Ted trudged along behind Cara. Her bare feet seemed to barely touch the mud, while his boots sunk into it with each step. A sheer cliff face rose close enough on his left that he could reach out and touch it. On his right, a stream trickled by. Beyond that, no more than thirty yards away yet completely shrouded in white fog, the other cliff face enclosed them. Forward or back, those were the only options.

The fog tumbled and swirled with no regard for the laws of physics, moving as and when it felt like it. It kept its distance, never coming closer than an arm’s length. There wasn’t enough information to speculate on why it was as it was, and just thinking about it made Ted’s skin crawl.

Was the fog part of why the stuck dead gathered here? He saw no magic in the rolling gray clouds, but not everything supernatural showed up on Discern Magic.

Metal clanked behind. Gramok, jumping again at voices no one else could hear.

Ted gritted his teeth, remembering the wailing cries he’d heard half an hour before. None of the others had heard that either.

More clinking of armor came from behind. This place… it wasn’t right, but Gramok, of all people, struggling the most?

Ted dropped back beside him. “So, this dragonrider. What do you know about them?”

Gramok’s gauntleted hands tightened on the grip of his greatsword. The spiritbane runes along the blade glowed, and he kept facing ahead, mechanically putting one squelching foot in front of the other.

Weird. Gramok was usually so open.

“We may have to fight him,” Ted said.

Still nothing. Not even a glance.

Discomfort curdled in Ted’s gut. Tempting as it was to let it rest, they couldn’t afford to leave any advantage on the table. “If you know anything,” Ted said, “it might help.”

A deep growl came back. “Fine. I know him. He’s—” Gramok froze. Stared ahead into the fog.

Ted followed his gaze, but there was nothing there. Just a swirling wall of fog.

Without another word, Gramok broke into a sprint. He ran past Cara, his heavy boots kicking up mud with each bounding step, the fog parting before him like a crowd fleeing.

Cara glanced back at Ted. All he could do was shrug, and follow. What the hell had gotten Gramok so spooked?

They ran after him. Cara kept pace while Ted fell slowly behind.

The temperature plummeted, an icy chill clawing at the edge of Ted’s awareness despite the magical warmth of his robes.

Maybe coming this way wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Ahead, Gramok slowed to a jog, and then a stop. He turned and spun, his gaze darting around, his eyes wide and frantic. “I heard him,” he said. “I heard him.”

Cara reached up and placed her hands on his pauldrons. “Deep breaths, Gramok.”

His motions slowed, and he stared at her. His eyes were still wide, but less wild, more full of sorrow.

Ted came to a stop close by, and cast Farsight on a hunch. Yet when the image formed in his mind, it looked much the same, minus the glow of their magical items and the Protection magic around Gramok and Cara.

“Who did you hear?” Cara asked, with kind eyes and an expression that promised all the time and space in the world.

Gramok’s jaw clenched, and he gave a faint shake of his head.

Cara didn’t look away. Didn’t stop giving him that look, that space, that invitation to tell her in his own time.

Seconds scraped by awkwardly, and yet Ted watched, entranced. Despite everything, his heart swelled—the Cara he’d first met would’ve slunk away.

Each of Gramok’s breaths were slower now, and he looked out into the fog with a measure of professional calm. “Karogar,” he said finally.

Karogar. Gramok’s friend, the one who’d died. The one Gramok never spoke about.

Cara leaned into him, hugging the huge orc as best she could with his thick plate armor, and whispered something to him.

A shriek pierced the air, sending a chill through Ted’s bones. His jaw clenched, yet neither of the other two reacted.

Of course not. They didn’t hear it.

Ted cast Absorb spells on both of them. Why had he been stupid enough to let Death take away his own ability to benefit from Protection spells? And in exchange for guilt, of all things. Now it was gone, he didn’t miss that deadweight around his neck one bit. “We need to keep moving,” he said. “The quicker we get out of here, the better.”

“No.” Gramok straightened up. He peered into the mist, his gaze locked on one point. “He’s here. Stuck.”

“You can’t know that,” Ted said.

“It’s him.”

The certainty in Gramok’s voice made Ted pause. Sure, Gramok always brimmed with bravado, but that confidence was well grounded in his own abilities. This was different. This was faith.

Ted stepped up to Gramok and cast a Visibility upon him. The spell went off without a hitch but no new magic effects appeared, no matter how Ted looked Gramok up and down.

“I told you,” Gramok said, “it’s him.”

“There’s no way you could know that.” Ted shook his head and looked to Cara for aid. “Right?”

She shrugged. “The tree-song shared knowledge without magic.”

Ted glowered back at her. It was a good point, but it damn well wasn’t helpful. “We barely survived our last encounter with spirits.”

“Yeah, well—” Gramok turned and gave a smirk “—you didn’t have me then, did you?” His gaze returned to that spot, and he walked into the fog. This time, it swirled around him, embracing and engulfing him in wispy grasps.

Ted and Cara followed. What else were they meant to do? They couldn’t, wouldn’t, abandon him.

“It’ll be fine,” Cara said, her lips pressed together solemnly.

“And if it’s a trap?”

Warmth spread through her face, and a smile slipped out. “We could use the experience.”

“Easy for you to say.” Ted double checked his spirit. Only nine left. “You won’t have to kill it.”

Her face scrunched up into a scowl. “Maybe I will.”

“With what?” Even as he asked it, his heart sank, knowing the answer.

“Dark magic on my bow.”

He shot her a glare. “You don’t have any spirit.”

“I can spend maximum hit points, right?” Her voice wavered, despite her attempts to hide it.

“They take days to come back, Cara. We don’t have days.” I can’t lose you.

“I’m not going to prance around like a rotten skin watching my friends die.”

Ted searched for the words to dissuade her, but none came. What words could possibly dissuade her from doing what had to be done?

“Come,” Gramok said, calling from ahead. “He’s close. I hear him singing.”

They hurried up behind him, and Gramok’s pace slowed. There was no song, not that Ted could hear, and an icy chill bit at his ears and his hands. The others had to be practically freezing, not that they showed it.

Patches of clear air swam through the air, sending ripples tumbling within the murky haze. The motions were strange, unnatural. Almost as if—

He pulled on his mana and cast a wide Visibility spell. “Enshka ko ri!”

A wave of purple magic blasted out, revealing three balls of wispy green and black smog flying through the air. The fog fled before the wisps, and at the center of each ball pulsated a darkness that ripped light right out of existence.

The wisps circled around them, and metal clinked as Gramok’s visor dropped into place.

“You see them?” Ted asked, instinctively forming up back-to-back with his companions.

“Yeah,” Gramok said, holding up his greatsword ready to swing at any spirit insane enough to take him on. “They seek to keep us from Karogar.”

Ted held his tongue. As delusions go, that wasn’t the worst he could have. “They’re dangerous, right?”

The wisps circled, drawing closer and closer.

“I don’t know,” Cara said. She nocked an arrow—one that would be useless unless she spent her maximum hit points on Dark magic. “We going to wait to find out?”

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Adrenaline pounded through Ted’s veins, demanding that he act. That he attack. That he destroy them.

But… they hadn’t attacked. Not yet. They just swirled around the trio, orbiting in circles that drew closer and closer.

Like a noose pulling tight.

What if Gramok was right?

“Stay back,” Ted said, unsure if they even heard him.

The wisps drew closer still. Almost close enough to touch.

Ted pulled on his mana and cast a Communicate spell upon them all. Stay back!

A deluge of cackling laughter slammed against Ted’s mind. Memories of his mother, drunk, yelling, screaming he’d come back. That he hadn’t abandoned them.

Mental intrusion detected.

Clenching tightness rolled through Ted. Stop that. STOP!

The spirits slowed. They formed up into an equilateral triangle a few paces in front of Ted, about head height. The triangle spun slowly in the air, taunting? Teasing?

What did they want? They didn’t seem hostile. More… curious.

One froze in place, and the other two spirits split off. They weaved purple magic in the air. A Telepathy spell. Touch, with elements of Affect in there, but other, more intricate segments as well.

“What are they casting?” Cara asked.

“I don’t know,” Ted said, memorizing the patterns, learning the spell. “I don’t think they’re hostile.”

The spell sealed. All three spirits surged forward, spinning together into a single spot that pressed against Ted’s forehead. Telepathy magic washed over him, and the spirits fled back into the cover of the fog.

Yet… nothing happened. Ted turned to face the others, and frowned at their stares. “I don’t feel any different.”

“Right.” Cara shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “The nice spirits of Ghostlight Gorge just wanted to give you a present.”

Before Ted could reply to that ridiculous suggestion, a screech blasted through the air. The fog pulled back, revealing a ring of thirty pale, lifeless faces staring at them. Dwarves, minotaurs, humans, elves, high elves, orcs, all standing perfectly still, staring in with dead eyes. Behind those thirty stood more engulfed in fog.

“You see them too?” Ted asked.

Gramok spat on the ground. “Drokur. Corporeal spirits, unslayable by most means. We’ll need my blade and your Dark magic here.”

Dark magic? Ted cocked his head. “I don’t know any Dark magic.”

The drokur lurched forward, charging as one, half-groaning, half-gurgling.

Cara loosed a fire arrow. It buried in the eye of a sheet-white high elf, stumbling the creature for a mere moment. “Not the time for jokes!”

Ted gathered his mana and fired off Blastbolt at dwarven drokur’s head. The direct hit smashed in the drokur’s skull. It staggered for an instant before resuming its advance in slow, jerky motions. What the hell would it take to stop these things?

Gramok dived into the closing ring of foes, decapitating one then another in bloodless strikes. With each hit, the runes along the blade lit up, and each victim evaporated upon impact. Three, four, five foes fell before him, each dissolving into white mist that fluttered away.

Yet more piled in. Dozens of drokur swarmed Gramok, grabbed his arms, pulled him to the ground. The creatures ignored Cara and Ted, shrugging off arrows and firebolts with the disinterest of zombies.

Zombies! Even if smashing their brains in didn’t work, perhaps decapitation might. Ted drew his falchion and swung at the neck of a minotaur pinning down Gramok’s right arm.

The first hit drew a crunch. The second, a crack. The third severed the bone, and the two-horned head fell away with a thud.

The minotaur turned slightly, as if to look at Ted despite missing his head. Yet, he continued to pin Gramok’s arm, while other drokur yanked away the greatsword, and Cara’s flurry of arrows, cycling red to white to purple, did nothing.

Shit.

Cara nocked another arrow. She drew her bow, and the groves along its side sucked the light out of the air.

“No!” Ted screamed.

Too late.

She fired. Her shot downed a single foe. It dissolved it into mist as yet two more hobbled out from the fog. Her face contorted in pain, and three of the drokur that had been weighing down Gramok turned on her.

Now she was a threat, there would be no more mercy.

Ted grabbed her by the arm. “I’m sending you back.”

She pulled him close, leaned in, dropped her bow to the ground. “Sorry about this,” she whispered.

Before he could assure her it was fine, a force tugged at his back and ripped his axe loose.

Cara stepped back, the axe rising in her right hand, swinging at his thigh.

He tried to pull back, but her other hand seized his, holding him still.

The axe head glowed white and slashed just above his knee. Agony seared his skin, and she winced even as she cut him.

Pain pulsated through him, while knowledge hammered back into his mind.

Dark magic.

He met her worried gaze, and he couldn’t help but grin. Now to see if it worked.

Ted spliced Dark magic into a Forcebolt and hurled it at the back of a human drokur struggling with Gramok’s helmet. The drokur’s chest exploded, and the creature dissolved like the ones Gramok had cut down.

Dozens of drokur—all those not pinning Gramok or chasing Cara—turned their gaze upon Ted. A single spirit was enough to infuse the bolts, but eight more bolts wasn’t going to cut it.

“Get down,” Ted cried out, joy flaring through him as he pouring five spirit and as much mana as he dared into an Area/(Force-Blast-Dark) spell.

Instead of dropping, Cara danced his way. Drokur surrounded him, hands reaching out. She pounced on the orc closing on his right, wrestling it to the ground before it could grab at Ted’s hands.

A wood elven drokur, its face impassive, launched at his left. It seized his arm midcast. Spell stability dropped from a hundred to eighty-four.

The drokur’s leg gave out, pulled away from the ground. It fell to the floor, straight into Cara’s waiting daggers.

The spirit and mana in the spell hammered against its weakening confines. If the spell failed with Cara at his feet…

A spindly arm reached around his neck and pulled tight at his throat with unnatural strength.

Ted flailed for air, weaving the complex patterns of the spell even as that inner sense harassed him with numbers—eighty. Seventy-six. Seventy-two.

The pressure on his throat grew. Sixty-eight.

His lungs burned and he forced out Za-enm-ronkatara as a garbled mess.

Twenty-four.

The spirt and the mana cackled and slammed against the barriers confining it. The power ripped at the walls of his magic, tearing into the falling barriers.

Twelve.

Blocking out the pain, Ted clenched his eyes shut, imagined the spell blasting out in a ring above the ground, and—

Mental intrusion detected.

He saw an orc laughing. Heard it, above the gargling drakur. Above the cackling of the spirit about to devour him.

Gramok’s laugh. No, too young to be Gramok. Too carefree.

The spell unleashed.

The light beyond his eyelids went dark. The pressure on his neck vanished. The gurgling groans passed beyond.

Silence fell.

5,510 XP received!

Ted gasped for air and opened his eyes.

Gramok lay on his back, staring up at the sky—or what passed for sky within the fog—and groaned loudly. “Whatever you did, thanks.”

Below, Cara smiled up at him, thank the Forest. She pulled herself up to a crouch, and inspected the gash on his leg. “Ouch,” she said, pressing her right hand to the wound and weaving a basic healing spell with the other. “Lunaeka!”

Warm relief flooded into the wound, and Ted let out a long exhale. “Thank you.”

“Good as new,” she said, gently stroking where the wound had been.

Ted tried to cast his mind back to what he’d been thinking before she hit him, but it was a blur. He named the spell he’d copied Alter Memory. “Pretty quick thinking there.”

“Thanks.” She rose to her feet and flung her arms around him. “Don’t you dare try sending me away again—you need me.”

Ted hugged her back. “Is that so?”

“It is.” She kissed him on the cheek, and gave him a grin. “Who else is going to fix your armor tonight?”

“I have Repair, you know?”

She traced her finger along the rather obvious yet totally functional fix to his chest plate. “Like you ‘Repaired’ the cuirass?”

“I needed it done sometime before the end of time.”

“I’ll fix it tonight,” she said, half glowering at him. “Promise.”

He smiled, despite it all. “Don’t make promises you won’t keep.”

“Me?” She pulled away and gave him a smirk. “Would I ever forget to do something I promised?”

Gramok slapped her on the shoulder. “Do you really want an answer to that, little lovebird?”

It took all Ted’s willpower not to laugh at her trying to hold an indignant expression. Then he met Gramok’s gaze. Saw the sorrow again. “Gramok…” he said, searching in his mind for words to express what went beyond them.

Gramok paused and cocked his head. “He’s here. I feel it in my teeth.”

“I felt him too,” Ted said, that memory fluttering free from his mind. “When I cast the spell. I pushed it to the limit, past it, really, I had to. When the drokur grabbed me, cut off the vocal and somatic components…”

“He’s here,” Gramok said again, almost whispering the words now with quiet certainty. “He needs us.”

“He saved us,” Ted said. “We owe him our lives.”

“Can you…” Gramok paused and looked around. “Can you cast Communicate on us?”

Not without knowing what to cast it upon. Ted looked around, but saw no spirits. He cast Visibility and Farsight, yet neither showed anything. Clutching at straws, he cast an Area Communicate.

Are you there, Karogar? Gramok messaged.

No response.

Please answer.

Ted met Cara’s gaze. Saw the worry in her eyes as well.

I’m sorry, old friend.

Still nothing. What if the Dark magic had destroyed whatever was left of Karogar? Or, worse, exiled beyond reach but still here?

Gramok’s head tilted up. “Do you hear that?”

Ted listened. Still nothing.

“What do you hear?” Cara asked.

“Music,” Gramok said, closing his eyes. “He always loved to play. Used to talk about…”

Ted stepped up to him and placed his hand on the hulking orc’s pauldron. “It’s okay.”

“We never had the time.” Gramok’s shoulders slumped. Was that a tear?

Cara grabbed her discarded bow from the ground and slung it over her shoulder. “He’d have understood, I’m sure. He wanted to protect people, right? That’s why you were training.”

The words seemed to lift Gramok up, although not by much. “Yeah.” He forced out a smile. “Yeah, he would have understood. He always did.”

Ted stared at Cara’s bow. At the magical groves along it, granted back in the Zelnari puzzle dungeon. “Music. He sang to you, right? Play back.”

Gramok shook his head. “I can’t…”

A spark erupted in Cara’s eyes. She reached into Gramok’s pack and pulled out the lute that, by any normal geometry, should never have fitted in such a small pack. A haze of purple magic glowed around the instrument as she held it up for him.

He tentatively took the neck of the lute in his hand and strummed out a sad chord.

Tendrils of dusky mist rolled out from the fog.

Gramok played another chord, a happier one, and then another and another.

The mist drew closer.

The chords came faster, progressing and building pace.

It swirled, the mist, forming into a column.

Individual notes punctuated the gaps between the chords now. An upbeat jig that bade Ted’s limbs to dance, even as he denied them.

The column of mist twirled, taking the shape of a man. Of a young orc with a stick in his hand.

Each pluck of the lute’s strings poured more warmth into the air, gushing into Ted’s soul like a torrent that couldn’t be denied.

The figure put the stick up to their lips—no, not a stick, a flute—and blew, though no sound came.

Wait—there. Slow and quiet, so quiet it could almost be a dream. A dream that sowed sorrow and joy, both peeking out from a distant song.

The mist swirled in ever more detail, and Gramok’s plucking slowed, his pace matching Karogar’s.

Cara’s icy cold hand slipped into Ted’s, and she pulled him back to watch and listen at a distance.

The orcs’ song quickened, a rising tide of sorrow and joy dancing as one. The flute sang in warm, steady tones that could hold the world aloft, while the lute’s notes quivered and wavered.

Cara’s hair bristled against Ted’s neck as she rested her head upon his shoulder.

Time. There was never enough of it. Eighty-eight times out of a hundred, he’d have lost her today without Karogar.

He leaned his head against hers and let his eyes close, listening to the duet intertwine and dance, letting the music take over and push aside the grim reality they faced, even if just for a fleeting eternity.

The flute music soared, and Ted’s heart rose on a tide of tender joy. How could it not?

The lute’s song gave chase. Gentle beginnings. What could have been.

Warm notes responded. A melody of hope. Of love. Of loss. Of salvation.

This couldn’t be natural, yet Ted had seen no magic in the air. “This is what the tree-song is like,” he whispered, “isn’t it?”

Another squeeze of his hand. “Used to be.”

Their harmonies converged, wavering now between melancholy and excitement, stoking both in Ted’s heart.

“I love you,” Cara said. She blurted the words out quietly, almost like an apology. “Thank you for letting me see the world.”

Ted put his arm around her shoulder. “We’ll fix it. You’ll hear the tree-song again.”

“Promise?” she asked, quivering as she did so.

The song crescendoed to a peak that hovered in joy tinged by sorrow, in hope fueled by despair, in the depths and peaks of the soul.

“I promise,” Ted said, kissing her on the forehead. They’d come too far to fail now.

The lute fell away, leaving the flute’s song wavering between pain and anticipation as it too faded away, leaving behind the dream of healed wounds.

Opening his eyes, Ted saw Gramok alone, staring at a mist fluttering away as if following a breeze.

Gramok fell to his knees clutching the lute to his chest.

Ted clutched Cara tight and squeezed her hand. “I love you, too.”

“He’s gone,” Gramok said, looking around at them with a thin smile and a tear in his eye. “He’s gone.”