Adamant was born of clay and stone.

The strange thing was, his memories started before he became a living thing, before he was shaped into an imitation of a man; he remembered the cool and quiet dreams of the earth, and the frantic hungry seeking-for-light of the mushrooms that lined his back. He could remember still the feel of earthworms crawling through the dirt that would become his flesh.

He remembered also the ring of hammers against anvil and red-hot iron, the work-songs in the dark, the taste of mead. Things he had never experienced at all. His head felt like a strangely busy place of late.

He sat at the edge of the mangrove orchard, his clumsy feet dangling into the water as he mused. Fish came to nibble at his edges. His thoughts were deep and vague.

Being made living was like being struck by lightning. Energy had burned him, moved within him, a flame trapped inside his chest that pushed him to move as well. With motion came reason. Why did I move, he had asked himself, and the answer was, because I was ordered to.

It was a good enough reason for a golem.

But when he dipped his feet in the river and remembered the idle thoughts of the earth, he felt an urge that couldn’t be explained; nobody had ordered him to dream.

Slowly, Adamant reached up and pulled one of his fingers off. The dirt-flesh crumbled away in his grasp, leaving a stump. He set down the dark clay in his lap and splashed water over it, wetting it, making it malleable. With careful slowness he molded it into the shape of a tiny golem.

Live, he ordered. The little golem obeyed.

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Strix felt the calm before a storm of grief as she lay in bed.

Morghul’s soul hadn’t answered the call of resurrection. Not this time. The high priests had tried everything to call him back from the Beyond, and still he just lay there in his coffin. Like a dead man. Exactly like a dead man.

When Strix had first been shipwrecked, Morghul had come to see the girl from the unknown continent.

While she lay in the infirmary, blinded and scared, he had traded stories of his homeland in the dwarven mountains for stories of hers, listening patiently as she rambled about the heat of the sun on her skin and the majesty of the great green river that cut the desert into two.

She had told him of the beauty of the red-and-black sands, and the green oasis. The fearful moment of waking up to find a pitch-black tomb scarab laying on her face. The palaces with their sun-drenched stucco pillars and pleasure gardens of white marble.

She had told him everything except one thing.

In the moment she had been blinded, she had her first prophecy.

While her ship had tossed in the grip of a vast and swirling maelstrom, thunder illuminating the pitch black veils of cold rain that came pelting down across the deck, she had stared out, and seen the God-Country’s great mountain. For a moment the eternal mists had parted and a vision of that holy pinnacle blazed through to meet her gaze. It shone with the clarity of diamonds, the heat of the sun. She had stared until her eyes wept themselves blind and in the darkness she had known-

Someday she would climb that mountain. But she would never return home.

One day, Morghul hadn’t come to the infirmary. In the darkness she had tossed and turned on her bed, barely able to move due to her wounds, afraid. The day had lasted forever.

Until he had returned, carrying a gift. He had found other survivors. A nest of tiny desert owls nestled into the broken timbre that washed ashore, bedraggled and peeping for food. She ran her fingers through their brown feathers.

That was the first time she had seen through an owl’s eyes, and the first time she had seen Morghul’s face.

And now she wouldn’t anymore.

Throughout the city, the news was breaking. The single fixture of the Adventurer’s Guild was broken. There would be men drinking to his name tonight, and when the ale ran dry, violence.

Strix would not join them. She had a choice to make. She could do the easy thing and blame his killer, forget the Dungeon had been acting in self-defense and that Morghul had acted recklessly, overconfidently. It would be the simplest thing in the world to lay the blame on the Dungeon and hate it for taking her friend.

But.

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She had received another prophecy that night, brought to her by a white owl.

And the city’s Fate would turn on whether she shared it with this Dungeon.

There were no easy answers with Fate. Blame and hatred twisted the strings, made you see what you wanted to see, instead of what was. Too much love could do the same. All Strix knew was that she missed her friend.

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Hrask had so many scars on his broad, muscled back that the whip couldn’t hurt him anymore. It couldn’t bite through the thickness of the pale scar tissue left by all the punishments past.

It had been arrogant of him to let them see that. To refuse to cry out in fake pain, to hold his head high in defiance of the fat overseer who sweated and went red in the face as he struck harder and harder, trying furiously to beat a reaction out of Hrask. The orc only snorted and flexed his muscles against the chains of the whipping post.

He was the biggest and the strongest of any of them, caught in the wilds. He was the last one who wouldn’t break.

And today, that had cost him.

“Damn the pig. Bring out his son,” the overseer had spat, throwing down the whip. “And get the strongest man you’ve got.”

The screams still echoed in Hrask’s head.

His son hardly moved now. His blood soaked through the bandages in guilty red stains, and he shivered, the only sign he was still alive, cold even under all the blankets they could scrounge up in the filthy tents of the slaves.

Nothing here was clean. Every thin sheet had been soiled by blood before, and by any other fluid you cared to name. There was a thin dust to the air of the quarry that clung to the insides of the lungs. The boy would cough, now then, cough in great wracking spasms that squeezed his lungs empty and pushed out thin threads of spittle grey with grit.

Hrask had always believed some day he would kill his captors. That someday his fellow slaves would remember who they were and rise up. The simple numbers gave them every advantage over their guards.

He didn’t understand why the rest of them were so afraid to die.

But then, Hrask had never been afraid for himself, not in the way he was afraid for his son now. It was a fear he felt gnawing into his belly. A fear that would not leave him the same orc as it continued to eat away at him.

The shaman sighed, sitting beside Hrask. The old pig was the only one the warrior respected. There was still a spark of fight behind his eyes, although a slower and more cunning one than Hrask could stomach. “I can tell you’re thinking of dying.”

“Today would be a good day for it.” Hrask said.

“If you say so. Me, I’ve heard a Dungeon was born in the city, so by my reckoning it’s a good day to live.”

Hrask’s ears pricked up. Their people came from Dungeons, long ago. If they could reach this one, they would have a home again, a chance at a life. The hope in him kindled against the cold fear for his son. “I’ll go. I’ll go tonight, and plead for it to give us shelter. I’ll...

The shaman clicked his tongue, turning his gaze to the boy shivering beneath his sheets.

And Hrask’s spirit sank.

“They’ll kill him if they find me missing…” he realized. “And it won’t be...” ‘Honorable’ was the word but it stuck in his throat. It was a funny thing. When he imagined his own death, it was with honor and bravery, it was the story of a hero. When he thought of his son dying, it was just death. Cold and without any meaning beyond loss.

“Then we’d better send the boy.” Reaching into his tattered clothes, the shaman brought out the tiniest shard of crystalline Mana, scarcely the size of a fingernail. Hrask’s eyes went wide. “Oh, but I’ve been saving this since my snout was smooth. It almost feels like letting go of an old friend.”

Crouching over the boy, the shaman breathed on the shard of Mana as he cupped it in his hands. It turned to pale green fire, making their shadows loom like giants giant against the cloth of the tent, making the world turn shades of emerald. Lowering his hands, he pressed the flame down into the boy’s chest. Hrask’s son gasped, a clean clear draw of breath, new flesh crawling over his wounds. Not even a scar was left behind.

“He’ll go tomorrow night. And I’ll keep the guards busy.” Reaching down, he gripped his son’s hand while the boy slept on, his slumbering face at ease now, his dreams less pained.

Before he was captured, Hrask had never suffered the shame of a single wound on his back. But he had fought hundreds of battles, until his chest and belly were so thick with scars that human swords and spears could never pierce him.

Tomorrow, while his son slipped away, he would show them that.

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Argent flashed away as claws scraped the ground where she had been. The raccoon-owl chimera let loose a high-pitched squeal as she appeared on its back, sinking her teeth in. Thick fur kept her jaws from biting deep, and the creature thrashed powerfully, but she clung on between its beating wings until she'd tasted the salt of its blood.

It flung her free, sending her rolling across the ground. She was gone in a flash of light. Gone before its almost-human raccoon hands could seize hold of her. Gone before its long owl talons could sink into her flesh.

The silver light skittered along the ground like a thunderbolt, reforming into Argent. She tore into its tail now, ripping long brown feathers free, and as it swept its wing out to knock her down she was gone again. Like a ghost.

Again and again. She would tear tiny pieces of the beast away, she would claw and scratch. And when it sought retribution she would be nowhere to be found.

Her brothers had already left her behind. Aurum had always towered over her, but now she was insignifcant compared to him. Barely an ant compared to what he’d become. Adamant had transformed into something new and strange. Only she remained as she was. She was always the smallest of them, the weakest.

The bravest.

She let the owlcoon grow clumsy with rage before she struck. She let it lunge for her, its beak snapping open, its hooting cry echoing through the narrow sewer tunnel.

And instead of teleporting aside, she rushed forward to meet the beast. The chimera flinched, surprised, as her claws sank into the pure white feathers its face. As her weight clung to its head.

As her teeth sunk into its eye.

The owlcoon let loose a piercing howl and threw her off, and Argent was gone, a lightning bolt weaving down the tunnel. She left its white face stained with red weeping from a hollow socket. An eye taken for a leg lost.

She would be back for the rest soon enough. And when she had worn the beast down to nothing, taken it apart piece by piece, she would be strong enough to follow her brothers.