Then, amazingly, it seemed that they had downed the last of the monsters in the immediate vicinity that they had teleported into.

There was some time to take in their surroundings, now that they weren’t preoccupied with fighting off wave after wave of monsters.

They were standing on a barren, rocky plateau, made up of a dark, grey-blue stone that hid myriad shadows where it jutted up and out in different places. Shadows that might be hiding more monsters.

In the distance in many directions were mountains. Not white, snowy, regularly-arrayed mountains like there had been in the Frozen North, but giant splintered fragments of the same grey-blue rock that rose up at odd intervals like randomly placed and shaped knife-blades sticking out of the ground.

Wicked pale little lights winked irregularly from the mountains in places–whether fires, or windows, or something else, Horatio could not be sure.

In one direction, very far off, a thin structure stuck up out of the earth so straight that it could not be a mountain–a tower, brooding lonely and ominous over the flatter landscape that lay that way.

The sky was thick with cloud, and dark, except for the far-off illumination of lightning storms.

The air smelled faintly of sulphur and rotting flesh. Noxious gases could be glimpsed steaming up from little pools of stagnant water here and there among the rocks.

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This was truly a horrible place. It was as though the very land itself had been twisted and corrupted by Brax’s evil.

The party could still see countless more monsters walking, flying or crawling over the landscape, more monsters than Horatio had ever seen in one place before. But, now that they had slain all those nearby, whether any of these other monsters had noticed this sudden incursion of non-Braxians into their territory, Horatio could not tell. None of them seemed to be heading their way at the moment in any case.

‘You,’ someone said in an unfamiliar, cold, contemptuous voice.

Horatio started, then looked for who had spoken.

He had not noticed somebody standing close by to them, atop one of the blue-grey rocks.

The armoured Braxian who had taken the Clarent Sword from Alex.

He was not carrying the Sword any more, though.

‘I thought you might try to make your way here,’ the Braxian snarled through his helmet, with a metallic echo. ‘A pity that I did not slay you, Ursula, in one strike. I imagine that you have come to try to take back the sword. Well, you won’t. I have sent it on to be delivered to Lord Brax with one my brides, Cressida, while I waited here to see if you followed us. You have some prowess between you, I will give you that, and you have slain many of my monsters. But I am another beast entirely, and I will be your end!’

Horatio’s heart was hammering hard against his chest. How strong was this man, to take them all on so confidently when he had already seen them fight off so many monsters?

The Braxian drew a sword, and leapt off the rock at them.

Boss battle: Othello.