Near the northern border of Varnhold, in a cave behind an irregular group of tors known as the Crooked Teeth, Baron Maegar Varn stepped through a portal.

  He half expected to end up in a random outhouse back in Varnhold Town or worse. Instead, he found himself in a dreamlike, magical world, a dark grotto covered in lush plantlife flaunting iridescent, vibrant colours, petals and mushroom hats shimmering in the darkness. Alien, eerie, beautiful, a place made for love – or for another evil nereid preying upon the deepest desires of his heart.

  His companions gasped at the sight as they filed out of the portal.

  "Is this... the First World?" muttered Gekkor.

  "Looks like," said Cephal, thumping the butt of his staff against the ground. "We got a little sample of it at Lostlarn Keep. That was when it all started to go south."

  However, they didn't have much time to marvel.

  Something creaked in the darkness, like an old tree in a windstorm. Except the air was completely still, motionless, ripe with a caleidoscope of fragrances.

  "There!" said Tehara in a muffled voice, her fiery eyes flaring to life with darkvision. "What the hell? A manticore, made from... vines?"

  Indeed, as Gekkor conjured a globe of light and attached it to a tall mushroom, they all saw the creature lurking in a farther recess of the grotto. As if a mad basketweaver had resolved to create a breathtaking memorial to Arno. Except it was alive, and apparently not happy to entertain visitors.

  "Heavy artillery?" asked the wizard between his teeth, casting a side glance at the baron.

  "Sounds like a plan. Gekkor, make us fireproof, will you?"

  While the cleric softly chanted his spell, Cephal took aim, slowly and carefully, calculating the angle and the distance. As he pointed his finger towards the wicker manticore thing, a bead of fire flew out and exploded at the far end of the grotto into a raging inferno.

  The heat felt unbearable even at a distance. Fireballs were something Maegar could never get accustomed to, although he'd had plenty of opportunities to do so with Cephal by his side. Once again, he established with surprise that his eyes had not popped, his lungs had not burnt out, his skin was not full of angry red blisters, and the most damage he'd taken was a few singed strands of hair and beard. Unlike the grotto. The colourful plantlife was gone. Only soot, ash and blackened leaves or petals remained.

  The smouldering shape of the wicker creature let out a terrifying roar and took a step towards them.

  Gekkor pulled out a handaxe and passed another one to Tehara. Arrows would be of no use here. The Bruiser slipped on a pair of leather gloves with iron-reinforced knuckles. Protection from Fire was all well and good, but it made no sense to push its limits by punching the embers with bare fists. As for the baron, he took to the shadows, hugging the rock wall. It was time to find out whether Drippy and Stinky could be used as machetes.

  "Wait!" cried out Cephal. "Something's wrong. I don't know about you lot, but I've never, ever heard a plant roar."

  Gekkor considered the implications for a moment, then gave his handaxe to Tehara and nocked an arrow instead. The tiefling twirled the second axe in her hand, and her eyes sought out the baron in the shadows, now very close to the monster. He jerked his head, giving the signal to attack.

  Tehara let out her best battlecry, her voice bouncing back multiplied off the walls of the grotto, and charged at the creature. It reared up and stretched its wings, charred pieces of vine breaking off its body with loud snaps and falling to the ground. Freed from its wicker husk, a large but otherwise normal-looking manticore stood in front of them, with an angry human face and sleek black fur. Its terrible, toothy maw opened for another ear-splitting roar, completely oblivious of anyone who might prowl in the shadows.

  Maegar lunged forward, entering melee range just as the beast abandoned its threatening posture to prepare an attack, and bore down on it with both his ankou-wing daggers. Luck was on his side. Drippy slipped in between two ribs, while Stinky tore its way into the beast's flank. Once they were in up to the hilt, the baron gave them a good pull downwards, opening deep gashes in the flesh. The monster howled in pain and snapped its tail forward, launching a pair of spikes into the air, but that couldn't save its life anymore. Before it could take revenge on its attacker, Tehara's axe sliced its head off its neck. By the time Maegar reclaimed his daggers, it was dead.

  "Poor pet," muttered Tehara, taking a closer look at the carcass. "Wrapped up alive in a bunch of vines... Of course it was furious. Shakoth always told me how cruel fey were, but I'm only starting to understand how right she was."

  This remark was enough to dissolve Maegar's euphoria of victory. His thoughts circled back to his beloved, who could be a target of a similarly cruel fey prank right now. They had better get moving. Even though it was tempting to let Gekkor skin the–

  His knee cracked with a jolt of sharp pain, out of nothing. Tehara caught his arm to stabilise him in the last moment before he lost balance and hit the ground. A moment later, a disembodied, shimmering hand lifted a screaming, kicking Bruiser into the air, holding him by an ear.

  "What do you think you're doing, young friend?" demanded Cephal as he walked closer to the squirming monk, while maintaining the cantrip without effort. "Physically attacking your baron amounts to treason, and the punishment for treason is death. Just saying. You know, I wrote the applicable law."

  The Bruiser tried to claw at the arm behind the mysterious hand, all in vain. There was no arm. For lack of a better idea, he continued screaming. The baron seriously considered joining in. The little rascal knew exactly how to wreck someone's knee for a lifetime. Unless, of course, one had a good cleric at his disposal.

  "Not so fast with that death sentence!" said Gekkor. He transferred the orb of light onto the Bruiser's head, then pointed at a manticore spike jutting out of the halfling's bare shoulder. "His brain has been muddled by the manticore's venom. He is not in full possession of his mental abilities right now."

  The baron snorted with laughter.

  "Hah! Nobody ever confused me with a manticore before. I'll take it as a compliment. Sort him out, Gekkor, before his ear gets ripped off. Just let me sit down somewhere... ouch. There. Now I can wait."

  Indeed, as soon as Gekkor removed the spike and splashed some general antidote into the Bruiser's howling mouth, it was safe for Cephal to dismiss his Mage Hand. It would have been nicer if he'd lowered the Bruiser to the ground first, though.

  They were forced to get some rest among the charred flowers crumbling under their weight, until Gekkor mended the baron's leg and skinned the manticore, and the Bruiser recovered from his ordeal. Meanwhile, Cephal and Tehara set out to explore the grotto a little more thoroughly. Except for the portal they'd arrived by, they only found one natural exit: a tunnel just behind the manticore's carcass, wide enough for two people abreast. This was where they continued their journey, hoping that it would lead them out of here, so that they could start their search for Darlac. They were well prepared: Cephal brought an arsenal of scrolls and other items to overcome any language barrier and retrieve the coveted information.

  What they were not prepared for, though, was the wind.

  From the moment they first set foot in the tunnel, it did everything in its power to keep them out. A strong draft blew into their faces, defying the laws of nature as they knew them. It was anyone's guess what force was sucking all that air through the tunnel into a grotto without any other connection to the world outside, or why the grotto didn't get overextended and blown up like an overfilled bladder. Anyway, the Varnlings pushed forward into the tunnel, two abreast, holding onto the rock wall and each other so as not to be blown away.

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  The gusts of wind brought raindrops (again, from where?), rock debris, and at one point, even a flock of bats, powerless against the draft, their fluffy bodies crashing into the Varnlings' faces. The baron and Tehara got the worst of it, walking (or, at this point, more like crawling) at the front. Cephal and Gekkor brought up the rear, keeping the Bruiser in a well-protected position, lest he was snatched up by the wind and carried away.

  "Where are we even going?" growled Tehara, wiping mud out of her eyes with the back of her hand.

  "To the other end of the tunnel," said the baron, trying hard to sound nonchalant. "Don't you want to know what is there?"

  "Sorry, Your Grace, but I can't imagine Darlac waiting for us there in the middle of a stormcloud or a tornado or whatnot."

  "In this case, Tehara, I envy you," snapped Maegar. "I can perfectly imagine that, or worse. At the moment, we have no better clue than to go through with this. We fight our way out of here and see what's next."

  Tehara fell silent. Either she felt ashamed, or perhaps a straggler from the bat flock got slammed into her mouth.

  At the next moment, a loud crash was heard. Electricity crackled in the air, striking all the way through the tunnel, leaping from one person to another, singeing them from the inside. What was going on? An attack of will-o'-wisps or some electrified monster? Or just a completely messed-up thunderstorm in the bowels of a mountain?

  Gekkor reacted quickly, once he recovered from the first shock, and granted another layer of elemental protection to the squad.

  "Hope there won't be acid or cold as well," he muttered. "This is all I had."

  The next strike of lightning was a lot less painful: it only made their hair stand on end. However, the respite was only temporary. If the storm continued like this, it would quickly grind their protection down to nothing, leaving them helpless against a finishing blow. Still, they had to go on. If there was 1% chance that they would find Darlac...

  They finally reached the end of the tunnel. No light awaited there, only a dark grotto, similar to the Crooked Teeth one but with more mushrooms and less flowers, bucketloads of rain coming from nowhere and disappearing into nowhere, thunder and lightning without clouds. And in the middle of all that, four other Varnlings were locked in combat with something like an animated compost heap wriggling amidst a bunch of thorny vines. An eagle was perched on top of the monstrosity, clawing at its stringy body with beak and talons.

  "I'm getting nostalgic for the Tors of Levenies," grumbled Cephal, his hands flaring up with sparks of fire. "I could do with a little less plants and water."

  His Scorching Ray made the raindrops sizzle and enveloped the compost thing in a cloud of vapour, but otherwise didn't do much.

  "What in the Archfiend's name? Is it too wet to burn?"

  There was no time to wonder about that. The lightning storm was steadily chipping away at their protection.

  Sometimes simple solutions were the best.

  Flipping out the ankou-wing daggers, the baron led the charge against the... whatever that thing was. Based on the simple assumption that First World enemies usually disliked cold iron, he slashed at a vine lashing out at him. Half of it fell to the ground, writhing, the rest drew back. The creature was apparently distressed, which meant the method was working. Now it was only a matter of dodging its blows and landing slashes.

  The joint effort of the two squads soon brought down the monster that was apparently a shambling mound. Its corpse looked like a heap of branches left behind after making a topiary. The eagle stopped its attacks, shook itself, did a somersault in the air, and became Faeli.

  "Your Grace, aren't you a sight for sore eyes! Quick, to the portal! Get out of here until I take a look around!"

  It didn't take much convincing. Leaving Gekkor behind to cover Faeli, the rest of the two squads passed through the portal, one by one. They stepped out into drizzling sleet on a clearing in the mountains. Maegar slumped to the ground next to the cave entrance and closed his eyes for a spell, while Faeli's squad were busy building a campfire and setting it alight with a flask of Alchemist's Fire. He remained so until Faeli and Gekkor made it out.

  "Reporting for duty, Your Grace!"

  The baron scrambled to his feet to face his soldiers. Despite the cleric's best efforts, his knee complained like never before. Would he end up in need of a walking cane? The mere idea of it soured his mood.

  "First of all, Faeli, if I remember correctly, I sent you to the Rotten Cave. What the smelly heck are you doing here?"

  "Your Grace... This is the Rotten Cave." Faeli pointed to the northeast, where a landmark rose towards the twilit sky: a lookout tower on top of a mountain, in the final stage of its construction. "That's the Tower of Arno. We are near the source of the Gudrin."

  "Oh. Then I asked the wrong question. What the smelly heck am I doing here?"

  "Apparently," said Cephal, stretching his limbs, "that awful wind tunnel is a wormhole through the First World that connects the Crooked Teeth and the Rotten Cave."

  "Wonderful. So we've discovered a path of fast travel which is useless for us because it has... weather. Unless..."

  "Unless we travel in the other direction, with our backs to the wind!" exclaimed Tehara triumphantly. "We put on some Protection from Electricity, and it's all smooth sailing!"

  "Provided that the grottos remain free from monsters, which can't be guaranteed," grumbled the wizard.

  "You have a point, Cephal," said the baron. "Faeli, did you find any exit from this grotto other than the wind tunnel?"

  The druid shook her head.

  "We circled the grotto at least three times, sir. I even probed the ceiling in woodpecker form for weak spots, to see if I can break through and do some recon outside, to no avail. We found a skeleton, though. Based on its belongings, it isn't the General."

  "Thank Desna... Any chance that this aggressive compost pile was behind the plague in Nightvale?"

  "I don't think so. I couldn't identify any underground waterways that could carry the seeds into the Gudrin, nor any plant part that could produce them. Shambling mounds don't even propagate by seeds."

  So that was that. Another failure, another meaningless waste of time, not a step closer to freeing General Darlac. Was there no way to turn those passageways to his advantage? Those monsters had to get into those grottos somehow. They couldn't just... spawn in there, or could they? Did the geography transform from time to time, opening up or closing down entrances or tunnels? Would it make sense to return later, just in case something would have changed? Would Maegar spend the rest of his life repeating the same actions all over again, hoping that next time they would yield a different result?

  "Also, in case you're wondering about your next step, Radvila collected a status report from your Tuskdale agent via Sending." Faeli fished a piece of paper out of her pocket, and read it out aloud. "Tuskdale overrun by monsters. Baroness departed to Womb of Lamashtu near Lake Silverstep to stem the influx. Is in bad shape, might not make it."

  The baron exhaled sharply. Not Guelder. Please. Losing Darlac already had him on the verge of breaking terminally. If Guelder fell to the Bloom... He couldn't tell why he cared. Two encounters were hardly enough to establish a deep and lasting friendship. They hadn't even fought side by side as yet. Also, the Regent of Tuskdale was a woman of honour, reasonable and not too difficult to deal with. She would probably make an excellent successor. And still... He felt the urge to intervene, thrice as strongly as when he'd received Jamandi's letter. At the moment, there was nothing he could do for his love – but maybe he could tip the scales for his friend.

  Faeli grinned as she saw the resolution forming in him. Did she have some druidic sisterhood thing going on with Guelder under the pretext of establishing the rookery? Next, Maegar caught Cephal's eyes before the wizard could voice his disapproval, and preemptively glared at him with all the authority he could muster. The wizard rolled his eyes and made a face, but knew better than to argue.

  Perhaps there was a way to make this operation matter, after all. Or, if nothing else, he would keep himself busy until he came up with another idea on how to continue the search.

  "Well, considering that we're this close to the Gudrin, it would be best to pay a visit at the new watermill and see if we can't requisition a few boats. Faeli, I want you to join me with your men. The Womb of Lamashtu should be somewhere downstream. Let's go see it for ourselves."

  "By the Archfiend's fiery arse," sighed Cephal, running his fingers through his grey hair. "Nothing beats whitewater rowing in wintertime, eh? I'm definitely getting too old for this nonsense."