"Is this place always so quiet?" Sou Yuet asked. The mists had rolled back in again, hiding the tiny buds on the trees, the first intrepid green shoots poking their heads from the ground. The forest was all dark silhouettes and pale fog once more.

Further, they seemed to be climbing.

"D'ye really think a normal human would be wandering around in all this?" was the necromancer's exasperated response.

As if to emphasise her words, a haunting tremulous wail drifted through the mists.

"What was that?" Sou Yuet asked, immediately turning to slide off Sunny and find the source of the noise. Another cry sounded out to the other side of the monk, and then a third, up ahead. "Pang Yau?"

The necromancer stood stock still, green eyes wide. The rest of the Hunt continued on without her. Sou Yuet patted Sunny to make her stop and turn around, but Lady Herela and Melhih trotted to block their path.

"Hold back, monk. Those birds are the pets of that child's mother. Did you not know?"

That would explain the desperately complex look on the necromancer's face, hope, trepidation, relief, worry, all chasing each other across her tough features.

What did Sou Yuet know, really?

Who was the necromancer's mother?

Who was the person they called Pang Yau anyway?

Lady Herela and Melhih slid past the monk, leaving them behind with the sorrowful trilling wails, and the necromancer standing alone with her eyes closed and face tilted upwards. Sou Yuet felt suddenly as if they were intruding.

"Let's go, Sunny."

"Stay." A tremble, and the necromancer was male again, tugging distractedly at the places where his robes no longer fitted properly. "I want you to meet them."

He rolled his tongue in a mimicry of their haunting, rolling songs, calling names. "Eisce. Tiris." And then, a low sound, a song without melody but rich in emotion, rose from his throat.

Sou Yuet had heard the necromancer sing once before, when he had told the monk the story of his childhood, and once more a wave of something indescribable wash over them. Grief? Joy? Whatever it was made Sou Yuet shiver.

Three birds emerged from the mists. It was difficult to tell if they were large birds, far away, or smaller birds, close to. They resembled some kind of owl, horns of feathers rising from their heads, and they sang back to the necromancer, their wailing tremolo and his husky, rising-falling keen making Sunny shake her head and back up a little. Sou Yuet was transfixed.

The necromancer spoke to the owls in Adhmaid, and as one they swivelled their heads to look at Sou Yuet. The monk hastily scrambled from Sunny's back and bowed. "N... nice to meet you?"

Seemed appropriate.

Or not. The owls immediately dispersed, without even a single sound of a wing beat.

"Did I... do something wrong?"

"No? Cén fáth? Wh- Mam's..." He couldn't get his words out. Suddenly, he turned and seized Sou Yuet in a bear hug. The monk could feel the big man's body trembling.

"Happy?" Sou Yuet patted the necromancer's back with a smile.

"Yes... A thousand times yes. We're nearly there."

"It seems she knew you were coming."

Here, the necromancer's expression darkened. "She's probably heard the rumours, damn it."

"I heard Lady Herela mentioned to you... she was talking about Spideog, wasn't she?"

The necromancer cracked his jaw in response.

"He really is... well, obsessed," Sou Yuet noted, unable to call the bhard's interest anything else.

"I should have sent the spirits of all his family to bother him every night," growled the necromancer. "Keep him so busy he wouldn't have time to scratch his arse."

"Are you sure you didn't already do that, which is why he's chasing you?"

“I didn't, damn it all.”

Realising that Lady Herela and the Hunt were rapidly disappearing into the mist, they followed quickly before they lost sight of them.

“I'm usually able to tell the weather somewhat. ” Sou Yuet's eyes glittered green as they looked around. “But this... I thought the weather was improving. The mist is deepening.”

“We are entering the domain of the King Unto the Mists,” Lady Herela called over her shoulder. “Stay close.”

Sou Yuet looked askance at the necromancer, who shrugged. “I sorta remember the old man. Usually keeps to himself in the high mountains around here. Ye can tell we ye enter his lands when the mists get thick like this. Never heard him speak a word. He's alright.”

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But the Hunt seemed strangely on edge. The hounds, who had been gambolling about playfully, slunk grimly at their masters' sides, ears flat. The Hunters moved in almost silence, brows furrowed.

Sou Yuet looked at the necromancer again.

The necromancer shrugged. Again.

And then there was an old man on the trail before them, an old man with long, wispy grey hair, and a spiked silver crown that floated above his head, and eyes white with cataracts. He hunched over a long-handled axe, blade resting in the dirt. Like a boulder, he blocked the way.

Melhih huffed angrily and showed her teeth.

“The feck...?” the necromancer peered at the old man between all the horses.

“We are merely passing through,” Lady Herela said, her voice harsh. “Let us past, Your Majesty.”

The old man creakily raised his stooped shoulders a little. “Turn around, trespassers.”

“You old fool, do you not recognise me?” Lady Herela snapped angrily. A murmur rose up from the Hunt.

The necromancer grabbed Sou Yuet with one hand and Sunny with the other.

“What is it?” Sou Yuet whispered.

“He's the King Unto the Mists. What do ye think'll happen if he gets pissed?”

“I would guess that he would separate us using dense fog.”

“Right. Stay close.”

“The Hunt-”

“They'll be fine.”

“How long can one be trapped by the fog?”

“... Forever, apparently.”

That would explain the tense air around the Hunters. A mortal would wander in the fog until they died. An immortal would continue to wander even if they went mad. There would be no release in death.

“Then-”

“Just look after yerself first.”

“But do we know that the king will antagonise us-”

“Can ye assume for a second that he's not going to offer us tea? Ye might live longer that way.”

“But why-”

“King Unto the Mists,” Lady Herela hissed. “Stand aside.”

The old man's response was to heave himself fully upright, an effort that resulted in a grinding sound, like rocks twisting against each other, and revealed him to be a hulking mass. He swung the axe, and everyone scattered, jumping or ducking to avoid the path of the weapon. As it passed, the Hunters charged in.

The King Unto the Mists batted away the Hunters as though he was brushing off ants, neither side seeming to be able to get an upper hand on the other. The king's skin was like rock, while the Hunters, unable to feel pain, simply charged forwards repeatedly.

Lady Herela's massive sword crashed against the king's arm, the two battling with their giant weapons until the rocks below them shook.

As she disengaged and prepared to rush in again, a thick white mist began to seep from between the king's teeth.

“Wait!”

“DAMMIT, YUET! GET BACK HERE!”

As if that would do anything. The monk landed lightly before the king, and bowed respectfully. “Your Majesty, I-”

The huge man swung his axe again.

Sou Yuet leapt up easily, landing on the handle of the axe. “- am Yuan Yi Feng, a cultivator and healer.”

The king shook the axe as if he were trying to shake an insect from it. Sou Yuet simply hopped easily on the spot until the old man stopped.

“We merely request passage to the western shores.”

The old man hissed menacingly, apparently at a loss.

“Oh, is this... Birchwood? It feels different from the wood at home. Let me see...”

A green glow lit Sou Yuet from within, and the axe handle below their feet, with a squirm, began to sprout new shoots and lime-green, ovate leaves.

“It really is a birch.”

The old man very slowly examined the new leaves on his axe. “You... You are the one...”

Sou Yuet quickly replaced the complicated expression on their face with a small smile. “You know me? Then, will you help us, Your Majesty? Or does this make matters worse?”

The monk rolled quickly to one side as a massive fist punched the air where they had been standing.

“I see...Then none of you may leave here.”

“Your Majesty,” Sou Yuet protested, “if your reason for this is because of what I did, then only I should be punished. Please let the others leave.”

“SHUT THE FECK UP!” the necromancer roared.

“They stand with you, they will be punished with you.”

“Ah. That's a pity.”

Oh I don't like that tone of voice, the necromancer thought. But there was no way he could move quicker than the monk.

The side of the mountain plunged away to the side of the track, and it was the work of a moment for Sou Yuet to kick the side of the king's knee, bringing the huge man off balance, and pull him down over the edge of the path, into the ocean of fog below.

They disappeared with the king's roar echoing across the stones.

“I don't fecking believe it,” the necromancer said faintly.

The mist quickly began to dissipate, revealing a darkening sky, the sun already lost behind the mountains.

The necromancer rushed to the edge of the path, narrowly caught by Lady Herela before he could jump after the monk and the king.

“Yuet? Fecking... SOU YUET!”

“Halt your wailing, cousin,” Lady Herela muttered. “The child is gone.”

She staggered back as a wall of black energy slammed into her, pouring off the enraged necromancer. Her wrist bones cracked as black teeth closed on them, her sternum caving as a dark blade crashed into it. On her knees, she gritted up at the necromancer, his green eyes sparking in the twilight.

“Listen, 'cousin'. I don't give a vole's nuts what happens to ye. But if anything happens to Yuen Sou Yuet, that's a different matter. Don't ye dare try stopping me.”

“That child is mortal, cousin.”

“Ye keep saying the same shite over and over. Don't ye get tired of it?”

“Come with us.”

“Ye what?”

“You belong with your kin. And we who walk with death, always, are your closest family. Come with us.”

Sunny whined and paced back and forth by the side of the track, occasionally testing the slippery sides and drawing back as small rocks and scree slid below her paws.

“So what?” The necromancer turned his back on Lady Herela, although the dark energy radiating from his tattoos continued to pin her down. “Maybe one day, when Yuet has finished up with life, maybe I'll come and see ye then. But not yet.”

He walked to the edge of the trail, scattering chips of dark mudstone. Before Lady Herela could stop him, a faint wailing sound drifted over to them.

The barrage of black energy ceased instantly.

“SUNNY!” Necromancer and si zi were gone, plunging away into the darkening mountains. The Hunters didn't even have time to process what was happening.

The wailing roar grew louder and louder as Sunny forged ahead, the necromancer on her back. She crested a ridge and suddenly the setting sun was blasting them directly, but there was the monk, standing on the top of a rock, swinging the clairin buirthe that the necromancer had made many months ago. The roar ceased as Sou Yuet dropped their arm.

“Ah! There you are!”

The necromancer really, truly wanted punch that damned monk. He slid from Sunny's back so fast that he almost tripped over.

So how was it that instead of getting into a fight, they were now standing gathered in each other's embrace, so fierce they might crack each other's bones?

“Damn it,” the necromancer muttered.

“... Sorry.”

“Ye're not sorry at all.”

“I suppose not.”

The necromancer moved back a little so he could look Sou Yuet directly in the face, but didn't let go. “Yuet... Even if ye can't look after yerself for yer own sake... Can't ye do it for me?”

Sou Yuet contemplated the necromancer's face quietly. Rising up on their toes, the monk gently placed their hands on the witch's face, stroking the stubbled jaw, tracing the raised markings on the forehead and temples. Their faces were close, enough to-

“Can you fight me?”

“... What?”

“Fight me, Pang Yau.”