Brittle’s rickety legs had never walked so much in his life. Following Gilly’s lead, the trio traveled from the protection of the forest and into a vast meadow of wildflowers and sawtooth grasses. From there, they braved hills, low-lying hollows, and more than one deceptively deep marsh before arriving at the chasmic rift that formed Stay Away Canyon. A thin ribbon of river snaked back and forth along its basin, looking as though it had been carved out of the surrounding rock by a giant serpent.

The sun was setting by the time they reached the basin. Soft, dimming light painted the steep walls in shades of orange and violet. Brittle might have found the surrounding landscape breathtaking had it not been for the skeletal remains of old fishing boats that lined either side of the winding river. Sun-bleached planks stuck up out of the water along the riverbank, like teeth from a long dead beast. Eerie symbols marked the canyon walls as well. Even though Brittle couldn’t read them, he imagined they were dire warnings, telling any would-be trespassers to turn back the way they had come.

Regretfully, neither Gilly nor Sir Thomassin seemed to notice.

Although Gilly’s fearless stride had lost some of its energetic swagger, she still plodded along with dead set determination. She didn’t stop, not even after coming to a jagged opening in the otherwise solid canyon wall. The great lizard waddled inside, beckoning for Brittle and Sir Thomassin to follow with an impatient swish of her tail.

Sir Thomassin stopped at the mouth of the dark cave instead. He removed his helm and wiped the collecting sweat from his brow. “It may be best for you to stay out here for this, Brittle.”

“If you’re worried about my innocence, sir, don’t be.” Brittle batted the man’s outstretched hand away as he trudged past. “If not here, you will surely destroy it the moment you lay a hand on my goddess.”

The inside of the cave was adorned in dusty cobwebs, blankets of overgrown moss, and several heads mounted on spikes. Ordinarily, this would have been reason enough to run back outside screaming, but something about the grinning skulls was off. Brittle edged closer, studying the curious decorations with a wary eye. The skulls were brown and somewhat fuzzy, shaped from a spongy wood substance.

“Sir Thomassin?”

“Yes, Brittle?” The knight called from the entrance.

“What’s this?” Brittle plucked one of the curious skulls from its spike and lobbed it at him – harder than he probably should have. Considering the man was here to harm the Great Maker herself, Brittle didn’t think she would mind all that much.

Sir Thomassin’s shrill shriek echoed along the stone passage long after he finished screaming. “Oh,” he said, blinking in confusion as he turned the fuzzy skull over in his large hands. The phantom echoes of his scream slowly faded in the distance further down. “It’s a coconut.”

“Is it dangerous?”

There was an unmistakable edge to the man’s tone. “Only when some wee beast throws it at your head.”

Fiddlesticks. Brittle had hoped the coconut would do something more impressive, like release a clutch of stinging gnats to chase the stubborn human away. Sadly, it was not so. Ahead of them, Brittle could hear Gilly’s heavy claws dragging against the cool stone floor as she ambled further down the passage. A guttural hiss over Gilly’s shoulder urged them to follow suit.

With a reluctant sigh, Brittle followed.

Unlike Sir Thomassin, whose statuesque frame still lingered at the mouth of the cave, backlit by the dimming orange and violet light. For some reason the knight wasn’t marching along with them. Brittle turned back around, hopeful, perhaps, that the dark, imposing cave was working its charms on the man’s thick head.

“Curses,” Sir Thomassin muttered.

“Something wrong?”

The knight edged one cautious step inside, and then another, moving as slow as a turtle caught in molasses. He shuffled along with his head bent towards the ground, as if looking for something. “The thieves took my lantern,” he explained. “I was expecting to find a torch or something along the entrance here.”

“Why would you expect that?” It was called Stay Away Canyon, for peat’s sake. Leaving welcome torches scattered about the entrance seemed like it would send mixed messages.

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“I know this might sound a bit fantastical, but that’s how it’s always been. Things seem to work out for me all on their own. The blessings of fate, I suppose.”

“How unfortunate. Well, we tried.” Despite his best efforts, Brittle’s tone brimmed with glee. He called over his shoulder to Gilly. “Come on back, Gilly. We’re giving up. Time to go home.”

“Brittle,” Sir Thomassin said, suddenly staring very intently in the bog log beast’s direction. “You could have mentioned you had a lantern.”

Brittle scratched the base of his left antler. “But I don’t. No need. Bog log beats possess excellent dark vision.”

“Don’t be cheeky, Brittle. I can see its green glow from here.”

A mighty smack from Gilly’s tail reverberated along the stone passage, clearing Brittle’s confusion. “Those are my eyes, sir,” he said. “They glow in the dark. Gilly says they’re hauntingly enchanting.”

“Glow in the dark, you say?” Sir Thomassin was at Brittle’s side in a matter of three, swift strides. Plucking Brittle from the ground, he hoisted the startled bog log beast onto his shoulders as though his wooden trunk weighed nothing. “I told you there was a reason you and I found each other, Brittle. The fates sent you to help me, just as I thought.”

Brittle had never been this high up before in his life. He was practically soaring above the clouds – had there been any clouds to speak of, of course. He beat the top of Sir Thomassin’s helm with his fists. “Put me down! ‘Tis unnatural to be this far off the ground!”

Sir Thomassin started off, walking with his signature confidence once more. “There, there. I won’t drop you, I promise.”

“The air’s thinner up here. I can feel it.” Brittle’s wooden head sagged to one side. “The woozies are setting in. World…growing…darker.”

“Have you heard the term ‘overdramatic’ before, Brittle?”

Brittle gasped his final words. “Tell Gilly this is all her fault.”

“I didn’t think so.”

They pressed deeper into the cave. Gilly at the lead, with Sir Thomassin following close behind, using the ghostly green glow emitting from Brittle’s hollow eyes as a light source. Resigned to silence, Brittle watched the ceiling pass by overhead. Row upon row of pointed mineral formations hung precariously over the top of them, poised to drop on an unsuspecting beastie’s head at any given moment.

It was the floor, however, not the ceiling, that presented the first obstacle. The trio rounded a corner to find the stone walkway had disappeared, hidden beneath a pool of dark, still water. The pool stretched from either side of the cavern, the size of a small pond. Alas, with water butting up on either side of the jagged walls, the only way to cross would be to wade through.

Brittle was suddenly grateful to be so high off the ground. Not that he minded getting his feet wet. He lived in a swamp, after all. It was what lurked beneath the water’s inky surface that concerned him. The elders used to tell tales of naughty bog log beast boys and girls being pulled under by timber-eating eels. Usually such stories correlated with whether or not one ate their swamp scum supper, but that was beside the point.

Gilly plunged into the watery depths unafraid. Sir Thomassin followed with thankfully less splashing. He and Brittle were halfway across when an unnatural ripple undulated over the glassy surface in front of them. Sir Thomassin saw it too, and quickened his pace, but it was too late. The water roiled as serpent leapt out at them, hungry jaws held wide open. Its fangs scraped against Sir Thomassin’s side, but all it got for its efforts was a mouthful of solid steel.

Gilly puffed up her throat as she whipped about, clawed feet paddling faster than Brittle had ever seen her move before. Had it been just Sir Thomassin, she probably would not have bothered chasing the snake off. But Brittle was a different matter. Who else was she going to drag along on her daily misadventures if he was too busy being digested in the belly of a water serpent?

Snapping her mighty jaws, Gilly harassed the snake into a desperate retreat, convincing it to slink back underwater and reconsider its poor life choices.

Sir Thomassin reached the far side of the pool by the time she was done. The knight clambered up the stone embankment, with Brittle still perched safely on his steel shoulders. “Are you beginning to understand now, dear boy?” he panted between short breaths.

“That without Gilly, we’d be supper?”

“No, about the reason I am here. The reason I do not need a sword.”

Brittle was pretty sure the answer to both of those questions was still ‘Gilly’.

Sir Thomassin continued, “Only the purehearted can defeat a god or goddess. A deity’s power is useless against a knight most noble. Whatever trials the Goddess of Ill Fortune may throw my way, I will not falter from my path so long as I remain true of heart.”

“And what do your beliefs say about hollow of head?”

“You are hesitant to believe the truth, I understand.” Sir Thomassin waited for Gilly to come clomping out of the pool.

The swamp monitor swaggered past with a smug look on her scaled face. Water droplets beaded from her pink and orange, pebbled hide as she assumed the lead. The passage stretched on endlessly before them, illuminated along the edges in an eerie green glow.

“By the end of the night,” Sir Thomassin said, as they continued walking, “I hope to have changed your mind.”

Brittle merely hoped that, by the end of the night, he was still alive.