Turns out finding a hawk made of bones was harder than expected. For one thing, it was taking longer than Rusk was comfortable with, and for another, it required Mandy to go out into the forest alone and converse with her monster, whatever that meant. By the fourth night of her absence Rusk was climbing the walls trying to come up with something else. Luckily Iraiah was there to soothe him. Hah. As if.

“If you keep pacing you’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”

Flow glared at her. She’d been pacing right alongside Rusk, the both of them antsy for Mandy to return. Though their reasons for wanting her back were different. For one thing, Flow didn’t care whether or not Mandy made it back, she just wanted eyes on the hawk, because the hawk could lead to the necromancer and that meant she could complete her own personal agenda. Rusk though. He cared. God, he cared so much. Even if Mandy wasn’t his romantic attraction any longer, and maybe never had been, she was still his friend, and he was a good person if not a perfect Hero. If not any Hero. He was just about to waltz out into the forest himself when she returned.

“Bad news,” said Mandy. She skulked into her own cottage with the air of one in defeat. “The hawk isn’t around anymore. Something ate it.”

“Something… ate it?” Rusk couldn’t wrap his head around that. After everything, the thing that bugged him was that the dead hawk had gotten eaten. “By what?”

“A mythical creature. A being of the natural elements.”

“I have heard of such things,” said Flow. “If it is gone, then it is gone. The ancients do not give up their bounty. Especially if it is food.”

“Then we come up with something else,” said Iraiah. As if it were nothing. As if she already had a plan.

It was grating on Rusk’s nerves. “And what else could we come up with, Miss Know-it-all? Every time we’ve tried to get into the castle it’s failed. And Gedresial is already dead, or dying, or under the necromancer’s control, and who knows what else when it comes to my other friends. What about them, huh? What are we supposed to do when there keeps being obstacles between us and our goal? Monsters I could deal with. Security not so much. Why am I so useless?” He roared and kicked the wall of their little temporary hut, and the entire building shook with his anger. Frustration boiled through him and he stood there with his fists clenched panting. “I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever tried to be a Hero in the first place. Clearly I’m not cut out for it.”

“Shut your yap,” said Iraiah. “I unlike you have a plan.”

Mandy and Flow moved both at once to put a hand on Rusk’s shoulder. They calmed him somewhat, but not entirely.

“What’s your plan?”

“We make another dead bird.”

Mandy closed her eyes in this knowing amused manner that made Rusk even more furious.

“Oh, right. Great plan. And we’re supposed to do this how exactly?”

“By killing a hawk, duh.” Iraiah readied a knife. “I’m a good hunter. Not as good as Mandy of course, but still good. I can get one out of the sky. Then all we need to do is figure out whatever magic and boom boom boom we can still spy on the inner workings of the necromancer.”

“Your plan has one major flaw,” said Flow. “It requires use of dark magic.”

“Yeah well. Not like I haven’t done that before.”

Rusk was taken aback. She’d what?

“Rusk,” said Mandy. “Iraiah was one of the necromancer’s puppets for a while. We had an ordeal getting her back, exchanging my monster for her. But we did it. It’s possible. Gedresial might not be as forgone as you think. And any other friends you’ve got waiting in there.”

Felix. Felix needed him more than the others. Felix first. So strange that the moment a solution arose he started thinking through lightning fast of ways to use it to help. Maybe he wasn’t such a crap Hero after all. He had to remember he had help. This wasn’t like the monster as a kid. He had friends now, allies, people he could trust.

Well, Iraiah was a work in progress. But he certainly trusted Mandy. With his life and so much more. And of course Flow. Flow was his lover now.

She gave him a private smile, seeing the moment the wheels started turning in his brain in that way that she could imply things. Then she gestured with her shoulder to the Dragons Knock. “I am sure that ancient spirit has experience with the darker magicks. Perhaps we shall seek its council?”

Rusk grunted in approval. He plucked the Dragons Knock from his quiver and asked it to share with the class.

It obliged, and told them it would only help if no innocents were harmed. So weird that it had a moral code. Rusk hadn’t considered that angle before. It wouldn’t kill an innocent hawk then?

“Guess we go hawk hunting behind enemy lines,” said Rusk. And just like that, they had a solution. Or at least a direction. But in the back of his mind he wondered if this weren’t another goose chase. If this would really work.

He took one look at Mandy and decided it had to. If it didn’t work, he’d make it work. He’d save Gedresial and Felix and Loretta and all the others. The whole kingdom. He doubted the people of this country would appreciate being ruled by one not of their realm. By the dead.

And then an idea struck him hard over the head.

The people of this country.

They had a right to know their king was full of shit. They had a right to know, and once they did, maybe they’d back Rusk’s mission.

So he told the others, Iraiah and Mandy and Flow, his three trusty girls, and he said:

“We should spread the word about King Ehrryn.”

“Not a problem,” said Iraiah. And there was this clever glint in her eye that told Rusk she’d do it and do it well. That she’d done things like this before. Perhaps, in another life, she’d usurped kings. Perhaps there was a reason Mandy trusted her so obviously. “You want a nasty rumor I can spread that real far. Especially since it’s true.”

So they went their separate ways. Mandy with Rusk. Flow with Iraiah.

And they told each other they’d meet back up and regroup once their missions were over.

Rusk hoped they all survived that far.