The next morning, I gathered the team at the edge of the wreckage. The ashen wind whipped around us, a constant, mournful reminder of where we were—standing on the roof of a monster's house.

  I pointed a gauntleted finger toward a distant, winding ridge of exposed bedrock that snaked across the plains like a broken spine.

  “New rule,” I announced, pitching my voice over the howl of the wind. “We stay off the ash. From now on, we stick to stone. No exceptions. It’ll be slower, but after what happened to those wagons, it’s the only way. The ground is not our friend.”

  A slow, wide grin spread across Faelar’s face. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen from him since the rabbit stew incident.

  “Finally! A sensible plan!” he boomed, stomping his boot on a piece of granite. “Back to honest-to-goodness stone! My feet were starting to forget what a proper, trustworthy surface feels like. This soft dirt is an insult to a dwarf’s constitution! An excellent command, lad! Top-notch!”

  Liam sighed, the sound a quiet, weary hiss through his teeth.

  “It's a sound tactic,” the elf conceded, his silver eyes tracing the long, meandering path of the rock ridge. “But it will also double, maybe triple, our travel time. We'll be moving at a crawl. At this rate, we could be at Vorash in a week, or we could get there in a month with very clean boots and a powerful sense of boredom.”

  “I think it’s sad,” Willow said, looking down at the vast expanse of soft, grey ash we would now be avoiding. “The ground is just trying to be comfortable for our feet, and now we have to be afraid of it. It’s not its fault it has monsters living inside it.”

  “A sentimental, if poetically phrased, fallacy!” Elmsworth declared, tapping a rock with his staff. “The ground is not ‘trying’ to be anything! It is merely a collection of various geological strata! The Grave Badgers have clearly learned to attune themselves to the vibrations created by footfalls on soft, loosely-packed earth. On solid bedrock, our vibrations would be dispersed, making us effectively invisible to their subterranean senses! It is simple, practical physics!”

  “So,” Faelar grunted, “the rocks are quieter?”

  “Precisely!” Elmsworth beamed.

  The new mode of travel was an exercise in tedious frustration.

  For hours, we moved in a single-file line along narrow ridges of stone. We hopped from one outcropping to another, balancing on jagged peaks to avoid the stretches of soft, treacherous ash. It was a tense and comical game of ‘the floor is lava,’ filled with near-slips, flailing arms, and constant bickering.

  At one point, we came to a gap of about fifteen feet—a channel of soft, deep ash separating two stable ledges of rock.

  I stopped, gauging the distance. “We’ll need a rope.”

  Nugget, who had been perched on Elmsworth’s shoulder and was now a rather drab, impatient-looking grey, simply got tired of waiting.

  With a few powerful flaps of her wings, the chicken flew easily to the other side. She landed with a soft cluck and began pecking at a shiny bit of mica.

  Faelar’s eyes lit up. The dwarf looked at the bird. He looked at the gap. He looked at his boots.

  “Ha! See?” he declared. “If the chicken’s not afraid of a little dirt, neither am I! I’m not waiting for a rope!”

  “Faelar, no!” I yelled, reaching out.

  But it was too late.

  With a defiant roar, he took a running start and stomped directly onto the ashen ground.

  Whump. Whump. Whump.

  He made it three heavy, sinking steps. Then he stopped.

  He realized his mistake instantly. The ground wasn't just soft; it felt hollow. It vibrated under his weight like a drum skin.

  He froze. He stood ankle-deep in the soft, clinging dust, his face a mask of sudden, dawning terror. He held his breath. We all held our breath.

  Nothing happened.

  The wind howled. The dust settled.

  After a long, silent moment that felt like an hour, Faelar let out a shaky breath. He scrambled the rest of the way across, pulling his boots out of the ash with loud, sucking sounds that made everyone wince.

  He made it to the other side, his bravado gone, looking pale.

  Liam just shook his head, leaning against a rock. “The chicken can fly, you magnificent idiot.”

  The day wore on, our progress agonizingly slow.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Liam took the lead. He moved with a painstaking caution that made my teeth ache, meticulously testing every stone with the butt of his spear before putting his weight on it. He was treating the landscape like a trapped dungeon corridor.

  Faelar’s good mood had long since evaporated. It was replaced by a simmering, volcanic impatience. It finally erupted in the late afternoon.

  “Are we marching to Vorash or trying to count every pebble on the way?” he bellowed. His voice echoed in the oppressive quiet, making me flinch. “A snail could outpace us! A dead snail! This isn’t scouting; it’s geology!”

  Liam didn't even turn around. “This is called caution, Faelar. It’s the reason my boots don't get pulled into monster-holes by six-legged digging machines. It is the art of not dying. You should try it.”

  “Bah! Art! All you do is sniff the air and look at twigs! A proper scout charges ahead and sees what’s what! Your ‘caution’ is just a fancy word for cowardice! Let me show you how a dwarf scouts!”

  “The last time you ‘showed us how it’s done,’ you started a battle by yourself while drunk,” Liam retorted coolly. “My confidence in your methods is, shall we say, limited.”

  “I was creating a diversion!” Faelar roared.

  “You were creating a mess!”

  “ENOUGH!” I snapped.

  My head was pounding from hours of exposure to the wind and their bickering. I was tired. My arm ached where the stitches pulled. My patience was a distant memory.

  I looked at Faelar’s red, furious face. And in a moment of profound weakness, I made a terrible decision.

  “Fine. Fine!” I waved a hand at the terrain ahead. “Faelar, you see that basin up ahead? You want to scout? Go scout the basin. See what’s there. But be careful, and report back immediately. Do you understand?”

  Faelar’s face split into a triumphant grin. “Aye, Commander! A proper job at last!”

  “This is a mistake,” Liam murmured as Faelar charged ahead with all the subtlety of a runaway boulder.

  “I know,” I sighed, rubbing my temples. “But at least it will be quiet for a few minutes.”

  Faelar vanished over the lip of the basin. We waited.

  A moment of blessed silence fell over our small party. It was peaceful.

  It lasted for about a minute.

  It was broken by a surprised, furious roar.

  “GET OFF MY LEG!”

  Then came the unmistakable sound of erupting earth—a deep, tearing noise like canvas ripping—followed by the high-pitched, chittering shrieks of Grave Badgers.

  Liam looked at me. His face was impassive.

  “Well,” he said. “He found them.”

  We charged over the ridge.

  Faelar hadn’t walked into a trap; he’d stumbled directly into a nest.

  He was in the middle of the basin, surrounded. The ground was erupting all around him as a full pack of a dozen badgers, led by three black-robed cultist handlers, boiled up from the ash like angry ants.

  “A little help would be appreciated!” Faelar bellowed, swinging Bessie in a wide, defensive arc that kept three badgers at bay.

  The battle was a swirling, chaotic mess. We charged down the slope, straight into the fray.

  Faelar was a rock in the middle of a furious river, but the soft, ashen ground was his enemy as much as the badgers. He roared in fury as one of the beasts latched onto his leg, its teeth sinking into his calf. It used its weight to pull him down to one knee.

  Another badger clamped onto his pauldron, trying to drag him backwards into an open tunnel.

  “Get off me, you dirt-digging rat!” he bellowed, kicking wildly.

  Willow, seeing his plight, acted instantly.

  “Hold still, Faelar!” she cried. She slammed her hands down onto the grey earth.

  “Solidify!”

  The soft ash around the dwarf’s feet suddenly compacted. It groaned and snapped together, hardening into a solid disc of calcified earth. It gave him a stable platform to fight from.

  Faelar found his footing on the new stone. With a triumphant roar, he brought the flat of his axe down on the head of the badger on his leg, crushing its skull.

  Elmsworth, seeing that a direct assault was a messy proposition, opted for a grand distraction.

  He pointed his staff at the largest of the skeletal trees on the edge of the basin.

  “Arise!” he commanded. “And live again, if only for a moment of violence!”

  A bolt of green energy struck the dead wood. With a groan of ancient, protesting timber, the tree pulled its massive roots from the ground. It didn't walk; it just stood there, flailing its huge, blackened branches wildly, like a giant, angry scarecrow having a seizure.

  Nugget, in a moment of helpful chaos, flew to the top of the flailing tree. Her feathers turned a bright, attention-grabbing crimson. She began crowing like a rooster, amplified by the echo of the basin.

  The handlers and their badgers, completely bewildered by the sudden appearance of a giant, flailing, crowing tree, faltered for a crucial second.

  It was the opening we needed.

  I drove my spear through a handler’s chest. Liam, a blur of motion, took out the other two with throwing knives. Without their masters, the remaining badgers became a disorganized, snarling pack. We cut them down.

  The fight was over. We stood panting in the sudden silence, surrounded by the bodies of cultists and beasts.

  Liam was clutching his leg, a deep, bleeding gash from a badger’s claw running down his shin. Willow was already at his side, her hands glowing.

  Faelar was physically unharmed, but his face was a thundercloud of humiliation.

  He knew the entire, bloody affair was his fault. He had disobeyed the plan. He had been taken down. He had to be rescued. His pride was in tatters.

  That night, at the campfire, he was uncharacteristically quiet. He stared into the flames, moodily sharpening his axe.

  Willow, finished tending to Liam’s wound, sat down beside him.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Faelar,” she said gently. “The ground was soft, and you are very sturdy. It is a difficult combination.”

  Liam, hobbling over to join them, couldn't resist.

  “Brave is one word for it,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “‘Walking bait’ is another. Don’t worry, Faelar. I’m sure the badger will tell all his friends in the great dirt-hole in the sky about how bravely you shrieked when he tried to re-plant you. You looked like an angry turnip.”

  Faelar’s head snapped up. His face turned red with indignation.

  “I did not shriek!” he roared. “And I was not dragged down, you pointy-eared git! It was a feint! A clever, tactical move!”

  He stood up, puffing out his chest.

  “I allowed the beast to pull me in, see? To get a better look at their tunneling methods from ground-level! I was gathering intelligence! I wanted to see the whites of their eyes! It was a calculated risk!”

  We all just stared at him.

  He continued, his story growing more elaborate and unbelievable with every sentence. He claimed he had counted the tunnels while being dragged. He claimed he had memorized the badger patrol routes. It was a magnificent, desperate attempt to rebuild his shattered pride.

  We listened. Not because we believed a word of it, but because he needed to tell it.

  The victory felt less like a triumph and more like a grim, embarrassing lesson.

  I took the first watch, looking out at the endless ashen plains. I was now keenly aware that every single step of our journey was a potential battle.

  A battle that we were, more often than not, destined to start ourselves.