Scratch's dream was almost pleasant.

There was a calming brook trickling through the unspecified nothingness, and stars brightened the night's sky.

But the peaceful ambiance was marred by the unsettling context.

This is a magic sleep.

Seconds earlier he had been awake. There had been shouting and unusual weather, and now he was here.

"Cyclophan? Are you there?"

A little adder dug itself up out of the ground. I have renewed attempt after attempt to wake you, but as long as that accursed bard keeps playing his music the magic will take again. This would not have happened with a stronger champion.

"The guild told us Linel was occupied in Eston. Why didn't you warn me they were lying?"

They... weren't.

"Don't be cute with me. Either they were telling the truth or they weren't."

The snakelet narrowed its eyes an unnatural way. **When any deliberate lie is spoken with the intent to deceive, I am there. I can tell you much about the potion brewer you have recruited, but your allies with the guild have spoken not a word of deception. If what they said was untrue... well... they must have been deceived themselves.**

"By...?"

...in some way that falls outside my power.

"Pfff." Scratch stood up in his dreamworld and began to pace around. "They'd have to choose their words pretty well if they wanted to give Mabel the runaround but not explicitly lie. They wouldn't do that unless... they knew about you."

What!?

He pointed at the reptile. "Who knows that the evil god of Deception inhabits a dungeon under the Promise?"

Cyclophan nodded. **Only you, your familiar, and my fellow evil gods... Manshuu, who is licking his wounds after being chased out here...

Pinchin, the god of Death and Undeath, that lich you met is his champion.**

"Ritter." Scratch clenched his imaginary jaw. "I knew he was too friendly to be trusted. Argh!" He slapped himself. "I should have known something was wrong this guy went so hard on the culling. The rest of the guild had agreed we're more trouble than we're worth, only an ulterior motive can explain it."

This doesn't help us in the moment. This enemy is more powerful than any you've faced before, if this continues he will easily bypass your city level and tear through the wildlife in your cave level. Then it's only a short distance to the factory level where my core is, and I *still* don't have a boss monster.

"...levels?"

That's how we divide up our dungeons.

"...I see... You said I can't wake up for as long as he's playing his music?"

You and your army. Bard music uses the same resonance normal music has with your mind. Harmonious tones and rythm can induce certain sensation, magical harmonies can induce special effects. Most monsters can't appreciate music in the first place, but subhumans are uniquely vulnerable. If this bard has mastered music that weakens, rather than strengthens, he must have experience fighting humans. And humans at least have the gods' blessings to protect them against harmful magic, you do not.

Scratch tapped his foot. "Then I suppose we have to interrupt his solo somehow."

Harkness and are men are currently attempting just that.

"Can you use your darkness?"

The adder shook its head. **Not at this depth, my tendrils only extend to the cavern ceiling.**

"Hmm. Here's what we'll do..."

----------------------------------------

"Sister Lawina, open thine eyes, our salvation has come!"

"Brother Gorid, do not fill me with empty hope, now that I must steel myself and face oblivion."

After their comrades had fallen, both elves had been captured alive by the goblin army and imprisoned near the entrance of their cliff side fortress.

They had been relentlessly interrogated, but neither had given anything to the Brood Knight.

For the past days they had been left alone in their cell while the goblin troops were building.

It was clear now that their captors had no further use of them. Lawina had been meditating for hours to work up the courage to bite her own tongue and die. At least in death, her body wouldn't be used for the production of yet more goblins.

"Stay thy tongue, Lawina, come look!" Gorid exclaimed.

From the small crack in the windowless cell he could see the guildmaster challenge the Brood Knight.

Lured by the sound of the dirge, Lawina pushed him away and looked at the spectacle herself.

"Our guards are made lame! Lawina we can escape." Gorid said.

She didn't take her eyes off the battle. "But can we return in good pride, without our bows? Surely, they must be inside the central motte."

"Aye, we will be disgraced. But to the motte we must not go. There are worse things there than goblins, Lawina. For me, death, for you..."

"I will not be another Fiora. Off with us then, in pride or shame. But how to escape these walls?"

Gorid looked determined, "brute force must do it, if we have no worry of alerting these here guards.

----------------------------------------

The razor sharp sound waves tore through the young settlement, drowning out even the mad threshing of affected goblins.

The humans were not wholly unaffected by the magic either, they were wincing at the music cutting painfully into their eardrums during the fight.

Lydia Harkness was engaged in a one-on-one duel with the bard. As long as she was up close, he wouldn't have the opportunity to pause and prepare a ranged magical attack.

While she was up close, she only had to content with the head of the guitar being thrust at her while it was being played. But she was failing.

The bard's music was making her slower and more predictable. Her fighting style relied on movements practiced to be near automatic, as most did, and automatic things were the most easily captured by bardic magic. More often than not she would move at the pace and rhythm of his tune, and he could simply side-step or deflect her knives.

Aimone and Audace were further away, hoping to interrupt his solo with some lucky strike of water magic, but they weren't getting lucky. And with the speed Linel and Harkness were dancing around each other on the stage it became an increasingly precarious shot.

"Go inside," Aimone hissed at Gildo, "get somebody."

"Who?"

"Just... anybody."

-

At the back of the manor's atrium, in the shade of the overhanging rooms, was the inset cave entrance. A carved wooden door depicting a stylized but triumphant goblin horde charging towards the middle.

Gildo fumbled with the lock and opened it.

There was a wooden interior room and a hidden staircase leading down. He had seen it before.

Normally there would be goblins about. Storing and retrieving inventory, crafting and counting in the dark. But it was quiet today, the goblins had gathered outside, and only the muffled clanging of their armor faintly reverberated from the outside.

"Candlelight." He summoned a magical orb to light his way, he needed to find somewhere populated, maybe with a witch or troll.

He ran back and forth around the basement layer trying to find a way down for just over two minutes, a fatally long time as far as fights to the death were concerned.

Suddenly it occurred to him to dim his light so the opening to the sunstone lit wolf den would stand out more.

It instantly did, indirect lighting smeared the dark off the natural stone and stone planks and the man could step onto the moss layer just a moment later.

"Mannaggia." He cursed himself out for wasting time and followed the horse-shoe shape cave to its front.

It was a wide open space with wooden lanterns lighting it up. He could see the wolf and fowl monsters that made the moss their home, and they could see him. The warg wolves sat in place, with glowing eyes staring intently at him as he went by.

He could only hope they wouldn't attack him, and they didn't.

At the end of the moss cave he still hadn't met a single soul, but there was a wooden platform that could be lowered into Lacrima's forge.

Gildo stopped in his tracks.

It would take half an hour before he could descend, reach anybody in the underground harbor, and lead them back up to the fight. And if he did, who could he bring? An aging witch? Some thieves' guild goon?

Aimone hadn't sent him for anything, he had send him away. To save his life.

"It's over, isn't it? They're already dead." He whined as he sunk to the floor.

"Are you going down or not?"

A small goblin with big eyes sat beside the entrance to the elevator.

He had been whittling a piece of wood, but had stopped to stare judgmentally.

"You're that brat that got put in time-out... Number two."

Second raised his knife. "Do you have a problem with me? Are you gonna kill me?" He had a desperate eagerness in his eyes.

"Ha! What's the point? We're all going to die soon anyway. If an army can't defend us..."

The goblin lowered his weapon. "What's going on out there?"

But Gildo didn't answer, instead he tilted his head looking at the wooden platform. A patter sound emanated from it, like raindrops were falling upside down against the wood.

"What's happening in there?"

----------------------------------------

It was becoming increasingly clear that the guildmaster was only toying with his quarry.

Whenever the bandit leader managed to get close by virtue of luck or complacency he would suddenly speed up, switch out his dirge for a panicky melody that messed with her balance, and hit her in the arm and neck. Then he would return to the back-and-forth they had before.

She wasn't running out of stamina just yet, but there was no path to victory here, so she withdrew the pressure she put on him to defend and prepared to flee.

As soon as he saw that he ended the fight in one blow. Grabbing the guitar by the neck her swung it around his head and swung at it at her temple.

She blocked with her arm but it caught only a fraction of the force and one of the points of the instrument cracked her skull open. She flew off the platform in an arc, spattering a trail of blood through the air, and fell limp onto the goblins there.

"Nothing personal, missy." Linel laughed, as he jumped down himself.

Without his music, some of the armored goblins had woken up, and they shielded Lydia's unconscious body.

"But we have a plan," he continued without pause, putting his hands over the snares again, "and you ain't in it!"

Another chord cut through the goblins, and blood spurted out of the metal in front of him.

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It wasn't enough the kill hobgoblins. "Hey!" Ada yelled out from behind. "We're not done yet."

He didn't turn to face her. He rolled his eyes and simply restarted his dirge, causing her to sink once more.

"Well..." Linel almost sang while he stood over Lydia Harkness' unconscious body, "goodbye." He raised up his foot to crush her neck.

That's when the swarm hit him.

-

The dragonbats that clung to the ceiling of the underground cavern did not usually fly in swarms.

Nor did they huddle together for warmth when sleeping.

Any bunching up of the creatures was only due to shared preference for certain kinds of shelter and food, and the increasingly dense population that had grown on the harbor town's food scraps and trash.

Yet over six hundred of the flying monsters, each with a wingspan nearing four feet, had rushed out of the elevator entrance, through the basement and into the town.

It was a river of scales and shrieks. A column of dragonbat shooting out and over the main road.

The bard was briefly enveloped by a fresh crop of new enemies, but their weak scratches posed no threat to him and he held his footing. Soon his vision cleared up as the beasts lost their cohesion and spread out over the Promise grounds.

"Goodbye- Ah what now!?"

Again his coup de grace was interrupted by an attack. A crossbow bolt with a curse of weakness stuck into his shoulder.

He had more than enough strength to pull it out, which he did, but the attacks kept coming. The hobgoblins were firing at him and the armored goblins were closing in around him.

He tried his dirge again, but he had already noticed the problem himself. The omnipresent shrieking and flapping of dragonbats was drowning out his music. Nobody knew better than a bard that an enchanted song is not an enchanted song if nobody hears it.

"Shut up. Shut. Up!" He conjured up a ringing shockwave from his guitar. The armored goblins where thrown into the air, great masses of earth rippled outwards, and all the fancy buildings in the Promise that had gotten their hands on real glass lost it to the bluster.

Left behind was an eerily silent patch of still air, with no dragonbats or dust inside, that enveloped half the settlement.

There was no lasting barrier, but the creatures had learned their lessons and were flying away from the guildmaster.

As the buildings settled from the shockwave, the prison had been damaged enough for the two elves to make their getaway.

Panting now, and a bit scratched up, Linel reached for his potion belt.

He was able to dodge Ada's whip as he held a mana potion to his lips.

It's not easy gulping down a full pint of liquid while you're being attacked from all sides, but Linel was a veteran adventurer and he more than managed.

A few seconds later he was ready to resume playing.

"Back to sleep wi-" He stopped talking and fumed when he saw the goblin patriarch had climbed up on the stage and had snatched the voice amplifying spellrod off the wooden floor.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

His little green face went red with strain as he shouted over Linel's song.

"You little-" he rushed towards him, but the path was blocked by the massive steel forearm of a troll.

He couldn't stay in place and battle her with the countless blades and spears of the goblin army raining down on him.

But he wasn't out of tricks yet. He quickly recited a spell, "Dower's Wings," and leaped upwards.

The air collected under his feet and cloak. He was levitating.

The goblin throng was undeterred however, and the small soldier towered on top of each other to reach him.

There was an upper limit to how high he could levitate, and it could be measured four goblins high. Like eager ants they climbed up and over

each other reaching his height. Most would fall after getting one strike in, but they were immediately replaced, and more consistent towers came into being as well, with dedicated lifters making up the base.

He toppled as many of the towers as he could, wielding his weapon as a club, but he couldn't box up against the sheer number of them and was driven back.

One more he tried his dirge, but the screaming goblin hadn't run out of breath yet. "I don't give a damn 'bout my reputation! You're living in the past it's a new generation!" He was turning it into a playful song, further enraging him.

A thorny whip wrapped itself around the bard's leg, and a two-pronged halberd cut into his arm.

"A guy can do what he wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do. An' I don't give a damn ' bout my bad reputation!"

The singing was still overriding most of his dirge and the surrounding army was preventing him from getting to the singer.

Not panic, but annoyed resignation spread across the bard's face.

He struck the chord again, toppling nearby goblins with a yet another shock wave, and landed on the ground. His levitation had ended.

"I'll be back. For both of you next time." He spat, and a magical circle spread around his feet.

A single javelin was hurled at him while he was performing the magic, but he dodged it without being interrupted.

He made eye contact with Fat, the goblin who had thrown it, and the look in his eyes caused the goblin to shield his face with his hands.

Then the magic activated and the bard disappeared in a flash of light.

"Did we... win?" Piers asked sheepishly.

A quick survey of their home didn't inspire a very strong asseveration. Their mother was near death, several goblins were laying motionless in their own blood, and many of the buildings were in ruins. One of which was the small prison that had, until recently, contained the prisoners of war.

-

Several goblins had died in the reconquest campaign before they had even set out.

Scratch himself wasn't in very good condition either. He was gasping for air, being anemic and having screamed his lungs out.

Lydia had a serious head wound that her sons were using magic to heal.

"Are still going to chase the humans out?" Will asked seriously. "If they're this strong..."

"We have to." Ada said, "we have more than twenty times a hundred goblins here. If we just send them home again they'll kill us."

"But he ruined the whole Promise. Everything is falling apart and we don't even have elves to trade anymore."

"We'll get new prisoners." Piers said.

"Hhm..." Lydia was regaining consciousness, but slowly. Jasper pressed his hands closer to her wound, which made her flinch.

"It is imperative that the throng sets out, and lays waste to the enemy." Youthere had snuck his way into their little meeting. "The more spread out a goblin army, the less it can be hurt by a single champion."

Will shook his head. "That's not the- that's not what we're talking about. I mean what's the point of having territory if they can just come to the Promise directly? He was here for mama."

"Yeah, why was that?" Constantine asked.

Scratch touched his upper arm, he still couldn't speak, panting as he was.

Constantine patted his back sympathetically.

Youthere smiled. "Magic has helped his escape, but magic did not bring him here. It is the elven connection to the forest that allows the humans to pass by our defenses. I would have suggested a course of action that could lead to their extermination, but I fear that without elven prisoners, this will have to wait."

"So exactly the worst thing possible happened." Ada complained. "We couldn't kill the music guy and the elves ran away. That's not f- that's so unlucky!"

"I suggest you grant me command of the army." The demon said. "I can inspire a campaign of cruelty that only the-"

"Mama is the commander," Ada said, "and if she can't do it I will. That's what papa wants too, right papa?"

"No." Scratch said weakly.

"What!?"

"I mean no to that other thing." He wound back an invisible tape recorder with his hand. "What you said before."

"If we send them home they'll kill us?"

"No... that we're unlucky. The truth is that we've been very lucky."

"Yes." Jasper nodded. "Most of us survived."

"N- Well that too."

----------------------------------------

"They suspect nothing?" Lacrima asked.

"We got lucky and didn't have to stage anything, they got sprung themselves by a friend of theirs." Scratch said.

"That is lucky." The piece of twine she was dangling from her fingers tugged slightly and she signaled to them to change direction.

While most of the army was following Lydia and her subordinates to the edge of the territory, a small contingent had split off for a side mission within the forest.

Two dozen lightly armored goblins, three hobgoblins, an anemic patriarch and a witch were making their way through brambles and undergrowth. There was no trodden path there, or any other sign of civilization for that matter.

The hobgoblins were busy hacking a way and Scratch let himself be carried on a shield by the soldiers.

Ada looked at the witch's strange dowsing implement. A lock of hair was dangling from a string and pointing them the right way. "Is the elf's hair cursed now or what?"

"The elf is under my spell and his hair alongside. It's sympathetic magic, now be quiet while I concentrate."

"Sympathetic magic is when you touch a piece of someone you touch all of him," Constantine explained with a know-it-all tone. "So we can cast a spell on the prisoner to know where he is if we have his hair."

"I can do that." Lacrima said, "straight on through here."

"Shield." Will pulled the thatch shield out from under his father and held it in front of the witch.

"Ah!" Scratch complained, as he fell onto the trampled thicket. "Did you see something?"

"If they're straight ahead that means they have a straight shot," he said.

"So you made us panic and you didn't even see anything." Ada complained.

Will was in a mood to argue back. "They're gonna see us before w-"

He dashed forward and caught an arrow in the guard before it impaled her.

He gave her the smuggest look possible.

But when the arrow started hissing he threw the shield to the side, where it exploded into green fire.

The goblins yelled out in rage and excitement.

"Well? Get them." Scratch spurred the others to action. "Do that bird plan you had."

The witch muttered a spell. Within an instant Ada and Constantine had become starlings and they flew over the thicket towards where the spell had come from.

They had left their clothes and weapons behind, but as soon as they transformed they employed their teeth and nails.

So much that when worked up goblin horde had made their way there the elven archer was missing certain key characteristics of a face.

The siblings were grinning madly and covered in blood.

"It's a good thing your poor mother isn't here to see this," Scratch threw them their clothes, "now cover up your junk before you give the old woman an aneurysm."

The archer had kept guard in a well camouflaged hut against the side of an ancient tree. If the attackers hadn't been in bird form there would have been no way to reach him without traversing a precarious wooden stair in full reach of his arrows.

"I don't think Lacrima would mind anybody being nude around her." Ada said as she pulled her tunic over her head.

Scratch sighed. "Before you give me one."

"Much obliged." Constantine bowed, clearly imitating something or someone.

When Lacrima caught up she was too occupied with her magic to notice the corpse or indecency.

"This is not right." She said.

"What clued you in?" Scratch quipped.

"The way is supposed to be straight, but every few paces my magic veers me to the right."

"Ho ho, wait a minute. Your magic isn't broken is it? I swear, if we're lost in hostile territory during wartime..."

"I think she means the elf is moving." Will said.

"None of that. If you would just stop and listen to me..." she gestured at the trees surrounding them. "This is what you would call illusion magic, as delivered to the world by Vreem, god of knowledge. Anyone that would come here is led in a curved path around the hidden village, while believing they are traveling in a straight line."

"So we could only come here because of your magic hair." Will said.

"Exactly. Without towers or walls, they have constructed the perfect defense, only dowsing magic such as this can allow a stranger to know when their path is being warped."

"Or, you know, any compass." Scratch laughed. "So you're saying we're close."

"Nearly there. My goodness, now this old lady is getting excited as well. It's been a good few decades since I've gone on an adventure myself.

-

The elves had not cleared a space in the forest of its trees in order to make space for their buildings.

The trees provided the space for their buildings.

When the family reached the long occulted civilization they saw a network of tree houses, connected via rope bridges, spanning up and down the trunks of three or so ancient oaks.

"Stop thine advance at once." A young-ish elven girl spoke to them from the closest balcony, "Ye are in the sights of our magic archers. If I command it they will rain death upon ye. Now turn thine backs!"

The hobgoblins froze in place. "Papa, what are we gonna do?"

Scratch kept walking, "she's bluffing, they would have attacked already. Block the exits."

"No!" The elven girl panicked and, indeed, no death was rained upon anybody.

The goblins ran around the grove and had a blast pulling on and destroying the various rope ladders leading up and down the tree village.

One was preserved for the hobgoblins to climb up with.

Within the connected canopy of bridges the hobgoblins clambered around and used magic to set fire to whatever neighboring branch or vine could conceivably be used to escape the town they had occupied.

Their mad laughter alerted the elves after it was already too late.

One came out clumsily trying to wield an enchanted bow, but he was tackled by Ada. She still had the blood of his slain comrade on her and she smeared it cruelly onto his face to disturb him.

Then, once the exits had cut off, the horde of goblins was allowed to come in as well and chase the villagers.

The only actual warriors in the whole village were the escaped prisoners on whose trail they'd gotten there. But they were able to surprise them in their beds and slit their throats.

Showing their lack of foresight, they hadn't brought enough rope to tie up all civilians, so they resorted to slashing a few tendons.

All together there where thirty elves in the hidden village. They were stalled out together in the most central rope bridge the village could be said to have. A circular one around an open space.

The orange light and cinders from the burning created an apocalyptic ambiance, and the elves screamed, threatened, and begged to make it even realer.

"They really did send away all their archers..." Will remarked to his father. "Everybody here is so... weak..."

"That's what happens when you get overconfident," he said, "you take unnecessary risks."

"No. They send out everybody because they want to kill us so much. This much."

Scratch was silent.

"Are going to kill them now?" Ada complained, "I hate this noise."

"Noise? The cries for mercy?" Her father said, "yeah you never get used to it. Kill them quick and painless, I know that you know how to do it, no more of that goring shit."

"Wait." Will said.

Scratch pinched the bridge of his nose. "What?"

"Can't we... keep a few?" He glanced over the thigh of a plump elven woman, who recoiled in horror. "I mean, maybe we can get our own enchanted bows, you know?"

Scratch laughed. "I see where your mind is going. You're growing up aren't you?"

"I don't get it." Ada said.

"Your little brother wants a girl for himself."

Will blushed.

Ada's eyes went big. "No way. You can't make them broodmothers. You said it yourself, they hate us."

"Before there were broodmothers there was snatching," Scratch explained, "I'd be a hypocrite if I said you couldn't have one. Barbara was a kept woman once, and we traded someone even worse for her. But I have some experience here that I can share with you: prey on women without a support network, you don't want any of your girls appearing on milk cartons or TV. Nobody whose parents can hire a lawyer."

Will stared at him a good long time.

"...Stick to lowlifes nobody is going to try and rescue. That's what I'm saying."

"Nobody has to know they're still alive. We're-" he turned to a whisper so the elves wouldn't hear "-we're gonna burn the village down anyway and we can keep them way below. Like, way below in the troll garden."

"Am I going to have to go down and explain to the sweet old lady that we're taking some spoils with us back home?"

"Lacrima uses magic to control orphans! She has enslaved *us*."

"And your mother?"

"I swear if she asks we'll kill them."

"Fine. Pick a few, make sure there's at least one bowyer with them. That's your cover story after all."

-

If they had started slashing throats then and there the fear that kept the whole village bowing their heads would have become the sort of fear that spurred them to action instead.

So they were led out of the central space one by one and killed by the entrance. Their bodies tossed off the side.

That is, except for four elven women that had supposedly admitted to being manufacturers. All of them of fertile age.

The witch wasn't concerned with the sex slaves, but she objected to fire being set to the ancient trees. "You're not destroying the site." She said, as she tugged on a burning branch one of the goblins was adding to the pyre at the roots. "It is a source of magic. This is where the wood for the enchanted bows are grown!"

Scratch calmed her down. "Who grows it? We don't. Do you care about magic you can't wield? Because if we keep this place intact it just becomes something we have to defend from the other elves, just cost, no revenue."

"Well... fine then. As a witch it hurts me, but fine. But turn me around, don't make me stand and watch."

-

Someone else was running away from the fire, too distraught to even look back. The young girl that had first confronted the invaders.

When the goblins had first started cutting off the exits, she was the only one who understood the situation early enough to escape unseen. Now it seemed she was the only survivor of her hometown.

She had kept running, until the brambles tore up her dress and she sunk down on the painful underbrush.

"Laurus..." she bawled. "Laurus your people are in ruin!"

----------------------------------------

Warp

Class: Mage

Level: D

Mages that have mastered this spell are able to transport themselves and their party to a warp circle they know. Warp circles must be intensely studied in order to be known, as each mosaic inscribes its own unique signature. Upon mastering the spell, a mage is able to return themselves and close allies to a warp circle within twenty kilometers of its surrounding wilderness. Upon honing the technique one can extend the distance traveled, although mana cost will continue to rise with distance and weight transported. Mages of rank B and higher have been known to traverse an entire continent using only a single warp spell.