“Well, ain’t that real bloody ominous,” Cedric growled, firelight reflecting off his green eyes and the silver on the morphic weapon wrapped about his hand. His fingers clinked as he tapped them together. “Too bad the bloody portal closed.”

“Yeah,” Hart said. “Would’ve liked to have seen it, considering it was our only lead.”

“Yes…” Drestra agreed, not trusting herself to say more. “That’s true.”

Dusk found the three Heroes sitting by a blazing campfire deep in the northern reaches of the forest of Coille on the evening after departing the Cave of the Traveller. Around them, flames chased shadow, dancing along falling snowflakes; their writhing forms seemed to echo the turmoil in Drestra’s heart.

‘We’re meeting Merzhin in two days,’ she thought. ‘There’s so much more to hide from him now.’

“So, about Merzhin,” Hart scowled as though he’d read her mind. The giant of a man tossed a twig on the fire; it hissed and popped as it was consumed. “What’re we gonna tell him?”

“Same thing I told the rest of the priests,” the Sage said.

“Which wasn’t much.” Cedric reached over the fire, turning the forest mushrooms and quail skewered above the flame.

“No, it wasn’t,” Drestra couldn’t disagree.

Her story to the army had been a simple lie of omission: she’d told them that she’d found a portal leading to the inside of a building she hadn’t recognized. When she flew closer, loud screaming started and the doorway shut before she could see anything more. Of the writing and statues, she’d said nothing.

With the portal gone—and showing no sign of returning—there was little the army could do but ask her questions, guard the secret passage, and observe it for signs of activity.

Meanwhile, Drestra, Hart and Cedric had searched additional passageways below the Cave of the Traveller, looking for concealed portals or clues. But none were to be found, only empty chambers of cold stone lying in the dark.

“Wish we had more than ‘not much’ to go on and I wish I’d seen that writin’,” Cedric said. “Not that it woulda bloody meant anythin’ t’me.”

“Yeah. Even more than the writing, I’m wondering why someone would scratch Uldar’s face off that statue of his.” Hart frowned. “You know, I think that’s actually an offence. Pretty sure I saw a guy in the stocks for defacing a statue of Uldar a while back.”

“I don’t think whoever did it was too worried about stocks,” Drestra said.

“Yeah, well, let’s hope if they’re still alive, they won’t try and scratch our faces off. Anyway…question is, what do we do now? That was our one lead, and it didn’t get us any closer to Uldar’s realm.”

“I think we gots t’tell the Generasians when we see ‘em,” Cedric said. “Who knows, maybe one of ‘em knows that writin’. Think you could recreate it, Drestra?”

Silence followed.

“Drestra?”

“Oh yes, sorry.” She pulled herself from her thoughts. “I think I could copy some of the characters from memory. Maybe that’ll be enough for one of them to recognize it and maybe know where it is. If they don’t—”

“—then where the hell do we go from here?” Hart finished her sentence and continued. “That’s the problem. I only see one option—talking to the church—and that ain’t a good one. And it wouldn’t be a pleasant kinda talking either.”

“I know,” Drestra said. “But we can’t—as you suggested—bust down the doors to the cathedral in the capital.”

Hart growled, scratching his head. “I’m not some inquisitor or investigator or anything. This is beyond me.” He snorted. “Makes me wish we had the Fool with us.”

Above her veil, Drestra’s face was blank.

“Aye, they’re supposed to be the one t’do the sneaky stuff an’ all the tricky skill work. If’n we had ‘em t’do the talkin', things’d be a might easier.”

“Yeah…” the Sage said. “I suppose so.”

“Well, they’re either dead or hiding,” Hart grunted, eyeing the roasting food. His gaze shifted to the dark stand of trees surrounding them as he listened to the wind rustling through bare branches. “No sense wondering about all that, I guess. We’ve only got us and the Generasians, so we can talk with them and—”

His words trailed off.

“Shhh,” he hissed. “Stay quiet.”

Cedric and Drestra froze.

Only the crackling of flame echoed through the dusk.

“What is it?” the Chosen whispered.

“Dunno,” Hart said. “Thought I heard something out there. Maybe all this shit’s making me jumpy.”

“Hold on,” Drestra conjured a cluster of forceballs and sent them into the woods; balls of light travelled between trees, illuminating trunks, bare branches and snow falling gently between them.

“Do you see anything?” she whispered, squinting into the darkness.

“No, I—” Hart froze. “Weapons out!”

A sharp crack came from the woods.

Squeals like those of an enraged dire boar came next.

Hart was already up and leaping over the fire with a large hammer and heavy axe in hand, blurring into the trees while Cedric was chanting his prayer to Uldar and following the Champion, his morphic weapon growing into a halberd. Drestra cast a flight spell and shot toward the sky.

A heartbeat later.

A mammoth shape exploded from the woods, churning clouds of snow, bounding through the campfire. Flaming logs and embers flew through the night trailing sparks, and in the flaring light, Drestra glimpsed the creature.

It was a bulky, four-legged beast riding nearly seven feet tall at the shoulders. Two bulging arms flexed at its sides—each ending in curved claws—while a long, thick tail lashed side to side, the tip was a bone-club poised like a snake. The monster’s broad skull was crowned by a helmet of ivory coloured bone, and spikes formed its spine, rising high above its back.

A bone-charger—a rare Ravener-spawn—moving with enough momentum from its charge to crack a keep’s gate.

The monster snorted, smoke escaped flaring nostrils as beady, glowing orange eyes fixed on the Sage.

Then, it leapt.

Powerful legs catapulted its bulk more than dozen feet through the air, clamping jaws snapped inches away from Drestra’s leg. Its claws slashed at her right side and the tail whipped out toward her back as the monster flew by, crashing to the snowy ground. It whirled to spring again, but she was ready with a spell.

A wave of acid washed the Ravener-spawn, turning it into a squealing pool.

“Hart! Cedric!” she shouted. “This—”

Searing pain struck her torso.

Drestra screamed, looking down at fletching protruding from her body, only her magic ring had stopped the arrow from piercing deeper, but she doubted it would stop the others flying from all directions.

Clutching the wound, she rose, casting forceshield and greater force armour, and as the magic enwrapped her body, she tossed a fireball high above her head, the blast illuminated much of the night sky.

Below, horror unfolded.

Through the bare canopy, she caught movement from all around them; scores of chitterers scrambled through the forest, each wielding thick-limbed longbows.

“We’re surrounded! It’s not only bone-chargers!” Drestra warned her companions while conjuring volleys of stone projectiles and blasting monsters with flurry after flurry.

The rocks cracked tree branches, sank into chitterers, pulping flesh, breaking bone and dropping them to the forest floor. More bone-chargers rushed from the woods, meeting the carnage Cedric and Hart were dealing out.

In the chaos of battle, Drestra suddenly noticed with alarm that; ‘Those chitterers aren’t aiming for them, they’re mostly firing at me!’

Then another wave of arrows came, leaving her no more time to think.

Drestra touched down on the forest floor when the last of the Ravener-spawn had fallen to the Heroes; monstrous corpses lay steaming in the wintry night. They twitched in pools of melting, blood-stained snow.

“Holy hells,” Cedric stepped over a chitterer's corpse. “Bloody vicious, these ones were. Real bloody vicious.”

“Yeah.” Hart pulled his axe from a bone-charger and frowned, noting the chip in its blade. He’d have to file that out. “They were working like a team with surprisingly good tactics. Well, good for Ravener-spawn, I mean.”

“Thank the spirits for your senses, Hart.” Drestra touched the arrow in her side. Her clothes were warm and wet around it. “If we’d been attacked in our sleep, we’d be dead.”

“You’re injured!” Cedric rushed toward her.

“It’s not bad, though. Mother’s ring did what it was made to.” She sounded relieved.

“Aye, well let’s get y’healed up,” the Chosen began to work on the wound with a healing divinity. As the glowing light of Uldar’s grace mended Drestra’s flesh, her attention was drawn to the bodies strewn about their camp.

Those chitterers had focused on her, which brought to mind Cedric’s suspicions about Alex when it seemed that the Ravener-spawn and dungeons had concentrated on him.

Curiosity was burning in her, but she kept her thoughts to herself.

She would stick with her decision to not tell Hart and Cedric what Peter and Paul had said about him. If Alex was the missing Fool, or if he had been through the Cave of the Traveller, she’d decided it would be wrong to accuse him publicly. Putting suspicion on him; not talking to him about what she had in her mind first was something she couldn’t take back once she told anyone else. If she was wrong, he’d be watched by priests, the king and court, the other Heroes…Merzhin—which would be a fate worse than death—and spirits knew who else.

He might have his own motives and secrets, but who was she to judge?

After all, so did she.

But if there was treachery in those secrets?

There would be hells to pay.

“You know.” Hart lightly kicked a nearby corpse, pulling the Sage from her thoughts. “This was a pretty big horde, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. Once we meet up with Merzhin, we might want to send a message back to the Cave: tell them that there might be a threat in the area. Maybe we should see if there’s a dungeon around here too.”

“Aye, more things t’do.” Cedric finished healing Drestra’s wound. “Ugh, look at us. We’re here spread so bloody thin, an’ meanwhile, we don’t even know if we can trust the very bloody people we’re fightin’ beside…or the god we’re fightin’ for! Makes me wish we could just hunt down the damn Ravener an’ get this done with.”

“Well, maybe we should take a closer look at Aenflynn’s deal,” Drestra said. “We need troops.”

The Chosen sighed. “Y’know, I think we’re gonna have to forget about recruitin’ the fae. I can’t think my way through Lord Aenflynn’s deal, an’ the last thing we’re doin’ is givin’ up kids.”

“Yeah,” Hart grunted. “We keep meeting with him and we keep stalling and the price keeps going higher. It was a nice idea, but…he's asking too much. Just wish there was a way to get more troops on the field without having to do something unsavoury. I mean, look at all these—” He gestured to the bodies. “—we cut ‘em down and the dungeon cores just make as many as they want, good as new. Sure, squashing them’s fun, but…I dunno, it almost feels like we’re being pointed in the wrong direction.”

“We can’t give up on Aenflynn,” Drestra said. “Now more than ever we need extra help, and help that doesn’t belong to either a treacherous god or a conspiracy peddling church. We need an army that—”

She paused.

A resource given to Aenflynn.

One that they could control.

And take back if he betrays them.

“Wait…Hart!” She flew over to the Champion and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Say what you just said again. About what dungeon cores do!”

“Uh…” Hart grunted. “Well, they make as many monsters as they want.”

“And what about when we cut them down?”

“They just make more, good as new.”

“Yes!” she cried, excited for the first time since Ffion had touched the dungeon core. “Hart, you genius! You just solvedthe Aenflynn problem!”

“Huh?” the Champion grunted. “I did?”

“You did!”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down, Drestra,” Cedric jumped in. “Catch us up. What’re you thinking?”

“It’s simple,” she said. “And even if he doesn’t take the deal, we still win. But—before we meet Merzhin—we need to find a dungeon. We need a living dungeon core.”

“What?” Cedric paled. “You’re not thinkin’ o’ givin’ one to him, are ya?”

“Oh my no...” Drestra grinned behind her veil. “We’re not giving him a dungeon core. We’re going to offer him something else. And if he doesn’t take it? We still get what we want anyway. Now we’ll be in control of negotiations!”