nothing to stop but would be endlessly entertaining and the retelling. That was probably what was going to happen here. I don't know how many blood rite clean ups we'd have to do, but It was looking like there was a lot of opportunity.

  Part of the plan on my end was making sure that we got a way into the event. Our usual process was to arrive far after an event, usually 1 to 2 days following it. If not further, is that my aid in not letting the smell get so bad.

  Each culture has its own specifications about burial practices and cremation rights. Sometimes they want to keep the bodies. Other times. They are very specific instructions. But for this? It sounded like it would just be a normal cleanup job. They cross this rickety bridge that's only big enough for one person as a part of their initiation. Anyone that falls will fall far enough where they would break either legs or the back, but no one expects them to live. In fact, every year that they've done this. They've lost at least a dozen students. I know because I asked. It didn't make sense to me. It was another one of those senseless loss of life things.

  But this was how they wanted to do the initiation into secret society. So members who wanted to do it would have to do that. If you wanted to become with Dragon Rider you'd have to do this. The ones that died? That was just a bit of loss.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  The fact that humans had so many of their young that they could just allow this to happen was mind-boggling. I would never see a fade do this okay. Every fade that was involved in blood right had to be a willing adult. And yes, all the mages and warriors and Dragon riders in the city were technically adults by human standards, but they all felt far out. Too young dad to be dealing with this. There were even a few mages there that looked like they just gotten out of diapers and they were drinking alcohol beverages.

  Stew it for his part was on board. I was very happy to hear that. He tended to make good decisions, especially when we were around. The fact that he was ready to listen to us about this and that he'd already made contact was reassuring. That meant that all we had to do was wait and buy our time. In the meantime, he was going to have his friends and do some meet and greets before the official date. All this because we were able to float on our previous payment for our last job. Turns out that people will pay a premium to deal with things they don't want to do and when you're the only one in the game, they can't really do much about that.

  We could have charged whatever we wanted. But we wanted more work so we didn't overcharge. Even with the ridiculous exchange rate we could live for months here without taking another gig. Perhaps even longer if we worked out our issues with my new favorite street meat vendor.

  Speaking of the vendor, he was on board with us.

  First off he agreed to show up to support the thing we were doing. He would bring his food and he would sell it. I would be ordering food from him weeks in advance. He didn't have to worry about what he was doing. At least for that part. I would be able to get more from him throughout the day.

  He knew what he was doing and I was happy to oblige him by giving enough business to choke a cow. That in itself made him a very happy vendor.

  The fact that he posted up by the docs meant that I saw him every morning as we trained and got ready for our first gigs in the city. We cleaned up a small house party that went wrong though the occult magic. There was only sort of a suggestion. That didn't give us much, but it gave us a window into a tiny organization within the capital. And it took us almost a week to get the contract but once we explained ourselves, they agreed to give us a shot.

  With that, we were ready to put our work into high gear. I even got Martin one of the gas masks just in case. You never know what happens to bodies and you always have to be cautious when you're approaching a blood rites site. It's particularly egregious when you have to think about the smell of dead bodies and how long it's been. Wearing a filtered mask can prevent most the bad smells from actually sticking around for too long.

  It's just that you don't really think about that until you're there and in the moment. That's all. We have standard operating procedures that involved putting on our actual equipment and testing it out before we actually go out and use it. For the most part, we don't need to do that much.

  It would have been nice. I just needed everyone to play their parts.