Three days after Cathra is gone, Kyros is still scouring the Bladed Road.

After losing the barbarians, he had looped around the flatlands back to their ambush site, hoping that Cathra might've hidden somewhere. But other than some animal tracks, he found nothing. He was almost relieved though, because whatever was left had been picked clean by scavengers and vultures. The thought of Cathra falling into the hands of savages or predatorial monsters is enough to still send shivers down his back.

Leading his cart-less horse down a steep ravine, Kyros stops for the day to make camp.

A thin river trickles through a grassy bank, giving both of them the first taste of water in two days.

“Just a quick rest,” he tells the horse as it plunges its face into the stream. “Cathra is still waiting for us.”

The animal pays him no mind. Once it’s satisfied with its thirst, it begins to follow the river upstream, nibbling at patches of moss and weeds poking through the stones.

Kyros sets his aching body down on the grass. His wounds have sealed and reopened countless times during his ride, but it’s as if his body has shut down every function not necessary for finding Cathra, so even without eating or drinking anything for three days, he is still able to continue the search.

A few sparks from his flint and dagger and Kyros is warming his hands by a small fire. He spots a few fish darting in the water and thinks about catching one.

Not yet.

He takes out the silver hair comb that he picked up from the site of Cathra's disappearance. Examining it under the orange sun and firelight, he sees that it is ornately made, likely from a master jewel smith. A row of clear crystals is embedded in the silver, giving the appearance of many eyes staring out at him.

Someone has taken Cahtra. This is certain. But without leaving any tracks, the only explanation Kyros can think of is a transportation circle or a flying mount of some kind. But with all the griffons long extinct in Gandolia, the second possibility seems slim.

Kyros is contemplating going back to the ambush site again when he hears the sound of splashing. He glances upstream, where the horse has rounded a corner of trees.

He gets up to follow, not willing to let his only transport leave his sight.

The river quickly vanishes into dense woods. Kyros pushes through overhanging branches, following the splashing. The sounds grow louder as he forges deeper into the woods. He thinks he hears humming, not unlike the one he heard when first waking up in Cathra's cart.

Thick shrubbery crowds around him, blocking out Kyros's vision. He is forced to navigate slowly by the river winding underfoot.

The horse has gone out of sight, but the humming is so close Kyros doesn't want to stray. He thinks he can start to make out a womanly voice.

Can it be hers?

He pushes on faster, zoning in on the humming. He can smell something, too. Nectar, or honey.

The humidity shifts. Moisture clings to his sweaty clothes. He hears water.

With a final push, he emerges from the branches.

The river widens into a bubbling pool surrounded by sharp rocks. A short waterfall tumbles from a ledge of stone, throwing up foam across the pool's surface.

A woman stands in the middle of the pool, her back turned to Kyros. Her wet skin glows orange from the afternoon sunlight. Her hair is bone-white, fingering down her body and into the water.

Kyros whips his head away so fast his vision blurs. Moving as slow as he can he turns around and tries to retrace his steps.

He knows he’s been seen when the humming stops.

“Greetings,” says a feminine voice. “Are you looking for someone?”

Kyros waves behind him without looking. “No, I mean yes. I mean sorry, I didn’t know there was someone here.”

“But you must’ve heard me singing.”

“Y-yes,” says Kyros. “I thought I recognized your voice. That’s why I followed it.”

He hears the sound of splashing suggesting the woman is stepping out of the pool.

I should be fleeing from here. Why am I not?

Soft rustling hints at clothes behind worn. Then the woman speaks again. “The pool is all yours, honorable adventurer. You smell like you need it more than I do.”

The humor in her voice defuses the situation.

Kyros braves a peek. The woman is dressed in a linen garb with decorated bells around the loose sleeves. The fabric is of such a rich shade of ebony that light seems to bend around it, making the woman's swarthy complexion shine a softer, milky hue.

On bare feet, the woman hops across the rocks. Her toenails are pointed, sharp.

“I’m not here for a bath,” Kyros says. “I’m searching for someone.” He busies himself with digging for the hair comb. “Have you seen a young woman of twenty-one, with black hair, about a half-head shorter than me, coming through these parts?”

His hand barely clears his pocket before the woman takes a hold of it.

“You’re burning,” she says. “You need some rest, brave adventurer, or I fear you may not see the light of the next dawn.”

“The hair comb,” Kyros says, trying to pull his hand away. “Do you recognize it?” He shows it to the woman but she isn’t looking at anything else but him.

“The day is ending,” she says. “Come. My village is not far. Rest up for the night. Whoever you are looking for, you will not see her if you are the first to die.”

Even though her words are harsh, there is something alluring to the woman’s voice. Kyros finds himself drawing nearer to her, like a fly to honey.

"Come," she says again.

This time, he does.

Kyros's mind begins to drift. He is aware that the woman is leading him to the pool, but cannot seem to recall how he got there.

“What is your name?” he hears her ask. “You may call me Ae'ru.”

“Sounds like a yaojin name,” Kyros says. Pressure on his shoulders tells him to sit and he obeys. The rocks are warm, seeping into his aching muscles.

Deft fingers reach down and unlace Kyros's boots, slipping them off his sore feet. Then Ae'ru nudges him ever so gently forward, her softness pressing into him.

Kyros scoots, dipping his feet into the pool, and lets out an involuntary sigh.

What was I... supposed to be doing here again?

He feels Ae'ru's slender fingers crawl below his neck. His cloak falls away. Then, his leather belts follow. Somewhere at the back of Kyros's mind, he thinks this is inappropriate, yet it is as if someone else has taken procession of his body. He can do nothing but gaze out at the water through half-closed eyes, watching his and Ae'ru's reflections move across the ripples.

“My name,” he says. “Is Kyros Argonston. Of Kesrock.”

“A more heroic name I have never heard,” says Ae'ru. “What brings you so far north, Kyros?” She begins to knit her fingers into Kyros's shoulders.

He groans in pleasure as all the pain from the past few days flows out of him.

“I… don't remember.”

His voice sounds distant in his own ears. "I think… I was looking for someone."

Kyros looks down at his hands. “No, it’s gone. The…”

What was it exactly he was holding? Kyros can’t seem to remember. He shakes his head but his mind has stuck to the back of his skull. “There was... a hair comb.”

Ae'ru makes a shushing sound. Her fingers trail up and down his neck. “Everything will be fine,” she says. “Sleep. And when you wake up, there will be no more pain, no more sorrow.”

Kyros’s eyelids feel heavy. The world drifts away.

Just before the last slivers of consciousness fade, he catches sight of a blue blade shimmering in the water.

Frostbane.

Kyros startles awake. He extricates himself from Ae'ru's grip and wades out into the pool. "I should be going," he says, reaching into the water for Cathra’s sword. "Thank you kindly, m'lady. You have done me a great service."

A pair of dark shapes stretch over his head. Kyros spots their reflections and whips around quickly.

Ae'ru looks irritated. She’s kneeling on the rocks with one foot dipped into the pool. The water around her toes begins to turn black.

She’s wearing the silver hair comb.

“You could've gone blissfully,” she says. “Now you'll go with me screaming."

Kyros watches in transfixed horror as four spider legs reach from behind Ae'ru's back, stretching out from chunks of sinewy flesh. They dwarf the woman they’re attached to as if they are the real creature and she is nothing but an attractive shell.

Kyros feels a primal instinct to run. But waist-deep in water, he cannot. He lifts Frostbane high out of the water. He must fight.

Moving as one, the legs point their spear-like ends at Kyros, and lash out at him.

Kyros dives under the water. He feels pressure slice over the back of his head. Keeping Cathra’s sword sheathed he breaks the surface swinging. He manages to block one leg but the rest punch into his shoulders and thigh. They push him into the waterfall, filling his wounds and lungs with foam.

Rocks dig into Kyros’s back. The force of the waterfall pounds against his head, blinding him.

In his hand, he feels Frostbane burning like it's telling him to draw it.

He does.

The blade comes out hissing. Kyros imagines he's holding a paintbrush and carves through the water towards the source of the pain. He feels steel biting into something hard like tree bark, and then he hears Ae'ru scream.

The legs retract, yanking him forward. Water blasts up his nose, filling his ears. Kyros pushes with his legs, stabbing Frostbane ahead of him as he breaks through the surface.

He is stopped by Ae'ru. The woman uses her spider legs to block but where the dark appendages touch Cathra’s blade, flames surge.

Ae'ru screeches, all semblance of her previous grace gone. She scrambles back from the pool, falling into the underbrush in a mess of smoke and blood.

Without thinking, Kyros leaps across the rocks and follows. Ae'ru is on the ground, writhing in flames. He plunges Frostbane into the woman's stomach, drawing a fountain of black blood from her.

Ae'ru lets out a strangled cry that drowns out even the crash of the waterfall, and then she stops struggling.

Kyros grabs her shoulder. Her skin is blistering hot. “Tell me where you've taken Cathra,” he says. “Tell me, fiend!”

Ae'ru curls on her side, her body wrapping around the blade. Her spider legs, now only stubs, twitch as they crumble away into dust.

Her eyes, as they turn to glass, slide up to him.

"Village," she says, smiling alluringly. Then her face goes blank.

Kyros steps back from the body. He feels his gut twisting, and lurches into a nearby bush to throw up.

A while later, he goes back and sits down on a rock next to the body. It is already beginning to decay. Starting from the left side of her body, the monster's womanly form breaks away into countless black stars, drifting into the windless sky.

Kyros watches them go, then gets dressed.

Frostbane is lying grass, next to the silver hair comb and a single nugget of amethyst.

The blade feels heavy. Kyros imagines a mighty dragon that just had a big meal and is now soundly snoring. He wipes it on the grass before returning it to its scabbard.

The hair comb and amethyst he puts both in his pocket, not stopping to look at either. Then casting one last look at the pool, its water now completely black, Kyros turns back the way he has come.

The horse is gone. Through sheer luck, Kyros manages to find the bank he first heard Ae'ru humming from. He traces his steps back up to the bend, then to the place where he entered the woods, but he finds no signs of the horse.

Sunlight has died away and dark clouds cover the night sky. Kyros has no choice but to give up. He collapses onto the grassy bank in exhaustion and decides to look for the animal tomorrow.

He is woken up by a swift kick in the side.

“Oi! I gots something here!”

Crying out in pain, Kyros rolls away and grasps for Frostbane but the sword is not by his side. He stops against a pair of fur-laced boots that kick him back.

“Sprightly fellow, aye?”

Laughter ensues. Kyros struggles to his feet, fists out to defend himself.

Two men in fur-laced armor stand on either side of him, one fat and the other thin as a stick. They are both clad in grey and washed-out blues, with messy beards and short, cropped hair. The fat man is holding Cathra’s sword.

“That’s mine!” Kyros makes a lunge for it but the man moves shockingly fast, putting Kyros on his ass with a sidestep and a shove.

“Still gots some bite to ‘em,” the fat man says. “10 Silvers says he’s a smuggler.”

“Nah,” says the thin man, wrinkling his nose. “He looks deadly killer-like if I so say meself aye?”

They both laugh some more. Then the thin man extends out a hand. “Name’s Mung, aye? This here we call Butcher.”

Kyros eyes the hand, then takes it. He thinks about giving a false name but doesn’t see a reason to. “Kyros Argonston,” he says. “Knight… once-knight of Kesrock. Are you two adventurers?”

"Haw!" The fat man, Butcher, guffaws. "Thems a jest if I ever heard one." He scratches his chin with stubby black nails. "Once knight you says. What you do?”

“Slew a man,” says Kyros. “For taking my sword.” He stares at Butcher, hoping his façade will not be seen through.

Butcher smiles a mouthful of broken teeth. “Hey now, dun look at me like that.” He smacks Kyros good-heartedly on the shoulder. “You get this back when we’re sure you’re safe.”

Mung looks around the riverbank, wrinkling his nose at the moss and stones. “You alone, good Sir? Fancy place to be on foot, aye?”

“I’m not a Sir,” says Kyros. “And no. I wasn’t. I’m looking for a woman, about half-a-head shor-”

A rustle from the bushes cuts him off. From within the woods, three more people emerge. They are all dressed similarly to Butcher and Mung, in leather armor laced with fur and cloaks in the colors of grey and blue.

It’s then that Kyros finally realizes why.

“You’re from the Battlefront.”

Mung itches his nose with a finger. “Our fellow ain’t so bright, aye?”

The group of three descend the bank to gather around the trio.

“The beast-bitch’s been slain!” says one man as he tosses a handful of stained grass down onto the ground. “Some bastard must’ve gotten to her before we did!” He glances at Kyros then, as if just noticing him. “Who’er this?”

Mung sneezes. He drags a gloved hand across his reddening nose. “He’s the bastard who got the bitch before us, aye?” he says with a laugh, then turns to say to Butcher, “Give ‘em back the sword, aye? Dun part a man from his stick less you gonna kill him with it, aye?”

Butcher grins. “10 silvers says Sir Knight doesn’t last two blows before I put'em down, like I did to them sick dogs last week.”

Kyros wishes more than anything at that point for strength like the Lord Commander’s, or Cathra’s.

I can at least go down swinging.

He balls his fists.

But Butcher doesn't attack. Instead, he reaches over and grabs Kyros’s hands, shoving Frostbane into them.

“10 Silvers says I gets this back before the winter ends,” the fat man says with a smirk that's more humored than ominous.

Kyros decides not to argue. He fastens Frostbane to his belt, then turns to Mung. “You have my thanks. You don’t happen to know of any villages somewhere close by?”

“Still think you’re back at the cities, aye?” Mung claps Kyros on the back and tries to push him along. “Thinking you can just go where you please, aye? Come on, funny guy, let's get some food inside that belly, aye?”

“Wait wait,” Kyros says. “I'm not going anywhere. There’s someone I need to find first.” He pushes again Mung but then Butcher steps in and lifts Kyros up by the back of his shirt.

“Dun make me haul your ass,” says the fat man. “I’ll do it. But can’t promise your body parts will all make it.”

Mung says, “We’ll look for your captain.” Then he wrinkles his nose at the look on Kyros’s face. “Yah, don’t think I don’t recognize you, Sir Knight. We’ve been told to keep an eye on a couple of new faces. A boy knight and his lady captain, aye?”

They think we deserted.

Kyros tries not to panic. He imagines what may happen if he draws Frostbane. He can take down a few of these men, he’s sure, but then what? Get cut down before he can make a run for it?

As frustrating as it feels, he knows he cannot fight his way out.

“I can walk,” he tells Butcher. “You can put me down.”

Butcher looks to Mung, who nods. “Alright,” says the fat man. “But you try running and 10 silvers says you dun make it three steps before I put a blade through your leg.”

“Deal,” says Kyros.

Once he’s on his own legs again, the men take up position around him and shepherd him downstream.

A small team of horses is waiting by the foot of the hill, kept by another man wearing the faded grey of the Battlefront. He hands each person a horse, all except Kyros, who has to ride with Mung.

As they begin their journey around the base of the mountain, Kyros asks Mung, “What were you doing in the woods?”

“Hunting.”

“For?”

“Thing you killed, aye?” says Mung. He sneezes. “Couple of our brothers were lured from their posts. Maria sent us to figure it out.” He pinches his nose and flings a line of clear snot into the wind.

The road flattens. They begin to turn north.

After a while of silence, Mung speaks up again.

“Feast tonight is yours, aye? Fancy that. Maria will be right pissed, aye?”

“I thought Maria was the name of the fortress,” Kyros says.

“Nah,” says Mung. “That’s the name we give the pile of shit at the bottom of the privies, aye?” His laugh is a whisper in the cold wind, and Kyros wonders if the man is crazy or is telling the truth.

I supposed there is only one way to find out.

Kyros turns his gaze skyward, on the white mountains rising before him, parting the clouds with their dominating, snow-covered forms.