Pouch, pack, sack, purse or bag, I didn’t care. Every one I found got opened with a quickness, contents examined as fast as possible, and anything promising or obviously useful stuffed into a pair of discarded saddlebags I’d found a few feet from the first corpse. Body after body, I raced onward, hoping I still had the grace of the clock’s ticking behind every step, until eventually the silent ticking in my head reached a crescendo as I tore through the belongings of the last rider.

  Nervous eyes flicked skyward and then narrowed into a startled squint. Frozen, seconds passed before I allowed myself a long, relieved sigh and a nervous laugh. The movement in the clouds wasn’t the beast, just multiple cloud layers passing each other.

  Attention returned to the task, I shuffled through the rest of the detritus before taking off at just short of a sprint. My path detoured in a long arc that avoided the pinned horses but saw me collapsing almost breathless next to Tomas several minutes later.

  “What’d you find?” the bard asked without taking his eyes off the copse of trees I’d returned from.

  Breathing heavily, it took me a few seconds to reply. “Little bit of this and that. Grabbed what looked interesting.”

  Tomas lifted the binoculars to his eyes and panned to the northeast. “I wouldn’t have spent a second longer out there than I had to if I’d gone instead. It’s been, what, a half hour since it left? Forty-five minutes?”

  I sat up and tugged open the first bag. “Something like that. You know, if we wait until it comes back, we might be able to figure out how far off Annesport is, assuming that’s where it’s nesting.”

  “What makes you think it’s coming back?”

  I blinked away the image that popped into my head, five horses pinned on trees like butterflies on a board. “It’s coming back, but you have a point. It might not come back immediately. Keep an eye out while I go through the rest of this. On the plus side, they did have a fair amount of food.”

  “Oh? Anything good?”

  “Depends on what you like,” I grunted and then flipped open the second section. “I put it all in this side of the bags.”

  Tomas glanced back and then sighed. “Oh, travel rations. Bannock and hardtack beat chewing on grass, I guess. You know, maybe we could throw one of your hamburger MREs at the thing if it spots us. It’d probably leave us alone. I know I would if someone threw that at me.”

  I spared a slightly amused glance for the man. “You do realize that was the last hamburger I brought, right? I ate the other one the night before.”

  Tomas made a sour face. “You brought two? Are you some kind of masochist?”

  “They’re not that bad, Tomas.”

  “Not that bad? What’s your standard for bad?”

  “The five fingers of death.”

  “The what?”

  I grinned. “Beef sausages. Really only four, but hands have five fingers so you’d catch people calling it the five fingers anyway. There were two versions of them. The latter wasn’t horrible, but the first? The first resembled sausages in pretty much the same way the hamburger resembled a ground beef patty.”

  Tomas coughed. “That was supposed to be ground beef? Really? How do you fuck up sausage? It’s just meat in a casing.”

  “You make it shelf stable. The first version was pale, but looked kinda burnt in spots. The texture was awful, worse than the hamburger, and the flavor was bad enough you really wanted to use all the hot sauce if you had any.”

  Tomas grunted. “You know, I tried the hot sauce. I actually kind of like it.”

  I shook my head as I turned back to the first pocket and its contents. “That’s a shame. Tabasco peppers were a regional thing where I came from. The odds of there being an analog here are pretty slim.”

  As I lifted the first potential treasure from the bag Tomas grumbled something to himself. “Well, if that’s the case, can I get your hot sauce if you don’t want it?”

  I turned the leatherbound book around and read the spine. The First Circle of Ignis and Aether. “I’ll set ‘em aside. Looks like one of them was a spellcaster of some flavor.”

  Tomas glanced back. “Spellbook. Might be worth something.”

  Having sat through I don’t know how many briefings and training sessions dealing with gathering intelligence, I followed one of the many principles they’d tried to beat into our heads: be thorough. I cracked the book open. Checking for anything tucked between the pages, I flipped past lists, walls of handwritten text, graphs, diagrams, and sketches until a thin length of carved wood slipped out toward the end. Gold glinted in the light as I snatched it before it fell far.

  Stained dark, the wood could’ve been anything from walnut to lighter. Considering the subject was a bare-chested mermaid, the relief itself was eye-catching even without the inlaid gold leaf. “Huh. Bookmark. Mermaid, you think?”

  “What’s a mermaid?” His eyes came about and lingered on the relief for a few long moments before he added, “That’s a water sprite. A nicely endowed one, at that.”

  “Ah, water sprite. Right. One of the mythologies back home called things that looked like this a mermaid. They generally lured sailors to their deaths with those endowments.”

  The bard nodded and turned his attention back to the skies. “Yeah, water sprites do that here, too. Tits like that, I almost wouldn’t mind a little doom, you know? Hmm. If you came from a different world, why are your stories so similar to ours?”

  As I stuck the bookmark back in and set the book down, I shrugged. “No clue.”

  Next up was another book. Circulus Secundus, De tonitribus et fulminibus. Unamused, I stared at the title. As I wondered how to specify the language I wanted things translated to, it shifted in an eyeblink. Second Circle: Of Thunder and Lightning. “First book was probably fire spells. This looks like lightning.”

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “Does this one have fun bookmark too?”

  After flipping through the book, I shook my head. “Nope. Same guy had a few wands in a case. Think you can figure out what they do?”

  “Do I look like Fiachra?” Tomas asked as he took the offered rune-carved metal case anyway. A minute later he handed it back. “That case isn’t silver, it’s platinum. As much as its worth, good luck finding a buyer. The runes look a bit like a containment pattern I saw Fiachra draw once. As for the wands, your guess is as good as mine. Fiachra had one that looked kinda like the first one, shot lightning I think, but I don’t think looks really matter with wands.”

  While I sat the case next to the spellbooks, I muttered, “Fiachra said something about you not being compatiable with wands. What’s with that? If you know.”

  “Using wands requires a bit of a spark of magic to trigger the effect. I don’t have the talent.”

  Fingers still around the case, I looked down at it for a long moment before picking it back up and setting it by Tomas’s pack. “You didn’t back then. Just in case, I’m setting it by your pack. When we’re safe, you might try at it again.”

  “You think so? Oh, right, MTV. Who knows? What else do you have in there?”

  “Crystals, gems, a couple dozen coins, some rings, and a bunch of scrolls.”

  Tomas grunted and scooted over. “I’ll take a look at those rings.”

  After skimming the first few scrolls, I kinda wished I hadn’t. Two of them were letters from family that would never see them again. A third was a shopping list, probably the supplies they’d put together for this trip. The rest were simply blank, but my paranoia had me set those aside just in case they weren’t as blank as they looked. “Well, fuck. I was hoping to find a map or something.”

  Shaking his head, Tomas tossed all the rings back into the bag. “Not magic, just well made, especially that carved onyx one. Signet ring, probably. Fiachra would be interested in the gems and crystals. I’ve seen some just like them in his office.”

  Nodding, I turned my eyes toward where the ferret had gone. “I don’t know about you, but I’d say we’d best be moving on, Tomas.”

  Without much more discussion, we packed everything up and set off east, intending to turn north after a day or two. As the miles passed by, I found myself wondering just how far away the skyferret had nested, but there were too many variables. The nest was at least thirty minutes away by air. On the way out, even with a horse in its claws, the skyferret looked to be about as fast interstate traffic, so the best guess I had, on the low end, was thirty miles. Considering we still hadn’t seen any fog and the terrain was mostly flat now, I bet it was a bit further out than that.

  Shortly before dusk, we paused in the husk of an abandoned house to eat. On a lark, I pressed one of the blank scrolls up against the MRE heater before it cooled off and found myself smiling. Not a single scroll was blank. Other than the one detailing the group’s orders, all of them were hand-drawn maps sketched in heat-sensitive ink.

  I spent the time before sleep took me worrying over how to address the skyferret threat. Would we be better off traveling at night or day? Tree cover here was sparse and more than a few trees I’d seen since the massacre bore discolored, blighted leaves. I decided it was ultimately a futile question.

  While I vaguely remembered ferrets as being near-sighted, scent driven carnivores, airborne predators generally had keen eyesight, some even saw better in low light than they did in the middle of the day. Beyond looking like a someone had taken a cute house pet and blown it up to truck-sized proportions, I had no reason to suspect the skyferret operated with any of the normal animal’s limitations.

  The only useful conclusion I came to before we set off the next morning came from a careful look over those maps. The scouting party had been heading back north after passing through the area already. Their maps of the outlying area held much more detail than the wide-scale map Fiachra had sent, to the point the maps carried multiple markings for landmarks you could see at distance, hills, trees, streams. Sure, they weren’t topo maps, but for once I felt like I didn’t have to worry about getting lost out here.

  Over the next few days, we hooked to the east a good fifty miles before turning back north. Fiachra was disappointed he didn’t get any sketches but marveled over the descriptions Tomas and I relayed of the creature and just how easily it had rendered armored riders into carrion. Jenna and the mage proffered a handful of theories as to the beast’s origins and how it flew without wings, all of them hinging heavily on various forms and types of magic.

  The discussion concerning the items we’d recovered meandered back and forth over the course of the second day of travel. Relayed via a different set of message books, Rowan made it known that returning with the maps alone would make the mission a qualified success.

  After letting Tomas try his hand sketching some of the gems, Fiachra expressed cautious optimism as to what they might be, but since neither of us were magic-inclined, positive identification would have to wait.

  That said, the mage reminded me we had the cloud chamber cube, which confirmed all of them carried some touch of magic. When I relayed the fact that the cube turned into a storm of colors next to the two smallest pale blue gems, we were warned at great length to avoid damaging them. Fiachra’s explanation was short, a simple question asking if I remembered why he didn’t send wands with me and how that answer should also guide how we handled the wands we’d recovered. The gems got moved to my chest pocket next to the two maps we were using.

  Jenna also relayed on-going events across several messages. The FSA scouts wandered into town and had met with the mayor and Aoife, but she hadn’t heard any specifics. Millwall had managed to convince Fiachra to let him consult with Jenna so long as their collaboration didn’t derail her education, which was still inching forward at a frustrating glacial pace according to her. The next two batches off coffee exploded and the third kicked off an exothermic reaction that slagged a hole through the pot. The fourth, the last she was willing to run before revisiting methods, ended up merely burnt so they were going to use that as a guidepost for future attempts. I also got the belated explanation the skyferret had interrupted, that she’d spent the night drinking with Aoife and Cailleach and slept in.

  Using our newfound map, we spent another three days creeping north toward the only terrain feature on the map in that direction, one of the only honest hills to be found on the maps. It also happened to overlook the final stretch of the Fuilteach before it flowed through Annesport. With that in mind, I knew exactly where we were on Fiachra’s map.

  We spent most of the third day climbing the south side of that hill, which was clogged with steep rock and largely vertical in spots to the point we used the drone to find a path up. We called a halt early, just short of the crest, and while we pulled up a comfortable rock, I realized this side of the hill had been worn down to cliff faces because it’d been part of the river at some point in the long distant past.

  Having shrugged off my pack, I nodded to Tomas. “Hey, I’m going to check out the top and figure out what we’re doing next since this is where the map ends.”

  Mid-stretch, the bard replied with only a wave of a hand.

  Trudging up what remained of the rock-strewn slope, my thoughts were hung up on just how creepy the last few days had been. Animals larger than a rabbit had grown increasingly rare until we ran into the skyferret. Other than plants, I hadn’t seen a single living thing since I spotted what looked like a dove the day after. The only sound that kept me company as I came around the last rock face and stepped up onto open ground at the crest was the wind.

  Ahead, the grass covered slope descended in fits and spurts. It dawned on me I knew exactly where I stood because I’d been much lower on this slope, but back then you could see Annesport in the distance instead of just a handful of stone spires piercing the veritable sea of fog stretching to the horizon below.

  I squinted and pulled out my binoculars. Grass near the edge of the fog was a sickly gray color, not green or brown. The tickle of static electricity brushed over me. The hair on my neck stood on end and heartbeat later I knew I wasn’t alone. My hand went to my pistol.

  “Not quite the view it used to be, but it’s still beautiful in its own way, is it not, friend?”

  Cold arced through my veins and I slowly, deliberately turned to find a pale, emaciated man in tattered robes lounging against the rocks I’d just passed. As he straightened and stepped away from the rock, my trigger finger began to itch. Something in the way his deep voice grated triggered something deep in my lizard brain.

  The smile that grew on his face didn’t reach the eyes staring at me, unblinking. “I almost didn’t believe you were real, you know. You’re the first soul to visit since the fog swallowed the Fuilteach. I’ve been here, waiting.”