The world erupted in a sheet of fire.
Gassi’s trap was savagely effective. The oil, slick and black, caught with a great whoosh as Nym’s torch spun through the air. Flames clawed at the sky, engulfing two of the bandits in a prison of roaring heat. Their screams were sharp, jagged things that were quickly swallowed by the inferno.
The ambush was sprung.
From the palisade walkway, Aurelio let fly with his javelins, the thrown spears arcing down into the chaos. Zogg, a silent predator, hurled a stone with telekinetic force that struck the lead bandit in the head with a sickening crack.
One of the burning men, wreathed in flame, staggered blindly before collapsing into a smoldering heap. The other, screaming, dropped to the ground and rolled frantically, trying to smother the fire that was eating him alive.
Nym, his face illuminated by the flickering blaze, muttered an incantation. A bolt of jagged lightning leaped from his outstretched hand and struck the rolling man. He convulsed once, then was still.
Before the remaining two bandits could fully react, Maven was upon them. She launched herself from the wall, a dark comet of hide and steel. She landed heavily, stumbling on the uneven ground and falling to one knee, but the awkwardness lasted only a second. She was up and moving, a blur of motion that ended with her arms wrapped around one of the bandits in a grip like iron bands. He was caught, helpless, his struggles useless against her raw strength.
Seeing his comrade captured, the final bandit—who seemed to be their leader—turned to flee. But there was nowhere to go. Zogg dropped from the walkway, landing silently behind him. A single, non-lethal blow from the pommel of his sword, and the man slumped to the ground, unconscious.
The battle, if it could be called that, was over.
The air smelled of burnt flesh and scorched earth. Two bandits were dead. Two were captured. The silence that fell was heavy and absolute.
The conscious bandit, a wiry man named Happs, was defiant. He sat in the mud where Maven held him, spitting curses.
Gassi approached, his expression one of mild curiosity. “Oleg,” he called out, his voice calm. “Would you be so kind as to bring me a fork, two potatoes, some honey, boiling water, three radishes, a great deal of salt, and three feathers?”
The request was so bizarre that even the bandit stopped cursing to stare. Oleg was frozen, dumbfounded. Svetlana, however, was the first to move; she hurried to fetch the items while Gassi listed them again, this time to the bandit, his voice low and thoughtful, as if planning a particularly complex and savage ritual.
“Now,” Gassi said when Svetlana returned, holding the strange assortment of goods. He picked up a radish, dipped it in honey, and sprinkled it liberally with salt. He held it before the bandit’s face. “Are you going to tell us where your main camp is, or must we become… unpleasant?”
The man’s nerve broke. He stammered out the details: a larger camp, a day’s march to the southwest, near the Thorn River. About ten men, led by a brute named Kressle.
“And the Stag Lord?” Gassi asked, taking a thoughtful bite of the salted, honeyed radish.
The bandit shook his head frantically. “None of us see the Stag Lord. Only Kressle does.”
Nym, who had been watching with rapt attention, sighed in disappointment. “So you weren’t going to…?” He gestured vaguely at the feathers, then the boiling water and finally the bandit.
“What? Oh, no no,” Gassi said, as if surprised by the question. “This makes a great foundation for a stew. A bit of meat, perhaps a sausage… Though I’m not sure what to do with the feathers. Birds fly with them, you know.” He offered the bandit the remaining half of the radish. The man just whimpered.
Just then, Svetlana stormed forward. “My ring!” she demanded, slapping Happs across the face. “Where is my wedding ring?”
Happs cringed away from her, blood from his lip staining his teeth. “I don’t have it! I don’t know!” he cried. “We just collect the goods and bring them to the camp. We drop them in the main tent, and Kressle takes the wagon up the hill to the Lord’s fort. We don’t go inside! We don’t see what happens to the gold or the jewelry after that. I swear it on the old gods!”
She stared at him, her chest heaving, then stepped back, telling the party how the bandits had stolen the simple gold band engraved with their names on the first raid. It was all they had left.
Aurelio knelt beside her. “We will find it,” he promised, his voice soft. “We will bring it back to you.”
They stripped the bodies of the dead, finding little of value besides their silver amulets, each stamped with the sigil of a beast’s skull fashioned into a helm. Zogg took one, slipping it over his head.
“To aid in infiltration,” was all he said.
Svetlana, grateful for the promise of her ring, offered them a piece of advice. “If you need more potions, or other… curious things, you should visit Bokken. He is an alchemist, a hermit. He lives in a hut to the east.”
They had a direction now: southwest, toward the Thorn River. Leaving Happs bound in Oleg’s cellar and their wagon in his care, they set out on foot.
The woods south of the outpost were thick and ancient. Hours into their trek, the forest grew strangely quiet, and then the whispers began. Not the voice of the First World brands this time, but something else. A high, childish laughter that seemed to come from all directions at once, followed by the appearance of shimmering, dancing lights that bobbed and weaved between the trees, leading them astray.
“Fey,” Nym grumbled, rubbing his temple. “They’re leading us in circles.”
Gassi stepped forward first. “Hello!” he called out pleasantly. “We seek the bullies who wear these!” He gestured to Zogg’s amulet. “Can you show us the way to them?”
An answer is given when the question is paid, round-ear, a voice giggled from the air.
“Fair enough,” Gassi said. He took out a handful of silver coins and tossed them into a mossy hollow. “My question lies within that hollow.”
The lights danced. The bullies with the skull-helmets are south of here, along the river. A vision flashed through their minds: a rough camp, a watchtower, a crossing.
Nym stepped up next, as if this was the most normal interaction in the world. “What of the Stag Lord,” he asked. “Is he with them?” He unclasped the silver stag amulet he had looted and gently laid it onto a nearby rock.
The voice hummed, pleased. No, the great bully, is another day’s march beyond. You are not ready for him.
Zogg, growing impatient with the formalities and riddles, barked out, “What do you mean we aren’t ready? What are we supposed to do then?”
He waited, expecting an answer. Instead, he felt a sudden lightness at his hip. He looked down—his pouch was open, and his fine brass compass was gone.
The poachers to the northwest, the voice whispered, fading into the wind. They are also bullies, they only take, give no respect.
“Mischievous little thieves,” Zogg muttered, while urgently checking the rest of his gear.
Nym chuckled to himself.
They followed the river south. The trees eventually gave way to a clearing. Before them, just as the vision had shown, was the bandit camp. It was larger and better fortified than they’d expected, with a crude watchtower overlooking the river crossing.
“I will be your prisoner,” Gassi announced. “They will see my bindings and think you are bringing them a prize.”
Maven tied his wrists with a clever knot that looked binding but could be slipped in an instant. Aurelio, Zogg, and she wore their captured amulets openly. They would walk in as if they owned the place.
“I will stay back,” Nym whispered, his hand on his cane. “If they buy the lie, I am not needed. If they don’t, you may need backup or a distraction, both I’m capable of providing.” He melted into the undergrowth, flanking the party from the safety of the foliage.
The main group strode into the clearing. “Halt!” a voice cried from the tower.
Zogg stepped forward, gesturing to the amulet around his neck. “We bring a gift for Kressle!” he bellowed.
An arrow sang through the air, embedding itself in the ground a hair’s breadth from his boot.
“Is this how you welcome your brothers?” Aurelio called out, his voice dripping with aristocratic indignation.
Another arrow flew, this one from across the Thorn River, striking Zogg in the shoulder. He grunted in pain. From the trees to the east, more bandits emerged, bows drawn. The ruse had failed.
Aurelio, his face hardening, screamed an obscenity at the man in the tower that would have made a sailor blush. “Your mother was an oversized rat and your father smelled of elderberries!”
As the man stared down, dumbfounded by the specific nature of the insult, the woman with the twin axes from Oleg’s story emerged from the largest tent. She was large and muscular, her face a mask of cold fury. This was Kressle.
She let out a roar and charged toward Zogg. The time for deception was over. The time for blood had come.
The world narrowed to the sound of screaming steel and labored breaths. As Kressle charged Zogg, the archers in the watchtower and across the river unleashed a volley of arrows. The shafts thudded into the mud around them, a sudden forest of fletched wood.
Aurelio broke into a sprint, not away from the fight, but directly toward the tower, seeking the dubious shelter of its base.
Nym, seeing the ambush unfold, broke from the tree line to intercept the closest bandit. He drew his sword-cane, but as his hand closed around the hilt, as it had done thousands of times before, something… happened. The familiar weight shifted, the balance becoming alien.
The blade seemed to come apart in his hand, not breaking, but transforming. What had been a thin, rigid rapier a moment before was now a segmented whip of glistening, obsidian-like steel. It hissed through the air with a mind of its own, coiling and striking like a serpent. Nym stared at it, his lilac eyes wide with a mixture of terror and awe.
Before he could process the thought, the whip-blade lashed out, wrapping around a bandit’s neck and sending him staggering back with a blood-choked cry.
Kressle was a whirlwind of death. She fell upon Zogg, her twin axes a blur of relentless, brutal blows. Zogg met the storm head-on, his stance rock-solid. He raised an arcane shield, the impacts of her axes ringing like doom-clocks against the steel. The force of the onslaught was staggering.
Maven charged into the fray, her axe swinging, trying to peel the bandits off Zogg’s flank, but she was intercepted by two men with spears.
Kressle’s fury was too much. The final blow smashed through Zogg’s guard, the axe biting deep into his shoulder. He staggered, a grunt of pain escaping his lips, his shield arm falling numbly to his side. He dropped to one knee, exposed. Kressle raised both axes for a killing blow.
“No!” Nym shouted.
He wasn’t close enough. He sprinted, ignoring the difficult terrain between them, cutting the distance desperately. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
He lashed out.
The whip-blade extended to its full length—ten feet of jagged, black steel. It struck Kressle in the torso, snake-quick, the segmented teeth tearing through her leather armor and biting deep into flesh. She gasped, the force of the blow ruining her swing, and she stumbled sideways, clutching her bleeding side.
The distraction was enough. Gassi, his hands now free of their bonds, sent a bolt of divine light lancing into an archer across the river. Aurelio reached the top of the tower, his flail crushing the man inside.
Kressle, bleeding heavily but fueled by rage, tried to recover. She raised her axe toward Zogg again.
Despite the fire in his shoulder, Zogg lunged. He didn’t try to kill her. He struck with the flat of his sword, a ringing, non-lethal blow meant to stun. Kressle stumbled back, her head ringing, and finally collapsed into the mud, still.
The fight broke. The remaining bandits, seeing their leader fall, lost their nerve. They turned and fled into the forest.
“Bind her,” Gassi said, approaching Kressle’s unconscious form. “She’ll be cranky when she wakes.”
He knelt beside her to secure her bonds but paused, his brow furrowing. “Strange…” he murmured. He touched her neck and then drew his hand back, his fingers stained dark with blood. “She’s dead.”
Aurelio stared from atop the tower. “What? But Zogg hit her with the flat. It was meant to knock her out.”
“It was not Zogg who killed her,” Gassi said, pointing.
Nym followed his gaze, and his stomach turned to ice. Across Kressle’s chest and abdomen were several deep, weeping gashes. They were not the clean cuts of a sword, but jagged, ugly tears—as if she’d been savaged by some great, taloned beast.
They were wounds of a type he now recognized. The marks left by his whip-sword.
He looked at the strange weapon in his hand, now inert and sword-like once more, with a dawning horror. It had killed her, bleeding her out even as she tried to finish the fight.
“I… I don’t know what happened. My sword has never acted that way before,” Nym stammered, his voice thin. He looked up at the others, desperation in his eyes. “My intention was to stop the barrage against Zogg. I never meant to kill her.”
He looked down at the weapon, turning it over in his hands. His fingers traced the leather grip until they brushed against a stud he hadn’t noticed in years of ownership. He pressed it. With a soft clack, the tension in the blade released, the segments going limp and fluid.
“It seems there is more to this old cane than I knew,” he muttered. “I need to study this.”
He wandered a few paces away from the fire, testing the weight of the transformed weapon. He made a couple of hesitant practice swings, the black steel hissing through the air, trying to understand a tool he had carried for years but somehow never truly held until now.
They searched her body, then the entire camp, but their victory was a hollow one. They found a healing potion, some coins, and another Stag Lord amulet. But Svetlana’s ring was not there. Nor were there any maps, any letters, any orders. Kressle was a dead end. The Stag Lord remained a shadow.
They made camp in the bandit clearing, the silence broken only by the crackle of their fire and the gentle murmur of the river. It was a grim, somber meal.
The fey had warned them they were not ready for the ‘great bully.’ The brutal fight with his lieutenant seemed to prove them right.
“They told us of poachers,” Nym said quietly, staring into the flames. He had been withdrawn since seeing what his weapon had done. “To the northwest. A different path.”
“A smaller threat,” Aurelio agreed, cleaning his flail. “Perhaps we should heed the fey’s advice. Hunt these poachers. Grow stronger. The Stag Lord can wait.”
“Knowledge must be gathered before it can be used,” Gassi intoned, sketching in his notebook. “The poachers are a page. The Stag Lord is the chapter.”
They fell into a weary silence. The decision was made. Zogg looked at the Stag Lord amulet he wore, its silver surface cool against his skin. The main path was too dangerous for now. It was time for a detour.
The next morning, under a sky that promised more rain, they broke camp. They left the bodies of the bandits for the crows and the wolves, a stark warning to any who might follow. They turned their backs on the south and followed the river northwest, away from the shadow of the Stag Lord.