The forest passed in a blur of shadows and dark, snow-crusted branches. Rasp winced as yet another needled bough, laden with sharp ice crystals, whipped him across the face as he ran. Hot breath billowed into the frosty air in front of him when he snapped, “It would be a lot easier to track the madman if you would stop running us into trees, you know!”

  “That was not a tree,” Oralia replied matter-of-factly as she jogged, her muscular arm linked with his, pulling with the full force of a mule team. Her chainmail clinked with every step. “It was merely a branch.”

  “It still fucking hurts!”

  “Perhaps if you complained less, concentrating would be easier,” she countered.

  Or he could not do that. Concentrate? At a time like this? Terrible idea. Rolling his eyes, Rasp put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The harsh sound bounced along the trees until it was swallowed by distance. Alas, there was no reply from Father. Meaning, for the moment, the three of them would have to rely on Rasp’s sixth sense to point them in the right direction.

  Dammit.

  “Anything?” Oralia demanded.

  “I’m not sure if Father can hear me,” Rasp admitted. He’d sent Father ahead to scout for their quarry, but the old man had yet to return. The beastly bellows and snarls, accompanied by the occasional earth-jolting rumble as one of the fighting dragons struck the ground, clearing entire patches of forest in their wake, made it difficult to hear. “He might be too far away.”

  And hopefully not squashed by a falling dragon.

  Oralia did not take the news well. “For the love of gods, boy, focus! We cannot depend solely on the ravens to find Cray. You have magic-sensitivity, do you not? The supposed sixth sense? Use it!”

  Good grief, she was starting to sound like Whisper. And yes, Rasp understood the importance of finding Cray before he captured the powerstone, but did it all have to come down to him? It seemed cruel to make the blind man do all the tracking when the two others accompanying him had perfectly good eyesight. Eyesight, alas, was useless when they didn’t have any tracks to follow, which then circled back to the whole ‘find him with your magic’ thing that Rasp was actively avoiding.

  For the record, not due to laziness, but because what Oralia was asking was damn near impossible. “It’s not that easy, okay?” Rasp said. “My range is limited. I don’t even know which direction to look.”

  Oralia clicked her tusks, wordlessly urging Rasp to try a method that involved more concentration and significantly less bellyaching.

  “Alright, alright, I’m doing it. Just don’t run us off a cliff or something, alright? My life is literally in your hands.” Swallowing the whimper that worked its way up his throat, Rasp clung tighter to Oralia and reluctantly closed his eyes. He drew in, summoning his sixth sense from its stasis. It took a bit of prodding, but his aura-vision roused from its metaphorical slumber with a severe case of bed-head and spread out, sweeping the surrounding forest for magical signatures.

  It pinged on something startling close by. Confused, Rasp whipped his head over his shoulder and eased one eye open, squinting at the murky shadow of his older brother who plowed through the snow behind them, huffing and puffing to keep pace. Mul’s body was shrouded in a faint green aura. The magic, much like Mul himself, wasn’t bright by any means, but it was there. Further proof that the Stoneclaw family gift of magic truly did select the absolute worst candidates from the genetic pool.

  Gods, he wanted to say something. Bad. The urgency of the situation won out, and Rasp reluctantly returned to the task he was supposed to be doing. He cleared the taunting insults from his mind and started anew. His sixth sense swept forward, past the limits of his vision, and into the dark forest beyond.

  Nothing.

  Rasp wrinkled his face in concentration as he tried again, pushing his sixth sense further than it had ever gone before. His magic stretched taut, like a dough rolled too thin, creating pocket tears in his sixth sense. Still, Rasp pushed, further, further, further, until his aura vision gave out under the strain.

  “It’s not working.” Cursing, Rasp’s eyes snapped back open. “We’re not in range. I can’t—”

  Croak! The most beautiful screech erupted overhead, bearing fresh coordinates.

  “That way!” Rasp pointed in the direction of Father’s call. “Dad says they’re headed in that direction.”

  Oralia dutifully corrected their course without slowing her pace. Her tone was not as confident as her stride. “They?”

  Rasp checked with Father to confirm his answer. In hindsight, it would have been better to have clarified a few things instead of relaying the old man’s message word for word. “He says a deranged elf and the mouthy faun.”

  Mul’s faint green glow pulled ahead of them with sudden urgency. “He means Briony!”

  Oralia cursed under her breath something in the orc tongue that did not translate to ‘corpse sodomizer’ and was, therefore, unknown to Rasp. Given the tone and the way their speed nearly doubled, Rasp hazarded it must have been something frightfully unbecoming. Alas, there wasn’t time to ask what, given the way he, too, was now being forced to keep pace.

  Oralia’s boots pounded against the slippery muck harder, matching Mul’s speed. Her words were strained over the labored sounds of her breath. “How far, Rasp?”

  Rasp reached out with his sixth sense once more. This time, armed with the correct coordinates and a shrinking field of search, his magic-sensitivity found what he sought. The magnitude of the power washed over him like a wave of ice, threatening to stifle the remaining breath from his lungs. Their quarry, Cray, wasn’t merely deranged, he was nauseatingly powerful to boot. A combination that, in Rasp’s limited experience, never made for a good time.

  A deranged, overpowered witch was only the beginning of their problems, unfortunately.

  Rasp could feel the dark entity’s power resonating within the stone Briony carried. The dark magic in Rasp’s veins stirred in anticipation. It, too, detected the nearing magic. The stone called to it, urging the poison to seize control of its human vessel and capture the powerstone. Together, with all its fractured pieces united, the dark entity could finally fulfill its purpose.

  You can fuck off with that idea, right now, Rasp told the squirming sensation that wriggled like worms beneath the skin around his neck. I am cool. I am calm. I am in control.

  “Rasp?” Oralia jostled him from his thoughts with a rough shake, forced to repeat her prior question. “How far?”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rasp swallowed the cold lump that had formed in his throat. “We’re close.”

  It wasn’t long before Mul pointed out two sets of tracks in the snow, one belonging to a faun and the other to her pursuer. There was blood, as well. Fresh from the way its copper stench wormed its way up Rasp’s nostrils. The squirming beneath Rasp’s skin intensified as they drew closer. Frigid breath spread from his lungs, clawed up his windpipe, and out of his panting mouth in puffs of air so bitterly cold, it made his teeth ache.

  An agonized scream cut through the trees ahead of them. Oralia followed it like a hound after a fox, arriving at a wall of naked, thorny branches. Instead of wasting their time searching for a way around the thicket, Oralia merely barreled through. Rasp had no other choice but to go with her. Shielding his face with his arm, the pair burst from the undergrowth in a spray of snapped twigs and snow.

  Sadly, there wasn’t time to complain.

  They had arrived.

  Rasp’s auro vision snapped into place, painting the grizzly scene before him. Two shapes flailed about on the ground only yards away. Briony, the smaller, unmagical body, constituted little more than a murky shadow. She writhed on her back in the snow, clawing at her face as sobs of agony escaped her tightly clenched teeth. Cray stood hunched over her, enshrouded in a cloud of white, pulsing power. The elf’s magic was so overpoweringly bright, Rasp nearly mistook it for the sun.

  Oralia slid her arm from Rasp’s and bounded forward with the reckless savagery of someone who didn’t care that the best way to fight magic was with other magic.

  Cray pivoted in her direction, channeling his power at the oncoming orc. It was a foolish mistake. An understandable one, Rasp conceded. While preventing the charging orc from ripping your head off was understandable, Cray should have cared more about the witch standing behind her. Rasp lifted his hand, harnessing the wind whipping overhead, and brought it down over the chanting elf. The gust swept Cray off his feet and slammed him into the nearest tree, stealing both breath and spell from his lips alike.

  Oralia rushed to Briony’s side, entrusting Rasp to finish the job. The wind tugged at Rasp’s cloak as he summoned a second gust, more powerful than the first. He cut his hand through the air like a knife, and the magic obeyed, howling as it thundered in Cray’s direction. The blast struck, rendering the tree into a cloud of splinters. It would have done the same to Cray’s miserable body, too, had he not rolled out of the way in the nick of time, disappearing from sight.

  “The fuck?” Rasp edged closer, stumped by the magic-man’s unexpected disappearance. He’d heard of performing magicians possessing the ability to vanish on stage, but he’d always assumed those instances involved parlor tricks and a well-sauced audience. “Where did he go?”

  “The hatch,” Briony’s voice was hoarse, fighting to get the words out. The faun eased upright with Oralia’s assistance and pointed to where Cray disappeared. “The bastard’s gone underground. You have to stop him.”

  Mul’s glowing green aura cautiously approached the open hatch. “Any of you sorry sods happen to have a torch stashed in your britches? Because I am fresh out.”

  “You cannot follow him, Mul,” Oralia said. “Humans are not equipped to see in the dark. And even then, he would overpower you in an instant.”

  “Someone has to.” Briony tried to struggle to her feet but only made it to her knees. “He has the powerstone!”

  Wordlessly, Oralia joined Mul at the hatch. She didn’t speak, but her posture changed. Her large, blurry shoulders slumped in an expression Rasp had never known her to admit—defeat.

  “You can’t do it, boss,” Mul told her. “You know as well as I do that those tunnels are too narrow for you. You won’t catch him.”

  “We can’t just stand here!” Briony’s hoarse voice wavered. “Someone has to do something. W-we can follow the tunnels above ground then. I know where they let out.”

  “You can barely walk,” Mul countered.

  And then, the unthinkable happened. Fate gazed down upon them with pity and delivered an answer. The heavens parted, casting down a single ray of sunshine as fate’s messenger shot from between the trees, eliciting sounds that were the opposite of what one would expect from the gods. In fact, it sounded a whole lot like an annoying raven with something stuffed in its beak.

  Rasp winced when Father landed on his shoulder in a flurry of sharp talons and dark feathers. Dipping his head, the raven dropped something in his son’s outstretched hand. Rasp rolled the object between his fingers, confused.

  Mul spoke before Rasp was given the chance, repeating their father’s words. “Use this?” he said, voice laden with suspicion as he turned to face his younger brother. “What’s he mean by that, Rasp? What is it?”

  Rasp spoke slowly, hoping that stating the answer aloud would somehow make Father’s solution clearer. “A mushroom.”

  Nope. Just felt stupider. To Rasp’s credit, he wasn’t the only one.

  “A mushroom?” Mul replied. “How is that supposed to help?”

  Croak! Croak! Croak!

  A brief pause followed Father’s explanation. Rasp felt the combined weight of the group’s stare as they looked at him, waiting expectantly for a translation. The problem was, it really wasn’t a translation Rasp wished to give. Unfortunately, before he could surmise it in a way that sounded remarkably less insane, Mul stepped up, detailing Father’s reasoning to the others, regardless of whether or not it made a lick of sense. “Father says that type of mushroom is like the algae. It’s all interconnected underground, and if Rasp taps into it, he might be able to find his way.”

  “Are we supposed to understand what that means?” Briony demanded.

  Mul’s response was the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “I’m just repeating what he said, ‘kay? You don’t have to get huffy about it.”

  Rasp gently squeezed the stem of the mushroom between his fingers, running the pad of his thumb along its soft, spongy flesh. Granted, he should have been preoccupied with Father’s instructions, but if he was going to die doing something crazy, it was only fair he got to call out his older brother one last time. “So you understand birds now, huh, Dingle?”

  “I…uh,” Mul stammered. “A witch infected me, you see.”

  Briony groaned. Rasp suspected it served two reasons: to protest Mul’s claim, and remind them that someone needed to get their ass down the hatch and stop the madman steadily limping his way to freedom.

  “Don’t worry, Dingle.” Rasp gave Mul’s arm an ungentle pat as he shuffled closer to the hatch, mindful not to fall face-first into it. “Your dirty secret’s safe with me. We both know I won’t live long enough to exploit it.”

  “You are going down there? Armed with a mushroom?” Oralia’s voice dripped with disbelief. “Insanity aside, you cannot see, Rasp. Cray will—”

  “Yeah, yeah, spare me the speech, lady. Just help me climb in before Briony kicks one of us down the shaft, alright? I’ll handle the rest.”

  They were out of options, and Oralia knew it. Hesitantly, she assisted Rasp down, helping him find his footing on the ladder. From there, he descended the rest of the way on his own. The darkness swallowed him as he eased down the rickety rungs as quickly as his nerves would allow. He breathed a sigh of relief once his heels struck dirt. Rasp tilted his head back, squinting up at the two shadowy heads gazing down at him from above, backlit by the gray sky.

  “This will work better if you close the hatch,” Rasp regretted each word that spilled from his foolish mouth the moment he said them.

  “Have you lost your fucking marbles, Dingle? First, the mushroom and now this?”

  “Just do it!”

  “Fine.” The rusted hinges protested with a shrill creak as Mul lowered the hatch. He paused, halfway, adding, “Look, in case it’s the last time and all, I just wanted to say sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

  And with that, before Rasp could muster a response, the wooden hatch slammed shut, sealing him in utter darkness. Clasping the mushroom in his hand, Rasp breathed deep, pouring power into it. His magic connected. As Father had said, the mushroom wasn’t a single organism, but a small piece of a vast, interconnected weave beneath the ground. Little by little, Rasp’s awareness spread, linking to the surrounding root system until a mental map of the tunnels had formed within his head.

  When Rasp opened his eyes again, the sides of the tunnel pulsed yellow with the interwoven threads of mycelium. The passage glowed with a phantom aura of light. It was a trick of the mind, of course. He knew that for anyone else, the tunnel walls weren’t actually glowing. But Rasp wasn’t anyone else. He was him. The witch with an empty enough head to mind meld with an entire fungal colony.

  The tips of Rasp’s fingers tingled. Interconnected, somehow, he knew without knowing what the colony was telling him. The mycelium detected warmth, an intruding body, limping through the tunnel up ahead. The intruder left an oozing trail of hot liquid in its wake. Rasp’s magic followed the heat to its source, locating Cray’s position on the mental maze pulsing within his mind’s eye. He took one last deep breath before breaking into a run, following the curve of the glowing tunnel, anticipating each twist and turn as if it were second nature.