“When Derezo said go through the kobold city,” Anathta murmured without moving her lips, “no one said we’d have to take a tour.”

“How long, Ibbalat?” Phanar asked in like manner, ignoring her.

“Once their eyes aren’t on me!” the mage hissed back, barely checking his temper. “I’ve got it ready and it’s fit to burst and I need to finish the spell.”

Behind him, he heard Redgate’s bemused chuckle.

Phanar looked Ibbalat up and down. The magician did look unusually excited, even for him, almost dancing from foot to foot as they stood on the balcony.

The incline the dragon slithered down to enter his lair was a forty-five degree slope of flattened boulders and sanded stone; that slope was about two hundred feet below them now. The kobold city was carved into the rock above the slope, curving down into the pit at a similar angle. Beyond the rail, over on the opposite face of the cavern, Phanar could see countless other balconies and terraces carved into the granite across the roof of the cavern, and imagined many more were directly beneath him and above him, hidden from sight. Some of those he could see were occupied: kobold guards, but also traders and traffickers, shoppers and shamans… There was a group of ugly kobold children playing on one of the open spaces, dangling rats over the drop by their tails and braying laughter.

There had to be thousands in this place.

He returned his attention to the female kobold who’d first challenged him, Shrunken-Tail; she had taken the position of their unofficial guide. It was hard to pick her out of the crowd bustling around them but he knew her by her voice now, and he focussed on her as he realised what she was saying:

“… of course, the Great Master can be viewed when he comes in and out, up and down – but he doesn’t allow us to speak directly to him, only to his pets. Now why don’t we show you to Unbreaking-Tooth, the Grand-Spellborn-One, and he can tell your destiny!”

This seemed to capture the heart of the crowd, and the kobolds surged forwards, the hairy, scaly mass carrying them back inside away from the balcony, into the mouth of another rough-hewn tunnel – more gates were opened, guards were shooed aside, and a half-stair, half-slide was descended.

“Ibb!” Phanar growled.

He cast about for the mage, finding him on his left. There was a single male kobold between them, a guard in a (long-looking) mail skirt and leather breastplate. He reached across the guard’s shoulders, but the kobold didn’t seem to mind – the creature was babbling about the price of hooks to his friend in the row in front – and Phanar grabbed Ibbalat by the arm.

When the mage met his eyes, he used his glare to carry the statement:

You can’t let them take us before their chief magician!

‘I know!’ Ibbalat seemed to be replying with his thrust-out jaw, his glower.

I am the ghost, Phanar reminded himself. I am the hourglass and I am the sand. I am the walker of the ways. There are many paths. Most are hidden. Only one takes me into my future. I will find the path. And I will walk it.

Not even for a single moment would he consider turning to Redgate for help. The sorcerer would probably just kill all the kobolds. He just had to blind the creatures temporarily, until Ibbalat’s erasure-spell took hold…

When he craned his neck around and found Kani, she was already looking at him.

He screwed his eyes shut repeatedly.

It only took three goes in rapid succession before she nodded firmly, pressing her lips together in resolve.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He got Ibbalat’s attention and then Anathta’s – he gave them notice in like fashion, with a squint and a warning look. A glance towards Redgate showed the champion seemed to be just regarding him serenely from behind the mask; assuming this meant the sorcerer was prepared, he turned back to Kani and nodded to her.

He looked ahead again, treading forwards in pace with the crowd, then firmly closed his eyes one last time.

Three – two –

The flare of white light the cleric created was so bright his eyelids turned a vivid pink-red. The night-vision spell he was under probably didn’t help.

Gingerly, at first, he squinted at his surroundings. Finding he could still see without much issue, he quickly directed the others with gestures while the kobolds were screaming. The poor critters were clasping their faces, falling about in confusion – their native night-vision probably rivalled or surpassed Ibbalat’s magic, and they’d had no warning.

Phanar pulled Kani through the crowd, jostling the blinded kobolds no worse than they were jostling each other. Within seconds the two of them were regrouping on one side of the tunnel with Ibbalat and Anathta – Redgate simply used his shadow-form to float through the intervening kobolds towards them.

Ibbalat had been chanting away under his breath, and scattering what looked like shredded fish-skin, complete with glimmering scales, onto the uneven rock floor. Then he clapped his hands and looked up at them, a tight, satisfied smile on his face.

“Done. We’re invisible.”

“Ah – hate to break it to you –“ Anathta said, raising her hand and waving it in front of her face.

“Not at all, my love,” Redgate murmured. “Invisibility to enemies – is that not the way it’s worded?”

Enemies.

Phanar held his breath, watching Ibbalat’s reaction. Clearly the magician’s spell wasn’t reading Redgate as an enemy…

The mage managed to nod without much concern reaching his eyes.

“Inaudible, too,” Ibbalat went on. “Hello, kobolds!” He yelled in the nearest creature’s face, and it didn’t react, still patting its eyes and moaning. Phanar spotted Shrunken-Tail, flailing about madly with her arm over her eyes, asking for the ‘strange ones’ with a saddening note of concern in her voice.

She was probably just worried that ‘Red-Of-The-Fur’ would disapprove of her when he found out she’d let their guests from far-off lands get hurt. The unfortunate truth was that her boss would likely skin her alive for letting a group of dragon-slayers into their city…

“We don’t have long,” Ibbalat prompted.

“So where’re we going?” Anathta asked.

Phanar looked into the expectant eyes of the cleric once more.

“I’ve got it,” Kani said firmly, without pause. “This way.”

She took the lead, the hand of her shield-arm kept steady on the butt of her mace to keep it from swinging in its belt-clasp.

Phanar noted the way Redgate seemed to hesitate before following, as though something about Kani’s assertiveness unsettled him.

The warrior longed to walk behind the sorcerer, keep a closer eye on the murderer’s subtle tells, prepare himself for action if it were required – but he knew he couldn’t. He took advantage of Redgate’s hesitance and walked ahead.

He had to trust in his reactions. He had to keep his thoughts away from action, away from plotting his manoeuvres… He could never be certain when the sorcerer’s shield was active, when it could give away his ill-intent. He had to walk ahead, even knowing that the sorcerer could right now raise his arm and strike them all down from behind, without warning. He had to maintain the facade.

But his mind – his mind dwelt on it.

He had little care for his own death, his own continued existence. He’d long since accepted that he would pass on from this plane, and had almost done so many times. He’d had to accept it, when his life’s-blood poured out into the dirt, the night Kani discovered her true power. And Anathta, Ibbalat – they too had the mettle, the spine to face the grave without fear. But Kani – until the morning they disembarked in Tirremuir she’d seemed so fragile. Refusing to step off the Dremmedine during Mund’s Infernal Incursion was a turning-point for her. She’d accepted her doom, and went forwards now to face it – leading them, even.

Yet when Redgate took a moment to reassess the cleric – for that was surely what he’d been doing – Phanar’s ill-will swelled.

More than for himself – more than for his sister – he feared for Kani.

He spoke the mantras, letting them empty him out, hollow him within.

I swallowed my ghost. I crossed the sand. I smashed the hourglass and remade it in starlight. I walked every way. I took every path. I found my future. And I became it.

But that hallowed hollowness, the scourge of thought and emotion that left behind only the path cut by his will – it would not come.

He saw them in his mind’s eye, too many paths to follow.

And every single one was the future in which Phanar watched, looked on in helpless horror, as Redgate slew Kanthyre, over and over again in increasingly-abhorrent ways.

I am futureless, he realised. I am adrift.

He almost stumbled. He almost fell.

He followed, emptied not of emotion, but of purpose.

* * *