Josh awoke the next day to find his fellow lodgers discussing over breakfast the news that the stone elves had taken the Azure Cathedral. Upon receiving this intelligence, Lord Northcrag had apparently suffered a collapse and taken to his bed, and his son had been summoned to the Palace to explain himself to the King.

Josh wasn’t sure what to think of that. It sounded like Lady Paleyne’s faction had neatly entrapped Lord Northcrag and reduced his family’s influence with the King in one fell swoop, all without revealing their hand.

To the other lodgers, Josh ventured the opinion that since the Earls of Northcrag had betrayed and slaughtered a generation of huldra fifty years ago, proceeded to take their Queen hostage, and then occupied the Cathedral as a hostile force, that the huldra rebellion had righted a great injustice. However, the consensus at the breakfast table was that the huldra were a shifty lot who couldn’t be trusted, and since it was Celespire’s Heroes who had cleared the Cathedral of monsters in the first place, so why shouldn’t have Celespire taken it over and reaped the benefits?

The narrow-mindedness of it depressed him.

After weapons practice, he dropped in to see Doug at Crosskeys, hoping to find out what he thought of the matter. Doug was out on an errand, but Doug’s friends were more inclined to be angry on behalf of the huldra, if only because they felt that the huldra ought to have stayed saved after Doug went to all the trouble of saving them. When Doug arrived shortly after, though, he was pre-occupied with his own news and the matter of the huldra was set aside for now.

“Penny sent a reply,” he said. He nodded to Josh. “If you are wondering how it was done so quickly, it’s because there are linked scrying devices that can be used to send messages across long distances.”

Penny was Lady Selene, head of the Shining Light of the Moon, and, it turned out, keeper of the third fragment. Josh hadn’t been wondering about the speed of the response at all, since he had no idea where Lady Selene or her religious order were located.

Doug took a deep breath.

“She confirmed that her fragment is safe. Whoever is after them hasn’t tried for hers yet.”

There were relieved sighs all round.

“But you know what this means.”

“Doug wants to get some nookie!” Someone yelled out, and everyone laughed. Doug flushed and looked sheepish, but then turned serious again.

“It means whoever stole the first two fragments will go for Penny next.” Doug smacked one fist into his other hand. “And I plan to be there when they do. Who is with me?” He raised a hand, and the entire tavern erupted with cheers and raised fists.

Some time later, when everyone had broken up into separate discussions, Doug came and sat beside Josh.

“I was hoping you would ride out with us,” he said. He held up a hand. “You don’t have to decide now. It would be a big commitment. But think on it, eh, lad?”

It would be good to get away from Dendral and all its intrigue and politics. And it would bring Josh one step closer to finding a way to unlock the power of the Dreamer and return to Earth. He promised to think about it, and went away to his daily magic lesson, where Arcanist Gryce was helping him build his own amulet. The spells that would go in were all very simple.

> Breath – makes a tiny gust of wind, enough to blow out a candle

> Tone – sings a single note

> Spark – generates a spark on flammable material

> Shock – creates an imbalance that causes a small electric shock

> Cool – creates a spot of cold

> Firefly – creates a small floating light

> Infusion – gently infuses Chi into an area

> Inspect – allows you to sense Chi pathways more easily

> Force – creates a weak kinetic force which can be applied to nearby objects

Josh had been thinking of his five Druid spells as simple low-level enchantments, but in fact they were more powerful than he had originally realised. Even though they were utility spells, he had been able to do a lot with them.

The spells Arcanist Gryce gave him were much weaker, most lasting only seconds, and producing the most minor of effects. However, while the lack of a fireball or anything remotely explosive was disappointing, there was a lot of versatility in there. Moreover, these were the foundation spells that would combine to produce new spells, and ultimately lead to more powerful versions. For example, mages focusing on Infusion and Inspect would go on to learn healing spells. Force would lead to telekinesis and physical combat spells. Spark and Shock would eventually lead to big area of effect spells with fire and lightning.

After the magic lesson Josh went to look for the author the Queen of the Fey had recommended, which would tell him about the power the Chains of Wayland guarded, but he was interrupted by Ramina in a visible state of excitement.

“Guess what I heard!” she said.

Josh noticed she was holding the shell listening device.

“I thought I told you to get rid of that!”

She clutched it protectively.

“As if!”

“If it’s some kind of linked magic system, and they find the one you planted on D…” Just as Josh was about to say Deathless's name, he realised that he had only seen it written on the guy’s character sheet, and that might not be the one everyone knew him by. “…the one you planted on … uh … that guy, they might be able to scry where the second one is.”

Josh wasn’t sure if any of that was likely, but give the magic he had encountered so far, he thought it was at least possible.

“Well, they ain’t found it yet. I heard him talking. There’s more about the scourge what’s loose in the city.”

Josh felt his stomach turn upside-down.

“There is?” He was amazed at how calm his voice sounded.

“Yeah.” Ramina paused dramatically. “They said the scourge was sent here to kill Wainy-boy!”

“Who?”

“Owain!”

“What?”

“Crazy, innit?”

Unless Ramina was a particularly good actress, it didn’t sound like she was the scourge in question. Josh didn’t see how it could apply to himself either.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Did that mean there was a third outlander in Dendral?

“Why would they want to kill Owain?” he asked. “And how does the Order of Unyielding know about it?”

Yesterday, at the ceremony, Sir Owain said he had received the information in a message. Who from? What has the message said?

Ramina rolled her eyes, as if neither question was important.

“Don’t you get it? If we can turn them in before the Order does there’ll be a reward!”

Josh was so shocked that he didn’t know what to say. Ramina regarded him brightly, with her head cocked to one side.

“What? You don’t want gold?” Her tone implied the no-one could ever possibly not want gold.

“Yeah but…” How could he put this without giving himself away? “You said you know what the Order will do to them.”

“Yeah, so?”

They stared at each other, and her expression changed.

“Don’t tell me you’re squeamish!” She exclaimed.

“Well … I was just surprised that you …”

She scowled.

“This is about my mum, innit?”

Josh hesitated.

“I don’t actually know much about your mum. Can you tell me about her?”

“She’s an outlander, not a scourge.”

“There’s a difference?” Josh asked cautiously.

“O’ course. They’re scourge if they ain’t with the Storm King or the Pirates.”

Josh didn’t think the locals made the same distinction. As far as the Celespirans were concerned scourge equalled outlander.

“So you’re not…uh…?” he asked, inarticulately.

She looked at him blankly, and then incredulously.

“What, did you think I was an outlander?”

“No,” Josh said hastily.

“You did, dint you?”

“No!”

“Yes, you did!”

“Look, of course I knew you hadn’t come from another world,” he said. “Er. Have you always lived at the Seamount?”

“Nah. Was born in Celespire. Came into the world in a middle of a siege,” she said, with obvious pride.

“But you didn’t stay in Celespire?”

She shook her head.

“Mum and Uncle Harvey had a fallout after the Demon War, and mum took a ship and started raidin’. Eventually she challenged Captain Redhook, and took over the Seamount.”

For some reason it had never occurred to Josh that the outlanders might have children. He didn’t know why. It was, of course, a natural consequence of hundreds if not thousands of people being abducted from another world and living here for decades.

It was why Ramina knew the Star Wars Imperial March theme tune, but she would never have seen any of the movies. It was why she had a gold tooth, like a real pirate—so obviously not the product of twenty-first century dentistry.

“You’re thinkin’ all outlanders should feel loyalty to each other ‘cos they’re outlanders,” Ramina said accusingly. “The scourge are as much our enemies as Rupey’s lot.”

Rupey? Oh, she meant Rupern.

“If they had a chance, they’d cut open me mum’s chest without a second thought. Why let scum like them live? So, last chance, in or out?”

Josh was still trying to get over the revelation he’d just had, but he forced himself to think quickly. If he refused to help Ramina hunt down the outlander in Dendral, she would just do it on her own, and someone from Earth would die permanently as a result. Even if they were horrible murdering scum, that didn’t mean they should be killed and harvested for their immortality. On the other hand, if he agreed to help Ramina, he would be in a better position to judge for himself what kind of person this scourge was. If they turned out not to be a complete psychopath, which was hopefully the case, he could warn them.

Now he needed to convince Ramina that he was fully in.

“How much gold are we talking about here?” he asked, after the appropriate hesitation.

She grinned hugely.

“Ten gold!”

There were twelve pennies on one silver, and two hundred and forty silvers in one gold. You could buy a loaf of bread for one penny, so if you calculated one penny as being roughly equivalent to two British pounds, then the reward being offered was nearly thirty thousand pounds. Or, to look at another way, Josh could live comfortably, if not extravagantly, on one silver per day, so two thousand and four hundred silver would provide living expenses for six and a half years. If you evaluated the reward amount in terms of average annual salary rather than using the Josh Unofficial Bread Price Index, it was over a hundred thousand pounds.

He sighed.

“I’m in. What do we do?”

“Gonna listen in for more info. When I get something, we can make our move.”

“Be careful. He could find the shell at any time.”

“Careful as a catfish!”

“Are catfishes careful?”

“How the hell do I know?”

Josh gave up.

Ramina left him alone in the library, and he could finally look for the book. He found it without difficulty, but it wasn’t a volume he would have chosen to read. It was a thin booklet, handwritten and amateurishly bound, and the author’s style was, at times, incoherent and rambling. There were several other, much fatter books that covered that period of Celespire’s recent history, all much better written and nicely set out in easy-to-read print.

Still, the Queen of the Fey must have had a reason to recommend this book instead of another, so Josh settled down to read it.

Several hours later, he put it down, and slumped over the table with his hands in his head.

He had already known that Tylas the Undying had been the Dark Lord of Six Spires, and had waged a campaign thirty-five years ago to conquer the world. He had been defeated and imprisoned five years later, but had broken free twenty years ago, and summoned a thousand outlanders from Earth, before finally being defeated once and for all shortly after that.

After the fall of Tylas, relations between the outlanders and Celespirans had deteriorated. Now that Josh knew that Sir Owain and King Rupern had been harvesting outlanders for their immortality, it made a lot more sense. This had led to the rise of the Storm King, and the Celespirans had lost their capital city only a couple of years later.

The Demon War had taken place four years after that. It had mostly affected just outlanders, and therefore didn’t figure as prominently in accounts written by Celespiran historians.

It wasn’t even a war, as such. There had been no massed forces, no pitched battles. Instead, outlanders had begun mysteriously disappearing. The Storm King had accused King Rupern of assassinating his outlander subjects, and had threatened to mount an offensive campaign against Dendral. Sir Doug and Lady Selene had gone to Celespire to lobby for a diplomatic solution, and had discovered the true culprit when Lady Selene had been attacked and nearly suffered a permanent death.

One of the outlanders had been revealed as a Demon, whose power was eating the souls of other outlanders. Or rather, the soul of anyone who was in possession of a Philosopher’s Stone, and that, according to the author of the book Josh had just read, included the five remaining Heroes.

If the Demon had just preyed on outlanders, no-one in Dendral would have cared, but not only were the Heroes themselves in danger, it was also a threat to the nobles upon whom Rupern had bestowed immortality.

Not it, Josh thought. He or she. The book he had read had referred to the Demon dispassionately as 'it' the whole way through, as if it wasn't fully human.

Following the incident with Lady Selent, the Demon had escaped from Celespire, but had eventually been tracked down and defeated. The player core had been extracted, and locked behind the Chains of Wayland. The three key fragments had then been separated, with Lady Selene taking one, Sir Owain taking another, and the Church the third. The Demon was the ultimate threat to anyone with a player or Hero core, and by controlling it, the Celespirans had finally put an end to the Storm King’s threats of expansion. If the Storm King attempted to conquer new territory, the author of the booklet had recounted with satisfaction, the Demon would be unleashed.

Which meant that Josh had been on a false trail ever since Brackstone. He was no closer to finding the power of the Dreamer than he had been when he had first heard of it.

There wasn’t anything he could do to change that, except start the search again. He would go through Silbury’s library from top to bottom. There had to be a clue somewhere.

In the meantime, though there were still some things about the Demon core which he didn’t understand. Both Doug and the Queen of the Fey had referred to it as a world-ending threat. But what did that really mean? Why would something that ate only Heroes and outlanders result in the end of the world?

More importantly, Lady Selene had confirmed that her key fragment was still in her care. Doug and everyone else now assumed that the thieves who had taken the other two fragments would still be seeking the third, and therefore that the Demon core itself was still bound.

But Josh knew differently. When he had first been presented with his class choice by the Guardian there had been three options: Assassin, Demon and Plumassier. At the time Josh had assumed that he had been the only one abducted by the Guardian, so he had hesitated over the class choice, but he’d been wrong. There had been two others taken alongside him. One of them had opted immediately for the Assassin, removing it from the pool of available classes. The second had taken Demon, leaving Josh with Plumassier.

That meant the Demon was back, and had been running around Six Spires for nearly five weeks now.

And Josh couldn’t tell anyone about it without revealing himself as an outlander.