Kajal scrawled furiously in her book.

  “What are you doing?” the Samurai asked.

  “Nothing much,” she said.

  “Do you imply that I don’t deserve your attention or have you lost your mind?”

  “Neither.” She finished with a flourish, adding her signature to the page. “This here is a Scribbler. I’m letting the guildmaster know that the Wood King has broken faith with the city.”

  The Samurai froze for all of one second, and then he bared his teeth. “We haven’t broken faith. I simply can’t let outsiders into our domain.”

  “You say that, but were it not for this device, you would have killed us and looted our corpses. Or tried to, anyway. I’m just ensuring that the guildmaster knows exactly what transpired.” She returned the item to her inventory. “So, shall we continue?”

  The Wood Elves below us murmured among themselves.

  Nice gambit, Kajal. The threat of guild action wouldn’t stop determined murderers, but it seemed that elves knew enough about Ezin to respect his might.

  The Samurai sheathed his sword. “Shrewd. I didn’t mean to cheat you, but our current situation has caused changes in the way we handle such issues.”

  “There is no war,” Kajal said with a shrug.

  “There is none indeed, but we can’t keep operating trade posts in the current clime.” He ordered his party to stand down with a raise of his fist. “You may come with us. We will summon a messenger of the court to negotiate with you on the Wood King’s behalf.”

  “That works for us.”

  “Doesn’t work for me,” Medekeine said. “The elves have shown spinelessness and faithlessness. There is nothing that stops them from stabbing us in the back.”

  “You don’t need to come along, dwarf,” the Samurai said. “We only need one of you to parley.”

  “You’ll parley with all four of us,” Kajal said. “I’m the leader of this party, but I won’t feel safe without my companions.”

  The Samurai considered her for a long moment, and then he broke into a smile. “Tenacious. Someone of your character will fit right in with us. We need to move, regardless. The scent of death attracts goblins and all sorts of evil monsters.”

  “But there is no war.”

  “Exactly.” He descended from the mound.

  “Quick thinking,” I said to Kajal. “That would not have been an easy fight.”

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But, keep your guard up. We’re not yet out of the water.”

  We joined the Wood Elves below. The reindeer they rode were actually monsters as I’d suspected, but of the regular rank. These weren’t Beast Riders’ summons, as those mounts tended to look more distinct. However, it begged the question: How did one go about training reindeer for battle?

  Div moved to the front of the wagon.

  “A Div?” the Samurai said after consulting with a caster in his party. “You own a Div?”

  Medekeine grunted. “I don’t see how it matters to you, elf.”

  “Interesting.” The Samurai sheathed his ōdachi and mounted a waiting deer. “I have a true name, by the way, even if it is of no use to you. You may call me Seeker! I’m a soldier in the service of the Wood King.”

  “I’ll stick with ‘elf’,” Medekeine said dryly.

  “Why ask the humans for aid,” I said before he could worsen the situation, “if you believe that the goblins aren’t a threat?”

  “Do we seem threatened?” Seeker retorted. “The aid is for the villages who can’t fend for themselves. Back in the Wood King’s domain, all is at peace.” He led his party in a canter down the forest.

  “You do realize, don’t you,” I said as our journey commenced, “that the goblins now control a large portion of Dreadwood?”

  “Do ants control a house,” Seeker asked, “just because they scurry about?”

  What kind of analogy was that? “Well, yes. In a sense. And, even if they don’t, ants do not raze villages. We encountered an elven chieftain a short while ago. His village, Nybala, had been plundered by goblins.”

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  A scowl made its way across Seeker’s face. “Dilwan. It pains me to admit, but with an idiot like him leading them, I didn’t expect his people to repel a single band of Goblin Riders.”

  “Their battle was more difficult than that, and you know it.”

  “You waste your breath,” Medekeine said. “Can you not see? These fools are in denial. The sudden turn of events has scrambled their minds.”

  “So says a beardless,” a Wood Elf maiden interjected.

  The others joined in laughter.

  “I’m surprised you found the courage,” she continued, “to ascend on your own to the surface. Have the Tinfolk become so lowly that a beardless is the best they send to represent them?”

  Medekeine’s features darkened. “Shut your mouth, elf. You know nothing about our culture.”

  “True,” the elf maiden said. “We tend to not care about what mold is up to until it grows in our house.”

  She had quite the tongue on her, huh? Did she imply that Medekeine’s lack of a proper dwarven beard wasn’t by choice?

  “You too, Dark Elf,” the elf maiden said.

  Huh? What did I do?

  She glared at me as though she had found something unpleasant on her boot. “You abandoned Harkonean to accept a job as a lackey to a dwarf?”

  “Is there something up your ass?” I fired. “Or is it just the way your saddle was constructed?”

  The Wood Elves gasped.

  “Language,” Seeker warned from his spot in the lead. However, he didn’t seem offended by the exchange, considering the way he chuckled.

  “The pariah looks like one,” the elf maiden cried. “Speaks like one too!”

  “Damien.” Kajal touched my shoulder. “Do not take their bait.”

  It was hard not to, especially when I recalled the hints the Harkoneans had dropped about their maltreatment in Dreadwood. My grievances aside, I wouldn’t make any headway by aggravating the Hinduli?. So, I’d let the elf maiden’s antics slide. For now.

  Come to think of it, didn’t the Wood Elves back then imply that they had been behind the destruction of the road connecting Harkonean to the other villages? The Wood Elves were just as culpable in the murder of my people as the goblins.

  “You laugh,” the div said quietly. “But, you are all going to die.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  “A threat?” Seeker asked, summoning his ōdachi.

  The air around Kajal swelled. “You have insulted my companions and me enough for one evening. This ends now if you still care about business.”

  “Easy,” Seeker said with a cheeky smile. “Let’s just call it even and let bygones be bygones, alright?”

  It turned out that the Wood King’s domain was even larger than I’d estimated.

  It took two more days of traveling to make any progress. Goblin sightings became nonexistent this close to the heart of Dreadwood, and [Nightfall] didn’t seem as ominous or as empowering.

  The attacks from the wild god’s pets remained consistent. But, with our current numbers, even those were a breeze. Our true challenge lay in dealing with the Wood Elves and the constant need to keep an eye on their movements. We had taken to sleeping away from the main group, keeping watch in groups of two.

  I monitored Paz’s progress through the Party System. He remained alive out there and even grew by two levels to boot. Kajal confirmed Logain’s good health, which left Dilwan as the only one whose status remained ambiguous.

  To my amusement, the Party System marked Seeker as a potential ally in the fight against the Apocalypse. He was certainly strong; I’d give him that. He had earlier cut a Rock Lurker in two with a casual swing of his sword: a feat I couldn’t manage despite also being silver-ranked.

  However, Seeker displayed none of the hax skills I’d encountered in the fight with the Skeelien Samurai. Unlike the latter, who beat his enemies into submission with [Riposte] and long-range slashes, Seeker relied instead on his affinity to deal damage.

  The Wood Elves fought like a well-oiled unit, lending some credence to the fact that they feared nothing from goblins. But, they hadn’t seen the crucifixions either, which only made their bravery seem like ignorance.

  On the third day of traveling, a messenger arrived from the Wood King’s court. She galloped toward us on her reindeer, cutting a dashing figure.

  “The Wood King extends his greeting to the visitors from Skeelie,” she said. “He also grants permission to travel across his realm and enter the hallowed halls of Nyneveh.”

  “Well, that changes things,” Seeker said. “Rejoice, you filthy scumbags! You are the first outsiders in a century to be bestowed with this boon. This is no small honor!”

  “What? No!” Medekeine said. “We’re fine with dealing with a proxy and getting on our way.”

  “We should visit,” I said because I had questions for the bastard who oversaw this realm.

  “Agreed,” Kajal said. “There’s no better place than this kingdom to find the answers we need.”

  Medekeine chuckled morosely. “This won’t end well. There’s something wrong with these elves. Rotten, I tell you.”

  But, Kajal and I wouldn’t be dissuaded. We traveled onward with Seeker and his group, alongside the new messenger. Kajal maintained contact with Ezin at intervals, updating him on our current situation. The Scribbler only had a few empty pages left. Caution needed to be exercised to avoid running out of space.

  Ezin’s messages were terse, according to Kajal. Rumors of the trouble in Dreadwood had started spreading through the city. It triggered a mad dash among the nobles for the use of the World Shrine, an asset that the city needed in the upcoming war.

  The effects of [Nightfall] were also not pronounced within the city, though the evil cloud sometimes crossed beyond the walls. Ezin estimated that Skeelie needed two more weeks to prepare for the invasion, but he said nothing about how he expected us to procure that window.

  We were still brainstorming over it when by the fifth day of traveling with Seeker’s crew, the topography changed.

  We arrived at Nyneveh: the capital of Dreadwood.