Two weeks came and went without any news from Edvin regarding the missing bog log beasts. Brittle was starting to fear they’d never get word when a window-sized portal opened over his stump of a breakfast table and a piece of parchment drifted through, settling onto his toast and loam sandwich. Hope swelling within his hollow trunk. Brittle snatched the letter and scurried out the door, in search of someone capable of reading Mara’s chicken scratch handwriting.

He found Sir Thomassin floating on his back in the algae-infested water just outside. The man’s eyes were closed and he clutched a single cattail between his hands. Having made a great, big show of throwing his armor into the water some nights ago, Sir Thomassin’s plainclothes made him darn near unrecognizable. That and the patchy beard, which looked a bit like the hide of a mange-ridden coyote.

“Sir Thomassin, I got a letter!” Brittle danced with excitement on the edge of his log porch. “You can read, right? Climb up here and tell me what it says.”

Wordlessly, Sir Thomassin remained still and otherwise dead to the world.

“Hurry now! Time’s a wastin’.” Brittle’s excited bouncing died down when he came to the conclusion as to why the other swamp dwellers referred to the man as Sir Thomassin the Dramatic. “Look, I’m all for embracing change, but this is a wee bit much. And that says a lot coming from me.”

Still nothing.

“If you’re waiting for the eels to come around, I already told you, it’s not going to work. They said they preferred their food to be less mopey.”

At last, Sir Thomassin grudgingly opened one eye to glare at Brittle. “This isn’t mopey, it’s stoic. I’m not even crying.”

Anymore, maybe. “What about last night? Pretty sure I heard wailing coming from your place.”

“That was different. I got a gnat in my eye.” Sir Thomassin stood and tossed the cattail aside with a sigh. At his full height, the waterline barely reached past his knees. He trudged over, green water sloshing on either side of him, before taking a seat on the edge of Brittle’s porch. “It stung.”

Brittle pressed the letter into the man’s hands. “Less moping, more reading.”

“Oh. It’s from Mara.”

“I know that. What’s it say? I barely got past my name.” It didn’t help that the only letters Brittle knew just happened to be the ones that made up his name. For the moment, it was irrelevant. He could work on becoming more scholarly after he learned what the Great Maker wanted.

“Edvin is coming by Mara’s home this afternoon with news regarding the missing bog log beasts. Mara suggests you stir your stumps to get there as quickly as possible.” Sir Thomassin’s sad, gray eyes dropped lower on the page. “She adds, ‘Please stop feeding the marmots pea flakes. It’s spoiling their appetite for trespassers.’”

“And that bit?” Brittle pointed to the line of chicken scratch scribbled along the very bottom of the letter.

Sir Thomassin frowned. “‘Take a bath, Thom. I can smell you from here.’”

In the two weeks since meeting the Great Maker, Brittle had visited Mara nearly every other day. Sir Thomassin tagged along sometimes simply because he didn’t have anything better to do. Lying motionless in the swamp waiting for the eels to come get you was tedious work, and even a dramatic knight needed a break now and then.

Brittle scurried back inside his hovel, calling over his shoulder, “Meet me back here when you’re finished. And it’s your turn to fetch the supplies.”

“Ugh,” was all sir Thomassin managed as he stood and slowly waded back to the abandoned fishing shack he now called home. Actually, he called it something else. A pile of shrimp, if Brittle recalled correctly.

Brittle hollered after him, “And don’t forget, yellow-eyed perch. Not pinstriped bass. You’re lucky I was there to talk the water serpent out of a full blown tantrum last time.”

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Twenty minutes later, Brittle stepped back out onto his porch to find Gilly awaiting him. “How?” Brittle demanded, placing his balled hands at his hips. “How did you know? For peat’s sake, I hadn’t even had a chance to tell you yet.”

The great galloping galoot merely smiled in return.

“Don’t you give me that ‘the gods and goddesses work in mysterious ways’ rubbish, madam. One of these days, I’m going to learn your secrets.” Spying movement out of the corner of his hollow eye, Brittle cut his lecture short. Sir Thomassin was back looking, if not cleaner, at least different. He’d changed his shirt and combed the moss out of his patchy beard. In addition to the leather satchel slung over his shoulder, Brittle spied a suspiciously familiar item hanging from the man’s hip.

“I thought you threw that in the swamp.”

“I did.” Sir Thomassin’s reluctant footsteps brought him to the edge of Brittle’s log porch. “It’s a nice sword, though. Couldn’t bear to part with it for long. I spent all day yesterday diving underwater to retrieve it.”

“And you’re bringing it?” Brittle, once more, tried to draw attention to the fact that carrying a sword into the home of the goddess the man had previously tried to kill may not have been the best idea. Unfortunately, it was like trying to talk sense into a rock. A great big, mopey one.

Sir Thomassin’s response was just what a big, mopey rock would say. “I feel naked without the armor. At least this is something.”

Brittle and Gilly locked eyes. The lizard’s grin spread wider across her scaled snout. “Gilly says it’s a good look for you,” Brittle explained as he hopped into the water and started off without them. “Says the eels prefer it when their food plays hard to get.”

Sir Thomassin followed, grumbling, “Now she tells me.”

The trio walked the customary path: out of the forest and across the meadow of wildflowers and sawtooth grasses; over rolling hills and down low-lying hollows; through the marsh and all the way to the edge of Stay Away Canyon, where the river snaked along the basin like a thin, blue ribbon. The mouth of the cave and the many, maze-like passages beyond were the same as they always were. Armed with their arsenal of bribes, Brittle and company passed through relatively easily.

The only complication arose when they turned the corner to the cave beasts’ dens and found themselves swarmed by a pack of hungry saber-toothed marmots. Regrettably, Brittle had to explain to a tear-eyed audience why he couldn’t give them anymore pea flakes. Their pitiful faces made his stomach feel like it was suddenly brimming with squiggly bark beetles. The only way to alleviate it, he found, was to give all the pea flakes to the hungry marmots – on the condition that nobody tell Mara. The marmots agreed.

The sound of raised voices echoed along the passage as they neared the doorstep to the goddess’s home. Brittle recognized the high-pitched one as Mara, but the other he couldn’t place. It was a man’s voice, and it boomed with an intensity that reverberated deep in his hollow bones.

The ruckus was enough to give Sir Thomassin pause. He reached out and placed his hand on Brittle’s timber shoulder, staying his footsteps. “Perhaps we should come back another time.”

“What if the goddess is in trouble?” Brittle countered.

“I am certain she can fend for herself, Brittle.”

Brittle slapped the man’s hand away and quickened his pace. “I want to see what’s going on.”

He heard Gilly’s clawed feet scrape against the ground as she hurried after him. Unsure of whether the lizard was trying to keep up or trying to prevent him from reaching the steps, Brittle doubled his speed. He sprinted around the final corner at a full run with Gilly hot on his heels.

The door was closed, but a crack of light seeped out from underneath it, highlighting the dark passage in soft, yellow light. A dark shape sat hunched over at the top of Mara’s doorstep, spanning almost all the way across. Brittle’s footsteps slowed as he approached, more cautiously than before.

“Edvin?” he said, peering into the gloom. “Is that you?”

The giant god raised his head from the cradle of his arms. His face was pale and gaunt, with dark rings beneath each brilliant blue eye. “What are you doing here, Splinter?”

“Mara sent for me.” Brittle ignored the fact that Edvin still didn’t know his name. Something was amiss. Every instinct in his hollow trunk was commanding him to turn back around and run. “She said you had news. What’s going on?”

“Go back home, boy. You don’t want to be here for this.”

The two voices rang out behind the closed door. Mara’s, shrill with anger, splintered hairlines cracks into the surrounding stone walls. “Get out!” Brittle heard her shriek. “Get out, and never speak my name on your tongue ever again!”

“Who’s in there with her?” Brittle asked.

Before Edvin could reply, the heavy door jerked open and bright, yellow light poured into the passage, chasing the darkness into the far corners. The silhouette of man took up almost the entire doorway. He was large, almost as tall as Edvin, but with shoulders twice as broad. The man’s golden eyes glowed as his harsh stare first settled one Edvin, before moving to Brittle, pinning him beneath its invisible weight.

“Gabor, God of Champions.” Edvin averted his gaze, forced to stare miserable down at his shoes. “My dad.”