The citizen of Uil we’d been speaking to had taken a little more encouraging to give us the answers we wanted. He really didn’t want to speak about the elves around here, which made me a little worried about what they were actually up to. But we were here to find Corminar, and it could have been no coincidence that elves would be around when he’d gone missing—we had no choice but to track them down.

  We were pointed east, towards the coast, and Arzak and I made quick progress using my portals. With the thick snow, it was impossible for even elves not to leave tracks, and so they’d made no attempt. This was good news for us, because Arzak and I were hardly expert trackers, so we needed all the signs we could get.

  As we tracked, I wondered if Corminar could have known about all this before he’d come this way, or if he’d just stumbled into it. He’d told me about the solution for my mother’s invisibility before he’d come, and I could think of no good reason that he would lie about it. If he was going to obscure his real reason for coming, that would hardly be the lie that he chose to cover it. So this meant that the elves being here was just chance, but Corminar had jumped at the opportunity to meet with them, or help them, and in doing so he’d even missed his portal appointment. I knew my friend well enough to know that he wouldn’t do so without good reason.

  I stood, having been crouched to look for the tracks in the snow we’d been following. ‘He’s recruiting,’ I said.

  ‘Mm,’ Arzak replied. ‘Maybe most successful mission yet. If enough elves around here to cause trouble—and there no Goldmarch soldiers around, yes?—then must be lots of them.’

  I nodded my agreement. Maybe we were about to find a good few allies after all.

  * * *

  ‘Keep low,’ I whispered.

  Arzak nodded, not daring to speak—her voice typically being a lot deeper, and louder, than mine.

  We moved slowly as we approached the two men in Goldmarch uniform, weapons raised and ready to strike. It was the day after we’d arrived in Uil, and the elven tracks had turned to head south. We were in the midst of a dense woodland, one that in warmer months might be alive with the sound of birds and insects, but right now was nearly silent. The two soldiers ahead were part of a larger unit, pacing through the forest and stopping here and there as they scouted their perimeter. If we wanted to know what the soldiers were doing here—once Amira’s army, now effectively under the control of the Council—we needed to get closer to their camp.

  We waded our legs through the snow rather than taking tall steps, which might result in crunching underfoot, and might in turn alert the lax scouting party to our presence. When we were near enough, I stopped, nodded to Arzak, and then opened a portal for each of us. At the same moment, she and I leaped through, and downed our assigned enemy in one hit.

  The resulting experience was enough not just to level up my Worldbending, but also to tip me over into level 35 for Stealth, which of course meant that I had an ability selection to make. Right now, though, we had other priorities, so I minimised the notifications for the time being.

  I patted mine down, looking for orders or any other sign of why they were here, but came up short. Arzak shrugged; she’d found nothing too.

  ‘Soldiers dow—’ an unfamiliar voice cried out.

  I had just enough time to snap my head to the source of the noise before its source was abruptly cut off. In the distance, through the snowy pine landscape, there was a flash of movement, and suddenly the soldier who’d spotted us was gone.

  Arzak frowned at me—an expression I returned in kind. ‘Monster?’ she mouthed.

  I shrugged, then nodded us towards where the enemy soldier had disappeared. I didn’t open any portals to carry us over there, being that I didn’t want to dump the pair of us into the midst of trouble, and instead kept them ready to activate. As before, we kept low as we crossed the dense forest, growing closer to the Goldmarch camp.

  I caught another flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look at it, it was gone. ‘I may drop you through a portal, if there’s trouble,’ I whispered to Arzak. ‘Be ready for it.’

  She nodded her enthusiastic agreement.

  We arrived at the very edge of the camp, obscured by a fallen tree. By my count, there were only a couple of dozen enemy soldiers here. That was simultaneously fewer than I expected and also far more than the pair of us could handle. We’d need to be careful, and pick them off one by one. If whatever other force was active in this forest didn’t get to them first.

  Part of me was tempted to wait to see what happened, to let this third party do the work for us. But there was no guarantee it wouldn’t kill us before it killed all the soldiers. I poked my head over the pine tree, and prepared a strategy.

  ‘There are three soldiers in a group on the left side of the camp,’ I whispered to Arzak. ‘If we’re fast, we should be able to take all three of them before—’

  From the trees, they fell.

  A dozen shapes released the tops of the pine trees that towered over the clearing, and they seemed to float down towards the ground, white capes billowing gently behind them. These humanoid shapes—these elven shapes—landed on the thick snow without a sound, not alerting a single enemy to their presence. Moments later, as one, they took their blades to the throats of the Goldmarch soldiers.

  This left only a half-dozen soldiers in golden uniform, all of whom sprang to attention to return the attack. Two more of them fell before they could even raise their blades, three of them attacked the elves just as the elves attacked them, and as for the last…

  I opened a portal beneath the enemy woman’s feet, and dropped her upside down in front of Arzak. My orcish friend saw to her.

  It had been only seconds since the elves had dropped from the trees, and the clearing had grown silent once more.

  ‘Styk?’ a familiar voice called out. ‘Is that you?’

  Arzak and I stood from behind the fallen tree, revealing ourselves to the elves. One of them pulled back his white hood, revealing Corminar’s smiling face.

  ‘It is good to see you, my friend,’ he said, his tone more light and joyful than I had heard it since the Dawnwood fell. ‘My most sincere apologies for missing our meeting; there was work to be done.’

  ‘So I see,’ I replied, my eyes sweeping over the other elves—eleven others, all told. When these newfound allies of Corminar understood that we weren’t the enemy, they also lowered their hoods. ‘Was that you back there?’

  ‘We thought it beast,’ Arzak added.

  Corminar smiled. ‘That was one of us, indeed. The army of the Goldmarch should have known better than to hide in such territory; our people are well equipped for forest warfare.’

  ‘You know why they’re here, not hurrying back to Auricia?’

  One of the other elves stepped forward—a beautiful woman with piercing eyes and long dark hair. I made a mental note never to mention her to Val. ‘They are here for us,’ the elf said, her tone one of easy command. ‘We have sought vengeance on their kind for the battle of Sunalor, and we have done battle here for weeks. It is an annoyance that the Council wishes to stamp out, I believe, but little more than that.’

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  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Well, if you want to be a real thorn in the Council’s side, then—’

  ‘I have explained the situation,’ Corminar cut in. ‘Though they required a demonstration of my loyalty to my people. After Sunalor…’

  ‘There were some who blamed you for the fall of our capital,’ the other elf said. ‘But we know for certain, now, that the loss was not your intent, despite your treason.’ The elf focused on Arzak and me, considering us. ‘I must assume that you are other members of the Slayers; you must be Arzak and Styk.’

  The orc blushed slightly—something that I had only recently learned to spot. ‘You have us at disadvantage. Please, what your name?’

  ‘Ulara. Once understudy to the great Captain Relaar, now captain of the Rooted Guard myself.’ She bowed to us. ‘If even a fraction of what Lieutenant Cladenor has told us of you is true, then it is an honour.’

  I returned the bow, copying Turell, not quite sure how else to respond to such levels of respect. Arzak awkwardly did the same.

  ‘If my sincerity is now sufficiently proven,’ Corminar said, ‘perhaps you might…’

  Ulara nodded, then raised her hand to summon her squadron in close. ‘Guard? Splinter. Summon as many of our kind as possible; we march for the Aurician Meadows.’

  * * *

  We were back in the command tent, and pleased to find that our camp had grown further in our absence—our number couldn’t have been far off five hundred by now. It was huge progress, and yet still only a fraction of what we needed to have even the slimmest chance of success. Still, it gave me hope.

  The leadership team was all present, short of Zoi. The tiefling was at this very moment welcoming an old friend to the fold—the blacksmith who had built the contraption that supported Arzak’s arm. Hopefully, they weren’t just catching up, but were instead figuring out how Kudd’s abilities might help the war effort.

  The rest of us had other priorities right now—namely the purple gem that Corminar had placed on the centre of our new command table. The table itself was a brilliantly ornate scale model of Auricia and its surrounding meadows, built by an artisan carpenter who had joined the camp two weeks prior. She’d built it with accuracy in mind so that we might plan our attack on the Goldmarch capital, and no attention to detail had been spared.

  Yet it paled in comparison to the brilliant glow of the gem that Corminar had retrieved.

  ‘It will reveal invisible objects within a radius of thirty yards,’ he explained. ‘It is not perfect, and yet it should be sufficient for our needs.’

  I stared into the gem—the means by which we might finally defeat my mother.

  Corminar continued, ‘My recommendation is that, until we meet Cleo again, we entrust this to the guards of the camp’s outer perimeter. We should change their route to encircle the camp as quickly as possible, with the gem brought into the centre of camp every hour, in case Cleo has slipped past. Should her presence be revealed, a specific cry should spread across the camp, and the gem kept as close to the Player as possible.’

  He looked to me for confirmation that this plan was sufficient. After a moment of consideration, I nodded. ‘Whatever you think is best.’ I left out the part about not trusting myself on this matter. For all my mother’s evil deeds, she was still blood; I had the same resistance to killing kin as she had.

  ‘Excellent,’ Corminar said, swiping the gem from the table and handing it to Turell. ‘Please, summon your best guards, and—’

  A cry rang out from somewhere outside the command tent. My eyes snapped to Corminar. ‘Is this…’

  He shook his head. ‘I have not yet told the scouts of your mother. This would be something else.’

  The camp’s leadership ran out from the tent, looking for the source of the cry. Three scouts had just ridden into the camp, their heads raised, looking for us just as we were looking for them. When they spotted Arzak and Lore, towering over everyone else, they rode for us.

  ‘It has happened!’ one of the scouts spluttered. Her mouth moved more, but no words came out, as though she was still frantically searching for them.

  ‘What has? What’s happened? Have they found us?’ My own reply was just as strained and anxious in tone as the scout’s.

  ‘No, no,’ another scout replied, shaking his head. ‘It’s not that. It’s… You should come with us.’

  We rode north, towards Auricia. Even before those strange devices towered before us, I had a sense of what we would see. Green light crackled throughout the sky, not entirely dissimilar to Val’s own lifedrain magicks, all of it seeming to centre in the heavens above the city. When we rode over the crest of a hill, and saw for ourselves those great towers, my heart dropped. Those giant copies of the devices in the witchfinder village were activated; the Council had already fixed our sabotage. It was those towers that drew the witchcraft magicks from across Alterra.

  ‘They’re drawing power,’ Val said. ‘The Council are getting ready to begin.’