The quarry was a landscape of carnage. It was a testament to a victory won not through superior tactics or overwhelming numbers, but through brute force and sheer, unadulterated madness.

  The silence that had fallen over the pit was heavier than the battle that preceded it. It was thick with the coppery tang of blood, the smell of ozone from Elmsworth’s spells, and the low, piteous moans of the wounded.

  I sat on a crate near the ruined command tent, letting the adrenaline fade. My left arm was a throbbing line of fire where the dagger had cut me, but the pain was grounding. It was real.

  Willow was a pale, determined ghost moving through the wreckage. She looked exhausted. Her robes were stained with mud and sap, and the flowers in her hair were wilted.

  She knelt beside a prisoner who had a broken leg, her hands glowing with a soft, green light. She whispered to the bone, coaxing it back into place.

  “Stop your squirming!” she snapped a moment later, moving to Faelar.

  The dwarf was sitting on a pile of rubble, his breastplate removed to reveal the angry, red line of the gash on his side. He was wincing as Willow pressed her hands against his skin.

  “It tingles!” Faelar complained, trying to bat her hands away. “It’s not natural, lass! It feels like a thousand tiny ants with pointy boots are marching around in my guts! Can’t you just cauterize it like a sensible healer?”

  “Cauterizing leaves a scar and damages the tissue,” Willow lectured, her voice sharp with fatigue. “And if you didn't want ants in your guts, perhaps you shouldn't have used your own body to block a demon’s claws. Hold still, or I’ll ask the roots to hold you down again.”

  Faelar went still instantly. “No need for that. The ants are fine. Lovely ants.”

  I stood up, testing my arm. It held.

  Our resources were depleted. Liam was down to zero arrows. His bandolier of throwing knives was empty, save for the ones he was currently retrieving from corpses. We had no potions. We were running on fumes and victory.

  I looked for Liam.

  He was sitting on an overturned cart near the edge of the clearing, away from the others. He had recovered his loot—the Fabergé egg Nugget had laid—and was meticulously polishing it with a scrap of clean cloth.

  He looked calm. Too calm.

  Suddenly, he stopped. He looked around, his eyes narrowing. He looked at his belt.

  “What?” he whispered.

  I watched him. He wasn't talking to me. He wasn't talking to Faelar.

  At his belt, hidden beneath his cloak, was the serrated, green-glowing dagger he had taken from the Cultist Leader.

  “A pathetic display,” a voice hissed in Liam’s mind. It sounded like oil sliding over rusty iron. “Truly. In my day, we would have had this entire quarry cleared, flayed, and salted within the hour. You fight like a clumsy milkmaid swatting at flies.”

  Liam stiffened. He looked around again to see if anyone else had heard it. Faelar was arguing about ants. Willow was humming. I was watching him, but I clearly hadn't heard the voice.

  “I’m going mad,” Liam muttered to himself. “Great. The stress finally broke me.”

  “You are not mad, elf,” the voice sneered. “You are merely holding greatness. My name is Soul-Drinker. And I demand respect. That last cultist you killed? His grip was sweaty and common. I feel positively defiled.”

  Liam looked down at his hip. He didn't draw the weapon. He just sighed, a long, suffering sound.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered to his belt. “No one is impressed.”

  “I am impressed! I am a weapon of legend! I have tasted the blood of kings! And you… you threw a pickaxe. A pickaxe! It was undignified!”

  “It worked,” Liam murmured, going back to polishing the egg. “Shut up or I’ll use you to cut cheese.”

  The dagger gasped—a psychic sound of pure horror—and fell silent.

  Across the quarry, Elmsworth was in his element.

  He had cornered one of the cultists still afflicted by his gibbering spell. The man was rocking back and forth, babbling in a language that sounded like rocks grinding together.

  “Fascinating!” the wizard chirped, scribbling furiously in a notebook. He was leaning in uncomfortably close to the man’s face. “He appears to be cycling between pre-dynastic Netherese and a rather obscure, guttural dialect of Deep Gnome! The linguistic implications are staggering! Say that bit again? The part about the ‘eyes in the soup’?”

  Nugget, who had shifted to a calming, sky-blue color, was perched on the map table. She was methodically pecking at the obsidian shards, arranging them into a complex, spiral pattern that made my eyes hurt if I looked at it too long.

  “Commander! Over here!”

  It was one of the freed villagers, a burly man who had taken up a sword from a fallen guard. He was pointing towards a collapsed section of the wooden watchtower that had fallen into the pit.

  “There’s one alive!”

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  I rushed over. Faelar grabbed his axe and followed, grunting with effort.

  A leg, clad in the ornate black leather of a high-ranking officer, was sticking out from under a heavy beam.

  We heaved the timber away.

  It was the Commander of the Quarry. Not the Cultist Leader Liam had killed with a pickaxe, but the military strategist who had been running the slave operation.

  He was a mess. His legs were clearly broken, and his face was a mask of blood and dust. But he was breathing. And when his eyes focused on us, they weren't filled with fear.

  They were filled with an undiluted, arrogant hatred.

  He looked at Faelar’s bloody axe. He looked at my grim face. He looked at the babbling madman Elmsworth was interviewing.

  And he smiled. It was a rictus of bloody teeth.

  We dragged him to the center of the quarry. He couldn't stand, so we propped him up against a rock.

  I knelt in front of him. My voice was low and hard.

  “The fight is over,” I said. “You lost. Your leader is dead. Your demon is ash. Tell us about Malkor. Tell us where to find the fortress of Vorash.”

  The Commander laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound, but it was rich with condescension.

  “You pathetic insects,” he spat. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. “You stumble into one of the Master’s larders and think you have won the war? This… this was nothing. A pantry. A place where we stored the meat for a far grander feast.”

  Faelar took a threatening step forward, raising Bessie. “Just get to the point, you windbag, before I decide to test the sharpness of my axe on your tongue.”

  The Commander didn't flinch. His eyes glittered with amusement.

  “Such savagery. Such ignorance. You have no conception of the grand tapestry of despair he is preparing for this world! My death means nothing. The deaths of these fools,” he gestured vaguely to the bodies around him, “mean nothing. We are but the opening notes in a glorious symphony of annihilation!”

  “Oh, his use of apocalyptic imagery is first-rate!” Elmsworth commented loudly to Willow from ten feet away. “A bit derivative of the Gnostic Heresies, of course, but his delivery is superb! Note the cadence!”

  I ignored the wizard. I grabbed the Commander by his collar and hauled him forward.

  “The plan,” I growled. “The location. Talk.”

  The Commander puffed out his chest. His eyes glazed over with the ecstasy of the true believer. He looked past me, at the sky.

  “The Master’s plan is a thing of beautiful, terrible mathematics!” he proclaimed, his voice rising. “It is a prophecy written in blood and stars! When the Crimson Star finally weeps upon the high altar of Vorash, a door will open that can never be closed! Malkor will be the harbinger of a new, glorious age of shadow! He will—”

  Thwip.

  The speech came to an abrupt, wet halt.

  The Commander’s eyes went wide with shock and disbelief. He made a choking noise.

  A single, slender throwing knife was suddenly embedded deep in his throat.

  He clutched at the handle. He stared at me for a second, his expression one of profound offense, as if I had interrupted a dinner toast. Then he slumped forward and died.

  A stunned silence fell over the quarry.

  I stared at the dead man. Then I turned slowly to look at Liam.

  The elf was standing ten paces away. He was calmly wiping his hands on his tunic. His expression was utterly blank.

  “What,” I said, my voice a low, dangerous growl, “did you just do?”

  Liam looked up at me. His eyes were cool and unapologetic.

  “What?” he asked. “He was monologuing.”

  I stood up. I felt the heat rising in my neck.

  “He was our only source of intelligence!” I roared, stepping toward him. “He was about to tell us something!”

  Liam didn't back down. “No, he wasn't. He was a zealot getting ready to give a speech about stars and doors. He wasn't going to tell us a map coordinate, Kaelen. He was going to waste our time and then die anyway.”

  He shrugged. A simple, infuriating gesture.

  “It’s a terminal condition,” Liam said. “Zealotry. I just sped up the symptoms.”

  “That was not your call to make!” I shouted. “We need answers, not corpses!”

  “Nice throw,” the voice in Liam’s belt whispered. “A bit throat-heavy, but effective.”

  Liam ignored the dagger and met my gaze. “He was done talking. Search him. If there’s intel, it’s in his pockets, not his poetry.”

  Furious, I turned back to the body. I knelt and began to search him, ripping open pouches and pockets.

  “Find something,” I hissed. “Justify this.”

  I found trinkets. A ring of keys. A pouch of coins.

  And then, in a hidden inner pocket, I found two objects.

  The first was a small, smooth obsidian token, different from the ones the foot soldiers carried. It was strangely warm to the touch. A single, complex arcane rune was etched into its surface.

  Elmsworth shuffled over, his notebook forgotten. He peered at the stone.

  “Remarkable,” the wizard murmured. “A directional ward-stone. It’s keyed to a specific, powerful source of magic. It won't show you the way, precisely, but it will grow warmer the closer you get to your destination. The rune… yes, this is the sigil for Vorash. It’s a compass.”

  I held it up. It pulsed with a faint heat.

  The second object was stranger. It was a single, barbed claw, about the length of my finger, attached to a thick leather cord. It was wickedly sharp, and its black, chitinous surface seemed to drink the light.

  “What is it?” Willow asked, peering over my shoulder.

  I handed it to Liam. He turned it over in his hands.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Too big for a dog. Too small for the demons we fought. It feels… old.”

  He tucked the claw into his pouch.

  “Compass and a mystery,” Liam said. “Better than a speech.”

  I glared at him, but the anger was fading, replaced by exhaustion. He was right. The Commander wouldn't have talked.

  “Pack it up,” I said, standing. “We’re done here.”

  We returned to Oakhaven not as triumphant heroes, but as a weary, blood-spattered work crew.

  The villagers, seeing the freed prisoners with us, swarmed the group. There were tears, shouts of joy, and embraces.

  Gunnar found me in the crowd. He gripped my hand, his calloused palm rough against mine. He didn't say anything, but the look in his eyes was enough.

  That evening, we gathered at our table in The Weary Traveler. The mood was subdued. We were alive, but we were heavy with the knowledge of what came next.

  I placed the ward-stone in the center of the table. It pulsed with a faint, internal heat, a heartbeat calling us north.

  “Our work here is done,” I said. “The local threat is broken. The prisoners are free. But the signal… it’s pulling us away.”

  I looked at each of them in turn. Faelar, nursing a mug of ale. Willow, braiding a piece of grass. Elmsworth, feeding Nugget a crumb of cheese. Liam, spinning a coin on the table.

  “We leave in the morning,” I said.

  No one argued.

  As I was doing a final check of my gear by the door, I saw Brenna approach Liam.

  The barmaid didn't say a word. She just handed him a small, flat object wrapped in leather.

  Liam unwrapped it. It was a whetstone. High quality, fine grain.

  It was a simple, practical gift. An acknowledgment of his trade.

  He took it. I saw a rare, small smile touch his lips—not his usual smirk, but something genuine.

  He nodded his thanks. “I’ll put it to good use,” he said softly. “It’s a dull world. Someone has to keep the edges sharp.”

  The next morning, we walked out of Oakhaven’s gates.

  The village was already coming back to life. Shutters were open. Smoke rose from chimneys. The sound of a blacksmith’s hammer—Gunnar’s hammer—rang through the air.

  It was a sound of rebuilding. A sound of hope. We left it behind us.

  Before us lay the vast, unknown, and blighted lands of Xylos, and the long, winding road to Vorash.

  Our only guide was a magical, heat-seeking rock, a talking dagger that only one of us could hear, and the certainty of more chaos to come.

  “So,” Faelar said, adjusting his pack. “Who’s got the map?”

  “The rock is the map, Faelar,” I said.

  “Right. The rock. I knew that.” He paused. “Do we have any more of that marching water?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then it’s going to be a long walk.”