‘Don’t let it get away!’ bellowed Mindu beneath. Maeve froze in place, the dragon and its rider in the sky was a sight she could not accept. The beast shrieked as if it was in agonizing pain, its small dark silhouette against the night sky bore visible signs of wretchedness; holes pierced its frayed wings, ribs protruded from the thin parchment-like hide, and its vestigial tail hung helplessly behind—the dragon’s flight was clumsy, unbalanced, and not in the least graceful.

It was hardly a dragon; a huge lizard, rather.

Darine dashed by Maeve, right toward the beast, shouting a single word. Maeve felt the faelin permeating Darine’s syllable, amplifying it to a scream, something unearthly, a shrill that could easily compete with that of the dragon. Maeve felt the essence blasting into the beast. The monster squealed, taking a sharp turn to the side, nearly dropping its rider in the process.

‘It’s not enough!’ Darine shouted. ‘Merv! Do something!’

Meave laughed hysterically. I can heal it from its wounds at best.

Then she remembered the gems. Now was a good time to make use of them.

Reynard and the hunters loudly tried to persuade Mindu into giving them weapons, but the Stormwalker and his people did not listen. A few of them grabbed their bows and sent several arrows at the beast, alas, none of them hit. The dragon, enraged by Darine’s attempt to put it to sleep, flew directly to Mindu’s group, pouncing one of them, but was unable to lift the man up from the ground.

Torn limbs and a bloodcurdling scream followed, nonetheless.

Maeve fervently opened the pouch in which the gemstones lay. She quickly snatched the amethyst, enclosed it with her fist, closed her eyes, and opened her Well—only to find nothing.

The faelin was there, pulsating, that much was clear. The gemstone, though, was only a black spot among the tempestuous waves of the essence, transparent, useless. Nothing like a vessel should have been.

Darine screamed again, this time more vigorously, trying to weave the syllables together into a distorted tune of madness. The dragon shrieked, trembled, struggling to shake off its rider, who remained unnervingly silent throughout the encounter. The beast then landed, snapped its head, screamed at Darine, and slowly trudged into her direction.

‘What are you doing?!’ Darine hollered, slowly backing away from the monster.

Maeve’s heart threatened with bursting in her chest. ‘What could I possibly do?!’

Mindu jumped at the dragon with two great leaps, wielding an axe nearly as big as he himself, and swung it at the beast. Long inches of the blade disappeared into the dragon’s hide; the monster whirled about, a daunting image to see considering the state of decay of its body and snapped its jaws at Mindu. The robust man had no chance to leap away from the beast’s teeth, the dragon’s head closed around his arm. The Stormwalker winced all in his body, let out a painful growl of agony, but had the composure to grab his long knife from his belt. One, two, three stabs at the head, and the last one hit the vermin in the eye—a squeal so sharp Maeve tensed all her muscles, and the dragon was off Mindu, axe dangling above its leg.

‘Give me your hand!’ Darine appeared by Maeve, grabbing her hand without hesitation, and turned to the beast.

‘Open yourself! I can’t use it!’

‘What?’

‘OPEN YOURSELF!’

Maeve quickly opened her Well and let the essence flow through herself. For a brief, serene moment she floated in the faelin, then she felt a wet, slippery something that reached over her, seizing her in a way that made her feel dirty, soiled. Then something forcefully penetrated her Well, pushed deep, grabbed all that was there and ripped it out, leaving a sensation of loss in its wake, emptiness, abrupt and final abyss.

As Maeve fell to her knees, Darine screamed into the night, screamed as death itself, something that vaguely reminded of a song, something that mockingly tried to mimic a melody, yet was nothing but raw, primal, repulsive noise.

The dragon briefly squeaked, then turned limp, swayed, and fell to the ground. Its rider had quickly jumped off the makeshift saddle and tried to make a run for it, alas, he ran right into Reynard, who vehemently sprang at him, pushing him off his feet, and grappled him on the ground.

‘Kill the beast,’ Mindu growled in the sudden quiet. His men briskly gathered around the unconscious dragon, and methodically slew the vermin. Silently, without noise, the night’s calm broken only by the wet piercings and slashes of the Boar tribe’s warriors.

Darine collapsed to her knees next to Maeve. Blood trickled from the girl’s nose; her eyes still glowed from the echo of the essence. Maeve slowly dragged herself to the redhead, put her hands on her cheeks, closed her eyes and opened her Well once again, not without any concerns.

But that unfamiliar power was not there anymore. She felt the faelin, pure, though a lingering sense of distraught left its mark on the essence. Maeve quickly utilized the faelin’s power and tried restoring some of Darine’s consumed stamina.

Naturally, her own waned even more after the process.

‘Get him on his feet, Hunter!’ Mindu barked from a rock he sat, while two of his men were trying to bandage his arm. ‘Does he have weapons on him?’

‘Not a single one,’ Reynard said after dragging the stranger to his feet. ‘But here’s a gemstone.’

‘Looks like a moonstone,’ noted Vhira next to his captain. The former rider of the dragon remained silent; Maeve could not make out his features very well in the dark.

‘Good thing the stones do not work here,’ Mindu observed, and he got up to go and take a closer glance at the gemstone and their prisoner.

‘Yes, wonderful,’ Maeve murmured. No one seemed to hear her remark.

‘Nari! Undha! Get Lady Hethlaw up and tend to her. We are close to the Ridge, bring her there.’

‘I shall join, too,’ Maeve stood, watching as two of Mindu’s men stepped to Darine and gently lifted her up in their arms.

‘No need for that,’ the Stormwalker said, inspecting the gemstone he was handed over by Reynard. ‘Come, Reborn one,’ he gestured to Maeve. ‘You are the expert here. Have a look at it.’

Maeve was watching the stranger’s face in the moon light. She searched for the same deformations on his head they saw on the giant three days before. She calmed a bit when she could not find anything like that, but only a bit. The red scale armour of the man glistened even in the darkness.

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‘What do you think?’ Mindu gave her the gemstone. For what she could see, Vhira was right, it was a green moonstone. A gemstone the power of which lay in rekindling the vigour in one ‘s soul.

Maeve blinked.

Now the picture of the walking dead made sense to her.

But moonstones were not supposed to bring the dead back. It could only give one back a fraction of power which had been drained before by the very same stone.

‘Where did you get it from?’ she demanded from the prisoner. The man, no older than Maeve herself, sneered, revealing his sharp, canine-like teeth.

‘Jak sprak noc thyn lanna, fheregh.’

‘What’s wrong with his teeth?’ whispered Amodh. The stranger grimaced and opened his mouth even wider, growling.

Mindu’s hand snapped at his throat, his muscles flexing.

‘I think you understand me, bud,’ he hissed, holding the young man’s face close to his. ‘Believe me this. In a couple of hours, you’re gonna sing. Loud. Histerically.’

‘Jak fhara noc drad.’

‘I take you don’t fear death. Good.’

A noisy group approached from the woods, polearms at the ready, torches in hand, agitated.

‘Most Honourable!’ one of them gasped, wearing a boar’s skinned hide on her back. ‘What happened? We saw Hethlaw prone.’

‘Calm down,’ Mindu said, releasing the prisoner. ‘We have much to discuss.’

‘Like whom all these people are?’

‘For one, yes. Let us head back to the Ridge. Bring the remnants of the beast. I want it dissected. Where’s Lyn?’

‘Right here.’

A warrior stepped forward, clad in plate armour, deep green cloak hanging from her back. She stood before Mindu, looking almost bored.

‘At my service, as ever,’ the Stormwalker smiled, tired.

‘What is it?’

‘More respect, boy!’ snapped the woman in the boar hide.

Boy? Maeve felt as if she were watching her own life’s events unfold from an outside perspective and someone had forgotten to tell her the context.

‘It’s all right, Amudhu. Knights had always been loners.’

A knight on Boar Isle. They really do have all the autonomy of the world.

‘Could you please make sure we were not being followed? This one got in somehow.’ Mindu’s voice was devoid of any mockery.

The knight called Lyn stood still for a couple of brief moments, then bowed her head, and slowly brought her left hand, clenched in a fist, to her heart. Then she straightened and went back on the path downwards, without uttering a single word, her figure gradually devoured by darkness.

‘Come on. The Ridge is just up ahead.’

‘This must be a joke, right?’ asked Lundahl as the Boar tribe began trotting up the hill among the dreampines. ‘He went back alone, with what? A single sword?’

‘Don’t underestimate knights, hunter,’ Nash hissed.

‘I don’t underestimate knights. I simply have little faith in a lonely madlad against the horde of the dead.’

‘That madlad might be an anointed knightlord of an order. Have you the slightest idea what that means?’

‘Haven’t heard about any knightlord named “Lyn”, especially one that young.’

‘Frankly,’ Reynard muttered, ‘even if that was Grandmaster Sandro himself, I’d have my doubts.’

‘He went to scout the area,’ Amodh pointed out. ‘Not to fight anyone.’

‘It’s ridiculous, nonetheless,’ Lundahl muttered under his breath.

Maeve remained silent. She knew knights were trained unlike the fighters of any other organizations; their training was said to be utterly direr than that of the Roses in Andoriel, which was notoriously inhuman. And rightly so, since the knights were the bulwark standing between the kingdoms of the Mainland and the behemoths crawling in the Brimlands.

At least, in the old times. Nowadays? Knights were springing up everywhere. Boar Isle included, as it seemed.

She tried to ignore the fact that apparently everyone thought the knight was a male.

The treeline of the azure woods abruptly ended. A good two hundred yards of clearing lay between them and the Ridge itself; a stronghold of wooden palisade, sharpened stakes, and deep, wide trenches. Scattered bonfires burned roaring across the clearing, perfusing the narrow slope leading upward the massive gates in light. The dark silhouettes of the peaks of whatever-mountains loomed tall beyond the open gates. The constant noise of mumbling Maeve had heard before now ceased, all silent in what she felt an aggressive trepidation; a mass of still people stood in the entrance, a mute horde of rabid shadows.

Mindu walked into the light, leading the group up among the bonfires, one hand held high. No shouts were necessary, no introduction was made; the mass split up, forming a pathway for the group to pass through.

Beyond the gates, people were teeming, staring quietly at the arriving group; even more gazed out in the darkness beyond their bonfires, their faces sombre.

Maeve watched the masses, silently regarding them, torn between astonishment and guilt. Truth be told, she had only ever seen natives in Grospan and on the battlefield, and having seen the circumstances, she drawn her conclusions. Hearing the word ‘tribe’ she had not pictured fine robes, glistening jewellery, nor steel armour or well-tended polearms. Some of the islanders wore boarhides around their waist or on their back, but by and large, they seemed just like anyone else living in Amrith—or Andoriel for that matter.

Buildings loomed on both sides of the path, structures of pure stone, formed in the most grotesque ways with no visible front doors. Thick, unadorned curtains hung in many an entrance. Among the cave-like dwellings hundreds of tents stood, with even more people shuffling around them.

Arriving at a less confined space Maeve thought of as a public square, Mindu came to a halt, and turned to face the Reborn.

‘Lady Hethlaw is going to be all right by the morning. I will not order you to use your power, but … if you were to, your help would be much appreciated.’

‘Let me tend to you first,’ Maeve prompted, but Mindu shook his head.

‘I’ll survive. The sanctuary is a great place to lay your heads,’ he pointed at a towering dark silhouette against the rocks. ‘Tell the sisters the Stormwalker saw you among the clouds. They will understand. Lady Hethlaw is also there.’ He looked back at Maeve. ‘Tomorrow there’ll be a council of sort. Your presence is highly anticipated there. Yours too, master Reynard.’

Mindu bowed his head and left the Royal Special Forces alone. Maeve winced under the hundreds of glances fixed on them. She expectantly watched Reynard’s face, as did Nash and Amodh and all the other hunters. His was a look of despair, of faithlessness and—Maeve realised with growing fear—resignation.

‘What are we to do, captain?’ whispered Vhira.

‘Head for that sanctuary, I’d say,’ mumbled Lundahl.

‘Captain?’

Maeve stepped closer to the man, slowly taking in the scene of the silent mob. All they know is we are Royalists.

‘Reynard. We ought to move lest we get acquainted with the Boar tribe a bit closer than what shall be healthy.’

The Hunter Captain flashed his eyes to Maeve. ‘Yes. Right. Let’s move.’

He seemed as though he had just woken from a dream; a nightmare, that is. Maeve stayed at his side, even went as far as to put a hand on his arm.

‘All will be well and fine.’ The words felt as empty as they did nearly a week before, on the shores of the Fisherman’s Fjord.

Reynard stared at a point Maeve doubted even he could see.

‘You know, Maeve, I fear we won’t live to tell the tale.’ Maeve’s body trembled by the tone of the man’s voice. ‘Boar Isle is to be the death of us. One way or another.’