A mass of bubbles burst from Leland’s mouth, the force of exiting the Void crushing against his lungs like a log falling on a cracker. Salt invaded his eyes and nose, blinding him to an awkward degree. With the Lord of the Chameleon’s contract still enabled, suddenly going blind kicked his instinct into high gear. His brain told him to swim up, but instinct told him to fully breathe out, despite the pain.

Several long seconds passed as Leland’s chest heaved before he finally fanned his arms out, pulling himself up through the water. He tried to open his eyes to see the surface, but only darkness and pain met him. With a distinct lack of bubbles coming from his mouth, Leland began to panic.

He thrashed and flailed, he would give anything to have a breath of air. The mocking smile of the Undying Army Harbinger filled his mind, enough so that Leland thought the man planned this. To die in agony, away from friends and family, alone in the crushing depths of an ocean potentially worlds away. Moments continued to pass and he still failed to breach, to escape his watery prison.

Just like the Undying Lord.

His vision became even more blurry, this time not because of the salt. Darkness encroached what little color he could see, until there was nothing but a cold lifelessness.

He began to sink, waterlogged and with heavy pockets.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Huuuurshhhhh.

A whimper, a muted whisper of an ambiguous tone. Nothing, yet a beacon for someone far beyond the scope of the material world. Then, a spark. Something, something so small, a finger twitching or a distant shape appearing in his periphery.

Cherry? Or maybe bitter pear?

Sour, but it also tasted like blood. Iron. A lot of iron. A lot of blood. And Cherry. Iron and cherry, a bad combination. He tried to spit it out, but the flavor, especially the cherry, kept coming. Infinite, it seemed, never draining despite his throat’s purging attempts.

Something hit him in the face, his own hand, he realized. Like it had a life of its own, his hand dove into his mouth, scooping at the blood and cherry. Anything to get the taste—

“Stop it, idiot!”

His hand was knocked away, his knuckles breaking from the force of hitting the ground. More cherry flavor came.

“Drink,” the voice snipped.

Colors, Leland found, everywhere. Dark, yes, but green as well. Yellow. Maybe even—

“Stop it and drink, Leland get the potion down.”

Two and two finally were put together and Leland swallowed. What came next was several minutes of healing from mortal wounds. His lungs were the worst of it, but his ears and face were torn apart as well, likely from clawing at the pressure hiding in his nasal cavity. Lastly was his hand, and the broken bones.

At some point Leland’s consciousness escaped him again, but luckily he was in no danger. When he woke, he couldn’t sit up, his arms failed him, his muscles like wet clay.

“What—”

“Well kid, when I asked you to get us out, I didn’t mean like that.”

Leland followed the voice, finding the Huntress. As wet as he was, she was worse, but that was most likely from hunting dinner. A fire was burning away between them, a dozen fish roasting on a stick resting in the heat.

While the smell the fish produced was heavenly, the same could not be said for the Huntress’ appearance. Bags of tar were cast under her eyes, ones with enough layers to pose as a century-old tree stump. She stared at Leland distantly, emotions locked away.

She was the Huntress, hardened killer of criminals and guardian of royal law… but right now, right now she was Isobel, widowed mother of a child who never grew to the age of double digits. A weight was plastered into her arms as she stared at Leland, a weight she had forced herself to forget.

Leland forced the clay in his arms to harden, sitting up with enough fever to light a smithy. “What happened?” his dry, raw throat managed to release before seizing like a cramped muscle.

“You got us out of the Void and put us into an ocean.”

“Where’s Sybil?”

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“I’m here,” the Princess whispered.

Leland turned, finding her sitting expectantly only a step away. A raging wave bashed him in the mind, nausea overcoming his stomach. He remembered the feeling right away, the divine mask’s camouflage. Once the pain settled down, his mind easily saw past the defenses.

“Something is wrong with your mask,” he muttered, still swaying a bit.

“It’s grown weak, yes,” Sybil said. “Lady Huntress thinks—”

“Isobel, call me Isobel.”

“Lady Isobel thinks,” she continued despite Isobel rolling her eyes, “that the Boneforged Monarch is draining the mask’s power.”

Leland knew of some runic formulas that lost power depending on the size of the item they were inscribed onto, but chose not to say that aloud. His audience wouldn’t care and he didn’t feel too up for it anyway.

“I was dead,” Leland then whispered into his lap.

“Yes,” Isobel mused, hinting with enough fleeting arrogance to more or less the actual severity of the situation. Whatever her reason, she chose not to expand her thoughts on the matter, only stating, “You own me for two high-quality potions now.”

Leland was able to roll his eyes, but allowed himself to lay back down. “Right, I’ll get right on that…”

He fell back asleep, waking when it was daybreak. Or at least, he thought it was daybreak. A stick pointing upright in the sand just out of reach of the smoldering embers caught his attention before the surroundings did. The fish impaled on the stick was incredibly dry, overcooked, partially burnt, and seasonless, but it still somehow managed to taste like a steak cooked in butter and served with potatoes.

Filling his belly, Leland turned his attention to his companions. The Huntress was awake and watching him, no doubt watching their surroundings as well. Sybil was asleep, wrapped in a ratty cloak.

“Any idea where we are?” Leland asked quietly.

“Take a wild guess.”

He held off rolling his eyes, instead looking around. A beach, waves, sand. Nothing too characteristic, other than that the sand was an off shade of black. And soft.

Weird, he thought, now scanning up the beach. In the distance was, well, Leland didn’t know how to describe it. A wall? No, that wasn’t quite right. From his sitting position, he could make out a few patches of grass and the poof of treetops atop the structure. For a moment he thought of activating the Lord of Chameleon’s contract to see further, but by then he realized what he was looking at.

A cliff.

The cliff wrapped far into the horizon, disappearing behind a bundle of clouds and lightning storms. Leland traced the storm, finding that it stretched all the way around and hovered over the open ocean. He then frowned, squinting at the faint outline of the cliff beyond the ocean and past the clouds. The cliff continued to wrap around, reuniting with itself where Leland first saw it.

They were surrounded, trapped within by cliffs that reached into the heavens. More importantly, Leland knew where they were, albeit he only knew about it because of the reputation this place garnered.

“Archon Valley,” he said to the Huntress, knowing his guess was correct.

She confirmed it with a nod. “Which means we are in grave danger.”

“Can you defeat an Archon?”

Isobel snorted, and a somber flame flickered in her eyes. “Hardly, Archons are practically divine beings. But they aren’t the danger as long as we don’t interfere with their experiments.”

“Then what—”

“Tell me, kid, how much do you actually know about this place?”

Leland blinked a few times, searching his memory for the information. He remembered asking his mom about the Valley after reading about it in some magic-basics tome. The Valley itself wasn’t special, other than being halfway across the world from home. It became special after the Archons arrived and terraformed the land into a protected garden.

No one knew where they originated from, but the Archons were said to have been around during the first Lord Ascension. They were an isolated race, however, never leaving their garden despite the outside world changing.

There were theories listed in the tome, ones of great debate. Some argued that the Archons wished to return to their homes with magical information. Others argued that the Archons were mindless golems created by one of the original Lords, and without their master’s command, they are forever set to continue their work.

What that work entailed? Leland didn’t know, only that some of the greatest magical discoveries in the last few centuries originated from the Valley. According to rumor, Lords with an interest in magic kept a loyal few hidden in the Valley, spying on one another as they researched Archon experiments.

Leland said all of this to the Huntress.

“You are missing one key piece of information,” she said, standing and stretching her back. “It’s not just research teams and Archons here. There are mutated monsters, Archon experiments, and mutated people, also experiments.”

Leland bit the inside of his lip. “There are monsters here that worry you?”

The Huntress jerked a thumb back to the tree line. “Monsters, not so much.”

Following the gesture, Leland found a honey badger the size of a bear, dead. Scales made up the back half of the creature, along with a twin set of fins that ran along its front arms. Now covered in mollusks and worms, it was camouflaged against the black sand.

Now that Leland knew they were in the Valley, he reassessed the sand. It was soft, nongranular, almost like the ash of a campfire.

“This isn’t sand,” Leland then said. “We’re sitting on an Archon experiment… is it ash?”

“Don’t know, and don’t care. As long as it’s not going to hurt us, I don’t see why it would matter.”

That was true, at least enough to a certain degree. Leland tabled the oddity for the moment, instead switching back to the previous conversation.

“If you are not worried about monsters, then what are you afraid of?”

Isobel stared longingly out to sea, her eyes settling on the storm across the way. It pulsed with lightning, highlighting the harsh winds that gusted high into the air. Eventually she shrugged.

“I don’t know.” She debated on saying the next part, but ultimately chose not to maintain the Huntress persona – Leland had the right to know. “There’s been… a chill in the air. Like we are being watched.”

“From where?”

“That’s the issue, from everywhere.”