“My sons!” Overlord Avernix roared.

The camp was in chaos.

Warriors ran to and fro, eager to make themselves useful lest they catch their sovereign’s wrath. The air was thick with the tang of blood. Light rain pattered on Eppon’s tent’s roof and a great line of standing crosses beyond. Upon them hung the crucified bodies of Avernix’s sons’ personal guard. After so great a failure, the overlord had no use for them. Had Lukotor not been engaged, he would have had him feed them to the hungriest of demons.

Before him lay his two heirs, one dead and the other bewitched and maimed.

A villain’s hand had carved the Garric word for ‘Coward’ deep into Eppon’s chest, though the insult was now hidden by reddened bandages. Were it not for the strange magic holding him in unnatural slumber, he likely would have bled to death in the night. Lukotor the Wise bent over the bewitched Eppon, working to break the spell as he had been for the entirety of this day. Acrid herbs burned in a vessel at his side and strange words tumbled from his mouth.

“They’ve shamed them!” Avernix’s voice cracked toward the evening sky. He looked down upon the ashen face of Agisil, whose eyes were now sealed in death. “Not in all my years of warring has there ever been such humiliation! Who did this!? Who!?”

“My Overlord!” A runner burst through the crosses. “We found a trail!”

The conqueror snarled. “Where?”

“Into the forest, lord.”

Lukotor looked up sharply. The words of power spilled from the wizard’s mouth faster. A final syllable smote the air and the sleeping Eppon stiffened and - with a groan - came to wakefulness.

The groan quickly turned to screams.

There was a sudden stench of rot as the Bear-Breaker’s flesh cracked and putrefied. Old scars bubbled into boils and burst in foulness. Gore ran from split skin. His nails tore back from his fingers and toes. He writhed and mewled like an infant.

“Do something!” Avernix cried, but Lukotor could only stare on as the hidden curse finished its grim work. When it was over, the giant was curled up sobbing. His flesh was a ruin of sores and lesions as though he’d somehow lived through a dozen poxes.

“The bastards hid a curse in the bewitchment.” Lukotor swiftly drew crushed leaves from one of his pouches and began to sprinkle them into the new wounds. Eppon moaned piteously. “The danger’s passed by my craft.” He peered at the wounds critically before making a noise of disgust. “But these will scar badly.”

“They’ve maimed him twice!” Spittle flew from Avernix’s lips. “Look at him, Lukotor! Is this how my rule begins? With one son dead and the other made a monster?”

Lukotor finished salving Eppon’s abscesses then drew up to his full, towering height. “We’ve got greater and more immediate problems, overlord. If they’ve gone into the forest, then they’ve learned of the egg.”

His dark eyes narrowed. Two of his tablets were missing.

“Greater problems? My sons have been ruined and you cry about a bauble?” Avernix’s hands balled into fists.

Lukotor’s lip twitched and he gestured to Eppon. “This was the work of vile magic, and if the wizard who did this claims the egg, then all its fell power will be at their call. We have to move quickly, or this will only be the beginning of our catastrophes.”

Avernix’s face blanched, then washed as scarlet as his beard. “Can you track them with your spells?”

“With some preparation. I will need the aid of The Three at this distance: they will want additional sacrifices.”

“You will have them,” Avernix pronounced grimly. “A score. A hundred if need be.”

“Then killers will be found. I swear to you.”

A hand grasped Avernix’s ankle. “Fa…ther…let me…kill them.”

“Who did this?” The conqueror crouched over his son

“A dark man…with eyes like blood. And a woman…I did not see her.”

“Did you get anything of theirs?” Lukotor snarled through his tangle of teeth. “A bit of hair? Blood?”

“No…no…”

The old man’s face turned to thunder. “Did you not fight back at all, boy?”

“They…snuck in while I slept.”

Lukotor was already marching toward his tent in disgust. “I need to start preparations, my overlord. I’ll inform you when all is ready.”

“With haste, Lukotor,” commanded Avernix.

By the time the old wizard had reached his bower, his teeth clenched so hard they threatened to shatter. Too much had he sacrificed. He’d eschewed riches, women and nearly all earthly pleasures in his pursuit of the egg. Now, mere days away from ultimate power, some upstart wizardling dared try to rob Lukotor the Wise of his destiny?

Half-mad laughter bubbled from the old man’s lips. It would not be so. Never! Still shaking with bitter mirth, he brought forth the Vessel of Altak-Tur. Its infernal whispers poured into his mind but he’d learned long ago the means to focus its power. The dreadful susurrus abided, laying bare the intelligible thoughts of those near and around him. Lukotor pushed the vessel’s range, reaching its sorcerous tentacles into distant mental bowers.

There was Eppon, his mind wounded and consumed with rage, pain and fear.

His father’s thoughts were occupied with laying with his wives to produce a new heir, even as he ordered his men to track his sons’ assailants at first light of the next day. The chaotic murmuring of the horde came next, like an over-crowded market. Then the low, dull emotions of the mastodons and the boundless hunger, malevolence, and latent fear of Avernix’s prized hounds.

The terror and resentment of the captives followed, their thoughts a tangle of languages.

His artifact was closing on its limits. The thoughts of the outer camp grew quieter and less distinct, like whispers through water. He narrowed its focus, driving it into the forest. Only the inane instincts of flighty hares and dull chattering of birds greeted him. The thieves were long gone, to little surprise.

With disgust, he cut his connection to the vessel. He would make a grand sacrifice tonight to gain the demons’ full aid, then search with their power even as he rode with the horde. They would find these interlopers and he would feed their screaming souls to The Three who Dwell in Ash.

“Run while you can, little rats.” The pools of dark that were his eyes swam with malice. “I’ve sacrificed dozens better than you, and they will tell you the folly of crossing Lukotor the Wise. You will meet them when you feel the heat of the hells on your necks.”

“We should’ve stolen blankets.” Wurhi huddled in the crook of a titanic root, the spell of invisibility long faded.

In the misty, eternal twilight of the Forest of Giants, the damp was endless. Combined with the sweat of their forced march, the Zabyallan thief felt like she’d swam the River of Scales. She missed the desert’s arid air and even its burning sun; she hardly saw the sky at all beneath this thick canopy.

It was cold - as this land always seemed to be - and a low fog drifted across earth strangled by the roots of greedy arboreal titans. Pale, moist mushrooms taller than men weaved through rootstock while tough, scraggy bushes and the trees’ withered offspring fought toward the bare strands of sunlight. For all their struggles, many fell prey to the great beasts of the wood.

A family of mastodons plodded before her, seemingly uncaring of her presence. They pulled leaves from young trees, while a small herd of woolly rhinoceroses dragged bushes and tubers from the earth to crush them in their craggy maws.

Wurhi found them quite curious. Captive rhinoceroses and elephants were not uncommon in the Zabyallan markets. One could buy nearly anything there, and they were often sold to Yamaputran sword-princes to fill their game-forests. Those beasts had been bare-skinned though, and while she’d once seen the hide of a woolly mammoth draped over the bough of Skjernan warship, the living examples were a far more remarkable sight.

She stared on in irrational jealousy. “All that fur looks warm.”

For a breath, she considered undergoing the change to have her own coat shield her against the cold, but no sense enduring that agony just to be covered in wet fur.

Wurhi looked up the vine-covered bark of the giant tree above her, but saw no sign of Kyembe. The Sengezian had scaled the twelve-pace wide trunk to find their bearings from the canopy, but had yet to return. She shrugged. If he’d descended the hard way, then the echoing scream and sickening impact would have let her know.

With any hope, he’d see these ruins described on Lukotor’s tablets. She was eager to be done with this. Her feet ached and her belly had nothing in it but water and pieces of the giant mushrooms that the Sengezian insisted were safe. They were filling, but foul tasting. She swore she’d live like an empress once this business was finished. Possibly forever if the legends of this magic egg proved true.

To pass the time and escape the distasteful woods, her mind drifted to fantasies of riches and what she would do with them. She would have a palace constructed and a garden kept for her, filling it with all manner of creatures in the fashion of the merchant princes of Zabyalla. She eyed the woolly rhino closest, imagining it grazing placidly amongst cultivated bushes. She dismissed that quickly, realizing the beast would eat her gardens. She considered a hound, but sour memories of being chased by canine maws through merchant courtyards returned.

No, what she needed was a cat.

Not a little one, those were hateful things that chased her through alleyways as a child.

She would have a great big one, like those she’d seen in the caravans of passing princesses. A sleek leopard or cheetah. Or perhaps a regal lion or tigress. How her neighbours would gawk! Wurhi the Rat lying in a palanquin with a great predatory cat at her feet!

Of course, such beasts were much too large to make a meal of a rat.

She paused. Then again, she was a very large rat.

Flutter.

A flight of birds tore from the branches above, interrupting her reverie.

The largest mastodon raised his head, with broad ears and trunk twitching. After a moment, he blared his trumpet and stomped from the glade with his family close behind. The closest rhinoceros looked to the south, snuffled, and bounded west with quick steps, closely followed by its kin.

In breaths, Wurhi was very alone.

She came to her feet in a heartbeat, her hand on the bronze short sword she’d taken from Eppon’s spoils. The forest had gone silent. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end.

“Kyembe?” she called out, glancing above her. No response.

Rustle!

Something burst from a thicket in the mist. She tensed; her sword hissed from its sheath. A northern antelope galloped past her, with wide eyes, pronged horns, and a body larger than a horse. As quick as it came, it disappeared back into the mist.

Her green eyes scanned the surroundings. Growing up in the slums, she knew what it meant when the neighbourhood suddenly went silent. She took a step away from the root, but one of her feet sunk into the earth. Cursing, she made to pull it out.

She went cold.

Surrounding her muddy cloth-wrapped foot was a naked footprint five times larger than her own. The toes were clawed. There was another print far ahead, revealing a stride longer than she was tall. Her eyes found another beside a tree with a symbol scratched into the bark. A hideous face with too many horns. They’d been so tired earlier they’d completely missed it.

“Shit…” Her eyes followed the tracks until they disappeared into the mist. “Shit…shit shit shit shit! Kyembe! Kyembe!”

“Stop shouting!”

She looked up. The Sengezian was as high up on the tree as Cas’ tower had been, but descended the thick bark as though his life depended on it.

“Kyembe there’s-” she paused. “-What’s wrong?”

“They found us! Their hounds are with them!”

A chill ran through her. Those beasts had looked like demons. “How many?”

“Perhaps a score, and half again that in hunters!” he cried, dropping to the earth.

“Thirty?!” Her lips tightened.

She heard faint barking resound from the south.

“Kyembe.” She pointed to the print. “We have other problems too.”

He gaped and crouched over it, measuring the depth with his little finger. “Its tread sinks deep into the earth…” he murmured. “It might be ten times my weight. And the track is fresh. A few hours old at most.” He looked to the marking in the wood. “That looks to be a territory marker.”

The pair looked at each other, then to the fog, turning in a circle as though surrounded by hidden enemies. Titanic trunks loomed from the mist, hinting at things unknown hidden behind their backs.

The barking drew closer.

Kyembe cursed. “I was foolish to miss these, but we will have to worry about them later.” He brought his ring to his lips and muttered words of power before casting his hand east, then west. Both directions were filled with sounds of running across root and earth, followed by cries that were eerily like their own voices. “That should mislead their ears and eyes. It will slow them, but we have to move quickly!” He peered at the fog. “The tracks made for the west. We will bear north. Come! We might lose our pursuers in the mist!”

The ground lay uneven and slick from recent rains beneath their feet. Muck sucked down their steps and their feet slid on wet rocks. More than once Wurhi stumbled, trying to keep pace with the long-limbed Sengezian. She was sorry she hadn’t changed. She could be scampering faster on four legs than on two.

Sounds of shaking bush and the crack of branch and twig echoed from all directions. Birds alighted from their perches and enormous branches creaked in the wind high above the earth. The Zabyallan quickly lost track of where they were running, desperately focusing on keeping Kyembe’s starry robe in front of her. Her heart pounded in her ears. The mist thickened and the air grew colder. A river roared somewhere ahead in the fog.

The sounds of their pursuers grew clearer.

Faint barking sharpened. Shouts of men and women could be heard.

“They’re closing on us!” Wurhi cried.

Her skin shuddered as though doused in crawling vermin. She felt eyes on her from all directions and a strange buzzing filled her ears. All the while, hers and the Sengezian’s illusionary shouts continued to recede west and east.

“Why aren’t they being fooled?!” she panted. “It worked on the dogs in Cas’ gardens!”

“Something walks with them!” Kyembe vaulted a giant root and landed lightly without slowing. “Can you feel it? Like a hundred eyes are on us? Their tribe’s demons are guiding them!”

The hounds bayed again. Perhaps only a hundred paces away.

“We can’t keep running!” Wurhi skidded to a halt and pointed to the closest verdant giant. “Climb up there!”

She started for the vine wrapped trunk.

“Wurhi, down!” Kyembe pushed her to the ground.

A great shadow sailed over her, the air whistling in its passing.

The hound crashed down into the brush and glared back with an unnatural malice. Its rumbling growl shook Wurhi to her bones, and spittle running from snarling jaws shone in the mist. Its teeth gnashed together but Kyembe was already lifting his ring, which shone with white hellfire. Burns ran up his arm as the terrible substance extracted its price. In deep concentration his jaw tightened against the pain.

He never heard the second one.

Crunch.

The beast galloped from the mist, its jaws clamping on Kyembe’s forearm.

His scream filled the forest.