Then the wind was gone, or at least diminished enough for Ignatius to stand again and the administrators to chase down their fleeing paperwork. When he finally looked back to the shrine of Mordo Ogg, the priest saw two azure flames blazing in the eye sockets.

It had been a long time since Ignatius knew the cold prickle of fear; he’d made his peace with death years ago, and since then he’d grown friendly with it. Yet where a familiar warmth should have kept rhythm in time to life’s cycle beating against the edge of oblivion, now there was only a frozen blue flame.

Icy terror bloomed in Ignatius’ chest, and hot tears cut through the soot staining his face. He shook with horror and fury as he stared at the offending gleam in his master’s eyes. “Why won’t you move on?” he rasped. “It’s time to leave.”

Timing is everything.

There is an old adage that timing is most important in comedy and in combat. This lends itself to a humorous series of observations about how jesters are like professional heroes, though such statements are usually made by the jesters and in the absence of said adventurers. Other professions might take umbrage as well, though only because they feel an equal claim to the significance of timing. A day trader on the Wall can make or lose a fortune on the speed of their trade sprites. Seconds can literally be the difference between life and death for a healer’s patients. And any pastry chef in Andarun could tell you that the shortest increment of time in the universe is the span it takes a perfect soufflé in the oven to become a misshapen lump.

Yet professional heroes live and die by timing like no other profession. A good adventurer must know how to move in sync with swinging pendulums, release the rope at just the right moment to land on the far ledge, and dance through the rhythm of a group melee. A hero needs to be able to sense when it’s the right time for a dramatic line, or a sneak attack, or a show of force. And more important than any of that is knowing when it is time to leave.

It was past time to leave.

Gorm could see the Dragon of Wynspar clambering from the dark depths. It can be difficult to read expressions on a face as long as a chariot and full of teeth like claymores, but something in the crimson dragon’s eyes suggested that it had moved on from its flight response and was ready to give fight a good show of it. It unfurled its broken wings, tattered and ripped by its fall, and began to advance on the party in a limping, stumbling clip.

“Get movin’! Find cover!” he shouted to the other heroes. He watched the dragon build up figurative steam and literal smoke as it charged through the cavern. “Go! We’ll be right behind ye.”

The party didn’t need much encouragement, or at least much more than a rampaging dragon, and they ran down the branching pathways toward the heart of the cavern. The beast roared behind them.

“All right, lass. See it through to the end, remember? Bein’ professional saves lives. And, he didn’t…” Gorm swallowed the lump in his throat and tugged gently on the Elf’s arm. “He didn’t die so ye could throw yer life away.”

He meant it to be a gentle reminder, but the ranger flinched as though physically struck by the words. Still, whether it was shock or pain or reason, something he said got Kaitha on her feet and they sprinted after the others. Whatever the Dwarf’s stout legs lacked in reach they made up for in vigor, and he was gaining on the mages when he heard the sound of a rushing wind. The dragon’s enraged bellow paused long enough for a sharp rush of air behind him, like Ad’az filling the great bellows of his divine smithy. The other heroes scrambled behind the next stone tree, but it was too far for Gorm to make in time.

Adrenaline lanced through Gorm like lightning through an oak, activating instincts honed over decades of not being skewered, disintegrated, or eaten by monsters. He leapt out over the void just as the dragon breathed a wall of fire toward him.

Gorm watched that frozen moment, that tiny eternity where time seemed to slow to a standstill, over and over again in his mind.

Several things went right for the Dwarf. The first was that the dragon, having been subjected to a Troll to the face and subsequently tumbling through the stone glade like a flaming pinball, was clearly wounded enough to diminish its capacity for violence. Its fiery breath came out as more of a smoldering cough.

The blobs of mucus and magma that Wynspar’s guardian hacked up were still enough to roast Gorm in his armor, but the Dwarf had timed his leap perfectly, judged the gap with an expert eye, and been nudged in the right direction by the sort of air currents that form when stale dungeon air is stirred by an ancient elemental spirit of fire on a murderous rampage. The uninitiated might have called it luck. A veteran hero would say timing is everything. Either is a euphemism for the fact that in any given life-threatening scenario, some adventurers beat the odds.

Yet, odds being what they are, some don’t.

He looked back as he hit the ledge and saw Kaitha had made the same calculation, attempted the same leap, sought safety in the same walkway. Yet she must have been a step behind him, or miscalculated the gap in haste or grief, or perhaps caught a less favorable wind, because her trajectory wasn’t leading to the same destination. Gorm’s eyes met the Elf’s in that frozen fraction of a second while she hung in the air, and his stomach dropped as time resumed its horrible march. The ranger dropped as well, and then she was gone.

“Kaitha!” Hot tears streamed down Gorm’s face as he shouted. He scrambled to look over the edge; a yawning black void stared back at him impassively.

He wanted to search the darkness for her, to call out again, to figure out a plan to get her back. But dragons are nothing if not difficult to ignore, and the monster still bounding toward him was sufficient reminder of how quickly and easily two dead party members could become three if he lost sight of the mission.

He scrambled back from the edge just as the dragon rushed past him, still dribbling molten slobber from its wounded maw. The dragon’s advance hadn’t been so much a final charge as a push past enemy lines to get back to its lair, and now it limped and stumbled back toward wherever it had come from.

Gorm set his grief aside, next to his mourning and regret. There would be time to sit down with them later, unpack them, and attempt to drown them in a barrel of ale. But now, he rejoined the remainder of his party with a grim look in his red-rimmed eyes.

“Where’s Kaitha?” Laruna asked.

The Dwarf shook his head.

“No,” whispered Heraldin. “She can’t be⁠—”

“Later,” Gorm growled. “There’ll be a time for questions and tears and raisin’ glasses to the fallen later, but only if we survive. We’ve got to finish this.”

“And what ‘this’ are we finishing?” Laruna demanded. “We were down here to prove there was no dragon. I’d say that ship has sailed!”

“We wanted to prove Johan was down here for something besides killing the dragon,” Jynn offered.

The solamancer shook her head. “Was he? He and his party tried to break through that wall that the dragon was hiding behind, before some of them turned undead.”

“You don’t believe that,” Jynn said

Laruna shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. The people will.”

“I thought we were avoiding being executed,” said Heraldin.

“That doesn’t seem to be working out either,” Laruna growled. “Not for all of us.”

Gorm chewed on his lip and watched the light of the dragon’s flame shrink as it fled to the mountain depths. It was true that this adventure had significantly more giant, fire-breathing reptiles than he’d anticipated, and of all the projections a hero made when planning a quest, the number of dragons seemed like the worst one to underestimate.

Still, professional heroes encountered unexpected monsters all the time, and it wasn’t cause for uncertainty. The guild’s standard course of action was to kill and loot the foe or, failing that, retreat, regroup with other heroes, come back with better gear, and then kill and loot the foe. Besides, the dragon wasn’t unexpected. Everybody on Arth expected there to be a dragon. The markets had quite literally bet a fortune on it. They had bet everyone’s fortune on it. And now they expected Gorm to do what Gorm did best.

Get in, get angry, get violent, get out, and get rich. It was practically a reflex for the berserker after all of these years. He was already in, and with two dear friends lost, he was far past angry. If he could get violent enough to make it out of the dungeon, riches were a given. Even Johan couldn’t touch him.

Doubts tugged at his mind. They had strong evidence that the Golden Dawn were killed by Johan, and not a monster. They’d been sent into a trap with some hideous new form of undead waiting for them. They had the paperwork to prove that the dragon wasn’t responsible for any of the recent attacks in its name, and the old Stennish magic had hidden the dragon from everyone. And when he put it all together… well, when he put it all together he had far more questions than answers. But the one answer he did have had always worked before, and it would satisfy his growing itch for vengeance. Gorm’s wrath, his paperwork, and his purpose were totally aligned. What came next was obvious.

Gorm drew his axe. “We keep going.”

“Where?” demanded Laruna.

“Not entirely sure on the destination, but we’ve got a contract, and that gives us a direction.” Gorm blinked back his own tears as he pointed an axe in the direction of the fleeing dragon. “We’re in a dungeon, we’re fightin’ a dragon, and there may still be a treasure. That’s as basic as quests come. Much as it hurts, no matter the cost, we swore we’d see it through to the end. And this ain’t over.”

“There’s still time,” said Johan the Mighty. “I still have time.”

Garold Flinn couldn’t say for sure if that was true. He wasn’t entirely clear on what the king was referring to, or even if Johan was addressing him. Yet the assassin smiled and said “Yes, sire,” as he approached the throne, because not agreeing that Johan had more time would likely increase the odds that Flinn didn’t.

The king sat perfectly still on the throne, staring into nothing with eyes as wide, round, and mad as the full moon. His cornsilk hair spilled in unkempt tangles over his golden armor; the pallid skin of his face stretched into a rictus sneer. It was unclear to Flinn how long the paladin had sat motionlessly watching the air, though he found a worrying sign in an enterprising spider that had found time to spin a web from the king’s pauldron to the royal armrest.

“I sent the Stone Skulls of Az’Herad the Mad. They’ll… they’ll work,” said Johan. “I still have time. It has to work.”

“Indeed, sire,” said Flinn, glancing around the empty throne room. He had seldom ventured into the chamber, but these days there weren’t many prying eyes within the palace. There didn’t seem to be anyone at all, yet his eyes settled on a thick rolled rug inexpertly propped in a dark corner.

“It will work. It has to. Mr. Flinn did what I asked,” said Johan.

The king said it to the empty air with total conviction, as one might tell a garden hedge about a bedrock truth.

“Absolutely, sire. Every detail to your specification.”