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“Does anyone have any ideas on how to avoid the effects of mind magic?”

Arkk looked around the meeting table. Vezta didn’t move in the slightest in response to his question. She simply sat with her hands clasped on the table, watching him with her unblinking eyes. Zullie, sitting across from Arkk, hummed but didn’t say anything. She glanced upward, looking to the ceiling as if she might be able to divine the answer to his question from the maze-like pattern overhead.

Rekk’ar leaned back in his chair, one elbow on the armrest while his other arm rested on the table. Arkk didn’t expect him to have any real answers, yet he was the first to speak up.

“Kill the caster.”

“True,” Zullie said. “Can’t be mind-controlled if the controller is dead.”

Arkk stared between them, lips pressed together. “I will mark that down under contingencies,” he said with a sigh. “Any other thoughts?”

“The [HEART] normally protects its master from many forms of internal magics. A fireball slamming into your face will still hurt but I believe there should be some resistance to mind-controlling magics.”

“Normally?” Arkk asked, glancing at Vezta.

“I am unsure if that feature is functioning with the current state of things.”

“That doesn’t help now. I wanted to use this guy in that ritual.” Arkk drummed his fingers on the desk. “Zullie, do you know mind magics? Maybe we can test to see if I’ll be able to resist.”

Zullie shook her head with an apologetic smile. “Mind magic is, of course, anathema.”

“So is evocation.”

“We’re taught to recognize signs of summoning as part of our training in the academies, giving me an inlet into how such magic functions. Identifying signs of mind magic usage falls under the dominion of those who use holy magics. I would suggest you ask your abbess or the inquisitors but I doubt that is an option, is it?”

Arkk shook his head. It certainly wasn’t an option. “If I can get a meeting with him, Vezta will come with me, hidden in my shadow. Should he manage to take control of me, you’ll have to kill him and we’ll look elsewhere for our ritual participant.”

“Speaking of,” Zullie said. “I’ve been working with Hale over the past three days. I’m not positive that she can take a corner just yet but she is a whole lot closer than… anyone else,” she said with a glance at Rekk’ar.

The orc just scoffed, unbothered by the insult.

“If she can, that would be the best option.” Arkk paused, taking a moment to peek in on his most recent employees. Both were in the newly constructed workshop. It was a full-fledged lumber mill and carpentry shop complete with tools and a large saw blade for cutting the plentiful logs. John had been quite impressed upon seeing it. “The corners are going to be harder to fill than the sides,” Arkk said, looking back to Zullie “Keep working with her.”

“Sure thing. Any idea who is going to be positioned at the last corner? Assuming you can get this gorgon guy—”

“Gorgons?” Rekk’ar growled. “I thought we were done entertaining that foolish idea.”

“I’m not sending the orcs after them,” Arkk said, shooting Zullie a glare. “The mine I told you about the other week ago is where this mind-wizard is hiding out. I think he is controlling the gorgon to use as guards. I’m not quite sure what the plan is yet. I don’t want to meet with him while the gorgon are around.”

“I would say that you just said the smartest thing I’ve heard you say but you want to meet with a man who has gorgon under his thrall.”

“He also put an entire village into some kind of stasis-like sleep,” Arkk admitted. Rekk’ar did not look impressed. “From the scrying I’ve done on the mine, he mostly stays down on the lower levels while the gorgon lurk around the entrance. They venture out to bring him food—mostly rats and fungus—but otherwise stay well within the mine unless intruders venture too close. I’m… honestly hoping I can appeal to him through his stomach. I’ll toss in a nice roasted chicken from Larry along with a message requesting we meet peacefully.”

“Should use your instant movement magic to appear in his private quarters and drag him out,” Rekk’ar grumbled.

Arkk nodded. “I thought about that. Don’t want to startle him. Considering I need his help, antagonizing him on our first meeting sounds like another downside.”

“In my former master’s day, spellcasters would typically ward against such teleportation magics. Teleporting in despite that generally ends poorly for the one attempting it. There is no obvious way to identify a warded area before attempting the teleportation unless you locate the anchor stone, which can be fairly easily hidden.”

“That’s another reason,” Arkk said. Vezta had explained that before to him when he had asked about getting into the Duke’s manor that way. Her words now were for the benefit of others at the table. “Given teleportation magic is High Anathema,” he said with a nod toward Zullie, “I’m not sure how many people will be—”

Arkk froze as he felt a sharp tug on the employee link between him and Ilya. He let out a small sigh as he looked in at her location. She wasn’t in trouble. Rather, she was standing around outside a garrison. It took him a moment to recognize the spot.

“Ilya’s in Smilesville,” he said, a genuine smile forming on his face. Standing, he looked over the others. “Meeting adjourned. Keep an eye on the inquisitors,” Arkk said to Vezta. “And everyone, try to think of a good plan for avoiding gorgon or mind magic.”

Arkk didn’t wait for any responses. He disappeared from the meeting room and reappeared at the far end of the Smilesville tunnel. The inquisitors, he knew, had left Langleey and headed back toward Cliff. He doubted they would be gone for long but for the moment, he should be safe to walk around Smilesville without worrying about them popping up.

The tunnel’s exit let Arkk out a short distance away from the burg’s walls. Most of the burg’s farmlands were down by the river on the floodplain. There was a small forest-covered hill just behind the village. That forest hid the trap exit. People did come up into the forest for foraging, hunting, and lumber, but nobody had found the door so far. It helped that it was hidden underneath a layer of dirt and brush that he had to lift to get out.

From the exit, it took a little over ten minutes to reach the burg’s gate. Nobody stopped him. He had been a little worried that the inquisitors would have put a bounty on his head. So far, there was no sign of that. After another few minutes of walking through the town, Arkk reached Ilya.

She was a beautiful mess. With how long she had been out on the road, Arkk wasn’t surprised to see her looking worn down, tired, and covered in a smear of grime. Her silvery hair wasn’t as smooth and straight as usual. Tied up into a tight ponytail to keep it out of the way, it was still frayed and frazzled. Her clothing looked worn and in need of replacement.

“—put a bounty out on any slavers!”

Still, watching her argue with the same archivist that Arkk had spoken with the last time he had been here, Arkk’s heart swelled. He rushed right up to her and wrapped her in a tight hug.

She jolted, shocked and ready to fight him off until she realized who he was. “Arkk! How did you… Where—”

“Welcome back, Ilya. You stink.”

“Arkk,” Ilya growled. “Get off me.”

“I haven’t seen you in over a month and that is how you treat me?” Arkk said, affecting his tone with false hurt as he pulled away. “I take it you didn’t succeed in finding a tailor?”

“They were all dead,” Ilya said, voice a whisper. “Or kidnapped. We found two on the way back but they didn’t know where they had been taken or what happened to any others. I’ve been trying to put bounties on slavers at every burg we’ve passed. Only one or two even listen to me,” she said with a glare at the archivist. “Only one would take a down payment of gold and Olatt’an thinks he took it for himself.”

Arkk had no idea how bounties got instantiated. He glanced at the archivist, who was pointedly ignoring them despite their presence right in front of her desk. “Don’t worry about the gold,” he said.

“I’m not. I’m worried about the bastards who attacked the elves.”

“I’ll speak with the archivist,” Arkk said, hoping their few interactions would be enough of a rapport to get an honest answer about how to place bounties. Otherwise, he might have to ask Hawkwood about it the next time he was in Cliff. “For now, however, why don’t we get you and the others back to the fortress? We’ll—”

“That’s another thing,” Ilya said, shoving a scrap of parchment against his chest. “What is the meaning of this?”

Raising an eyebrow, Arkk looked down. The first thing he noticed was the large symbol dominating the top half of the parchment. A familiar symbol. It was a depiction of an eye with a vertical bar instead of a pupil, split several times by thin horizontal lines. The inquisitors wore the same symbol as a metal pin on their uniforms.

Feeling his stomach dropping, he quickly scanned over the rest of the parchment. “A recruitment notice? To scour the Cursed Forest for old ruins?” He looked over to the archivist. “How long has this been posted? When is this search taking place?”

The woman adjusted her glasses. Still ignoring Ilya—making Arkk wonder if half her troubles in placing a bounty came from her sharp ears—the archivist looked at the parchment in Arkk’s hands. “Swiftwings delivered notices to all burgs in the area over the last few days. We just received the notice last night. The search parties will gather in Stone Hearth Burg in ten days’ time where High Inquisitor Darius Vrox will organize them and send them into the Cursed Forest. Unfortunately, we do not have many more details than that. If you are interested in signing up—”

“I might be,” Arkk lied. “I need to speak with my men first.”

“Very good, sir,” the archivist said, immediately looking back to her desk.

“And I think I need to speak with them immediately,” Arkk said, placing a hand on Ilya’s elbow as he led her away from the garrison. “Let’s get you and the others back. The two elves with you are coming as well?”

“I didn’t know what else to do with them,” she said with a sigh. “Sorry if that—”

“It’s fine. The fortress is more than large enough for two hundred more, let alone two more.” Although they were now moving down the street toward the stayover, far from others, Arkk dropped his voice to the barest whisper possible. “They aren’t employees so I can’t just take them straight there, unfortunately. Are they opposed to joining up?”

“I didn’t talk with them about that. They barely speak at all. I was just… trying to keep a level head as we made our way back. I kept wanting to run off into the wilderness and track down these slavers myself. Olatt’an kept me moving in the right direction.”

“I’ll see about these bounties. Maybe tracking them down ourselves won’t be impossible. We’ve got a lot going on right now, however. A lot has happened while you’ve been out. Not much of it good.”

“Great. Just what I wanted to hear upon returning.”

“Would you like to hear about a hot bath? I’m having the lesser servants stoke the flames as we speak.”

Letting out a faint sigh, Ilya nodded. “That, I could stand to hear some more about.”

“Great. Try not to worry too much about things for at least a little while. We’ll talk about what you did and what I did after you get some good food and some rest. Nothing that has happened is immediately urgent.” Arkk pressed his lips together, looking back down at the parchment in his hands. “Well, nothing except this maybe.”

“Piss off some people while I was gone?”

“To be fair, I think they were pissed off before they got here. I didn’t do anything to make the situation better, though.”

Ilya paused in the middle of the road, making Arkk stop as well. The garrison sat right on the edge of the city, close to the wall and one of the city gates. “We’re not actually at the stayover,” she said, nodding her head toward the gate. “Olatt’an claims he wouldn’t be welcome in any burg in the Kingdom and a few of the others are in similar situations. I especially didn’t want them around here after what we saw when passing through with Dakka.”

Arkk’s jaw tightened. “They did take those bodies down. Probably a good idea anyway.” Using his employee vision, he did a quick check on Olatt’an and the other orcs Ilya had taken with her. Like her, they all looked worn and ready for a nap. If the inquisitors were sending people into the Cursed Forest in search of him, he needed them well-rested and ready to fight if the situation called for it.

He would have transported them all straight into Fortress Al-Mir from here were it not for the two smaller elves that were sitting in the middle of the group. A young boy and a young girl. Siblings, maybe? They both had hair the color of gold and the same upward tilt to their sharp ears.

“What is the deal with the elves?”

“As I said, the village was destroyed. Many died. Many more were taken as slaves. Those two, we found on our way back in the hands of some old human,” Ilya said, her fists clenching tight. She paused, not speaking for a long few moments until they passed through the gate and left the burg behind. Only then did she resume in a soft whisper. “The orcs were more than happy to fight his guards and smash in his head. They looted his manor. I only took the kids.”

“Did… anyone see you?”

“No one still alive,” Ilya said with a frown. “Don’t know exactly what happened to the kids. They don’t speak much. Any time I or one of the orcs raise our voices, they flinch. I’m hoping a safe environment will help, but we… sort of left that village behind in a hurry. Doubt our hasty retreat helped much considering they were slung over orcs’ shoulders most of the way. It must have felt like they were being kidnapped all over again.”

Arkk… didn’t quite know what to say to that. “Hale is living at the fortress for now,” he said. “Learning magic from Zullie. Maybe having someone around who is their age—or at least height—will help. John is there as well. You know how he dotes on Hale.”

“That is a relief. I have no idea what to do. They want to go learn how to hunt, I can do that. Parental things?” Ilya shook her head and then pointed off the road.

Following her lead, they quickly came across the orc camp. Although it wasn’t a camp. Rather a small gathering. They hadn’t set up their tent or even started a fire. Most of the orcs were gathered around, sitting on the ground or a fallen log while a few others kept watch. At Arkk’s approach, one of the guards called back for Olatt’an.

The old orc stood and approached slowly. He looked a bit resigned to having a chat right out here in the middle of the woods. Before he could start, Arkk waved him off.

“You all want to get back. We’ll have a debriefing later. Unless there are any objections, I’ll send you all back now. Make sure you have your belongings.”

Arkk waited a moment. Although he hadn’t specified, all the orcs ready to go lined up in front of him with a pair holding onto the horses’ harnesses. The horses and carts, considered property of his, could be transported as well although they were reaching the upper limit of what he was able to move. As the rest gathered their things, they slowly formed into a messy gathering as well. Then, once everyone was standing in front of him, he pulled them back to the Fortress. Everyone except Ilya and the two young elves stayed behind.

The two elves didn’t look up or react to the sudden disappearance of the orcs. They just stood stock-still, not even looking up to meet Arkk’s eyes.

Arkk shot a glance at Ilya but she had no eyes for him. She stepped forward, pausing when the smaller elves flinched. “This man is going to give you a coin,” she said. “It is yours to keep. It will let him take you to a safe place. Do you understand me?”

Both gave identical nods of their heads, still without glancing up. Neither said a word, though he did note that the young boy started breathing harder as Arkk stepped closer. Trying to look as unthreatening as possible, Arkk pulled out a pair of gold coins. Kneeling, he got a look at their faces for the first time.

While partially healed, there was heavy evidence of bruising. The girl’s eye looked like it might have swollen up recently, though now it had at least partially returned to normal. One of the boy’s ears had been clipped, chopping off a sizable portion.

Not trusting himself to open his mouth, he just held out the gold coins.

“Take them,” Ilya said, noting their hesitation.

That stopped their hesitation. Arkk didn’t miss the stricken expression crossing the girl’s face as she took the coin like it was a venomous snake. The boy held it like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw it away or hand it right back.

Arkk couldn’t quite understand their expressions. He did start frowning as he noted something.

“It didn’t work.”

Both winced, squeezing their eyes shut in preparation for a beating.

“What do you mean?” Ilya hissed, tearing her eyes off the elves.

“I mean it didn’t work,” Arkk said, keeping his voice as soft as possible. “There isn’t a connection.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” he said, thinking back to all the other times he had hired employees.

Ilya had been his first, becoming an employee upon them making a transactional agreement. The orcs, he had hired with gold. At least some of them had been under duress at the time with him threatening them into working for him. So duress couldn’t be it. He had been able to hire Hale without incident, so age didn’t play a factor.

Then there were all the times he had handed gold over to people without hiring them. Mostly merchants. Whatever magic linked him to his employees could tell the difference between purchasing goods or services and a desire to hire. At least to an extent, given Ilya’s hiring.

Was it his fault? Did he not want to hire them? He wanted them back at Fortress Al-Mir. Wasn’t that enough? Or was it something else? Did the magic, apparently smart enough to not hire merchants, think that these kids weren’t worthy of working for him? Was it something about them? A resistance to wanting to work for him? He doubted that it was the falsehood of what Ilya said given that he had hired Ilya basically on accident, maybe her words played some role anyway?

“I might need to ask Vezta.”

“We can’t just leave them here while you go figure things out,” Ilya hissed. “Can we… I don’t know, carry them? You move our clothes and gear. Why not people?”

“We can try. Otherwise, the entrance to the tunnel isn’t far from here. The tunnel isn’t designed for people to physically travel through—” Not after Zullie’s excursion to Langleey, anyway. “—but it is a direct route straight to the fortress.”

“Let’s try the instant travel first. Not looking forward to walking in a dark tunnel. My boots have practically worn away as it is.” Stepping back toward the smaller elves, she held out her arms for the young boy. “Come here. I’m going to pick you up and hopefully we’ll disappear.”

Although he winced at Ilya’s arms, the young elf didn’t disobey. He stoically marched over and let Ilya pick him up without a fight. Ilya lifted him off the ground but didn’t fully stand. Probably not wanting to drop the elf if one disappeared but not the other.

With Ilya’s arms around the young elf, however, Arkk noted something interesting. A link formed between him and the boy. It wasn’t an employee bond. Not like he had with all his other employees. Some elements were similar but, if Arkk had to put a word to it, it would be prisoner.

Although he hoped it wasn’t permanent, it did afford him the ability to pick up and drop both Ilya and the elf in her arms back at the fortress.

The prisoner bond solidified somewhat upon their arrival, making him worry a bit more.

He needed to speak with Vezta.

But first, he looked down at the remaining elf. Instead of staring at the ground, she stared after her vanished brother with wide eyes and a quivering lip.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Arkk said, kneeling and holding out his arms as Ilya had. “Come here and you’ll be back with him.”

The young girl had teal eyes, Arkk noted as the elf threw an angry glare his way. That flash of defiance disappeared almost as quickly as it had come as the elf dropped her head and stepped into Arkk’s arms.

Both vanished.

 

 

Arkk watched via crystal ball as the inquisitors made their way through Langleey Village. Like their first visit, they stopped at the Baron’s manor and had a chat with Gert. It wasn’t a long conversation. The inquisitors didn’t even proceed beyond the entryway. After their conversation finished, the inquisitors left and headed to the church. Abbess Keena opened the door for them but, as they moved inside, Arkk noted something odd.

“I can’t position the crystal ball’s viewpoint inside the church?”

“The Abbey of the Light has a method of blocking scrying,” Zullie said in an absent tone as she flipped through the pages Vezta had made up for her.

“Not surprising,” Vezta said. “The symbols on the building indicate that it has been consecrated to at least one of the three. It is effectively a temple to them.”

Arkk tapped his foot on the ground repetitively, impatiently waiting for the three inquisitors to step outside. It was late. Just after sunset. If they were planning on spending the night, he would have to hand the scrying off to Vezta. The only reason he doubted they were staying right now was the presence of their carriage driver. The man with the wide hat was moving about the carriage, shoving oats into the mouths of the two horses. As soon as he finished, he retook his seat, reclining back against the wall of the carriage with his hat over his face.

If they were staying the night, surely they would have invited him inside too.

Sure enough, High Inquisitor Darius Vrox soon followed Abbess Keena out of the church, the latter carrying a lit lantern to guide her way in the dimming light. The chronicler and the purifier stayed inside, unfortunately.

Abbess Keena brought the inquisitor to the empty storehouse that Zullie had been using earlier in the afternoon. Keena stayed near the door while Vrox moved about, inspecting the remnants of the ritual circles left behind.

“I wish I could hear what they are saying,” Arkk grumbled. Neither Vezta nor Zullie responded with a solution, so he just sighed. “You weren’t doing anything illegal in there, were you?”

“It was a standard aptitude test. Shouldn’t cause any real concern, although he might wonder why we were testing the villagers.”

“Is that illegal?”

“Not as far as I know. Of course, officially, I would be required to report any promising subjects to the church. The fact that you and that little girl were never reported is more damning for that abbess than for us, I should think.”

Arkk slowly nodded twice, then tensed. “Is Hale in danger?”

“The inquisitors are ruthless, or so I’ve heard, but they aren’t unreasonable. They aren’t going to murder her if that is what you’re worried about.” Zullie casually flipped a page in her book. “Might take her away and shove her in one of the academies. Bit of a shame for us, but I’m sure we can find other spellcasters. It’ll just take longer.”

“She won’t have a choice?”

“I wasn’t given one,” Zullie said.

Arkk tapped his fingers against the armrest of his chair several times, watching as the inquisitor knelt in front of one of the circles. As Vrox stood up, so did Arkk.

“I’m going to get her.”

“Master—”

“No. It’ll be fine,” Arkk said. “I slip in, ask Hale if she would rather go with the inquisitors or come here, and then teleport back. Ideally, nobody knows that I was even there. At least in the next few minutes.” A quarter of the village had seen him earlier while looking for Zullie.

“I wasn’t going to object,” Vezta said, clasping her hands together in front of her chest. “I was going to mention that the young girl has been here before. Allowing her the choice of falling into the inquisitor’s hands is less than ideal.”

“That’s…” Forcing her didn’t sit right with Arkk. Still, Vezta had a point. “I’m sure she wouldn’t choose some random people over someone she knows.”

“Very well. I shall maintain my vigil over the intruders. If you feel me reach for your attention, leave at once unless you wish to meet with them.”

Vrox had been chatty enough the first two times Arkk encountered the inquisitor. This time felt different, however. The way Vrox was moving about the village combined with how they had been lurking around Smilesville, searching through the streets for him… Not to mention the way the purifier had chased him and Zullie around just before they left Cliff.

Arkk doubted a meeting now would be quite so friendly.

Teleporting to the far end of the Langleey tunnel, Arkk climbed up the ladder and pushed the trapdoor out of the way. It wasn’t particularly well hidden but it was out of sight of the village. Unless Zullie had screwed up earlier, nobody from the village should be aware of it. As Arkk hurried across the bridge to the village proper beyond the river, he pulled a spare crystal ball to him. Vezta keeping watch was good for when he was distracted but he needed to be sure nobody would see him making his way to the home next to the carpentry shop.

The purifier and chronicler were presumably still inside the church. He couldn’t see them. The coachman was still napping under his hat. Vrox and Keena had emerged from the storehouse but weren’t walking anywhere. Instead, they were chatting with Higgens just outside the storehouse doors. Arkk wasn’t sure why the village tailor was there at this time of night. The inquisitor was probably asking about Zullie’s test earlier.

That meant he would quickly learn that Hale had been the one with the best results.

Still, they were paused for the moment. That gave him time to run along the riverbank and to the building next to the old waterwheel. Hale was inside, eating a stew with John. Arkk didn’t bother to knock, slipping inside through the narrowest gap in the door he could manage, not wanting to flood the outside with light from the hearth.

“Arkk!” John said, an easy smile on his wrinkled face despite the sudden intrusion. “Hale was just telling me that you might be taking her away from me.” His serious tone managed to inject a note of levity at the same time, making it clear that his disappointment was just a front.

He cared for Hale a great deal. The life of a backwater village’s carpenter wouldn’t lead anywhere. A spellcaster, on the other hand? Arkk well knew that a proper spellcaster could make a great deal of coin, travel the world, and generally live well. John had to know that as well.

“Unfortunately,” Arkk started slowly. “She might be leaving sooner than expected.”

The easygoing look on John’s face faded as he narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

Arkk took a breath and looked down at Hale, who had been doing her best to not look excited at Arkk’s arrival but was now struggling not to scrunch up her face in confusion. Holding out the crystal ball, Arkk focused on Vrox.

“This man is an inquisitor with the church. He is almost certainly going to be coming here later this evening. Maybe even in the next few minutes. He will probably want to take you away and put you in an academy. The kind of place where Zullie learned magic.”

“A real magic school? Will they teach me to read and write?”

“I… I don’t actually know,” Arkk said, wishing he had brought Zullie along to answer a few questions. “Probably? But that isn’t why I’m here now. At least not directly. If this man takes you away, you probably won’t be allowed to leave the academy for a long time. You probably won’t be coming back to Langleey anytime soon.” Arkk gave a long look at John before glancing back to Hale.

“I assume you came with an alternate option?” John asked.

“Hale comes with me first. Zullie and I can teach you magic and how to read. You’ll still be able to visit the village, though you probably won’t want to come back until after the inquisitors leave.”

“To your… castle, was it?” John said, a frown on his face. “Out in the cursed forest?”

Arkk grimaced. Of course Hale would have told him all about it. Arkk had mentioned the ruins in the cursed forest to Abbess Keena, so the inquisitors probably knew that much at least. “Yes, though I would appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around too much. I don’t think the inquisitors like me much. If you come with me—”

“I am.” Hale crossed her arms over her chest. “Obviously.”

“If she goes with you then what?” John asked, not so easily deterred.

“Well, I don’t exactly know for sure,” Arkk said, rubbing the side of his head. “I will obviously strive to keep Hale out of any conflict that might arise. The last few times the inquisitors and I met, we just sat down and talked though, so maybe nothing bad will happen at all.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You can go with her as well,” Arkk said on impulse. “I can have accommodations made in an instant.”

“Abandon the village?”

“Not abandon. Just a temporary relocation. As soon as the inquisitors leave, I don’t see any reason why you both can’t return. It’s just that they will almost certainly try to take her while they’re here. Maybe forcibly.” Once again, he should have brought Zullie along to clarify that.

Arkk’s eyes flicked to the crystal ball as Vrox started moving. At the same time, he felt that warning tug from Vezta.

“We need to decide quickly.”

“I choose Arkk,” Hale said, crossing her arms as she shot a glance at John. It wasn’t a challenging look. Rather, she was searching for approval.

Approval came in the form of a groused sigh. “I’m going with her.”

Arkk held out his hand, two gold coins appearing in it just before he uncurled his fingers palm up. “Take the coins and I’ll—”

Two heavy thunks against the door made Hale squeak. Startled, she quickly snatched one of the gold coins. John frowned but followed suit.

In an instant, they were gone. Relocated to the library with Vezta and Zullie. The crystal ball on the table went with them.

Arkk, however, stayed where he was. Vezta wouldn’t approve. He didn’t need to peek into the Fortress to tell. The constant tugs for attention were enough.

But he was curious. What did Vrox want now? Why come back to Langleey? Was this going to be something he had to worry about in the long term? Would he always have to watch his back for inquisitors chasing him down?

Arkk didn’t feel like he was in any danger. If Vrox did move to attack him, he could instantly teleport himself back to the fortress. Meeting here and now was a better option than happening across Vrox in the middle of Cliff or anywhere else where Arkk lacked the advantage of Fortress Al-Mir.

Besides that, it caught Vrox off guard. As Arkk opened the door, he watched the flicker of surprise cross Vrox’s face before the tall man steeled his expression. Abbess Keena, standing just behind and to the side of the inquisitor, didn’t do quite as good of a job at hiding her shock.

“Mister Arkk.” His lips drew back into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I was under the impression that a burgeoning spellcaster called this… hovel her home.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, High Inquisitor. It’s just me today.”

“Not a disappointment at all. You saved me the trouble of tracking you down.” His tone was polite but Arkk could feel the threat. “Might we come in?”

It wasn’t his home. Arkk stepped aside, motioning a hand toward the table and chairs anyway.

Vrox ducked his head to fit under the door but otherwise entered the home as easily as if he owned the place. He didn’t take a seat, moving around and touching things instead; he inspected some of the woodcarving tools on one shelf and then moved to the bed where he rubbed a thick blanket between his fingers. Keena, on the other hand, ducked her head despite her shorter statue, seeming to shrink in on herself as she walked past Arkk. She quickly took a seat at the table and locked her eyes on her lap.

“I knew you were lying to me, Mister Arkk,” Vrox said, pressing his hand to the side of one of the bowls of stew. After a short hum, the tall inquisitor looked back to the gently closing door. “From the moment we met. I could smell it on you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You were in Darkwood a few weeks ago. Defending the burg from a horde of crazed monsters. In addition to your usual cadre of orcs, you were spotted in the presence of a monster with dark violet skin and burning yellow discs against a black starfield for eyes. The horror from beyond the stars.”

“Her name is Vezta,” Arkk said. “She isn’t a horror. That makes twice that she has defended human settlements from monsters. That’s more than I can count for you or the Duke’s men.”

“The inquisitors under my command had to clean up your mess in Darkwood,” Vrox said with his smile widening. “After you fled, we arrived and removed the threat at its source.”

“So much for the ultimate defensive object,” Arkk mumbled.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, I hope the people of Darkwood were more appreciative of your efforts than my own.”

Vrox let out a small laugh. “Indeed. We had to decline their invitation to a victory feast. Too much to do. Too many heretics to put in the ground.”

“Me?” Arkk said, raising his eyebrows. “What did I do?”

“Mister Arkk, what do you believe is the purpose of the Inquisition?”

“I’ve… been told that you hunt down users of forbidden magic to kill them and seal away the magic. But I’ve never—”

“Spare me,” Vrox said, raising a hand. “I’ve heard every protest. Lucky for you, I don’t care that you’ve delved into forbidden magic. Only the results of that magic.”

Abbess Keena jerked her head up and looked over to Vrox with as much confusion as Arkk felt.

“I thought your job was to suppress and destroy magic.”

“It is a side-effect of our true purpose. That of keeping beings like your monster out of our world. Some still manage to get here. They are summoned by deviants or manage to force their way through on their own. We are interested in destroying the means they might use to do so. But controlling the creatures? That is an entirely separate interest and one within which we have made many strides.”

“You… want to control her?”

“Control or destroy. I’m not particularly picky,” Vrox said with his same bland smile. “Then find out where she came from and make sure nothing else follows her.”

Arkk drummed his fingers on his thigh, considering. He thought back to his conversation with Abbess Keena back before the goblins assaulted the village, trying to remember everything he had said to her. He knew he mentioned ruins out in the Cursed Forest, a magical artifact, and Vezta. Had he mentioned that all those were pre-Calamity? He thought he had. In that case, repeating it now wouldn’t likely reveal anything new to the inquisitor.

“I might be able to set your mind at least partially at ease. Vezta is pre-Calamity. She has been here for at least a thousand years. From the way she talks, it might be even double that. If nothing has followed her here after all that time, I doubt you have much to worry about.”

“Worry I do,” Vrox said. “Especially when the oracles point me in a direction and I find you sitting along the path. I don’t believe in coincidence, Mister Arkk.”

Arkk just sighed. So much for getting the inquisitors off his back by making a show of cooperation. “Why don’t you speak plainly and tell me what you want? Specifically, what do you want from me?”

Vrox turned his head, looking over Abbess Keena for a moment. “You found an artifact out in that desolate forest.” It wasn’t a question. “That artifact is what granted you control over the creature, correct?”

“I don’t control her. We’re working together—”

“On what?”

“She asked me to clean up some old ruins out there,” Arkk said, figuring Abbess Keena had mentioned that as well. He really wished that he had kept his mouth shut back then, but how could he have known what would happen? That had even been before he made his contract with the [HEART]. “In exchange, she has agreed to help me out. First with defending the village and, later, defending Darkwood Burg.”

“Cleaning ruins makes you worthy of devotion?”

“It’s her home.”

“And the artifact?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what it is.” Before Vrox could call him a liar again, Arkk barreled onward. “It protects the ruins. Vezta can’t interact with it herself. Thus, she requires me to help.” Vague but true.

Vrox hummed. “Very well. Then, you will hand over the artifact for examination. If it is innocuous, it will be returned to you. You will hand over the creature as well. I will not promise its return.”

“I’m going to decline on both fronts then. The artifact is part of Vezta’s home. Vezta has done nothing to harm people. I’m not going to betray that.”

“I wasn’t asking, Mister Arkk.” Vrox’s tone was polite but laced with a painful warning.

“Yeah, well, demand all you want. It won’t change my answer.”

Vrox shook his head, turning to fully face Arkk. “It is unfortunate to hear you say that, Mister Arkk,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his long coat. “I had thought you—”

Arkk didn’t stick around. He reappeared within Fortress Al-Mir’s library and immediately turned to Vezta. “What did he pull out of his pocket?”

The servant leaned over the crystal ball with a frown. “A ring. Silver with a black stone.”

“Magical?” Arkk asked, glancing between her and Zullie.

“Probably,” Zullie said with a shrug. “Can’t tell you what it might do without examining it. I can tell you that inquisitors are known for their use of a variety of holy artifacts.”

“Things that act like that magic wand you had?”

“More or less.”

Arkk nodded twice, feeling entirely justified in escaping before the inquisitor could use that artifact on him. “Keep watching him. The inquisitors know about the ‘ruins’ out here. Since we sealed off all nearby surface entrances, I hope they just wander around until they get bored and leave.”

Otherwise… Otherwise, Vrox claimed that he had killed the Keeper at Darkwood.

They might have a fight on their hands.

It was time for a strategy meeting with Vezta, Rekk’ar, and Zullie.

But first, Arkk turned to the two new guests. Hale and John stood between him, Zullie, and Vezta, right where he had dropped them off at. Hale, having been here before, didn’t look too shocked at her surroundings but John was gawking at the still sparsely populated library. He even reached out and ran his fingers along the wooden shelves.

Arkk just smiled at them. “Welcome to Fortress Al-Mir. I expect you have a few questions. Let’s find you some quarters.”

 

 

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Recruiting,” Zullie said.

Zullie stood in a recently emptied storehouse within Langleey Village, hands clasped behind her back as she paced back and forth in front of twelve villagers. Each of the villagers had a magic circle on the floor in front of them. They were simple circles, all of which were the same. Arkk easily recognized the spell to create a temporary, stationary light source. Despite the looks of concentration on most of their faces, only two circles were lit up.

Lips quirking into a frown, Zullie shook her head. “Well, determining whether anyone is worth recruiting. It isn’t looking good.”

“Of course it…” Arkk pressed his fingers to his forehead, rubbing away the headache. “Langleey is just a simple village. We’re not known for our spellcasters.”

“Not known for anything,” Zullie mumbled. “Still, there is some promise,” she said with a motion toward the two lit circles.

One was dim. Jorgen, surprisingly enough, sat in front of it with a scowl on his face. Not quite as big of a scowl as Hurtt, who glared with undisguised envy from the darkened circle one over.

Hale sat in front of the other lit circle. The young girl managed to coax a bright white light from her circle. She was one of the few without that intense focus on her face. Arkk wasn’t too surprised given her ability to use the teleportation circles without being contracted to the [HEART].

“You aren’t thinking of roping a kid into this, are you?”

“We need spellcasters and you haven’t had any luck.”

“I have plans,” Arkk said. “If those inquisitors weren’t buzzing around, I’d have gone to the gorgon mines already.”

Zullie looked over, eyebrow quirked above the rim of her glasses. “Really? You were going to go in there? Do you have a death wish?”

“No. Of course not. I wasn’t going to go in, just toss a message in and run away.”

“Great plan,” Zullie said, tone flat. “I’m not sure that one of these can take a corner position. I’ll have to do a few more tests. This whole charade was just to check on who was worth spending more time on.”

Arkk just sighed. “How did you even get here? And how come you didn’t mention anything about going.”

“I do have two legs,” Zullie said. “I wasn’t aware that I needed your permission to do my job.”

“I could have saved you the time it took to walk. And…” Arkk dropped his voice to a whisper. “I could have saved you the effort of testing this bunch.”

“Would you have mentioned her?” Zullie asked, pointing to Hale. When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “If she had been born in a proper burg or city, she would have been taken in as an initiate. I’m surprised the local abbess didn’t report her.”

Arkk frowned, thinking. “I haven’t been around the village much in recent weeks. But… I don’t think I’ve seen Abbess Keena in months. Huh.”

“She was spying from the door not too long ago. Disappeared just a bit before you arrived, actually. I tried to invite her in to test her as well—any proper abbess should be capable of taking a corner spot in the ritual—but she rejected me. Probably for the best given her profession.”

“I don’t think she likes Vezta much. Or me for bringing Vezta to the village.” Which was probably why the Abbess had been avoiding him. It… did sting a little. Especially because half the reason he had gone back to Vezta for help was that the Abbess reassured him that he wasn’t making a deal with a demon. “Speaking of Vezta, she was looking for you. Which was why I was looking for you.”

“Oh? Did she make any progress on her task?”

A half-smile spread across Arkk’s face. “Oh? You’re giving her tasks now?”

“I thought she was happy to be ordered around. As she keeps reminding us, she is a servant.”

“I don’t know that she is happy to be given orders… Maybe. What did you have her working on? More ritual work?”

Zullie waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “That project is effectively frozen until we’ve got enough personnel to proceed. No, I asked her to write down everything she knows about the older magic used by her former master. Every instance she could recall of him using it, what the effects were, incantations if possible. The evocation ritual was an interesting distraction but I came here to uncover the mysteries of your short incantations.”

Arkk couldn’t stop his sudden laugh. Reversing the Calamity and opening portals to other planes of reality were distractions.

At his laugh, the looks of concentration faded from most of the villagers around. Like a trance broken, everyone looked up to him all at once.

“Arkk’s back!” Hale chirped, only to steel her features in a sudden bout of embarrassment.

“Well, well, well. Look who deigns to visit us mere peasants.”

Arkk turned away from Hale to shoot Hurtt a flat look. He had thought they had been getting along better after the barrows. Seeing that same envious look from earlier directed at him now just made Arkk sigh. “Hello. Harvest went well?”

Higgens made a show of looking around the empty storehouse. “Well enough that the taxman felt he could take the entire stock we had here.”

“Only one storehouse to get us through the winter,” Jorgen grumbled. “Going to have to tighten our belts. Especially with you and Ilya not bringing any meat in.”

Arkk grimaced at that. True, he hadn’t been hunting. The sudden freedom and ability to travel that came with even a modicum of wealth had him focusing on other matters. Things that felt more important. Especially because Fortress Al-Mir provided food on its own.

“I might be able to help with that. I can get some chickens and pigs.” Arkk wasn’t quite sure how but a small portion of gold could be turned into living chickens and pigs within the pens and bread and vegetables in the kitchens. It was an entirely automatic process, providing plenty of meat for Larry to butcher up into passible if not good meals.

“Isn’t that mighty gracious of you, your majesty.”

“What Hurtt means to say,” Higgens said, shooting the larger man a glare, “is that help would be appreciated. We’ve been doing our best but no human can match an elf at hunting.”

Arkk gave the village tailor a flat look, knowing well that he had kept up with Ilya just fine. Mostly. He did have to wonder at just who they had been sending out in his place. Some of the younger boys, probably. Maybe he could have Ilya take them out for some proper hunting lessons when she got back.

With a quick glance through his employee link, Arkk checked on Ilya. The elf had been on her way back with the other orcs for a few weeks now. It did not look like they had accomplished their objective. They only had two new members of their group. Both were elves but they both looked like children. Elves did age a bit slower than humans, so they might have been as old as twenty rather than the ten to fifteen they looked. Even with that consideration, they did not look old enough to be master tailors.

That was a failure on two fronts then. Both his attempts at rapidly increasing Al-Mir’s renown and Ilya’s attempt to get them nicer clothes than the lesser servant could provide. At this point, it was looking like he might have to visit Cliff once again, this time with a sack of gold specifically for fancy attire. He was wealthy enough to simply purchase clothing outright.

All the fancy clothing in the world wouldn’t get them into one of the Duke’s parties, unfortunately.

Visiting Cliff again would give him a chance to meet with Hawkwood. Maybe Wolf as well. They might have some connections he could use.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Zullie said. She lifted a small wooden wand with a handle capped with a violet glowstone that looked like it had been pried off the walls or floor of the fortress. A small wave of the wand created a controlled gust of wind that swept away the magic circles. The only one she skipped over was Hale’s circle. “Come collect the pay I promised and get out,” she said, reaching into a pouch at her hip and pulling out a few silver coins.

Arkk’s eyes were stuck on the wand, however. He recalled something similar at the Cliff Academy. The spellcaster helping Zullie with her shield spell had used a large staff to fling the rocks at her and then later to collect them after the demonstration.

“How does that wand work?”

Zullie glanced over, perplexed even as she handed out coins to the departing villagers. “Right. I keep forgetting you have no magical training or even general knowledge.”

“Sorry. Your lessons are helping.”

“I should hope so. I would hate to think that I’m wasting my time.” Between handing out coins, she held out the wand for Arkk to take. “It is possible to imbue single spells into limited-use items like this wand. Well, mostly into large staffs. Not too popular considering how heavy they are. The glowstones in the fortress are of exceptionally high quality, however, so I was able to craft that. It has a simple wind spell inside that I made as a test.” Her voice dropped to a hushed whisper as she leaned over, tickling Arkk’s ear with her breath. “Nothing impressive to any initiate with the basics of magic down. More than enough to floor some backwoods bumpkins.”

Arkk opened his mouth, about to object to her insult. Keeper of the Heart of Fortress Al-Mir though he might be, he had still started out here with the rest of Langleey Village. Before he could, however, Zullie pulled away to chase down Hale, grabbing the younger girl by the shoulders.

“Not you. You stay.”

“But John wanted me back by—”

“You really want to go back to…” Zullie started waving her hand in a circular motion, grasping for a word. “Peasanty things,” she settled on, “instead of learning magic?”

Hale’s eyes widened. After a quick glance at Arkk, who just sighed, she looked back to Zullie and offered a hesitant, “No?”

“No, you don’t want to learn magic?”

“No! I meant no to the other thing. But John…”

“I’m sure he would be happy to know that you’re moving up in the world, not bound and tethered to this… slovenly place.”

Hale crossed her arms, pouting a pout that said she didn’t understand the word but still understood that she had been insulted. She didn’t get much of a chance to continue her pout, however, as Zullie reached out and grabbed her head.

“Open, tongue out,” Zullie said, pinching the sides of Hale’s cheeks.

“Wha—”

“Chin up,” Zullie said, lightly tapping Hale’s chin closed. “Look at my eyes.”

“Bwah—”

Hale, now trying to shove Zullie’s hands off her face, squeaked in surprise as Zullie leaned over and started peering into her ear. With a slight grunt, Hale squirmed out of her grip. “Can you read?” Zullie asked, undaunted by the look on the twin-tailed girl.

“A few words,” Hale grumbled, rubbing her cheeks.

“We’ll work on that too. Now, sit and—”

“It’s late,” Arkk said. “Let her go back today and talk about it with John. There isn’t any rush given that we still need several others.” Looking at Hale, Arkk nodded his head toward the door. “Go ahead and get back to John. We’ll… get back to you tomorrow, I guess.”

Hale nodded twice. Spring in her step, she started toward the door only to pause and switch to a more serious style of walking. She kept her hands at her side without swinging them in the slightest as she marched out of the warehouse.

“Who is John? Her father?”

“The local carpenter. Treats her like his daughter. No one knows who her actual parents are. She just showed up on the Baron’s doorstep one day as a baby.”

“Really? Odd. Or is it odd? I don’t know how these peasants work. Does that happen often?”

Arkk shrugged. “A number of us don’t have parents. Not everyone just shows up in the middle of the night but pretty much everyone in the village is missing at least one parent or, failing that, a grandparent or two.”

“Mhm. I never knew my parents.”

“Oh. Sorry?”

“Doesn’t bother me,” Zullie said, her tone as clinical as when discussing the difference between a rune and a stave. “If I knew my parents, we wouldn’t be talking now.”

“How so?”

“When the church identifies someone with the potential for spellcasting, they’re taken away as initiates. A propensity for holy magic results in an acolyte. I showed promise for the arcane and was shoved into one of the academies. If I had been left with my family…” Zullie stared after the door Hale had just vanished through, shaking her head.

“I… barely remember my parents,” Arkk said slowly. “Ilya’s mother raised me, taught me to read, and showed me that I had the capacity for magic—even if I only caused explosions at the time.”

“That is the woman you’re trying to rescue from the Duke?”

“Yeah.”

“And she knows magic?”

“I don’t think…” Arkk paused, considering the question. “Actually, I don’t know. I don’t remember ever seeing her cast a spell, either through ritual or incantation, but it is a bit strange that she knew enough about magic to identify me as a spellcaster.”

The conversation lapsed into a few moments of silence. Arkk thought about Alya and the small ritual circle she had drawn to get him to try. It was a faint memory. Something he had thought that she had come up with as a way to get his mind off his recently deceased parents. He couldn’t remember the ritual circle or even what its intention was, only that it had turned into a bright burning fireball that Alya had then used a wet rag to beat out before it could spread through their house.

She had ordered him to never try magic indoors again.

“Perhaps she would be willing to take up a position around our ritual then.”

“Maybe,” Arkk allowed. He wasn’t so sure about that. When the subject of rescuing Alya had first come up after finding Fortress Al-Mir, Ilya had mentioned something about how Alya had been living in the village to keep watch on the Cursed Forest. If that translated to keeping watch on Vezta and the [HEART], she might not be so enthusiastic. “We have to get her out of the Duke’s manor first. With everything else I tried ending up poorly, I had been hoping to use this ritual to do that. Vezta says we will be able to find allies on the other side of the portal. If we need her, then we’ll have to find another way.”

“That sounds like something for you to figure out,” Zullie said, stiffening her back. “Now, as long as you are here…”

“What? Don’t want to use your legs to get back to the fortress?”

“I’ve done enough physical exertion for the day.”

With an amused snort, Arkk ripped both of them through space. They reappeared just outside Zullie’s room, down the hall from the library.

Vezta stepped out from the latter room the same instant that they appeared. “Master, there you are,” she said, walking closer. “I was just about to call for your attention.”

“Something wrong?”

“I have an update on the task you assigned to me,” she said, holding out the crystal ball.

Arkk leaned in, peering at the image already on display. A familiar dirt road, roughly halfway between Smilesville and Langleey. Arkk, Ilya, and Dakka had camped on it while on their way to Cliff. At the moment, there was just one small black carriage traveling along the bumpy road.

“The inquisitors are on the move.”

 

 

“So, you’re saying I don’t need to dig downwards?”

Arkk stood in the middle of the largest room in the fortress. It took a full week for Vezta to convert the model temple room into a workable schematic. The room itself had been ready in two days. Compared to digging a straight line, where more than one lesser servant would just get in the way of any others, digging out a large room made space for many others.

But he was a little confused about the specifications Vezta had given him.

“The pool is supposed to be deeper than the floor of the room, which will be roughly where the floor is right now,” Arkk said, looking down at the tiled ground.

“The schematic was designed with this floor level in mind. Interestingly enough, should you decide to dismantle the room following the ritual, the floor will return to this level.”

“How?”

Vezta shrugged. “Fortress magic.”

Arkk gave the servant a flat look. “Considering I’m in charge of this place, I feel I should understand how it works a little better.”

“Even my former master didn’t understand all its nuances. I doubt any but the [PANTHEON] know how it functions.”

Zullie looked between Arkk and Vezta with a small shake of her head. “I’m still hung up on the fact that you can convert gold into entire rooms filled with all kinds of different matter. Gold is alchemically pure and magically inert. Introducing impurities the way you are should be impossible.”

The witch had a point, he supposed. The room construction itself wasn’t something he understood either, he had just come to accept it as part of the fortress. The whole place was as much a mystery to him as it had been the day he found it. It was just that it was his mystery.

Reaching into the treasury, Arkk pulled over several piles of gold. Almost a third of what he had collected thus far. A few months ago and he would have died from shock at seeing this much gold. Knowing it was all his still caused an odd sense of disassociation. “I really hope this works,” Arkk said. It didn’t quite feel real. Throwing it away on a flawed ritual would still hurt.

Taking a breath, Arkk focused on the schematic in his mind. Vezta, like the other schematics, had communicated what was needed in the [CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGE], which shoved the concept of how to go about building this place straight into his mind. It wasn’t so much that he knew what needed to happen as it was that she had developed an instinct for it within him. However it worked, he could hear it working even with his eyes closed. Like an archivist using an enormous wooden block stamp to mark papers, the room around him shifted and changed.

Opening his eyes, Arkk looked around. The tiny model from a week ago had blown up to a truly staggeringly sized room. He, Vezta, and Zullie all stood in the direct center of the room, atop a platform with a detailed ritual circle carved into its surface. Intricate metal archways lined the edge of the pool, both around the central altar and on the far sides beyond the narrow bridges. Each bridge, stretching out in cardinal directions from the central altar, was engraved with a long pattern of maze lines quite similar to those in the [HEART] chamber and a few other areas around the fortress.

The maze designs on the bridge had Arkk frowning as he knelt to inspect the lines. “This wasn’t in the schematics. Is it going to cause a problem?”

Zullie joined him, bending to run a hand over the faint indentations in the stone walkway. “I’ll have to double-check whether or not magic is being channeled through these areas. If so, the design will likely cause resistance as the magic tries to work its way through the maze. That could cause a cascading—”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Vezta said, standing tall just behind the two of them.

“And how can you say that? You don’t even know how this ritual works,” Zullie said, looking over her shoulder. “Need I remind you that you left its design to me?”

“This is true. However, while you may know magic, I know Fortress Al-Mir. It wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the intent of a room.”

Arkk raised an eyebrow at that, turning to Vezta. “Is the fortress alive?”

“The beat of its [HEART] is the beat of your heart.”

“I mean, how does Fortress Al-Mir know what the intent of the room is?”

“You know. It knows.”

“Alright. But I don’t know. I might be learning a bit about proper ritual construction from Zullie but this reverse evocation ritual is about a hundred levels beyond me right now.”

Vezta just shook her head. “[Fortress Al-Mir]/[HEART]/[Arkk]|[created by]/[placed by]|[PANTHEON]/[beings above all]. Attempting to comprehend the inner workings is likely an exercise in futility that— Zullie, I would recommend against touching the water.”

Arkk looked back to find the witch near the edge of the altar platform, hand stretched out over the glassy surface of the utterly still liquid. Her hand snapped back as Vezta spoke, looking at the servant with alarm.

“Why? It should be regular water.”

“The majority of this room is based on the temple. Arkk, you may recall passing a room with a pool of water during your initial exploration of this fortress.”

“I didn’t investigate too closely, but yeah. I remember. The lesser servants had eaten it by the time I thought about exploring this place later on, unfortunately.”

Vezta dipped her head in a nod. “My former master used the temple to gain boons from the [PANTHEON]. To do this, he would offer something to the temple waters. It serves as a gateway between this plane and theirs.” She paused, canted her head, then added, “Things that cross over rarely returned and, when they did, never in the form they departed in.”

“But the planes are disconnected,” Zullie said. “Reopening the portal to one of those planes is the whole point of the ritual here.”

“Still a bad habit to get into.”

Curiosity getting the better of him, Arkk approached the edge as well. He trusted Vezta enough to not touch the surface of the water, but he was still interested.

The surface was glassy, looking more like a polished silver mirror than water. Except, while it reflected the world around him—the rest of the room—he didn’t see his own reflection as he leaned over the edge. Zullie, still near the side, should have been visible as well. She wasn’t. Just the violet glowstones set into the ceiling—which was a great deal higher than it had been before constructing the room.

“Your former master would put something in and get something else in exchange?”

“This is correct.”

Pulling a gold coin from the treasury, Arkk held it in his hand for a slight moment before tossing it out into the water.

It slipped through the surface without causing any disturbance. Not even the slightest ripple spread out. The coin just disappeared. He couldn’t see it beneath the surface either. The way it simply slid out of the world made him shudder.

He wasn’t the only one. Zullie had almost the exact same reaction. As a chill ran up her spine, she slowly scooted back from the edge.

“This is no wishing well, Keeper,” Vezta said, though she sounded more amused than annoyed.

Arkk just shrugged. “You said to toss something in so I tossed something in.”

“Many rituals my former master performed were private affairs, even to me. I do know that he occasionally entered the temple room with captured prisoners and returned with loyal minions. Other times, he would enter with grand meals or livestock.”

“What if we tie a string to the coin?”

“I would suggest you do not offend the [PANTHEON] by attempting to retrieve your offerings. However, with access to the [PANTHEON] restricted, it is likely nothing will happen should you attempt your experiment.”

Zulllie’s eyes brightened for just a moment before she started scowling. “Great. Another magical mystery to add to my ever-expanding list. I’ve been here for a month and a half and it seems like my list doubles in size every other day.” She shot a glower at Arkk. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any luck recruiting more researchers? Or just laboratory assistants? An extra hand could go a long way.”

Arkk shook his head.

He hadn’t found anyone, not that he had an opportunity to try. Those inquisitors were still around Smilesville Burg. He hadn’t dared to return. In fact, he hadn’t left the fortress at all. The only thing he had done remotely related to venturing out had been ordering the lesser servants to dig a tunnel out in the opposite direction from Langleey Village, headed toward a burg roughly the size of Smilesville on the other side of the Cursed Forest. He didn’t know that Stone Hearth Burg would have anything that Smilesville didn’t, but at least it didn’t have inquisitors swarming around.

“I did scry on the gorgon mines,” Arkk said. “There is a human in there living with the gorgon.”

“Without being killed? A prisoner?”

“I don’t think so. I wouldn’t call their existence copacetic but the human does seem to be directing the gorgon around. The archivist mentioned something about mind magic. I assume that is how he has survived among them; he’s using them as his guards now. No idea how to approach that situation, unfortunately. I already know Rekk’ar and most of the orcs would riot and abandon us if I tried to tell them to go there.”

“Best to avoid that,” Zullie said. “We’re already short on people for this ritual.”

“I know. I’m thinking about solutions. It’s just those inquisitors aren’t making things easy. I know they’re here for me. Still, if I could get a message to Savren and offer him asylum in exchange for helping out in this ritual… The food alone has to be better than rats and mushrooms and…”

Arkk trailed off, squinting as he looked over the wide pool of water. While the pool was shaped like a diamond, the room was square. Each corner of the pool was at the mid-point of the walls.

Along those walls, he spotted several large pedestals that also hadn’t been in the schematics. Turning around, he found four pedestals against each of the four walls.

A few of them were occupied.

“What are those?”

Both Vezta and Zullie looked over, following his gaze toward one of the occupied pedestals. Following him, they crossed the bridge and came to a stop in front of a tall statue of a woman wearing a long, ripple-covered dress. She had her arms spread wide as she stood in front of an engraved decoration that looked like a tall closed door. The door had two half-circles, one on either side, that looked almost like large glass windows looking out onto a field of stars. The stars were just tiny glowstones, however. The door didn’t open either.

Probably.

The magic of the fortress could be strange at times.

Large thin tendrils reminiscent of Vezta’s extra limbs reached out around her from the false door, winding around her arms and wind-blown wavy hair. A large orb at the center of her dress looked like an eye, though not like Vezta’s many eyes. It was more like a mechanical depiction than burning suns set into a void.

Vezta gave a deep, respectful bow toward the statue. “Xel’atriss, Lock and Key. The member of the [PANTHEON] holding dominion over barriers, locks, boundaries, and separation. The Lock and Key’s presence is likely a good sign, indicating that we are on the right track.”

“It is just a statue though,” Arkk said, hesitated, then added, “Right?”

“This place is more connected to the [PANTHEON] than any other physical location in this world. If anyone can breach the barrier separating them from us, it would be the Lock and Key.”

That didn’t answer Arkk’s question in the slightest. Still, Arkk didn’t see any sign of intelligence or movement in the violet gemstones that sat in place of the statue’s eyes. Turning to the pedestal two away from this woman, Arkk asked, “What about that one?”

It wasn’t human. Humanoid, yes, but not human. With a head like the skull of a goat, four sets of horns stretched out in a long and tangled mass that wrapped around the depiction of the creature like a briar thorn bush. It held both hands in front of it, one hand above the other. An hourglass floated between, rotating end over end to keep the sand within from ever emptying fully into one side.

“The Jailer of the Void. Time. Eternity. Emptiness,” Vezta said, offering another bow to the statue. “I’m not sure why this one would appear.”

Arkk waited but Vezta didn’t have anything more to offer. Instead, the servant narrowed her eyes as she looked at another wall. Another pair of statues occupied two of the four pedestals.

The first was a woman cast entirely in gold armor with a large heart-like object placed within the breastplate. The headdress she wore over her full, curly, and golden-brown hair was large and extravagant, making her look like some kind of royalty. The serious expression on her face reminded Arkk of some of the times Abbess Keena gave the occasional harsh Suun lecture.

On the other end of the rows of pedestals, a tall man stood clad in golden light that hurt Arkk’s eyes to look at. Much of his chest was bare with only those thin lights of gold stretched between his muscles. He had a chiseled, angular jawline and short hair. Like his chest, most of his face was hidden behind a form-fitting mask of golden light.

“The Heart of Gold and the Holy Light,” Vezta said with ill-concealed hatred. “Traitors.”

From her tone of voice, Arkk didn’t think it was wise to ask further questions about these two. The servant turned on her heel, fists clenched as she strode across the bridge to the opposite wall.

Only one of the pedestals was occupied here. The last of the sixteen with a statue in place. This one was of another muscular man with longer hair striking a heroic pose. A spear in one hand and a staff topped with a fleur-de-lis in the other, the ends of both were planted near his feet. A long billowing cape was frozen in the air behind him, though Arkk wasn’t sure how it was attached to him. The man didn’t have a shirt on and, below a washboard of muscles, he only had a wrapping of cloth around his hips. Two feathery wings sprouted from his back, giving him the visage of a particularly humanoid harpy.

“The Almighty Glory,” Vezta spat. “The three instigators of the Calamity. Trapping the rest of the [PANTHEON] while they run free? Betraying their sisters and brothers to elevate themselves? Disgusting.”

“Should we… destroy these statues or something? If that tentacle woman is a good sign, surely these are the opposite.”

“I would leave them all alone,” Vezta said, her voice in a forced cool tone. “For now. In addition, I would suggest you avoid further experimentation with the waters of this chamber. Although I imagine it is unlikely that those present are watching us in any capacity, tempting that would be unwise. Avoid the room until we’re ready to use it.”

Arkk nodded, glancing toward the sole doorway. A translucent visage of a metal door appeared with his gaze. The work order would already be in the smithy.

“Right. Zullie. No experiments.”

“Am I the only one creeped out by these?” the witch asked, staring at the towering face of the Almighty Glory. “They weren’t in my plans.”

“This is the first room I’ve made that had unexpected changes,” Arkk said with a frown. He cast his gaze around the empty pedestals, wondering if they would populate after the ritual.

He eventually looked back to the Almighty Glory. Though he expected it to be looking down at him with his back turned, it wasn’t. The statue remained still and stagnant.

“As long as they aren’t manifestations of these beings…” He shook his head. “Let’s get out of here. Zullie, I don’t suppose you’re aware of any other outlaw spellcasters,” he asked as they started walking away.

Only Vezta remained, shadowy tendrils around her roiling as she glared at the tall statue.

Eventually, she turned away, putting her back to the statue as she left the room.

None of the five statues moved.

 

 

“Evocation is considered a lost art of magic. To the best of my not-inconsiderable knowledge of magic, no attempt at evocation has succeeded since the Calamity. There are highly detailed records, so we know it was an actual branch of viable magic at one point in time. To make matters more complicated, evocation, along with all planar magic, has been deemed High Anathema by the Abbey of the Light. Anyone caught researching or otherwise engaging with planar magic is immediately charged and, without trial, sentenced to summary execution.

“At the academy, we were taught enough to recognize when planar magic was involved so that we could abort whatever we were doing and seek absolution with the church before it got to the execution point. Nothing else.”

Arkk grimaced at Zullie’s explanation. “And you want to research it now? Even knowing that consequence?”

“Already have,” Zullie said with a wave of her hand. “I told you before that I’ve got experience dodging inquisitors. They weren’t hounding me because they were interested in my ability to stop incoming projectiles. There have been accusations against me in the past. Nothing anyone could prove,” she added with a grin.

“Why is it banned?” Arkk asked. He doubted he would change his mind about proceeding with their evocation magic to reopen the portal. The inquisitors thought Vezta was an enemy. Their opinion was clearly flawed. Still, it would be good to know.

Zullie, one arm across her chest with her hand holding the elbow of her opposite arm as she gesticulated, launched into a lecture. It was starting to become a familiar sight. After their disastrous departure from Darkwood Burg, it had taken a little under a week to return to Fortress Al-Mir. Arkk had been too weak for most of that to protest their abandonment of the burg. When he had recovered enough, they were practically back. Scrying on the burg showed no additional attacks since their departure, so he hadn’t felt up to insisting they return.

Arkk had enlisted Zullie in magic tutoring on the way back, mostly to distract himself from what he thought was a fairly unpleasant departure. Not only was proper magic something he always wanted to learn but it also helped Vezta with her objective of carrying out her former master’s final command. The last few days had been… a lot.

Still, Arkk felt he had the basics down. He knew much more about rituals and how to construct them. Learning what all the little symbols and runes did in a ritual circle had clued him into what he was doing wrong that caused explosions when he tried to work most magic. Namely, an utter lack of direction toward how magic was supposed to flow through a ritual spell. In a great number of rituals, the undirected collision of magic caused the explosion.

He wasn’t quite so confident about jumping into forbidden anathema magics. That didn’t stop Zullie from her explanations.

“Evocation is a branch of planar magic, dealing with other planes of existence. It is a close relative to summoning magics—which also used to be a widespread branch of magic but has since degraded into demon summoning and little else. It is banned for that reason. Very little good can come from pulling bits of other realities into our own.” Zullie shot a curious look to Vezta, who simply chose to lean up against the wall for the duration of every lecture, before adding, “Or so says the church.”

“Fair enough. But we aren’t summoning demons.” It wasn’t a question.

Zullie laughed, waving her hand back and forth. “No, no. We’re not stupid. We’re just trying to punch a little hole into this Underworld place. No Hell involved.”

“And,” Arkk started, glancing at Vezta, “breaking through to the Underworld isn’t going to end this world or anything, right?”

“I don’t see why it would,” the servant answered. “The planes have been connected before without ending the world. We’re merely reopening a door that has been closed for a long time.”

Arkk nodded his head, accepting her answer as he turned back to Zullie. “You’ve figured out how to do this? Work some ancient magic nobody has gotten working before?”

“It helps that we have someone who has seen this kind of magic working, knows why it stopped working, and has a general idea of how to fix it,” Zullie said, motioning toward Vezta. “When I publish, I will be sure to mention your names in the footnotes.”

“Is it a good idea to publish anathema?”

“Of course! Posthumously.”

“Fair enough. So, how do we do this?”

“Not easily, unfortunately.” Turning around, Zullie approached the large table in the library and whisked a cloth off the top.

Arkk took a few minutes to figure out what he was staring at. Several vaulted iron archways surrounded a diamond-shaped pool of water. Thin bridges reached out from all four corners, stretching to a pentagonal altar in the center of the pool. Several tiny runes were inscribed on the altar, each so small that Arkk had to get up and squint down at it just to see. As he did so, he noted several other pentagonal circles spaced around the outside edge of the pool of water, one placed beneath each of the archways.

“It’s only a model,” Zullie said. “Vezta tried to explain the schematics that let you build rooms but I didn’t quite get it. Instead, I got that blacksmith orc to build this to my specifications. Hopefully one or both of you can figure out how to build a large-scale version.” Zullie pointed at the altar in the center of the pool of water. “That altar should be large enough to fit a full-sized orc within the inner pentagon. The rest of the room, likewise, expanded to scale.”

Arkk’s eyes widened. He didn’t know for sure without measuring it but just from a glance, it looked like the central altar would be roughly the size of the meeting room table. The room would be massive. Larger even than the orc barracks.

“It is modeled after the temple,” Vezta said, not moving from her position against the wall. “You may or may not recall the room with the large pool of water. That is where my former master beseeched the [PANTHEON] for their boons. The ritualistic elements were added by Zullie to facilitate our ‘evocation’ efforts.”

“And this will work?”

“Never seen evocation work, remember?” Zullie shrugged. “No idea if this will do anything at all. We’re venturing into the unknown.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“Hopefully, we learn something.”

Vezta shoved off the wall, stepping closer. “While I may not know much of magic, I do know a few odds and ends. Evocation, as Zullie refers to it as, was not a type of magic commonly seen. A layperson would not have the magical capacity to reach through the walls of realities. It was the type of magic that required several spellcasters, advanced preparation, and,” she paused, motioning to the model on the table. “And a lot of work. It is no surprise that such magics have died off. Even a large number of spellcasters wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything with the way magic has withered away in this world.”

“But we will?” Arkk asked.

“It will still require work and personnel, but Fortress Al-Mir will make what others find to be impossible just within our reach. We should have the gold reserves to cover the construction of the temple,” Vezta said. “It will cause a sizable dent compared to your other constructions, however.”

“Not like I’m using it for anything else,” Arkk mumbled. “I suppose I’ll have the lesser servants start digging? If you can get me the exact size of the room, that would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Vezta said with a bow.

Arkk nodded, then looked back to Zullie. “I assume there is a little more to this than just building this temple?” Work and personnel. He could already see several points around the model that looked like they were intended for spellcasters.

Zullie let out a withering laugh. “A little,” she said with a snort before pointing at the central altar. “You’ll need to position yourself here,” she said. “From there, you need a spellcaster of at least my caliber at each of the four corners.” Her finger crossed from point to point. “Between each corner, at each ritual circle, you can have lesser spellcasters. I’ve been testing the orcs. Not many of those I’ve seen will suffice. You’ll need to find others for the remainder of the spots.”

Arkk did some quick math. There were five spots between each corner. Twenty in total. Ilya’s group of orcs had yet to return. If even half of those who had passed through the Fortress in the last few days were able to fill those spots, that was only about six orcs. Even if Ilya’s group were all able to fulfill Zullie’s requirements, that still left several empty places. And Zullie wasn’t sounding all that optimistic about the orcs.

Not to mention the four corners.

“Vezta can take one of the corners, right?”

Zullie shook her head, glancing at Vezta.

The monster’s many eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Not exactly,” she said, voice cool. “My magical capacity is pitiful. I might suffice in one of the lesser ritual circles, but even that is uncertain.”

“Rather than have her perform that role, however, I believe she would be better suited to standing in the central circle alongside you. You provide immense magical power. She provides a symbolic connection to this Pantheon thing. Symbology is quite important in ritual magic.”

Arkk pressed his fingers to his forehead, closing his eyes. “I don’t suppose either of you has suggestions for where we might find three more capable spellcasters and several others for the lesser slots?”

Uncomfortable silence greeted him. It lasted long enough to force Arkk to open his eyes. He shifted his gaze from Zullie to Vezta and back.

“Anyone?”

“I went through a list of all my colleagues at the academy. Of the ones who might be capable of helping, I only came up with one name who might be willing. And he is a fairly big might. That’s the biggest problem. Anyone in good standing with the Abbey of the Light is more likely to report us than help us.”

“Great.”

One problem after another.

Arkk stood outside the Smilesville Burg garrison. Compared to the garrison in Cliff or even Darkwood, it was a wooden hut that wouldn’t stand up to a stiff breeze. Still, it had mercenary jobs posted. Mostly local affairs. Things that needed doing within about a day or two of travel from Smilesville. It did have a few larger warrants out for enemies of the Duchy.

Now that he had spent a few days distracting himself from his pessimism with other work, he had become a little more optimistic.

He was starting to think that this would work. The mercenary business at Darkwood hadn’t exactly gone as planned but it hadn’t exactly gone poorly either. Sure, he had wound up poisoned and had to be carried away from a potential riot. That was a bit of a downer. But upon arriving at the Smilesville garrison, he found a letter addressed to him from Hawkwood full of praise for the successful defense of Darkwood. Arkk wasn’t sure who told Hawkwood but that praise meant something. It meant someone was paying attention.

If Hawkwood was paying attention, perhaps, just perhaps, the Duke was as well. He had heard that the Duke often invited various prominent figures, including the leaders of mercenary companies, to his lavish parties. That, as far as he could tell, was the best bet for getting into contact with Alya. He and Ilya had written letters to her several times over the years and never received anything in response. Arkk wasn’t exactly sure what her situation was right now, only that the Duke apparently listened to her. So, forcing a confrontation using one of those parties would work best.

But that wasn’t why he had come today. At least, not the only reason. It was definitely something he was keeping in mind as he browsed through stacks of papers at the Smilesville garrison.

Unlike Cliff where they posted jobs out on a signboard unless the weather turned bad, Arkk had to enter the garrison and browse through their files. They just didn’t get used often enough to justify having them out in the open. That meant that Arkk could go through even the older bounties that had never been claimed.

One of which he recognized. The sketch of Olatt’an depicted a younger, tusk-filled mask of snarling rage. Seeing that might have given Arkk nightmares as a child. Now, he found himself confused over how the easy-going elderly orc could possibly be the same person as the one listed as wanted for nearly every crime it was possible to commit.

Sliding that paper aside, Arkk browsed through the rest. Paper after paper went onto the discard pile, making sure to maintain their order so that the archivists here didn’t get upset with him. Eventually, however, he spotted something promising. Another scowling face, this time of a human that looked about ready to eat a whole pile of babies. Most of the sketches were of scowling individuals. Very few had normal expressions on their faces.

The bounty was old. Posted about six months ago. Wanted dead or alive, Savren of Hope’s Rest was accused of practicing foul magics of the most awful sort. What exactly those foul magics were wasn’t listed. Still, Arkk figured this was as good as he was going to get for now. He flipped through the remainder of the notices but failed to find anything promising.

Leaving the rest of the papers in a neat pile, Arkk headed up to the archivist.

“Has there been any more information on this Savren person?” Arkk asked, sliding the paper across a wide desk.

The woman seated on the other side of the desk adjusted her round glasses as she looked up. “Savren of… Oh. The Hope Killer.”

Arkk pressed his lips together, not sure he wanted to ask but, at the same time, he couldn’t stop himself. “Hope Killer?”

“From Hope’s Rest,” she said, a slight nasal tone in her voice. “Put the whole village to rest, didn’t he now?”

“Killed a whole village?” Arkk said, mentally groaning. He had been paying attention to the magic listed on the paper, not what the man had done with the magic.

“No. Put some kind of sleeping spell over all eighty people there. ’twas a few months ago and they haven’t woken up since. Mind magics.”

“But they’re alive?” Arkk asked with a frown.

“Sure are, but they don’t wake. Don’t eat. Don’t even breathe. Just sit, still alive but as good as dead,” she said. That sounded like a bit more than mind magic to Arkk but, even with Zullie’s tutelage, he was still far from knowledgeable. “The brightest spellcasters from the academy haven’t been able to wake them. As far as I understand it, they were taken to a larger church and are just… stored there until something can be done about them.”

“Then why Hope Killer?”

“Catchier than Hope Rester now isn’t it?” the archivist said, turning to a large paper-filled drawer.

“I guess,” Arkk said with a slight shake of his head. The possibility of recruiting this spellcaster was a little bit more palatable than it had been a moment ago. Zullie said that no one in good standing would help them out, leaving Arkk to track down people who weren’t in good standing. He knew what that meant, but he didn’t want someone who would callously slaughter an entire village.

He tried not to investigate the pasts of the orcs in his employ for much the same reason. At least most of them had fought against a demon summoning and were now making amends through honest mercenary work. More or less.

The archivist turned back with another paper in her hand. She laid it out on the desk, facing it toward Arkk. “Last news on Savren was reported three months ago. Other burgs might have more up-to-date information.”

“Spotted in the mines of…” Arkk started reading, only to pause as he recognized a name. It clicked a moment later. “Oh. Oh no.”

“Something wrong?”

“The mines of Silver City,” Arkk said, thinking back to his first outing to find mercenary jobs in Cliff. “I recognize that name. A den of gorgon moved in. It has been one of the largest outstanding mercenary jobs for… about three months. No one has dared take it up, I’ve heard.”

“Ah. Probably explains why we haven’t had any updates on Savren. He’s been turned to stone. Good riddance, I say.”

Arkk sighed, fearing he might have to go to a larger burg to find more information on spellcasters who might be willing to participate in an evocation ritual. “Mind if I get a paper to write all this down on anyway?” he asked. Might as well have Vezta scry the mines and see if it was full of gorgon or not.

If Arkk were trying to hide, starting a rumor of some of the most dangerous creatures in existence living around him would be a great way to keep all but the most dedicated of bounty hunters away from him.

The archivist handed over ink and paper in exchange for a silver coin. Arkk quickly scribbled down every bit of information, from the location of Hope’s Rest to the various villages Savren had been spotted in before winding up at Silver City. In the end, he thanked the archivist for her help and left the garrison.

He made it about three steps down the street before spotting something unpleasant. A black carriage, gleaming with the striped emblem of the Duchy on the side, sat just outside the local stayover. A familiar man with a wide black hat sat at the reins of the horses. Arkk didn’t stick around any longer. Ducking back into the alcove of the garrison’s entryway, just out of sight of the guards, he teleported straight back into Fortress Al-Mir.

And ended up in front of Vezta, who was currently trying to convert Zullie’s model into a useable schematic for construction.

“We have a minor emergency. Maybe a major one,” Arkk said, pulling a crystal ball to him.

Vezta canted her head to one side, looking away from the model to peer into the glass ball.

He held it out and immediately began scrying on the Smilesville stayover. The Smilesville stayover had an external staircase to four rooms, all perched over a tavern. It took only a second to flick through each of the rooms before finding the black-cloaked inquisitors in the third.

The short chronicler sat on the edge of the bed, reading from a small book. The purifier stood perfectly still at the window, watching outside. There was no sign of High Inquisitor Darius Vrox, but something about the purifier sent chills up Arkk’s spine.

Adjusting the viewpoint of the crystal ball, he let out an audible groan as he noted the direction the purifier was looking.

If she had been standing there a few moments ago, she would have had a clear view of him stepping outside the garrison and then ducking back in.

“I need you to keep watch on these people,” Arkk said. “I’m sorry, but until they leave the vicinity, this takes priority over the temple room.”

“I can handle both tasks at once,” Vezta said with a mild bow.

“Good. Thank you.”

 

 

“We’ve been searching for a week across this soggy marsh,” Olatt’an grumbled. He slapped at his arm, crushing more than one mosquito. “The exercise and fresh air were nice for a time. These bugs are not. How long are we going to keep looking?”

“They have to be here,” Ilya said, frowning at the bit of cheese on her stale bread.

She knew as well as he did that their time was running out.

Their provisions were running low. The wet marshlands and accompanying insects were irritating the orcs she had brought along with her. A week of trudging through the marsh, both on foot over the large islands and on a boat for crossing the wide channels, might have been fine if there had been an end in sight. At this point, they were just wandering aimlessly.

“My mother said that if I ever couldn’t stay with the people of Langleey Village, I should seek out the elves of Marrowland Fen. They would take me in.”

Olatt’an looked over the despondent elf. She caught his eyes wandering over the few other orcs who were taking a rest before ending up back at her. “Your mother,” he said, voice soft. “She lived in the human village for most of her life?”

Ilya raised an eyebrow. “She had a very long life. I… I was only a small part of it.” Maybe that was why her mother hadn’t looked happy to see her. Alya was over six hundred years old. Ilya was thirty-two. Only half of which had been spent in the presence of her mother. For the rest of Ilya’s life, her mother had been with the Duke.

The thought made her shoulders slump.

“When was the last time your mother visited her people? Didn’t she have a more accurate location?”

Ilya looked over at the toothless orc, pressing her lips together. She didn’t know. Her mother hadn’t left Langleey in the time since she had been born. From stories the other villagers told her, Alya had been a part of their village for at least a generation. Even the older villagers remembered Alya as children. Whether or not she left and returned at any point, Ilya couldn’t say.

“None of the villages we passed could point us toward an elf village,” Olatt’an said, voice still soft. “All they said was that elves would show up on occasion, but haven’t for a long while.”

Ilya swallowed a lump in her throat. “If they aren’t here anymore, where did they go?”

“Can’t say. I don’t know elves. The only elf settlement I’ve visited was down near the border of the Duchy of Mystakeen and the boy prince’s Principality. That was decades ago. No idea if it is still there.”

“Could you take me there?”

“To the Principality? That’s months of travel. Not to mention…” The old orc wrinkled his nose. “Elves have long memories. I doubt my face would be welcome.”

Ilya rolled her eyes. “Is there anywhere that doesn’t have an outstanding bounty on your head?” Throughout the entire journey, Olatt’an kept a bandanna around his face and a hood up anytime they ventured into a settlement. Even then, he stuck on his own, avoiding anyone outside their group. Most larger burgs, he and the other orcs had camped well outside their walls.

Olatt’an didn’t get a chance to answer her. Kazz’ak came running up. Ilya noted that he came running up to Olatt’an, not her, despite her being in charge of this whole operation. He didn’t look particularly excited to speak. At the same time, there was a worried intensity in his eyes.

“We… found something, Ripthroat.”

Olatt’an gave the younger orc a flat look. It was subtle, but Ilya caught the way his head twitched toward her.

Kazz’ak turned his head first before the rest of his body followed, looking at Ilya. “We found something,” he said again with marginally less respect in his tone.

“A village?”

“It… might be better if you came and saw for yourself.”

Not liking the sound of that, Ilya wrapped up her meager meal in a bit of cloth, pocketing it for later. “Keep watch here,” Ilya said, probably unnecessarily. The older orc wasn’t making any attempt to stand as he continued to eat his own food.

Marrowlands Fen was a wet marshy location far to the northeast of Langleey Village, right on the border with the Sultanate. Some parts of it were open to the ocean, the same ocean that Cliff’s harbor sat on, but large berms of grassy land kept the salty water mostly out. Were it not for the water, the land would likely be an incredibly hilly landscape, bordering on mountainous. Instead, it was more like large rounded islands dotted the greenish water. A few of the larger islands held settlements, though none were at all prosperous and wealthy. Even for all the gold Arkk had given her for this voyage, they weren’t willing to part with too much food for fear of starving themselves. Their farms were small, constrained by the islands, and most of their meals came from the fish both in the ocean and in the marshes.

So far, Ilya and the orcs had combed over the larger islands. Both those settled and those barren. Upon discovering that the settlements that were here didn’t know about any elf villages, she had been hoping that the elves were hiding their home with some kind of magic that she, an elf, would be able to see through. Just like in the stories of old. Unfortunately, she had yet to locate any sign of that. Even if the villages were hidden, there should still have been elves moving around, farmlands that couldn’t be concealed, or any number of other proofs that her people lived in the area.

Instead of heading inland on this island, however, Kazz’ak took her along the shore down to the second of their boats. The one he and his scouting team had been using to circumnavigate the island in an attempt to locate any sign of habitation. He joined two others aboard. Ilya followed.

Rather than circling the island, however, Kazz’ak directed the boat away from shore. Ilya’s sharp eyes looked into the distance, spotting a large mountain on their left and a smaller yet hilly island on the right. Using a long pole to push the boat through the water, Kazz’ak set the heading directly between the two islands.

As the boat sailed away from the island she had been on, Ilya spotted something that they were going to hit. It looked like a large grouping of cattails and a mess of reeds. As they got closer, however, Ilya realized that it wasn’t a natural formation. Cut reeds, wooden planks, and netting made from bulrush sedges formed the floating island. There were… constructions on the island as well. Small foundations of what might have been huts in the past. Now, it was clear that they had fallen into disrepair.

Kazz’ak pulled the boat up against the reeds, partially beaching it on the fake beach. Ilya had to wrinkle her nose. The entire island smelled of rotting plants. She had to wonder how long it had been out here, floating around with no one to maintain the island. It was clearly artificially made and would have to have maintenance to keep it from completely falling apart.

Following the scouting team, Ilya stepped onto the floating island. It wobbled a bit under her feet. Not enough that she thought she was going to fall through it. In fact, in its prime, it might not have felt different from solid ground.

“This way,” Kazz’ak said, waving a hand as he started across the surprisingly large floating island.

Passing one of the straw pillars that might have been a hut, Ilya paused and knelt. Something was sticking out of the straw that caught her eye. A smooth wooden shaft. Gripping it and wrenching it out of the straw, Ilya scowled down at the chipped metal arrowhead.

Ilya looked up to Kazz’ak, about to ask whether the arrow was one of theirs, when she spotted something beyond the tall orc.

Corpses. A dozen bodies piled up. The flesh had rotted and the bones had been picked clean by carrion feeders. Stumbling closer, Ilya found the scent of decaying plants replaced with the foul stench of rotting meat. The remains were still intact enough to tell that they had been humanoid. Judging by the tall stature, long legs, and thin builds…

These had been elves.

“We searched the area,” Kazz’ak said, voice mild yet uncaring. “Couldn’t find anything of value, though I can’t tell if that is because everything was looted or if these people didn’t have anything valuable in the first place. The bodies all look older. No children or youth. More huts than bodies too. Slavers, I would guess.”

“This couldn’t be too old,” Ilya said, warring with herself between getting closer and stumbling backward. “A few months at most or this entire island would be gone.”

“Think there are other floating villages? We might have been looking in the wrong place by checking over all the actual islands.”

“I…” Ilya’s voice caught in her throat. “Where would slavers have taken them?”

Kazz’ak shrugged. “The chieftain wasn’t in the habit of selling captives,” he said without any shame toward his former profession.

Ilya clenched her fist around the arrow in her hand. She felt sick. Sicker even than when her mother had turned away from her at the Duke’s manor.

Could she do anything about her people being captured? It had been months ago, based on what she saw now and what the other villages in the area had said about elf visitors. They would probably be gone in the wind without a trace.

Ilya let out an inarticulate cry as she dropped to her knees, slamming her fist down into the reeds.

She could only hope that Arkk was having better luck than she was.

The fires burned. A beautiful red-white glow licked the stone bricks of the long corridor, dancing under the wild choreography of Agnete’s dancing fingers. She basked in the flickering light, letting the fire flow around her in a whirlwind of purifying fury. This, Agnete thought, dropping the burning remains of her long coat to better feel the heat of the flames against her skin, must have been what humanity’s ancestors felt when they first lit their drab caves.

Light bright and hot enough to ward off the dark and the evils that lurked within.

Agnete strode forward, indomitable and relentless. The flames moved ahead of her, attacking all without mercy. Squeals of goblins, shrieks of fleeing insectoids, dismayed cries of all kinds of monsters… None reached her ears as her flames burned sound itself.

One of the mockeries of humanity appeared directly in front of her, claws already swinging through the air. Its hairless body caught fire the instant it manifested, but that didn’t stop its momentum. Agnete didn’t try to dodge. The monster’s claws skewered deep into her side.

A geyser of white flames erupted from the wound, fully engulfing the red-eyed ghast even as they burned away at Agnete’s skin. The keratine of the claws evaporated in the heat, leaving a wound that quickly seared itself shut. Mere pinprick scars remained behind. Agnete’s march forward didn’t slow in the slightest.

As the ghast died a fiery death, black smoke emerged from its disintegrating corpse. Bright red eyes glared at Agnete just long enough for the monster within to realize its mistake in approaching her. The black smoke burst into flames, causing the intangible being to fully manifest before her.

A human. Greasy black hair with a pointed beard. Neither remained on the screaming man’s face for more than a few seconds before being consumed by the flames. His purple robe and high collar caught fire and his skin began to char, but Agnete didn’t get to enjoy the process of purification before the man disappeared as quickly as the ghast had appeared.

Agnete continued forward through the hallways of this underground fortress. She didn’t make it far before a shudder in the ground threatened to throw her off her feet. A loud noise of breaking earth followed, bringing with it a blast of air coursing through the tunnel with such intense force behind it that it actually managed to snuff out her flames. Agnete’s fingers melted the stone wall, creating a handhold to keep herself steady.

As the wind died down, Agnete found her attention drawn to the wall she was gripping. Or had been gripping, rather. The thick stone bricks, reinforced with magic to the point where they managed to avoid more than cosmetic damage from the intense heat of her fires, began to crumble to dust, revealing bare dirt walls. The tiles under her feet, cracked and broken yet were still similarly reinforced, decayed.

The curiosity about the deteriorating fortress became a non-concern as a chill in the air made the hairs on Agnete’s arms stand on end. She drew in a breath, preparing to flood the area with the hot comfort of fire once again, only to hear a voice behind her.

“That is enough.”

Dry lips cracking into a snarl, Agnete turned around to face the one who dared dampen her heat. A man stood in the dirt tunnel, tall and lanky. Arms like noodles and thin glasses perched on his nose, he wasn’t a threat. He should burn for his—

The man reached into a pocket in his long black coat and withdrew a small clear marble. White fog of condensed air flowed around the man’s gloved hand, drifting to the floor like a waterfall of cold.

Agnete sucked in a breath, taking a fearful step backward. Ice replaced the molten heat in her veins as she stared with wide eyes. The ice crept inward, moving from her fingers and toes toward her burning heart. She opened her mouth, letting out a dry, croaking scream.

“I said that is enough, Purifier.”

Fight or flight kicked in, except she couldn’t manage either. Her feet had frozen to the ground and the fire contained under her skin diminished to mere embers in the presence of that marble of ice. All she could manage was a clipped nod of her head. Agree. Bow down to the ice in the hopes that it would grant mercy.

The man stared, a humorless smile plastered on his face. Nodding in satisfaction at something, he clasped his hand around the ball of ice and dropped it back into his pocket.

The moment it was away, Agnete collapsed, curling up into a tight ball on the dirt floor. She shuddered, rubbing cold fingers against her arms and legs in an attempt to bring back some of that heat from earlier. Slowly yet surely, feeling and warmth returned to her. It didn’t return in the same force. The out-of-control boil that threatened to spill over turned to a low simmer capped with a lid to avoid the possibility of that marble coming back out.

“Pick yourself up, Purifier,” Darius said, voice as cold as the marble hidden in his pocket. The disgust in his tone said more than words ever could. He stepped over her even as her shaking arms tried to heft herself up.

He held out a gleaming brass lantern. The white orb within was a gift from the Light, allowing vision even in the darkest of environments. Agnete hated the thing. For all its brightness, it had no heat. One could reach through the bars of brass and feel nothing at all.

Agnete stumbled to her feet, arms clasped tight to her body. She had to grind her teeth together to keep them from clattering. She dared to take her eyes off Darius, looking around back where they had come from. Sure enough, the short chronicler was coming up from behind. Holding a tablet in one hand and a pen in the other, he scribbled a few notes down. Probably ones related to her, how she almost lost control and burned them all or just how long it took her to recover from exposure to the marble. Whatever they were, she didn’t care at the moment. Her eyes were locked on the articles of clothing draped over the crook of his elbow.

Douglas squinted up at her, then, reluctantly, handed over a fresh pair of trousers and a long coat. He dropped the boots from under his arm and then continued after Darius without a word. Glaring after him for a long moment, Agnete tore off the remains of her burned clothes and began dressing herself. First the trousers, then the coat. She did up the six buttons across her chest before ducking down to don her boots. Once the buckles were secure, she let out a small sigh. The barrier between her skin and the cold air outside wasn’t much, but it helped.

Straightening her back and squaring her shoulders, Agnete began marching after her two fellow inquisitors. She didn’t speak when she caught up with them, merely falling in step behind Douglas. Agnete didn’t pay attention to the crumbling fortress around her, letting Darius lead them through the now silent corridors. He paused at a few intersections and peered into a few rooms, but didn’t stop until they reached a room unlike any other.

It was a large and rectangular room with a circular pit in the very center, surprisingly intact despite the ruins the rest of the fortress had turned into. Four thick columns stretched up, not quite reaching the peaked ceiling of the room. Each held carvings of profane symbols. Thick metal chains dangled into the pit from the tops of the pillars, perhaps having once held something aloft. Whatever that something was, it was gone now.

Stepping up alongside Darius at the pit’s precipice, she peered down into inky darkness. Not even the light from the holy lantern could penetrate the depths.

Douglass sat back, muttering under his breath into a small golden pendant that he wore around his neck. Prayers to the Light, asking for information. He paused and, with a nod of his head, looked over to Darius.

“Divine inspiration doesn’t tell me what this is. It… wasn’t so much of a non-answer as it was a rejection and refusal to answer.”

Darius frowned, dragging his long fingers from his cheeks to his chin. “Whatever it was, it seems to be gone now. Was it the purifier’s fires?”

“That information was not revealed to me,” Douglas said, squinting as he motioned to the chains dangling from the pillars. “All I was told was that we removed a great evil from this world.”

“Well,” Darius said, clapping his hands together with a false smile. “Not what we came here for. It is gratifying to know that we could eliminate an object of ancient evil nonetheless. If only the horror had been present.”

Douglas flipped back through his notes with a thin-lipped frown. “The truth is difficult to discern from an angry mob, but reports place the horror as defending the burg from the creatures of this pit.”

“Curious, isn’t it? Eyewitnesses put our old friend Mister Arkk working alongside it once again. I do wonder what dark magics he had to invoke to gain such control over a creature like that.”

Agnete, head remaining still, shifted her burning eyes to the back of Darius before flicking them back down into the deep pit.

“Perhaps it is time to visit that lovely village of Langleey once again,” said Master Inquisitor Darius Vrox.

 

 

“—brought the monsters here!”

“—heard they were after him—”

“—attacked one of my own the day before.”

“You see the company he keeps? No wonder monsters—”

“The one with the eyes… you didn’t see the way it fought. Ripped apart anything that got near without even blinking.”

“My advice? Hide until this blows over. Keep the kids indoors and…”

“That ghast spoke. Said it would leave us alone if…”

“Speaking ghasts? Nonsense.”

“Doesn’t matter. This ‘Al-Mir’ group is bad news. Kick them out before they draw more problems to the burg.”

“And just who is going to do that? You? Don’t make me laugh. You soiled yourself when that monster of theirs—”

Zullie carefully closed the door behind her, trying to avoid as much noise as possible. Only once she was inside the small room did she lower the hood of her cloak. “Boss isn’t very popular, is he?” she mumbled, wishing the relative privacy of the stayover room did more to relieve the tension in her shoulders.

“Irrelevant,” Vezta said, eyes locked on the unconscious form of Arkk as he slept on in the bed. Several tendrils moved damp cloth over his body, trying to keep his body temperature down. “Did you discover anything?”

“I spoke with the alchemist they mentioned. Ghasts have some kind of toxin in their claws. He gave me this,” Zullie said, holding up a small crystal phial of clear liquid, “in exchange for about ten times more gold than I know it would take to make something like this.”

“Gold is no object.”

“Still…”

“Will it work?”

“Hope so,” Zullie said, stepping closer to Arkk. “The alchemist refused to come to see Arkk. Said something about Arkk threatening him. So, if it doesn’t work…”

Dakka, standing watch over Arkk’s bed not far from Vezta, bared her tusks in full with a low growl. “We go out there to rescue his girl from monsters and he repays us like this? It wasn’t even a real threat,” she snarled. “Should have left the girl to die.”

“If it doesn’t work,” Vezta said, voice unnaturally calm, “I will be the one speaking with this alchemist.”

Zullie suppressed a shudder. Her first thought upon meeting Vezta had been one of fear and shock. The monster’s appearance alone was unsettling. Knowing Vezta was pre-Calamity? That was another level of shock. One that quickly gave way to interest and curiosity once it became apparent that Vezta wasn’t going to eat her. The problems they had been working on together were fascinating, to say the least.

An alternate system of magic with truncated incantations alone was enough to draw her interest. Then Vezta brought up her reverse evocation problem. Punching a hole through planes of existence to reopen pathways that had been closed for over a thousand years? How could she say no?

Evocation, summoning, and likely teleportation—Zullie was fairly certain that the teleportation ritual circles used planar magic to dig tunnels through reality for instant transportation—were all classified as High Anathema by the Abbey of the Light. Zullie knew the theory of summoning but had never been allowed to practice or delve deeper than what was required for recognition. Vezta helped out with that. The pre-Calamity monster didn’t know how to work magic but she did know how to explain what she needed to happen in such a way that Zullie could formulate ideas about how to accomplish her needs if not full rituals.

With such interesting problems to work on, she had almost forgotten just what Vezta was.

Having seen Vezta in a fight and, later, frighten off a mob of angry people, Zullie doubted she would think of Vezta as just another researcher anytime soon.

Deciding to not tempt the ancient creature by staring, Zullie hurried over to Arkk’s side, uncapping the phial as she moved.

“Ingested, injected, or topical?” Vezta asked.

“Ingested. Can you sit him up?”

Tendrils formed from the shadows around Arkk, lifting him into a sitting position. Zullie winced at the sight. He wasn’t completely limp nor was he completely unconscious. He drifted in and out of lucidity. While her mending spell had sealed the gashes in his front after far more effort than she had expected, a bramble of blackened veins marred his chest, stemming from the thin scars the magic had failed to heal. Parts of the black veins were creeping up his neck, threatening to attack his face.

“Alright, Arkk. I need you to swallow this as much as you can.”

Zullie’s boss didn’t respond. Not even a blink of his eyes. Was he weaker than he had been before she left?

Yes. Almost certainly. They wouldn’t need a potion if he was getting better.

The alchemist had given her a long glass straw to use to carefully administer the potion without spilling any. Dipping the straw into the phial and then covering the end captured a small amount in the tube. With Vezta holding Arkk’s head back and his mouth open, she held the straw partially in his mouth—not far enough to trigger a gag reflex—and let it dribble out and down his throat.

His breathing paused a moment. Just long enough for a weak swallow. That was a good sign. Zullie had been worried about accidentally drowning him on the concoction.

Zullie continued, forcing him to drink small amounts at a time until she couldn’t capture a meaningful amount in the straw, at which point she upended the remainder into his mouth and hoped that would be enough. Stoppering the bottle and setting it aside, Zullie watched as Vezta gently set him back down on the bed.

“How long before we see…”

Vezta trailed off. It wasn’t hard to see why. The black veins around his throat were already pulling back. His breathing, formerly labored, steadied out. The potion worked fast, it seemed. That alchemist, though antagonistic, knew alchemy.

“Good,” Vezta said. “As soon as we confirm the stability of his condition, we will be leaving. In fact, we ought to leave before he regains consciousness to avoid any protests on his part.”

“How will we—”

A pair of sharp knocks interrupted Zullie. Her head snapped to the door, worried the angry crowd from downstairs had decided to throw them out. Or worse. She dismissed the notion almost as soon as it came. An angry mob wouldn’t knock.

Vezta stepped toward the door, unfazed.

Zullie quickly inserted herself between Vezta and the door. “Maybe I should..?”

“I can handle myself.”

“It isn’t you who I’m worried about.” Zullie didn’t consider herself a creature blessed with social graces. Between a pair of angry orcs and an angry… whatever Vezta was, it was a bit sad that she thought she was the best option for a peaceful encounter with whoever was on the other side of the door.

Vezta stared a moment but dipped her head, clasping her hands in front of the eye that sat where her navel should be.

Taking a breath, Zullie carefully pulled open the door, ready to jump aside and let Vezta handle a potential angry mob. Only it wasn’t a mob at all. A well-dressed man stood on the other side of the door, gently running his fingers against the stubble on his chin. He looked surprised before a small smile wrinkled his face.

“Ah. Good day. Is Mister Arkk…”

“Doing better, now that he has had a healing potion.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I… I heard the alchemist when he came in. Mister Arkk went to help a woman who ventured outside the walls, asking little in return for his assistance. The monsters would have certainly followed anyone back, including that alchemist, so I know the others downstairs aren’t speaking with the entire story in mind.”

“That’s… much appreciated,” Zullie said with a forced smile. “Mister…”

“Wolf. Aron Wolf,” he said with a nod of his head. “Wolf Trading Company.”

“I’ll let Arkk know. I’m sure he’ll appreciate your visit.”

“Ah. I’m not here just for good wishes. I wanted to warn him that the crowd downstairs is getting… rowdy. Several guards have shown up. I would try to explain what happened myself but the hysterics of the situation seem out of my control. Letting you know so that there wouldn’t be any surprises is the least I can do.”

Zullie drew in a sharp breath. That didn’t sound good. What were they going to do? Throw them into the stocks? Lynch them outright? Zullie glanced over her shoulder. Neither option seemed likely to succeed with Vezta here. Either option would turn bloody.

Zullie’s hesitation to respond cost her. Vezta stepped forward, offering a polite bow. “Thank you for your warning. We were just leaving.”

The man stiffened, eyes going wide. He tried to speak only to cough on a bit of spittle. His coughing fit died out as he took a step backward. “Yes, well, I…” He cleared his throat more, pointing a finger vaguely away from the door. “I just… Better leave before… Good luck.”

Zullie watched him scurry off down the hall and could only shake her head. Vezta hadn’t even been trying to threaten him and she frightened him off. Hopefully, Arkk wasn’t going to be upset that he might have lost the one friend he had in this town.

Closing the door, Zullie turned back to the room. “How are we—What are you doing?”

“Avoiding unnecessary conflict,” Vezta said, pushing open the large shutters over the window. Her tendrils had Arkk wrapped up, held aloft and away from the bed. “Out the window. Dakka. Orjja. Zullie. I’ll follow.”

Neither orc looked impressed. “You want us to fit through that?”

The window wasn’t a large one. It had no glass. A vertical beam of wood bisected the opening, cutting down the total space to one that Zullie felt she would have a tough time squeezing through, let alone Dakka or the marginally larger Orjja.

Vezta simply looked back to the window, considering the problem. Before Zullie could offer any alternate solutions to the situation, tendrils wrapped around the frame and ripped a portion of the wall away.

“Out.”

Dakka didn’t argue again. With a casual shrug, she kicked aside a plank that was protruding before hopping straight out of the window. Orjja followed immediately after.

“Maybe we should leave some gold for repair—”

The noise of ripping away the wall must have alerted those on the ground floor. Heavy stomping moved up the stairs. Flipping the latch on the door, Zullie hurried over to the opening.

Vezta was already climbing out, using extensions of her tendrils to lower herself and Arkk carefully.

It wasn’t that high of a drop. The ground below was muddy and slick. Zullie’s mind started flipping through every spell she knew, trying to find one that wouldn’t have her breaking her leg if she landed poorly. A heavy slam against the door behind her made her mind go blank. Splinters of wood broke away from the latch with another heavy thud.

“Vezta!” Zullie shouted, jumping.

She wasn’t going to land well. Her arms spun through the air. She wasn’t just going to break her leg, her neck was going to snap against the muddy ground.

Oily black tendrils reached up and looped around her, slowing her down until her feet touched the ground as gently as if she were stepping down from one of the library’s ladders.

“Thanks.”

“Hurry,” Vezta said, not even stopping. “Arkk would be upset if I were to start a fight here.”

Zullie didn’t need telling twice. The angry shouts from above were more than enough motivation to rush through Darkwood Burg.

They rushed through the streets, moving directly toward the gate where all the fighting took place. Rekk’ar and the rest of the orcs stood outside the guardhouse, protecting the ritual circle within from a small contingent of guards who wanted to get back in. Zullie was honestly surprised that there hadn’t been a fight yet. Rekk’ar looked more than ready to start one.

The posturing of the guards died down as soon as one spotted Vezta approaching. Some must have seen her fight. They quickly pulled the rest away, granting them a wide berth to enter the guardhouse.

“Zullie. Get the orcs through the teleportation circle.”

“We’re taking the circle out? Arkk wanted to be seen leaving.”

“Then he should have been more careful.”

Zullie pressed her lips together but didn’t argue any further. It wasn’t that she was afraid of Vezta. The pre-Calamity monster did creep her out somewhat but she was fairly certain they had a good enough rapport between them to not come to actual conflict. Her lack of further protest stemmed from a definite desire to leave Darkwood behind and never return. Teleporting was simply the best way to put as much distance between her and the monster-infested woods as possible.

One by one, the orcs stepped inside. Zullie knelt next to the teleportation circle, activating it for each with only a small delay between. They all had done this before and knew they needed to clear the exit point as fast as possible.

There were more than just orcs inside the guardhouse. Two of those creepy lesser servants sat in one corner, bubbling and staring at everything while mouths and eyes formed and reformed across their pustulate skin. As Orjja, the last orc, made it through the portal, Zullie glanced at Vezta. “What about the servants?”

“Send one of them.”

“Only one?”

Vezta pointed a tendril at one. It carefully repositioned itself within the ritual circle. With a shrug, Zullie pushed out some of her magic. In a flash, the servant vanished.

“The other?”

“It will destroy the ritual circle after we have left then burrow straight down and discorporate,” Vezta said, narrowing her eyes at the few guards brave enough to stand at the doorway and watch what was going on. “Don’t want anyone following us.”

“Discorporate?”

“Kill itself.”

Zullie winced. “Is that really necessary?”

“It is just a lesser servant. It barely has thoughts of its own.” Vezta looked off into the distance over the heads of the few guards in the doorway. Zullie could hear shouts approaching. “Through the portal.”

“Sure.”

Zullie stepped inside and, with a light touch of magic, she found herself out in some nondescript forest. The same one she had traveled through on the way to the Darkwood Burg. The orcs stood around, casually chatting as they waited. They hardly took note of her presence, watching for Vezta and Arkk.

The two emerged a moment after Zullie cleared the circle. Vezta immediately destroyed the circle she had just emerged from with a liberal application of tendrils and then started directing the orcs through the next circle. The heavy rain, which had thankfully stopped, had disrupted part of the circle but Vezta was quick to clean it up.

As Zullie sent each orc through, she watched them, observing the way they looked at Arkk and Vezta. The end of the battle had been chaotic, to say the least. Just before all the monsters had vanished, they had broken through the gates. Zullie hadn’t seen it with her own eyes but she had heard from Dakka that, in the ensuing fight, Arkk had shoved Katt’am out of the way of the ghast’s claws.

Zullie barely interacted with the orcs. They lived in an entirely separate section of the fortress. Technically, she used the same mess hall for food. Practically, she ate at such odd hours that she most often scrounged through the kitchens to find food that she then took back to her room or the library. She wasn’t sure what relationship the orcs had with Arkk prior to today. She wasn’t sure what they had now, only that several were shooting him looks that she couldn’t quite parse.

Vezta left behind their final lesser servant to destroy the portal and then kill itself once again. The thought made Zullie a little ill at how callously Vezta just threw them away. Sentient or not, ugly though they were, she still found it disturbing to a degree. If Arkk was conscious, he probably wouldn’t have stood for it and would have insisted that they walk all the way back.

As Vezta destroyed the next teleportation circle without them traveling through it first, Zullie almost wished there were more lesser servants to facilitate their speedy return to the fortress. Almost. Not quite.

“Find the nearest burg or village,” Vezta said, holding out Arkk’s crystal ball. “We’ll head there for rest and transportation.”

Zullie couldn’t help but sigh as, an hour later, she located the nearest village far enough away that it would probably take the rest of the day and even part of the night to reach.

Maybe a little more than almost.

 

 

“Electro Deus!”

Lightning scorched the ground where the red-eyed ghast had been standing an instant ago. The ghast hadn’t jumped aside. It simply vanished. Arkk recognized the effect immediately as the same kind of teleportation he could do around Fortress Al-Mir.

“I did warn you, Master. It isn’t too late to flee.”

“Focus on the rest of them,” Arkk said, launching two more lightning bolts at the goblins attacking the gate. “Without an army, the other Keeper…” Arkk trailed off as the third goblin he tried to fry vanished much like the ghast.

It wasn’t just him either. Archers on the walls found their arrows passing right through where their targets had been. Farr’an tried to hit one of the snapping insects with a crossbow bolt, only for it to be whisked off elsewhere. Dakka and Orjja had procured bows from somewhere and were making efforts, but to Arkk’s eyes, it looked more like a waste of arrows than an effective battle tactic.

“Electro Deus.”

Five bolts laced out from each of Arkk’s fingers. Only two hit their targets. The Keeper was quick at getting the minions out of the way.

Zullie threw a few lightning bolts of her own. Like Arkk, the majority of hers struck nothing. Their combined accuracy was still better than any of the archers. Lightning was just a bit faster than arrows and they didn’t have to aim much at all. Just point and blast. Unfortunately for Zullie, she couldn’t maintain the output that Arkk could. After two or three bolts, she had to stop and take a short rest. That took out half their effective fighting force for several moments.

With a frustrated cry, Dakka shouted the incantation for lighting and fried a raptor that had tried to leap onto the wall near her. It looked like she tried for a second bolt but didn’t manage anything before collapsing, chest heaving up and down. Interesting though it was to note that she could cast that spell in a combat situation, Arkk was disappointed in her stamina with it.

Maybe training would increase her effectiveness? He would bring it up with Zullie later.

Arkk narrowed his eyes as he spotted movement in the distance. More monsters were approaching. Reinforcements? Or were they the ones the Keeper had whisked off coming back to rejoin the fray?

“He has territory nearby?”

Vezta, who hadn’t yet acted in an offensive capability as she stood next to Arkk, simply nodded her head. “I would expect nothing less.”

“We—”

Arkk cut himself off as a cry of alarm rose over the far end of the wall. A yellow and black striped insect had scaled the wall. One of the guards, bow on the ground and sword drawn, didn’t get a chance to strike out before the scythe-like pincers sliced him clean in two.

Arrows and crossbow bolts rained down as the insect started to lash out at another guard, only for the insect to vanish. That didn’t stop the arrows. One ripped straight through another guard’s thigh, eliciting a cry of pain.

The distraction allowed the forces at the wall to spring their attack. A ghast, using its powerful hind legs, leaped into the air not far from Arkk, intending to land on the wall somewhere near him.

“Electro Deus!”

A blinding bolt of lightning followed by a heavy thunderclap struck the flying ghast. Its limbs seized in mid-air but its momentum carried it straight toward the wall.

Tendrils erupted from the shadows around Arkk, ripping the ghast from the air. Arkk expected it to simply get whisked away to wherever the other monsters had gone, but it didn’t. Vezta’s tendrils wrapped around its limbs and began pulling, squeezing, and twisting. Pale blood dripped to the ground as if the ghast was a wet cloth being wrung. Finished, Vezta flung the broken body back into the crowd with enough force to crush a goblin.

“We should count ourselves lucky that this whole town isn’t within our opponent’s domain,” Vezta said in a conversational tone as she worked. “Not only would I not have been able to teleport directly to your side, but one of those large insects teleporting behind you would take off your head before either of us could react.”

“A few more of those and the wall will fall anyway,” Arkk said, looking around. “The Keeper just needs to kill enough guards to lessen the defense enough to where the majority of his force can rush inside unhindered. Until then, it is a battle of attrition and his teleportation tactic is giving him an advantage while depleting our stock of arrows. But…

“The Keeper isn’t fighting the way I would. He could have used his servants to burrow into the burg, bypassing the wall entirely. He is just throwing his forces at the wall. The heavily defended part of the wall no less.”

More reinforcements were coming to the gate. Soldiers from elsewhere. Even some of the mercenaries from the tavern.

Everyone was coming here.

“Dakka!” The orc wasn’t effective with the bow and couldn’t manage sustained lighting bolts. Arkk pulled out his crystal ball and tossed it over. “I need you to scry the rest of the wall. Make sure we aren’t fighting a distraction.”

“Me? Scry? I can’t—”

“It’s easy. If you can cast a lightning bolt, you can scry! Just think of where you want to see with a little touch of magic and the crystal ball will take care of the rest.”

“I… I can try.”

Arkk glanced at Zullie, who had given up on lightning spells in favor of some bird made of flames that swept outward from the wall before exploding in the middle of the monsters. It wasn’t killing anything—the wave of flame following the explosion wasn’t nearly as fast as lightning which meant that the Keeper could pull any monster that was in danger away—but it was doing a wonderful job of giving them some breathing room.

Vezta wasn’t actively attacking, but the few monsters that did make it within range either had to be whisked away before her tendrils could reach them or else she would crush them. It was like the Keeper couldn’t teleport anything away once she got her tendrils around them.

Both were too effective to put on scrying duty.

“Do it,” Arkk said, tossing the crystal ball. “Succeed and you’ll get a pay raise.” She tried to protest, but Arkk was already turning away. “Orjja!”

The green-skinned orc stiffened, loosing an arrow before turning to face him.

“Get down to the guardhouse. Take the teleportation circle. You should find another circle at the other end. Repeat that until you’re back at the fortress. I’ve shoved Rekk’ar and the other orcs into the armory—hopefully, they get the hint to gear up. Bring them back here.” Before she could offer the same protests that Dakka had tried, Arkk added, “You should be able to use magic enough to activate the circles.”

Orjja gave an uncertain nod to acknowledge the order but didn’t protest as she rushed down off the wall.

“Will a few orcs turn the tide?” Vezta asked, voice soft in the heavy rain.

“Not necessarily, but if we are being surrounded, I would rather have people I can count on to have my back,” Arkk said, eying a pair of the First Legion who were taking up the defense down the wall. “Can we destroy or otherwise nullify the Keeper’s territory? If the Keeper’s forces have to travel long distances after being rescued, that will at least wear them out. It should also slow down the attack, giving our side moments of rest.”

“Your lesser servants should be able to forcibly unclaim territory. They won’t be able to claim it in your name without territory of our own, but it would shrink our opponent’s effective area.”

Arkk, after launching a few more bolts of lightning, summoned a pair of lesser servants. “Burrow in that direction,” he said, pointing to where the reinforcing stream of monsters was coming from. “Find enemy territory and disrupt it.”

“They shouldn’t require verbal orders,” Vezta said, canting her head as she watched them leap off the wall and dive into the ground. A few monsters struck at the lesser servants, but they couldn’t follow into the tiny passages. The servants weren’t digging corridors or halls meant for others, just their own amorphous bodies. “The lesser servants are direct extensions of the [HEART]. Your [HEART].”

“So the ones I summoned earlier can be brought back to help those two?”

Vezta dipped her head. “For as much as they can help. You’ve seen them fight. The moment the other Keeper spots them, their mission will end.”

“They need escorts.”

“Master,” Vezta said, burning suns that were her eyes turning to bore into him. “Might I remind you that you said we were to defend only?”

Arkk fried a goblin and hit a ghast with lightning. The latter got back to its feet, unfortunately. “You know what they say about a good defense,” he said, gritting his teeth into a forced smile. “We just need to—”

“No we master. The Keeper is after you. If you step foot onto enemy territory, you will be surrounded and defeated in an instant.”

“If it is any consolation, I don’t think the Keeper wants to kill me. Just eat my brain.”

Vezta was not amused.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

Vezta drew in a breath of air and let it back out. “I will go after your servants. You will stay safe.”

“Will you be safe?”

Vezta’s eyes shifted back to the ground over the wall. She assessed for a moment before nodding. “If this is all the Keeper has, I won’t die.”

“And if he has more? If there is another of your kin around?”

“Then I will impress upon my sibling the utter mistake of attacking the master of Fortress Al-Mir.”

Arkk held Vezta’s gaze, looking for any sign of false bravado in her confidence. Finding none, he smiled. “Then I’ll leave this to—”

“Arkk!” Dakka shouted, moving closer with the crystal ball. “Sorry to interrupt. You were right. The guards along the northern side of the wall are dead. They look… eaten. Partially.”

Grimacing, Arkk looked back to Vezta. “If the Keeper is here, now might be the best time to go. Destroy as much as you can. Once you’ve been noticed, get out.”

Vezta hesitated, then bowed. “As you command.”

She backed up until she bumped against the waist-high barrier of the wall. She didn’t stop moving, tipping over backward. Arkk rushed over just in time to watch her land on her feet, somehow facing away from the wall. Tendrils covered in eyes and mouths whipped around her in a fury, striking at anything too close. The Keeper took note in an instant, ripping away any monsters that were within reach.

As soon as there was nothing left to attack, Vezta’s tendrils turned on her. They twisted around her, folding over and over as they tied her down into a tiny knot far too small to contain her full form. The tendrils turned and shrank until they were completely gone, pulled into the ground right where one of the lesser servants had burrowed into the ground.

A moment of silence covered both sides of the battlefield with Vezta’s departure. More than a few eyes turned in his direction. Even Zullie was staring down at the spot where Vezta had vanished. Arkk tried to pretend he didn’t notice. Instead, he used the momentary lapse in action to send a full-powered bolt of lightning at the nearest insect. The explosion of yellow globs of blood and viscera started the battle over again.

Twisting, roiling masses of tendrils erupted back onto the surface just after reaching a fortified wall through the narrow tunnel the lesser servants had dug. The entrance to the fortress was well hidden, poking out from a large boulder that might have been covering the entrance entirely up until this event started.

Vezta stared for a long moment, watching and observing as she tried to recall just who had commanded a [HEART] in this area. The area had the faint smell of death and decay still lingering even after a thousand years. The Eternal Silence, Vezta presumed. The only Keeper Vezta could recall who paid such tribute to the Eternal Silence would have been Duncan the Undefeated, who had obviously been defeated at some point over the centuries. Or… maybe he hadn’t. The Eternal Silence, a master of death and undeath, could have sustained a servant indefinitely.

Or so would have been the case before the Calamity.

As Vezta stood watching, a third lesser servant emerged nearby. Arkk had summoned five in total, three before she arrived and two after. She wasn’t sure where the missing ones were, but the three present should suffice for her current duty.

Disrupting the enemy’s ability to return their minions to the fight in a timely manner wasn’t a bad plan. It might make the opposing Keeper less inclined to rescue useless minions knowing that they wouldn’t be back in the fight for a long time in addition to tiring out those that did get rescued. It showed acceptable levels of tactical thinking, which was about all Vezta could expect from a novice. It was also a plan that only had a chance of success now. If the [HEART] of this fortress was connected to the [PANTHEON] the way it should have been, Vezta wouldn’t have made it more than a step inside before magical destruction rained down upon her for her insolence.

As it was, all she had to worry about were the monsters raining down upon her.

Vezta watched with narrowed eyes as a trio of monsters emerged from the long stairwell that led down into the depths of the fortress. None noticed the glowing eyes in the shadows of the Darkwood. They didn’t bother to look back, ushered along by their Keeper to continue their mindless assault on the human settlement. A pair emerged shortly after and another two after that.

Simply walking inside would see her caught. While Vezta had every confidence in her ability to escape, even should the Keeper make an appearance, the lesser servants would perish and thus she would fail her mission. Without the siege magics provided by a fully functional [HEART], burrowing inside wouldn’t be possible either. She could scour the area for an alternate entrance but that would likely consume too much time.

Vezta looked over the three waiting servants with a distasteful frown. If only she could carry out the task of destroying territory on her own. Alas, her former master had sacrificed much of her connection to [HEART] magics to make her a more effective advisor capable of autonomous thought and activity. It had been necessary for her to delve into the mysteries of the [HEART] failure caused by the Calamity.

Reaching down, she picked up one of the squirming masses of tentacles and began reshaping it much as she had done with the servant currently in charge of tailoring. Discarded bits and pieces fell to the ground around them as she rent the physical form of the creature, leaving it more or less in the form of a shadow between the stars. A few glowing eyes and one snapping set of teeth were all that remained. The rest of the darkness bled into the shadows of the brush under the trees.

Vezta performed the same treatment on the other two servants. They wouldn’t survive for long like this. They didn’t need to. Within the hour, she would finish her task and would finally be able to get her stubborn master away from this place.

Prepared, Vezta waited for a lull in the number of monsters emerging from the opening beneath the barrel. Her tendrils pulled her down into a shadowy form, though it wasn’t quite as hidden as while in Fortress Al-Mir or while near Arkk. The Keeper might notice if he paid attention. Some of the smarter minions could as well if they knew what to look for.

Entering the passageway with the other servants trailing after her, Vezta was surprised to find a total lack of doors. Had the Keeper relied entirely on the boulder as their method of defense? That, Vezta could only shake her head at. It was either an embarrassing display of incompetence, an embarrassing display of overconfidence, or an embarrassing display of ignorance. Whatever the case, her opinion of the Keeper fell even further as she continued down a long and straight corridor.

She no longer held any delusions that this might be Duncan the Undefeated.

The corridor was a mess. The tiles were cracked and broken and the gemstones, typical identifiers of [HEART] territory, were faded or missing entirely. Vezta could hardly believe that this area could count as territory without the linking stones carrying out the [HEART] magic. What were the servants of this fortress doing?

Vezta’s slithering march through the fortress corridor came to a pause as she considered that question.

Were there servants? Arkk only knew the spell to summon lesser servants because she taught it to him. If other servants of Vezta’s kind had withered away in the years since the Calamity, there might not be anyone around to teach the current Keeper of the [HEART]. Vezta was unsure how she had survived. The [HEART] going dormant without a master should have starved her. Instead, she had waited for a suitable master to come along and now lived to watch Fortress Al-Mir regain its beat.

Master Razerk’s modifications to her being might have been the cause. He truly had been a genius in the art of magic. If only he had lived to see her return with knowledge of what the so-called Light gods had done, he would have had the portal reopened in a week and the Calamity undone the next.

Thought discarded, Vezta pushed forward. If there were no servants in this fortress to reclaim the territory she destroyed, her task became infinitely simpler. She just needed to find the furthest junction of the territory. Fortress territory had to be contiguous for any given locale. If she disrupted territory as far from the boulder entrance as possible, she wouldn’t need to fight her way through minions every step of the way. Normally, that wouldn’t even be possible. She would have to start at the outside and work her way in on any proper fortress. Here? With the weak links between each tile?

She was honestly surprised that the fortification magic was still working. Destroying the territorial claim would be child’s play.

With the magic of the [HEART] disconnected, the servants would then be able to collapse the tunnel entirely, forcing the monsters to take a different route if the enemy Keeper wished to continue their assault.

Vezta found her junction after a few minutes of scurrying along the corners of the corridor. This tunnel was long and empty, much like those from Fortress Al-Mir that led to the nearby villages. It lacked the traps Arkk had installed and had no other defenses. Not even patrolling minions—they were presumably all involved with the assault. Vezta was disappointed with how easy this job was.

The servants under her command got to work with a mere gesture, fighting the weak magic of the dilapidated fortress’ claim on the territory. Vezta remained at the ready, fully prepared for the rain of minions.

Yet the tiles cracked and withered, collapsing to raw earth. As the last of the fortress magic dissipated from the area, a cascading effect ran down the corridor at Vezta’s back, destroying every tile and wall. Not questioning her good fortune at a lack of opposition, Vezta directed the servants to the walls to begin collapsing the tunnel.

Only after they burrowed within did the situation change.

A ghast appeared before Vezta, perhaps the same one from the initial moments of the assault. Frothing white foam dripped from its unhinged jaw as it looked around the corridor. Its tiny red eyes settled on Vezta after only a moment. Without a word or attempt at communication, it charged.

Vezta just waved, smiling wide as the tunnel collapsed down around it.

That wouldn’t have killed the Keeper. Even if he hadn’t been possessing a body, a simple teleport would have him extracted. With the collapse and no territory on this side, however, he was trapped over there. Vezta did not know where other entrances were or if there was another close route. That should still stall him enough.

Perhaps more than enough. A small part of Vezta wanted to agree with her master. Crushing this interloper entirely both for offenses against the [PANTHEON] and being such an embarrassment toward Keepers of the [HEART] would have been gratifying. Still, embarrassment though this Keeper was, her reasoning from earlier had not changed. Especially not now that he had been alerted to her presence. He would be on guard if he wasn’t completely incompetent.

With a small shake of her head, Vezta turned and started walking back through the dirt tunnel, directing the servants to continue collapsing the tunnel behind her until they inevitably expired.

Upon returning to the burg, Vezta took stock of the situation as she approached. The gate had been bashed in but there wasn’t any fighting going on. Bodies stained the ground, most from monsters but a few humans as well. No living monsters remained. The Keeper must have pulled them back, possibly fearing that they were under further attack.

Ducking under a ruined wooden beam of the gate, Vezta’s many eyes swept over the scene. The knot of fear pulled taut deep within her chest.

Humans stood on one side. Orcs stood on the other. Arkk was on the ground, blood staining his tunic from a series of thick claw marks across his chest. Zullie crouched over him, muttering something as she drew her finger over one of the wounds. The skin behind her finger sealed together as she moved, but whatever magic she was using didn’t work properly. The skin split apart almost immediately and her spell wasn’t doing anything about the black veins spreading out from the wound.

“Master?”

 

 

“Slave Natum.”

A trio of lesser servants appeared before Arkk. “Search the forest,” Arkk said. “Look for a fortress like Al-Mir. Failing that, alert me if you find anything that looks like a permanent dwelling.” They hadn’t even finished forming before they burrowed into the ground heading in the direction of the Darkwood forest, moving to carry out his commands. He wasn’t sure that they needed verbal orders. Around Fortress Al-Mir, they always just seemed to know what was needed at any given moment.

The verbal command at least removed any ambiguity on his end.

Ignoring the repulsed noises and cries of alarm from both his companions and the wall guards, Arkk closed his eyes and focused his attention afar.

Within Fortress Al-Mir, Arkk ripped one of the lesser servants through space remotely. It couldn’t reach him—he was far too far away—but he could pick it up and drop it down right in front of Vezta, stopping a discussion between her and Zullie. Assisting him from afar might not be possible. He still felt that she should be aware of the situation.

If it came down to it, Vezta had suggested chaining together teleportation rituals for rapid transit in the past. Both of them had been leery of actually doing so for the simple reason that it would leave a trail that led directly back to the fortress. Destroying the circles forced the one doing the destroying to walk the distance, which wasn’t an insurmountable problem but it was an irritating one.

With the lesser servant interrupting Vezta, a crystal ball appearing in its hand along with an alembic, he hoped Vezta would catch on. She was smart enough.

As soon as Arkk saw her pick up the crystal ball and start scrying with it, Arkk opened his eyes. It would likely take her a few minutes to find him since he wasn’t actually in the alchemist’s workshop, the first place he figured she would check because of that alembic. That gave him plenty of time to start scrawling down a few messages for Vezta to read from afar. The guards, after receiving a generous donation of far too many coins, had been more than happy to lend him some parchment and ink.

“I will be getting Gretchen back to my workshop,” Morford whispered. Gretchen was under the cloak once again, but Morford had a hand gripping the empty air, so presumably, he was holding onto her.

They started to turn, but Arkk held up a hand. “Wait.”

Morford stiffened. “I offered payment. I can offer more if—”

“I don’t care about payment or Gretchen at the moment. You said you had seen red-eyed ghasts before? When? Under what circumstances? Have you ever seen more than one at a time? How many ghasts are estimated to be in the forest?”

Arkk could feel the flat look he was getting despite not being able to see it. “Gretchen—”

“Is an excuse. Answer my questions, alchemist.” Arkk shot a look at Dakka and nodded his head toward Morford. “This is not negotiable. If you refuse, I will carry out the job I initially came here for. Rescuing Gretchen from her captor.” Arkk shot a pointed look at Morford as he said that.

“You wouldn’t,” hissed the empty air next to the alchemist as Dakka approached, arms crossed over her chest.

“I won’t need to if you just answer the questions.”

“An invasion of ghasts is unlikely at worst,” Morford hedged, sounding more resigned than upset. “They don’t work together.”

“Assume there is an outside force making them work together.”

“That is just as absurd. I have studied the creatures in an attempt to uncover the secrets of their creation. They possess a gland that secretes a substance which makes them angry and then turns their rage into strength and brutality. Unfortunately, a flaw in its design causes it to go overactive when in the presence of another of their kind. The smell of each other sets it off. Hence their territoriality.”

“Boss,” Dakka said, “we might be dealing with more than just ghasts.”

“How do you figure?”

Dakka shrugged. “You hired us, that witch, and Vezta, right? There are all kinds of monsters out in this forest. If this guy can hire these ghast things, who is to say that he can’t hire everything else?”

Arkk closed his eyes. She was right. He hadn’t actually hired Vezta—she had come along as a part of the fortress more than a minion—but everything else was accurate. What all was out in the forest? Undead, an insect colony, goblins, raptors… probably more besides those. Raptors were beasts more than monsters. Was it possible to hire them? If not, it was entirely possible that he would have people in his employ capable of taming them and using them as war beasts.

Pulling out his crystal ball, Arkk asked, “Morford, when you were out there exploring, did you ever come across old ruins, structures, landmarks, peculiar activity among the various monsters, or anything else of interest?”

The guards, though happy to hand over parchment in exchange for gold, hadn’t believed a word about an invasion. Monsters threw themselves against the walls of Darkwood Burg with a regularity that had become routine. None of those assaults were organized. If he could scry an army approaching and show it off, he might be able to organize a proper defense.

While Morford thought, Arkk quickly checked in on Vezta. She and Zullie were hovering over the crystal ball. A quick glimpse into their crystal ball showed it focused on him. Glad Vezta was such an adept at scrying, Arkk pointed over to the parchment where he had set it down on the gatehouse table. One of the guards was reading it as well, not that Arkk minded much. While he hadn’t written it in code, references to another potential fortress were vague enough that only someone familiar with them should be able to understand what he had written down.

Other parts of the message were less vague. A potential invasion on the burg chief among them.

“There is a lake in the center of the forest,” Morford said in their usual whisper. “When I and…” They trailed off, hesitating a moment before restarting their sentence. “When I first came to this settlement and began my research, there was an old church-like building that I observed some monsters making their home of. Raptors, for the most part. We caught a ghast not far from it and neutralized it with one of my potions before dragging it away for examination.”

Looking into his crystal ball, Arkk focused high above the forest. From there, it was easy to pick out the lake. It looked completely landlocked. No river flowed in or out. “What side of the lake? Closer to the burg or the opposite side?”

“Closer, around the southern side.”

Adjusting the viewpoint in the crystal ball, Arkk started scanning. “Dakka, write what Morford just said on the parchment while I search,” he said.

Image after image flashed by in the crystal ball, flickering from point to point around the lake. The vast majority of everything he saw was just trees, unfortunately. Thick black-barked trees with branches high over the forest floor formed a thick canopy that blocked even more of what little light there was today. Those must have been the trees Darkwood had been named for.

He found it. He wasn’t sure if it had been a church in its former life, but today, the ruins Morford had pointed out were little more than a mound of rubble. A full pack of emerald-feathered raptors was nesting within the crumbled walls. Each was as large as a horse, capable of moving fast to chase prey. Their hooked beaks were sharp enough to tear through flesh as easily as the kingdom’s sharpest sword. Or so Arkk had heard; this was his first time seeing one.

Moving the viewpoint of the scrying down below ground, Arkk sucked in a breath.

A familiar sight greeted him. Large hallways lit by torches and the occasional glowstone. If he squinted his eyes and blurred his vision somewhat, Arkk doubted he would have been able to tell the difference between Al-Mir and this corridor. Upon looking closer, however, the differences were obvious. Instead of clean tiles with a faint maze pattern and compass rose in the floor, the tiles here were old and worn, cracked and broken. There were still glowstones, these burning a dim red as opposed to Al-Mir’s vibrant violets, but several tiles were simply missing their glowstones. Checking from room to room, he had to frown at the sight. Most of it looked dilapidated. More like how he had originally found Al-Mir instead of its refurbished look after the servants had gone through to clean it up. The rooms that did have items and occupants looked less like they had been constructed using the fortress magic and more like the occupants had simply dragged in whatever they needed from outside.

Still, it was there.

And disturbingly empty. Al-Mir had a lot of entirely unused rooms but enough of it had activity, even with the currently reduced presence of orcs within its walls, that he felt confident in being able to find signs of life if he had to scry his own fortress. This place, however, was deserted. That might have filled him with confidence had he not received that warning about invasion earlier. As it was, it only made him think that this other Keeper’s forces were already moving toward the burg.

“Write down—”

A faint flash of light in the guardhouse cut Arkk off. He blinked twice and found Vezta, hands clasped at her navel, standing in the middle of a freshly formed teleportation circle.

“Master, I—”

“Holy Light!” the guard cried out, staring at Vezta.

That was the wrong thing to say. All of Vezta’s eyes narrowed as an oily tendril lashed out from her arm, wrapping around the guard’s throat.

“Stand down, Vezta,” Arkk said as soon as he realized what was happening. “He isn’t an enemy.”

The tendril remained in position just long enough for it to look like she was going to snap his neck anyway. It uncoiled, letting the guard drop into a heap where he quickly scrambled back against the wall. The tendril merged with Vezta’s arm as she gave a light bow. “As you command.”

Letting out a small sigh, Arkk looked over his servant, then dropped his eyes to the ritual circle. “You came.”

“Another active fortress is unexpected and warrants extreme measures.”

“What do you propose we do about it? I assume you have suggestions?”

“We leave,” Vezta said. Arkk blinked a few times, not quite sure he heard her correctly. She took that as a need for explanation. “We take this circle out of the city. It took four hops to reach you here. We will only use this, the shortest distance teleportation. The rest we destroy on our way back to Fortress Al-Mir. After we have gone, we can reevaluate the situation at our leisure.”

“This other Keeper is going to invade,” Arkk said, frowning. “You want to leave these people to fend for themselves?”

“They are not allied with you.” Vezta sighed, then pointed a tendril toward the parchment. “And if it bothers you to such an extent that you would throw your life away, consider that this Keeper is invading for you. If you are no longer here, there is no cause to invade.”

“And who is going to tell this Keeper that I’ve left?” Arkk shook his head.

Stepping closer, Vezta put a hand on Arkk’s arm. “Master, many of Fortress Al-Mir’s capabilities are not functioning due to the Calamity. I have no reason to believe that this fortress is any different. However, the capabilities Fortress Al-Mir does provide heavily favor defense. Assaulting an opposing fortress without offensive power—or, indeed, an army—will see you defeated and me bereft of a master once more.”

“But that’s—” Arkk paused as he felt a tug on the link between him and one of the lesser servants. Checking on it, he frowned. “One of the lesser servants I sent out to find the fortress just ran into a fortified wall that it can’t dig through?”

Vezta nodded her head as if she expected that. “As I said, we lack offensive capabilities. We would have to find a proper entrance, go through it the way the opposing Keeper wants us to, and deal with his traps and minions. Minions that he can move about at will just as you can yours within Al-Mir’s walls.”

Arkk pressed his lips together. “What kind of offensive capabilities?”

Vezta cast a glance around the room, narrowing her eyes at each of the individuals present who weren’t affiliated with Fortress Al-Mir. Taking Arkk by the arm, she led him off to a corner of the room where they could speak in quiet, hushed tones. “There exists magic capable of rending the fortifications. Siege magic. I know little about how to go about affecting such spells but do know that my former master, as powerful as he was, was forced to lean heavily on the [HEART]’s magical reserves when conducting these rituals.”

“Is the Heart capable of supporting that kind of magic right now?”

Vezta could only shrug. “Unsure. The [HEART] gains strength with additional territory and minions. It might be possible. It might be impossible with the effects of the Calamity looming over us. However, in either case, neither of us knows how to cast those rituals.”

Arkk closed his eyes once more but before he could say anything else, a shout came down from outside the guardhouse. “Enemies at the gate! To arms!”

Vezta tried to pull Arkk toward the circle, but he shook her off. “We can’t leave.” Before she could protest, Arkk said, “We won’t attack the fortress. We will help defend. Then we need to be seen leaving the city. Is that—”

Another faint flash filled the guardhouse. Arkk blinked and glanced over to the teleportation circle.

Zullie stood in the middle, looking down at her hands with a loopy grin on her face. “That was a hell of a thing.”

“Zullie, you know any offensive magics?”

The violet-eyed witch looked up, offense written across her face. “Do I know offensive magics? Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“A woman who said she had never been in a fight when last I asked.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with my magical knowledge.”

“Good. Zullie is here for the defense too.” Arkk paused then tilted his head to one side. “What about siege magic?”

“Siege magic?” Zullie sounded less certain. “What exactly would that entail? I’m sure some magic I know could be used in a protracted siege…”

“Never mind.” Looking back to Vezta, Arkk placed a reassuring hand on her arm. “Defense then leave. Alright?”

Vezta let out a long, incensed sigh. “As you command,” she said with a bow.

“Good,” Arkk turned, nodded to Dakka, then started out of the guardhouse. He paused at Morford, however. The alchemist’s dark lenses were locked on Vezta. Thinking back, Morford had been staring at Vezta since her arrival. Obviously, Arkk couldn’t see them blinking, but with how utterly still they were, Arkk wouldn’t be surprised to find out that Morford hadn’t blinked once since that initial flash of light.

Shaking his head, Arkk moved past the alchemist without a word. Morford wasn’t a minion of his. He couldn’t command them around. Not to mention that he had maybe threatened Morford just a little bit ago to get them talking about the fortress. Better to just leave them alone.

With Vezta here, Arkk wasn’t too concerned about whatever this Keeper might throw at the burg. They had the guards to back them up and, assuming she did know combat magic, Zullie could sling spells from the walls until she collapsed from exhaustion.

A set of stairs along the wall granted him access to the ramparts. He probably wasn’t supposed to be allowed access. Nobody stopped him. A number of guards were rushing up ahead of him, all brandishing longbows. Vezta, Zullie, and the orcs followed him up, also unimpeded. Vezta did draw a few looks and even an alarmed shout. However, the presence of a monster standing peacefully on the wall paled drastically in comparison to what was lurking in the woods that hugged the road out of the city.

Arkk started to wonder if his confidence in fighting off this force was misplaced.

Multiple ghasts lurked around a large group of raptors and goblins, running counter to Morford’s claims. There weren’t many and they were spread across the rest of this… army? Insects took up the backline. They were larger even than the raptors with thin, spindly legs and large snapping pincers. Others were more bulbous in shape, drooling caustic yellow slime. Arkk didn’t know much about insect colonies like this, unfortunately. He had no clue what they were capable of.

It was a small consolation that this army numbered fewer than the horde of goblins that had attacked Langleey Village. There had been two hundred goblins in that encounter, though about half of them had fled once Ilya and the other villagers returned to offer support. This wasn’t even half as large. Maybe not even a third of the size. With the ghasts, raptors, and insects, he felt he would rather have faced off against four hundred goblins instead.

At the lead of the army, one ghast stood in front of the rest. One with bright red eyes, ominously glowing in the dark storm.

 

 

 

Arkk was no stranger to being out in the middle of a storm. Really bad storms didn’t happen around Langleey more than a few times a year. When they did occur, they tended to do so at unpredictable moments. If he was in the village, it was typically a time for staying indoors and doing little else. Sometimes, however, they happened while he and Ilya were out hunting, forcing them to seek shelter—and often forcing them to head home should the winds have ripped their camp down.

This storm was the first Arkk could recall in which he ventured out into it willingly.

The soakless solution on the cloaks helped a lot. The rain didn’t quite avoid them, but it was the next closest thing. If not for the humidity in the air, he wouldn’t have felt much different than on a chill day. Watching the water run down his front without drenching him brought a little spark of joy as he started thinking back to that treatise on alchemy, wondering if he would be able to make something like this in the future. If Arkk had known this was possible, he would have tried to find an alchemist a long time ago to treat his clothes.

Though, until recently, he wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

Checking over his shoulder, he was pleased to note that all three of his orcs were looking much happier, outfitted in their own cloaks. Morford walked a short distance away, moving with their group without being a complete part of it.

Turning his attention forward again, Arkk frowned. “Damn. She must have been beyond the walls before I started tracking her.”

The street they just stepped on was near the edge of Darkwood Burg. A thick stone wall stood tall at the end of the street, blocking progress forward. While Arkk could see the ethereal glow of Gretchen in the distance, he hadn’t been able to tell what was between them. This had simply been the most direct path from the alchemist’s shop to Gretchen.

“Is there a gate nearby?” Arkk asked, looking to Morford.

The alchemist looked around as if to double-check where they were, then nodded. “Follow me,” they whispered before walking along the street they had just come from.

The nearest gate took longer to reach than Arkk had been hoping for. He knew from the first time he had successfully performed the tracking ritual that it wouldn’t last forever. He didn’t know exactly how long that was, but if it started to fade before they reached Gretchen, he would do nothing to try to restart it. He couldn’t risk that.

Not with what happened to the stag.

The gate was locked tight, protected by miserable guards trying to take cover from the rain in the small alcoves on either side of the larger wooden structure. A few happier guards hung out near the guardhouse, safe under its awnings. As miserable as the others looked, the ones positioned on the ramparts had to be in a worse state of mind, not even having a wall to block some of the rain. The alchemist, in far more of a hurry than Arkk was even with the time limitations on his ritual, rushed up and began speaking with one of the guards. Their conversation concluded before Arkk could finish walking up.

“They will allow us out,” Morford whispered as the guard pulled the latches on the smaller door set within the larger gate.

“I know what I said back in the tavern about following your orders… We’re really going out in this?” Dakka grumbled, first glancing at the dark clouds overhead and then at Arkk.

He wasn’t particularly happy about it either. Perhaps he should have taken everything the alchemist owned instead of just the soakless solution.

Dakka’s shield was on her back, over her cloak. As she ducked through the relatively small door, she drew her axe, holding it firm in two hands. The other orcs followed suit, drawing their weapons. Orjja wielded a large mace with thick triangular protrusions coming off the bulbous end. Farr’an, apparently having taken up tutelage under Olatt’an, wielded a crossbow with a nasty blade on the end.

Arkk had his daggers but planned to use lightning almost exclusively if something started a fight.

The alchemist followed up in the rear, brandishing no obvious weapons but took a moment to adjust a number of vials on a bandolier. Some contained colored liquid, others clear liquid, and others still looked more like they contained miniature clouds. Arkk was curious, but not so much so that he hoped one of the Darkwood’s monsters would come charging out and force the alchemist to reveal just what was in those stoppered bottles.

Outside the burg, thankfully on the side of the town that faced away from the majority of the forest even if some of it did wrap around and follow alongside the road, Arkk could see the ethereal glow of Gretchen in the distance. It didn’t look like she was making good time, trudging away with heavy steps. From her posture, hazy though it was to his eyes, he guessed that she was wrapped up tight in her cloak.

It hadn’t occurred to Arkk to try to scry on her as scrying on someone invisible was fairly useless. Now, he wondered if that cloak was her invisibility cloak or a regular one that she had switched to for the travel.

Drawing his crystal ball from its pouch, he looked down and focused. Unable to tell how far away to look from the tracking spell alone, he focused on himself first then dragged the view in the crystal ball toward Gretchen’s position. After a few moments of seeing nothing, Arkk almost put the crystal ball away. Movement in its smooth surface made him pause. A few quick flashes of the view changing had him close enough to see what they might be dealing with.

“Wolves,” he said, drawing the attention of the others even as they hurried along the path away from Darkwood Burg.

A small pack. Six that he could see. All things considered, a pack of wolves wasn’t the worst thing to face. Even better, while in the rough direction of Gretchen, they didn’t seem to be actively hunting her. The heavy rain probably played havoc on their senses, drowning out footsteps and washing away smells in the air. Still, they were in her direction and that alone posed a mild danger. Most wolves wouldn’t just maul a person for no reason, but if they were hungry enough?

Arkk had everyone pick up the pace.

A few wolves weren’t a problem. So long as they were far enough away from him when he spotted them, he could likely take them out on his own. Having seen the results of the orcs on their first mercenary job, that of culling a few out-of-control wolves that had been harassing a village, he was willing to bet that Dakka alone could take them on, let alone all three orcs and him. That was assuming the wolves would fight at all rather than run off once faced with a threat they couldn’t handle. Arkk figured that just them showing up would see them back to the woods.

With them running and Gretchen stumbling through the mud, they made decent progress relative to her. It was quite a ways away, far enough that Darkwood Burg looked like a little brown box against the backdrop of the thick Darkwoods. Had Gretchen managed to get her hands on a horse, catching up would have been a much more difficult ordeal. As it was, it just took some good old-fashioned hustle.

In the distance, he thought he could see her. The actual Gretchen, not the ethereal tracking spell. The crystal ball must have been too small to see properly, but there was an odd haze in the air. A person-shaped bubble where the rainwater hit and ran off, leaving a space in the air. As impressive as the invisibility cloak was, it did not work perfectly in the rain.

He could see the wolves as well, lurking off in the woods a short distance away from the path. As Arkk expected, their hasty approach startled the small pack, sending them away.

“Gretchen!” the alchemist said, apparently having seen the same distortion in the air that Arkk had. Their voice was still a whisper, but a raised one filled with a harsh rasp.

The haze, and the ethereal glow coming from within, froze.

“She knows we can see her, right?” Dakka said, loud enough that it was meant for Gretchen to hear.

There was a long pause before Gretchen reached up and pulled her hood down. “I told you not to follow me,” she said, looking about ready to cry. Maybe she was crying. With the rain, it was hard to tell.

“I might have listened to your wishes had you left on any other day.” Morford stepped forward, only for Gretchen to step back. The alchemist stopped moving as soon as she did so. “Today? What were you thinking? You know the dangers—”

Six heads snapped to the south of the road as a baying cry started and silenced in the same short second. An instant later, four of the wolves from earlier bolted out from the tree line straight toward their group. The lightning spell on Arkk’s tongue died as he watched the four wolves, two of whom were splattered with blood, run straight past them, heading into one of the recently emptied fields.

A new noise followed in the wake of the wolves, drawing everyone’s attention back to the trees. Arkk had a hard time identifying just what that noise was supposed to be. A howl? A shout? Laughter? It sounded distinctly human and yet animalistic at the same time.

Whatever it was, it sent a chill up his spine.

“We cannot be out here,” the alchemist whispered, grasping hold of Gretchen’s invisible shoulders. “Back to the burg. Quickly.”

“And put our back to that sound?” Arkk asked, watching as Morford forced a protesting Gretchen along the road.

“Better to be near the wall than caught in the open.”

“Caught by what?” Dakka asked, glowering at the trees.

“Ghasts,” the alchemist said. “Quickly.”

None of them made it more than five steps before that chittering howl started again. It was louder now. Closer. Arkk narrowed his eyes, looking at the trees. With the heavy clouds overhead diminishing what little light made it through the trees and the rain making it even harder to see, he didn’t spot the source of the sound.

“What is a ghast?” Arkk asked, moving once again. Even Gretchen wasn’t protesting now.

“Beasts created for war,” Morford whispered without looking back. “We do not wish to encounter even a single one.”

“Created?”

This time, the alchemist’s beak-like mask turned. Not fully. They still kept their hands on Gretchen’s shoulders as they rushed along the path. “This forest has played home to a plethora of unpleasant guests over its lifetime. Necromancers, warlocks, vampires, and others besides. This dark forest contains numerous ancient evils.

“The ghasts are creations of a life alchemist attempting to design a being that could conquer the kingdom. I dare say he might have succeeded if he hadn’t been consumed by his creations before he could learn to control them. It is what initially drew my interest to this area.”

“You wanted to conquer the kingdom?”

“I wanted knowledge. What would I do with a kingdom?” The alchemist managed to inject incredulity into their whisper.

Shaking his head, Arkk looked to the forest again and decided to ask a slightly more immediately important question. “Are they immune to lightning?”

“I do not know. They were created for war and all that entails.”

Although Arkk talked to every single person who passed through Langleey Village, learning more about the world beyond the farms, he had little clue about what, exactly, war entailed. Obviously, people fighting each other. Soldiers, weapons, knights, and spellcasters. Zullie had taught him the academy-approved lightning spell and it was fairly long-winded, but if a row of spellcasters was protected by a frontline of soldiers, they would be able to cast it with relative freedom.

But did they? Would a man who wanted to conquer the kingdom have prepared his creations for lightning spells in specific?

Arkk gnawed at his lip as another cackling howl echoed from the trees.

This time, he saw something. A dark shape, shadowed by the heavy birch and pine trees. The silhouette shuddered with great, heaving breaths as it stood hunched over with long arms dangling down to its legs. Arkk opened his mouth, the incantation for lightning on his lips, but the creature disappeared behind another copse of trees before he could get a single syllable out.

“It is watching us,” he said instead.

“All the more reason to hurry,” Morford said, drawing a vial of dark red liquid and holding it tight in one hand.

“If we reach the walls and they don’t let us in because we’re being chased, doesn’t that just mean that we’ll be up against that wall with nowhere to run?”

“You would rather face it out here?”

“I would rather not face it at all if I’m being honest. How likely is it to attack us? Do they travel in packs?”

“There won’t be more. They are aggressively territorial toward their own kind,” Morford whispered, looking off into the trees. “Another failure by their creator. As for how likely it is to attack? I’m surprised it isn’t attacking already.”

Arkk started to ask another question, only to freeze as he caught sight of the creature once again. It chittered, wheezing behind one of the trees. He could see it better now. Closer to leaving the forest, it was in the light enough for Arkk to grimace in revulsion. Hairless with skin a ghastly gray, it looked like a human with distorted proportions. Its eyes were tiny relative to its head and it lacked both a nose and ears, having only thin slits in their places. It lacked lips as well, leaving gums and far too many teeth visible as the skin was drawn back around its maw. Red glistened off its teeth.

Blood from one of the wolves?

It elicited a feeling of revulsion similar to what he had experienced the first time he saw one of the lesser servants. It wasn’t quite the same but it was a feeling of wrongness. The creature near the trees just shouldn’t be.

“Electro Deus,” Arkk intoned.

Even as he built up magic at the tips of his fingers, he didn’t fire the spell.

The eyes of the monster changed. Formerly a beady white, the moment Arkk finished his incantation, they glowed a luminous red. A familiar red. Its entire posture shifted, moving from a hunched back to a straightened back. The laughing wheeze vanished.

Arkk’s eyes widened, then narrowed immediately. Not sure that he could do it on demand, he drew on as much irritation as he could manage; the rain, the waste of time this trip had been, the delay in returning to the fortress, and the other bounty hunters. All his feelings focused on a point.

An external view of himself using his connection to his employees showed his eyes flashing red. It didn’t last long. A few seconds at most.

It was enough.

The ghast, the possessed ghast, stilled for a long moment. Its large thighs and digitigrade legs made it look like it was better suited for leaping, yet it took a single step forward.

Farr’an readied his crossbow and the alchemist raised the vial in his hand, ready to throw.

“Wait!” Arkk said, holding up a hand. Aside from that single step, the ghast wasn’t moving. Just watching.

“Wait?” Morford hissed. “I’ve seen the red-eyed ones before. They’re smarter and far more vicious.”

“Orjja, Farr’an, escort Gretchen and Morford back to town. Dakka, with me.”

Everyone hesitated at Arkk’s orders. He could see Dakka’s glance at him over his shoulder.

“You sure about that, boss?”

“No. But…” Arkk took a breath, not blinking as he kept his eyes on the monster. It still wasn’t moving toward them, just watching and waiting. “But yes. Do it.”

Orjja and Farr’an still hesitated. Morford and Gretchen did not. Jerking his head got the orcs moving. Arkk waited a few moments for them to put some distance between them before he cautiously approached the line of trees. Arkk eyed the monster’s teeth and its long fingers. The fingers were like spider legs, sharp and to a point with thick joints. One of its hands was as red as its face.

But it still didn’t attack.

Arkk kept a distance between them. He might be curious and suspecting that this wasn’t some wild creature, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Only mostly an idiot.

“Do you speak?” Arkk said, then paused and altered his question. “Maybe I should ask if this body speaks?”

The ghast narrowed its thin eyes even further. When it did speak, its voice gurgled with a wet slop in the back of its throat. “You are the one casting old magic in my domain.” Arkk got a distinct impression that these creatures were not designed to speak as humans did. Or, if they had been designed to speak, this one hadn’t done so in years. Its speech was further hampered by its lack of lips.

“If by old magic you mean a single lightning bolt yesterday, then yes. Otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

A repetitive clicking came from the back of the ghast’s throat. Arkk wasn’t sure what that meant.

He was curious and wary. The presence of this possessor made Arkk wonder about this forest. All the stories he had been told, from what Hawkwood said back in Cliff to the alchemist just a few moments ago, said that this forest harbored numerous dangerous creatures. It drew the attention of necromancers and life alchemists—whatever those were—and other powerful individuals who all sought refuge within to carry out their plots and research.

Now it was starting to make a little more sense. There was a [HEART] in the forest. One that sounded like it had been claimed many times over the decades.

Was there another of Vezta’s kind out in the forest? Did this claimant know more old magic than Arkk did? Was there a library out there filled with a treasure trove of old books that were more intact than those in Arkk’s library? Would this [HEART] work for Vezta’s ultimate goal or would they have to destroy it?

He was curious. Eager, even. Yet, something gnawed at the back of his mind. It had been gnawing since seeing this creature’s eyes turn red. Arkk wasn’t quite sure what that feeling was, only that it was screaming a single word at him.

Rival.

“Where did you learn?” the gurgling gaunt asked.

“Old magic?” Arkk licked his lips. “A mentor taught me everything she knew. You? You’re using Cranium Internum, correct? Possession.”

Its narrow eyes widened for a moment. “You do know. In my eighty years, I have never met another…”

Arkk did not miss how it didn’t answer his question. He didn’t bring it up. Most of that was an attempt at deflection. Admitting to being another owner of a [HEART] felt dangerous. He would consult with Vezta before saying anything on the subject. Instead, he shrugged. “I am a traveler from afar after a bounty. I wasn’t expecting to meet someone like you. I apologize if you feel I’ve intruded. We were going to leave today, but the storm has delayed us.”

“After feeling the old magic, I set my watchers along the roads. I was preparing to invade the burg, but I suppose that is no longer necessary.”

“Invade?” Arkk said, tension threatening to rip his stomach apart. “Just for me? For a single lightning spell?”

He had been about to ask if the ghast—or the person possessing it—would be willing to sell books on old magic in exchange for gold. Now?

“An old magic practitioner is too rare. I would have you give your knowledge to me.”

“I have a few books,” Arkk said. “Not with me, but—”

“No books,” the ghast said, stepping forward. “I would have you give your knowledge to me.”

Something about the way it spoke made Arkk think that it wasn’t inviting him to a nice sit-down around a cup of tea for a chat about their favorite spells. The way it was looking at him was more akin to something wanting to rip open his mind and consume the contents without any regard for him.

Was that possible to do with possession? Arkk hadn’t tried to do anything similar during his one experiment with the spell, but it did make a little sense. He had been sharing Zullie’s mind.

Something to think about later.

For now…

“Well,” he started, trying to keep as calm as possible. “I suppose I could share my favorite spell right now. Have you heard of… Electro Deus.”

The moment the incantation left his lips, Arkk opened the gateway of his magical power to its fullest. Every scrap of magic he had went into his fingers as he thrust his hand forward. A bolt of lightning burned into his eyes as a deafening thunderclap threatened to throw him to the ground. The air around him lost all moisture as it burned, feeling more like he was standing next to a bonfire rather than out in a rainstorm.

When his eyes finally cleared, the ghast was gone. In a panic, he started looking around, only to turn back to where the ghast had been.

There was a dark cloud there. Shadow given a misty form. As it slowly solidified, a pair of bright red lights appeared in the head of the shadow. The two eyes narrowed into thin slits, forming a glare that lacked any words but promised pain, agony, and ultimate death.

Before Arkk could start the incantation over for a fresh if less powerful bolt of lightning, the shadow whisked away through the trees.

Gone.

Possessing something else? Another ghast? Back to his [HEART]? Arkk didn’t know.

All he did know was that they needed to get out of here. Immediately. Back to the burg, maybe to mount a defense against whatever invasion that Keeper of a Heart had been planning on.

Turning, he noted Dakka’s face twisted in a snarl. She was blinking several times, trying to clear her own eyes from that bright lightning bolt. At the same time, she looked completely ready to chop her axe down through whatever approached.

“Are you okay?”

“Where did it go?” she growled. “Did you get it?”

“I think I got the ghast. Not whatever was possessing it.” Arkk, carefully, grabbed Dakka’s arm and helped lead her back to the road.

Shaking him off, she kept blinking for a few moments before shaking her head. “I’m fine. Just a blind spot straight through the center of my eyes.”

“Sorry. After the alchemist’s comments, I wasn’t sure that a normal lightning bolt would put it down.”

“I wish I could have seen its face,” she grumbled. “Didn’t know who it was messing with, did it?”

“We need to get back and try to convince the guard that a threat is coming,” Arkk said, avoiding her question. It wasn’t like he had given it a fair shot. The ghast probably would have torn him apart if he hadn’t taken it by surprise. If it came back with two ghasts, he doubted he would be able to kill both before they reached him. Not with that powerful of a bolt of lightning, anyway.

Shaking his head, he started running down the path toward the other orcs and humans. He could see they had stopped. Probably because of that thunder. “We need to hurry,” Arkk shouted. “We’ll pick up and carry Morford and Gretchen if we have to.”

Hopefully, the guards could be readied for an invasion.