Amazonia.

Puerto Maldonado.

Much in the same vein as its northern Mexica neighbour in the resurgent city of Neo Tenochtitlan, Cuzco’s reversal of the Euro-centric Age of Discovery had left a legacy of colonial naming conventions for its various locales.

The Port of Maldonado was named after its founder, a Peruvian Mage from Lima with the distinctly un-Incan name of Faustian Maldonado. Faustian was a native by blood, but like many of his kin at the turn of the 19th century, the erasure of Incan culture meant many sons and daughters of the Sun Kingdom had taken on the ironic inheritance of their colonisers.

Situated in the Southern Suryu, land of the Antis, Puerto Maldonado was accessible only because it was the point of confluence between the Madre de Dios and Tambopata rivers.

Historically, this was where the colonists harvested the twin resources of mahogany and rubber, both of which were equal to the wealth of HDMs found downstream of the Wall of the Woods.

It was here that the Antis tribe of Cuzco affirmed their knowledge that the Yana Yumbo, the Apuof the ukhu pacha, “The World Below”, were not products of survivors’ hysteria.

In the long-frayed rope-records of their Incan ancestors, the Forest Spirits of the Dark were beings deserving of worship. They were mythics, ageless and inhuman, cruel and playful and full of unknowable whimsy.

To test the mettle of Human rulers, the Apu often gifted tribesmen with elixirs and treasures, which invariably led to inter-clan conflict and violence. Other times, they blessed weaker tribes, so that the ambitions of humble men grew beyond the stone walls of their small kingdoms. Other times, they warned the Antis of the Beast Tides to come, then watched from the trees as the Incans’ ancestors were devoured. Later, better-recorded incidents involved an Apu showing the Spaniards where they could tap into an almost limitless reserve of rubber trees, leading to the cessation of a peace treaty that had been two generations in the making.

There were many such stories, but the grand narrative that linked the tales of the Yana Yumbo was strife, chaos, and sadistic delight. Yet, the Apu were not seen as evil, for their influence upon the material world was perceived as trials for the Suyu and its king, the Sun of Inti.

Ergo, the rulers of Antis took great care to temper their passion for the riches beyond Puerto Maldonado, fearing the mischief of the Apu, gradually mythologising their existence into something to frighten the children at night.

Presently, it was in this very port that the Regent of Shalkar, her Sword Mage, and her Rat-kin Commander now arrived.

From the air, the enormous banks of the Rio Madre De Dios carved a serpentine, squiggly “U” into the landscape, creating within its natural shelter a clearing a mere five kilometres across, which existed only because of a jut of mountainous granite pushed through the silt-laden soil. Except for the township itself, Amazonia surrounded the port from every direction, smothering the very air with moisture and hostility.

Quietly, Strun adjusted the settings of his Dwarf-forged Scout-Klad, while Lulan regulated herself through Taoist mantras learned from Ryxi.

Gwen’s suit was self-regulating, and so her concern was that, as far as she could tell, Amazonia surrounded them from every direction as a continental Black Zone, stretching as far as a man or woman could travel until they were driven to insanity by the maddening sameness of the lush greenery.

“On the western edge of the township, the local tribes have constructed a temple to the Svartálfar,” The Tower Master of Cuzco said with a conspiratorial air. “I must leave you here, Regent, for we have express orders from the Sapa Inti to avoid interaction with the ageless ones. Before we leave, however, may I confirm if you are aware of the true nature of the… Apu?”

Gwen’s eyes regarded the colonial trading post below, where half of the buildings were lashed together from wood, with only a dozen brick and mortar constructs in the style of modern Incan architecture, before turning to the Tower Master. “Of course, Master Amaru, I have entertained no expectation that you would be accompanying us on our questionable endeavour. Your generosity has already been a great gift and boon, however you feel.”

The Tower Master took her courteous caution well, for the man paid no heed to her obvious impatience. “Regent, I understand that my antagonism to the young lord Inti may one day put us at odds' end, but know that I do wish Tica well, whatever happens, and if her wish is for you to succeed… then I shall not wish otherwise.”

Gwen studied the man with the ophidian mien. When they had last met, they were hardly equals. Now, they were… no longer equals. The Regent of the Mageocracy’s Shining City on the Hill, where all of the Dyar Morkk converged… is incomparably rarer than a backwater Tower Master with nary enough trade to bribe the Grey Factioneers.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Tower Master,” she forced a smile to appear on her face. “I hope that our cooperation will not come to a point where sides must be chosen, for I do believe that would be a lose-lose situation.”

Amaru raised a stick-thin palm. Gwen took it.

“Tupananchiskama, Regent. I hope you find your munay.” Amaru bowed his head, then signalled for his Mage Flight to prepare for the meandering flight back to the closest Teleportation Station, leaving the two women and their rat hovering above a crowd of gawking locals, some of whom were looking downright worshipful.

“I always find my money.” Gwen mulled as she watched the Incans fade into the edgeless emerald sea. “Alright. Let’s check out this temple of theirs. According to Amaru, it shouldn’t take long for the Svartálfar to find us…”

Her crew found the temple after flying around with the Omni Orb.

Surprisingly, the temple was situated inside a tree hollow.

A hollow filled with spiderwebs and spiders.

With the collective death-auras the threesome exuded, the hound-sized spiders that inhabited the interior of the temple-cavern avoided the trio like wasps. They were thus able to use Mage Hands to part the silken veils uninterrupted until they arrived at a suggestive statue.

“To be perfectly honest,” Gwen remarked to her Strun and Lulan, “This isn’t too far from what I saw over in Illhîweth. The shocktroops of the Frost were demi-Humans with the lower half of spiders as well.”

The statue in question was just over four meters tall and carved from the root base of an old mahogany, spanning some eight or nine meters where the roots were styled into spindly legs. Unlike the murky space of the temple’s interior, an unnerving glow seemed to surround the polished surface of the statue, bringing its carapaces to life.

“That looks exotic,” Lulan remarked, studying the upper body of the alien spider-being, which was contorted to emphasise its mammarian figure and long, flowing hair which cascaded over broad, tautly-muscled shoulders.

Gwen found the artist’s choice strange as well, for while Solana’s kinfolk did possess feminine figures, nothing in their choice of attire or lifestyle inferred a physiological focus on postnatal care. If anything, she would have expected egg sacks and ovipositors, not that she had a desire to know more.

Taking a step back, she regarded the statue as a whole.

The figure was a ten-limbed demi-human, sporting eight long legs that looked like conjoined scimitars, and a pair of human arms from the shoulders, with one hand holding a whip, and the other a barbed fang-dagger. The pose of the statue was that of a creature in the middle of a ritual, for the vectors of its limbs led the gaze back toward its navel, below which Gwen spotted a bowl.

“Hold…” she approached.

Inside the bowl was something dark and vague, and it took Gwen a few moments to figure out that it must be offal of some kind, hopefully belonging to an animal.

“The locals make offerings…”

Amaru had said, despite an explicit ban on idolatry.

The Tower Master had also stated that petitions and the rare attempt at communication were also performed in this way, with a golden-etched Message plaque being presented with the offerings.

“Do we wait, mistress?” Strun’s nose was already inhaling the scents of the past. “It doesn’t smell like one of the Svartálfar has been here for a long time.”

Gwen’s olfactory senses, however, were attuned to more than just molecules of blood, sweat and pheromones.

She sensed—

She felt—

And she knew… what must be done to summon the Svartálfar.

Giving her companions a quick heads up, she approached the statue and its bowl of desiccated offal. With a delicate touch of Void mana, she cleansed the interior, stripping back the ruined wood.

Then, with a closed fist raised atop the bowl, she allowed her Golden Mead to ooze from the mana channels of her hand, slowly dripping into the vessel as though filling the interior with golden blood.

Strun sunk into the shadows while around Lulan, jadeite blades silently emerged from tiny rents in the Prime Material.

The statue groaned.

More precisely, the wood that formed the statue groaned, for the liquid seeping into its conjoined vessel was violently bringing the once-dead wood back into a semblance of life. Sustained by her Essence, leaves began to sprout from the statue’s nether regions, quickly germinating new branches even as a carpet of moss rapidly overtook the once-polished surface.

Within moments, the Svartálfar spider-kin was green with emerald energy, dripping with dew, and smothered with tiny flowers that possessed an array of rainbow-hued petals in concentric layers.

“Wow…” Lulan’s eyes were wide with wonder. “It’s… beautiful.”

“Focus…” Strun’s voice came from the dark, though the Rat-kin was equally impressed. “Mistress?”

“We should be expecting our host very soon, I’d wager,” Gwen re-gloved her gauntlet. “There was a smidgen of Essence in that statue. Almudj’s has now… well… you know Almudj doesn’t like strangers.”

“I think something’s here,” Strun answered at once. “Ah—our visitors are above us.”

At her Rat-kin Commander’s behest, Gwen looked up.

Indeed, their hosts had arrived.

From the darkness of the tree’s interior, sword-limbs tipped with what she suspected to be moulded obsidian skittered into the light, leading their eyes from the long, slender digits toward the wasp-waisted bodies of the encroaching Yana Yumbo.

“Greetings…” Gwen spoke, feeling her neck suddenly grow hot as her Master’s Ioun Stone took its toll of mana. “I am Gwen Song, Regent of Shalkar, a member of The Accord, and seeker of truth.”

So Master had met Svartálfar too… Gwen found the stone’s operation to be no surprise, for it affirmed certain hypotheses she possessed of Henry’s labour over the lost years of his final, unrecorded half-century.

The Svartálfar who had come to see what had erased their mark were a trio. Two possessed the likeness of male drones, which in the realm of the Frost Elves, were stocky, stolid beings with the quality of automatons. These were larger by a considerable circumference compared to the females, a wholly humanoid figure in a battle garb.

The male spider-kin, their faces inhuman and their bodies more so, stopped just outside the threshold of the vertical entryway.

“Who dares to call upon the Mistresses?” The feminine voice that drifted downward was one of mandibles made to speak in the tongue of mortals. If Gwen had to guess, it was a dialect of Elven spoken by the Svartálfar, one significantly removed from the lingua franca the arboreal race used across Tryfan’s domains.

As their bodies drew level, both parties studied one another with undisguised scrutiny, for Gwen felt no less the Svartálfar’s equal—while the Dark Elf evidently saw herself outside the possibility that Gwen could be her superior.

With Solana and Sanari as a reference, Gwen’s first impression of her very first Svartálfar was not one of existential wonder. Perhaps it was because she had rubbed shoulders with Ancient Red, Green and Blue Dragons, or that she had accidentally fried Solana with a Lightning Bolt. Still, she had the distinct feeling that the individual before her was the equivalent of a lieutenant, whereas her capacity encompassed that of an ambassador from a neighbouring nation.

From the female’s silver-threaded brows to her mithril-hued hair, the Dark Elf cut a svelte figure through the cascading dark, her ballerina’s figure reminding Gwen of an exposed, naked blade. The Elf’s face, once in view, was angular and elegant, almost cat-like, with enormous eyes well-adjusted to the dark, brought into emphasis by metallic-silver pupils that glimmered as the light shifted. From the braids of her matted hair, a pair of enormous ears, larger than those of Tryfanian Elves, protruded well above the brows, with tips shaped like hunting knives.

Gwen’s gaze moved downward. Other than the lilac complexion of the Elf’s face and neck, her entire body was covered by a medieval-themed series of leather, silk, and precious metal ornaments in different blends of murk. This was a huntress’ garb, Gwen duly noted. True to the rumours, the Svartálfar did not live idle lives like the art-loving Tryfanians, for an eye-watering array of magical implements in the form of sharp and dangerous things were hooked, buckled, snapped or slid into the silken folds of her hostess’ utilitarian leather skirt, beneath which metal-tipped greaves reinforced a pair of leather-bound legs.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Gwen was glad she wore her crow-skin, for in terms of fashion, they spoke the same language of imminent violence.

Their eyes met.

Hers were brilliant with the promise of Almudj’s ire.

The Svartálfar’s pupils were cold with apathy.

“I have come to seek an audience with the daughters of the Matron of the Long Night, in my capacity as the Vessel of the Rainbow who slumbers in the Navel of the World.”

Gwen’s mixed Draconic and Elven came across better than she had expected, which she credited to the fact that both races had been parasitising the World Trees since time immemorial.

The Dark Elf’s lips snarled and split.

“Foul, arrogant mortal.” To Gwen’s amazement, the Elf’s face was haughty with disgust. “Never has one of your ilk spoken thus to one of—”

The female never completed her sentence, for one of the half-naked drones behind her swiftly moved from the walls to snatch the speaker by her neck, choking her next enunciation.

While Gwen stared, half-confused and half-horrified and Shield-spell on the tip of her lips, Lulan came between them with a flourish, her aura radiant with manifestations of her Naga Spirit.

The male drone shook the female like a ragdoll while she whimpered, then flung her with such force into the statue that Gwen had thought the rude woman impaled until she fell gagging and coughing onto the floor, half choking on foamy blood.

“Our.. apologies,” the drone, its angular, masculine face showing no emotion, spoke with a disembodied voice that was rich and husky. “I should not have expected a member of the ‘rothe’ to be able to perform something as simple as inducting a High Born into the Web Spire. If you yet wish an audience, Regent, then follow this one’s Fang. Leave the inept to heal. You need not show empathy for the rothe.”

A Fang, Gwen understood from her homework sessions, was a Dark Elf Drone, a male with a chimeric body who could channel the will of their psychic broodmothers—in this case, the Cress-c'nros, the Web Weavers. All Drones were created with the expectation that they could be Vessels unto Vessels, though no one knows if this was truly the case.

“I will take this slight into consideration.” Gwen kept up her Draconic caricature, unsure of what other persona she might assume. “May I receive your name, mistress?”

“You may.” the Drone robotically nodded its carapace-clad head, its horse tail mane swishing to and fro. “My faithful call me Vestra Quar-Tath, Jabbess d-lilth Venorsh—”

Gwen had no idea what “The Mistress of the Silenced” inferred, but understood that her gambit had worked, and that Almudj’s erasure of the Essence in the statue had hooked them a large enough spider goddess to begin negotiations.

“Well met, Mistress of the Web Spire.” Gwen bowed her head slightly. “Are my entourage equally welcome?”

“More than welcome,” the voice said with a cruel mirth. “We demand it.”

The Drone skittered upward, ignoring the crumpled form of the quivering female elf underfoot. The second Drone followed, ushering Gwen and company to rise with them into the interior of the tree.

“The entrance was above us…” Strun’s silent Message relayed the action of one slapping their forehead. “No wonder I couldn’t find anything…”

Signalling at Lulan to pack away her implements of death-dealing, the trio rose on the uniform power of Flight offered by her Mass variant, following the twin Drones as space began to distort and their skin tingled with the familiar sensation of entering a Pocket Dimension.

“Drop a Contingency Missive to inform Inti of our progress,” Gwen advised her followers. “And stay close.”

A vague distance later, they sensed the gravity shift as the ambiguous space gave way to the familiar dimness of the deep Murk, transitioning the trio into a vast, endless cavern that appeared like an inverted mountain range.

When the dizziness ceased, a faint scent of the deep canopy enveloped them, as did the immensity of the humidity, which made their faces glisten. The earthy aroma of mushrooms, rain and soil was everywhere, and the air was so rich with oxygen that she felt her lungs greedily expand.

“Please wait, I shall be there shortly,” the Drone informed them, then stood aside to afford Gwen an unobstructed view of the Great Spires that made up the utmost mythical region of Amazonia, eternally hidden behind the Woods that Wend.

At long last, she was in Che’ell-Cressen.

But before her eyes could take in the grandeur of this world within the woods, her awe was overshadowed by another scene below their hovering bodies.

It was a mining operation.

They were among giant trees that made up an enclosed cavern, so the notion of an open-pit strip mine was absurd, and yet there it was, stark as day, brilliant as the HDMs being mined.

Within that mine were Drones by the dozen, and what looked like milling miners by the thousands. As a microcosm, the scene below appeared as a fantastical farm of oppressive misery where HDMs grew as ferns, forming exotic harvests of technicolour pertaining to the core elements. The miners, pallid, hunch-backed, barely clothed and looking like hags in spoilt rags, moved through the dimly lit spaces, forming lines of moving bodies along invisible seams, their implements rising and falling into the fossilised wood.

Gwen saw what looked to be Dwarves, but for their beardless faces and ashen bodies. She saw what should be a Human, only the man was apish, and pale as a maggot. There were other Demi-humans as well, many with motifs of overland animals, mostly of a reptilian lineage. The greatest number were the principal citizens of middle Amazonia—Trolls, whose number made up for more than half of the labourers.

With masochism in place of efficiency, the miners laboured, unaware of the trio looking down upon their collective anguish.

Unsure of what to say, Gwen allowed her eyes to wander.

Above the fantastic quarry, she saw the answer to what the labourers were labouring upon. It was a statue. An enormous, vain, statue of a female Svartálfar, her features elegant and regal, her lips full and cruel. The statue was roughly hewn, but it was obvious that it was the result of the inefficient toil of God knows how long. Over the mine of misery, the statue loomed, half-complete, its cat-like eye slits long and sensuous, its retinas gargantuan and all-seeing, already infested by colourful fungi that brought the likeness to life.

There were many such statues, all in a row, decorating the outer ring of the great city whose edge they had just entered. Statue upon statue, some completed, some crumbling, some in the middle of agonising manifestation…

Just to be sure, she allowed her Omni Orb to roam for a few quick seconds.

Sure enough, it immediately began to drift toward where the spires were clustered the densest.

CLANK—

Gwen’s mental faculties instantly snapped back into place as the Drones dropped to their segmented knees in gestures of supplication.

From a rent in mid-air, a dozen figures emerged, led by an eye-catching female wrought in dark silks.

Gwen rose to meet her presumed hostess, instantly perceiving from the sheer volume of fashionable exposure that she must be high-born and unquestionably comfortable in her skin.

“Vestra Quar-Tath.” An elfin face with the grace of a saint, made its best effort to smile, an act that gave Gwen serious uncanny valley vibes. “Welcome to my domain, Daughter of the Rainbow who Slumbers in the Navel of the World.”

“Gwen Song, Guardian of the World Tree of Shalkar, greets the Daughter

of the Matron of the Long Night.”

The two grew closer and closer until, sensing the hostility from the women behind Vestra, Gwen halted her movement.

Breaking from the ranks, the Svartálfar leader approached, effortlessly gliding through the air as though a lascivious vision in a fevered dream. Different from the soldierly Svartálfar in the temple, Vestra’s garbs were spider silk patterns woven into hanging folds that hung from a scandalous body, leaving her shoulders, arms, midriff and a good length of her long limbs unprotected. Her hair, as well, elaborately styled and braided after Nordic nobility, framed the Dark Elf’s protruding cheekbones and elevated her long, elegant neck.

Everything about the woman screamed guileless aristocrat, though Gwen wouldn’t dream for a second that this creature was anything other than Solana’s contemporary.

The Svartálfar raised a hand, putting her digits slightly apart.

Recognising the signs, Gwen returned the gesture with her own Vulcan salute.

When the hand remained hanging, Gwen took the initiative to give the Svartálfar a Vulcan high-five.

“Live Long and Prosper…” Her translator did their best to relay her diplomatic intent.

In the aftermath, a painful silence reigned. If a certain bald Magister were to be present, his scalp would have come alive with a thousand teeming fire spiders.

“If the Vessel of the Elder One would allow it…” Her hostess stated awkwardly. “We need to ascertain certain validities…”

In the next instant, Gwen sensed the tyrannical presence of an ancient being coursing through the conduits of the Svartálfar before her, transforming the brilliant silver iris of its host into that of a regal Tyrian purple.

Finally catching on, Gwen performed likewise, allowing her hand to be suffused by the Essence of her World Tree.

Then, and only then, did their palms gently kiss, and the two duelling energies measured one another with the intensity of alpha tyrant lizards eyeing one another through the gloom of a primordial rainforest.

“The Council does not lie,” the Daughter of the Long Night withdrew her hand, sighing in feigned surprise. “To think the Rainbow Serpent would take on another Vessel after Kalinda.”

“You KNOW of Kalinda?” Gwen blurted out in surprise, then immediately regretted revealing such esoteric knowledge. “I… not many people know of that name.”

“I knew Kalinda.” Vestra smiled. “I knew her Enclave as well, while it still existed. That was before your…”

The Svartálfar seemed lost for words. “... species? Before your people took on their role in the great balance. I imply no offence to you, sister, but… I hope you understand how unusual this is to beings as old as ourselves.”

Gwen intellectually understood, though she wasn’t about to agree that her species was inferior by nature, literally.

“Let us digress in a better premise,” Vestra seemed to lose interest in wrestling with the semantics of language. With a gesture, her long fingers tore the space beside them, revealing a portal into what appeared to be an enormous, luxurious space overlooking a vast, spire-based metropolis. “You are a rare guest, sister, and I know that you have come with a request. As one of her daughters, I possess the means to grant that request, or at least, the means to the ends you desire. Will you oblige?”

Gwen felt her hands grow suddenly clammy as she stared into that cosy abyss conjured by one of the Mistresses under the slumbering Matron. She may regret ever stepping into the portal, but then again, what’s regret when one would choose no other recourse?

Che’ell-Cressen.

The Web Spire.

Elizabeth Sobel, guest of Phyr Quar-Tath, watched a rogue sinew dance on her arm, sending her slender fingers into strange, involuntary spasms.

“Hmm?” She studied the wayward synaptic anomaly with a furrowed brow, understanding that this was a phenomenon derived from her well-digested Divination talents. Unlike a true Diviner, however, her powers remained reactive, though they had afforded her significant liberty when faced with imminent destruction. “What’s this now?”

Rising from the divan, she slipped into a loose silk tunic styled by the Svartálfar servants, pulled into a pair of Troll-skin sandals, and approached the balcony, from where she could see the arena below.

With a gentle wave of her hand, the Void Witch dismissed the veil of silence, allowing the chaotic sounds of the arena to overwhelm her private suite. Below, the bloodsport continued more often than not, a reality as unchanging as the spire city. It amazed Sobel sometimes just how monotonous the Elves’ idea of entertainment could be, for there was only so much curated death and bloodshed a Human could stomach before growing numb.

Then again, she wasn’t one of the Daughters of Quar-Tath, and had nothing riding on the outcomes of the Blood Pits other than the strange pleasure of seeing her cruel little creature grow increasingly cantankerous.

Presently, the anarchy below was different to its usual showmanship of sadism. The roars were louder, the cries more urgent, and the action involved a spectacle not even the Svartálfar had seen in the last century or two.

On one side, a chimeric Owl Bear was rapidly bleeding out from what looked to be a dozen stab wounds carved into its sides. The creature’s berserk rage had run its course, and now it was too fatigued to dodge the heavy strikes of its opponent.

Opposite, exhausted, huffing, and covered from pale blonde hair to blue-gold greaves in guts and gore, was a young man bearing the tabard of a Knight of St Michael. The young man was presently fueled by nothing but the remaining Faith left over from a Greater Heroism, swinging his Spell Sword as though in a daze.

It was worthwhile to note, Sobel observed, that the fighter was a rare Radiant Knight, and that the spell-blade was wreathed in a multitude of elements, attesting to the combatant’s talent.

Sobel felt genuinely intrigued. Yet, observing what should be a pleasant spectacle, something like a strand of hair tickled the back of her throat.

With a final lunge, the Owl Bear launched itself, its massive jaws closing on the Knight, crushing the young man’s shoulder pauldrons. The crowd roared as, simultaneously, a burst of golden light in the energy Humanity called Faith erupted from the spell-blade, exiting the Owl-headed skull from its gory sockets.

Both collapsed.

But only one was dead.

The watching arena roared and groaned. Upon the terrace levels, several of the High Born snapped shut their conjured shades in disgust and disappointment while others tutted their thin flutes of amber refreshments toward the easternmost spire, from the apex of which a regal Svartálfar looked down upon the arena.

Sobel recognised the elevated platform as belonging to Qila Quar-Tath, Mistress of the Suffocating Dark, one of the more pre-eminent sisters of the Spire and chief supplier of Che’ell-Cressen’s seemingly endless labour force.

A Knight of St George… Sobel had fought the Ordos enough to know that, like cockroaches, one Knight often meant a whole plague of fanatics. To her knowledge, there was only one reason why Qila would have the means to arrest Ordo Knights from the surface—meaning someone must have ordered an expedition into the Chilean Coast, where an agent akin to herself was tinkering with the Sinneslukare.

A minute later, while the arena was cleared and transmuted for the subsequent match-ups, Sobel saw why her nerves had been fraying.

Bolting from the arena’s resting pits, a flaxen-haired Human female crossed the distance in great strides, riding on the shoulders of an enormous Treant in the likeness of a bipedal ginseng tree. Without ceremony, her plant tore the Owl Bear off her companion with the ease of rotten bark, then dropped to her knees in fervent prayer as another Plant Sprite, a bipedal Alraune, doused the dying Knight with restorative Elixirs.

Above the carcass and the healer, observant Dark Elves murmured in contempt, appalled by the presence of what they saw as primitive magic born from the wishful thinking of a lesser race.

An inexplicable thrill coursed through Sobel’s trembling torso, flushing her bloodless complexion a hale, healthy pink and transmuting her lips into the hue of glistening rubies. “Now there’s a sight for sore eyes…”

Was this luck for her nasty little beastie, freshly filled from the crown to the toe with aberrant cruelty?

Or would Percy’s luck in the arena face its natural conclusion?

That Sobel had no idea what the future held was itself the most exciting outcome, for far more than her clueless Svartálfar hostess, she could not wait to witness the fateful, glorious duel to come.