Dahlia eyed the tiny, silver thimble in her hand. It had landed on its side, and the cap pointed towards the front courtyard where the fairy ring to leave Vesperis Morghaine lay.

  “Meet me at the fairy ring,” Dahlia demanded of the Ebon Chorus through telepathy, before she settled onto Mr. Disapoofer’s head.

  Within minutes, all but the Vesperis Morghaine squad—Elyssandra and her subordinates—gathered around a ring of spooky mushrooms.

  “Someone attacked Riverwatch. At least one, maybe all three mortals who traded me their True Names, are likely dead. We still have several quests to gain rewards from their lord, too. Unfortunately, our fairy ring is only attached to the ring where Aelwyth Morghaine used to lay. We have a bit of a march ahead of us.”

  Dahlia nudged Mr. Disapoofer with her heel, and the wolf hopped into the fairy ring.

  “Everyone inside,” Dahlia said. When the Ebon Chorus crowded in, she activated her yet unused ability: Return to Fairy Ring. Vesperis Morghaine swirled in their vision, and they were all pulled through winding paths of magic to the sister ring in the heart of the Bramblewood.

  The Bramblewood lay thick around them, the twilight beauty of Vesperis Morghaine gone in a flash. The trees that had replaced Aelwyth Morghaine were younger specimens and lacked the natural feel that an older forest might have. It looked shallow and felt hollow as if it were an illusion. Such was the forced growth left behind by Thoth’s magic.

  Dahlia grimaced.

  “Let’s make haste,” Dahlia demanded.

  Imagine being a Noble Fey, with a full day of travel separating you from your goal and unable to produce magic to get you there faster. Worse, a forest, primeval nature, stood in her way. Whoever attacked Riverwatch would pay for subjecting Dahlia to this humiliation and embarrassment with a price far higher than their lives. Perhaps she should have sought assistance from one of the items in the Profane Hoard, but the thimble had pointed to the fairy ring, not the hoard.

  The journey began much like their journey to Aelwyth Morghaine—moving through incessant vines, avoiding brambles, and exterminating the Blights that dared to get caught in their path. The group had been journeying for less than an hour when Dahlia noticed faint, flashing lights flickered amongst the shade of the trees. Wherever sunlight snuck through the canopy, the flickers were barred from.

  “Are those Will O’Wisps?” Drynthor asked.

  “No,” Lorien answered with a frown.

  “Soulglimmers, Wraithlights, Phantom Embers, Echowicks… they have many names,” Dahlia said. “They are fragments of mortal souls. This occurs when many mortals die at once when the Ferrymen of the Dead cannot immediately accommodate their passage.”

  Mr. Disapoofer teleported beside one, and Dahlia held her tiny hand out. After a brief hesitation, the mote of light drifted to her hand.

  Images from a panicked mind filled Dahlia’s. Riverwatch was aflame. Huge men in armor rounded up villagers while others were slaughtered in the streets. By the time Dahlia had worked out the scale—the mote was a human child’s height—the image vanished. Her failure to find a sigil or identify characteristics of the attackers beyond armored humans vexed her greatly.

  “We might find some survivors,” Dahlia said. All of the Ebon Chorus could hear the pessimism in her tone.

  “Why are some of the trees glowing like embers?” Ruth asked and pointed further ahead of them. A tall, black-barked tree had lines of burning cinders traveling up it.

  They left the fragment of the child to wander; a Ferryman would be along in time, so Dahlia blew it a kiss, and the group moved on to examine the strange tree. The smell, the scents, and the magical feel were all things she had sensed before.

  But where?

  “Lorien?” Dahlia asked the ranger.

  Lorien hesitated, not about following Dahlia’s order but about if the spirited elf could communicate with the tortured trees. A shudder ran down his spine; memories of his death haunted him. The War of Iron and Thorn had so many casualties. He touched a spectral hand to the black, gnarled bark of the tree and whispered soft, coaxing words meant for the wounded and lost.

  Dahlia waited impatiently, but time ticked away. Still, the fairy did not snap at Lorien while his fingers traced the trunk, and his lips moved urgently. Lorien practically panted for breath between his murmurs and the tree's ancient presence. Finally, a presence solidified—not magic, or not quite magic, but a presence that held the weight of something ancient and skittish.

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  When Lorien stood, his lips were pulled back in a grim look.

  “The dryads—” Lorien’s voice cracked, and he spoke barely above a whisper. “Their spirits are still here.”

  A gust of wind burst around the tree, and dead leaves were thrown into the air and amongst the Ebon Chorus.

  “Aelwyth Morghaine was the last Fey stronghold in the War of Thorn and Iron. When Horus’s forces reached this land, they had gone far beyond simply cutting the fey from nature. They bound them. Cold iron chains wrapped the trees so tightly that they bled sap from the open wounds. The dryads, t-t-they were trapped inside, screaming.. and then the soldiers lit the pyres.” Lorien swallowed hard as if forced to live the memory from the dryad he spoke with.

  “That should have been the end.” Lorien laughed, a hollow sound that couldn’t dispel the vileness of what he had to relay. His voice sounded brittle as if the lightest caress would destroy him from the inside.

  “But someone taught the mortals how much power lingers in suffering. They come now, not with chains, but with axes and greed. They saw and chop until they expose the cursed hearts of the trees and claim them for the potency of agony-filled magic.”

  “This one warns that the Inquisition’s fire is not yet spent.”

  Dahlia turned her gaze upon the tree. Time was not on her side.

  “The Inquisition?” Dahlia asked, but the others shrugged off her query.

  “A new version of the legions of Iron?” Lorien guessed.

  “We will remedy this injustice,” Dahlia growled. A fresh spark of anger stirred deep within her. She finally recalled where she had felt this presence before—in Riverwatch. Griff had turned one of those cores to Lord Graystone. No wonder they had been secretive about it!

  “Your name will be whispered in leaf and loam, and those who have done this….” Xeras did not speak further words, but Gloombough sliced the air, splitting the tree clean in two. Before either half of the tree could fall, the spectral green flames surrounding the Gloamknight engulfed the tortured tree, burning it out of the material world and releasing it to the Soulweald.

  “Nicely done, Xeras,” Dahlia said in thanks.

  And so, their trek found occasional pauses, during which Xeras dispatched the bound essences of Dryads from the black trees. The forest had suffered for hundreds of years, but the rage and fury sparked within Dahlia were fresh—she refused to let them suffer even a day longer.

  With the passage of each tortured, agonized spirit, they drew themselves on a map. Even with the amulet around Dahlia’s neck to thwart scrying, the robust flows of magic in the forest were being disrupted with each dryad they dispatched to the Soulweald.

  When the sixth black tree vanished from the material world in a burst of Xeras's green flames, a swift and silent falcon found its way to the party. It landed gently upon a branch, the leaves shaking from its arrival, and stared at the party with its head cocked to the side.

  “Hail, Druid,” Lorien called to the bird.

  A sound between a laugh and a caw responded to the spirit elf.

  “When I felt a disruption here, I expected to find humans with axes and saws, not…” the hawk trailed off when its eyes fell upon Xeras, Mr. Disapoofer, and Dahlia. “…fey!?”

  Dahlia, gifted with True Sight, stifled her laughter. She simultaneously saw a falcon and the image of a human squatting in the tree. The man had long black hair bound in simple braids, with woven charms of dried leaves and bones nestled in the messy braids. He was lean, a bit sinewy even, and had deeply bronzed skin that had been weathered for years under Nantes's unrelenting sun.

  The man’s clothes were all made of hides and leather—far more primitive than any self-respecting Fey would ever deign wear. His cloak, however, caught Dahlia’s eye.

  “Where did you get that cloak, mortal?” Dahlia demanded to know.

  It was a piece of clothing not woven from fabric but from living fibers of roots and vines, interwoven with dried feymoss and whisper-thin threads of shimmering silk. The fibers seemed to breathe with his breathing, dispelling heat and keeping the human cool.

  It held heavy enchantments, indeed, but more than anything else, that was not what unsettled Dahlia.

  Dahlia recognized the plant from which it had been created. The Banyan tree grew somewhat abundantly in the Soulweald and was sacred to the lost. Spirits would shelter within it, nurtured by the tree's roots, until they regained strength to take care of themselves once more.

  That a human should wear a garment woven of such a thing… it felt wrong. Disrespectful, even. Yet that he could it at all spoke profoundly of his ties to nature and character. Were he of a like mind to most humans, the cloak would have wrapped around his face and choked the life out of him for daring to wear it.

  If the cloak wanted to be diminished by being worn by a human, so be it.

  The falcon, perched amongst the branches, watched her for a moment longer before he hopped forward. The bird dissolved into motion. Feathers blurred to tanned flesh, and in a breath, the bird no longer existed—in its place stood the tall, rustic human.

  Strangely, the druid seemed unfazed by her purple gaze. Even the harsh stare of Xeras’s flaming green eyes did not put the druid off his game. He curiously studied each member of the Ebon Chorus, while they studied him.

  “My cloak? It was a gift from the Warden of Weeping Boughs,” the Druid answered readily enough.

  The fairy stilled. Dahlia’s lips pursed. Unless there was another, the Warden of the Weeping Boughs was none other than Nyxaria, ArchFey of the Soulweald.

  The druid casually moved on from that weighty revelation, although his tone took on a grim note.

  “You’ve chosen a poor time to visit Nantes, friends. The Inquisitors have come with their axes, saws, and irons.” While he spoke of iron, the scent of burned flesh wafted into the air. A fresh wound or an old wound vividly remembered? Wisps of smoke rose from the brand on the man’s shoulder—a brand of a spike driven through a flowering branch.

  “The village to the north is already in their hands.”

  “You mean Riverwatch?” Dahlia asked.

  “I do. Riverwatch, and River Home, both.” The druid answered darkly. Dahlia had not visited River Home, but it was the sister settlement to which the ferry ran across the Silvervein.

  “I intend to change that,” Dahlia growled, flexing her fingers as sparks of magic formed around her.

  The druid studied her for a moment, weighing her words and the appearances of her companions.

  “I am called Tarik,” the druid said, “and I would be honored to help you kill those Feybane Inquisitors.”