Math kneeled at the edge of the pit, stunned. Thea sobbed beside him. The shrieks of the kobalds had faded as quickly as his brother’s screams, lost in the dark tunnel. Rai’s face was seared into his memory. Even now, Math could close his eyes and see it, see the horror on it as Rai was pulled into darkness. He shook his head, trying to clear the vision to no avail.

Khel was the only one moving. He put a hand on Math’s shoulder.

“Get up,” he said. Math heard the words, but they didn’t register in his mind. “We have to move before they come back,” Khel continued.

Math nodded a grunting assent. He reached out to Thea and slid his hand under her arm. Khel moved to her other side and did the same. Together they helped her to her feet. She complied, stumbling. They turned and headed towards the horses.

“Ulric?” Math asked. Khel shook his head in reply and motioned to the side with a tilt of his chin. Math followed the motion with his eye and saw Ulric lying face up in the center of a crowd of slaughtered kobalds. His face was gone. At least, that’s the way it appeared to Math. The flesh had been shredded and bitten. The features were unrecognizable. Where his nose should have been was just a pulpy mess. His lips were torn away, exposing bloodied teeth. Forehead and cheeks were flayed. The eyes had been torn away, leaving two gore-filled depressions in the ruined face. A ragged hole in his neck exposed the inside of his windpipe to the sky.

Math looked away quickly before he made himself sick. Thea hadn’t noticed the torn corpse, so he leaned a bit forward to block her view as they walked. He looked to Khel and saw the Sidhe’s face also stricken with grief. He and Ulric must have been close.

The horses had fled a short distance down the road. Khel jogged ahead of the pair and grabbed the reins of one, then the other. He led the animals back, meeting Math and Thea as they stumbled drunkenly down the road. Thea complied as they helped her on to one of the horses. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups to let Math use them to swing himself up. Khel took the other horse for himself.

Neither Math nor Thea said a word when Khel turned the horses down the road in the direction opposite Berendale. Nobody wanted to face Ana and tell her she’d now lost a son in addition to a leg. The loss of the son would be far more painful. Math would rather have given up a leg himself than lost his brother.

They rode silently for hours. None of them wanted to break the grieved silence. They kept eyes scanning the sides of the road for the telltale signs of moving earth, but other than that the scenery passed in a haze. They had a wordless lunch on horseback in the middle of the afternoon. Khel simply started reaching into the saddlebags and passing out bread and cheese. Math and Thea ate slowly and silently, washing down the light meal with water from a skin hung from their own saddle. They continued on until close to nightfall, when Khel led them off the road. The sound of rushing water reached their ears, and once over a short rise the ground became rock beneath the horse’s hooves. A slow-moving river flowed rapidly before them, churning through stones and boulders between banks of wide, flat rock.

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They dismounted and, still silent, began to set up camp. Khel scavenged up some dry, dead kindling and began building a fire. Math and Thea unpacked blankets and more of the bread and cheese for their supper. Khel retrieved some flints from the saddlebags and soon had the fire going. They sat and ate, staring at the flames, Thea still leaning on Math.

Math was the first to break the silence.

“So what now?” he asked.

Nobody answered. Khel sat quietly, chewing and thinking. Thea sat quietly, not even chewing, just staring into the flames.

Finally Khel responded. “I don’t know.”

Silence fell for more minutes.

“Are we heading to your people?” Thea asked, barely audible above the crackle of the small fire.

“Yes. We’ll have to keep fighting, somehow.”

“Are there any other-,” she began. Scions, she left unspoken, unable to speak it. Khel had said the key needed three scions.

“No.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know. But we have to try. We have to find some way.”

“You think someone back home knows?” Math asked.

“I don’t know.”

Math paused, then responded, “We shouldn’t have come this way. I need to let Ma know.”

“We can send word, if you like, when we arrive.”

“Thank you, but I should do it myself.”

“I understand.”

“You will need time to locate the last scion anyways, won’t you?”

“No, we know where he is. But we don’t know if two is enough anyways.”

The three were silent again. As the sun began to set, the sounds of night life in the outdoors swelled around them, crickets chirping, an owl’s low hoot in the distance. The soft cry of some strange animal drifted through the woods. Math looked up in surprise when Khel mimicked the sound.

A few minutes later, he heard soft footsteps approaching through dry grass and loose pebbles. He spun in alarm, only to see Rowan stepping up out of the twilight behind Khel. Destrian was not with him. Rowan paused by the fire and looked to each of the three. His glance to the faces of the three around the fire told him all he needed to know about the missing two. He rested a hand gently on Khel’s shoulder as he sat down. Khel glanced at him, then looked back into the shadows, waiting for Destrian to follow Rowan to the firelight. He looked back to Rowan, eyebrows raised in an unspoken question. Rowan shook his head.

“Damn,” Khel whispered. He didn’t say anything more as he offered Rowan some of their provisions. He let the Sidhe eat and drink a few bites before he asked anything more.

“News from Berendale?” he asked after Rowan sat and took a bite.

Rowan swallowed. “We didn’t get that far.”

“Kobali?”

Rowan nodded. “They set an ambush in the road. The dig up to the surface but not through it, reinforce the thin crust to keep it from caving in until some fool steps on it, and they’ve got a perfect pit trap. Swallowed Destrian and his horse before we knew what was happening. Had to pick which way to run for it, figured I’d go back and try to warn you. Guess I didn’t make it. I’m sorry.”

Khel waved off the apology.

“How far out of town were you?” Math asked.

“Not far. Couple hours maybe.”

“We’ve got to warn them!” Thea said. “My dad! Ana! We have to let them know!”

“Can’t, I’m sorry. We won’t get through. They’re devious little bastards. We’d be threading a gauntlet of traps and ambushes. We’ll never see them coming.”

“So what do we do? We can’t just leave them unaware!” Math argued.

“There’s nothing we can do!” Khel said. “We can’t go back while they are there.”

“So how do we get rid of them?”

“The four of us, alone, can’t. Even if we had more, we can’t squirm through their tunnels and hunt them down. Something drew them here. To drive them away we have to get rid of the threat that brought them.”

“The Dragon,” Math and Thea answered in unison.