On the next day, thankfully avoiding any encounter with hydras or nixies, two oarspeople, two miniature humanoids and three cats made landfall at the tip of the peninsula separating the middle toe of Lake Silverstep from the southern one. Hazel stepped out onto the shore with Guelder in their arms. They buried their face into her fur and kissed her head repeatedly, then threw her away, quickly, before her claw swipe would rake their cheek bloody. The cat twisted in the air and landed on her paws, let out an outraged meow, then disappeared in a whirlwind of Nature energy and became an elf.

  "That... was a bit over the top, Hazel," she said, flustered. "If sleeping with you makes you so disrespectful, I will think twice before doing it again."

  Valerie contracted her eyebrows and looked her up and down, but she kept her comments for herself. As to Guelder, she couldn't be bothered to dissolve any misunderstanding the Regent might harbour. She had more important tasks to see to.

  "Linzi, would you mind removing the curse from Pangur, while I prepare Tristian? Nok-Nok, the bag, please."

  She took a squirming, meowing bag off the half-sized goblin's hands, and while Linzi performed the short ritual on Pangur, she opened it. A gorgeous, dazzling white tomcat climbed out, with a black patch of fur on his chest. He squirmed and flailed wildly as Guelder collected him into her arms, whispering soothing words. Travel by water had been frightening for all three of them. She'd felt its horror in her bones, and only her leadership experience had helped keep her cool for the others' sake. Pangur had responded well to her soothing purrs and slept through the better part of the journey – unlike Tristian, who'd been hysterical all along, bristling his fur and wailing loudly, putting everyone's nerves on the edge. This was why he'd been put into a sack and trusted to Nok-Nok for safekeeping.

  As soon as Linzi finished casting the abjuration and Tristian regained his human form, he tore himself out of Guelder's embrace, trembling with helpless rage.

  "Do not do this to me ever again! You hear me?"

  "I am sorry, Tristian," said Guelder. "There was no other way to restrain you."

  "How many times do I have to lose myself?" he yelled in a fury he'd never displayed before. "What's next? A tadpole? A gnat? A godsdamned tardigrade? Why don't you just reduce me to nothing and be done with it?"

  Then, as suddenly as it came, the fight went out of him, and he fell to his knees, shaking with sobs.

  Hazel cast a questioning glance at Guelder.

  "Is this usual? I mean, is post-polymorph hysteria a thing?"

  Guelder had no answer to that. She could imagine how scary a sudden drop of consciousness level was for those who didn't experience it regularly. In fact, without the safety of her leash and medication, even she found it overwhelming. Still, Tristian's unexpected distress surprised her. He must have had some idea of how the spell worked. Had she unwittingly torn open an old, festering wound?

  She knelt beside the cleric and put an arm around his shoulder.

  "Ssh... Tristian, if you want to talk, I will listen. Whenever you feel you are ready."

  "I don't want to talk! I just... want to be safe from this shit, once and for all! Is that too much to ask of you?"

  This was increasingly weird. Guelder had never heard Tristian swear before.

  "Of course not. Please forgive me. If I knew how it would affect you, I would have found another way."

  "Never again," whispered Tristian, burying his face into her shirt, soaking it with his tears. "Please..."

  "Never again."

  Once Tristian calmed down somewhat, the team continued their journey on land. It didn't take long for them to discover the first clue: the corpses of two goblins and a militiaman. Kesten had probably taken the land route around the southern toe and reached the area not more than a day before them. From that point, it was only a matter of picking up the scent and following it to the bitter end: a dark, gaping cave in the side of a mountain overlooking the lake.

  The team descended into what proved to be an entire cave system, home to a variety of invasive plantlife, its leaves shimmering in the dark and reflecting the radiance of the globe of light above Pangur’s perked-up ears as he prowled forward. The first thing that hit Guelder was the smell. Caked blood, other bodily fluids, charcoal. It made her shudder.

  Then they spotted the corpses. Goblins and militiamen alike, some of the latter burnt by fireflasks, and a single one exploded in the well-known way of the Bloom. The lumbering shape of an owlbear feeding on the bodies cast an even darker shadow on the glistening wall of the cave.

  "Why am I not surprised," remarked Hazel.

  "It is not over," stated Guelder, hugging herself to stop the shaking. "That owlbear is the vanguard of the second Bloom wave. Nightvale will know no rest until we finish what we came here to do."

  She grabbed the shortbow Hazel had provisioned for her, but alas, her hands were trembling. And she had no melee weapons except for her fangs and claws. Her signature weapon, Davik Nettle’s spear, was history. Ekundayo had promised to make her a new shaft incorporating a sliver of the old one, and Verdel had insisted on upgrading the spearhead to cold iron. But all that manufacturing work required peaceful circumstances, a working infrastructure and operational workshops. It would take time until the capital could provide all of those again. Also, she was strictly forbidden by her clerics from going melee, even though by this time she knew everything about taking out an owlbear (with the sole exception of staying alive).

  Hazel laid a hand on her arm, gently shoving her back and taking position in front of her. Tristian joined them, preparing some fire magic. Defeated, Guelder lowered her bow and tapped into the blessings of Nature she could share with her friends to boost their abilities. Cat's Grace was a good start to help them aim better. She continued with other buffs, hoping against hope that they would not encounter magic-devouring dweomercats.

  The owlbear raised its bloody muzzle from its prey and stared at the newcomers with large, yellow eyes.

  The corpse in front of the monster twitched.

  Hazel glanced at Tristian and nocked an arrow.

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  “Three… two… one… fire!”

  Linzi strummed her lute, starting a battle song. The owlbear shuddered and let out a terrifying screech as Hazel's arrow pierced its left eye and the Scorching Ray coming from Tristian's hand baked the right one. Valerie pushed forward with a very unladylike battle roar to claim the blinded monster's attention, while Nok-Nok wiggled under its belly and used his kukris against its most vulnerable spots. The beast didn't stand a chance.

  Guelder should have been proud of her team, and proud she was, but her joy were soured by frustration. This would not do. Boosting her companions and staying back from the fight was the reasonable thing to do. However, Guelder's reason was slowly sinking to the bottom of the bloodlust pooling, bubbling in her guts. She would not let the next enemy go down without ripping into its flesh.

  Wait, what?

  Had it been already four weeks since the riot in Tuskdale?

  Valerie checked on the corpse the owlbear had been feeding on, and yelped in horrified surprise.

  “Your Grace!”

  Then Guelder saw it, too. The body was Kesten Garess himself, still alive, which was a miracle considering that his belly had been ripped open and most of his internal organs had been nibbled. A faint glimmer of recognition appeared in his glazing eyes as they focused on the baroness.

  “The capital is safe, Kesten,” she said softly, kneeling down beside him. “I shall finish what you started. Thanks for trying. Also... I apologise for the way I treated you.”

  She turned back towards Tristian with a questioning glance. The cleric shook his head. Whether he was truly unable to heal the terrible wound or just wary of spending his strongest spells on Kesten instead of saving them for the needs of the field team – it was better not to know.

  "If you want me to make it quick for you, close your eyes and open them again."

  A slow blink came as an answer.

  "Let me do it, Your Grace," said Valerie. "You have enough burden to bear. Let this be mine."

  Guelder squeezed Kesten's shoulder in farewell, got to her feet and stepped away while Valerie plunged her blade into his throat. Then she returned to close the dead man's eyes.

  "He will be buried with honours by the state, as one of our own," she said. "He deserves as much."

  She turned and hurried back to the entrance of the cave for a last lungful of fresh air before they would continue their way into the depths. Also, she didn't want the others to see her tears. Every inch of her being thirsted for revenge. For Kesten, for the militiamen who lay dead in the caves, for all her subjects fallen to the plague or the monsters, for her own pain and distress and increasingly frequent visits at the Death's Door, which might soon open up and let her in. But if it did, she would take her enemies with her.

  She heard Hazel's footsteps behind her, hardly audible for anyone with normal hearing. They touched her arm, called her name. She hissed at them to scare them away, baring her teeth. They took two steps backwards and started to rummage frantically in their backpack. All in vain. The silver chain had been left behind in the palace, safely attached to the wall in her bedchamber, and this was no time to knock herself out for a day with edelcup root, either. Tonight, she reached for the moon.

  Answering her wordless, godless prayer, the full moon shimmered through the clouds of the overcast winter sky, letting her absorb its power.

  She embraced the cramps of transformation.

  Valerie flattened herself against the rock wall, hiding a terrified Linzi behind her shield. Tristian looked to Hazel in a silent plea for help. Hazel caught Nok-Nok by the scruff of his neck as he was running towards Guelder, brandishing his kukris. And, of course, Pangur was there for her, acting as the voice of reason, guiding her on the right path, like everytime she succumbed to the curse.

  She let out her wildest roar and leapt forward, eager to face whatever this dungeon could throw at her. Judging from the hurried footsteps, the others followed from a distance. She didn't care. It was just Pangur and her, like in the old times.

  And the spiders.

  Loads of spiders, some the size of a horse, others the usual size but attacking in swarms, their appearance messing with the eye, sometimes there, sometimes not, their hairs irritating the nose, their ichor tasting horrible. Sticky web trapping the paws. Screams. Bites. An urge to retch. It didn't matter. Once she had her teeth in her prey, nothing could deter her. Not even the arrows whistling around her, missing her by an inch and hitting the spiders instead. Her fur caught fire. Panicked, she rolled to and fro on the ground to put out the flames, but at least the tiny spiders were burnt to ash, too.

  There were huge slugs, too, with thick, sticky mucus, making her sneeze repeatedly or even throw up, spitting acid, ripping off tufts of fur and bits of flesh with their scratchy tongues. They scrunched up to half their original size when they died. There was no time to clean her fur or lick her wounds. The power of the moon urged her forward.

  Redcaps appeared, exuding an appetising smell of blood. Scythes. Those gave her a pause, a surge of terror from a deep recess of the past, followed by an irresistible drive to rend and swipe and maul. Kill the scythe man. Avenge the fallen. Fight for life. She threw herself into the fight with a rage that surprised her, revelling in the taste of fey blood and the clanking sound of scythes dropped to the ground.

  Nok-Nok obtained a red cap for himself.

  Narrow tunnels. Shiny holes in the fabric of reality. The smoothskins following her were busy opening chests and taking things from them. Guelder was impatient. A taste of her claws would teach them to focus on important things. But Pangur stopped her. He pointed out that the wood of the chests was great for scratching, and Guelder's claws did need some maintenance, what with the hard work they'd been doing tonight. Also, Pangur made her enter those holes, following the smoothskins. She didn't want to. It almost came to a fight. Then she relented. She didn't want to lose Pangur. And perhaps the smoothskins, either.

  There was a gap in the rock. A foreign-smelling breeze came out of it. Guelder had never realised that there was a note of scent common to invasive, iridescent plants, Bloom monsters, and fey. That was the scent oozing from the gap. The smell of the First World. It called to her. Clawing her way forward, she entered the gap. The smoothskins yelled at her, one of them even pulled her tail so hard that it hurt, but there was no way back. The tunnel was too narrow to turn in. She pushed forward. Wherever her head fit through, she would squeeze through her entire body, whatever it took. Then she didn't have to push anymore. Instead, the gap pulled her, sucked her in, swallowed her whole, compressed her, flayed her alive, then spat her out in a foreign place with bluish, hazy air, weird-coloured grass, and that scent everywhere.

  Guelder remained lying in the grass, stripped of her fur and fangs and tail, her mouth tasting horrible in at least five different ways, her stomach roiling, her muscles twitching with spider venom, her shoulder dislocated again. The power of the moon evaporated from her body and mind, freeing up space for agony and panic. Had she died? Or, on the contrary, had she been born to another world?