Em was worried.

It wasn’t that they’d lost the creature, quite the contrary. They followed it as it walked up the road out of the cavern and simply continued on, without a care in the world and never looking back. They stayed back as far as possible, losing sight of it more than once. That was a risk, Em knew. Many caverns had dozens of hidden crevices and tunnels leading in and out, connecting them to other caverns and smaller caves. That made it easy to hide, but even easier to get lost if you ever took a wrong turn.

Not that it mattered in this case.

The trail the damned thing was leaving was far too obvious. It wasn’t walking down the firm dirt road so much as next to it, snapping fresh branches and stomping through grass and mud.

She sighed, looking over at Charlie, who stopped, scratching at the back of his neck as he stared at the tracks uncomfortably. His skin was mottled in an unsettling kind of way, and blackened briefly after each scratch before returning to its version of normal. While he didn’t look or smell like a rotter anymore, he still kind of looked like a corpse that just refused to lie down.

“Look, it’s obviously a trap, but we need to know where it’s going. We can't just turn around now.” She knew she was trying to convince herself as much as him.

He frowned. “I know, but it’s not going to help much if the ghouls get us. It’s not trying to lose us, so maybe we can just back off a bit. Better yet, maybe I should go alone. I have some scout training…”

Em did her best not to scoff at him. What could he have learned that could help him evade that thing? “Maybe, but that’s probably exactly what it wants us to do. Besides, we’re in the middle of the woods, the ghoul could easily double back and sneak up on you anywhere.”

Em felt conflicted, and that made her irritable. She didn’t know much about super-ghouls that kidnapped people, but she knew she didn’t want to lose this one. The trail so far led steadily upward, toward the surface. That just didn’t make sense. More powerful monsters normally lived further down—hiding from the gods, supposedly. The more powerful they were, the more quickly the Pantheon’s guardians, the martial branch of the priesthood, could find and destroy them. So where was it taking Lonnie?

“Alright, listen,” Charlie said, “There are protocols for this sort of thing. We have to be fairly close at this point. If we both report back to Hasan, we can come back in force with bigger and properly armed scouting parties…”

A ragged growl interrupted him as something leapt from the bushes, slamming into him and knocking him to the ground, stunned. As it pinned him down, Em kicked it in the side as hard as she could. It grunted, but ignored her, trying to strangle the life out of Charlie.

She could play that game too, though. Drawing on the wind essence all around her, she sent a stream of air into its mouth and nose, encouraging it to expand and holding it there. The creature stopped and turned toward her, gaping like a landed fish.

It was a ghoul of sorts, but like the one that had Lonnie, this one had a few oddities. For one, it didn’t have any obvious deformities, beyond its dead, filmy eyes. What was really strange, though, was that it wasn’t a human at all. It was a trogg. Since when could troggs even become revenants?

While it was distracted, Charlie finally recovered enough of his wits to help. He reached for its leg, and she saw it flinch when he made contact. Putrid black rot began to spread.

Then Em pulled all of the air back out of the ghoul’s lungs, collapsing them instantly. It jerked violently, then fell as it tried to put weight on a dead leg.

Charlie pinned it down with a knee, drew Lonnie’s knife and put it to the creature’s throat.

“Are you and that other one who just walked by here working together? What are you?”

The trogg-ghoul’s eyes bugged out and he worked his mouth, still unable to speak.

Understanding what Charlie was doing, Em used some more of her essence to force air back into its lungs, and then released it so it could breathe. It groaned in pain and coughed up a brownish-yellow phlegm. It smelled horribly, like rotten milk. She took a step back, gagging slightly.

“What did you do to my leg? Don’t kill me!” It rasped, “I’ll pretend you weren’t here. If you kill me, they’ll know!”

Charlie’s eyebrows rose. He seemed completely unbothered by the smell

“What? Since when do ghouls—” But the creature kept talking, frantic.

“I’m just a picket. The vampire was supposed to dispose of the ghouls—the failures. He wasn’t supposed to attract attention. They’ll come after you if they know you’ve seen them.”

Was there a whole camp full of super-ghouls here? Charlie looked up at Em, who shrugged. She didn’t know any more than he did.

“What do you mean “the vampire”? Is that what you are?”

It wheezed out a choking laugh. “No, no. That takes time—lots of time. I’m a wight. Just a wight.”

While they’d been talking, Charlie had relaxed somewhat, which turned out to be a mistake. As it finished, the wight snatched Charlie’s knife hand. It wasn’t just a physical attack, though. Charlie gasped as essence was visibly pulled out of him. Then, the essence split, most of it dispersing into the air, while a much smaller, almost invisibly stream entered the creature. Em couldn’t believe her eyes. What in the deepest dark was it doing? More importantly, how was it doing that?

Reacting as quickly as she could, Em collapsed its lungs again, and then pulled Charlie up and off the thing as it squirmed on the ground, scrabbling at its own throat. At least that still worked.

She retrieved his knife and rammed it into its torso over and over, all training forgotten. It jerked violently a few times before it finally stayed down, limbs still twitching in death.

Em turned to Charlie, who was bug-eyed and gasping, but otherwise fine. She helped him up.

“We should get going. Someone will probably notice that he’s missing, and we know they’re around here somewhere.”

Charlie nodded, dazed.

If that thing was telling the truth, they’d be discovered before long. Every minute they stayed was an unnecessary risk.

“Hello? Is it dead?” Came a quavering voice from the woods.

Em and Charlie froze, heads whipping around to look who had spoken. They saw no one.

“Uh… Hello?” Em answered.

A tiny mop of gray hair with two black button eyes poked out from between two bushes.

“Is it dead? Oh, it is! By the dead mother, thank you!”

Em watched warily as the most bedraggled-looking wood-elf she had ever seen shuffled out into the road, still thanking her profusely and making odd circular hand gestures. He didn’t look old or young, despite the gray hair, and he wore nothing but a ragged loincloth and an iron collar, which was attached to a few feet of chain that he held in his hand to keep it from dragging on the ground. Both his neck and the hand holding the chain sported an angry red rash where the cold iron had touched him.

For a second, she was too stunned to respond.

“...you can talk? Where did you come from?”

Elves couldn’t talk. At least, not that Em had ever heard. They didn’t usually go into the Deep Paths either. Maybe the ghouls had captured it up above and brought it down here?

“Oh, just there,” he said, pointing into the trees, and nodding emphatically at where he had just emerged, “didn’t you see? It was terrible. That horrible monster there took me along for a snack. Two days, we’ve been out here! I didn’t think I’d ever miss the pens back at the camp.”

Charlie was staring at the elf with a mixture of fascination and horror. Fey were common on the surface, and mostly harmless—except that this one was talking. That was more than a little odd, but she supposed it wasn’t the strangest thing she’d experienced in the Deep Paths. Still, Charlie looked downright scared of it. What was his problem?

“Look, we don’t want any trouble, ok?” he said, moving the dagger on his belt to hide the cold iron from its sight. “We didn’t step off the path, made you no promises and have accepted no gifts. We won’t pry into your business and we’re just leaving anyway…”

Oh.

Em rolled her eyes. She hadn’t taken the young man for a village rube, but she supposed it had never really come up. People out in the country often left offerings out for the Fae to appease them and to discourage their tricks and curses. It was nonsense, of course. Elves really were magical creatures, sure, but modern science considered them something almost like animals—humanoids, sure, but driven by instinct. She supposed it didn’t help that no one knew they could talk.

“Leaving?” The elf asked, surprised. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on with the ghouls all the way up here?”

Well, if he was offering…

“Yes, of c—” Em was cut off by Charlie’s urgent grip on her arm.

“No, no! We wouldn’t want to impose, or put ourselves in your debt.” Charlie said.

Em pinched the bridge of her nose and tried to will away the headache Charlie was giving her. This was too much.

Fortunately, the elf came to her rescue.

“Oh, but you saved me!” He grinned up at them. “I’ll tell you freely. The ghouls are camped at the stairway entrance, half an hour’s walk down the road. There’s a trogg lich, well over a dozen vampires and were-creatures, and nearly a hundred wights like this fellow there.” He kicked the body of the trogg wight with his bare foot. “They have a lot of prisoners, too, and they are not nice to them—I can tell you that from personal experience!”

“Thank you.” Em told him. She hadn’t realized there was a path to the surface so close, and the rest didn’t make much sense to her, but she was sure Hasan would know what to do with the information. “You must be terrified and hungry and I’m sure you could use a change of clothes. Why don’t you come back with us? What’s your name?” It would be best if they could get the full story from the elf back at the village.

Charlie gaped at her as if she had just invited a ghoul for dinner, but she ignored him. The elf had obviously been through a lot.

“Oh, how inconsiderate of me. My name is—” The little creature swept a bow, making a series of chirping and whistling noises, more like a bird than anything else, and went on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, “—of the legendary fae city of Alfheim.”

“I’m pleased to meet you.” Em responded, giving the elf their names in return. Only then did she register what she’d just heard.

“Uh… did you say ‘legendary fae city’?”

The elf winked. “Sure! I built it myself!”

Right. Obviously.

For all she knew, this was the first and only elf to learn human language, much less build an actual house.

Before she could formulate a response, he went on.

“I’ll have to turn down your generous offer. I have lots of… important things to get back to. Good luck with all of those ghouls!” With that, he nodded to himself, clearly proud of his ridiculous and also entirely unnecessary excuse, and scrambled back into the forest.

Em, surprised by the abrupt way that he’d left, tried to call after him, poking her head into the bushes to see where he had gone. But there wasn’t a trace to be found, as if he never existed at all.

"Where did he go?" She asked.

Charlie laughed quietly, disbelievingly, in pure, absolute relief.