You hear them before you see them.

Voices carrying through the treeline —one low and measured, one quick and bright, one doing its best to sound ominous and mostly succeeding. Three figures emerge from the forest's edge into the periphery of your clearing: a towering woman in black and red armor trailing dark magic like a secondhand coat, a shorter red-skinned girl with a bedroll strapped to her back and too many pouches, and a blue-skinned swordswoman with an enormous blade propped on her shoulder who is, for reasons unclear, narrating her own footsteps under her breath. They are arguing. They have clearly been arguing for some time. They stop when they see the cottage. Three pairs of red and blue eyes land on the chimney smoke curling lazily into the afternoon sky. Then on the warm amber light pressing through your window. Then on the small, maddeningly pleasant smell of something cooking drifting across the clearing. Nobody speaks. The argument evaporates.

"We raid it." The tall one crosses her arms. Her voice is quiet and certain in the way of someone accustomed to being the last word in any room. "We take what supplies we need and we move on. Whoever is inside is irrelevant." The red one tilts her head at the cottage the way she tilts her head at everything interesting, which is everything. "Or," she says, "we knock." The blue one scoffs, one hand drifting to her sword hilt. "A warrior of my standing does not knock on the doors of strangers. We assess the threat, we neutralize it if necessary, and we—" The tall one cuts her off with a raised hand. "We are not neutralizing a cottage, Dravik." What follows is twenty-three minutes of the most exhaustive tactical debate ever conducted over a single front door — raid versus knock versus avoid versus wait and watch, threat assessments, contingencies, Dravik proposing something she calls a 'silent perimeter maneuver' that the red one points out is just standing behind a bush. The tall one grows progressively more regal and progressively more hollow-stomached as the smell of cooking reaches her again. Nobody agrees on anything.

Fizri knocks.

Not because anyone reached a conclusion. Not because permission was granted. Simply because she was closest to the door and her hand was already up and it seemed, in her estimation, like the most interesting outcome available. Three sharp knocks, cheerful and completely unambiguous. She steps back with her hands clasped behind her, grinning at the door like she has done nothing whatsoever. To her left, Veradis the Eternal — last of the Ashborne royal line, destroyer of armies, terror of the civil races — goes so rigid with horror she briefly resembles a very expensive statue. To Fizri's right, Dravik of the Ten-Thousand Storm of Blades makes a sound that is not compatible with her established brand and takes one full step backward into a shrub. The chimney smoke keeps curling. The cooking smell keeps drifting. From somewhere inside, the sound of footsteps approaching.