Pirin and Myraden sprinted down the main thoroughfare of the camp, dodging warriors and workers as they wove towards the entrance into the tunnels. Pirin used the Winged Fist to push a clump of Staltspray warriors away, while Myraden swatted them with her spear.

“A map!” Pirin yelled. “We need a map!”

Myraden caught a worker’s wrist with her spear. The man had been charging at them with a shovel, ready to strike, but she redirected him and flung him into a cart filled with stone. “Where?”

Pirin ducked under a warrior’s fist, then struck the man in the gut with the pommel of his sword. Gray swatted another aside with her beak, and Kythen pinned the same man with a hoof. With his surroundings mostly clear, Pirin leapt up onto a barrel and looked around.

Near the entrance to the tunnels, a tent with open sides perched on a stone shelf. It had a table in the center and shelves along the edges—filled with parchment scrolls. He couldn’t make out what any of them said, but if there was a place to document the current state of exploration, that would be it.

Pirin pointed at it, then shouted, “There!”

He jumped off the stack of barrels, pushing an angry worker away from Myraden. With her spear, she snatched an arrow out of the air before it skewered him through the neck. “Watch yourself,” she snapped, then tossed the arrow down. “This would not be a fitting death for a king.”

“We can worry about a proper death for me later,” he said, then began to sprint towards the shelf of rock with the map tent on it.

The archers had scattered as soon as they made it down to the ground, and now, they all fired at random intervals. Arrows could come from all directions, and Pirin kept his gaze up, hunting for anyone who posed a threat to them. Maybe one day—no, for sure—he’d have the senses to detect an arrow coming before it hit him.

He couldn’t get turned into a pincushion before that day came.

A pair of workers pushed a flaming cart across the thoroughfare, scattering stones and burning debris in front of Myraden and Pirin and the Familiars. The four turned to the side, sprinting into a gap between two tents—where a pair of archers waited, ready to fire.

They both loosed their arrows, but Gray flapped her wings, stirring up a gale that knocked the arrows off-course. Pirin chopped one of their bows in half, then pushed the man through the fabric wall of one of the tents. Myraden jabbed her spear straight through the other’s throat.

They ran around the backs of the tents. They made it past one, but the next had been pressed right up against the crevice wall. Pirin jumped up, holding onto hanging vines and pulling himself over.

Gray fluttered over the gap, but Myraden hung back. She motioned towards the tent with a hand, and Kythen smashed through it horns-first. Running in the Bloodhorn’s wake, she said, “There is an easier way to do things.”

“My way was easier…”

They kept running. When they passed the wall of fire, they turned back to the main thoroughfare. A warrior tried to intercept them, but Kythen plowed through the man, flinging him into a tent on the other side of the crevice.

“This sect has wizards, correct?” Myraden asked. “Where are they?”

Three archers emerged on the other side of the crevice. Pirin spun around the other side and ducked behind a crate, then pulled Gray down too. The arrows thudded into the crate harmlessly.

He looked back at Myraden, barely remembering the question. With his mind racing in the heat of the fight, it took him a few seconds to parse it. Finally, he said, “I’d rather not stick around to find out!”

He might have wanted to find and meet the sect’s wizards a few days ago, but now with the prospect of Nomad?

There was a possibility that the Saltspray wizards were better—stronger—than Nomad. But the way Nomad carried himself was just…different. Maybe he was just incredibly confident in his abilities, but Pirin suspected he was confident for a reason.

Pirin pushed himself up and kept running. He leapt over a campfire, then spun around a stack of barrels and toppled it into a charging man’s path.

They passed one more tent, then arrived at a wooden walkway that ran up the stone shelf and the map tent. Pirin led, holding his sword out in front of him. A pair of workers in loose robes were running down the walkway, scrolls of parchment in hand, when they reached Pirin. Pirin tried to slip past them—they were unarmed—but they blocked his path.

Until Myraden launched them off the walkway with a swipe of her spear.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Be fast,” she hissed.

Pirin sprinted all the way to the top of the walkway, then jumped up to the ledge with the tent. A Saltspray warrior guarded the tent, his salt-knuckles raised. He charged at Pirin, but Pirin stepped to the side, then pushed the man off the ledge with a Winged Fist.

There was only one more worker. He was an older man, hunched over the table and scrawling something on a page.

Pirin didn’t waste any more time. He struck the man on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword. As the man collapsed, Pirin turned back to the maps.

The table was covered in a collage of parchment sheets, but each individual sheet marked a section, and the entire table was covered in sheets. Together, they formed a single map. Indeed, it was larger than Nomad’s map; it showed tunnels venturing deeper than even the enormous statue’s buried pedestal.

Myraden grumbled something, then pulled up the corner sheet. “Come on! Grab as many as you can!”

“That’s not gonna help us!” Pirin ducked behind one of the corner pillars of the tent, just in time to avoid an arrow. “We won’t be able to make sense of that many different sheets down in the tunnels.”

Gray squawked. She pounced on the warrior that Pirin had knocked off the ledge—who was climbing back up the walkway towards them. Kythen let out a deep bleat as he trotted around the back of the tent, knocking over shelves.

“They’ve gotta have a smaller, more condensed map somewhere,” Pirin said, running behind Kythen and sifting through the bloodhorn’s mess with his boot.

Myraden tossed down the sheet she had lifted. “I will—”

A loud thud cut her off. Pirin stopped in his tracks. Suddenly, the clamour of the warriors and workers outside the tent quieted.

Then a wave of greenish-brown Essence blasted through the side of the tent, slicing the ceiling off and knocking Myraden off the ledge. She tumbled back along the main thoroughfare, skidding and rolling. Kythen bleated, then pranced after her, scaling the mountain with incredible grace.

Pirin backed up. He held his sword ahead of him in one hand, and he cycled his Essence to his shoulder, preparing a Winged Fist with the other hand.

Now, the tent had no roof. A woman, dressed in complicated layers of robes and a pristine white cloak, landed in a crouch on the table. A beaver perched on her shoulder, clinging onto her metallic brown hair like its life depended on it.

She was, as far as Pirin could tell, human. Swirling black Saltspray tattoos ran down the sides of her face, and she only wore a single brass ring with a salt crystal embedded in it. Her other hand glowed with the same greenish-brown Essence that had sent Myraden flying.

A wizard. Of course.

Pirin concentrated on his core, trying to feel the weight of this woman’s spirit.

All he could make out was that it was stronger than his.

May I suggest running away? Gray asked.

And abandon all notions of getting inside the tunnels? Pirin couldn’t let that happen. Nomad said that he’d be watching, and that nearly everything would be treated as a test—that had to include this.

“I’ll say, you’ve done a remarkable job at keeping my sect’s deaths to a minimum,” the woman said. Her beaver nattered, then scampered down her back and across to her other shoulder. “Our casualties—injured or otherwise incapacitated—however, remain numerous. It must be punished.”

“We’re not your enemy,” Pirin said, taking a step back. He didn’t lower his sword, but he was sure his arm had started to tremble. He doubted he’d last for long against a wizard powerful enough to swat Myraden across the camp.

Already, Myraden was running back towards the ledge, but this woman could crush Pirin before she returned.

“You’ve come to take our clan’s prize,” the woman said. “That’s enough to make an enemy of every Saltspray.”

“I’m not here for the gold or riches,” Pirin said, taking a step back. Gray fluttered back up the ramp and chirped angrily. At least now they could attack from two directions. “Nor any fancy rune-scripts and magic weapons. I’m just looking for the Reign gems.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. Nomad said he had put the offer out to every wizard, so she must have had an inkling of what Pirin wanted. “What makes you think I'm not after those as well?”

“Well, uh…” Pirin took another step back. “Someone of your power and stature shouldn’t need Reign Gems, right? You’ve got plenty in your sect...uh, headquarters? Wherever you hang your coats…”

“What is it about these ‘special treasures hidden under miles of tunnels’ that makes you think they’re available to an average sect? The Dominion has taken everything from us! Power, privilege, wealth…”

Pirin cleared his throat. “I was…uh, going more for the flattery angle.”

“As if that would work?”

Look, either we attack her and let her crush us, Gray said, or we try running away.

Pirin offered a smile. “It would buy time…”

As soon as he finished, Myraden sprang back up to the ledge, the edges of her gambeson still smouldering from the strike. She lunged towards the woman, thrusting with her spear, but the woman caught its shaft and flung Myraden against the crevice wall behind the tent.

Myraden didn’t hit the wall hard, but she still fell flat to the ground, landing on her stomach and coughing. Kythen pranced behind her, but he didn’t rush in—instead, he bent over her and nudged her shoulder.

That was without any visible use of Essence.

Salty lady had an enhanced body, Gray said. Got it!

The woman closed the distance between herself and Pirin in the blink of an eye and wrapped her fingers around his throat. She squeezed. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you on the spot.”

Pirin began to choke and wheeze. Nothing he could do would break her grip, short of trying to stab her—which she’d probably already planned for. Gray could attack, but she wouldn’t fare any better than Pirin would.

Pirin might have had his mask on, but he didn’t have his hood up. He tilted his head to the side and back, as much as he could in her grip. His hair fell away from his ears. “I don’t like the Dominion either,” he choked out. “You know who I am.”

She threw him down onto his back, but only hard enough that gravity did most of the work. “Let’s talk, then.”