Eris was lost.

They descended from one of the many mountainside gates of Kem-Karwene and into the hills and forests of Nanos below. Her impression of the ‘map’ was that the identified destination, the painted circlet, was in the south near Thermopos, and so for a week of hard travel she directed her party thusly. First down the Grand Regal Road, maintained for eons by the Dwarves, then across hunting trails and footpaths, and then through thickets—back into the red woods of the Sanguine Forest. Nothing but the sun and stars guided them there.

The sun and stars, and Robur. He navigated nature deftly. Eris communicated her impression of their location according to the Orb and he delivered them faithfully at her instruction.

Which was awkward, considering Eris was lost, and had no idea whatsoever how to read the Orb or where she was instructing them to go.

Yes, she thought at first the circlet was in the south. Now she held the map the other way around and wondered if it wasn’t in the west. As much as she tried to visualize the globe stretched out across the cylinder as a two dimensional map, a map that made sense on a regional scale, she only found herself more perplexed.

Nothing added up. The red triangles suggested the trees of the Sanguine Forest, yet they extended well past where the forest itself did in the modern day. And the beach? Indeed there was a sandy shoreline, but it was positioned to the south of the woods and Kem-Karwene, which made no sense at all.

Of course she realized only later that it was well-known amongst the Magisters that Esenia had cooled since the Fall of the Old Kingdom. Everything was different. Oceans shifted. Mountains moved. The Oldwalls, which extended throughout Nanos as they did Rytus, seemed to often defend nothing at all for precisely this reason—they had moved with the earth before falling into ruin.

So Eris was lost. Her map was useless. She had no idea where she was leading her companions. She did not want to admit it, either. Doing so would be an unnecessary shock to her already damaged reputation. There would be no need. She felt confident that, in due time, they would find what they sought.

The approach toward Thermopos from the north led near to where she found the Magister’s tome those months passed, in its custodianship by the Arktids. There the trees grew much taller, to the height of mountains: hundreds of feet, perhaps even more. More than only the Arktids called this place home. Great spiders, dire wolves, dyoelefai…to say nothing of the more sapient variety of monster that delighted at human flesh.

“How much longer till we get there, witch? My feet ache from all this walking on grass,” Kauom said at camp.

It was late and very dark. The canopy was so high overhead here that it was indistinguishable from a cloudy sky, which lended a feeling to this part of the forest that it wasn’t a forest at all, but rather, at least at camp during night, some open plain somewhere. The only contradiction to that thought were the trunks of the trees, enormous, sprinkled everywhere about them; yet even still, without branches visible close by they seemed more like disparate ruined columns than the supports beams of an entire forest. Their uppermost leaves stole away the sunlight from that which dwelt below, which left the floor barren except bark and detritus.

They had been in this part of Nanos for three nights. Tomorrow would be their fourth day searching for…something. That was the problem with setting out in search of something without knowing what it was, or where it was, or why it was desirable. ‘Knowing it when she saw it’ only worked if it existed.

“‘Tis not far,” Eris replied sharply. “Do not fret, dwarf.”

“We’ll be out of rations before long.”

“I am full aware.”

“Are you?” he said, leaning toward her.

“We aren’t far from Swep-Nos, we could—” Robur began, but Kauom cut him off.

“Because it seems to me we’re wandering around like a bunch of blind bats!”

“You are free to return home whenever you wish,” Eris said.

“These are dangerous woods, you know. We shouldn’t prance about any more than we have to. It’s practically a miracle of the Stonemother no dropwolves have fallen onto us, no spiders have attacked, no—what was that?”

“What?” Robur said.

Kauom stood up, grabbing his crossbow. “There!” he whispered. “Listen!”

Eris listened. The Sanguine Forest was often filled with the sounds of animals, and often of animals screaming, bleating, whining, fleeing, and whatever else prey and predator did together in their trysts. Yet tonight heard nothing but the distant call of an owl.

“The horns on an owl are but metaphorical,” Eris said. She rolled her eyes. “You needn’t fear them.”

He shushed her. Another hoot. This call was bassier, closer by, and at it the branches far, far overhead rustled with the flight of birds—their first reminder in hours they were in a forest at all.

Kauom spilled water onto the fire. It quenched in an instant. Everything went black.

“What are you doing?” Eris scolded, but she kept her voice down.

Silence pursued. They stood together, still, waiting for whatever Kauom expected.

Hoot. Hoot. It came from overhead.

“Gah!” he cried. He spun around, falling onto his back, and he shot his crossbow directly up into the air. The bolt reached well above the canopy, smashing through branches before beginning its descent back to Earth. A fluttering of wings followed after it; Eris conjured a light into her hand and held it up high, and just as the bolt landed an inch into the dirt beside Kauom’s head, she saw the enormous white wingspan of a great owl.

It dove from a branch, swooping some way toward them, then flapped off into the night.

“Damn owl bastard!” Kauom swore. He scrambled to his feet, reloaded his crossbow, and about ten minutes after the bird was gone shot another in its direction.

Eris relit their fire. She couched a head in her hands. “Is there some vendetta you have against owls I should know of?”

He continued to swear. The crossbow lowered. Hopping like a maddwarf, he retreated back to his place—clearly still incensed. “I thought it was something else. Something…worse. All right?”

“An owlbear?” Robur suggested.

“Don’t ever say that word around me, boy!” Kauom snapped. “Call them sal ampau pakware salamo luwoku if you have to call them anything at all!”

Robur thought this over. “That’s a rather long name—”

“Be quiet! I don’t want to talk about it!”

Eris considered the words. She learned some Dwarvish while at Kem-Karwene; as best she could tell, this phrase he used, salamo luwoku, meant ‘bird-dog.’ She found his agitation amusing and decided to press the issue. “Are there owlbears in Nanos? I did not know such creatures truly existed.”

He spoke in unusually contemplative tones. “Salamo luwoku exist all right. They’re the evilest, vilest creatures you’ll ever lay eyes on. Wicked abominations. Unnatural. As if an animal couldn’t get any worse than a bird, awful flying things of the cursed sky—they took its beak and grafted it onto the body of a bear, hideous, squawking, hooting, rampaging, raping, murdering, slaughtering, merciless, berry-eating—”

“Who precisely is they?” Eris said.

“They! Magicians, damned sneaky magicians like you!”

“Ah. ‘Tis a fair assessment; we are responsible for most this world’s plights.”

“Are you certain that—” Robur started.

“If we spend too long out here,” Kauom interrupted, “and stumble into a pack of them—it’s our funerals. All of ours.”

“Between your arbalest and my magic I think we could take a whole colony,” Eris said.

“Know why I keep a Karwenian Ranger’s arbalest, witch? Because it’s the only weapon in the world with half enough power to defeat salamo luwoku. Any other arms bounce off like pebbles. But no one should ever want to face one in battle. If you do, you’re a fool!”

He remained on high alert, checking every corner, listening closely. But then Kauom always was a paranoid little man. For her own part, Eris had no trouble finding sleep—even when she heard an owl’s hooting late at night.

“Are these owlbear tracks?” Robur said. He pointed to indentations in soft earth. They were indistinguishable from wolf prints to Eris in their specifics, but larger and more elongated than any canine she knew.

Kauom ducked to the ground. “They’ve been through here! How many more?”

“I don’t know—two, about the same size…”

“A whole herd! Damn it, they’ve set an ambush! Cast that spell of yours—see through the trees!”

“Supernal Vision can’t see through trees,” Robur said, explaining earnestly as ever, “it detects mana only. Living creatures, except demons and elves, are—”

“I don’t care about that magic bullshit! Use the spell!”

There was a moment of silence. Apparently not knowing what to say, Robur cast Supernal Vision, his eyes flashing green. He surveyed the woods around them and shrugged. “I don’t see anything.”

“You’re full of it! Magic doesn’t work anyway!” Kauom jumped to his feet. “Get out here, sal ampau pakware salamo luwoku! I’m not afraid to fight! Are you afraid!?”

“You failed in your vocation as a stonemason?” Eris said.

“What!?” Kauom said, jumping at her voice.

“I am simply perplexed as to why.” She rolled her eyes. “Look here. See the ground? Spear point impressions.” There were small indentations in the earth beside the tracks, as if the bottom of a heft of wood had been pressed downward. “Unless owlbears walk with canes, these prints belong to Arktids.”

“Arctic salamo luwoku …?”

“The Arktids are creatures which live in these woods. I have had dealings with them in the past.”

“So you’re saying they keep salamo luwoku for pets?”

“There are no owlbears, you buffoon! Except in your imagination.”

“I think she is correct,” Robur said. “These prints are very small for a bear-sized creature.”

Kauom growled. “Juvenile pack.”

“This conversation is over,” Eris said. She glanced back down at her map. No clue whatsoever where they were. “We are growing nearer.”

She thought over the probabilities extensively. So long as they were not retreading the same ground, and presuming they were in the general vicinity of the marked destination, and presuming the destination still existed, they would likely find it before long…and there were many ruins throughout Esenia they might happen upon, that they could plunder instead. They did not necessarily need to find these specific ruins on this specific expedition…

In the principalities of Ganarajya to the far south, across the Straits of Serapaz, they told stories of karma. As mana intook and expelled must equal one another, so too must the good a woman did and the evil she fell victim to balance each other out—or something to that effect. It seemed an implausible superstition to Eris, but then, as dusk fell that fourth day, as they rounded a hill, passed a tree, and saw outsticking from the crest of a noll beneath the canopy ancient Old Kingdom ruins, she wondered.

Was she not a very kind and generous person? Whatever small faults her character had, she looked after her appearance—and that made up for a great deal of moral malaise, did it not? Was there no karmic deficit in her case?

She could think of no other explanation when those toppled black bricks overgrown with red vines came into view. Good karma for her obvious virtue. For even she had to admit, this was a victory she did not well deserve.

But then she got ahead of herself. She didn’t know for certain these were the ruins she sought.

From a distance it looked like nothing much compared to the majesty of the Archon’s Vault. Like all other Old Kingdom ruins the masonry was hewn from huge onyx stone, but here the bricks were scattered on the ground like fallen boulders, a field of cyclopean scree across the forest’s floor. Only the faint impression of a complex remained. The trees grew all between, not remotely deterred by the once-upon-a-time presence of some grand structure in this place.

As they approached the quantity of fallen stone became more apparent. It was almost like entering another forest of black pillars. Carved columns obscured by the trunks of trees lined the ruined way of a road up to the entry arch of the complex.

Kauom dodged between cover all the way, advancing as if under volley. Eris moved with caution less theatrical.

No sign came of the Arktids.

They took cover at either side of the archway. It was very tall. Some manner of inscriptions covered its surface. Eris pulled a vine aside for a better look, but the decoration on the stone beneath was so weathered that she could make out nothing in specific.

“This place has been abandoned for centuries,” Robur observed.

“This place has been abandoned for centuries!” Kauom proclaimed. “Look at all these vines. We’re going to find nothing here but a nest of sal—”

“Be quiet,” Eris said. She poked her head through the archway. Beyond was no ceiling, the roof had collapsed, but four high walls still mostly stood. Perspective made them seem like funnels up toward the red canopy.

From this vantage point she looked back toward their approach. The road, ruined as it was, could be seen clearly now in patches stretching down the knoll. Framed by columns. All under the shade of trees. She could almost imagine what this place looked like all those years ago…

She saw two large stags staring back at her. Far away, challenging to discern in the dim twilight. They would have elicited no further response, except that as she turned she realized there was but one body between them.

The stag had two heads. A dyoelefai. He regarded her for only another moment before bounding off into darkness.

Robur had already proceeded inside the structure. “Eris,” he called out to her. She was so used to ignoring him that it took another two tries before her attention returned to the party.

She stepped through the arch. Here, unlike elsewhere in this part of the forest, she felt grass underfoot. A lawn stretched between the ruin’s walls. The blades were long and wide, neither red nor green but pale gold. She knelt down, running her fingers across their damp tips—

Sparks of blue mana arced between the blades and her fingers. In the darkness they were bright enough to cast shadows across the walls, briefly, crackling like the world’s smallest bolts of lightning in an ant-sized thunderstorm.

She recognized this from her studies.

“Elektronoi,” Eris said. “Aethereal plants that feed on mana rather than the sun. There is some source of energy beneath this place.”

“I wonder if—” Robur started.

“So what is it?” Kauom said.

“Do you wish me to have all the answers for you already, dwarf?” she said, standing. She took with her a handful of the grass. It was placed into a reagent pouch at her belt—Elektron plants were rare and had many alchemical uses. They were also charged with mana for use in an emergency.

“You’ve dragged us all the way out here, so you’d better!” he said.

She walked past him, farther into the ruins. It broadened somewhat; then, covered in red and violet plants, showered in leaves, she saw the statue. Weathered badly, surrounded by the rubble of the ceiling, but clearly still a man in armor. He held a scepter outstretched in one hand, while his other was level at his side, palm open, as if it should be clutching some other symbol of rank…

An Archon.

Eris never should have doubted herself. She knew precisely where she was going all along. Of course she did.

“Think that statue will come alive?” Kauom said.

“There is always a chance with the Magisters,” Eris said, “but I do not think it likely.”

She collapsed the Orb. It was a perfect match for the statue’s palm. But rather than rush ahead, she instructed her party to help her scout about the complex, in case any they missed anything. Branching off from this main foyer were indeed other rooms, but save the baths they were so ruined and collapsed and ravaged by time that they were unidentifiable.

“What do you think was the purpose of this place?” Robur said. “It must have been built after the Fall, yes? Like the Vault itself?”

Eris had no idea, so she made something up and stated it with absolute certainty. “Do not be absurd. The Orb led us here, and the Orb is as ancient as the conquest of Nanos itself. This place is something different...or it was, when first built.” A thought occurred to her. “The Magisters built their mountainside vault to store their own secrets, their most precious writings, and they brought with them the Archon’s Orb after his death, to keep it safe—along with whatever else they could ferry there. Gold and jewelry, as we saw. But there were no enchanted swords, no suits of armor from the Manaforge, as there should well have been. Those artifacts would have been stored elsewhere. Someplace secure. Impossible to find. A reliquary, accessible only to the Archon himself…”

She glanced down at the Orb in her hand. Suddenly it made far more sense. The shape was intentionally confusing, hard to decipher for the uninitiated, and it had been drawn before the Fall, when Nanos looked quite different. One of the Magisters must have painted over it with a brush sometime after, turning the green forests red and adding clouds to Thermopos—as neither (as far as she knew) were anything but mundane in the days of the Old Kingdom—to make the location of this place easier to decipher. It had been the clouds that led Eris southward, else she would have been even more lost. That made the imperfect map of geography that no longer existed at least plausibly understandable.

Thanks to him, it had worked. Or so she thought.

“I believe,” she continued, and now her certainty was more than just feigned, “this place was disguised as a temple of some kind, or perhaps a retreat for the aristocracy. Thus no one knew its true purpose. The statue was likely painted. I would wager he held a prop orb, though of that I cannot be certain.”

“Fascinating!” Robur said. “One thing—”

“That’s all a bunch of shit,” Kauom said, “you don’t know any of it.”

“You do not know the difference between a bird and a bear,” Eris said. “You are also a useless idiot who has done nothing during his entire tenure in this party except whine and complain. You would be wise to hold your tongue, lest a spell see it removed.”

She was growing tired of him. She turned back toward the statue.

“We should make our camp here for the night before unifying the statue with the Orb,” she concluded. “There is no telling what might happen when we do.”

“You don’t know anything will happen!” Kauom said.

“Yet sleep must come regardless, so little will be lost by delay.” She dropped her backpack to the ground.

The dwarf grumbled, muttering something in his language that was well beyond her capacity to comprehend. Then he added quietly, “I bet you don’t even know a spell of tongue removal.”

So camp was set, as always. That night Eris used Hydropneumonic Purification to cleanse water from a nearby pond at which they refilled their canteens earlier in the day. She almost left Kauom’s unpurified out of spite, but decided to save such a trick for when its effects would be more deeply felt.

The faint taste of mana on water was delicious. Like a cold tea from the heavens.

They kept a fire active only briefly that night, then retreated to bed. As ever they shared watch-duty. Kauom first, then Robur, and Eris last, waking early and keeping vigil until dawn. Each day they rotated out of the final slot. This pattern was Rook’s idea; now Eris made it her own.

She saw the large shadows of leaves overtop her blanket when she awoke. Dawn had come already. She shot upright, alert instantaneously.

Kauom slept beside her.

No sign of Robur.

Hair messy, muscles poised, a face consumed by instinct. Like the unsuspecting fox caught in torchlight at night she had an animal's alertness in her eyes. She stayed still. Listening.

Her heartrate rose. She knew something was wrong.

She kicked Kauom.

“Get up!” she hissed.

He leapt from his bedroll, for his crossbow, without any hint of delay—nor stealth. “What!” he yelled at first, yet when he saw her look he caught on instantly. Kauom was nothing if not paranoid. He ducked down low, then whispered again. “What is it?”

She motioned toward Robur’s bed, then slowly rose up to her feet. All her things were still there. All his things were there, too—his backpack, his canteen, his bedroll, his books.

“It’s the damn salamo luwoku,” he whispered.

She ignored his comment, but together they slowly scouted the premises. Eris stalked on her sandals as if sneaking up on a fawn. No sign of him, nor anyone save themselves, elsewhere in the ruins.

She left her things, including the Orb, at the statue’s base. Then she approached the archway…

A still Sanguine Forest beyond. On the ground then she saw shoeprints leading down—Robur’s, she was certain. She waited for Kauom before trailing very cautiously after them, preparing a discharge of mana in case anything attacked.

Eris liked the forest, and had spent a great deal of time amongst trees over the last two years, but she was no outdoorswoman. Thus it was only as she rounded the trunk of one particularly large tree and saw both of Robur’s empty shoes that she realized the severity of the ambush.

Six Arktids revealed themselves. They had been waiting patiently all morning. Two from around this tree’s trunk. Two from behind cover in the field of rubble between the forest and the ruins. Two more with bows-and-arrows farther off.

Eris let slip her prepared mana: she threw one Arktid, armed with a spear, flying through the air, tumbling over himself. But she wasn’t fast enough to stop the other. He grabbed hold of her arm with his claw, some mixture between a human hand and a bear's, and closed his fingers with immense strength. She gasped in pain, but had nowhere near the strength to break free without the assistance of magic.

Behind her Kauom fired a single bolt from his crossbow. He hit one Arktid as they rushed toward him; the immense power of the Dwarven arbalest sent the bolt sailing clean through its body and into a far-off tree as if it had passed through nothing at all. The Arktid toppled to the ground, slain in an instant. Kauom lowered the weapon to his feet, placed another bolt, used the winch to reload—and rotated it twice before being apprehended. He was wrestled to the ground, easily overpowered.

Eris grabbed hold of the Arktid’s furry arm and tried to sear it away with heat channeled from the fingers on her free hand, but he slashed her across the face, scratching her badly on the check, sending her rolling backward; then apprehended her other arm, too, and lifted her into the air.

A gray streak ran down the Arktid’s snout. His eyes were human in shape, precisely. He opened his jaw, revealing rows of sharp teeth, and roared in her face. Then he bound her wrists together in one hand, and as she tried desperately to do anything she knew how to do—levitation, pulling them both into the air—he smacked her again in the head, then slammed her against the tree.

Wind knocked from her chest, darkness in her vision, she could do nothing but remain limp as the bearman dragged her through the wood.

Eris was vaguely conscious as a thick, course rope was used to bind her legs and her torso, wrapping her arms against her chest. She was vaguely aware of the spear’s tip held to her throat all the while. She was, even, vaguely aware of her surroundings: another ruin, an enclosure of small toppled walls, in which both of her companions were also bound.

“Eris!” Robur said. “It’s a trap! I tried to warn you, but they captured me!”

She rested her forehead against the warm ground.

A paw grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back. The same gray-faced Arktid stared down at her.

He spoke.

The language sounded like the whining of dogs, with a broader range—and more sustained tones. But it was a language. She knew the Arktids were capable of speech.

He harangued her. A lengthy scolding, furious. When it was finally over, he stared her in the eyes expectantly.

She shook her head. “I cannot understand you,” she said, feeling rather defeated.

He continued to growl at her after that. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on escape. Getting out of the ropes was possible with magic, though not easy, but of course that spear to her neck would make any efforts pointless. She could try to blast the spearbearer away…but there would be no time to free herself before the rest of the party was upon her.

So she gave in, and she used the Wisdom of the Sages. Using the spell for spoken language was like taking the words from the Arktid’s mouth and transcribing them onto her mind, then flipping a switch. When next she listened, she heard speech as clearly as Kathar:

“…where it is, your friends will go free. If not, we will slit their throats and drain them like slaughtered dyoelefai.”

“We have done nothing to offend you,” she managed.

He roared. “Killer! Thief! Do you think your tricks will fool us? You are the only fool, to think you could return to our territory and not face our wrath for your treachery!”

As if the situation might get any worse, Eris' heart plummeted into her sandals. They recognized her. But how could that be? She was under disguise when she stole the book, and she had slain all those—

All those who witnessed her true form, except one. She let him get away. She closed her eyes and swore.

“Where is the Holy Book, female? Tell me now!” he said. He put a foot on her torso and lowered himself. She wheezed. He weighed five hundred pounds, at least. “This is one small taste of your fate if you do not pronounce now the Holy Book’s location!”

He let up the weight. She gagged, rolling over onto her side. The spear’s blade followed against her skin all the way. “I do not have it!”

“Where is it!”

“Lost!”

“Where?”

She said the first thing that occurred to her. “In Dacia! Across the Great Divide! It was stolen from me!”

He growled. “Liar. Nothing you say is true. It wasn’t before, nor is it now.” He showed a finger; the claw atop glinted. He dragged it across the bare skin above her breasts. Pushing harder. Drawing blood. “Try honesty. Here is encouragement.”

She felt nothing but warmth, yet fear of scarring drove her to hysteria—and in hysteria she told the truth. “It was destroyed, you idiot mongrel! Burned to dust! You will never see it again!”

He stood up suddenly and stumbled back in shock. At a loss for words. He turned to Kauom, then his nearest spearbearer, and—

Another Arktid’s voice came. “Chieftain! The beast!”

“What?”

“It’s followed us! We must move at once!”

“No. Our business isn’t settled.”

“Grab the humans, let’s be off!”

“I said be quiet—”

A tree in the distance crunched.

“Chieftain! It’s here!”

Murmuring. Eris saw three Arktids, just their feet, route from the camp at once, fleeing back into the desert. The Chieftain swore, glancing down at her, and that was when they both heard. A terrible sound. Thunderous. Evil. Nightmarish.

A noise like the roaring of a bear, combined with the bass, echoing hoot of an owl.

The Chieftain looked up. He grabbed the spearbearer, still at Eris’ neck, and commanded: “Fly! The woods itself will be your death sentence, mage—pah!”

They both routed.

Twigs and branches crunched a dozen feet off. Eris righted herself after a great deal of fumbling, and around her she saw Kauom and Robur, both also upright, petrified, staring directly behind her—

She turned, and she saw.

The owlbear was all red. Feathers covered its skull and front legs. A squareish head, with horn-like ears and a small, vicious beak. Eyes like eclipses: black moons against burning orange suns. The front legs were winged from claw to the mid back, so that when the creature stood, and it did stand as it looked down on its three new dishes, it expanded in a mighty span, like a flying squirrel. The rest of the abomination was covered in fur and identical to a bear, except the tail, which was flat and elongated and feathered—and pure white.

The manawyrm was an extraordinary creature. The goblins were disgusting. The bugbears were vicious. The Regal Avatar was terrifying. Yet until now Eris did not know what it meant to feel true terror in the face of an adversary.

Kauom was right. This was a hideous abomination. Too familiar to be alien, yet so wrong in so many ways. Enormous. Impossible to look upon without quavering.

She opened her mouth to say something, but only a dry wheeze came out.

It smelled the blood leaking down her torso. With ease it stepped over the wall around the Arktids’ camp, lowering its head to the ground, then leading itself by the nose toward her.

She scrambled back as best she could, kicking with her heels, until the top of her head collided with the wall behind. The owlbear was not deterred. It pursued her. When she stopped it put a foreleg on her heel, then sniffed up her body, toward her breasts, with its mouth. Its beak touched her bare skin. A tiny, narrow tongue extended outward, licking at her dripping blood—

And it stumbled backward. Eris was so afraid she hardly noticed what was happening at first, but then she saw Robur, behind the bear, fiercely concentrated: between her and the owlbear now extended a flickering yellow wall of light. A forcefield. A shield of mana.

The owlbear let out a noise halfway between a hoot and a roar. It pounded at the shield. Robur reacted by falling to the ground, but he maintained the field still.

Another roar. Another pound. The shield still held.

This was Eris’ only chance. Her head turned to Kauom, and she saw him struggling hard against his constraints, swearing, trying hopelessly to break free. Beside him was his arbalest.

A sudden idea.

“Stand still!” she shouted to him. She focused hard on each of the knots around his torso and legs. Hand gestures were not required for channeling mana, nor was direct contact required for transferring heat, but they made the process much easier—yet there was no time to free them both now, not yet. Instead she prayed that the dwarf’s obsession over owlbears, and his insistence in using his arbalest, would have at least one use.

One by one, the knots came undone. A burst of flame engulfed one segment of the rope, immolating it before being put out. Soon he was free—

Robur screamed in pain as another blow came against the field. Just then it fell. Eris turned her attention back to the bear, and as it lunged toward her, as that evil beak came for her heart, she raised a field of her own, catching the beast and knocking it backward as a net.

It was incensed. All its sense of the surroundings gone. It wanted nothing but Eris, and it battered against her new forcefield savagely. She channeled all her Essence into maintaining it. From her corner of her eye she watched as Kauom grabbed a bolt from his quiver, slid it into the arbalest’s cross, withdrew the winch, cranked it…

The process took a full minute.

…cranked it again, and again, and again, even while the assault grew more intense. Eris felt blood leaking down her nose. Each hit against a forcefield was like a concussive punch to her face, like she could feel her brain pounding against the walls of her skull, but she had the determination to make it hold.

Kauom raised the arbalest. He aimed right for the owlbear’s neck, and he pulled the trigger.

A twang. The bolt whistled through the air. It hit its target. Just at that moment Eris dropped her forcefield; she no longer had the energy to sustain it. The bolt made it halfway through the owlbear’s neck and knocked it over onto its side, lodged in the thick flesh therein—

Yet it wasn’t dead. It flailed for several moments as it righted itself; but once it had, it was enraged, and it lowered itself to charge at Kauom.

But now Eris had the chance she needed. She let out a blast of energy, taxing herself badly, undoing the knots around herself with the shockwave. Once freed she grabbed desperately for the pouch of reagents at her belt—

There she felt the tingling of electricity. Mana within golden blades of grass. The Elektronoi from last night, found at the foot of the statue. She tapped all of their energy. The blades turned to rotting refuse in an instant, but her Essence was reinvigorated just enough. She extended her arms toward the owlbear as it ran past her and let slip a stream of flames from her fingers.

The feathers went up like charcoal. A terrified hoot of pain left the owlbear’s beak as it immolated, patting itself down in agony with its massive front paws. Eris didn’t have the energy to spare to sustain her spell, so she ceased her barrage only a moment after letting it go, allowing fire’s natural spread to take its course; it would be out before long, but now the owlbear was too distracted to attack—

And Kauom had reloaded. He stepped toward the flailing beast casually, almost nonchalant. Then in a single hand he lowered the arbalest to the creature’s head, and he shot.

The owlbear fell dead to the ground.

Kauom took the owlbear’s ‘horns,’ its ears, as trophies. The rest of the head they put on a spear left behind by the Arktids. A warning that they were not to be trifled with.

Kauom spit as the effigy was erected. “Salamo luwoku. May the magma spirits take you.”

Robur held both his hands against his forehead. He was very ill. “Why do you hate these creatures so much?”

“Maybe I just don’t like the way they look. Ever thought of that, kid?”

“No,” Robur replied.

“Good! That would be stupid.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“What happened between you and creatures such as this one?”

Kauom frowned. “My brother. He was a Ranger. They said a flock of owlbears got him out on patrol, but they never knew for sure.”

“Why not?”

“Because evil monsters like owlbears don’t leave anything for evidence except guts and gore!”

“Then ‘tis fitting we leave nothing but guts and gore of the owlbear,” Eris interjected. “Now let us not stay here, lest the Arktids return.”

They carved as much meat as could be carried off the beast, then fled back to the ruins with the statue. There all their things remained for them unmolested. They set a fire and ate, still alert, until noon. The dark meat of the front legs was sweet and delicious. The red meat of the back legs was tangy and good on its own, but did not go well with the former. As for the white meat of the breast—Eris did not bother trying it.

Once finished, she took more grass and placed it in her pouch, then turned her attention toward the statue.

They were in terrible condition. Robur was nearly spellsick. Eris herself was drained; the Elektron grass would help, but only in emergencies, and at great risk of overtaxing herself further. It would be days before she could comfortably use magic again as she would normally. But she feared reprisal from the Arktids, and they had come so far already. There was no choice but to proceed. Whatever happened next, at least, she presumed, they would be safe from the hunting of the vengeful bearmen.

So she placed the Orb into the hand of the statue.

Nothing.

Until…

A click. Rumbling underfoot. She stepped backward, and then she saw the grass atop which she stood be swept away by a mechanism in the floor. Layers of earth poured into a hole soon revealed by the motion of the ground. Soon a spiral staircase at the statue’s base was revealed, leading down into the depths of darkness.

When all was silent, she grabbed back the Orb.

“At least,” she said, “I doubt there will be owlbears down there.”

“Say no more!” Kauom said. “Let’s go, before more of your friends show up.”

So Eris lit a torch from her backpack, and Kauom took the first step, arbalest at the ready, descending once again underground.