The sense that he was traveling with a nest of vipers eventually became impossible to ignore. Leopold had had suspicions as soon as they set out from Durum hot on Willow’s trail, but with every day he saw more signs.

Dean Weatherby’s staff was much more than just a staff. It was a powerful and rare artifact the likes of which Leopold couldn’t even imagine. Why did he need such a tool just to find and persuade a wayward student to come back home?

The guards were more than guards. As if what had happened in the little unnamed town wasn’t enough, he’d seen in the time since signs of a coming battle they shouldn’t be preparing for. Once or twice he’d seen chain mail in the guards’ packs that glowed: armor inscribed with powerful enchantments. He’d bet his right arm it was created to resist psychokinesis and a host of other similar spells. None of them could hope to survive being hit by the kind of spell Willow had unleashed through the broken gates of Durum, but they might survive the backsplash from being near one.

And there was Bryan. They never spoke of it, but the older man drew inward by the day. He had the confidence of the other guards and whatever he was learning from them obviously gave him conflicted feelings.

There was only one thing Leopold could do: leave the company behind and set out on foot to catch Willow before they could. If he could somehow find her, he could warn her about what was coming. She might be able to prepare something, maybe even something like that barrier she’d used at the unnamed town, although there hadn’t been any sign that she’d cast a spell since then. At least none of the impossible variety.

It was dangerous, but he had to do it. He laid in full gear in the small tent, and when there was a break between the circling guards he took the chance. With only the clothes on his back, enough rations that he could carry in the small pack, and his still-hidden sphere of incomprehensible power from Willow, he set off into the night. The more intelligent magical creatures might know who he was by the power he carried, but the smaller ones didn’t seem to care. He’d have to battle twice as hard to clear ground as he had with the company.

He’d do it, if it meant warning Willow.

He was half a mile from the company when he risked casting a small magelight, complete with a modification on-the-fly that would direct the beam mostly forward. He hoped it would be enough that the guards wouldn’t be able to see the sparking light in the distance as he weaved through the long grass choking the overgrown highway.

There was only one way to go from what he’d seen when daylight had revealed the landscape ahead, and he headed due west. There was a gap between two low mountains through which ran the remains of an ancient highway of asphaltum. He entered the pass in the pitch black and for a moment thought he caught the scent of woodsmoke, but when he stopped to smell again it was gone.

Maybe just a vague memory of home. How he wished he were home right now, or even back in Durum where everything at least made sense. With Willow. How had things managed to go so wrong?

He was barely midway through the bordering pair of mountains at the pass when he heard a rustle to his right. He swung the narrow beam of light around at the same time he heard a thunk. There was a vampire lizard nailed to the ground with a featherless arrow. He searched from the direction the arrow had come, but there was no sign of the elf who’d shot the creature.

Was he still under their protection?

He made his way past twin heaps of white blasted rock which bordered the trail—perhaps once a milestone of sorts—and continued walking all through the night until the faint red haze of morning illuminated the clouds overhead. He was so deep in the mountain’s shadow that the freezing night air numbed his hands.

He couldn’t stop to sleep. Alone he’d be faster than the company, but he wanted to gain as much time on them as he could to prepare Willow for what was coming. He couldn’t imagine seeing her after what she’d done in Durum. To him she was two people at once: the same old Willow wracked with guilt at the unintended death of her professor, and some kind of nearly warbeast-level mage who was capable of leveling landscapes with the cast of a single spell. That they hadn’t seen sign of spellwork of that magnitude since the town long ago made him wonder if those two forces were battling inside her as well, and if the first was winning.

Exhaustion dragged at his feet, but he kept on going as the clouds overhead grew light enough to illuminate the way. He extinguished his magelight and tried to make distance from the company he knew would be following in his footsteps—tracking both him and Willow now that they knew he was gone.

He spotted a bundle in the middle of the ruined highway straight ahead. He slowed his pace until he stood above it. The package was wrapped in thick green leaves alien to these mountains. In fact, they didn’t so much look like leaves at all; more like green leather. Was it something Willow had discarded, or a trap Annabelle had set? Not in the middle of the road, surely.

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He crouched and, mindful that every second he stalled was a second he was losing to the approaching company, tugged at a thick cord of creeper which tied the bundle together.

When the leaf-leather unfurled, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Food, and lots of it. Jerked meat, some kind of bread, and compressed blocks of what looked like vegetable matter. It was a gift, and it was meant for him. He scanned the treetops once more, but saw no sign of his benefactors.

So he was still under the protection of the elves. Was it really that important to them that he reach Willow? He didn’t spend time wondering why, but hastily rewrapped everything but a strip of jerked meat and dumped the whole package into his small pack. He’d already wasted enough time as it was.

🜛

He was no tracker, but the signs of Willow’s passage were hard to miss. Beside the road the next day he found a heaped mound of earth. The ground on either side looked like it had been scooped out with giant shovels in a single stroke, and he supposed that was in effect what Willow had done. He didn’t want to know what monstrosity she’d buried under there, but the others weren’t so easy to miss. Later that day he found the remains of some kind of giant insect splattered through the forest for at least a hundred feet to the right of the highway. Entire trunks had been denuded from the force of the passing viscera.

And there were more gifts. Food the second day, a staff on the third which was made of some kind of smooth semi-transparent material. He’d have said it was gemstone if he hadn’t seen the elf in the clearing so long ago. Leopold hesitated to touch it at first, but it had been a gift and he didn’t know what would happen if he refused one from his benefactors.

The staff turned out to have some surprising side-effects. Where it had been difficult to pass through the overgrown highway before, he now found it as easy as walking the paved streets of Durum. The vines and creepers seemed to part before his feet and he always set his feet down on solid ground. Leopold inspected the staff again, but there were no inscriptions on it. Could it be part of whatever integral magic the elves used to pass through the forest so easily?

Magical creatures of all stripes had been making moves at him in the days and nights, but with the staff they stopped completely. He finally dispersed the ball of concussive force he held at the ready after six hours of no such attacks, trusting in the magic of the elves. If they were trying to help him, then he’d let them help.

A few days later, he found another gift in the road. A cloak and bag, although what effect they had he had no idea. He exchanged the cloak given to him by the guards for the gift, but stuffed the empty bag into his still-serviceable one. It would have been a pain to transfer all of his food from one to another, and there was no reason to waste a bag he might need later when they were so easy to store.

🜛

Two days later, walking on the road and making excellent time, he felt a twinge on his back. He turned around and searched the hillsides on either side of the highway, then the stream at the bottom of the gully, but he couldn’t find anyone watching him. He supposed the elves were probably there, but he hadn’t seen one the entire journey since that first night.

He turned and before he’d taken three steps the twinge turned into a pressure that almost brought him to his knees. He tried to turn again, then the pressure increased tenfold and he toppled facedown on the broken asphaltum. It was like he was carrying a hundred pound weight in his pack, but he couldn’t move his arms and legs to shift it. He realized he’d been paralyzed. His chest rose and fell shallowly under the magical weight.

It took two days for the company to arrive, and by then he’d already figured the trick out. The elves had tried to help; they’d offered him replacements for the gear that had been tainted by whatever sigils the dean had sewn into his clothing. But he’d kept the pack—stupid—thinking there was no reason to discard it. He should have known.

Dean Weatherby came at the front of the column just past twilight and Leopold caught the soft sounds of the group breaking to make camp. The dean crouched down beside him and tutted.

“You shouldn’t have run off.”

“You expected it,” Leopold gasped. After two days of no food and water he felt faint, but he’d keep himself awake enough for this. “Why’d you trigger it? Leash too short?”

Leopold couldn’t see the dean’s face, but he felt the other man’s anger crackle the air between them. The dean reached down and picked up Leopold’s staff.

“Interesting. I wondered how you were doing it. Seems like the elves have taken a liking to you.”

“You thought I’d already reached her,” Leopold huffed, the edges of his vision darkening. “Not what you were expecting. You thought she’d stay to fight for me.”

“We all have our little disappointments,” he said, and Leopold saw him raise the foot of his staff.

“You wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Leopold said and chuckled weakly.

The staff came down hard on his temple.