“On your left,” Dean Weatherby shouted as he blasted one of the scurrying toothy things with the end of his staff. Leopold turned and saw by the firelight as two of the creatures teamed up to pounce on him at the same time.

“Freezing chill, freezing chill,” Leopold said, then the creatures leapt. The concept wasn’t imbued fully yet onto the spell-form, but there was no time left. Leopold slammed down with his hands and a wave of frost caught the leaping lizards and drove them down into the grass. Where they hit the fronds shattered like glass, but the lizards were only dazed.

“Fuck,” Leopold said and rushed forward with his dagger. He stabbed each lizard through the head before they regained their senses, and his knife ran with sparking blood.

“Aaaaargh,” one of the guards shouted as he was overrun by at least five of the foul beasts. Two other guards turned and began laying into the heap, but not before the conglomeration scattered, leaving behind a shrunken and desiccated body. The corpse reached up with one trembling arm to his comrades, then collapsed.

Vampire lizards. The name was so much less terrifying than the lizards had proven to be. Dean Weatherby had warned them that they might encounter roving groups of the things, but they hadn’t been prepared for an attack like this. To be fair, the dean had said they’d never attack a group this large.

“Enough,” the dean shouted and pointed his staff into the grass. The three coiled shafts unfurled and from within came a light so bright that Leopold had to shield his eyes. A wave of heat erupted from around him and a brief glimpse showed a beam of yellow light lancing out into the grass. Where it hit a vampire lizard, they’d burn white-hot like magnesium.

Dean Weatherby laid about with his lance of light, igniting the lizards and burning the grass all around them. Now Leopold had to save himself from the conflagration, but that was a task much simpler than dodging the lizards. He quickly cast a spray of water and doused the grass to his back and the feet of the guards nearest by.

Within a couple of minutes the attack was done. Whether the dean had driven the lizards off or had exterminated them all, it was impossible to tell. At no point had it been clear how many lizards had ganged up on them when they awoke to the first guard screaming. The horde just seemed to keep on coming.

They’d made camp for the night just outside the giant ruins. It seemed like folly now—would they have been safer in the ancient streets than out here in the tall grass? But a smell of putrescence carried on the wind from the city prompted the dean to raise camp a full hour earlier than normal.

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Leopold went around helping where he could. He was no good with magical healing but he could right the tents which had been upended and stomp out coals. The guards were hard at work dragging human bodies away from the camp. Outside the ring of light they were beheaded, just in case the old wives tales were true.

In all they’d lost five men and two tents to the lizards and the dean’s ray of light. Nobody slept the rest of the night, and when they started off into the city once the sun rose they were irritable and chafing at each other.

It wasn’t long until they found the source of the stink from the day before.

Leopold knew he’d be summoned to the front, so he arrived of his own accord. The dean was crouched down beside the head of a roc, but one much larger than any he’d ever seen. The dean ruffled its feathers as he touched it here and there.

“Festooned with tumors,” the dean said, and Leopold pointed to one of several deep craters in its body.

“Is that what killed it?”

The dean reached into the bloody hole and retrieved, along with some pulverized tissue, a chunk of black rock.

“Do you recognize this,” he asked.

Leopold shook his head.

“Asphaltum,” the dean said, and pointed back to the thirteen remaining men of the company. “From the road.”

“It hit the road,” Leopold asked. The dean stood up, but he kept hold of the chunk of black rock.

“I think the road hit it,” he said, as he made his way back to the company.

Sure enough, just a little farther along they found a nearly perfect circle of missing road. Leopold grabbed a chunk of the asphaltum and inspected it. Yes, it did look like what the dean had recovered from the roc.

“I’m reminded of a zephyr,” the dean said from behind Leopold, which caused the young man to jump.

“What,” he reflexively said.

Dean Weatherby motioned down at the road. “These haven’t been melted or frozen, or even phased. They were disturbed by psychokinesis alone. There’s a creature that has such an ability: the zephyr. It’s a small thing really, only the size of an acorn, but it’s surrounded by a psychokinetic storm which looks almost like a whirlwind. That serves to keep its body safe and allows it to husk the grains on which it feeds.”

“Do you think a zephyr did this,” Leopold asked. He couldn’t imagine a creature he’d meet on the plain taking down a roc that size. What could he even do against something like that?

“No,” the dean said, and tossed the bloody chunk back into the circle. “But something like it.”

It wasn’t hard to take the hint. Leopold had seen Willow do things he couldn’t explain—like cracking a plate on the table that should’ve been out of reach the day they’d found her wandering the streets. The day she killed Professor Brandeweiss. He’d suspected her psychokinesis might be able to extend past her body after that but she’d never talked about it, and he didn’t ask.

The dean was telling him, none to subtly, that he already knew about this, and probably more.

“Hmm,” Leopold said, and walked on, nursing his slight limp. There was that question again in the back of his head: what did the dean really want with Willow? Why was the company following her when she appeared to be heading deeper and deeper into the unknown lands west of Durum? And what would happen when they caught up with her?