“It was the same time the Ravener came back,” Paul said, shaking his head. “Turned eighteen that very day and then—that evening—we heard that the Heroes were marked and a new Ravener cycle was starting.”

“Alex’s eighteenth birthday was the same day the Ravener came back…the day the Heroes got marked?” Drestra’s brows rose.

“Oh yeah,” Peter said. “Was a nasty coincidence, that. Glad he got out when he did. I don’t know if ya know this, but he and his sister have had enough bad in their young lives with what happened to their folks in that fire, and all. The poor lad had been working himself to the bone for a nice future and then bam, the day he’s grown to the law, is the day all hell breaks out in Thameland. So, it’s good he’s finally catching a break and now things are going his way for a change. How’d you meet them?”

Silence followed.

“Everything alright?” Paul asked. “Are more monsters coming down the tunnel?”

“Hm?” Drestra shook her head. “No, I was just thinking. Anyway, I can confirm that he’s doing well. He’s studying at the university in Generasi. He’s gotten…powerful with magic.” Her mind crawled over the times she’d seen him cast spells. “He even made a golem.”

“Oh,” Paul said. “That’s nice, I suppose. Er, what’s a golem, Peter?”

“How should I know?” Peter hissed. “Well, good to hear he’s getting all fancy. Maybe he’ll come back to Alric, set up some kind of wizard’s tower and help folks in town with his magic.”

“Oh, come on, Peter,” Paul said with disdain. “You know half the young folk who learn a bloody trade don’t come back to Alric. Do you really think a fancy wizard’s going to come back? That’d be fooli—” He paused, then suddenly broke into laughter.

“You know what’s funny, Drestra?” He asked.

The Sage’s mind continued turning over memories of when she’d first met Alex, Theresa and their friends. In truth, she liked Theresa the most of their group—they had a lot in common—but Alex was the one who got her to open up about things she’d buried for months.

Her frustrations.

Worries.

All of her desires, when it came to ending the war once and for all.

All had come pouring out like someone had punched a hole in a full rain barrel. It was like he’d known exactly what to say to her.

‘After we met the Generasians,’ she thought. ‘The stress of everything seemed a little easier to bear. I got along better with Hart and Cedric. We even started working more like a team, it’s not perfect, but we’re not working against each other either. And, when Alex was around giving strategy suggestions, we really fought well together. It’s true that he and his friends were trained by Baelin, but…it was almost like a missing piece was slotted into place.’

“Drestra, you alright?” Paul asked.

“Hm, yes!” the Sage pulled her mind back to the present. “What..what was so funny?”

“Heh, well, you know,” the guard from Alric chuckled. “Maybe you had to be there, but I remember telling that boy: ‘Act the fool long enough and you’ll get the fool’s mark’, and I was pointing right at that ugly face on the Fool statue in the fountain in town. Could you imagine if that had happened?”

He snorted. “About to go to wizard university and then he loses his chance because the Fool can’t do magic? It’d be a tragedy. Shit, I would’ve felt terrible. You know, maybe that’s not as funny as I thought it was.”

“Nice going, Peter,” the other guard muttered. “Now, quit flappin’ your jaws. Look.”

He pointed to a symbol carved in the stone wall ahead lightly illuminated by Drestra’s forceball. “There’s the marker from the first survey team. We’re down as as deep as they made it before the monsters got too thick to fight through,”

The guard clapped down his visor. “From here on, we’ve got no idea what we’ll find. Best be on our toes.”

“Yeah,” Paul agreed. “Don’t wanna end up dead down here in the dark like those monsters.”

“Don’t worry,” Drestra said. “I’ll protect you.”

Alex and Theresa had shown how far they’d go to help her people, even risking their own lives, so she wasn’t about to let anything happen to folk from their hometown. She had a duty to them.

And so the trio went quiet with the Sage fixed on their surroundings.

She needed her focus, but try as she might, her thoughts drifted back to Alex Roth. All of Cedric’s musings about something being off with him came back to her.

‘Cedric kept saying how he found it odd that the chitterer dungeon seemed to focus on Alex, didn't he? I remember some talk about that. But, him being the Fool doesn’t make sense? He can cast magic. He built a golem. I’ve seen him fight—’

She hesitated.

Had she seen him fight…?

She remembered their first battle together, the one above the two dungeons in Greymoor. Their fight with the cultists and demons patrolling Crymlyn Swamp when they’d grabbed Llyworn and Rhodri to question them. And the tail-end of the fight against that greater demon Zonon-In in the Skull Pits.

Her mind sifted through details of each fight, carefully.

She startled at a revelation.

‘Did…has he ever cast a combat spell that you saw?’ She brought to mind every memory of him spellcasting that she had. ‘Ya, he did. He used those potions to make things fly around and rip themselves apart. …but—that’s not really a combat spell is it?’

The more she thought, the more she realised: she’d never actually seen him cast force missile, or any fire or lightning spells, or any direct combat spells for that matter. In three battles—all deadly—he hadn’t cast a single combat spell once?

Why not?

‘As a matter of fact…’ she thought back to the times she’d seen him. ‘I don’t remember him ever carrying a weapon? His whole cabal…all his friends carry weapons. Even Isolde has her dagger. He looks like a fighter, he’s all muscle, he’s got all that strength, and he’s fast too. Yet he doesn’t even have a short sword to defend himself with?’

It made no sense. His entire group carries weapons, some more than one, or they use battle magic. How come he only carries potions, ropes and tools?

‘And has he ever hurt anything directly, anything that I’ve seen. I don’t think I’ve even seen him wound something—wait. Those potions, they rip things apart. That’s definitely using a weapon. And the Fool can’t fight…or hurt living things. Or use magic for that matter!’

She shook her head, trying to stop the stream of contradictory thoughts running through her mind.

Alright, there were some odd, suspicious things going on with Alex—like him seeming to appear before everyone else whenever they were teleported—but, it was a historical fact that the Fool couldn’t use spellcraft, divinity, or fight.

And Alex fought.

She’d also seen him cast spells.

‘And that’s why you’re being crazy, Drestra,’ she told herself. ‘Being distrustful like Cedric was after you first went to the encampment. Put this idiocy out of your mind and focus. You’re down here to look for clues, not focus on silly coincidences, like Alex being born on the same day as you and the others. Lots of people are born on the same day.’

She chuckled softly. ‘In the end, it's a historical fact,’ she thought. ‘Alex can’t…be…the Fool.’

Her steps slowed.

Her breath did too.

The Fool was useless. The Fool couldn’t fight, use spellcraft or divinity. That was a historical fact. A historical fact. A historical…fact? But where did she get that fact from? Who was spouting that ‘truth’?

‘The church,’ she thought. It came from the church. They’re who said the Fool can’t use spellcraft, divinity or fight. I’ve never met any Fools. Aren’t I here looking for clues because the church—or Uldar—is hiding things?’

She re-examined her assumptions.

All of them.

What if what she knew about the Fool was wrong? Or—if not outright wrong—then incomplete? What would that mean?

‘Let me think about this. Leaving all the Fool’s limitations out of it. Peter and Paul said Alex had his birthday on the day the Ravener came back. So, what does he do? He, Theresa, his sister and Brutus immediately get out of Alric. Get out of Thameland.’

She frowned, thinking back on what the guards had said.

‘Theresa’s family left after Alex and their daughter? Why? Why wouldn’t they travel together? There’s safety in numbers, and Theresa’s a warrior. Shouldn’t they have been travelling together to protect each other? But, no, he and she left first. And then what happened?’

Her frown deepened, thinking back to the story Cedric told when she’d first met Alex at the Generasi encampment. ‘Cedric went to the Cave of the Traveller by himself. He killed the horde of Silence-spiders that were gathering there and hunted for the last one. Then he met Alex, and the others.’

Moving through the dark, she tried keeping her mind on where they were heading while listening for threats, but a part of her brain was hooked on solving the puzzle now.

She couldn’t let it go, not just yet.

‘Then Cedric left them, met up with us, and we came back together,’ she thought. ‘The dungeon core was already destroyed when we got here. There were worker Silence-spiders, but they were all dead. Burnt to a crisp.’

She recalled the scorch-lines Claygon’s fire-gems left when he fired them. Weren’t they similar to some they’d seen in the Cave?

‘But Claygon didn’t exist then, Peter and Paul didn’t even know what a golem was, and they definitely would’ve mentioned him if he’d been around. No one misses Claygon. So maybe something else happened to those spiders. We thought it was the Traveller’s power destroying the dungeon, but the army’s been here for months and she hasn’t done anything to help them, even when they were attacked by beast-goblins and the like.’

The Sage took a deep breath. ‘Suppose I was the one who was marked as the Fool and lived in Alric and wanted to get away from Thameland. Suppose I knew that the priests’ had a barrier over the land that stops Ravener-spawn from leaving…and can also detect a Hero’s Mark. What would I do?’

The answer came immediately.

‘If I was desperate, which I would be, I’d try and leave through one of the portals in the Cave.’

Things were adding up.

Certain other things might be explained.

‘Banning the priests from going into the Generasians’ territory,’ she thought. ‘If someone on the research team was the Fool—like Alex—then a ban would make Greymoor the perfect place for them to hide, that’s if he was mad enough to come back to Thameland. If I was the Fool, I’d be long gone: even if I had to hide in the Irtyshenan Empire.’

She felt the Traveller’s mana above as they continued through the dimly-lit tunnel.

‘And let’s say Alex is the Fool and he did come through the Cave…if he found dungeon core remains and took them with him, then that’d explain why the Generasians started the expedition in the first place. All this time, no one’s been able to understand how they knew that dungeon core remains were valuable. But this…this fits.’

Still, in the end, all she was doing was thinking of different scenarios in the dark, when she should’ve been paying attention to their surroundings. She had to put it aside for now.

But she had reached a decision.

‘No more secrets,’ she thought. ‘I’m tired of them. I’m going to get him alone and ask him directly the next time we meet and I’ll watch his reaction. That’s the only way I’ll know for sure. And if he is the Fool, then—I’ll… …is the Traveller’s mana getting stronger?’

“Hold on for a second,” Drestra stopped and raised her hand for Peter and Paul to do the same.

“What is it?” Peter gripped his sword. “More monsters?”

“No,” she said. “Something else. I’m sensing a familiar mana near here.”

“Is…is it the Traveller’s?” Paul asked.

“Yes, but we’ve been heading deeper underground and away from her shrine for a while now,” she said.

Focused on her mana senses, she stepped forward.

There was no mistaking it.

“And the further down this tunnel we go, the stronger it is. We’re getting close to something.”