Tay had thought he’d known the meaning the word haste. But chasing Sally down ramps and ladders in Duskborough’s sewers taught him that he still had much to learn.

Had they been back in the forests of Pyrewood, perhaps it would’ve been the other way around, but as it was, he was struggling to keep up. Whenever he managed to push ahead and reach Sally, instead of keeping pace, she’d rush on ahead and assume he was ready to move faster.

Eventually, Tay gave up and said, “Slow down, Sally.”

To his surprise, she suddenly stopped. Then she put a finger to her lips. “Quiet, Tay.” And before Tay could respond out of offense, she added, “He’s close by. I can hear him, but you’re going to have to be quiet.”

All Tay could hear was the lapping of the sewer waters. That, and the sounds of scurrying mice and other vermin. And while this revenant had seemed kin to them, Tay couldn’t recall it making any sort of sounds whatsoever. He most certainly couldn’t hear whatever was stringing Sally along, as she perpetually kept one of her ears up.

“He’s this way,” Sally said, abruptly turning to the right. “Come on, Tay.”

“How do you know? I don’t hear anything.”

From his pocket, Garudigas said, Because you’re a mere weakling. You should keep your guard up, fool.

“Can you tell them to be quiet too?” Sally asked. “Both of you are making it an awful challenge to hear Scamper.”

But they didn’t need to be quiet for very long, because Scamper’s glowing form illuminated the tunnel and waterway not far from where they were. And though Sally’s candle helped in guiding their path, it did a horrible job at actually revealing the details of the walls and floor, so Tay only now got his first glimpse of their current part of the sewer since they’d been beneath Peace and Quiet.

And for lack of a better word—it was gorgeous.

Instead of the usual slick cobbles and drab walls, greenery—sprawling cave lichens, hanging ferns, and even budding blue and violet flowers—turned the sewer from a disgusting, dank place into a pristine, enclosed wilderness. It was like they’d suddenly wandered into a meadow cave.

And ahead was the thing that called this beautiful place home.

Though home was extremely subjective here, as Scamper had clambered on top of a pile of rubbish and refuse and currently had his back to them, digging through what seemed to be an assortment of half-smashed violins and organ pieces. There was even half of a boat’s bow jutting out from midway up the pile, as if the whole hoard could be pushed into the sewer waters to be sailed across Duskborough.

“Just,” Sally said, “follow my lead, okay?”

Sally extinguished the end of her candle, which had been about to go out anyway, and then tossed the stub into the pile of what Scamper clearly thought were treasures and objects of value. Tay wanted to ask her a million things, but said nothing as she prowled out into an open space just before the mountainous pile. She clamped her hands to her mouth and called out to the revenant.

“You know, that was awfully rude of you to leave us like that back there?”

While it had been digging through its pile, its scythe hadn’t been in its hands. Now, it formed directly from its palm, materializing out in both directions to form the shaft and the sharp head of the weapon, as if it were nothing more than an icicle.

The girl, you fool!

Tay willed his feet into motion and skirted to a stop just in front of Sally, one hand on her chest, and the other raised to defend himself against the revenant. Not that it would do him much good. Scamper seemed scared by Tay’s bravado though, as he flinched back and gave a long hiss.

Then Sally stepped around him, and despite her small size, pushed against Tay’s stomach hard. “What. Are. You. Doing? You’re going to scare him off again. Don’t you want to meet my friend?”

Tay looked down at her. What was he missing here? “His scythe materialized.”

“He’s like a dog.” Sally said. “Would you kick one for snarling at a stranger? Tay, he speaks differently than you and me. You have to trust me to do this. Please.”

And suddenly he was pulled back to what he’d told Mond earlier. He’d wanted Mond to trust the both of them, but apparently, he didn’t even trust Sally. He did need to let her do this.

Tay stepped back and said, “You’re right. Sorry, Sally.”

She gave him a small smile, and a nod, then turned back to the revenant—Scamper. “It’s alright,” she called out. “He’s sorry for startling you. He’s not here to hurt you or anything. We just wanted to spend some time with you, and see how you’re doing. Tay’s different, like me. He can hear revenants too.”

Not very well, it seems, Garudigas added, with the coldness in his ears a whole lot tamer than usual. Tay wondered if that equated to a whisper.

Scamper moved forward on top of his pile, but did not come down. The scythe receded—or melted—back into his hand, and he stared down at Sally.

“We’re working on it,” Sally said, as if answering a question Tay had not heard. “But I think you can. He’s not going to hurt you. Besides, even if he wanted to, it’s not like he could really defend himself—you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

Tay didn’t like the sound of that. He couldn’t defend himself? Just what was Sally telling this thing?

Scamper came down the side of his pile, his body their only source of light to keep back the complete darkness of the sewers. Tay noticed when he got close, that even though Scamper had a layer of fur and probably should’ve reeked of sewer stench, there was no smell whatsoever.

Just like the revenant seemed to make no noise, he too seemed to give off no odors. Now, if only all rats could be so thoughtful.

Of course, Scamper was much more than a rat. He had rat features, but also those akin to something a person might have. Each of his hands had five fingers, and his chest rippled with thick muscles. His legs were shaped differently, but Scamper still walked on two instead of four. All of that made him seem as much a person as he was a rat-creature.

“Okay, Tay,” Sally said. “I think he’s ready for your apology now. You can come up and tell him.”

Sally smiled at him, but Tay made no move toward the revenant. “What’s stopping him from bringing out that scythe again?”

“Your kindness, for starters? He’s not going to hurt you though. Like I said, he was just startled before. He’s fine with you now though. He’s assured me.”

Tay swallowed, but approached until Scamper loomed up over him, towering a full head higher. Scamper sniffed at the air as Tay approached, but never exhaled. Tay kept his eyes fixed to the revenant’s hands, waiting to see if Scamper would bring out its scythe again. Should that happen though, there wouldn’t be much Tay could do to stop the revenant from cleaving straight through him.

He’d be dead, and Sally would be stranded down here with a monster.

But Tay trusted her. And she wanted him to do this, so Tay forced himself into saying, “Sorry?”

And no scythe materialized. Instead, Scamper bowed slightly and then took a full step back.

“He said he likes you,” Sally said, clapping her hands together.

“I didn’t hear him say that,” Tay noted, turning to her, brow raised.

Sally frowned. “Well, he did. Almost as plainly as your card talks to you, so.”

“Then, why didn’t I hear him?”

“I don’t know—I thought you’d be able to. I thought, since you could hear your card that maybe you could hear Scamper too…”

Scamper had returned to picking at his pile of rubbish, picking up various pieces of broken boards and shattered desks. Whenever he found one he didn’t like anymore, he tossed it away—off into the waters of the sewer. It was strange to see a revenant with a personality. Did they all have one? Tay supposed Garudigas did too. But where he could actually hear Garudigas speaking with him, he hadn’t heard even a peep out of Scamper.

“I guess it’s just Garudigas then,” Tay said.

They couldn’t silence me if they tried, Garudigas said in his mind.

“Hold on?” Tay replied, pulling Garudigas out. “They?”

Garudigas didn’t say anything, so Tay turned to the only other person he knew who could hear him, and asked again, “They?”

“Yeah,” Sally said. “They. Probably the people who captured him.”

All of a sudden, Scamper cried out, hissed, and then retreated to the top of his pile, where he gave them a mean eye. Sally deflated as she looked up at him.

“Sorry,” she said. “I know you don’t like me talking about it. We’ll be quieter.” And to Tay, Sally said, “Scamper doesn’t like talking about them.”

“I got that.” And in a lower voice, Tay asked, “But who is them?”

Sally tilted her head to the side and raised one of her brows. Then her eyes widened and she slapped her forehead with one of her palms. “Sorry, Tay! I keep forgetting you’re new. Runicka is everything here in bottomside. But I know they don’t have it topside much.”

“Or outside of Stormwall too.”

“Well, Tay, they are,” and Sally really lowered her voice for this next part, “rune hunters.”

“Rune hunters?” Tay said, admittedly a little louder out of curiosity.

Sally threw her hands up and said, “Shh! Quiet. Don’t make Scamper mad. Rune hunters, yes. They’re the ones who go out and find revenants to capture.”

Tay took a step back and then looked down at Garudigas. For some reason, the card seemed to be shimmering just a little less bright than it usually did. “Capture? How do you capture a card?”

“You don’t,” Sally said. She looked up at Scamper, eyes glimmering, and said, “You capture a creature.”

Tay spent a long moment shifting his gaze between Sally, Scamper, and Garudigas, working out what all of this meant in his head.

“So, all the cards in my deck—this one here? They’re creatures first, and then cards?” He shook his head. “But I thought the Runic Council made these cards?”

Sally threw up her hands. “Well, I don’t know how the whole thing works. Today was the first time I’ve ever been in a card shop. But yes, the cards that you play with, they’re creatures just like Scamper—revenants.”

Scamper perked up at hearing his name, but didn’t come down. He simply resumed his digging throughout the pile, ascending back up to the peak, one tossed-away piece of garbage at a time.

“But what’s that mean? How do you capture a creature?”

Again, Sally threw up her arms. “How am I supposed to know? I’m down here, in the sewers of all places, trying to figure that out myself. I thought—I thought if I got to know Scamper a whole lot better, then I could figure it out. But I’m not entirely sure. If I knew, I’d have at least one new card to add to my deck.”

“You think he’d go with you?” Tay asked.

“If I could figure it out—if I learned how to summon and unsummon revenants—undoubtedly. He may not like the you-know-whats, but he loves me. And do you see how he’s living down here? He could come live with us.”

“I thought you said you wanted this to be a secret from Mond and Cari?”

“Obviously, I haven’t thought that far ahead, okay, Tay? It’s not like I wanted to capture him tonight, anyway. But if you must know, I can’t tell Mond because he’d just treat me like a baby, and well, with Cari… well…”

Sally’s gaze went blank as she stared off to the side, toward the darkness waiting beyond in the rest of the sewers. It was plain that she didn’t want to talk about that, so Tay asked, “So no one is summoning Scamper then? How many of them are there down here then—these revenants?”

Sally’s attention returned, and she scratched at the back of her head. “In the sewers? Wish I could tell you, Tay. At night, I can hear them if I listen. They’re always moving about—trying to stay out of sight. They don’t belong to anyone. They’re wild.”

“Is it possible that they were summoned by someone, and then they just left them here?”

Sally shook her head. “I don’t think so. Whenever you summon a revenant, that creates a bond between the runekeeper and the revenant. If you get too far from each other, the revenant will return to the runekeeper, back in their card form.”

And Tay recalled when Mond had pulled the Skywing Lord out of air after Rantho’s revenant had obliterated it.

“So, they’re just a mystery then?” Tay asked.

“As much to you as they are to me. From what I’ve been able to gather from Mond, and just hearing stuff in Duskborough, wild revenants are pretty rare. That’s why rune hunters have to be good at their jobs. They go out into the world, and find them where no one else tries to look.”

Except underneath their very feet apparently. But who was really looking for revenants down here, where not even the poorest of the poor lurked? No one except for those who could hear these revenants. Which, apparently, meant only Sally.

Tay glanced back to Garudigas, and wondered why the card had now gone completely silent. He wasn’t about to ask though. He was too keen on having the Eternal Devourer freeze his ears off anymore than they already had. Still, Tay had to wonder what sort of rune hunter out there could’ve possibly been able to catch a creature as fearsome as Garudigas looked. If Scamper was twice his height, Garudias must’ve been that five times over.

Eternal Devourer, indeed.

Looking at Garudigas gave him another idea. Tay stowed Garudigas back away, and then said, “Maybe you were on to something before, Sally.”

Sally looked up at him and tilted her head. So, Tay continued, “With getting to know Scamper. I was only able to talk with Garudigas after spending some time studying him—learning about him.” Staring at him for hours on end, but he wasn’t about to admit that. “Maybe capturing revenants works the same way? Have you tried seeing him as a card?”

“You mean like in a battle duel? Yes! I’ve learned about him the same way you did your card. He’s an Order 2 revenant with the Decay aura. He also has a Shout effect that advances your Talisman by 2 recharges. Oh, and he has 3 Power.”

When Tay first looked, he couldn’t see any of that. Then, came the shimmering of white runes all across his body. But as Tay mulled over everything Sally had said, those pieces of knowledge filled in lines of blurred script, and when Tay next blinked, he saw all the information Sally had relayed.

(15) ????? Stable Shout: advance your Talisman by 2 recharges. Decay 3 >>

“Well,” Tay said. “I think it’s obvious what we’re missing to try capturing him. You’ve been calling him Scamper, but that’s not his name. Runicka cards don’t typically have names, do they?”

Except for Garudigas. For some reason, that was the only card Tay had seen so far with both a name and a title. They were usually just titles—like Warlock of Midnight Darkness or Tamsian Aeroweaver. Assuming Scamper was like those and not Garudigas, they’d need to figure out what he was.

“I suppose they don’t have names,” Sally said.

“No, they typically have whatever they are combined with whatever they do.” Tay looked around the room, motioning to the giant hoard of rubbish. “I think it’s quite obvious what Scamper does. What’s less obvious is what he is. I originally assumed these were the stuff of tall tales. Is there one that could possibly explain what Scamper could be?”

Sally put a hand on her chin, but then said, “I don’t think so. I mean, I can try asking him?”

Sally called up to Scamper, to see if he knew exactly what he was, but after a moment, she then said, “He doesn’t remember. Or he doesn’t want to remember.”

Scamper gripped at the sides of his head and then rolled onto his back, still atop his pile. He made no sounds—no grunts or groans—but it was obvious that he was in some sort of internal pain. His form shifting a bit, as if he were suddenly a flame atop a half-burnt candle, flickering in a moderately strong breeze. It lasted for only a moment though, before he regained his substance again and resumed his picking away at the rubbish.

“Looks like a little bit of both,” Tay said. “Could you maybe ask him why he’s been collecting all this junk?”

“Don’t have to do that,” Sally said. “He’s already told me—it’s what he’s meant to do. He thinks it’s his purpose, and you wouldn’t believe half the stuff he brings down here, Tay.”

A quick look through Scamper’s so-called purpose turned up more wooden artifacts, but moving some of those aside, Tay unearthed a hefty metal-bound tome covered in a thin layer of grime—seemingly the only book in the whole stack. Tay pulled it out and quickly leafed through it. It was immediately obvious why Scamper had considered it worthy of being added to his pile.

Tay didn’t take him for a creature that could read, which explained the lack of other books, but this tome had depictions of creatures that looked eerily similar to Scamper. They didn’t glow white, but they had the same lanky arms, square and buck teeth, and rat-like features. The author had coined them the Jawen, on account of a small noise they constantly made.

A noise that Scamper seemed to have forgotten, as he didn’t make a sound.

Tay showed Sally the pictures, and her brow creased. “I’m—I’m not the best reader, Tay.” Her cheeks reddened as she admitted that.

Tay’d only picked up reading because Claudus had been a bit of a bookworm, and he’d all but forced Tay to read to him nearly every night when they were little. He’d almost forgotten about that.

Still, he pressed on and said, “They’re called the Jawen. I’m not sure if they were smart, or if they were even a people, but that’s what this author calls them.”

“So, what?” Sally said, “Scamper is some kind of Jawen hoarder?”

The room suddenly brightened, as if a star had descended straight out of the heavens. But instead of a star, it was Scamper. He’d become a beacon of white light, burning like a signal fire at the top of his pile.

Then Scamper began to, well, scamper down the pile. As he did, his light grew in intensity, almost becoming too much to bear. Sally and Tay retreated to the middle of the room, and shielded their eyes, but Scamper continued to approach them, shining brighter than a bolt of lightning as he came to stand in front of them—in front of Sally.

His eyes were beaming down at Sally, but he hadn’t brought forth his scythe. It was like he wanted something from her.

“Sally,” Tay said. “Say that again—what you just said.”

Sally looked at him nervously, but then turned back to Scamper and took a deep breath. “Jawen Hoarder.”

The two words echoed throughout the room. And Scamper only grew brighter, until Tay had to shut his eyes. But before he did so, he swore that Sally also seemed a glow a bit. Either that, or she was reflecting Scamper’s intense luminance.

Then the light was gone.

And when Tay opened his eyes again, there was only Sally standing there beside him. In her hands was a snowy white Runicka card. A depiction of a giant rat-person standing on a pile of rubbish was printed on the front.

(15) Jawen Hoarder Stable Shout: advance your Talisman by 2 recharges. Decay 3 >>