The patrol of goblins approached them again soon after they departed camp. Hobnailed bootsteps echoed down the ruined and overgrown streets. Trito led them into cover, and there they waited.

They could do nothing but be still and listen to the march.

“What are they looking for?” Dorian asked.

“Prey,” Trito said.

“They would make easy prey themselves for some creatures,” Mother said.

“Their leader is an orc. He will know many spells. One with such power does not fear an anastimenos.”

Trito glanced out at the streets again.

“We enter goblin territory. They are feral here, surviving off the glow of the maelstrom. The orcs send out riders with slaves to ensure they have not spread too far. Feral goblins are sated for magic. They are harder to dominate than those in Esenia; the orcs do not dare go where we do without soldiers.”

“I thought we were nearing the Mortalist compound,” Dorian said.

“We are.”

“Goblin territory. Mortalist territory. Which is it?”

“They are one and the same.”

The party stared at him, awaiting an explanation. But no explanation came. Instead Trito was silent for a moment. Then he slipped back out into the street, and onward they pressed.

An indigo forest rose swiftly over them. In the trees were drawn crude pictograms, and between them and columns and fallen piles of brick were effigies made from bones and sticks and rocks. In one tree Corvo spotted a squirrel with fur like velvet; it radiated light the same color as the leaves around it.

It grabbed an acorn off a branch before leaping down and out of sight.

Trito took them over a hill and across a large field, venturing to a place that might have been a park three thousand years ago but was today nothing more than a stretch of forest unsullied by ruins. Yet the ruins were never far out of sight. As they reached its edge, they found another street. Mossy cobblestone led them forward.

And Trito halted.

Roots burst through the road. It continued down a lane for a few feet, and then it stopped suddenly, as trees—old, large trees—blocked the way forward. They stretched from a building to a wall and were thick and twisted together, their trunks intertwined, so that Corvo could not look between them from his low vantage point.

There was no way forward.

Trito shook his head.

“This is not right,” he said.

“What?” Aletheia said. She nocked an arrow.

“This is not how I remember….” He looked over his shoulder, at Mother. His mouth opened, but he said nothing.

A red shadow washed over them.

Everyone glanced up at the sky.

A snake slithered through the air far overhead, past a gap in the canopy. It moved through the sky like a sea serpent through water. It was over them for only a moment, but that moment was time enough to see the light from the maelstrom pass through its body.

It was immaterial. Translucent. The shape of a snake, yet Corvo saw through it, to the twisting clouds; its body looked red from this angle, but its immaterial veins and hovering eyes were undoubtedly blue.

Mother grabbed Corvo and pulled him to the forest floor. Aletheia joined her; she dropped her bow and instead drew her sword.

“What was that?” Dorian said, spinning about himself.

“A demon,” Trito said.

Their first demon.

They all watched the sky. But nothing else came.

“It did not smell us, this time,” Trito said. “But there will be many more throughout the city. That is why we cannot use magic.”

“He is right,” Mother said. “Creatures of the Aether are far more dangerous than any ilethian, and they will smell us if we do not take care.”

“Then end your spell on me,” Dorian said.

“They are still less dangerous than that, for you,” Mother said.

Trito turned his attention back toward the trees in front of them. “A demon will be drawn to our Essences, if we let them loose. Yet others are not always so cautious. Do you detect a spell over these trees?”

Mother rose and stepped toward them. She looked them over, then shrugged.

“It is impossible to know for certain without Supernal Vision,” she said.

“You can feel magic, can you not?”

“Normally. But everything here is….” Mother stopped herself.

She put her hand to a trunk. It seemed solid. Corvo followed and did the same, thinking that he might be helping somehow.

It felt like wood to him.

She sighed and drew her sword. Corvo recoiled, and he whispered, “No!” as he watched her cut her left pinky.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“It is all right, Corvo. Be calm,” she said.

A droplet of blood dribbled down to her palm. She caught it, then held it up to the tree, outstretched and level.

Her blood was repulsed. It came to a stop at the center of her palm, but when she moved it toward the trunk, the tree seemed to push it away, like two magnets of the same charge coming too close together.

The droplet rolled off her palm and into the dirt.

“Does that mean there is a spell?” Dorian asked.

“Most likely, yes,” Mother said. “But it would be a powerful illusion, to trick sight and feel alike.”

“I was not last here so long ago that these trees might have grown in my absence,” Trito said. “Someone has blocked this way forward with a spell. Be it illusion, or enchanted growth.”

“Maybe your memory is bad,” Mother said.

Trito ignored her. She didn’t respond, so it seemed she meant this as nothing more than a jab. Everyone knew that Trito’s memory was not bad.

“Whose spell is it?” Aletheia asked. “Could it be a Mortalist’s?”

“No,” Trito said. “But it belongs to someone who does not wish for us to reach our compound.”

He glanced between the thick trees leading forward.

“A goblin sorcerer wishes for us to go around,” he said. “He wants us to use the streets. It is a trap for me or my people.”

“There are goblin sorcerers?” Aletheia asked.

“Then what is our recourse?” Mother asked.

“It is too dangerous to dispel it now, if it could be dispelled.” Trito lowered his spear. “We’ll have to walk into the trap.”

The road, where it was traversable, led away from the wall and toward the center of the city. They followed it for a mile before another street took them back in the right direction.

But Trito’s confident stride slowed. He climbed trees to look at their surroundings, and often he hesitated at branching pathways.

Corvo picked up on his uncertainty. It was new, and frightening. Trito was meant to be like Mother. Trito was meant to be confident. But he no longer was.

“You gaze around yourself like a nervous hound,” Mother said. “What is wrong?”

Trito hesitated. He looked around one tree, then another.

“Are you lost?” Aletheia asked.

He shook his head, but he said, “Maybe.”

“So much for your infallible memory,” Mother said. “You said you never forgot so much as a tree.”

“I don’t,” Trito said. “But I have never been here, precisely.” He quickly climbed another tree, leaving his spear leaned against its trunk; he moved as deftly up the branches as an ape, until he poked his head through the canopy.

He descended just as quickly.

“This way,” he said. “The compound is not far.”

Soon the ruined city peeled away again. In its stead was left another thick forest of bright trees. Birds and more squirrels and rabbits with coats of fur so white that they reflected light like mirrors darted beneath the brush or ran underfoot. A lane remained, a clear path forward, but to its sides there were no alleys or sidepaths—only the thickest of trees to funnel them forward, like a slot canyon of wood.

Trito picked up his pace, until he came to a stop.

He pointed through the branches. “There,” he said.

“That is your compound?” Mother said.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t look like much,” Dorian said.

“What were you expecting?”

“Something more like the palace that we saw from the wall, I suppose.”

The adults all gazed forward for a time in silence. But Corvo was too low down. He couldn’t see what they saw.

He tugged on Mother’s mail sleeve.

“I can’t see,” he said.

Aletheia responded first. She turned and grabbed him and heaved him upward, and although her hold was awkward, she was more than strong enough to lift him.

“Here,” she said. “Look.”

She pointed, and he saw.

A ruined tower rose in the distance. It was blockish and crumbling and covered with vines.

“That’s all?” Corvo said.

“Not quite,” Trito said. “Come.”

Aletheia put him back down, and they started off anew. But they stopped within two steps.

Trito listened. Corvo tried listening, too, and this time he noticed what the other adults didn’t yet.

Voices.

They were distant but growing closer. They spoke loudly, and in a language Corvo didn’t know. Mother and the others showed confusion at first, but soon the voices were loud enough for them to hear.

They readied their weapons.

“What tongue do they speak?” Mother whispered. “Are they goblins?”

“Yes,” Trito said. “There is nowhere here to hide.”

“Use an invisibility spell,” Dorian said. “Like you did on the road.”

“No. It is too dangerous,” Mother said.

“You think a fight’s less dangerous?”

“For me. Yes.”

“Maybe they want to talk,” Aletheia said.

Trito twirled his spear. He didn’t bother replying as he stepped forward. He found a tree and took cover behind it, gesturing for the others to do the same.

“Stay behind me at all times,” Mother commanded to Corvo.

He nodded. And they did as instructed, hiding themselves where they could. But they would be spotted easily when anyone walked past them—they weren’t truly concealed.

The voices grew louder. And louder. There were at least three, or maybe many more. He couldn’t say.

Then he heard detritus crunching beneath footsteps.

Trito lunged out from cover with his spear swinging. The others followed his lead; Aletheia drew her bow and jumped into the open, and Dorian prepared to thrust his sword. Only Mother hesitated. She had drawn her sword but now lingered back and watched from the tree at what followed.

Corvo peeked around her waist.

There were five goblins. Short, repulsive creatures, with uneven eyes and gray skin and wispy white hair. These wore no armor or clothing except cloth around their hips, and they wielded branches and sticks for clubs.

Trito struck from cover. The blade of his spear, wide enough to cut, was pulled down the nearest goblin’s chest. Pure black blood flooded from its chest as it was split in two, and it fell to the ground with a shriek.

Aletheia shot a second goblin in the chest. Her arrow pierced all the way through its thin skin and breached the other side of its ribs, sailing off into the woods and landing in a distant tree. But the creature didn’t die. It raised its club and sprinted at her, before falling lifelessly the moment it reached her feet.

Dorian thrust his blade through the gut of a third. It yelped and hit him in the head twice with its club before he withdrew the blade and cut it across its waist, and it died.

The other two did nothing. The ambush surprised them so much that they waited to be killed.

Trito obliged. He stabbed one and cut at the other. They joined their comrades.

Everyone panted. Dorian grumbled and ran a hand along his head, wiping up blood. “Damn it,” he said.

“Their corpses will leak mana,” Trito said, “and draw demons. Come. Hurry.”

This time no one sheathed his or her weapon. They moved quickly down the lane, around its gentle curve, before they reached a sudden dead end.

The path led nowhere.

Trito swore in Regal. They all turned around.

The way back was changed completely. They had come for a mile down a forested lane; now behind them was no forest, but a vast cityscape beneath the red clouds. The jagged shapes of ruins cast harsh shadows everywhere across the ground.

Impossibly thick woods still blocked the way forward. They had no choice but to go backward.

“Fucking magic!” Dorian said. “We’re stuck in a maze! Break the spell!”

“You think a goblin is responsible for this illusion?” Mother said. She sounded afraid. “Dorian is right. I—this is too much. I must break this spell.”

“He is playing with us,” Trito said. “If we kill him, the illusions will end. That is safer. Now is not the time for magic. Not yet.”

“How do we find him without magic?” Aletheia said.

“We try the door newly revealed.” Trito proceeded toward the city.

Aletheia looked to Mother. So did Dorian.

“What do we do?” Aletheia asked.

Mother clenched her jaw. She touched Corvo on the shoulder with her palm, as though to make sure he was still there—really there.

“We go with him,” she said.

They followed him again, into the city, down a newly appeared road and past a crumbling forum.

But when they turned at a fork, they froze.

A dozen goblins waited for them down the road. They stared silently, raising clubs.

Corvo looked the other way.

A dozen more.

Corvo looked back down the way they came.

The same.

They were surrounded.

Mother shepherded Corvo until he was in the middle of the adults, protected on all sides.

“Is now the time for magic?” Aletheia shouted.

On all sides the goblins stepped forward.

Trito shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”