Rova 12, 4719

Akrivel

Morning

It didn’t take long to realize that a jungle is not merely a hot, wet forest. It is a dizzyingly complicated ecosystem that’s teeming with life, from the canopy to the forest floor. It is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. It’s not a place, but a thousand places, all woven together.

Kyira gave voice to the obvious: If we were to walk into this thing and have any hope of coming back out alive, we needed a guide.

“We need a guide”, she said.

The Ekujae couldn’t provide one. Even getting within a few miles of these totems rendered them blind. Fortunately, before we parted ways, Renali had offered to guide us. The Ekujae knew where her village was, so it was just a matter of getting in touch with her.

“Iskaryn, do you think you could find Renali?” I asked.

“Certainly,” she said.

I naively thought this simple exchange would stop there, and she’d fly off. I was wrong.

“Maybe she can drop a note to them,” Kyira said.

Then Trip chimed in. “Can’t your bird just talk to anybody it wants to now?”

Iskaryn fluttered down and gave me a pointed look. “What does ‘your goblin’ mean by ‘your bird’?”

This sort of thing is why Trip keeps making jokes about roasted bird.

Afternoon

Renali said she would meet us here tomorrow. I thought it would be just an uneventful day in the village—there is nothing wrong with uneventful—but Liberte had other ideas. He had been studying the gold bar we found near Huntergate, and learned it was thoroughly tainted with arsenic.

He explained that it can occur naturally in the raw ore. It’s removed during the refining process, long before it would ever be formed into gold bars like the one we found. No one would knowingly wear jewelry or carry coins laced with poison.

This turned into an interesting conversation with Akosa, who I learned had been held captive by an Aspis Consortium operation and forced to work in one of their gold mines. It explained a great deal about why he’s been terse with us. Perhaps all of it.

Akosa explained why most of the Ekujae didn’t wear any gold, and it had nothing to do with arsenic: it’s simply taboo. Their ancestors fought Dahak and somehow imprisoned him inside Alseta’s Ring with some ancient ritual, long forgotten. They believe his blood spilled over the land here, became gold once it cooled, and is now cursed by his nature. This taint is why people covet gold, and are willing to spill blood and take lives just to have more of it. 

The only exception is the keledi. They swear their lives to fighting Dahak should he ever return, and wear gold not as a sign of wealth, but as a sign that they are worthy. “That their very souls”, as Akosa put it, “can cut the flesh of a god”.

I grew up around gold; we had quite a lot of it when I was young (when I was older, not so much). It’s pretty much everywhere in Druma. I understand his point, but wealth takes many forms, and gold is only one of them. Removing gold from society doesn’t actually solve anything: people who are greedy or desperate enough will always find something worth killing for.

But then again, my family was destroyed by gold. In my home country, the people in power wear white to show their purity—abundantly adorned with gold jewelry—and long, white gloves so they don’t bespoil themselves by touching the unworthy. Otherwise known as “regular people”. It’s difficult not to see gold as a symbol.

So is gold tainted by the nature of Dahak? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s just tainted with arsenic.

Rova 13, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

I was thinking of the jungle as more of an endless rainforest, but it’s not really like that at all. There are trees, of course (just see Akrivel for proof of that), only they appear in groves rather than large stretches of land. Most of it is a dense tangle of underbrush, with plants so thick you can’t walk through them without clearing your own path ahead of you. The sun beats down on everything, and all this vegetation tries to crowd out its neighbors to get as much of it as it can.

And there are insects everywhere. This is not hyperbole. I have never seen so many insects at one time ever in my life. It’s apparent why the Ekujae gifted us with mosquito nettings and cautioned us to ensure our tents were completely enclosed in them at night. If only mosquitoes were the only bugs we had to worry about.

Renali pointed out that a common mistake people make when first entering the jungle is assuming that the biggest threat is from large predators. Yes, large predators will certainly kill and eat you if given the chance, but the more pervasive dangers are toxins and disease, delivered in the form of insects and reptiles, or just eating the wrong food. It’s humbling to realize that you can die from an insect that you didn’t even know bit you several days earlier.

As for Renali, she is traveling in what she calls her natural form: a humanoid spider. She actually asked us if this was OK first, because the Anadi have learned that humans are not always comfortable around spiders, much less human-sized ones, much less ones that literally look like people and spiders meeting halfway. That is a fair assessment, but after you’ve seen a skinless rider-and-horse monstrosity, it raises the bar for what you consider disturbing. A bipedal spider just doesn’t register.

The others didn’t seem bothered, either. Honestly, we’d seen worse in our first week in Breachill. Which, uh, sounds like I’m insulting the place where I live. I’m not. We just happened to stumble into some unusual events.

Entirely by coincidence, I’m sure.

Rova 14, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

Nketiah warned us that there were fey in this part of the jungle. Today we met one of them.

I am not under any illusions about the fey. There are a few that seek out humanity out of genuine curiosity, but most simply do not share our values. Their motivations range from inscrutable to entirely alien, and that makes them dangerous almost by happenstance: the boundary of a fey’s territory is as likely to be a rock half buried in the soil as it is something obvious like a stream or tree line. Others see us as inconvenient, entertainment, or outright prey. The malevolent ones will often combine the latter two.

It is not surprising that the most alluring of them tend to be the most dangerous. And that brings us to today.

We were tracking the Cinderclaws through the brush—the grauladons left quite the trail—when Gath came across a trail of freshly spilled blood. He decided to follow it. Someone will need to remind me why we thought this was a good idea.

What he found was a self-proclaimed hunter carrying a large sack over his shoulders. It was still dripping with blood. 

He was a very handsome man. And I want to point out that I meet a lot of attractive men and women, and normally don’t feel compelled to write it down. So when I say “he was a handsome man”, it means something.

He claimed that he had just killed a bird. Not long ago, we had fought two birds about the size of the lump in his sack, so it all seemed on the level to me. Gath, however, was suspicious.

I handled the translation between Taldan and Mwangi.

“Can we see the bird?” Gath asked. “We’re awfully interested in the local fauna.” 

“Uh, no. It will escape if I open the bag. But you can see one of its magnificent feathers,” he said. He then held up a large, fluorescent orange feather which did not look like any bird I knew.

But I don’t live here, so I threw the question to Renali, in Taldan. “Any birds in this jungle have bright, orange feathers?”

“Not that I am aware of,” she answered.

Which made me suspicious, too.

Some of my friends came up to investigate, and as they approached him, I could see them fall under his influence. One by one, their suspicions simply…faded. Trip and I stayed where we were. I didn’t know exactly how close I could get to him, and I was in no hurry to find out.

Real horror is not a monster. It’s watching your friends succumb to supernatural charms.

The creature discovered Gath spoke Sylvan. A few quiet words later, Gath did something extraordinary and terrifying. He set his bow on the ground, and calmly walked away.

Then Kyira recognized the feather: it belonged to an angel. She and Tarsius surrounded him, unaffected by his presence. His head swiveled, revealing a hyena’s face, and it attacked.

The violence shattered the enchantment on everyone. Everyone but Gath. He just kept walking.

As the others closed in on the creature, I sent Iskaryn after Gath. “Keep an eye on him!” I shouted. The thought of him wandering alone through the jungle—that we might lose him out there—was even more frightening than what we were fighting.

Both Trip and Marcus tried to break the enchantment on him, but neither could.

Finally, Trip yelled out, “Gath! Tarsius has been killed! We need your help! Now!”

It wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter. I watched him stop. Then he turned around.

The creature, which we later identified as a kishi, was surrounded by our warriors, but the killing blow came not from their blades, but a cold iron arrow.

Shot by Gath.

He looked at Trip and Marcus and said, “I will remember what you tried to do.”

We cut open the sack. Inside was not a bird, but a wounded angel with wings of bright orange feathers. Trip stabilized him before the kishi’s work could claim him.

He introduced himself as Choima, and thanked us for freeing him. Choima explained that he’d been traveling to the Magaambya with materials needed to break a curse, and apologized that he couldn’t stay. The mission had already been delayed long enough. We said our good-byes, and he took flight, disappearing to the south.

We gathered what little the kishi had left behind, found a place to make camp, and tried to put the day behind us.

Sleep did not come easily.

Rova 15, 4719

Mwangi

Evening

We encountered our first dragon pillar this afternoon. We’re calling them that because they are pillars topped with a carved dragon head, and there’s no reason to overcomplicate the name.

This one poisoned Gath. We are lucky that he is still alive.

So lucky that I am not even sure how he’s still alive, because it just doesn’t seem possible that he survived. It was that close.

It happened so quickly I only pieced it together afterward. The thick underbrush broke into a clearing of tall grasses with a small copse of trees, and the pillar was planted roughly in the center. Two bodies were hanging upside-down from the trees, which naturally put us on edge. We kept behind the taller vegetation while Gath and Qantrip crept forward through the brush to try and get a better look at it.

That’s when they spotted the drakes perched in the trees. Then something triggered it, and a beam of green light shot out from the pillar and struck Gath. He crawled his way back to us but looked horribly ill, his skin pale, his breathing strained and ragged, and sweat breaking out across his forehead.

Then the drakes took to the air and came for us, and our attention was split between surviving the attack and saving Gath. Arrows flew and blades slashed as the drakes descended on us. And every few seconds someone would glance back at Gath. Was he still breathing? Was the poison getting worse? Did anyone have another idea?

Then Marcus cried out as one of the drakes stung him while flying by. Now we had another poisoned companion to worry about. Kyira used a restorative spell to keep Gath alive while Marcus scrambled for an antitoxin. Neither of them was looking good.

One of the drakes went down, crashing into the ground, dead. I put an arrow in the other—a shot that it will remember for a very long time—and it took off to the west. 

But Gath was still dying. Marcus was getting weaker.

And all I could do was stand there and watch it happen.

I was sure Gath was gone, but Kyira managed a second restorative spell that I swear was too late…and he stabilized. His breaths were ragged and shallow, but he was still alive. The poison must have run its course.

Marcus was still struggling, though. We broke out the healer’s kit and more antitoxin, and still he fought not just to stay upright, but to even stay awake.

Eventually, he, too, stabilized.

But the dragon pillar was still there. Waiting. Two of our friends were down, and we hadn’t even gotten close to it.

That’s when I noticed what Renali had done during the fight. She had made herself invisible, crossed to the trees, and cut the charau-ka body down. The pillar hadn’t targeted her. And that gave us a way forward. I cast my own invisibility spell on Trip, and she used a flight spell to cross the clearing and drop a sack over the dragon pillar’s head.

That is all it took. It seemed so ridiculously simple, but I’ll take simple, ridiculously or otherwise. 

We studied it for a while before Gath figured out how to disrupt its magic for good. It is completely inert now. 

He’s currently hacking the dragon’s head to pieces.

No one is stopping him.

Rova 16, 4719

Some River, Mwangi

Afternoon

We’re camping by the river that Nketiah told us about while Gath and Marcus recover. There’s not really much for me to do here (I don’t have restorative magic beyond healing wounds), so my thoughts have turned back to the dragon pillar.

When Qantrip studied the white one over by Huntergate a couple of days back, she said, “This thing is a focus for magic energy. It funnels occult ritual magic, amplifies, sends it to a point far away, powers something there.” So the Cinderclaws are using these pillars to power something important. And that means they need the pillars, which means the pillars need to be defended.

Blinding the Ekujae elves was a logical choice, since they and the Cinderclaws are in direct opposition to one another. Nketiah said the Cinderclaws hold a grudge against the elves because they trapped Dahak between worlds long ago. So, keeping the elves from interfering, or even investigating, makes a lot of sense.

But more things live in the jungle than the Ekujae, and the Cinderclaws cannot assume the elves are the only threat. So the pillars can defend themselves. The green one proved that quite effectively.

The problem with that, though, is that it’s still a pillar. It can’t move, can’t think, can’t pursue anyone, and can’t adapt to when someone does something unexpectedly clever—like putting a sack over its head.

That is what the guards are for.

The more I think about the guards, though, the less the arrangement makes sense. There were two bodies hanging from that tree: a boggard and a charau-ka. Every sentient Cinderclaw cultist we’ve met so far has been one of those two. One of them wore enchanted armor dyed deep red, which just screams “Cinderclaws” to me. So these must have been the guards, or at least part of them.

So why were they dead? And how do the drakes fit in?

I am not entirely unfamiliar with drakes. We’d get them occasionally around Macridi—The Forest’s Drake didn’t just choose that name for the clever wordplay—and though they were generally smart enough not to tangle with the city, that is not the same thing as being smart. And, certainly, no one I knew ever accused drakes of being reasonable. They are impatient and prone to violence.

So why were there two drakes, a dead boggard, and a dead charau-ka sitting in those trees? I can think of two possibilities. The first is that the Cinderclaws intentionally paired them up, and that pairing…went poorly. The second is that the drakes weren’t sent by the Cinderclaws at all: they just came along and found the guards to be a tasty snack. They weren’t guarding the pillar. They were guarding their meal.

Except the pillar didn’t attack them. And presumably it wouldn’t attack its own guards. So maybe there’s something the pillar “sees” that lets it recognize an ally. Maybe whatever marks a creature as dangerous to the pillar does not include drakes. Or maybe the same magic that made this pillar poisonous also made poisonous creatures seem harmless to it.

I don’t know. That last one feels like a stretch.

Or maybe it’s not. Maybe the pillars are capable of more reasoning than I thought.

Night

Or. Maybe it’s a dragon pillar, and drakes are dragons.

Rova 9, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Afternoon

The stairs to the lower level have been rebuilt, and we cleared the rubble from the stairwell that descends to Alseta’s Ring. Which is a lengthy, boring way of saying we no longer have to spend half a day crawling through six miles of caves just to reach it. 

Easy access to the Ring means we can spend time studying it and hopefully make sense of what we’re seeing.

I’ll be honest: I am not our group’s expert when it comes to magic. I am no slouch and can certainly do some study and research, but when you really want to understand, oh, say, ancient elven teleportation rings, you probably want to talk to Qantrip. And after that, everyone else. And then me.

We started by just getting a good look at everything. The first time we were down here, we were a little preoccupied with not dying, and after that, getting past Raldar again (also without dying), then getting back to town. Now, we could take our time.

Of the six gates, only five were still standing. We didn’t need magic to tell us that the Lotusgate would never work again. If the burned-out husk of the former way station wasn’t enough to convince you, the half-melted archway would do it.

Dreamgate shimmered like clouds, with butterflies and stars worked into the stone. Duskgate felt warm despite being deep underground. Vengegate was not even decorated at all, or at least it seemed that way at first. Then someone pointed out it was covered with tiny carvings of wasps. I wish they hadn’t; now I can’t stop seeing them. Jewelgate looked like someone decided you just can’t have enough crystals.

And then there was Huntergate. Hawks, moons, and jungle vines were carved into the arch, all sacred to Ketephys, the elven god of the hunt. This was the one that we needed to go through. The one we needed to fix.

It didn’t take long to figure out what needed to be done here. The best way I can describe it is that the gate was out of tune. Apparently “out of alignment” is the more accurate term, but “out of tune” makes more sense to me. We can use the gate key—the arrowhead the Cinderclaws brought with them—to adjust it. It would just take time and patience.

That was the easy part. The hard part…

“Do we want to inform the council?” I asked.

The last time we discussed this, we couldn’t come to a consensus. About the only thing we did agree on was we weren’t saying anything to anyone until we secured the Ring and figured out how it worked. Well, as of that moment, both of those conditions had been met. So we called for a vote.

“I vote for telling the council,” I said. “We tell them the Cinderclaws came through a teleportation device that’s in our citadel, and that we intend to go through it ourselves to deal with the rest of them.”

Not everyone agreed. Kyira wanted to add that this is our citadel, and that no one else has the right to come in here to investigate or study it. And that the council shouldn’t share the knowledge of its existence with anyone else.

It wasn’t until we got to Trip, though, that the vote got really complicated.

“A witch votes ‘no’—at least not all of the council. Not that woman especially. The head woman, Greta, only is ok.”

“That woman” is Amera Lang. She’s the operations manager for Posandi Bros., one of the two masons we hired to repair our walls. They’re owned by town councilor Quentino Posandi.

Trip spent several days looking into the members of the council because she has a healthy dose of paranoia. That sounds pejorative, but it’s not. Yes, most of the time it’s exhausting. But then she’ll notice something the rest of us missed, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so excessive.

Posandi Bros. is a family business in the most extreme sense of the term. Literally everyone who works there is either family or married into it. And Trip did not like them. We didn’t hire them to rebuild the stairs for that reason. Trip didn’t want Amera, or anyone else from Posandi Bros., inside the citadel.

Greta Gardania used to run Lamond’s Lament. When she became council president, she handed it over to Renatta. Watching her, it’s hard not to think Greta sees being council president as just another way of taking care of people.

“I’ll support just telling Greta,” I said. 

One by one, we all agreed.

Night

We were able to meet with Greta in private late this afternoon. I ended up as spokesperson for what was likely to be an uncomfortable conversation.

“The Council asked us to deal with the Cinderclaws, and ensure they’re no longer a threat. Here’s what we’ve learned…” I said.

I explained that they had come through a teleportation gate beneath what was now our citadel—I specifically used that wording, “our citadel”—and caused extensive damage inside the structure. That the group got split in two, with neither able to reach the other. Then, about the caves, Voz’s involvement, and us finally reaching the Ring.

Greta looked increasingly tense. I couldn’t blame her. 

“We’ve rebuilt the stairs and cleared out the rubble,” I said, “so we now have access to the gate. We believe we know how to repair it and activate it. And to fulfill our contract, we need to go through it.”

“And you control this teleportation gate now, not them?” she asked.

“We have the device they used to activate the gate. It is uniquely coded. And we believe it’s the only one.” I took in a deep breath, then added, “We need you to keep this quiet.”

Greta looked relieved. Which made no sense to me. There was nothing about this that should have been relieving. “I was going to talk to you about this,” she said. “I’m glad you came to me.”

What?

She continued. “Voz said something troubling to me as she was being transferred to Elidir. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing, trusting those people you barely know! I bet they didn’t tell you that underneath their castle is a gate that’s controlled by a foreign cartel, and they’re going to invade!’”

This has been what I was worried about from the start. But I figured it would be Calmont that would eventually convince someone the Ring existed. I never imagined Voz would say something just to spite us and sow division.

It was foolish of me not to have considered that possibility.

I chose my next words carefully. “So…much of that is accurate. There is a gate below the castle. The Cinderclaws were planning to invade through it. I…wouldn’t call them a cartel…”

“I just assumed she was lying—”

“She had financial backers to help set up her assassination guild and necromancy school. Those backers, they gave her that money because she promised them access to the gate.”

“That’s my concern. If they’re already in control of this thing—” 

“But they’re not. We are.”

And then I explained everything we had pieced together. The Hellknights somehow managed to build their castle on top of a millennia-old elf gate. Voz learned about a breach in the caves that led to it, and hatched this plan to sell access to it once she took control of it. Calmont found Voz’s notes and hatched his own plan to get there first. And then the Cinderclaws came through the gate at just the right time to upend everything.

“Voz was backed by a group called The Scarlet Triad, who are working through a business called Tabir’s Exotic Wares in Kintargo. But she never reached the gate herself. She’s taking pieces of the truth, and assembling a story that sounds alarming.”

Of course, the existence of five teleportation gates, one of which was functional and the other four potentially so, was alarming enough.

“So this cartel could be in control of some of them,” Greta said.

“Yes,” I admitted. “But as far as we know, none of the other gates have opened in millennia. Though we can’t prove that.”

To our relief, Greta agreed to keep the knowledge of Alseta’s Ring, and our plans to travel through Huntergate to confront the remaining Cinderclaws, to herself.

For now.

Rova 10, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Late Afternoon

We were able to retune Huntergate. Everything after that was a disaster.

The two charau-ka are dead. We agreed to take them home, and we tried, but they never made it.

It’s not our fault. I know that. We didn’t promise to protect them. I know that too. But we were the means of getting them home, and that means is what got them killed. We didn’t know. No one could have known. And I can’t convince myself that this matters.

 

Iskaryn could have died in there.

 

And I should thank Magdh that she didn’t, because she and Renali got out a split second before the tunnel, or tube, or whatever in the Nine Hells you call that place, erupted in flames.

 

Iskaryn just said, “Enough.”

She’s right.

Rova 11, 4719

Citadel Altaerein

Morning

The waystation wasn’t there.

It’s not even a burned-out husk like Lotusgate’s—the one we walked through weeks ago. Huntergate’s is just gone.

The closest description I can think of is a lava tube. And it was hot. And it got hotter. Then this vision, or image, or phantasm of a dragon made of flames appeared, and we ran…

And not all of us made it out in time. The charau-ka never made it out at all.

Marcus says it looked like Dahak. He would know. He’s told us about his visions.

We think it’s a manifestation of him, or his aspect, or his power. Magdh, I don’t know how to describe it. It doesn’t matter.

Gath thinks we can…destroy it? Dissipate it? Turn its magic in on itself? I don’t know how any of that works, but I trust him. Qantrip and I will help him. Qantrip’s laughing is…unsettling…but it has this way of helping you focus if it’s done right. My part is to reinforce it with a calming, rhythmic chant.

I hope it’s enough.

But we’re warding ourselves against fire, just in case it’s not.

Akrivel, Mwangi

Night

We dissipated the Dahak manifestation and stepped through the portal on the far end of the tunnel.

Before we tried activating Huntergate, Renali told us what we should expect on the other side. She described a beautiful, open-air temple to the elven god Ketephys that now lay in ruins. “I watched in horror as the Cinderclaws smashed the temple and burned its gardens.”

And the weather?

“Hot. And humid.”

We exited the portal into the burned-out remains of a temple to Ketephys, dense jungle all around us. It was very hot. And very humid.

And we were surrounded by about two dozen dark-skinned elves, looking right at us with arrows drawn. They did not look pleased.

Before anyone could shoot us, I called out in Elvish, “We mean you no harm! We’re here in pursuit of the Cinderclaw cult!”

One of the elves stepped forward and asked, “You seek the Cinderclaws?”

“Yes,” I said. “They attacked us.”

“I see,” he said, looking at each of us with an appraising eye. “And you are…?”

“Here to kill Cinderclaws.”

His name was Jahsi, and he was a leadership figure of some sort—he used the word “keledi”, which is not one I recognized—in the Leopard Clan. After introductions, we had what I would call a tense conversation. Tense for us, because they still had bows and, except for Jahsi, seemed ready to use them. Jahsi was more relaxed.

He also spoke Taldane, which was a bit of a surprise. None of us knew precisely where in the Mwangi jungle we were, but I know generally where it is on a map, and it’s not a part of the world where Taldane is widely spoken. Jahsi was also the only one of them wearing any gold jewelry (none of us were wearing any gold either). I suppose I noticed it because my family once had plenty of it.

Our anti-Cinderclaw position, combined with the story of what happened on our side of Huntergate, earned us an invitation to their village for a feast. He explained that their clan is tasked with guarding this portal.

Alseta’s Ring dates back to before Earthfall. They’ve been doing this for thousands of years. That is a remarkably long time, even by elven standards. And I doubt that they normally do it with two dozen archers. My guess is the Cinderclaws changed that when they tore through here.

The Leopard Clan’s village was built just under the tree canopy, with branches intertwined to support the weight of buildings and platforms. Bridges made from vines spread out from it in all directions, providing a walkway through the jungle stretching as far as I could see. Some of the trees were massive, with trunks easily ten feet in diameter. The Ekujae grafted fruit trees onto the trunks, and occasionally meshed branches together and filled them with soil to create floating gardens.

The scale of it is spectacular.

It’s also the anti-Druma. It is the opposite of all I’ve learned about how communities function. There are no shops or markets. From what I can see, everyone contributes to the tribe in their way, making what’s needed, when it’s needed. No currency, no buying or selling, no profit or loss, and none of the social trappings that come with these things. It also means no poverty and no one left impoverished. It certainly appears that everyone is cared for by, well, everyone.

As long as you feel like you are part of your community, of course. I wonder if this is where the Renalis of the world come from: people who feel trapped by obligation. But I suppose we have those problems, too.

We were allowed to wander the village ahead of the feast, so I set down my weapons, removed my armor, pulled out my new cittern, and went in search of the tribe’s artisans and musicians. 

Over the last few weeks, I’d been making good on my promise to Nish—or perhaps that promise was to myself—to become comfortable with string instruments. I chose the cittern to honor her. As it turns out, while the lute may have a warmer, more mellow sound, the cittern is simply more fun to play.

Carrying that with me here, surrounded by elves, reminded me of her. I could almost feel her walking beside me.

The instruments here are very different, which means the music is as well. But it’s more than just the sound they produce: it’s also the way they put rhythms together, weaving several independent patterns into something that somehow feels simpler than any one of them alone.

I, uh, spent hours with the tribe’s musicians, trading styles, even instruments (I learned to play a kora, which I’d heard of but never seen!). I was so caught up in it that I didn’t even notice when it started getting dark.

I am not sure what the others did with their time. A few joined the hunting party for the feast (I am still wrapping my head around the notion of declaring a feast before you have food to serve). I think Tarsius spent time talking with the guards. And Gath, true to form, just seemed to pick a direction and walk.

Just ahead of the feast, we were summoned to meet with the Twin Leopards, the twin sisters Ose Panin and Ose Atsu, who lead the clan. They wanted to learn a little about us before the festivities began. And that’s where things took a turn.

“Please tell us about your friends and families, your occupations, what you consider important, and what you are most proud of about yourselves.”

And just like that, I wanted to be anywhere else. I could feel Iskaryn shift uncomfortably. I mean, I would be more than happy to talk about myself, but…tell them about my family? I did not want to do that at all. And I didn’t feel I could avoid it.

When my turn came, I took a deep breath and said, “My father hung himself. My mother is probably alive somewhere. If I’m lucky, I’ll never find her.

“Family is…complicated.

“My friends are the people I travel with. They’re probably the first people I’ve known who’ve learned truths about me and stayed. What’s most important to me is keeping your word so people will trust you. And what I’m proud of,” I said, pointing to Iskaryn, perched on a branch above us, “is her.”

True to form, she fluttered down, landed on top of my head, and gave a very human bow.

The biggest shock of this exchange came from Qantrip. It didn’t occur to me until she stood up that none of us knew anything about her. She has never said anything about where she was from.

Then she spoke. “A witch is called Qantrip,” she said. “This was the name given to her by her slave master. She has not found another yet. She has no family. The same master slaughtered them all. A witch’s entire tribe. A witch was in his service.

“Look around. These are the things a witch considers friends. Bound by a Harrow we still don’t talk about.

“What is most important? A witch is in service to the sovereign hourglass. That, above all, is where a witch leads. What a witch is most proud of?” 

She pulled out an elven skull and said, “A witch outlived him.”

Nine Hells.

Late night

Before the feast, Osa Panin challenged me to a little music competition. Because of course she plays the flute.

We just sort of agreed on a duel. I don’t generally like competitions, but duels are another matter. Done right, they are really a conversation in music. We started cautiously, probing each other’s skills, then started adding variations, passing them back and forth. Then came a little modulation, some unusual rhythms, and then suddenly we were playing with each other rather than against. Which is exactly how it was supposed to go.

We both looked ridiculously pleased with ourselves after it was done.

“Thank you,” she said, grinning. “I needed that.”

I needed it, too.

Then she offered us a gift. And things went a little sideways.

“As token of the skill and character you displayed here, you are the friends of the Leopard Clan. I understand it is the way of your people to give gifts at such occasions, so please allow us to offer you this.”

It wasn’t intended to be for me, specifically; I just happened to be there. She picked up a dagger and presented it to me to take. I reached for it, and then suddenly realized that I could feel it. It was made of cold iron.

Cold iron doesn’t harm me, but ever since the Forest, it makes me uneasy. There’s just a wrongness to it.

I hesitated.

And pulled my hand back.

And then every pair of eyes was suddenly on me.

Liberte stepped up to accept instead.

I tried to explain. I don’t know how coherent it was. But everyone stopped staring at me and the night went on.

The feast itself was wonderful. Music, dancing, food I’d never tasted before, and a series of friendly competitions that seemed to spring up whenever someone got brave enough to challenge one of us to something.

Nketiah, Jahsi’s half-human, half-elven daughter, recruited us into a conspiracy of sorts. According to her, her father and his oldest friend Akosa had spent the better part of a decade in love with one another, but couldn’t bring themselves to act on their feelings. She asked us to help nudge the evening in the right direction. Music seemed as good a way as any. While I played, my friends subtly manipulated the dance pairings, and the two finally found themselves partnered together. Judging by Nketiah’s grin afterward, we’d managed to help.

The evening concluded with stories. Nketiah is the clan’s linguist, and called us all into a circle. She went first.

And we learned the story of why they’ve guarded Huntergate for thousands of years. 

She spoke of a Great Darkness that emerged into a world already suffering and sought to reduce everything to ash. The Ekujae stood against it, sacrificing their greatest heroes to wound it before finally imprisoning it somewhere between worlds, where they swore to stand watch so that it could never escape.

What stuck with me, though, was the ending. She asked, “Could the people imprison the Darkness forever, when even the best among them could not defeat it? Was it foolish to expect them to try?”

 

Her story over, Nketiah invited us to answer with stories of our own. It struck me that the point wasn’t entertainment. This was simply what came next. They had shared the story they had been given. Now they wanted to know the stories that shaped us.

Gath told of leading goblin hunters against marauding boars. Liberte transformed a tale of reclaiming Citadel Altaerein into an academic lecture. Marcus spoke of ancient dragons and the visions that brought him to Breachill. Tarsius spoke of defending a caravan and realizing Nethys had placed him exactly where he was needed.

And I told the story of the Five Kings Minstrels.

I didn’t think about it until much later.

I’d never actually told anyone that story before.

Not even Iskaryn.

 

When the feast had wound down, Nketiah asked to speak with us privately.

We learned the Cinderclaws fled east after their attack on Huntergate. The Ekujae tracked them, but reached a point in the jungle where they could go no further. Whenever they tried to enter, they were struck blind.

“The Darkness has a grudge against us,” she said. “The Cinderclaws are using the power of that grudge to keep the Ekujae from striking them at the seat of their power.”

The Cinderclaws had tried to raise a pillar outside Huntergate before going through, but the Ekujae destroyed it before they could finish. We examined the remains before leaving for the village. It had been a wooden pillar topped with a carved dragon’s head. On the ground next to it was a leather bag that held a single gold bar.

Qantrip took the time to study it and concluded it was one of many such devices. They were designed to harm the Ekujae. And defend themselves.

“So what would you say if I asked you to investigate the jungle to the east?” Nketiah asked.

We said we’d start in the morning.