They entered the city carefully late in the afternoon. Nathan, Nestor, Ankou and her. The big entrance portal stood wide open as they arrived, almost looking like a huge mouth that swallowed them up as they entered.

Dawn had switched some of her days with Lutha and Samya around to go on this trip without neglecting the responsibilities she had taken up when she had become an adopted member of the Kharlins.

Now she had four days for exploration until she was expected back in New Haven by Lutha. Though she didn’t expect to be away for more than three. Nuala hadn’t liked it that she wanted to come here once more, but hadn’t stopped her despite her obvious misgivings. Dawn had already learned that it was not her way to influence others by objecting or arguing with them. Mostly her adopted mother listened to their stories and experiences and gave suggestions or asked them questions, letting people work out solutions and the implications of their thoughts and actions for themselves. It worked quite well for her, though it wasn’t a method that Dawn would be capable of using. She was much too hasty and opinionated for that.

In the end Nuala had embraced her fiercely, smiled and wished her luck and a safe return when they had left the Kharlin village. Though Nestor had unexpectedly offered to accompany them on their expedition and Dawn had the suspicion that it was Nuala who had asked him to. The cubs had been left in the care of Verene, Kharma and Niko. It took more than one person to watch over them. Though the two had grown far more wary after Chaos had been wounded so badly. It made Dawn slightly sad to see the two mischievous terrors acting far more guardedly around the people of the village. Though she supposed in the end it was for the best. Ankou at least was very sure of it.

[The cubs have survived their mistake. It is bad that Chaos was hurt but valuable that he had the chance to learn. They will both be more careful in future.] was his only comment.

She had ended up discussing her extensive list of available skills with Nathan and Nuala after all. With her adopted mother, it wasn’t even a question. She trusted Nuala with her life, with her soul and everything in between. Not to forget that she valued her sage advice. And she couldn’t imagine that Nathan would ever use her confidences against her. He had been the first person to go out of his way to help her. He hadn’t known anything about her when he had stumbled over her and Kharma out in the wilderness. They had had neither money nor anything else they could give him in return for his help, yet he hadn’t hesitated to disrupt his own journey and aid them. The food he had given them then, and even more important the lessons in hunting and fishing had been immensely helpful and saved her from going hungry more than once.

In the end Dawn had opted for Cocoon of Shadows as her second pick out of the skills that were available to her. The skill was nothing fancy and it didn’t give her any more offensive abilities but Nathan had strongly urged her to pick it for the sake of her continued survival,

“Of course your healing skill is a strong asset,” he had told her. “And as long as you survive an attack and are not knocked unconscious you can heal yourself. But if you ever get ambushed by a strong enemy or run out of mana during an extensive fight, you may be dead before you ever have the chance. You have some offensive capabilities with your freezing and lightning spells, but your overall health remains a weak point. There are always other considerations, but without knowing the future you can’t know what skill would be the one you need most in the next weeks or months. The main advantage of cocoon of shadows is that you can cast it in advance and it is kept up until you get hurt enough for it to break. That means the mana you spend on it should be regenerated long before you enter any fight. An important point. As an offensive spell caster you never have enough mana to go around in a fight. I’d imagine that to be doubly true if you fight and heal with your spells.”

Dawn had nodded emphatically in agreement, saying. “You don’t even know how right you are.” And had picked Cocoon of Shadows with her second skill point.

She had activated the skill as soon as they had left the Kharlin village and kept it up as they hurried through the abandoned city along already familiar paths until they arrived in the demon’s lair next to the lake at the bottom level. Or rather their former lair. The webs that had hung down from the ceiling were burned and destroyed, carcasses of spiders and their hacked off parts lay around practically everywhere and the traces of battle were written on the ground in fire, blood and destruction. Dawn counted the dead demons in the main cave, and came to the impressive sum of seventeen adult spiders that had found their death in the battle against the devotee and the soldiers. There were no spiderlings among the corpses, so apparently the last of them had been killed in the fight she had observed in the vicinity of the Kharlin village.

“I didn’t think there were so many of them left after we fought several skirmishes and that huge battle against them,” she said. “When I was here first, there were quite a few of the beasts and of course I didn’t have the time or opportunity to count them thoroughly, but I thought there were maybe thirty to fourty of them. But far more than that have been killed all together now. I really think we must have killed at least forty adult demons together. The Kharlins, the rangers and me. And Ankou, obviously,” she added, as the lynx next to her growled in annoyance at being forgotten.

“I’m really glad that the quest completion told me that all of the demons are dead now,” she added with a faint shudder. “Otherwise, I’d be forced to look over my shoulder the whole time, seeing demons around every corner and in every shadow.” She smiled at Nathan a bit sheepishly. “I’m kind of a coward, you know. Even now, the demons chase me in my dreams sometimes. I feel much safer now that they are gone.”

“Don’t take your safety for granted,” recommended Nathan. “The demons may be dead, but you yourself told me their queen is still alive. And now that they have been eliminated, there may be other dangerous beasts around that are willing to take over their lair. I don’t think enough time has passed that it has happened already. But if you are out of the civilized areas you cannot afford to let your guard down for a single moment. That’s one of the first things every ranger learns.”

The ranger took his time to scrutinize the whole cave very carefully, but had to admit defeat in the end. The fight against the demons together with the movements of the soldiers in the cave afterwards had thoroughly destroyed any usable traces for him. They explored the side caves too while Nestor kept a lookout for possible enemies in the main area, but found nothing of use. Rakor’s living area and his laboratory were emptied out now. Someone had taken everything that had been remotely usable from there, to Dawn’s quiet chagrin. She had hoped to add some more of the alchemist’s equipment to her stash. Now that she was working with Lutha in her laboratory they could have made good use of it.

“Let’s check the queen’s personal room,” Dawn suggested, loosening her shoulders. “We should also keep a look out for the secret passage she used. If I wanted to escape a bunch of soldiers intent on my demise, that would be the first way I’d try.”

“There’s a secret passage here? That’s the first I hear of it.” Nathan replied turning his head abruptly to look at her quizzically.

Dawn fell silent under his gaze and bit her lip. “I thought I mentioned the passage to Grinna and Teren,” she said hesitantly. “But looking back I’m not exactly sure if I did.”

“Probably you forgot to mention it,” Nathan said with a frown. “Otherwise they’d have surely told our party about that before we set out. And they didn’t.”

He waved her in front of him. “By all means lead the way to the queen’s lair. A secret passage sounds promising. And interesting.”

Dawn entered the familiar side cave with deep misgivings. She had been a captive here once and almost died in the ritual circle. Everything looked unchanged, apart from the fact that the furs on the pallet were missing and the stone bed was empty. While it was possible that the soldiers’ party had looted the furs, Dawn rather doubted that they had had any use for the ancient skeleton.

The queen must have taken it with her. She had seemed quite morbidly attached to the remains of her former husband so it was only logical, if a bit impractical. Together they scoured every meter of the queen’s former domicile but found neither an entrance to a secret passage nor any other trace of the queen.

Finally, Nathan shook his head and gave up.

“If the entrance is here it’s hidden beyond my capabilities to discover it. Maybe there’ll be some scholar or rogue in the next expedition they’ll send from Atelang that will be able to find something.”

“Or the entrance is somewhere else,” Dawn said. “Though I was pretty convinced that the queen was sitting on it. It made sense in my mind. But,” she shrugged. “I cannot find anything here, either.”

Nathan nodded. “I’ll check out the last cave in the back, maybe it’s there” he said and vanished through the exit back into the main cave. Ankou followed in his wake.

Dawn let her gaze move over the queen’s former lair once more thoughtfully. It snagged on the ritual circle on the floor. She had hardly dared to touch it. The memories of the Kharlins dying and bleeding out over the queen’s eggs in that circle were a dark weight in her mind and she would have given much to be able to get rid of them. Nevertheless the runes in the circle fascinated her. They had been put to a dark and horrible use, but the runes were just a tool in the hands of that mad creature.

Dawn still would have liked to learn more about runic magic. She hadn’t forgotten the advice the lady had given her, however, about the dangers of learning magic without a teacher. She knew she could be rash and stubborn and sometimes do foolish things, but nevertheless she intended to heed the warnings of the ancient woman. Luck could only carry her so far, and during the last weeks and months her own had surely been working overtime.

Pondering her luck and the lady’s advice, she crouched down before the circle and brushed her hands softly over the symbols etched into the floor. To her surprise the symbols began to take on a dark red glow and without warning Dawn found herself tumbling down into unfathomable darkness. She felt a sharp pain in her leg and then her head collided with something hard and she knew nothing anymore.