(669 A.C.)

Ott paused during his descent down the watchtower just before the second level. He stood, listening, but it didn’t sound like anyone was coming for him. He peeked past the door frame into the room that made up the second story of the watchtower, but the space was empty. Just bedrolls on the wooden floor and the weapon racks along the walls conspicuously barren of any arms. That didn’t bode well.

He crept down to the bottom floor of the tower, mace braced over his shoulder, ready to swing at the barest hint of danger. It hardly mattered--this room was empty as well, nothing but more bedrolls and a single wooden chair jammed in the corner. The archway leading into the adjacent building had no guard, and Ott pressed himself against the wall next to it, mace at the ready, and peered around into the building proper.

There was no bandit guarding the elevator into the mine, but the door opened no more than three seconds later, letting in a throng of bandits into the building. Ott quickly drew back, mace gripped in front of him. What would he do if they started moving toward the watchtower? There were too many for him to fight off, even with a weapon, and even if he had a wand--which he still didn’t--he was still just one bard against an entire fighting force.

Ott kept his breaths measured, quiet. Listening intently to the footsteps of the bandits, he tried to determine exactly where they were and what they were doing. It seemed like they were loading themselves onto the elevator into the mine. Ott held his breath as he caught footsteps heading toward his pathetic hiding spot, but just before they reached the doorway, he heard someone call, “What are you doing?”

“Grabbing a lantern,” came the retort, far too close to Ott for his comfort. “Don’t give me that look, it gets fucking dark down there.”

“Just hurry up,” the first voice sounded again, impatient. “Esseli will have our heads if we don’t make this quick.”

If they don’t make this quick. Ott shuddered. Esseli might be sparing him now, but the moment Ott stepped foot in those mines, he became just another prisoner needing to be slaughtered.

He had never had an operation that had fallen apart so quickly or so spectacularly. He had never been in as much danger of dying as he was right now, but he had to keep moving forward with this. As tempting as it was to tuck his tail between his legs and let Esseli pull him around like a dog on a leash until he was able to make a proper break for it, he couldn’t leave the other prisoners to their deaths. He couldn’t leave Wanily.

The whirring of the elevator reached his ears a moment later, and Ott risked another peek into the building. There was only one bandit left in the room, standing by the lever controlling the platform. With the door leading into the building shut and the bandit’s attention focused on the mineshaft, Ott had no better opportunity.

He clamped his mouth shut against the war cry that threatened to spill past his lips, instead charging into the room with his mace ready to strike and only his footsteps to announce him. The bandit, to his credit, snapped to attention the moment Ott entered his peripheral vision. He reached for the sword sheathed at his hip, but Ott was faster. In just two more bounds, Ott was on the bandit, smashing the mace over his head before he was able to get his weapon out all the way. He fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, boneless and with eyes unseeing. Blood poured from the gaping holes in his head where the sharp spikes of the mace had connected with his skull.

Ott made a face of distaste as he gingerly stepped back from the growing puddle of blood on the floor. He really hated violence.

There wasn’t more time for him to ruminate on his disgust. Ott risked a peek over the railing sectioning off the entrance of the elevator. The platform, full of bandits armed to the teeth, had gone down about fifteen feet and was still descending, but at least none of them looked up while Ott was observing them.

He drew back, thinking. There was no other way for him into the mine. He didn’t want to potentially damage the elevator either by heaving the lever the other way and leaving the prisoners down there still with no way of getting back up. But if he descended now, there was no saying how they would get back up without someone to man the lever anyway.

Think, think, think, Ott chastised himself. He glanced at the body of the bandit on the ground next to him. Even if Ott went down into the mine after the rest of the bandits, there was a good chance that the one he’d killed would be found. And there was the matter of how long it took the elevator to go up and down--by the time Ott was in the mine himself, there was no saying how many of the prisoners the bandits would be able to kill.

Ott scanned the room. The dead bandit only had blonde hair, so there was probably nothing there. And Esseli wouldn’t risk putting a wand in the hand of a mage while they were mining, even if they could be more efficient with one. But Ott really needed a wand.

Or, he thought, a crystal.

Ott turned and raced back into the watchtower, practically leaping up the stairs, three at a time.

Esseli had been making a lot of money, she’d said so herself. She had nice amenities up in that room of hers. Crystals cost a lot of money and were rather good at improving quality of life. She might have one in her room. She had silver hair, too--there was the possibility of a wand stowed away somewhere at the very least.

He threw the door open, bursting into her room. Hush lifted his head as he shot inside but made no move to attack him as Ott stopped in front of her desk. He wasted no time in yanking the drawers of the desk open and rifling through their contents. There was a lot of paper--correspondence between Esseli and whatever contact she had with Dryan, Ott surmised, as well as meticulously kept records of their earnings and spendings. Esseli wasn’t kidding when she said she’d earned a pretty mark.

None of that helped him though. It wasn’t until he reached the bottom drawer that he found a small, metal box tucked inside a larger ledger. The ledger itself was empty--blank pages with a hole cut into the middle to securely hide the box. Perfect.

Ott tore it out, but when he tried to open it, the lid wouldn’t budge. Locked. Not perfect.

Esseli had to have a key somewhere, but Ott didn’t think he had the time to try to locate it. Sending up a brief prayer to Amera, he picked up the mace he’d dropped on the ground beside him, replaced it with the box, and swung the mace down on top.

The metal crunched under the force of his blow, but nothing else. No explosion from a smashed force or fire crystal. The only thing that happened was a faint light shining through the spaces where the top and bottom of the box no longer met. Ott stooped down to wrench it open and grinned at what he found.

Three force crystals, two lined up on top and one on bottom along with a light crystal. The force crystals were a pale, opaque white, like quartz but with an iridescent sheen surrounding each of its many jagged edges. The light crystal, yellow and smooth like river stones, must have been at the end of its lifespan, considering how faint the light was. Or maybe Esseli just bought a cheap one. As cheap as a crystal could be, anyway.

Ott pocketed all of them. He glanced at Hush as he did so, but he didn’t do so much as lick his chops. Small blessings, Ott thought, rushing back out of the room and down the stairs. He skidded to a stop at the bottom, quickly checking back out into the adjoined building, but it looked like no one else had been there yet. If they had, Ott would have expected more bandits waiting for him, weapons and smiles sharp. All he found was the body of the bandit he’d killed, still leaking blood all over the floor.

Ott wrinkled his nose but didn’t let it slow him down. He hurried over to the elevator, peering down into the mineshaft again. He couldn’t see the bandits at the bottom. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not but screams seemed to be ringing up from the depths.

Ott grimaced and pulled out one of the force crystals. Gripping it in his hand, he thought of the spell he wanted to cast. That was the best part about crystals--they were the ultimate conduit for spells. Words, wands, none of that was needed when it all could be replaced by a simple magic crystal. The type of magic crystal did, however, limit the kind of spell that could be cast. That was about the only drawback that Ott knew.

He needed a spell that would make it so he wouldn’t die when he threw himself down that mineshaft. Something that could slow his descent. A spell that could make him fly would be better, but that was something that fell out of the scope of crystals entirely as far as Ott was aware. So, flexing his fingers against the smooth surface of the crystal, feeling it almost hum under his touch, he took one last deep breath before vaulting over the railing.

Ott didn’t crush the crystal in his hand--that would be a rookie mistake. He just focused on the spell he wanted to cast and put as much intent behind it as possible. Bending reality itself to the vision he had in his mind. That, naturally, being not ending up as a splatter on the bottom of the mineshaft.

It still wasn’t the nice descent Ott had been hoping for. He’d thought that the crystal would slow him down until he gently touched down on the floor or something of the sort. This was not the case. Just when he thought the spell had failed and he was going to end up a puddle on the elevator platform after all, he suddenly shot back upward. Ott grunted at the whiplash of the change in his trajectory, but he only went up about a foot before falling once again.

The spell had changed the fall from almost-certain death to about a three foot drop. Ott still grunted when he hit the bottom of the elevator and groaned as he picked himself up. He might not have ever used a crystal before, and they were notoriously finicky. He wasn’t sure beyond that exactly why the spell hadn’t played out the way he imagined, but he didn’t have the time to spend pondering it. He had gotten to the bottom of the mineshaft, and he was still alive. For now, that had to be enough.

Screams sounding from down the tunnel had Ott moving before he even fully registered it. He picked himself up and raced down the corridor, mace in one hand and another force crystal gripped in the other. The last one, as with all crystals used as a conduit, disappeared upon use. Now, he only had two more, so he needed to make them count.

He passed the branch in the path that led to the magical creatures, slowing for only a moment as he did so. There might be an ally in a certain griffin if Wanily could be believed, but Ott didn’t want to risk getting mauled by a griffin or any other manner of magical creature at the moment. He continued on, sending a silent apology to Wanily. He wasn’t about to lose his life or risk the lives of others over a giant, bird-brained cat.

When he finally reached the end of the tunnel and its two off-shooting paths, he immediately found himself face to face with a bandit. She must have been guarding the tunnel from any would-be escapees, what with the sword she had drawn but the way she leaned against the wall of the tunnel with an air of boredom. She looked just as surprised as Ott when he skidded around the corner and nearly crashed straight into her. The bandit was quicker on the uptake than him, though, seizing her sword in one hand and aiming to run Ott through. He twisted out of the way at the last second, gripping his mace and swinging straight for her face.

The bandit, obviously more experienced in fighting than Ott, moved too quickly for Ott to make out. He just knew that one second, his weapon was about to end her, and the next, he was sprawled on the ground with the mace clattering down somewhere beside him. The bandit stood above him with a smile mixed with a sneer. She moved to plunge her sword through his chest. Ott brought up the force crystal.

This was a spell Ott was more familiar with--enough that the crystal purely amplified exactly what he envisioned. The bandit brought down her sword. In the second before the tip of the blade sliced through Ott’s flesh, the force crystal vibrated in Ott’s outstretched hand. He couldn’t see it, but as the caster of the spell, he could sense it. The wave of force that pulsated from the crystal, throwing the bandit against the tunnel wall, had enough strength that her chest folded into itself with a sickening crack. She didn’t even get the chance to scream.

Ott’s empty hand was still outstretched, and he let it fall to the ground beside him. In the moment after, the bandit’s body peeled from the tunnel wall, collapsing in a heap just beyond his feet.

That’s horrible, Ott thought. He wasn’t supposed to use another force crystal so soon. But, well, he couldn’t go around casting powerful spells if he was too dead to use the crystals. A necessary evil, then.

The sound of fighting and more shouting spurred Ott back into action. He grabbed his mace, scrambled to his feet, and raced down the last stretch of tunnel. He could see movement and flashes of light past the mouth, but nothing came into focus until he burst into the cavern itself.

Prisoners were running, twisting, and pushing each other out of their ways as bandits stalked after them with smiles, weapons gripped in one or both hands, some of which already dripped blood. There were a few bodies strewn about the room, but a quick glance confirmed that none of them sported green hair. Small mercies, Ott supposed. If Wanily had already fallen--

Well. Ott wasn’t sure what he would have done. Nothing good.

He threw himself at the nearest bandit, bearing down on him with an overhead swing of his mace before the bandit could use his own weapon against another of the prisoners. The bandit didn’t know what hit him--quite literally, as he fell to the ground, dead, and would never know what had hit him.

The prisoner Ott had saved was one he recognized, luckily. It was Reynold, the first prisoner beside Wanily that had entertained a conversation with Ott. The brown-haired man, who Ott could only have described as gruff and snarky, was visibly relieved to turn and see that Ott was there, armed, and probably looking rather thunderous with righteous vengeance.

Ott stooped down, pulling the bandit’s sword from his slack grip. He certainly didn’t need it anymore and hadn’t put it to good use when he had, so Ott felt no guilt proffering the hilt of the weapon to Reynold. He took it with a nod and fell in beside Ott.

“What do we do?” Reynold demanded, holding the sword at a somewhat awkward angle. Ott somewhat doubted he’d ever held a weapon before in his life, but there was hardly time for a lesson on that right now.

“Get people calmed and armed,” Ott said, watching for any bandits coming their way. One spotted them just as Reynold nodded, brow furrowing as she slowly approached, a sword gripped in one hand and a dagger in the other. “If you can’t get them proper weapons, pickaxes will do. And Reynold?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Reynold, who had already started moving to fulfill Ott’s orders, stopped. He glanced at the bandit approaching them, balking, but Ott simply said, “Don’t die.”

He nodded again before throwing himself back into the fray. The bandits weren’t watching for any of the prisoners to start attacking them back, and Reynold, despite his inexperience, was able to catch one unaware and drop his body to the cavern floor. The woman Reynold saved immediately scrambled for the bandit’s weapon, and the two of them turned their sights to the others.

That was all Ott saw before he had to return his attention to the bandit warily approaching him. She narrowed her eyes, watching Ott carefully as she slid into a battle stance. “Trying to be a hero?” she called over the din of the chaos around them.

“Nope,” Ott said, adopting his own stance even though he knew next to nothing about fighting with a mace. “Just a bard.”

The bandit smirked, which answered the question of whether Ott was just making a fool of himself with the way he was holding his weapon. She charged forward without any other preamble, striking at him with fast swipes and precise jabs that Ott was just barely able to deflect or dodge.

The element of surprise was only ever going to get Ott so far--he had to be able to hold his own in a fight. No, more than that, he had to be able to win a fight, which was not exactly how this was turning out.

The bandit scored a slash along Ott’s ribs with her dagger, making Ott wheeze. He needed to think, to come up with some sort of plan, but she was making that very difficult while he had to focus on remaining not-skewered as well. He had another force crystal, but he didn’t want to use that just yet, and more than that, he didn’t think the bandit would be polite enough to grant him the precious seconds it would take to fish it out of his pocket.

The bandit lunged forward with her dagger, and Ott knew he was going to react too slowly. Time almost seemed to slow down as he watched the dagger approaching the space between his ribs, ready to bury itself into his chest up to its hilt. His breath stuttered.

He was going to die.

That--That wasn’t how this was supposed to go! He hadn’t become famous yet, hadn’t become the greatest bard to walk the earth. He hadn’t even managed to take down Esseli yet. He couldn’t die, not now, but even as he brought his mace up to try to block the attack, he knew he wasn’t moving quickly enough.

Then, at the last second, the trajectory of the dagger suddenly veered to the left, so that the bandit stumbled forward. Like she was pulled that way.

When Ott brought his weapon up, it was right into the space of her upper chest and neck. She let out a gurgle as Ott yanked the weapon back, its spikes having scored deeply into her flesh. Her dagger and sword fell to the ground as she seized her own neck, blood spilling past her fingers, before she dropped to the floor next to her weapons.

In the space behind her, Wanily stood, one hand outstretched and the other gripping a pickaxe. That’s when it clicked into place--that had been old magic. Ott was no old magic mage himself, but he was from Fris. He knew old magic when he saw it.

“Ott!” Wanily cried. She started forward, stopped with a glance down, and with a twist of her lips, she stooped down to grab the bandit’s discarded dagger. The small blade still looked big in Wanily’s small hands. “You’re okay!”

Ott gave her a crooked grin. “Could say the same to you.” He swept his gaze across the room, relieved to see Reynold and the woman he saved still alive and with many more prisoners added to their ranks now. There was no more aimless running and panic--no, the prisoners stood together, facing off against the handful of bandits that remained. The bandits had bunched themselves into a small group and were slowly backing up toward one of the other tunnels.

They couldn’t afford to let that happen. If the bandits got into the tunnels, there was no telling how long they would be able to hold off Ott and his men. They’d have the defensive advantage. If Ott wanted all of the prisoners to escape, they couldn’t be worrying about bandits at their back while they were trying to figure out a way up and out of this gods-forsaken mine.

“Don’t imagine this is the part where you tell me you’re actually a purple and can rip apart those bandits with your mind?” Ott muttered, just loud enough for Wanily to hear.

He kept his eyes trained on the scene before him, but he could feel Wanily staring at him. “Purple-haired mages can do that?”

Ott shrugged. There were stories that suggested as much, but, well, they were also stories. Not necessarily rooted in reality. “What I wouldn’t give for a wand,” Ott lamented.

“A wand?” Wanily said. “Will a stick do?”

Ott laughed despite himself. “Most wands are just sticks.” Special sticks, sometimes, made of specific material that helped along certain spells. But at their fundamentals, a wand was just a length of wood.

Wanily knelt beside him, and Ott turned to watch as she laid her new dagger on the ground and gripped the shaft of her pickaxe, one hand just below the head, and the other a couple inches lower than that. Her brow furrowed and her knuckles went white as she, apparently, tried to snap the head of the pickaxe off its handle.

Ott glanced between her and the retreating bandits, “I don’t think--”

A loud snap interrupted him as the shaft of the pickaxe splintered and broke. Wanily let the head of the pickaxe clatter to the ground and proffered the shaft to Ott. It hadn’t been a clean break, but it had worked. Wanily must have amplified the force she’d been applying to the pickaxe until, well, it broke.

Ott had never been so glad that old magic existed. He took the offered ‘wand’ and turned back to the bandits. He ran through all the spells he knew, trying to latch onto one that would be helpful in this situation but also didn’t require more conduits. That made the relatively long list of spells that could do something much shorter. He could use the force crystal and try to deal with the bandits in one fell swoop, but he had the inklings of a plan in his mind. He’d need to hold onto the force crystal for that to work. The light crystal still sat in his pocket as well, but he didn’t see how that would do anything in this situation.

But maybe he didn’t need to attack the bandits themselves. He eyed the mouths of the tunnels behind them, offering up another prayer to Amera that there were no prisoners left alive further into the mine, and finally settled on a spell. “Earth is the base, and I the sculptor,” he said, waving his wand at the tunnel the bandits were shuffling back towards. “As I change the face, of the dirt that is under.”

A head rush hit Ott, leaving him feeling a little lightheaded, as the earth at the top of the tunnel shook. Dust rained down from the mouth of the tunnel, the peppering sound drawing the attention of the bandits. Most turned to watch, faces drawing with horror as they witnessed the tunnel collapse into itself. Ott grinned, pointing his wand at the other tunnels in quick succession. The heads of the bandits whipped about as they turned about themselves, watching with visibly mounting panic as their only means of retreat disappeared one by one.

The newly-armed prisoners advanced, expressions dark and many of their weapons already dripping blood. One of the bandits pushed himself toward the front of the little group and threw his weapon down at his feet.

“Spare us, and we’ll help you,” he rushed to say. He brought his hands together, lacing his fingers together and dropping to one knee. “You need a way out of the mine, right? They won’t let you up without us. We’ll get you up and out of here if you let us live.”

Reynold, who was still leading the group of prisoners, stopped and shot a look to Ott. Waiting for his direction.

“I think we’ll figure something out,” Ott called back. The bandit paled. Reynold nodded to Ott and brought his blade up to end the bandit’s life.

Ott started to move in front of Wanily, hoping to shield her from any more gruesome displays of violence, but he shouldn’t have bothered. Wanily spun on her heel and darted out of the cavern, back towards the entrance of the mine. Ott yelped and shot after her just as the sounds of fighting resumed behind him.

He stopped at the mouth of the tunnel, shouting after her, “Where are you going?”

Before she disappeared down the next tunnel, Wanily slowed just enough to yell back, “I have to help my griffin!”

Ott grimaced, throwing a glance over his shoulder. There were already fewer bandits remaining than the small number they’d started with, but he also spotted a few new prisoner corpses. Ott’s fellow captives had the number advantage, but the bandits clearly had more experience fighting.

Ott had no idea if the other prisoners would prevail without him, but he couldn’t let Wanily escape the bandits just to die because she insisted she was best friends with a griffin. Maybe it was selfish, but Wanily was a good-natured, free spirit--she represented everything Ott himself was fighting for. He couldn’t let her die, even if it meant the death of the many.

Cursing to himself, he took off after her. He ran down the tunnel leading toward the main corridor just in time to see her skid around the corner of the other tunnel, the one that led toward the monsters. Ott rushed over and down it, not letting himself hesitate or debate whether this was a good idea. He’d survived a werewolf as a watchdog and not one but two fights with bandits--if the griffin did attack them, Ott would figure something out. He refused to let himself or Wanily be killed.

The tunnel leading towards the monsters wasn’t very long, and after Ott threw himself around the sharp turn at the end of it, he burst into a cavern similar to the one he just left, if smaller. This one, however, was crowded with metal cages hosting a range of magical creatures. Pixies in a bird cage were trapped next to a rectangular cage containing a dusty kappa beside a massive cell built into the cave wall barring off an entire dragon.

The pixies--small, with smooth, gray skin and bat-like wings--clung to the bars of their cage and watched Ott stop in front of them with their huge, black eyes. They chittered nonsense for a moment, phonetic sounds that didn’t make true words until one of them finally squeaked out, “Fuh--Free?”

The other three trapped in the cage mimicked their fellow, all of them chirping, “Free? Free? Free?”

The kappa, small for such a monster at only about two feet tall, blinked up at Ott with beady eyes. Its skin, which should have been a deep green and shiny with moisture, was dry as leather left out in the sun. It wrapped its arms around itself, webbed hands tightening on the ridge of the turtle shell that made up its torso. It clicked its beak together once, and while Ott knew kappas were new god creatures capable of speech, it said nothing to him. Ott grimaced and swept past it and the pixies.

He hesitated by the cell of the dragon, finding himself checking over this monster, too. It had to be at least twenty feet long, but the cell was only big enough for the dragon to coil its long, thick body about itself like a spring or a snake. It was a pale yellow with an off-white stomach and spikes running along the top of its body that were a vibrant red. The dragon shifted as Ott stopped in front of its cell, slithering so that its head, framed by two red horns, rested atop its coils. Ott couldn’t help but note that there were several bloody patches along the dragon’s body where it looked like the scales had been plucked or sawn off.

It trained its bright, yellow eyes on him and opened its mouth, revealing two rows of sharp teeth. “Not a bandit,” it said, its voice deep but lilting along every word, like it was about to break out into song. “The girl tries to free the griffin. Will the man free the dragon?”

Ott shuddered. He liked the new gods and new magic as much as the next guy, but there was something about new magic creatures that was just unnatural. Probably the fact that most of them could talk. And a shocking number of them were humanoid, though that wasn’t the case for a dragon.

Still, it felt wrong to just leave it here. If--no, when--Ott and the others managed to get out of the mine, the dragon and all the other monsters down here would be left to starve to death or something of the sort. On the other hand, those teeth in the dragon’s mouth did look rather wicked. If the stories were to be believed, dragons could usually be counted on for their benevolence, but there was no telling all that the bandits had done to this one. Even if the dragon could tell Ott wasn’t one of them, it might still be inclined to end his life and escape on its own.

Taking a deep breath, Ott moved past the dragon’s cell and beyond, marching by a disturbing collection of more cages, all containing magical creatures in varying states of neglect and abuse. Most of them were new magic creatures, Ott noted, which made sense as they were generally weaker than old magic creatures. But what had Esseli planned to do with them? It seemed obvious that she kept the dragon to use its scales in potions--though what potions a dragon’s scale could make, Ott couldn’t say--or at least sell the material to a potion-maker. But what about the pixies and the kappa? They had no obvious signs of physical harm, and there was nothing that could easily be gathered from them on a regular basis. Had she aimed to train them much like her werewolves?

It didn’t matter now. Ott reached the back of the cavern where a medium-sized cage rested against the wall. In it, a fledgling griffin sat on its haunches, thin tail whipping back and forth behind it. Wanily knelt in front of the cage, the lock holding it shut in one hand as she turned it this way and that.

“I don’t know how they work,” she said. For a brief second, Ott thought she was talking to him, but when the griffin let out a chirp, he knew otherwise. “If I did, we would have escaped the first time around. You know my magic isn’t strong enough to break metal.”

The griffin glanced up, its hawk-like gaze fixing on Ott. It let out a shrill screech that rebounded against the cave walls and had Ott jumping about a foot in the air. Wanily barely reacted except to glance over her shoulder.

“That’s just Ott, he’s been helping me,” Wanily said, turning back to the griffin. Ott was almost offended until she looked back at him again. “Do you know how locks work? I can’t get this thing open.”

Ott nervously glanced at the griffin again. He wasn’t an expert on them by any means, but this one seemed to be glowering at him, ears tilted back and eyes narrowed. Its tail did not slow down in lashing at the air.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Ott asked. He already knew what Wanily was going to say, but he felt compelled to double-check anyway.

Wanily rolled her eyes. Ott could have at least done without the attitude. “Eko is harmless,” she said, waving her free hand. “Well, at least to me and the people I like.”

“Reassuring,” Ott muttered. He hesitated just a moment longer before joining Wanily on the ground in front of Eko’s cage. He peered at the lock in her hand. It was gray, so probably made of iron, but big, larger than Wanily’s palm.

Ott had no idea how locks worked, but he didn’t need to. “Unlock the path, of that which would stop,” he said, pointing his wand at it. “Allow me to go past, and open the lock.”

With a click, the lock in Wanily’s hand sprung open. Ott--hurriedly and wisely--backed away from the cage, wand and mace at the ready as the door creaked open. The griffin shook itself, dust rising in a cloud from its coat and wings, before slinking out of the cage. Ott gripped his weapons so hard the wood dug into his skin, watching as the griffin approached Wanily and nudged her shoulder with its beak. Wanily, still kneeling, squealed and threw her arms around the griffin’s neck.

Ott shuddered. The damn monster was about as big as her, so Ott knew it had to still be rather young. That didn’t make it any less dangerous though.

“Are you okay?” Wanily asked, drawing back and raking her eyes over it. “Your poor wing...” she breathed, one hand hovering over the griffin’s right wing. Much like the dragon’s body, there were raw patches of flesh around the top of the appendage where the feathers had been plucked.

Ott expected the griffin to snap its beak at her for getting so close to its wound, but it merely let out a soft chirp and pulled away from her. It shot Ott another glare before marching past both of them and back toward the main corridor of the mine. Wanily shot to her feet to follow it, and Ott, feeling a little foolish, let his weapons fall to his sides and trailed after them.

Back out in the main tunnel, Ott could no longer hear the sounds of fighting coming from farther down. Instead, the soft murmurings of conversation drifted down toward them. The griffin, who was still leading them for some reason, went to the left, heading back toward the elevator and away from the source of the voices.

Wanily stopped, hands on her hips. “Where do you think you’re going?” she called after him.

The griffin stopped, twisting its neck to look back at her. It blinked slowly, tail twitching.

“We can’t leave them,” Wanily insisted, and Ott wasn’t about to tell her that she was no sage--she had about as much chance communicating with the griffin as she did with a rock. Griffins couldn’t even speak.

The griffin lifted one paw and took another step forward. Almost... pointedly.

“They can help us,” Wanily said, crossing her arms. “There are still more bandits up there.” She pointed above them to emphasize her point. “Remember how last time went?”

The griffin let out a sharp whistling sound. It looked down the corridor at the elevator in the distance before shaking itself again and whirling around to march back toward Ott and Wanily. It did not look at either of them as it stalked right past.

Bewildered, Ott glanced at Wanily. She grinned in return before hurrying after Eko. And Ott--well, what else was there to do but follow?