Three miles. That was all. Three miles through fallow fields, over thin banks of snow, past thickets of dead wintertime forest, toward a grove where the trees were spangled with frosted spiderwebs. That much, only three. They often traveled days to reach their sites of adventure. Eris went through more sandals than rations. So three miles, no more than an hour, was a jog. A day’s exercise. A jaunt. She should have been grateful, even if she expected they would find little at their journey’s end.

And yet. And yet…

One hour felt longer than two days combined in the freezing wind. One hour and her toes were numb and she was sick of slipping on the ground. The cacophony of crunching steps castrated her capacity for contemplation; she could focus on nothing else but the champing, chawing, chomping mastication of snow beneath treaded feet.

At least the snow had stopped. At least the sun was out, for now.

She dropped her dagger. It slipped from the belt at her waist and plummeted hilt-first into a pile of sleet. The indentation left was clear, so she dropped to her knees, swearing. She held her hand there above the ground. An invisible slap. The release of energy. She sent flames from her fingertips to clear away the snow.

Nothing happened.

“I am going to kill you once I am restored,” she muttered, though even she wasn’t certain if she meant Robur or the Manawyrm or, in fact, herself.

She sifted through the snow with her hands.

When she finally found it an inch or two down, the metal was so cold it couldn’t be touched by bare hands. Again on instinct she tried to channel heat into the hilt to warm it up, but of course nothing happened. She clutched the dagger in her right hand, with her Spellward gauntlet, then sheathed it back at her side. She tightened her belt again.

The covered blade dug into her hips. It was still freezing.

“It looks very different in winter,” Robur said.

“What?” Eris snapped.

“The village. If it wasn’t for this tree I wouldn’t have thought we were there yet.” He motioned at a withered chimera. It was a straight, centered, symmetrical pine tree, like a pyramid, except the gnarled, spider-like limbs of an oak spiraled off from its central trunk in every direction. Its leaves might usually have been red, but now the branches were bare—except for the white, rose-like petals that bloomed completely out of season.

Lizardmen and kobolds were not the only abominations left on this Earth in the wake of the Fall.

Eris looked the tree over, then glanced about for any sign of a ‘village.’ She saw nothing but black trees and white ground.

Birds flitted off a branch. Snow rained down onto her back. She hissed in frustration and watched the flock go. If she had her power yet, those birds would not survive to safety…

“There is no village here,” she said.

“Yes there is,” Robur said. He pushed past the chimeric oakpine tree, into a thicket of red briars. With the covering of white brushed off, their knife-like needles looked something like blood streaked on the snow. If Eris wasn’t careful, she thought, that appearance would prove a prophecy.

They picked the thicket apart with a stick and stepped through, and on the other side there the grove was. No clear sense could be found for why plants grew some places while others were bare. But Robur stumbled forward. He went to one tree, then another, then stopped, and he began kicking snow away with the side of his heel.

Doom descended on Eris.

“Do not tell me ‘tis underground,” she groaned.

“It is a dwarf village,” Robur said.

“I will not go underground anymore,” Eris said. “Especially not—no more! Enough with tombs, enough with mines and vaults. My eyes are sick of overstraining in the darkness. Drag me instead to a cemetery, where we may dig up graves in the open!”

“In the snow?”

“No! I—” she was so frustrated she wanted to scream, but she centered herself, voice precise, staccato, “you sad ‘twas a village. Not a collection of holes.”

“It is a dwarf village,” Robur repeated. He led her some way over to a circle of stones that barely protruded from the snow, which he polished clean. “Look. They had a well.”

The stone was so white she could hardly see it before, but now she did, and looking over the edge she saw a hole that led into darkness.

“A well. Brilliant. You have changed my mind entirely.”

“Anything that isn’t underground is hardly worth taking,” he said. “The oldest, and most valuable, things will always be hidden out of sight.”

The real point of contention, which Eris didn’t want to admit, was in the fact that she would be unable to conjure light for the two of them. She meant what she said—she was very sick of underground adventuring, of spelunking and dungeoneering—but she was most self-conscious of her current disability. Asking Robur for light would demean her.

She folded her arms. The skeletal canopy of branches overhead blocked out the sun well enough here to cause a noticeable dip in temperature. She shivered. “So,” she said. “Wherefore precisely have you dragged us here? What do you expect to find?”

He walked back to where he’d cleared away some snow. Leaning down, he found a knob, tugged, and a concealed hatch lurched upward. It gave an inch before locking back into place. Eris approached. She saw a trapdoor made of stone, much like the trapdoor into the bugbear lair beneath the old tower in Rytus.

“It wasn’t locked last month,” he said.

The grove about them was silent, but she perked up like startled doe at that revelation. She took it for granted that no one but themselves would be stupid enough to wander three miles from town in the dead of winter, not even bandits, and the worst of Nanos’ monsters rarely ventured so near Swep-Nos. But now she doubted they were so alone.

“I do not suppose you found a key when you were last here,” she said.

“No.”

“Are there others that still open? We should check them first.”

Fortunately Robur, not tapped of his ability to cast, cleared away the snow in the clearing with fire. Thus revealed a few more entrances, and even the exteriors of the buildings: their foundations and their white stone walls, which were all but invisible against a snowy field. The grove looked more like what she was promised now.

Of the four more trapdoors they found, only one, one within a basin of crumbling walls, was unlocked.

Robur took a torch out of his backpack, lit it, handed it to her. “Here.”

“You have not answered me.”

“What?”

“What do you expect to find?” she whispered now, “surely you have some impression of the value that might be within before we stumble back into the darkness below?”

She took the torch out of instinct, but waved it around frustratedly once it was in her hand. She tried to smother the flame with mana out of protest. That went as well as could be expected.

He stared at her. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly.

“Perhaps old chairs,” she muttered. She stormed past him, down the stairs, through the trapdoor. No matter what happened she refused to be a follower to Robur, of all people. That was like being led by a leashed dog.

…even if she felt her stomach churning at each step she took downstairs.

Fortunately it was not deep. It was also warmer, relatively, shielded as it was from the wind. Only ten steps saw them inside what could only be describe as a dungeon of a house. The ceiling stood no higher than 5’6”. Stone furniture scattered everywhere. A bed, kitchen, furnace, all in an open floor plan; the amenities of a peasant’s abode, only dwarven.

As they looked the premises over, Eris noticed scuff marks on the stairs. With the torch raised they saw next the barrels, scattered about the room. They stood nearly as tall as the ceiling.

“I don’t recall seeing those,” Robur said.

Eris rapped her knuckles against a barrel. It was full of some liquid. The construction, black wood banded by white metal, was clearly Karwenian.

“Someone is using this place,” Eris said. “We should not tarry.”

Robur nodded. Their search began. The familiar search of rummaging through old ruins for anything of value, combined with the less familiar—although more probable—outcome of no success. Unless they intended to haul old furniture back to town, nothing here was worth taking, nothing except those barrels.

But they did find a lantern. Oil still lingered at its base. It hung on a loop near the stairs, left here not long ago. They also found a bedroll.

This was a very dangerous place.

“Let us take a barrel and go,” Eris whispered.

“What’s inside?” Robur said.

“A question for tomorrow.”

“It may not be valuable.”

“You have no right to be cynical. That is my job.”

“It’s a long way to carry something so heavy…”

Just then there came a howling of wind that sounded just like voices. Eris froze, fumbling for her dagger, listening as closely as she could, before the howl picked up. Branches rustled distantly. She realized.

She shook her head. Paranoia was a new look for her. She didn’t much like it, yet all the same perhaps it was wise her disability had her on edge. Suddenly Kauom’s disposition made much more sense to her.

She went back to the barrels once more. Searching their sides for any markings. Around the corner she found one, a brand in white. It read in Dwarven characters…

Something.

She couldn’t cast her spell to translate.

She closed her eyes, clutched her fists, and fumed. She nearly impaled the wooden surface with her blade when Robur put a hand on her shoulder.

“Wait,” he said. “I recognize the characters.”

“I recognize the characters as well, but that does not suggest I know their meaning,” she said. She had learned the Dwarven alphabet, which wasn’t so dislike the Regal, but the language itself was impenetrable to her still.

“No, I mean I’ve seen this character before. It means ‘nog.’”

Eris realized. “Nog,” she said. Dwarven ale. Rarely sold outside Kem-Karwene. Fermented underground, in the great caves, by some secret process. It was available at Swep-Nos for an outrageous price. Everyone knew of nog; it was said a single sip could knock a grown elf unconscious.

Their fortunes turned.

“This is a smuggler’s encampment,” she whispered.

Robur nodded.

“Do you know how much a barrel of nog might be worth?”

“If we can carry it…”

“‘Tis a barrel! It will roll!” She stopped to listen again. Another howl of wind. Whoever was staying here could be back presently. They had left the hatch unlocked—she did not want to find out. “Help me,” she said, still whispering. She leaned over and grabbed one side of the barrel, then tilted it over. The nog within sloshed. Robur did help, and soon they were at the stairs. “Use a spell to lift it!”

“That is very challenging to do with an inanimate object…”

“I am full aware. Now do it!”

He took a moment to center himself, but soon a mist of red light swelled out onto the floor, congregating about the barrel’s sides, and it rose into the air. Once a foot off the ground Eris pushed it over the stairs and into the open, where it was set back down again.

They glanced around. No sign. Could this be so easy a heist? After their last ordeal she felt they had earned it. She tried picking it up, but the barrel was dense; it must have weighed seven hundred pounds. She could never lift it.

Even one drachma per pound…this nog may well have been silver.

Three miles. Three miles through cold and snow. That wasn’t so far to roll a barrel, was it?

“Let’s go!” she hissed.

“How do you think they got the barrels to this place? There must be a sled somewhere—” Robur started.

“If you wish to stay and knock, so be it.” She started rolling westward, back toward Swep-Nos. She used her dagger to cut away branches and brambles through the thicket, and soon Robur helped her, and they moved the thing back toward town. It sloshed every inch of the way.

Her back ached. Her thighs burned. But they kept going, slowly. When the barrel became stuck in sleet Robur cleared it away with heat, and when exposed roots or muddy earth made the going difficult, a spell of levitation was enough to lift it free. Robur was drained by the third mile, but they were nearly back. Eris couldn’t believe the ease of this expedition. Banditry suited her well, it seemed.

There was a bank they had to scale to make it back up to the main road. Robur needed long rests between bouts of lifting the barrel, which weighed more than twice as much as the both of them combined, and it was just as they lowered it on the ploughed highway that they heard a man’s voice.

“Stop right there!” he cried.

It came from down below.

“I said stop, or I’ll slit your throats, you damn thieves!”

Eris glanced down at their path. They had left an easily-followed trail through the snow. It was getting late and the highway was deserted save for the birds in the leafless trees overhead.

“Incinerate him!” Eris whispered to Robur. He shook his head and took a seat on the barrel. “You cannot sit there and do nothing! Prepare a spell!”

“I can’t,” he said. His eyes were closed.

“You idiot—” she started, when just then she saw a human in the ravine they had just ascended. He had a knife in his hand.

“Stop!” he said again.

Eris pulled her new cloak—she went through these rather rapidly—around her shoulders, concealing her dagger at her waist, and presented her hands innocently.

The man wore thick furs. His accent sounded Kathar. Eris stepped in front of the barrel, but it wasn’t much of an effort of concealment.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

He pointed the knife at her. “Stay put, bitch.” He grabbed an exposed root and hauled himself up to their level like a mountaineer ascending a cliff with rope. Once close he menaced them. “I don’t know how you’ve rolled that damn thing all this way on your lonesome, but I don’t take kindly to my property being stolen .”

She thought fast. Looking as she did then, she knew she seemed far more like an innocent girl than a hardened adventurer; that she could use to her advantage. She thought of a lie and stuck to it.

“We were told by the patron of the inn in Swep-Nos the barrels had been abandoned,” she said. She kept her eyes wide and voice soft.

The man scoffed. “No one abandons aged nog.”

“Please,” she approached him, wary of the knife but cognizant of the jade ward around her left wrist, “he said he’d pay us to fetch them. We had no notion anyone owned them…”

He gave her a suspicious look. “Oktar told you where to find the village? That double-crossing bastard. Hey! Stay put!” A pause. “How much is he paying you two?”

Eris shook her head. “Only days’ work for each barrel retrieved. We didn’t mean to steal! We’ll bring them right back!”

He stared at her, then Robur, who was idle still on the barrel. “How’d you get it up here?” the man asked.

“It has taken all day. The work is very hard,” Eris said.

“Without the carriage, it’s bloody impossible.” The look on his face suggested he didn’t believe their story, so Eris, giving her best pout, stepped toward him.

“Don’t hurt us, we’re very poor,” she said. “We just needed enough to buy food...”

He reached out, touched her arm. “Knock off the act,” he said. But he lowered his guard. “All right. Help me roll it back now, or you won’t see the light of next dawn. Either of you.”

Eris nodded. She revealed her left hand and again brushed it against his forearm, and although he regarded her suspiciously he was not immune to her charms.

“Move the barrel,” he whispered.

She nodded. Then…

She thrust her dagger into his heart. Three stabs in quick succession. It was incredible how quickly even a dull blade could draw blood. His fingers still clung to his own knife, but when he brought it toward her, the edge was rejected as if by some invisible magnetic field. Eris felt the blow delivered straight to her wrist, but it wasn’t hard enough to do lasting damage, and she withdrew her blade again and shoved it in his throat, snarling like a rabid wolf, showing no mercy. He didn’t collapse to the ground, but he did stumble backward, and she used that chance to shove him on the shoulders.

He plummeted off the side of the road, down the ravine, and into a pile of snow at the base of a tree.

Robur watched on with some amazement. She turned to him. Without saying anything, she took hold of the barrel, and began the process of rolling it down the road once again.

They told Oktar, the bartender and owner of the sometimes-thriving Swep-Nos inn, that the nog had been liberated from the clutches of bandits. They were willing to let it all go for a low price of a mere four silver pieces per gallon, or two hundred drachmae for the entire barrel. This was well below market rate. It seemed Oktar knew more than he let on, but he was happy for the business opportunity.

As Eris counted her counted her coins, she could hardly believe their luck. She turned to depart for her room.

“By the way, miss,” Oktar said. “A gentleman came in this morning lookin’ for you.”

She stopped. Such commentary from the staff rarely interested her before, but a newfound nervousness betrayed her, and her ears perked up. “A gentleman?”

“A human. Blond feller. Says he came way down from the south, looking fer a girl named Eris. That is you, innit?”

Her heart picked up. “A blond human? How old?”

“Not old, though it’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Things really did seem too easy. It couldn’t possibly be Rook. How could it be? What were the chances? She felt like a stupid little girl for the unrealistic excitement that flooded through her now, and yet—who else?

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I offered him the room next to yours, on account of all the vacancies this time of year. That’s 372, to the right. Just knock—I think he’s in now.”

Robur, who was even more exhausted than before, had barely been listening, but he said at this point, “Do you know who this might be?”

She nodded. “I think I might. You needn’t stay. Go to bed, I shall see to this matter.”

He needed no more encouragement. So Robur went to bed, and Eris went to her own room, and she stared at room 372 right beside her own. The restaurant and bar of Swep-Nos was on the first storey; all others were built below ground, in the basement, in dark and dungeon-like hallways, so there was no natural light or hint of the night’s moon as she considered that door.

She hadn’t felt such girlish excitement since she was a child. Since she had been told she would become a magician. Since her lips first met Rook’s.

She knocked on the door. What would she say? She often thought about the answer, all throughout the last year, yet all her contemplations left her now. She couldn’t think of anything coherent. She felt like a dog whose master had just returned. It was a pitiful, child-like state, really beneath her, and yet…

The door cracked open.

A handsome blond man stood on the other side. He was about six feet tall and well-built. Clean shaven, well cut, and he wore a short tunic. Emblazoned across its surface was the sigil of the Tower of Pyrthos: a Magister’s staff emitting an open, burning flame. Although he wasn’t old or gray, he wasn’t young; Eris guessed him to be at least thirty.

His eyes were red.

This was not Rook. But although she couldn’t sense his Essence, and although she had never seen such a person before, she knew at once who he was.

This was a Seeker—a witch hunter for the Magisters.

He smiled at her