Candlemere Isle had never been famous for its well-groomed vegetation and comfortable hiking paths, but the overgrowth that Guelder and her team found there was disturbing even compared to its original state. Lurid First World plants were mixed into the native flora, creating barely surmountable barriers across the path and hiding an alarming quantity of alien wildlife. This time, the main attraction were dweomercats and, of course, owlbears. As Guelder still couldn't harness her inner owlbear with any degree of reliability, she chose the good old leopard form instead, something that no magic-eating feline could claw off her, and dove into the thick undergrowth with Pangur to decimate the rival species, leaving it to the rest of the team to apply their buffs and take on the owlbears – preferably using arrows and spells.

  After a long and satisfying hunt, Guelder dropped another sorry piece of dark blue fur that used to be a dweomercat from between her jaws, and perked up her ears to locate the team. She only had to follow Linzi's music to find them. They were waiting for her at the foot of the hill, where the steep climb up to Candlemere Tower started. She dropped the shapeshift and stepped out onto the clearing.

  Except there wasn't supposed to be a clearing.

  Jaethal stood in the middle of destruction, death in her wake, broken leaves, severed stems, mowed blossoms, a big furry-feathery carcass at her feet, her scythe dripping with blood and plant sap, tossing her hair back and smiling triumphantly.

  All too familiar for comfort.

  Guelder stood petrified, her lips parted for a scream, her voice stuck in her throat. Cold sweat broke through her shivering skin. Everyone is dead. I am the last survivor, the prey of a mad hunter, soon to be harvested...

  "Is something wrong, Guel?"

  She hadn't noticed dropping to the ground. She was kneeling amidst the crushed, bleeding leaves, clutching sticky plant bits between her fingers, sobbing. How could this happen? Why had she not been there to stop it? Why had she not been allowed to fight until it was too late to make a difference?

  A deceitfully gentle hand touched her shoulder – an enemy nonetheless. Her friends were no more.

  "Guel, it is just invasive flora. Nothing to griev –"

  She lashed out towards the voice, claws at the ready. A cry of pain followed.

  Then something big and soft pushed itself against her, a wet nose nuzzling her neck. Pangur. How big he was... Not a cub anymore. A mature, strong male, more than capable of fending for himself and protecting her. A lot of time had passed since the massacre, and they'd both survived. She hugged the beast and buried her face into his fur, crying tears of relief. They were alive.

  "Dumb longshank," muttered a raspy little voice.

  A pair of no-nonsense hands took Guelder by the arms and forced her to get to her feet.

  "Whatever is wrong with you, child?" hissed Jaethal in Elven, giving her a good shake. "We shall talk about this later. Exhaustively."

  Hazel was holding a bloody handkerchief to their cheek. To Guelder's relief, their eye was intact. They returned her worried glance with a wry smile. Were they actually happy to wear a scar from her, as a badge of honour?

  Oh, brambles.

  Still a bit confused, Guelder extricated herself from Jaethal's grip, took back her leopard form, and set out up the slope, the farther from the others, the better.

  What awaited her at the ruined tower was not a tad more pleasant than Jaethal's handiwork.

  A year or so ago, the ruins had been home to a mysterious portal, by which a will-o'-wisp-like lesser fey lord, known by the name Duke Dazzleflare, had extended his power to a group of adventurers chasing after some treasure for Willas Gunderson, the would-be Chronicler of Varnhold. Posing as the god of magic, the fey lord had pushed the group's cleric into abandoning or downright killing his companions, intending to use him to gain access to the mortal plane. It had been quite a challenge for Guelder and her team to make the cleric come to his senses – almost as hard as defeating the Duke.

  Ever since, the portal was supposed to be dormant, safe under the repentant cleric's vigilance, reinforced by a group of three rangers. Guelder had a small cabin built among the ruins to house the portal guards, and switched the personnel every three days. Now the cabin's door was hanging ajar, its walls splattered with blood, its staff, cleric and rangers alike, mauled to death, and the portal's oval was proudly shimmering in the air, ready to be used.

  And of course, there was the bait, sitting on a boulder in his blue-white-gold garb now reminiscent of a heavily used cleaning rag, his dead eyes hidden behind a strip of cloth cut from the edge of his robe. Hearing Pangur's growl, he raised his head and flashed a sheepish smile in an entirely wrong direction.

  Guelder resumed her elf form, the encounter putting her disturbing flashback out of her mind. Despite her excitement, she remained alert. This seemed all too easy. Surely Nyrissa was familiar with the old feline hunting trick: catch the fawn, make it squeal to lure its mother there, kill both, have a feast. Pangur did it all the time. And indeed, Tristian sometimes felt like a son to her.

  A son she now had to beat some sense into.

  "Tristian?" she said. "I am here. A little to the left. More... No, too much... Perfect. Well done!"

  "You came... You shouldn't have."

  "Of course I did. And I want to take you with me."

  "No. That's impossible." He drew himself up to his full height, chin up, arms beside his body. His tone switched to a mechanical droning, as if reciting a speech practised ad nauseam. "Do yourself a favour, Guelder. Flee. As far and as fast as you can. Back to Kyonin, or beyond. Forget me, forget the Stolen Lands, and save your life. Perhaps it's not too late yet."

  Guelder raised an eyebrow, even though Tristian couldn't see that.

  "Thanks, but no. I have a barony to rule, and you are my Councillor of Welfare. I am not quitting, and neither are you."

  "Huh?" he asked, apparently running out of Nyrissa's premade message.

  Guelder heard footsteps and the rustling of leaves behind her. The others were catching up. She raised a hand to signal them not to intervene.

  "I know who and what you are, Tristian," she said. "Darlac told me."

  A wistful smile appeared on the cleric's face, and perhaps also relief.

  "She wanted me to swear by Pangur's life that I would come to your aid. Not that I needed such an incentive."

  The lower edge of Tristian's blindfold began to darken with tears. Guelder continued.

  "I also know you are supposed to lure me into a trap. Play your part, and I will play mine. If you cannot join me now, do your best to stay alive until I come for you. If Sarenrae took your eyes, that means she is still watching over you. Trust her, and trust me." And let us hope that will be enough.

  Tristian bit his lips to stop them from trembling, and nodded.

  "Whatever you do, do not follow me," he said, his voice breaking, and stepped into the portal. It snapped shut after him, but not before spitting out a bunch of dweomercats, an owlbear and a giant flytrap to keep Guelder and her friends occupied.

  All right. Back to the catfight, then.

  "Did anyone see where that portal led?" asked Jaethal after the battle, cleaning her scythe from dweomercat brain material with a piece of cloth (and discreetly popping a small sample of it into her mouth).

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "The Temple of the Elk," said Hazel. "I recognised the building and the surrounding trees."

  "I wonder if Tristian really meant we shouldn't follow him," chimed in Linzi.

  "A good question," said Jaethal. "These monsters probably come from the First World, not from another place in Nightvale. I am not sure that the portal would have taken us to the temple."

  Guelder gave the matter some thought. She remembered Darlac's story of the treacherous portal trapping her in the First World. If Nyrissa wanted to distract her from the war in Glenebon, duping her into entering a rigged portal would be a good way to do so. Duping her into undertaking a long hike to a location where she would look for Tristian in vain would be an equally good way.

  "We wanna go where green witch want us be?" piped up Nok-Nok.

  Guelder shook her head. "No. Definitely not."

  "Where should we go, then?" wondered Linzi. "If she took him to the First World, there is not much we can do. We don't even know where she lives in the First World!"

  "But I do know where she lives in this world," mused the baroness. "She once invited me to what she called her home. Perhaps we can access her lair from there."

  "The Verdant Chambers." Hazel shuddered. "I never thought you would ever want to return there, Guel."

  "Now that makes sense," said Jaethal. "It is a test. At your first visit, you were taught a bitter lesson, and you only got away by the skin of your teeth. Is the boy important enough for you to brave that place once again? And if you do, will you fight like the hero you make yourself out to be, or will you collapse under the weight of your unsettling memories?"

  Guelder glared at the inquisitor through narrowed pupils. Having the horrors buried under her sanity dredged up was bad enough. She didn't need her nose rubbed into it.

  "I can handle the vast majority of my unsettling memories just fine," she retorted. And you have something to do with those I cannot.

  "What are we waiting for?" enthused Linzi. "Let's head there and surprise Nyrissa! Either we'll find Tristian there, or at least we can get our hands on some information we can use against our foe."

  "Indeed," said Guelder. "Let us go. We have wasted enough time here."

  They climbed straight down the rock face and made their way back to their rowboats by the lakeside, following the path Jaethal had made with her scythe. But for the ripples whipped up by the oars, the lake was calm and quiet. Linzi sat in the prow, playing a lively tune on her harmonica, helping Hazel and Guelder stay on the beat with their rowing. In the other boat, Nok-Nok was hanging out over the edge, trying to catch fish with his bare hands. Time and again, Jaethal attempted to give him a shove with the handle of the oar and push him into the water, but the goblin was too alert to fall for her ruse.

  "Are you sure this is not a fool's errand, Guel?" said Hazel. "Nyrissa is probably trying to keep you away from the war, and if you ask me, that in and of itself is an argument for heading straight to Glenebon instead of chasing shadows here."

  "Do you think the six of us would make any difference in the war?" said Guelder. "Battles are won by armies, not by adventuring parties."

  "True. Still, your presence might matter for the morale of your army. Remember, this is the first time your soldiers will actually fight a battle. They are already decent at herding displaced peasants or scowling at river pirates, but a real war is a different cup of tea."

  "I am just as inexperienced at warfare as they are. The best I can do for them is ensure that they still have homes and families to return to. As for the battle... well, I trust Kassil knows what he is doing."

  She preferred to keep the rest of her concerns to herself. Kassil's military knowledge was mostly based on books, which was a lot more than could be said about Guelder herself, but he lacked Maegar Varn's or Darlac's practical experience. If Kassil messed this up, perhaps she should revise the governmental roles and replace him with one of those two. Then again, if Kassil messed this up, there would likely be no more Nightvale to govern or defend.

  Also, she had to consider long-term solutions of mobility. She had to improve the snail-paced travel speed of her team, not much influenced by the carb-rich rations cooked up by Linzi. Darlac, who had long dreamt of setting up a cavalry for the army of Varnhold, would probably have a list of contacts to obtain a few herds of horses from. The Kamelands would be a great place for horse breeding, with its rolling hills and meadows covered in deep grass. The horses might even be able to integrate into the local ecosystem. As a next step, Nightvale would need a network of teleportation circles connecting the centres of each region – a modern and versatile system, loosely based on ancient elven aiudara. Guelder would have to ramp up her efforts to improve arcane research in the barony, perhaps with the Storyteller's help. So much to do, unless Armag Reborn would raze the Stolen Lands to the ground first…

  Reaching the mouth of the river Murque, they pulled their boats out onto the shore, and continued their trip on foot, following the south bank of the river, cutting through a bend, then crossing at the ford to the north bank. They found an abandoned campsite there, used by an adventuring party not more than two days before. Out of curiosity, Guelder sniffed around in leopard form and identified the scents of two female humans, a male dwarf, a male gnome, a male half-orc, and some remnants of fey and kobold presence, probably passing through the site. She wondered what they could have been up to so deep in the forest, and whether they'd survived. Based on their camping technique, they'd seemed pretty clueless about outdoors life. Guelder herself chose another campsite for the night, farther into the trees, and they spent the night there.

  Their journey to the Verdant Chambers was blessedly uneventful this time. The abandoned dwarven keep (identified by Harrim as the old Silvershield Fortress, formerly run by Clan Woradash) showed no trace of change since last time. The gnarled tree was still there in the courtyard. But alas, this time Guelder touched its bark in vain. No answer came, no portal, no monsters. The tree was just a tree.

  Next, they tried to enter the fortress in the traditional way, using the entrance.

  "What a majestic building," whispered the baroness, her hand brushing at the cold hewn stone wall of the antechamber. "With a little investment, it could be restored to its original function, like Bronzeshield Fortress was. One more reason for us to kick out its current inhabitants."

  "If your previous visit is anything to go by," said Hazel, "those are probably redcaps. A lot of them."

  As Harrim explained (for the umpteenth time, because Nok-Nok had not heard it yet), this was the third piece of the line of dwarven fortresses across the Narlmarches that used to defend a trade route coming from the Five Kings' Mountains. The southernmost one was Bronzeshield Fortress, once run by Clan Langebukk, then abandoned, then occupied by the trolls and kobolds building their joint kingdom, until Guelder had sent them packing. The northernmost was Adamantine Shield Fortress, garrisoned by Clan Skjegge, still enthusiastic about the secrets it was hiding (which were mostly haywire golems helpfully unmade by Harrim), so much that they were already working on its restoration. Once Silvershield Fortress was cleansed from the supposed fey infestation (and hopefully from Nyrissa herself), even the road connecting the fortresses could be restored. Road traffic from Mivon to Brevoy would be a nice thing to have. Even apart from that, it was always good to have fortified places for the people to flee to in case of an enemy incursion.

  Guelder feared they might actually need to use that functionality soon. She breathed deep, and her thoughts wandered to the west, to her General and the army, preparing to stop the barbarian invasion.

  A loud clink startled her from her musings. Linzi, tampering with a heavy oak door reinforced with iron bands, had dropped her tools with a loud sigh.

  "No luck here," she said. "I mean, no lock. And no hinges, either. We can't enter here."

  "Shall I give it a taste of my axe?" offered Hazel.

  Linzi shook her head. "No. This looks like a dungeon exit. You know, the type that only opens from the inside, and only after the place has been cleansed from whatever evil it was hiding. We are approaching the problem from the wrong end."

  "Then we have to look for an escape tunnel," said Harrim, "like the one we found in Bronzeshield Fortress. Look for signs of disturbed vegetation in the neighbourhood. Whoever lives here probably doesn't exclusively travel by portals."

  It took the better part of two hours spent snooping around the keep until Hazel discovered a possible way in. Disguised with a negligently placed heap of tumbleweed, a flat, round stone covered the mouth of an underground tunnel leading towards the fortress.

  "Finally," said Guelder, her heart filled with determination. "We shall retrieve Tristian, one way or another, and if all goes well, we shall face off against the ilduliel of Nightvale. There is a chance we can end this fey farce for good. Are you all ready?"

  "I told you, Guel," said Hazel. "Wherever you go, I will follow."

  "Quills sharpened for the most exciting chapter!" exclaimed Linzi.

  "This is a good day to die," grumbled Harrim. "As good as any other day."

  "Let us compost that nasty vegetable," said Jaethal with a smirk.

  "Nok-Nok get stabby!" offered Nok-Nok.

  And so they descended into an already familiar realm of iridescent, alien flora, thriving without light.