“Aletheia!” Astera said again. She stepped forward, away from camp, toward the wild desert.

“I would not do that,” Eris said.

Aletheia stood halfway concealed behind a tree. Like a scared child, or a cowering cat.

Astera stopped as commanded. Eris took the chance to rouse Rook, then Jason, and then the others. She only listened as Elf and Girl spoke.

“There was no choice,” Astera said. Her voice was weak. “I thought—there would be no other way to escape…”

“It’s okay,” Aletheia said. “You’re back now, right?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t leave again?”

No response, until: “Not until Lord Arqa has been slain.”

By now Rook’s sword was in his hand. He grasped Astera’s shoulder, but she pushed him away. Eris watched on.

Aletheia pouted. “Why did you have to fight?”

"What?” Astera said.

“Astera…” Rook said.

“He loved you. You didn’t have to do anything but love him back.”

Astera hesitated. “He loved Daphana.”

“So?” Aletheia said. Eris hadn’t seen this girl in a very long time, but she recognized the way she spoke, the cadence to her voice, the timid indignity. “If you had just pretended, he would have loved you. He couldn’t tell the difference.”

“Astera!” Rook said.

“This creature is a facsimile,” Eris said. “No matter how real it seems.”

“We could still have a family,” Aletheia said. “He would still love you like he loves me. And we could all be happy together.”

Tarfur’s axe was in his hands. He skirted around the tree at which Aletheia hid. The rest remained silent.

“He is a monster,” Astera finally said. “And he will pay for what he did to you.”

Now the girl’s face twisted into a scowl. “What you did to me.”

Rook stepped forward with his sword.

“No,” Astera said.

Aletheia stepped into the open. “Yes! You killed me! It was your decision, and you killed me!” She retreated, walking backward as Rook approached. “It was all your fault! You swore to protect me, but you killed me!”

“I didn’t…” Astera started, but she felt silent.

“Did you tell Rook how I begged? Did you tell him how you ignored me? Just because you were afraid? Did you tell him what it sounded like when my body fell to the ground? Why didn’t you tell him, Astera?”

“Please…”

“But it doesn’t matter now. Because you’re back. And now he knows you’re here.”

Just then Tarfur charged. He pulled his axe to the side and like a madman breaking down a wooden door he cleaved it into her chest from the front. The blade bit into her sternum. She gasped and her white dress split in two—

But there was no blood. No scream of pain. Nothing at all—except her eyes, which tilted up to meet the troll’s.

A deep red shadow appeared around Aletheia’s silhouette. A sanguine corona, just for a moment. She grabbed Tarfur’s arm and his skin sizzled; he withdrew his axe, and when he did there was no mark save on her dress. He stumbled away in pain.

Robur rushed to his side. He let forth a gust of cold at Aletheia, but as the icy air met her skin, it deflected back against him. He was showered by his own spell and set coughing.

Rook jumped forward—

Aletheia knocked him over with a blast of wind.

Astera stood still and did nothing.

“You idiot! You gave this vampire a magician!” Eris said.

“For Kem-Karwene!” one of the dwarves said, and all three charged forward.

“Use your spell,” Astera said distantly. “Use the spell on her—to make her vulnerable…”

“I will not!” Eris said. “I have only one soulcharm. I will not risk it on this child. Draw your sword and slay her!”

Astera grabbed at her. “Use it!”

A dwarf was pulled into the air by an unseen string. With a gesture of her hand Aletheia tossed him across the desert. His brother swung his hammer at her and the force knocked her over, but the unenchanted weapon dealt no damage. She scurried away.

Eris swore. She pushed Astera aside and rushed to Rook, helping him up. The two of them pressed forward together. Aletheia tried to grab Eris with a spell, but she felt the Essence—an evil, unfamiliar, tainted Essence, not Aletheia’s at all—wrapping itself around her, and she dispelled it with her Spellward gauntlet, reaching out and snapping the connection between them. Next there came a cloud of golden flame, but Eris blocked that, too, and then Rook was upon her. He thrust his sword into her shoulder—

She pulled herself away at once, gasping in pain.

This time, blood seeped down the wound.

Her golden eyes met Rook’s. Tears swelled. There was a long moment of hesitation.

“Rook!” Eris shouted. “Kill her!”

He did nothing. She tried to grab his sword, and only then did he step forward again. He swiped at her neck—

But Aletheia was gone.

“You are all imbeciles,” Eris said. “Even Zydnus was a sage compared to the absolute depths of your idiocies. There are children who I should sooner entrust with my security than you lot of inbred, degenerate, ogre-brained mongrels!”

“Eris…” Rook said.

“No. You,” she pointed to Astera, “you are expected to be an idiot. ‘Tis no surprise there. But the rest of you—”

She growled. She went down the line.

“We told you already,” she said to Tarfur and the three dwarves, “that your weapons will not work against demons. Yet you get in the way regardless. You all might jump off the nearest cliff to save us the effort of working around your bumbling in the future.”

To Robur: “You know fully that our magic is ineffective against demons. You try it anyway.”

To Astera: “Of course we know you are an imbecile already, yet when the call to action comes, the least you may do is answer it. Instead you do nothing. You would see our entire expedition fail because of your inability to move past your own trauma.”

She was furious. Since no one stopped her, she kept going for as long as she could.

Finally, to Rook. “And Rook. Your sentimentality has allowed Aletheia to escape. No doubt hordes of the undead descend now upon us, and for what purpose? Because you could not bear to bring your sword down upon a creature which had assumed the shape of your surrogate little sister? I hope such sentimentality is worth all our lives, for it may well have cost as much.”

“How would you feel,” Absalon, who had not participated, said, “to suffer abuse at the hands of a sister you thought slain? Would you be able to kill her yourself?”

Eris hmphed. “If ‘twere one of my sisters I would be even more upset she escaped the encounter alive.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You are a charming lady.”

Two of the dwarves huddled around their fallen third. He groaned in pain. “Mas!” one said. “Hold on!”

Astera had been sitting on the ground, but now she rose to confront Eris. “You should have used your spell. We may never have a chance to confront her again.”

“That seems unlikely,” Eris said, “yet even so, so be it. We are not here to rescue Aletheia. Lord Arqa is our only concern.” She watched Astera’s face contort. “Or perhaps we are here for the girl, hm? Could it be your motives have changed since this new revelation?”

“…we can’t let her stay like this.”

“We can, and we shall, until the greater threat is vanquished.”

“Eris is right,” Rook said. He appeared nearly as upset as Astera. Eris did not find the look attractive. “We aren’t here for Aletheia. There’s too much at stake.”

“Perhaps,” Robur said, as he always did, “whatever hold Lord Arqa has over Aletheia will be banished along with the vampire’s Essence.”

“That depends wholly on the nature of her possession,” Eris said. “If ‘tis a shard of himself deposited into Aletheia’s corpse, as the Manawyrm was to me, then that seems likely.”

“That’s it,” Jason said. “I have it here—somewhere, in my things. He’s revived her to be one of his thralls. Not just a zombie but a body with a piece of himself at the helm. Like—growing a new starfish from a single chunk, or something. If he dies, so will she.”

“Then she wasn’t dead?” Astera said. “We might still be able to save her?”

“No. She’s dead. She’s just an empty body.”

“It sounded just like her,” Rook said, staring off at the desert. “At first.”

“This is an evil creature indeed,” Absalon said, “who tortures the living with the ghosts of little girls.”

“No wonder,” Eris said. “For it seems to work spectacularly.”

Rook stood. Silently, he packed his things, until he said, “Can you walk, Mas?”

“Aye,” a dwarf said. “Just point me in the right direction.”

“Then let’s continue off. We’ve slept all we’re like to.”

The injured dwarf limped behind the party for two miles. His brothers walked next to him. Eris didn’t watch closely. Everyone remained alert.

Beneath the Valley’s clouds there was the atmosphere of a perpetual precipice before heavy rainfall. At any moment it looked like rain would fall. But it didn’t smell like rain. It wasn’t humid. There was no thunder or wind. It was simply dark and gloomy forever, and somehow that was worse than any storm.

There came a point where one of the dwarves called out for the party to stop. “Everyone! Stop! Where’s Mas? Stop! Hold on! Ras! Where’d he go?”

“Mas?” the other dwarf called out. “Mas? Where are ye?”

Rook sprinted back down the line. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

“It’s Mas!” Ras or Kas said. “He ain’t here!”

“He was here, not a second past,” Kas or Ras said. “Mas!”

“Astera,” Rook said. She nodded and rushed over, moving at once to look for tracks on the ground.

Eris watched on with disinterest. They were moving off-road and the going was harsh. Her legs were scratched to pieces and her skirt laden with thorns and barbs. Yet she saw no approaching horde of the undead—no sign of danger at all, except the dark sky and the distant pyramids on the horizon. Their destination was still out of sight.

After a few minutes of searching they retraced their steps.

“His tracks end here,” Astera said. “I don’t see…you were with him?”

“I was with him every step of the way!” Kas or Ras said. “I turned me back for a single second, and then—he was gone! Weren’t ye talkin’ to him, too, Ras? Ras?”

The dwarf, who must have been Kas, craned his head. Now there was only one dwarf.

“Ras!” he cried. “Where’d ye go?”

Pyraz dropped low to the ground. He growled. Rook drew his sword. Absalon readied his spear.

“Fall in!” Rook said. “Closer!”

Everyone obeyed. Soon they were silent, with no sound but their breathing as they formed a circle around each other.

Tarfur listened closely. “Hear it,” he said.

“Yes,” Astera said.

“What?” Rook whispered.

“There!” Tarfur said. He drew a handaxe from the sash at his waist and threw it into the desert. The blade twisted in the air over the handle, again and again, until it landed in a thicket of cactus and white creosote with a floral crash. A moment passed—

And a spider leaped into the open.

Its body was the size of a bear. Legs much longer. The color was the same sandy white as the trees, and it moved with perfect camouflage. Embedded in its head, in half of its eyes, was Tarfur’s hatchet: it had hit perfectly on target.

The spider did not mind.

“Sandspiders,” Jason said.

“Undead sandspiders,” Rook said. “Steel yourselves!”

The first spider skittered toward Tarfur. He roared and met it head-on. The enormous, stocky, tusked creature was more than a match for the nimble arachnid; they both fell to the ground in a brawl. At Rook’s half of the circle another spider emerged: this one was missing a leg already, and it jumped at him without any regard for its safety.

Their circle broke to avoid being trampled.

Astera pulled her sword to engage it, but another came for her. It pulled her to the ground. Eris drew mana from the air—there was much mana here, more than she needed to kill a spider, or re-kill it, when Robur cried, “Look!”

Two more materialized from the desert. They were hiding in banks of sand, mere inches from her. Robur pushed one away with magic and she caught the other with a forcefield, stumbling backward.

Now their lines were entirely broken.

Astera sliced her opponent to pieces. Bits off the carapace; more from the legs; the mandibles, the eyes, but nothing made a difference. She dodged every blow. Absalon engaged one with the help of Kas, but his spear became lodged in the creature’s thorax. He was pinned to the ground—except his armor was thick enough to stop the jaws as they bit against his neck and torso, and Ras hammered it again and again, pulverizing it like meat at a butcher’s storefront.

“Pin them!” Eris said.

Robur tried his best. Roots snapped from the hard ground and wrapped around the two spiders nearest. They were restrained momentarily; that was all Eris needed.

She lowered her fingers toward one and let slip jets of fire. Green that sent shadows burning across the whole gloomy desert, flashing in the darkness, blinding her. But the spider felt no pain. It was hardly slowed. It pressed forward and leaped for her, only slow enough now that she stepped out of its path.

More fire. The spider’s exoskeleton contracted. It could no longer control itself, but it didn’t die. It came for her, so she increased the potency of the flame; it flickered into gold, until finally the spider disintegrated into ash at her fingertips.

When she looked upward she was exhausted. That took far longer than it needed to. Then she saw Rook. He deftly went for the legs. He was covered in putrid blood, but patiently he removed one leg at a time, until the spider he fought was immobilized, left with only one appendage for movement—

And he cut that off, too, before disengaging victoriously.

“Help!” Robur said.

She turned back toward him. He had lowered a shield onto the other spider to keep it in place, but it had nearly broken free. Eris had an idea, but as she prepared another casting, the wall broke.

Robur stumbled backward. The spider moved too quickly. It barreled into him and bit him in the arm, tearing away at the flesh. He gasped in pain. A wave of force tried to knock it away, but succeeded only in pulling his sinew from his body. Gore dripped from the spider’s mouth.

Eris reached out with her Essence to grab one of the spider’s legs. Then another. And another. As quickly as she could she traced a line between all eight appendages, and once her will had a hold, she tugged outward. Every limb in the opposite direction, all at once.

The spider’s hold on Robur loosened. Then loosened. It was lifted upward an inch and he scuttled away. Then—all eight legs were ripped from its body.

The legs rained down on the far-off desert like wooden beams in a hurricane. The spider was left immobile. It rocked on bloodied stumps, chomping its mandibles, otherwise helpless.

Absalon and Kas pulverized their opponent so thoroughly that nothing remained but shivering pieces of exoskeleton. Astera avoided injury by virtue of her armor and stumbled away from a spider much the same. Rook’s was still dangerous, as was Robur and Eris’, if they drew too close. As for Tarfur…

He rammed his tusks into the spider’s head. He tore it off, sending spider brains flying into the desert. Once its mouth was disabled he tore off its limbs one-by-one, then smashed its thorax to pieces with his fists.

Robur was treated first. The injury was painful and would take time to heal, but non-threatening. Then presently they found Ras and Mas in the nearby shrubs. Mas did not make it. Ras, however, still breathed; he had been envenomed, but Astera tended to him quickly, and with a spell she neutralized the worst of the dose. He would survive.

Tarfur picked him up and slung him on his back. “Go now. No time.”

“We must burn the body,” Astera said.

A weepy-eyed Kas shook his head, running a hand over his brother. “He is returned to the Stonemother. Ye won’t burn him, elf.”

“We burn him so you never suffer what I have with Aletheia.”

“Dwarves cannot be raised from the dead!” Kas said. “Don’t ye dare speak of my brother as if he were some human!”

Astera looked to Eris and Robur.

“He is right,” Eris said. “The powers of necromancy hold no sway over dwarves or elves.”

She closed her eyes. But she nodded, and she agreed. “Very well,” she said.

“We’ll return to give ‘im a proper burial, once all this is finished,” Kas said.

“If,” Rook said, “it ever is. Arqa Two isn’t far off. Let’s keep moving. And everyone, stay close. Never leave my side.”