Konrad

Given how well regarded Alice was in the eyes of the dwarven leaders, the Wrights, Konrad expected to be farewelled from the mountain city of Burly with at least some kind of fanfare. But to his surprise, he was shaken awake by Alice before the sun had risen.

"Alice, what’s wrong?"

The shadows in the room began to coalesce around Konrad as he instinctively began to weave his etherial armor.

"It’s okay; there’s nothing wrong. I just wanted to leave without making too much of a fuss," Alice explained in hushed tones.

Konrad could see Rolo standing by the door with a pack on his back, his eyes unfocused. It appeared that a good night's sleep had done little to break him out of whatever trance he was in. Spirit lay on the floor by his side, struggling to keep her eyes open.

Konrad had known Alice long enough to realize that she was up to something. "How much trouble is this going to cause?"

"On a scale of one to ten? About an eight."

"I thought the dwarves loved you?"

"Some do, some don’t; I might have embellished my resume a little. They were mostly convinced when I figured out what their artifacts did, but honestly, without Rolo’s mail shirt, I would have blown myself to bits."

"I at least wanted to go back to the Rose Hall once more."

"There’s no time, trust me."

Alice held Konrad’s gaze, and her earnest expression broke his resolve just like it always had.

Their little group slipped out of the city before the sun had risen. The adventurers that had gathered to seek glory in the caverns of Rhendra’s Falls were gradually packing up their camps and leaving to seek new campaigns. Few were heading north, and it wasn’t long until Konrad and his companions found themselves alone on the winding road.

The sun was high in the cloudless sky, and the trees cast a dappled shade as they swayed in a cool breeze. Rolo wandered along, humming cheerfully, while Konrad and Alice talked non-stop. He was forced to retell all of his adventures, frustrating Alice with the lack of detail he could provide about the more magical and historical aspects of the places he had been. When he told her that he gave away a ship crafted with the magic of the ancient snow elves, her mouth hung open, and she made him swear to take her on a voyage.

On the first night, Konrad took the first watch and found himself sitting alone, listening to the nighttime sounds of the forest. He tried to process what he had learned in the crystalline Lathorok chamber, but the revelation was almost too big to comprehend: Cloda had been killed by a champion of the Father wielding a white sword, and the Mother might be a fiction invented by the Father and the Brother. Konrad considered calling Avram or Casovan to find out what they knew, but in truth, he knew he couldn’t trust any of their responses.

For his whole life, champions had been something to look up to, but the more he delved into the history of Parthanea, the more he realized that champions weren't the force for good that he had always thought they were. But what choice did he have? To give up was to be cut off, and he shuddered at the recollection of Issie, shivering and pale, stripped of her strength and her power. Even worse than that, he might lose the use of his leg. The waif still remained a mystery, but there was nothing to suggest that he wouldn’t also take back his gifts if Konrad renounced his duty.

His last shred of hope lay in Lyran’s past. She had been the only one among them who had strived to help people; if she proved to be just as callous and unfeeling as the others, then he would reject the small gods, accept his fate, and limp back to the fishery in Fallow Vale.

After four days, the volcano came into view and they saw that over the years, the thick green jungle had reclaimed the slopes, except for the top, where a black growth seemed to boil out.

"I don’t see a red forest," Konrad muttered, squinting at the summit.

"We’ll get to your forest, but first we have a lost city to find," Alice replied, plunging into the jungle.

Insects attacked every inch of their bare skin, and the stuffy, stagnant air sapped their energy. After a few hours, Alice’s excited voice came from up ahead. "There’s a clearing here!"

With a swipe of his shadow sword, Konrad cut the last of the creepers that blocked his path and found himself surrounded by great slabs of thick stone covered with thick vines.

"An ancient civilization," Alice said, barely able to keep the excitement from her voice.

Alice stepped forward, and Spirit darted out and snapped her belt in her teeth, pulling her so violently that they tumbled backward.

"Spirit, what are you—" Alice fell silent as the jungle floor where she had been standing collapsed, revealing a pit with gnarled pointed sticks arranged at the bottom.

"Someone doesn’t want us to go in here," Konrad said.

"Thanks, Spirit," Alice said, brushing the hair out of her eyes and hugging Spirit.

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"We can’t stay here, not when Rolo could wander into any of those pits," Konrad suggested.

"We could tie him to a tree?" Alice suggested.

Konrad gave her a blank stare, and she sighed, gazing longingly into the ruins before turning away.

"When we’re done with your quest and you get this ancient power, we’re coming back down here. Deal?"

"Deal."

At the base of the volcano, a monstrous staircase had been cut right into the side of the mountain. Each step seemed to have been made for giants' feet, and climb sapped the strength from their muscles.

It took them all day to reach the top of the volcano, and as the sun was setting in the south, they finally gazed down into the caldera. The bowl at the top of the volcano was so vast that it would have taken a whole day just to walk around the rocky rim. Inside, the black vegetation they had seen from below turned out to be a tangled mass of thorns. The plants looked deadly, with the thorns somewhere between the length of Konrad’s hand and the length of a longsword and just as sharp. Right in the middle, the mass rose out to a thick mound, as if the thorns had reached up to swallow something in the center of the hollow.

"The story didn’t say anything about thorns," Konrad muttered.

Before they could stop him, Rolo reached out to touch one of the long spikes and gave a hiss as blood welled out from a deep slice. Konrad grasped him and healed the wound while trying to recall everything he could about the fresco he had seen in the Rose Hall. "The forest was half green and half red, but the last image just showed an empty crater with a stone cube in the center."

"The thorns certainly rise in the middle; they could be covering it. If it’s there, what do you think we’ll find inside?"

Konrad considered the question. He had to know if the small gods were capable of the same cruelty as the Father, and he would start with Lyran; if she was bad, then there was little hope that the likes of Casovan were any better.

"The truth," he said finally, summoning his shadow blade and hacking away at the thorns.

Rolo seemed to hold a personal grudge against the plants and pulled his axe from the loop on his belt, swinging it in huge blows that battered the thick brambles.

"I can help get us in there," Alice ventured over the sounds of heavy breathing and hacking.

"It’s okay, Alice; we’ve got this," Konrad replied.

Alice muttered something unintelligible about "boys" as she rummaged in her pack.

The sharp thorns were almost two feet long in places, and razor sharp pieces flew off as they worked, shredding small holes in Konrad and Rolo’s jackets. Konrad summoned his shadow armor and took a deep breath, swinging his weary arms. At this rate, it would take them a week to reach the center.

A nearby explosion caused the whole volcano to tremble, and a shockwave knocked them both off their feet and into the thorns. Fortunately, Konrad’s armor took most of the impact, though Rolo wasn’t so lucky.

"Ye gods, what fresh hell is this?" the northman bellowed.

"Rolo, you’re back!" Konrad cried.

Another explosion shook the earth as Konrad tried to haul his friend to his feet, shattered remains of thorn bushes raining down on them.

"I know I’m back, but where have I been?" Rolo replied.

"I’ll fill you in later. Grab your axe; we have to get to Alice."

Konrad sprinted back up to the rim of the volcano and saw that a huge section of the tangled mass of plants had been annihilated, but it wasn't an earthquake, or the volcano erupting, as Konrad had feared. Alice and Spirit calmly walked through the blasted landscape, and when they reached the wall of thorns, Alice extended her hand, and a shockwave obliterated everything in front of her for about ten feet. Spirit danced around her, yapping in delight, and between the deafening blasts, Konrad could hear Alice’s laughter.

"Sometimes I think the small gods should have chosen her as their champion," Konrad murmured.

"Perhaps the gods were too frightened to choose her. I remember meeting that girl in your village. How did we all come to be here?"

"Let’s go down; Alice will be able to explain better than me."

They caught up with Alice at the entrance to a long, dark tunnel she had blasted into the thorns. The sunlight couldn’t penetrate inside, but there was the faintest hint of a purple glow in the depths.

Alice stood proudly holding what looked to be a short broom handle painted vivid blue. "I told you I could help get us in there."

"I see you got out of your wedding; I hope you didn’t use that on the groom," Rolo said, pointing to the object in Alice’s hand.

"Rolo!" Alice rushed forward and threw her arms around the northman, who looked slightly taken aback.

"It's clear that you know me, but forgive me, I only recall meeting you once," Rolo said as he gently disengaged himself.

A small blush rose to Alice’s cheeks. "I’m sorry, it just it seems like we’ve known each other a lot longer than that. You won’t believe that adventure we had together."

Sitting among the still smoking thorns, Alice explained to Rolo what had happened after he had been transformed into a puppet and in turn, Rolo told them about his journey from the North.

"As soon as I heard the champion of the Father and the head priest mention you, Konrad, I came to warn you. Little did I know you’ve grown big enough to take care of yourself. You’ll be almost as tall as me soon; if you ever do meet that champion of the Father, he’d better watch out," Rolo said.

"I already ran into one of them, in Portia, but in truth, he didn’t seem that bad."

Konrad explained his fight with the champion of the Father, trying not to glance at Alice, who was listening with rapt attention. Getting a little carried away, he even suggested that he could have stayed and won the fight, but Spirit whined and covered her eyes with her paws, causing both Rolo and Alice to chuckle.

"I don’t think Spirit agrees with you, Konrad, but at least now we can both claim that we have fought the Father's followers," Rolo declared.

The young northman detailed his confrontation with the first priest of the Father, and his storytelling was far more vivid than Konrad's, full of magical chain mail and exploding hedrons. Alice and Konrad cheered, and Spirit howled her approval as Rolo described throwing Flean into the harbor.

"Now it’s time for you to tell me what we are doing here; is this another quest?" Rolo asked, the excitement clear in his voice.

"Konrad’s here to unlock the ancient power of one of his gods, and then he’s promised to help me explore the lost city," Alice supplied.

Night had fallen, and as he watched Alice and Rolo animatedly discuss their current quest, Konrad began to feel as if he had made a mistake. How could he have thought it was okay to lead Alice into danger?Poor Rolo hadn’t even had a chance to recover. If he could persuade them to make camp, perhaps he could creep back on his own later.

"We should rest back up on the rim of the volcano and wait for daylight," Konrad ventured, glancing from Alice to Rolo.

"We should at least have a little peek before bed, just to make sure there’s nothing in there that could come out," Alice replied, a smile playing on her lips.

"I certainly couldn’t sleep a wink without at least checking," Rolo added, drawing his axe and testing the edge with his thumb.

Spirit laid a paw on Konrad’s arm and gazed at him with her black eyes.

"You too, Spirit?" Konrad asked, and she licked his face.

Alice rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a fine coat of chain mail that shimmered blue in the moonlight. "This is yours, Rolo; you might need it for looking around."

Rolo took one look at Konrad’s expression, and his familiar deep laughter rumbled around the clearing. "Did you really think you could leave us behind, champion of small gods?"