The crush of wood against bone.

  His bones. Tyndral’s bones. He woke up with a jolt.

  He sat up, his body slick with sweat. The small, smokeless fire had burned down to embers, casting a faint orange glow on the walls of their rock shelter.

  Across the pit, Mara watched him. Her amber eyes were filled with a calm, analytical stillness.

  "Another one?" she said.

  Trenn nodded. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and reached for his armor. There was no comfort to be found, only the next hunt. Mara gave a single, sharp nod of her own, a silent acknowledgment.

  "Good," she said, her voice a low rumble in the pre-dawn quiet. "Use it."

  Trenn started with the straps of his greaves.

  "Tell me about him," Trenn said, his voice a low rasp. "Before."

  Mara’s expression didn't change, but a flicker of something ancient and weary passed through her eyes. She stared into the dying embers, her thoughts a world away. The silence stretched between them.

  "He was a collector," she said finally. "Of strays. Broken-winged birds, orphaned cubs... me."

  She stood up and began methodically checking the straps on her own armor, her movements signaling that the conversation was over. But she stopped, her back to him.

  "He died because our plan was arrogant," she said, her voice dropping to a low growl of self-recrimination. “We underestimated the Hobgoblins.”

  Bomber’s silent signal led them to a clearing where a Goblin hunting party of ten was trying to bring down a tusked boar the size of a small car.

  They were a chaotic mess of thrown spears and panicked shouts as the beast charged and gored one of them.

  The boar wheeled around for another charge, and the Goblins planted their spears and pointed them at the crazed animal.

  Mara slid from the low-hanging branch of a copper-barked tree and landed on a surprised Goblin’s shoulders. She pressed her fingertips to its skull and pushed her long, curved claws into its brain, before hopping off its.

  Trenn, from the opposite end of the clearing, drop-kicked Skate into the fray. The grey sphere shot low and fast, catching the first Goblin in the shins and shattering its legs before rebounding up to smash the teeth out of another one’s skull.

  The Giant Boar crashed through the Goblin’s broken formation and ran off into the undergrowth, leaving Mara and Trenn standing over a half dozen Goblin bodies.

  They’d been hitting isolated groups like this for days.

  The days were blurring into a grim nightmare of hunt, kill, vanish.

  The nights were blurring into a grim nightmare of spear wounds, Hobgoblins, beatings, broken bones, and the final squelching thuds that ended Tyndral’s life.

  For weeks, they bled the goblin clans, turning the copper tree forest into a killing ground. Patrols vanished. Hunting parties were ambushed and butchered, their game left to rot.

  In a smoky camp of the Bone-Eater clan, a lone Goblin with a bleeding gash on its arm stumbled into the firelight. It was a Red-Gnawer, and his eyes were wide with panic and fury.

  "Treachery!" it screamed, pointing a trembling, dirt-caked finger at the Bone-Eater chieftain. "Your patrol! You said the southern pass was clear! We walked right into a trap! The Guardian and the Pink One!" Its voice cracked with hysteria.

  "They took my whole squad! Your fault!"

  The Bone-Eater chieftain, a burly specimen with a necklace of chipped animal teeth, leaped to his feet, his own face contorting in a mask of rage. "Lies!" it roared, spitting into the fire. "Your squad was weak! You blame us for your own cowardice!"

  A Red-Gnawer in the crowd hurled a half-eaten bone at the chieftain's head. A Bone-Eater responded by smashing its cudgel into the Red-Gnawer’s face. Within seconds, the camp devolved into a writhing brawl.

  From a high ridge, lit by the dual moons, Trenn and Mara surveyed the chaos they had sown. Trenn finally lowered his head as the strain of his projected hearing sent a wave of dizziness through him.

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  The sustained effort of projecting his hearing had left a sharp, pounding ache behind his eyes. His Wild Mage ability was a muscle, and right now, it was strained to the point of tearing.

  A firm hand settled on his shoulder. Mara was beside him, a silent presence in the night. She didn't speak, but he could feel the low, satisfied purr-like rumble in her chest.

  "It's working," she said, her voice a quiet growl that was barely audible over the distant shouts and the sickening crack of clubs on bone. "They are eating each other alive."

  The stench hit them first. Not the usual sour musk of a Goblin camp, but the coppery, metallic tang of old blood, heavy in the humid air.

  Trenn lay prone on the ridge, his hand raised to halt Mara’s advance.

  Four Goblins had been nailed to the wide, copper-colored trunks of the trees that bordered the clearing. Their crude weapons lay broken at the base of the trees.

  Pinned to the chest of each one, with a shard of bone, was its own severed tongue.

  A wave of nausea hit Trenn. This wasn't the aftermath of a battle. His mind, focused on their guerrilla war, struggled to process the brutal variable. This was a calculated display of power.

  Mara moved past him, a low, dangerous growl vibrating in her chest. She dropped into the clearing, her amber eyes taking in every detail with professional assessment.

  "Deserters?"

  Trenn finally slid down the embankment to join her, his gaze fixed on the horrifying tableau.

  His mind, which had been focused on the logic of their guerrilla war, struggled to process this new, brutal variable. They had been trying to create chaos, to turn the clans against each other.

  "It's not trying to win their loyalty," Trenn said. "It's culling them. Getting rid of anyone who won't obey without question."

  A vulpine grin split Mara's face. The rumble in her chest was a purr of predatory satisfaction.

  "Good," she said. "He's doing our work for us."

  The moons were high in the sky. Mara and Trenn were positioned on a rocky outcrop overlooking a major, well-trodden game trail, a natural chokepoint in the dense forest.

  Bomber’s signal came, but it was different this time. Not the tight figure-eight of a small patrol, but a wide, urgent sweep back and forth, indicating a large group.

  Trenn closed his eyes and pushed his senses down the trail. He was expecting the usual cacophony of grumbling, bickering Goblins, but there was no chatter. There was only the disciplined tramp of heavy boots on packed earth and the clack of wood on wood.

  A moment later, the column emerged from the trees, and Trenn’s breath caught in his throat.

  At its head strode the last of the three Hobgoblins. It wore the sadistic Hobgoblin’s layered hide armor and carried its enchanted long-club. The first Hobgoblin's bow was slung across its back, and belted at its hip was Trenn's kris knife.

  It was surrounded by a dozen Goblins. They marched with a purpose, their spears held at a uniform angle, their beady eyes alert and constantly scanning the trees.

  His experience screamed that this was wrong. "Put four Goblins together, and you've got two fights," Mara always said. Goblins bickered and fought; they didn't march in disciplined columns. But these were soldiers.

  But it was the amulet around the Hobgoblin’s neck that made the blood run cold in Trenn’s veins. It was a simple piece of polished stone, so black it swallowed the light.

  Trenn could feel it, even from this distance—a low, discordant hum. Mana Radiation.

  Mara’s body went rigid. Her claws slid from the tips of her fingers. Her amber eyes, which had been coolly analytical, now burned with focused fury.

  Trenn put a hand on her arm. The muscle beneath the white fur was coiled as tight as a steel spring.

  "Not now," he whispered, his voice a raw, urgent rasp. "We can't. Look at them. We wouldn't even get close."

  She looked from the Hobgoblin to Trenn's restraining hand, back to the war party. With a low, frustrated growl, she retracted her claws.

  Together, they watched in tense silence as the disciplined column marched past their position, the Hobgoblin at its head a figure of unchallenged authority. They vanished down the path, the rhythmic tramp of their boots slowly fading into the vast, indifferent silence of the forest.

  The oppressive presence of the war party faded. They retreated to a hidden crevice between two moss-covered boulders.

  Mara paced.

  Trenn sat with his back against the cold stone, watching her. The adrenaline from the encounter had drained away, leaving a hollow exhaustion. The silence stretched.

  "It was the right call," he said.

  Mara's head snapped toward him, her amber eyes blazing. She stopped pacing, her body coiled.

  "The 'right call' was letting it walk away?" she said, her voice a low growl. "It was right there. The debt could have been paid."

  "We would be dead," Trenn said, his voice hardening. "Its guard was too disciplined. We would have been pincered before we reached it. You saw it."

  "I saw a Hobgoblin responsible for Tyndral’s death," she said, stalking a step closer. The name was a physical blow. Trenn flinched, the sound of a club crushing bone echoing in his memory.

  "I keep hearing it," he whispered. "When I close my eyes."

  She stopped pacing and stood before him.

  "Good. Remember that sound. Remember what they did to him."

  She leaned closer, her gaze direct. "Use it."

  He met her gaze.

  “You keep saying that,” he said. “Use it for what, Mara? To get us both killed? That's not tactics, that's suicide. Tyndral died because we were outnumbered. You’re talking about revenge, not victory."

  Mara averted her gaze. She did not answer.

  Trenn finally broke the heavy silence, his voice a low, troubled murmur. "That thing... around his neck. Tyndral was right. It’s dangerous, I can feel it."

  He looked up at Mara, trying to articulate the sensation. "It hummed, like the charm I have on Skate and Bomber."

  “I felt it too," she said. “We can’t be reckless. We have to assume the Hobgoblin is never alone. That amulet is powerful, whatever it is.”

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