The woods around Aressea were dark and thick, and yet Dan didn’t feel in danger. Not after seeing the external forest. And besides, he was currently accompanied by a group of dangerous fighters. The strays had displayed their prowess during the morning training: he’d watched in awe, with the disquieting feeling that all of that training was going to be used on someone.

“What about venom?” Autur asked while they waded through the woods.

Dan looked at her, half-expecting her to be addressing someone else. The entire day had been filled with talks of the strategy and precautions to use, discussions from which he’d been excluded. Even Tagu had been more involved than he was, and she didn’t even fight with a weapon. But Autur was looking straight down at him with her small boar eyes.

“Venom?” he asked.

“Yes. Sea snakes are venomous, right? Can you produce venom?”

He was suddenly self-conscious about his teeth. He touched them with his tongue, looking for any differences. He would have noticed if something was different, would he?

“Not yet,” he said.

Kaspuru chuckled.

“Careful there, don’t bite your tongue.”

That prompted another probing of Dan’s teeth. He walked a bit slower to touch them with his fingers without the other two noticing. Was he immune to his own venom? Or would he die as soon as he swallowed it?

He thought of Lihana, back at Lausune. He’d seen her laugh plenty of times, but her teeth were completely normal. Granted, she hadn’t pushed her transformation as far as Ulres and his family had, as far as he was about to push it. He regretted not asking them how they had dealt with it. Not that there had been time to ask much of anything, after Mayvaru’s arrival.

In an attempt to get his mind off of it all, he turned to Autur and asked:

“Why did you come to Aressea? If you don’t mind telling me.”

Before she could answer, Kaspuru emitted a shocked gasp.

“Why, you’re telling me you don’t believe Tagu’s story? How could you?”

She had spoken the words out loud, but Tagu was walking quite a few armlengths ahead of them, with Sibras and Merekis. Her ears turned a bit, but she didn’t give other signs of having heard.

“I don’t mind,” Autur said. “My clan lives in a forest north of the Golden Lands, outside Arissian territories. There are no traitless humans among us. It was time for me to find a mate, but the only options were my cousins, and every single one of them is an idiot. So I left for the city, to find someone like me or a human willing to change.”

“Why would they need to change?” Kaspuru interjected. “Why not an animal person of a different kind?”

“I plan to go back home, at some point. They wouldn’t survive my clan’s lifestyle. We have tried multiple times in the past, but the cold, the animals and the nomadic life have scared away most spouses, and eventually killed the rest.”

Kaspuru made a sound similar to a snort. Autur answered with a deeper, guttural sort of snort that made Dan’s hairs stand on end. They glared at each other.

“What are we doing today?” Dan asked, his voice made annoyingly high-pitched by the tension. He cleared his throat.

“Sibras didn’t tell you?” Autur asked.

“No. I understood something here and there, but…”

The last two days had been lost in a blur of preparations. Most of the time, the rest of the group had been too occupied in making sure everyone had something useful to do to actually sit him down and give him the details of the mission.

“Makes sense, he won’t participate this time,” Kaspuru said. “You have to stay out of danger, you hear me?”

She tapped Dan’s head with a feathered finger. He retracted, eliciting a laugh from her.

“I’ve already given him some tips on what to do in case someone attacks him,” Autur said. “We’ll start properly training you if you survive this mission.”

Dan nodded, trying to keep his face unexpressive to hide his apprehension.

“Today is going to be easier than usual,” Kaspuru said. “We just need to scare off a participant to the sculptors’ contest. We’re still weeks away, but this one comes from beyond the sea, so they departed early.”

“Contest?” Dan repeated.

“I’d ask you if you’ve lived under a rock all this time, hatchling,” Kaspuru said. “But anyone who lives around rocks knows of the sculptors and their contests.”

“Every governing family organizes one contest a year,” Autur explained. “The winner can join their ranks. Usually by becoming a relative to a secondary branch, but the lucky ones get to marry into the main dynasty.”

“The one we’re fighting today is too lucky, and now we get to knock down their luck back a notch,” Kaspuru said, tapping the two swords strapped to her back. “Mayvaru wants them gone. Not killed, don’t worry, we’ve never had to assassinate someone so far. Mainly because the families would ask Mayvaru to kill us if we did.”

Dan thought back at the swarm of rats, of the control that she supposedly had on all the animals for towerlengths in any direction.

“Why can’t she scare them herself?”

“She could, hatchling,” Kaspuru said. “But then everyone would know or suspect it was her, and she doesn’t want a diplomatic war between the weavers and the sculptors. It would hinder her influence.”

“It’s more than that,” Autur said. “The weavers are trying to exert their influence on the whole government, and to succeed they need supporters from all the families. They don’t currently have them, because governing families are only loyal to themselves. So they need to infiltrate them by making sure only the people on their side win the contests. Strong rivals like the one that’s coming are an obstacle to their plans.”

Kaspuru whistled.

“Listen to her, she’s the smart one about this stuff.”

Dan nodded, but he felt uneasy. He had suspected the strays’ missions weren’t anything noble, nothing he’d be proud to help them with. At least they didn’t plan to kill anyone.

“We have a reputation as famous bandits,” Autur said. “So tough that Mayvaru has tried to kill us multiple times but never succeeded.”

“And we’re her sworn enemies,” Kaspuru said, then chuckled. “Allegedly funded by Aressea’s rivals. After all this time, everyone still believes it.”

Dan wanted to ask for how long, exactly, they’d been working for Mayvaru, but the group in front of them had stopped.

“Tagu, tell us if you spot something,” Sibras said.

She nodded and jumped onto a treetrunk, immediately starting to climb it up to the lowest branches with the help of her clawed hands. From there, she jumped up, using the tail for balance, allowing herself just a second of calculation before the next jump. After she’d disappeared into the foliage, only the occasional up-and-down movement of the leaves betrayed her presence. Dan thought of how she’d been spying on him for days before she decided to talk to him and shivered.

She rushed down after an instant.

“Carriage, road north from here. The dust cloud is big.”

“So it might have an escort,” Sibras said.

“They most certainly do,” Merekis added.

They continued north until they came across a barren road dividing the grass between two stretches of forest. Kaspuru and Tagu walked off in two opposite directions to find a spot where the trees were closer to the road. Dan was waiting with everyone else for their return, when a heavy hand on his shoulder made him jump.

“Remember what I told you,” Autur said, her voice so low it almost sounded like a rumble. “Stay hidden and out of danger, unless we explicitly tell you what to do. Don’t be brave.”

“I’m not,” Dan said, eliciting an amused grunt from her.

Tagu returned before Kaspuru did, so they chose the area she had found. Dan hid deeper into the woods, on top of a rock hidden by a tree that allowed him to see most of the scene without being spotted. Tagu climbed a tree, this time disappearing into the foliage without reemerging. Sibras, Autur and Kaspuru positioned themselves behind trees at the sides of the road. As much as Dan looked around, he couldn’t see Merekis anywhere.

The silence fell on the entire scene. Dan felt the rock’s moss dig under his nails, and at the same time a pang of faint guilt for being so scared when he was the only one doing nothing. Then, a low rumble started approaching from the road. He saw something move between the shapes of the trees.

Autur stepped out from her hiding spot and positioned herself at the center of the road. Now the carriage was close enough for Dan to see it: it was being escorted by four people riding green creatures that resembled moving plants. Each of them held something long and metallic. The carriage itself was pulled by two more green beasts with branches at the top of their heads. The small windows to the side were covered by heavy drapes fluttering in the wind.

Yells came from the riders, two at the front and two at the back, but Autur didn’t step aside. She lowered her head, then started running toward the riders. One of them swerved to avoid her, while the other one was already out of her range, or so they thought. Autur’s tusks grew until they rivalled with her in height, and with a movement of the head she hooked them to the belly of the creature and pulled. Rider and animal lost balance and fell to the ground. Autur pivoted on herself, bringing a hand to each of her tusks. She broke them with a crack that rocked her head from side to side.

The other rider was turning around to assist their colleague. They raised an arm to protect themselves, since their armor in that point was thicker. It was made of a gray substance that didn’t shine in the sun, so Dan guessed it was some sort of rock. Autur threw one tusk, then, when the rider moved their arm to deviate it, the second one. It caught the rider on the armored chest, pushing them off their animal.

The other one had managed to slither out from under their fallen beast, and approached her with their long weapon. It changed shape as they got closer into something resembling a sword. Autur extracted a huge tusk from a sheath on her back, bigger and thicker than her own had been, sharpened on one side to form a blade. She engaged both of them, their weapons seemingly unable to pierce her thick skin in the rare chances when she moved too slowly to avoid them.

The carriage slowed down and the driver found refuge inside. The riders at the back were approaching their colleagues, but Kaspuru and Sibras stepped out of the trees before they could reach Autur. Kaspuru’s two swords cut away a leg of the nearest plant creature, but the rider was already expecting it and jumped down, ready to fight.

Sibras was wearing the hood of his cape and holding his weapon, identical to the ones of the riders, but he didn’t need to use it to stop them. He stepped aside and grabbed one of the creature’s horns. It started falling to the side, and Sibras only seemed to pull it toward himself without effort as it progressively crumbled into a mass of foliage and branches. His whiskers shone in the light, moving faster than ever.

He managed to swing his weapon at the rider, now shaped like a spear with a long blade at the top, but only obtained to chip their stone armor. Dan wondered how they could even move under that weight, but he imagined the patterns sculpted onto the thicker elements somewhat helped.

He discarded that guess when the pauldron of one rider changed shape, growing spikes when Kaspuru stepped too close to it. She managed to elude the attack, so they retracted back into the armor. The next swing put her out of balance, but Autur saw her and threw another one of her tusks to slow down her assailant and allow her to get her bearings.

Sibras engaged his adversary in close combat, their weapons turning to swords, to knives, to swords again. The rider managed to block his weapon. They tried to push him away with his shoulder, but Sibras avoided his attack and freed his weapon in one fluid movement. Dan heard the rider’s swearing even from that distance, and realized they had hoped to use the spikes, but they hadn’t appeared.

Dan was biting hard onto his lower lip. He was constantly on the verge of yelling something, be it an alert or some encouragement, but Autur had made it clear he could only make the situation worse. So he observed the fight, hoping for it to end soon.

The strays were slowly forcing the riders back and away from the carriage. Once the fight was far enough, something dark dropped from a tree onto the carriage’s roof. Tagu crawled up to the border, tail whipping the air from side to side, and stretched out an arm to unlock the door on Dan’s side. The cabin was dark and still mostly covered by a long curtain, so he couldn’t see either the carriage’s driver or the sculptor. Tagu waited a few instants, half-hanging down from the top of the carriage, then moved the curtain aside with a quick gesture.

A stream of flames erupted from the inside of the cabin. For a moment, Dan couldn’t see anything other than scorching light engulfing the spot where Tagu’s arm and head had been. He tasted blood, but still managed to not yell. The riders didn’t even look back, while the three remaining strays screamed Tagu’s name.

The flames subsided, revealing her crouched figure on top of the carriage. Dan blinked furiously to make sure she wasn’t just a spot in his vision caused by the light. She jumped down on the opposite side just as two people emerged from the carriage. Each of them was holding a vase so big they had to carry it with two hands. Dan could barely see the dark lines on the surface, but he imagined the clay had been sculpted to form more patterns. He wondered how many of them existed. He briefly recalled asking Morìc that very question, and being told it didn’t work like that.

He could see the vases’ open mouths as their wielders turned toward the fighters. One of them, probably the one who had shot fire, was shining with a trembling light, while the other was completely dark but definitely not empty, considering how carefully its wielder advanced.

The riders scrambled away from the strays when the two people stepped forward. Kaspuru moved first, stepping diagonally toward the newcomers. The first vase shot another stream of flames, but she managed to avoid it by crouching down and stepping to the side. The other wielder waited until she’d stopped moving, vase pointed at her, then a stream of transparent liquid gushed out of it in an arc. The flames that were still exiting from the first vase flared up, creating a second stream that headed toward Kaspuru. She rolled back, but something must have reached her anyway, because she furiously slapped a patch of her orange fur.

“Acid,” she screamed.

The second wielder sprayed it around, turning on themselves. Autur stepped back, keeping the weapon to her side as if she wanted to protect it from the liquid. Sibras was the only one not to retreat. He only stepped to the side and sprinted forward. The wielders tried to aim both streams at him, but the acid one dwindled before it could reach him, and the flames moved too slowly. He grabbed the vase of acid with one hand, while the other closed around the wielder’s arm. Even if the opening was aimed at his stomach, nothing came out of it.

The other wielder realized that something was wrong and stepped away from them. They turned toward Autur, but Kaspuru made a sudden jump forward, so they aimed at her. She rolled to the side, but she was still too close to bring herself out of range. The flames spewed out, straight toward her.

Then they stopped.

The wielder dropped to the ground. Merekis was standing behind their unconscious body. He seemed to be naked, except maybe for a loincloth the same color as his skin. Dan couldn’t see him well from that distance, and when he blinked, Merekis had disappeared.

Sibras took advantage of the distraction to knock out the other wielder. Their vase broke on contact with the ground. Sibras stepped over its remains, heading toward the carriage. One of the riders was laying on the ground, apparently unable to stand. The remaining ones attacked Autur and Kaspuru. They fought back to back, the double swords cutting the air as if wielded by two different people, the tusk forcing the attackers to step back.

Tagu stepped out from her hiding spot behind the carriage. She went inside after Sibras. After a few instants, they emerged with a screaming and thrashing figure held between them. The driver followed meekly, as if they didn’t know what to do with themselves.

Sibras voice echoed in the clearing, so loud Dan could hear it as if he was standing a few armlengths from him.

“We’re clearly stronger. Drop your weapons or we’ll kill all of you.”

The riders paused the fight, still holding their swords, or spears, or knives. They seemed indecisive, as if expecting an order. One of them stepped toward Sibras, their spear transforming into a long sword. Before they could raise it, Merekis appeared behind them and snaked an arm around their neck. Another arm wrapped around the hand that was holding the sword. Another around their midsection.

Dan blinked, wondering if he was seeing well. Merekis seemed to have at least five arms, now, three of which jutted out lower in his chest, almost at belly level. The rider screamed something and let go of their weapon, and when Merekis released him to disappear once again, they dropped to their knees. The others imitated them. Sibras and Tagu allowed the sculptor to kneel as well.

“What do you want?” they yelled.

“For you to return home. Take your fallen colleagues and leave the way you came. We will follow you, so don’t try to use another road or a detour. If you come back, we will know about it, find you, and kill you.”

The sculptor asked something, with a voice so thin Dan couldn’t distinguish the words.

“You won’t participate. Not now, not ever,” Sibras answered.

There was another exchange of words where the sculptor moved their hands frantically, even trying to grab Sibras’s trousers at some point. He stepped back and repeated his words in a tone of command. In the end, the sculptor seemed to understand: they slowly stood and entered the carriage. The riders left their weapons on the ground and approached their unconscious comrades. They barely managed to fit them inside the vehicle. The driver made the carriage turn, the plant creatures extremely obedient under the movement of the reins despite the fight they had just witnessed.

The creatures on the ground didn’t move, so the remaining three riders had to flank the carriage and proceed by foot. It took a bit for the vehicle to go away. The strays stared at it until it disappeared from view, then Tagu climbed a tree, probably to check that the carriage was actually proceeding along the road. Dan stayed hidden, unsure of what to do. Autur and Kaspuru seemed to be talking to each other, while Sibras examined one of the fallen beastplants. Merekis stepped out from behind a tree, wearing his clothes again.

“Come out!”

Dan jumped when something swung in front of his face from the branch above him. Tagu was looking at him upside down.

“Everything alright?” he asked. The patches of naked skin on her fur seemed the result of a burn, now that he thought about it, but she looked identical to how she had before the fight.

“Obviously!” she said, and climbed back onto the branch.

He walked toward the rest of the group while Tagu followed him by jumping from tree to tree. He stepped onto the road carefully, not knowing what mood to expect after such an intense fight. Autur greeted him by waving a giant arm, while Kaspuru let out a long whistle.

“Enjoyed the show?” she asked.

Dan smiled, but the muscles of his face were too tense to express actual joy.

“It was scary,” he said.

“Oh, hatchling,” she stepped closer and ruffled his hair. “Don’t worry. We’ve survived worse.”

“Worry about yourself,” Autur said, the broken tusks moving with her mouth as she spoke. “My goal is to train you so well you’ll be able to participate, next time.”

That idea was scarier than anything he’d witnessed that day.

“Kasp,” Sibras called, “Follow the carriage. Make sure they leave for good.”

Kaspuru nodded and ran along the parallel lines left behind by the passage of the carriage. Autur sat down and extracted a hunting knife from a pocket of her trousers. She started chipping away pieces of her tusks, making them progressively more pointed. Sibras sat down under a tree, and Merekis followed him after a bit. They started talking in a low voice.

Dan looked around, but Tagu seemed to have disappeared somewhere else. He prodded with a foot one of the fallen beastplants, then retracted, expecting them to move.

“Let me guess, you don’t know what they are?” Autur said. She tried sculpting while she talked, but her tusks moved too much, so she was forced to lower the knife to her lap.

Dan shook his head.

“We didn’t have them at the village,” he explained.

“We neither, at the forest,” she said. “They’re a product of the Golden Lands, even if the base plants come from further away.”

“Are they animals or plants?”

“Carnivore plants, fed with cows, horses and other herbivores. Mayvaru can’t control them, that’s why they’re becoming so popular among the few who can afford them.”

Dan nodded. He left Autur to her tusks and went to sit at the foot of a tree, on the opposite side from Sibras and Merekis. He managed not to get startled when Tagu dropped down next to him.

“It was fun,” she said. “But now I need to sleep for ten hours.”

She laid down on her belly, arms tucked under herself. Dan doubted it was a comfortable position to sleep in, but didn’t comment.

Merekis suddenly stood, throwing away his clothes to the ground. Dan was about to avert his gaze, but then he noticed the diaphanous membrane and the tentacles jutting out from his midsection and couldn’t tear his eyes away. He used two of them tied together to cover his genitals, while the rest moved independently, folding the clothes neatly under a tree. He noticed Dan staring and produced a smile with a sad quality to it, then closed his eyes and disappeared.

Dan kept his eyes peeled on him, resisting the urge to blink. He could still see his trembling shape, a slight distortion of the treetrunks behind him. Merekis moved, and following his shape became even more difficult. He stepped deeper into the woods, and soon Dan wasn’t able to see him anymore.

“Where is he going?” he whispered, in case Tagu was already asleep.

“Merekis left?” She turned her head. “Without saying anything? Rude.”

Dan had already resigned himself to not receiving an answer, when she sat up next to him.

“He’s going to the weavers’ palace to get the recompense,” she said.

Dan held his breath for an instant. He tried to fight back the fog of older, indistinct memories to catch the one of the dinner at Ulres’s house, the last time he’d seen his brother. They had talked about Mayvaru, told them that she worked for the Iraspes. The weavers.

“Is Mayvaru there?”

“I don’t know,” Tagu said, cutting the air with her tail as if he had somehow irritated her. “If she went to the Golden Lands, then Beramas will give us the food. But it doesn’t matter who gives us the food, it’s food.”

He glanced at her, preventing himself to wonder too much about what, exactly, she ate. The previous evening, she’d told the rest of the group that she wanted to look for garbage, then disappeared for a few hours. Kaspuru had chuckled as if her words were an inside joke.

“Is there a way we can go with him?” he asked.

“No, I’ve tried. Sibras says he’s the only one that can go to the palace because nobody sees him, so they don’t know we are connected to Mayvaru.”

Dan nodded.

“What if we try again, next time?” he asked. “With my help, maybe we can reach the palace without Merekis noticing.”

“And Mayvaru? She saw me, last time.”

“You said she might leave for the Golden Lands. We’ll wait until she’s gone.”

“And Beramas?”

“Who is Beramas?”

Tagu laid down, on her back this time.

“He can’t see us from afar,” she said, “But Sibras says he’s dangerous.”

Dan breathed in, then flashed her a large smile.

“I bet I can get to the palace before you do.”

Tagu sprang up, eyes wide. Her pupils narrowed to slits.

“No, I will.”

Dan felt a bit guilty about deceiving her, but if there was a place where he could find his brother, it was the weavers’ palace. His home, or better, Morìc’s home.

“We’ll see,” he said.