The Shadow Man followed an invisible course. He twisted and turned without clear patterns, leading Corvo on and on.

At last Mother caught up to them. She grabbed Corvo and lifted him upward and forced him to stop.

“Corvo!” she shouted. “What are you—”

But then she looked to her side, and the illusion changed again.

They were back within the thick woods. All of them, together, trapped within a sea of trees, a collection of lanes leading forward.

Corvo pointed at the direction his shadow fled, as the Shadow Man chose one path and disappeared down it.

Corvo pointed. “That way! The goblin is that way!”

“Why do you think—”

“The Shadow Man says so!”

Mother stiffened. She shook her head. “We will not go that way. You do not know—”

But Aletheia jumped to the head of the party. She left Dorian’s side, and he stumbled and nearly fell to the ground before catching himself. Tirto helped him straighten.

“No time to argue!” Aletheia said, and she vanished after the Shadow Man.

Trito went next. And Dorian. And finally, Mother, shaking her head, grabbed Corvo by the arm and took him that way.

They snaked after Corvo’s absent shadow through left and right paths. At times the woods became too bright, and his shadow disappeared; but it returned always beneath the shade of the tree’s branches, leading them onward still.

Finally they came to a place where the trees thinned. Structures appeared, made of thick wood and topped with glowing leaves for thatching, huts and longhouse and primitive accommodations for small and stunted people.

Goblins were gathered everywhere there. They hacked at carcasses—goblin carcasses—with makeshift tools and erected sticks topped with severed heads. Some carved spears while others fashioned arrows from scavenged steel. One gnawed on the severed arm of one of its own kind. Yet when they saw Trito, all rushed to action, screaming and wailing in fear as they grabbed weapons from nearby structures.

“Find the sorcerer,” he said. “I’ll deal with the rest.”

Mother needed no more instruction. She led Corvo through the village, her head twisting in every direction, ignoring the goblins that sprinted around them. Some fled outright, fleeing into the woods, while a few were brave enough to meet Trito in the open.

They didn’t last long.

Aletheia followed Mother. Together they found the largest of the buildings, a wood-walled and triangle-topped structure at least ten feet high. It was sized perfectly for Corvo, but not for adult women.

Corvo jumped over a small pit to reach its entrance. Behind him he watched Trito stab an unarmed goblin, then reach into his pocket and withdraw his lighter.

He held it up to the roof of a structure. It sparked, and the thatched roof ignited immediately. A jet of flame puffed hot against Corvo’s flesh.

Dorian stood nearby. He killed one goblin with his sword, then did nothing more than watch.

Corvo looked inside the large structure.

Mother stepped within, crouching down. She had her staff readied and held in her left hand, but her right hand was kept empty. Aletheia’s sword was drawn.

Three goblins were within. A throne built from discarded bones stood at its far end, and before it was a goblin almost as large as Aletheia. It was fat and strong and in its hands was a staff, like Mother’s, with a glowing gem at its top, streaked up and down with lines of blue.

Mother stared at the gem.

“Where did you get that?” she whispered.

The large goblin snarled. It bore fangs at them, and its black eyes swirled with darkness that moved like the Shadow Man would in a lightless room. Lines of mana, tattoos, reached up and down its arms, glowing red and blue on either arm.

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To its sides, its two bodyguards were clad in heavy armor—for goblins—and wielded axes. They did not wait; they charged at Mother and Aletheia, swinging wildly in the small confines.

Mother took the blow. Her mail easily deflected the swing of the axe to her arm, and she hit the goblin atop the head with her staff. But it was only dazed.

Aletheia dispatched hers more quickly. She rolled out of its way as it came to her; it was deft for a goblin, but clumsy for a human, and she drove her blade into its back.

But the leader, the Sorcerer, did not sit idly by. It raised its staff and the lines along its haft lit blue. The crystal glowed, and it raised its hand to let slip a spell.

A stream of streaking blue bolts hit Aletheia in the side. She yelped and fell; her armor was blown through as though it were nothing but cloth, and she collapsed to the ground.

Corvo ran to her.

“Get back!” she said.

But he didn’t listen. He took her by the shoulder and tried to help her up.

Her leg bled. Her torso did, too, and her shoulder smelled like burnt flesh.

“I’m okay,” she gasped. “Get back. Corvo!”

Across from them, Mother hit her goblin again atop the head, kicking it, then punching it with a gauntleted fist. It crumpled at that, and she turned toward the Sorcerer.

The Sorcerer laughed. It raised its staff, and it did the same as it had before: three blue bolts of energy left its hand and flew toward Mother.

She raised her right hand, and all three impacted her palm.

Corvo screamed in fear that his mother had just lost her arm.

But nothing more happened. Her arm was not lost. She closed her fist, and that was all.

Corvo saw the strap of bronze along her wrist.

The spell had hit her Spellward gauntlet. Her magical bronze gauntlet, worn over a simple leather glove. It could dispel magic.

The Sorcerer screeched like a frightened animal then. It used another spell, shooting a plume of flame from its lowered staff.

Again she caught it in her right hand, and the flame disappeared.

Again. And again. The Sorcerer tried every spell it knew, and each time Mother abolished it with a wave of her hand.

Corvo helped Aletheia to her feet. He handed her her sword, and as it tried to throw one final spell of ice shards at Mother, Aletheia drew her arm back, pointed her sword its way, and threw it point-first at its chest.

The goblin was impaled up to the hilt. It dropped the staff and collapsed to the side, coughing as it quickly died.

“It is done,” Mother said. “Are you hurt?”

“No worse than usual,” Aletheia coughed. “Why am I the one who always gets hurt?”

“Because you are daring, and I am cautious.”

Aletheia rolled her eyes, then winced in pain. “You. Cautious. Yeah.”

She stumbled to the Sorcerer’s body. She put her foot on its chest and withdrew the sword, with some effort, and sheathed it without cleaning it of blood.

She took the staff.

“It looks just like the first staff I found, in this very city,” Mother said. “It is ancient, no doubt.”

“Good,” Aletheia said. “Maybe it’ll help me heal myself.”

“I cannot imagine where a goblin would have….”

But Mother trailed off at the sounds of screams from without the building.

She looked to Aletheia, and the two rushed out into the open.

Corvo stared at the body for a while longer yet. The tattoos sizzled as they met the Sorcerer’s black blood. Its black eyes looked to melt in its skull, as though it putrefied within moments.

He kicked it.

It was dead.

He followed the others.

The forest was gone. They were not in woods at all, but the ruined cityscape of Ewsos, as they had been twenty hours before. Here and there trees overcrowded the ruins, but they were undoubtedly ruins. Tall structures rose all around them.

And nearby, a blocky tower, ruined and crumbling, could be seen.

The goblin village burned. Bodies littered the ground. Most were unarmed or unarmored. Dorian had been hit again in the head, and he sat on the ground, staring at the flames.

Trito finished off any survivors with his sword. A quick cut to the neck, and that was all it took.

They were all covered in blood.

He saw Mother.

“I recognize this place now,” he said, spitting tar from his mouth. “We are nearly there.”

Aletheia looked at the huts, and the corpses, and shivered. She nearly fell over, so Corvo rushed to support her.

“You killed them,” she said. “All of them.”

He wiped his spear off on a body. “Yes.”

She sounded frightened, suddenly, unlike she usually was. “Why?”

“No one should have power over the arcane, and goblins least of all. What was the sorcerer?”

“He used this staff to channel magic from the maelstrom,” Mother said. “That maze was no doubt his lunatic idea of grand strategy. Some good it did him.”

“But they were just—they weren’t even attacking us,” Aletheia said. “Why would you—why did you build your compound here if you were just going to—”

“These creatures are not animals, Aletheia. They are perversions of Essence. The only reason the Mortalists stay our blades is for the cover they provide, and a lack of manpower. These above others needed to be cleansed.”

“I hope that is not also your view of magicians,” Mother said.

“It is,” he said simply. “But a magician can be reasoned with. And most are not cannibals.”

“My damn ears are ringing too loud to hear!” Dorian said. “I should’ve brought a Kings-blasted helmet! Shit! I’m hurt!”

“I am, too,” Aletheia said.

Trito nodded. “We will care for you within our compound. Come.”

With the spell broken, Trito quickly found the correct path. Then the others had no choice but to limp along behind him.

Yet Corvo could not help but wonder, as they moved quickly through the City, why Mother’s magic would draw a demon—while the goblin Sorcerer’s would not.

The compound was attached to the Oldwalls. It had its own, far smaller curtain wall that stretched for an acre across the City, atop a hill. Its central tower was enormous and sturdy, but it had worn much over the millennia, and now its bones showed through its decaying skin.

A huge gate was at the compound’s center. Trees grew along its sides.

The party approached it slowly. Mother dragged Aletheia up the hill.

Corvo looked down at Dorian, far behind them.

A shadow passed over him.

He stopped.

He looked upward.

The blue demon was back.