The Murk.

With the vibrant tarantulas scattered for the moment, the Pale Priestess and her company of rats and Dwarves took a moment to contemplate their whereabouts. As wonderful as her Omni-Orb was, there was no GPS functionality attached to one’s subliminal desire, meaning there was no way to know where they had penetrated the Prime Material’s crust.

“Maybe we can send out the Skitterers to scout,” Hanmoul suggested from the vox-channel. “They’re not exactly crafted to navigate the Himsegg, though, and neither are our maps. Until we make modifications, I fear yer on yer own.”

Skitterers, which Gwen had mentally filed as skittles, were a relatively new addition to the Dwarven mechanised brigades made for combined arms. Designed with non-Dwarven users in mind, the Christmas Island crab-crawlers possess Divination Mandalas that allow for localised Clairvoyance fed back to a user’s sensory unit. Gwen’s only gripe was that these Murk-use “drones” were massive and heavy, about the size of four Coconut Crabs, though they did fit snugly into Storage Rings and pouches. More typically, Mandalas were etched onto the drone shells as payloads, and the vision was merely a way to steer the constructs in the right direction.

“No need,” Gwen made the call based on their present circumstance. “Get the troops prepared. I’ll take a gander out there myself. Ariel?”

“Ee–Ees!” Ariel replied at once, chaperoning the hounds. Though Ariel should be taking on human speech after its celestial upgrade, time and practice were rare resources, for the articulation of Human lingua franca took an excess of effort when one possessed a Draconic tongue.

With a few muttered mnemonic syllables, her Familiar turned invisible, simultaneously shrinking its size and repressing its Draconic presence. For the latter, Gwen was glad, for she was previously distraught that Ariel would no longer fit into the subspace of her Astral Body. Thankfully, when she appealed to Slylth, a combined study of Elven “source” sorcery and Morden’s “source” teachings was enough to modify the parameters of her Summon Familiar—though Gwen still attributed their eventual success to Ariel’s maturing control over its new body.

Now past the edge of the vertically askew “gate”, her dogs fanned out, surging for the exit and its exciting smells of tropical warmth, spilling from the Himsegg Vjeit.

Outside, Gwen’s third eye quickly adjusted to the light.

Her immediate realisation was just how hypersensitive her low-light vision had become in the dark. Aided by her changed physiology, she could see just as well in the Murk’s dim fungi-glow and lumen-orb halls as the outside. This meant that the brilliance outside wasn’t unmitigated sun, but filtered light shining through an understorey of sorts. They were also not in a clearing, as the word might imply, but the regrowth of a section that was destroyed and cleared some time ago. Above and besides Ariel, all she could see were thick swaths of translucent webbing, great sheets of it, layered and strewn as silken bedding across the great girth of trees not felled by the passing of the passage’s former travellers.

There were spiders cowering in the tunnels dug into the base of the fallen tree's rotting hollows. From the sheer volume of creatures she could see at a glance, Gwen deduced that the fallen wood had created a perfect habitat, for any break in the canopy of a thick forest meant immense opportunities for both predators and prey.

Her Familiar rose into the air.

Her dogs growled and hissed at the spiders, cowing the intelligent creatures into submission. With their Draconic likeness and imposing auras, even a Beast Tide would think twice before engaging a swarm of divinely imbued draconic-dogs.

There was something very familiar about the area. Visually, it was a strange place, but the vibe of the place was something that spoke to Gwen’s bones, telling her that she had been here before.

Kakadu? Her mind raced.

The Daintree?

No… according to Ariel, the scent was familiar to itself, meaning this wasn’t somewhere she had seen or walked in her past life.

Then…

Amazonia. Her mind performed a little mental pirouette as the realisation struck.

If we’re truly in Amazonia, Gwen forced herself to move past the shock. Then that means…

“SKARRRRRRK–!” A thunderclap rang out.

FUCK. Gwen’s premonition, linked to Ariel, stiffened every segment of her spine.

“EE–?” Her familiar had just enough time to look up and duck when a pair of fang-like claws missed its invisible body by inches. The bird-of-prey was grasping for straws, but that doesn’t change the fact that it could sense the general presence of her Familiar.

Below, her hounds were not nearly so lucky.

A lightning Hound gave only a cut-off whimper as a shadowy blur snatched up its waist, a dozen claws penetrating the thick hide and crackling lightning without so much as a token resistance. A Void Hound, too apathetic to pain to react quickly, was smashed into smithereens, becoming a gooey splatter as a massive wing struck its upper torso.

Buck, her leading Void Hound, barked and leapt, only to be caught in a massive, man-sized pair of jaws, losing its lower limbs as its torso was tossed to and fro into a scattering ring of spiders fleeing into the forest’s depths.

“BIG BIRD–!” She swore from inside the tunnel, drawing looks of confusion and chaos from the Rat-kin and the Dwarves. The linguistics that her mind intended was in Chinese, utilising the pictograms for the “Peng”. In Dwarven, however, the translated expression indicated a large, bipedal avian who taught Alphabets on Sesame Street. “Lower the Entran—no. Leave it until I say so!”

She was sure that if the ground began to move, the creatures would immediately flee.

Ariel recovered, drinking in the horror below.

There was one… two… THREE Da-peng slinging through the air, humanoid fingers spread to gasp at the delicious scent of Dragons below. Their faces, crone-like with large hooked noses that resembled beaks, possessed cruel smiles lined with teeth that reminded Gwen of a buzzsaw. From the difference of their wingspans, she guessed that this was a family, with the female being the largest and most powerful, while the buck and the chick were smaller in comparison.

Ariel was an elevated existence, but the natural repression of its Draconic-everything by the Da-peng wasn’t something her Familiar’s liminal physiology could overcome. Every screech from the Da-peng sent its fur to stand on end, stabbing Gwen’s brain with dizzying crescendos of nails running-writing on chalkboard.

Paranoid of Ariel drawing even more Da-peng, she pumped her Kirin full of Almudj’s calming Essence, willing it to return.

The largest of the Da-peng launched itself like a raptor, ignoring the bites, blasts and entanglements from the Hounds. From wingtip to wingtip, the monstrosity mentally measured between ten to twelve meters. Below its obscene body, unlike her own Caliban’s dainty white fingers, the Da-peng’s limbs were crooked and distended, its digits double-jointed and covered in the scaly epidermis of rooster claws.

“SKARRRRRRK–!”

“SKARRRRRRK–!”

Two barks marked the limit of Ariel’s observation, as Gwen could already feel their Empathic Link disintegrating.

With a command, she tasked the dogs to flee into the undergrowth, hoping to draw the Big Birds away.

Simultaneously, in cowed silence, her Kirin slid back into the trap-door lid of the elevated tunnel platform.

“Force swords hot. Drop the opening if they clear the entrance…" She commanded her troops. “Strun, whatever happens, don’t fight the Big Bird in melee. Lulu—”

Seven hovering blades rotated overhead, ready to skewer whatever made their way into the tunnel.

It took Ariel only a few silent seconds to return to her side, whereupon it hid behind her, slightly shivering, a frightened child having found the bogeymen.

Years ago, she had fought the Da-peng to a standstill. Those were hard-won fights involving Golos, blood, and more guts than she possessed at the time.

Now there was no Golos, but she had a small legion of battle-hardened shock troops. The problem, alas, was that her Murk warriors were conditioned to fight the monsters of the appropriate Element, and not near-impervious flying foes capable of crushing Golems like jello cups.

Gwen’s brain rapidly cooled as the Void Mana filled her conduits. After ten seconds of meticulous verbal and mental invocation, the space in front of her shimmered then split, birthing forth a Black Sword of Disaster that drank deep the feeble light.

At the back of her mind, Caliban lurked, ready to face the Da-peng with a bird-form of its own.

“Stun the bird and I’ll finish it…” She silently delivered the message to her bodyguard. “Golems—focus on entrapment and disorientation. You won’t be able to kill a Big Bird even with everything you have.”

Debris descended from the ceiling as the Big Birds ducked into the tunnel, showering the tunnel’s inhabitants with oxidised iron. Big Birds, despite their size and seemingly weightless selves, were extremely heavy creatures. As a sorceress wearing the crow-skin of a superior specimen, she knew exactly how much her modest suit could weigh if the Elemental Air feeding the feathers were disabled.

“Skarrrrr–?” A living mask of cruelty poked through the opening, salivating at the prospect of more Draconic-something.

Gwen stifled her revulsion to study the likeness of an insaneJack Nicholson measuring just over two meters from chin to brow, peering into the threshold, squawking that here it comes with a barbed, distended tongue.

Their eyes met.

The Dapeng… smiled.

Every hair on Gwen’s body stood still, and she sensed that her Rat-kin were doing the same. The Dwarves with their extreme combat discipline remained unfazed, but all who Almudj’s serpentine Essence touched felt for the first time in a long time, the unmistakable feeling of becoming prey.

THUMP—!

The largest of the Big Birds landed on the furthest platform, its head barely missing the lifted ceiling.

Gwen levitated into the air, her aura imperial and inviolable.

Come here, birbies.... The Regent hissed. If she was right and here was Amazonia, then fighting a Big Bird would only bring Papa Bird. Killing Papa Bird would only bring Elder Bird, then Venerable Elder Bird, then Ancestor Bird, then True Ancestor Bird…

Her projection was a worst-case scenario, as no data existed on the habitat, nature, and societies of the Da-peng beyond folklore—but it wasn’t something she was willing to risk.

Silently, her Black Blade moved into place, hidden in a darkness of its own making.

Behind the female, the male and the chick also poked their heads in to regard the unexpected boon.

“Kukuku–KuKU—” The female nodded its head, miming the bobbing motions of an owl mid-hunt. With no signs that it felt threatened, the avian body of the Big Bird lowered itself into the likeness of a missile, its tail feathers spreading in a display of intimidation.

“SKARRRRRRK—!” The tunnel shook from the vibrations of its steel-piering voice. Vox boxes sizzled, sparks flew, and Gwen’s Rat-kin shivered.

The Big Birds charged.

HOLD. The Regent demanded of her troops. HOLD—HOLD—HOLD—“NOW! Drop the gate!”

“—KARRGGHNN—!” The leading Big Bird was instantly caught in the narrowing space of a pair of Walls of Force erected by the Dwarven Shield Golems. Ever since their adventure into the Earthen Dragon’s lair, the Dwarves’ arsenal had been updated to deal with creatures capable of exerting seismic force.

Before the bird could distent itself and bring its crushing claws to bear, Lulan sprang her attack.

With metallic shrieks, long metal slabs too large to be called swords pierced through the air, striking the soft flesh of the immobilised face with so much force that Gwen wouldn’t be surprised if a shard shot out the bird’s ass.

As the penetrating blades met the impenetrable face, the cavern rang out with a conclusive CLANG as spiralling shards of superheated metal skittered across the force panes. Lulan swore as her successive swords stuck, each adding to the first, yet failing to punch through the sneering human likeness.

The gargantuan avian howled. It wasn’t dead, but it was grievously injured. A sword had lodged itself into an eye socket, and though it thrashed and fought, parts of its face were mangled, as was a generous segment of its lower jaw. Its remaining eye, Gwen could see, was shattered by the hot spall.

Behind it, the Golems had trapped the smaller human-faced birds with interlocking Force Cages, restricting their powerful bodies.

“Regent–!” Hanmoul was horrified but not shaken. “Permission to fire!”

Strun barked a his men, each eager to show the Pale Priestess their worth by distending their bladed gaunlets.

“Don’t!” Gwen knew there was little the Elemental damage from the Spellswords could do. What they needed against the Big Birds was overwhelming force. “Strun, keep your kin back!”

Gwen wondered if she should be glad that their victim remained the low-cunning variety, for the blinded Big Bird possessed no means to address its injury through mystic healing or elemental magic. Instead, it simply attempted to push through so that in its final moments, it may yet taste flesh and vengeance.

Disgusted, the Regent raised a hand in the style taught by Slylth, using a pinch-pull gesture to control her Blade of concentrated Void.

With an alien sound of space being devoured, her sword slithered forth, striking the trapped Da-peng square in its howling maw.

Her fingers spread and closed, willing her sword to perform flowering strikes and swallow-swings. With each hit, she felt her vitality diminish ever so slightly, as if she were cutting through something denser than stone, yet offering the resistance of soft butter.

This story has been stolen from NovelBin. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“Skarrrrkk–!” The remaining Big Birds, suddenly afraid, made the ether Engines powering the Force Cubes roar as they pounded the Force panes with enough kinetic energy to shatter boulders.

Lulan fired off new volleys, mangling their exposed bodies.

CRUNG—! The trapdoor gate finally closed, sealing the offenders inside.

“Lulu, beat them within an inch of their life,” Gwen gave the command. “If we’re where I think we are, we’re going to be fighting these things on the regular… I want an autopsy, research, and solutions. Hanmoul, do you think yours Spellswords can be modified to fight these?”

“Certainly, yer Regent,” the Dwarven Golem bobbed its cockpit.

While the howling continued, Gwen switched her mind’s eye back to the Hounds who were even now creating chaos in the undercanopy.

All of her Lightning Hounds were dead now, leaving only two Void Hounds sustaining themselves by devouring the forest’s eight-legged inhabitants.

Suddenly, without warning, one of her Essence links winked out, disappearing in less time than it took for her to swallow the shared pain. The final hound, its monochrome vitality-vision scanning the surroundings, lifted its head to regard what it knew to be overhead.

An imposing beacon of triple-distilled vitality stood above it—but from the silhouette, Gwen could tell that this was no Big Bird.

It was a woman.

With her eyeless dog, there was no way to tell what the woman truly was—only that the lithe figure regarded her dog with interest, raised her hand…

Then Gwen was once more back in her body, listening to the howling of two Big Birds being slowly and meticulously broken so that they could be strapped, boxed, and sent back to Shalkar.

Amazonia.

The Murk.

Deep under a newly sealed segment of the low-way, the Regent patted herself on the back for her meticulous, anal-retentive command to line every new Dyar Morkk with Divination lines and arrays that would allow both teleportation and communication with her capital city.

Unlike her last trip to Amazonia, there were no hours of flights, multiple ISTC stations, and hefty payments to the FedEx Tower in Hawaii.

Instead, she merely set the boxed Big Birds, wings shattered and bodies well-packed in triple-redundant Force Cubes, onto a mechanical platform and watched them traverse back to Shalkar under guard and key while she made a call to her advisors.

On the Lumen-casters in her makeshift command tent, she was greeted by the holographic Projected Image of Slylth, Richard, and the Druidess Sanari, who was apparently waiting to answer her summons.

“Uncle Dhànthárian isn’t one to fib,” Slylth assured her. “If he says that’s where the infested Dwarves have gone, that’s where they’ve absolutely decided to lay down their new… tentacles?”

“If indeed the Sinneslukare hostages are somehow holed up in Amazonia, that’s arguably out of our reach,” Richard spoke from a thorough knowledge of the Mageocracy’s political red strings. “The Commonwealth ends at the Canadian border to the north. In the south, there are only the Falkland Islands. The Mageocracy hasn’t landed in that Black Zone since… the Beast Tide.”

“Then Shalkar shall go at it alone,” Gwen did not feel that the Mageocracy needed to be involved in the vendetta of the Dwarves. “Legally, we’re in no man’s land… unless…”

She looked at the serene face of Sanari.

“Mmm…” Slylth was also looking at the Elf. “Yes. You’re in the domain of Quar-Tath, she’s as old as Mother, but nowhere near as hospitable.”

The Hvítálfar’s eternally unchanging smile demurely awaited her Regent’s questions.

“Indeed. Yet, what’s to prevent me from cleaving out an outpost and hunting down the Big Birds?” Gwen asked through the vox box. “Sanari, you know I am a member of the Accord. I am not adverse to its labour. What’s the ordeal this time? Do we need to speak in private?”

“Regent,” the Druid smiled a little. “I know it can be difficult to believe, but leading you here is also the extent of our power. The Matron of the Long Night reigns in Amazonia, and our mistress, The Bloom in White, has no sway in this domain.”

Gwen considered the Elf’s words. “That may be… but I would still like to know the catch. What’s the outcome Tryfan is expecting?”

“Tryfan can reveal that our kin-slayer, the professed founder of your Spectre, has trafficked with the Mistress…”

“Is that a Dragon?” Gwen noted the changed title.

“No, Quar-Tath is the Midnight Elder responsible for the World Tree Che’ell-Cressen,” Slylth helpfully appended her limited knowledge of The Accord’s members. “The Mistress would be her Vessel, Phyr Quar-Tath. Is that correct, Lady Sanari?”

“One of the seven Vessels of The Long Night,” Sanari added to the Red Dragon’s cheat sheet. “There is a complex ecology in Amazonia, interwoven via a convoluted system of sisters and Web Spires. They have chosen to amuse themselves within their realm, choosing not to heed the troubles of the Prime Material so long as their vast domain lies untouched.”

“How vast are we talking here?” Gwen pointed out something important to her expedition. “Like Deepholm? Like the poles? Or…?”

“In the standardised units borrowed from the Dökkálfar used by your civilisation,” Sanari spoke like a happy biologist dissecting an obedient frog. “Amazonia covers six point-seven million square kilometres, discounting its arboreal pocket spaces.”

Gwen stared at her Druidess.

Sanari, platinum blonde and very pretty, smiled back.

“That's… er… five hundred… Tasmanias?” Richard helped his Regent visualise her task. “We know it's seven Sydney to one Tassie, so…”

“Thank you, Richard,” Gwen sighed. “So I’ll use the Omni Orb. Sanari, what happens if we run into the Svartálfar?”

“Ah, there would be great joy,” Sanari spoke happily. “If I were to meet our cousins.”

“Oh?” Gwen felt relieved. “So…”

“... They will capture me alive, and throw me into the Gore Pits to fight all manner of creatures found in Amazonia until I perish from exhaustion, whereupon they shall feed my flesh to their favourite beasts, which are spiders.”

“You said great joy…”

“Their joy,” Sanari nodded wisely. “The Svartálfar are sensates, highly attuned to hedonistic emotions. It is how they pass the time. An eternity of isolation has twisted our cousins in manners we cannot fathom, only accept.”

“Mother said that the Svartálfar are sociopathic, insular psychopaths and masochists who deserve nothing more than to be turned into ash in a pyre,” Slylth said helpfully. “She said I may kill any that bothers me, since Quar-Tath will never leave her lair.”

Gwen knitted her brows with her fingers. “We’re in her lair… but I get it. Thanks, Slylth.”

The Red Dragon beamed.

“Okay, okay,” Gwen reorganised her thoughts. “Big Birds. What’s the deal there?”

“Now that’s a good question,” Slylth, favourite of the Regent, raised his hand again. “I don’t think Quar-Tath is working with them. Such alliances never happened in the Primordial Age, and I don’t see why it could happen now.”

“We suspect there are pockets of space… in the Prime Material that have survived the great cataclysms of the past,” Sanari offered her sagely wisdom as usual. “These Mauk-xathi

, the hunter killers, were rulers of entire arboreal bird-doms. That a pocket should survive in Amazonia, where many such kingdoms were concentrated, isn’t so surprising. Besides, the Matron of the Long Night cares nothing for the space above Amazonia. Blessed Che’ell-Cressen is sustained easily enough by the lay-nodes feeding it from the Murk. So long as these… Big Birds know not to venture into her domain; we can only assume they are her excellent guard dogs.”

“So, Tryfan and the other Dragons know there are Big Birds here, but it's not your or their problem. Quar-Tath knows there are Big Birds out there, but they don’t bother her because it keeps the other Dragons away…” Gwen rolled her eyes. “I see how it is. You guys weren’t so chill when it came to the Kirin Clan.”

“It's The Accord,” Sanari shrugged, her pretty shoulder blades wrapped in simmering moon silk. “To erase a pocket plane from her arboreal domain would involve either a war with Che’ell-Cressen, or require permission for mass destruction. The Lady Matron might be a homebody now, but in the Primordial Days, she was quite the widow-maker. That’s why her domain is the single largest expanse of the Prime Material under the rule of a sole monarch.”

“I see,” Gwen replied contemplatively. “I think I know what we need to do. Sanari, can you somehow give us a general location of where we are?”

“If you bring the Llias Leaf into the Prime Material and plant one of its seeds, yes,” the Druid nodded.

“Great,” she paused for thought, then affirmed the plan in her mind. “Wait for my call.”

It took the Dwarves only six hours to seal the Himsegg Vjeiti and install a Mandala array that would displace its location within the Murk, ensuring that wildlife without access to complex spatial magic could not access the precise space the original exit occupied. The exact rationale behind the Spellcraft was the very phenomenon that fuelled Petra’s Spellcubes, and therefore beyond the ken of the Regent of Shalkar, whose only role was playing the beneficiary of Dwarven ingenuity.

From their abandoned outpost, Gwen once again consulted her Omni Orb, instructing the Fabricator to tunnel beneath the surface through the liminal space they called the Murk until the Dwarves determined that they had reached another section of Amazonia, almost six hundred kilometres from their original exit.

This time, her Dwarves hand-built a “breaching” platform used to penetrate the final membranes of spatial fabric between the Murk and the Prime Material, then set about deploying mechanical Skitterers in place of Gwen’s Hounds.

The expedition set up their new FOB, then, after a hearty meal and a generous amount of drink, her men sobered up and then proceeded with the deployment.

The Regent watched with heartfelt appreciation as Runes surrounding a Star Gate array moved into place, finding the minute fluctuations that ate away at the Prime Material. When finally the ether engines subsided, the swirling pool of cobalt conjuration gave way to what looked like the interior of a subterranean cave.

Without subtlety, the clanking Skitterers roved into the newly opened chamber, their sensor arrays linked to Master cartographers whose conjured Sand Moulds formed into scale miniatures of their next destination.

“Salt Cave, Regent. All clear.” Hanmoul studied the living geometry unfolding like a 3-D printer spooling the interior of a jagged organ. “These are naturally forming. There’s likely a river below it, meaning if we follow the water, we’ll be out and about in the Himsegg in no time.”

“Well done, Commander,” Gwen gave the Dwarf an appreciative pat on the knee-plating. “Strun, take the Shadow Guards and give the outside a sweep before I venture to the top side. Be very careful. Stay hidden.”

Her Rat-kin commander bowed. He and a dozen Rat-men in lightly mechanised garbs moved swiftly through the portal, instantly disappearing into the shadow.

On the cartographer’s table, Gwen watched her men file into the void, silencing the aggressive fauna as they went. From their Murk Gate to the cave’s lip, there looked to be a kilometre of arduous traverse, though that should prove no hardship for herself and Lulan.

Momentarily, her Rat-kin arrived.

“Mistress, we’re at the cave mouth. It’s a cliffside, and the forest stretches out to the horizon.”

Once again, Gwen can only sigh at Ruxin’s gift.

Truly, her Omni-Orb was a miraculous device hand-crafted by the Yinglong… and all it cost her was Evee and Percy.

“We wait,” she instructed her rats. “Let’s take this one with a bit more patience than the last…”

While they waited, she checked on her troops, and spoke at length with Hamoul of the events transpiring both in Shalkar and in the Murk. Her Commander expressed that, indeed, Irøngut’s Grudge was not something his people took lightly, and even if they were to fight the velvet-skinned “knife ear cousins” of Tryfan, Deepholm would commit its full force to hunt down the infested Dwarves with their stolen crafts of the Ancestors. Gwen’s assurance was that, of what she knew of the Elves, Dragons and their Trees, they would never ally with the Undead—though it wasn’t unimaginable that the Sinneslukare could be the pawns of a “pruning” related scheme.

Two hours later, Strun reported that he had spied exactly zero Big Birds, though Harpies and the likes were plentiful, and a few had even gotten close enough to almost sniff out the Rat-kin hidden in the crevices and nooks.

“Thank you, Strun. I’ll be there shortly.”

Taking advantage of their well-mastered Flight skills and armed with Lulan’s Shape Earth, Gwen and her bodyguard navigated the cave and its narrow turns without incident, arriving to greet a semi-circle of Rat-kin Shadow Guards.

Carefully, the Regent of Shalkar produced her Llias pouch and brought it to life with her Essence.

In her hands, the pouch stirred. From its opening, a seed rolled forth, instantly taking root as it landed, rapidly germinating the verdant Sigil-sorcery the Druids used in their home of Tryfan.

Within moments, a flowering Trellis Gate had matured.

Gwen watched as a meniscus of thin mana formed like creeping frost over a still, wintery lake across the gate’s threshold.

She had seen this scene before, and knew that in the next moment—

“Regent,” Sanari, their resident Druid, stepped through the portal. When it settled once more into stillness, she could see that the other side held a dear and familiar setting.

“Is that the Sky Garden on the lower bower of my World Tree? Is that Phelara?” Gwen could scarcely believe that Sanari had traversed something like half the globe by taking a single step from her tree. “How stable is this gate?”

“Stable, but ephemeral,” Sanari reported. “Only the Hvítálfar and those blessed by you, with our distinct constitutions and attunements, may pass the gate without destroying it.”

“Oh…” Gwen felt a sense of disappointment. “No Golos then?”

“It is best to transport Lord Golos through the Murk, I fear,” Sanari confirmed. “Lord Slylth, as well, has petitioned to join you. However, considering the circumstances, I do not recommend that you approach the discovery of our foes with such heavy-handed Draconic means.”

“Right,” Gwen recalled that indeed, she was here for the Squid-Lich, not to fight the Big Birds to a standstill or invade the lair of a Black Dragon. “So, where am I now? Am I in or out of Amazonia?”

The smiling Druid materialised a map woven from what looked like the fibres of a leaf. To Gwen’s amazement, it unfurled into a detailed map of what she recognised to be the northern and middle portions of South America. “The Bloom has asked me to give you this living leaf to use while traversing the realm of The Long Night. She says that so long as you do not step into the Demi-Plane that houses Che’ell-Cressen, the Vessel Sisters of Quar-Tath should ignore your passage.”

“And if I do trespass?” Gwen asked. When it came to hidden clauses, Tryfan always answered with a resounding yeah-nah. All the same, she allowed her Essence to nurture the leaf-map, noting that it passively commuicated her wereabouts.

“You are the Vessel of an Elder One,” Sanari assured her. “Whatever mindful cruelty the Spire’s Sisters possess, they respect those with an unbound capacity for violence—and you, Regent, have been wielding a great deal of it of late.”

Gwen considered the truism. To her knowledge, the Dragon’s council had spoken of her ordeal with Dhànthárian, meaning the Matron of the Long Night must have also heard of her feats second-hand. What remained to be seen was if—

DING—! Her Message spell chimed. This far into Amazonia, the only sender would be one of her Shadow Guards stationed on the cliffs and beyond.

“Yes?” She answered, noting that the Message was also channelled to their three officers, Strun, Lulan and Hanmoul. “What’s the matter?”

“Your Paleness,” the voice of reverence that answered back possessed a strange tone of unwavering faith fulfilled. “Centurion Ixich has found something. We believe you should personally see to the validity of his discovery.”

“Strun?” she cocked her head habitually to hear the Message better. “What is it? Tell me it's not a Big Bird nest.”

“My Regent,” Strun’s voice echoed that of his subordinate. “We found a survivor of what I believe to be an expedition from Tawantinsuyu.”

Gwen raised both brows.

“The survivor is delirious from being lost in the undercanopy, but he recognised me from a Lumen-cast broadcast. He says his name… is Tupac, and that us finding him was Inti’s providence.”

“You found… Tupac? Alive?” Lyrical rhymes, accompanied by the Doctor’s most bombastic G-funk beats, flashed across her frontal lobe, bringing cringeworthy memories of her teenagehood before settling into the reality of her IIUC yesteryear in Cuzco.

Once she recovered, the Regent of Shalkar turned to regard the unaffected face of the Druid standing beside her, and her eager Omni Orb, still edging toward the exit to deliver her heart’s desire.

“Providence?” she complained not to Strun, but her Druid. “Yeah-Nah... I think not.”