The ranger slowed as she reached what was, appropriately enough, an effective dead end. The path ahead ended at a broken pillar housing the ruined remains of a stone staircase, with no path around it and no branching turns. The pathways crisscrossing through the air above her were far out of reach, and the blackness below held no hope of a safe landing.

Her own walkway shook with a sudden violence as something heavy landed behind her. By the time she regained her footing and turned, the dragon was already rearing up, scales flaring bloodred as it pulled in a breath. Hot doom bubbled behind its dagger teeth.

Kaitha knew, even as she drew her bow, that it wasn’t enough. Her life would be cut short and cauterized as well. The best she could say was that she went down fighting. She breathed out her regrets, nocked an arrow in one fluid motion, and set her sights on the dragon’s baleful eye. The entire world seemed to hesitate for a moment.

With the exception of one Troll.

Thane plummeted from the heights of the cavern with a roar like an avalanche and landed squarely on the end of the dragon’s muzzle. The sheer force of a rapidly descending Troll to the face cannot be ignored, not even by an elder dragon, and the creature’s head was snapped down and to the side just as the spout of dragonfire came rushing from its maw.

Thane screamed as white-hot flames caught him directly in the midsection. The dragon screeched as the struggling Troll punched through scales and bones, tearing flesh and breaking horns and teeth. The air was rent with the cries of two of Arth’s most fearsome titans experiencing new and unfamiliar pain.

The dragon’s flames sputtered and died, but the Troll kept up the assault, sending loose scales and hot blood raining down on the stone. In desperation, the beast slammed its own head against the stone pillars, and Thane cried out as his bones snapped under the crushing force. With a final shake of its head, the dragon flung its assailant away and careened over the edge of the walkway in a motion caught between a dive and fall. It unfurled its wings and glided beneath Kaitha’s path like a great red whale passing beneath a fishing skiff as it fled back toward the entrance of the cavern. Other stone trees in the path of the beast shuddered as the dragon collided with them in its reckless, panicked flight.

She turned back to her own walkway, where Thane writhed on the stone. He lay at the center of a splatter of black, viscous blood, his arms and legs tracing erratic pathways as they flailed. His torso was a mess of thin, charred tendrils of flesh that waved around in a futile dance as they tried to weave themselves back into a Troll. His mouth was open wide in a scream that she couldn’t hear, though Kaitha couldn’t tell if he was silent or the blood pounding in her ears had drowned him out.

Then he looked at her with eyes like a sunset, crimson flecked with gold and fiery orange, and the pain and shock seemed to drain from him. The most beautiful smile Kaitha had ever seen bloomed on his face, and he opened his mouth to greet her.

But rather than words, thick, black blood welled up from his throat. The light behind his irises faded, and he slumped lifeless to the floor.

Chapter 24

“Another one goes!” laughed Ignatius. The priest cackled as red light flared in the eyes of the shrine of Mordo Ogg. “Big or small, all are the same in death!”

The red light grew brighter, and did not fade.

“And you were a big one!” snickered the priest.

“Hey! It’s not funny,” said a small voice. “You shouldn’t laugh, you meanie.”

Ignatius was not used to being addressed as such, or even addressed at all. Most people averted their eyes as they walked hurriedly past Mordo Ogg’s shrine near Sculpin Down. The dark-robed priest turned to see a small Gnoll child leaning on a cane. “What?” he asked.

“Losing someone hurts,” The boy looked at his feet with his tail tucked beneath his legs as if remembering a distant pain. “A lot. Laughing only makes it worse.”

“I… uh… well, death is a part of life—the last bit, aha, and… I… well, it’s good to not make it more than it is…” Ignatius found it difficult to explain himself to the small child because, like so many people called out by children, his rationale was stupid. Much of what passes for wisdom are actually attempts to paper over faults and weaknesses with pithy slogans. The priest tried another one. “I think it’s important to find humor where you can in this life.”

“Well, I think it’s important not to be a smelly old coot whose brain is turning to cheese!” snapped the Gnoll, demonstrating the limits of the innocent wisdom of children. He hobbled off to another pair of giggling pups, who hoisted him up to support him. The trio ran laughing from the square.

Ignatius snorted as he watched them go. Being laughed at did hurt, as it turned out. Still, none of Mordo Ogg’s clients had complained in all of Ignatius’ years of service. He giggled at the thought and turned back to the shrine.

The crimson light in Mordo Ogg’s skeletal eyes hadn’t faded.

“Are you still here?” asked the priest, leaning in close to the statue. “Don’t fight it. Don’t fight. It happens to everyone.”

The light remained unmoved.

After a while, Ignatius stepped back. “Usually it doesn’t take this long, though,” he added to the unwavering glow. “What’s keeping you?”

Kaitha cradled Thane’s head in her lap, stroking his fur as she wept. The Troll’s glassy eyes stared up at the sobbing Elf.

Gorm blinked back his own tears. He’d assumed there was a finite list of friends he might see perish in the depths of Wynspar, and Thane was the last person he’d have put on it. To see his old companion now, after so long, just to watch him die was a new and awful kind of ache.

But it didn’t change the rules of the dungeon delving.

“Come on lass,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Come on. We need to go.”

Kaitha didn’t seem to hear him. “You came back,” Kaitha sobbed to the Troll. “You came back for me… why?”

“Because he couldn’t live in a world without you,” said Heraldin softly. “I think... I think he knew that some treasures you cannot keep, no matter how much you wish it was different. But they are still worth everything. And he gave everything for you.” The bard drew in a ragged breath and looked at Gaist with red-rimmed eyes. “I see that now.”

Gaist nodded solemnly.

“You came back,” the Elf repeated. She kissed Thane’s forehead, and her lips came away with a thin coat of gray dust. Thane’s face had turned the gray of old ash, his skin cracking and brittle.

“Not to be insensitive,” Jynn murmured in Gorm’s ear. “But is such rapid desiccation normal for a Troll that has… you know…”

“Don’t know,” said Gorm, wiping his eyes. “Ain’t never seen a Troll… you know… before. But it ain’t the time for that sort of question. Ain’t even time for mournin’. The dragon’s still about.” He could still hear the beast thrashing around in the depths of the cavern. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll take him to a temple healer…” Laruna forced the words through a throat choked with tears. “They have old magics and rites that could… that might… we have to try if there’s a chance that⁠—”

The mage’s hopeful words were lost in a sudden gale that howled through the cavern with the force of a tempest. Thane’s body blew apart like a great, gray sand dune in a desert wind. The last of his remains blew through Kaitha’s scrabbling fingertips and swept into the abyss. As soon as he was gone, the wind died as fast as it had come, leaving only traces of gray dust on the bloodstains and a mournful wail echoing through the broken hall.

“No.” Kaitha doubled over under the weight of her grief, her tears mingling with the dust and the blood. “No!”

“Come on.” Gorm put his hand on her shoulder, though it was as much to steady himself as to call her back to the quest. Elsewhere in the cavern, the dragon still raged. “We see it through to the end, remember? No matter what. We need to move before we lose any more.”

Kaitha didn’t seem to hear him. “He came back,” she sobbed. “He came back for me, and he… and I never got the chance to… I never got to tell him…” The Elf broke off, overtaken by her sorrow.

“He already knows, lass,” Gorm told her. “I’m sure he knows.”

“Don’t give me empty words!” The Elf finally looked at him then, her eyes bubbling with agony and tears. “He’s dead! How could anyone be sure of what he knows?”

“The light won’t fade!” Ignatius slapped the side of the stone skull as if to dislodge a stubborn particle, but the ruby glow remained in each of Mordo Ogg’s hollow sockets. “Why won’t you go?”

The illumination burned brighter in mute protest, then faded back to its strong, steady crimson.

“It never takes this long. It—oh, wait! What?” Ignatius clambered into the lap of the statue and leaned in close to its face, like an oversized child demanding attention from a stiff and stoic parent. “Are you going?”

The glows in the skull’s eyes appeared to be dimming for a hopeful moment, but closer inspection revealed that they were just contracting. Even as the lights got smaller, their glow grew more intense, until they were two pinpricks of a diamond-hard, white-hot glare.

“What are you—” Ignatius began, and then the lights exploded.

The blast was no bigger than the firecrackers that alchemists sold to revelers and miscreant children, but it was enough to blind any priest within a nose-length of the shrine. Ignatius tumbled off the statue, smoke trailing from the singed remnants of his eyebrows and the overpowering smell of ozone ringing in his nostrils.

It took him several befuddled moments to untangle his limbs, and once he did, he found it difficult to stand. It wasn’t just that the blast left him blinded, half-deaf, and bleeding from his nose; now a howling wind was descending from the mountain with enough force to rip banners from their polls and topple careless pedestrians. Ignatius slid back along the cobbles as he braced himself against the gale. A flurry of paper blew in from the Third Tier, followed by a gaggle of clerks bouncing down the stairs in pursuit. The clouds above began to flow in a far more pronounced spiral.