The common room of The Weary Traveler smelled of damp stone, old wood smoke, and ghosts.

  It was early morning, though you wouldn't know it from the light. The weak, grey sun struggled to penetrate the grime on the windows, leaving the room in a perpetual, dusty twilight.

  I stood by the window, rhythmically polishing a spearhead that was already clean enough to see my own tired reflection in. Outside, in the muddy square, a woman hurried past. She pulled her shawl tight, her eyes fixed on the ground as if afraid of what she might see if she looked up.

  Every shuttered window, every barred door in Oakhaven was a testament to the fear that had its hooks in this place. It wasn't a panic; it was a slow, suffocating dread.

  A weight settled in my gut, colder and heavier than any stone.

  “Is this it, then?” Faelar’s voice boomed from behind me, making me flinch.

  The dwarf stomped to the table where Brenna had left five wooden bowls. He peered into one with the suspicion of a man inspecting a trapped chest.

  “Grey sludge,” Faelar announced. “Hot, grey sludge.”

  He poked at the steaming porridge with his thumb. It wobbled gelatinously.

  “This is what passes for breakfast in this valley?” he asked, looking at me with genuine betrayal. “It looks like something you’d use to patch a leak in a boat hull. It smells like wet wool.”

  Liam was already seated in a shadowy corner. He wasn't eating. He was holding a throwing knife up to the weak light, checking the edge for the hundredth time.

  “It’s food, Faelar,” the elf said, not looking up. “You put it in your mouth, you swallow, it keeps you from dying for another six hours. Try not to overthink it. It’s a new experience for you, I know, thinking.”

  “Bah! This wouldn’t keep a gnome alive!” Faelar roared. He dropped into a chair, the wood groaning in protest under the weight of his plate armor. “A proper breakfast involves meat. And ale. And eggs. And cheese. And more meat. This… this is an insult to the morning. It’s an insult to my stomach. Bessie is offended!”

  He patted the massive axe leaning against the table.

  “Good morning, everyone!” Willow’s voice was a splash of color in the grey room.

  She drifted in, looking surprisingly rested. She had woven fresh wildflowers—though where she found them in this blighted place was a mystery—into her hair. She took a seat and beamed at the bowl of sludge.

  “Oh, porridge! It’s very good for the digestion,” she chirped. She took a spoonful. “And the oats have such a lovely, calming energy. They’re very… humble. Don’t you think?”

  “Remarkable,” Elmsworth muttered.

  The wizard shuffled to the table. He was wearing his robes inside out, displaying a lining covered in pockets and strange stains. He peered into his bowl as if it held the secrets of the universe, adjusting a monocle.

  “The Brownian motion of the suspended particulates is forming a pattern highly reminiscent of the Draconic star charts,” he observed. “If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, the constellation of the Grumpy Lizard is in retrograde. A terrible omen for any venture involving… well, grumpy lizards. Or perhaps it’s just lumpy oats. The distinction is scientifically negligible.”

  He turned to his shoulder. “Nugget, your analysis?”

  The chicken, who was a startling shade of royal purple today—likely reflecting the ambient magical frustration in the room—puffed out its chest. She stared at the porridge, tilted her head, and let out a single, authoritative squawk that sounded like a condemnation.

  “Precisely my thinking,” Elmsworth nodded gravely. “The omens are gastronomically unstable.”

  Brenna entered from the back room. Her face was a careful, neutral mask, betraying nothing of the fear I knew she felt. She placed a pitcher of water on the table—no ale, to Faelar’s visible sorrow—her movements economical and silent.

  As she turned to leave, her eyes flicked to the corner where Liam sat.

  It was a quick, unreadable glance, but Liam’s hands, which had been methodically spinning the dagger, stilled for a fraction of a second. He nodded once. She didn't smile, but her shoulders relaxed slightly before she vanished back into the kitchen.

  The heavy sound of the inn’s front bar being lifted silenced the room.

  Gunnar stood in the doorway. The morning light silhouetted his broad, powerful frame, but it couldn't hide the dark circles under his eyes or the soot that seemed permanently etched into his skin.

  He strode to the table, his heavy boots thudding on the floorboards like a drumbeat. He didn't say a word. He just slapped a rolled piece of hide down in front of me.

  It landed with a soft, heavy thud.

  “Tamsin drew it,” he grunted, his voice rough with sleeplessness. “Best she could remember. The path, the ridges. The tower’s marked.”

  He leaned forward, planting his big blacksmith hands on the table.

  “They took the Miller’s boy at night,” he said, looking at each of us. “You’ve got until dusk. Don’t waste it.”

  He straightened up, gave Faelar’s axe a look of grim appraisal—one warrior recognizing the tools of another—and turned on his heel. The door barred behind him with a sound of finality.

  I unrolled the hide. It was crude, drawn with charcoal, but the intent was clear. A winding path up the ridge. A clearing. And a stone structure overlooking the valley.

  “Alright,” I said, looking at my team. “The objective is the watchtower. We need a way in.”

  “Finally! Less talk, more smash!” Faelar grinned, cracking his knuckles. The sound was like pistol shots.

  He jabbed a sausage-like finger onto the map.

  “Here’s the plan,” the dwarf announced. “We walk up the path. Nice and slow. Let ‘em see us. We make some noise—maybe I sing the Ballad of the Drunken Goat. They’ll get cocky, see? They’ll send a few lads down to say hello. We turn those lads into a fine red mist. Then, while the rest are still gawking, I introduce Bessie to their front door. We’re in and drinking their ale before they even know they’re dead.”

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  He leaned back, looking extremely pleased with himself.

  “That is, without question, the most idiotic plan I have ever had the misfortune of hearing,” Liam said.

  His voice dripped with a boredom so profound it was almost insulting. He walked over to the table, using the tip of his pristine dagger to point at the map.

  “You see this, Faelar? It’s called a ‘ridge.’ That means they are up high, and we are down low,” Liam explained slowly. “Your ‘nice and slow’ walk up the path will be a leisurely stroll into a storm of arrows. Honestly, it’s a miracle you’ve survived this long without accidental self-decapitation.”

  The dwarf’s face flushed a dangerous shade of red that matched his beard.

  “It’s an honest plan!” Faelar shouted, spitting a little porridge. “Face them head on! Look them in the eye! Not like some pointy-eared sneak who’d rather stick a knife in a man’s back while he’s asleep!”

  “It’s called efficiency,” Liam shot back, a cold, shark-like smile playing on his lips. “You should try it sometime. While you’re busy getting yourself killed for ‘honor,’ I’ll have already slipped over the wall, slit the commander’s throat, and be halfway through their lockbox of valuables.”

  “Why you little…” Faelar started, rising from his chair, grabbing the handle of his axe.

  “Enough!”

  My voice cut through the room like a whipcrack. Faelar froze. Liam leaned back, looking smug.

  I rubbed my temples. The headache was back.

  “Both of your plans are useless,” I snapped. “We are not getting slaughtered in a frontal assault, and we are not assassinating a single target when we don’t even know if there are prisoners inside. We need another way. Something that disables them without killing the hostages. Willow? Elmsworth?”

  Willow, who had been watching the argument with wide, worried eyes, spoke up softly.

  “Well… the tower is made of stone, isn’t it?” she asked. “Stones get sad when they’re used for bad things. And the wind… it doesn’t like all the shouting and the dark magic up there.”

  She traced a circle on the table. “Maybe… maybe if I ask the wind to sing a sad song, and the moss on the stones to listen, they could help us? The moss could get thick and cover the windows, and the wind’s song could cover the sound of our footsteps?”

  It was a gentle idea. A soft idea.

  Before I could even process it, Elmsworth, who had wandered over to the wall and was examining a large, grey insect resting on a beam, let out a triumphant cry.

  “Eureka! The child is a genius!”

  We all turned to stare at him. Willow blushed.

  “Not about the sad stones, of course, that’s sentimental nonsense,” Elmsworth clarified, waving a dismissive hand. “But the song! She’s right! We need a song! But not of the wind! A song of pain! A song of pure, unadulterated, neurological agony!”

  He scurried back to the table, his eyes alight with a terrifying, manic glee.

  “This specimen,” he said, pointing back at the wall, “is a Giant Emperor Moth! Its primary defense mechanism is a subsonic wing flutter that is intensely irritating to predators! A marvelous evolutionary adaptation! Now, imagine that irritation amplified a thousand-fold! Imagine it focused, concentrated, and resonated through solid stone!”

  “Nugget!” he shouted.

  The purple chicken hopped from his shoulder onto the map. She began pecking furiously at the ‘X’ that marked the tower.

  “She sees it! The chicken sees the sublime beauty of the plan!” Elmsworth’s voice rose with excitement. “I cast a simple thaumaturgical amplification charm on a swarm of these creatures, creating a focused, directional wave of sonic torment! The cultists inside won’t be able to hear, think, or even stand! They’ll be too busy wishing their own skulls would crack open just to make the noise stop! It will be a symphony of suffering!”

  The silence that followed was absolute.

  Faelar stared at him, his mouth slightly agape. “You want… to fight them… with a bunch of angry, noisy moths?”

  Liam began to laugh. It wasn’t a chuckle; it was a deep, genuine bark of pure, unrestrained delight.

  “An army of angry, noisy moths,” Liam corrected, wiping a tear from his eye. “It’s the single most insane, idiotic, brilliant thing I have ever heard. I’m in.”

  I looked at the hopeful look on Willow’s face. I looked at the bloodthirsty grin on Faelar’s face. I looked at the purple chicken pecking the map.

  This was my command. My training manuals had no chapter for this.

  “Alright,” I said, the words feeling heavy and absurd on my tongue. “We do the moths. Elmsworth, can you build the amplifier?”

  “Trivial!” Elmsworth scoffed. “I just need a tuning fork, a bit of quartz, and… ah. The moths. I need the moths. Live ones. At least a dozen.”

  He looked at the team. “Well? Chop chop! The specimens won’t catch themselves!”

  And that was how the legendary heroes of the Celestial Guard spent the next hour.

  “I got one!” Faelar bellowed.

  He was standing on a chair, reaching for a moth fluttering near the rafters. He swung his massive, plate-armored hand with all the grace of a falling boulder.

  SMACK.

  He opened his hand. A smear of grey dust was all that remained.

  “Too much torque,” Elmsworth critiqued from the floor, where he was assembling a strange device. “We need them alive, you barbarian! Less smashing, more grasping!”

  “It’s a bug!” Faelar argued. “It’s fragile! It shouldn't be so squishy!”

  Across the room, Liam was moving like a cat. He was stalking a moth that had landed on a barrel. He moved silently, holding a glass jar Brenna had provided. He waited. He lunged.

  The moth fluttered away lazily. Liam, off-balance, tripped over his own boots—or perhaps a loose floorboard—and crashed into the barrel.

  “Stealth expert,” Faelar muttered.

  “It has erratic flight patterns!” Liam defended, scrambling up. “It’s unpredictable!”

  Willow was the only one having success. She stood in the center of the room, humming a low, buzzing tune. She held out her finger.

  Slowly, one by one, moths drifted down from the rafters and landed on her arms, her shoulders, her head.

  “They just want to be asked nicely,” she said, smiling. She gently transferred them into Elmsworth’s collection jar.

  “Show off,” Liam grumbled, rubbing his bruised shin.

  By noon, the preparations were complete.

  The common room hummed with a strange, focused energy. The air crackled with anticipation.

  Faelar sat by the hearth. The rhythmic shiiing, shiiing of his whetstone on Bessie’s curved blade was a grim, steady beat. He was humming a dwarven war song that sounded suspiciously like a drinking song played at half-speed.

  Willow was in her corner, her eyes closed, whispering to a bundle of herbs and twigs. She was asking the wind for favors, negotiating the price of silence.

  Elmsworth had produced a series of vials, a tuning fork, and a small, intricate net made of copper wire. He laid them out on the table, muttering about “harmonic convergence” and “chitinous resonance.” He dropped a pinch of sparkling blue dust into the jar with the moths.

  “Is that the Crystallized Regret?” I asked, recognizing the shimmer from his previous requisition list.

  “Don’t be silly, Kaelen,” Elmsworth sniffed. “Greydon wouldn't give me that. This is Powdered Indifference. It will make the moths stop caring about their own safety and focus entirely on being annoying. Much more efficient.”

  I moved to a quieter part of the room to check my shield straps. Liam was nearby, laying out his throwing knives on a worn cloak. He checked each one for balance, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  He was so absorbed in his inventory that he didn’t notice Brenna approach until she was standing right beside him.

  She held out a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. “Here.”

  Liam looked up, surprised. He slipped a knife into his sleeve instinctively. “What’s this?”

  “For the road,” she said. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion, but her eyes were kind. “Bread. Cheese. And dried apples. Not porridge.”

  He took it. The rough cloth was warm in his hands. He fell back on his usual defense—sarcasm.

  “Don’t trust the army rations? Think I’m too skinny?”

  She didn’t rise to the bait. Her gaze was direct, cutting through his armor.

  “I trust you to not die stupidly,” she said. “Come back.”

  Liam was silent for a long moment. He looked down at the bundle, then back up at her face. For the first time since I had met him, the cynical, professional killer was gone.

  “We will,” he said.

  And it sounded less like a boast and more like a promise.

  As the sun touched the horizon, painting the sky in strokes of orange and blood red, we stood at the edge of Oakhaven.

  The forest before us was a tangle of shadows. Behind us, the village was silent, holding its breath.

  I looked at the strange company I kept.

  The berserker who named his axe. The thief who counted his knives like worry beads. The gardener who weaponized roots. The madman who was currently shaking a jar of chemically indifferent moths. And the color-changing chicken.

  My orchestra of lunatics.

  I turned my back on the town and faced the path leading up the ridge.

  “Let’s go make some noise,” I said.