The next few days went by without incident. Under different circumstances, Milius would have been pleased by the lack of action, but with all that had happened only days prior, the illusion of peacefulness was rather unnerving. He had made his peace with Regulus, Aurora, and Porella’s decision to remain in the Paladins’ bunker, with the knowledge that they were in very capable hands, and instead chose to turn his attention to the more pressing matter at hand: Alcyeoneus.

With initial reluctance from the Elders, Milius, Shakil, and Sirius had doused themselves with Ariana’s Invisibility Potion, and under cover of its magic they soared back across the country, towards the site of the Void Giant’s revival. The sight was as horrible as it had been several days prior — a massive crevice, layered with a deep, velvety blackness that even the brilliant, golden rays of the overhead sun could not pierce. It was like an enormous wound stretching along the earth’s visage, the sole remainder of what, days before, had been acres and acres of rich earth and lush green fields, filled with animals and humans alike.

For a while they simply hovered over it, looking around, but they saw nothing. No sign of life anywhere. There were a few sections of the gap where they had seen the crimson glow of magma well below the surface, and twice Shakil said that he thought he saw something silvery flickering ahead of them, but nothing of substance presented itself to view. With nothing in sight, and the time limit on the potion wearing off, their scouting session was drawing to a close.

Milius was deeply uncomfortable. If Alcyeoneus was capable of doing this much damage after only just rising from several millenia’s worth of confinement, what could he do at full power? How did the first generation of Dragonknights ever manage to defeat an enemy like this?

“Perhaps you could simply ask them,” said Shya, when Milius had raised this very question after they'd returned to Knight's Tower, which was due east of the Dragoon Cave, settled underground. Apparently the first Knights had used magic similar to that which they had employed to conceal the Catacombs on the Tower itself. “Is there any way to contact them?”

“Certainly there is,” Basil told him. “But each one requires a certain level of discipline, which, most unfortunately, none of our charges yet possess. We could try, of course, but in all honesty I believe we'd be wasting our time. No, I think for now our efforts would be better spent scouring the library, to try to find anything we can on the seal our Original Knights used, or simply find a different one that could yield similar effects.”

And so they did. For the next three days they alternated between rifling through the ancient tomes lining the polished oak shelves of the Tower’s palatial library and doing routine scouts of the countryside, to see if they could pick up any inkling of what the Void Giant was doing outside the Tower. On one of these scouts, they had ended up visiting the Dragoon Cave, for Sirius had suggested that his forces could possibly still be there, waiting for them to return. But this assumption was proven false. When they'd arrived, nobody was there, the statues of the Originals and their dragons lay in glittering fragments scattered around the entrance, and the Cave lay desolate and destroyed behind them.

It was a devastating blow: the Cave had been a place of wonder and magic, full of incredible weapons and artifacts and a vast repository of knowledge, but more importantly, it was growing to be a kind of second home to Milius, especially now that his real home, with Minerva, had been lost. And now it too was gone.

They did not have much time to mourn the loss, however, as only a day after they'd discovered the wreckage, Calder summoned them urgently into the main hall.

They sprinted the length of the wide, magnificently decorated hallways, summoning their armour as they ran, then burst into the main chamber, out of breath and anxious, their swords aloft, for they had all thought that they were in the middle of an emergency.

“What is it, Elder? Is it the shadow creatures again?” Ariana demanded, her usually sleek hair swinging wildly around her face.

“Worse, I think,” Calder said gravely. “A message arrived here, moments ago.” He pointed towards the far right corner of the room, where some kind of creature was lurking, winding around Shakil’s statue, which nobody had noticed until now. It was a beautiful golden lynx, with a long, sleek tail that ended in a wisp of silvery smoke.

“Wow,” Ariana breathed, lowering her sword almost, it seemed, absentmindedly. “It's beautiful.”

Milius quite agreed, though he did not lower Palpatunde. He had always been an avid animal-lover, but even the lynx’s radiance could not mask the grim atmosphere that its arrival had provoked.

“This is Basteyah,” Calder said. “The hunting partner of the goddess Diana.”

“The moon goddess?” said Shakil. Basteyah purred. Unless Milius’s ears were deceiving him, the noise had sounded strangely like “Yes.”

“Indeed. Unfortunately, Basteyah does not bring tidings of joy. The goddess is being targeted.”

“Targeted? She's a god, who could possibly be after her?” Cole said, looking incredulous.

“Another god,” Sirius said, with a look of dawning comprehension upon his face. “This is Alcyeoneus’s doing, isn't it?” he demanded of Calder.

The Elder nodded. “According to Basteyah, Diana is certain that, from the aura emanating from her pursuers, they are not originally from this plane. Unfortunately, as I once told Milius, the gods of our world, while still powerful today, lost a great deal of their power back in ancient times. Diana fears that she may not be able to overcome her attackers, should they come face-to-face.”

“And she needs our help?” Shakil said, looking excited.

“Yes. Will you accept?”

“Of course!” Ariana said at once. “It's like Lucas said, isn't it? We need as many allies as we can get, and here we have an actual god who could prove an invaluable weapon against Alcyeoneus!”

“I agree,” Shakil said eagerly.

“As do I. Unfortunately, you cannot all go.”

“What? Why?” Milius asked.

“Because,” Calder said, “this could be a plot of Alcyeoneus’s, to use Diana as bait in order to lure you out into the open. In that case, one group will go to assist Diana, the other will stay. Should the first group need help, or should another issue arise, those who remain behind will be able to deal with it.”

“Sounds fair,” Sirius said, shrugging. “Who goes, who stays?”

“I'd like to go,” Ariana said keenly.

“Me too,” said Shakil, positively bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet in excitement. Milius knew that, in his fascination with mythological beings, he would simply love to meet a real god in person — or, at least, another one.

“Sir?” Milius prompted.

“Nah, think I'll stay,” Sirius said. “You go on.”

“In that case,” piped up Shya, “I shall accompany you as well.”

Milius looked at him in mild surprise. “You?”

“The Lady Diana is not just the goddess of the moon, Milius,” Shya said. “She is the sister of our sun god, Apollo, who is also the god of archers. As the goddess of the Hunt, she too possesses great skill with a bow. It would be any Archer’s greatest honour to meet her. Enzo and Kali will be thoroughly disappointed they missed the opportunity.”

“All right, I hear you. Cole, Lucas?”

“I believe Cole would be better off staying here,” Aaron said, looking at Cole with a hint of disapproval in his eyes. “He has no field experience, no knowledge of what his blade can do. He is simply too much of a liability.”

Milius inwardly agreed, and so, it seemed, did Cole, for he did not protest.

“I'll stay as well,” Lucas said. “For backup.”

“Very well, then,” said Calder. "Basteyah will guide you. Hurry on, Lady Diana awaits.”

Within minutes they were ready for take-off, having secured any items they believed would prove useful on the journey along with stocks of food and water. Ariana, of course, was bringing her Invisibility Potion, as well as her magic-nullifying whip. Shakil had left his scales behind, but had slipped the bag of golem seeds into his pocket below his armour, and Milius, having used his golden wreath to send Frederick cascading into the tide of darkness several days earlier, had nothing now except the Orb of Triton he had taken from Phontus’s palace, which he did not feel would be of much use on land, and the coin of the goddess Victoria. This he slipped into his pocket, along with the remaining three vials he had received from Pan, all of which were still sealed, and mounted the waiting Lumeus.

After cloaking themselves once again with the Invisibility Potion, Ariana and Shakil burst into the air, and Milius, whom Shya was riding with, followed. Basteyah soared on ahead of them, her shining golden form like a beacon against the slowly reddening sky.

“We should move quickly, find her before the sun goes down,” Shya said. “Hunts are always more difficult at night.”

Milius did not need Shya to tell him this, but did not argue. They followed Basteyah north of Knight's Tower, leaving the stretch of ground it was nestled under, a vast, resplendent garden from which enormous slabs of gleaming greyish rocks protruded to form an elaborate formation, behind. The sky darkened as they flew, chilly wind whipping around them. From where they sat, Milius, Shakil, Ariana, and Shya were still perfectly visible to one another, though the bright white smoke of the potion still wound around their bodies like many living snakes. Every now and then they exchanged looks, then returned their eyes to the figure of the lynx gliding ahead of them.

At last, after several hours, Basteyah swooped. She dove down towards a massive forest in the distance, which rose beside a huge stretch of mountains.

The dragons followed, pushing their way through the treetops. The golden lynx touched down lightly, her luminous paws making not a sound as she turned on the leaf-bedded ground to face them. The dragons landed as easily as they could, though the ground still trembled beneath their weight. By now, the potion had worn off, and the coiling mists had vanished from around them.

“Can you guys see that?” Shakil said, pointing suddenly at the ground ahead. There was no need to ask what he meant; the sight drew their eyes towards it the moment they had looked up. Thick splatters of a gleaming white fluid stained the bedding of age-gold leaves ahead.

“Ichor,” said Shya, sliding off of Lumeus's back to examine the shining liquid more closely. “The blood of the gods. Most people assume that it is gold, but the true colour is white — the colour of purity. Nature gods sprang forth from the purest parts of nature, after all.”

“She must be badly injured if she's let off that much,” Ariana said, looking nauseous.

Basteyah mewed sadly.

“Don't worry, girl, we'll find her,” Milius assured her, and the lynx looked up at him, purring appreciatively. Then she turned and began to wade forward, picking her way across the leaves again. They left the dragons where they were, trusting to the fact that they could care for themselves and hoping that, should the need arise, they would know where to find them, and began to follow Basteyah.

The further they went into the forest, the more Milius began to suspect that there was some magic at play. For one thing, he noticed that the trees around them were no longer straight-trunked, but winding and twisting around in the air as though the wood was malleable. Though the sky was darkening above, illumination came from below, where beautiful white flowers were sprouting before their very eyes, their leaves glowing moon-bright. The sounds issuing from the woods around them cast an air of serenity, but Milius’s sense of foreboding increased with every step. Eventually, they came up to two large cypress trees, with vines stretching between both trunks to form a kind of arch. As they passed under it, they found themselves looking out at an enormous canyon-like structure.

Basteyah turned to face them again, and she let out a mew once before disappearing into thin air as though she too had been sprayed with Invisibility Potion. They had gotten the point, however: Diana was somewhere nearby.

Shya pulled out his bow and raised it, the gleaming gold looking almost silver in the moonlight, and Stormpyre, Palpatunde, and Oceannerva pierced the air as their owners heaved them from their sheaths. Together, all four began to inch forward, moving slowly and quietly through the maze-like structure. The soothing hoots and gentle scurryings of the animals roving through the forest had been lost to hearing now; silence pressed upon their ears like an invisible veil. The quiet was more sinister than anything, like the wait just before a hunter deems that its prey had moved closer enough, and leaps to claim its prize. . . .

“Stop!” Ariana whispered suddenly, and Milius, Shakil, and Shya all jumped.

“What?” Milius hissed back.

“Listen . . .”

They listened. Now that they had stopped moving, their heavy boots no longer crunching ground beneath their feet, they could hear a kind of gentle fluttering sound.

“It's coming from that direction,” Shya said softly, pointing eastwards. “Let's go.”

They edged forward, moving at a slightly quicker pace than before. At last, they found themselves around a corner, a simple turn from where the sound was at its loudest. Shya pressed a finger to his lips, then, as one, they all moved around.

A figure lay supine on the ground in a small opening in the rock, her hand clutching her stomach, brightly illuminated by yet more puddles of glowing white blood around her.

“Lady Diana!” Shya gasped. The goddess jerked upright and stared out at them; the sight made Milius recoil. At first glance, she appeared human enough. Her hair was a long, messy curtain of silvery-white, as though woven from moonlight. She was dressed in hunting gear, with a magnificently carved dark wood bow lying at her side; her face was pale and round and beautiful, but where her eyes should have been were glowing orbs of pure white. Several small birds were hovering around her, their wings flapping gently in the effort to remain stationary.

“The Dragonknights,” she breathed, a faint smile breaking across her face. “At last.”

“Lady Diana,” Shakil began, bustling forward importantly. “Who did this? Was it the god Alcyeoneus?”

But before she could respond, a cruel laugh echoed through the dark grounds, and from the earth itself emerged three humanoid forms, all looking at them with expressions of savage pleasure.

“Excellent, they've found the moon maiden for us,” sneered the one in the middle. He held up his hand, and they saw that he was holding the limp form of the golden lynx by her neck. She let out a feeble yowl, and the man twisted his hand. There was a resounding crack, and he let Basteyah fall to the ground, where she faded into a cloud of shimmering dust that trailed away on the chilly night wind.