As the trio crept deeper into the dungeon-city of Tarn, their plan shifted. They would no longer skirt around the monsters. Not entirely, anyway. Thea needed practice, they needed weft, and the Hollow Earl’s forgetfulness gift gave them an edge that they intended to make full use of.

  Their first few skirmishes confirmed it. The enchantment worked flawlessly. The bone horrors and shrike serpents forgot the party existed the moment the line of sight broke. No grudges or clever counter-strategies. Just blissful amnesia. For Raith, it was a dream come true.

  Everything was going unsettlingly well.

  Which of course meant it was time for things to go terribly.

  There was no chime or convenient announcement from Sabik to let them know the dungeon had leveled up. Just the rhythmic clacking sound of something massive moving down a side street. Raith motioned for silence and led the others quickly up an exterior stairway onto the shadowed terrace of an apartment above street level.

  “If there are any wights inside, I don’t think they can get us here. Just in case, Veil keep an eye out for us.”

  The little creature gave a crisp salute.

  What soon emerged around the corner was not what they'd expected.

  The bone horrors were now ox-sized monstrosities clad in mismatched pieces of scavenged armor. Where once they carried rusted junk, they now held brutal looking, shiny weapons. Massive axes, spears, or heavy maces. Their skulls were enormous things, the jaws now wide enough to bite a man in half. Unlike before, they marched in lockstep with each other, dozens of bone feet clacking loudly on the stone in perfect time.

  Raith held his breath, watching from the cracked remains of the railing as the patrol passed beneath them, the rattle and clank of their movement echoing eerily in the still air.

  "Six of them," he whispered, glancing at Thea. "Think we should take the shot?"

  Her face was tight with focus, jaw clenched as her fingers drummed once against the rim of her shield. She gave a single nod.

  “I’m getting better,” she murmured. “Still have a long way to go, but we can’t wait forever.”

  Raith could see how much effort it took for her to keep moving forward, injury or no. He was incredibly proud of his friend’s bravery and knew she would shove him off the terrace if he mentioned it.

  Then Nyhm raised a hand sharply.

  "Hold up. Look."

  Another group turned the corner down the street. Shrike serpents, this time. Only four of them, but like the bone horrors noticably larger than before. One wore what could only be described as a military cap, complete with a star-shaped emblem etched in gold. It let out a hissing command, and the bone horrors immediately turned their formation and headed down a side alley with mechanical precision.

  “A ranking officer?” Raith muttered. “That’s new.”

  The shrikes advanced alone now. Their temporary isolation from the troops was an opportunity that Raith didn’t intend to waste.

  He leapt from the terrace with graceful ease. His dart shot forward in mid-fall, whistling through the air and plunging into the lead shrike’s heart. It was a perfect strike, and Raith smiled grimly that all of his training with Noni had paid off. The creature barely had time to hiss in surprise before crumpling.

  He heard Thea curse from the window behind him, and Nyhm muttered in irritation at Raith’s abrupt attack.

  “Guess we’re doing this.”

  Thea followed with a scowl, her shield flashing through the gloom to strike one of the creature’s heads with a loud crack.

  The battle that followed was fiercer than the last. The shrikes were faster than before, striking with darting, coordinated lunges that tested every inch of reflex they had. One nearly caught Raith in spite of an [Acrobatic Dodge], only for Nyhm to land a fierce claw on its midsection from ten feet away with Fangreach, raking deep and kicking it backward in a single, smooth motion.

  Thea held her own, landing a clean bash that knocked a shrike off its coils before extending her gauntlet. Vines lashed out and grabbed one by the tail. She heaved, yanking it sideways into a pillar with a wet crunch. She smiled in satisfaction. Not yet as proficient as she used to be, but good enough. And quickly improving with each battle.

  In moments, the street fell silent again. Raith turned, wiping grime from his brow.

  “Ok. That was a lot harder, but not unbeatable.”

  Thea nodded, breathing heavy. Nyhm nudged one of the corpses with his foot, then leveled a glare at his brother.

  “Give us a heads up next time you’re planning an ambush.”

  Raith looked down, embarrassed.

  “Sorry about that. I don’t think we could have taken both groups at the same time and didn’t want to miss the chance. How about we see what those bone horrors can do?”

  With a nod, the Myth Seekers stalked through the alley in the direction the patrol of bone horrors had gone. It wasn’t difficult to find. As they drew closer, Raith saw that it wasn’t just their size and armaments that had improved. The bone plates across their torsos were fused tighter now, their joints better reinforced. Raith grimaced as they watched the group move in uncanny, mechanical unison down the street.

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  “I think we can take them,” Thea whispered, tightening the strap on her shield. There was a quiet confidence in her this time. Her earlier hesitation had been swallowed by a new sense of focus. Not eagerness, exactly, but grim readiness.

  Raith eyed her sidelong.

  “I’m glad to see you coming around.”

  “I’m improving,” she said simply. “Feels good.”

  Nyhm didn’t respond, just raised an eyebrow and gestured forward. The creatures were moving past. This was the window. Raith nodded, spun his dart, and leapt silently into their midst.

  The fight was a disaster from the first clang.

  Raith’s dart struck one of the horrors directly at the base of its skull. During the last fight this had neatly decapitated the monster, but now it ricocheted off with a thunk. The horror barely staggered. It turned with eerie calm, twin eyes burning red in its skull, and clacked its massive jaws at him before charging.

  “They’re tougher!” Raith shouted. It was a pointless statement but somehow made him feel slightly better.

  He danced to the side as a mace carved a crater into the stone where he’d stood. Another lunged from the flank, but Nyhm intercepted with a kick. The creature twisted and slammed its shoulder into the elfling, knocking him clean across the pavement to slam into a pillar.

  Raith winced as Nyhm rolled, coughing blood. His brother quickly shook it off and dove back into the fray.

  Meanwhile, Thea was thriving.

  She moved like a storm. Ducking, spinning, slamming her shield into kneecaps and skulls. Her root gauntlet shot forward, grabbing a creature’s leg and dragging it off balance. She pivoted and drove the edge of her shield into its jaw, snapping bone. When another horror tried to flank her, she ducked low and hurled a seed beneath it. Vines snapped up, wrapping its limbs, and she crushed its skull with the edge of her shield as it struggled.

  Raith, on the other hand, was not having a good time.

  He dodged a swing, cast his dart out, and was rewarded with a cracked shoulder for his trouble. The bone horror lashed out with a backhanded blow, and pain spiked down Raith’s arm like lightning. His dart, the dreamforged weapon that had felt so promising, clanged uselessly off the horror’s plating again.

  “I need a hammer, not a glorified faerie toothpick!” Raith snapped through gritted teeth, fending off another strike.

  He paused, activating [Staccato] consider the scene. As his mind cleared, he felt something in the weapon twitch.

  It wasn’t physical, more like a pulse in his thoughts, a flicker of familiar sensation in the back of his mind. A deep hum of that same dream magic he felt in the gleaming, waiting to be grasped.

  Raith set the world back in motion, spinning away from a blow to duck behind a fallen pillar. He closed his eyes for the half-second it took to focus, willing his weapon to transform.

  The dart quivered in his hand and changed. The metal affixed to the end of his rope swelled and solidified into a dark, gleaming sphere. A meteor hammer, perfectly weighted.

  Raith grinned. “Oh, hell yes.”

  He launched from cover, swinging the new weapon in a sideways arc. The horror he’d been fighting was to slow to understand that something had changed before the heavy metal ball collided with its head, exploding the bone into a shower of white chips.

  Raith didn’t stop. He spun, stepped, slammed the hammer into another horror’s knee. It buckled. The follow-up cracked into its sturdy helmet and sent its skull bouncing across the ground. A third horror clipped Raith in the ribs as he overextended, and he dropped to a knee, trying to regain the wind that had been knocked out. Nearby, Nyhm was back on his feet but holding a nasty gash along his thigh, dark blood seeping between his fingers. His brother slashed fiercely into the air from a dozen feet away, Fangreach crossing the distance to dismantle one of the monster’s legs.

  Finally, the last horror fell beneath Thea’s relentless onslaught, her shield and root gauntlet working in savage harmony.

  All at once, the silence returned except for the trio’s ragged breaths.

  Thea helped Nyhm sit while Raith leaned against a ruined cart, panting. “Okay,” he wheezed. “I vote no more optional fights.”

  Nyhm winced. “Seconded.”

  Thea looked at the seed bundle in her hand. The vines had actually worked this time, albeit still not up to their previous strength. Still, it was progress. She tucked the seeds away and nodded to herself.

  “I agree. It was smart to get in some practice. Weaver’s know I need it and still have a long way to go. But we’ve been lucky so far, and these things are just going to keep getting worse.”

  Raith stood slowly.

  “Alright then, training time is over. Let’s go be save the world.”

  Thea gave him a playful shove while Nyhm grimaced in response to the overly dramatic statement. Together, they limped forward into the shadows of Tarn.

  ***

  Tolliver and Zinny stood before the massive gates of Tarn.

  The [Mage] swallowed hard as a lump rose in his throat. It sank into his already twisted gut and threatened to rise again. He glanced sideways at the tiny fae who had guided him so far beneath the world.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

  “Of course you can, silly,” Zinny replied with a flutter of gossamer wings. “They’re your friends.”

  Tolliver looked down at the ring on his finger, the one Zinny had given him. A simple band of dark wood, cool and smooth to the touch. A charm that let him remember the team he had once fought beside. A gift of memory against the empty void of the fae geas.

  The faces were still gone. The voices, too. When he closed his eyes and tried to summon Raith’s charming earnestness or Thea’s fierce conviction, all he got were outlines, like shadows burned into a wall. But the feelings had stayed. The warmth he felt during their shared campfires. The desperate trust forged in battles against root tenders and grin-infected terrors. The quiet, surprisingly personal talks with Raith during his long recovery in the monastery.

  For the first time in his life, Tolliver had felt like part of something real. Not simply tolerated, or used for his wealth and connections. Included.

  He ran his thumb along the ring’s curved edge.

  “Where did you say you got this?”

  “Oh, I stole it, of course,” Zinny said with a twirl midair. “That silly Earl would never have given me one if I had asked. So I didn’t ask.”

  Tolliver raised an eyebrow.

  “You stole from a fae noble?”

  “I’m very very sneaky,” she said primly.

  He turned his gaze back to the gates. They loomed ahead, ancient stone inlaid with glyphs that shimmered faintly in the immense darkness. He didn’t feel ready, not even close. But if he ever wanted to make things right, if he ever wanted to deserve the memory of those friends after what he had done, he had to go in.

  “Are you sure you can’t come with me?”

  Zinny’s upper wings drooped slightly as she hovered in place.

  “We’re forbidden. Old rules and older magic.” She looked up cheerily. “But you can go, and you can help them!”

  She flitted up close to his face, her eyes luminous, and touched his cheek gently with a tiny hand.

  “I know you’re brave enough to do this. You’re a Myth Seeker, remember?”

  He managed a thin smile.

  “Right. A Myth Seeker.”

  Tolliver took one last breath, gave Zinny a grateful nod, and then shimmered into the form of a bat. Without another word, he shot forward into the darkness, leathery wings slicing through the still air.

  Toward his friends.

  Toward redemption.