The Returned Omnibus

Books 1-3

Dante King

Copyright © 2024 by Dante King

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Contents

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Contents

Book 1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

Book 2

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Epilogue

Book 3

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

Epilogue

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Immortal Swordslinger

Bone Lord

Book 1

1

The turning point of Toby Adams’ life could have taken place anywhere, anytime.

During some kind of celestial event. At a literal crossroads. The peak of a mountain or in the depths of some mysterious cave system. Even while rummaging around at the back of a dusty old piece of furniture he found at an antique store.

But the Wash Wizard Laundromat in Queens, New York?

No. Never.

“So what do you think?” Toby said to Anna. He’d just finished recounting his brother Kevin’s embarrassing first day while teaching at Cornell.

Anna re-tied her long brown hair back in its practical ponytail. She was one of Toby’s oldest friends, and if he could have chosen anyone to share the mundane task of laundry, it would have been her.

Anna puffed out her cheeks. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with mirth. “It’s amazing, really, that you turned out so normal.”

Toby wrinkled his nose. “Who the hell wants to be normal?”

In all honesty, his childhood had been so far from normal that it was almost near unbelievable. Even Toby himself struggled to believe even half of what had happened to him as a kid.

He never spoke of it, though. He barely even spoke of it to himself. Barely even thought of it.

He stared into the dryer. His clothes whirled around. In the glass, his face was reflected back, almost part of that textile vortex.

Tousled, short brown hair, brown eyes, and stubble that was fast approaching beard length. It was the face of an everyman. A scar through his right eyebrow where Kevin had nailed him with a baseball when they were messing around in Kissena Park.

At least that was the story Toby told everyone. He could hardly tell someone that the scar was a result of a disagreement with a gremlin who’d had a little too much fairy dust.

But maybe that, like all his half-rememberings, was simply the fanciful imaginings of a kid whose life had been far too ordinary.

The sound of Anna flicking through a crappy gossip magazine brought Toby back to himself.

He looked down at the much-thumbed, much-foxed paperback in his hand. The Shadows of the Shattered Isle by R. M. Gurnard. It was one of his favorite fantasy books.

The dryer let out a series of beeps as it finished its cycle.

“How many times have you read that book now, Toby?” Anna asked.

“Countless times,” Toby said as he got to his feet and put the book on his chair.

“How are you not bored of it yet?”

Toby shrugged. “How can you get bored of dipping into other worlds?”

He walked over to the dryer and opened it.

Then, he stood there and he stared.

It might have been the undignified choking, gurgling noises that Toby was emitting that made Anna look up from her trashy magazine.

“What’s up?” she said.

Toby didn’t answer.

“What’s up?” Anna repeated, louder this time.

“Uh…”

“You know when you read the word ‘flabbergasted’ and you think to yourself that no one actually ever looks like that?” Anna said. “That’s how you look now.”

Still, Toby didn’t answer. His eyes were glued on the circular opening of the dryer.

“Oh, you didn’t have it set too high, did you?” Anna said. “You didn’t shrink your boxers to elf-size, did you? I did that over Independence Day weekend once. I spent two days learning what it’s like to wear a corset—only a little lower.”

“This is a little wilder than a case of two-day chafe,” Toby replied dazedly.

“You haven’t got someone else’s boxers in there, have you?”

“What?” Toby said in a stunned voice. “No.”

“So what’s the problem then?”

Slowly, the corners of Toby’s mouth turned upwards. He felt something burgeoning in his chest. He felt his whole body turn light. Turn warm.

“No,” Toby said, gesturing frantically for Anna to stand up and come over to him. “It’s… holy shit. It’s Eclipsia.”

Toby heard Anna get to her feet. “Eclipsia?” she said in a nonplussed voice. “Did you leave mints in your pocket? You know that’s Laundry 101, right? Always check your pockets before…”

Her voice tailed away as she came to stand in front of the dryer door.

Where there should have been a jumble of band t-shirts that had seen better days, jeans, sweaters, and boxers that should have, by all rights, been consigned to a funeral pyre long ago, there was a rich, rolling green landscape stretching away.

The grass was waving like a sea, as if it was being tossed by a pleasant summer breeze. The sky was blue. Cotton wall clouds moved sluggishly across it.

“Holy fuck,” Anna breathed. “It’s—”

“No,” Toby said, cutting across her. “It’s Eclipsia. I told you.”

As Anna continued to make some odd clicking noises in her throat, Toby felt his smile grow wider.

He hadn’t imagined it. It had been real. He had known it all along in his heart of hearts.

After all those years, his belief had been vindicated.

Eclipsia, he thought.

He knew that he stood on the edge of a precipice. He could, of course, walk away. But that would mean returning to his humdrum every day existence—being just another tiny speck of life in the vast Petri dish that was New York City.

And Toby Adams wasn’t ready for that.

Here was a door into another world.

What kind of average Joe, would I be if I didn’t step through it? Toby thought.

He turned from the beautiful vista in front of him and looked at Anna.

“Are you coming?” was all he asked.

Anna turned and gaped at him. “Am I coming?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I coming into the Land of the Dryer?”

“Yeah.”

“I…”

Toby took her by the hand. “This is one of those moments, Anna,” he said, staring deep and earnestly into her eyes, “where, if you don’t take the plunge, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Trust me.”

Anna glanced back at the impossible rolling landscape that they could see through the dryer door. It was almost like looking through a ship porthole and at some untrodden land.

Anna had been Toby’s closest friend since high school. She was the kind of friend he could call at 4am to say that he had something fun to do and half an hour later she’d be waiting at his door, and vice versa. They’d shared vodka for breakfast and a number of wild thrills for dinner. Five or so years before, they had also shared the burgeoning beginnings of a romance, but it hadn’t worked out.

Toby knew that Anna enjoyed the uncertain things in life, just as he did. It was what had kept them together as such fast friends through the years.

They were on the same page.

Anna glanced over her shoulder at the worn paperback that still sat on the uncomfortable plastic seat of the laundromat.

“This is one of those adventures you’re always talking about, isn’t it, Tobes?” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes alight with excitement. “And now it’s our turn to go and find one of our own.”

A smile started to break across Anna’s pretty face. “All right. So long as it’s one for the ages.”

“One for the ages,” Toby echoed. “You got it.”

And with Toby leading, they crawled, with some difficulty, through the dryer door, leaving New York, the modern world, and all its bullshit behind.

2

Toby tumbled out of the air and landed in springy fragrant grass. A thud behind him told him that Anna had done the same.

Toby stood up. He was standing in a scene straight out of a pastoral painting. Rolling hills stretched out around them, carpeted in lush green grass. It swayed gently in a balmy breeze.

The warm air was filled with the sounds of greedy insects as they devoured the wildflowers. Their colorful blooms dotted the landscape like splashes of paint on a canvas. Toby looked down at one of the unfamiliar purple-headed flowers. The flower sneezed.

Okay… Definitely not still in New York.

Off to their right, a babbling brook meandered its way through the countryside. Its crystal clear waters shimmered like silver in the sunlight. To their left, down the slope of the hill, towering trees cast dappled shadows across the ground. Their branches were heavy with bright emerald foliage.

Toby turned. There was no sign of the opening they had come through.

Don’t worry about what you can’t fix, he thought. You made it back last time, didn’t you? You can freak out and achieve nothing, or you can roll with it. Enjoy the ride.

Behind them, at the bottom of the hill, stood a crossroads.

Toby turned back to Anna. She was taking in the scene with the same sense of awe on her face that he himself felt. Although, this being her first time here, her wonder likely dwarfed his own.

“Well, we’re here,” she said. “Wherever here is.”

“I told you, it’s Eclipsia,” Toby said.

“You’ve been here before?”

Toby nodded.

“I’ll start with the first question before moving onto the other hundred—how are we here?”

“I can’t answer that one. I just don’t know. Let’s move on to the others.”

“So,” Anna said as she continued to gaze around her, “what do we do now? Now that we’ve crawled through the magical tumble dryer.”

Toby considered this. He watched brightly colored butterflies flitting from flower to flower. Their delicate wings shimmered in the sunlight as they danced on the breeze.

He inhaled. I know what to do. I know how this place works.

“Come on,” he said. “Follow me.”

They walked down to the crossroads. The names of the towns or settlements engraved into the wood of the sign had long been worn away.

“Helpful,” Anna pointed out. “What do the people in this place pay their taxes for?”

“I’m not sure there are taxes here.”

“Hm. Maybe we should stay just for that. So which way?”

Any way was good as another. And so Toby set off in a direction he thought might be north. Roads in Eclipsia were not as common as the ones found on Earth. They all led somewhere in the end, though, or so it had been said to Toby all those years ago.

It wasn’t long before, in the not so far away distance, Toby caught the thin pencil-shading tendrils of wood smoke rising languidly up into the sky.

“See that?” he said, gesturing to it.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Anna said.

“And where there’s fire, there’s usually a bunch of people cooking something over it.”

The pair made their way down the road in the direction of the smoke. Rounding a copse of elm trees, Toby and Anna were brought up short.

There was a small figure crouched down in the grass not far from the roadside.

The figure caught sight of Toby and Anna at the same time they clapped eyes on it. It was very short, no more than four feet in height, wearing a simple outfit of linen trousers and a smock.

“Just take it nice and easy,” Toby told Anna out of the corner of his mouth. “Try and act as you would around any other stranger in New York.”

Anna shot him a look. “What? You want me to ignore them or, maybe, flip them the bird?”

“You know what I mean. Be polite.”

Anna nodded.

Toby and Anna approached the figure, who was watching them warily.

“Hi there,” Toby said. “How are you? Nice day.”

The figure had straightened up fully now. She—and it was most assuredly a she, with a cascade of bright blonde hair falling around her face—had a wicker basket hanging from one arm. The heads of colorful toadstools protruded from the top of the basket.

“Good morning,” the stranger said in a melodious voice.

Before Toby reply, Anna let out a wordless little cry. “Holy hell, Toby. Why has that... uh... short person got goat legs?”

With the small horns protruding from her head and the bandy goat-like legs, she could be nothing else but a faun.

The faun bristled at Anna’s words. “I don’t have goat legs. And I’m not a short person.”

“Sorry, dwarf then,” Anna said apologetically.

Toby let out an inward groan.

Anna turned to Toby while a look of disgruntlement swept over the faun’s pleasant facial features.

“I thought dwarves were always digging away in mountains for gold and jewels and wore those hats like road cones,” she said to him.

“Wow, you’re really nailing this ice-breaking business,” Toby said.

“What?”

“Gnomes are the ones who go in for pointy headwear,” Toby hissed at her.

The faun’s eyes narrowed. Toby noticed how they were big and brown and full of a quiet intelligence.

“Look, I don’t appreciate your tone,” the faun said. “I’m certainly not a dwarf and I sure as anything am not a gnome.” She pronounced the word like a human might pronounce the words ‘overdue bill’. “And while, admittedly, I do have legs that might, at first glance, seem goat-like, I assure you they’re perfectly natural, as well you should know.”

Clearly, Anna wasn’t quite sure what to say to this. Back on Earth, all of twenty minutes ago, she’d always been a polite individual.

“I apologize,” Anna said respectfully.

The faun gave a curt nod.

“We’re both sorry for coming across as rude,” Toby said, trying to take the conversation in hand. “It’s just that we’re from a place where fauns… Well, where you don’t see many fauns.”

Anna quirked up an eyebrow at this declaration, but Toby ignored her. Thankfully, Anna didn’t say anything in response.

The last time Toby had been here, he’d met fauns, but he’d never noticed just how attractive they could be (he had been a boy, after all). Now, as he looked at the blonde faun before him, he couldn’t help but notice that, aside from the horns and her legs, she was a beautiful woman with a bust that was bound to cause future back issues.

Toby hastened to bypass the awkwardness. “We’re trying to get to the village yonder,” he said, pointing in the direction of the wood smoke, while Anna mouthed the word ‘yonder’. “I was wondering if you could tell us what the name of that place is.”

The faun gave Toby a slightly mistrustful look, which he didn’t hold against her. If the average New Yorker had been insulted in the way the faun had been, they would have been on the receiving end of cutting words—if not a cutting knife.

“That township is Stagbreach,” she told them.

“What kind of name is that?” Anna asked before clapping her hand over her mouth. “Ah, sorry.”

The faun looked at Anna and crossed her arms. “Have you ever seen a stag breach?” she asked pointedly.

Anna had to admit that she hadn’t.

“Surely it would be the doe that usually breaches, technically speaking,” Toby said.

“Exactly,” the faun said, giving him an approving nod. “Which is why it’s noteworthy when a stag does it, and why a town might be named after it.”

Toby had to concede the faun’s point. “It does sound messy.”

“Very,” the faun agreed.

“I was wondering, is there a tavern in this town, in Stagbreach?”

The faun nodded. “Of course there’s a tavern in town. There are a number of them.”

“What’s the name of the best one?” Toby asked.

“The Toby Jug,” the faun replied.

Toby felt a little flash of almost apprehensive and excited premonition at this.

The Toby Jug, he thought to himself. Surely not.

The faun gave them an open look, up and down. “So, you’re not from around here, then.”

“What gave that away?” Anna replied dryly.

“I have to admit that we are a little lost,” Toby said.

“Just a smidge,” Anna chimed in.

“But we’re hoping to gather news in town. A tavern is always a likely place to start, in my experience.” Toby felt more than saw Anna shoot him a look at the words, ‘in my experience.’

“Well, you’ll get news aplenty,” the faun said. “Folk have a lot to talk about these days, right enough.”

“Is that so?” Toby said.

The faun laid a cloth over her basket of toadstools and tucked it in at the edges. “Have you been living under a rock or something?”

“No, we’re from the Big Apple,” Anna said.

The faun gave her a curious look. “Is that the settlement out by a Cranberry Cove where the elves specialize in making complementary fruit baskets?”

“No.” Anna’s face was as wooden as the Trojan Horse’s must have been.

“You really must be from far, far away if you haven’t noticed the shadow looming over this land,” the faun said.

Anna looked up at the sky. The day was bright and beautiful.

“I think she means, metaphorically speaking,” Toby said quickly.

“Ah,” Anna said.

Toby looked back at the faun. She was regarding him closely.

“You know, there’s something familiar about your face, stranger,” she said.

Toby nodded slowly. “I feel like I’m about to hear that a lot.”

The faun shook her head. “Look, I’ve got to get on. These toadstools aren’t going to pick themselves, and it doesn’t take long for them to turn bad.”

“Right,” Toby said.

“Yeah, you’ve no idea how much of a pain it is to round up a bunch of toadstools that have gone rogue,” the faun said casually. “Anyway, good luck to you. In Stagbreach, head for the Toby Jug, like I say, and you’ll hear all there is to hear.”

With a final wave of her hand, she headed off into the forest that bordered the road.

When she was gone, Anna turned to Toby. She let out a semi-hysterical giggle. “Complimentary fruit baskets made from elves at Cranberry Cove.”

“Hey, you’ve got to get your complimentary fruit baskets from somewhere,” Toby said.

Anna shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. “This is happening, isn’t it, Tobes? This is actually happening. I thought for a moment that I was having some sort of neurological episode, but this is really happening.”

Toby grinned at his friend. “This,” he assured her simply, “is Eclipsia.”

3

Stagbreach first came into view after Toby and Anna skirted a belt of extremely tall pine trees. The first thing they noticed was the castle behind the town. It was set upon a crag and gazed down austerely from its vantage point. It was made up of a collection of teetering turrets and towers, each one seemingly defying gravity as it reached skyward.

Then, a little while later, Toby was leading Anna through the outskirts of the bustling Stagbreach. The pair were immersed in a scene straight out of a Dickensian period drama.

The cobbled streets were lined with crooked timber-framed buildings adorned with colorful banners and awnings. Each one leaned haphazardly against its neighbor.

“This is unreal,” Anna said, for what felt like the eight-hundredth time, as they made their way through winding alleys and past bustling market stalls.

Despite having been there before—not in Stagbreach, but in Eclipsia—Toby couldn’t help but agree with his friend.

Merchants hawked their wares from makeshift stalls and barrows. Street performers entertained small knots of pedestrians with music, stories, and magic tricks.

It wasn’t all fairytale-like architecture, though.

Toby thrust out an arm and stopped Anna in her tracks, inadvertently grabbing her by a breast.

“Sorry,” he said.

“What happened?” Anna asked, completely unfazed.

Toby nodded. The third story window of a building had been thrown open ahead of them. Someone poked their head out. A woman with forearms like hams heaved something onto the sill.

With a grunt, she tossed out a bucket of putrid-looking brown waste. It fell into the street below, hitting a luckless pedestrian. The passerby swore in a tongue that was most definitely not English—or human, for that matter. Judging by his size and the way he was carrying a pickaxe over his shoulder, Toby thought it likely that they had just seen their very first dwarf.

“That’s a genuine dwarf, is it?” Anna said. Since their run-in with the faun, she had learned to keep her observations down to a low volume.

“Yep, that’s a dwarf all right,” Toby said. “A dwarf all covered in crap.”

“Toby.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got to ask.”

“Ask away.”

“What is going on? How did we get here?”

“We passed through a portal from our world into this world.”

He knew he was making it sound simple, but the thing was, it was simple. At least, it was simple in practice. It was about as far from simple in theory as it was possible for anything to be, but theory was something else entirely. Theory was something for the Stephen Hawkings of the world to melt their minds over.

In practice, though, it was as simple as walking through a door from one room to another. Only this door was a door between worlds and couldn’t be whipped up by any builder that Toby had ever met.

“Okay, I mean, that’s kind of vague, but it makes sense,” Anna said.

“I’m glad you think so,” Toby said, “because apart from that, I can’t explain it myself. It might be like a wormhole, perhaps, connecting two worlds or universes or something that are trillions and squillions of miles apart, but honestly, I don’t have a fucking clue.”

“Fair enough,” Anna said. “Can I ask you something else?”

“Of course.”

“How is it that you seem to know exactly where you’re going and what you’re doing, and what you’re looking for and what to say to the weirdos—the different creatures—we meet? How did you know to ask for the most popular tavern in town? How in the hell are you so calm?”

“Like I mentioned, I’ve actually been here before. Not Stagbreach. But this world—Eclipsia. You do remember me saying that, right?”

“I was actually trying to forget that you said it. It seemed... well, it seemed crazy.”

“Maybe. But then you’re just as bonkers. Shit, come out of the way before that thing tramples you.”

Toby pulled Anna into the mouth of an alleyway, saving her from a potential laundry list of injuries as a stone troll lumbered past.

In the alleyway, a small lizard rooting through a pile of trash looked up and stared at them through a pair of baleful yellow eyes. Then it spread a small pair of wings, burped a gust of purple flame in their direction, and took off into the air, disappearing over a roof.

“I promise, Anna, that I’ll fill you in in due time,” Toby said. “But first, there’s something else. Something I just thought of. It might be the case that we’re not actually in Eclipsia. We could be in another world, a different world. Not Earth, and not Eclipsia either. If one doorway can lead to Eclipsia, then why not another doorway leading to an entirely different, albeit similar, world?”

Anna puffed out her cheeks. Then she unexpectedly reached out and hugged Toby. “All right. I trust you, Tobes. I really do.”

After asking directions to the Toby Jug, from several citizens they deemed least likely to mug them, Toby and Anna stepped out into a square. The square, as squares often are, was square. It was also bordered on all four sides by buildings. Numerous streets and alleys ran off of it like spokes from a poorly thought out square wheel.

In the middle of the square was a large community well, complete with the obligatory shingled roof. On top of this well was a plinth. On top of this plinth was the statue of a boy.

Toby and Anna had to cross the square to reach the Toby Jug tavern. As they navigated their way through the crowds and the hawkers, the thieves and the jugglers, the beggars and the children that ran every which way, their gaze was inexorably drawn upwards to the statue on top of the well.

Toby had thought he knew what to expect. He kept one eye on Anna as they walked around the statue. She caught sight of the boy’s face. Anna’s pretty heart-shaped visage creased into a frown. Then she looked at Toby and then back up at the statue and then back at Toby.

“You know, Tobes,” she said, “I’ve seen a lot of photos of you as a kid, and that statue up there has a strikingly uncanny resemblance to…” Her voice tailed away as she noticed that Toby was nodding.

“It is me,” he said bluntly.

“What?” Anna cried out.

Toby put his arm around her shoulder. “I came here as a boy, right?”

“Right. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense obviously, but I’m willing to agree with you on that detail.”

“Perfect. So I came here as a boy and—shit, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’ve told you about my grandma, Lily, haven’t I?”

“On many occasions. She sounded like a first-class lady,” Anna said.

“Well, Grandma Lily used to tell me stories about how there was a world that was parallel, or slightly overlaid, to the world that everyone on Earth knew. Grandma Lily used to tell me stories of this place. About the two worlds that were divided only by a thin veil of belief.”

“Okay,” Anna said.

“Grandma Lily would say that back in the olden days, you know, like medieval, Dark Age times, this veil was more easily passed through. People believed in dragons, goblins, giants, and all the rest of it, but as the world aged and modernized, the veil became harder to pass through for some reason. People’s beliefs changed, I guess. She used to say that people stopped believing in monsters and myths and started only believing in money and gaining their fifteen minutes of fame, and stuff like that.”

“Not that I want to cast aspersions on the sanity of your Grandma Lily, rest her soul and all the rest of it, but that doesn’t explain how you came to be here when you were a kid, and it certainly doesn’t explain why there’s a statue of you standing in the middle of the square behind us. I mean, everyone’s grandparents tell them bedtime stories like that. It doesn’t mean that they all start popping into these other worlds.”

Toby could only shrug at that. “I know this is going to sound really fucking infuriating, but I think that I was able to pass through into this world because I truly, truly believed that another world existed.”

“To use a much-detested popular phrase, are you saying you manifested yourself here?”

Toby shrugged again. “There was no doubt in my mind about it existing, is what I’m saying, and that lack of doubt, that faith and hope that something existed beyond our mundane world, somehow opened up the barrier that separated the two worlds.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. Saying all that, like that, did make him feel just a touch crazy.

He felt Anna’s arm, which had looped around his waist, give him a brief squeeze.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m standing with you here now. I’m not going to accuse you of being nuts. That would be like accusing myself of being completely nuts, too.”

Toby laughed.

“Still, it sounds like you had almost a religious belief in this place,” Anna pointed out.

Toby shook his head. “It wasn’t religious. It was just undiluted optimism, I think. Like J.M. Barrie once said, ‘All the world is made of faith and trust and pixie dust’.”

“If you’re after a bit of pixie dust, mate,” a hawker manning a barrow called out at him, “I’ve got some A-grade pixie dust fresh from the nesting sites out by—”

“No, no, I’m fine, thank you,” Toby replied, with the same hurried politeness that was usually reserved for people trying to sell knock-off Zippo lighters and fake Air Jordans in the markets of Southeast Asia.

“And the statue?” Anna prompted once they were past the muttering man.

“Well, that’s a bit more problematic,” Toby said. “I can’t recall what I did to end up cast in stone.”

“You can’t remember?” Anna said, disbelief tinging her words.

Toby shrugged. “It sounds improbable, I know. But I just can’t recall. I mean, I’ve always believed, even if it has faded a little bit, that I was here. But as for why I was here… I’ve tried to search my memory so many times and I just can’t remember. It’s like there’s some block on that part of my mind. Some kind of amnesia.”

“Mysterious,” Anna said, waggling the fingers of the hand that wasn’t clasped around Toby’s waist.

Toby snorted. “Yeah, that’d be one word to describe it. But at least we know now that this is actually Eclipsia. That it’s not some other world.”

Anna smoothed some of the flyaway strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Toby,” she said, “when we get to this inn or tavern or whatever you want to call it, I could definitely do with a drink.”

“I feel you on that one,” Toby agreed. “One of those drinks that come in several glasses, you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. So how is it that you knew to head for a tavern?”

“Well, I mean, they were called pubs—public houses—for a reason. It’s where villagers back in the day used to share the news and swap stories and generally catch up with one another. What better place to learn the lay of the land than at one of these watering holes?”

“Sound logic,” Anna admitted.

They uncoupled their arms as they strode towards the Toby Jug.

“Can I have that in writing?” Toby teased.

Anna punched him chummily on the arm. “You know that I’ve always thought you’re one of the smartest people I know, Tobes,” she said, her eyes shining with seriousness.

There was something else in those eyes, Toby thought, something that hinted of a feeling he hadn’t thought she’d had for him in a long time.

“Likewise, Anna,” Toby said. “And thanks for not writing this off just yet as a delusion.”

“The day is still young,” Anna said. “The day is still…”

She stopped in her tracks. She was looking up at the front facade of the tavern. The exterior of the Toby Jug was a wonky mishmash of crooked timbers and weathered thatch. Its roof was sagging slightly under the weight of the years. Smoke rose lazily from its two chimneys.

In spite of the faint air of neglect, there was a warm light emanating through the whorled glass windows. There came a smell of roasting meat and the distant sound of laughter and drunken singing. The building held an air of dilapidated but undeniable charm.

It was not the general aesthetic of the place that had made Anna freeze in mid-step, though.

The sign that hung above the inn’s double doors was painted with the picture of a Toby jug, an old kind of drinking vessel that commonly had a face molded or carved into it. Usually, the face would be of a reigning monarch or religious figure or some such person.

This Toby jug, though, was different. It was fashioned with Toby’s boyish face.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Toby said. He turned and looked at Anna.

She let out a small bark of laughter.

“This place is named after me,” Toby said.

Anna just shook her head. Toby let out a long chuckle.

“That’s the coolest thing ever,” he said.

He grabbed Anna by the hand, and they pushed their way inside into the smoke and noise of the Toby Jug tavern.

4

“I know I’m in danger of sounding like a stuck record,” Anna said, “but this is so goddamn weird.”

Toby nodded. “We did just crawl through a dryer into a magical land.”

“Yeah, but the fact that your head is on a statue in the middle of a town square and over a bar is just insane.”

“Insanely cool.”

Anna let out a disbelieving laugh.

They made their way into the main taproom.

Pipe smoke hung heavy in the rafters.

Toby saw a cluster of gray-skinned, big-eared creatures in one corner—goblins. They puffed heavily on long-stemmed clay pipes while playing a game of firing smoke rings through other smoke rings. When one of them achieved this feat, the pair of smoke rings would either turn blue or pink, depending on who had fired the smoke ring that had hit its target.

Raucous laughter and beery conversation filled the air.

Lamps bobbing around in mid-air lit the place, while two hearths burned bright at either end of the large room. Eerie shadows sprawled across the worn wooden tables. Threadbare tapestries adorned some of the walls, but Toby could make out nothing of the scenes or people depicted in them.

“Look at that!” Toby said to Anna, pointing over at a table to their left.

Anna frowned. Her eyebrows shot up.

Food had appeared as if by magic—exactly by magic—on a table in front of two goblins.

“I wonder if that means fewer tips?” Anna quipped.

“Come on,” Toby muttered. “Let’s not be gawping tourists.”

They moved towards the bar. Row upon row of gleaming bottles and decanters lined its shelves.

Musicians in a corner of the tavern strummed a sudden blast of folky music. Several patrons whistled and stamped their feet.

Toby and Anna sidled up to the bar. While they waited for the innkeeper to finish filling tankards from a barrel, Anna elbowed Toby softly in the side.

“Hey,” she said, “I just realized it must have been hard.”

“What must have been hard?” Toby asked.

“Living with the knowledge that you’d been to a place as incredible as this before, and not having anyone believe you.”

“Yeah, it was hard,” Toby admitted. “I spent the longest time trying to get back here. I remember that. I must have really enjoyed myself. After a while, I had to actively try to convince myself that it really did happen. Eventually, adulthood came, and I guess I stopped believing. Well, maybe not quite that. I just stopped thinking about it.”

Anna looked sympathetically at him.

“It’s not that strange to imagine yourself in a fantasy world when you’re a kid, is it?” Toby said. “Really, the only rational explanation was that I had an overactive imagination.”

“Did anyone ever believe you? Did Kevin?” Anna asked.

“Kevin never mocked me, but being older, I doubt he ever believed me. Grandma Lily always had my back, but she had my back about everything, so I kind of took it as par for the course, I suppose. I guess everyone wondered a little why I picked up a bit of a British accent, and why I used their lingo so much, but they figured it was just watching too much English tv shows.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about it?”

Toby gave her a crooked smile. “Don’t tell me you would have believed me.”

“Maybe not,” Anna admitted.

“Besides, I had a crush on you for the longest time. And nothing scares a girl away like telling her you’ve been to a mystical world where fauns and goblins roam about, and dudes in markets are trying to sell you pixie dust by the gram.”

“Not exactly a panty-dropping remark.”

Toby laughed. “I’m glad I’m here with you, Anna.”

“Me too.” She looked around at the tavern and its patrons. “It’s all just so alien, so unbelievable.”

Toby shook his head. “Nah, it’s not really. Just think back to when you were a kid. It’ll start to look more familiar. You should try and accept it for what it is: just another foreign land.”

“That’s actually pretty good advice.”

“I have my moments.”

“It could be worse. We could have portaled our asses to Staten Island.”

While they waited for the bartender to finish pouring the large tankards of ale, Toby glanced over the blackboard that was fastened to one wall.

“Oh look,” he said brightly. “They’ve got a special on wings.”

“I could go for some wings,” Anna said.

“Could you go for some cherub wings?” Toby smiled wryly.

Anna frowned. “You know, I have absolutely no idea. I suppose it’d depend on whether they came with blue cheese sauce.”

“Shit, I could eat anything with enough blue cheese sauce.”

After taking a handful of copper coins from the man waiting for the tankards, the barman made his way towards Toby and Anna. He was a stout and jovial-looking cove with a weather-beaten face that spoke of years inside, spent surrounded by the warmth of hearth and home. His eyes twinkled as he looked first at Toby and then at Anna from under a pair of storm-cloud gray eyebrows.

Toby gave the man a nod and a smile in return. He was a head taller than the barman, but the other man was heavyset.

The barman had a thick mane of silver hair framing his kindly, ruddy features. He carried himself with a sprightly energy that belied his age and his prodigious belly. His movements were quick and nimble as he bustled down towards their end of the bar. Toby also noted that he carried a heavy-duty club at his belt, which might have been more accurately described as a cosh.

“Greetings,” he said, “my name’s Oswald Parsons, owner and proprietor of the Toby Jug. What can I get you?”

Anna said, “What’s the strongest thing you’ve got to drink, Mr. Parsons?”

Oswald Parsons reeled off a list of drinks, which sounded as intriguing as unfamiliar. Toby didn’t catch them all, but amongst the few he did were nutmeg ale, wild cider, ghostberry moonshine, and the rather unappealing sounding potato floor-smacker.

Anna turned to Toby. “Alright, over to you.”

Toby ordered a couple of meads.

Oswald Parsons bobbed his head and hurried to fill the order.

“Mead?” Anna whispered.

“They always have mead,” Toby said. “It’s like Bud Light here.”

“You ordered the shittiest, wateriest, pathetic excuse for a beer you could, is that what you’re telling me?”

“No, I mean it’s ubiquitous. Mead’s like a honey beer.”

While they waited, Toby looked around. The tavern was of peasant men and women, but there were also exotic and fantastical looking folk in there.

A couple of centaurs leaned in through a wide open bay window, munching at a manger of hay. Near the goblins and their smoke rings, several shrouded and shadowy figures played a card game. One of the players was wrapped all in bandages under a shabby, voluminous coat.

Oswald Parsons put two pewter tankards down in front of Toby and Anna. “I’ll be back to collect your money in just a few moments,” he said, and hurried off through a door at the back of the bar.

“Well,” Anna said, “that conveniently delays the awkward conversation we’re going to have with him about not being able to pay for these.”

Toby shrugged. “Let’s just cross that bridge when we come to it. Not like either of us have never dined and dashed, is it?”

He raised his tankard to his lips, but before he could take a sip, Anna pulled on his elbow. Toby almost spilled his drink.

“What is it?” he asked.

Anna nodded past his left shoulder. Toby turned.

Just down the bar from him, a human-sized gingerbread man leaned against the bar. He was not your typical friendly, singing gingerbread man that might be expected to help Santa Claus out over the festive period. He looked like a troublemaker, the type of guy who hung around in bars waiting for someone to inadvertently knock into him or say something he didn’t like before he started breaking bottles over heads.

He had one chocolate chip eye, but where the other one was supposed to be was a smear of brown beneath an eye patch. Over his crusty shoulder were two other gingerbread men conversing in low voices.

“Toby,” Anna said, “that is a giant cookie man, and yep, he’s actually eating a cookie.”

He was, too. But Toby had to admit that it looked more like a muffin than a cookie.

“Wouldn’t that be cannibalism?” Anna said. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of one hand. “We’re here drinking honey beer, and there’s a giant gingerbread man standing not ten feet from us.”

Before Toby could answer, the gingerbread man looked in their direction. He moved closer to the pair of them.

“Oi,” he said in a gruff, crumbly voice, “who the fuck are you callin’ a gingerbread man, darl? Is it just the color of my crust? I’ll have you know that I’m a shortbread, but the damn pâtissier over-baked me. What are you, some sort of pastry-phobe?”

It was the most bizarre denouncement that had ever been leveled at Toby. He couldn’t believe that he and Anna were being accused of being confectionary supremacists, but he was quickly distracted from this insane thought when the shortbread man grabbed Anna by the upper arm.

Toby reacted instinctively. He wasn’t a fighter by instinct or inclination, but he had seen his fair share of scuffles

“Get your hands off her,” he said to the troublemaker.

“What are you goin’ to do about it, pal?” the shortbread man said, his icing mouth twisted into a contemptuous smile.

The smart-ass part of Toby’s brain half wanted to retort with something along the lines of, if he didn’t let go of his friend’s arm, he’d grind his bones to make his bread, but he thought that would only inflame the situation.

Instead, Toby reached down behind the bar and picked up the half-drunk cup of tea steaming on the counter. He flung it into the shortbread man’s face.

The shortbread man released his hold on Anna and fell back. He spluttered and gagged, wiping his face with his clumsy pastry fingers.

“Fightin’ dirty straight out of the gate!” he spat. “And with hot beverages too, the one weakness of our kind! Come on boys, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Toby barely had time to register the fact that he seemed to have won the fight when the three shortbread men barged past him and made for the door.

“And don’t come back until you’ve minded your manners!” This parting shot came from Oswald. “If you do, there’s a barrel of milk in the cellar waiting for you. Wouldn’t be the first time I dunked one of you!”

The door slammed shut. The patrons went back to talking.

The bartender turned to Toby. “Thank you, friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Toby said. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I hate it when you’re in a bar and some asshole ruins the mood.”

Oswald Parsons grunted. “I’m a landlord. Trouble is part of the trade. But if it stares me in the face, I look it squarely in the eye and then kick it in the nadgers. You did well there.”

“Still,” Toby said. “I’m sorry for wasting your cup of tea.”

The landlord waved a hand. “I’ve been having problems with Gary all week,” he said. “Those drinks of yours are on the house, by the way.”

“Much appreciated,” Toby said. “And Gary?”

“The shortbread man you put in his place,” the bartender explained. “People in general are a little tense around town at the moment.”

Toby leaned on the bar. “Why? That’s the second time we’ve heard that.”

Oswald Parsons looked wary. “I’d prefer not to say.”

Before Toby could press him anymore, he was called away by one of his roving barmaids.

Toby and Anna went back to their drinks. Anna, who was trying to settle her nerves after the unexpected run-in with the giant cookie-cutter-cut figure, was guzzling her mead.

“It’s not bad,” she said to Toby.

Toby listened idly to the tavern chat that was swirling around them. Some people talked about the pair’s human, Earthly garb. However, as things normally did in pubs, the chatter soon turned back to the business and news of the day. Toby heard a number of things he didn’t understand. The names of someone that sounded like ‘Juke Diddle’ and ‘Vex’ came up a few times, but they were said in quiet, muttered tones.

Toby’s attention was soon drawn to the little scenes unfolding around the tavern. A barmaid was taking the order of a wolf sitting at a table. Toby overheard her ask the wolf if she could get him a wings special, or perhaps a nice raw steak. The wolf looked a bit offended at this.

“Why do you automatically suppose that I’m after a block of raw meat?” he asked.

The barmaid put her hands up placatingly. “I didn’t mean anything by it, love.”

“I get it,” the wolf said defensively. “You think that I’m on that grandmother diet. Or maybe I eat only pig, is that it?”

The waitress didn’t respond.

Then the wolf grinned a big white-toothed grin. “Good to see you, Betty.”

“And you too, Marty, you damn troublemaker,” the barmaid responded.

“I’m sorry,” the wolf said. “My humor is a little off today. I’m just a bit on edge. I’ve been out trotting through the Feywood the past couple of days.”

“How are things out there?” Betty asked.

“Things are more unsettled out in the wild than they have been in twenty years.”

“That seems to be the consensus. You sure I can’t get you a nice grandmother shank to settle your nerves?” Betty teased.

“I’ve been trying to cut down on the meat diet,” Marty replied seriously. “Better for your bowels and your colon, my apothecary says.”

“Gotta watch your ass,” Betty said sagely.

“Exactly. Plus, grandmothers are so stringy, and a wolf can only gobble up so many little piggies until he’s repulsed by the sight of another pork chop. I’ve gone vegan, you know.”

Toby rolled his eyes and looked away. He heard Anna asking the landlord why the name of the tavern was the Toby Jug.

“Well,” Oswald Parsons replied, “there was a young man who saved this world of ours over twenty years ago now. Such was the peace that lay upon Eclipsia straight afterwards that I felt inclined to rename the tavern in the lad’s honor, don’t you know?”

Anna glanced at Toby. There was a glimmer of admiration in those bright blue eyes of hers.

Toby gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

Anna turned back to the bartender and asked in what she obviously believed to be her most winning and lady-like accent, “Pray, tell me, good sir, how did this mere slip of a lad manage to save an entire world?”

Oswald Parsons raised an eyebrow at Toby. “Why’s she speaking all formal like that?” he asked. “Are you a pair of traveling actors or something?”

Toby seized on this. “Not actors. No, we’re, uh… We’re bards! Traveling story-tellers. From… far, far over… that way.” He waved his hand vaguely in a random direction.

“Ah,” Oswald Parsons said. “I was wondering what your ludicrous get-ups were all about.”

Anna bristled slightly and looked down at her outfit.

“I’ll have you know,” she started to say, “that these pants were from—”

Toby put a calming hand on her arm.

“Well, as strange as it is that a pair of professional bards haven’t heard of one of the most important and divisive instances in this land’s history,” Oswald went on, “I’ll tell you that folk in this part of Eclipsia don’t talk about what happened if it can be helped. Those were dark days. Very dark days. Folk don’t like to bring ‘em up in case they jinx anything by speaking of those times aloud. As it is…”

“You don’t believe in jinxes and are going to tell us?” Toby asked.

“What? No! I believe in jinxes as much as the next sane and logical man,” the publican replied. “No, I was going to say that as it is,” and he leaned down close to Toby and Anna and lowered his voice, “things feel as if they’re taking a turn for the worse…”

5

The day was on its way to ending.

Both Toby and Anna had lapsed into a thoughtful silence after Oswald Parson’s proclamation about things feeling as if they were taking a turn for the worse.

“Well,” Anna declared, suddenly, “I need to use the little girl’s room.”

“Where’s the bathroom, Oswald?” Toby asked.

“You want to take a bath?” the landlord asked. “You look all but freshly scrubbed as it is. You know it ain’t healthy washing away the good humors more than thrice a year.”

Toby avoided Anna’s gaze. “No, I mean, where’s the toilet?” he said.

The landlord gave Toby a blank look.

“Ah, the latrines!” Oswald said with a snap of his fingers. “The latrines are out the back. State of the art long-drop facilities.” He added the last part with a measure of pride in his voice.

“Isn’t a long-drop just a hole in the ground?” Toby said.

“Aye, but it’s a fine deep one,” the landlord said.

“Excellent.”

“There’s only one, mind,” Oswald said. “We don’t divide men and women. We’re very modern like that. All genders being created equal and all that.”

Anna let out a reproving sound as she finished the last of her drink, and the pair headed out.

Toby had been bracing himself to find that latrines were nothing more than a pit or trench dug in a muddy alleyway. As it turned out, they were actually their own little shed out the back of the tavern. They didn’t smell any worse than the average festival toilet and were, in contrast to everything that Toby had thought he knew about medieval era times, quite clean and totally usable. They were even partitioned into cubicles.

There was even a long bench with some buckets and jugs and towels for drying hands. It was all, everything being considered, fairly sophisticated.

Toby waited by the washbasins humming loudly to himself while Anna did what she needed to do.

“That wasn’t all that bad, I guess,” Anna said when she came out. “Although I don’t know what the bucket of soot in there was for.”

Toby told her.

“Ah,” Anna said, “that makes sense. That’s kind of eco-friendly.”

There was a long mirror with tarnished edges where the wash basins were. Anna checked herself out while washing her hands.

“You look good,” Toby said.

“Always did have a smooth tongue on you, Tobes.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Anna dried her hands on a towel, folded it neatly, and replaced it on the pile. She was considerate like that. Then, she swiftly turned, took Toby by the face, and kissed him hard on the mouth.

Toby was completely surprised at first. Then he surrendered to the kiss. His ass bumped up against the wall of the cabin, and his hands moved automatically to Anna’s waist.

They broke apart all too soon for Toby’s liking.

“What was that?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”

Anna pinched herself on the cheek and then gave her other cheeky little slap. “I was just trying out a couple of methods to see if I’d wake up.”

Toby touched his lips quickly. “That felt good and real to me.”

“Me too,” Anna said, a little shyly.

She turned back to the mirror and gazed critically at herself. She untied her hair and re-tied it. Then she winked at Toby in the reflective surface

“Want to see how well I’m acclimatizing to this place?” she asked.

“Uh—”

“Mirror, mirror on the wall,” Anna said in a dramatic voice, looking into her own eyes once more. “Who is the fairest of them all?”

“Whoa,” Toby exclaimed softly.

The mirror had rippled as if the reflective glass had had a small pebble thrown into the middle of it. A face formed out of the ripples.

“Well,” the mirror said in a high, pure, ringing tone, the kind of voice that reminded Toby of someone running a wet finger around a glass rim. “Well, I suppose that red-haired people are pretty fair.”

Anna had taken a step back from the mirror.

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” she said. “And, um, that’s not really what I was getting—”

“Well, then, there are a branch of the northmen, the seal hunters up in the ice wastes and in the blubber bays, that would be pretty fair, as they get little sunlight in that region,” the mirror went on.

Anna shook her head. “No, no, that’s not what I was getting at. I was just jo—”

The mirror huffily interjected. “Hm, well, if you must know, I’m not exactly comfortable dealing with any of the skin tone race stuff. I mean, you have darker people and you have fairer people and you have everyone in between. You have gray, green, and blue skin in Eclipsia. Each to their own, don’t you know?”

Toby saw that Anna looked mortified. “I think my friend here was asking who was the fairest in terms of physical attractiveness, not skin tone.”

The mirror’s face contorted as if it was made of liquid rather than solid glass. “I think,” it said without the faintest trace of irony in its voice, “that your friend needs to take a good, long, hard look at herself.”

“Um,” Toby said.

“She’s pretty, but she’s not dressed in the conventional manner, is she?” the mirror pointed out. “And I’m sure many people, many humans, might find her very attractive. You look like you do, young man.”

“Yes, she’s very—”

“She’s beautiful and comely, after all, and she has all her limbs and no visible pox scars. I must say that I’m surprised that one so aesthetically pleasing to the human eye, and as well spoken, as your friend is here, is so shallow.”

Toby looked at Anna, but Anna was just gaping.

“I think we can leave it, and just say that we’ve a slight misunderstanding,” Toby said.

“I’ll say,” the mirror said haughtily. It rippled again, and its surface went blank and smooth once more.

“One thing’s for sure,” Toby said as they exited the latrine. “It’s a lot easier to dig yourself a hole in Eclipsia, isn’t it?”

Anna nodded.

They headed back to the tavern where Toby and Anna attempted to think out their next move. Toby, ever pragmatic and sinking quite comfortably and enthusiastically into the role of the fantasy world explorer, said to Anna, “We should find a safe place to hole up. It won’t be long until it’s evening, and we’ll want somewhere safe and dry to pass the night.”

“You’re right,” Anna said. “We don’t want to be out there on the street come nightfall. We’ve only been here a little while and we’ve already managed to offend a giant cookie man and a piece of home decor.”

“Don’t forget the faun you labeled a goat-legged dwarf.”

“Exactly—and which I feel terrible about by the way. So, what do you think we do?”

Toby scrubbed at his stubbly jaw. Then he motioned to Oswald Parson, who was busy cleaning a pewter tankard with a cloth.

“Yes, my friend?” the landlord said.

“I was wondering if you had any lodgings going?” Toby asked.

Oswald gave him a shrewd look.

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you are in possession of any coin, of course,” he said.

“I have to admit that we don’t,” Toby said.

The landlord grunted and raised his eyebrows sympathetically. “Well, then—”

“The thing is,” Toby said, extemporizing on the spot, “that, as you know, we are traveling bards and we happened to be waylaid… by circumstance.”

“That happens,” the bartender said. “And it doesn’t surprise me none, being dressed up all outlandish as you are. Outsiders are the bread and butter of bandits.”

Toby was glad that Oswald had interpreted ‘circumstance’ as ‘bandits’. He’d been using ‘circumstance’ in the place of ‘by a tempting and fascinating opening into another world or dimension’.

“I was wondering,” Toby said, “with that in mind, whether there’s some other way that Anna and I can pay for a room for the night. I’m a realistic guy, I don’t expect something for nothing. Surely, there must be jobs in a place like this that need doing. Something you’ve been putting off, maybe, that might be worth letting us have a free room. Maybe for more than one night.”

The bartender set the tankard down and tucked his cloth into the strap of his apron. “As it happens,” he said, “Old Cook out back could use a little help during the dinner rush. I’m a little short of my usual kitchen hands.”

“Why’s that?” Anna asked.

“They’ve been dropping like flies of late. Signing up to the King’s Legion in preparation.”

“In preparation for what?” Toby asked.

Oswald Parson’s expression darkened. “There’s a rumor going about that war’s abrewin’,” he said, in a typically and gratifyingly ominous tone.

Toby and Anna waited while Oswald regarded them minutely.

“I tell you what, if you help out tonight in the kitchens and do a few other little jobs around the place, you can have the spare room up in the attic.”

“Excellent, sounds perfect,” Toby said. “By the way, my name’s Toby, and this is Anna.”

The landlord gave Toby a sudden sharp look up and down. His eyes narrowed. Toby got the distinct impression that there was a lot going on behind that florid face that the bartender didn’t let on.

“Oswald Parsons, as I said,” the tavern owner said. “Follow me.”

He called for one of his barmaids to watch the bar for a moment and then led the way through a door out back and up some stairs.

The room in the attic turned out to be simple, but clean and dry. A double bed with a straw mattress, some neatly folded woolen blankets, and feather pillows sat in the middle of the room against the back wall. They were up in the gables so Toby and Anna had to be careful not to hit their heads on the beams of the low ceiling. A wash basin and a jug of water sat on a nightstand.

“Well, here it is,” Oswald said. “Make yourselves comfortable for a moment. I’ve got a trunk of clothing and bits and bobs that have been left in the tavern over the past couple of years. Might be that there’s enough garb in there for you to change into. You’ll attract less attention wearing that.”

Toby and Anna thanked the landlord. He disappeared but returned a minute or so later with a small trunk.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” he said. “Then the pair of you come downstairs and I’ll show you the first thing I need doing.”

Toby nodded and thanked the landlord once more as he left.

Anna and Toby riffled through the box of what was, essentially, lost and found. They discovered several items of wearable clothing before they both got dressed, each of them turning around to give the other privacy.

After the brief kiss they had shared in the latrines, Toby had half hoped that something might happen between him and Anna, especially now they were sharing quarters, but he didn’t want to press his luck. The last thing he wanted to do was make things awkward given how far from Earth they were.

However, though nothing happened as they got changed, Toby couldn’t help but notice a slight frisson of energy between the two of them. He glanced over his shoulder at one point and saw Anna’s naked back as she pulled on a linen shirt. She happened to be looking at him at the same time.

“You’ve been going to those HIIT classes then,” Anna said, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ve been trying to keep in shape,” Toby said, turning back to face the wall. “I hit thirty-five, and now I have to think about every mid-week breakfast donut I sink my teeth into.”

“That’s how I feel about midday margarita jugs,” Anna said. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

Toby couldn’t help but smile, feeling pleased with himself that Anna had noticed he’d been working out.

The pair donned linen shirts, simple canvas trousers, and leather boots that came up to just below the knee.

Toby pulled on a tweed morning coat which came down to mid-thigh. To top it off, he put on a wide-brimmed hat.

“Well,” he said, turning around to Anna, “what do you think?”

Anna appraised him with a critical eye. “You look like something between one of those short guys from that fantasy movie you love and a cowboy.”

“Like a pioneering hobbit?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Is that a good thing? I’m not sure that’s something a grown man necessarily wants to hear.”

“Depends on context. Here, I think it looks pretty dashing,” Anna said. “How about me?”

Honestly, Toby thought that Anna looked wonderful. She had found a coat at the bottom of the trunk, but hers was leather and fell past her knees. It also had a hood which she could pull up.

“You look… You look…” He tried to rack his mind for a sufficiently complementary adjective. He thought she looked amazing.

“Judging by the way your eyes are lingering on my rack, I’d say I look that good, huh?” Anna asked with an upturn of her mouth.

“Yeah,” Toby said quite genuinely. “Yeah, that good.”

Anna smiled, walking over and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, then. Oswald is waiting for us.”

Did her hand linger for just a little longer than was necessary on his shoulder? Did her eyes peer into his for slightly longer than was normal?

When they got back downstairs to the bar of the Toby Jug, Oswald clapped his hands and grinned. “Ah, there you go,” he said. “Proper traveling garb for this part of the world. No one will give you a second glance now.”

“Good to know,” Toby said. “Now, what was that first job you needed us to do?”

The landlord pointed to four wooden pails standing nearby. They were filled with vegetable peelings, bacon rinds, meat cutoffs, and other kitchen detritus.

“Take the slop buckets out the back to the pigs,” he said.

Toby and Anna both grabbed a couple of the buckets each. Toby led the way outside. They found themselves, after taking a left at the latrines, in a courtyard. There were stables along one side. On the opposite side to the stables were several pens. In one of them, five fat hogs grunted and rolled in the mud.

Toby and Anna emptied the buckets into the pen. The pigs fell upon the food scraps with joyful gusto. After watching the animals slurping and chomping happily at the organic garbage for a while, Toby and Anna walked back inside the tavern, depositing the buckets near the back door. Toby was on the verge of asking Oswald what they should do next, when a blasting sound echoed from outside the front door of the Toby Jug.

“That’s coming from the square,” Toby said.

“Yes, of course it’s coming from the square,” Oswald said, wiping his hands on his apron. “That’s the royal fanfare.”

His voice was filled with excitement and trepidation both, as well as a tinge of resignation.

“Doesn’t sound like a fanfare,” Toby said.

“What does a fanfare normally sound like?” Anna asked him.

“Well, I don’t know. I’d be expecting trumpets or something. This sounds more like recorders,” Toby said.

Anna shivered. “Not recorders.”

“The worst instrument ever devised,” Toby agreed, nodding.

“Come on, you two,” Oswald Parson said.

The tavern was emptying out, patrons streaming out of the front door and into the square.

“Is a royal fanfare performed by recorders a normal thing?” Anna asked.

“Aye,” Oswald said as he waited for the last of his customers to exit the taproom. “Aye, the king has unusual tastes when it comes to, well, a lot of things actually. As for royal fanfares being sounded out in general…” His face clouded over a little. “No, it ain’t usual.”

“Does that mean the king is here?” Toby asked.

The tavern keeper seemed unsure, but there was a little excitement in his eyes. “Let’s go outside and find out.”

Toby and Anna hurried out into the growing crowd.

6

Thankfully, the hellish din of the recorder-wielding orchestra subsided by the time Toby and Anna arrived at the square.

Toby stood on a beer barrel to get a better view over the heads of the crowd. He saw the recorder players standing with their instruments over their shoulders like rifles. Behind them, a man with a hooked nose that curled down to his mustachioed top lip stood on a wooden box. He wore a pair of tights and a doublet. An enormous feather stuck out of the small cap perched on his head.

“Gentlemen and ladies,” he called in a ringing nasally voice, “their majesties, the King and Queen of Eclipsia, have an important announcement.”

The babbling crowd grew silent.

“King Balourd would like to extend an invitation to all those gathered here to the front of the Palace of Eclipsia, so that he and Queen Lascivo may address the growing concerns of this fine township.”

The man furled his scroll and stepped down from the box. Awful music blasted from the recorders again, and everyone winced. The chatter resumed.

Toby hopped down from the barrel and looked at Oswald, who was leaning in front of the door of the Toby Jug.

“That’s it?” Toby asked. “They announced that they’re going to make an announcement?”

“That’s the way the King usually does things,” Oswald replied.

“Seems inefficient,” Toby said. “Why didn’t he just make the announcement? It’s like someone calling a meeting to let everyone know that they’re going to call a meeting.”

“That’s the way the King usually does things,” Oswald repeated.

Toby looked around. The crowd was dispersing. They were following, in dribs and drabs, the Royal Proclaimer and his hellish band of recorder players up the street.

Toby looked up at Oswald. “Do you mind if Anna and I go?”

“Not at all,” the landlord said. He was turning to bar the door of the tavern. “I’ll be heading up to hear what King Balourd has to say, too. It’s not often that he bothers to address us little people.”

While people filed around them, heading up the road, Toby stepped closer to the landlord. “This King Balourd,” he asked, as Anna listened at his shoulder. “Is he a bad King?”

“Depends what you mean by bad,” Oswald said as he slid the wooden bar across and then pulled a heavy key from his pocket and locked the front door. “If you mean is he openly cruel or vindictive, then no. If you’re asking me whether he’s effective in his position, let’s just say that he’s about as much use as a marzipan dildo. Speaking of dildos, some of the more cynical folk in town sometimes call him King Cockfingers.”

Toby only had to think about that one for a second. “Because he fucks everything he touches?”

“Bingo,” Oswald said. “He’s not cruel, except in an indifferent sense when he’s dealing with his inferiors. He’s just disconnected.”

Toby thought he understood. “He lives in a world of his own?”

The landlord nodded his big silver-haired head. “That’s right. He’s prone to wishful or idealistic thinking, I suppose. Best thing for you to do is see the King and Queen for yourselves.”

So, hand-in-hand, to make sure they weren’t separated in the crowd, Toby and Anna followed Oswald Parsons up the road towards the Palace of Eclipsia.

Cobbled streets which wound this way and that for about a mile brought them within sight of the castle. They’d seen it from a distance, but up close, the palace looked far more majestic.

It sprawled like a lazy monarch in its own right upon the crags, as if the natural geology were its throne. It was ringed by tall walls and towers dotted with arrow slits as well as stained glass windows. Although it was one structure, Toby felt that it was almost an amalgamation of castles that had been built over the years, before being meshed together and changed by cunning hands—and, most likely, by magic.

There were statues of scantily clad women, of cherubs, of gargoyles. On closer inspection, he saw that the gargoyles were, in fact, real gargoyles. He caught one snapping out at a passing blackbird and gulping it down whole.

Toby and Anna followed the crowd through a set of imposing gates. A portcullis hung jagged above them. Toby found himself skipping quickly under this. As they walked under the looming gatehouse, Toby saw there was a ragged man hanging in a wrought iron cage from the ceiling. He was moaning and crying out pitifully.

Toby almost tapped Oswald on the shoulder to ask how one ended up in one of those gibbet cages.

However, before he could do so, someone in the crowd called out, “Oi, Reg!”

The skinny man, who was dressed in a loincloth and had the sort of beard that you could have hidden a Thanksgiving turkey in, stopped his heart-wringing moaning. He squinted down through the bars of his cage.

“You all right, Astofar?” he shouted down into the crowd.

“What the bloody hell’s going on, Reg?” the unseen Astofar asked.

“Search me,” Reg called back. “My shift was supposed to end at the ringing of the fifth bell, but now I have to do a couple of hours overtime as King Balourd and Queen Lascivo wanted to tell everyone something. Typical. It’s the missus’ birthday tonight, and she’s going to have my guts for garters for being late for dinner.”

“Is hanging around moaning in that cage that man’s job?” Anna asked Oswald.

Oswald looked over his shoulder. “Course it is. Can’t have your gibbet cages hanging empty. Don’t look right, does it? Say what you like about King Balourd, but he knows what a castle needs to keep looking proper. And he’s providing gainful employment.”

They emerged out into a wide open space. It was a mammoth courtyard with a fountain playing musically in its middle. There was a fair congregation gathered there by the time Toby and Anna came to a halt beside Oswald.

Two figures who could only be King Balourd and Queen Lascivo stood at the top of a flight of wide steps leading from the courtyard up to the ginormous twin doors that fronted Castle Eclipsia.

Toby and Anna weren’t too far from the front of the crowd. He could make out the features of both the King and Queen tolerably well.

King Balourd cut a rather comical figure standing next to his wife. He was short, and his portly frame was adorned in extravagant robes of the finest silk and velvet. Decorated with an ostentatious display of jewels and elaborate embroidery, he reminded Toby of a Christmas tree. His face was round and jowly, and it wore an expression of bemused cluelessness, as if he were surprised to see all these townsfolk gathered in front of him. His hair, which must have once been a rich shade of chestnut, was now streaked with grey. It was styled into an elaborate coiffeur, which made him look like a parody of a king.

All in all, Toby’s first impression of Eclipsia’s monarch was of a man who it’d be great fun to have a night on the tiles with, but perhaps not trust with the running of a kingdom.

Or with sitting the right way round on a toilet seat.

Anna, like any good New Yorker, had an ear for gossip, and she was already in a muttered conversation with the woman to her right.

“What’s the deal with the king and queen?” she asked.

The little bonnet-wearing woman gave her a surprised look, obviously amazed that Anna didn’t know the story already. Then she launched into an explanation.

“Well, they haven’t been married long, have they, dear?” she said. “Wasn’t at all surprising, though, when the match was announced. The king, by all accounts, but mostly his bank account, was doing a right fine job of running the kingdom into the ground.”

Toby saw Anna raise a questioning eyebrow.

“Oh, it wasn’t on purpose like,” the woman next to her said. “He’s an amiable enough sort, our King Balourd, but he’s not got a head for numbers.”

“Not like Queen Lascivo,” said a man in front of her. He had a tray of steaming hot sausages around his neck and was clearly taking advantage of the announcement to sell them to any gathered punters who might be in need of a little pick-me-up.

“What does that mean?” Anna asked.

“Well,” the woman beside her said, “Queen Lascivo was one of the richest women in all of Eclipsia thanks to setting up and running a series of extremely profitable and successful brothels.”

“No shit,” Anna said.

“Oh yes,” the rosy-cheeked woman said, clearly misinterpreting Anna’s amazement. “She’s done awfully well for a woman in the male-dominated entrepreneurial space, especially considering she never got into the game of negotiable intimacy herself.”

“So it was more of a business thing, was it?” Toby asked, leaning around Anna.

“That’s right, dear,” the woman said, nodding. “Queen Lascivo brought the money and King Balourd supplied the,” and she waved her hand around, “Kingdom, I suppose.”

“Happily,” the sausage seller said, “it all seems to have worked out. They both seem content enough. King Balourd couldn’t really give two figs about all the ins and outs of running Eclipsia, whereas Queen Lascivo relishes it.”

“That’s right,” the woman agreed.

“I suppose,” the sausage seller said, turning momentarily philosophical, “it’s because running a kingdom is very much like running a great giant brothel in itself, only one in which everyone is trying to fuck everyone else and get away without paying anything.”

“Aye, that’s right,” the apple-cheeked woman said. “King Balourd is only too glad to give the reins over to the Queen. He’s as happy as a clam, so long as he gets to indulge his penchant for mermaids.”

Toby frowned. He looked from the woman to the sausage seller.

The sausage seller waggled his eyebrows before going back to applying some mustard to a sausage and handing it to a punter.

“You mean he—?” Toby started to say.

“Oh yes,” the sausage seller said, pocketing the coin he’d taken from his client. “He’s got a thing for the mermaids. Well known for it.”

“Mermaids?” Toby repeated. “But they’re fish from the waist down.”

“That’s right,” Oswald Parsons said. “And it would be a dull world if we were all into the same things, wouldn’t it? Curiously, if the rumors are true, some say the King himself isn’t even into the Queen, and the same goes for her. Going to be hard to get a legitimate heir if that’s the case, ain’t it? Now, pipe down. Looks like the king’s going to address us.”

But the Queen spoke the first words. She was at least a foot and a half taller than King Balourd, and Toby thought her a very striking woman.

Her voluptuous figure was perfectly accentuated by a lavish gown of finest silk or satin that clung to the curves of her body like a second skin. Her hair was a cascade of raven black waves. It fell in soft tendrils around her shoulders, framing a vaguely austere face, which held the unmistakable allure of a woman well aware of her own powers.

Despite her advancing years, Queen Lascivo exuded an undeniable sensuality. Her eyes were smoldering flints of emerald green that sparkled with mischief, as if she was in on a joke that no one else had gotten just yet. Juxtaposed next to the amiable, slightly idiotic-looking king, there was an undeniable shrewdness and cunning to the woman. She looked like the kind of well-dressed older woman who frequented certain top-tier bars in Manhattan and ate recently graduated investment bankers for breakfast.

“She looks like she plays by her own rules,” Toby said.

“She sure does,” Anna agreed. There was more than a hint of admiration in her voice. “I like her style.”

She certainly had style by the bucketloads, Toby had to admit. And when she opened her mouth, it turned out that she didn’t just have style, but she also had charisma.

“My dear subjects, esteemed friends, and distinguished nobles of Eclipsia,” she said in smooth honeyed tones. “The king and I stand before you today with heavy hearts. We have a solemn duty to keep you abreast of the constantly changing situations that surround the kingdom of Eclipsia. With that in mind, we felt that it was time to address the rumors that you all have no doubt heard. The rumors of unrest, the rumors of villages being burned and people turned out of their homes, the rumors of strange monsters skulking in the shadows. In short, of the nefarious deeds of the long unheard of Duke Diddle, who is, if the gossip is to be believed, causing trouble on the far-flung reaches of our kingdom.”

Toby looked around. The crowd was murmuring anxiously. It seemed that the gravity of the situation was more than they had bargained for.

King Balourd stepped forward. “Yes, that is quite right, my dear queen,” he said in a loud, chummy voice. “Duke Diddle has been, um, causing quite a ruckus, hasn’t he? But fear not my loyal subjects, for I, your humble king, shall endeavor to put an end to his antics once and for all.”

Toby did not fail to notice the exchanges of skeptical glances around the crowd. It was obvious that most, if not all, of them were unsure of King Balourd’s ability to handle a handle, let alone this situation.

The queen clearly had a nose for the public mood, for she said with a smile, “Ah, my dear husband, your noble intentions are as commendable as they are endearing. But let us not forget that Duke Diddle is a foe of cunning and guile. We have not seen the likes of him since he was defeated and banished over twenty years ago. But for those of us who recall that time all too clearly, they will remember that he was a man who would stop at nothing to achieve his twisted ambitions.”

Puffing his chest out so that he looked like nothing more than a toad that had been inflated by a bicycle pump and then thoughtfully gift-wrapped for the occasion, the king said, “Yes, yes, of course, but fear not my dear subjects, peasants, and the rest of you. I have a plan. I am currently drafting a list of noble names with which I mean to form a contingent of knights that I will send forth to meet this Duke Diddle and see what he is about.”

Toby saw the sausage seller exchange a bemused glance with the man to his right.

“Ah, yes,” Queen Lascivo said. “Yes, my dear husband’s plan is certainly coming along and is certainly optimistic. However, we are also working on some more strategic approaches. We are in talks to gather our finest warriors and to reconvene our wizards, who were scattered after the fall of Duke Diddle two decades ago.”

King Balourd beamed proudly. “Yes, that’s right, that’s the spirit. We are working on a way to vanquish this bugger, this Duke Diddle, and restore peace and prosperity to our beloved kingdom once again.”

“We felt that we owed it to you, my good people,” the Queen went on, “to keep you informed of the current mercurial situation.”

The crowd lapsed into murmurings and mutterings as the Queen stepped backwards, raised her hands, and said, “The King and I thank you for coming. We will keep you all apprised of the situation as it unfolds. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears pricked for posters around town, as well as the daily announcements by the town criers.”

As the noise of the crowd started to ratchet up again, Toby distinctly heard, from his position near the front, the King say, “Very well said, my dear, but it would be a great boon if we could find that young lad who saved us the last time. Save us all a deal of time, and I could get back to my mer—”

“Yes, yes, my King,” the Queen said smoothly. “But we all know that that young man disappeared without trace after he had brought Duke Diddle down low the last time. Even if he was still amongst us, he would be a man grown now.”

“Well, I wish he’d pop up again,” the King grumbled. “A bona fide protector of the realm is just the ticket when one wants to, well, protect the realm.” He chuckled good-naturedly. “It’s been so long since I had to do it, I don’t mind admitting, my dear, I am quite clueless as to how to proceed.”

The royal couple passed out of earshot, and thanks to the babble of voices that surrounded him, Toby couldn’t make out the Queen’s answer.

One man, standing on the edge of the ornate fountain in the courtyard, yelled out, in a mixture of defiance and hopeful pigheadedness, “This sounds to me like a load of bollocks!”

The Queen, on hearing the man, turned.

Toby waited with bated breath to see if she would signal the headsman to come and sweep the man’s head off his shoulders.

Or maybe throw him in the stocks?

However, Queen Lascivo merely smiled.

“As a woman who made a substantial fortune in the sex trade,” she said, “trust me when I say, my friends, that I know a load of bollocks when I see it. And this is not the case here.”

7

“Anna, what do you think about this theory?” Toby said.

“What theory?” Anna asked.

The pair were sitting on the bed in their room at the Toby Jug. They were due, in a matter of minutes, to head down to the bar to receive their evening’s orders from Oswald Parsons.

“My theory about why it is that we’re here,” Toby said.

“What are you talking about?” Anna replied.

“The reason that the portal opened, the reason that it opened at this time, is because of this looming threat of Duke Diddle.”

Anna shook her head.

“I know, I know,” Toby said. “I still can’t believe the guy’s called Duke Diddle either.”

“I mean, what was he thinking? Is that actually his name?” Anna said. “That’s poor branding whichever way you look at it.”

“I know. Why wouldn’t he have changed it to something a little more intimidating?” Toby said. “I mean, he’s just begging to be made fun of.”

Anna held up her hand. “Look, let’s not go down that rabbit hole. There are too many options and too many unanswered questions that we could bring up.”

“That’s a good point,” Toby said. “Too many jokes to be made.”

“So, go on with this theory of yours,” Anna said.

Toby took a deep breath. “I’m thinking that the reason that the portal opened after all these years is because Eclipsia is in real danger. And because I saved it once, the world itself, or whatever being that might control portals in the universe—”

“You think it’s hoping that you’ll save it again?” Anna said.

Toby shrugged.

Anna considered this. “I mean, it’s plausible. It’s pretty fucking conceited, but I mean, it does make a kind of sense.”

“Hey,” Toby said defensively. “It’s not like I’m stoked that I might have to save this world. I spent years looking for a portal back to it just in the hope that I might come back here and be, like, I don’t know, a fisherman or a blacksmith or something.”

Anna clicked her tongue and gave Toby a knowing look. “I mean, that sounds idyllic. And I’m sure it’s all fun and games until you cut yourself on a rusty nail or horseshoe or whatever. Or catch some disease that would ordinarily be easily cured by modern antibiotics.”

“Oh, don’t take the romance out of it, Anna,” Toby chided her.

Anna laughed. “Look, as theories go, it’s a pretty compelling one.”

Toby nodded. “It’d make sense. I mean, did you see the crowd after the King and Queen declared Duke Diddle was causing problems?”

Anna snorted at the name.

“They all seem to take it as given that the aristocracy are, and always have been, useless. More figureheads than actually helpful leaders of the land,” Toby said.

Anna nodded. “Yeah, it doesn’t seem like they were flush with options so far as saviors go, does it?”

Toby shook his head.

“How do you feel about it?” Anna asked.

“About what?”

“About being the potential savior. You know, the chosen one,” Anna said, managing to put quotation marks around the words without using her fingers.

Now it was Toby’s turn to laugh. “I don’t know. I wish I actually knew that that’s what was happening. Could all just be coincidence.”

“Could be an opportunity, though,” Anna pointed out.

“True. Opportunities and coincidences are often muddled up, aren’t they?” Toby said. “Sometimes something coincidental will happen, and you’ll blow it off as being just that. And then a week or a month later you’ll realize it was actually a door being opened by the universe, but you were just too dumb or too scared to step through it.”

“I’d say that we definitely weren’t too scared to step through this particular door,” Anna said, meaning the dryer.

“That’s right.”

“Might have been a little on the stupid side, though.”

“I prefer to label it as impulsive.”

Anna chuckled again, leaned in and rested her head on Toby’s shoulder. “You know, as wacky as this all is, I’m having fun.”

“Me too,” Toby admitted. “Amazing how it only takes stepping through the veil that divides space and time to shake one out of the everyday grind.”

“Yeah,” Anna deadpanned. “I can’t see why no one else is doing it.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Toby said. He put his arm around Anna and gave her a squeeze. He buried his nose in her brown hair for a moment. Then he murmured into the top of her head. “Come on, let’s get downstairs. Oswald will be waiting. He’s been pretty good putting us up like this. I don’t want to let him down.”

* * *

In payment for the lodging Oswald provided, Toby would help Old Cook in the kitchen. Anna would lend a hand to Oswald around the bar and in the taproom, cleaning up and taking orders from the locals.

Old Cook was an intriguing, mysterious, androgynous sort of a character. Even after being introduced to them, Toby wasn’t quite sure whether the rosy-faced chief of the Toby Jugs’ kitchens was a man or a woman.

Old Cook was round, although it might have been more accurate to say that Old Cook was made up of rounds. Their arms, legs, fingers, and face seemed to be made of circles squashed into different oval forms. Their eyes were lost in flabby folds. The Cook’s hair was a messy perm of bright orange that looked to be glued onto the top of the great round head. They also had two distinct sides to their personality.

Sometimes, these sides even had conversations with one another.

The personality that usually had the most control over the enormous spherical body was a kindly and amiable gastronome who took great pride in their work. The other side was a furious and fiery lunatic that would have made Gordon Ramsay look like a little bitty baby.

The cherry on the cake in all of this was that Old Cook also spoke with a heavy brogue, which was not Scottish precisely, but near enough to make no difference.

On that first evening, Toby wasn’t sure what to expect. When he and Anna got down, they found the taproom heaving.

“Everyone’s in the taproom discussing the royal proclamation,” Oswald Parsons said. “Anna, come with me. Toby, go through the back there and do whatever Old Cook needs you to do.”

What Old Cook needed Toby to do was grab an apron and pull down a much-stained cookbook from a shelf. There was no getting confused with what cookbook the rotund chef meant. There was only one.

“I need you to flip to the page I’ve marked as mutton stew,” Old Cook said.

Toby did so. “All right, I’m there.”

“Bloody smashing. Well, get to it then,” Old Cook said.

“Get to it?”

“Aye, get to it, lad.”

Toby looked at the pink figure.

“You’ve never cooked before?” Old Cook demanded.

“Yeah, I’ve cooked,” Toby replied. “Just not in these sorts of surroundings.”

“Shit, bugger and balls, we’re snowed under out there!” Old Cook exclaimed, with such vehemence that Toby took a step back.

Before he could answer, Old Cook said, in a far more relaxed tone. “Now, now, the lad might never have done this before. Let’s just talk him through it, nice and easy.”

The big cook lumbered over. They pointed at the mutton stew recipe. “All you have to do, lad, is read out what you need doing, and my knives and pots and pans will do as directed.”

Toby blinked up at the looming figure. His reward was a pat on the back that felt like he had just been whacked between the shoulder blades with a side of bacon.

“Just go through the method, step by step, lad,” Old Cook said again. “Read out the recipes from the book, and my highly tuned wizarding-supplied cookware will do the rest.”

They gave Toby a reassuring smile and then went back to glazing ten chickens with honey and herbs.

“He’s a good looking lad,” Toby thought he heard Old Cook mumble to themselves.

“Ah, your mind’s so dirty,” Old Cook shot back at themselves, “even a dog wouldn’t lay its ass down in there to crap in it.”

Toby did the smart thing and ignored this double outburst. He turned his attention back to the cookbook.

“Mutton stew,” he mused. “Mutton stew… Okay. Firstly, cut up onions, carrots and turn it into bite-sized chunks. Whoa!”

At once, a pair of knives levitated up from the large chopping board in front of him. A bunch of carrots and onions, as well as several large turnips, dumped down from Toby knew not where onto the chopping block. The knives got to work.

While they did this, Toby found a large cauldron and hung it, somewhat awkwardly, from a black hook.

“Whilst the vegetables are being chopped,” he read, “cut the mutton into bite-sized pieces and brown in a pot with the chopped onions.”

Just as the vegetables had started being prepared, so too did the meat find itself on the sharp end of a big knife. As Toby watched, amazed, the cleaver sliced the mutton into hunks. This all went into the cauldron that Toby had prepared. It started to sizzle at once.

Toby retrieved a long-handled wooden spoon from a rack and stirred the meat as it browned. He didn’t want it to catch and burn. He had to duck as a smaller chopping board holding the sliced onions flew over his head and dumped its contents into the cauldron.

It took only a minute or so for the smell of the frying onions and cooking meat to set Toby’s mouth to watering. The diced carrots, turnips, and barley then went into the cauldron.

“Next, pour in enough broth to cover everything,” Toby read.

A large jug wobbled up from where it had sat on a counter, cruised through the air, and emptied its contents into the cauldron. Apparently all the recipe then required was some salt, pepper, and woody herbs, which Toby found nearby and added manually to the mutton stew. The last thing he wanted was a sprig of rosemary through the ear hole.

Once he was done, which took surprisingly little time thanks to the magically automated process, Old Cook came over. Rather disconcertingly, the cook had one of their huge hands stuffed up the backside of a chicken.

“Cracking job!” Old Cook said. “We’ll let that simmer for a good couple of hours. In the meantime, why don’t you get started on the spiced ale? And after you’ve done that, you can make me up a dozen apple tarts. The punters go bloody bonkers for my apple tarts, and there’s enough of them out there that a dozen might well be not enough.”

Toby spent the rest of the evening working as a magically augmented line chef.

The stew went out after a couple of hours, but it was so popular that Oswald Parsons asked Old Cook and Toby to make up another batch.

Toby was able to eat as he worked. He appreciated this, as he hadn’t realized just how famished he’d been. It’d been a big day.

Anna was supplied with dinner too, though she could only stop in to scarf down mouthfuls at a time, as the bar was so busy.

The pair flopped into bed that evening, so exhausted from their work that Toby didn’t even have the time to entertain any delicious, lascivious dreams of what he and Anna might have done had they been less tired.

The next few days passed like this, while Toby and Anna waited for a sign or some clue as to what they were supposed to do next. Toby was in no rush. He was enjoying himself. The work in the tavern, especially using the magical cookbook, was enjoyable. It took all the strenuous, potentially monotonous manual labor out of cooking.

Anna was kept busy in the bar, learning how to make different drinks and getting used to the strange clientele. During the day, when times were quiet, she helped out around the inn cleaning and sorting out the few bed chambers that the Toby Jug offered to travelers.

One quiet evening, only a few days after they had arrived in Eclipsia, Toby was out front, behind the bar, helping himself to a tankard of mead. Anna was upstairs taking a rest. Oswald Parsons was out the back, selecting, with the help of Old Cook, which of the pigs would next find themselves playing the lead on the Toby Jug’s chalkboard menu.

The front door opened, and a man stepped in out of the rain. He was hooded and cloaked against the weather. His boots were covered in mud. His trousers were also spattered with grime, as if he had been riding hard.

The man pushed his hood back from his head and shook the dampness from his long brown hair. He looked over at Toby with a quizzical expression. “New here, are you?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Toby said. “Only started working a few days ago.”

“Makes sense,” the man said. “My name’s Bellingham. I’m a hunter by trade, and I’ve got a couple of fat does that I thought old Parsons might want for his menu.”

“I’m Toby,” Toby said. He held out a hand and Bellingham shook it. “Oswald’s out the back.”

“Ah, I’ll wait for him, then,” Bellingham said. “No harm in staying in the warm. I’ve been out for six days tracking deer and other game.”

“Drink?” Toby asked.

“I’ll have a hammer beer if you’ve got one.”

“You sure?” Toby asked. He’d been given a rundown of the drinks by Oswald, despite not strictly working behind the bar. Hammer beer had stayed in his memory due to its very apt name. One glass, Oswald had told him, would make a man feel like he’d just been hit in the head with a lump hammer—but in a good way.

“Yeah, good point,” Bellingham conceded. “I’ll need my wits for bartering with that devil Parsons. I’ll take a green imp, then.”

Toby got to making the drink. That was another one that had stuck in his mind, as it was the only drink that Toby had ever heard, either in this world or the one he’d come from, that was served in a tankard wrapped in a piece of ham.

Oswald hadn’t been able to explain why that was.

“So,” Bellingham said, “what brings you here?”

Toby fed him the same tale that he and Anna had told Oswald, about them being traveling storytellers from a distant land.

Bellingham nodded as he drank deeply from his tankard.

“You and your friend,” he said, after Toby had finished spinning his yarn. “What is it that brought you to Eclipsia’s capital?”

“Neither of us are sure yet,” Toby said truthfully.

Bellingham grunted once more.

Toby was called away then to serve a couple of halflings who were after some true dwarven stout. It was a strong drink, not recommended for those who couldn’t handle their booze. However, halflings, small as they might be, were true booze artists. The dwarven stout was served in a special cup that was cut out of rock. It was so thick that you could stand a teaspoon in it.

Once Toby had taken the halflings’ money, and they’d wandered off to a table, he returned to Bellingham.

“So,” Bellingham said, “if you’re not sure why you’re here, what’s keeping you here? You’ve the look of a man who’s searching, pining for answers to some question he might not even know yet.”

Toby blinked. “You’re pretty astute.”

“I’m a hunter. It’s part of the trade,” Bellingham replied.

“I suppose we’re waiting for a sign,” Toby said. He let out a short laugh. “That sounds uncertain, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Bellingham replied.

“But it’s the best way I can explain how I feel in the pit of my stomach.”

“I know that feeling right enough. Feels like you’re almost caught between who you were and who you’re meant to be, is that right?”

“Yeah, that is right,” Toby said. “That’s right on the money, actually.”

“Well, if you’d allow me to offer you a bit of advice?”

“By all means.”

“When I was in that predicament, when I was trying to figure out the next step in my life’s journey,” Bellingham said, waxing slightly lyrical as he drank deeper from his tankard, “I went in search of a wizard.”

“A wizard? “

“That’s right, a wizard.”

“Why’s that?” Toby asked.

“Well, because anyone who wants to know anything about anything, or anything about what’s going on, usually seeks out some sort of magical being to help them divine some meaning from the tangled ball of yarn that life usually feels like.”

Toby had to run that through his head a couple of times before it did. “Right. So you’re thinking I should seek out a seer or someone similar?”

“Yeah, that would be the way,” Bellingham agreed, belching. “A seer is always good. Nice and clear and precise, your average seer. Shame there’s not any of them about anymore, really.”

The excitement that Toby felt faded in his chest. “Then what would you suggest?”

“Fill up that tankard, Toby, mate, and I’ll tell you,” Bellingham said.

Toby did so.

“The closest we’ve got to a seer in these parts is old What’s-His-Face.” Bellingham snapped his fingers a couple of times. “Ah, that’s it. Rowan Moonshroud. That’s the boy.”

“He’s certainly got a wizardly name,” Toby said.

Bellingham gave him a penetrating look. “Yeah, he’s got a wizardly name to him, alright. Closest thing we’ve got to a credible or helpful magical being close to Eclipsia, really. Definitely the most accessible one, that’s for sure.”

“Where can I find this Rowan Moonshroud? Is he in town?”

“Nah, wizards are outlawed from living in town. Ever since the Great Dragon Fire. Nah, you can find old Rowan along the east road that leads into the Feywood. His hovel is about four miles down the east road where a track turns off by a pool. Down that track aways, not more than a mile, you’ll find his place. You can’t miss it.”

“Are you sure that you can’t miss it? My friend and I, as I’ve told you, aren’t familiar with the landscape around here. I’d hate for us to get lost.”

“Well, let me put it like this, mate,” Bellingham said, raising his tankard in a silent cheers. “You’ll be doing bloody well to miss Rowan Moonshrouds abode.”

“Why’s that?” Toby asked.

“Because that wizard lives in a giant mushroom.”

8

“So, you’re telling me that this Rowan Moonshroud lives in a giant mushroom?”

“That’s right,” Toby said.

Anna patted tugged at her auburn ponytail. A sure sign that she was trying to get her mind to accept something quite unacceptable.

“Like an actual giant mushroom?” Anna asked.

“Yep.”

“‘Mushroom’ isn’t a colloquial term for some kind of cottage or something they have here?”

“No, lass,” Oswald Parson assured her. “Wizards are well known for taking up their abodes in unlikely sounding places. It’s part of the trade. Advertising. The more peculiar a wizard’s home the less tied to the realms of the real he’s thought to be and, therefore, the better he’s thought to be at the arcane arts. Don’t ask me why.”

Toby, Anna, and Oswald were out back in the kitchen of the Toby Jug. One of Oswald’s barmaids was holding fort at the bar. It was late at night and only the most seasoned and determined drinkers were still in residence. Toby could hear a bawdy tavern song being sung or, more accurately, slurred with great enthusiasm.

“Now the lads at the bar they’re a damn rowdy lot,

With tales of their conquests, they’ll boast and talk rot,

but the lass in the corner, she’s the one to beware,

for she’ll steal a lad’s virginity with a toss of her hair!”

Toby, Anna, and Oswald were picking over a platter that had been left out for them by Old Cook. There were cold meats, homemade cheeses, and crusty bread, alongside some extremely tasty pickled vegetables.

“I don’t know why you’re looking so disbelieving, Anna,” Oswald said.

“You don’t know why I’m looking so disbelieving at the information that a grown man lives inside a giant fungus?” Anna said. “Really?”

“Aye,” Oswald replied. “Why when I was a lad back east, near where my parents farmed griffons, there was an old woman who lived in a sandal.”

Toby looked at him. “Don’t you mean she lived in a shoe?”

“No, no it was a sandal,” Oswald said vehemently. “Now, admittedly, she was fair cracked in the head even for a witch, nicely addled with all the bathtub rum she was brewing and consuming. She always complained that when it rained she got leaks something fierce.”

Anna looked at Toby. Toby looked at Oswald.

“And she was surprised that she was letting the rain in, living in a sandal?” Toby asked. “As far as weatherproof footwear goes, a sandal seems to make the least sense.”

“Like I said,” Oswald replied, “she was cracked. Naught under that pointy hat other than hair many said—and not even much of that with her habit of accidentally setting it alight.”

Toby looked over at the two deer carcasses hanging in one corner of the large kitchen. He had helped Old Cook to gut and skin them. He still had dried blood under his fingernails. “So do you think Bellingham had a point?” he asked the landlord. “Do you think it’s worth going to see this Rowan Moonshroud?”

Oswald picked a piece of gristle from between his teeth. He shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Can’t hurt to go and talk to the man. Might be that, as a wizard, he has the answers. Might also be that those aren’t the answers to the questions you asked, too. They’re a different breed of thinkers, wizards.”

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

“Well, you see, the thing is,” Oswald said thoughtfully, “wizards used to be very important folk. Then, just a little over two decades ago, they sort of lost their use.”

“Lost their use?” Toby asked.

“Aye,” the landlord said. He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out a long-stemmed churchwarden pipe made of clay. “They suddenly found themselves going from prominent and relied-upon members of society to being somewhat… What’s the word?”

“Superfluous?” Toby suggested.

“Aye, that’s the one,” the landlord said, pointing his filled pipe at Toby. “Superfluous.” He rolled the word around his tongue like the finest brandy. “You’ve clearly had some schooling. Nice gold-plated word that, Toby.”

“Thanks,” Toby said.

“See, the mind of your average wizard needs to be kept ticking over,” the landlord said. “They’re not good at being idle, not good at retirement sort of thing. So you can imagine how they felt since they were no longer needed.”

“They didn’t like not being the center of attention?” Anna said.

“Oh, I don’t think it was a case of their pride giving them ideas above their station or anything like that,” Oswald said. “It was just that they had been utilized by the king and queen and their councilors and relied upon heavily. Then, what with the sudden expulsion of Duke Diddle and his minions by that young lad whom you share the name with, Toby—”

Anna glanced at Toby.

“—the wizards found themselves at somewhat of a loose end,” Oswald finished.

“So what have they been doing in the meantime?” Toby asked.

Oswald walked to the hearth so that he could pick up an ember with the tongs and light his pipe with it. “Mostly a specialized branch of brewing.”

“They went from solving the kingdom’s problems via magic to brewing potions,” Toby asked, surprised.

“No, not potions, Toby. Booze.”

“Beer?”

“Well, if you want to call it that,” Oswald said, in the tone of a man who took great pride in the art of brewing and wasn’t about to concede that wizards could even come close to what he considered a good pint. “Personally, the brews they whip up aren’t exactly for your average consumer. I’d certainly never consider putting any of the stuff they ingest on tap in here.”

“Why not?” Anna asked.

“Well, having your customers levitating unexpectedly or shrinking down to one-eighth of their previous size is bad for business.”

“Are you telling us that we shouldn’t accept any offer of food or drink?” Toby said.

“I’d be very careful accepting anything edible or, more pertinently, drinkable from a wizard,” Oswald said firmly.

Anna looked at Toby. “What do you reckon, Tobes?”

Toby swallowed the mouthful of ham he had been chewing on. “Personally, I’m still intrigued.”

“I thought you would be,” Anna said.

“I mean, come on, how often in life do you get to go and visit a man who lives in a giant mushroom?”

“Yeah, that’s a fair point,” Anna conceded. “It’s definitely not something I’ve done before.”

Toby looked at Oswald. “Is there any chance you can spare us for a couple of days, Oswald? I feel a bit shameless asking for vacation time, seeing as we’ve only been here for a few days, but I’ve got a feeling it might be important.”

“No, that’s not a problem, lad,” Oswald said good-naturedly. “Betty’s got a cousin visiting, and I know he wouldn’t mind a bit of work. I can make do for a few days.”

“Awesome,” Toby said. “I appreciate it.”

Oswald heaved himself to his feet, wiping his hands on his apron. “Well, I better go and kick the last of these sozzled fools out and send them back to their wives and their homes,” he said, nodding in the direction of the door that led to the bar. “If the pair of you head out first thing tomorrow morning, I’ll make sure Old Cook leaves you some provisions to take with you.”

Toby held out his hand. “You’re a good man, Oswald Parson.”

“Don’t I know it,” Oswald said, and he shook Toby’s hand.

9

The following morning saw Toby and Anna strolling along the dirt road that led out of Stagbreach and into the wooded country that surrounded it. Anna hummed and sung snatched words of a tavern song from the night before.

“So here’s to the tavern and the friends that we find,

by the warmth of the fire with a brew of the best kind.

We’ll laugh and we’ll sing till the break of day,

in the bawdy, rowdy taverny way.”

It was an enchanting morning. Toby and Anna had left the pungent smells of wood smoke, baking bread, and recently removed night soil behind them. These had been replaced by the scent of leaf mold, flowers, and damp grass.

It hadn’t taken them long until they found themselves once more amidst rolling hills and verdant meadows. There was only one road, and it had been easy enough to find and follow. Thickets of ancient oak trees with delicate wildflowers swaying around their knees bordered the road. Insects hummed. Birds fluttered and sang out to their prospective mates.

But it wasn’t just natural beauty. There was also supernatural beauty on display.

Pixies flitted about amongst the branches of the trees. Their iridescent wings shimmered in the dappled sunlight as they chattered playfully to one another, pulling raspberries and making rude faces at Toby and Anna as they passed. Strange looking magical plants lined the roadside. Their vibrant colors and unusual shapes hinted to Toby of hidden powers and arcane properties. Some emitted soft supernatural glows from where they gathered in the mossy green shadows amongst the arching roots of the trees.

Toby had a pack slung across his shoulders. Inside were water skins, a variety of foodstuffs that had been tied up in a cloth by Old Cook, a large hunting knife, and a flint and tinder. There are also blankets tied to the front of the pack.

“Shouldn’t be much chance of being waylaid by bandits so close to Stagbreach,” Old Cook had told Toby and Anna as they picked up the pack. “But Oswald told me to add a knife in there just in case.”

“A knife?” Toby had asked.

“Better to be armed and not need it than not have something sharp and pointy and want it,” Old Cook said. “Now, be off with you. I’ve got scones to bake.”

Toby kept his eyes peeled for a track turning off the main road. As they walked along at a leisurely pace, the Feywood closed in closer and closer around them. It wasn’t an intimidating forest, but Toby got the distinct impression that there were secrets aplenty to be found in its depths should one get the urge to go exploring.

“There it is,” Toby said, pointing ahead of them. There was a distinct fork in the track. The main road ran onwards, but the path that Toby had spotted was far less used. Branches overhung the entrance to the pathway in a seemingly natural arch.

“Down here?” Anna asked.

“That’s what Bellingham made it sound like,” Toby said.

The pair took a quick break, ate some bread and meat, and then continued on their way. A confused-looking owl with bright blue feathers peered down at them from a lofty branch as they headed down the hunting track.

“Hoot, hoot,” it said.

“That’s weird,” Toby said.

“What, an owl in the daytime?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, that, but also the fact that it said hoot, hoot. It didn’t actually make a hooting sound.”

Anna frowned and looked back up at the owl. It saw her watching it and made its head revolve in a slightly off-putting three-sixty.

“Hoot, hoot,” it repeated.

They walked on.

“So,” Anna said, “what do you think this guy’s going to be like?”

“The wizard?”

“Yeah, Rowan Moonshroud. What do you think he’s going to be like?”

Toby noticed that Anna’s voice had fallen to little more than a hushed whisper, as if she was speaking in some sacred place. He noticed that he’d done the same.

“I can’t help but think he’s going to be some grand and wise and selfless old guy with a big flowing silver beard,” Toby replied. “Something along those lines, you know? But from what we’ve heard from others, it sounds like the wizards are now loose cannons.”

Anna nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve certainly learned that any expectations I’ve had in this place are likely to be turned on their head.”

Toby snorted with mirth. “That’s one way of putting it. I guess we’ll see what we see.”

They walked for maybe half a mile more when, suddenly, the peaceful quietude of the forest was disturbed by what sounded like a muffled explosion. Toby and Anna pulled up short. Toby felt every muscle in his body tense up as adrenaline flooded him.

“What the hell was that?” Anna asked.

“Sounded like something blowing up,” Toby said.

There was a squawking overhead as a number of ravens took flight from the branches they had been hanging out on.

“Oh, look,” Anna said with sarcastic brightness, “a murder of ravens. If that’s not foreboding, I don’t know what is.”

“No, ravens in a group aren’t called a murder. That’s crows,” Toby pointed out.

“What are ravens, then?” Anna asked.

Toby gave her a tight smile. “An unkindness.”

“Oh yeah, that’s a lot better,” Anna replied dryly.

Moving cautiously, they rounded a natural curving corridor of vegetation and found themselves stepping out into the outskirts of a glade. As one, they pulled up and stared.

“Right, well, this would be the place then,” Toby said.

“The giant toadstool house?” Anna replied.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

The mushroom house looked exactly as Toby might have expected it to. It was so bizarre, so ridiculous that it almost appeared to be a giant prop in a movie production. The roof had gills underneath, just like a real mushroom cap, and it was red with white dots. The stalk, which made up the main part of the house, was a dirty white color.

He needs to get a pressure washer on that, Toby found himself thinking.

Anna was standing stock-still, like a wild thing that had heard the crunch of a hunter’s boot. Toby knew why that was.

Someone stood in the overgrown garden in front of the mushroom house. He was tall and spindly, and he was flapping and twirling in what might have been a dance, had it not been for the fact that Toby could see he was trying to beat out one smoldering hem of his bright blue robes. The robes twinkled and flashed in places that caught the sun. Its surface was covered in intricate swirling patterns of embroidered stars and crescent moons.

Toby squared his shoulders and hitched his most genial smile onto his face. He turned to Anna. “Let’s go and talk to our very first wizard.”

“Yet another sentence I never thought I’d hear while dead sober,” Anna said in a low voice.

Toby grinned and led the way towards Rowan Moonshroud.

The wizard’s head jerked up as he heard them approaching. Unkempt hair, a riot of unruly curls the color of midnight, framed a weathered face etched with lines and besmirched with soot. Rowan Moonshroud’s eyes, one a murky brown and the other a deep azure blue, pinned them and actually caused them to stop in their tracks when they were about ten paces away. They shimmered with something that might have been arcane energy and hinted at a keen intelligence tempered by a special brand of mischievous cunning.

If Toby had been asked to supply one word to describe Rowan Moonshroud at first glance, he would have opted for ‘crackpot’.

“Ah,” Moonshroud said in a high, cracked voice, as if he hadn’t spoken to anyone for quite some time. “Aha! Yes, I’ve been expecting you.”

This was a sufficiently portentous declaration to make Toby glance nervously at Anna. Then he looked back at the wizard and said, “You were?”

“Yes,” the wizard said in a forthright manner. “I haven’t had any post for weeks.”

Toby blinked. He felt himself relax slightly. “We’re not the mailman.”

“Or mailwoman,” Anna added.

“You’re not?” the wizard replied.

“No,” Toby said. “We’re here to ask you some questions. Some people back in Stagbreach told us that you might be able to help us untangle why we’re here.”

“You want me to decipher why you’ve come to visit me?” Rowan Moonshroud asked.

“That’s right,” Anna said.

“That seems very illogical, seeing as you’ve brought yourselves here,” Moonshroud grumbled. “But I suppose that, now you are here, you may as well come in.”

Toby looked over the wizard’s shoulder. There was smoke seeping slowly from out of one of the windows, which had been thrown wide.

The wizard looked around and saw where Toby was looking. He turned back. “Oh don’t worry about that. Just a minor explosion.”

“Oh, brilliant,” Toby said. “Just a minor one.”

“Nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry you,” the wizard said. “It often happens when a mage of my standing is dabbling in the occult craft. That’s why we wear fireproof robes, you know.”

Toby looked pointedly at the hem of the wizard’s blue robe. It was still smoldering. The wizard looked down. He cursed and patted the spot until all the smoke had desisted.

“Yes, well. I’m a little behind in the washing.” He started walking towards the front door of the mushroom house. “Now, you better come inside and tell me what all this is about.”

Toby and Anna followed behind him.

The wizard looked over his shoulder. “It’s a shame about the mail, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Toby said.

“Not your fault, not your fault,” the wizard said graciously, flapping a hand at him. “It’s just that I always find it gratifying to be reminded that one exists. All too easy, I find these days, to forget that one does. To get swept up in the notion that one might very well be the summation of everything and everyone that came before—and if that’s the case, perhaps, we’re little more than a shared consciousness of the world itself. Just drifting aimlessly in these collections of particles that we call bodies…”

“I think I’ve had one of those kinds of existence questioning hangovers,” Toby whispered to Anna.

“Anyway,” the wizard yelled, “come on in, come on in. Drink?”

10

The inside of Rowan Moonshroud’s mushroom house was the very epitome of organized chaos. It was a dizzying kaleidoscope of colors and light, every surface adorned with occult paraphernalia.

The walls of the mushroom were lined with shelves and alcoves, each overflowing with ancient-looking tomes bound in leather, hide, and, in some cases, leaves. Some of the covers were illuminated with intricate sigils and runes. Most of them were covered in a thick layer of dust. Jars of curious ingredients hung from the ceiling beams or lined the shelves that rose all the way to the roof. Their contents ranged from dried herbs, exotically colored powders, shimmering crystals, or iridescent feathers.

Doors led out from the one main living space. In the center of the chamber stood a massive cauldron. Its cast-iron surface was blackened with age and stained with the remnants of countless magical brews. Yellow steam rose from the bubbling concoction within, filling the air with a heady aroma of herbs, chemicals, and, bizarrely, takeaway Indian food.

Around the cauldron, tables and workbenches were scattered haphazardly. There were a few squashy armchairs arranged in a higgledy-piggledy fashion. All in all, the furniture was placed in a vaguely concentric circle surrounding the cauldron and looked to have been pushed back, if the scratch marks on the stone-flagged floor were any indication, by the explosion that they had heard out in the woods.

The surfaces of the workbenches were cluttered with vials and beakers filled with mysterious liquids and powders. Some of these had been recently smashed by the blast.

Toby looked around. Strange contraptions of brass and glass hung from the ceiling, whirring with an energy which he was fairly sure didn’t come from electricity. The floor was strewn with loose bits of parchment, reeds, and several dead squirrels.

At the rear of the room, a spiral staircase wound its way up to the floor above. The color and light that dazzled Toby’s eyes when he first stepped into the wizard’s home came from several orbs and crystal spheres dotted around the room. They refracted the light streaming in through the windows.

Rowan Moonshroud’s home oozed magic and wonder. It was a testament to a mind filled with boundless curiosity and an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

As well as an insatiable thirst for drink, Toby found himself thinking.

Anna was gazing around, dumbfounded, too.

“Everything all right, my dear?” Rowan Moonshroud said in an obsequious voice.

Anna pointed at the staircase. “Where does that lead?”

“Oh, that goes up to my uranography tower,” the wizard replied casually.

“You pee up there?” Anna asked.

“What? No! Not a urinegraphy tower, a uranography tower,” Moonshroud replied. “A place where I map the celestial bodies.”

“But… there’s no tower on the top of your house,” Anna pointed out.

“Oh, that’s just your point of view, isn’t it?” Rowan Moonshroud replied airily. “It’s just a quirk of the old arcane architecture. Nothing to bother your head about. After all, if we could only make use of the things we could see we’d never get anything done.”

Toby took this chance to nod in the direction of the fireplace. “There wasn’t a chimney either,” he said.

“No, no, like I say, just more arcane architecture,” Moonshroud replied. “Saves a lot of money with builders, let me tell you. Not that this place cost me anything. I grew it from a spore, you know. Now, please take a seat. Will you take something to eat or drink?”

Toby shook his head. “Thanks, but we ate shortly before arriving.”

“Surely some libations then,” Rowan Moonshroud said.

Toby once more shook his head. “We’ve got water, thanks.”

“Suit yourself, suit yourself, but I’ve got some rather excellent bog grog in a jar over there.”

“I’ll pass thanks,” Anna said kindly. “Sounds delicious, though.”

“Oh, don’t let the name fool you,” Rowan Moonshroud said. “The stuff tastes awful, but it does give an amazing buzz.”

“We want to keep a grasp on our faculties, just until we have a few things ironed out,” Toby said.

“Fair enough, fair enough. Yes, good thinking,” Moonshroud replied. “You don’t mind if I partake, though, do you?”

“Not at all,” Toby said. “Go for it.”

While Toby and Anna seated themselves in the mismatched armchairs, Moonshroud poured himself a generous measure of the bog grog. He then sat down opposite them, crossed one leg over the other, and took a pull on his horn cup. He smacked his lips appreciatively.

“Ah, tastes like a demon’s jockstrap. But sometimes that’s what a wizard needs to clear the cobwebs. Now, who are you? I think that would be a prudent place to start.”

“This is Anna Coombes,” Toby said. “And my name is Toby Adams.”

The wizard spat out a spray of bog grog. The fine misting of droplets hung in the air for a moment, forming a bright multi-hued rainbow of green. “Toby Adams?”

“That’s right,” Toby said.

“Curious. Most curious.”

“What’s curious about it?”

“Well, that’s the exact same name that the much-lauded young lad who cleansed this part of Eclipsia from the diabolical machinations of Duke Diddle had.”

Toby nodded. “There’s a reason for that. I’m that Toby Adams. The original one.”

Midway through a swig, the wizard gaped, and he made a strange gurgling sound, like water trying to get down a blocked sink. He whacked himself in the middle of his concave chest with a fist and then let out a belch. Eyes streaming, he managed to choke out, “You are Toby Adams?”

“He is,” Anna said.

“I am,” Toby said.

The wizard sat back in his seat. “Amazing. This is quite a surprise, I say.”

“Yes,” Toby said. “That’s why we haven’t actually told anyone that I’m the young lad—or was the young lad, I suppose.”

If he were being honest with himself, Toby was more than a little uncomfortable about the whole ‘him having previously saved the kingdom’ thing. It was partly why he hadn’t said anything at all to Oswald, despite the man being someone that Toby felt he could implicitly trust. It was as if, if he voiced the admission he would then be expected in some way to help the kingdom out of its current plight. As he still had no recollection how he had done it the first time as a small boy, he thought getting involved again would be asking for trouble.

“You’re telling me that you haven’t divulged to a single person that you are this revered boy returned to our world?” the wizard asked.

Toby shook his head. “Not yet.”

As Rowan Moonshroud took another gulp of his bog grog, Toby thought he saw a shimmer of distrust in the cunning eyes.

“You know, Toby Adams, that this is a very bold claim,” he said.

“It’s not a claim,” Anna said, leaning forward in her chair. “It’s the truth. The truth doesn’t stop being the truth just because some people might not want to believe it, or might be more inclined to ignore it.”

“Oh, that is a lovely sentiment,” Rowan Moonshroud said. “But in the real world, young lady, I think you’ll find that there is no truth, only the interpretations people make from the things other people say.”

“That’s a bit cynical,” Anna said.

“Perhaps. But, then again, this is a cynical existence of ours, don’t you think?”

Toby puffed out his cheeks. “I always found being slightly more optimistic makes life a little bit more bearable.”

“That is so,” the wizard replied, “but with a claim of this magnitude, it would be a rash man, indeed, even a rash wizard, to jump on it like a pixie on a dung beetle.”

Toby didn’t quite understand the reference, but he perceived what the wizard was getting at. “So, you don’t believe me?”

“It’s not a case of whether I believe you or not,” the wizard said. “What we need in a case like this is proof.”

Toby frowned. “Where there should have been underwear, we found a portal into Eclipsia. I don’t see what other proof is necessary.”

Now it was Rowan Moonshroud’s turn to frown. “That is an extremely ambiguous and intriguing statement, but it still doesn’t prove anything. Before I deign to try and help you unravel the mystery of why you have been brought here—which is, I assume, the reason you came to visit me?”

“It is,” Toby said.

“Well, in that case, before I can begin to unravel this mystery, or at least help you do so,” the wizard went on, “I think it would only be judicious of me to try and ascertain some verification of your credentials.”

Toby let out a little noise of annoyance. “Well, the portal closed behind us. We have our old clothes from our previous world, but, realistically, if we wanted to go down the slightly more pessimistic route, any tailor in Stagbreach could probably put together clothes to that design.”

Rowan Moonshroud let out a soft belch and nodded. “There are some extremely gifted seamstresses in Stagbreach. Garments alone would not suffice.”

“Well, then, how can we prove to you that Toby is who he says he is?” Anna asked.

Rowan Moonshroud made a show of considering this. His black brows contorted into a V of almost over-the-top rumination. “A feat of daring and skill is usual in times such as this. If you really are the boy grown, the one who helped banish Duke Diddle, you must be possessed of some extraordinary powers of some kind. Tell me, are you able to explain to me how—?”

Toby shook his head and cut him off. “I can’t remember much of anything about what happened when I was previously here. I’ve got some sort of memory block or something. All I remember is coming here, having a general sense of what the land was like, of what I saw. Of being awed and excited to be here. But so far as how I helped banish this Duke Diddle guy, I have no idea. That’s the main reason we came to see you. We were told a wizard might be able to give us some insight.”

“That is problematic,” Moonshroud said.

He got to his feet and walked over to the jar in which the bog grog was stored. He poured himself another generous measure. He came and sat back down. Toby and Anna eyed the wizard while he regarded Toby.

“Shouldn’t a wizard have a beard?” Anna said, breaking the heavy, thoughtful silence.

“Pardon me?” Moonshroud said.

“A beard,” Anna said. “I thought all wizards had beards.”

“We used to,” Rowan Moonshroud said. “But after the fall of Duke Diddle, and our subsequent segue into the art of magical brewing, it turned out that beards were somewhat of a fire hazard.”

“Well then,” Toby prompted, before they could get sidetracked. “How are we going to get past this little impasse?”

“I think that tradition will be our savior here,” Moonshroud said.

“Tradition?” Toby asked.

“A quest,” the wizard explained. “I think if you were to go on a quest, that might go some little way into proving you are who you say you are.”

Toby nodded, but said nothing.

Moonshroud narrowed his mismatched eyes. “There is a palpable aura around you, Toby Adams,” he said. “You might not have the vision to see it, but there is something special about you.”

“See?” Anna said teasingly. “I told you that you were a chosen one.”

“Bah, a chosen one,” Moonshroud said contemptuously. “Don’t get me started on chosen ones. They’re a silver a score these days.”

Must be like a dime a dozen, Toby thought.

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

“I had a lad come visit me about six months back, younger than you, by some way,” the wizard said. “He had a scar on his head—not through his eyebrow like you, but across his forehead. It was shaped like a bolt—”

“Of lightning?” Anna asked eagerly.

“No, like a bolt,” Moonshroud said, frowning slightly. “The thing that a smith might connect a nut to.”

“Oh,” Anna said, looking a trifle disappointed.

“Anyway, this young fellow seemed to think that this in some way made him special,” the wizard went on. “He went out searching for the artifact I have in mind to send you after, and he was never seen from again.”

“That’s encouraging,” Toby said dryly.

“He did not have the same palpable aura of mysticism that surrounds you,” Moonshroud said. “He was just a young buck looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, a way to get free drinks in his tavern of choice, and an invitation into the skirts of any gullible young woman he might come across in the pub he was getting them in.”

Toby raised his eyebrows.

“I think that if you were to accomplish the mission I have the mind to send you out on, it might go some way to backing up your claim,” Moonshroud said.

Toby sighed. “All right, then. I’m always game to try something new. What did you have in mind? What’s this artifact you want me to get my hands on?”

The wizard gave an expansive shrug. “It’s a thing of little consequence, really. A bird. A carrier pigeon, in fact.”

Toby frowned. “You want me to go out and risk my life to try and get back a carrier pigeon? What’s it got? Some sort of spell scroll strapped to its leg?”

“No,” the wizard replied blandly. “It’s just a favorite pet of mine, you could say.”

Toby was a pretty astute man, and he noticed a gleam of avarice in the mismatched eyes of the wizard. He didn’t entirely trust that, but he said nothing.

“Go on,” he said.

“There is a crooked tower in the depths of the forest. A couple of days walk from here,” Moonshroud said.

Toby could not shake the impression that the wizard was playing this job down somehow. “And the carrier pigeon is at the top of this tower? How do you know?”

“I have seen it in my scrying plate,” the wizard said.

“Then why don’t you go and get it?” Anna asked.

The wizard scoffed at that. “An arcane practitioner with a reputation as impressive as mine does not go risking his life on such an errand. If I was to perish, a whole host of brewing knowledge would die with me. Not to mention a load of potentially world-saving magical spells. It would be remiss of me to risk that for the sake of the kingdom.”

“Right,” Anna said.

“If you’re willing,” Moonshroud went on, “I will draw you a simple map. The tower is not overly hard to find.”

“And when we get there, we just pick up this bird and bring it back?” Toby asked.

“That’s right.” Moonshroud replied. “I will furnish you with a specialized fold-out cage for the capture. I implore you not to try and handle the bird, skin to feathers.”

“Why?” Toby asked.

The wizard’s eyes flicked back down to his beaker of bog grog. He swirled the liquid pensively. A faint green steam came up out of the cup. It smelled strongly of body odor.

“This carrier pigeon is precious to me,” he said casually. “I would not want any harm to come to it. Or to you.”

“To us?” Toby said, surprised.

The wizard seemed to realize what he’d said. “It pecks. Very prone to pecking, this bird. I wouldn’t want you to lose a finger or anything.”

Toby looked at Anna. He could tell that his best friend didn’t trust the wizard either. Still, it seemed to Toby like they had little choice if they wanted Rowan Moonshroud’s help in deciphering Toby’s past, and in doing that, his future.

Besides, Toby thought, this is a quest in a fantastical land. I can’t turn it down. I’d never forgive myself. I’d always be wondering what if.

“Fine,” Toby said. “You have yourself a deal.”

“Excellent!” The wizard sprang to his feet, knocked back the last of his bog grog, let out another fragrant belch, and then hurried over to a corner. “You’ll need a few supplies, as well as the map.”

“We have food and water that should last us there and back,” Toby said.

“I was thinking more along the lines of… this,” Rowan Moonshroud said.

He finished rummaging in a basket that looked to contain a whole host of staffs or walking sticks. From out of the jumble, he pulled a scabbarded sword.

“What’s that for?” Toby asked.

The wizard gave him a quizzical look. “For fighting with, of course.”

“Yeah, right. Sorry. Silly question,” Toby said.

“No such thing as a silly question,” the wizard said.

Now that Toby had elected to take on this quest, Rowan Moonshroud seemed imbued with new enthusiasm.

“Now, I’m thinking out loud here,” Moonshroud said, “but it seems remiss of me not to reward you in some other way, except for the knowledge you seek, if you manage to bring my beloved carrier pigeon home to me. So, to show my gratitude, I would like to offer you one of my homes in Stagbreach too.”

“A house?” Toby said, amazed.

“I own a number of properties in the township,” Moonshroud said in a flippant voice that stung the perpetual New York renter in Toby. “Most of them are rented out, but this one isn’t. I don’t see any harm in letting you take up residence there, as a little sweetener to this deal of ours.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Toby said graciously.

Moonshroud made his unsteady way across the debris-strewn floor and handed the scabbarded sword to Toby.

“Now, don’t go losing that damn thing,” the wizard said. “It’s a good one. Able to be enchanted, don’t you know? If only I could find the stupid jewel that needs to be set into the pommel. I know it’s around here somewhere.”

“Any advice on how to use it?” Toby asked.

“Yes,” the wizard said. “Don’t try to use it for eating. Last person I lent it to, a barbarian dressed in furs that, judging by the smell of the man, he hadn’t cleaned all the messy parts of the animals out from, tried to act tough in an inn, apparently. He went to eat his supper off the point. Ended up stabbing himself right through the head.”

Anna made a face.

Toby said, “What the hell was he trying to eat off the end? Peas?”

“No,” the wizard replied, with just a trace of disappointment in his tone. “Soup. Barbarians are, on the whole, known for their brawn, but their brains… not so much.”

With only a little fumbling, Toby was able to secure the sword scabbard to the belt around his waist. Although it felt entirely alien, he couldn’t help but feel just a little delighted. He was, in the privacy of his own head, getting to accessorize himself in a way that all small boys wish to from about the age of five.

Rowan Moonshroud hastily drew up a rough map on a piece of parchment with a bit of charcoal.

“You simply follow the track that led you here further into the wood,” he explained as he passed the map to Toby. “You’ll see that I’ve marked a number of naturally occurring road signs, as it were. You come to a couple of forks, but so long as you take the turns as I’ve listed them here, you can’t get lost.”

With his mismatched eyes shining with excitement, Rowan Moonshroud ushered Toby and Anna out of his mushroom house. He had furnished them with more food, which looked mundane, but Toby made a point to separate it in the bag, just in case it reacted with Old Cook’s provisions and spontaneously combusted or something.

“Now,” Moonshroud said eagerly, “once you have your hands on the carrier pigeon, get back here as soon as you can with it in its cage.”

“And once we get back, you’ll fill me in on the missing piece of my past and tell me what I might be doing here? That’s right, isn’t it?” Toby said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the wizard said hurriedly. “Anything you like, my good man. Just bring me back that bird.”

Toby hoisted his pack onto his shoulder. “All right. Consider it done.”

“Splendid, splendid,” Moonshroud said. “Well, good luck to the pair of you.”

Toby and Anna walked from the path that led from the wizard’s front door back to the track. They took the right rather than the left that would have taken them back to the main road.

“Do you trust that guy?” Anna said under her breath.

“Not as far as I can throw him,” Toby replied. “But if we want answers, we should try and do what he’s tasked us to. We’re just collecting a carrier pigeon from an old abandoned tower in the middle of an enchanted forest. It’s like popping down to the corner store for a loaf of bread, isn’t it? What could possibly go wrong, really?”

Anna gave him a look.

“Yeah,” Toby said with a small grin. “Better not answer that one.”

11

The two-day journey through the Feywood passed more or less without incident.

There was only really one path to follow, despite it petering out in places only to re-establish itself further along. Also, the wizard’s map was simple, clear, and concise.

On their first evening under the boughs of the Feywood, Toby impressed Anna by lighting a fire using the flint and tinder in their pack. As a self-confessed addict of Bear Grylls, he drew a lot of satisfaction at how he’d gotten the blaze going more quickly than he had anticipated.

“Who would have thought a city boy like you could be such a Davy Crockett?” Anna teased as they sat around and enjoyed the warmth of the fire.

“Hey, what can I say?” Toby said. “I’ve spent a lot of time procrastinating on YouTube.”

“Just like our forefathers of old,” Anna said.

They laughed. They ate and then went to sleep after. Toby had built up the fire. Before he closed his eyes and sleep claimed him, Toby saw a number of eyes peering at them from out of the dark. He was unnerved at first, but the eyes seemed uninterested in bothering them. Still, he slept with one hand resting on the sword that he lay down beside them.

In the morning they carried on, following the map as they had done on the previous day. They made a point of walking quickly. Toby was aware that they had limited food, and the last thing he wanted to do was spend time foraging or hunting. For one, as a New York city boy, he had very limited experience with hunting, unless it was scavenging for kebabs at three o’clock in the morning.

As for foraging, he wasn’t confident in identifying mushrooms or other edible plant life in his own world, let alone this alien one.

In the late afternoon, the weather took a turn for the worse. Thunder grumbled in the lowering clouds overhead. Typically, the forest of the Feywood was thick, but its canopy was also thin in spots, allowing the rain to reach them easily when it finally arrived.

Toby had his broad, brimmed hat on to keep off the worst of it. Anna pulled her hood up. As he followed along behind her during one stretch of the walk, Toby couldn’t stop thinking how sexy she looked, dressed in her ranger-esque garb. With her hood pulled up, it was all too easy to imagine her as an elven beauty, or some such, out of one of the stories he’d read as a boy.

They called a halt to their march early that day. The weather was getting steadily worse. The rain wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was persistent.

“I’m going to try building a shelter,” Toby told Anna.

Anna nodded. “I wouldn’t say no to a roof.”

They came upon a likely-looking spot not too much further down the track. There was a natural windbreak in the form of a cluster of large boulders. The area was on a relatively flat piece of land too, which lent itself well to the erecting of a shelter. Under Toby’s direction, he and Anna collected a number of long, dead branches from a surrounding forest. Toby leaned the longest and sturdiest ones against one of the larger rocks, angling them slightly to create a sloped roof, which would, he hoped, make the rainwater run off rather than pool on top.

“Now we’ll grab some smaller branches,” Toby said, “and weave them between the bigger ones.”

They worked while the rain pattered steadily down all around them. They had no twine or any other way to secure the branches to the support beams, so they had to weave and combine them as much as possible, gradually adding in smaller and smaller branches, some of which still had leaves on.

While Anna finished off the simple roofing by layering over branches with more leaves still on them, Toby kindled another fire. Once this was done, they crawled into the tight confines of their simple bivouac.

Night came down. The rain persisted. The temperature dropped. Toby and Anna huddled closer, not only to their fire, but to one another. They talked of this and that, but mostly listened to the sounds of the forests all around them. They had a humble dinner of bread-cured meats and a cheddar that was so sharp Toby could have shaved with it. Old Cook had also furnished them with a clay pot filled with pickled onions.

“I don’t think we should crack into this,” Toby said.

“Me neither,” Anna said with a smile. “It might get a little crowded in here if we do that.”

Toby laughed.

With the cloud cover, there was no light from the moon or stars that night. The only source of illumination in all that part of the Feywood was their fire. Thankfully, the ground underneath them was relatively dry, after Toby had scraped away the top layer of damp soil. They settled down together.

“Do you mind if we spoon?” Anna asked.

Toby shook his head. He couldn’t think of anything he’d enjoy more.

“So long as I get to be the little spoon,” he quipped.

“Ordinarily,” Anna said, “if we were taking positions based on how dominant our personalities are, then I would agree with you.”

Toby laughed.

“But,” Anna said, “on a night like this, with the weather being as icky as it is, I think you should take the more dominant role and go with the big spoon. Just in case anyone is watching.”

“Fair enough,” Toby said.

Anna hunkered down next to him. She wriggled backwards until her back was pressed against Toby’s chest. She lay her head on Toby’s arm, where it was spread out in front of him. She made a show of plumping up his bicep as if it was a feather pillow.

“That’ll do,” she said. “That’ll do nicely.”

Toby snorted softly. His senses were full of the smell of Anna’s hair, of the proximity of her body. It tickled at his chin, and it tickled at his libido, but in a very pleasant manner.

Anna scootched in a little closer, her taut backside pressed into Toby’s crotch. Neither of them made any note of this, but a frisson of energy seemed to pass between them. Toby wondered if Anna felt the sudden ratcheting up of the tension.

The rain continued to pitter and patter on the arboreal roof of their shelter. The wind hissed through the branches all around them. It sounded like the sea.

“You know, I’m not usually one for camping,” Anna said in a husky, sleepy voice. “But this isn’t actually so bad.”

“Beats that time the two of us passed out after that big night in Central Park, doesn’t it?” Toby said.

“I’d forgotten about that,” Anna replied.

“Whatever.”

“That was a good night.”

“That was a great night,” Toby agreed.

They had kissed for the first time that night, after seeing a world-famous DJ play at a grungy venue in downtown New York.

“This feels like a date,” Anna said suddenly.

“I never thought camping could be classified as a date,” Toby said quietly into her ear. “It’s always struck me as more of an endurance test of sorts.”

“My mum always told me that if you can survive spending a couple of nights in a tent with someone, you should probably marry them on the way home,” Anna said softly.

“Well, your mum and dad have been together for a long time,” Toby said. “Did it start out under canvas?”

“Oh yeah, that’s what they called it,” Anna said. “My old man sprung to take her to the Hilton, as if it was the usual. Classic camping story. They ate steak in bed and had champagne for breakfast. It must have been like spending the night in the Appalacians.”

They lapsed into silence. Funnily enough, despite the weather, Toby mentally pictured the sky beyond the cloud layer. He imagined, in that moment, when he was feeling as tired and as happy and as far from home as he had ever been, of the stars growing fuller above them, of the yellow moon shining down.

Toby draped an arm over Anna’s side. Anna, without saying a word, took his hand and pressed it to her chest. There was nothing overtly sexual in that movement. She did it in the same way she might have pulled a blanket more tightly around herself. Toby found himself thinking how happy blankets must be when their owners were the likes of Anna Coombes.

With the combined aural stimulus of the crackling fire, the drumming of the rain, and the soft hissing of the wind through the leaves and branches of the Feywood, Toby should have had no trouble at all getting to sleep. It was basically a best of white noise soundtrack. However, despite the soothing lullaby that nature had decided to put on for them, Toby found himself unable to drift off. He didn’t doubt that this was due to the beautiful woman pressed up against him.

Although he could not see her face, he was fairly certain that Anna was struggling to nod off as well. Her breathing was measured and regular, but it did not have the deep resonance of sleep.

A warmth that had absolutely nothing to do with the campfire was spreading through Toby’s body. His hand drifted downwards so that it rested on Anna’s stomach. In response to this subtle shift, Anna squirmed backwards a touch. Her buttocks pressed delightfully into Toby’s groin.

“Are you alright back there, Mr Adams?” she asked in a soft voice.

Yep. Not uncomfortable. Not in the way you’re meaning, Toby thought.

“No, I’m good,” he said. “I’m better than good. Honestly, this might be the most romantic night I’ve ever experienced.”

Anna laughed softly. It was a husky sound coming from low in her throat.

“Candid tonight, aren’t we?”

“Well, if there was anyone I ever felt I could speak candidly around, it was you.”

Anna moved her head to the side so that Toby saw the gleam of one eye. “Been a while since we’ve found ourselves in a position like this, hasn’t it?” she said.

“Too long.”

The words were out of Toby’s mouth before he had a chance to lasso them back.

Without altering where she was lying, Anna managed to turn around. Toby found himself nose to nose with her. Her head was still resting on his arm. It was going to go dead soon, but Toby didn’t care. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Mr Adams, is that your sword, or are you just happy to see me?” she purred.

“I can’t believe you went with the ‘is that your sword’ line,” Toby said.

Anna grinned.

As if he had been injected with a confidence and boldness that he hadn’t felt romantically speaking for some time. Toby leaned forward and kissed Anna. Her lips were soft and yielding. She tasted amazing. It was like returning home in some way that he couldn’t adequately explain to himself.

Anna let out a little moan. Her hand moved up to cup Toby’s cheek. Their kiss became ever so slightly more passionate. Almost shyly, Anna opened her mouth. Toby’s tongue pressed forward. Anna’s flicked against his own. She let out another little moan. Toby’s own hand slid down her side and rested on her ass cheek. He gave it a squeeze.

“All this walking is doing you very good, Miss Coombes,” he said in a soft voice.

“Don’t forget the antipasto diet we’ve both been enjoying,” Anna quipped.

Toby laughed softly. His chuckle soon turned into a soft groan as Anna ground her crotch into his, sliding her leg over his hip.

Toby felt that sensation that was rarer and more special than a run-of-the-mill physical attraction or connection that he had felt with other women he had been intimate with. This was different. He felt safe and comfortable, as well as extremely turned on.

They kissed and fondled one another for a while, exploring one another’s bodies over their clothes in a way that they hadn’t for years. Toby felt as if he was on fire from within. And when he pulled back the better to look down into Anna’s face, it seemed that her very skin was alight with some illumination that couldn’t be attested to the fire beside her.

“There’s something different about you,” Anna whispered.

“Apart from the fact that I get to wear a sword these days, apparently?” Toby asked.

“Apart from that.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” Anna said, thoughtfully, biting her bottom lip in a way that made Toby want to do it himself. “It’s something indefinable, like you’re the flame and not the moth.”

It was a thing that waited in everyone, waiting for the right circumstance or catalyst so that it could open its jaws wide and howl at the moon. Anna had always stirred passion in Toby, but due to the closeness of their friendship, he had seldom allowed himself to yield to it. They had dabbled when they were younger, and they had enjoyed each other physically. But both of them had always erred on the side of caution, not wanting to ruin their friendship by making things more complicated than they might be.

And in New York, Toby thought, things can get complicated fast.

Toby’s lust was building. He could feel his member pressing through his trousers, rubbing up against Anna’s thigh. For her part, Anna gave him a delicious, devilish smile that told him, all too clearly, she knew exactly how he was suffering. In response to this knowing look, Toby slipped his hand down the back of Anna’s trousers and squeezed the naked flesh of her backside. It was smooth and wonderful. One of his fingers crept under the cleft where cheek met thigh. He could feel how hot she was, knew that if he moved his finger a fraction, he would find the soft, wet velvety confines of her vagina. The thought sent a swirling surge of warmth through his brain that almost blinded him.

The rain drummed upon the leaf roof. The branches of the trees tossed and complained in a gust of wind that heralded a torrent of harder rain.

Anna broke from the kiss they were sharing and looked up at the leafy ceiling of their shelter. “I hope it doesn’t get any worse out there. Nothing will put more of a damper on this than having the roof falling down on us.”

“I don’t think I’d notice,” Toby said. He nuzzled at Anna’s neck. He planted kisses down her throat. Anna moaned and closed her eyes. Her hand moved from his face down to his chest, then down to his waist.

“How hard will it be,” she said to him cryptically.

“How hard will what be?” Toby asked. “If you’re talking about what I’m thinking about, then I can assure you it couldn’t be much harder. It might shatter otherwise.”

Anna laughed softly again. “I was talking about how hard it might be to get off this belt of yours,” she said.

“Oh,” Toby said. “Yeah, it could be tricky. I’ve lost all feeling in the arm you’re lying on.”

“Shit, sorry,” Anna said.

“No, don’t apologize,” Toby said. “I think it just means that I get more sensation in the remaining parts of my body.”

Anna smiled up at him.

“The medical field is worse off for missing out on that mind of yours.”

Her hand crept lower and rubbed at the bulge in Toby’s trousers. Toby felt his breath catch in his throat. Anna was rubbing herself on his thigh, almost dry-humping it. Toby realized that as a thirty-five-year-old man, he hadn’t experienced a good old-fashioned high school dry-humping for quite some time.

“What are you smiling about?” Anna asked.

“Just how perfect this is,” Toby said truthfully. “It reminds me of being younger. You know, when you meet someone you’re obviously attracted to, and things start out as a kind of game.”

“What? Like, you make a move, I make a move, you make a move—”

“—and if all our moves correlate, then we both win,” Toby said. “Yeah.”

Awkwardly, due to their proximity, Toby reached between them, feeling the heat of their combined bodies. In response to Anna’s attention, he rubbed at the front of her pants. Anna opened her mouth in a silent gasp.

“I guess it is a kind of game,” Toby said, “only we’ve become better players.”

Anna looked up at Toby. Toby smoothed away a few errant hairs from her cheek and tucked them behind her ear.

“So, Toby Adams”, she said huskily, “what’s your next move?”

Toby opened his mouth to answer.

At that moment, a shattering peal of thunder sounded. It was so loud and so close sounding that Toby wondered for a moment whether the sky of Eclipsia hadn’t just shattered.

Anna huddled instinctively into Toby. Toby wrapped his arms protectively around her. Despite the burning desire he felt inside himself, and which he knew would be reciprocated in kind by Anna, some instinct told him not to rush things.

The world was suddenly lit for a splintered second by a bright, harsh stroke of lightning calling somewhere outside.

“I think our next move,” he said, into Anna’s ear, “is to get some sleep.”

‘“Is that… Is that… Is that the chivalry thing that I’ve heard so much about, yet never ever seen in New York City?” Anna teased.

“Might be this land’s rubbing off on me,” Toby said.

Anna pulled away again slightly, then reached out and twined her fingers through Toby’s short brown hair. She pulled his face into hers, pressing her lips hard against his.

“It’d be sound advice, generally speaking” she said. She lowered her head and nuzzled into Toby’s neck.

Toby shivered with enjoyment as he felt Anna’s lips trace their way down his throat.

“Yeah usually that’d be good, mature advice—admirable and commendably grown up and all the rest of it,” Anna said. “And, honestly, for what I’ve got in mind, we’d probably be better off with the inn’s feather mattress and not this hard ground.”

“Is that right?” Toby said.

He could hear the impish grin in Anna’s voice when she replied.

“Oh yes,” she said, “for the acrobatics that I’m picturing right now, combined with the fact that we are, technically speaking, on a quest, as crazy as that sounds, I wouldn’t want you to put your back out or dislocate a knee or something.”

Toby put on his best geriatric voice. “You’re a woman who’s possessed of the body and spirit that can make a man forget his years, Miss Coombes.”

Anna laughed. “Glad to hear it, Toby. Because I have plans for you. As I was saying, all that bullshit you were saying about getting our heads down and all the rest of it all fine and dandy—”

“I’m sensing there’s a big fat ‘but’ looming in our immediate futures,” Toby said.

“If there is, then it’s going to be yours,” Anna said.

“Nice comeback. You were saying?”

“But…” Anna gave the bulge in his trousers one last squeeze. “Holy… This thing feels like you could moor the Hindenburg to it. I’m excited to see what you can do with it.”

Toby closed his eyes and kissed the top of Anna’s head as the woman in question continued to squeeze him in a thoroughly familiar fashion. Although they were lying on the forest floor with lightning flashing and thunder rolling, he found himself musing on the fact that that might well have been one of the more romantic situations he had ever found himself. Not to mention the most sexually charged.

And you’re trying to tell this fox that getting a bit of shut-eye is a winning idea? Are you nuts?

“Look at this, will you?” Anna said. “You’re trying to tell me that getting a bit of shut-eye right now is a good idea? Are you nuts?”

Toby opened his eyes. He saw Anna supporting herself on one elbow and looking out at the storm. Lightning illuminated the plains of her face, throwing her beauty into sharp relief.

“Did I say that out loud?” he said.

“Oh, shut the hell up and kiss me, Tobes,” Anna said, turning back to him. “We’re not wasting this. We can sleep when we’re dead.”

“Hell of a li—”

Toby was cut off. He couldn’t much blame Anna for doing it. He certainly couldn’t complain with the way she went about doing it. She knew he’d prattle on if she didn’t. She knew him. It was as simple as that.

Her mouth was on his again. It was tentative for a fraction of a second. And then Anna’s forthrightness, her confidence, asserted itself. Her lips pressed hard against Toby’s. Her tongue pushed its way into his mouth.

Toby tried manfully to assert some dominance, but the tight confines of the shelter made it hard. Plus, he didn’t really want to try. It was a nice feeling, to be wanted. To be wanted to such a degree that the woman wanting him felt like a coiled spring under his hands, like she was a moment away from tearing his clothes off with her teeth.

And it was Anna. If anyone wanted to dentally undress a man, it’d be her.

Her hand took up where it had left off, only this time it dispensed with the high school over the pants fumbling routine. This time it was Anna, the no-nonsense New Yorker who the hand belonged to. It dived down the front of Toby’s britches with the alacrity of one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles diving back down a sewer tunnel.

Toby closed his eyes again and surrendered himself to the almost, but not quite, painfully forceful pleasure of Anna grabbing and massaging his junk. If he had been hard before, he was diamond-tipped in the amount of time that usually separated two NASCARs at a photo finish.

His hands, given the all clear by Anna’s obvious enthusiasm to investigate under his own clothes, went roaming. Slowly at times, and then in brief flurries of passionate movement, they undressed. They stayed close together as the lightning cracked the sky above. Toby found himself basking in the light coming off Anna’s body as the lightning illuminated her curves and contours, marveling as her nakedness was revealed in storm-light intervals.

He took one of her nipples in his mouth causing her to tilt her head back, her mouth open, her eyes closed with surprised rapture. As he licked and sucked at her, feeling her nipple stiffen against his tongue as she became ever more aroused, his hand bent between her legs. She was wet. Eager. Quivering and hot.

Her leg slid across his waist. It was the work of a moment—less than the work of a moment—for her to grab him and guide him inside of her.

A snarling crescendo of thunder drowned out their shared lustful gasp.

Anna said something inarticulate, but most assuredly profane. The sound of their wet groins coming together and grinding in a slippery frantic burst of rutting fever was lost as the rain came down.

The storm went on.

The night drew down.

And Toby and Anna lost themselves in one another.

Toby thrust up into Anna, clasping twin handfuls of her tight ass, as he tried to penetrate to her core. Anna’s hair tickled his face as she looked down at him. Her breasts swinging and bouncing in front of Toby’s face. Her nipples brushing his nose, his mouth, his lips.

She smiled, lost in the madness of the moment. Toby smiled with her.

And when they finished, Anna climaxing with a cry as they clutched one another in the cramped confines of their shelter, Toby wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the stars had been rattled in their fixtures.

12

They reached the tower that they had been seeking midway through the following morning.

They’d needed to cross a narrow but swift stream before that, and Anna was still grumbling as she had slipped on a slick stone and soaked one leg of her trousers. She fell silent when they clapped eyes on the edifice, which was as crooked as a dog’s back leg and defied gravity’s every attempt to bring it low.

The tower was surely being held up by magic or some other occult means because it had more in common with the u-bend in a toilet than it did any building in the Big Apple.

Toby’s amazement and relief at having reached their destination quickly faded, however. The crumbling, crooked tower was bereft of anything that even resembled a door or entrance way. Also, a number of strange creatures milled around at the base of the building.

“What the fuck are those things?” Anna asked in a low voice.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Toby said.

The creatures were green-skinned, bandy-legged monsters. The largest of them stood four and a half feet tall. They had gnarled features and hair that looked like moss or lichen. Their arms were long so that their knuckles almost dragged in the dirt. Their three-fingered hands were tipped with black claws.

Their faces were made up almost entirely, or so it seemed, of large mouths, the bottom lips of which drooped down like a blacksmith’s apron. Pug noses that resembled squashed root vegetables sat below single eyes. These cyclops’ eyes had cat-like pupils, and they burned with a malevolent yellow light.

“Are they goblins?” Anna asked.

Toby shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“They don’t look friendly, though, do they?”

“No,” Toby said. “No, they don’t.”

There were ten of the creatures gathered around a campfire that had obviously been extinguished during the previous evening’s storm. A scattering of charred bones littered the area. Toby saw a very human-looking skull sitting in the very middle of the dead fire.

That, as they say, does not bode well.

When they saw Toby and Anna, the creatures began to gibber and croak at one another in an indecipherable language. Slowly, Toby drew the sword hanging on his left hip.

“What are you doing?” Anna hissed.

“Whatever these things are, and whatever they want,” Toby said, “I don’t think it’s going to be to exchange pleasantries about the weather.”

“Do you know how to use that thing at all?” Anna asked out of the corner of her mouth.

“Does watching Rob Roy and Braveheart count?” Toby asked.

“I’m not sure if it does,” Anna said.

“Well, that informal training is going to have to do,” Toby said. “Stay behind me.”

The jabbering creatures were moving hurriedly towards Toby and Anna. They reminded Toby of nothing so much as a bunch of stoned college kids who had just seen the take-away delivery driver turn up. Drool hung in grotesque ropes from many of their mouths.

They’d have to be some seriously blazed college kids to be considering eating the delivery guy too, Toby thought.

Before he really had time to consider the absurdity of the situation, namely that he was about to throw down with a bunch of strange monsters with a sword he’d been given by a wizard, Toby hefted the blade and stepped out to meet his attackers. He didn’t think twice about striking the lead monster down. This was a clear-cut case of self-defense.

Unfortunately for the strange bow-legged monsters, their height made them absolutely perfect for being decapitated. The first monster found this out the hard way, although he probably only found it out very, very briefly.

Toby’s sword came round in a sweeping cut which had more than a little of the baseball batter’s strike to it. The lead monster was still grinning as its head flew off to the side and landed in a tree.

The question as to whether or not the sword needed sharpening was answered with a resounding no. It was so keen it went through the skin and sinew of the monsters like a big, long, double-sided hot knife through lard.

The next monster came on. It was clear that these things, whatever they were, were not used to attacking or fighting as a cohesive unit. Toby was thankful for that. It also became quickly apparent that they weren’t the sturdiest monsters either.

Toby’s backswing caught the next monster at the point where its neck met its shoulder. The flat of his blade struck the creature, but the blow was hard enough to make an awful cracking sound. The monster fell limply, its neck broken.

Another creature came snarling forward, clawed fingers outstretched. Toby took one of its arms off and kicked it in the chest. It thrashed and snarled before another blow stilled it.

After that, things became a bit of a blur. Toby hacked and sliced and stabbed. In some peculiar way, which he couldn’t quite understand, he felt a… connection to this sword. He wondered if it had something to do with some sort of inherent magic within the metal. Hadn’t Rowan Moonshroud mentioned something about that blade being able to be enchanted? Whatever the reason behind it was, Toby felt a supernatural affinity with the deadly weapon. There was the suggestion that the sword itself was guiding his hand to an ever so slight degree.

As the fight progressed, Toby became more sure of himself. He found he was moving his feet like that of a dancer, letting them lead him.

Maybe it’s a residual effect of watching so many movies as a kid, he thought, as he ran the sword through one of the other creatures, pulled it out in a spray of blood, and then clove another monster’s head cleanly in two.

When only four of the little beasts remained, Toby felt the tide of the battle change. The monsters looked like they might waver. The hideous faces of the creatures were contorted more in fear now than aggression. Toby knew that he couldn’t let any of them escape. There was no knowing whether more of them might be lurking around.

One of his enemies tried to break his head with a half-burned log from the fire. Toby parried the blow. The sword was so sharp that the log was sheared neatly in half. Toby was about to step forward and run his off-balance enemy through with the point of the sword when Anna came up behind the monster and cracked it over the head with a heavy rock. Blue blood spurted from the creature’s nose as it collapsed.

“Nice work,” Toby said.

“Don’t mention it,” Anna replied, somewhat breathlessly. “Behind you!”

Making use of some instinct, Toby took a step forward, ducked and whirled. The simple stone ax, which had been on course to connect with his temple, whistled harmlessly over his head. His sword scythed around in a beautiful backhand stroke. The blade was a blurred streak of silver. It cut through the abdomen of the monster who’d tried to make a permanent impression in his skull, spilling its guts across the ground.

Anna kicked the penultimate monster in the groin, doubling it over, before dashing its brains out with the rock she had used to kill the other one.

The final monster, the biggest of the batch, came roaring across the space that divided itself and Toby. It looked to have been hanging back, hoping that its fellows would slaughter the two humans that had arrived in their midst.

Typical fucking supervisor, Toby thought. Letting the lesser folk take the risks, but all too ready to run in and reap the rewards.

It hadn’t been so lucky, on that score.

And its luck is only going to get worse from here, Toby thought.

The final monster came ravening towards him. Slobber flew from its flapping lips as it bared its fangs. It swiped with ferociously impressive speed with its talons. All in all, it was giving Toby the real, balls out, I’m-going-to-fucking-kill-you-so-quail-puny-human treatment.

Toby stepped back and dodged the raking claws as the monster attempted to eviscerate him. He stepped backwards again. His beastly opponent let out a roar of frustrated rage, then the monster’s stringy muscles in its legs bunched, and it launched itself at Toby’s face. Its talons extended a further couple of inches. Toby ducked at the last moment. The monster flew overhead and landed on all fours with a thud.

Toby hamstrung it with a deft backhand slice across the back of its bandy legs. Once more the sharpness of the sword was showcased by a nauseating view of the monster’s cleanly severed tendons, gleaming pinkly, a moment before its blood welled out.

The monster fell. Toby reversed the sword and, using both hands, rammed it through the creature’s back, pinning it to the earth. It squirmed and thrashed, gibbering in a thoroughly put out fashion, and then went still. Toby twisted the blade and pulled it free.

He looked up. Anna was looking at him in mild astonishment.

“Everything okay?” Toby asked.

“It’s just… yeah. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like that,” Anna said.

“I’ve never done anything like that,” Toby told her.

“You could have fooled me.”

Anna walked over to him. Tenderly, she reached up with her sleeve and wiped a smear of blue blood from Toby’s cheek. “So, Rob Roy and Braveheart, huh?”

“Best teachers a budding swordsman could wish for.”

“I’ll have to give them a watch.”

Toby let out a little disbelieving laugh. He could feel the adrenaline seeping out of him. His heart was beating so hard it was practically a whine in his ears. He looked at the sword and saw that it was shaking.

“I mean, Braveheart’s not really historically accurate,” he said, “but the fight scenes are incredible.”

“Not to mention you apparently get to see Mel Gibson’s bare ass at one point,” Anna said. “And a Mel Gibson in his prime too.”

“There is that too,” Toby said, rolling his eyes.

“Toby?”

“Yeah?”

“You were incredible, Tobes,” Anna said.

“Come on. Don’t sell yourself short,” Toby said. “You took two down with just a rock.”

Anna shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess that’s growing up in Queens for you, right? Got to be handy. Everything’s a weapon in a pinch.”

“Right,” Toby agreed.

Together, they walked around the tower. As Toby had predicted, there was no door. He looked up. Just under the weather-beaten roof, which was shingled with wood, there was a large window. He looked at Anna.

“I’m getting real Rapunzel vibes here. How about you?” he said.

Anna nodded. “How can we get up there?”

Toby walked around the tower again. A waterfall of ancient-looking ivy ran down from the window to the ground. He had been hoping that they wouldn’t have to use that, but it looked like his hopes were going to crapped on. He reached out and pulled on the ivy. There was a crack, and it gave way under his hands. It was very dry and brittle.

“It’s not going to pass any health and safety standards,” he said, “but it’s the only way I can see that we’re going to get up there.”

Anna considered this. “I know we come from a world where they’re always trying to ram equal opportunities down our throats. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you to go first.”

Toby grinned. “And here was me thinking you were a team player.”

“Hey,” Anna said, “I just didn’t want to cramp your style. You know, you’ve done so well already, what with defeating the horde of weird, ugly little monsters. You’re on a roll.”

Toby sighed.

“I promise to try and catch you if the vines give way,” Anna said.

“That makes me feel a lot better.”

“Was that a joke?” Anna asked, raising her eyebrows.

“It was a joke, yeah,” Toby said. He sheathed his sword and ran his eyes over the crumbling vines, looking for the best handholds. “I don’t know if you remember, but we used to tell them back in the day, before everyone started getting offended at everything.”

“Oh yeah, those were the glory days, weren’t they?” Anna said.

Toby would have liked not to have to take his sword with him. It would decrease the chances of his legs getting tangled with the flapping scabbard and sending him plummeting to a concussion. The way he figured it, though, there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be more of the angry, goblin-looking monsters at the top of the tower.

Slowly, testing every foot and handhold, Toby started his ascent, making a point to keep his eyes fixed on the window above him.

“Hey,” Toby said, “how about you tell me a story to keep my mind off the ankle-shattering drop I’m risking here?”

“Well, I was actually just thinking about something from our past now that you mention it,” Anna said.

“You were?”

“Yeah. You know, after last night, after what happened between us, I was thinking back on you and me. All the moments we’ve shared and stuff.”

“And?” Toby puffed, looking around for his next handhold.

“And I was thinking back to the last time we kissed and got a little touchy feely. Can you remember when that was?”

“Course I can,” Toby grunted. “It was that Sunday night. I managed to talk you into coming to that comedy show at… Shit, where was it?”

“37th Avenue,” Anna said.

“That’s right. And you were a bit reticent about the idea because you had work the next day, but you were in a party mood. You were worried we were going to get obliterated drunk.”

“And we did get absolutely obliterated drunk.”

Toby scrabbled for a moment as the vine he’d been holding disintegrated under his fingers. He quickly grabbed another.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we did that. That was a good night.”

“We ended up making out in that coat room,” Anna said from below.

Despite the fact that Anna couldn’t see his face, Toby smiled at the memory. “Yeah, we did. You were wearing those red lacy—”

“Keep your mind on the task at hand, Adams,” Anna said.

Toby laughed. “True. Don’t want to get sweaty palms at a time like this.”

“I was thinking that you might snag your boner on one of the vines.”

“Don’t make me laugh!”

Toby kept on climbing.

“Did I ever tell you I got fired because of that night?” Anna asked.

“What! No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “Sent my boss a scathing text about him being a douchebag who didn’t take my design skills seriously.”

Toby winced. “The drunken boss text. That’s never good! So, what happened.”

“Well, apparently, he called me that night in response to the text—I have no recollection of that, though—and after I unloaded on him about him not paying me what I was worth etcetera etcetera, he told me not to bother coming in on Monday.”

“But,” Toby said, “if I recall, you didn’t go in on Monday. You stayed at mine on Sunday night, and we binged Firefly the next day and ate Chinese food.”

“Man, I miss Chinese food,” Anna said.

Toby grinned. He looked up and saw that he wasn’t far from the edge of the windowsill. He planted his foot into a nest of the desiccated vines and pushed himself tentatively upwards. “So, you got fired?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Anna said. “But the real kicker was—and I didn’t tell you this at the time because I was too embarrassed—that I was still so hammered that Monday morning that I called in to take a sick day and, the receptionist, Jen, had to remind me that I didn’t actually work there anymore.”

Toby had to pause and laugh.

All in all, there were a couple of hairy moments, but Toby managed to reach the lip of the window without falling to his doom, which was a pleasant bonus. The tower was about four stories tall, so what with landing on the ground, which had been softened up by the rain, he probably wouldn’t have died, but he might well have broken his leg, and that could prove just as lethal in the circumstances.

With one final effort, Toby hauled himself over the lip of the window and into the tower.

13

Toby thumped ungracefully onto the wooden floor and had a quick look around. Lying on his back as he was, he could make out one crucial thing, and that was that there were no enemies that he could see. Nothing was trying to kill him.

“Don’t you disappear whilst I climb up!” Anna ordered him from below.

“Yes, my lady.”

Toby turned and waited for his friend, leaning over the windowsill after he had taken a quick glance around the room to make sure there were no lurking monsters. All there was was a rather dilapidated four-poster bed with some heavy curtains drawn around it.

“Eyes on me,” Anna said.

With only a few words of encouragement, Toby watched as his friend climbed up the tower. When she was within reach, Toby lowered his hand and hauled her the rest of the way.

Anna dusted off her hands. “Now, what do we have here?”

Toby looked around the room. Apart from the bed, there was precious little else in the chamber. Toby let his gaze slowly move around the space. For an abandoned tower, the place wasn’t as derelict as it appeared from outside. There wasn’t that much accumulated dust.

He was just about to go over and open the curtains of the bed when a soft cooing noise made him look up.

“Ah, there would be Moonshroud’s carrier pigeon, I guess,” Anna said.

I think you’re right,” Toby replied.

The pigeon was a fat bastard. He looked like any other pigeon, albeit slightly bigger and darker of plumage. The bird was almost coal black, which seemed unusual, although maybe not in Eclipsia.

Toby removed the fold-out cage from his pack and opened it. The bars snapped together with a bass heavy finality that surprised him. An almost oily sheen rippled through the metal. It happened so fast that Toby wasn’t quite sure that he hadn’t imagined it.

“How the hell do you suppose we get that flying rat down here?” Anna asked. Like all good New Yorkers, she had a healthy disdain for pigeons.

“I was thinking that we use a little of the bread to try and coax it down,” Toby said.

“Good thinking,” Anna said. “But a waste of good bread.”

Toby pulled off a few fragments of the loaf they had in the pack and placed them on a rather worn, if clean-looking, dressing table. He and Anna retreated across the room.

The pigeon looked down at them contemptuously. Toby was used to the moronic multitude of pigeons that inhabited New York City. He’d once heard that there were over a million of the things living in the Big Apple. It was often quipped that the reason for their success was their adaptability, which was a universal trait they shared with the humans that called New York home.

“Is there something you can do to bring it down, do you think?” Toby mused.

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know. Like, whistle it down or something?”

Anna shook her head. “It’s a pigeon, Tobes, not a golden retriever.”

“Then how—?”

Further speculation on how they might lure the bird down was put on hold when the curtains of the four-poster bed were abruptly ripped apart.

Toby’s hand flew to his sword hilt. Then it paused.

“What’s all this noise?” said the beautiful blonde woman who had suddenly been revealed. She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. She blinked, clearly having just awoken from a deep sleep.

“Holy shit, it’s a damsel in distress,” Toby said.

The blonde woman, who would have been a striking beauty in anyone’s books, pouted prettily.

“Speak for yourself,” she said. “I was just up here trying to catch a wink of sleep, and suddenly I’m woken up by you two.”

Her blonde hair fell around her heart-shaped face like strands of spun gold. She had a pert nose, high cheekbones and full rosy lips that curved into a naturally warm and inviting smile. Suddenly though, her otherwise clear complexion was drawn into a slight scowl.

“What do you think you’re doing busting in here and waking me up so rudely?” she demanded.

Toby looked at Anna.

“Uh, sorry,” Anna said. “We didn’t realize the tower was occupied. Do you live here?”

The woman’s eyes, which were the color of sapphires, and suffused with the wonderful sparkle of those gemstones, regarded Anna.

“Hello,” she said. “You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?”

“Uh, thanks,” Anna said.

“And you, you’re very handsome, too,” the blonde woman said, turning to look at Toby.

“I guess he would be the knight in shining armor of the piece,” Anna said dryly.

The blonde woman rolled her eyes. “Ugh, don’t get me started on knights in shining armor, self-proclaimed heroes, or any of those kinds of jokers. That’s why I’m up here.”

Anna frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I feel like I’ve spent the last two weeks being hounded by horny noblemen wanting to play the hero, who seem to want nothing better than my hand in marriage,” the blonde said. “Honestly, they see a woman traversing the Feywood on her own, and they think that I must be lost, or in some sort of distress, or in need of saving.”

“Antiquated thinking,” Toby said.

The blonde snapped her fingers and pointed at Toby. “Exactly. I couldn’t have put it better myself. Antiquated thinking is what it is.”

“Don’t you hate it when men don’t think women can look after themselves?” Anna said.

To Toby’s amazement, the blonde extended her closed fist in what was undoubtedly a request for a fist bump. Anna obliged.

“Not that I’m averse to her little male attention,” the blonde said, glancing at Toby. “Especially not when it comes in such a package as this—or female attention for that matter.”

She looked coyly at Anna. “But a girl can have only so many people trying to save her before she gets thoroughly sick of it and wants to kill herself.”

“Now that’s ironic,” Anna said.

“Tell me about it, honey,” the blonde said.

“Guys, I hate to butt in here, but what’s going on?” Toby said.

The stranger had a slender and graceful figure. She had curves that were both elegant and alluring. Curves that were in all the right places, too. She moved with a natural poise and confidence, every gesture permeated with a subtle grace that commanded attention and admiration alike.

Her dress was made of plain fabric, but somehow the muted tones perfectly complemented her fair complexion and bright blonde hair.

“How long have you been up here?” Toby asked.

“Oh, I’ve been up here ever since my wicked grandmother tricked me into pricking my big toe on an enchanted slipper,” the blonde said.

“Really?” Anna asked.

“No, not really, love,” the blonde said. “I just found this tower yesterday. Struck me as a good place to spend the night. I’m not really much of a one for al fresco living. Then, when I woke up this morning, there was a pack of spriggans down below, holding what looked like to be a barbecue.”

She made a face. “I think they caught one of the Prince Charming types that have been dogging my steps ever since… Well, I think they caught one of those lunkheads mooning around down there.”

“I did see a skull in the fire,” Toby said.

“If it belonged to one of the men who have been hounding me I doubt it was a very big one,” the blonde said in an unconcerned voice.

“Spriggans would be the crooked-legged little monsters?” Anna asked the other woman.

“The green-skinned things that would take an entire battalion of very short-sighted mothers to love?” Toby added.

“Those are the ones,” the blonde agreed.

“We’ve dealt with them,” Toby said.

“You did?”

Toby nodded towards the window. The blonde seemed to float over. She peered out.

“Oh, well done. You butchered them good and proper. Look! You even managed to land one of their heads in that hazel tree over there! That’s what I like to see,” she gushed. When she looked back at Toby, there was definite admiration in her cool blue stare. “What’s your name?”

“Toby,” Toby said. “And this is Anna. A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise. My name is Verity.”

“What’s your last name?” Toby asked.

“None,” Verity replied.

“Are you saying that your last name’s None, or that you have no last name?” Toby asked.

“Both.”

Toby glanced at Anna.

“That’s actually a pretty badass,” Anna said. “I still don’t know what she means, but something about it is badass.”

“I know,” Toby agreed.

“Please don’t be tempted to make any jokes,” Verity None said. “The amount of rubbish attempts at humor that I’ve heard from the morons who have tried to save me over the past two weeks has been truly horrific.”

“Not a problem. No jokes here,” Anna said.

“Now, you know why I’m here, namely to catch a few Zs and stay out of the way of any possible suitors, but what are you doing here?” Verity asked.

“We’re, uh, here to catch that pigeon,” Toby said.

Now that he came to say it out loud to someone, he realized that it didn’t have quite the dramatic impact of telling someone he and Anna were, say, on a quest to slay a manticore might have.

He pointed at where the fat black pigeon—which had alighted onto the dressing table and was chowing down on the bread—was watching them closely. It definitely had the look of having more intelligence than the average pigeon.

“You came all the way through the Feywood to find a pigeon?” Verity said.

“Yeah, but it’s a special one,” Toby said hurriedly.

“Does it do tricks?” Verity asked.

“It’s special, according to the wizard who tasked us with getting it back,” Anna explained.

Verity nodded. “A wizard, you say. You want to be careful with wizards. They’re an unpredictable bunch.”

“Trust me, we found that out for ourselves,” Toby said.

“Well, as annoyed as I was to start with at finding someone who’d come to disturb my peace and quiet, I think it’s rather jolly having company,” Verity said.

“Three is probably definitely better for wandering in these woods than two,” Anna said to Toby.

“Agreed,” Toby said.

Verity clapped their hands, delightedly. “Oh, how exciting. I haven’t been in a band since, well, since I decided to break away from the uncouth fellows I was hanging around with and strike out on my solo career.”

Toby wasn’t quite sure what the woman meant by this, but seeing as she didn’t elaborate, he decided not to press the issue.

“Let’s catch this damn bird,” he said to Anna, “and head out. Verity, you’re more than welcome to come with us.”

“I’d love to, Toby,” the blonde stunner said.

Anna picked up the cage and approached the pigeon slowly. Toby noted how she was careful not to hold its eye, as was the smart move when dealing with wild animals you didn’t want to leg it. Anna was within grabbing distance when the pigeon suddenly cooed and took off.

Reacting instinctively, Toby grabbed at it as it fluttered past his face. The last thing he wanted was for the fucking thing to end up back perched on the beam above their heads.

As his hands caught the feathery flutterer, a sudden blindness overtook him. This was accompanied by a swooping sensation, as if he had just stepped out into space. It only lasted for the space of a couple of heartbeats. A flash of scintillating light danced across his eyes, and Toby stumbled.

“Holy… Holy shit,” he said. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Anna asked.

“Did you… did either of you…?” Toby looked from Verity to Anna. He shook his head and looked down at the pigeon which was struggling in his grip. “Never mind. Let’s get him locked up.”

They put the pigeon in the cage and hastily shut the cage door. The pigeon gave Toby a reproachful look. He got the impression that had it had hands instead of wings, it would have been flipping him the bird.

One at a time, they scaled the precarious ivy back down to the ground.

“We’ve been sleeping pretty rough the past two nights,” Toby said to Verity. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping under the stars for a little while longer.”

“Not at all, Toby. I don’t mind it half so much when I’ve some excellent company,” Verity said. “I imagine the pair of you have been keeping nice and cozy through the chill evenings? Using each other’s body warmth, no?”

Toby glanced at Anna. Verity smiled. There was very little of the damsel in distress or wholesome princess in that look.

“Now there’s a sandwich I wouldn’t mind being the filling in,” she said.

Toby went to exchange an incredulous look with Anna, but saw that his friend was eyeing the blonde woman with something very akin to lascivious interest. Anna had once mentioned to Toby, when they’d been out enjoying a bottomless mimosa lunch a couple of years previously, that she had dabbled around with some girlfriends in college.

I wonder if she still does that now, Toby thought.

He found that the idea of Anna writhing about in her birthday suit with some other faceless woman was an extremely alluring one. He wondered if, realistically speaking, there might not be a way to make this sandwich that Verity had referred to.

Eye on the prize, Adams, he chided himself.

“All right,” he said aloud. “Let’s get this bird back to the wizard.”

“You made a bargain with this wizard, with this Moonshroud?” Verity asked.

“That’s about the shape of it,” Toby said.

“Hmm,” Verity said. “Well, it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out. Wizards can be slipperier than a boiled onion when it suits them.”

“You talk as if you’re speaking from experience,” Anna said.

“You could say that,” Verity replied cryptically.

“What was it you were doing in this band that you spoke of?” Anna asked.

Verity gave the pair of them another secretive, enigmatic smile. “Let’s just say that I have a particular set of skills.”

Somehow Toby managed to refrain from finishing off the famous quote.

“You’re not about to elaborate on that, are you?” he asked.

Verity winked at him. “Don’t you know that the secret of a good, well, secret, is the same as the secret to a good striptease?”

“Is that right?” Toby said. “And what is that?”

“It’s not the revelation itself, but the promise of the revelation to come that is the key,” Verity said.

“Come on, then,” Toby said. “Let’s head back to Moonshroud’s and see if he’s going to make good on this promise of his.”

Together, he, Anna, their new companion, Verity None, not to mention the annoyed-looking captive pigeon set off back into the Feywood. They skirted the grisly scene where the spriggans had met their end and headed back down the track, toward the mushroom house of Rowan Moonshroud.

14

The journey back through the Feywood had been uneventful, without violent and bloodthirsty magical creatures or the more tantalizing potential three-way sandwich action.

Their new companion, Verity None, proved exceedingly easy to get along with. Toby and Anna had spent a lot of time just chatting to the other woman and getting to know her. Details of her past, of what she had been up to before she had decided to take a nap in the abandoned tower, were still sparse. Although she had gone into detail on the numerous would-be suitors she had had to fight off—in some cases quite literally—with a big stick, she was reticent to divulge any of her history past that point.

Toby didn’t hold that against her. He and Anna had been pretty scant so far as details of their own past or where they had come from, went. Toby had told Verity the truth, so far as it went: he and Anna had come from a far distant land and had sought out the services of Rowan Moonshroud in the hope that he might be able to shed some light on the strange amnesia that Toby was suffering from.

The more that the three of them had hung out and conversed, the more Toby realized that Verity was clearly as savvy as she was beautiful. She was also a repository of sexual innuendos.

Nothing saucy had happened between the three of them, despite sharing shelters at night, Toby had not been able to press his suit, as they might have said in Eclipsia, with Anna either.

He had, interestingly, woken up late at night on the second evening and found the two women huddled very close together, whispering to each other. Toby had drifted back off to sleep fairly fast, being pretty beat from the day’s walk and the reduced rations which had been a result of sharing their remaining food with Verity. However, the last thing he had heard before he’d nodded off was the two women giggling softly to each other. He had liked to think that was a promising sign.

When they had been making their final approach to Moonshroud’s abode, Verity had declined to follow Toby and Anna inside.

You don’t trust wizards?” Anna had asked.

Verity scoffed. “No, of course I don’t trust wizards. And you shouldn’t either, dear Anna. Honestly, on the whole, those bunch of magic users and booze dabblers are so contrary that I wouldn’t trust them to breathe in and out if the process weren’t automated.”

“They’re that all over the place?” Toby asked.

“Putting your trust in magical individuals, whose idea of a good square meal is drinking fortified wine out of a box, is not wise,” Verity replied simply.

“You sound a little paranoid,” Toby said.

Verity had shrugged her elegant shoulders. “Maybe. Paranoia was a key survival trait when I ran in the circles that I ran in. You find yourself dwelling on all these ludicrous situations and concocting the solutions that might get you out of them. You never expect any of these situations to present themselves, of course, but when they inevitably do, it’s always nice to have your persecution complex vindicated. Just the two of you be careful when dealing with Moonshroud and any of his kind. That’s all I’ll say.”

And so Toby and Anna had left Verity relaxing against the bole of an ancient oak. When Toby looked over his shoulder one last time, he saw the woman looking for all the world as put together as Princess Peach might, reclining languidly against the rough bark as if she had been in a throne room and lying on a chaise lounge.

“What do you think of Verity?” Toby had asked Anna as they walked up the wizard’s garden path.

“I like her,” Anna said. “I trust her.”

“I know what you mean,” Toby said. “She’s shady, but there’s this weird trustworthiness in her untrustworthiness.”

“Exactly,” Anna said. She gave Toby a gentle nudge with her elbow. “Plus, she’s easy on the eye.”

Toby smiled. He and Anna were at a stage in life, in their mid-thirties where they didn’t need to worry about offending one another by simply making observations of other people’s physical perfections.

“That she is,” Toby agreed. “And I have to say that what she mentioned, about the whole sandwich scenario, has been lingering in my mind.”

“You’re not the only one on that score,” Anna said.

Before Toby could probe into more detail about this comment, they had arrived at Rowan Moonshroud’s door. He raised his hand, knocked, and walked into the main quarters of the mushroom house.

Rowan Moonshroud was there, and he whooped at the sight of the cage. There was an almost manic energy to the wizard that had not been present when they had seen him last. Dancing around and waving his arms, the skinny, frazzled wizard may as well have been a poster child for pleonexia.

“As gratified as I am to see how excited you are about getting this pigeon back,” Toby said. “I believe that we had a deal, Mr. Moonshroud.”

“Toby’s right,” Anna said. “We had a deal, Moonshroud. What about that house in Stagbreach you promised us?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Not a problem, not a problem,” the wizard said. “Hold on a second. Yes, yes, we had a deal. Of course, not a problem! In fact, just to sweeten the deal, I thought that I’d throw in the sword for good luck too. How about it? I even found that jewel that can be set into the pommel.”

“What does the jewel do?” Toby asked as Moonshroud continued to rummage through a series of drawers, tossing items over his shoulders as he searched for whatever it was he was looking for.

“The jewel enhances your ability to learn the way of the sword,” the wizard said breezily. “It magnifies the preternatural skill that a wielder might have for the weapon. It extrapolates the innate learning potential of the individual and then enables the wielder to use the sword with a greater strength, as well as with more dexterity and poise.”

“Well, that should be interesting,” Anna said. “Toby kicked the shit out of some spriggans with that thing, and he had no idea what he was doing.”

“I probably was waving my arms around a little like an octopus having a seizure,” Toby said, “but I got the job done.” 

“Did you just, did you just?” the wizard replied in a manner that made Toby think he was barely listening. “Excellent, excellent. We’ve had a problem with spriggans in these parts of late. Always good, a healthy culling.”

“There was nothing healthy about it, not so far as the spriggans were concerned,” Toby said.

“Shame. Here,” Moonshroud said.

Turning, he tossed a bright red jewel to Toby, who caught it.

“Fit that to the pommel of the sword. It should seal itself magically,” the wizard said.

Toby pressed the stone into the pommel of the weapon. Just as Moonshroud had said, the stone glowed briefly red and then affixed itself to the squared off end of the handle of the sword. Toby felt a flush of warmth run through his fingers and up his arm.

“Ah, here’s the little devil,” Moonshroud said. He held aloft a small brass key. “This is for the front door of my cottage in the Baker’s District.”

“How do we know which cottage door it unlocks?” Anna asked.

“Oh, you’ll know when you see it,” the wizard said. “It’s the door covered with runes of protection. And the place has four chimneys. The key will dissolve the magical wards that protect the house and stop your fingers from melting off should you try and force the door.”

“Always a bonus,” Toby said.

“Exactly. Nothing like a property being wizard-owned to act as a deterrent to burglars`. And not only that, being in the street it’s located in, you’ll be constantly surrounded by the wholesome, homely smell of baking bread and cooking cookies at all times of the day,” Moonshroud chuckled. “You’ll love it. You’ll love it, honestly. You’ll have a great time. It might need a bit of a tidy up, but you’re welcome to make yourselves quite at home.”

“A sword and a place to live,” Toby said in an aside to Anna.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Anna beamed at him.

“You’re really doing me a favor,” Moonshroud blathered on. “Property speculation was a sideline of mine. But, according to the peasants in Stagbreach, my rents were too high. The villagers decided to boycott my properties. So, you see, you’re really doing me a favor, Mr Adams. Keeping the house in working order and making sure it doesn’t fall apart.”

He let out another one of those ingratiatingly, toadying laughs. He came over and handed Toby the key. Toby pocketed it.

“Now, the bird, if you please,” Moonshroud said.

He held out his hands to receive the cage. Toby noticed that the wizard’s hands were shaking, although that might have had something to do with the two empty bottles that were smoking gently nearby and the faint purple staining that adorned the magic user’s lips.

Toby looked into the wizard’s face. Having come from Queens, from a family that had never had an excess of money, Toby had been on the receiving end of a few shady deals in his time. Nothing too outrageous. He’d brought a television off a man who had genuinely assured him it had fallen off the back of a truck, and he had also scored a toaster and electric kettle combination for forty dollars, which carried a retail price of two-hundred and fifty. These sort of interactions had furnished Toby with some street smarts and a trust in his own instincts.

Right now, those instincts were twanging like an electric guitar coming off the back of a three-day speed bender. Nothing about this was quite right. He didn’t feel in danger, per se, but the hairs on the back of his neck were definitely thinking about standing on end.

The straining of the belief that the wizard could be wholly trusted was made all the more acute by the way that Moonshroud’s left eye was slowly revolving in its socket.

I wonder what the hell the guy brewed up and has been guzzling on, he pondered to himself.

Still, they had made a deal.

Slowly, Toby raised the hand which held the cage. He held it out to Moonshroud. The carrier pigeon cooed unhappily, bobbing its head this way and that. Moonshroud snatched the cage from Toby’s hand.

“Yes,” he said softly to himself. “Yes, yes. Finally, I have it.”

In a flash that harkened him back to the life he had left on Earth, Toby was suddenly reminded of the wizard being one of those nuts who lined up outside certain tech stores on the day that the latest smartphone dropped. He had that same demented gleam to his eye.

To reinforce this comparison, the wizard started cackling maniacally, but this ominous laughter was cut short by a coughing fit. Moonshroud reached over to a bottle, this one full. The cork in the bottle flew out by magic and pinged off the ceiling. Moonshroud took a long glug to calm the coughing and then smacked his lips. His gaze, at least the one eye that wasn’t busy rolling around in his skull, was locked on the cage in his hand.

“Yes,” he spluttered. “Yes, yes. I have it. Finally, I have it back.”

Maybe it’s the latest model, Toby thought, still picturing the head cases that were prone to line up outside the stores of those certain technology multinational corporations.

Toby and Anna stood there. The moment he had laid hands on the cage, Moonshroud seemed to have forgotten the existence of the other man and woman. He walked over to one of the tables and placed the cage reverentially on a rare bit of free space. He muttered some arcane-sounding words. The door to the cage sprang open.

Quickly, his clawing hand darting in like the head of a viper, Moonshroud grabbed the pigeon. He pulled it out and held it aloft, much in the same way that Indiana Jones might hold up some treasured artifact shortly before he was forced to flee an enormous grinding boulder or runaway elephant.

“Yes,” he whispered to himself yet again. “Yes, yes, yes, yes! By all the saints living and dead, you’re mine.”

“I don’t like this, Tobes,” Anna whispered into Toby’s ear. “I think we should get out of here.”

Toby nodded. “I think you might be right.”

He still didn’t quite understand why the wizard would be so excited about getting his hands on the fat, moldering black pigeon, but neither was he sure he wanted to be in the mushroom house to find out.

As the pair of them slowly backed towards the door, the expression on Moonshroud’s face slowly morphed from ecstasy to confusion. He gave the pigeon a shake. Toby heard Anna mutter something under her breath. He knew she was an animal lover, though he was surprised to hear her affection for animals stretch to a pigeon.

“I don’t understand,” Moonshroud muttered, obviously speaking to himself. “I don’t understand. Surely there should be some sign, some manifestation of a link, of a bond formed?” He frowned and gave the pigeon a slightly more violent shake.

Abruptly, with a flurry of feathers, the pigeon wriggled itself free of the wizard’s grasp. With a whirring of wings, it shot across the room and fluttered down to land on Toby’s shoulder.

Had he been back in New York, Toby’s overriding instinct would have been to punch the pigeon off him, but something stayed his hand. He craned his head back so that he could look at the bird on his shoulder. The pigeon looked back at him. It blinked its beady, rather inscrutable avian eyes at him and gave Toby a stare that he found strangely discombobulating. Then the pigeon jerked its head around and looked back at the wizard.

“I don’t understand,” Moonshroud said. “You belong to me.”

“Nah,” the pigeon said. “I don’t belong to you, mate. You didn’t find me and lay claim to me. I belong to this human here.”

The pigeon spoke in a tone that was almost reminiscent of a London Cockney gangster. Toby found, though, that he didn’t have much amazement to spare for the accent of the bird. It was more the fact that the pigeon was speaking at all that had rendered him momentarily speechless. It was a good thing the bird had its claws gripped into Toby’s shirt. Otherwise, the start Toby gave would have knocked it off.

“Um,” Anna said. “What—?”

Then, as if to add the cherry on top of this demented turn of events, the pigeon burst apart as if it had been made not from flesh and feathers, but from shadow.

Toby stepped away, one hand raised in front of his face.

The pigeon reformed in a second. When it did, it was no longer a pigeon. It was no longer a bird. It had taken the shape of a humanoid figure with a square, ugly head topped by a pair of tiny horns and a long forked tail. Its skin shone with a pearlescent silvery-black sheen.

“You’re not a pigeon,” Anna gasped.

“Got it in one love,” the former pigeon said. “No, not a pigeon. An incubus, a fiend given physical shape, a fallen saint, a cacodemon.”

“No, imp!” roared Moonshroud. “You should be mine!”

“Yeah, or an imp,” the imp said, “though it doesn’t sound quite as good as all the other options, does it? Kind of sounds like I’d be more inclined to tickle you ‘til you were sick, rather than pull your guts out of your bum until you died.”

Rowan Moonshroud let out a strangled, croaking inarticulate bellow of frustrated rage. He raised one hand. A nimbus of blue light ran along his fingers.

Before Toby could move, a jagged bolt of searing illumination shot towards him.

Crap.

The imp on his shoulder whip-cracked its tail. There was an imperceptible, or almost imperceptible, boom as whatever spell the wizard had flung at Toby was rebounded. There was a sharp crack, and, where Rowan Moonshroud had once stood, there lay a turnip on the floor.

“Holy shitballs,” Toby said.

A stunned silence permeated the room. It was broken only by the slightly depressing sound of the turnip rolling across the floor and thudding into a leg of one of the armchairs.

“Yeah, now look, don’t get any ideas. That counter was a one-off sort of deal, yeah?” the imp said. “Kind of like an inbuilt insurance policy. People flying into psychotic rages is part and parcel of when a being such as me changes hands, you see? I can’t go turning people into root vegetables at the drop of a hat from now on, just so you know.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us,” Toby said.

The imp levitated from where it was sitting casually cross-legged on Toby’s shoulder. It floated over and looked down at the turnip with its strange silver eyes. It conjured a tiny cigar from nowhere and shook its head sadly as it smoked.

“You know, I’d think the whole thing was extremely funny if it wasn’t so sad,” it said. “They—wizards, you know—they used to be protectors of Eclipsia before that kid, Toby, saved the world and made them all rest on their laurels and take up brewing.”

It looked around at the mess that was the wizard’s abode and shook its head again. “A wizard’s home is a reflection of the wizard themselves. So with a mushroom-shaped gaff like this, you can imagine what kind of wizard this bloke was.”

Toby looked from the floating demon in the air to the turnip on the floor.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we’re not going to be getting any answers out of Rowan Moonshroud any time soon.”

“No, I don’t reckon,” the imp agreed. “Turnips, on the whole, have never been known to say much.”

“I think we should go,” Toby said.

“Good idea,” Anna agreed.

“Yeah, I could use a change of scenery,” the imp agreed. “Smells funny in here. You when you materialize in someone’s house you haven’t taken shape in before and it smells weird, and—”

“You’re coming too?” Toby asked, cutting off the little creature’s monologue.

“Sure am,” the demon said. “You didn’t think I was giving old mate back there a load of lip service, did you? Oh no, sunshine, you and I are bonded now. You grabbed me, a recently released djinn from the world beyond this world—or is it the world beyond the world beyond this world? I always forget. Anywho, you caught me with your bare hands. You and me, pal,” and here the imp crossed its tiny shimmering fingers, “we’re like that.”

“Great,” Toby said, dragging the syllable out to eight times its usual length. “Can we start off this budding relationship by having me tell you that you should never call me sunshine again, unless you’re in the market to be drop-kicked into the nearest wasp’s nest.”

“Sure,” the imp replied graciously.

They hurried to the door and took their leave of the wizard’s house.

As they hurried down the garden path, the imp, which was floating along at head height next to Toby, said, “Here, did I hear that wally say that he’d given you a house to go with that sword?”

“Yeah,” Toby said. He touched at the pocket in which the key to the house rested.

“Oh, that’s nice,” the imp replied. “Exciting times. First home ownership and everything. Do you think I can get my own room?”

15

“Oh yes, this is very nice, very nice,” the imp said.

Toby, Anna, Verity and the imp were standing outside the newly acquired house in Stagbreach. It was smack dab in the middle of the baker’s district.

“He wasn’t lying when he said living here would be like living in the middle of a giant donut,” Toby said.

“Yeah, it’s easy on the nose,” the imp agreed. “I know there are a few parts of a human town that can be a bit whiffy. What with the residents’ belief that throwing their own excrement out into the street is a legitimately clever way to get rid of it. I would have thought they would have modernized their thinking since the last time I was here, but I guess that was just wishful thinking.”

After having traveled with the imp floating at his shoulder for all of ten minutes, Toby had found that he was basically fresh out of incredulity. Instead of being flabbergasted and blown away by the fact that he had a demon literally at his shoulder now, he decided to just accept it. It made life easier. It was one less thing to think about.

Just treat him as a very small, slightly annoying and abrasive new friend, he had told himself.

“I’m with the small imp,” Verity None said, “and can I just say that I really am appreciative of you offering to let me stay here, Toby, and you too, Anna. You didn’t have to, and we’ve only just met and, well, I just want you to know it means a lot.”

“Seriously, it’s no problem, Verity,” Toby said. “Genuinely, it’ll be nice to have you around. You seem like a good sort.”

“As do you, Toby.”

Toby saw Verity run her bright blue eyes up at the front facade of the cottage that Rowan Moonshroud had given them the key to. Surprisingly, it was two stories high, which was fairly unusual in Stagbreach. Most of the residential houses were cottages that like to spread out rather than grow up.

“Yep, the location is spot on. It looks to be in pretty good nick,” the imp said in a connoisseur’s tone. “There’s the added bonus of your landlord now being a root vegetable too.”

“Is that magic you used to turn him into a turnip reversible by any chance?” Anna asked.

The imp shrugged apathetically. “Would it matter if it wasn’t?”

Anna made a face. “I suppose, due to the fact that he tried to hit Tobes with a thunderbolt, probably not.”

“Might be,” the imp said. “He caught me off guard. I was a little rusty, so I can’t say for certain whether he’ll be able to turn back into a human. But you never know. Still, a lot of folk around here wouldn’t wish it.”

“No?” Toby asked. “I thought wizards were handy to have around.”

The little pearlescent demon shrugged again. “If things are like they were, I imagine folk would think you’re very lucky having a landlord that’s a turnip. A landlord that’s a turnip isn’t going to give you much strife, and that’s worth its weight in gold as a renter in this economy.”

Toby merely grunted his agreement at that. He ran his eyes up the front of their new home. It stood proudly amongst its neighbors. Its two stories were constructed of sturdy timber and cut stone, which offered a welcoming façade to all those who passed by. The windows were apparently shuttered up tight, but they were fronted with window boxes from which a variety of happy flowers bloomed.

“Shall we go inside?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, yeah, good idea,” Toby said.

He stepped up to the heavy wooden front door, slipped the small brass key into the lock, and turned it. There was a moment’s pause. The sigils and runes cut into the door flashed brightly once and then faded away, becoming nothing more than chiseled marks in the wood. There was a deep click from within, and the door swung open.

Toby stepped through the portal and into the hall. He was greeted by the comforting scent of polished wood and hearth smoke, and that strangely soothing musty smell that some old houses had.

To the right of the entrance, a spacious living area beckoned. Toby stepped inside. As soon as he was over the threshold, the hearth burst into flame.

“Automatic heating spell,” the imp said appreciatively at his shoulder. “Typical wizard’s edition, that. Very nice.”

“Would you do me a favor?” Toby said.

“Yeah, mate, of course.”

“Would you just zip it for a few moments?”

“Yeah, yeah, not a worry,” the imp said.

“Great, thanks.”

“I just wanted to point out that an automated fire isn’t exactly par for the course in this town,” the imp said. “That’s pretty high-spec domestic magic, that. I mean, come on. A fire that requires no fuel to burn? That’s very environmentally friendly. Very fashionable amongst the homebuyers of today.”

Toby looked levelly at the imp.

“Right, yeah, no worries, mate. Zipping it up,” the imp said.

Without speaking, Toby, Anna and Verity spread out to explore the new house at their own pace. Mismatched furniture replete with plush cushions and cozy blankets were scattered around the living room, inviting Toby and anyone else to relax and unwind after a long day doing whatever it was people spent long days doing in Eclipsia.

Adjacent to the living area was a modest kitchen. Its wooden countertops and shelves were stocked with all the essentials that someone whipping up a meal might need. As Toby looked around the kitchen, the imp on his shoulder gave a couple of deep sniffs. He looked questioningly at Toby.

Toby sighed. “Go on then, spit it out.”

“I was just going to point out that there’s a magical charm that’s been subtly impregnated into this room,” the imp said. “Should maintain an aura of cleanliness and order. You know, ensuring the dishes are always washed, surfaces are always tidy and free of crumbs, and all that sort of stuff. Keeps the mouse population down.”

“That’s good,” Toby said.

“Yeah, I suppose. I’ve always been a bit partial to a bit of mouse, me,” the imp said.

At the rear of the ground floor, a small dining area provided Toby and his friends a comfortable space to enjoy their meals. The wooden table was scarred and burned in places. Ill-assorted chairs were arranged around it. A large window overlooked the back courtyard, allowing sunlight to filter in and illuminate the room with a warm golden glow, thanks to the late afternoon sun.

Toby ascended the staircase to the second floor. He discovered four bedrooms. Each of them was furnished with a comfortable double bed. Toby sat on the edge of the mattress. Then he lay back. It was very yielding. He let out a groan of satisfaction.

The imp performed a textbook reverse swan dive and landed flat on the bed next to Toby.

“Feather,” he said approvingly.

“Goose?” Toby guessed.

“Nah, hippogriff by the feel of it. Top quality,” the imp said. “That Moonshroud bugger, he might have had a unique sense of reality, but he didn’t skimp when it came to interior furnishings, I’ll give him that.”

Toby got up as he heard Anna and Verity break into a chorus of cooing from down the hall. He went to investigate. He found that what had got the girls all revved up was the bathroom. It was simple in design, but it was equipped with a magical bathing tub that filled itself with warm water when the bather pulled on a lever connected by a chain to the ceiling. After the unexpected travails of the road over the last few days, Toby found himself looking longingly at that tub.

“Dibs,” Anna said when she saw Toby looking covetously at the bathtub.

Toby grinned. “Well played, Miss Coombes.”

“Have you checked out the outhouse?” Anna asked.

Toby shook his head.

“Oh, it’s lovely,” Verity said. “It’s nestled among a riot of colorful flowers and fragrant herbs. Very good spot for it. It’s equipped with all the necessary amenities, too.”

Toby noticed Anna was nodding her head enthusiastically.

“Don’t tell me it’s got a flushing toilet,” Toby said.

“The next best thing,” Anna said. “It’s a magical chamber pot that empties itself. And there’s also an enchanted lantern in there that provides light if you need to go for a pee in the middle of the night.”

“Yes, those sound like the creature comforts a wizard would add,” the imp said. “Yes, overall, I’d say we’ve done tolerably well out of that deal with old Moonshroud. This place is a charming blend of medieval craftsmanship and magical convenience.”

“You sound like a realtor,” Toby said.

“What’s a realtor?” the imp asked.

“They’re like merchants,” Toby explained. “Merchants that sell people’s houses for them.”

The imp frowned. “Where the hell are you from? Why don’t people just sell their own houses?”

“That’s just it,” Toby said. “Realtors are cunning because they figured out that people, for some reason, don’t want to buy houses straight from other people—not in our world. They’ll buy practically anything straight from another person, but not a house.”

“So what you’re saying is that these realtor chappies, they just play the part of the middleman when no middleman is actually required.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Anna said. “And then they take a percentage of the agreed-upon purchase price from the person selling the house and the person buying the house.”

The imp’s little jaw sagged open, revealing twin rows of needle-sharp pointy teeth. “You’re telling me that these realtor blokes take a percentage of the money that is exchanged between someone selling a house and buying a house when they don’t have any stake in the house at all?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Toby said.

“Fuck me sideways with a pitchfork,” the imp said. “And some people think that imp’s, djinn, and all the other spirits are evil geniuses. Madness.”

They all trooped back downstairs and made themselves comfortable in the parlor.

“Look, do you have a name?” Toby asked the imp. “I can’t go around referring to you as ‘it’ or just saying ‘oi’ to get your attention.”

The imp’s small forehead creased up.

“Remember, we have a self-vanishing chamber pot if you’re going to—” Toby said.

“I’m just trying to translate my name into the common tongue,” the imp said. It summoned another one of its tiny cigars, puffed thoughtfully on it for a few moments, and then snapped its fingers. The cigar vanished. The imp blew a perfect smoke ring that divided and then turned into a pair of breasts.

Verity chuckled.

“My name translates roughly, into your speech as ‘Frankly-you’ll-wish-you’d-never-been-born-when-I-the-corruptor-of-men’s-souls-has-my-wicked-way-with-you-and—”

Toby held up a hand. “That’s your name?”

“Well, no, not my whole name. It runs on for another two minutes or so. Now, let me start again. It’s ‘Frankly-you’ll—”

Toby interrupted the imp again.

“Frank,” he said. “We’ll shorten it down to Frank.”

Frank, the imp, looked momentarily outraged. Then he seemed to see the sense in this. “Yeah, alright then, guv. Fair enough. I suppose it’s still sticking with the name, isn’t it? I’ve had my name a long time, you know. I’m attached to it.”

“Names are important,” Anna said.

“Nah, they’re not important,” the imp said in a blasé voice, “but they’re a comfort, aren’t they? Life, especially a long life that, like we spirits enjoy, might take a lot away from you, but it can’t take your name. People have called me an imp. They’ve called me all sorts of things over the years. A ghost, a saint, a demon, an elemental spirit. The name they give me doesn’t matter. The name they give me doesn’t stop me being able to set them on fire in the blink of an eye, does it? It doesn’t change what I am.”

“Are you able to set someone on fire in the blink of an eye?” Toby asked.

The imp, the freshly christened Frank, looked down at its feet. It shifted where it floated in the air, kicking at an invisible rock, maybe. “Well,” it said. “Yeah, I suppose I can. If the person was, say, standing next to a bonfire, and I had the opportunity to shove them in…”

“What magic can you do?” Verity asked. “Can you even do any?”

“Of course I can,” Frank replied indignantly.

“Go on then,” Verity said.

“I can’t just… I’m not just a… Look,” Frank said. “I’m a magical being, right? I mean, that much is obvious. I’m floating in the air, for Pete’s sake. It’s just…”

“Yes?” Verity said, slipping a strand of her perfect blonde hair behind her ear.

“It’s just…”

“It’s just…?” Verity prompted.

“It’s just,” Frank said, “I haven’t been back out in the material realm for… Blimey, must be going on three centuries now. I’m a bit out of practice. I need to warm up, you know?” Like a… Like a Castle Keepers player.”

Toby looked blankly at the imp. Then he looked over at Verity. “Do you know what Castle Keepers is?”

Verity shook her head.

“What?” Frank said. “They’re not playing Castle Keepers anymore? That game where you used to run around with a leather ball, five players to a team, and the whole point was that you had to get your ball through your opponent’s goal, or ‘castle gate’, while defending your own castle gate from attack?”

Verity shook her head. “I’ve never seen anyone play it. Certainly not in the street.”

The little pearlescent colored imp looked slightly crestfallen. “Bugger. I love to play a bit of Castle Keepers, me. Bloody great game, that was. Used to be very popular with beings in my line, because the body count was always so high. I used to be a supporter of Pigbladder United.”

Toby looked out the window. He stretched his arms above his head. “Looks like it’s getting on out there. I think we should go over to the Toby Jug, Anna. We might not need the lodging anymore, but Oswald probably thinks that we’re still working there.”

“Are we not still working there?” Anna asked. “It’s not like, just because we’ve got this house, it means we’re bringing in any money.”

“She has a point,” Verity said.

“True,” Toby agreed. “Plus, the tavern’s just about the best spot I can think of where we might hear some news that might shed a little light on what’s going on with you and I being here.”

Anna got to her feet.

“Hold on, hold on, my newly minted friends,” Verity said. “Before you all go rushing off, how about we whip up a quick meal and sit down as a—”

“Family?” Toby finished.

“Yes, an orphan sort of family,” Verity said with a smile.

Toby considered this. “Have we got enough food in the house to make something?”

“I’m sure I can rustle something up,” Verity said.

“I’ll help,” Anna told her.

“Splendid.”

Verity got to her feet and bustled off to the kitchen. Anna followed. Toby looked pointedly at the imp.

“Don’t look at me, mate,” Frank said. The last thing I cooked was a supplicant’s feet over hot coals. Like I say, that was over three hundred years ago. They smelled good, but they tasted like over ripe blue cheese.”

Toby snorted. “What’s your deal anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are we bonded in the way that you apparently think we are?” Toby asked, as Anna and Verity bustled off to go and search the kitchen.

“I told you,” Frank said. “You touched me. Your hand to my feathers. I remember it distinctly.”

“As do I,” Toby said. “I remember it too. You felt a bit greasy.”

“That’s because I was fresh out of the void,” Frank said defensively. “I’m not always such a slippery character. Look, imps like me. We’re supposed to be… How do I explain it? You know how they say there’s a demon and a saint sitting on either of your shoulders?”

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Toby said. “What, are you, the demon or something?”

“Nah,” the imp said with a fiendish grin, as he waggled his eyebrows and puffed up his horns a little. “I’m the one that uses his tail to strangle the demon while the saint looks on in horror.”

Toby looked at him and then said, “Yeah, that’s very scary and everything, especially coming from someone who’s six inches tall, but I was wondering, before you go doing whatever dastardly business you have in store for me, can you wait until after we’ve eaten?”

Frank’s horns retracted. “Yeah, of course I can, mate. I’m not an animal.”

The imp vanished in a puff of greasy smoke.

Toby sat for a few moments with his head in his hands. He sucked in a deep breath and then let it out. He found that he was laughing softly to himself.

“Uh oh,” came a voice. “Five minutes alone with that little sable weirdo and you’re already laughing maniacally to yourself.”

Toby looked up. He grinned. “Hey, Verity,” he said.

“Hello. Anna’s just bustling in there and I feel like I’m hindering more than I’m helping currently, so I thought I’d come and annoy you.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“What were you laughing about, if you don’t mind me asking?” the beautiful woman asked.

“Nothing specific. Just how things turn out.”

“Exactly how you think they’re going to turn out, yes?” Verity said sarcastically.

“Oh, yeah. Every single time. You wouldn’t believe how closely the last few days have worked out just as I thought they might. It’s uncanny.”

“You need something to take your mind off it, otherwise you’re liable to get overwhelmed,” Verity said.

“Is that right?” Toby said. “Well, I’m sure it’s nothing a good home-cooked meal won’t—”

An eel swimming through a vat of petroleum jelly couldn’t have moved more smoothly than Verity did in the next moment.

She slipped in between Toby’s body and the table, her left leg slipped over Toby’s before he knew what was going on, and then she was in his lap.

Before he could so much as finish his lame-ass sentence, Verity had taken his face in her hands and kissed him.

Toby was quite taken aback, but he rallied magnificently. His hands came up, as if some quicker thinking being sitting on the floor above was maneuvering them with strings coming through the ceiling. He placed them on Verity’s waist.

Verity ever so gently, and almost as if by accident, rocked forward and back in Toby’s lap. Toby could feel the heat of the woman pressing into him. He could feel the hardness of her pelvis rubbing, rubbing, rubbing against him.

“Home cooked meals are nice,” Verity said, “but I often have less refined tastes.”

Toby swallowed, looking up into the dazzling eyes of the princess look-alike. “Well, there are appetites and then there are appetites, aren’t there?” he said.

“You’re a man after my own heart,” Verity said.

She pressed herself slightly harder into Toby’s crotch. Toby let out a little moan. Verity leaned forward and kissed Toby again. This time, Toby’s hands slipped around and found Verity’s ass. He kneaded her buttocks together. Verity left out a little groan in return.

She pulled away slightly from Toby and then nipped at his lower lip.

Toby’s hands came up and boldly he pushed Verity back so that she was leaning against the table on her elbows. His hands came around from her shoulders and ran down her front. He squeezed her breasts.

Verity bit her lip, not taking her eyes off Toby. Toby’s hands moved lower. He rubbed at Verity’s crotch through the fabric of her clothes. It might have been his imagination, it might have been wishful thinking, but he thought that he could just feel a dampness through the material.

A sudden rush of lust of longing swept through Toby. It was such an acute feeling of want for the woman sitting in his lap that it almost took his breath away. He would have quite liked to bend her over the table there and then and have his way with her. The way she was looking at him, he reckoned similar notions were swirling through Verity’s mind.

“Oh,” Verity said in a low voice. “You are trouble.”

“That’s funny,” Toby said. “I was about to say the same thing about you.”

Verity grinned. Her face was the very definition of minx. “You’ve been through a lot the last day or so by the sounds of it, Toby.”

“I have. We have,” Toby said.

“You’ve been through a lot,” Verity said again, he leaned forward and whispered. “But tell me. After going through all that, have you learned one of the most important truths about certain kinds of women? The kinds of women that myself and Anna are?”

Toby gave her a questioning look.

“The truth is,” Verity said, lowering her voice even further so that her breath brushed Toby’s cheek. “The truth is that for certain women like me, like Anna, no matter how much trouble we allow ourselves to suffer, nothing can take away our appetite for more.”

Toby looked up into the beautiful heart-shaped face as Verity pulled away from him. She winked lasciviously. That simple gesture dripped with promise.

“You know,” Toby said, “you did strike me, even on first laying eyes on you, that you had a hell of an appetite for trouble.”

Verity grinned and winked again. “Insatiable is the word I would use,” she said.

She reached down. Her fingers walked up Toby’s thigh. She cupped him so that Toby stiffened in more ways than one. Then she kissed him on the cheek.

“Come now,” she said, emphasizing the first word. “We don’t want to be late for dinner.”

16

By the time they had finished their supper—a string of sausages fried up in a cast iron pan with onions and sage and served up with a creamy mashed potato and some roasted carrots—the sun had well and truly sunk. When Toby stepped out into the street of Stagbreach, with Frank floating at his shoulder, the muddy streets of Eclipsia’s capital were lit by magically ignited torches and fairy filled lanterns.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you?” Anna asked from the doorway.

Toby looked up. “No, it’ll only take one of us to explain the situation to Oswald. You and Verity put your feet up.”

“We might give the house a little bit of, you know, the female attention,” Anna said.

Toby had no idea what that might mean and didn’t want to know, but he nodded dutifully. “Sounds good. I won’t be long.”

“Stay safe,” Anna called after him.

Toby pointed at Frank, hanging in the air and looking around. “Don’t worry. I’ve got our very own turnip changer here. How could I not be safe?”

“I told you that was a one-off,” Frank said.

Toby rolled his eyes. “Make sure you lock the door behind us. I’ve got the key.”

Anna waved a goodbye and closed the door. Toby heard the comforting sound of arcane-driven locks sliding and thunking into place. The runes on the door glowed bright and then faded once more, diminishing to a gentle humming illuminance.

“Come on then,” Toby said.

As they walked along or, in Frank’s case, levitated, Toby quizzed the imp on just what kinds of powers he’d brought to the party.

“So you can’t turn anyone else into a turnip?”

“Negative,” the supernatural being said.

“A pumpkin? That’s usually a favorite in worlds like this.”

“No, can’t do a pumpkin,” Frank said.

“A cabbage? A head of broccoli? A potato?” Toby asked.

“No, no, and no,” Frank said.

“Look, how about a kidney bean?” Toby said. “Or an onion? Not a big white onion, you know, but one of those small fancy ones. The kinds that the French use.”

“Look, kid, I don’t know what a French is, but it sounds dirty and untrustworthy,” Frank said.

“Don’t call me ‘kid,’“ Toby said. “I’m thirty-five years old.”

The imp scoffed. “Thirty-five? You’re little more than a suckling babe.”

“How old are you, then?” Toby asked.

Frank mused. “My age would be better measured in epochs than it would be in your puny human years.”

“And yet, when it comes to turning violent, inebriated wizards into assorted root vegetables, you’re a one-shot wonder?”

“Hey,” Frank said defensively. “I can do stuff. I can do this. Can you do this?”

His tail gave a soft little crack and he vanished from where he floated at Toby’s shoulder. He reappeared a moment later, sitting on the eve of a roof not far away. Catching Toby’s eye, Frank winked and then disappeared again, coming to stand on the back of a pig that was being led down the road by its owner.

“Oi!” grunted the man, breathing out a veritable miasma of pickled onions and beer. “Get your squirrel off my pig. She’s a ruddy prize winner!”

“Yep, that she is. That she is. Sorry about that,” Toby said. “Excellent pig.”

When the man had passed, Toby motioned for Frank to come closer. Frank bobbed over. “Can other people see you?” Toby asked.

The imp shrugged. “They see what they expect to see, I suppose you’d say.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Toby asked.

“It means that your lot, humans, are rubbish at seeing what’s in front of them.”

Toby gave Frank a look. “I can see you all right, and I can certainly hear you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because you and I are bonded, isn’t it? We’re like two peas from a pod—or two turnips from the same patch, eh?” The imp gave Toby a nudge in the arm with a very pointy elbow.

“So you’re saying that no one else can see you?” Toby asked, rubbing his bicep.

“All right, mate. Listen up, because Uncle Frank’s got a bit of wisdom to share with you,” Frank said. “Now, you humans, bless you, you’re a funny lot. I say humans, but most of the sentient species in Eclipsia are the same—some to more and some to lesser degrees. But basically, they all go about their business thinking they know everything there is to know about the world. But, the thing is, they’re as blind as a bunch of bats when it comes to seeing what’s right in front of them most of the time.”

Toby paused at a cross section, trying to get his bearings. They were out of the Baker’s District now. The pungent smells of Stagbreach filled Toby’s nostrils once more.

That was something that couldn’t be adequately described through the medium of film or novels, he was finding. The organic, lived-in earthy stink of a medieval era-looking town like Stagbreach. Many of the houses may have looked as if they had been copied wholesale from one of the more nauseatingly virtuous cookie boxes that you might find at Christmas, but there was no disguising the smell of a lot of dwarves, humans, and who knew what else kind of races living in close proximity to one another, especially when modern plumbing was probably little more than a pipe dream.

“See, you mortals, you’ve got this knack for explaining away things that you don’t understand,” Frank went on, as Toby picked a direction and set off again. “You’ll come up with all sorts of fancy theories and explanations to make sense of the world, even if it means ignoring the evidence staring you straight in the face.”

“As in the evidence that the spirit world is real and that demons exist. Demons, moreover, with extreme cases of verbal diarrhea,” Toby said.

“Yeah, exactly. The thing I noticed when I was last out from doing a stretch in the Beyond Beyond was that most folks, whoever they be, prefer a flowery, sweet-smelling lie to a hard-edged stinky truth. Helps most of them sleep better at night, you see?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Toby admitted. “That’s the thing about the truth, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s not pretty. Sometimes it’s downright uncomfortable and disturbing.” He looked pointedly at Frank. “Doesn’t mean we can go ignoring it and sweeping it under the rug, like it doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist.”

“Nah,” Frank said. “Always best to face the truth head-on, even if the truth of the matter is that you don’t know shit about anything.”

What with only having recently arrived and then working his kitchen job at the Toby Jug, Toby hadn’t really been out into the streets of Stagbreach.

After dark, shrouded in a veil of darkness that was punctuated by the misty lantern and torchlight, the place took on a more mysterious and eerie ambiance. Long shadows danced across the rutted muddy streets. The faint glow of hearth fires spilled out from taverns and homes, hinting at a warm respite from the chilly night air.

People moved around, their faces obscured by hoods and cloaks that were pulled up against the falling temperatures. On the main thoroughfares where there were cobblestones, the sharp rapping of people’s booted footsteps echoed more loudly off the buildings.

“It strikes me that we’re going the long route,” Frank said.

“You don’t even know where we’re going,” Toby pointed out.

“Yeah, but from the directions you’ve taken thus far, we could have saved a bit of time by cutting through a bunch of alleys and back streets.”

“The time we would have saved taking that kind of route we probably would have lost again, being mugged,” Toby said.

“Yeah, maybe, but that’s a shame,” the imp said. “I like a good mugging.”

“I don’t,” Toby said, “especially when I’m the star of the show.”

Frank blew a raspberry. “It’s character building.”

Finally, Toby recognized where they were. They passed by an apothecary that was still open for business despite the growing lateness of the hour. The door was open, and the flickering light seeped out into the street.

“Oh, look,” Frank said, pausing to float and look through the open doorway of the apothecary. “Back when I was last here, leeching people was on the cutting edge of medical knowledge. I’m surprised they’re still doing it.”

Toby walked back up the street to usher the imp along. He looked into the doorway that Frank was staring through.

“I don’t think that man is getting leeched for any sort of medicinal purpose,” he said, “unless it’s stress relief.”

The old boy, who was sitting on a stool while a bent, old crone administered the leeches to his torso, had his eyes closed in rapture.

“That’s it, that’s it,” he grunted. “Now, stick the final two on my nipples, will you, Hattie?”

“Ah, I see,” Frank said.

They were only a couple of streets over from the Toby Jug. Toby decided to throw caution to the winds and cut through a back street that would lead straight to the courtyard outside the tavern. They had only walked a dozen yards through the fetid space when Toby let out a groan.

“Shit,” he said.

At his shoulder, Frank cackled.

Four hulking figures emerged from out of the darkness. Two of them stepped out of the shadows to block Toby’s way ahead. A sound behind him made him turn. He saw that two others had appeared from behind some stacked crates. Knives, or some other sharp kind of blades, gleamed in the fitful light of the sickle moon. They weren’t heavy-set men. They were rangy, scrawny almost, with lean, hungry faces.

“Evening,” Toby said brightly. Casually, he dropped his hands to his hips. On the left one, his sword hung.

“Don’t even think about it, Sonny,” one of the men said.

“Too late,” Frank replied gleefully.

“Shut up,” Toby hissed.

“Who are you telling to shut up?” one of the men situated behind Toby snarled.

“No one. I was just talking to…” Toby realized that the men probably couldn’t see Frank, especially not with the alleyway being as dark as it was. “Sorry,” Toby said. “I was just gearing myself up for—”

“Gearing yourself up for what?” a third man asked. There was a definite sneer in his tone, which Toby didn’t appreciate.

“Trouble,” Toby replied. “Not that I want any.”

“That’s too bad,” one of the men said in a falsely morose voice. “Because Trouble’s my middle name.”

“I thought your middle name was Angel,” one of the other men said. “You know, because your mum always said when you were a little boy that you were an angel. And…”

“Would you shut up, Parker?”

Frank burst out in a rolling chortle. “Angel? Oh, yeah, that’s a very scary name, Angel. Angel’s my middle name. Watch out.” He gave Toby another dig with his pointy little elbow. “What do you think his go-to move is? Strangling people with his halo?”

“What did you say?” the man that might have been called ‘Angel’ but would have rather been called ‘Trouble’ asked. “Did you say something, man?”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Toby said. “I was just…”

“Look, are we going to rob this bloke or not?” one of the other men said.

“I reckon you should probably have a crack,” Frank said. “Otherwise you would have got all dressed up in your balaclavas for nothing. Apart from that guy over there—is that just a tea cozy with holes cut out of it?”

Toby tried to regain some semblance of control over the situation. “Look, if you could just let us pass—”

“Us? It’s just you, mate,” one of the men said.

“Yeah, I meant…” Toby said.

“Or are you referring to your sword as well?” one of the men, who was brandishing the largest knife, sneered. “Are you one of those fellas, one of those would-be heroes who names his sword?”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Toby said.

“Yeah, he does,” Frank chipped in.

“No, I don’t,” Toby said forcefully.

“Who are you bloody well yarning to?” one of his assailants said.

“Oh, fuck this,” Toby swore and drew his sword.

To his astonishment, the blade seemed to emit a faint radiance in the darkness of the alley. At first, Toby thought it might be simply reflecting the pale moonlight from above, but then he saw that the light was more gold than silver.

“Hold on,” one of the men said. “That blade doesn’t look like your average Saturday night special.”

“Don’t be a pussy, get in there!”

And Toby darted forward.

The handle of the sword was warm in his hand. Glancing down, he saw the red stone, which he guessed was a ruby, was glowing also with an inner fire. It was as if he and the sword, more even than they had been when he had fought the spriggans, were working on the same wavelength. The sword was guiding him just as much as he was guiding it.

The razor-keen point of the sword slid easily through the shoulder of the man nearest to Toby. He left out a little hoot of disbelief. Toby twisted the blade and pulled it through. The man collapsed into the muck.

It wasn’t a killing blow. Toby could have skewed the man right through the chest if he wanted to. He knew that. Something stayed his hand in that regard, though. He didn’t want to go cutting people down, people who might be on the more desperate side of things in the middle of Stagbreach. Something about that didn’t sit right with him.

As if it could read his mind, the imps said, “Ah, come on, mate. Nothing adds the final touch to an alleyway like a couple of corpses, don’t you reckon?”

Toby was too busy to answer. One of the men behind him, the tallest of his assailants, rushed him. Toby stepped to the side. He raised his sword and parried the knife as it came down towards his face. The clang of metal on metal was punctuated by a spray of sparks.

As Toby had pointed out to Anna whilst they had been getting changed a few days earlier, he had been trying to keep fit. He gritted his teeth as the man with the large knife tried to push it towards his face. He felt his muscles strain. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. He turned his head a fraction.

Another of the men was charging towards him. He had a wicked little stiletto clutched in his hand. He held it low, obviously intent on ramming it into his guts.

A blaze of warmth flooded from the hilt of Toby’s sword down his arm and into his chest. It was an inexplicable feeling. It almost reminded him of that sensation that comes over someone just before they’re involved in some kind of accident. It was that infinitesimal moment just before something significant took place, where all the world froze. A moment someone looked back on and thought, ‘What if I did this? What if I did that?’

The heat built in Toby’s chest and then ran down his other arm, his free arm, his left arm. Without quite knowing why, Toby raised his hand.

An expanding, concentric ring of rippling air burst forth from his open palm. It tumified as it moved further away from Toby until it filled almost all the alley. The man running towards Toby with the stiletto was blown off his feet. He was flung backwards with a soft exhalation of breath that was more a groan than a scream. He smashed into the wooden side of the house that was at the end of the alleyway, before dropping senselessly into a pile of refuse.

“Holy shit! He’s a wizard!” the man who was tussling with Toby shouted.

He disengaged from Toby and backed off.

Toby actually almost told the man that he wasn’t, but he was too busy looking down at his hand. It was tingling. It almost felt like he’d been burned. Toby took a step towards the man with the large knife. The man took a couple more hurried steps backwards. Frank de-materialized from where he had been watching casually, by Toby’s shoulder, and appeared again just behind the man’s right knee. The man tumbled over backwards. He let out a satisfying cry. His weapon clattered away into the dark.

“Our mistake, mister. Our mistake,” he said, showing some top-class survival instincts. “We’re like you. We don’t want no trouble.”

“That’s good,” Toby said, “because I think Trouble, or is that Angel, is lying down at the end of the alleyway there. It’s him that left the dent in the side of that house, isn’t it?”

The man nodded. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Never had much time for Trouble.”

Toby glanced over his shoulder. He saw that the other man had disappeared. Toby raised his free hand and pointed at the man on the ground. He flinched as if Toby had brandished the sword in his other hand at him.

“You help your perforated buddy over there,” he said. “Get him to an apothecary. There’s one just round the corner. She should have finished up with the guy with the leech fetish by now.”

The man nodded mutely.

Toby turned and walked down the alleyway. He and Frank passed the stricken man who was moaning in the pile of stinking garbage. As Toby and the imp passed him by, a loose board fell from the shattered wall into which he crashed and landed on his head with a soft clonk. The man’s moans redoubled.

“Frank,” Toby said out of the corner of his mouth as they exited the end of the alley and headed towards the Toby jug which lay on the other side of the square. “What the hell was all that about? What did I just do?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” the imp said. “But I do know one thing.’

“What’s that?”

“That, my human companion, was most definitely magic.”

17

Magic.

The idea of magic was not so incredible to Toby now, of course, having been in Eclipsia for going on a little over a week than it once would have been. The fact, the idea, that he might be able to use it, though… Well, it was almost as if he was standing on top of a wall that divided the possible and the impossible. The real and the unreal. On one side of that wall was everything he thought he knew to be and on the other side was what in his wildest dreams he might hope to be.

Oswald was busy when he and Frank made their way into the Toby Jug. Still in a daze, Toby sat down at the end of the bar.

“Magic,” he said. He looked down at his left palm. It was still tingling. There was no outward sign of anything untoward though. He turned his hand over. It looked just the same as it always had done, the thirty-five years he had been connected to it.

“You want to be careful with magic, Toby,” Frank said.

“Wait a minute, shouldn’t you be egging me into using it so that I do something stupid?” Toby said. “You said that you were worse than the devil on someone’s shoulder.”

“Yeah, but I mean, I’m enjoying this little stretch out of the Beyond Beyond,” the imp said. “I’ll be the first to admit that if things get a little stale I’ll be giving you a nudge in all the wrong directions, but as for now I’m quite enjoying myself.”

The demon, imp or whatever he was, looked around the pub with his bright silver eyes. “Yeah, magic’s a bit like a strong liquor, mate.”

“In what way?” Toby said.

“Well if you’re not used to, it you end up doing some fucking stupid things and making a right fucking fool out of yourself.”

Toby gave his head a little shake. “Do you really think that was magic?”

“What do you think?” Frank replied.

Toby paused before answering. “I can’t think of any other explanation.”

“Unless that pheasant gave you gas the way it gave me gas,” the demon said. “But I’ve never seen a fart of that magnitude. Never seen a fart throw a man down an alleyway. Not even back west five-hundred years ago when there was the great cabbage famine.”

“There was a cabbage famine?” Toby asked.

“Well there was a famine and all that would grow was cabbage,” Frank replied. “Trust me, that was one time when I wasn’t sad to be re-summoned back out of the Beyond Beyond.”

“All right, so if I did do it,” Toby said. “I suppose the next question is how the fuck did I do it?”

“I’d say it’s something to do with that sword,” Frank said.

Toby put his hand on the pommel of the sword that hung back on this hip. It was still warm.

“But Moonshroud said that the stone would help tap into the natural ability of the sword to be enchanted, didn’t he?”

The imp shrugged its little bony shoulders. “I can’t remember, mate. I wasn’t really listening to what he was saying. I was in pigeon form remember? Whenever you change into the shape of a creature you always take on a little bit of the mentality as well as the physicality of that creature. Pigeons are scatterbrained at the best of times.”

“I wonder if he picked up the wrong gem or something?” Toby speculated.

“Might have done, might have done,” Frank said. “The man was obviously not all there. I don’t know what he’d been drinking but, I mean, well, you saw his eyeball revolving in his socket. That’s a sure sign that you’ve had too much of something.”

“But how—?” Toby started to say.

“Hold on, here comes the bartender,” Frank said.

Toby turned. Next to him there was a soft popping sound.

“Hello ,Toby, you’re back, then,” Oswald Parson said.

“Yep I’m back and still in one piece,” Toby said.

“How did you go with the wizard?” Oswald asked.

“It wasn’t as smooth sailing as anticipated.”

“Did you get your answers?”

“No we didn’t get our answers,” Toby said. “But we did get a house.”

“A house?”

“Yeah, Moonshroud the wizard, well we did a favor for him and, as part of the deal, he threw in one of his rental properties in town.”

“Bloody wizards, buying up houses only to rent them,” the landlord complained. His gaze dropped to the sword that Toby sported at his hip. “And you got a weapon? Good idea. And this is your cat?”

Toby looked to where Frank had been floating. The imp was gone, but on the stool that was next to Toby a big silvery black cat was sitting.

“What interesting eyes he’s got,” Oswald said.

The cat, Frank, said, “Meow.”

Toby saw Oswald frown.

“Yep,” Toby said.

“Drink?” Oswald asked.

“Please,” Toby said. “I need one.”

“Why?”

“A couple of thugs tried to rob me in the alleyway just over the way. Just now,” Toby said.

“You fought them off?”

Toby nodded.

“Well that’s something.”

Oswald went and poured Toby a pint of good strong black beer. Toby lowered the level of the tankard by about three inches before he set it down with a sigh.

“So you’ve got some new lodgings,” Oswald said.

Toby nodded. “That’s why I came over. I wanted to let you know that Anna and I will be moving out. You can rent out that room again.”

Oswald acknowledged this with a perfunctory nod. “Will you still be looking for a bit of work?”

Toby made a face. “I’m not sure.”

Oswald nodded. “That’s fine. Betty’s cousin’s still here. He’s picking up the slack. You figure out what you need to figure out.”

“Oswald,” Toby said, “I know I’ve said it once, and I’m sure I’ll have reason to say it again, but you’re a damn good man.”

Oswald grunted. “I’d be intrigued to hear all about how it went down in the Feywood with that wizard. However, before I forget, and as chance would have it, there’s a man here to see you.”

Toby frowned. “A man to see me? What does he want?”

The landlord shrugged. “He’s been waiting here since lunchtime. I asked him about his business but he just smiled blandly at me.”

“Who do you reckon he is?” Toby asked. “Is he trouble?”

The landlord waggled his hand in that universal sign that meant ‘maybe, maybe not.’ “He hasn’t said anything to me, just that he’s looking for you or Anna, but from the cut of his cloth, I’d say he’s come from the palace.”

“From the king and queen?” Toby asked in surprise.

Oswald Parson nodded his big head. He took Toby’s tankard and topped it up.

“Always a good idea to be adequately lubricated when dealing with one of King Balourd’s messages,” the landlord said.

Toby took his drink and walked over to the man that Oswald had indicated was waiting for him. Frank, still in cat guise, padded along behind Toby, wending his way through the legs of the other patrons.

The royal messenger was sitting at a table, and he was a nondescript fellow. The only notable thing about him was the fact that he didn’t so much have a chin as a slight bulge in his neck where his chin should have been. It was the only deviation to show where his neck finished and his face began. He had a dainty goblet in front of him.

“I understand you’re asking after me,” Toby said.

The messenger gave him a bland smile and indicated the seat opposite. Toby sat.

“Well,” he asked, “how can I help you?”

The messenger steepled his fingers. “It is not how you can help me but how you might oblige King Balourd and Queen Lascivo.”

“Ah, so this is less a conversation and more you passing on some orders, is that right?” Toby asked.

The messenger inclined his head respectfully.

“What would King Balourd and Queen Lascivo like me to do?” Toby asked. “And how do they even know of my existence?”

“How they know what they know, how they know who you are, is not something I concern myself with,” the messenger replied primly.

Fuck me, Toby thought. He’s one of those lunatics—a genuine royalist.

“Okay,” Toby said. “Well, we may as well not beat around the bush, then. I won’t lie to you. It’s been a bit of a long day. A bit of a long couple of days, really.”

“There is no need for any unease on your part,” the messenger said smoothly.

He spoke with that disingenuous variety of comforting tone that those who work for powerful people sometimes adopt when they forget that they themselves aren’t powerful at all.

“Their Royal Highnesses simply wish you to attend to them.”

Something deep inside of Toby bristled at this terminology.

Attend to them, he thought. A little bit too servile for my tastes.

Doing his best not to show his annoyance on his face, Toby asked. “Attend to them in what way?”

“You and your female companion, Miss Anna Coombes, have been asked to be guests at the King and Queen’s royal banquet tomorrow evening.”

“A Royal Banquet?” Toby repeated. “That sounds fancy. What’s this banquet in aid of?”

“That’s not for me to divulge at this time,” the messenger replied. “All I’ve been given leave to say on behalf of their Royal Majesties is that they would like to meet you.”

“The banquet’s not for me and Anna, is it?” Toby asked.

The messenger gave Toby a small, condescending smile. “No, it is not. Their Majesties simply believed that it would be an opportune time to make your acquaintance.”

“Kill two birds with one stone sort of thing?”

“The only birds being killed at the banquet will be the ones roasted and served up on the table,” the messenger said in that stuffy voice of his.

Toby sat back in his chair and plucked at his linen shirt. “I’ve never been to a banquet before, be it royal or otherwise. I’m not sure if these threads will be up to the job.”

“King, Balourd and Queen Lascivo thought that this might be the case,” the messenger said.

He reached into the folds of his doublet and pulled out a small leather purse. He sat it on the table.

Toby heard the unmistakable clinking of coins as the man pushed it towards him.

“This should cover any expenses incurred in procuring some more suitable clothing for both yourself and Miss Coombes,” the messenger said.

“Very generous of the King and Queen,” Toby said. He swept the purse off the table and pocketed it. If the messenger had been hoping for some more fawning thanks than that, then he’d have to be disappointed, because Toby, as a proud American, had never cared much for monarchs.

Toby drummed his fingers on the table. “Well, if that’s everything…?”

The messenger gave a tight little smile.

Toby was finding it harder and harder not to reach over and poke the man in the eye. He had one of those faces that you couldn’t help wanting to rearrange.

“You should be at the palace before the strike of the eighth bell,” he told Toby.

Toby nodded. “Sure. I can’t wait. How many courses will there be?”

“Seven, I believe,” the messenger replied.

“Seven courses,” Toby said, with just a smidge of sarcasm in his voice. “Wow. The last seven course meal I had was a six pack of Coors Lite followed by a slice of day-old pizza that I microwaved.”

The messenger was visibly confused. “Pizza? Micro-wave?”

“Never mind,” Toby said. “They’re just a couple of examples of different magic, I suppose.”

There was a soft purring sound. Frank, still in the guise of a big fat silvery black cat, leapt up onto the table. Toby was surprised to see the austere expression on the messenger’s face soften a little bit.

“You like cats?” Toby asked.

“Yes, I do like cats,” the messenger admitted, reaching out and stroking Frank’s ear with a single finger. “If the banquet of life is made up chiefly of the main course of dealing with people, then cats are the entree. They are the warm-up before the main event. Less testing and infinitely more to be desired in most cases.”

Without another word, the messenger got up, leaving his half-drunk drink on the table. He picked up a heavily plumed hat, put it on his head, and adjusted it minutely. Then with a final nod he took his leave.

“Cor, an invitation up to the palace,” Frank said once the man had gone. “That doesn’t happen to everyone every day, you know. That’s kind of exciting.”

Toby grunted, but he had to admit that there was a squirming of anticipation in the stomach. It was another thing to tick off the list: attending a real banquet in a real palace. The imp might talk a lot, but there could be no denying that he was onto something with that comment.

“Yeah, should be a laugh,” Frank said. “Drink a little bit too much, make a few mistakes, fiddle  around with someone you shouldn’t, maybe try and pocket something of the silverware variety… Yeah, all in all, there’s some potential for some mayhem and skullduggery. It could be a good time.”

“I suppose Anna and I will have to go clothes shopping first thing tomorrow morning,” Toby said.

“You don’t sound very excited.”

“No, clothes shopping has never really been my thing,” Toby admitted. “Anna will be looking forward to it though when I tell her?”

He took a sip of his ale and enjoyed basking in the warm ambience of the Toby jug.

“I know that fancy pants messenger was a bit of a stuck-up asshole to you,” Frank commented, “but he was really quite polite about cats.”

“Yeah, he was,” Toby said. “It made me feel a little bit sorry for him to be honest.”

“Yeah,” Frank said casually. “Well, we’ll see how fond he is of the little feline bastards when he realizes that I crapped on his nice shiny boot whilst you were talking.”

18

“You’re sure this is the place?” Anna asked, excitement underlying her voice.

Toby looked up at the elaborate sign above the contrastingly understated shop front.

Rectus’ Royal Residence of Raiment.

The sign was painted in gold leaf, with lettering so florid that it was almost unreadable.

Toby looked behind him. “Yep, this is the place.

Anna’s eyes gleamed as she stepped towards Rectus’ Royal Residence of Raiment. “I can’t believe that snooty messenger gave you the coin for us to shop here.”

“Yeah, it looks like one of those overly ostentatious setups that’s a bit too good for you scrubbers,” Frank said from where he floated in the air between them. “But hey, if that bozo King Balourd wants to kit you out with his coin, then who’s to argue?”

“Don’t worry, you demonic little naysayer,” Anna said brightly. “Technically not having enough dough to shop in a place has never ever stopped me from walking into any boutique store in all my time. Toby and I are New Yorkers.”

“And what does that mean?” Frank asked.

“It means that we personify the great American idiom ‘fake it until you make it’,’” Anna said.

Frank narrowed his silver eyes. “I like that one. That kind of mentality could get someone into a lot of trouble if they weren’t careful.”

Anna gave Toby a nudge. “Don’t look so apprehensive.”

“I’m not—”

“You’ve got the kind of look on your face usually reserved for those special ops guys who are about to parachute into a hostile jungle.”

“Come on,” Toby said resignedly, and he led the way into the shop.

As they crossed the threshold and the bell above the door tinkled with a pleasant silvery sound, Toby, Anna and Frank were greeted by the soft glow of candlelight dancing upon rich tapestries adorning wood-paneled walls. The air was heavy with the scent of fine fabrics and the indefinable but unique smell of money just waiting to be spent. It was one of those establishments where the very atmosphere could suck money out of your wallet as you set foot inside it.

In the center of the room stood a large oak table. It was strewn with bolts of sumptuous silks, vivid velvets, and brilliant brocades. Bolts of cloth in a dazzling array of colors and patterns were set into alcoves in the walls.

Alongside the table, a grand fireplace crackled merrily, casting a warm, inviting and, somehow, well-heeled illuminance over the opulent surroundings.

In answer to the tinkling of the bell, a luxurious curtain at the back of the shop was opened and a strange figure walked—no, almost floated—out into the shop.

It was a tall humanoid figure, dressed in an exquisite robe. Its skin was a deep burnished gold, and it was completely hairless. The great dome of its bald head gleamed under the soft light. Its eyes were deep and dark, radiating a serene calm that went very nicely with the room itself. Its long arms, which must have hung down past its knees when hanging loose, were folded, and its ten-fingered hands were clasped in a welcoming fashion in front of its thin chest.

“Greetings,” it said in an incredibly and inhumanly sedate voice. Its tone was like chloroform for the ears. “Welcome to Master Rectus’ Royal Residence of Raiment.”

“Hi,” Toby said.

“Is there something I can help you with today?”

“Yeah, we’re looking to get attired for dinner with the King and Queen,” Toby said.

At the mention of the royal personages, the curtain, which presumably led to the back of the shop, opened once more. This time, a man stepped through. He was not as tall as his supernatural colleague, but he was still at least six feet tall. His skin was papery white. His liver-spotted pate was fringed with gray hair. He rocked a pair of eyebrows so wide and stiff looking Toby thought that he might have been able to hang his coat on either one of them.

“Welcome,” he said. “I am Master Rectus. This is my assistant, Noni. I judge from your matching expressions of slight stupefaction that you have not met a weavekin before.”

“No, we haven’t,” Toby said. “But we’re very pleased to.”

“Unsurprising,” Master Rectus said. “Weavekins are a rare and secretive creature. I was very fortunate to come across Noni during my travels in the far south. She wished to perfect her craft with one of the best tailors in Eclipsia, and thus you find us working together. Weavekins like Noni are possessed of dexterous hands and an incredibly keen eye for detail. This, amongst many other reasons, is why Rectus’ Royal Residence of Raiment is the premier establishment for those wishing to attire themselves not so much in clothes but in living, moving works of art.”

The old man bowed his head. It was almost as if he was expecting a round of applause.

Personally, Toby had never held with this sort of pretentiousness, especially when it came to clothes. However, he held back the sarcastic retort that bubbled instinctively into his mind. It was a bit of shame. The one that had come to him revolved mostly around the man having his head stuck so far up his own ass that—

“As I was saying to Noni,” Toby said, cutting his own thoughts off, “Anna and I are here to find some clothes suitable for dinner with the King and Queen.”

“Ah, yes. The banquet this evening. Is that right?” Master Rectus asked.

“It is,” Anna said.

“We’re here to get suited and booted,” Toby said. “And we need the garments ready for this evening.”

Master Rectus’ eyes flicked up and down Toby and Anna. It was clear to Toby that the tailor was measuring them up, not only in terms of size, perhaps, but also in terms of whether or not they could afford his services.

“I hate to be indelicate,” Master Rectus said, “but for such a job we require payment in full on completion. Half payment to start the measuring.”

Toby patted his pocket. There was the jingle of coins. “We’ve been furnished by the King himself with money.”

The old man’s expression brightened. “Most splendid. In that case, may I offer your raven some corn?”

Toby frowned. For a moment he thought that this was some sort of tailor’s parlance which he didn’t understand. Then he saw where Master Rectus’ eyes had alighted. He glanced left and saw that Frank had transformed into a raven shape and was sitting perched up on one of the shelves.

“Oh, yeah, my raven. My pet, tame raven. Yeah. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks,” Toby said hurriedly.

“And perhaps a little wine for the pair of you?” Master Rectus asked.

“It’s a little ear—” Toby started to say.

“That’d be great,” Anna said, making the executive decision. She looked at Toby. “Toby, this isn’t going to be over quickly. Trust me, you’re probably going to want a drink. Probably more than one. I know what you’re like when it comes to shopping.”

Toby had to concede she probably had a point.

“Very well. Noni, if you could please furnish our esteemed guests with libations,” Master Rectus said.

Bowing her great golden dome of a head Noni silently left the room.

“Now,” Master Rectus said, clapping his ancient hands softly together. “Is there something you have in mind?”

Toby looked at Anna. Anna was staring around the room at all the different colors and patterns of cloth, however.

“To be honest,” Toby said, “we’re not from Stagbreach. We’re not from Eclipsia, in fact, and so our knowledge of the fashions is a little…

“Scanty,” Anna finished.

“Right, scanty,” Toby agreed. “It’d be great if you could use your expertise to help us decide what we need. Point us in the right direction.”

This seemed to please Master Rectus. Toby reckoned that was probably because he could, more or less, name his price as to what the two of them required to meet the king and queen.

The old tailor pursed his lips and ran his rheumy eyes first over Anna. “If I may be so bold as to start with the lady?”

Anna giggled at being referred to as a lady.

“By all means,” Toby said. “She might explode if you don’t.”

Master Rectus walked from behind the counter to stand a few paces from Anna. He tapped his lip thoughtfully a couple of times. “Such a magnificent, superlative and graceful figure you cut already, even in these simple rags. You will need a gown, of course, a chemise, a surcoat, and perhaps a headpiece—a jeweled tiara or circlet, perhaps?”

Anna’s eyes lit up.

Master Rectus did not fail to notice this. “And as the evenings can be chill, a shawl and gloves, perhaps.”

“That would be lovely,” Anna said.

“And for sir,” Master Rectus said, turning to Toby. “Of course you’ll be needing a doublet, hose, and a cloak.” He reached out and plucked at Toby’s sleeve. “A shirt, too, and a codpiece, I think. They’re very fashionable at the moment.”

Toby blinked. “A codpiece. What’s fish got to…?”

“It covers the groin area,” Master Rectus said delicately. “It is often embellished with embroidery or jewels.”

“You want to make me a pair of dual encrusted underpants?” he asked.

Anna choked and slapped her thigh in a fashion that was assuredly not ladylike. She even snorted for good measure. “A codpiece goes over the top of your hose, Tobes.”

“Like Superman?” Toby asked.

Master Rectus blinked.

“Superman wore a codpiece?” Toby asked.

Anna had tears in her eyes, but she couldn’t answer.

“It is very much in vogue, I assure you, sir,” Rectus said.

“Uh, okay,” Toby said, completely taken off balance. “That’s not a magazine I ever—”

“Just stop. Please, stop,” Anna said, bending double to try and keep her ribs in.

“Splendid,” Master Rectus said. “And of course you’ll need a belt to hold that fine sword of yours, as well as a hat to add a certain flourishing touch.”

Toby’s mouth opened and closed.

“Excellent,” Master Rectus said before Toby could say anything else.

Anna turned her attention from all the cloth to the tailor. “What would you recommend in terms of color, Master Rectus?”

“Oh, for your ladyship, most certainly a deep green to accent that lovely auburn hair of yours.”

Toby saw Anna blush. She blushed very prettily, especially for someone who Toby had seen eat a number of tequila worms in her time.

“And for Toby?” she asked.

The old man turned his bright gaze on Toby. “I think perhaps some sables—no… that would be too somber, although it would make you cut a rather dashing figure.”

“Yeah, we want to be the life of the party,” Anna said.

Toby shot her a dirty look.

“In that case, might I suggest a confection of silvers and blues?” the tailor said.

Toby glanced at Anna.

Anna nodded. “I think that would be excellent.”

Noni reappeared at that moment. The weavekin carried a silver tray bearing two crystal cut glasses and a bottle of wine.

“While you refresh yourselves, my assistant will take you to the measuring area. I will procure the cloth for your outfits,” Master Rectus said.

Without spilling a drop of wine, nor making a single sound of glass on glass, the weavekin poured Toby and Anna glasses of wine. The pair of them took their drinks. The weavekin bowed her head and raised her long arm.

Toby took a sip. Despite the earliness of the hour, he found himself revitalized. Strengthened. Ready for the trial ahead.

“Told you,” Anna said, catching the look on his face.

“You’re a wise woman.”

“I think we both knew that already, Tobes.”

“Please come this way,” Noni said in her wonderfully sanguine voice. She led Toby and Anna to a spacious fitting area.

Toby glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Frank was behaving himself. He saw the raven was still perched up on a high shelf. He caught Toby’s eye, and Toby saw the raven surreptitiously pop a squat and deposit a small nugget of poop on the shelf. Toby bit back an admonishment. It seemed that the imp took small pleasures in defecating wherever he went. It was like he epitomized what a kid might do to annoy someone as obviously fastidious and prim as Master Rectus obviously was.

“Please stand side by side,” the weavekin said.

Toby and Anna did so. The weavekin ran her deep dark eyes over the pair of them. Then she reached into the pockets of her robe and pulled out two measuring tapes.

“Which one of us do you want to go first?” Toby asked.

The weavekin gave him a small shy smile. “Measuring the pair of you at the same time will not prove a problem.”

With remarkable precision, the weavekin then began the meticulous process of measuring Toby and Anna for their outfits. She took the measurements of Toby’s chest, waist and arms.

“I will ensure that your doublet will fit you like a second skin,” she told him.

As she did this with one hand, she simultaneously attended to Anna’s measurements, measuring the length of her gown and the circumference of her waist with equal care.

As their measurements were taken, Toby and Anna sipped their wine and marveled at the skill and dexterity of the weavekin. The creature’s ten-fingered hands moved with a speed and accuracy that was completely supernatural. With each measurement, the weavekin muttered to herself in hushed tones, apparently committing the measurements to her memory.

Whilst the pair of them stood as still as they were able to, Toby feeling slightly awkward and Anna looking absolutely entranced and delighted, Master Rectus busied himself climbing ladders and fingering the many bolts of cloth.

After about half an hour, Frank fluttered down from his perch and came to stand on the back of a nearby chair. The imp cocked its avian head to the side.

“Don’t you say anything,” Toby muttered.

The raven gave a croak of amusement.

Finally, after what seemed like an interminable time to Toby, the weavekin stepped back. With a wave of her fingers, the measuring tape snaked back into the pockets of her robes of their own accord.

“The measurements are complete,” she declared.

“Oh, are you sure?” Anna said. “We can stand here for a little while longer.”

“Speak for yourself,” Toby said.

Toby led the way over to the counter where Master Rectus was waiting for them. He knocked back the rest of his wine as he did so. It was, so far as his relatively inexperienced palate was able to deduce, a very good drop. It had done a lot to appease his impatience.

“What do you think of my choice of clothes?” Master Rectus asked.

Toby ran his eyes over the bolts arrayed on the counter. “They look very nice.”

Master Rectus looked a trifle disappointed with his lack of enthusiasm, but to Toby’s eye it just looked like gray and blue cloth with some subtle patterns on.

“Very… soft?” Toby tried.

Master Rectus closed his eyes as if Toby’s analysis pained him.

Thankfully, Anna cooed and exclaimed over the material that the tailor had selected for her gown and other bits and pieces like a dove over a crusty loaf. This seemed much more to his liking.

“Now, I’m afraid, it comes to a rather uncouth matter of payment,” the tailor said, with a slightly apologetic tincture to his voice.

Toby pulled out the bag of coins, which the messenger from the king had furnished him with. He plonked the pouch down on the counter. With the swiftness of an eagle falling on a luckless rabbit, the old tailor’s hand shot out and grabbed the pouch of money. He weighed it in his hand with the air of a connoisseur.

“Ah, yes, this will do admirably to cover the costs,” he said.

“Will there be any change?” Toby asked, without much hope.

The old man chuckled, as if the very notion of change was fanciful. He pocketed the money.

“Your items will be ready to be picked up an hour before the eighth bell,” he said, “which I believe is when the banquet is to start.”

“It is,” Toby said.

“Splendid. Come by here on your way, and we will dress you so that you look immaculate for your rendezvous with Queen Lascivo and King Balourd,” Master Rectus said.

“Thank you very much, Noni,” Anna said, as they walked to the door.

“Yeah, thanks very much for putting up with us, Noni, and to you, Master Rectus,” Toby added.

“It was our pleasure,” the tailor gushed as he held the door open.

They stepped back out into the street. The door closed with a crisp snap behind them.

“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” Anna said, with genuine enthusiasm. “I hope we get to visit the King and Queen more often if we get new outfits.”

Toby said nothing.

“What?” Anna asked with faux sweet innocence. “Don’t tell me you enjoyed fighting those spriggans more than you enjoyed getting all dolled up?”

“Come on,” Toby said. “Let’s go and get something to eat.”

“Good idea,” Anna said, taking Toby by the arm. “Let’s go to the Toby Jug and have a debrief. I want to hear what you thought about my outfit.”

“You haven’t had it made yet,” Toby pointed out.

“Yes, but you saw the gorgeous color of that cloth. I’m looking forward to hear you waxing eloquent about how well it’ll go with my skin tone. This gal for one is looking forward to going from drab to fab.”

Toby rolled his eyes and exchanged a look with Frank, who had materialized back into his usual impish form.

“Women,” Toby said in a low tone to the imp.

“I heard that,” Anna said.

19

Toby feared for a moment that Frank was going to be sick. The imp was laughing that hard.

“Would you put a sock in it?” Toby griped.

“Put a sock in it?” Frank choked. “You could probably fit an entire change of clothes in it, but I’m not going to be the one to put a sock in it.”

“I meant,” Toby said, “can you stop your damn cackling?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Frank said breathlessly. “I’m a foul entity of the Below Below. Cackling is one of the requirements. It’s just… Oh man, that codpiece is just… Well, it’s just fucking ridiculous. It was ridiculous the last time I was here three-hundred years ago. I can’t believe in three centuries no one has had the balls to point out just how ludicrous and hysterical they are!”

Toby turned sideways and regarded himself in the mirror. He hated to admit it, but Frank had a point. More germane still was that he had a point, and not one that he was a fan of. It looked like he was wearing some bizarre glittery respiration mask over his crotch.

The pair of them were in one of the lavishly appointed changing rooms in Rectus’ Royal Residence of Raiment. Anna was in the changing room next to them, being helped into her gown by Noni.

“What’s going on in there?” she called.

“Nothing,” Toby said in a flat voice. “Just having a bit of a battle with this codpiece.”

“If the good master would like, I’d be willing to lend a hand in—”

“No,” Toby said in answer to Master Rectus’ polite offer. “No, no, I’m fine. I just… I think I’m going to skip out on the codpiece.”

“The style is to… How do you say? To accentuate what’s already there, sir,” Master Rectus said.

Was there a hint of amusement in his voice?

“I could always make it smaller if it’s to sir’s taste?” the tailor said.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Toby said. “I think I’ll go without. Maybe we can take it home and use it as a fruit bowl or something. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a refund, is there?”

“Sir would suppose correctly,” Master Rectus said smoothly.

“Say what you like about it,” Frank said in a hushed voice, finally getting himself under control. “But it’s nothing if not an icebreaker.”

Toby flicked the tip of the codpiece. The hardened leather made a dull, hollow sound. “It’s certainly hard enough to break ice,” he muttered.

As he extricated himself from the clutches of the codpiece, Toby ran his eyes over his reflection in the mirror. Except for the piece of unnecessary groinal embellishment, the rest of his outfit actually looked all right.

The doublet was crafted from a rich blue velvet. The perfect tailoring made his chest and shoulders look pleasingly broad compared to the saggy clothes he had been wearing. Silver buttons adorned the front, catching the candlelight and adding a touch of refinement to the garment.

Beneath the doublet he wore fitted gray hose, a soft woolen fabric, both comfortable and, so far as things went in Eclipsia, quite stylish too, Toby reckoned.

Over his shoulders, Toby had draped a cloak of charcoal gray. Its hem was embroidered with intricate patterns in shimmering silver thread. He imagined that the cloak would billow behind him as he moved and would add a sense of drama to his appearance up at the palace.

His shirt was crisp and white. There was delicate lace trim at the cuffs. Toby didn’t much care for this, as he knew for a certainty it was going to end up in the first saucy thing he tried to eat at the banquet.

His wide-brimmed, practical, weather-stained hat, which he had also been given by Oswald, had been replaced by a slightly less wide-brimmed blue one that was sitting on a chair in the corner of the changing room. It had a feather in it, which Rectus had assured him came from only the finest griffin.

His sword was now fastened to his hip by a brand new leather belt with a silver buckle and jeweled studs. Knee-high boots of polished black leather completed the look.

“Now that I’m free of the penis hat,” Toby said, “what do you think?”

Frank, who was lounging cross-legged in the air, itching his butt with the end of his forked tail, regarded him through narrowed eyes.

“Yeah, not bad,” he said grudgingly.

Toby exited the changing room with Frank, once more in his raven’ guise, sitting on his shoulder.

“Ah, yes,” Master Rectus said, clapping his hands softly, as was his wont. “Yes, once more, mine and Noni’s skills have blown even myself away.”

“What he’s saying,” Frank whispered into Toby’s ear, “is that even he’s amazed that he managed to polish this particular turd up.”

Toby ignored the imp.

“I will have one of my runners take your other garments back to the address that you supplied,” Master Rectus said. “As part of our service, I feel it is incumbent of me to make a few modifications to your other items, just so your other garments fit you just a little bit better.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Toby said.

“Not at all,” Master Rectus said. “All part of the unparalleled service we offer here.”

Toby assumed that the tailor was feeling particularly charitable due to the potential overpayment he had received for his services.

Toby poured himself a drink from the decanter on the counter, just to take the edge off his nerves. They were starting to build a little now the thought of attending a proper royal banquet.

The sound of a curtain being drawn behind him made him turn.

“Well?” Anna said. “What do you think?”

Toby choked on the mouthful of wine. He swallowed hastily, trying not to spill any down his front. Mutely, and with a slightly disapproving look at risking the clothes that he and his assistant had so painstakingly crafted, Master Rectus passed him a handkerchief.

“You look…” Toby’s stunned mind struggled to pick out a suitable adjective to describe how Anna Coombes looked to him at that moment.

The material of Anna’s deep forest green gown flowed around her like a cascade of emerald waves. The bodice of the gown was fitted to absolute perfection. It accentuated Anna’s athletic figure. Every curve and line was made all the better. There was some delicate beadwork, done in gold, that drew the eye up from the waist to the bodice, where some wondrous dressmaking magic meant that Anna’s pert breasts were on full display, more or less.

The skirt billowed out around her in luxurious folds, swaying gently as she rotated in a slow three-hundred and sixty degree turn. Over the gown was draped a surcoat of matching green. Its hem was embroidered with intricate floral motifs, also in shimmering gold thread. The surcoat added a layer of elegance to the ensemble that Toby couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“This fine linen chemise provides a wonderfully comfortable layer against my skin, Master Rectus,” Anna said in a complimentary tone.

The ancient tailor humbly inclined his head. “As I say, Noni is one of the best dressmakers, if not the best dressmaker, in the entire city of Stagbreach.”

Anna turned again. Her hair was adorned with a jeweled headpiece. The sparkling gems caught the light, and somehow made her face even more radiant.

“So, Toby, stop standing there like a stunned fish and tell me what you think,” she said, giving him a pout that made him want to sweep her off her feet—preferably into a bed.

“Uh…”

Anna adjusted the delicate shawl of sheer green fabric around her shoulders, and made a tiny adjustment to the gold brooch that held it in place. Her gloves were elbow length, crafted from the softest leather, dyed green, and embellished with tiny pearls that glimmered in the candles that surrounded them.

“You look… You… You look…”

“I think what the master is trying to say,” Rectus said, “is that you look, quite simply, like a veritable vision, my lady.”

Toby tried to clear the obstruction in his throat with another swallow of wine.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you’ll definitely do, Anna.”

“Always the charmer,” Anna said dryly, cocking an eyebrow at Toby. “Shall we go, then?”

Toby, without saying anything, proffered the crook of his elbow to Anna. Anna beamed.

“The lady is right,” Master Rectus said. “It won’t be long until they sound the eighth bell. Give my regards to the King and Queen if they should honor you with their conversation.”

They stepped out of the shop and into the street. The lanterns, in this cobbled, more affluent part of Stagbreach, were lit. They cast the road in a pleasant bronze glow.

Toby didn’t set off immediately. He looked at Anna, turning his eyes up and down.

“What are you looking at?” she asked. It might have been the light, but Toby thought there was a faint blush to her cheeks.

“You,” Toby said. “I’m looking at you, Anna Coombes.”

Anna looked down at her dress for a moment, giving it an unnecessary smoothing with her gloved hands. Then she looked up at Toby from under her long lashes. “You don’t look too bad yourself, Tobes.”

She raised herself up onto her tiptoes and kissed Toby on the cheek.

Toby smiled at her. “All right. Enough of this. Let’s get up to that castle and see what the king and queen want with us. It’s party time, my lady.”

* * *

“Well, shit a brick,” Toby said softly.

“What is it?” Anna said. “Is it not what you expected?”

“On the contrary, dear Coombes,” Toby said in his best impersonation of Sherlock Holmes, “It is precisely as I expected it to be.”

As soon as they stepped through the enormous doors that led into the hall, Toby was politely addressed by a liveried footman. When he heard who Toby was, the footman nodded and asked Toby and Anna to accompany him to their place at the table.

The centerpiece of the hall, of course, was the grand banquet table. It was a mammoth thing, a marvel of craftsmanship, and it wasn’t made of wood, but of a single piece of quarried stone.

“Man,” Toby said under his breath to Anna, as they were shown to their place about halfway down the table, “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the entire castle was built around this thing.”

At the head of the enormous main table, which must have been about twenty-five meters long, was a raised dais. On this was a much smaller table. It looked to have been made from gleaming white marble veined with gold. Sitting in the middle of this was King Balourd and Queen Lascivo. On either side of them were men and women that Toby assumed were their courtiers, or noble women and men, or whatever they called the higher-ups and dignitaries in Eclipsia.

Dressed as they were in their new finery, Toby and Anna garnered little in the way of excited or interested comments. This suited Toby just fine. He did see Queen Lascivo looking in his direction at one point. Their eyes caught for just a moment, and Toby thought a small smile quirked the lips of the Queen before she turned to address her husband.

King Balourd was looking around himself with the same rosy-cheeked, good-natured, dazed expression that he’d worn when he’d addressed the crowd in front of the palace. He looked to be having a great time. He was drinking heavily from a jewel-encrusted goblet that was almost the size of his head.

“Look at us go,” Toby said. “From taking out the slops out to the pigs at the Toby Jug to hanging out in a genuine bona fide palace banquet hall.”

The place truly was impressive. Its towering walls, which finished in arched cathedral-like ceilings, were adorned with enormous, moody oil paintings and gleaming silken banners that fluttered in the gentle breeze coming through the open doors. Small birds and brightly colored fairies flitted overhead. The place was lit by large globes of magical fire that hung in the air.

“Holy crap,” Anna breathed. “Look at those.”

Toby looked up to where she was pointing. Along one wall of the hall, stained glass windows depicted scenes from, Toby assumed, Eclipsia’s rich and storied past. As he watched, the vibrant colors of one window came to life and the scene that had been frozen the moment before played out like some bizarre low-res movie clip before the window shimmered and returned back to its original state.

Toby turned his attention to the table. Had it been made of wood, it probably would have been groaning under the sumptuous array of dishes and delicacies. Roast meats of various kinds glistened under the glow of the firelight above. Exotic fruits and cheeses of various shapes and sizes beckoned him. He suddenly found that he was ravenous.

It looked to him like there weren’t going to be courses served, as there were mains as well as desserts already on the table. Toby supposed this was to furnish each of the many guests—and there must have been about one-hundred and fifty or two-hundred of them—with whatever they desired, depending on how quickly they ate.

A rather enormous woman sitting just down from Toby, on the other side of the table, had pulled a decadent frosted chocolate cake towards her. Her extravagant towering hairdo, which looked to be emulating the Queen’s hair, made her look like a pig in a wig. When she saw Toby eyeing the cake, she gave him a wide smile.

“Devil’s food cake,” she said, her multiple chins quivering.

When she cut into the confection, Toby saw that there was a small bright fire burning within the center of the cake like one of Hell’s own furnaces done in miniature. Oozing chocolate ran out.

Devil’s food cake, indeed, Toby thought to himself.

He took a moment to listen to his fellow diners to try and work out what some of the dishes were. There was a platter of unicorn steaks not far from his right elbow. Next to these was a magic mushroom risotto.

“Ah, excellent! Toad in the hole!” a man to Toby’s left declared enthusiastically, pulling a silver salver towards him.

Toby perked up at this. He’d been on holiday to England once and had developed a great fondness for the giant Yorkshire puddings with sausages baked into them.

“Ah, yes,” the man went on, “made from only the finest, fattest roasted toads, taken from the King’s own marshes!”

Toby made a note to steer clear of that one.

“Excuse me,” Anna said, turning to the man on her immediate right and pointing at a bowl of steaming seafood in front of her, “could you tell me what these are?”

“Ah, yes, my dear,” the man said with relish. “These are mermaid mussels.”

“They’re not actually muscles taken from a mermaid, are they?” Anna asked.

The man chuckled at Anna’s inadvertent wit. “No, no, of course not, my dear. They’re just regular, plump, green-lipped mussels taken from the sea. They’re exquisite, especially when you eat them with a nice crusty bit of bread for dipping.”

“What’s the sauce made of?” Anna asked, clearly wanting to be sure that she didn’t accidentally eat something repulsive.

“The broth is made from mermaid’s tears,” the man told her. “Our king is quite partial to mermaids, as I’m sure you know.”

Anna smiled.

“Henry dear, don’t lie to the poor girl,” came an austere voice beside the man.

A woman with a heavily powdered face and a disapproving, pinched look to her countenance leaned forward to address Anna.

“The broth’s not made from a mermaid’s tears, dear,” she said.

“No?” Anna asked.

“No, it’s made from a bodily fluid that the king is slightly, shall we say, more partial to?”

Anna gave the woman a strange smile. “Thanks so much for the information.”

All in all, the banquet was much like Toby might have imagined it, although to be fair, it was disrupted partway through by a rather raucous food fight at one end of the table. There was also a comedy of errors of sorts involving a number of bumbling servants, which ended up in a small section of the guests being drenched in stew. How that came to pass, Toby wasn’t sure, but he was getting, more and more, the impression that the entire meal was almost a physical demonstration of the ineptitude and disconnect of the aristocracy from the rest of Stagbreach’s population.

Throughout the meal, which proved to be a prolonged affair, there were various forms of entertainment put on by the king. One that stuck in Toby’s memory was a group of jesters, one of which was accidentally blown through one of the stained glass windows at the culmination of a particularly impressive bout of athletics.

None of the guests seemed to know whether or not this finale had been planned, but they clapped politely along all the same. Judging by the slightly disapproving expression on the queen’s countenance, Toby doubted that the destruction of one of the fine windows had been on the menu.

As Toby was finishing off a slice of roast boar, along with some honey-glazed carrots and some of the best roast potatoes he’d ever eaten, Anna nudged him.

“Have you seen Frank at all?” she asked him.

Toby paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. He had been so swept up in the experience of the feast that he hadn’t even noticed the imp had vanished.

“No,” he said slowly. “You?”

Anna shook her head.

“You don’t think he had anything to do with the stew incident, do you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Anna said.

“Let’s hope that’s the worst of what he does, if it was him,” Toby said.

Finally, after what must have been three hours, the feast came to an end. More liveried footmen swarmed forward. Much to the evident annoyance and discomfort of most of the guests, another squad of royal recorder bearers let off a shrill discordant fanfare to quiet the hubbub.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will now, at the behest of the King and Queen of Eclipsia, make your way through to the Purple Ballroom, there will be cocktails and dancing,” a particularly austere-looking announcer proclaimed.

As one, the guests got to their feet. Some moved a lot more unsteadily than others, having partaken of the copious amounts of wine and ale on offer.

Toby had made sure not to imbibe too deeply. He still wasn’t quite sure why he and Anna had been invited along, but he had a feeling they were about to find out in due course. He had wanted his wits about him.

As if in answer to these inner speculations, a footman appeared as if by magic at Toby’s elbow.

“Sir?” he said.

“Hello,” Toby said, trying not to act too startled. “How are you?”

The man blinked. “I’m tolerably well, thank you for asking, sir.”

“Can I help you?” Toby asked.

“The king and queen request the honor of your company in the drawing room at the back of the banquet hall, sir.”

Toby glanced at Anna. She was looking at him.

“And that would be now, sir, if you would be so kind,” the footman said. He indicated with an arm for them to follow him.

Toby got to his feet, helping Anna up as he did so.

“I guess this is the part where we learn while we’re here,” Anna said to him quietly.

“It’s either that or that or we’ve managed to get ourselves on the VIP list, and now it’s going to be a hedonistic evening of opium, bourbon and strip poker,” Toby quipped.

Anna nudged him. “We can only hope.”

Together, they followed the liveried servant to the back of the hall, through a discrete door, and into the presence of the two most powerful people in all of Eclipsia.

20

Okay, Toby thought. Not exactly what I was expecting. Then again, having heard what we’ve heard about the king, maybe it’s not so surprising.

He and Anna had been ushered into the parlor at the back of the grand banquet hall. The door had been closed noiselessly behind them. The room was just as lavishly appointed as the banquet hall, but far more intimate. Large clear windows around the parlor allowed one to gaze out at the starry night sky. The room was much more cozily lit too, with an excess of candelabra burning lovely yellow beeswax candles.

In the center of the room, a plush velvet sofa sat beneath a canopy of billowing silk curtains. The sofa was flanked by ornate end tables, each of which was adorned with what looked like one of those trendy Himalayan crystal sea salt lamps, which Toby so despised. These, though, of course couldn’t be powered by electricity. They were lit from within by some kind of spell.

What truly had caught Toby’s attention, however, was the plethora of massive fish bowls that lined the walls and were dotted around the room on stands of various different heights. Each one was filled to the brim with shimmering clear water and exotic fish. The fish swam lazily in their aquatic homes, their colorful scales catching the light from the candles and crystal lamps.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw Anna glance at him. He knew what she was thinking. She was thinking the exact same thing he was thinking.

Gives the term ‘fish fancier’ a whole new meaning.

All the fish tanks were a definite nod to King Balourd’s well-known fetish for mermaids. Toby tried to push this eccentricity to the back of his mind.

He was glad that Frank wasn’t around to make some quip or other. As Anna had noted, the imp had vanished early on in the feast and still hadn’t reappeared. Toby guessed that he had probably manifested himself as some sort of small bug to stay out of sight.

The king and queen were reclining on the velvet couch. It was more accurate to say, perhaps, that just the king was reclining, while the queen sat primly upright.

King Balourd’s gut protruded over the gold-buckled belt that was cinched around his waist. He looked like a man who had done himself very well at the trough. His face was so rosy red with wine that it was almost the same deep crimson color as the robes he wore.

As for the queen, she looked as in command and poised as anyone had probably ever looked. Like a Hollywood starlet fresh out of the make-up trailer. Her raven black hair was piled on top of her head in a way that made Toby question if magic was involved. The jewels that were set within that elegant beehive formation gleamed like stars in the night sky. She was dressed in a gown of shimmering gold.

“Your majesties,” Toby said, after a slightly awkward pause. “How are you? How are things?”

“Indubitably excellent, my friend. Thank you for asking,” King Balourd said graciously. He gave a slight hiccup and beamed at Toby and Anna. “Can I offer you a beverage?”

“I think I’d better,” Toby said. “It’s not every day that my companion and I get to meet a king and queen. Might help take the edge off.”

“Ah, don’t be absurd! We’re all chums here!” the monarch said.

The king made a motion with his sausage-fingered hand. Almost at once, two glasses appeared in front of Toby and Anna, levitating in the air. Tentatively, Toby reached out and took his. Anna did the same.

“I think we may as well cut to the chase,” the queen said. She spoke politely and softly, but there was an edge to her tone that hearkened back to her history as a savvy business owner.

“I think that will probably be best, Your Majesty,” Toby agreed. “Then we all know where we stand.”

“As it is,” Anna said, “I have absolutely no idea where I’m standing, except in this lovely amateur aquarium.”

The queen smiled with genuine amusement. “A little affectation of my dear husband.”

The king gave a half-apologetic nod. “The sea fascinates me.”

“Not half so much as the things in it, though. Hey, my dear?” the queen said.

Toby allowed this little bit of banter to wash over him. He took a sip from his glass.

“If I might be so bold,” he said, feeling slightly foolish for wording his question as if he was reading a script for some B-grade medieval drama. “Can I ask why we’re here? How did you even know that Anna and myself were in Stagbreach? How did you know who we were? There must be countless travelers passing through this place. Lots of new faces.”

“Not that we don’t appreciate the new threads and the invitation to dinner,” Anna said hurriedly.

“Speaking of dinner,” King Balourd suddenly said, his heavy lidded eyes opening up wide for a moment. “Did either of you two happen to sample the dragon’s blood pasta?”

“I can’t say that I did,” Toby said.

Anna shook her head.

“A pity,” the king said, “it’s my favorite dish that our skilled gourmands in the kitchen are whipping up at the moment. They’re very conscientious—they cook seasonally, you know. Instead of a tomato-based sauce, you see, this particular pasta dish is served with a fiery red sauce made from the blood of dragons. It gives it a hell of a spicy kick. You feel it first thing in the morning, let me tell you.”

“I’ll have to try some next time, Your Majesty,” Toby said politely.

“Nonsense. I’ll get you a doggy bag fixed up,” the king said.

He snapped his fingers, and an attendant appeared at his side as if he had popped out of the thick carpeting.

“Fill a bag up with dragon’s blood pasta and have it attached to one of our delivery hounds,” the king told the man. “Send it to the address that my steward has on file for our two guests here.”

The attendant bobbed his head and vanished.

So, the king apparently knows where we live already, Toby thought. Or, more likely, the queen does.

“That’s very kind of you, Your Majesty,” Anna said.

“Not at all, not at all,” the king said. “Now, as my dear queen was saying…?”

The queen re-crossed her long legs. She might have been ten or fifteen years older than Toby, making her around the half-century mark, but she sure as shit had lost none of her feminine allure.

Toby only realized his eyes had strayed to her exquisite calves when Queen Lascivo cleared her throat gently. Toby’s eyes flicked upwards. The queen was eyeing him knowingly.

“Your arrival was revealed to us by one of our many sets of eyes that we have in Stagbreach,” she said. “Well, in truth, it wasn’t a complete set of eyes.”

Toby frowned slightly, then he cottoned on. “The disgruntled shortbread man.”

The queen smiled and nodded. “Yes, Gary said you left an impression on him.”

“He wasn’t such a tough cookie,” Toby said. “It only took a little bit of coffee, and he crumbled.”

The queen let out a melodious laugh. “Yes, Gary does talk a good game, doesn’t he? But that’s not why we employ him. He’s got a good eye—one very good eye—and an excellent memory for faces.”

“That’s good,” Toby said, “because with a personality like that, I doubt he’s much of a treat at parties.”

The king snorted. “Very good. Treat at parties.”

“Now, as for the reason you’re here,” the queen continued, “it was Gary’s description that intrigued myself and my husband. Namely, the description of yours and your partner’s clothing.”

“Why would that be of interest to you?” Toby asked.

“Because the likes of that clothing has not been seen in the kingdom of Eclipsia for going on twenty-five years or so,” the queen said.

She clapped her hands. Another liveried servant arrived. To Toby’s utter astonishment, he was bearing some clothing. It was the kind of clothing that might have fitted a ten-year-old. More specifically, a ten-year-old boy from Earth.

Along with another servant, the uniformed attendant held up a pair of dirty jeans, a pair of sneakers, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shirt. They were all obviously far too small for Toby now, but he recognized them nonetheless. He had missed that shirt.

“We first thought that the young lad who wore these clothes was a halfling,” King Balourd said.

Toby gave the king a blank look, which even the wine-soused monarch must have picked up on.

“Oh, you know, because the little lad who wore these clothes saved the realm, and halflings, despite their penchant for heavy drinking, are always turning up to steal the show or step in and save the day,” the king said.

“No, Your Majesty, I believe I fit those clothes merely because I was a child,” Toby said.

“Yes, yes, that does make more sense,” King Balourd admitted.

Toby’s head was, curiously, at once empty and also full of questions. Before he could voice any of them, though, the king carried on.

“You know, we had the dickens of a time shortly after the fall of Duke Diddle,” he said. “My team of wizards tried to emulate these intriguing masked terrapins on the front of this shirt.”

“You had your wizards dress up as Leonardo, Donatello, and the rest of the gang?” Toby asked.

“Hm? No,” King Balourd said. “Directly after the banishment and defeat of the duke, my magical advisors were trying to come up with ways to deter him from ever trying anything ever again. Or for anyone like him to think twice before they started being a pain in the royal neck. These experts of mine believed that they could take ordinary tortoises and turn them into fighting machines.”

“And why would they think that?” Toby asked.

“Well, they assumed that the little lad, this Toby Adams, must have come from a world that was full of these martially adept reptiles,” the king said. He took a slurp from his enormous cup that was sitting in his lap. “I mean, why else would they go to all the trouble of painting such heroes onto the front of their clothing?”

Toby glanced at Anna, then looked at the king. He wasn’t quite sure what to say.

Happily, the queen came to the conversational rescue. “You have been in Stagbreach now for long enough to have heard of the threat posed by Duke Diddle to Eclipsia,” she said.

“We were at your announcement, Your Majesty,” Anna said.

“Ah, excellent,” the queen said.

“What kind of threat does he pose?” Toby asked.

“Over three decades ago, Duke Diddle used to be one of King Balourd’s closest wizarding advisors,” the queen explained. “Then, one day, whilst experimenting at the top of his tower during a lightning storm, Duke Diddle managed to fashion himself a wand.”

“A most excellent wand,” the king chipped in.

“A most dangerous wand,” the queen amended.

“Yes, yes, my dear, that’s what I meant,” the king said hastily.

“And what does this dangerous wand do?” Toby asked.

“It allows Duke Diddle to fashion any creature he desires from out of the ether. He is able to draw whatever monster takes his fancy and bring it to life,” the queen said. “He calls such monstrosities his ‘happy little accidents.’“

“And you think that Duke Diddle’s getting stronger again?” Toby asked.

The queen inclined her head.

“We do,” she said. “We never recovered the duke’s body nor the wand in the aftermath of that final battle.”

“And what exactly do you think that Anna and I will be able to do exactly?” Toby asked. “How can we help, if at all?”

“Well, as for that,” the queen said, in what Toby thought was a slightly demure voice, “that is something I was hoping to talk with you alone about, Mr. Adams.”

Toby looked at Anna. Anna gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, as if to say, ‘Where’s the harm?’

“Make no mistake,” Queen Lascivo said. “This is a choice you have. You’re more than welcome to take your leave from here, but I think it will be in all of our interests that Miss Coombes allow my husband to take her on a tour of the castle, whilst you and I discuss matters.”

Toby couldn’t quite see what difference it would make having Anna in the room or not. It wasn’t as if he knew more about anything than she did. A hand on his shoulder made his pondering cease.

“It’s all good, Tobes,” Anna said. “I’d be happy to take a tour with the king.”

“Are you sure?” Toby asked.

“Positive,” Anna said, giving him a meaningful look.

She turned to the king, who was being helped from his divan by one of his footmen. “I think we should take a bottle or two of good wine with us, Your Majesty, just to ensure we stay hydrated.”

“An excellent idea, an excellent idea. A woman after my own heart,” King Balourd said in a jolly voice.

“Excellent,” Queen Lascivo said. “Take her out to the water gardens, my dear. They’re always most captivating at night-time. And that should give Mr. Adams and I a good half an hour to discuss things.”

The king nodded and led the way to a set of double doors on the right of the chamber. Anna followed.

“Hold on one second, Anna,” Toby said. He hurried over to her while the king paused at the door and lowered his voice. “We can just leave.”

Anna smiled and shook her head. She leaned in and kissed Toby on the cheek. As she did so, she whispered into his ear. “That woman is going to make a pass at you, Tobes.”

“What?” Toby hissed.

“Trust me. Trust my woman’s intuition,” Anna said.

“But… I mean, are you okay with that?” Toby asked.

Anna gave him a slightly sympathetic smile as if Toby was being simple. “Tobes, you and I go way back. What’s between me and you, that’s ours.”

Toby felt a surge of warmth in his chest at these words. “Untouchable.”

“Right. Untouchable,” Anna said. She gave his arm a squeeze. “Besides, we need to find out what is going on in this world and why we’re here. Why you were able to open that fucking dryer door and lead us into an alternate world. Remember?”

Toby nodded.

“So, if that means you’ve got to sleep with the queen here,” Anna whispered. “Then I think you should prepare yourself to be royally fucked.”

Toby closed his eyes in appreciation. “Great line.”

“I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“If you’re sure about—” Toby said.

“I’m sure. A casual bit of sex isn’t going to change anything between you and me, don’t worry.” Anna leaned in closer. “Besides, that old milf might teach you a trick or two that you can bring home with you, if you know what I mean.”

Toby gave her a sharp glance.

Anna winked and turned away. “Right. Come on, Your Majesty. Let’s go and take a look at these water gardens.”

Toby watched as the last of the seemingly inexhaustible supply of liveried servants slowly closed the doors behind the retreating backs of King Balourd and Anna. The doors snapped shut.

There was silence. Toby turned. The queen was still sitting on the velvet sofa. Her bright, intelligent jade eyes were fixed on Toby’s face.

Toby’s gaze traveled downwards. It was almost as if his eyeballs were moving of their own accord, trapped by a localized gravity well that was pulling his pupils down Queen Lascivo’s neck, past the wonderful abyss of her cleavage, past the waist and on, southwards, towards the hem of her dress.

This was where his eyes stopped.

The reason for their cessation of southerly movement was because the hem of the dress, which had only a few short moments before been all but brushing the ground, was now hiked up around her knees. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Toby Adams found himself on the business end of his very own Fatal Attraction moment.

So, he thought to himself, that’s what a queen’s vagina looks like.

21

“Are you set on doing some camping, Mr. Adams?” Queen Lascivo purred.

“Come again?” Toby said.

“I haven’t the first time yet,” Queen Lascivo replied. “But I was saying that you seem intent on doing some camping. You seem to be pitching a tent.”

Toby looked from the Queen’s holiest of holies, with its thin strip of black pubic hair running upwards, down to his own trousers.

“Ah,” he said. “So that’s why people wear the fucking codpiece. It’s like the grown-up lazier version of tucking it up under the waistband of your shorts at school.”

The queen laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I imagine it would help in concealing those unfortunate moments of erection.”

“Speaking of potentially awkward erectile moments,” Toby said, “what about King Balourd?”

“The king is as indifferent to whom I share my bed with as I am of who shares his,” she said. “To be honest, many cynical people think that, due to our marriage being one of arrangement and convenience, that we wouldn’t be happy. In truth, I believe that we are a good deal happier than many couples out there who marry for love. Besides, as I’m sure you no doubt have heard, my husband long ago had a siren song sung to him. His heart rests with the mermaids, and I don’t begrudge him that. Each to their own. But he needed money, and I fancied a kingdom, and so we both won out of the match.”

“I suppose,” Toby said carefully, “with your background in business, you know a lot about how there are different strokes for different folks.”

“I know that there are many people out there who seem all too eager to attach some kind of sin to every aspect of our lives,” Queen Lascivo said. “People take some strange pleasure in making sin, such as it is, unattractive. I always made it a point of view in my business to take the other path.”

“As I understand it,” Toby said, walking slowly towards Queen Lascivo, “you were never a…”

“I always had more of a head for business than I was interested in the business of head,” Queen Lascivo said.

“Holy cat shit,” Toby said. “That was exceedingly well put, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you.”

Toby moved towards the Queen. “Is this a ‘you scratch my back, I scratch your back’ sort of scenario? We play out whatever it is that’s going to play out here, and in return you reveal what Anna and I can do for you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” the Queen said.

Her tone was simple and direct and gave Toby no reason to be dubious about her words. It really did sound like she had no ulterior motives. She was just a horny woman looking for a good time.

“Coming from where I come from, my background, I mean,” Queen Lascivo said, “one might imagine that I’ve done the rounds, as it were.”

Toby said nothing. The thought had occurred.

“The thing is, with everything I saw as I grew my brothel empire,” Queen Lascivo said, “it made me increasingly picky as to the partners I entertained in my private bedchambers.”

She let out a little laugh and shook her head. “You know, I really can’t recall the last time I made the beast with two backs, with either a man or a woman.”

Toby could feel the blood surging inside of him. Pounding in his head—both his heads. The idea that he might, as Anna had so succinctly put it, about to be royally fucked, was one that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. Not the head with his brain in, though the other one seemed to have different ideas as to what was going to happen.

“The truth is, I didn’t know that this was going to happen until I saw you at the banquet,” Queen Lascivo said.

Toby recalled the moment when he and Queen Lascivo had locked eyes.

“It was in that moment,” the Queen went on, “that I decided to get something out of this for me for once. As for how you can help myself, King Balourd, and the Kingdom of Eclipsia, I’ll tell you whether we see any more of each other in the next twenty-seven minutes than this.” And she nodded down, without breaking eye contact with Toby, towards her revealed royal prerogative.

“Your wish is my command, Your Majesty,” Toby said, with theatrical pomposity.

The Queen leaned back against the luxurious couch. She hiked her no doubt expensive skirt further up her thighs. “Excellent. Now, my good knight, kneel, and present your sword.”

Before Toby could yield to this rather obvious euphemistic request, he did, ironically, have to remove his sword so that he wouldn’t get his legs tangled in it as he bent to his task.

As he unbuckled the blade from his belt, he couldn’t help but reflect on how a pack of cards had it wrong in its ordering, whilst chess was more or less on the money. Kings might be considered a higher card than a queen in a pack, but so far as life in Eclipsia went, it seemed that things were more chess-based. The Queen, whilst taking a back seat in the running of the realm, was assuredly more powerful than King Balourd was.

His sword fell to the ground. His belt followed a second or two later.

The Queen raised an eyebrow. She was still remarkably regal for a woman who had a dress pulled up around her waist and her monarchical muff on full display. She opened her legs wider and wider. It was one of the sexiest things that Toby had ever seen, made more so by the fact that the woman was dressed all in gold and had a genuine crown upon her head. Her calves and thighs were marvelously toned.

The benefits of spending all day going up and down turret stairs, I suppose, Toby thought.

Toby took one of the Queen’s knees in either hand, pushed her legs a little bit wider so that she let out a small gasp. Then he lowered his face to Queen Lascivo’s regal sword scabbard.

The Queen leaned further backwards against the velvet sofa and tilted her head back. Toby hadn’t gone down on a woman for quite some time. With life being permanently hectic in New York, he had lost interest in dating for the past little while. Anna had rekindled that. The fact that she had given him his blessing in going for a roll in the hay with Queen Lascivo only heightened his arousal now.

Perhaps the old milf will teach you a trick or two that you can bring back home…

Anna’s words echoed in his mind as Toby’s tongue darted in and out and up and down. The Queen was as wet as could be before his tongue so much as touched her. After only a couple of minutes, she was veritably dripping. The fabric of the sofa was a darker red under her crotch.

Toby could feel himself pressing uncomfortably against his new tight hose.

“Excuse me just a minute, Your Majesty,” he said, coming up for air. “I just need to relieve a little of the pressure.”

He pulled the hose, which were really just tights for men, down his arse so that his member could spring free. The Queen’s eyes were slits of ecstatic green, but she saw Toby’s rod spring free of its material prison and they lit up.

“Stand, knight,” she commanded.

Fuck yeah.

Toby stood.

Queen Lascivo leaned forward on her chair and took him in her mouth. Toby’s eyes bugged out as his entire length went down the royal throat. In that moment, with a bona fide Queen sucking on his bona fide boner, Toby didn’t so much feel as if he could reach for the stars, but grab them and haul them down and use them to light the erotic scene.

The Queen’s raven-haired head bobbed up and down. The sounds she made, as she occasionally gagged on Toby’s diamond-hard rod, juxtaposed crazily with the surroundings. Toby had to stifle a laugh at the absurdness of it all.

As Queen Lascivo ran one hand up his thigh and fondled his coin purse, Toby couldn’t help but feel like he was the star in some over-elaborate, over-budgeted porno film. The trappings of the room were so close to being cliched, but they weren’t. They were the real deal. This was no movie set. This was a genuine palace. And he was being given a blowie by a person who had the power to have other people’s heads chopped off.

Toby had thought he had got up to a lot of crazy shit in his younger days in NYC, but he realized that all of his more youthful antics had been nothing more than a prelude to this.

He reached down and entwined his fingers through the elegant beehive of black hair. Queen Lascivo let out a little grunting moan.

Had a servant entered at that point, Toby would have been caught quite literally with his pants down. But the thought didn’t do anything to bother him. Did nothing to make him even consider stopping. He had a pretty fair idea that Queen Lascivo, in spite of being very easy to talk to and worldly in her thinking, probably ran quite a tight ship so far as her staff went.

The king, Toby thought, not so much.

The queen pulled back. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. She ran her tongue over her lips. It was an action more befitting a whore than a queen, and only turned Toby on more. Her raven hair was in slight disarray. Her eyes shone with lust. She shuffled over so that her back was to one of the arms of the sofas.

Toby eyed her breasts, which bulged invitingly over the top of her dress just as Anna’s had. As if she could read his mind, the queen let out a little chuckle.

“There is no chance in the underworld that you’ll be able to get me out of this dress in the time it takes my husband to give your friend a tour of the outer gardens,” she said, “let alone get me back into it.”

“Took a small team, did it?” Toby asked.

“Yes. So these,” and Queen Lascivo ran her fingers seductively over the bulging twin orbs, “will have to wait until next time, Mr. Adams.”

“It’s always nice to have something to look forward to,” Toby said in a low growl.

He leaned forward and kissed the queen on the mouth. The queen’s tongue danced across his own. Bar the occasional bubble from one of the many fish tanks, the soft sucking sounds were all that could be heard in the room for a moment.

As they kissed, Toby’s hand ran down the inside of the queen’s left thigh. His fingers slipped inside of her. First one, then two, then three. He started to fuck her with his hand, slowly at first, but Queen Lascivo raised her hips to his, and he started to pump his fingers into her harder.

“That’s it, don’t be shy, good knight,” she whispered.

Soon Her Royal Highness was grunting and moaning. The squishy sound of her wet box filled Toby’s ears. He felt her arousal coating his hand, going past his wrist.

“Enough,” the queen said in a thrilling, commanding voice. “Enough. Fuck me. Fuck me now.”

Toby was only too willing to obey. Pushing the queen’s leg out, he lowered his tip to her slot. It was obscenely easy to slide himself into her. Their pelvises thudded together with a soft, moist slap. He could feel the end of his member pressing up deep inside her.

“Yes,” the queen moaned. “That’s it.”

Toby didn’t beat around the bush. They were on a time limit after all. He started to pound into Queen Lascivo. The sounds of their wet, sweaty flesh coming together was like music to his ears. They were both more or less fully clothed, but that only made what they were doing hotter, somehow.

As much as the scenario felt like some sort of period staged porno film, it was a reality. As such, Toby, in their current position, soon found himself struggling with a cramp in his ass.

This didn’t seem to phase the queen when he voiced it. She pushed him hard on the chest and caused him to slide out of her. He sat down on the couch. Without a moment’s hesitation, the queen straddled him in the reverse cowl-girl position. She grabbed him by the base of his slick member and guided him back into her.

Toby let out a gasp of rapture as he grabbed her by the waist. It was a fantastic feeling, having the queen of Eclipsia bucking down on him, driving him hard into her like he was the hapless nail to be used in a piece of wood.

Up and down, up and down, up and down she went. The momentum built and built. How long they went for, Toby wasn’t sure, but he had a fair idea that they were nearing the end of the allotted time. He grabbed the queen by her hips and bodily lifted her from him. Then he forced her head down so that she was leaning over one arm of the sofa.

“Yes! That’s it. Right there! Make me your whore. Make me your queen whore,” she grunted.

Toby’s balls slapped into her as he drove himself faster and faster into her gaping pink sex. Before long, he felt her tightening around his shaft. It was enough to tip him over the edge. With a final guttural groan, he emptied himself into her.

“Yes, that’s it! Don’t pull out!” Queen Lascivo commanded. “I want to feel your seed inside of me.”

Toby was glad to hear it because he couldn’t have pulled out even if he had wanted to. The muscles of the queen’s vagina held him fast.

Together, they quivered and shuddered and fell limply onto the sofa, Toby cradling the queen as he slowly slid out of her. They lay like that for a few minutes, gathering their breath. Then, without a word, they started to dress. It didn’t take long. All Toby had to do was pull up his hose. On the flip side of that, the queen merely had to pull down her skirts. There was a bit of rearranging, a dabbing of sweat from brows and from the hollows of the queen’s throat.

Toby looked around and located his sword, which he seemed to have kicked halfway to the other side of the room. He buckled it back on.

Once they had adequately regained their composure, they sat at opposite ends of the couch and eyed one another hungrily.

“Now that’s what I call diplomacy,” Toby said.

The queen smiled like a cat that had got the cream. Around them, the fish swam about their bowls, quite unconcerned with the intense mating ritual that had taken place right in front of their glassy eyes.

When the door to the parlor swung open and Anna and the king entered, Toby and the queen were sitting quite casually, sipping on glasses of wine. Toby found that he had quite the thirst.

“How was the tour?” Queen Lascivo asked.

“The water gardens are breathtaking,” Anna said politely.

“And how did the negotiations and chat go in here?” the king asked, sounding genuinely interested. He had more of a stagger on now as he plopped himself down onto the couch.

Toby stood courteously to allow the king room to spread out. The king was good at spreading out.

“We have strengthened our connections and diplomatic ties, I feel,” the queen said.

Anna looked at Toby and dropped him a subtle wink.

“Now that you’re back, Anna, my dear,” Queen Lascivo said, gesturing for a servant to pass Anna a drink, “we can get down to the nitty gritty.”

“The nitty gritty?” Anna asked.

“Yes,” Queen Lascivo said. “The king and I have a job for the pair of you.”

“Job?” Toby asked.

King Balourd made a face. “Don’t use the J word, my dear. Employment has always struck me as a cage of sorts.”

“What would you call it then, Your Majesty?” the queen asked sweetly.

The king took a slurp from his great goblet. A trickle of wine ran down his chin and he wiped it away. Toby couldn’t banish the queen performing the same action, though with an excess of saliva rather than wine, only a few moments before.

“Let’s call it what it is,” the king said. “A quest!”

“Ah,” Toby said, feeling a roiling cocktail of trepidation and excitement bubble up in his stomach. “One of those.”

22

“I’m afraid to say,” the king said, “that Duke Diddle is most likely out there looking for you, hunting for you at this very moment.”

Toby was perched on a chair. “Why would this Duke Diddle be looking for me? How does he even know who I am, or that I’m back?”

“Duke Diddle,” the king said, “is, what my good wife might call, one cunning son of a basilisk.”

There was a slur to the king’s speech, but Toby noticed there was a hard glint in his red-veined eyes too. He got the impression, just for a moment, that the king might be much shrewder than many people gave him credit for.

Being able to disguise your intelligence might very well be one of the best disguises you can use as a monarch, Toby thought. There’s nothing like having your enemies underestimate your mental capabilities.

“Yes, he is slimy, conniving and self-serving,” the king went on, waving his pudgy hand around. “And that, of course, was what made him such an excellent servant and a skilled magic user. I’ve no doubt about that. Duke Diddle knows the worth, the solid gold worth, of information. Like my dear queen and I, he has ears and eyes everywhere. Probably within the palace.”

He paused and looked from Toby to Anna. Toby had the sudden sneaking suspicion that there was something specific about all this that the king and queen were driving at.

“You’ve already had some problems with some of Duke Diddle’s minions, haven’t you?” Toby asked.

The queen made an appreciative little noise as she sipped her drink.

“Ah, you’re as intuitive as I hoped you would be, Mr. Adams,” she said when she had swallowed. “Yes, we have had some problems already with Duke Diddle—or more likely through his right-hand man, one known as Vexxx. Our intelligence informs us that there are some elven ruins, about three days’ journey from our fair capital of Stagbreach, that might bear some scrutiny.”

“And why is it you think we should look into these ruins?” Anna asked.

The king and queen exchanged a look.

“You can trust us,” Toby said. “We have no previous allegiances. And, seeing as I’ve saved this world before, though I can’t remember how, or why, I think that shows that you can tell us things in good faith.”

Queen Lascivo tapped the rim of her half-empty glass against her teeth. Then she set it carefully on the side table. “Yes, I believe we can trust you.”

“Yes, indeed,” the king replied convivially. “This fine young woman has been excellent company, and I have detected no hint of subterfuge in her manner. What’s more, she can drink like, well, like one of these fish here.” He waved a hand around once more to encapsulate the room filled with fish tanks.

“Thanks, Your Majesty, you can put the stuff away too,” Anna said, beaming.

With an effort he leaned forward, though his prodigious gut somewhat hampered him in this action. “The crux of the problem is that the queen and I have been working on a weapon to protect the kingdom.”

Toby looked at King Balourd. “What kind of weapon?”

The queen answered. “Thanks to my business—shall we call it an empire?”

“I think that would be fair, my dear,” King Balourd said. “You do own an awful lot of brothels.”

“True. Well, thanks to my business empire, I have a network of spies throughout Eclipsia,” Queen Lascivo went on. “Some months back, this network of mine started hearing whispers. Rumors. Pillow-talk gossip. These rumors all had one thing in common.”

“Duke Diddle?” Toby asked.

“Not precisely,” the queen said. “But these nuggets of information and gossip, for those in the know, pointed us in the direction of Duke Diddle and his ‘happy little accidents’. The king and I came to the conclusion that the dear duke was starting to amass power slowly once more from wherever it was he had been holed up.”

“So, in order to counteract this,” the king went on, “my clever wife gathered some of the best wizards still available to Eclipsia. She brought them here to Stagbreach with the notion that they might work on counteracting anything that Duke Diddle might think to attack our kingdom with.”

Toby nodded but said nothing.

“You look dubious. You look unconvinced about something,” Queen Lascivo said.

Toby weighed his words and spoke slowly. “It’s just we’ve had a run-in with a wizard already. And that experience has left me doubtful about how effective they are at anything other than brewing up the kind of booze that’ll take the enamel off your teeth.”

“Or give you the kind of hangover that makes you wake up and feel like your brain has been turned into the kind of mush you might scrape out from the bottom of a parrot’s cage after a month of neglect,” the king added.

“Precisely, Your Majesty,” Toby agreed.

“Well, it’s funny you should say that,” Queen Lascivo said. “Because of how the wizards of Eclipsia have fallen into a state of general laxness, so far as their basic spellweaving abilities—and personal hygiene—are concerned, it turned out that the weapon they cooked up, or brewed up, you might say, was a biological one.”

Toby felt his eyebrows head north. “A biological weapon? What kind of biological weapon? Do you mean something that lets off a magical explosive pulse and melts the skin off your enemies or something?”

Toby didn’t much like the sound of a biological weapon, even if it was magical. Particularly if it was magical. If this was something like the equivalent of an arcane nuclear bomb, then he wasn’t sure if he wanted to get himself and Anna mixed up in it.

“No, it’s nothing explosive in nature,” the queen said, looking at him closely.

“Nothing that will result in a city like Stagbreach being turned into a crater or some sort of grim glass sculpture?” Toby said.

The queen gave him a sharp look. “No, such a weapon would be insane.”

“Then what was it?” Anna asked.

“Our team of occult engineers and mixologists came up with a potion,” the king said. His usually jolly red face had gone a shade paler, and there was an unaccustomed somberness to his tone. “It was something that we thought we might be able to add to the water supply of Duke Diddle’s troops if the need arose. You know the sort of thing, poured into wells or other water sources.”

“What did this potion do, or what does it do?” Toby asked.

“It would strike down any of those who imbibed it with extreme and, in some cases, quite literally explosive flatulence,” the king said.

Toby couldn’t help it. He felt a laugh bubbling up from inside. His lips twitched in a smile. However, his mirth was quickly quelled by the serious looks on the faces of the royal couple.

“You’re not serious?” he said.

“Quite serious,” King Balourd assured him.

“Excuse me for saying so, Your Majesties, but that doesn’t sound too bad,” Anna said.

“I can see your point, Anna,” Queen Lascivo, said kindly. “But just take a moment to consider how debilitating it might be for an army of creatures, or people, who can’t walk more than three paces without letting out the sort of rectal emission that might knock them straight on their face. Imagine an entire force of monsters or minions facing off an opposing force in battle, only to be struck down by gut-cramps that feel like their internal organs are being squished in a vice.”

“Not to mention the sheer cost of continuously furnishing such a stricken army with underclothes,” the king pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” Toby said, still somewhat miffed and unconvinced by the whole thing. “There is that. I imagine soldiers don’t enjoy marching miles with underpants they’re continually sharting into.”

“Rub something fierce,” the king said in a grave tone, “especially when coupled with chain mail. But there is a problem. It seemed that our arcane alchemists got a bit carried away. They ended up knocking up the sort of potion that could… What was the percentage again, my queen?”

“Seven and a half times out of ten, this potion would cause the person to drink it to explode like a fleshy pink balloon,” Queen Lascivo said.

“Excuse me for asking,” Toby said, “but how could it work seven and a half times out of ten?”

“That is accounting for the dwarven population,” the king said.

“Ah,” Toby replied. “This potion, does it have an antidote?”

“Yes, of course,” Queen Lascivo said. “The only way that the biological agent can be counteracted is with the antidote, which we still hold in our vaults below the palace.”

Toby did not miss the subtle inflection, nor the choice of the queen’s carefully chosen words. “You still hold the antidote, but you no longer hold the potion, is that right?”

The king nodded his great, fat head.

“A mere week or so ago, perhaps a day or two before you arrived in Stagbreach by all accounts,” Queen Lascivo said, “the chief alchemist of this little band of cleverclogs that brewed the potion, was rendered senseless, and—”

“—the potion was stolen,” Toby finished.

The queen inclined her graceful head.

Toby sighed. “Well, as I said before, we’ve already met one of these wizarding folk, and they seemed far from reliable. How can you be sure that the alchemist, the chief brewer in question, didn’t just misplace the potion, or drink it, or in some other way screw something up?”

A silence settled over the gathering of four. King Balourd and Queen Lascivo became slightly reticent. The queen looked at the king. The king shuffled his feet and started humming to himself.

The queen folded her hands in her lap and looked at Toby with her clear, clever green eyes. “The thing is, Mr. Adams, that it couldn’t have been an accident.”

“Why?” Toby asked.

“The potion was hidden in a very safe place,” the queen said.

“It was hidden,” the king butted in at this juncture, “inside one of my favorite statues. A prized possession.”

“A statue of what?” Anna asked, though Toby had a fair idea.

“It was of the glorious mermaid princess, Gwynemir,” the king said. “A statue of divine beauty that I had commissioned by the great sculptor, Percy Tadger.

Toby chanced a glance at the queen, but the woman looked quite unperturbed.

“So both the statue and the potion were stolen in one fell swoop?” Toby said.

“A double tragedy,” the king lamented.

“Okay. And what is it you would like us to do, Your Majesty?” Anna asked

“We think that you would be ideally placed, not being known to be here within Stagbreach by any but us two and a few highly trusted individuals, to retrieve this statue and the potion contained within it,” Queen Lascivo said.

“It all sounds very fishy,” Toby said, before he could stop himself.

This crack seemed to pass right over the king’s florid head, but Toby saw Queen Lascivo’s lips twitch up in a brief smile.

“Yes it is,” she agreed.

“Now hold on just a minute, Your Majesty,” Toby said. He had been struck by a sudden thought. “Are you sure that it wasn’t just the statue itself that has been targeted by thieves? Perhaps they know nothing about the potion hidden inside of it.”

“The thought had occurred. However…” King Balourd waved his hand at the queen. “You tell them, dear.”

The queen clapped her hands. A door at the back of the parlor opened. A servant appeared, bearing a tray. On the tray was a scroll. The queen took the scroll, waited for the servant to exit the room once more, and then unfurled it. She ran her eyes briefly over it, though Toby got the feeling that she knew it by heart already.

“That’s a ransom note,” Toby guessed.

“You are correct, Mr. Adams,” the queen said.

“And what does it say?” Anna asked.

“It says that unless the king and I step down and cede control of Stagbreach and the kingdom of Eclipsia as a whole to Duke Diddle,” the queen said in a flat voice, “the flatulence potion will be administered into all the wells in Stagbreach just before the kick-off of the king’s annual Jousting Jamboree.”

“Sorry for stating the obvious,” Toby said, “but the annual Jousting Jamboree would be a yearly joust that the king holds.?”

“Indeed,” King Balourd said with a sigh. “It is a pageant that I put on every year, to the delight of the townsfolk, I might add. It is an event that is looked forward to most keenly.”

“Not least because the good king pays for all the ale and lets said ale flow like water,” the queen commented.

“Yes, but the thing about excessive ale is that, in the following days, it requires an excess of water to shake the cobwebs,” the king said.

“And so, what we are hoping you will help us with, Mr. Adams,” the queen said, “is to find and retake the statue and its biologically unsound contents before they can be used against us.”

A sudden blooming of understanding, burgeoned in Toby’s chest. Something told him, in that very instance, that this was why he and Anna had found the portal in the laundromat.

This is why we’ve been brought here, Toby thought. I’ve been brought here because something inside of me calls to this place. They needed a…

The thought was a crazy one, but also captivating in its grandeur.

Eclipsia needs a hero. And I’m it.

Toby squared his shoulders. A slow electric thrill was passing through him. It was as if his spine had been hardened into steel.

Now this, he thought to himself, is a quest. This is a true adventure, a true testing of mettle.

“We’ll help you save your kingdom, your majesties,” he declared.

A look of utter relief suffused King Balourd’s face. He slumped even more heavily in his seat. A smile broke out across his rosy features. “Excellent,” he said. “Most splendid.”

“Might I ask that we’re allowed to go and see this chief alchemist that brewed up the potion in the first place?” Toby asked.

“Of course,” Queen Lascivo said. “I would have suggested the exact same thing.”

“But first,” King Balourd said, “you must be attired for your adventure.”

Toby plucked at his silky doublet. “You’re right. Traveling anywhere in this kingdom we’ll stick out like a sore thumb dressed like this.”

Anna looked troubled.

“Don’t worry,” Toby said. “You’ll get to keep the dress.”

Anna gave a little snort. “Fine.”

“Splendiferous!” the king said, louder this time. “In that case, before you go to your rest, before you meet with our alchemist tomorrow morning, the first thing you should do is to head to the armory. I have some things ready and waiting for you.”

“Some things?” Toby asked.

“Items and gear,” the queen explained. “To go with that marvelous sword of yours, Mr. Adams.”

23

The door to the armory opened with such a long and pronounced creak it sounded almost like a sound effect. A dry gust of air emerged, redolent with the scent of oil and metal mingled with the faint aroma of leather, wood, and smoke.

Toby blinked and waited for a moment for his eyes to adjust. The room itself was long and low. There were no windows. It reminded Toby of a medieval bank vault. He supposed this was apt. Weapons, next to gold, would probably be the first thing that any thieves or enemy force taking the castle would try and get their hands on first.

A man was waiting for them. He was hunched and scarred. His face bore a permanently set upon expression, as if any visitor was an unwelcome and unwanted pain in the ass, a distraction from his real work, which was clearly caring for the weapons and armor held in that great vault. He grunted impatiently and beckoned for Toby and Anna to come inside.

“After you,” Anna said in a small voice.

Toby stepped through the doorway. He found himself surrounded by an array of weaponry and armor that spanned the length of the large, dimly lit chamber. The room was poorly lit by ranks of flickering torches mounted on the walls. These cast long shadows across the rows of gleaming metal and sent tapers of greasy smoke up towards the low ceiling. The effect was, in a word, lugubrious.

“We’re here to pick up some things King Balourd and Queen Lascivo have set by for us specially,” Toby said to the head armorer.

The man grunted again and jerked his head off to the side.

“You’re not one for small talk, are you?” Toby said, trying to lighten the mood.

In response, the mute man opened his mouth. Toby saw the grisly stump of a severed tongue in his mouth.

“All right, I’ll let you off, I suppose,” Toby said.

The mute man scowled at him. He jerked his head again in a sign for Toby and Anna to follow him. He wore a leather arming cap on his head, its long leather fastenings dangling and swaying under a chin covered in stubble coarse enough to strike a match off of.

Toby, with Anna close behind, followed the man. Along one soot-stained wall, racks of swords stood sentinel. Their blades had been meticulously polished to a mirror sheen. Many had hilts that were adorned with a number of intricate designs, but just as many were plain. They looked like serviceable weapons for the most part, made for killing and not for exhibitions.

Nearby, more shelves held an assortment of shields. These ranged from small, light wooden bucklers to towering kite shields. Each of these, without exception, was emblazoned with the sigil of Eclipsia: a half crescent moon intersecting with a rayed sun.

In the center of the armory, rows of suits of armor stood to attention. Their polished surfaces reflected the sputtering torchlight. They winked and glittered at Toby and Anna as they walked past. Toby noticed that some suits were simple and utilitarian. Others were more ornate and decorative. They looked to be crafted for ceremonial purposes rather than battle.

Well, maybe they’re the sort of thing, Toby thought, that jousting knights will wear at King Balourd’s Jousting Jamboree.

With that thought, the weight of the looming quest settled on his shoulders like snow. Toby shrugged it off. This was what being in a world like Eclipsia was all about. Hazardous escapades and uncertain exploits.

They passed more weapons. Racks and large oaken barrels displayed an impressive array of killing devices, ranging from halberds, pole axes and spears to maces and unwieldy, brutal-looking war-hammers.

There was a lesser selection of crossbows and longbows hanging from hooks. Their strings were loose, but they looked oiled and well cared for.

The still smoky air seemed, in some indefinable way, to be filled, to Toby’s mind, not only with dust, but history, tradition, and deeds that had already been done.

The armorer came to a halt. There was a long workbench in front of him. On this workbench, a number of items were laid out neatly. He grunted at the assembled items. Then he pointed at Toby and Anna.

“For us?” Toby asked.

The man nodded curtly.

“I suppose we may as well get dressed now,” Toby said to Anna.

Anna gave the armorer a pointed look.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you can give us a few minutes while we get out of these rags?” Toby said, gesturing at his elaborate doublet and hose.

The man grunted again and sloped off back the way they had come.

“Let me get dressed first,” Toby said. “I’ll be quick. Then I can help you out of your gown, if that’s alright.”

“Of course it’s alright.” Anna smiled. “Otherwise, I’ll be stuck in this thing forever.”

Toby busied himself getting out of his banquet clothing. It didn’t take him long. Considering as it felt like he had been decked out like a wedding cake with multiple layers, it transpired that, as lengthy a process as it had been getting the clothes on, it only took him a little time to take them off.

He was glad to see that the king, or more likely the queen, favored more practical attire over heavy plate armor. He first pulled on a simple but new linen shirt. It was better made and better tailored than the one he had taken from Oswald Parsons’ box of lost and found, and it had the added bonus of not being previously worn.

Over this, a supple leather jerkin took the place of a rigid steel breastplate or chainmail. It offered protection with minimal encumbrance. Toby found a small note attached to it. The note was written in a neat, compact cursive script.

Queen Lascivo’s, he thought.

The writing told him that the inside of the jerkin was etched with old runes for protection and good luck. On closer inspection, Toby found this to be so. The note also mentioned that the jerkin had wyvern bone armor stitched in between the two layers of leather. Apparently this was particularly adept at stopping arrows and smaller blades.

“Comforting,” Toby muttered, “but also slightly worrying.”

He tucked the shirt into a pair of serviceable and well-fitting canvas trousers. He had been issued with another simple silver-buckled leather belt, and he attached his sword to this. He hung the hunting knife, which had been provided too, from his other hip. He checked the blade before he replaced it back in its scabbard. It had been honed to a keen and bitter edge that glinted wickedly in the light of the torches.

Over his shoulders, he draped a cloak of forest green that hung to the back of his knees. Its thick fabric looked perfect for offering shelter from any biting winds and driving rain. The outside felt like it had been lightly waxed to be water repellent. It was lined with the fur of some unknown beast, which felt warm and light both.

Perfect for spending long nights beneath the open sky, Toby thought.

It took him a moment to recognize what the vambraces were for. It was only thanks to having watched the Fellowship of the Ring movie dozens of times that he recognized that they were the kinds of things that the character of Aragorn wore on his forearms. They were made of hardened leather, embossed with subtle designs and more runes. Light and flexible, they offered protection without sacrificing mobility.

Once he was dressed, Toby picked up the pack that had also been provided by the King and Queen. He riffled through it quickly. It was filled with a number of essential supplies for survival in the wilderness: flint and tinder, a waterskin, and packets of rations.

He laid the pack down and turned to Anna, who had her back to him. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Anna turned. She ran her gaze approvingly over him. “That’s more your style.”

“Yeah, it feels better than this silky stuff.” Toby nodded at the pile of rumpled, banquet clothes he’d left in a haphazard pile on the counter. “Now for you.”

Undressing Anna was a somewhat more painstaking task. Toby helped unbutton, unlace, and unfasten the numerous clasps, clips and buttons. Once the bodice of her gown had been unlaced almost to the top of her ass, Anna left out a sigh.

“Man, that’s better,” she said. “I feel like I can breathe again.”

Toby flicked open a clasp at the top of the dress, brushing Anna’s spine with his thumb as he did so. Anna let out another soft little sigh and shivered, though it wasn’t a shiver of cold.

“I’ll let you get ready,” Toby said. “I’m just going to have a little look around at the weapons. It’s not every day that you get to wander around the interior of an Elder Scrolls inventory.”

“I don’t know what the hell that means,” Anna said, “but knock yourself out.”

It didn’t take her long to dress. When Toby heard her calling for him, he returned to find her dressed in similar attire to himself. The cut of her leather armor had been altered slightly to accommodate her breasts, something that Toby was quick to notice.

“You remind me of Laurana,” Toby muttered.

“What was that? Who’s she?” Anna asked.

“Nothing, just an elven chick from fantasy literature,” Toby said, a trifle awkwardly. “Let’s just say she was a bit of a babe-a-saurus rex.”

Anna laughed. She scooped up her gown and the rest of her clothes. Toby did the same.

“Can we get out of here?” she asked, putting the pack that she had been supplied with over one shoulder.

Toby swung his own pack, stuffed with his banquet clothes, over his shoulder as well. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go home. We’ve got a quest to embark on tomorrow.”

Anna gave him a knowing smirk. “How long have you been waiting to say something like that, Tobes?”

Toby returned the grin. “You have absolutely no idea.”

24

The following day saw Toby walking up the main steps of the Palace of Eclipsia with Verity. Anna had elected to forego the interview with the chief alchemist and visit Oswald Parson to fill him in on the latest news.

Toby had reminded her not to go into details of their quest, not because he didn’t trust the landlord, but because he didn’t trust that Duke Diddle didn’t—as King Balourd and Queen Lascivo seemed to think he had—have ears and eyes everywhere.

Anna had wanted to go and see Oswald personally and tell him that, as much as they appreciated him giving them a hand and some lodgings when they first turned up in Eclipsia, they were now going to be so busy that working in the tavern wouldn’t work.

“He was so good to us that I wanted to tell him personally. I didn’t just not want either of us to turn up,” Anna had said that morning.

Toby had nodded in agreement. “He has been good to us. He’s a good man and a good friend. I think that’s a good idea, Anna. I’ll have to drop in on him and say thank you myself when I get a chance. I can go alone to the castle to talk to this alchemist.”

“I’ll come with you,” Verity had said brightly.

Toby had considered this. He’d liked Verity None straight off the bat. She was great to talk to, had a wicked sense of humor, was highly capable, and was lovely to look at. However, there was some aspect of her, one that Toby couldn’t quite put his finger on, of a live hand grenade rolling around in the back of a moving pick-up truck.

“Okay,” he’d said, after swallowing a mouthful of smoked kipper. “I think that’s a good idea. You do have a certain un-manning charisma to you.”

Verity had beamed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

And so that’s how they found themselves walking through the enormous twin doors of the castle.

“That was really good of you to pop out yesterday to get supplies for breakfast,” Toby said.

Verity gave him a shrug. She too was dressed more appropriately for travel through the city. She wore trousers with a simple jerkin and a belt. Her boots were worn but very serviceable. A dashing long-tailed coat covered her slender frame. Her bright blonde hair bounced around her face just as it had done when Toby and Anna had first met her.

“It wasn’t a problem,” Verity said.

“You’ll have to let me know how much it costs so I can give you a share of the money,” Toby said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Verity told him. “It’s not as if it costs me anything.”

“You were given it?” Toby asked, thinking back to the kippers, blood sausage, and potato hash that had made up the hearty breakfast the three of them had enjoyed not long after the sun had risen.

“In a manner of speaking,” Verity replied evasively.

Toby stopped. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”

“Let’s just say I… borrowed it,” Verity said. “I made a note of the vendors that the produce belonged to so we can always go and drop them their money at a later date.”

“Who are you?” Toby asked, intrigued.

“I’m like anyone else,” Verity said. “A woman with a past. And the thing about pasts is, some of the cheeky little things are smidge more checkered than others.”

Toby recalled the little that Verity had told them, of how she had come to end up in that tower. Before that, it sounded like she had been part of a band.

An outfit? Bandits? Toby mused. It’s clear she’s got clever fingers. Not to mention the fact that she is a distraction just standing quietly by herself. Still, she doesn’t seem like the criminal type.

Well, it was too late to ponder on that now. They had business to attend to. And it was like Verity said, everyone had a past. There was no knowing what circumstances might have led her to pursue banditry, if that’s what she had been embroiled with. Toby just made a mental note to be sure to visit the shops she had purloined the food from and make recompense.

They were met in the main inner hall of the palace by a servant who was accompanied by a single guard.

“Master Adams,” the servant said, bowing low.

“How’s it going?” Toby asked. “We’re here to see—”

“We are aware of the circumstances of your visit,” the servant said crisply. “Please, follow me.”

He and the guard led Toby up an enormous staircase that could have accommodated a couple of Buicks. They moved through the castle via a meandering and almost nonsensical route. The only non-variable was that they continued to go upwards, sometimes taking paths that, nonsensically, took them up a couple of levels without ever walking up a single step. Other times they wound their way through spiral staircases. Or stood upon stone stairways that moved of their own accord like an escalator.

Eventually, they came to a dead-end corridor. The servant led them to the very end of this hallway, then stopped. He held out a hand and directed Toby and Verity to stand on a large, beautifully woven rug, which abutted the wall at the end of the corridor.

Toby raised an eyebrow at the servant. “Are we meeting this alchemist here?”

“No, sir,” the servant said.

With a lurch, the rug started to rise. Toby looked up. There was a stone shaft above them, cut to the exact dimensions of the rug he and Verity were standing on. The rug was levitating, using some form of magic.

“Well, shit my ass and call me Shirley,” Toby said.

The servant’s mouth opened in a disapproving ‘O’, but he was soon out of sight as the rug traveled up the shaft. Toby stamped his foot on the rug. It was bouncy underfoot. He kept doing this until Verity slapped him on the shoulder.

“Don’t mess with magic,” she said severely.

“Sorry, it’s just every time I come across it, it blows me away,” Toby said.

“Better to be blown away by it than blown up by it.”

The rug emerged out into what was clearly a tower room. It was completely circular.

“Wow,” Verity said, waving her hand in front of her face. “That is… that’s pungent.”

“That’s one word for it,” Toby said in a semi-choked voice.

The air was thick with the stink of alchemical reagents, and it almost perceptibly crackled with arcane energies. There were desks strewn with small bubbling cauldrons dotted all over the place. Weird apparatuses lined one wall. Shelves groaned under the weight of books and scrolls. Glass jars containing all manner of strange specimens, some of which had clearly been alive at one point, and might have still been alive in a couple of cases, were stacked in a haphazard pyramid not too far away.

There was a door to the right of the—for lack of a better word—elevator shaft, and a door to the left. The door to the left was open and led out to a balcony that was set high above the castle. There was a round circular workbench, which would have driven anyone with OCD mad, as it was slightly offset to the center of the room. It was cluttered with beakers, flasks, and vials of all descriptions, which contained potions of every conceivable hue.

Bubbling concoctions simmered over open flames, crackling sparks winked in the air. A massive device that looked like a telescope sat by a glassless window.

“That’s a storm seeker scope,” Verity said, nodding in the direction of the device.

“Used for spotting storms?” Toby asked.

“You got it,” Verity said.

“How do you know that?”

“This isn’t the first wizard’s tower I’ve been in,” Verity replied.

As Toby stood there dumbfounded, a figure emerged from the doorway which led out to the balcony.

“Hello,” the figure said cheerfully.

“Hi,” Toby said.

“Good to see you,” the man said.

“And you,” Toby replied.

“Um, who are you?” the figure asked.

“Oh, right. I’m Toby, and this is Verity. We’ve been sent here by the king and queen to talk to you about the missing biological weapon that was stolen, along with a certain statue,” Toby said.

“Ah yes, ah yes,” the alchemist-cum-wizard-cum-loon said, quite unabashedly.

The man cut a striking figure as he wended his way through the paraphernalia and magical detritus of the room. He had a wild shock of white hair, which seemed to defy gravity as it stuck out in all directions like the frizzled fur of an electrified badger from his head. His bushy single eyebrow perched precariously above a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, one lens of which was cracked.

As he came over, wiping his hands on a much charred apron, Toby saw that his nose was slightly crooked and the nostrils were rimmed with green powder or residue.

A thick beard, which looked to have been set on fire at some point and then put out with a brick, was peppered with crumbs and stray bits of glittering powder. It sprouted from the wizard’s chin like a tangled thicket, and it framed a wide grin that revealed a row of slightly crooked, stained teeth.

“My name is Tootenstein,” the alchemist declared. “Wolfgang Tootenstein.”

Never has a man matched his name so well, Toby thought.

Instead of a lab coat, the alchemist wore a lab robe. It must have been pristine white once—many, many decades before. It was now stained with a kaleidoscope of colors, burns, and splotches, no doubt evidence of countless mishaps and misadventures in the man’s quest for alchemical enlightenment.

Wolfgang Tootenstein was clutching a bubbling vial of mysterious liquid. He set it down very carefully on the circular table in the not-quite center of the room. He let it go.

The vial balanced on its bottom for a second, and then both vial and contents evaporated in a puff of steam.

The chief alchemist cackled. “Bugger!” he said. “Still, a failure’s not a failure. It’s only proof that you didn’t make what you were endeavoring to make, don’t you think?”

Before Toby could answer, Tootenstein stepped towards them and held out a hand. Toby noticed that there was a finger missing. He supposed missing digits probably came with the territory.

“So, you’re here to talk to me about the stolen statue and its volatile contents, are you?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Toby said.

“And your names were?”

“Toby,” he repeated, “and this is Verity.”

“A veritable pleasure to meet the pair of you,” Tootenstein said, with an almost idiotic snort at the attempt at punnery. He shook Toby and Anna’s hand. Toby felt the calluses on the man’s palm.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Verity said smoothly, gesturing around the room, which looked like someone had tossed in a couple of hand grenades recently.

“Oh, why, thank you very much,” Tootenstein said. “I cleaned it the other month. It’s normally a real mess.”

Toby found himself thankful that Verity’s breakfast that morning had consisted of a strange blue fried mushroom that had worked on his brain like an intravenous triple shot of espresso. Otherwise, he would have thought that the fumes in the room would have made his mind a little foggy.

“Welcome to the highest point of Eclipsia Castle,” Tootenstein said.

“Thanks very much,” Toby said, trying to swallow the acrid taste that was lingering at the back of his throat. “We won’t take up too much of your time.”

“Very kind of you, very kind, I’m sure,” Tootenstein said. “I’m a busy man, always busy. Never the slightest bit of peace up here, let me tell you. Vegetables might fly like potatoes most of the time, but I always find time moves like an arrow.”

“Absolutely,” Verity said brightly.

“We were hoping that you’d be able to tell us, Mr. Tootenstein, a little about this potion that’s gone missing,” Toby said politely.

The eccentric fellow’s eyes lit up behind his damaged spectacles. “Of course, of course. Did Queen Lascivo and King Balourd elect you to hunt for the missing statue?”

“Yes,” Toby said.

“In that case, let me give you this,” the alchemist said.

He trotted over to a bench, spilled a bunch of parchment sheets over the ground, and held something aloft victoriously. He walked back over to Toby and handed the sheet of paper to him. Toby looked at it.

“This would be the statue?” he said.

“Yes indeed, yes indeed,” Tootenstein said.

Toby handed Verity the piece of parchment. He saw her pale eyebrows raise.

“It’s very… unique,” Verity said.

“Indeed, indeed. Well, our good king has a very unique taste, does he not?” Tootenstein said.

The statue appeared to be a crowned mermaid in a very seductive pose—or so Toby guessed the pose to be, if you were into mermaids. She wasn’t so much splaying her legs, as she didn’t have legs, but her tail fins were sculpted in a way that left you in no doubt what the sculptor had been trying to portray.

“I haven’t got a clue who took it, only that it wasn’t me,” Tootenstein said. “I also have absolutely no idea where they might have taken it.”

“That’s okay,” Toby said. “Queen Lascivo’s spies have a fair idea of where it might be. All I wanted to know was what this potion hidden inside the statue contains and what it might do. I guess, really, I wanted to get a clearer idea of the severity of it.”

Wolfgang Tootenstein leaned on one of the workbenches nearby. He took a small brass tin from a pocket, unscrewed the lid, and procured a pinch of green powder from inside. He snorted up the powder into his left nostril with gusto.

Toby was sure he heard a soft pop shortly before thin lime green smoke curled out of the wizard’s ears.

“Ah, that’s better. Let’s shake the old gray matter into action, eh?” Tootenstein said.

He replaced the snuff box back in his pocket and clapped his hands.

“Now, as to the ingredients in the potion, I can say that it contains mostly the essence of a swamp gas that I harvested during the quarter moon. There’s also an extract of skunk cabbage, which has to be gathered at midnight as it’s too volatile during the day.

“Okay,” Toby said.

“Then there are the tears of the lesser-spotted hysterical auger, the powdered beans taken from a particularly vicious beanstalk out in the southern wilds, and some ground sulphur from the deep, abandoned, goblin mines in the Humdrum Mountains.”

None of this meant anything to Toby, but he nodded along all the same. Tootenstein was obviously a special variety of eccentric. Such men were best left to waffle on until you were able to uncover the information required.

“After much painstaking trial and error, which all but destroyed my sinuses,” Tootenstein went on, “I discovered the method with which to produce said potion. I began by brewing a cauldron of bubbling bog water, and infusing it with the essence of swamp gas. I let that simmer for a few days, until it reached a noxious boil. The addition of the tears of the lesser-spotted hysterical auger brought the concoction down to a very pleasing simmer.”

“Intriguing,” Verity said. “Please go on.”

“I then next added the extract of skunk cabbage, and I stirred vigorously to release the pungent aroma. That was perhaps the most dangerous part of the whole business,” Tootenstein said. “After that, it was all too easy, and dare I say it instinctive, to add the powdered beans, recite a couple of textbook incantations, before adding the ground sulfur.”

“And this produced this flatulence-making potion, did it?” Toby asked.

“Indeed it did, yes,” Tootenstein said. “The effect of the potion on our test subjects…”

“Hold on,” Toby said. “What test subjects?”

“Oh, we usually used the rats that the kitchen cats caught,” Tootenstein said. “Although every now and again I managed to snare a pigeon out on the balcony over there.”

“And this stuff really results in uncontrollable flatulence?” Toby asked.

“Indeed it does, yes,” the alchemist said. “The violence of said flatulence quite took my team and I aback, of course. But the king and queen had wanted something with some kick, and by Jove they got it!”

“Is this stuff really that dangerous?” Verity asked.

Yes, Miss Verity, it is indeed,” the alchemist said severely. “Flatulence is all fun and games and joviality, up to a point, of course. But past that point, it becomes a very serious business, indeed.”

“Must the potion be handled in any special way?” Toby asked.

“Not particularly,” Tootenstein said. “If the potion is still within the statue, you should be able to bring the statue back with you. However, if the beaker containing the potion is free of the statue, all I can tell you is to handle it with the utmost care. Breaking the sealed beaker will result in the potion reacting with the air. The stench would be… Well, it would be beyond your comprehension.”

“Would the smell alone kill anyone who smells it or comes in direct contact with it?” Toby asked.

“No, it wouldn’t kill you, it has to be imbibed to be fatal, but you would be living with the scent of it for the rest of your days,” Tootenstein said.

“Well, that’s something,” Verity said, trying to sound positive. “At least we won’t die.”

“Yes, that’s one way of thinking about it,” Tootenstein said slowly. “However, would one as formidably beautiful as yourself, Miss Verity, want to live out the rest of your days smelling like…” He waved his stained hands around in the air in front of him as he fished for a sufficient adjective to describe the smell of the potion.

“Like?” Toby prompted.

The alchemist failed in the end. “Let us just say that this latest concoction of mine can only be described as a symphony of olfactory horrors. It is a veritable potpourri of putridity that will assault the senses of anyone within forty feet of you, with all the subtlety of a stampede of wildebeest moving through a manure patch. Imagine, if you will, the pungent stench of a thousand skunks engaged in an orgy in the middle of a compost heap, which just so happens to have had a particularly ripe wheel of cheese dropped into it. Marry this with the kind of awful flatulence that could strip paint from walls and wilt even the hardiest flower at a hundred paces, and you will have some, some notion as to the strength of this potion.”

Toby gulped and looked at Verity. She didn’t look pleased. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t feel pleased.

“Okay,” he said, “so we’ll be very careful.”

“Yes, I would definitely advise you to be very careful,” Tootenstein said. “This brew would turn the nose of even the most hardened dung collector. An incontinent dragon would be as a bunch of lavender compared to this—”

“Okay, okay, I think we get the point,” Toby said. “We’ll be very careful and we’ll handle the potion when we find it with the utmost care.” He held out his hand. “Thank you very much for your time, Wolfgang Tootenstein,” he said.

“My pleasure, dear fellow, my pleasure,” Tootenstein replied.

He shook Toby’s hand and then Verity’s. His face changed at that moment. It took on a severely worried expression.

“You must find this potion, Toby,” he said. “For if it falls into the hands of Duke Diddle, as Queen Lascivo and King Balourd fear it might, then the whole of Stagbreach will be in the most dreadful, putrid, bowel-exploding danger.”

Toby placed a hand on the alchemist’s shoulders. “Mr. Tootenstein, you have my word that we’ll do our best to retrieve this weapon.”

25

Toby and Verity were silent as they made their way back through the castle, past innumerable bustling serpents and poker-faced guards. When they reached the head of the gargantuan and grandiose staircase that led down to the cavernous main hall of the castle, Verity put a hand on Toby’s forearm.

“Are you okay?” Toby asked.

Verity nodded her beautiful blonde head. “I can still taste that tower in the back of my throat.”

“Me too.”

Verity sucked her teeth for a moment. “Things are just a bit more dire than I anticipated,” she said in an unusually somber and thoughtful voice.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Yeah, this potion, as initially ridiculous as I thought it sounded, doesn’t strike me as the sort of thing you want in a town’s water supply, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” Verity agreed. She licked her full lips. “Toby?”

“Yes?” Toby said.

“I’d like to come on this quest with you and Anna.”

Toby was surprised. Verity had not been asked to go on this adventure. “You know, you don’t have to. I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be more dangerous than I thought. If Duke Diddle has this thaumaturgical or biological weapon, he’s probably going to do everything in his power to keep a hold of it. With him having this wand that we’ve been told about, the wand that allows him to draw whatever creatures he fancies and bring them to life, I thought we might be issued with some sort of magical eraser, you know. Something that could just as easily rub them out of existence. But it sounds like, if we come across any of these monsters of his, we’re going to have to take them down the old-fashioned way.”

Verity nodded. “That’s what I was thinking too.”

“So with that in mind,” Toby went on, “I don’t want you to feel like you’re inclined to accompany us. We found you in that tower, but we didn’t really rescue you, you know? Anna and I killed those spriggans, but they looked as if they would have gotten bored before long and just wandered off.”

“That’s not the point,” Verity said. She swung her arms around for a little bit in a distrait sort of fashion. “For the longest time now, I’ve been doing things only for myself, taking heed of only that which concerns me directly. This, though…”

“This is bigger than any one person,” Toby suggested.

“Exactly. And I feel, as corny as it sounds, like I should do my part.”

Toby reached out and squeezed Verity’s arm. “Then you’re more than welcome to come along.”

Verity smiled her Hollywood smile at him. “Thank you. It will be a novelty to do something good for once.”

Toby couldn’t imagine Verity None doing anything particularly bad, but he didn’t see that moment as the moment to ask her what she meant.

A subtle cough from behind them, a sound that was akin to a llama politely clearing its throat, made Toby turn. One of the numerous and facially indistinguishable footmen was standing only a few paces off. Where he had come from, Toby had no idea. The space that he and Verity were standing in was wide, and Toby hadn’t heard him coming.

“Yes?” Toby asked.

“Mr. Adams?”

“That’s me. Her Majesty, Queen Lascivo, has requested that you report to the Lord Marshal before you head off on your endeavor,” the footman said.

“Why?” Toby asked.

“She feels that it is incumbent on her to provide you with some basic weapons training,” the footman said in officious tones, as if Toby should think twice before asking the Queen of Eclipsia why she did anything. “She is aware that your familiarity with certain weapons, perhaps, could do with a brush-up, seeing as you have been so long away from this land.”

That, Toby deciphered, was the Queen acknowledging that having come from another world, he might not know one end of a sword from the other.

“What does she have in mind exactly?” Toby asked.

“She requests that you spend the next two days training with the bow and sword,” the footman said. “Although I have not been vouchsafed with the details of your mission, the Queen did iterate to me that she thought it best that you were as well prepared in skills as you were with provisions.”

“Well,” Toby said, “she might have a point there..”

“Excuse me for voicing my opinion, Mr. Adams,” the servant said. “But I have found that the Queen often does have a point, and it is usually an exceedingly sharp one.”

“Very well,” Toby said. “I’ll have to nip back down into Stagbreach to find my companion, Miss Coombes, too. She’ll be needing—”

“A messenger has already been dispatched to find Miss Coombes,” the footman told Toby. “She will meet you at Lord Marshall Vani’s office. If you would be so kind as to follow me?”

“Okay,” Toby said. “Just give me one minute.”

The footman retreated to a discreet distance with a slight inclination of his head.

“Seeing as you’re coming along, too,” Toby said to Verity. “Do you want to join us for this bit of training?”

Verity shook her head. “Swords and bows have never been my forte.”

“No?” Toby asked. “I thought you used to run with a rough crowd.”

Verity gave Toby an arch grin. “The thing about rough crowds is that they don’t often play by the rules, handsome. Don’t worry yourself, though, I know how to handle myself just fine. Verity None is more of what you might call a clandestine specialist.”

Making sure to turn her back to the waiting servant, Verity gave her wrists a surreptitious flick. Twin blades shot out of the cuffs of her coat. Toby goggled at them. The blades retracted as quickly as they had appeared.

“Whoa,” he said.

“Yes,” Verity agreed. “That’s just the sentiment that many would-be assailants expressed just before I was forced to deflate their advances. Along with their lungs.”

“Okay,” Toby said. “I guess I’ll see you back at the house, then. I doubt they’ll make us stay up here, even if this training is going to take two days.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Verity said. She patted Toby on the chest, her hand lingering for just a moment, then hurried off down the stairs.

Toby watched her go. It was quite a sight. Then, he turned to the servant.

“All right,” he said. “I’m ready. Lead on.”

As Toby followed the pristinely uniformed footman from a few paces behind, a soft squelching pop sounded in his ear.

“Blimey, that hot blonde, talk about a mysterious past, eh mate?”

“Frank,” Toby hissed in a whisper, glancing at the imp floating along at his shoulder, “where the hell have you been?”

“Miss me?”

“I don’t want to lie to you, Frank.”

“Fair enough.”

“But all uncomfortable truths aside, where have you been?”

“Let’s just say I’ve been keeping a low profile,” the imp told Toby. “You’ve been spending a lot of time up here at the castle. There’s wizards and other subtle magic about. Too many magic users and too many ways they might detect an imp like me. They’re not overly fond of my ilk. They seem to have this blanket rule that spirits of my kind are nothing but trouble.”

“I thought causing trouble was your whole bag,” Toby pointed out, making sure to pitch his voice low enough so that the servant ahead of them wouldn’t hear. “Was that massive stew fiasco at the feast your doing?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Frank said laconically. “But there’s a time and a place for trouble, like there is a time and a place for all things.”

“Except for fucking recorder fanfares,” Toby corrected him.

The imp shuddered. “Right, except for them. As for the stew thing, I have no idea who stuck that baguette through the legs of one of them maids carrying the stew. Nor do I have any notion as to how that blasting powder got increased by eight-hundred percent and sent that clown through the window.”

Toby sighed.

“But don’t you worry, I’ve been occupying myself around town just fine,” Frank went on. “Caused a bit of havoc that will be, as is the way with creatures like yourself, attributed to bad luck.” He snorted and shook his little squared off impish head. “Honestly, sometimes the way you mortals believe that trouble is this thing that calls ahead baffles me. Trouble doesn’t call ahead. It just kicks your door down and walks right in.”

* * *

A relatively short while later, Toby found himself standing next to Anna in a large office. It was a large office on paper, but not a large office in actuality. The reason for this was the large amount of paper of all sorts that took up almost all of the available space in the room.

There were great towering sheafs of parchment scrolls piled haphazardly against the walls, and boxes filled with even more vellums and papers. Maps of varying degrees of detail, depicting areas that Toby could only guess at being parts of the kingdom of Eclipsia, covered all the walls.

The light in the room had a second-hand quality to it. This was because it was struggling to penetrate through windows whose chief purpose wasn’t to illuminate the space, but rather to supply a base for several thriving neighborhoods of spiders.

With all that paper in residence, the atmosphere inside the office was similar to that of a library that had been closed up for five-hundred years.

Frank, thankfully, was in the form of a fly and was tucked under Toby’s collar.

“I’ll just have a quick kip under here,” he had informed Toby before they entered the room.

Regardless of the fact that the servant who had led Toby there had assured him that this was the workplace of Lord Marshal Vani, there didn’t seem to be anyone in residence. The only clue as to someone being somewhere within the room was a soft rumbling snore emanating from one corner.

Toby and Anna exchanged mystified glances. Toby could just see the end of an enormous desk protruding from a mountain of paperwork.

“Hello?” Toby said. “Anybody home?”

No answer was forthcoming.

Gingerly, Toby stepped over a platter which might once have held a roast chicken, though the carcass had been picked completely free of flesh.

Probably by rats, Toby thought. Or the spiders.

Toby nodded towards the desk. Together, he and Anna moved around the teetering columns of parchment and barrels of scrolls until a mop of grayish-green hair came into view. The mop of grayish-green hair topped an enormous head. The enormous head was lying on the enormous desk.

Anna cleared her throat politely. This had no noticeable effect whatsoever.

“Hello? Lord Marshal Vani?” Toby tried again.

The sleeper did not stir.

Toby looked around. He saw a book, almost the size of a paving slab, sitting on a spindly table nearby. He picked up the book, held it about a foot off the surface of the table, and dropped it. It landed with a loud thump. The table promptly collapsed under its weight.

There was a snorting, gurgling snarl, the kind of sound that might emanate from a snoozing wild boar that had just been kicked sharply in the nuts, and the figure behind the desk jerked upright.

There was a thick sheet of vellum stuck to its face, glued there by its own drool most likely. The figure flailed arms that were as thick around the biceps as Toby’s thigh, growling in agitated confusion. Just as the sheet of vellum fell from the figure’s face, one of its flailing arms knocked a great clay flagon from the edge of the desk. With an unerring dexterity, the same arm shot out and caught the flagon.

Toby looked upon the face of the very first ogre he had ever met.

Lord Marshal Vani was most definitely an ogre. He had a face that looked like it had been clumsily molded rather than formed through any kind of neat cellular process. He had beady yellow eyes, which were very bloodshot, perched above a snout. Underneath this snout, with its cavernous nostrils, was a small mouth from which two tusks protruded. The mouth was set above a chin so large it could have been used to crack rocks. Both the bared arms and the face were covered in a scaly gray skin that would most assuredly be more accurately described as hide.

The beady yellow eyes focused with seeming difficulty on Toby and Anna. “Who the hell are you?” the ogre grunted.

“I’m Toby Adams and this is Anna Coombes,” Toby said.

“And why the bloody hell are you standing in front of me?” the Lord Marshal demanded gruffly.

“We’re here to receive some sword and bow training,” Toby said.

“What? Why? Who made the request?”

“The king,” Toby said.

Lord Marshal Vani stared incredulously at Toby.

“The king. You know, the guy who runs the kingdom,” Anna said helpfully.

“King Balourd sent you to receive basic bow and sword training?” the Lord Marshal repeated.

“That’s right,” Toby said.

“Am I still drunk?” the ogre said.

Toby looked from the enormous clay flagon to the Lord Marshal’s red webbed eyes. “I think it would probably be a stretch to say you were sober.”

Lord Marshal Vani scratched at his mop of strangely colored hair. This resulted in a shower of what looked like pipe tobacco falling out of it. “Ah, well, that’s something,” the ogre grunted and began to scrape the pipe tobacco into a pile with his thick fingers.

Toby and Anna remained standing silently.

Lord Marshal Vani looked up. “Well, sit down then, sit down,” he barked, gesturing to two chairs, which were covered in sheafs of bound paper. “Chuck that stuff anywhere.”

Toby and Anna carefully removed the parchment from the chairs and sat down.

“Now, where’s my bloody lighting candle?” the Lord Marshal asked.

“We didn’t see a candle coming in here,” Anna said.

“Well then, I’m afraid you failed the first observational test of the swordsman,” the ogre grunted.

Toby held his tongue. He had a feeling that this was all part and parcel of the spiel that a commanding officer went through to showcase his importance.

“I bet that damned adjutant of mine threw it out,” Lord Marshal Vani went on as he looked around. “He’s always going on about how having a naked flame in here is a fire hazard. He’s always throwing out things that he doesn’t like. It’s probably why he’s on his fourth wife.”

Anna held up a rather disgusting looking bread roll. “I don’t have a candle, but there seems to be a bun here.”

“Ah, excellent. Breakfast,” Lord Marshal Vani said. He took the moldy bun from Anna.

Anna wrinkled her nose.

Lord Marshal Vani dropped the bun. He snorted in annoyance and ducked under his desk to retrieve it. “Ah, a double whammy,” he said. He straightened up, holding the bun in one hand and a lit candle in the other.

Toby saw Anna turn away in disgust as the ogre stuffed the bun into his mouth and began masticating furiously. With his hands he started to fill a large pipe. Once he had done this, he brushed the crumbs of tobacco off his uniform. He swallowed the bun with apparent difficulty. Then he raised his enormous booted feet and plonked them ceremoniously on his desk. He stuck the pipe in his mouth and lit it with the candle. He puffed luxuriantly.

“Your adjutant might have a point,” Anna said. “Do you really think you should be smoking in this tinder box?”

“Smoking my pipe is one of the few comforts left to me, as marooned as I am on this island of complacency,” Lord Marshal Vani said through a cloud of smoke.

“I don’t care much for the smell,” Anna said a little testily, waving her hand in front of her face.

“We all have our burdens to bear,” the Lord Marshal replied unconcernedly. “Why, I myself have a whopper of an ingrown toenail.”

“With the very little respect you’ve earned in the last five minutes,” Anna said, with some of that good old-fashioned New York acerbity, “can I ask whether you’re going to teach Toby and I how to shoot a bow and arrow and use a sword, or are you not?”

“Ooh, the manticore has claws,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “That’s good. That’s what I want to see in a potential trainee.” He thumped one boot approvingly on the desktop.

The candle flew off. Toby managed to avoid the spinning thing as it flew past his face.

“Oh, well done,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “Excellent reflexes, that man. I dare say you just passed the physical.”

“Do you want me to get that?” Toby asked.

The Lord Marshal grunted. “Don’t worry about it. This damn cave is as damp as they come,” he said. “It’ll probably be fine. Now, I see that one of you at least is wearing a sword. Does that mean that you, Mr. Adams, know how to wield it?”

“Well, I managed to take down a bunch of spriggans,” Toby said.

“That’s all for the good. That’s all for the good,” the Lord Marshal said. “How about you, Miss Coombes?”

Anna didn’t answer.

“Hello? Miss Coombes?” the ogre said pointedly.

“Sorry, Lord Marshal,” Anna said dryly. “I was distracted.”

“Well, you better not get distracted in the middle of a combat situation,” the Lord Marshal said. “It might very well be the end of you.”

“Yeah, I can appreciate that,” Anna said. “It’s just that your office now seems to be on fire.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

The ogre got laboriously to his feet, walked over, and stamped out the smoldering pile of parchment. Once he had extinguished the small blaze, he stumped back over to the desk and poured himself a suicidally generous measure of what smelled like paint thinner from the contents of the flagon. He knocked it back and then motioned towards the door.

“Well, come on then,” he said. “I won’t lie to you that it makes a pleasant change to have a couple of able-bodied people to train. For the past however many years I’ve been sitting in here, poring over maps, and have slowly been coming to the conclusion that life is pointless and we’re all just killing time until we meet a slow and boring death. Now, where were we?”

“You were in the midst of a monologue and then you set the office on fire,” Toby pointed out.

“Yes, that’s right. Excellent. Now, how long has good King Balourd given me to teach you the finer points of the bow and sword?”

“Two days,” Toby said.

The ogre let out a despairing sigh. “Well, it’s better than nothing. Let’s go and tackle the basics this morning and then we’ll break for lunch and I’ll talk you through a little of the theory.”

“There’s theory involved in sword fighting?” Toby asked.

“Yes, admittedly there’s not much to it,” Lord Marshall Vani said. “The chief considerations mainly revolve around sticking the enemy with the pointy end and making sure that any bugger you come across who is intent on cutting you down ends up being the one that dies at the end of the confrontation.”

He stomped his way out of the room.

Toby and Anna got to their feet and followed him.

“Seems like a competent sort,” Toby said in an undertone to Anna.

“Well, yeah, you would think that,” Anna said. “You grew up with Kevin.”

“I like him,” Frank said, buzzing around Toby’s head in his fly form.

“That,” Toby said, “does not inspire confidence.”

26

To Toby’s surprise, he and Anna began their training out in the practice yard with a series of dynamic stretches and exercises to warm up their muscles and increase blood flow.

“I would have thought increasing blood flow was the last thing you’d want to do to yourself in a sword fighting situation,” Toby quipped.

Lord Marshal Vani gave him a look so stony Toby could have used it for the countertops in a high-end kitchen.

“Do you find something funny about preventing muscle strain and other slightly debilitating injuries, Mr Adams?” he asked.

Toby shook his head and said nothing.

Once they had gone through a number of calisthenic-like exercises, Lord Marshal Vani handed both him and Anna wooden practice swords.

“Now, the first thing a warrior needs to do is come to grips with his weapon,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “And I’m not speaking metaphorically. The first thing you literally need to do before every engagement is grip your weapon.”

“Well… yeah,” Toby said.

“And the best way to do it is thusly,” the Lord Marshal said.

He demonstrated how he wanted Toby and Anna to hold their weapons.

“Do we have to do it with three fingers like you’re doing?” Anna said.

Toby managed to refrain from rolling his eyes at her. It was obvious to him that she was being sarcastic, but he was glad to see that Lord Marshal Vani seemed to have missed it.

“No, Miss Coombes,” the ogre said. “As you were born with five fingers and I with three, I think it’s probably prudent that you use all of your digits, don’t you?”

“Yes, Lord Marshal,” Anna said with mock meekness.

Once Lord Vani declared themselves satisfied at their grip, they moved on to their stances. Toby found settling into his stance quite naturally. He had taken some kickboxing classes at a gym in Queens and a sword fighter’s stance, apparently, was not so much different to that of a fighter’s. It was all about balance, keeping a low center of gravity, using the balls of one’s feet to make minute adjustments.

“Stability,” Lord Marshal Vani said, “should always be at the forefront of your mind. A good fighter is stable, and an excellent fighter is patient. What sets a true swordsman apart, however, is the marriage of the two.”

Toby found this somewhat ironic; a sword tutor lecturing about stability whilst occasionally swigging from a flagon of strong drink. However, he had to concede that Lord Marshal Vani had a point.

“So long as a sword fighter remains on his feet, he always has a chance. You get an opponent on the ground, and nine times out of ten they’re as good as dead,” the Lord Marshal said. “Get an opponent on the ground, especially an opponent dressed in heavy plate or overburdened with chainmail, and you can stick them at your leisure.”

The ogre then had Toby and Anna walk across beams with their swords while he threw rocks at them. The rocks, he told them, were meant to take the place of enemy sword thrusts. He encouraged both Toby and Anna to either try and deflect the rocks with their staves or else dodge out of the way of them, all without falling from the beams.

“Falling from the beam is the same as falling on the ground,” he told them. “And once you’re on the ground…?”

“You’re dead,” Toby intoned.

“That’s right, Mr. Adams. You’re dead,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “And the thing about being dead is that it’s awfully infinite in its duration.”

They took a short break after these exercises.

“So,” Lord Marshal Vani said, as they sat and caught their breath for a moment, “what particular reason is it that led King Balourd to pointing the pair of you in my direction?”

“We’re going on a quest,” Toby told the ogre.

Had the Lord Marshal any eyebrows, Toby was sure he would have raised them.

“A quest?” he said. “As in a proper quest? An old-fashioned mission into the wilds?”

“That’s right,” Toby said. “You look surprised.”

“That’s because I am surprised,” the ogre grunted, pulling out his pipe and beginning to fill it. “One could say that I am astonished, Mr. Adams. The last recruits I had through here, the last trainees, well, let’s just say the only quests I would have started them out on were simple ones. Quests like learning how to boil an egg or retaining their composure after sitting down on a really cold privy seat.”

“There’s not been much call for soldiers then, in recent times?” Toby asked.

“Not so much. Not for troops trained enough to keep brigands from the roads and the trade routes open. Not since the downfall of Duke Diddle,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

After their short breather, they moved on to basic strikes.

“We’ll start on attack first,” the ogre told Toby and Anna. “If you manage to effectively learn how to attack, the ideal scenario is that you won’t be called upon to defend.”

They spent the next hour or so learning how to strike with precision and control.

“You don’t want to go swinging your blade around like some sort of mentally handicapped hydra,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“Don’t hydra have multiple necks, Lord Marshal?” Toby asked.

“Did you understand the point I was trying to get across, Mr. Adams?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then shut up.”

“Shutting up, Lord Marshal.”

“As I mentioned before, it’s about marrying footwork with timing,” the ogre went on. “That’s how you execute an effective attacking stroke.”

He showed them a number of stabs, thrusts, overhead and backhand blows.

“You don’t want to get too tricky,” the Lord Marshal told them. “We have limited time. Better you learn these basic movements. Learn them well. Learn how to link them. Learn them like your life depends up ‘em. Because it might very well do. Then, once you’ve gained confidence and, hopefully, experience, you’ll be able to figure out how to form combinations of your own.”

Toby and Anna waited for the Lord Marshal to light his pipe with a sulfurous match.

“There are a number of self-proclaimed swordsmen in Stagbreach who will try and convince you, should you ask them, that true swordsmanship is all in those over-the-top flourishes and ludicrous twirls,” the Lord Marshal said, blowing out the match.

Toby had a feeling he was about to have a childhood dream crushed.

“But that, my friends, is a load of bollocks,” the ogre went on. “Keeping things simple is where the true mastery lies. Keeping things simple is what will keep you alive. Those same self-proclaimed master swordsmen, those old soldiers you find in the tavern spinning their old yarns, they’ll tell you, or try and tell you, that what a real warrior wants is a worthy opponent.” The ogre snorted a spray of snot. “But make no mistake, what a real warrior longs for is to stand against a more inept or less prepared opponent. Because that gives him the best chance of winning.”

Toby was glad to see that Anna looked to be taking as much enjoyment from their lessons as he was. She had always been a woman that enjoyed a challenge, and enjoyed learning something new.

And this is about as new as it comes, coming from New York, learning how to swordfight, he thought.

Next, they moved on to defensive techniques. Lord Marshal Vani was an excellent person to have as a sparring partner. He was possessed of, unsurprisingly, seeing as he was an ogre, prodigious strength. This meant that after he had run through a succession of parries and blocks, Toby and Anna took it in turns to be struck by him.

The shock of his blows passing through the wooden swords was formidable. Toby soon learned that whilst a strong guard and reacting quickly was, of course, paramount, it was also important to learn how to use the force of the oncoming attacks to his own benefit. His parries became less solid blocks and more about shifting Lord Marshal Vani’s blows to one side or another.

This, the ogre explained, had the added bonus of putting an opponent off their balance, which in turn might open up a window in which to kill them.

They had a late lunch brought out to them after this and regathered their strength for an hour or so. Lord Marshal Vani left them in the yard and disappeared.

“I reckon he’s gone off to have a liquid lunch of his own,” Anna said.

Toby grinned and nodded his agreement.

“I’ve got to say that, even though he strikes me as a bloke who enjoys passing one over the tonsils,” Frank said, appearing in a puff of greasy smoke, “the ogre seems to know his business. I’ve been around a lot of warriors in my time, and this Lord Marshal seems like a no-nonsense type. The type whose chief concern is keeping those he teaches alive.

“Wouldn’t all swordmasters do that?” Anna asked the imp.

“You’d be amazed at how many weapons teachers get bogged down with the icky idea of honor and all that sort of guff,” Frank replied. “Kill your opponent and then make up whatever honorable tale you like about how you did down at the pub afterwards.”

The afternoon passed far more quickly. This was due to Lord Marshal Vani telling them that they would be practicing sword drills, one against the other. Toby and Anna took it in turns to attack and defend, applying the various techniques they had learned earlier in the day.

Lord Vani sat on one of the beams and watched them. He had them run through a series of drills at half speed. Whilst he sat and drank from his flagon, he would bark out the occasional instruction: telling Toby or Anna to adjust their feet, or change the angle at which they deflected or blow; or explaining why they should have only moved a half step forward when executing a certain kind of thrust.

Lastly, as the sun sank below the castle walls, they put their skills to the test in a simulated combat scenario. The Lord Marshal instructed them to start on opposite sides of the training yard and then attack one another as if their lives depended on it.

“Remember,” he growled, “you must exhibit patience. Fight like you’ve got all day. One of the most formidable weapons that a swordsman has at their disposal is the ability to wait until their opponent cocks up. There’s no point going hammer and tongs right from the off. Test your opponent. Only go for the killing blow when you can be most assured that it will land.”

After another hour or so of this, in which Toby and Anna collected a series of bruises from the other, the Lord Marshal heaved himself to his feet.

“Right,” he said. “That’ll do for today. Bugger off, and I’ll see you here after breakfast tomorrow.”

Toby and Anna walked back through Stagbreach. The pair of them wore matching grins of satisfaction on their faces.

“That was fun,” Anna said. “I mean, I know it’s likely to be a lot less amusing when someone’s coming at us with the intent to kill us for real, but still, I’d happily take classes in that just for the exercise.”

After enjoying another excellent dinner put on by Verity, Toby fell asleep in his bed almost at once. He slept more soundly that night than he had done since they had stepped out of the dryer and into the world of Eclipsia.

* * *

The following morning, he and Anna reconvened in the training ground.

Lord Marshal Vani was waiting for them. He looked more hungover and hangdog than he had done the previous day, but he was there, waiting for them with a matching pair of yew bows. He himself had a much bigger, stouter-looking bow, lying on one of the balance beams nearby.

“Now, you’ll hear a lot of soldiers make disparaging remarks about the bow,” he said. “They’ll give you a load of old rot about how it’s a true warrior who gets up close and personal with his enemy. That is, of course, utter bullcrap. Poppycock. Applesauce. Personally, I find it extremely gratifying being able to kill an enemy from afar. It gives them less chance for them to put an inconvenient hole in me.”

“Seems like a sound bit of logic to me,” Toby said.

“Thank you, Mr. Adams,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “Despite your opinion meaning next to nothing to me at this hour of the morning, I appreciate your willingness to suck up.”

Anna giggled.

“Now, just as with sword fighting, becoming half decent with the bow requires not just keeping your arrow tips sharp, but also your mind,” the Lord Marshal continued. “And that doesn’t include asking yourselves questions like, ‘What happened yesterday?’ and ‘What was I about to do just now?’ It’s about thinking ahead, about pondering on what your target might be about to do next. You have to be willing to put yourselves in their shoes so that you get the opportunity to put both them and their shoes in the ground. Got it?”

“Got it,” Toby and Anna replied together.

“Excellent,” the ogre said. “Now, let’s start with learning how to string a bow.”

He demonstrated how to lean on a bow in order to string it. Once this was done, he showed them, only half sarcastically, how to fit the arrow to the string.

“You’d be amazed and saddened at the amount of wallies I get in here who fuck that up,” the Lord Marshal said gruffly, shaking his enormous head. “Now, these bows have different draw weights. That is to say, the bow strings have been altered so that yours, Anna, is slightly less hard to pull back than Mr Adams’s here. Do either of you fancy guessing on where we’ll be starting today?”

“Stance?” Toby asked.

“Well done, Mr. Adams. Your lack of complete ignorance heartens me.”

“Any time, Lord Marshal,” Toby said.

“Yes, stance and stability are the orders of the day,” the Lord Marshal said. “But before that, we are going to limber up—don’t you eyeball me, Mr. Adams! I’ve been eyeballed by things with bigger and more numerous eyeballs than you, and it has quite lost its effect.”

Once they were done limbering up, they practiced knocking arrows to the bow string and drawing them back smoothly.

“As you might with the lover of your choice,” Lord Marshal Vani said, “I want you to pay attention to your grip and finger placement.”

“That was a bit crass,” Anna commented.

“Welcome to the military, Miss Coombes,” the ogre said.

Next, without an arrow knocked to the string, Lord Marshal Vani taught them the techniques for aiming the bow and releasing the arrow with precision.

“Hold your aim steady. Endeavor to keep your breathing and heart rate under control,” the ogre said. “Of course, this is a lot easier said than done when you’ve got some orc charging towards you with a pair of battle axes, but it’s worth getting into the practice of it. Try not to twang the string as you release. Just let it go, and the string will do the rest. This will ensure maximum accuracy in your shot. You’re not playing the bloody cello, after all. Although, come to think of it, the scream of a shot enemy is, in its own way, a special kind of sweet music.”

It was only during the afternoon, after another simple lunch out in the practice yard, that Toby and Anna started target practice in earnest.

Lord Marshal Vani led them to the archery butts. They started shooting at targets only ten paces away. Gradually, when he deemed them ready, the ogre gradually increased the distance until they were soon shooting at fifty paces.

“When you get to this sort of distance, you need to start taking into account winds and elevation,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “Very good, Miss Coombes.”

Anna beamed widely as her arrow thudded into the inner ring of her target. “Did you see that, Toby?” she said.

“Yeah, very nice,” Toby said. He sighted along his own arrow and released the string. It thudded a couple of inches into the straw butt, a little further away from the center of the target than Anna’s.

“That’s a shot of mead when we get home,” Anna said.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” Toby said. “Alright then, let’s start keeping count.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourselves,” the Lord Marshal growled. “And speaking of getting ahead of yourselves, let’s move on to some moving targets.”

The Lord Marshal turned a wheel and targets started moving jerkily around a small section of the archery range.

Toby and Anna quickly learned that firing at moving targets was a different kettle of fish to shooting at stationary ones. They had to focus on leading their shots and adjusting their aim to account for the target’s movement.

The final part of the afternoon was taken up in a friendly competition. The Lord Marshal, who had turned out to be a much more mellow character than they had feared he would when they first woke him up at his desk, even supplied the drink.

“It’ll be good shooting under the influence. Give you something to think about, something else to battle against,” he said as he poured a slosh of fortified wine into a cup.

By the end of the second day’s session, Anna had fallen in love with archery.

“You can take those bows with you,” the Lord Marshal grunted.

“Thank you, Lord Marshal Vani,” Anna gushed, running her fingers over her plain wooden bow.

“Yeah, thank you very much, Lord Marshal,” Toby said, echoing Anna.

“Don’t mention it,” the ogre said gruffly. “They’ll only be gathering dust in the armory if you two don’t take them. Just do me a favor, will you?”

“What’s that?” Toby asked.

“Try not to get killed for fuck’s sake,,” the Lord Marshal said. “Not only will it put a real crimp in your social calendar for the foreseeable future, but it’ll mean I have to fill out a great deal of paperwork.”

“Right,” Toby said, grinning. “A touching sentiment.”

“I’m not here to coddle you, Master Adams. And the last thing I bloody well need,” Lord Marshal Vani growled as he shooed them out of the practice yard, “is more bloody paperwork.”

27

“What the hell are in those blue mushrooms you keep serving us up for breakfast?” Toby asked Verity as they walked along. “I was feeling a bit dusty the other morning when we set out, after Anna and I had played that drinking game whilst we were practicing archery, but I felt right as rain almost straight after eating those mushrooms. And now, with a normal head, I feel as alert as I’ve ever done.

“Adenosine triphosphate, ergothioneine, polysaccharides, psilocybin, and viridiumezenin,” Frank reeled off at once.

Toby looked at the imp. “You know a lot about food.”

The demonic little figure gave him a nonplussed look. “I don’t know about that mate, but I know a shitload about mushrooms.”

They were two days gone on their quest. According to the instructions that had been delivered to the house they had been given by Rowan Moonshroud, the elven ruins were not much more than three days’ journey on foot from the outskirts of Stagbreach.

“But where do you keep finding these mushrooms?” Toby asked Verity.

“Oh, they’re everywhere if you know where to look,” the blonde replied.

Anna was walking at the head of the group of four. She was carrying her bow. She had taken to carrying it at all times. Toby thought that she liked the heft of the weapon in her hand. It made her feel ready.

Kind of like how I’ve taken to walking around with my hand on the pommel of my sword, I guess, Toby thought.

The instructions on how to get to the elven ruins where the king and queen’s spies had thought that Duke Diddle’s minions were hiding out were not the only things that had been delivered to their house in the baker’s quarter. They had also been given a special pouch. The pouch, which looked to be made of plain black leather, had come with an explanatory note.

This pouch will enable you to transport the statue back to Stagbreach once you find it, Toby. Simply place the opening of the bag over the head of the statue, and my magic will do the rest. Good luck, your friend, Wolfgang Tootenstein.

Toby had been glad that the addled alchemist had had the foresight to send that magical bag along. He’d been pondering on just how heavy the statue might be. The addition of the bag to their travel kit backed up his initial worry that the statue would be all but impossible to shift back to Stagbreach with just the three of them.

As far as the journey went, it was surprisingly smooth sailing. Verity None had a good idea of the countryside for some miles around Stagbreach.

“I’ve never been to these elven ruins,” she told them on the morning they set off, “but I have some notion as to what direction they lie in. Most travelers, even bandits, shun them. They shouldn’t be too hard to find.”

“Why do people shun them?” Toby had asked.

“Please let it be evil wights, please let it be evil wights,” Frank had said, crossing his tiny fingers.

But Verity had just shrugged. “Word on the road is that it’s just a place of bad omen.”

And so they had walked along. They took the road that had taken them to the path that led down to Rowan Moonshroud’s mushroom house. Instead of turning off at the fork that led to the wizard’s abode, they carried on for some time until at Verity’s behest they took off into the trees.

The verdant woods, draped in the emerald hues given them by the exceedingly clement weather, gradually gave way to more rugged terrain as the road Verity picked out wound its serpentine path into the heart of the countryside. At first, the woods were made up primarily of ancient oaks and towering beaches. The branches of these trees intertwined in an arboreal tapestry above their heads. The forest floor danced with dappled sunlight. Birdsong echoed through the occasional glades they walked through. Wildflowers were blooming in abundance.

Once, Toby called a halt, and the four travelers hunkered down as a storm of hoof-falls passed off to their left some distance.

“Centaurs,” Frank said. “Nothing to worry about. They mostly do their own thing. Pretty dumb brutes for the most part. They might have the heads of men, but so far as my experience has ever gone, they’ve got a horses’ brains.”

They, surprisingly, came across one other traveler in those trackless forest depths. Frank, with his demonic hearing, was the first to realize that they weren’t alone.

“Ready your bow, woman,” he said in a condescending tone to Anna. “There’s a deer up ahead. Might make a nice change having a bit of fresh venison as opposed to the jerky and hard biscuits that you lot have got in your packs.”

Anna crouched and nocked an arrow to her string. The three of them waited. Toby had his bow at the ready too, just in case Anna should miss with the first shot. Bushes rustled ahead of them. A set of little horns protruded. Anna drew her bow string taut.

“Go on,” Frank urged. “Loose it! Go on! Let’s ‘ave it!”

“Not until I see the creature,” Anna whispered.

A moment later, a faun walked out into the glade that Anna, Toby and Verity were hiding on the edge of. Anna relaxed at once. She stared accusingly at the imp.

“What?” Frank said, holding up his hands. “I’m a benighted spirit of the Below-Below. You can’t blame me for trying to trick you into something a little bit morally questionable, can you?”

Anna shot him a filthy look.

Toby suddenly realized that he knew the faun.

“Anna, it’s the same faun that we bumped into the first day we arrived here,” he said.

The faun looked up as they approached. “Well, well,” she said. “Fancy seeing you two here. And look, you’ve made a friend.”

“What are you up to all the way out here?” Toby asked.

The faun held up her basket. “Foraging. Always foraging. Gotta make hay while the sun shines. Collecting the bounty of nature’s bread basket isn’t half so easy once winter comes along. How about you? What brings a bunch of humans out here?”

“We’re on a quest,” Anna said.

“Ooh, a quest.” The faun smirked. “Very fancy. Very official. Well, don’t mind me, but I think I’ll leave you to it. Though, if you want my advice, I wouldn’t keep heading in the direction you’re going.”

“Why not?” Toby asked.

“Something dark’s hanging over the forest in that direction,” the faun said. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there are elf ruins out there. Some say they’re haunted. Normally, I’d scoff at that, but something isn’t right out those ways.”

Toby nodded. “Thanks for the advice. But as luck, good or bad, would have it, that’s just the direction we’re heading in, and those ruins are our objective.”

“Well, rather you than me,” the faun said.

She hefted her basket, and trotting nimbly along on her goat-like legs, she vanished into the underbrush.

“She was nice,” Verity said. “I hope we live to get to see her again.”

As the days passed and the miles stretched out behind them, the character of the landscape began to shift. The trees grew sparser, their branches reaching skyward like gnarled fingers grasping at the clouds. Toby’s legs began to burn. They were going steadily upwards. The air grew cooler, and Toby felt thankful that he had his fur-lined cloak.

The smell of the forest changed, too. The moldering scent of decay morphed into one of crisp pine and sap, and the earthy mineral aroma of moss-covered rocks.

“This is more like it,” Frank said. “A bit of igneous rock underfoot makes an imp feel more at home.”

“You’ve been floating through the air, you lazy little bastard,” Anna pointed out.

“You know what I mean,” Frank retorted.

By the end of the second day, Toby and the others found themselves ascending into a series of foothills. Craggy peaks loomed on the far horizon whenever they were able to breach the forest canopy. The woods here took on a more rugged aspect. The boughs of the trees were twisted and weather-beaten by the harsh, more mountainous winds.

Toby was feeling good, feeling healthy. Like he had done on the few occasions he’d been able to escape New York and go hiking at places like the Stairway to Heaven Trail just outside of Warwick, or the tracks around Bull Hill. His legs were still aching from the unaccustomed climbing, but they ached in a good way. They told him that he was getting stronger, getting fitter. The air was fresh and invigorating in his lungs.

It was on the evening of the second day, just as dusk was falling, when Anna managed to bring down a young stag they happened upon.

Toby had to admit it was a great shot. Instinctive. The stag stepped out into a clearing where they were resting. Toby had slung his bow over his shoulder while he sat on a rock, but Anna had still had hers in her hand. She dropped to her knee and deftly fitted an arrow to the string, sighted, and fired. It was a beautiful, fluid, almost poetic bit of movement. The arrow took the stag just behind the shoulder, and it fell stone dead.

“You go, girl!” Verity said, striding forward to check on the stag. When she had ascertained that it was indeed dead, she looked up at Anna. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a bit of a badass here,” she said with approval in her voice.

It turned out that, despite her princess-like appearance, Verity was a dab hand at a bit of forest butchery. She soon had the stag skinned, and that evening they enjoyed some roasted venison over the fire.

It was the one of the few times, really, that Toby was glad they had the sharp-tongued Frank with them. The imp was able to start a fire merely by prodding at the kindling with the tip of his forked tail.

Anna was unusually quiet while Verity busied herself preparing dinner.

“Everything all right, Anna?” Toby asked.

Anna looked up from the freshly lit fire. “Yeah, I guess so. It’s just I never killed anything before.”

“What about those spriggans?” Frank pointed out with his habitual delicacy. “Sounded like you caved their head’s in pretty good.”

“Yeah, but that was a case of self-defense,” Anna said.

“True enough,” the imp said. He conjured one of his tiny cigarettes out of nowhere and lit it with a dab of the end of his tail. He exhaled smoke and then nodded in the direction of the skinned stag. “It’s not like you could use the old ‘it was either him or us’ excuse with that guy, is it?”

“Would you zip it, Frank?” Toby said.

“What?” the imp replied. “I’m not saying it wasn’t well done. It was a brilliant shot. By the way, any chance that I can get the kidneys, I prefer my offal raw, so don’t bother putting it over the flames.”

Just think of it like this,” Toby said to Anna, leaning towards her and putting a hand on her thigh. “Getting our meat that way is a shit more ethical than going to the supermarket and picking up a packet of barn-raised chicken thighs.”

“Yeah, there is that I suppose,” Anna conceded.

At night the three of them curled up by the fire as they had done the preceding nights. There was no thought of any hanky-panky, as the trio were fairly tired from walking for the last two days straight. They slept out under a truly magnificent blanket of stars.

“Don’t worry, I don’t need to sleep,” Frank said. “I’ll keep a watch. You can trust me.”

Toby was dubious about this, but he thought that the imp would have little to gain, letting them just be eaten by wolves or bears or whatever.

They woke up with the sun. Frank was tucked up, fast asleep, using Verity’s butt as a pillow. Toby flicked the imp in one of his bat-like ears.

“Ow, what the…? What are you doing?” Frank complained.

You said you were going to stay up and keep watch,” Toby said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I did.”

“Why are you asleep then?” Toby said.

“I was just resting my eyes after keeping my eyelids open all night,” the imp groused.

“Come on,” Toby said. “Let’s get ready for another march.”

They ate cold venison for breakfast and carried on.

As they progressed that day, they talked less. It was as if an unspoken agreement had passed between them. They were getting closer to their destination. Toby felt it was prudent to be on their guard, moving as silently as possible through the alpine woodland.

It was just before the sun had reached its zenith that Frank darted close to Toby’s face and whispered, “We need to stop. There’s someone up ahead.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?” Toby asked.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Frank said. “I mean, I know my run hasn’t been exemplary in terms of telling the truth and not trying to land you in the shit from time to time, but I’m serious.”

Something in the imp’s tone convinced Toby. He gestured for Verity and Anna to come close.

“Frank reckons there’s something or someone up ahead,” he said. “Let’s move very cautiously.”

It didn’t take long for Toby to see that the imp was telling the truth. They were moving through the trees in a line, spaced about six paces apart. Toby held up a hand, just as a marine might in the movies, then lowered it to show the others they should move into a crouch. They did so. Quietly, Anna and Verity moved up until they were crouched next to Toby.

“What is it?” Anna whispered.

Toby pointed through the trees.

There was a tall man standing not far away, leaning against one of the pines. He had very pale skin and a shock of bright red hair. He also, Toby noticed, had very pointy ears.

“That’s a dark elf,” Frank said.

“How do you know?” Toby asked.

“The ears are a giveaway,” Frank said. “But you can just trust me. I’m a well-traveled demonic entity. Cultured like.”

“Cultured like yogurt,” Anna hissed.

“I thought a dark elf would have had black hair,” Toby said.

“Ooh, that’s hair-ist,” Frank said.

“That’s not a word,” Toby said.

“Says you,” Frank retorted.

“Boys, boys, can we focus on the key point here, which is that there is a dark elf standing over there and he has a sword and a bow and is clearly on the lookout for something or someone,” Anna said.

“Anna’s got a point,” Toby said to the imp.

“Yeah, fine, whatever, mate,” Frank replied. “Look, do you want me to take this guy out?”

“I thought you told us that you couldn’t just use magic willy-ni—?”

“I said,” Frank interrupted, “that I couldn’t use my magic all the time, and I specifically said I couldn’t just go turning everyone into root vegetables.”

“So you can use magic,” Toby said.

“Look, I’ve been laying low. I’ve got a bit of a store built up,” Frank said. “I’m just saying if you need me to do something, I can do it, mate.”

Toby contemplated it. But then he said, “No, I want to take this one alive.”

“Why?” Frank asked, sounding genuinely taken aback and disappointed. “Why would you want to take him alive when you can, I don’t know, not take him alive?”

“Because I want to know how many more there are of them,” Toby said.

Frank looked like he was going to make a scathing retort, then his face cleared. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” he admitted.

“Thanks, Frank.”

“You’re welcome.”

After a little bit more quiet squabbling and conferring, they decided that Verity should approach the dark elf while Anna and Toby skirted around and tried to take him unawares. Verity’s natural charisma and stunning good looks would, they hoped, give Toby and Anna enough time to incapacitate the sentry in relative silence.

They put the plan into action. Verity stepped boldly through the trees once Toby and Anna were in position. The dark elf’s aquiline face contorted in suspicion as she approached. He raised his bow and pointed it at Verity.

Verity raised her hands and smiled. It was a smile that could have been measured in kilowatts.

“Hi,” she said.

“Don’t move!” the dark elf said, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.

“I know what we discussed,” Frank whispered into Toby’s ear, just as Toby was about to spring into action, “but trust me, I got this.”

“No, Frank, wait a—” Toby began, but the imp had already dematerialized.

It rematerialized right in front of the dark elf’s face.

“Hi there, chum,” he said.

“What—?” the dark elf started to say.

Frank waved his hands.

The way he did it reminded Toby of the way he had waved his hand back in that alleyway in Stagbreach and caused a burst of inexplicable magic to shoot from his palm. No expanding concentric ring of magic issued from the tiny palms of the imp, though, in this case.

Instead globules of greasy silvery black magic appeared in the air and shot towards the dark elf. The eldritch projectiles hit him in the wrists, ankles and around the neck. He was catapulted backwards. He dropped his bow. The arrow was released and thudded into the ground between Verity’s feet. He somersaulted through the air and crashed into the trunk of a pine tree, some fifteen feet above the forest floor. Fir needles rained down along with a bird’s nest. The globules of magic pinned him there. He opened his mouth to scream and another globule fastened across his mouth, gagging him.

“Frank, what the hell?” Anna said in a hushed voice. “I thought—”

“I told you I had it,” Frank said, dusting off his hands. “And now let me do something else that us evil djinn are particularly adept at, yeah?”

“And what’s that?” Toby asked.

“Interrogate the prisoner,” the imp said, and he cracked a wide smile showing off his tiny pointed teeth.

Toby looked up at the dark elf. His eyes were wide with fear. “My little friend here is going to ask you some questions,” Toby said in a soothing voice. “It’ll be in your best interest to answer him and not try and cry for help. Understand?”

The dark elf nodded, his red hair flopping into his eyes.

“Great, thanks,” Toby said.

“Now, if you don’t tell me what I want to know, mate,” Frank said, floating up so that he could be on an eye level with the dark elf. “I’m going to take away that magical gag, and I’m going to crawl down your throat. You got me?”

The elf nodded again.

“Now, to show you I’m not messing around,” Frank went on, “I’m going to do this.”

He curled himself up into an impossibly compact black and silver ball and cannoned directly into the dark elf’s unprotected groin. It was the kind of nut shot that Toby couldn’t help but sympathize with. He almost felt it himself, a tingling frisson that ran from his teeth all the way down to his asshole.

The dark elf’s eyes almost popped out of his pale face. He let out a stifled moan of real feeling.

“Frank,” Toby said sharply.

“Let me work, mate. Let me work,” Frank replied.

The imp turned back to the dark elf, still helplessly pinned to the tree. “Now, as you can see, my friend, I’m what you might call,” and he waggled his fingers around in the air, “a little bit magical. But I’m also more than a little bit,” and he twirled his tiny finger against his head. “A bit… mad.”

“No argument there,” Anna said.

“All I want to know from you to start off is this,” Frank went on, “are those elf ruins that we’re looking for just over that ridge line there? You can shake your head or nod. Just as a test of trust, you understand?”

The dark elf nodded.

“Excellent,” Toby said. “Thanks very much for that.”

Frank shot him a look that implied he was ruining the mood.

“Now,” Frank said, turning his head in a slow, Exorcist style, three-hundred and sixty degree circle to look once more at the dark elf. “The second thing we want to know is this. How many of your kindred are down there guarding that mermaid statue?”

The dark elf’s eyes shifted this way and there, a telltale sign that the imp had hit the mark so far as guessing that the statue was down in the elf ruins as suspected.

“Now, I’m going to remove the gag,” the little demon said chummily. “But remember, if you even look like you’re about to scream, down the old food pipe I go. And as for where I pop out of…” He shrugged. “Well, you elves have only got two options down south, don’t you? And because I’m feeling as if I want to challenge myself today, I might take the narrower exit road.”

He floated downwards and tapped the elf right on the tip of the pecker.

The dark elf flinched as well as he was able to in his bonds.

“Does this strike you as a little bit… tortury?” Anna whispered to Toby.

Toby gave her an uncomfortable look. “It’s not the way I would have done it, but it’s not like he’s applying hot pincers to his nipples or anything. If we get the answers, I think I can live with it. Everyone needs a sack-tap every now again. That’s basically a scientific fact.”

Above them, Frank dissolved the gag that bound the dark elf’s mouth.

“There are about a dozen,” the dark elf said at once in a hoarse voice.

“A dozen?” Frank said.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound very sure,” Frank said.

Toby had to agree with him. The dark elf didn’t sound very certain.

“Well, it’s just…”

“Just what?” Frank asked, showing off his teeth and making them grow just a little bit longer. He gnashed them together suggestively.

“Well, it’s just that I never learned how to count,” the dark elf sentry said.

Frank rolled his silvery eyes. “That’s just great. We had to get the one guard that was uneducated.” He held up his ten little clawed fingers. “Is it more or less than this many?” he asked.

The dark elf’s eyes moved across Frank’s hands. “About that many,” he said.

“Okay,” Frank said. “I believe you.” He reinstated the magical gag across the elf’s mouth.

“Okay, Frank, that’ll do,” Toby said. “Let’s—”

“Now,” the imp said, moving just a touch closer to the dark elf’s face, “you’ve got precisely ten seconds to see if you can wrangle your way out of these bonds. And if you can’t, I’m going to kill you.”

The dark elf immediately started to struggle against the magic that pinned him to the tree.

“Frank…” Toby said, a warning note in his voice.

“Come on,” the imp said cheerfully to the dark elf. “It doesn’t feel like you’re even trying. You look like the sort of fellow that worked better with an audience, but you’re letting your public down.” He gestured down to Toby, Anna and Verity.

“Frank, you better not!” hissed Toby.

Frank rolled his eyes again. “Fine,” he said, turning back to the dark elf. “I’m not going to kill you. The boss man down there says I’m not allowed to. Besides, you’re not really important enough to die here in this wood, are you?”

The dark elf gave his head an emphatic shape.

“Maybe, it might be worth giving up the soldiering game and going back to school?” Frank suggested.

The dark elf nodded so hard his head was a blur.

“Alright, then.” The imp’s tail snaked out and its forked tip jabbed into the dark elf’s neck.

At once, the captive went limp.

“You didn’t kill him, did you, Frank?” Toby said. “You better not have. That’s not the sort of ship we’re running here.”

“Relax,” Frank said. “Don’t be such a sissy about it. He’s just unconscious. He’ll wake up in twenty-four to seventy-two hours, give or take a day.”

With a snap of his tiny fingers, the dark elf’s bonds were released. He fell limply to the forest floor in a spray of fir needles.

“Right. Good,” Toby said. He walked over and put the elf sentry into a bit more of a comfortable position. “Now that we’ve found out what we need to know—not in the manner that we’re going to make a habit of, by the way, Frank.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the imp said.

“Now we’ve found out what we need to know,” Toby went on, loosening his sword in its sheath. “Let’s go and get what we came for.”

28

“I can’t believe we’re about to do this,” Toby said.

“What?” Anna whispered. “Go down there to risk our necks against a bunch of dark elves?”

“Well, yeah, there’s that, obviously,” Toby said. “But I was more thinking about how absurd it is that we’re doing all of that in order to recapture a stolen potion that could potentially endanger the lives of a massive portion of a city by having them fart themselves to death.”

Anna gave him a look. “Yeah. That does sound pretty fucking crazy, even in the context of all this.”

“Even having lived in this world all my life,” Verity added. “That sounds particularly insane and unlikely.”

Toby looked at Frank. The little imp was lying in the bush that they were all using as cover alongside him. He had gotten into the swing of things, smearing a couple of streaks of dirt under his eyes, commando style.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m from the Below-Below. It’s all fire and brimstone and sulfur down there, guys, let me tell you.”

They lapsed into silence and surveyed the area in front of them. From his concealed vantage point in the thick, dense undergrowth, Toby’s gaze fell upon the elven ruins nestled amidst the craggy foothills like long-forgotten relics of a bygone era.

“I’ll say this,” Frank muttered. “I’ve seen a lot in my time, but I ain’t ever seen building work like that. Look how smooth and seamless the stone structures are.”

“You’re right,” Toby said in a low voice. “The stone works like nothing I’ve seen before in this world.”

“Just looks like cement rendering to me,” Anna pointed out bluntly.

Toby blinked. He looked at his friend. “I think you’re right,” he said. He laughed softly. “That takes a bit of the magic out of it.”

He’d been so caught up in the world, was becoming so engrossed in it that, in that instance, he hadn’t recognized cement when he’d seen it. He laughed to himself again.

“What?” Anna asked.

“Oh, nothing. It’s just usually in these scenarios, the elves turn out to have some sort of crazy elemental magic that enables them to carve stone like butter or something. Whereas really…”

“They just figured out how to make cement before everyone else,” Anna said.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Looks like that, doesn’t it?”

“What the hell is cement?” Frank asked.

“Never mind,” Toby said. He eyed the imp. “I could make you a great pair of shoes out of if we had some.”

“That’s good of you,” Frank said.

“Don’t sweat it,” Toby replied.

“But let’s not let that detract from the fact that it looks like they did a lovely job of it,” Anna said.

It was true. The ruined stone structures, which the elves had apparently made, rose from the rugged landscape as if they had been grown there. Their beauty stood in stark contrast to the weathered ancient hills and the gnarled pines that surrounded them. The ruins, even if they were made of cement or render, possessed an otherworldly elegance. There were graceful arches and intricate carvings, which only hinted at the skill and artistry of their elven creators.

Despite the passage of centuries, the stone bore no real trace of erosion or decay. It had fallen in places, toppled by some natural event perhaps, but it still caught Toby’s breath as he looked upon it.

As interesting and thought-provoking as the architecture was, it was those who were roaming amongst it that ninety percent of Toby’s attention was focused on. There were more dark elves. The sentry had told them that there had been around ten. It turned out there was a baker’s dozen—at least.

“I should go back there and turn that lying bugger into—” Frank started to say when Toby counted the dark elves for the second time.

“Forget it,” Toby hissed firmly.

All of the dark elves had bright flaming red hair. They were dressed in woodland browns and blacks and grays. All of them had pale skin and bright, keen eyes. It was obvious, just by going off the way they moved—antsy, skittish—that they were either expecting trouble or waiting for someone.

Or both, Toby thought.

“Any tactical ideas?” Toby asked. He looked pointedly at Verity.

Verity flexed her wrists, and the twin blades shot out.

“Shit, would you look at that?” Anna said. “Now that’s how you accessorize.”

“Hey, handsome, you know how I told you I was more into the clandestine side of life?” Verity said to Toby.

“I do,” Toby said.

“Well, that’s my plan. I’m going to slip down there quietly as a brownie in their favorite pair of slippers. And I’m going to try and get nice and cozy with a couple of those dark elves and take them out before they can do us any harm. “

“And in the meantime,” Toby said, running on from Verity’s train of thought, “Anna and I will try and pick as many as we can off from a distance.”

It was the tactic Toby would have employed had he been faced with this scenario in a video game. He would have taken out the outer ring of guards or sentries and then worked his way in once the alarm had been raised.

“Seems a little… cold-blooded,” Anna said quietly.

“I know,” Toby said. “But it’s all about enhancing our chance of survival.”

“I don’t know. I think the cold-blooded thing suits you,” Frank said to Toby.

“Shut up, Frank.”

“Okie-dokie.”

“I think that’s a sound plan,” Verity said. “You just give me thirty to forty seconds to get down there before you kick things off.”

“Understood,” Toby said.

Verity gave him a wink. Then she pulled the hood of her cloak up and disappeared into the undergrowth. There was a swish, a rustle, and she was gone.

As far as they were able to ascertain from their vantage point, there was no set schedule or pattern to the dark elves’ movements.

“I know it feels a bit ruthless, Anna, taking out the sentries before they have a chance to even defend themselves,” Toby said, hardening his heart. “But remember what Lord Marshal Vani said.”

“Do you mean that little spiel he gave us about preferring to pick his enemies off from afar so they didn’t get a chance to stick a knife in him first?” Anna said.

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

Anna bit her lip. “I still don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it much either,” Toby admitted. “But I don’t like the thought of being brutally stabbed to death either.”

“When you put it like that…”

“And I’d also rather them be dead and us be able to retrieve that potion which is hanging over the heads of all the citizens of Stagbreach, like the Sword of Damocles,” Toby said.

“Where the hell did you learn about the Sword of Damocles?” Anna asked.

“The Simpsons,” Toby said. “Where I learn most of my useful information.”

“Okay,” Anna said. “Let’s do this.”

With bows in hand and Frank in tow, Toby and Anna made their way stealthily into the ruins. They crept and crawled as close to the edge of the elf ruins as they could. Toby was able to find a position behind a fallen section of wall. Some fifteen paces off, he could see Anna slowly straightening behind the wide trunk of a douglas fir.

Toby gave her a thumbs up. Anna returned the gesture. Toby then raised his right hand, the hand that wasn’t clutching his bow in one arrow. He extended the fingers and then folded the little finger in.

The countdown had begun.

Anna nodded to let him know she understood.

Toby’s heart was all of a flutter. The almost overriding feeling that he couldn’t quite believe what was going on was quashed by the immediate danger that was now only three… two… one seconds away.

His final finger folded down.

Toby took a deep breath, pulled the bowstring to his ear, and stepped out from behind his cover. He had already picked out his target, a swarthy looking dark elf, his red hair held back in a warrior’s tail.

The instructions that Lord Marshall Vani had given them ran through Toby’s head as he sighted the arrow. They acted like a mental balm. They stopped his thoughts from straying to other uncomfortable subjects, subjects like where this dark elf came from, what his circumstances were, whether or not he would have really wanted to be there, part of the group that had stolen the statue. Had he been coerced? Had he been paid? Had he just  come along for shits and giggles?

None of that mattered. All that mattered were Lord Vani’s instructions. All that mattered were the different aspects of bow and arrow shooting technique that Lord Vani had taught them. All of that knowledge that he and Anna had digested in a scant couple of days distilled itself down into one simple conclusion in Toby’s mind.

Better I shoot you, you bastard, than have you shoot me.

The arrow left the string. It crossed the space between Toby and the dark elf in the space of time occupied by a single hummingbird heartbeat. The elf’s expression barely had time to change from that of bored complacency to surprise at seeing Toby, to shock and disbelief as the arrow took him through the throat.

His own bow dropped into the grass. He fell to his knees, one hand coming up to touch weakly at the feathered shaft in his neck. Then he pitched forward onto his face. He twitched feebly a couple of times and then lay still.

Toby didn’t hear Anna’s shot, so focused had he been on striking his own mark. Movement out of the corner of his eye made him adjust his gaze, and he saw another dark elf topple over sideways.

Don’t freeze, don’t stop. Keep moving, his brain told him.

“Best not stand still,” Frank said quietly at the shoulder. “If you’re going to be a target for a dark elf, you really want to be a moving one.”

“I’m on it, I’m on it, Frank,” Toby said.

He started forward, moving in a half crouch. He had another arrow nocked to his half-drawn string, though he didn’t remember pulling it from the quiver. The adrenaline was soaring through him, kicking in the instincts that he had only just learned he had a few days previously.

If he’d had time to think about it just then, Toby might have been inclined to thank the teenage years in which he had spent a large chunk of his time playing RPG games. It was amazing how the habits he had picked up there translated to real life.

Always have your ranged weapon to hand if you’re heading into unknown hostile territory. Easy to drop that and draw a sword, then put a sword back and unsling a bow if you need it.

His breath was coming hard and fast through his nose. He made a conscious effort to calm himself down, but fuck a duck it was hard. There was no turning back now, no turning aside even. All he could do was press on, until he came to the end of this tiny mad chapter in his life. The chocks had been kicked away, and the roller coaster car was gathering speed, heading for that last long steep dive.

He moved as quietly as he could, rolling his feet to minimize the sound of his footfalls. His eyes flicked down occasionally, making sure he wasn’t about to trip on a bit of loose elven stone. His muscles felt like they were coiled up tight as a bunch of springs.

He stepped around an arching column that was broken off half way, so that it resembled nothing less than an enormous lowercase ‘r’.

A dark elf, who had clearly twigged that something was not quite right, was stalking away to Toby’s right. An arrow hissed out of the shrubbery and caught him in the shoulder. He let out a wordless cry. Toby’s arrow punctured him straight through the chest. The dark elf revolved slowly on the spot, his cry turning to a wheeze. He opened his mouth, but spoke only in blood. He coughed and fell over backwards. The ax in his hand rang loudly as it struck a stone.

“Oh,” Frank said, “mark my words, there goes the neighborhood.”

He wasn’t wrong. There was a cessation of sound, as if the forest all around them was taking a deep breath. Then movement erupted from some of the ruins to Toby’s left.

A couple of dark elves came, darting out, swords drawn. Another arrow flitted out from the undergrowth to Toby’s right. He guessed that’s where Anna was. The arrow missed and struck sparks as it pinged off a smooth wall.

Well, the stealth approach was never going to last, Toby thought.

He managed to get one last arrow from his quiver and shot it at one of the oncoming dark elves. As luck would have it, the dark elf stumbled on a tree root and instead of taking him through the chest, the arrow thumped into the meat of his arm. He screamed. The force of the shot spun him about.

Toby dropped his bow and dragged his sword free of its scabbard. The injured dark elf came on. His naturally chalk-white face was even paler after being stuck through with Toby’s arrow. Still he came on, his blade raised above his head in one hand. Toby’s sword met his.

Patience, patience, he told himself. Wait for the opening. Don’t rush it. Wait for the opening. And when you see it—

“Boo!” Frank materialized out of nowhere, just to the left of the dark elf’s head.

The dark elf let out a cry and half turned. Toby’s sword came whistling down and thudded brutally into the place where the dark elf’s neck met his shoulder. The blade was so sharp that it cleaved the dark elf down to his collarbone. The dark elf let out a hoarse scream.

Toby tore his blade free and then hacked, almost in a panic, he was so keen to put the elf out of his misery, at his foe. His sword caught the elf in the temple. Blood sprayed. The dark elf dropped, lifeless.

The second elf had been distracted by the arrows that occasionally flickered out from the bushes where Anna was hiding. Seeing his fellow drop, though, had spurred him into action. He came running full pelt at Toby.

Toby set himself and waited.

Just before the dark elf reached him, a shape blurred out from behind a rock. It was Verity. The bright, beautiful, blonde hair was a dead giveaway. She tackled the dark elf round the knees with the consummate skill of a professional linebacker. The elf went tumbling. Toby watched in awe as Verity released her hold around the man’s knees, rolled up into a crouch and lashed out with one of her forearm daggers. There was a spray of scarlet as the blade passed across the fallen elf’s throat. He clutched at the wound in his neck, trying futilely to stem the pumping blood. His heels kicked impotently at the ground as the life leaked out of him.

Toby did not stay to watch. He was moving through the ruins, scanning for the statue. He knew where it would be. It would be in the middle of the ruins, in a place where it could be most easily defended.

Toby was bowled into by a dark elf while he continued to look around. His opponent roared in shock as the pair of them ran into one another. They both fell. Both got up at the same time. The dark elf came at him with a pair of long daggers. Toby hadn’t faced someone wielding two weapons before. They hadn’t gone through that in the training arena. It didn’t matter though. It was all about staying alive.

Just make sure that your opponent ends up being the dead one.

The words of Lord Marshal Vani came back to him.

Toby attacked. He forced the dark elf to parry his blow, and then parry the spinning backhand that he followed it up with. He pressed and pressed, forcing his enemy backwards. The dark elf parried and kept his eyes fixed on Toby’s face, trying to perceive where he was going to go next.

Their blades clashed. Silver and metal glittered and blurred in the air. Toby found everything else falling away. Even the rather pressing worry about dying disappeared. All that mattered was landing or deflecting the next blow.

Life became unimaginably, gloriously simple. Only one thing mattered, and that was continuing to stay alive.

The ringing of metal became Toby’s world. Once again, he noticed that the sword, to a certain extent, would move or adjust his grip or positioning to ensure he defended a strike properly. With his training and the sword, which felt almost sentient, Toby was more than a match for the dark elf.

Amazingly, it played out just as Lord Marshal Vani said it often did. The elf grew impatient. He lunged in. Toby deflected the blow and shoved the elf aside with his shoulder. The elf stumbled, and Toby ran him through the back. As the sword hit home, the blade turned of its own accord in Toby’s hand. This enabled him to miss the rib that he had been going to hit and slide it cleanly into the elf’s back and out of his front.

The elf jerked and drooled and then slid off the blade into a lifeless pile on the ground.

“Still alive,” Toby panted.

It wasn’t a battle. Toby had no delusions about that. There was no constant roaring, clashing din of arms on armor. There were sporadic bursts of deafening silence, and then there was noise; shouted curses as Toby and his friends clashed with the dark elves. There was the occasional scream or thud of a falling body or cracking crumble as some stone gave way.

After dropping the elf with the two daggers, Toby wended his way further into the ruins. He was looking for the statue. All he wanted was to find that potion, to get it back to Stagbreach. The sounds of the fray were becoming less and less frequent. Toby ducked through a low, half fallen tunnel and emerged out into an overgrown courtyard.

“There it is,” Frank said.

“Man, it’s even more lewd in the flesh than it was on that illustration that Tootenstein showed us,” Toby commented, eyeing the statue. “And that’s saying something.”

An arrow pinged off one of the statue’s generously proportioned breasts. Toby looked up. He was just in time to see another arrow flicker upwards and take the dark elf that had tried to snipe him right through the mouth. The dark elf choked as brains dripped heavily through the wound in the back of its head. Then it toppled forward and landed with a depressingly final thud on a jagged boulder.

“Ooh, that’s got to smart,” Frank said.

Toby glanced over and saw Anna push her way out of a small thicket of saplings.

“You’re getting damn good with that thing,” Toby said.

“I know,” Anna said brightly. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a hobby.”

Toby hurried over to the statue. In true keeping with the man who had commissioned it and with the design of the statue itself, Toby knew that the hidden compartment was in the ass of the mermaid. Silently reprimanding himself for doing so, Toby pushed his finger into the recesses made by the cleft of the mermaid’s stony buttocks. He pressed the catch.

The ass cheeks slid apart. A space inside was revealed. It was a padded space. It was empty.

“Hmm, yes,” said an almost apologetic voice from behind them. “I’m sorry, but you’ve come a little bit late for that.”

29

“By all the…! Where did you come from, you sneaky sod?” Frank exclaimed.

Toby turned. His stance was low, his sword was held high. Anna’s bowstring was to her ear, her final arrow pointed in the direction of the newcomer.

“Ah, so you’d be the bad guy then, would you?” Toby said.

The man who had appeared out of nowhere gave a little twitch of discomfiture at that.

“How do you know he’s the bad guy?” Frank asked.

“Pasty, bald, wearing a pair of vaguely sinister gold-framed spectacles,” Toby said. “He’s ticking all the boxes.”

“Well, he might just be averse to the sun, be short-sighted, and have a case of alopecia,” Frank said. “You shouldn’t go rushing to conclu—”

“Look at the ill-fitting black robes,” Toby counted. “Although, I have to admit that traditionally they’re sort of plain, fusty black robes—a bit of dried blood on them, maybe—and they don’t have the haphazardly sewn patches and buttons added into odd places.”

“Yes, I was hoping it would give off a sort of more unique vibe,” the man said. “Those are some additions of my own, you know.”

Toby gave the newcomer a proper look. At a first and casual glance, he had the whole bad guy’s shtick and aesthetic going on. The black robes; the tall, stick-like, almost skeletal build; the bald head; the pale skin that just cried out for a couple of weeks at the beach. All to be expected.

On closer inspection, though, there was a subtle flamboyance to the man. The golden spectacles, whilst sinister, weren’t necessarily the kind that Toby might have expected an evil genius to wear. The addition of the buttons and almost punk-like array of zips looked more fashionable than formidable.

All in all, he looked like a hipster accountant who had dressed up as Lord Voldemort for a Halloween costume party.

Of course, that’s terrifying in a whole different way.

“You would be Duke Diddle?” Toby said.

“No, I certainly would not,” the man replied.

Toby was taken aback at that, but he soon rallied. “Then who the hell are you, and why the hell are you making off with the potion you just pulled out of that mermaid’s ass?”

Frank sniggered.

“Hmm, yes, as for that, I’m afraid that whilst I’m not Duke Diddle, I do work for Duke Diddle,” the man said.

“Who are you then?” Anna asked.

“That is Vexxx,” Verity None said, stepping out from the shadows of one of the elven pillars.

“Ah, Miss None, to coin an old addage… we meet again,” Vexx said, nodding his head in greeting.

“Vex?” Toby repeated.

“I am Duke Diddle’s right-hand man,” Vexxx said. “And it’s spelt with three X’s.”

“Does that change the pronunciation?” Toby asked.

“Not one bit,” Vexxx said.

“Then why the hell does it matter?”

Vexxx merely looked at Toby.

“Why is it spelt with three X’s?” Toby asked. “That seems a little gratuitous.”

Vex looked a little uncomfortable. “It was the Duke’s idea. He told me Vex with the single X was too plain. ‘Just another way of saying ‘to annoy’,’ were his words. He said Vexxx with three X’s had ‘more villainous flair’.”

Man, Duke Diddle sounds like an absolute weapons-grade jackass.

“Well, he’s not wrong,” Frank admitted. “I imagine your signature looks pretty awe—”

“Give us the potion,” Toby said, cutting across Frank’s ramblings.

“I’m afraid that’s precisely what I can’t do,” Vexxx said. “It was hard enough getting our hands on it in the first place. What with drugging that head alchemist and sneaking into the castle and purloining the damn thing—it really is heavy, you know.”

“I can imagine,” Toby said dryly, glancing at the solid five-foot statue set on its three-foot plinth.

“Of course, not getting an alchemist to ingest a drug is the real trick,” Vexxx went on. “But that chap at the top of the tower was a particularly careful fellow.”

“You seem like a capable man,” Toby said.

“Oh, thanks very much,” Vexxx said.

“So why didn’t you do it yourself?” Toby asked. “Why did you get these dark elves to do the actual stealing?”

“I met them here rather than do it myself because the Duke wanted to try and retain his anonymity for as long as possible,” Vexxx explained. “My face is just as recognizable as the good duke’s to some people.”

He held up the jar of potion. It was a foul, sludgy green color.

“Duke Diddle has big plans for this,” Vexxx said.

“Those are plans that we’re going to be disrupting,” Toby said.

“Yeah, nuts to this,” Anna said. “I hate all this blustering back and forth bullshit. Let’s skip to the end credits.”

She released the bowstring.

Almost at the same moment, Vex snapped his fingers

Even though Anna had let go of the string, the string remained in its pulled position, as if it had frozen solid.

Toby looked at the solidified string and then looked back at Vexxx. “Tricky,” he said.

“Magic,” Vexxx replied, his glasses flashing.

Anna lowered the useless bow. “Excuse me for saying so, but you don’t strike me as a typical villainous asshat.”

“Vexxx here isn’t your typical outlaw,” Verity said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not very good at his job.”

“Thank you for saying, Miss None,” Vexxx said.

“Hold on, am I missing something here?” Toby said.

He took a step forward. Vexxx held the potion a little higher. “I would desist in your subtle maneuvering forward if I were you,” he said, in a tone that did not brook argument.

Toby stopped. “The others are right. You don’t come across as the typical maniacal malefactor.”

Vexxx studied the jar of potion for a little while longer. Then he tucked it securely into one of the zippered pockets of his robe. He zipped the compartment shut. “I suppose,” he said, in that oddly polite voice of his, “that you could say I fell into the job.”

“You fell into being a henchman,” Toby said.

“Yes, I suppose that’s how I look at it,” Vexxx said. “You see, I suppose the trouble all began, or should I say the career in troublemaking began, when I graduated from EMU.”

Toby and Anna exchanged looks. Toby turned to Verity. “What the fuck is EMU?” he asked.

“Oh, I apologize,” Vexxx said. “It’s Eclipsia’s Magical University. You see, I’ve always had a natural gift for the arcane arts, but I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to come out of university with one of those degrees that no one else had. I wanted to stand apart from my fellow academics.”

Toby was desperately trying to think of a way to get the conversation pointed back at the potion and how they might get their hands on it. While he sought for a way to do that, Vexxx went on.

“While my fellow students were coming out with degrees of Astral Prediction and Dreamwalking, or Botanical Magic, Potionography, Mystical Engineering, Wand Law, or Enchantment Studies, I finished my academic career off with a degree in… Management.”

Frank let out a little groan. “By all the spawns of the underworld, that sounds terrible. And that’s coming from a demonic entity.”

“My parents had agreed that going for a management career was a good idea,” Vexxx said. “They thought it would give me a career path with excellent prospects.” His perfectly round face clouded over for a second. “Turns out the only thing it opened up to me was a career in henching.”

“Didn’t your career advisor point that out to you or anything?” Anna asked.

Vexxx gave Anna an embarrassed look. “Well, yes, he might have done,” he admitted. “But there was a lot of dragon dust going around it at the time in my first year. I believe he said, though my memory is hazy, that Management would allow me to pursue life as a toady, sidekick, acolyte, flunkey, or right-hand man.”

“Those are just different words for the same thing,” Toby said.

“Yes, they are,” Vexxx agreed. “But I was young and discovering a real passion for textiles and the like, and I wasn’t really listening at the time.”

“Okay, look, this is all interesting,” Toby said. “And I mean genuinely interesting—I do not have a goddamn clue what to make of you, Vexxx. Part of me actually finds itself inclined to like you.”

“Very kind of you to—”

“But the fact is, we need that potion,” Toby said, in as commanding a voice as he could manage.

Vexxx spread his large pale hands in a conciliatory fashion. “Yes, I get that distinct impression. But I’m sorry to say that’s a point on which we’re fated to butt heads, I fear.”

“Vexxx,” Toby said, taking a step forward despite the other man’s words. “Please, you seem like a, well, maybe not a normal guy, but you seem fairly level-headed. Surely you can see that poisoning the water of an entire city, so that seventy-five percent of those who drink it are fated to fart themselves to death, is just plain wrong.”

“Of course I can,” Vexxx replied curtly.

Verity stepped forward. Her big blues were set in an expression of such a top-class display of puppy-dog eyes that Toby reckoned puppies for years to come would be studying them.

“Then why—?” she started to ask.

“Do you not wish that I could always do what is right?” Vexxx snapped. “Of course I do. It would gratify half of our world whilst astounding the other.” “But the thing is, that would be remiss of me. That would be neglecting my position as a faithful henchman.”

Toby shook his head. He had never given much thought to the idea of morals, or religion. Religion was one of those tricky things that he’d always seen as being above his pay grade. For instance, he had always thought that before someone could really settle down to being one-hundred percent Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Hindu or whatever, they had to first learn to perfect being a human.

And Toby had always seen that as a work in progress, as far as he was concerned, that would last his entire life.

Morals, though… That was just right and wrong.

“You’re telling me that you know what you’re doing is wrong, but you’re going to do it anyway?” Toby said. “Because… why?”

“Because I signed a legally binding contract, which included a very generous remuneration package. Because the Duke offered me employment when no others would,” Vexxx said, tilting his chin up.

“Yes, but—” Verity said.

Vexxx’s eyes, which had been darting nervously around and betraying a sense of almost perpetual anxiety, fastened on Toby’s face. “Would I rather Duke Diddle be engaged in the design and manufacture of wonderful and practical clothing for the masses, instead of plotting how he might seize the throne of Eclipsia and murder most of the population of Stagbreach in the doing so? Of course. But what I want and what I must do are two very different things. First and foremost, I am an employee, and whatever else I might be, I have always been a loyal and dedicated employee.”

Holy crap, Toby thought. This poor bastard is the personification of the brainwashed working man. He thinks that just because Duke Diddle gave him an avenue through which he could use his obviously prodigious magical skills, and pays him, that he owes him some kind of debt.

“Vexxx, you know you really don’t have to do this,” Toby said. “A man of your talents, a man of your obvious brains, there’d be jobs aplenty through the kingdom. Why don’t you just talk to the king and queen and—”

“Enough,” Vexxx said. “Enough chat. I have work to do and a schedule to adhere to.”

He snapped his fingers again. A portal opened behind him, a swirling, variegated whirlpool leading to who knew where.

“Now just wait a minute, Vexxx, darling,” Verity said in a cajoling voice.

“Oh, spare me your blandishments, Miss None, please,” Vexxxx snapped. “I have a job to do. The three of you have jobs to do. You did excellent work mopping up those dark elves, by the way. I was under strict instructions from Duke Diddle to annihilate each and every one of them so that there would be no witnesses. So thank you for saving me a job.”

“Don’t mention it,” Frank called. “We left one alive on the edge of the wood when we came in, but we can get him on our way back.”

Toby clapped a hand across the imp’s mouth. “Vexxx, let’s talk.”

Vexxx stepped backwards into the portal. “I’m sure we’ll all be seeing each other very soon.”

Toby launched himself towards the portal. The only thought in his head was to get a grip on Vex and then bodily wrestle that potion from him. But the portal closed up, as if a seam was sealing in the air. Before Toby could reach it, there was nothing left.

Toby stood there, panting, for a moment. He reached out and touched the place in the air where the portal had been. His hand dropped to his side.

“Fuck,” he said.

Verity ran her fingers through her perfect blonde hair.

“Well,” Anna said, in the voice of someone who was desperately looking for a silver lining, “at least we’ll be able to take the statue back to the King.”

Toby looked at the hideous, semi-pornographic monstrosity of carved stone.

“Fucking fuck!” he said.

“I’m with him,” Frank said. “That statue is rubbish. And now it doesn’t even have an ass to look at. That was the best bit.”

30

Toby stood and stared at the large box. It was wrapped, in his opinion, in overly festive wrapping paper. It was also standing in the middle of the kitchen of the house that Rowan Moonshroud had gifted to Toby and his companions.

“I can’t believe King Balourd got us a present, as well as a monetary reward,” Anna said. “Say what you like about him, but he’s generous.”

“That he is,” Toby agreed. “He seems like a good sort, and I think he’s actually a bit more switched on than people give him credit for.”

Verity made a skeptical little sound in her throat.

“What do you think it is?” Frank asked.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Toby said. “Who wants to do the honors?”

Anna stepped forward and attacked the wrapped present like a small puppy might. There was no technique, no finesse. She just launched into it with a manic consumerist gleam in her eye. Within fifteen seconds, wrapping paper was strewn liberally through the kitchen.

“Wow,” Verity said. “A dishwasher.”

“A dishwasher?” Toby said, surprised.

“Yeah, it’s this thing that washes dishes,” Frank said.

“Cheers, Frank,” Toby said. “That was a very helpful explanation.”

“No worries, mate,” Frank said.

“All right, it hasn’t escaped my notice that you’re looking a bit dubious, Toby,” Verity said. “And that doesn’t surprise me, being the red-blooded male that you are. But even though it’s not so exciting, it’s actually a very thoughtful and helpful present. This is cutting-edge arcaneology.”

Toby looked at the box of the dishwasher. It wasn’t like any box for any home appliance he had ever seen. In fact, it looked like it had been painted to resemble a house with little cut-out windows and a tiny door sketched into the wood of the crate.

“But where do you plug it in?” Anna said.

“Plug it in?” Verity asked, looking bamboozled. “What do you mean?”

“I just mean, where does it draw its power from?” Anna said. “Or its magic, or whatever. And where does it empty the water, too? I wasn’t aware that there was a mains water system or anything in Stagbreach. Hence the reason why the king and queen and their close ministers are freaking out about having one of the wells poisoned with this flatulence potion.”

“You’ve lost me,” Verity said. “You’ve lost me, darling.”

“I think we’ve lost each other,” Toby said. “I think this whole dishwashing thing might have gotten mixed up in translation.”

“Not to mention made exceedingly boring,” Frank pointed out.

Verity pulled a knife from one of the drawers and wedged the blade under the lid of the box. She pried it off.

“Holy shit!” Toby said, taking a step back.

A shower of sparks had emanated from the mouth of the box. As they faded, a winged little humanoid, about seven inches in height, fluttered out from the box.

“Greetings, customer,” it said. “And thank you for purchasing the Bubble-rific Dishwasher Djinn Mark Two.”

The little djinn, if that’s what it was, spoke in a cheerful tone, but Toby still got the impression that the small creature was reciting something from rote. This was backed up when, with an extra impressive forward front flip in the air, the dishwashing demon launched into its warranty policy.

While the sprightly supernatural creature droned on in the same cheerful tone it had announced itself in, and which was somehow made grating by the fact that it was reciting an extremely dry policy, one that basically spelled out to Toby and the rest of the household that they were liable for almost anything that went wrong with the Bubble-rific Dishwasher Djinn Mark II, Toby looked at Verity.

“What?” she asked. “I don’t know what you were expecting.”

“Probably not this,” Anna said.

“Yeah, they’re not the brightest sparks in the spiritual family, these domestic djinn,” Frank said, with a soupcon of contempt in his demonic little voice. “But they do serve a purpose, there’s no denying that.”

“And they save a gal from getting those horrible, dry dishwashing hands,” Verity said, giving a little theatrical shudder.

The dishwashing djinn came to the end of its spiel.

“Well, I think we’re going to need to give him a name if he’s going to be living here,” Toby said.

“Technically,” Verity told him, “you cut out the box supplied, and this acts as his little house. And we can put that out in the garden if we want.”

“We can’t do that,” Anna said. “Let’s put him in that cupboard under the stairs. There’s plenty of room in there, and it’ll be a lot warmer than being left out in the garden.”

The dishwashing djinn beamed good-naturedly around at Toby and his friends. There was something in its facial expression that reminded Toby of King Balourd.

Although, if the king was putting on his apparent bovine dim-wittedness, then the dishwashing djinn certainly wasn’t.

“Let’s call him… Dishy,” Anna said.

Toby looked at her. “Dishy? Really?”

“Yeah, I like it,” Anna said. “You know, like, ‘Oh, he’s a bit of a dish.’“

Toby looked at the djinn. It was pale-blue in color. Rather than having two horns, like Frank did, it had one larger horn sticking out from the center of its head. Unlike Frank’s eyes, which were filled with a malevolent sort of cunning, Dishy’s eyes were completely innocent.

“Well, Dishy,” Toby said, indicating the sink, in which were piled quite a number of dirty dishes. “Have at it, my friend.”

Dishy saluted and, looking genuinely gleeful, pulled a small dishcloth out of nowhere and hung it on his central forehead horn. Then he darted outside. A moment later he was back, hauling with him a full-sized pail of water.

“They’re very strong for their size,” Frank said, in answer to Anna’s astonished glance. “Like an ant. Strong in body, not strong in mind.”

“That’s not very nice, Frank,” Anna said.

Frank jabbed himself in his tiny chest with his tiny thumb. “Hey, I’m a demonic entity. There ain’t supposed to be nothing nice about me.”

Anna raised a slightly contemptuous eyebrow. “That wasn’t such an evil comeback,” she mocked. “I would have expected more from a demonic entity such as yourself. You talk the talk, but you don’t walk—”

“Hey, look here, love. If you’re waiting for my comeback, then you’d best wait until I’ve scraped it off your mother’s tongue,” Frank said.

“Wow,” Toby said. “Now that’s more like it.”

Anna shook her head. “Yeah, that was brutal, Frank.”

“Thank you very much,” Frank said. “I do have one question, though.”

“What’s that?” Toby asked.

“I don’t understand why you named the dishwasher djinn,” Frank said.

Well, I mean, he’s going to be part of the household, isn’t he?” Toby said. “We can’t just have him floating about the place doing domestic chores and not give him a name. That’s just rude.”

Frank made a face. “But, I mean, would you name a dog that you invited into your house?”

“Yeah, of course I would name a dog that I invited into my house,” Toby said. “What sort of psychopath wouldn’t name a dog that they invited into their house?”

“Really, you’d name a dog? Even if you were planning on eating it?” Frank said.

“What? Why would you be eating the dog?” Anna asked.

“Why would you not be eating the dog is the question I’d like to put forward in my rebuttal,” Frank said.

Toby waved his hands in the air and shook his head. “Let’s just stop. Let’s just stop before we get started for once. Before we end up down a rabbit hole we can’t reverse our way out of. Let’s focus instead on how lucky we are to have received this dishwasher djinn from the king. Not to mention, as Verity touched on before, the large amount of cash that he very kindly had dropped off as a reward for us.”

“Yes,” Verity said. “That was awfully lovely of him, and the queen.”

“Especially considering that we just got there a little bit too late to get our hands on that damn potion,” Toby said.

The whole way back from the elven ruins he had been trying not to dwell on the fact that they had failed in their mission to retrieve the potion.

“Look, it wasn’t your fault that we got there just after Vexxx did,” Anna said. “We got there as quickly as we could. It was just one of those things, that Vexxx had planned to meet his little band of dark elven mercenaries just before we arrived.”

Toby nodded his head glumly. As frustrated as he was, he couldn’t help but cherish a little spark of optimism in his breast. Something about the whole situation spoke to something inside of him. He got the almost indefinable feeling that things were playing out as they should, as he might have expected them to have this whole thing just been a work of fiction or a daydream he’d been having.

“I guess the king was glad to have his statue back,” Verity said. “He must really love that hideous thing.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “But exactly how much did he love it?” The imp conjured a set of eyebrows onto his face just so he could waggle them in a meaningful fashion. “I hope you washed your paws, Toby, after you took it back out of that sack in the throne room.”

“Hey,” Verity said severely. “There’ll be no kink-shaming in this house, thank you very much. It takes all sorts to make a world.”

Frank rolled his eyes.

Toby watched Dishy set to work whipping up a foaming cauldron of sudsy bubbles in the kitchen sink with a tail that was shaped more like a whisk than the forked one that Frank had.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help but feel a royal pain in the ass that we didn’t get there an hour or two hours before,” Toby said, unable to contain his outburst. “Vexxx pipped us to the post like that before we could collect the potion. Dammit, that annoys me!”

“Speaking of Vexxx,” Verity said. “What do you make of him?”

“What do I think about him?” Toby said.

“Yes. You know, as a man, not an adversary,” Verity said.

Toby thought about that. “I mean, for a guy who has the balls to rock a name with three X’s in it, the dude didn’t strike me as being too bad a sort, honestly. Obviously convention would have me hate the man, considering what he’s planning to do with that potion, considering who he works for. But… I don’t know…” Toby trailed away as he thought about the pale bald man and the calm, reasonable way he had spoken. “I guess he’s possessed of a strange brand of loyalty,” he said.

“Loyalty can be a dangerous thing,” Verity said. “I should know.”

Maybe,” Toby conceded, “but loyalty alone isn’t something worth hating a guy for. It totally depends on who he’s loyal to. And why.”

“Well, in that case, we should look at him with disdain then, shouldn’t we?” Anna asked. “He’s working for Duke Diddle.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t sound like he’s working for him out of choice, per se,” Toby said. “He struck me more as one of those poor bastards you’d hear so much of back in the world we came from, Anna.”

“What poor bastards?” Anna asked.

“You know, those who suffer from a poorly thought out and pointless university degree,” Toby said. “There are a shitload of them back on Earth who are in the same boat as Vexxx is.”

“True,” Anna conceded. “But they’re not using that boat to pick up potentially lethal flatulence potions and then deploy them into water sources that said boat is sailing on.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” Toby said. “They’re using that boat to sell their dumb asses to job interviews for which they are grossly overqualified for, so that they can start earning a minimum wage in order to pay off the interest on the insane loans that they took out to pay for their crippling, nugatory, theater degrees majoring in archaeology.”

Anna let out a little laugh. “That’s true. But then none of those poor bastards have the arcane arts to fall back on, do they?”

“Yep, I suppose Vexxx does have that advantage over them,” Toby said. “I imagine that being able to use magic would be useful, even if you were one of those delusional maniacs who thought that a degree in entrepreneurship is going to be helpful to anybody other than the college offering it.”

“I didn’t have the chance to chat with Vexxx,” Verity said. “Not as much as I would have liked, but I’ve had brief dealings with him in the past. He normally plays the shadowy puppet master figure type. And I have to agree with you, Toby. I don’t think there’s anything inherently evil about him, if that makes sense.”

“Apart from the fact that he’s working for a geezer who’s looking to poison an entire city,” Frank pointed out.

“Yeah, apart from that,” Verity said in her light, princess-esque voice.

“But apart from that, yeah, he doesn’t seem like one of those sadist nutjobs, does he?” Toby said with a brief laugh. “With that in mind, I think that should we cross paths with Vexxx again, I’m not going to give up hope that the other man might not be able to be reasoned with.”

Anna nodded. “I kind of felt sorry for him.”

Toby nodded in turn. “So did I,” he said.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence, which was punctuated only by the gentle clink of crockery and the rattle of cutlery as Dishy cleaned up the accumulated mess in the kitchen.

Suddenly, Verity clapped her hands together. “Come on,” she said. “I know just the thing that will get us out of this funk.”

“It’s not really a funk,” Toby countered. “It’s more of a thoughtful time where we try and figure out what the hell we’re going to do next.”

“Exactly. That’s a funk,” Verity said.

Anna nodded. “Verity is onto something, Tobes. We have to wait and see what happens. It’s out of our hands for now. The potion. Vexxx.”

“All of it,” Verity finished.

“Okay,” Toby relented. “Seeing as we’re waiting on a new development, how would you suggest we occupy ourselves?”

“Easy,” Verity said. She looked at Anna. Anna’s face lit up.

“Oh no,” Toby said, dread coloring the two words. “Oh, no no no no! You’re going to suggest we go and use some of the coin that the King and Queen gave us, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Verity said brightly.

She held up her hand. Anna saw what was expected and delivered a crisp high-five to the other woman.

“Shopping trip!” they both trilled in unison.

“What fresh devilry is this?” Frank muttered.

31

Toby had formed a number of simple philosophies in his life. These were conclusions he had drawn after careful personal observation of humanity as a whole. One of these was that humanity could be divided into two basic groups of people.

The first group could probably be labeled as ‘realists’. They were the people who knew that going to the shop with the intent of getting, say, just a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk and coming out of the shop with only a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk were about eight-hundred and ninety-two million to one. The other group of people were, in Toby’s opinion, dangerously delusional.

Toby knew Anna. He knew her well. He knew that she loved to shop. He also knew that, more frustratingly, than that, she loved to not shop whilst shopping. Anna was one of those women who would spend many long and tedious hours—in Toby’s opinion, at least—just walking through an endless array of shops that more or less sold the exact same things at slightly different price points, touching everything in said shops, and buying nothing.

Knowing this about his best friend, and knowing enough of the female species to guess that this affliction of hers would only be made all the more acute when she teamed up with Verity None, Toby headed out with the two women on their shopping expedition filled with trepidation.

Thankfully their excursion didn’t prove to be as painful as Toby had feared it would. For one, they didn’t go clothes shopping.

“No, we don’t have enough time for that,” Anna said matter of factly.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re in agreement on that score,” Verity said. “If we’d been going clothes shopping we would have needed to leave the house much earlier, and you wouldn’t be coming with us, Toby.”

Toby wasn’t going to make any arguments to that.

“Shopping for women is harder than for men,” Anna said to Toby.

“Okay,” Toby said. He was happy to be on the receiving end of a nonsensical lecture if it meant he wasn’t going to get dragged around a bunch of stores and asked over and over again how Anna and Verity looked.

“The thing is, we women are far more complicated than you men,” Anna went on. “We usually love what we buy and yet every time I go into my closet I’m struck by the curious fact that I mostly hate everything that’s in there.”

“Oh, same, hon,” Verity said. “That’s why I stick with a few tried and trusted outfits. It just takes the thinking out of the morning, you know. Especially when you might be a bit pushed for time because you’re on the run for some minor misdemeanor.”

“I feel you sister, I feel you.” Anna said.

Toby was just starting to look around for some sort of tavern or grog shop where he could blunt the edge of his sobriety with some heavy drink when Verity let out a little exclamation.

“Ah here we are,” she said. “Our first stop.”

Toby looked up at the sign. It read, ‘Edgewise Extensions’.

“This isn’t a hair salon is it?” he asked in a resigned voice.

“Please, no,” Toby heard Frank say softly as if he had just been told he needed to stand alone against an army of foes.

“Hmm? Oh, no no,” Verity said.

“Thank goodness,” Toby said, relieved. “I thought for a moment you guys were getting hair extensions.”

“No this is for our house,” Verity explained.

“You want to get our house an extension?” Toby said. “Do we have enough money for that?”

“Oh yes. The king was very generous, darling,” Verity told him.

As excited as he was that they wouldn’t be shopping for clothes, Toby wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of having builders around or outside their base of operations for the foreseeable future. When he voiced this concern, Verity shook her head and gave him a sympathetic smile.

“I keep forgetting you’re not from around here,” she said.

That’s one way of putting it, Toby thought.

“These extensions that they offer at Edgewise, you pay a premium but their results are slightly more instantaneous,” Verity said.

“Magic?” Anna asked.

“Absolutely,” Verity said.

Anna clapped her hands. “Sounds fun!”

“Just you let Anna and I do the talking, Toby,” Verity said.

Toby held his hands up as if to say, ‘Our fates are in your hands’.

Verity opened the door to the shop and led the way inside. Anna followed and Toby came after with Frank floating at his shoulder.

“It could be a lot worse,” Toby said to Frank in an aside. “We could be shopping for clothes or, if we were really unlucky, for shoes with the girls. We would have been in real trouble if that had been the case. It only takes me about an hour before I lose the will to live.”

“Think how bad it is for me, then,” Frank said.

“What do you mean?” Toby asked.

“Well, I can lose the will to live when it comes to this sort of thing too,” Frank said. “And I’m immortal.”

Verity breezed into Edgewise Extensions. “Hello,” she said, to the well-dressed woman behind the counter.

“Good morning, madam,” the woman said. “How can I help you? Are you looking for anything in particular today?”

“I was hoping you might be able to help me with an alchemy lab,” Verity said. “Also, depending on the price, we were also thinking of investing in a magical crafting workshop.”

“Ah, madam, you know your extensions,” the woman behind the counter said in an approving voice.

“If we were to purchase both of those rooms,” Verity said, “would there be any way we could get some sort of a deal on them?”

“I don’t see why not. I’m sure that we might be able to furnish you with some sort of deal,” the saleswoman said smoothly. “For such a substantial investment, I’m sure we might be able to throw in a few little extras. You will be paying cash, I presume?”

In answer to this query, Verity pulled out a bulging purse. “Of course.”

Toby had never actually seen dollar signs appear in someone’s eyes before, but the saleswoman of Edgewise Extensions very nearly managed it.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said suavely, “please follow me. I’ll show you our packages.”

In the end, Verity, along with Anna, picked out an alchemy lab that the saleswoman said she would very graciously include the potion brewing equipment with. This was with the proviso that Toby, Anna, and Verity also purchased their magical workshop package, complete with crafting stations.

Toby took a backseat for these negotiations, but Verity seemed happy with the outcome, and so he made no protestations as a large portion of the money that King Balourd and Queen Lascivo had rewarded them with for the return of the statue was handed over to the saleswoman.

“Oh, I do love spending money,” Verity said as they exited Edgewise Extensions. “And I especially love spending it when it’s not mine.”

“I was just wondering,” Toby said, “are there any checks we need to have done?”

“Checks?” Verity asked. “What kind of checks?”

“Well, I just mean do suddenly, magically appearing or sprouting rooms on houses contravene any sort of building regulations?”

Verity just looked at him. “Building regulations?”

Anna, who was walking alongside the other woman with her arm linked through hers, explained the concept of building regulations to Verity.

After she was done, Verity said, “You mean people in your world have to apply to an agency run by the king or queen?”

“The government. But yes,” Toby interjected.

“And they have to ask them whether or not it is okay to build something on the land or the building that the person already owns?” Verity finished.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Toby said.

“And this government is able to say that they can’t?” Verity said.

“Yep.”

Verity stopped in the middle of the street and tipped back her head. The beautiful fluting sound of her laughter actually stopped other people in their tracks as they sought to see where the fabulous noise was emanating from.

“Wow, that’s wild,” she said. “Where do you guys even come from? If King Balourd tried to implement something like that here…” She shook her mane of lustrous blonde hair. “I mean, look, from everything I’ve ever heard about the man, he sounds like a convivial soul. But if he’s not the most clueless person in Eclipsia, then he better hope that they don’t die. Still, even he wouldn’t try to do something like that. Telling other people what to do with their own things on their own land?” She shook her head again. “That sounds like a surefire way to get a lot of people to hate you really, really quickly.”

Toby considered that. “Yeah, from what I little understand about it all, that’s basically what governments spend most of their time, and our money, on perfecting.”

“Wait until we have a quiet winter evening, and Toby and I can explain mortgages to you,” Anna said.

Over the next few hours and with a gratifying lengthy luncheon, Toby and Verity purchased a few more bits and bobs for their house in the Baker’s District. One of these items, which the two women deemed as ‘essential’, was a magical wardrobe. This wardrobe, according to the occult carpenter that had crafted it, was impregnated with a special hex.

“Whatever clothes you put inside it, it stores,” the bent-backed man told Anna and Verity. He had correctly deciphered that they were running the shopping show.

“Right, so it acts as every other wardrobe does?” Toby said.

The man gave him an exasperated look. “Yes, it stores the clothing, young master,” he said. “But if you allowed me to finish my sentence, I was going to say that it stores the clothing, but also comes with an augmented mirror spell which allows you to see what you look like with the stored clothing on, without actually getting changed into it.”

“Ooh,” said Anna and Verity in unison.

The craftsman turned to the two females. Toby could see that the man was aware that, so far as the selling of this enchanted wardrobe went, Toby was surplus to requirements.

“Yes, my dears, you may well exclaim with joy,” he said. “For not only does it show the wearer what they might look like in certain outfits, but if they are happy with what they look like, they simply select the outfit by touching the mirror and the wardrobe will cause the clothes to materialize on the wearer within seconds.”

“You mean it rids you of the chore of getting dressed?” Toby said.

“That’s right, young master, that’s right. Perfect for the modern day young go-getter. You can be dressed in the blinking of an eye.”

Toby had to admit he quite liked the sound of that. It sounded almost like the outfit selection process at the beginning of some RPGs.

They ended up buying the wardrobe. The craftsman nodded his thanks and told them that his delivery trolls would have it at the house before Toby, Anna and Verity had got home.

Their final stop was at what amounted to be the medieval version of a garden center or nursery. While Toby looked around at the varied and extensive array of fascinating plant life, Verity organized a team of what sounded like gnome landscape gardeners to swing by the house and do something with the backyard.

As they headed back towards the Baker’s District and their home, Toby turned to Verity. “Now I don’t want you to think that I’m in any way questioning your logic when it comes to shopping,” he said.

“That was really well prefaced, mate,” Frank said.

“Cheers, Frank.”

“Any time.”

“Yeah, so as I was saying,” Toby went on, “I don’t want to sound like I am questioning the workings of the female mind when it comes to shopping, but why exactly did we need to get the gnome gardeners?”

“Because, darling,” Verity said patiently, “now that we’ve got a potion-making laboratory ready to be added onto our home, we are going to need to grow things with which to make the potions. The king was very generous in his offer, giving us the funds to make the extensions, but we really want to be self-sufficient and make the most of his gift.”

“And not only that,” Anna said, “we can grow our own food too.”

“Exactly,” Verity said. “A good garden will pay for itself in time.”

“Do you think if we get into the potion-making game,” Toby mused, “whether we might be able to start selling them to people in the neighborhood, and people in Stagbreach as a whole?”

“We could do it, yes. I don’t see why not. So long as they do what they say they should do on the label,” Verity said.

Toby nodded to himself. He still had no way of knowing what the future would hold, of course, but working on the basis that they managed to thwart Duke Diddle and Vexxx they would have to, depending on how long they stayed in Eclipsia, start making ends meet. Toby liked the idea of working for himself, of setting up some little businesses to bring the money in.

At least we don’t have rent to pay, he thought. There’s some definite perks to having a turnip for a landlord.

When they got back home, Toby fixed them all drinks. “So,” he said, as they relaxed around the kitchen, “what do we do about these extensions that you spent so much money on?”

Verity shrugged. “Let me finish this drink, and I’ll show you.”

The shopping had conveniently all been brought back to the house by the various different shops’ delivery crews. The wardrobe was sitting snugly upstairs in Anna’s bedroom. The team of gnome landscapers had been organized to come in the next few days. The two room extensions, which Toby, despite having seen all he had so far in Eclipsia, was still having some trouble believing would actually expand out into two new rooms within the household, sat in their elaborately carved boxes on the table.

“Come on, tell me, how does this work?” Toby asked impatiently. “You know I’ve got a soft spot for magic. Let’s have at it.”

Verity gave a theatrical sigh and put her drink down. “Fine. What room would you like to add to the house first, darling?”

Toby thought about it. “Let’s have a crack at the crafting workshop first.”

“Okay, sounds good, and it’ll be easier to verify whether Edgewise Extensions knows their business,” Verity said.

“How do you mean?” Toby asked.

“You’ll see,” Verity said. “Or else, at least, I hope you’ll see. Otherwise we’re going to be going back to have words with that saleswoman.”

She pulled the box, which apparently came with an entire room within it, towards her. Toby didn’t see how it would work, but he guessed that was magic for you. Verity paused with her fingers brushing the catch to the box. Then she pushed the box over to Toby.

“You do it, darling,” she said.

“Me?” Toby said.

“Yes, you.”

“Don’t worry, mate,” Frank said in a bracing voice. “These sort of magical home extensions are made for the rich and idiotic. You might not be particularly rich, but I’m sure you’ll still manage. I promise I’ll scrape you off the ceiling if it’s a dud.”

“Thanks, Frank,” Toby said dryly.

“What I think Frank’s trying to get at,” Verity said, shooting the imp a venomous look, “is that these spells, these incantations that add new rooms to someone’s house, are made for those people who don’t have the time for all the wand waving and all that other stuff.”

“That’s why you pay a premium for the spell?” Toby asked.

“Exactly,” Verity said. “The instructions will be in the box.”

Toby opened the box. There was, indeed, a tightly furled scroll tied with a pretty silver ribbon inside. Toby undid the ribbon and read the scroll.

The first thing he was required to do was perform a series of gestures that were illustrated on the scroll. This he did. Anna watched him eagerly.

“Next,” Toby said, “I have to take these crushed, dried herbs and blow them into the air. Apparently they harmonize the spell with the space.”

“Go on then,” Anna urged him. “Get harmonizing, Tobes.”

Toby emptied the small vial into his hand and blew the powdered herbs off his palm. They swirled in the air, releasing a pleasing scent that was not dissimilar to mint mixed with antiseptic ointment. Then, carried away by a non-existent breeze, they disappeared.

“Now?” Anna asked.

“Now,” Toby said, turning over the scroll. “Now, I need to perform some more gestures, which apparently will lock the room into position.”

Slowly and methodically, Toby performed the hand gestures. Once he was done, the box on the table glowed with a soft golden light. The lid flipped over and snapped shut.

“I’d say that’s done and done,” Verity said brightly. “Shall we go and see if it worked?”

“How…?” Toby began to say, but Verity was already marching from the room.

The blonde woman led the way outside and turned around. “Ah, excellent.”

Toby turned around. His jaw dropped open. There was a small tower extending up from the roof of the two-story house. It most assuredly had not been there when they had come home about twenty minutes before.

For all the world, it looked like it had been built when the house had been built. It blended so seamlessly into the wooden tiles of the roof.

“How is that…?”

“Magic,” Frank said succinctly. “That’s magic for you, mate.”

“Holy hell,” Anna said. “You would not believe how different that is compared to the contractors who work in New York. Just getting the box open would have taken a team of three burly men four days.”

They trooped back inside. This time, Anna built the new potions laboratory. This new room materialized downstairs in the basement. It hadn’t mattered one wink that there hadn’t been a basement before. It seemed that the spell came with an excavation clause.

When the three humans, along with the one imp, went down the wooden stairs and stepped out into the basement, Toby could only let out a short bark of disbelieving laughter.

The potion laboratory was spacious, with stone walls lined with shelves containing rows of glass vials, jars of exotic-looking ingredients, and neatly organized alchemical equipment. At the center of the laboratory were a couple of gleaming copper cauldrons. There were a series of intricate glass alembics standing ready to use too. Each cauldron was set atop a sturdy iron tripod. Its surface was polished to a mirror-like sheen. The alembics sparkled with the promise of distillation and refinement.

All in all, there was everything there that the budding potioneer might require.

A long alchemy workstation was positioned down one wall. It was made from a sturdy wooden bench on which sat a few mortar and pestles and a variety of measuring tools and implements.

Everything was obviously brand new and untouched, awaiting the hands of Toby, Anna and Verity when they started bringing their potions to life. Toby was stoked to see that there were also a number of heavy books standing on a shelf.

“Probably the most important things in this whole room,” Verity said, when she saw where Toby was looking.

“What are all those?” Anna asked. She was pointing up at the low ceiling. Suspended from the beams of this ceiling by shimmering chains were an array of magical crystals and apparatus.

“I have absolutely no idea what any of those do,” Verity said. “My best guess would be that the crystals serve as conduits for magical energy, for channeling and amplifying power and stuff like that, you know. That’s just a guess, though. We’ll have to spend a bit of time studying those books before we go diving in.”

The new tower-based crafting workshop was just as mind-bogglingly brilliant as the potion laboratory.

Once Toby had led the way up the short winding staircase that led to the squat tower, the three of them found themselves in a workshop bathed in the warm glow of the setting sun that filtered through the windows. The air was filled with the scent of wood oil. Every surface, every tool, was just as immaculate as the equipment down in the potions laboratory had been.

There was an honest to goodness forge against one wall. In front of it was an anvil, standing ready to transform raw materials into, well, whatever Toby and his friends learned to make, he supposed. Apart from where the forge stood, around the rest of the walls there was a beautiful sweeping workbench. Its surface was covered with neatly arrayed tools and implements. There were hammers and chisels, saws and drills. Every tool a master or, in their case, an amateur craftsman might need was within arms reach.

There were neatly organized racks and pegboards lining the walls. Along one wall shelves and cabinets were stocked with an abundance of raw materials and resources.

“Oh good,” Verity said, going over to examine this. She opened a couple of the drawers. “Yes… good… copper wire… dowel…  mercury… She didn’t try to do a number on us.”

“Who?” Toby asked.

“The saleswoman back at Edgewise Extensions,” Verity said. “She told me she would throw in six months worth of crafting materials if we paid the full amount today. She also said she’d be a dear and throw in some blueprints and designs for a few bits and pieces.”

They looked around and soon found the blueprints in the drawer of a desk that was able to be pulled out from underneath part of the workbenches.

“It’s wonderful,” Anna said, gazing around the room.

“Yes it is,” Verity said, looking pleased. “What’s more though, I’ve got a feeling that this place, as well as the potion laboratory, is going to come in really handy. There is a lot of excellent gear just waiting to be found and picked up in this part of the world. Treasure troves, dragon hordes that have long been forgotten. You mark my words, the chances of finding an interesting weapon, an enchantable object, or a piece of customisable armor are really pretty high if you know where to look.”

“And you know where to look, I bet,” Toby said.

Verity gave him a cherubic smile and then winked. “I might do, handsome,” she said. “If you play your cards right.”

“Speaking of cards,” Toby said, “how about we close up the house now that we’ve unpacked the shopping and head over to the Toby Jug for a bit of dinner and some drinks.”

Anna’s eyes sparkled. “Shopping and a date night. You sure know how to spoil your womenfolk, Tobes.”

Toby gave her a grin. “Just you remember that when we come home tonight.”

Anna glanced over at Verity. Then she looked back at Toby. “I’m sure we can find a way to repay you, Tobes.”

“Holy shit, fella,” Frank whispered into Toby’s ear. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” Toby said. “What do you think it means?”

“I think that means that they’re hinting that they’ll pick up the tab,” the imp said.

32

It was, unsurprisingly, a rather nice feeling having Anna under one arm and Verity under another.

To have a beautiful blonde under one arm and a gorgeous, auburn-haired dream like Anna under another would have been a fine sensation ordinarily. Coupled with the excessive amount of goblin brandy that they had drunk throughout the evening, it was almost enough to make Toby burst into impromptu song and dance, like one of those corny old films from the fifties.

Almost, but thankfully, not quite.

Having each of the women under one of his arms also served a practical purpose too. It meant that the three of them formed a tripod, with each member of this tripod keeping the other two members on their feet.

The two girls were giggling, leaning in across Toby’s chest to exchange whispers that his booze-clouded ears couldn’t make sense of. Not that he minded. He was bathed in that wonderful rosy glow that just the right amount of alcohol envelopes a man in. It was that honeyed sweet spot that came after the drinking games and the gambling and the flirting, and shortly preceded the rapid deterioration of cognitive and physical function, which, in turn, slightly further down the track, precipitated falling into bed without getting undressed.

Or, Toby thought muzzily, in more severe cases, waking up with your head in the refrigerator and one hand wedged into an open jar of mayonnaise. I wonder… Do we have any mayonnaise?

“Ladies,” Toby said. “Ladies, be quiet. You’ll nake the weighbors.”

“What?” Anna chuckled.

“I said you’ll wake the neighbors,” Toby repeated, correctly this time.

“Fuck the neighbors,” Anna said.

“It’s not the neighbors I want to fuck,” Verity said, and the two of them broke down into giggles yet again.

Toby found himself grinning widely at this bit of banter. They had been skirting around the issue all evening. As more and more drink had flowed, the hypothetical talk had seemed to get less and less hypothetical and more and more inevitable.

A threesome. A threesome involving himself, his oldest friend, and a woman who could have come straight out of the pages of Playboy’s Princess Fantasy edition.

It had been such an enticing thought that Toby had made a conscious effort not to get too carried away at the Toby Jug and keep a handle on his drinking. In that regard, he had just succeeded.

Seeing as the night was no longer old, but the day extremely young, he thought he’d done pretty well in keeping a lid on the libations. After all, with a potential threesome on the horizon, the last thing a man wanted was to be keen in mind and yet hampered by an unfortunate case of whiskey dick… or goblin rum dick… or whatever sort of dick the spirits they had ended up drinking towards the end of the evening in the Toby Jug brought on. Toby had a feeling it had been quite the eclectic collection of alcohols.

“Is someone going to open the damn door or what?” Frank asked.

The imp was lounging in midair as if lying in a hammock. He was even swinging gently to and fro. His silver eyes were almost completely shut. He might have been a demonic entity, but it turned out that Frank was partial to a bit of troll blood—a particularly brutal and smelly alcoholic concoction, which was so strong it had been known to make unwary drinkers go temporarily deaf.

“Can’t open the door without the key,” Toby pointed out, squinting with one eye open at the imp.

“Yeah, that’s correct, mate, and you’ve bloody well got it,” Frank said.

“Got what?” Toby asked.

“The bloody key,” Frank said.

“Oh, right, yeah.”

Toby patted himself down. He felt a mild thrill of panic as he realized he couldn’t find the key. It was hard searching through all his pockets to find a key when he had a beautiful woman under each arm. So, regretfully, Toby untangled himself from Verity, using his left hand to rummage through the many pockets of his coat and trousers.

“What are you doing?” Anna said. She giggled and hiccuped. “You look like you’re trying to put a fire out.”

“I’ve got news for you, Toby Adams. You might be hot stuff, but you ain’t that hot,” Verity laughed.

“I’m trying to find the front door key,” Toby said.

“It’s in your boot,” Verity told him.

“It is? Oh, that’s right,” Toby said, slapping himself on the forehead and managing to connect on the second attempt.

“Yes. That is right,” Verity said.

He had taken the key out of his pocket and slipped it into his boot for safekeeping.

“Hold on, hold on, I’ll get it,” Toby said. He unlooped his other arm from Anna.

Anna and Verity came together like two dominoes who had a central domino pulled out from between them. They leaned against one another, forming a rough arch. Toby, out of the corner of his ear, thought that he could hear the two sexy women exchanging little kisses. He wanted to look up and watch, obviously, but the retrieval of the key was proving a more difficult enterprise than he might have thought a few hours previously. Mostly, he was hampered by the fact that he seemed to have grown an extra leg. He blinked hard, trying to refocus his vision.

“Now, what boot did I put it in? The left one, the right one, or this strange new center one that seems to be blurring in and out of existence?”

The hushed conversation taking place between his two female companions had taken on an urgent edge. Anna grabbed Toby by the arm.

“Come on, Tobes,” she said. “We’re sick of waiting.”

She and Verity dragged Toby around the side of their house. They had to make their way through a rickety gate, but this potentially awkward process was made easier by Frank melting the hinges of the gate so that it just fell inwards.

They made their way around the side of the two-story house and into the overgrown backyard. There was nothing in there except for a rather dilapidated potting shed.

It seemed to Toby that the dark of the night was becoming more diffuse. The world was paling. He looked off to the east. Immediately, he wished he hadn’t. The rooftops in that direction were blushing. Slowly, the dawn was coming. Toby had been in this headspace before. He knew that seeing the sunrise whilst being in such an intoxicated state would bring with it a unique pain, a unique dread.

“Come on this way,” Anna said, yanking at Toby’s arm. Toby followed. Verity walked along beside him. Her eyes were glued on the potting shed.

Suddenly, to his dismay, Toby was engulfed by one of those waves of annoying morose introspection. Such a blooming of pensive self-analysis often came with a night of heavy drinking. He just wished it hadn’t decided to rear its head now.

“Guys,” he said, “guys, do you think that maybe it’s a little bit irresponsible, us getting hammered drunk when we know there’s a looming threat of explosive flatulence floating over Stagbreach?”

Verity and Anna looked at one another. Then they looked at Toby.

“No?” Verity said.

“I’m going to go with ‘no’ in this instance too,” Anna said. “You’re outvoted, Mr. Adams.”

“Oh,” Toby said. “Fair enough, then.”

Anna and Verity continued to drag him towards the potting shed. Toby was visited by the interesting and humorous thought that it was almost like the three of them were vampires of a kind. Only they were trying to escape the sun, not because its touch would mean that they crumbled into dust, but because its touch bore with it the promise that very soon they would be suffering from the kinds of hangovers that made a person feel as if their eyeballs had been dressed up in wool sweaters and their mouths filled with the kind of ripe kitty litter that could have melted the armor plating off the side of a battleship.

They bundled inside the rather musty, but not overly foul, interior of the potting shed. Toby kicked the door closed behind them.

“Hey, what about me?” Frank called from outside the wooden door.

“What about you?” Anna asked.

“Are you telling me the invitation to sexy times only extends to those of the human race?” the imp replied.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Anna said. “Although, to be fair, I don’t feel like I should have to tell you.”

“That’s a bit speciesist, isn’t it?” Frank called. “You know, I could just appear in there if I wanted to.”

“That’s true,” Anna said, as she fumbled at Toby’s shirt front. “But I’d like to point out to you that I’m more than willing, if you do that, to put your claims that you’re immortal to the test.”

Although most of Toby’s mind was taken up by the pawing hands of the two women who he was sharing that dark, fusty space with, he thought he heard Frank snort from outside.

“I wouldn’t even need to materialize. This flimsy wood would be no match for me if I wanted to bust in there.”

“I see where you’re coming from, Frank,” Toby replied. His hands were busy. One was on Anna’s hip, the other caressing the nape of Verity’s neck. “That might be so,” Toby continued. “But it’d also be interesting to see if your demonic ass would be any match for the rusty spade that I just found inside this shed.”

There was a bit of grumbling from Frank, but this soon faded away as the imp floated off.

Toby, Anna’s and Verity’s breath, which were all heavy with alcohol, mingled in the close confines of the potting shed. All of them were breathing heavily with anticipation. Every now and again, one of them would laugh as one of the other’s hands found some sensitive spot.

Any pretense there might have been at subtlety or technique was well and truly out the window. They were groping one another like horny teenagers who knew that they only had a certain amount of time before their parents came home and broke up the party.

There was something to be said for enacting this kind of thing in almost pitch darkness. It added to the already heightened sense of erotic expectation. Within the confines of that tiny, smelly little shed, the atmosphere was supercharged.

Toby had never experienced a threesome before. He had, obviously, being a male over the age of sixteen, fantasized about it on numerous occasions. Numerous occasions per day, if he was being honest. The only prerequisite he’d ever set for such an occasion in his own mind was that there should most definitely be two buns to his sausage, rather than a double wiener scenario.

A pair of hands—Toby wasn’t sure whom they belonged to—groped up his neck and found his face. They pulled his head down. Lips met his chin. Then, after a brief correction, they found Toby’s own lips. The kiss was hot and heavy and slightly sloppy, if he was honest—but, in a good way. It was all raw passion.

To Toby’s surprise, another hand groped down from his belt and found the bulge in his trousers.

While Toby continued kissing—he thought it was probably Anna—his hands went wandering. His right hand moved from the hip of whoever’s waist it was resting on, down around their back. He slipped it into the top of the tight, canvas trousers. His fingers found the cleft of their wonderful, tight ass inside.

His other hand moved from—maybe—Verity’s neck, down her front, and groped and grabbed, in an uncouth fashion, at her breast. There was a muffled groan. A sigh. Then the person that Toby was kissing pulled away from him. She kissed him under his chin, then his throat, then at the open button where she could still get to his chest.

Then the head was moving down his torso. There was a fumbling and a giggling down at his waistline. Toby felt his belt open. He let out a little grunt as a warm hand grabbed him in an exceedingly familiar fashion. There was the extremely sexy and promising sound of someone spitting into their palm, then someone began to rub at his member.

Toby quickly went from semi-aroused to very much aroused.

Somewhere down by his knees, probably whilst she was on hers, Verity’s voice said, “Ah, Mr. Adams, it would seem like the sun is not the only thing rising this morning.”

Toby grunted a laugh. “Circumstances being what they are,” he said, “can you really blame me?”

Anna—it must have been Anna, seeing as Verity was busying herself down south of the equator that was Toby’s belt—grabbed Toby’s free hand and shoved it roughly down the front of her trousers. Toby felt the ardent wetness of her arousal immediately. He ran his fingers up and down Anna’s sex. It was coarse, it was rough, but Anna seemed to love it.

Probably because it’s in keeping with these rustic surroundings, Toby’s brain observed.

Silence, brain, your input is not needed here. Go back to enjoying your booze bath.

Toby closed his eyes. It was more or less the same as having them open anyway in the murk of the shed. He allowed his sense of touch and smell to take the place of his eyes. The fingers of his left hand were drenched where they were busy rubbing the labia and clitoris of Anna. His nose was full of the musky scent of female arousal.

Anna had a forehead leaning against his shoulder while he worked his digits up and down and in and out of her. For her part Verity had engulfed the length of Toby’s rod down her throat. This sensation of warm softness, coupled with the feeling of having his fingers buried to the third knuckle in his best friend, was quite the delight.

The sound of Toby’s member occasionally colliding wetly with the back of Verity’s throat was modulated with the slippery sounds of his fingers at work.

There were grunts and groans and Toby wasn’t even sure which ones were his sometimes. His booze-muddled mind was on autopilot. He was too drunk and too tired and too happy to think too much about what he was doing. He just laid back—metaphorically speaking, as doing so in reality was impossible in the shed—and allowed himself to go with the flow.

He felt Verity expertly cupping his nuts as her head bobbed in and out of his crotch. Her tongue flicked across the tip of his cock whilst she ran her fingernails up and down his thighs. Her movements were so steady and constant that Toby wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she had found a way to breathe out of her ears.

Anna was breathing hard and grinding against his palm. Toby realized that his hand had been pressed against his thigh by the gyrations of his best friend’s hips.

Then Verity rose to her feet. She turned, no easy feat in the squishy and cluttered shed. She swore as she kicked over a plant pot and almost went head over biscuit thanks to a bag of fertilizer. Eventually, though, she got herself into position, with her ass sticking out towards Toby.

Anna disengaged herself from Toby’s fingers. Toby couldn’t see exactly what was going on, but he rather thought that Anna had taken the other woman by the buttocks and was guiding her onto…

Toby let out a long groan. Verity lowered herself with a long, low guttural sigh of contentment onto his waiting pole. Then, slowly, so slowly that it was almost maddening, she raised herself.

Through the slowly lightening gloom, Toby saw Anna holding the other woman’s butt cheeks wide. Then Verity lowered herself again. Toby whacked his head on the shed for the umpteenth time as his head tilted back automatically. He barely felt it.

A hand reached down. For a moment, Toby’s brain was playing catch up, trying to figure out whose hand it was that was now caressing his ball bag in between strokes.

“Anna?” he whispered.

The only answer was a knowing giggle.

After what might have been minutes or hours or a day, Toby found himself sliding free of Verity. Anna grabbed him immediately, knelt and sucked the juices of Verity’s sex off the end of his rod.

A moment later, she was on her knees with Toby’s member pressed between her breasts and held there by her shirt. She jacked him off with her titties for a while. Toby’s mind wandered, and yet at the same time remained glued to what was going on just below his waist. He was fairly certain, although he couldn’t see for sure, that Verity was leaning against that same fertilizer sack that had almost sent her tumbling and was diddling herself.

Then Toby felt Anna’s tongue run over his tip, and he felt a tingling in his nether regions.

“Oh shit,” he said.

“Oh shit,” Verity echoed in a slightly strained voice.

There was the crashing sound as something was knocked over and something else fell off the wall and knocked into something else and sent it clattering. Might have been a rake.

Then Toby felt Anna’s, or it might have been Verity’s, hand working overtime at his prick. He grunted and closed his eyes. Tendrils of pink spider webbed across his vision as he shot load after load.

Through his narrowed eyes he could see Anna’s—no, Verity’s—face below him. Her mouth was open, her tongue extended. She was moaning like the cat who had got the cream.

Toby could just make out that Anna’s hand was between Verity’s legs, and it was moving backwards and forwards with a very wet, very slippery sound. Eventually all three of them sagged into sitting or leaning positions.

“That… That was a lot of fun,” Verity said breathlessly. “Well done, team. Excellent effort.”

“Thanks,” Toby managed. “I always… like to think that… I try my best.”

Anna giggled. Toby heard the soft wet sound of two people kissing.

“Mmmm, Tobes,” she said, “you taste just as nice secondhand.”

“So that huge, fat guy with the tiny head in the pub tonight was talking shit when he tried to crack onto the pair of you and I stood in the way and he called me… What did he call me again?” Toby said.

“Oh, what was it? How did that big sweaty guy describe Toby, Anna?” Verity said softly, as she slowly got her panting breath under control. “He said something rather good just before you went off to order the round of bangsnapper shots.”

“I believe,” Anna said, “that he called you a ludicrous-looking parcel of driveling pig goolies, who couldn’t handle two women the likes of us if you had a play-by-play woodcut and skilled team of ladies of the night to help you.”

“Hm, that’s poetry of a kind,” Toby conceded, “but the fat slob was still incorrect.”

“He was indeed,” Verity purred. “So much so in fact that I find myself wondering if we might go another turn.”

“It’d be rude to waste such luxurious and comfortable accommodation, wouldn’t it?” Toby said, grinning into the gloom.

Toby was just waiting for Toby junior to recover and was pondering on the conundrum of who he was going to fuck first this time around—and how, once he had chosen, one went about politely informing the other female participant that they would have to wait their turn—when there was a rat-tat-tat at the shed door.

“What?” Toby said, his eyes shooting open. “Frank, that better not be you.”

“Who the hell else is it going to be, you degenerates?” the imp retorted.

Toby was briefly robbed of his ability to form a witty reply by Verity taking his balls into her mouth and sucking on them vigorously. All Toby managed to choke out were the words “Spade… shove it up your… Fuck! Fuck off, Frank. Not a good time.”

“Not a good time, eh?” Frank said. “Well, in that case, the benighted djinn that I am is going to take great pleasure in telling you that you’re going to have to put whatever’s going on in there on hold for at least a little while.”

“Why?” Verity said in a muffled voice.

“Because,” Frank said, the glee evident in the tone of his voice, “there are some blokes here to see you.”

“Blokes?” Toby said. “What the hell are you talking…”

“The gnomes,” Frank said. “The gnome landscapers that you organized yesterday. I imagine it feels like you did that way back when, but here they are. They’re here to get started on the back garden.”

Toby, Anna and Verity all froze in the various states of disarray and debauchery they were currently in.

“Fuck me, you’ve got to be kidding,” Toby said in an aggrieved voice.

“‘Fraid not, my old chum. They’re here,” Frank said.

Toby sighed and leaned his head against the rough wooden boards of the shed. All the sexual activity had sharpened his senses. He was sobering up. Right then, it did not feel like a good thing. He frowned into the dark.

“Frank,” he said.

“Yes, mate?”

“Are they… Are they singing?”

“You better believe they are,” Frank replied happily. “A nice, cheerful working song.”

Simultaneously, Toby, Verity and Anna all held their breaths and listened. From outside in the garden came the chorused singing of overly enthusiastic, bright little voices.

“Digging in the dirt,

oh, what a jolly time!

Planting seeds and watching sprouts,

our joy will surely climb!

With our pointy safety hats, we’re the gnomes you love to see.

Tending to your garden with boundless energy!”

There was something about that song, something about the voices singing it, that reminded Toby of the Sherman brothers’ ‘It’s a Small World.’

“Shit,” Toby said. He ran his fingers regretfully through Verity’s thick, blonde hair. She still had his member in her mouth, he was already semi-hard again, but Toby felt as if the mood had been somewhat dampened.

Round two would have to wait.

“Shit,” he repeated, “and the day was off to such a good start, too.”

33

“Well, dip me in shit and roll me in breadcrumbs,” Toby said softly. “They’re fucking hipster gnomes.”

He was sitting on the step, on the back porch of the house. Anna was sitting next to him. Verity, as the one who had organized the gnome landscaping team, and the one who was still possessed of her goodwill towards said gnomes despite them having disrupted what could very well have been the best morning of Toby’s life, was talking to the gnome foreman.

Mercifully, the gnomes had ceased their singing. Toby appreciated this, at least. The singing had permeated into the very center of his brain, with all the subtlety and tenderness of a dentist’s drill.

He and Anna were sipping on mugs of thick, strong coffee. It turned out that Dishy really wasn’t only limited to washing the dishes. The dishwashing djinn also made one hell of a cup of joe. The stuff was so strong that Toby reckoned he could probably have stood a spoon up in it.

“What do you mean ‘hipsters’?” Frank asked.

Toby took a sip of his coffee. He gestured mutely at the congregation of some two dozen two-foot-high figures. The gnomes were, to a man—or to a gnome, he supposed—possessed of immaculately coiffed beards and waxed mustaches.

“Well, F my A,” Anna said in a weak voice. “You’re right. Now that you mention it, they do have a bit of an Astoria vibe to them.”

The mention of F-ing A only heightened Toby’s pique at the poor timing of the gnome landscaping team. He would have very much liked to currently be balls-deep, F-ing Anna, or Verity’s, A.

But, unfortunately for him, it turned out that gnomes rose with the sun and got to work soon after. They were known for it and took great pride in it.

“I still don’t get what you mean about them being ‘hipsters,’“ Frank said. He was sitting in between Toby and Anna on the porch step, smoking another one of his tiny cigarettes. “They don’t have particularly big hips that I notice.”

Toby tried to find the energy to explain to the imp. While he gathered his limited mental resources, he listened to the gnomes talking passionately to Verity about how they would help her and the other residents of this house grow organic heirloom vegetables and leave them a list on how to tend to their meticulously crafted garden once the gnomes had built it.

“I mean, just look at them,” Toby said after a moment. “Those two have got top-knots, for goodness sake.”

“And those gnome hats aren’t exactly what I would have expected,” Anna said. “They look more like those trendy, saggy beanies.”

“And look at the chunky knitted scarfs,” Toby said.

“Man, I think my looming hangover is going to make me too cynical to be out here soon,” Anna said. She slurped at her coffee as if it were some elixir that might be able to fend off the hangover.

With a sigh and knowing that he sat there much longer, he was either going to fall asleep or meld into the decking, Toby got to his feet. He walked over to Verity to see what was going on.

Verity turned to see Toby coming towards her. A look of utmost relief swept over her face. She was smiling, but it was the slightly strange fixed smile of someone who’s being clobbered repeatedly over the head with a certain ideology.

“Toby, I was just telling the foreman here the ideas I had for the outdoor space and how we wanted to grow produce for the house, as well as simple common potion ingredients too, now that we have a potion laboratory.”

Toby nodded. He wished at once that he hadn’t. It felt like his brain was rattling around in his head like a marble in a blender. “I don’t have much of a clue when it comes to the aesthetics of gardens,” he said to the gnome foreman.

“Oh, don’t you worry, sir. Don’t you worry,” the foreman said cheerfully. “Us gnomes take a lot of pride in enabling those who are looking to do so in embracing a garden to table approach when it comes to their cooking and potion brewing. We love to see others in Stagbreach using only the freshest locally grown ingredients from their own gardens when cooking up meals for their loved ones. For, sir, is there any better way to show those we care about that we love them than providing them with a wholesome meal, the ingredients of which we know came from the soil on our own lands?”

Toby blinked and looked at Verity. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “That sounds… That’s the one, all right.”

“Wait until we’re done, sir. Wait until we’re done,” the gnome enthused. “You’ll be hosting garden parties, serving up elaborate vegan feasts—perhaps paired with some craft kombucha from your own fermentation jars?—before you know it.”

“You gnomes are vegan, are you?” Toby asked.

“We are, sir, we are.”

Toby grunted. Looking closer, Toby saw that the gnome foreman’s beard, as well groomed as it was, was adorned with a tiny bird’s nest. It was almost like an eco-conscious statement piece. It might have been the irritation he felt of having a potential threesome interrupted, but seeing that eco-conscious statement piece in bird’s nest form made Toby want to seize the gnome by the back of his sweater (which Toby didn’t doubt the gnome had knitted himself from ethically sourced materials and repurposed fabrics) and dropkick him over the garden fence.

“That all sounds lovely, doesn’t it, Toby?” Verity said.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “That all sounds lovely. And you’re going to get cracking today?”

“That we are, sir, that we are! We work from sunup to sundown until the job’s done. That’s the gnome way,” the foreman said.

“Well, all right then,” Toby said. “Glad to have you aboard. And how long, roughly, do you think it’ll take?”

“Oh, we’ll be done in time for the King’s Jousting Jamboree, don’t you worry, sir.”

“Excellent,” Toby said, feeling a pang at the mention of the jamboree.

They were still, of course, no closer to guessing when or how Duke Diddle and his right-hand man Vexxx might seek to administer the potion to one or all of Stagbreach’s wells.

“Good luck to you,” Toby said.

“No luck needed, sir,” the foreman chirped. “No luck needed when hard work will do.”

Toby nodded and walked back towards Anna.

“How was that?” Anna asked, with a small smile.

“A little painful,” Toby admitted, “but they seem like efficient sorts.”

“I thought we’d left all that bullshit behind,” Anna said shortly.

Toby snorted. “I’m sure all the inevitable chat about how they host DIY gardening workshops and urban homesteading classes for fellow enthusiasts to share their expertise in organic farming, composting and herbal remedies will be a bit more bearable when we’re not coming off the back of a big Toby Jug session.”

Anna smiled. “I hope you’re right,” she said. “How long will they be here for?”

“The foreman said they’d be done in time for the Jousting Jamboree,” Toby said.

Anna got to her feet. “Too bad they turned up when they did.”

“You’re telling me,” Toby said with real feeling.

“Ah well,” Anna said. She stepped forward and leaned down from the top step of the porch so that she could plant a kiss softly on Toby’s lips. “They do say that of all the hardships that you have to face in this life there are few that are more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”

Toby grinned. “I get that there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in planning or looking forward to a thing,” he said. “But from the little we got to enjoy in that fucking potting shed, I’d say that there’s even more pleasure in actually doing the thing.”

Anna gave him a laugh and then winced. “I’m feeling a little fragile. I’m going to go take a bath.”

“I might go for a little lie down myself,” Toby said. “Maybe try and catch a quick nap.”

Behind them, as if on cue, the gnomes broke out into song once more.

“We’ll prune the roses and trim the ferns with care and dedication,

our gnomey hands, so skilled and swift, will bring rejuvenation!

The sun is shining, birds are chirping, all is fine and dandy.

To build a green space that you love,

a gnome or two is mighty handy!”

Toby looked stonily at Anna. “How long do you think it’s going to be before that gets old?” he asked.

Anna laughed. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be spending a bit more time than usual at the Toby Jug.”

“I think you’re right,” Toby said.

* * *

The next few days passed in a curious blend of dragging time and hours that seemed to flash past in fast forward. There was little for Toby and his friends to do but walk around Stagbreach and keep their ears to the ground for any news of Vexxx or Duke Diddle.

As impatient as he was for news, Toby was relatively calm and unfazed by the lack of whispers they heard. He knew, somehow, in his heart that something would turn up.

When Anna asked him, over breakfast on the second day of the gnomes landscaping the back garden, how he knew that something would eventuate, Toby’s only answer to her was that he just knew.

“That’s how these things pan out, Anna,” he said. “I don’t know what else to tell you. Just have faith.”

“Faith in what?” Anna asked.

“Faith in me, I suppose,” Toby said. “Or faith in the universe. Just general faith.”

“Faith in not accidentally drinking water that causes us to fart ourselves into an early grave,” Anna said.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “That too.”

The gardens of the house in the Baker’s District underwent a remarkable transformation under the care of the gnome landscapers. What had once been an overgrown and modest vegetable patch now resembled a vibrant, almost enchanted paradise.

The gnomes reported to Verity, and she in turn reported to Toby and Anna. She told them that the gnomes had put in mundane vegetables such as carrots, tomatoes and cucumbers. There was also more exotic and magical flora.

Amidst the mundane crops the gnomes had introduced several magical plants. One such plant was the shimmering starlight lily. This plant’s petals emitted a soft glow that illuminated the garden at night. That was nice in itself, but these eerily beautiful glowing plants seemed to attract pests too. Knowing this the gnomes had installed some ingenious magical vegetable defenses.

Tiny anti-slug arcane mines dotted the garden beds. These emitted a harmless, but effective, deterrent to any slimy intruders, mixing up their sluggish mines and sending them off to the neighbors’ properties.

The gnomes also installed an enchanted scarecrow which reacted to any birds that had the temerity to land near the garden beds. With more ballsy avian intruders, the scarecrow would actually fling its hat at them and yell at them to bugger off in a cracked, straw-filled voice.

When they weren’t walking around town, dropping into the local taverns to listen to the news or sitting on street corners and listening to the gossip of Stagbreach flow around them, Toby and his friends occupied themselves by doing lots of reading and experimenting in their newly built crafting workshop and potion laboratory.

So far as the crafting workshop went, there wasn’t really much that any of them could accomplish. Whilst they had some of the materials needed to work objects none of them, so far as Toby had been able to ascertain through some of the books he had read, would be helpful in altering the one weapon he had: his sword. It seemed that the sword was perhaps even more formidable than Rowan Moonshroud had led them to believe.

“I think,” Toby said one night over dinner, pointing at the sheathed sword that was leaning against one of the chairs, “that we might have quite a rare item here.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Verity said. “I’ve been around more than a few weapons in my time and, although that one looks fairly pedestrian, I’d be more inclined to guess that it was actually something special. It’s the big shiny swords and axes with flashing jewels and big knobs on the end that often turn out to be just a piece of metal.”

“What would you call it when Toby’s waving that thing around, other than it having a big knob on the end of it?” Frank chuckled.

Toby threw a honeyed carrot at the imp. Frank snapped it out of the air and swallowed, licking his lips with his forked tongue.

Frank had, after a bit of cajoling, agreed to act as a mentor of sorts for Toby in the potions laboratory. The imp had made, on numerous occasions, allusions to the fact that brewing up potions was part and parcel of being a demonic djinn.

“Oh, you’ve got to know your poisons if you want to be a diabolical phantasm worth their sulfur,” he’d said once. “You’ve got to know your aconite from your foxglove, don’t you, mate?”

Toby had tried to glean more information out of Frank over the past couple of days, whilst the gnomes had been hard at work in the garden. However, it was only on the evening of the second day that Frank finally relented.

Looking back, Toby really shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened. On the third morning, they settled down to make a simple health potion. Frank had been all knowledge and insight, and Toby had just been congratulating himself on finding a way to expedite the process of reading through the myriad books that lined the walls of the potion laboratory.

“And now,” Frank said, “we add just a pinch of powdered chimera claw.”

“Are you sure?” Toby said, pointing at the ingredients and method list on the cracked parchment page of the spell book he had been reading from. “It doesn’t say anything about powdered chimera claw here.”

“Ah, that’d be because it’s what you might call a trade secret, my old chum,” Frank said.

Toby took a pinch of powdered chimera claw from a small clay pot and sprinkled it into the copper cauldron he and Frank were gathered around.

“That mu—?”

The resulting explosion was localized yet powerful. Toby picked himself up off the ground. He was blinking hard to try and clear his vision of stars and his ears were ringing.

Frank was hovering up near the ceiling, slapping his thigh and emitting those wheezing squeaking noises that someone makes when they’re deep in the clutches of hysterical rib-breaking laughter.

“You little bastard,” Toby said, reaching up and feeling where his eyebrows had once been. His hands went lower, and he felt that half of his beard, which had been coming in as he’d been too lazy to shave or trim it of late, had been blasted away. “You absolute and utter bastard.”

“I’m a hellish fiend, remember?” Frank wheezed, slapping his little thigh harder with his clawed hand. “It’s all part and parcel of it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Toby said.

Thankfully after Toby had walked back upstairs and been on the receiving end of some outrageous laughter from Anna and Verity, Anna took the regrowing of Toby’s eyebrows and beard as a challenge. She spent the rest of the afternoon whipping up a potion, which turned out to be quite efficacious. The only side effect of this hair regrowing potion was that Toby was immediately required to do some manscaping after his pubes went wild too and almost filled his underpants.

Speaking of manscaping, the back garden was all done and dusted with before the sun set on day three of the gnome landscapers working their special brand of magic. Toby, Anna, and Verity all stood on the front porch and waved the team of gnomes off. The bearded, top-knotted little sons of guns were singing as they walked off down the road. Toby was fairly sure he heard one of his neighbors yell out of a top story window for them to shut the fuck up.

“Remember sir and good ladies” the gnome foreman said. “Don’t be shy in popping around to our guild house if you have a free evening. We’re always doing DIY gardening workshops and—”

Toby fixed a big smile onto his face and interrupted the gnome. “We’ll definitely think about it. Although, we might be too busy enjoying our garden.”

The gnome beamed. “That’s why we do it, sir, for that sense of satisfaction.”

“And the exorbitant amount of money we paid you,” Verity pointed out.

Oh and that too miss, yes that too. That keeps the wheels turning,” the foreman said. “Good evening to you.”

“Good evening to you too,” Toby said. He went to close the door.

As if unable to repress an urge, the gnome said, “This week’s meeting will be about composting and—”

“I’m sure it’ll be a good one,” Toby said, and closed the door. He leaned against the jamb and let out a long breath. “Well, say what you like about their prowess at coming up with lyrics, but the garden does look amazing.”

“And when it’s fit to bursting with veggies and potion ingredients, do you think you’ll end up going to one of those meetings that bloke was on about?” Frank asked.

Toby shuddered. “I bet that they gather in a cozy fairy-light lit garden shed adorned with vintage botanical prints and handmade terrariums.”

“I heard some of them saying that they sit around and talk about gardening whilst they’re sipping their fair trade herbal teas and discussing the latest trends in permaculture and rooftop beekeeping,” Frank said. “For a while there the shit they were talking about made me feel like they were speaking in a different language.”

“Yes, they’re good-hearted,” Toby said. “But hanging out with those sorts of people can be a different kind of hell.”

“Sounds bloody terrible,” Frank said. “I might have to go and check it out”

“What?” Toby asked. “Why would you want to go and check it out if you—?”

“They’re always looking for fresh ways to torment the mortal mind down in the Below-Below,” Frank said. “I mean, just before I was subbed up here by that plonker Moonshroud, they were trying to perfect this method of infuriating people by making up this system.”

“What kind of system?” Toby asked, interested despite himself.

“This new system which they were going to implant into the mind of some court bureaucrat or other,” Frank explained. “This system required everyone who owned a horse or a cart to apply for this special license to own it and use it. They had to sit a test and everything to prove that they could ride the horse and drive the cart, if you know what I mean.”

“Right,” Toby said.

“And then,” Frank went on, “they had to make sure that the horse had the correct hooves on and was eating the correct feed for its breed, and that the cart was of a sufficient level of repair to be on the roads.”

“That sounds annoying,” Toby said, “but hardly hellish.”

“Wait, it gets better,” Frank said. “The beauty of the scheme is meant to lie in the fact that, inevitably, everyone’s horse and cart is in some way going to come up short to these stringent requirements, right?”

“Okay,” Anna said, who had walked into the hall to listen in.

“So then the owner has to contact this special kingdom-wide transport committee by carrier pigeon and sort it out through this amazingly convoluted and pointless route that inevitably brings that owner back to the very person they started communicating with in the first place,” Frank said. “One of the Below-Below higher ups, a senior demon I suppose you might think of her as, she had this cracking idea where, when the owner of the horse or cart got to this stage, the person at this transport department, or whatever they were going to call it, would end up losing the original complaint and the owner would have to start all over again.”

Toby thought of the DMV. “Well, if they’re looking to drive people mad, that’s probably quite a good way to do it.”

“It’s still in its early rough stages,” Frank said. “But the higher ups seem to think there are some real possibilities there. Some real potential for people to get properly pissed off with one another and flip right out. Nothing warms the heart of a good demon like a bit of domestic violence.”

“How about we head to the Toby Jug to see if there’s any news about you know what?” Anna suggested.

Toby nodded slowly. He didn’t much feel like going out and socializing, but now that Anna mentioned it he felt like it would be shrewd for them to get out there. The Jousting Jamboree was only a couple of days away. They were fast running out of time.

“Okay,” Toby said, getting to his feet. “I’ll just run up and get my coat.”

“We can celebrate the completion of the back garden” Verity said.

“Not to mention the fact that we don’t have to listen to those two foot-tall buggers singing their bloody annoying songs anymore,” Frank said.

Verity gave him an admonishing look. Then she seemed to realize what she was doing.

“Yes, and we could celebrate that too,” she said.

34

“Tommy Hurst, you stop waving that turkey leg in front of old Marty’s face. You know he’s trying that meat-free lifestyle.”

“Oh, come on, Oswald, I was just muckin’ around.”

“Yeah, well, it’s all fun and games,” Oswald Parson called from behind the bar, “until someone gets rabies.”

“I don’t have rabies, thank you very much,” Marty, the talking wolf, rejoined with some heat.

“I wasn’t referring to you, Marty,” Oswald replied.

A great chorus of laughter went up.

Tommy Hurst, who Toby thought looked like he’d had more drink than was good for him, brandished the half-eaten turkey leg at the barman. He started to say something when one of his fellow drinkers caught him by the shoulder and turned him forcibly around.

“Come on, Tommy boy,” Toby heard the other man say, “don’t be like that. Old Parson is just having a bit of fun.”

Tommy Hurst ripped a chunk of turkey off the leg in his hand and swallowed it almost whole. “Yeah, alright,” he said grudgingly.

“That’s the spirit, lad,” the other man said. “Now, me and the boys wanted to ask you a question.”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Tommy said.

“Do you remember your first blowjob?”

“Course I do,” Tommy said, cocking his head to one side and grinning in a cocksure fashion.

“Oh, yeah,” the other man said loudly, “how did it taste?”

The sound of the table crashing over was barely discernible over the roar of laughter as Tommy Hurst tackled the other man to the ground.

Toby caught Oswald’s eye as the big landlord hurried around the bar with his heavy stick in hand.

“There’s always one,” he grunted.

“Yes, there is,” Toby agreed. He scooped up the three tankards and made his way back to the table where he, Anna and Verity had taken up their position. As he excused himself and squeezed past the bent back and rather hangdog expression of an old goblin goblin he heard the ancient figure say, “I think one of my livers is going, Ron.”

His companion, a hard-drinking halfling, apparently called Ron, frowned. “Grink, lad, you do realize you’ve only got one liver don’t you?”

“What?” the goblin croaked.

Thus far, Toby and the others had enjoyed another fruitless evening spent listening out for any hint of gossip that might point them in the direction of Vexxx and the stolen potion. For the briefest instance, on entering the male latrines out back, Toby had thought he might have stumbled across and overheard a conversation of some relevance. However, it turned out to not be the case. He had heard one half-drunk elf say to a dwarf standing a couple of paces down the pissing trough, which had been adjusted for one of his height, say, “You want to know a secret buddy?”

Toby had stopped in mid-stride. He had actually felt the breath catch in his chest. Was this going to be the moment?

“You’re a good guy, so I’m going to tell you this, even though I don’t think I should have to.”

“Go on,” the dwarf slurred.

“Buddy,” the elf groaned as he unleashed his stream, “a good piss is almost as good as a good fuck.”

Toby sighed and continued around to join the two drinkers at the trough. He saw the dwarf swaying slightly. He looked to be pondering the statement.

“Either I don’t know how to piss, friend, or you don’t know how to fuck,” he said.

Toby related this not so near miss to the ladies when he got back from the washroom.

“Yeah, I had a similar moment, darling,” Verity said.

“You did? You thought you were onto something in the privy?” Toby asked.

“Well not in the privy, but yes. You see those four men sitting in the corner over there?”

Toby craned his head. “Slightly intimidating-looking men, two of which have the hoods drawn up even in the heat of this taproom?”

“Those are the ones,” Verity agreed.

“What about them?” Toby asked.

“Well, I thought they looked suspicious.”

“They do look suspicious,” Toby said.

“Yes, so I wandered over there to see if I might be able to eavesdrop on their conversation.”

“And?” Toby said. “There was nothing?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say there was nothing,” Verity said.

“There was something?”

“It was quite enlightening. I can’t remember exactly everything that they said, but the first thing I heard that man with the broken nose and the scar through his eyebrow—a little like yours, really—say to one of the hooded figures was, ‘Look I’m not arguing that. If you put aside the idea that the universe only exists because we are here to observe it then—’“

“Wow,” Toby said.

Verity nodded in agreement. “And then the other man cut him off with a sharp hand and said, “Oh, why don’t you go on and tell us more, Spooner. Who of us is actually the qualified astrologer here?’”

“Just goes to show, I guess,” Toby sighed. “You never can judge a book by its cover.” He took a sip of his tankard of mead and turned to Anna. “And I’m guessing from your silence that you’ve come up short too?”

“Hmm?” Anna said.

Toby chuckled. “I was just saying that you don’t look like you’ve come across any clandestine information pertinent to the whole potentially lethal intestinal gas outbreak conundrum.”

“No,” Anna said.

“Didn’t think so,” Toby said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing so much,” Anna said. “I’ve just been watching a little bit of theater play out across the bar over there. You might want to turn around. I think we’re about to witness the grand finale.”

Toby turned in his seat. Leaning back in his rickety wooden chair, he saw where Anna was looking. A broad, tall, muscular man, whose extensive facial hair, wide shoulders and scarred forearms told Toby that he was most likely a lumberjack by trade, was sitting at a table with a rather stunningly pretty peasant woman.

“What are we watching?” Toby asked.

“Oh, here we go,” Anna said.

A man sauntered over from where he and one of his chums had been propping up one end of the bar ever since Toby and his friends had arrived. Toby could tell at once that the man was absolutely smashed. He had the gait of a man who was walking across the heaving deck of a storm-tossed ship rather than across a perfectly level taproom floor.

“Ah,” Toby said. “I see.”

The drunk man sauntered up to the table where the lumberjack and his date were enjoying a quiet drink and a plate of drake wings. The drunk preened his mustaches, which were, admittedly, luxuriant and waxed to fine points, and said in a loud, carrying voice, “My good sir, your female companion is exceedingly fine. Would I be lucky enough on this fine evening to learn that she is your sister and not a paramour?”

“Oh dear,” Verity said quietly.

The lumberjack’s eyebrows were slowly coming together in a frown. He grunted something inaudible, which Toby guessed to be something along the lines of, “This is my better half.”

“A pity!” the drunk man lamented. “Then allow me to express the compliment that I would suck upon your phallus just to see how she tasted.”

“Yikes,” Toby said.

The lumberjack stared at the man for a moment. His expression didn’t change one iota. Then, with a swiftness that his bulk belied, he got smoothly to his feet and promptly knocked the man out with a single devastating blow of one massive fist. The man crashed over backwards through a table.

“That’s one way to commit suicide,” Toby said to his two companions.

The drunk’s friend, who was obviously a decent sort and was still leaning against the bar, started choking and crying with laughter.

The lumberjack sat back down and went back to the conversation he had been enjoying with his female companion. Once the sound of shattering crockery and splintering wood had faded, Toby turned back around to his two companions.

“Well, on that rather final note,” he said in a slightly dispirited voice, “shall we make like Tom and—?”

But his words were cut off by the sound of the tavern door opening and closing.

“Look,” Frank said from where he was lounging on top of the booth’s headrest near Anna’s head. “It’s another one of these peacocking jokers.”

Toby didn’t need to ask what the imp was talking about. The unmistakable form of one of the royal household’s messengers was standing in the doorway. His wide-brimmed hat was dripping with the rain that was coming down outside. The feather on top drooped sadly. He gazed around the heaving, steaming, smoky taproom.

His eyes fastened on Toby. Without so much as shaking the rainwater from his waxed poncho, he strode through the throng until he stood in front of Toby’s table.

“Mr. Adams,” he said without preamble, “King Balourd and her graciousness Queen Lascivo request your attendance at once.”

35

The dark elf looked nervous.

Toby didn’t blame the bastard.

The elf was chained at the wrists and ankles, and these chains were chained together. He was also surrounded by ten heavily armed members of the King’s Household Guard. The spears of these men and women were pointed directly at the dark elf’s chest and back, where they surrounded him in a circle.

The King and Queen sat on their thrones, up on the dais, looking down at the dark elf. The King’s usual expression of good-natured imbecility was plastered across his face. Once again, Toby couldn’t shake the feeling that it was partly, at least, a show. It was hard to read a man’s thoughts when his face was so openly and apparently obviously happy to see you.

The Queen’s face was inscrutable in a different way. It was like a mask of perfect marble, completely unreadable. Her bright jade eyes moved slowly from the quivering dark elf to Toby, Anna, and Verity as they crossed the vast space of polished marble that led from the doors to the throne room to the thrones themselves.

“How’s it going, Your Majesty?” Anna said brightly.

The King raised his cup in greeting at the sight of Anna. “Splendidly, splendidly, thank you, Miss Coombes. And all the more splendid for seeing you. How about your good self? How do you fare?”

“Oh, you know, surviving, Your Majesty,” Anna said. “I don’t suppose you’d have an extra wine going, would you?”

The King’s florid face broke open in a wide, genuine smile. He motioned for his servants. “I said it once, and I’ll say it again, Miss Coombes. You are a woman after my own heart.”

“Here, I recognize you,” Toby said. He was looking at the dark elf, who was standing in the midst of the ring of bristling soldiery. “You’re the guy who very kindly told us what to expect when going down into those elven ruins.”

“After that abominable djinn creature threatened to kill me,” the dark elf said, in the same high-pitched voice that made Toby recognize him all the more.

“Yeah, I mean, there was that, but you still told us, which we really appreciated,” Toby said.

“Well, that answers the first question we were going to ask you,” Queen Lascivo said.

Toby regarded the Queen. He allowed himself a small, half-smile. It was a mark of the severity of the situation, perhaps, that the Queen did not return it.

“And what question was that, Your Majesty?” Toby asked.

“Whether or not this blighter was spouting utter poppycock and rot in the story he told us about how you came across him standing sentry,” the King said.

“There wasn’t much of a story, Your Majesty,” Anna said. “We did manage to waylay him, catch him off guard, and get a bit of information out of him that proved to be valuable.”

“As to what he’s doing here, though,” Toby said, “I have no idea. I’d be interested to hear the reason.”

“It turns out that this fellow snuck back to the ruins after waking shortly after you knocked him unconscious,” the King said.

Toby glanced at Frank. The imp had taken the form of a small beetle and was perched on Toby’s shoulder. “What was all that shit about him being out for seventy-two hours, give or take seventy-two hours?” he whispered.

Frank fluttered his shell casing. Toby took that for a beetle shrug.

Toby made a note to give Frank a bit of shit about his magic being off when they got home. Then he turned back to the King and Queen. “So this dark elf,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the prisoner, “he snuck back to the ruins. We didn’t see him.”

“No,” Queen Lascivo said. “You did not see him, but it sounds very much like this young dark elf saw you.”

“And heard you too,” the King said.

Toby suddenly clicked. He looked over at the dark elf. “You heard what Vexxx said,” he said. “You heard how he callously said that Duke Diddle wanted him to wipe you and your fellow dark elf mercs out after you did the job they hired you to do. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The dark elf glanced at Toby and stared at the floor. He gave a quick curt nod.

“Well well, I bet that was eye-opening, you poor young ragamuffin,” Verity said.

Sometimes, just sometimes, Toby was startled by the juxtaposition, the dichotomous personality of Verity None. Here she was, acting like the dark elf and his kin, who had put up a hell of a fight, were nothing more than lovable rascals. And yet Toby had seen her tackle a dark elf and cut his throat as neat as neat.

She did that, acted with such brutal efficiency, and yet she stands here in the throne room, looking not one bit out of place, he thought. Looking every inch the princess, rather than the assassin or thief in the night, or whatever else she might have been in her shady past.

“Seeing as these three mutual friends of ours were so punctual in arriving,” King Balourd said to the dark elf, fixing the young elf with an uncharacteristically stern expression, “why do you not regale them with the tale you so recently told us?”

The dark elf looked at King Balourd and then glanced at the dour-faced woman sitting beside him. The Queen’s emerald eyes bore into him so that he soon looked away again.

“Like you say, I snuck back to the ruins after I woke up from whatever spell that foul black little sh—”

“Alright, alright, move on,” the King said.

“After I woke up,” the dark elf continued, “I went down to the ruins. As you say, I overheard what that double-crossing bastard, Vexxx, said to you about the duke wanting me and my fellows dead—loose ends eliminated and all the rest of it.” The dark elf flexed futilely at his wrist restraints as he marshaled his words. “I was going to go down and help Vexxx until I heard that,” he said moodily. “When he spoke those words, well, all the loyalty that money can buy, and it ain’t much, truth be told, evaporated. I waited until everyone had gone.”

“How come you didn’t come back here at once? How come you didn’t come with us?” Toby asked. “We would have taken you in.”

“Gladly,” Anna added.

“I was torn between the loyalty to my dark elven kin and the fear of Vexxx’s—or Duke Diddle’s—wrath, if you must know,” the dark elf said. “That man, he ain’t like other evil overlords that me and my kin served over the years. He strikes me as being basically emotionless.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I ain’t ever met anyone like him.”

Toby nodded. “But after a few days’ thought, the idea of fucking Vexxx over in return for being kept safe by King Balourd and Queen Lascivo here, no doubt, won out, did it?” he said.

“That’s right,” the dark elf agreed.

“And that’s why a good boss tries to keep his employees happy, and doesn’t try to kill them if it can be helped,” Toby said.

“Very wise, very wise managerial tactics,” the king said in a blasé voice.

“Look, in all honesty, it wasn’t just about getting revenge on that cold fish, Vexxx,” the dark elf said.

“No?” Verity asked. “What else was going through your mind then, darling?”

To his astonishment, Toby saw the dark elf blush. Even chained up, Verity None could have that effect on a male, it seemed.

“There was this uncomfortable feeling in my chest,” the dark elf said. His chain’s clanked as he touched at a point on his breastbone. “It was this heavy feeling, you know? Kind of tickled and was hot.”

“Guilt?” Toby said.

The dark elf snapped his fingers. “Yeah, that could be the one,” he said. “Guilt. Yeah. I didn’t like the feeling, you know? I’ve been a bandit for so long that I’ve managed to repress that. You’re no good as a bandit if you feel guilty about the stuff you do and the jobs you pull.”

“Understandable,” the king said.

“Anyway, I found myself unable to bear the weight of this guilt any longer,” the dark elf said.

Toby thought he was laying it on a little bit thick, but could understand why he would, seeing as he was standing in front of the two most powerful people in the realm and was surrounded by a lot of sharpened steel.

“I resolved to seek redemption by betraying Vexxx’s and Duke Diddle’s plans to the authorities,” the dark elf said. “I snuck into Stagbreach under the cover of darkness and decided to deliver this damning testimony to the good king of Eclipsia and his noble queen.”

Toby saw Queen Lascivo roll her eyes.

The king nodded his head in a genial, almost fatherly way. Then he said, “Why did you sneak into Stagbreach under the cover of darkness?”

The dark elf looked up at the king and blinked. “I don’t understand your question, Your Majesty.”

The king repeated his question. “Why did you feel like you had to sneak into our wonderful town under the cover of darkness specifically?” he said. “No one knew what you looked like, or would have cared that you were coming. The gate guards would have just let you through if you’d told them you were looking to go to the pub. No one would have known what you had been involved in or what your errand was. Even Vexxx probably believes you to be dead or fled.”

The dark elf looked a little flummoxed. Then he gave a one-shouldered shrug and said, “I don’t know, Your Majesty. Sneaking in under the cover of darkness… Well, it just felt like the kind of thing that needed to be done under the circumstances.”

The king regarded the dark elf thoughtfully. Then he stirred from whatever ruminations he was undergoing and looked at Toby.

“Thus, concerned by the gravity of the information that this young scalawag imparted and recognizing the urgency of the situation,” he said, “my wife and I dispatched a messenger to summon you and your friends to inform you of the imminent threat posed by Vexxx.”

“That was very thoughtful of you, Your Majesty,” Toby said loyally.

“Yes, it was rather,” King Balourd said, looking pleased with that. “But it wasn’t out of nicety that I did it. We urge you to take action to thwart the villains in their dastardly scheme. The threat of poison and explosive flatulence still hovers over us like a cloud.”

Toby turned to the dark elf. “What other information can you give us about what Vexxx has planned?” he asked. “We’ve only got two days until the Jousting Jamboree. What do you know? How many wells or water holes or what have you is Vexxx planning on tainting with the potion?”

“Well, I don’t know the exact locations,” the dark elf said.

Queen Lascivo let out an exasperated little tut. In answer to this, the armed guards moved in half a pace.

“I don’t know the exact location. I admit that. I admit that!” the dark elf said hurriedly, raising his hands as if they would be able to ward off the multitude of spearheads that were pointing in his direction. “I don’t know the exact location, but I do know one thing.”

“And what’s that?” Toby asked.

“That he’s only going to dump the potion in the one location,” the dark elf said. “Vexxx doesn’t seem to think, or I suppose Duke Diddle doesn’t seem to think, that they’ve got enough to risk splitting it up. That’s all I know about how many places they’re thinking of dumping that foul brew. I swear!”

“But what—?” Toby started to press.

“There is one more thing,” the dark elf said.

“What?” Toby asked. “Come on, this is no time for theatrics. Just spill your guts.”

“Or I’ll have them spilled for you,” the queen said in a dangerously sweet voice.

“I overheard Vexxx telling my captain that the potion would be administered at the moment that good King Balourd here crowns the champion of the joust!” the dark elf said.

“Why would he tell your captain that?” King Balourd asked.

“Because he was going to kill him anyway, Your Majesty,” Toby said.

King Balourd considered this. He and the queen exchanged looks.

“It does make sense,” Queen Lascivo conceded. “Makes a minion feel important, sharing in such a detail. And it would be no skin off Duke Diddle’s nose, as he’d been killing the poor sap after his job was fulfilled.”

“It will be the prime moment where everyone’s attention is directed somewhere else,” Toby said. “When even the most stalwart guard is tempted to look away.”

The queen nodded her agreement. She turned her gaze to one of the soldiers that were ringing the captive in. He had the rangy, slightly pop-eyed look of a junkyard dog held only in check by the leash of its master’s word.

“Captain Gurnard, you can take our dark elven friend here back to his cell,” Queen Lascivo said.

“Very good, my lady,” the captain of the guard said. “Shall we torture him? Make sure he hasn’t forgotten to vouchsafe anything.”

“No, no torturing, not just yet,” the queen said.

“Oh, but your majesty, not just a little bit?”

“No, Captain Gurnard,” the Queen said. “I must insist.”

“Very good, Your Majesty,” Captain Gurnard said, giving the dark elven prisoner a look that said all too plainly, ‘You lucky little sod. If I had my way, we’d already be waterboarding you right now.’

After the prisoner had been escorted out of the throne room, the queen looked from her husband to Toby, Anna and Verity. “It’s not the ideal information we were looking for, but it’s something.”

Toby nodded. “We’ve a time that the potion is going to be administered, but not a place. It’s not a lot to go on, but at least we have a timeframe.”

“The sand is well and truly pouring through the hourglass now,” the Queen said, almost to herself. “The search will begin in earnest tomorrow morning, Mr. Adams. I want you and your friends involved.”

“Of course,” Toby said.

“I will be sending small groups of guards dressed in plain clothes around to some of the wells this evening,” the queen said.

“Excellent idea, my love,” King Balourd replied. “I’ll have some of our mermaid contacts search the underground water tunnels that run under Stagbreach too.”

The Queen nodded. “Go and get some rest, Mr. Adams. In the morning, the hunt begins.”

36

The day of the jousting jamboree dawned as fair and as fresh as anyone could have wished. Toby woke just as the sun peeked over the eastern horizon. The sky, where it wasn’t still pink near the zenith, was that wonderful washed blue that spoke of a chilly morning followed by a glorious balmy day.

For a few moments he lay still looking out of the window. Anna’s head rested on his chest. She was breathing deep and even, still asleep, still free from the cares that would, once she woke, take up most of her mind.

Just as they’ve already taken up most of mine, Toby thought.

The two of them hadn’t slept together the previous evening. Not slept together in the sexy sense at least. Anna had come into Toby’s bedroom late.

“Can’t sleep?” she said, poking her head around the door.

Toby had shaken his head. They’d spent the past two days, since the dark elf’s information had come to light, scouring Stagbreach for any sign of Vexxx and the potion. There had been nothing.

“Nope, not a wink,” he said.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone say ‘not a wink’ seriously,” Anna said.

Without asking, without needing to, Anna pulled back the duvet of Toby’s bed and slipped him beside him. There was no sexual ulterior motive. Both of them had been too preoccupied with what the following day might bring, be it good or bad.

“I’ve been lying here thinking,” Toby said.

“Uh oh, you didn’t strain yourself, did you?” Anna teased.

Toby grinned and put his arm around his friend. Anna snuggled into him.

“I’ve been thinking, the reason we haven’t found any clue as to what Vexxx is going to do next, or where he’s going to put that fucking potion,” he said, “is because he’s going to wait until the last minute to place it.”

“I’m not going to lie, that would make sense,” Anna said. “Whatever he is, he’s no idiot.”

“No, he’s not, unfortunately,” Toby said. “There are, when you think about it, only a few places where he can administer that potion into the water supply. The longer it’s at any one of those places, the better chance King Balourd and Queen Lascivo have in finding it.”

“Yep,” Anna had agreed.

Toby had let out a long, deep sigh that felt as if it came up from the very core of his being.

Anna propped herself up for a moment and patted his chest. “Don’t worry. Haven’t you been saying that something will turn up?”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Although, I was hoping it wouldn’t be quite so much at the eleventh hour as it looks like it’s going to turn out to be.”

Anna grinned and kissed his cheek. “Get some sleep, Toby. I think we’re all going to need it.”

Somehow Toby had drifted off.

And now here we are, on the final day, he thought to himself.

Just outside the window, a group of fairies darted past, laughing. One of them was holding a large earthworm. A moment later, a blackbird fluttered after them. The fairies scattered, shrieking with glee, clearly having the time of their life antagonizing the hungry bird.

Toby very carefully slipped out from under Anna. He looked down at his best and oldest friend. Maybe it was because he could basically feel the last grains of sand running through the hourglass, but Toby was struck by a poignancy at that moment. Anna was one of those truly once-in-a-lifetime friends who knew all about you and still cared about you all the same. Over the past twenty-five or more years that they had known each other she had seen Toby at his best, and at his worst, and at every other stage in between.

Just as I’ve seen her, he thought.

Now that they had come down to crunch time, Toby realized that the real reason he was searching for this potion, a more tangible reason he was searching for it, was to keep his friends safe. To keep Anna and Verity, the cheerful King Balourd, and the enigmatic and sexy Queen Lascivo safe.

Yes, of course, he wanted to make sure no one in Stagbreach exploded whilst unintentionally loosing what should have been an innocent fart, but it was those closest to him that made the threat all the more real.

Looking down at Anna, though, with her auburn hair spread in an unruly tangle around her gorgeous face, the sunlight touching the points of her chin and her nose, everything as peaceful and serene as she rarely looked when she was awake, Toby felt a thrill run through him.

We have to do this, he thought. We will do this.

Toby wasn’t stepping out into the street with the notion in his head that he was going to lead anyone. If anything, he was indirectly walking behind and following the lead of King Balourd and Queen Lascivo. But with Anna, she was neither walking behind him and expecting him to lead her, or walking in front of him and expecting him to follow. She was going to be walking beside him. She was going to be his friend.

And I’m going to keep you safe, Toby thought as he exited the room quietly.

He went into Anna’s vacant room and stood in front of the enchanted wardrobe. He selected his everyday garb, the canvas trousers, the linen shirt, the well-made but comfortable boots, the thigh-length coat, and the broad-brimmed hat. The clothes materialized on his body like a fog forming, only a fog that formed in about two seconds.

Happy with his selection, Toby went downstairs. He had the idea in his head that he’d make himself a leisurely bit of breakfast before whatever drama the day had in mind for them unfolded. He’d make his breakfast, watch the sun rise out on the back porch, drink a cup of coffee, and listen to Stagbridge come awake bit by bit.

Toby should have known better. He should have remembered the golden rule, the rule that states that when a man plans, the universe sits back and chuckles sadly to itself.

He walked into the kitchen just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation taking place between Frank and Dishy.

“I’m not going to pull your leg, Dishy mate,” Frank was saying. “You’re a bit whiffy on the nose this morning.”

Toby slowed his pace. He had a feeling that a little bit of peace and quiet he had been hoping to enjoy that morning was already going to the dogs. He heard Dishy sniff.

“Oh dear, you’re right Frank,” the new djinn said in a slow, amiable little voice. “You know when you get those days where you jump in the water bucket outside, but just forget to wash?”

“No I don’t, Dishy,” Frank said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Toby came and stood inconspicuously in the doorway of the kitchen. He saw Dishy give himself a little slap on the side of his horned head. “Sorry Frank,” the dishwashing entity said. “You know, us domestic djinn are simple beings.”

“Yeah, I was coming to that conclusion myself, Dishy,” Frank said, stony-faced.

“I’m trying my best to learn all about this world but I’ve been in that box ever since I was summoned,” Dishy said, meaning his box which had been cut out into his own little house and was now stored in the cupboard under the stairs. “I’ve been trying my best to understand how this world works.”

“Has me opening the kitchen window so you can hear the street helped at all?” Frank asked.

“A little bit,” Dishy said.

“Hear anything interesting lately?” Frank asked.

“Well, last night, after everyone had gone to sleep,” Dishy said, “I was busying myself polishing some of the cutlery, you know. I like to do that by the light of the moon. It’s peaceful.”

“Right,” Frank said.

“Anyway, I heard this male and female human walking past and she was screaming at him.

“Screaming in pain?” Frank asked with a little bit of relish in his voice, not to mention a touch of hope.

“No, not in pain. She sounded very cross,” Dishy said. “She kept screaming at this chap and asking him if he was really breaking up with her. I think they’d come from that tavern just down the road. She was getting crosser and crosser because he didn’t want to buy her another drink because I think she was intoxicated and, to use some of his words, she was making a ‘total ass’ out of herself.”

“Yep, humans can be pretty well spoken and gentle at times, can’t they?” Frank said.

Dishy completely missed the irony. Toby doubted that the helpful little djinn even knew what irony was.

“She kept repeating the whole breaking up thing,” Dishy said. “Maybe she was one of those pottery people, a golem, you know?”

“Maybe,” Frank said patiently.

“And then she finished this tirade of hers by screaming, in a very high pitched and frankly annoying voice, that, ‘Every time we fucked, I fucking faked it.’”

Toby saw Frank conjure a pair of those little silvery eyebrows onto his head. He raised them so high that they actually levitated above the top of his bony, horned skull. “Ouch,” he said.

“Yes, I assumed that it was a derogatory remark to make,” Dishy said, in the same vaguely interested voice that he had recited the whole anecdote in.

“And what did the guy do?” Frank asked. “Tell me he reaped some terrible vengeance on her.”

“I looked out the window and saw him standing there. He looked quite calm,” Dishy said.

Frank looked disappointed at that. “And then?” he said.

“And then he said, ‘What makes you think I was fucking you for your benefit?’” Dishy said. He shook his head. “I just don’t get them.”

“Yep, it takes many, many years to figure this weird bunch out, mate,” Frank said. He patted the other djinn between his little wings. “You’ll figure it out, though. I’ll tell you one thing you should figure out faster than others, if you want some advice, Dishy.”

“Oh, yes please. What’s that?” Dishy asked.

“That mayonnaise is not a beverage,” Frank said.

Toby cleared his throat. “Morning, boys.”

“Morning, Toby,” Frank said. “Dishy and I were just discussing the finer points of humanity.”

“I wasn’t aware there were finer points of humanity,” Toby said.

“Yeah, you might have a point there,” Frank said.

“Would you like a bit of breakfast, Mr. Adams?” Dishy said.

“Sure, that would be great, Dishy,” Toby said. “And call me Toby, will you?”

“Okay, Mr. Toby,” Dishy said. “What would you like to eat?”

“You couldn’t rustle me up a bacon sandwich, could you?” Toby said.

“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Adams.”

“Toby,” Toby corrected him.

“It would be my pleasure, Mr. Toby Adams,” Dishy said.

Toby sighed. He exchanged a look with Frank. Frank shrugged.

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” Frank asked.

“Haven’t you heard?” Toby said. “It’s the Jousting Jamboree. It’s game day.”

37

As a born and bred New Yorker, Toby had seen some weird shit. He had experienced some weird shit. He had heard, in a second hand kind of way, of even more bizarre shit.

But none of that shit even came close to what he was experiencing now.

Amidst the lively revelry of the Jousting Jamboree, Toby found himself ensnared in a peculiar juxtaposition of circumstances. The vibrant colors and exuberant festivities clashed starkly with the weight of responsibility pressing down upon his and his friend’s shoulders.

While the air resounded with tears and laughter, Toby couldn’t shake the lingering undercurrent of tension that was running through him, an imminent threat lurking in the shadows. Not that there were any proper shadows, of course, only metaphorical ones. The day was an absolute beauty. It couldn’t have been more clement if it had tried.

As he, Anna, Verity, and Frank navigated their way through the throngs of revelers, Toby couldn’t help but marvel at the absurdity of it all. Here he was, amidst the grandeur of the Jousting Jamboree. It was a full-blown medieval-style festival the likes of which he could never have imagined attending—unless it was at one of those strange historical recreations where grown men got to run around dressed up as knights or wizards and pretend that they were doing it all for the sake of history.

It felt surreal, but it wasn’t. Mirth and menace danced hand in hand that day. Toby was destined to play a role far greater than any knight or king if he managed to thwart Duke Diddle and Vexxx’s schemes.

“I know we’re fast running out of time here,” Anna said, “but I feel like I have to point out just how lovely the town looks.”

Toby grunted his agreement. Colorful banners and flags fluttered in the breeze, hanging over the street, displaying the heraldry of noble houses. The kingdom of Eclipsia’s crest, the crescent moon and sun combined, was the most prevalent on display. Decorations lined the streets and adorned the facades of the buildings. Pennants and streamers in bright hues crisscrossed above the thoroughfares, creating a canopy of moving, waving color that stretched overhead. These pennants swayed in the gentle wind, casting playful shadows on the cobblestone streets below.

The streets themselves were absolutely rammed, not only with Eclipsia’s citizens, who had been granted the day as a holiday, but also with entertainers and street performers. The town squares and marketplaces were bustling, filled with music and dance, theatrical performances and freshly cooked street food. Toby saw jugglers, minstrels and jesters adding to the lively atmosphere.

“And look,” Frank said in a dark voice, “there’s always one.”

The imp’s tone was one of such deep disgust that for a moment Toby thought the little demon had spotted Vexxx or one of his minions. However, when he saw where Frank’s silver eyes were fastened, Toby noted that the demonic entity had only noticed a mime.

“Yeah, there’s only one good thing about a mime, they say,” Toby said.

“Really? What’s that?” Frank asked.

“It’s that when someone inevitably freaks out and hauls off and beats them up with a tire iron or something, they can’t call for help,” Toby said.

Frank considered that. “Maybe I’ll set him on fire or something on the way back,” he mused.”

“Anna, come on,” Toby said.

Anna gave a little guilty start. “Sorry,” she said, standing up from where she had been leaning over one of the many stalls that lined the heaving streets. This one offered an array of silver jewelry set with semi-precious stones.

“Come on,” Toby said. “We have to keep our eyes skinned. There’ll hopefully be time for shopping later.”

“Just another reason to save the city, huh?” Anna said in a low voice.

Toby gave a half-hearted smile.

There were merchants peddling their wares everywhere, selling everything from handcrafted trinkets, the likes of which had caught Anna’s eye, to savory street food and sweet treats. The air was filled with the tantalizing aroma of roasting meats, freshly baked bread and spiced cider.

“Let’s head straight to the tournament grounds,” Toby said. “We may as well canvas them before the crowds descend upon them.”

The tournament grounds were, of course, the focal point of King Balourd’s Jousting Jamboree. They would no doubt be bustling with activity later as spectators gathered to witness their jousting matches. Seeing as the day was still early, though, the temporary grandstands and bleachers that had been erected to accommodate the crowds were more or less empty.

Toby, Anna, Frank, and Verity split up and walked around the tournament grounds in opposite directions.

“You don’t expect Vexxx to plant the potion at the wells at either end of the grounds, do you?” Verity asked.

Toby shook his head. “They’d be the first places that King Balourd and Queen Lascivo would have checked,” Toby said. “Besides, I know that they’ve had soldiers in plain clothes stationed all around the grounds since the dark elf came forward. No, I think that wherever he puts it, it’s going to be in a more obscure spot. He needs it to be busy, of course, otherwise what’s the point of poisoning the water source, but I doubt he’ll go for somewhere as obvious and open as here.”

As they walked around the tournament grounds, Verity swore under her breath. Absent-mindedly, she flicked the daggers that ejected from out of her cuffs a couple of times.

“What is it?” Toby asked.

“Oh, it’s just, it seems such a shame that today should be ruined by Duke Diddle, is all,” Verity said.

“I know what you mean. It would have been a fun day if it wasn’t for all this,” Toby said.

“No matter what the band I was involved in at the time was up to, no matter what the bounty might have been on our heads, we always made a point to come to Stagbreach for the Jousting Jamboree,” Verity said. “It was always a great time.”

“Don’t speak like it’s a past thing,” Toby said, reaching down and squeezing Verity’s hand. “This won’t be the last one. Not if we can help it.”

Verity’s head of golden hair flashed as she turned to look around at all the decorative flourishes that adorned the buildings and landmarks. “All this pomp, all this ceremony,” she said. “I love how it adds an extra layer of grandeur to the town’s aesthetic. I love all the floral arrangements, the garlands of ivy. It all really makes Stagbreach feel so much more alive, doesn’t it? Like the capital’s a living, breathing entity in its own right.”

Toby nodded. His gaze was drawn, irrevocably up to where Eclipsia Castle stood on its promontory. If the city was a creature, then the castle was that creature’s head.

And within that head, Toby thought, sits Queen Lascivo, like the brain.

The four companions met up once more and walked through the tournament grounds. This was a sprawling expanse of lawn divided by the white fence down which the jousting combatants would charge at one another. They crossed the dusty racing circle that surrounded the jousting strip and walked through the gleaming white tents, which were home to the knights that had traveled across the land to come and compete in King Balourd’s tournament.

Toby saw noble lords and ladies decked out in their finery, emerging from their tents. He recognized a few of them from the King and Queen’s banquet.

“Come on,” Toby said. “I made an agreement with Captain Gurnard that we would meet him at the ninth bell up at the castle gates. He wants to come up with one last plan of an attack to figure out how he might give Stagbreach one last thorough canvas.”

Captain Gurnard and twelve of his men were waiting for Toby and his friends when they arrived. They were standing directly under the portcullis, which made Toby a little uneasy.

“How’s it going, Captain Gurnard?” Toby said.

Captain Gurnard, who was a sour-faced man at the best of times, looked even more this morning like someone who had attempted to eat an entire lemon.

“You might be the King’s favorite at the moment, Adams,” he said. “But I don’t trust your ability to see this through.”

“Cheers for the vote of confidence,” Toby said casually. “Now, how about you and I make a plan as to how we’re going to stop this nut Duke Diddle from turning Stagbreach into Eclipsia’s biggest privy?”

In crisp, curt tones, in which neither of them wasted so much as a word, Toby and Captain Gurnard divided out the jobs and ways that each of their teams could help search the city.

“Obviously, you’ve got more men,” Toby said. “So, might I respectfully suggest that you and your lot conduct another comprehensive citywide search?”

A muscle in Captain Gurnard’s seemingly constantly moving bottom jaw twitched. It was weird, but there was something of the nineties’ ecstasy fiend to the Captain. Like he’d just been pulled out of a Darude gig. He was always grinding his teeth. His eyes always seemed to be popping. After a couple of moments’ cogitation, he said, “I concede that you have a point, Adams. Consider it done. Me and my men and women will cover the various districts and the more obvious landmarks.”

“I’d make sure not all of them are uniformed, though,” Toby said. “If Vexxx or any of his minions are out there, which they surely are, we don’t want to alert them too easily to what we’re doing.”

“I’ve been part of the Household Guard, both as a boy and a man, Adams,” Captain Gurnard said. “I was here when Duke Diddle was counted as among one of King Balourd’s closest and most trusted advisors. Let me tell you, if it’s true that the Duke is behind all of this, he’ll know how we’re going to operate. If he hasn’t put some contingencies in place, or it’s got some of those damn spies stationed around town, then I’ll eat my helmet.”

“That sounds like a good way to get indigestion,” Toby said under his breath.

“What was that?” Captain Gurnard snapped.

“Nothing,” Toby said. “I said that just sounds not ideal.”

“None of this is ideal,” Captain Gurnard growled. “Now, how do you think that you and your unlikely lot, which the King and Queen seem to have so much faith in, might be able to help us track down and stop this threat?”

It was decided that Toby, Anna and Verity, along with Frank, of course—although Captain Gurnard did not deign to acknowledge the existence of the imp—would focus their search on some of the key architectural locations within Stagbreach. Captain Gurnard furnished Toby and his friends with a list in this regard.

“We’ve locked up most of these buildings, especially the ones with their own private wells,” Captain Gurnard said. “I have one of two keys. Their Majesties have the other. I don’t see how you’re going to be able to gain entrance to them.”

Toby gave the Captain a wink that he knew would only infuriate the other man. “Don’t you worry about that, Captain Gurnard. I have my methods.”

Those methods in particular turned out to involve sending Frank into any of the locked buildings that were on the list. Frank was a particularly helpful accomplice. He was able to materialize on the other side of the locked doors, poke quickly around the interior of the buildings if they weren’t too big, or else open doors from the inside.

“You know,” Verity said, “there are some places, some passages hidden beneath the more ancient streets of Stagbreach that Captain Gurnard and his like might not be aware of.”

Toby looked sharply at Verity. “Why didn’t you mention this before?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve actually checked them out a couple of times,” Verity said, “over the course of the last few days. While you and Anna were out and about doing your thing, I thought it was more prudent going on my own. One makes less noise than three after all.”

Toby couldn’t argue with that. “And there was nothing down in these hidden secret passages,” he asked.

Verity shook her head. “But today is the last day,” she pointed out.

“Okay,” Toby said. “You lead on.”

There was a thrilling buzz of excitement running through him when Verity pushed open a door hidden by a curtain of ivy, and they wound their way down a staircase that led under one of the main thoroughfares in the city.

Nobody noticed them step off the street. The roads and paths and alleyways were thronged with people going about their business, drinking and eating and making merry on this public holiday.

Something in the pit of Toby’s stomach told him that they were on to something. So it was with a deflating sense of disappointment that after he, Verity, Anna and Frank had investigated the subterranean passages that wound around under the older, most ancient parts of Stagbreach that they found nothing. There was even a water course running down there.

When Toby pointed this out, Verity said, “Yeah, I know why you might think this would be a surefire sign that Vexxx was going to plop that potion in here, but the thing is, this water course is so old that it no longer feeds the city. This just runs under it and then joins the river to the south of Stagbreach.”

By the time the sun had risen to its noon high, Toby and his friends were all feeling slightly defeated. They took a pause in their search and grabbed some lunch from one of the nearby stalls. Somehow, they found a section of low wall that surrounded one of the wells that had been a focus point of their search and sat down. Toby bit into his meat pie. It was delicious. Minced beef and melted cheese, with here and there a chunk of bacon or a mushroom, took some of the edge off his bad mood.

“Can’t be long now until the jamboree kicks off,” Verity said.

“It doesn’t kick off until noon?” Anna asked.

Verity shook her head. “They have some of the sparring matches in the morning. You know, knights fighting one another on foot with blunted swords and in full armor, but the jousting doesn’t start until—”

A sudden rising roar swept through the street. Toby noticed people craning their heads up and looking skywards. He followed their lead. His jaw dropped open. He felt a mouthfull of half-chewed pie fall out. He paid it no heed. Neither did anyone else.

A team of seven dragons flying in formation swept low over Stagbreach. It reminded Toby, with a pang, of the kind of flyover you might witness at one of the more important NFL games back on Earth. Vaguely, he wondered how the Giants had fared in their last game against the Arizona Cardinals.

As the seven dragons, each one a different color, sailed silently over the town, they abruptly emitted matching roars. Smoke billowed out from either side of their mouths and streamed away behind them. Toby found himself standing next to Anna and Verity, who were gazing up in awe too.

The dragons broke formation and wheeled away into a starburst configuration. They looped back around, still trailing smoke and disappeared towards the tournament grounds.

“Wow,” Anna breathed.

“Show-offs,” Frank said dismissively.

“So, that’s the start of the tournament,” Verity said. “Which means we have six hours before dusk.”

“Which means we have six hours before Vexxx strikes,” Toby said grimly.

38

It was the dragons that gave Toby the mental kick in the pants that he needed. As that piece of delicious pie had fallen from his slack lips as he watched the team of seven dragons pass overhead, Toby had been sharply reminded that this was a land of dragons and magic.

Magic.

“Magic,” he said out loud.

“What about it?” Frank said.

“Magic. Why the hell haven’t we got ourselves some magical assistance?” Toby said.

“Probably because the wizards that we’ve come across so far have been about as much use as a drum kit would have been to Anne Frank,” Anna pointed out.

“Yeah, there is that,” Toby said, “but I just remembered something about our visit to Moonshroud’s place.”

“What about it?” Anna asked.

“Before he took up life as a member of the brassica family,” Toby said, “he mentioned something about scrying. Do you remember?”

Anna shook her head. “I was still trying to get my head around the whole we stepped through a portal and are now visiting a wizard in a giant mushroom thing at that point, I think,” she said. “What’s scrying?”

“Scrying is basically a magical way of spying on someone,” Frank said. “Wizards spend a lot of time alone and so it became an easy way for them to see what was going on in the outside world. Not to mention being able to look at those they fancied whilst they were taking a bath. Wizards are a pervy lot after all.”

“Let’s keep wizards’ voyeuristic inclinations out of this for a moment,” Toby said sternly, “and focus on the problem at hand. Could we not use scrying to find the potion, Frank?”

Frank considered this. “I suppose we might,” the imp said. “The thing about scrying spells is that they’re real quick-burn incantations. You know, you can’t just keep them running all day. If you could do that, wizards would never stop jerking—”

“Right,” Toby said, “let’s get up to Tootentein’s tower ASAP.”

As they set off, Verity asked Toby, “Do you think Captain Gurnard has had any success?”

Toby made a face. “I think as well-intentioned as the captain probably is that he’s one of those people who, when they’re in a managerial position, productivity probably goes up on the days that they’re not around.”

“Oh yeah,” Anna said. “Yeah, now that you mention it he does strike me as one of those.”

“What I’m hoping is that we’re able to scry this potion,” Toby said. “The best case scenario would be scrying it and seeing it in Captain Gurnard’s hands.”

“Let’s hope we’re that lucky,” Verity said, “because if this thing is resolved it means we’ll get to enjoy the jamboree along with everyone else.”

“I’m just hoping that we find Tootenstein in his tower,” Toby said. “Let’s hope that he didn’t duck out early to go and indulge in that wizarding proclivity of getting absolutely shitfaced.”

* * *

“I’m afraid you’ve caught me somewhat under the influence,” Wolfgang Tootenstein said.

“Under the influence of what?” Toby asked.

“Ah, that’s a good question,” the wizard said.

“Great,” Frank muttered, not too quietly, under his breath. “We’ve got here just in time to see how this wizard is going to be less helpful than the desk he’s currently leaning against.”

“Did that cat say that?” Tootenstein said, squinting down at Frank, who had indeed taken a rather cantankerous-looking tomcat shape.

“Yes,” Toby said, not having the energy to make an excuse.

“Crikey,” Tootenstein said, “this brandy’s got a bit more pep than even I anticipated. Been a while since I believed animals were talking to me.” He took another swig from the demijohn he was holding. He smacked his lips and then he gazed blearily at the three humans and the cat.

“There’s no need to get shirty, though, my friends,” he said.

“No?” Toby said. “We’re here for your help. Not only that but we might require you to make something.”

“And what might that be?” Tootenstein asked.

“We were thinking of ways that we might track down the potion,” Verity said in her kindest, most cajoling voice.

“Is that right? Is that right?” The wizard said.

“The potion that could wipe out over half of those people who accidentally drink it if it gets into the water supply,” Toby said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, yes, that one! I must tell you that I too have expended a great deal of thought on the matter. I fear that I have expended every neuron’s worth of energy in my head, in fact. And have yet to find—”

“We were thinking that we might use a scrying glass to find the potion,” Toby interrupted.

The frazzled looking wizard stopped in mid-sentence. With a soft popping sound he closed his mouth. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that might work.”

“Really?” Anna asked.

The wizard did not answer. He was gazing far off, staring out to something that only he could see. His bushy eyebrows danced a thoughtful dance over his wire-rimmed spectacles. Almost without thinking he reached into the pocket of his lab robe and pulled out the little brass box. He took a couple of pinches of whatever the powder was inside and snorted them up his crooked nose.

He’s what Dumbledore might have looked like had he mixed with the wrong crowd in college, Toby suddenly found himself thinking. Tootenstein is a Skid Row Dumbledore.

“Yes, by crikey, I think a scrying glass might just work!”Tootenstein suddenly ejaculated. “I can’t see why not.”

“I was explaining,” Frank said, “to the others here that the incantations for a scrying glass are really flash in the pan jobbies.”

The wizard looked down at the cat. “You’re really rather well informed for a domestic pet,” he said mildly.

“Cheers,” Frank said.

The wizard gave his head another little shake. He sniffed hard a couple of times as if to force the invigorating powder deeper into his head. “Yes, I can’t see why not. I can’t see why not,” he muttered to himself. “Yes, the cat is right. The spells are very brief in their duration. But it is a simple magic and thus hard to bamboozle.”

Without another word he spun on the spot and began flitting around his tower laboratory like a swallow at feeding time.

“Just a couple of drops of melted unicorn horn,” Toby heard the wizard mutter. “This crystal orb is a little dusty, but it will suffice. Some of this… Yes, yes… And a little of that—no no what am I thinking! None of that, Wolfgang, you silly old goose. Do you want to spread us over the better part of the town?”

Anna looked nervously at Toby. Toby gave her what he hoped was a fortifying look.

“If anything starts smoking,” he said under his breath, “we can make a run for that elevator carpet thing.”

“Very comforting,” Anna said with a small smirk.

It took Tootenstein a good half hour to collect all the items and resources that he needed to make the scrying glass. He was hampered, in no small way, by the general mess all around them.

“How long will the process take to actually make it?” Toby asked.

“An hour, perhaps,” Tootenstein said. “At least an hour if I stop drinking now.”

Verity stepped forward and picked up the demijohn that the wizard had just been on the point of reaching for. “We’re on a time limit, Mr. Tootenstein,” she reminded him. She gave him one of those radiant smiles.

Tootenstein softened at once. “Of course, my dear, of course. Very wise of you, very shrewd, very forward thinking. Now to work…”

Toby didn’t pay too much attention whilst Tootenstein got to crafting his scrying glass. Instead, he walked over to the doors that led out to the balcony. He stepped out into the bracing air. The wind was stronger up at the top of the tower. He looked down, as his scrubby brown hair was blown around his face. The town of Stagbreach spread out around him. Humanity—but not just humanity, of course—spilled over into every street.

“Man,” Toby said to himself, “I can see why Duke Diddle wanted to wait until today to spring his plan into action. So far as diabolical schemes go, the more collateral damage you can accrue the better, I guess.”

He sat out there for a good while, staring down into the street. He imagined what each and every one of those people down there were doing. In the universal spirit of all public holidays he guessed that drinking and eating too much was going to play a large role on everyone’s itineraries. He felt a pang that he couldn’t be down there enjoying it with everyone.

Someone’s got to save the damn day, I suppose.

Some time later, Toby was roused from his reveries by a shout of delight.

“Aha, and there we have it!” Tootenstein cried.

Toby hurried back inside the tower.

“Now, we just seal the enchantment with a whispered word of power,” the wizard said. He leaned over the orb he had declared as being a little dusty and waved his hands in a mystical fashion over its now polished surface. He whispered something to it. The scrying glass glowed with a soft inner light. Its surface shimmered and rippled.

“Is it done?” Toby asked.

“It’s done,” Tootenstein confirmed. He crooked his finger in Verity’s direction in a come hither motion.

“You’re sure?” Toby asked.

“Yes, yes, quite sure. This isn’t my first bull ride so far as scrying glasses go.”

Toby nodded at Verity. Verity handed the demijohn over to the wizard. Tootenstein tipped the demijohn up and took a long, long drink. Toby thought that he didn’t look likely to stop until he’d drunk the vessel dry.

“How do we use it?” Toby asked.

“Hm? Oh, just stare into the depths of the orb,” Tootenstein said casually. “Think of what you want to find. Picture the potion as you saw it in Vexxx’s hands. Fill that mental image with as much detail as possible. Then, follow the latticework of magic down to the window that the orb and the scrying glass will open in the world.”

Toby puffed out his cheeks. He looked at his companions. “Here we go.”

Verity nodded. Anna gave him a tight smile and a thumbs up.

“Let’s hope that this bloke hasn’t ballsed it up,” Frank said in his usual comforting manner. “But if he has, and your puny human mind is reduced to porridge, can I have your room?”

Toby ignored the little demon and stared into the depths of the scrying glass. He pictured the potion. He muttered what he wanted the scrying glass to show him. He tried to inject his whispered words with the earnest desperation he felt at wanting to find the potion. He tried not to worry about what Tootenstein would have meant by following the latticework of magic. He hoped that it would be an intuitive process.

The scrying glass, or the scrying stone as Toby thought it could more accurately be labeled, suddenly took on an impossible depth for an object that was only five inches tall. Toby’s gaze was drawn down, down, down, as if his eyeballs were being sucked down a preordained plug hole of enlightenment.

He gasped. There in front of him, as if it was being displayed on the smallest television screen imaginable, and yet one that almost filled Toby’s vision, was the glass jar of foul-looking potion. It was hanging in a magical force field. That much was clear.

“Quick, Tootenstein, come over here and take a look,” Toby said, without taking his eyes from the image.

Tootenstein along with Anna and Verity clustered round the scrying glass.

“Yes, that there is a levitation force field,” Tootenstein said matter-of-factly. “A classic thaumaturgical spell that is prone to time degradation. It’s one that’s often been used in Eclipsia’s wars. Really very handy, so far as setting traps goes.”

“Time deterioration?” Toby said. “I guess that backs up what the dark elf said about this thing being released at a certain pre-decided time.”

“Yes, and now that we see it hanging there we also know that it’s in position,” Anna said.

The image flickered.

“The glass is losing power,” Tootenstein said.

Toby desperately sought to take something else away from the image, to find some clue. There was a reflection on the side of the jar. It looked to him as if the light being shed by the levitation spell was dancing off something and refracting back onto the glass jar.

“Water. It’s hanging over the water,” Toby said.

The image flickered again. Their view of the potion was suddenly skewed.

“Yes, we’re losing it,” Tootenstein said in a low voice. “The force field’s magic is countering that of the scrying glass.”

The angle of their viewpoint tilted down and swung away. Suddenly, Toby and the others could see what the potion was hanging over. All of them, as one, craned their heads forward and squinted.

“That’s not water,” Anna said.

“No,” Verity agreed. “That’s not water. But what is it?”

“If I had to take a wild stab in the dark,” Toby said. “I’d say that looks like… beer.”

All four of them, gathered around the scrying glass, exchanged glances—well, all of them except for Wolfgang Tootenstein, who was staring fixedly at Frank as if trying to decipher if the cat really was of the talking variety.

Toby snapped his fingers in front of Tootenstein’s face. The wizard blinked. He cocked one half charred eyebrow at Toby. “Yes, Mr. Adams?” he said.

“Why?” Toby said. “Why would Duke Diddle want to poison just one vat of beer? Surely that doesn’t make sense. With all the drinking that’s going on today beer will be flowing out the door very much like water. But only poisoning a single vat would mean that only those drinking at one tavern would be infected with this magical bio weapon.”

Tootenstein’s eyes lost focus again. “Yes, I see your point,” he said. “Seems like a bit of a waste of potential, does it not? Unless…” His eyes snapped up to Toby’s face. “Oh no,” he said. “It couldn’t be that simple could it?”

“I don’t know,” Toby said, trying to keep hold on his patience. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The potion, it’s hanging over the King’s famous jamboree ale,” Tootenstein said.

Toby shook his head. “Elucidate, man.”

“Every year King Balourd has a special ale brewed to commemorate the Jousting Jamboree,” Tootenstein said. “He has it brewed up in a number of enormous fermentation tanks up at the castle.”

Anna shook her head. “But how would that ensure that a load of regular people imbibed the ale if it’s all stored up at the castle?” she asked.

Tootenstein took a steadying breath. Absent-mindedly, he reached into his robes, pulled out his little brass container, and snorted a great quantity of dust up one nostril. Toby watched as more steam trickled out of the man’s hairy ears.

“This ale, this commemorative ale, is released into the streets via a number of pre-selected fountains, which are connected by a series of intricate pipes to the fermentation tanks up at the castle,” Tootenstein explained. “Obviously, everyone wants to partake of the royal brew. It’s limited in quantity and never the same recipe two years running.”

Toby was already heading towards the elevator carpet.

“He couldn’t have picked a better target,” Verity said, striding along behind him.

Toby nodded. “Everyone from Queen Lascivo to King Balourd to Captain Gurnard is wondering how Duke Diddle or Vexxx is going to poison the water supply,” he said. “None of them have even spared a thought for the fact that he might be targeting the booze.”

As Toby, Anna, and Verity waved a hasty goodbye to Wolfgang Tootenstein and descended into the dark of the elevator tunnel, Toby looked around at the others. All he could see for a few moments was the glint of the light above shining in their eyes.

“We can still stop this, Toby,” Verity said.

“Let’s hope so,” Toby said. “Otherwise we’re about to discover the very epitome of the term ‘drinking problem’.”

“Not to mention booze-poos,” Frank said.

Toby looked out of the corner of his eye at the imp that was now floating in his preferred place at Toby’s shoulder. “You always have to take it just that one step too far, don’t you Frank?”

39

“How did you know?” Anna asked, as they hurried through the castle.

“How did I know what?” Toby said.

“How did you know something would happen at the last moment? That we’d catch some break?” Anna asked.

They swung around the corner. Toby’s boots slid on the polished stone floor. He managed to keep himself from falling over via the expedient method of crashing into the wall. He bounced off it, his shoulder throbbing.

“It’s just the way it is,” Toby said. “It’s just the way it is in these kinds of situations. The villains always set up these elaborate ways to administer the potion or chemical weapon or whatever. And we, the good guys, get just enough of a chance to stop them.”

He looked over his shoulder at Anna. She looked perplexed to say the least.

“But if Vexxx just dumped it all into a well now, then he’d have most likely won,” Anna said.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Toby agreed. “But whilst there aren’t rules per se in a land like Eclipsia, I think I’m getting the feeling that there are certain ways certain things are done, even amongst villains.”

“What are you—?” Anna started to say.

“There’s a certain style required, is what old Toby’s getting at,” Frank said. “What’s the point of winning if you look like an asshole doing it?”

Anna looked really confused at that. “I thought being an asshole was more or less what being a villain was all about.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Frank conceded. “But the thing is, if Duke Diddle and his right-hand man, Sexy Vexxxy, had just poisoned the water in some random well without anyone knowing who did it, then… Well, there just wouldn’t be any style to it, would there? Whilst being an asshole is a key component of being an enemy of the kingdom, you’ve also got to be able to retain your bragging rights for the evil deeds you commit, don’t you? Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Anna looked like she was in the mood to poke holes in that logic, but she was cut off by an exclamation from Toby.

“Ah, yes!” he said.

They were at the top of the enormous staircase that led down into the castle’s main entrance atrium. At the bottom of the stairs, standing near the front door and looking like he was itching to take off into town, was one of the men that Toby recognized as being part of Captain Gurnard’s guard. The man was in conversation with none other than one of Queen Lascivo’s spies, Gary, the shortbread man.

Toby hurried down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. His friends followed close behind.

The guard and Gary turned as Toby rushed up.

“Everything alright, Mr. Adams?” the guard asked, whilst Gary’s only sign of greeting was a scowl with his one chocolate chip eye.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” Toby said somewhat hurriedly. “Actually, no, what am I saying? Everything’s not fine. That’s why I need your help.”

The guard stood slightly to attention. He might not have been aware to what degree the King and Queen knew Toby and his friends, but he knew enough that he was willing to listen to Toby.

“Where’s the king’s private brewery?” Toby asked.

The guard hesitated. He looked slightly uncomfortable.

“Come on, buddy, now’s not the time to go all reticent,” Toby said. “Now is not the time. You know what I’m talking about. Where’s the brewery?”

The guard swallowed. “It’s out past the east garden, surrounded by trees to keep it from public view. Why is that, sir?”

Toby ignored the question. There wasn’t time to explain. “Where’s Captain Gurnard and the rest of his men?” he asked.

“They’re scattered all throughout the town, sir. They’re still searching,” the guard said.

Toby cursed under his breath. It looked like they were going to have to go into the brewery without backup. In all honesty, that didn’t surprise him. In the same way that Duke Diddle’s decision to have Vexxx plant the poison potion at the last minute in a more elaborate spot than dumping it down the easiest well, so too had he half expected to have to go the final stage of this quest alone.

He did some quick thinking. They only had a few hours until the king was due down at the Jousting Jamboree to declare his yearly champion. Toby had heard some of the servants saying that he and Queen Lascivo were yet to depart the castle. Toby hoped this was still the case.

“Look,” Toby said to the guard, “there’s something I need you to do urgently, right away.”

“But Mr. Adams,” the guard said, “the captain expects me to meet him down in the—”

“I hate to be that guy,” Toby said, cutting across the man, “but I don’t give a rat’s ass what Captain Gurnard has asked you to do. This is more important than anything Captain Gurnard has asked you to do. Got it? If he gets a stick up his ass about it, just send him to me.”

The guard swallowed, but then nodded.

“I need you to take a message to King Balourd, or Queen Lascivo if you can’t find the king,” Toby said.

“What message, sir?” the guard asked.

Toby then relayed to the man why it was that he, Anna, and Verity were heading to the King’s private brewery.

“The thing that the King and Queen have tasked us all to find is there,” Toby said. “Right under everyone’s noses. In the last place anyone would think to look.”

“But Mr. Adams, I thought it was the water supplies that—”

Toby shook his head. “We were wrong. We were all wrong. We were looking in the wrong place. Now, get out of here and go and find the King or Queen and tell them what’s happening. Tell them to send more soldiers as soon as they can. It’s probably best, I imagine, that the King doesn’t deviate from what he’s planned to do. That people expect him to do. If Vexxx is watching, which it sounds like he’s a devious enough bastard to be doing or having someone do in his stead, then anything untoward happening might cause him to cancel the levitating forcefield that’s holding the potion above the special jamboree ale.”

The guard paled at this, then he nodded again. “Very good, Mr. Adams. I’ll go at once. There’s just one thing.”

“What?” Toby asked.

“How did Vexxx get the potion into position? There are brewers in there working day and night. Especially in the days leading up to the jamboree. There are also guards and—”

“We can worry about all that once we’ve got the potion back,” Toby said. “Now get going, man!”

The guard nodded and dashed off up the gargantuan staircase.

“All right,” Toby said, turning to his friends. “Let’s go.”

He turned back to head out through the imposing double doors that led out into the sunshine, but found a cookie-cut figure blocking his path.

“Gary!” Toby said brightly. “Look, I can understand you’re probably pissed off, but the thing is, I just don’t have the time for it right now.”

Gary carried on glowering at Toby. Slowly, he raised one of his fingerless biscuit hands and pointed at his own face. “This is your fault,” he said in a cracked, gruff and crumbly voice.

Toby looked more closely at the shortbread man. He could see now that part of his face was a slightly lighter hue than the rest of it.

“I don’t—” Toby started to say.

“I had to have a crust graft after you threw that coffee at me,” Gary growled.

“Why is your dough so much paler than your original dough?” Verity asked. “If you don’t mind me inquiring, sir?”

“Because of where they took it from,” Gary said in a menacing voice.

“Where did they take it from?” Toby asked before he could stop himself.

Gary’s one chocolate chip I narrowed. “Take one bloody guess, smartass,” he said.

“Ah, I see,” Toby said, suddenly understanding. “‘Ass’ being the operative word, here, yes?”

Gary’s mouth changed into a hard line.

“Look, Gary, there is somewhere we need to be, I don’t know if you overheard,” Toby said. “But how about you and I bury the hatchet once all this is over?”

Gary crossed his arms over his chest. “Maybe I’ll bury it in your head,” he growled.

“Good one!” Frank said.

Toby stepped past the shortbread man and patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, that’s what we’ll do,” he said, one eye on the doorway. “We’ll grab a cappuccino together. My shout.”

“What’s a cappuccino?” Gary asked, sounding unconvinced.

“Oh, you’ll love it. You’ll love it,” Toby said. “Cappuccino and a man like you, they’re a match made in heaven.”

Toby glanced over his shoulder as he, Anna, Frank, and Verity hurried outside and took a left into the castle’s expansive gardens. He saw Gary looking after them. Then the shortbread man put his head down and hurried off into the castle.

Something about that final look the shortbread man gave them tugged at an instinct of Toby’s. He repressed it, though. If Gary was up to some bullshit, then they’d have to deal with it later.

Besides, Toby said to himself, as he led the way across the immaculately manicured lawns, how much of a pain in the ass can a guy whose Achilles heel is warm milk really be?

40

“A maze,” Toby said. “A maze. Of course there’s a goddamn maze.”

“Why is there a goddamn maze?” Anna asked.

The three humans and Frank had just sped through the King’s elaborately laid-out flower garden, complete with a series of mermaid-shaped hedges that, despite being comprised only of leaves, still managed in Toby’s mind to carry the R18 sticker. Now, thanks to the help of one very confused and flustered gardener, they stood at the entrance to a maze which, according to the old man, led to the King’s hidden private brewery.

“Of course there’s a goddamn maze,” Toby explained, “because there’s always something like this at this point in the quest, isn’t there?”

“Is there?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, you know, when the heroes—”

“We’re the heroes?” Anna interrupted.

“Yeah, of course we are,” Toby said. “We’re the good guys.”

Just behind him, floating in the air, Frank stuck his finger in his throat and gagged.

“This always happens. It’s one last little piece of adversity, one little hold-up before we reach our goal,” Toby explained.

Anna looked at Verity. Verity was minutely inspecting the tip of one of her wrist-mounted daggers. She looked up. “He does have a point,” she says. “Not that I have often been on what might be referred to as the ‘good side’ of things as often as I should perhaps have been. But a gal’s got to make a living.”

“And this sort of thing occurs regularly in these kinds of situations?” Anna asked.

“A last minute dash to the objective, or one last obstacle to overcome, is more or less standard procedure in these scenarios, yes, darling.”

Anna blinked. “Okay. Well, I guess we should get in there.”

Toby drew his sword.

“Why are you doing that?” Anna asked.

“Just in case there’s a maze guardian,” Toby said.

“A maze guardian?” Anna said. “Hold up, hold up, hold up. What are you talking about, a maze guardian?”

Verity stepped forward and put her arm around Anna’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, hon. Chances are that there’s not going to be a maze guardian. I mean, this maze leads to a brewery, doesn’t it? Judging by dear, sweet King Balourd’s almost perpetual state of intoxication, as well as the mermaid topiary we passed on the way here, I imagine he comes wandering out here to check on his brew fairly often. I doubt he’s going to want to go through all the bother of evading some maze guardian each time he wants to come out and sample the goods.”

“She makes a point,” Toby admitted, “but it’s still better to be safe than sorry. “

“Man, this world sure can be a mindfuck,” Anna said.

Together, they raced into the maze. Toby, thanks to his pop culture-rich upbringing, which had started in the nineties and continued, more or less, right up until he’d stepped through the portal in the laundromat, had lent him to think that they might be accosted by something in the maze. As it turned out, though, the maze was far more of the elegant ornamental variety, the kind which you might find in some British stately home or park, than it was the filled-with-horrors kind. He and his friends navigated it quickly.

The hedges didn’t close in around them, mists and shadows didn’t leak from their bases. Overhead, between the ten foot high walls of shrubbery, the sky was a perfect blue ribbon.

Toby pointed this out to his companions as they hurried along.

“Yeah, and look,” Frank said, “there’s the occasional plump cloud like a nice fluffy baa lamb.”

“What’s got your panties in the bunch?” Toby asked.

“Nothing,” Frank grumbled. “It’s just, well, it feels weird, doesn’t it? I’m more inclined to be on the other side of this sort of showdown, and here I am in the company of self-professed ‘good guys’.”

Toby reached out and patted the imp on his horned head. “Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone, Frank.”

“Good, because if you do, I’ll wither your asses into the ashes that—”

“Shh!” Toby said.

They had rounded a corner. Ahead of them was the exit to the maze. Slowly they crept out through the archway of perfectly clipped green leaves.

They were met, surprisingly, by a rather picturesque scene. Nestled within the verdant embrace of the palace gardens, the king’s very own private brewery was shielded from the prying eyes of the townsfolk below by a thick curtain of towering trees. Toby had no idea what kinds of trees they were, but they were possessed of leaves that were almost more yellow than they were green. The square of trees formed a natural barrier, concealing the brewery from view.

And, Toby thought, helping to hide temptation from Stagbreach’s thirstier and more enterprising locals.

The brewery itself was a large two-storied stone construction. It had a tiled roof from which a few crooked chimneys poked. Ivy crept along the facade facing the maze. There was an almost rustic Tuscan vineyard vibe to the place.

“It’s pretty,” Anna said.

“It’s pretty quiet,” Toby added.

“What are you talking about?” Anna asked.

“He means that there should surely be some guards around,” Verity said in a low voice. “Or at least some people at work.”

“Like the guard mentioned,” Toby said.

“Yeah, I mean, an establishment like this isn’t complete unless there’s at least a couple of guys loafing around outside the front door smoking their pipes,” Frank commented.

With his sword still drawn, Toby led the way slowly and as quietly as they could towards the front door of the brewery. They paused outside the door, some five paces away. It was ajar. From inside, they could hear the sound of liquid bubbling and the soft clinking of glassware. From the chimneys, soft pink steam rose and was pulled away by a gentle but insistent breeze.

“Frank,” Toby whispered.

“Yes, fella.”

“Can you take the form of something innocuous and do a quick circuit of the building just to make sure no one’s hanging around outside anywhere?”

“You got it, mate.”

Frank turned into a silvery black sparrow and darted away. He returned less than thirty seconds later. “All clear on the exterior.”

“You’re not fucking around, are you, Frank?” Toby asked.

“I promise I’m not.”

“A promise from an imp strikes me as a pretty poor currency,” Toby said.

“Yeah, all right. That was harsh, but I probably had it coming,” Frank said. “But I’m being serious. There’s no one lurking around outside. No one looking out of any of the windows. In fact, all the windows are shuttered.

“Pretty strange for a brewery, don’t you think?” Toby said. “It’s probably pretty hot in there with all the windows closed.”

Frank inclined his head in agreement.

Toby looked at Anna and Verity. “It’s time. Let’s go and save the fucking day.”

Anna gave him a look.

“What?” Toby asked.

“That’s another one of those things you’ve been waiting your whole life to say, isn’t it?”

Toby gave a little shrug with his mouth that would have fooled no one, let alone his oldest friend. “Maybe.”

“You darlings go in the front,” Verity said. “I’m going to scale some of this ivy and slip in through one of the shuttered windows.”

“Sounds good,” Toby said. “Frank, you go with Verity and watch her back.”

Frank ripped off a textbook salute. “Aye aye, Captain.”

Verity slunk off around the corner, moving quieter than a cat in slippers.

Toby looked at Anna. “You ready?”

“I’m ready,” Anna said.

“Okay.”

“Hey,” she grabbed him quickly on the arm as Toby turned to head towards the door.

“Yeah,” Toby said.

“If we come face to face with Vexxx, do you honestly think that we’ve got the combined ability to take him down?”

Toby gripped his sword tighter. Then he thought of the magic that he had sporadically, randomly used. “Yes,” he said, trying to instill the single syllable with every ounce of conviction he had.

Anna grinned. She looked nervous but defiant. “I suppose ability is of little account without opportunity.”

“That’s very wise, Anna,” Toby said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek swiftly. “Is that one of yours?”

“No,” Anna said. “That was Napoleon.”

“Was he that short French dude?”

Anna shot him a look.

“I’m kidding,” Toby said. “Come on, let’s go.”

When they stepped through the heavy wooden doors, Toby and Anna were immediately enveloped in the heady aroma of hops and barley mingled with the faint scent of fermentation. The brewery hummed with the almost inaudible sound of countless specks of yeast doing their thing in the fermentation process.

The air was thick with fumes, maybe, but it was also heavy with anticipation. Rows of enormous wooden brewing tanks lined the walls. Each one looked to Toby like an enormous wine barrel. Each of the fermentation vats must have housed at least ten-thousand liters of ale.

There was what looked like a pyramid of empty barrels in the shadows at the back of the room. In one corner of the brewery, a water-powered mill churned rhythmically. The creek of its ancient gears was barely audible over the strange ambient bubbling of the tanks.

Toby could see pipes running from each of the enormous vats to a central pipe that led out of the building. It disappeared into a hole in the ground. Toby guessed that this central pipe allowed gravity to transport the beer down to the designated fountains in Stagbreach and onward to the thirsty throats of the elated drinkers of the Jousting Jamboree.

“There must be a dozen of these tanks,” Anna whispered. “Which one do you think’s got the potion in it?”

Toby’s eyes were glued grimly up near the ceiling. “I guess it would be the one that’s being protected by the two henchmen over there.”

Anna’s head snapped around. There were two human-shaped figures standing up in the gloom. Though they weren’t moving, Toby could tell they were looking down on him and Anna.

“Well, well, well,” said a voice from out of the gloom. “Ain’t this a treat? Not only do I get to reap a rich monetary reward for my services to Duke Diddle, but I also get the sweetest prize of all. My bloody revenge.”

Toby sighed through his nose and raised his sword. “Hello, Gary. I’d like to say that I’m surprised and disappointed to see your mottled face here, but to be honest, there’s something sadly inevitable about a limp biscuit like you getting in the way.”

“It ain’t just me, Adams” Gary said in a low snarl. “I’ve brought a few of my friends along with me.”

Toby glanced around. More shortbread men were emerging out of the shadows. They were armed with a motley, but no less deadly for that, collection of weapons.

“Great,” Toby said sarcastically. “It’s a batch made in heaven.”

Gary’s chocolate chip eye narrowed. “Get that bastard!” he yelled.

The shortbread men rushed forward.

41

There was one thing that could be said for his shortbread opponents, and that was that they were a brittle bunch.

Toby’s sword cleaved through the arm of one foe. With a scream, the shortbread man dropped the hatchet, not that he had any other choice, seeing as it was clutched in the hand of the arm that had just been severed.

Anna scooped the weapon up. With a battle cry of her own, which included a selection of choice swear words, some of which Toby didn’t quite understand, she launched herself at their opponents.

Teeth gritted and eyes narrowed with anger at Gary’s betrayal of the King and Queen, Toby slashed left and right with his sword. There were a lot of enemies. They seemed to pour out of the woodwork of the brewery. Happily for Toby and Anna, the numbers of their foes actually acted as a hindrance to their enemies. Whilst Toby and Anna were able to dodge around posts and beams and barrels, jumping up onto crates and ducking under the water-powered conveyor belt, the shortbread man got in one another’s way.

Toby didn’t really know much about such things, but it was clear to him that they weren’t a cohesive fighting unit. They were little more than thugs. Thugs that Gary had managed to either coerce or bribe into helping him.

Hell, Toby thought, as he yanked his sword free of a shortbread man’s head that he just split in half, spilling syrupy brains, they might even be all of the same family, or the same batch.

As he fought his way through the press of shortbread men, half of Toby’s mind was still on trying to identify the tank that was most likely to hold the hidden potion. Before his surroundings had become a veritable sea of shortbread men, Toby had noticed the two shortbread guards who appeared to be stationed on top of a tank at the far right-hand side of the brewery.

“Got to start somewhere,” he growled to himself.

A shortbread man came at him with a mace. Toby parried the stroke. His sword moved, twisted in his grip. The mace went clattering to the floor. Toby kicked out with an unrefined boot. The shortbread man staggered backwards and let out a shriek as one of his legs was caught in the gears of the water-driven conveyor belt. There was a crunching sound, which reminded Toby of snapping a biscuit in half before dunking it in a cup of coffee. The shortbread man fell in a shower of crumbs.

Reacting to some instinct of his own, or perhaps some call of his enchanted sword, Toby whipped the blade around his back and parried another blow, this time from a basic woodman’s ax being wielded inexpertly by a shortbread man. His sword blade snaked out in response and severed the haft of the ax.

The shortbread man holding it looked down in dismay. “Crap on a—” he started to say.

Toby shoved the blade through his chest and twisted it. Icing poured out of the wound.

Toby, in those opening few instances, made a conscious decision to surrender himself to the push and pull of the blade in his hand. Unsurprising, perhaps, seeing as they were led by Gary, his opponents were not refined fighters. They were as eager and rash as any tavern brawlers that Toby had seen in the Toby Jug. This meant that each and every one of them thought as an individual and not as to how they might swamp him and Anna as a team.

Anna had picked up another hatchet from somewhere and was laying about her with a New Yorker’s vehemence.

“Take that, you sons of biscuits!” Toby heard her scream.

Toby was just swinging around to face another opponent when he caught a glimpse of Gary. The traitor was slipping between a couple of barrels. The shortbread man had his head tilted up, and his eyes were fixed on the very tank that Toby had been intent on examining first.

That’s the one we need to—

A biscuity arm reached around Toby’s neck. It clamped hard around his throat. Toby choked. He thrust an elbow back hard, connecting with a crispy and crunchy exterior. The shortbread man who had him in the headlock grunted but kept his hold.

Toby felt the blood thumping in his head as his windpipe was constricted. Another shortbread man, grinning a red smile, came lumbering towards him. He had a long knife clutched in his hand. Toby saw something drop out of the rafters.

It was Verity. She fell like a shadow. She landed as softly as one too. The shortbread man, advancing on Toby, let out a little whooping cry as a dagger punched through his back and out of his chest in a spray of crumbs and icing. The blade retracted. Verity’s other arm, with its blade extended, came across the shortbread man’s throat and opened it. Icing blood gushed out. The shortbread man fell.

Toby let out a little wheezing grunt of admiration.

Verity, who was some ten paces from him, reached down to a boot and, in one smooth motion, unsheathed the knife she had there and sent it spinning past Toby’s face. There was a dull, crunching thud. The grip around his throat relaxed. The shortbread man, trying to strangle him, fell backwards with Verity’s throwing knife embedded in the center of his great wide forehead.

Toby nodded his thanks and rubbed at his throat. “Think you two can hold them off?” he said, glancing around and seeing Gary climbing a ladder towards the tank that Toby guessed the potion was hidden in.

“Us three, you mean,” Frank said.

“I think we can buy you some time,” Verity said. She wiped some icing off her face and grimaced. “Ugh, this is much stickier than blood,” she complained. “It’s going to be hell getting it out of my hair.”

Toby grinned and darted away. He followed Gary towards the back of the brewery. He cut down a couple more shortbread men as he went. Just as he was about to reach the ladder that Gary had ascended, there was a stealthy movement in the corner of Toby’s eye. He just had time to half turn when the shortbread man wielding a crossbow stepped into full view and pulled the firing lever.

The bolt shot towards Toby’s chest. In that splintered second, Toby felt heat rush through his palm. The red stone set into the pommel of his sword glowed bright. Toby’s hand came up. It performed a figure eight parry in the air, which was almost too fast for Toby’s own eyes to follow. The crossbow quarrel was sheared in half in the air.

“Holy fuckballs,” Toby said.

“Holy fuckballs,” growled the shortbread crossbowman.

Toby’s eyes came to rest on the face of his would-be shooter. He feigned a step towards the shortbread man. His enemy dropped the crossbow and legged it.

Toby reached for the ladder and started to climb. When he got to the top, he was obliged to drop down a couple of rungs as Gary was waiting for him. The leader of the shortbread men swung an axe at Toby’s exposed head. Toby felt the blade whistle over his hair.

He launched himself up the ladder as Gary overbalanced. Gary’s axe came back around, and Toby caught it with his own weapon. For a moment, the two of them strove, one against the other. Then Toby managed to set his feet and pushed Gary away.

“What did he promise you, Gary?” Toby asked.

Gary smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yeah, of course I’d like to know. That’s why I asked,” Toby said. “I’m not just engaging in some pithy back and forth with you. I’m interested. Sounds to me like you would have had a pretty good deal working for Queen Lascivo.”

“Duke Diddle has bigger, broader ideas for Eclipsia than King Balourd and his whore queen,” Gary spat.

“Shit, is that right?” Toby said, raising an eyebrow. “And what would those bigger, broader plans be?”

“It’s alright for you, isn’t it?” Gary said. “You’re a human.”

“What are you on about?” Toby asked. “You’re human shaped. There are elves and dwarves and goblins and men and all sorts that make up Eclipsia. Why do you feel so hard done by?”

“Ah, that’s spoken like someone who’s been born into the privilege of flesh,” Gary said.

“What?”

“We’re baked. We’re not born,” Gary said. “We’ve always been looked down on, us shortbread and gingerbread people. Always viewed as second class citizens.”

Toby took a few steps to his left, trying to move towards the tank that he had his eye on. Gary moved counterclockwise to counter him.

“Look, Gary, I’m sorry that you feel hard done by,” Toby said, “but I’m sure it’s one of those things you could just talk to Queen Lascivo or King Balourd about.”

“This is a systemic ideology,” Gary said.

“Those are a couple of big words coming from someone like you, Gary,” Toby said. “Were they planted in your head by someone called Vexxx, perhaps?”

The way that Gary’s biscuity face contorted into a frown of anger was answer enough. “With that wand of Duke Diddles,” Gary said, “us biscuit folk won’t feel so put upon, so segregated. They’ll be much weirder stuff than us floating around in the world once the Duke takes power.”

“Wow,” Toby said. “That might be the most petty reason for treason I’ve ever heard. Not to mention totally delusional. I’ve seen a load of shortbread and gingerbread men hanging out with all sorts of different folks in loads of different taverns. I saw that today alone. No one looked like they gave a crap.”

Gary raised his sword. Toby readied himself.

“Ah, I struck a nerve,” Toby said. “I think I see. What you’re really saying is that Duke Diddle, perhaps, has offered you the chance to be, what, the leader of the biscuit folk? Some sort of right-hand man to him or something?”

Gary shuffled closer.

“Ah, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s just a power thing?” Toby shook his head. “It’s always just a power thing, isn’t it? A greed thing. An ego thing. You just want to be important, is that it, Gary?”

Gary snarled something inarticulate.

“Shit, Gary,” Toby said. “I come from another world. I come from a place called New York City. It’s a place that’s practically run on egotism. You know what I’ve learned about it? About egos? It’s that it’s just a glass that distorts your own life when you look through the bottom of it.”

“Shut your pie-hole!” Gary said.

“I’m just trying to tell you, Gary, that none of this is worth it,” Toby replied. “Besides, Duke Diddle is going to fuck you in the end. Vexxx probably has instructions to kill you and your buddies down there and sweep you under the carpet after all this is done. Which, let’s face it, is going to be a lot easier with you, being biscuit people and all, and able to be crumbled up into the convenient little—”

Gary charged. There was a clash and smash of steel on steel. Sparks flew from their two blades. Toby was driven back a few steps. He wheeled. Gary’s ax blade whistled past the end of his nose. There was another furious exchange of blows. Toby ducked another vicious overhand cut from Gary, and then kicked out at the back of the shortbread man’s leg.

Gary let out a cry, stepped backwards, and found that there was nothing to stand on but air. He yelled as he fell backwards into the vat of ale, letting go of his ax as he went.

“Help me!” the shortbread man cried, panic evident in his voice.

Toby moved forward to give him some assistance. Gary was clutching onto the edge of the enormous beer vat. The frothing ale came up to his shoulders.

Liquid, the Achilles heel of biscuit people.

As Toby moved forward to help the shortbread man, he suddenly found himself picked up by some invisible force and thrown against the far wall. He managed to keep a hold of his sword and also managed not to impale himself with it as he fell to the ground with a rush of expelled breath.

Vexxx was standing in that strange, almost fashionable robe of his which was covered in zips and buttons. Where he had come from, Toby had no idea. Vexxx’s bald head gleamed in the dusty light coming through the window behind him. It was the window, Toby guessed, that Verity had gained entry into the building through.

Vexxx looked from Toby down at the hapless Gary floating around in the vat of ale.

Master Vexxx, help me, please!” Gary said. “I’m going soggy!”

Vexxx knelt down, careful to keep himself out of reach of the clutching hand of the shortbread man. “My apologies, Gary. But you’re done.”

“No,” Gary said in a hushed voice. “No, you promised.”

Vexxx made an apologetic face. Toby had seen a lot of feigned apologies living in New York, and it struck him that the black-robed figure really did look like he was remorseful.

“I’m sorry, Gary,” Vexxx said. “But that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.”

“No!” Gary wailed.

Vexxx waved a casual hand at Gary. Toby saw the shortbread man’s arms, which were now thoroughly soaked and inundated with ale, part with his shoulders. Gary sank out of sight into the deep brown murk of the ale vat and disappeared.

Toby got to his feet, sword in hand. Vexxx straightened up as well.

“I wonder,” Vexxx said, in a genuinely interested, almost scholarly voice, “whether he’ll dissolve before he drowns.”

“Do you mind if we dispense with this next part?” Toby asked.

Vexxx cocked his bald head to one side. “What do you mean, Mr. Adams?”

“I mean, can we just bypass the whole witty back-and-forth between the good guy and the bad guy part?” Toby said. “Let’s just get down to finishing this. I want to get down to the Jousting Jamboree with my friends and enjoy the last of it. They make some great pies down there.”

“Optimistic,” Vexxx said, approvingly.

“I’ve always thought that life becomes just that little bit more easy and less of a pain if you at least try and see the good in all situations,” Toby said, with a sickly sweet smile.

Vexxx held out a hand, a shadowy sword coalesced in his grip.

“I’ll have to learn how to do that myself one day,” Toby said.

“I’m not sure if you have the knack,” Vexxx replied. It wasn’t an insult, just a statement of fact according to the other man. “I’ll be sure to try one of these pies you speak of.”

“All right then,” Toby said. “Let’s go.”

He and Vexxx came together. Toby lashed out left and right. Vexxx parried. They spun and danced and twirled, blades flashing. Toby fainted low and then brought his sword up and around in a cut that should have taken Vexxx’s head off. Vexxx conjured a shield out of nowhere. It exploded in a shower of molten fragments and smoke.

Vexxx looked in surprise at his hand. He wrung it as if he had been burned. “That sword…” he said.

“Given to me by another wizard,” Toby said. “So who the hell knows what’s going on with it?”

Vexxx didn’t reply. Instead, he attacked. He forced Toby back. As Toby retreated under the onslaught of shadowy blows, he glanced to his right. They had just passed by the last tank on the row and Toby saw, floating in its nexus of pale blue light, the potion. He tried to reach out a hand.

Vexxx thrust out his own hand in a wave of pulsing air and launched Toby backwards. Toby fell hard onto the wooden boards of the walkway. He rolled backwards just as the shadowy sword descended and sank through the wooden plank in front of him like a hot knife through butter.

Toby launched into a counter attack of his own. He was dimly aware that he was becoming more proficient by the minute as a swordsman. He channeled everything that Lord Marshal Vani had taught him and Anna. He coupled this knowledge with an intrinsic trust of his semi-sentient sword.

To his surprise, Vexxx looked becoming more and more agitated with every passing moment. Toby saw, on a number of occasions the pale mage point a finger at him or thrust out a fist. Toby felt magic wash over him, yet the sword came up and deflected it, almost in the same way that it had taken command of Toby’s hand and helped him cut the crossbow quarrel in half.

As they broke apart for a moment, Vexxx regarded Toby. “I must say, Mr. Adams,” he said, quite politely, “that you really are more of a handful than I gave you credit for. There is more to you than meets the eye.”

“You know what they say,” Toby said. “It’s not the hound in the fight, it’s the fight in the hound.”

“Oh, I like that one,” Vexxx said.

Behind him, Toby saw movement. He made a concerted effort not to let his gaze drift over Vexxx’s shoulder and alert the other man to what was going on. Anna and Verity had emerged up from the ladder that led to the walkway that ran along the top of the row of enormous beer vats. With Verity leading and Anna watching their back, the two women were sneaking up towards the vat in which the potion sat glowing in its levitating force field.

Toby knew that it was up to him to keep Vexxx distracted while his two friends had a punt at getting the potion out of the vat. Once the potion was no longer floating over the beer supply, they could focus on taking Vexxx down.

“I still don’t understand,” Toby said, fishing around for something to say.

“Understand what, Mr. Adams?” Vexxx asked.

“Why don’t you just pack it in with that Duke Diddle and come and join Queen Lascivo and King Balourd?” Toby said.

“I told you it’s a matter of principle, a matter of pride. A man must have his word or he has nothing,” Vexxx said.

“I understand that,” Toby said, meaning it. “But when it comes to keeping your word to a man who wants to overthrow a monarchy using a wand that can help him conjure monsters from the ether…”

“Ah, but not just monsters. The wand is not limited to pulling only monsters from the ether,” Vexxx said.

Toby paused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, the wand’s capabilities are practically limitless,” Vexxx said. “Yes, the making of a monster army suits Duke Diddle now, as it will help him overthrow King Balourd and his queen, who is, let us be candid, not exactly royal material.”

“Yeah, right,” scoffed Toby. “Who wants a ruler who got there by cunning, perseverance, a canny business sense, and a forward-thinking mind when they could have a monarch who became ruler through the expedient method of just being born?”

Behind Vexxx, Anna and Verity had reached the barrel containing the potion. Anna was leaning out whilst Verity held one hand. Anna was groping, trying to reach the potion that floated over the center of the vat.

“The thing is, though his methods might be somewhat uncouth,” Vexxx said, “Duke Diddle really does have the best interests of Eclipsia at heart.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what every single tyrant in the history of the universe has probably started off their reign with saying,” Toby pointed out.

Vexxx considered this. “You might be right,” he conceded.

“I think I am right,” Toby said. “Not to sound too big-headed about it, but the thing is, it’s never going to work out.”

“No?”

“No,” Toby said, “because Duke Diddle, unlike Queen Lascivo, isn’t fearless.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?” Vexxx asked.

“Because he’s not here, he’s not standing where you’re standing right now,” Toby pointed out. “He, like so many tyrants through, well, through my world’s history, seems like a badass at first, using other people as his weapons, but those kinds of guys never last.” They’ve got no staying power. Tyrants like that, they start off seeming invincible, but that illusion quickly fades.”

“Whereas—”

“Whereas Queen Lascivo…” Toby let out a low whistle. “Now there’s someone who is fearless. I tell you what, if Duke Diddle really does overthrow Eclipsia and boots the king and queen out of power, he better hope he kills Queen Lascivo in particular. That woman is fearless, and fearlessness in those without power is a recipe for a real pain in the ass to those who have it.”

“I will pass these insights on to Duke Diddle when I next see him,” Vexxx replied cordially. “As for now…”

Toby felt a thrill pass through him. Anna had almost got the potion in her grip. His eyes must have strayed, though. Vexxx whirled around.

“No,” he said. He raised the sword in his hand. It morphed, in an instant, into a spear.

With Anna reaching for the potion as she was, and Verity holding on to Anna’s free hand with both of hers to stop her falling into the vat of ale, Toby’s two friends were basically helpless.

With the sound of a whipcrack, Frank appeared in the air in front of Vexxx’s face.

This time, his appearance did not have the abrupt effect that it had done on previous enemies. Vexxx was obviously a man who had perfect control over his emotions. He barely registered the imp before his hand flicked out and Frank was sent cartwheeling through the air. He hit the wall to Toby’s left with a soft splatting sound and slid down it.

Vexxx pulled his arm back, ready to launch the shadowy spear.

“No!” Toby yelled in turn. His hand thrust out, turning into a claw.

The spear left Vexxx’s grip. It was heading straight at Anna, straight for her heart Toby saw Anna’s eyes widen.

No.

And then the spear exploded in a cloud of wispy, greasy magic.

“What the…?” Vexxx found himself, to his obvious astonishment, floating in the air. He was trapped in a cage of golden light. He revolved slowly on the spot. “What the…?” was all he said again.

Toby was kneeling on the ground. Sweat was streaming down his face. Every breath was torturous, but he kept the grip on the magic that had abruptly come to him once again in his hour of need.

Vexxx reached down his hand towards Toby. His hands met the globular cage of pulsating gold magic. Sparks erupted. He hastily pulled his hand back, wringing it, smoke curling from his fingertip.

“How…?” he started to say.

Toby couldn’t have answered him, even if he had the breath or energy.

“Get out of here!” he managed to croak at Anna and Verity.

Anna had the potion in hand. The ale was safe for now.

“Toby…” she said.

At that moment the doors below banged open. A host of armed soldiers trooped into the brewery. Biscuit crunched under their feet as they stepped over and through the bodies of the felled shortbread men.

“Up there!” Captain Gurnard roared, pointing in Toby, Anna and Verity’s direction.

Toby was just aware, out of the corner of his rapidly fading vision, that Queen Lascivo and King Balourd were in attendance. Not only that, they were accompanied by Wolfgang Tootenstein and a few more robed figures, whom Toby guessed to be more members of the Royal Wizarding Team.

“Up there!” Toby heard King Balourd’s voice parroting, his plummy voice coming to Toby’s ears as if from the end of a very long tunnel. “Up there, you three magical buggers! Go and help Adams!”

The wizards floated up into the air. They were surrounded in matching nimbuses of bright green light.

The last thing that Toby saw before unconsciousness claimed him were the trio of magic users lassoing the levitating Vexxx with coils of crackling blue arcane energy. Then Toby slumped. He dropped heavily to his knees. He heard the bang of his kneecaps on the boards, but felt no pain.

We… did… it…

Then the floor rushed up to meet him, bounding up to smack him in the face like an overzealous Jack Russel. Toby didn’t even have time to close his eyes before unconsciousness closed over him like a pool of velvet.

42

A few days later, Toby found himself standing in the throne room of the castle of Eclipsia. Anna and Verity stood on either side of him. Frank, who had recovered in body, if not in pride, from being splattered into a wall by Vexxx, was sitting in beetle form on Toby’s shoulder.

Toby was feeling his old self again. He was still slightly gutted that he’d missed the Jousting Jamboree. He supposed, though, that having been unconscious for a full two days after the expenditure of magical energy he never even knew he had, it couldn’t have been helped.

And the main thing is that we foiled Duke Diddle’s scheme to explode seventy percent of Stagbreach’s drinking population, he thought to himself. Not only that, but we got Vexxx.

Toby’s eyes flicked over to where Vexxx stood, quite calm and unperturbed, in a cage of bright blue light in one corner of the throne room. From everything that he had heard from Anna and Verity, Duke Diddle’s right hand man had said very little. Of the few words he had spoken, all of them had been unfailingly polite. He had been both courteous and respectful to both King Balourd and Queen Lascivo.

The doors at the back of the throne room opened. King Balourd and Queen Lascivo walked sedately through from the fish tank parlor. The doors were closed behind them by a pair of liveried servants. The King and Queen took their seats on the dais.

“Mr. Adams, Eclipsia’s hero, how are you, old bean?” King Balourd asked.

“Good, Your Highness, thanks for asking,” Toby replied. “Chipper.”

“I’m not surprised,” King Balourd said amiably. “You had enough sleep, you lazy bugger.”

“I think we all earned it, didn’t we, Your Highness?” Toby said.

King Balourd signaled for a drink. A servant brought him over his goblet of wine.

“And one for my friends, of course,” the King said graciously.

More goblets of wine were produced for Toby, Anna, and Verity.

“Now that you’re fully recovered,” the King said after a hearty slurp from his own goblet, “I think we need to decide what we do with our friend here.” He gestured to Vexxx.

“I’ve told you before, my dear, but I’m in favor of a nice old-fashioned hanging, drawing and quartering,” Queen Lascivo said.

The King chuckled indulgently.

Anna raised an eyebrow at Toby.

“I know, my dear, I know. And if he was any ordinary scalawag, I’d oblige you,” King Balourd said. “But from the little chats we’ve had with Mr. Vexxx here, I feel as if the knowledge he has rattling around in that capacious skull of his could be better used by us.”

“I must admit that I would much prefer to skip the hanging, drawing and quartering if at all possible, Your Majesty,” Vexxx said.

“I’m sure you would,” King Balourd replied, his expression turning grave. “Yet you have still to be forthcoming with any information that might point us in the direction of your master.”

“Whilst loyalty is a fine thing,” Queen Lascivo said, “you must see, Vexxx, that you have no cards to play here. There is only one hand that you can put forward, and that is the truth.”

“There are two hands, with all due respect, Your Majesty, and one of them is putting forward the truth, the information that you want,” Vexxx said, “and the other hand is saying nothing at all.”

“For which you will reap the hangman’s reward,” the Queen said icily, “but only after we spilled your guts, literally, as you refused to spill them, metaphorically.”

Toby watched Vexxx. The pale bald man took off his glasses and polished them. He replaced them on his nose, and then stared pensively up at the ceiling for a moment, through the crackling bars of his magical cage.

“I don’t see why you need my help when it comes to formulating a plan to defeat my master,” Vexxx said in a musing voice.

“You don’t,” the Queen said. “Why ever not?”

“Well, you’ve done it once before,” Vexxx pointed out.

“Yes, but unfortunately we are not entirely certain how that took place,” Queen Lascivo said delicately.

The Queen looked at Toby and caught his eye. Toby gave her a small shake of the head. He was still as unaware as he has always been as to how, as a boy, he had saved the kingdom of Eclipsia.

The King made a motion with his hand. The servants and guards stationed around the walls, at once and as one, headed for the doors, until it was only the King, the Queen, Vexxx, Toby, Anna, Verity, and the unseen Frank in attendance in the throne room.

Vexxx looked around at all of them. “You’re telling me that you’re unaware as to how the Duke met his downfall last time? Truly?” There was a slight frown of puzzlement on his face.

Toby thought he looked like a man who was treading carefully, walking around a trap, not wanting to fall in.

Vexxx scrutinized the King’s face with his big pale eyes. “You really don’t know how Mr. Adams here defeated the Duke?”

The King shook his big, fat head, setting his chins to wobbling. “Why don’t you tell us, old boy?” the King said. “Whilst my Queen would like nothing better than to see your head on a spike, I’ve told her that you’re not as far gone as she believes. Why don’t you use your considerable talents and mental acumen in the defense of the kingdom, hmm?”

“It is because, as I have iterated to Mr. Adams on a couple of occasions,” Vexxx said, “and as I have told you and your good Queen before in our previous interrogations, I left Eclipsia’s Magical University with a seemingly and outwardly ridiculous and useless degree in management.”

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” the King said. “Everyone with half a brain knows that university education is all but useless. And that’s coming from me!”

“That is maybe,” Vexxx admitted. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Duke Diddle offered me a position and a place in the world. I owe him a lot for that.”

“Well then,” the Queen snapped, her usually icy demeanor cracking slightly, “why don’t you spare us all this, and if you won’t leave Duke Diddle’s service, tell us how it is we came to defeat him last time? If you do, as you seem to, know how this was accomplished.”

“Well, it’s due to Mr. Adams’s half-wizarding blood, of course,” Vexxx said slowly.

Toby felt as if he had been hit in the face by a bucket of ice water. He stood, stunned. “Half-wizarding blood?” he repeated. “What are you talking about?”

Surprised looks were exchanged by everyone in the room.

Anna caught Toby’s eye and mouthed, “What the hell is he talking about?”

Vexxx appeared genuinely puzzled. “You really didn’t know?” He fired the question at the Queen.

The Queen looked at the King. The King shook his head.

“Surely the first thing you did, to prove or disprove this man’s claims as to who he was, was to have one of your wizards conduct a blood test?” Vexxx said.

The King looked down at his lap and muttered something into his third and fourth chin.

“Hold on a second,” Toby said loudly. “Are you telling me that’s why I’ve got this iffy, sporadic affinity with magic? Are you telling me that I’m a half-wizard? That I’m actually able to do magic? It’s not just an accident?”

“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Vexxx said in his usual curt, no-nonsense manner. “You have half-magical blood, Mr. Adams. I’m amazed that no one’s made you aware of this fact.”

Queen Lascivo was staring intently at Vexxx.

Vexxx looked with a slightly accusatory eye at the King and Queen, sitting on their thrones. “Honestly, I thought that I’d been foolish and immature and rash during my university days, during those days where I’d spent a week at a time up to the eyeballs in dragon dust,” he said. “But this lack of planning, of scrutiny, boggles my mind.”

“What do you mean?” Toby asked. “Speak plainly, why don’t you, man!”

“The reason this man, who hails from another world beyond our world, can do magic is because he has the blood of a wizard flowing through his veins,” Vexxx said to the King.

Toby gave his head a shake. “But my mum and dad…” he said. “My dad was a mechanic. My mother, well, I never really knew my mother when I was younger, but she was a New Yorker. I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure I would have remembered if she was rocking around the apartment in a robe and a pointy hat with a broomstick over her shoulder.”

Anna let out a little laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it.

“She was gone for a lot of my youth,” Toby gabbled. “She only returned back home in strange circumstances when me and Kevin, that’s my brother, were older. We never really questioned it. We thought it was just a little dispute, a little marital tiff between Mum and Dad, you know? But when she came back more permanently, we supposed that they’d ironed out whatever differences they had.”

Vexxx was staring unblinkingly at Toby. Toby got the annoying impression that the bald-headed man was waiting for him to make some sort of mental leap.

Toby waved his hands around the air and closed his eyes. “But I don’t know why I’m saying that. This is all by the by,” he said. “My mum and my dad were not wizards or witches or magic users.”

“Clearly,” Vexxx said, “that is not true. Magic is hereditary.”

“Look, as interesting and as revelatory as all this is,” the Queen said sharply, “it still doesn’t explain why Mr. Adams here was able to bring Duke Diddle down low. We have plenty of magical users in this realm. Plenty of half mages and half witches who have one parent who is magically inclined and who have magic running through their veins.”

“Ah, but there you put your finger upon the nub,” Vexxx said. He folded his hands behind his back, for all the world looking like a professor about to embark on a dull lecture. “This all boils down to blood,” he said.

“What about blood?” Anna asked. “Toby’s blood?”

Vexxx inclined his head. “Yes,” he said. “The blood that runs through Mr. Adams’s veins. The blood that runs through Duke Diddle’s veins. The blood that the two of them share.”

There was a silence of such resounding loudness that Toby thought he could hear the mice running around in the wainscoting, the sound of a soldier yelling in the practice yard, the very candle flames in the ornate chandeliers flickering.

What… the… fuck?

Before he could marshal or assemble all the questions that he had in his head into something that vaguely resembled a coherent list, there was some muffled shouting beyond the throne room door. The King’s head jerked up from where he had been staring pensively into his lap.

“What—?” the Queen started to say.

The door to the throne room exploded inwards. A couple of guards, or the parts of a couple of guards, were thrown across the floor, leaving streaks of blood on the pristine marble.

“Here we go!” Frank said from his hiding place under Toby’s coat lapel.

A great beast crashed through the doorway. Its shoulder tore out part of the frame as it lumbered in. It was standing on two legs. For a moment Toby thought that it was a minotaur. The top half of it was certainly a bull, but the bottom half was not a man. No, the bottom half belonged to some sort of huge tiger or lion. Its great paws were spread across the stone. Dark claws gleamed.

“Bugger me!” the King exclaimed.

“Ah,” Vexxx said in a vaguely pleased voice. “Right on time. This would be one of the Duke’s happy little accidents, I’m afraid.”

The minotaur creature charged across the room. Its red eyes gleamed and its horned head was lowered. Some more guards ran into the throne room behind it with their swords drawn.

Following their judicious lead, Toby drew his own sword. Anna drew her blade, which she had been given apparently in token for her deeds in the brewery by the King and Queen. Verity extended the knives at her wrist.

“Let’s have it!” Frank, the beetle, crowed happily.

The fight was a brief but bloody affair. With the soldiers, some of whom were armed with crossbows, peppering the minotaur’s back, Toby and his friends soon had the beast at bay in a corner.

Thrashing its horns and stamping its hooves, the minotaur tried to gore Toby. Toby’s sword was so keen he hacked off the horn before it could pierce him. The minotaur, for all its ferocity, was soon overwhelmed. Within ten minutes it lay as a bloody carcass on the ground.

Toby, his breath coming hard and fast in his lungs, his sword dripping blood onto the marble floor wheeled. He wanted to ask Vexxx what the fuck he was talking about. What did he mean, ‘shared blood’? Shared blood with who? With Duke Diddle? Is that what he had meant? How could that be poss—?

The cage in which Vexxx had been held was empty. The crackling blue magic had dissipated. Scorch marks along the walls and across the ceiling showed where the thaumaturgy had ruptured.

“He’s gone!” Anna said.

“He’s fucking gone!” Toby echoed. “And he’s taken the truth about me with him.”

Anna reached out and grasped Toby by the upper arm. “I’m sorry, Tobes.”

Toby clenched and unclenched his fingers around his sword hilt for a moment. Then, with an effort, he relaxed.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay. No one’s hurt, are they?”

“Just some of my brave guards,” King Balourd said. Grief colored his words. It made Toby respect the man. He had come from a world where those at the top rarely gave much thought, let alone care, to those they deemed beneath them.

“It’s okay. I’m okay,” Toby said to Anna. He looked at the place where the man who had held the answer to a question that had become the most pressing question in Toby’s life had been held captive. “It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Anna asked.

“Yeah.”

Anna looked unconvinced. “I wonder what the hell that egg-headed butthole was talking about with that shared blood comment?” she said.

Toby let out a long, calming breath. “We’ll just have to save that question for when Vexxx and us meet again,” he said.

* * *

Vexxx walked out into the garden. It was a well-tended garden. The flowers were in full bloom. They were a riot of color to the eye.

However, Vexxx’s gaze was fixed on the man standing with a watering can in hand and his back to Vexxx, carefully watering a bush of fragrant lavender.

The figure was attired in his usual mismatch of ostentatious fabrics and slightly inharmonious accessories, which Vexxx knew the Duke hoped conveyed an air of regal authority. Privately, Vexxx thought that the man came across as a slightly laughably flamboyant actor who was auditioning for the role of a melodramatic stage villain.

The fabrics were all of blacks and grays and rich deep purples. These clashed rather incredibly with the Duke’s pale orange hair. This hair was slicked back in an attempt to look cunning and sleek, but also with the pragmatic belief that it would help camouflage the Duke’s rapidly expanding bald spot.

“So,” Duke Diddle said in a soft voice, “you escaped?”

“Yes, your monster proved quite efficacious to that extent, sir. I thank you very much.”

The Duke grunted. “A mere twiddle of the wrist.”

“All the same, sir, I humbly thank you.”

Duke Diddle set down the watering can. He was slightly hunched, and he hunched further as he bent down to sniff at the lavender. One hand dropped to his side. Vexxx saw that the wand was clutched in his fingers.

“Is there anything to tell me of the King and Queen of Eclipsia?” Duke Diddle asked without turning. He sucked in a long breath of lavender-scented air.

“Only that they genuinely appeared to have absolutely no idea how it was that your downfall was accomplished two and a half decades ago, sir,” Vexxx said.

He saw the Duke stiffen.

“They weren’t feigning their ignorance?” the Duke asked.

“No,” Vexxx said. “No, I’m mostly certain they weren’t. If they were, then the man, Toby Adams, certainly had no idea. You should have seen his face. It was a picture when I divulged that you and he shared blood.”

A low, chuckling cackle came from the hunched figure. Vexxx saw him shaking with mirth. The cackle rose in pitch until the flowers almost seemed to wilt under its ferocity.

Duke Diddle turned around and fixed Vexxx with his mad, bright blue eyes. His pointed face was contorted into a grin that did not reach his eyes.

“Gosh, I wish I could have been there,” he said. “But if those fools thought that that little revelation was insane, wait until they learn what happened with my dear sister, with Mr. Adams’s dear mother. Just wait until the poor bastard learns of his heritage. It’ll shake him to his very core.”

He started laughing once more, turning back to the lavender to run a gentle finger across one flowering bud.

Vexxx bowed his head. The Duke’s cackles followed him all the way back inside the honeysuckle-covered cottage. He walked over to the fire, poked it into life, and busied himself with making his master a cup of chamomile tea. The greatest threat to the peace and equilibrium of Eclispia liked an afternoon beverage and a biscuit.

His diabolic tendencies and maniacal cackling always calmed down over a nice cup of tea.

End of Book 1

Book 2

1

The ghastly humanoid figures lurched out of the smoke that wreathed the burning village. Behind them, haloing them in orange flames that leapt and crackled hungrily into the beautiful azure sky, cottages and shops were consumed by yet an inferno set to devour another of Stagbreach’s satellite hamlets.

It was a sight that would have wrung the heart of any sympathetic soul, whilst simultaneously filling any unprepared stomach with leaden dread.

The figures moved jerkily, almost drunkenly. They were ragged scarecrow forms, skeletons of moldering brown bones with tattered skin hanging loose and rotten flesh peeling away as if it was being flensed by some invisible hand.

The reeling hellish apparitions mewed, screeched, and bayed like mad hounds as they made their way through the ashes and flying sparks of the dying little community.

The creatures seemed to have been drawn along human lines. The faces of almost all of them were devoid of anything approaching humanity, however. Some had flies or other chitinous insects crawling in and out of nostrils and mouths, while the visages of others were covered in awful leprous, cancerous-looking pustules that leaked viscous yellow fluid.

The oncoming horde was an apocalyptic and bowel-loosening sight.

“Cor, that’s a bit more like it! Old Diddle really put a bit of effort in when he sketched this lot up. Look at the boils on that one! Look at the way they’re oozing all that—”

“Shut up, Frank.”

“Okie dokie.”

“Fuck me,” Toby Adams said. “I didn’t think it would have been possible, but they reek almost as bad as they look.”

“Look at that one over there,” said the pretty woman dressed in the leather coat next to him. She had her brown hair tied up in a practical ponytail and a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.

“You mean that one over there with the belly that is so distended it looks like it’s suffering from the world’s worst case of gas?” the other woman, a blonde, standing on the other side of Toby, said. At first glance, it might have looked like she held matching daggers in her hands. On closer inspection, it would have become clear that the blades were actually extended out from either cuff of her coat.

“Yep, that’s the one,” the brunette, Anna Coombes, agreed.

Toby spotted the monster that the pair of women were alluding to. Its grossly engorged gut almost looked like a mockery of a pregnant belly.

“What are those weird, fleshy, dangling things hanging off it?” Frank asked, interestedly.

Toby glanced at the silvery, sable imp with his squared head and little devilish horns floating in the air next to him.

“I think those are what are commonly referred to as buboes,” Verity None, the blonde, offered.

“Buboes,” Frank said, repeating the word and rolling it over his forked tongue like a fine vintage sherry. “Buboes. They don’t sound very nice, do they?”

“They don’t look very nice,” Toby said with feeling. He suppressed the urge to retch and looked away from the horrible growths. “Makes you wish that you hadn’t had quite so much honey mead last night, doesn’t it?”

“Speak for yourself,” Anna said. “That stuff is delicious.”

Somehow, the words ‘buboes’ and ‘delicious’ being in such close proximity to one another made Toby feel even more queasy. He wiped his hand across his mouth.

“Alright,” he said, trying to get his head back in the game. “Alright. Judging by the corpse green color of the shamblers, they’re the same type of monster that Duke Diddle whipped up to burn and pillage that wheat field a week ago.”

Anna and Verity nodded.

“You know, I used to have a mate, back down in the Beyond Beyond,” Frank said conversationally, “and his sitting room was painted that same pale green that those animated corpses, or whatever the hell they are, are.”

“All right, that’s enough,” Toby said, cutting the imp off. “We don’t need to hear about the interior decorating choices of demonic entities, thanks. We’ve got a job to do.”

“That we do,” Anna said. She knocked an arrow to her bowstring.

Toby reached for his enchanted sword that hung at his hip and drew it. It made a satisfying ringing sound as the blade cleared the mouth of the scabbard.

“I’d like to point out, not for the first time,” Frank said as he reclined in midair and drifted around Toby’s head like a rather talkative and very small cloud, “that even though you say we have a job to do, we’re yet to be paid for it. That, so far as I understand it, is a key component of employment.”

“This isn’t about money, Frank,” Verity said, cutting him off. “This is for honor.”

“Oh, don’t you start with that rubbish,” Frank said. “You know how it grates on my ethereal nerves when you start talking like that.”

“What?” Toby said. “It’s a charitable act. We’ve got the skills to protect the peasantry of Eclipsia. It’d be remiss if we didn’t play our part.”

“Bloody hellfire,” Frank said. “Using words like ‘remiss’ already… You’ve been in this world too long, my son. As for charitable deeds, what are those again?”

“Charity is where you do something selfless for the benefit of others,” Anna explained.

“And who pays you for that?” Frank said.

“No one pays us for that, Frank,” Anna said. “That’s why it’s called goddamn charity. That’s what it means. You do it for nothing.”

“You do something for nothing, for people you don’t even know?” Frank said.

Verity nodded.

Frank looked from the faces of the two former Earthlings to the princess-featured Verity, then back to Toby again. He shook his little oily black head. He clicked his fingers, and a cigar popped out of nowhere. He puffed on it thoughtfully for a moment and then said, “Cool, cool, cool. Cool. If that isn’t the most fucked thing I’ve ever heard then I don’t know what is.”

The shamblers—for so Toby and his friends had labeled them over the past couple of weeks—lurched onward, getting closer and closer to where Toby and his company stood waiting for them.

They stood on the edge of the village. They waited, weapons drawn and gleaming in the rising light of the fires.

Earlier that day, they had received a report from some of the villagers who called the little habitation home that Duke Diddle’s minions had been massing for a raid. Toby and his friends had ridden to the village as fast as they could after readying themselves for the journey. The riding part had perhaps taken a little longer than it might ordinarily have done. This was due to the fact that, as former New Yorkers, Anna and Toby were not really at home on horseback.

Over the past couple of months, since Duke Diddle and his right-hand man, the enigmatic Vexxx, had reared their heads from out of the mists of the past, Toby, Anna, and Verity had been keeping their heads down and training to become as formidable a trio of warriors as they could.

In the intervening time since the day that Vexxx had escaped the clutches of King Balourd and Queen Lascivo, Duke Diddle had been busying himself by harrying Stagbreach and their surrounding townships with monster attacks. None of these attacks had been particularly devastating, but they had been fairly constant.

The skirmishes had kept the much-reduced and poorly trained armed forces of Eclipsia busy. However, As Lord Marshal Vani was fond of saying, there was no experience like battle-experience.

“There never was a sharper, or potentially shorter, lesson than them as you learn in the middle of a war,” the ogre would boom out to the parade ground.

As their monstrous enemy, which Duke Diddle had quite literally drawn and pulled out of the ether using the diabolically useful wand he had built for himself, closed on them, Verity began whistling a jaunty tune to herself.

Toby tried not to dwell on how they were meant to defeat an enemy who had, more or less, an infinite amount of minions at his beck and call. Instead, he concentrated on the fight in front of him.

“One enemy at a time!” Toby growled. “Until we win.”

“Until we win,” Anna echoed. She pulled her bowstring to her ear and sighted.

“You always say that before we get stuck in,” Frank said.

“Yeah, well, it’s good advice,” Toby retorted. “And although I don’t have much experience as a leader in battle, I reckon it’s a pretty safe move to try and not sound like a pea-brained butt-head before you go into one.”

“Too true, too true. Well thought out that, man,” Frank said.

Toby gripped his sword in two hands. The enchanted ruby that was set into the weapon’s pommel, and which seemed to guide Toby’s hand sometimes when the fighting was hottest and heaviest, glowed a deep blood red. Like he himself did, the sword almost seemed to hum and thrill with the thought of the coming battle.

Toby gritted his teeth and settled his stance as the slack-faced zombie-type monsters—their features and bodies covered with rippling growths, their mouths stretched wide into broken-toothed rictus smiles, their weeping, sore-covered bodies teeming with colonies of maggots and other insects—came towards them.

He swallowed back another mouthful of nausea.

“I really shouldn’t have drunk so much last night,” he reprimanded himself for the umpteenth time.

“Don’t worry, mate,” Frank said from his shoulder. “You look a little green around the gills, but there’s nothing that your first decapitation or evisceration won’t sort out.”

“Cheers for that pep talk, Frank.”

“No worries.”

“Do me a favor, will you?”

“What’s that, Tobes?”

“Don’t give me any more.”

“Alright, mate.”

Toby’s knuckles whitened on the grip of his sword. Bizarrely, despite the acute case of the mead flu that he was suffering from, as well as the generally horrifically repulsive appearance of the shamblers coming towards him, he felt a smile tugging at his lips.

“Anyone got a good battle cry they want to throw out there?” he asked.

“Death!” shouted Frank.

“That’s a little bit negative, Frank,” Anna said.

“How about ‘Death to hangovers!’?” Toby roared.

“Yeah,” Anna said. “I mean, it’s not great, but it’ll do.”

Together, screaming wordlessly, the three friends and the one imp charged into battle.

2

Toby waded into the fight. That wasn’t a colorful bit of imagery either. He was quite literally obliged to wade into the fight thanks to, after cutting down his first shambler, his next step depositing him calf-deep in the entrails of a squirming shambler that Anna had grounded with a shot through the head with her bow and arrow.

“Whoa, that’s fucking horrible!” Frank said in a gleeful voice. “Are those your good boots?”

“No, they’re not my good boots,” Toby said, extracting his foot. It made a liquid sucking sound as he pulled it free.

“Pity,” the imp floating about his head said. “That would’ve been the icing on the cake. And speaking of cake, how about that stink, eh? The putrid, suppurating stench coming off these things is unreal, ain’t it? I tell you, it reminds me of this top-quality breakfast I had back in—”

“Shut up, Frank,” Toby said between gritted teeth as he ducked the swiping claw of one of the shamblers.

“Sorry, mate. I forget that you humans like to focus when you’re busy doing this sort of thing. It’s like when Anna and Verity are doing them yoghurt exercises—”

“Yoga, you mean?” Toby said, stabbing his sword through the brittle chest of a shambler who fell backwards with a thin croak.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Where they twist themselves up like pretzels. Anyway, the way you lot really zone in and concentrate on not dying reminds me of…”

Happily, Toby was able to tune Frank out after that. Although his presence often seemed like more of a penance than anything else, Toby was willing to put up with the little imp’s company as he occasionally found himself in a position to blast one of the shamblers with a bit of magic.

Doesn’t mean I have to listen to his waffling, though.

Toby knew that for whatever reason, Frank had a limitation so far as his ability to perform more potent magic went. A case in point had been when Toby and he had met and, subsequently, been bonded to each other. Frank had very obligingly turned a wizard who had been trying to attack Toby, a certain Rowan Moonshroud, into a turnip. It had taken Frank a number of days to recharge after that.

Whenever the imp was particularly annoying, Toby would always make a point of drawing Frank’s attention to the fact that he had finite magical abilities. There wasn’t much that annoyed the demonic entity, but being reminded of his limitations was one of them.

Toby’s sword descried a wide arc of razor-sharp slicing death around him. Bits of shamblers went flying as his blade sliced easily through the diseased, wasted, and putrefying flesh. The butchery made a lot of noises. They were the kinds of noises that weren’t suited to a man who had enjoyed a little too much goblin rum than was probably good for him the previous evening and now had a capricious stomach. They were the kinds of noises which Toby hoped he wouldn’t remember but knew his contrary brain most certainly would.

Helpfully, after five minutes or so of ducking and weaving, of cutting and hacking and stabbing and blocking, he was able to lose himself in the fight.

During the almost daily lessons that he, Verity, and Anna had been taking with Lord Marshal Vani, the head of Eclipsia’s armed forces, Toby’s mind and body had begun to meld together so that when he was under attack he entered an almost trance-like, automatic state of mind. His mind retreated to that place now. It walked the familiar paths of battle drills. It lost itself in the many counters and patterns of melee combat which had ingrained themselves into his sinews and muscles.

“Oh, look,” Verity said. “That one with the distended stomach was full of gas.”

Toby, despite his better inclinations, looked to where Verity was gazing. Anna had struck the shambler that she had spotted previously, right in the guts with one of her arrows.

She really is getting good with that thing, Toby thought to himself.

The arrow had punctured the bulbous gut, and the overextended skin had ruptured. A miasma of green gas was, indeed, fountaining from the slowly opening wound.

“Oh, yuck,” Verity said a moment later.

Fatty, glistening ropes of serpentine intestine were suddenly writhing and flopping out of the shambler’s abdominal cavity like a very lengthy, half-filled sausage skin discarded by some demented butcher. The loops of guts splattered onto the bright green grass of the meadow in which they were currently fighting.

“Yeah, that’s pretty grim, alright,” Toby agreed.

The shambler itself continued on, heedless of the fact that it was missing more and more of its vital organs with every step it took, and ground its own viscera under its horny feet.

“You’d think that even the basic power with which old Duke Diddle has animated them all with would tell it to stop and— Oh no, look there he goes!” Frank said enthusiastically.

The foul, zombie-like creature, which Duke Diddle had pulled out of the ether using his wand and his imagination, had stopped and was now busily trying to cram its own slithering, sticky, stinking guts back into the rent that its bursting stomach had made in its torso.

“Well dunk my dick in sugar and call it a beignet,” Toby said to no one in particular. “That’s just fucking… I mean, even if I wasn’t hungover, that would be a bit much to deal with.”

“Admittedly, and remember this is coming from a being of the Below Below,” Frank said, “that is pretty full-on.”

“It’s just the smell as well, isn’t it?” Toby said, gagging slightly. “It’s just the fact that it smells like all of them should be visiting a plumber rather than a dentist.”

Toby cut another three of the shamblers down. It was as the third vile apparition fell to his sword that he was suddenly struck by a realization.

“I don’t think these are quite like the ones we faced before,” he cried out.

“What do you mean?” Anna asked.

Verity spun and flashed past Toby. Her extendable dagger blades, which she could pop in and out from under her cuffs at will, were spraying sticky streamers of yellow and green pus and blood all over the place as she worked her lethal magic on the shamblers.

“I think I know what you mean,” the blonde said.

“The wounds,” Toby said. “If you don’t kill them outright—”

“—their wounds are knitting back together,” Verity finished with a nod.

Even as the words left Verity’s mouth, Toby saw that his latest sword gash, which he had scored down the length of a shambler’s rotting thigh, had slowly drawn itself back together so that it looked like it had been sewn up with livid sutures. The awful, moldering flesh, seething with maggots under the skin, made Toby grimace with distaste as he sliced the malformed head from the shambler’s shoulders.

It wasn’t too long before Toby and his friends had wiped out the horde of shamblers. As they whittled down the numbers of the monsters, Toby had attempted to cast some spells of his own. His efforts had been to no avail.

It seemed like only yesterday that Duke Diddle’s right hand man, Vexxx, had, just before escaping the King and Queen’s custody, all but told Toby he was a half-wizard. That revelation had been a long time sinking in. It had made sense, in a way. Toby had, on only a couple of occasions of intense stress, cast spells. He hadn’t meant to, but the results had been undeniable.

He could do magic.

He just didn’t know how.

He felt like an old person confronted with the remote to the latest home entertainment system. He’d managed to turn the damn thing on a couple of times by sheer luck, but he still didn’t have a clue as to how to rent the latest Hollywood offering in 3D with the sound system set to theater. He felt like he was blindly stabbing buttons in the dark whilst wearing boxing gloves.

Once Toby had split the final lurching horror down the middle and then cut off half its head so that it fell limply to the floor as a mound of mushy meat, he looked around.

The village, the name of which escaped him for the moment, was a mess of fire and smoke.

“Clear!” he shouted.

“Clear!” came the voices of his two companions.

Anna and Verity came to stand beside Toby. They were soot smeared and sweating. Toby imagined he didn’t look much different.

Together they watched mutely as thatch, which had kept the weather out of the cottages of that little hamlet for generations, blew up into the air, carried by the roaring heat. Wattle walls collapsed inwards in showers of sparks. Beams crashed down with dull thuds.

The fact that it was a beautiful day somehow cemented the awfulness of that milieu. Aright blue sky, sun almost at its zenith, emerald green grass, a few white fluffy clouds on the horizon. None of that went with the scene of utter devastation.

And none of it goes with the stink, Toby thought to himself.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said to Anna and Verity as they watched the villagers walking cautiously out from the surrounding woodlands where they’d taken cover during the raid, “Duke Diddle knows his stuff.”

“What do you mean?” Anna said.

“I mean that it’s not just a standard war he’s waging here, is it? He’s attacking not only the hearts of Eclipsians—”

“Everyday Eclipsians,” Verity added.

“Right, he’s not just attacking the hearts of the everyday people of this land. He’s also attacking their minds,” Toby said. “These monsters, they’re not actually that hard to defeat. They’re slow-moving, cumbersome, and unless a whole bunch of them get a hold of you, they can’t really do too much damage.”

“But how they look and how they smell…” Anna said.

Toby nodded. “It’s enough to give anyone nightmares.”

“Well, I suppose, since he’s pulling these things from his imagination, they probably are the stuff of nightmares,” Verity pointed out.

“That is a good point,” Toby agreed.

They watched sadly as the villagers of the little habitation formed a bucket line and tried valiantly to put out the fires that were tearing their homes apart.

“Come on,” Toby said after a few moments. “Let’s go home.”

Anna nodded. “I could use a bath,” she said in a small voice.

“And I could use a drink,” Verity said. “That awful reek has gone right into the back of my throat. I’m sure I’ll have to throw away these clothes.”

“I could do with a bath and a drink,” Toby said. He put his arms around his friends. “And I don’t really mind which one comes in the tub.”

“First stop home,” Verity said, “and then the Toby Jug.”

“Oh, yeah,” Toby said. “I’m already picturing a jug of that nice dark beer Oswald’s got on tap.”

“Not so fast, cowboy,” Anna said, not without a hint of regret in her voice. “We’ll have to make a stop off at the palace before we go to the Toby Jug.”

Toby nodded. “You’re right. There are some people for whom a report just can’t wait.”

“And the King and Queen of Eclipsia,” Verity said, “are two of them.”

3

The belch that reverberated from down the hallway of the palace and around the one-of-a-kind parlor was given extra heart by the fact that the room was lined in glass. Behind this glass were a countless array of fish tanks housing myriad different varieties of fish.

Toby always found himself thinking how it would have been just the kind of room to have been found at the Playboy Mansion back in its heyday.

There was a lot that was said about King Balourd. A lot of it was derogatory. Most of those derogatory things centered around the irrefutable fact that the monarch of Eclipsia was possessed of the kind of intellect that would probably allow him to hide his own Easter eggs.

However, Toby thought to himself, there can be no denying one thing. King Balourd’s staff keep a hell of a drinks cabinet.

“Son of a banshee knows how to entertain, does he not?”  Frank whispered. He was in beetle form and perched on Toby’s shoulder. Toby heard the self-proclaimed evil djinn let out a tiny burp.

Toby, Anna, and Verity were standing in King Balourd’s favorite parlor. They had been furnished with refreshments whilst they waited to be admitted, but they were now refreshment-less. After the run-in with the shamblers earlier, Toby found he could have done with another.

The organisms in the many fish tanks peered with their big googly eyes at the three adventurous companions as they waited for the King and Queen to arrive. Toby knew that the few rare prisoners brought to stand before the King and Queen of Eclipsia in this room were told—or had heard through the grapevine—that the fish and their countless unblinking eyes were meant to unman them, make them feel their guilt, and put them off their stride.

Toby knew that the collection of aquariums was nothing more than the end result of King Balourd’s love of all things marine.

It was well known, and graciously accepted by the Stagbreach public, that King Balourd had a thing for mermaids. No one seemed particularly bothered about it. Not even the Queen.

Toby knew enough about the King and Queen’s relationship to know that it was more a matter of business than passion. Queen Lascivo was the owner of the largest chain of brothels and cathouses in all of Eclipsia. She had been a very rich woman when she married the King. The King was a genial old boy who had not much wanted a wife but had been in dire need of money. For her part, Queen Lascivo had conquered the business world and had rather fancied being the head of the kingdom.

It had, as far as business propositions went, been a match made in heaven.

What made it all the more gratifying, as far as both parties were concerned, was the fact that the King and Queen got along very well. Both were quite content to let the other pursue and enjoy those things they liked pursuing and enjoying. While they had two very distinct personalities and very different interests, they did share one crucial passion, though.

Eclipsia.

Both King Balourd and Queen Lascivo cared very much for the continued prosperity of their realm and the people that called it home.

“Ah, Toby, old boy! So good to see you, dear chap!” King Balourd’s booming voice echoed around the glass-lined aquarium parlor as the doors were flung open by a pair of liveried footmen to emit the royal couple.

Toby turned with a genuine smile on his face. “Good to see you too, Your Majesty,” he said. “You’re looking particularly fit this afternoon.”

“Fit for a fiddle, one might even say,” the King said jovially.

“I believe the expression is ‘fit as a fiddle,’ my dear,” Queen Lascivo said in her silken voice.

The King’s great florid forehead wrinkled up like a pink duvet.

“No, no,” he declared, “I prefer the expression my way.” He chuckled heartily and clutched his great gut, which strained at the velvet and ermine that cloaked his person.

Toby nodded in greeting to Queen Lascivo as both the King and Queen sat themselves down in their comfortable armchairs. Only once the pair of them were set on their royal derrieres did more footmen hurry forward with seats for the guests.

The Queen was an absolute stunner. A grade-A milf knockout. She was the kind of slightly older woman—maybe fifty, if that—that all younger men pictured when someone said ‘milf’. She was, to put it simply, Stiffler’s mom—a legendary paragon of mature feminine beauty and sexual wiles.

The Queen had the kind of bust that Toby could—and very much would have liked to—get lost in for a couple of days, at least. Her raven hair was piled regally on her head that day, gold pins glinting where they held it in place. Her shrewd emerald eyes peered at Toby, Anna, and Verity from under deeply shaded lids. She exuded an almost effortless sexual allure that came off her like a perfume.

“Mr. Adams,” she said in a low purr. “Miss Coombes, Miss None, how are you all? You look, if I may say so, freshly scrubbed.”

“Apologies, Your Majesty,” Verity said. “We were obliged to take a bath before we came round to see you.”

Anna nodded. “We had another run-in with Duke Diddle’s lurching shamblers, Your Majesty,” she said. “We were a little ripe.”

“Yes, I gathered as much,” the Queen said. “And say no more. I remember when Captain Gurnard brought one of the awful thing’s severed heads to show me, back when the shamblers were first loosed. We had to burn the rug he tossed it down on.”

“Took it out of his pay that rug, though,” King Balourd said. “Fair is fair.”

The Queen nodded.

“You defeated the rotten slimy buggers?” King Balourd said.

“We did, Your Majesty,” Toby said with a nod. “Cut them up and turned them into dog food. Although, to be fair, I don’t think there are many, if any, mutts that would be keen to feast on the mess left behind by those things.”

“No,” King Balourd said. “No, by all the accounts we have heard over the past month or so—many of which have come from the three of you, actually, now that I come to think of it…”

“Make that four,” came Frank’s put-out voice. He was still in the body of a beetle and still hidden under Toby’s collar.

Toby tried to shush him as quietly as he could out of the corner of his mouth.

The King frowned. “Anyway,” he said, giving his head a little shake so that his crown threatened to slip over his eyes, “what I mean is that they don’t sound too nice, these shamblers.”

“Speaking of which,” Queen Lascivo said, smoothing out the skirt of her midnight blue gown, “these raids seem to be coming more and more frequently.”

“Yes, they are, Your Majesty,” Toby agreed.

“We have noticed something quite interesting about that, Your Queenliness,” Anna said.

The Queen inclined her head politely. Toby was unsure whether the beautiful woman allowed anyone other than Anna Coombes to call her such names as ‘Your Queenliness,’ ‘Your Queenship,’ ‘Your Madjereeno,’ or, on one occasion, ‘Queen Lasciviyo-yo.’ However, for whatever reason, Queen Lascivo seemed to have a weak spot as far as Anna Coombes was concerned.

“Go on, Miss Coombes,” she said.

“Well, Your Queenliness,” Anna said, “from the little we’ve been able to gather about the ‘happy little accidents’ of Duke Diddle that we’ve come across, it seems that when the gaps between attacks are longer, the monsters themselves, when they inevitably appear, are tougher.”

“Is that so?” the Queen said, and there was genuine interest coloring her words.

“That’s right,” Toby said. “It was Anna who first noticed it.”

“That’s right,” Anna said, nodding her head eagerly. “It was about a fortnight ago now, I think, that I first cottoned onto it, but it happened again today. We hadn’t fought the shamblers for—how long was it, Tobes?”

“About ten days,” Toby said.

“Right.”

“And before that, we’d had four attacks on three different villages within a week,” the Queen said at once.

“Right,” Toby said.

“And,” Anna went on, “when we fought the shamblers today, their wounds—if we didn’t kill them outright—actually knitted themselves back together.”

The Queen shot Toby a sharp glance.

“It’s true,” Toby said. “And it was a pretty disgusting sight to see, if I don’t say so myself.”

“And excuse me for being the dunce in the room,” King Balourd said in his usual chummy voice, “but what does all that mean, precisely? Explain it to us in layman’s terms for the noodleheads in the room.”

“It means, dear,” Queen Lascivo said, putting a hand on her husband’s pudgy-fingered one, “that the more time Duke Diddle, our old friend and former counselor, takes between attacks, the stronger the monsters he can bring forth are. Is that not the conclusion you came to, Master Adams?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Toby said. “That’s exactly the conclusion that my two lovely companions and I came to as we rode back home.”

“Then why, in the name of all that is crumbed and dipped in gravy, is old Diddle peppering the land with attacks of these stinky, slimy, rotten blighters? What do you call them again?”

“Shamblers, my lord.”

“That’s it. Yes, why? Why is he sending all these shamblers our way? Why doesn’t he just save up his metaphorical pocket money, as it were, and hit us with something enormous and awful?”

“I think,” Toby said, “that it’s because he doesn’t want to give us more time than necessary to prepare ourselves.”

“We are in an interesting situation, Your Majesty,” Verity said, stepping forward.

The King beamed as he always did when he laid eyes upon the beautiful buxom blonde that was Verity None. She looked every inch the stereotypical princess from a nursery rhyme. However, Verity None was about as far removed from a damsel in distress as anyone Toby had ever met.

He had once, on one memorable occasion, seen the blue-eyed beauty respond to a leering man in the street, who inadvisably called to her, ‘MacMunzel, MacMunzel, won’t you let down your pubic hair—so I can have a rummage around in it?’ by cutting off his ear.

“I’m sorry,” Verity had said sweetly to the screaming man as he scrambled around on the ground and tried to get hold of his lopped-off aural accessory, “I thought you said, ‘Cut off my ear.’“

“Yes, we’re in an interesting situation,” Verity went on. “While Duke Diddle seemingly has this amazingly powerful weapon in the wand he created up in the tower of this lovely castle, he needs time to pull something powerful and kingdom-crushing out of his hat, as it were.”

“And in the meantime, if he decides to bide his time and store up that power,” Toby said, “it allows you and the Queen, along with Lord Marshal Vani, to gather numbers and train up an army to face him.”

“But,” Anna said, cutting smoothly in, “if he keeps hitting us with these more frequent but weaker attacks, it means that Lord Marshal Vani is obliged to send out men here, there, and everywhere. It means that he can’t get them trained up to the level he would like if he wants to be able to deploy them to counteract Duke Diddle’s moves.”

The King nodded his big, rosy, beefy head. “Makes sense, makes sense. A good old, Eclipsian standoff is what it is by the sounds of it,” he said.

“And so the question must be asked,” Queen Lascivo said, “what do you think we do next?”

“Well, I think a drink would be the best move,” King Balourd said.

“I was talking of the slightly broader picture, my dear,” Queen Lascivo said.

“Ah, I see,” King Balourd said, dabbing at the sweat that beaded his numerous chins. “Well, if you’re talking about supper, then—”

Queen Lascivo turned to Toby. “Any ideas, Mr. Adams?” she asked, while King Balourd mumbled to himself about what type of game bird he might want stuffed into what other kind of game bird.

“Honestly, Your Majesty,” Toby said. “It feels like we haven’t had enough time to sit down and think of a plan of attack.”

“Because it’s been all defense,” Anna said.

Toby nodded. “It has a little bit,” he admitted.

The Queen folded her hands. She looked at Toby with those penetrating green eyes. It was a perceptive look. It seemed to Toby as if the royal woman was peering right into the center of him.

He couldn’t help but hold that gaze and wonder to himself just how long it would be before he got to take off that elaborate confection of silks and satins that the Queen wore and get her just the tiniest bit naked again. He recalled, in the few seconds that they held one another’s gaze, how the austerely beautiful woman had tasted, how the feel of her skin under his fingers had been, how her nipples had risen as he—

“Might I suggest,” Queen Lascivo said, breaking into those warm and potentially embarrassing erection-summoning thoughts of Toby’s, “that the three of you head home and spend some time recuperating. There is no doubt in either mine or the King’s mind that you’ve been a great boon to the kingdom ever since you arrived.”

Toby inclined his head.

“Now, whilst you’re relaxing in your lovely little house in the Baker’s District,” Queen Lascivo said, “perhaps expend just a little of that excessive brainpower the three of you have on how it is we might counteract these attacks by Duke Diddle.”

“You’ve got it, Your Majesty,” Toby said. “It does feel like we need to get on the counterattack a little bit. Take the bull by the horns, so to speak.”

“Quite right, quite right,” King Balourd said in a blasé tone. “Always easy quicker the bull in the goolies when you’ve got the blighter by the horns, or so my tutor used to say when I was a lad. I think.”

“Quite,” Queen Lascivo said.

“But let’s leave that for tomorrow,” the King went on enthusiastically. “As for now, let us share in some much-needed libations with the Queen and I and wash the dust of the road from your throats whilst you are at it.”

He clapped his hands, and with a small flash of light, five crystal-cut glasses appeared in mid-air. Each of them floated to a member of the gathered company.

“To your health,” King Balourd rumbled, plucking his goblet from midair and raising it in a toast.

“To the health of Eclipsia,” Toby said back, raising his own glass.

“I’ll drink to that,” the rotund king said, and knocked back his goblet with a practiced tilt of his elbow.

They all of them drank their drinks in quiet, and almost thoughtful, unison. Then, their now empty goblets were collected up by one of the ubiquitous liveried footmen, and the meeting with their royal personages broke up.

Toby slipped his hands into his pockets. He followed along behind Anna and Verity as, chatting animatedly with the good-natured King Balourd, they left the room.

“Mr. Adams?”

Toby turned. Queen Lascivo was leaning against the arm of the chair she had been sitting in.

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Toby said.

“May I have a moment of your time?”

“Hey, you’re the boss, Your Majesty. My wish is your command kind of thing, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is, yes,” Queen Lascivo said in a voice that had more than a little purr to it.

Toby glanced back at where the King, Anna, and Verity were leaving the room. Verity looked over her shoulder, saw Toby standing with the Queen, and waved a nonchalant hand.

“We’ll see you at home, Toby,” she called. “We’re just going to wash a little more of this pesky road dust away and take a tour of the royal cellars with the King.”

“Perhaps the only part of this castle of mine that I can say, with perfect truth, that I know better than any of the domestic staff,” the King said, clutching his belly as he allowed himself a chuckle.

“All right, see you back home,” Toby said. “Enjoy!”

Toby turned back to Queen Lascivo as the last footman stepped out of the room and closed the large doors behind the retreating figures of the King and Toby’s two companions.

“Now, what can I do for you, Your Majesty?” Toby asked.

“It’s more about what you can do to me, Mr. Adams.” Slowly, she re-crossed her long, toned legs.

Toby couldn’t have stopped the smile forming on his lips had there been a crossbow pressed to his temple.

“It’s like that is it, Your Majesty?”

“Yes, Mr. Adams,” the Queen said. “It’s just like that.”

“I can’t help but feel as if I’m being led by the nose a little bit here, Your Majesty,” Toby said.

“I must say that having made a very, very considerable fortune in the trade of negotiable affection,” Queen Lascivo said, “I have never heard it referred to as a ‘nose’ before—a ‘head’ or a ‘miniature head’, yes, and a ‘trouser brain’ on one memorable occasion—but never a nose.”

Toby chuckled as he followed the Queen of Eclipsia along a plushly carpeted corridor. Her dress trailed along the floor behind her. It wasn’t her lacy train that was capturing Toby’s attention, however. No, what his eyes were affixed on was a point some two and a half feet above the hem of her dress.

“Yeah,” Toby said, “I imagine that having come from the—what did you call it again?”

“The trade of negotiable affection,” Queen Lascivo said over her shoulder.

“Right, having come from the negotiable affection trade,” Toby said, “I imagine that you’ve probably heard every euphemism under the sun.”

“And the rest,” the Queen said.

“If I might be so bold, my Queen,” Toby said, his eyes continuing to watch the hypnotic up-and-down movement of Queen Lascivo’s wonderfully shapely backside, “where is it you’re taking me?”

“Well, seeing as the King has been so good and attentive as to make sure that the dust of the road was washed from your tonsils and hind teeth at least,” Queen Lascivo said, “I thought that you might enjoy coming with me and washing the road from the rest of your body.”

“That does sound quite wonderful,” Toby said. “Can I expect a copper bathtub pulled up to the fire and filled with suds? Will you be manning the loofah?”

Queen Lascivo paused and allowed Toby to catch up with her. She gave him a look. “I trust that the Queen of Eclipsia can provide something a little more elaborate than that, Mr. Adams,” she said.

“Shame,” Toby said with a grin. “I bet you’d look great naked and with a sponge in each hand.”

They continued on through a series of corridors. Liveried footmen and guards were posted at intervals along these hallways. When they saw the Queen coming, they stood to attention or bowed. The Queen, as regally intimidating and sometimes coldly austere as she could be, never failed to acknowledge the guards and domestic staff.

On one occasion, she inquired how one of her footmen’s children was getting on. The man assured her that young Terrapin was recovering well from the bout of red-cap pox that he had been suffering from.

After they rounded the corner, Queen Lascivo caught Toby looking at her.

“What is it, Mr. Adams?” she said. “Speak your mind.”

“Um… Terrapin for a child’s name?”

“Jendo’s family were originally fishermen in the marshlands, I believe,” the Queen replied. “Naming children after creatures of the marsh is a tradition there.”

“Right.”

“There’s something else?”

“I’m just impressed that you know so much about your staff,” Toby said. “Honestly, back where I come from, domestic staff aren’t treated with that much respect, I don’t think. Not on the whole.”

The Queen looked surprised at that.

“These good people spend the majority of their working days looking after me and my husband, and whatever guests might be taking advantage of our hospitality,” she said. “Why would I not show them common decency? I consider many of them to be my friends. It’s always been my policy, Mr. Adams, ever since I started my first simple bawdy house, back west in the fishing port of Taradise to look after those who work for me. Look after those underneath you, and they in turn will look after your business. That was the first lesson I learned in business and the one lesson I have stuck by. You want to make those you employ and those you surround yourself with feel safe, feel part of your family, feel needed and appreciated. That is the best form of security that you can provide yourself.”

Toby considered the wisdom in these words as they carried on, swept around a long looping corner, and then took a spiral staircase down a floor. This spiral staircase emerged out into a corridor that was, if at all possible, even more elegantly decorated.

There was a shitload of gilt in evidence, and ‘opulence’ was the adjective of the day so far as the interior decorator had been concerned. The furniture had that unique look to it where Toby wasn’t sure whether it was antique or brand new. ‘Expensive’ was the word Toby would have labeled it with.

This corridor was lit by scones filled with pink candles that burned with a wonderful even light. There was one maid hurrying down the hall and she stepped respectfully aside to let the Queen and Toby pass by.

“Lovely to see you, Meredith,” Toby heard the Queen say.

Two guards, dressed in uniforms that almost exactly matched the wallpaper behind them, stood at the end of the corridor guarding a large double door. The Queen made a gesture, and the guards uncrossed their ornate, but still very sharp, halberds. The doors swung open automatically. The Queen walked inside, and the doors were closed behind her and Toby.

Toby paused for a moment to soak in the magnificence of the room he suddenly found himself in.

“The Magisterial Baths. A little better than a copper tub pulled up in front of the fire, don’t you think?” Queen Lascivo said.

“I’ll say,” Toby replied.

Queen Lascivo took his hand and walked him across the highly polished and somehow internally heated floor.

Toby gazed around.

If Toby had thought the corridors leading to that place had been flashy, then the Magisterial Baths of the King and Queen were a marvel of opulence. They were a testament to centuries of indulgence and luxury enjoyed by the upper crust.

Steam billowed softly from the surface of the sprawling pools. It rose in gentle curls toward the vaulted ceiling high above. The ceiling was covered in a great tableau depicting an underwater scene. It was a scene that looked, to Toby’s jaundiced eye, to be something that looked very much like an orgy taking place between some rather surprised and pleased sailors and some extremely randy mermaids.

“It’s heated by a natural thermal spring,” the Queen said. “The water is always warm, flowing endlessly through intricately carved channels that crisscross the chamber like veins. You see?”

“Uh huh,” Toby said, still looking around in stupefied amazement.

The walls were lined with marble. The stone was a deep green flecked with gold. It shimmered under the soft light cast by enchanted lamps shaped like seashells.

The baths themselves were expansive, to say the least. They were bordered by wide stone steps leading down into the water. There were mosaics of polished stones underfoot. These showed serene ocean scenes, which clashed marvelously with the saucy antics taking place on the ceiling.

Unsurprisingly, if you knew anything of King Balourd, everywhere, the presence of mermaids was felt—life-sized statues of them perched on the edges of the pool, their tails curling sensuously, each figure impossibly beautiful and crafted with delicate detail. There were skinny mermaids, plump mermaids, naked mermaids, mermaids clad in strange costumes. The eyes of each and every statue was set with precious gems. This made it look as if the eyes of the statues were glistening with mischief, as though their owners might slip into the water at any moment and join in.

Which is probably precisely what the King was going for when he got the stone mason in.

The king’s love for mermaids was apparent in every detail, from the tiny mermaid figurines set into the faucets to the gilt-framed mirrors that reflected back the shimmering water.

On one wall a mural stretched across the smooth stone. It showed a great undersea kingdom filled with fantastical creatures and shimmering coral reefs. Fountains in the shapes of mermaids holding conch shells spewed hot water into smaller pools, creating a soothing sound that reverberated gently in the vast chamber.

Scattered around the edges of the room were lounging chairs draped in rich silks. High pyramids of fat towels were stacked around the place.

The air was thick with the scent of fragrant oils and herbs. Everywhere, there was a sense of excess and relaxation.

It was a place where time seemed to slow, where anyone entering was invited to leave their cares at the guarded door. It was a sanctuary that all but begged the patron to sink into the warmth and forget the world beyond.

“Man, I’ve never much anchored after a governmental position,” Toby said. “But this bathroom alone would make me rethink my prejudices.”

“It is rather grand, isn’t it?” the Queen said. “I have to say that although the dear King’s fetish for all things mermaid and aquatic does stretch credulity sometimes, when it came to the fitting out and design of this bathroom, I think he did rather well.”

A soft rustle of cloth tore Toby’s eyes away from the incredible golden fittings, the almost worryingly lifelike statues, and the myriad other little luxurious touches in the bathroom.

Queen Lascivo, utilizing some feminine skill known only to her and, presumably, the rest of the fairer sex, had managed to free herself of her complex-looking clothing and was now standing as naked as the day she had been born.

Toby felt his jaw make a dive for his toes.

“Do you still feel as if you’re being led by the nose, Mr. Adams?” the Queen asked quietly.

“No,” Toby said. “No, it’s definitely not my nose I’m thinking about now.”

The Queen smiled and stepped down into one of the steaming pools. The water barely cast a ripple as she moved smoothly into it. Toby watched, transfixed, as her curvaceous form slowly disappeared under the milky, mineral-rich water.

The Queen let out a deeply contented sigh. “Oh, is there anything better than a good hot soak?” she said. Her voice echoed a little around the high-vaulted chamber.

“I can think of one thing,” Toby said.

“Yes, and that one thing is precisely why I brought you here,” the Queen said.

“How fortuitous that we will get the opportunity to combine one with the other as we combine one of us with another,” Toby said.

“Very nicely put, Mr. Adams,” the Queen said. “Now, you will slip out of those travel-worn clothes and into the embrace of this rather wonderful bathwater at once. I’m about to show you a rather neat trick.”

“You are?”

“Yes. It’s how a Queen can magically make you exit a bath dirtier than when you got into it.”

As Toby began to undress under the hungry green eyes of Queen Lascivo, he asked, “This place is pretty echoey. There’s no chance of being overheard by anyone outside is there?”

“No, no,” Queen Lascivo said. “There is some rather clever and old spell-work woven about this place. No sound escapes it.”

Toby slipped into the water. The groan of relaxation that was pulled out of him was one that he couldn’t have stopped even if he’d wanted to.

“I told you it was good,” the Queen said.

She floated over to where Toby had just submerged himself up to his neck. The water was fantastic. There was a strange buoyancy to it as well. It was how Toby imagined the description he’d heard of bathing in that super salty inland sea somewhere in the Middle East or the Mediterranean.

The Dead Sea, his memory chimed in. That’s the place.

Well, there was no chance of Toby feeling at all deceased in that bath. Faced with a naked queen he’d never felt so alive.

He felt a soft touch on his left hip and then a mirror touch on his right. He reached forward and felt the wonderfully sinuous lengths of Queen Lascivo’s legs under the water. Whether it was due to some oil she had been wearing or the mineral quality of the water, there was a slickness to her flesh.

Toby, his eyes locked with those of the Queen, slipped his hands on the outside of her legs.

The Queen’s lips parted. Toby could see the moist pink sliver of her tongue. She bit her lip as Toby stepped in between her legs.

Toby carried on rubbing her satin-smooth skin with his palms. Up and down. With every movement forward, his hands moved a little higher. Soon he was at the top where her hips were. He ran his hands under her buttocks. His fingers traced the cleft between her cheeks.

Toby was hot all over, thanks to the wonderful water the pair of them were submerged in. But he could feel an almost volcanic presence between his own legs.

He couldn’t see below the surface of the water due to its milky color. He knew, though, that the tip of his questing rod could only have been a matter of inches from its target destination. With a strong, subtle sweep of her hands under the water, Queen Lascivo propelled herself towards Toby.

Toby felt his shaft slide along her thigh. The sensation made him shiver.

Queen Lascivo sucked in a quavering breath. “Oh!” she said. “Well, that feels nice, doesn’t it?”

“Not bad, my Queen, not bad.”

They moved towards one another and pressed their bodies together. The sensation of their slick, wet forms squashing and rubbing up against one another was fantastic. Toby knew he could have happily spent the next half hour running his hands over every inch of the Queen’s naked form, had his libido and self-control allowed it.

He pictured for a moment how people who received those oily, erotic Nuru massages must feel. There seemed to be very little friction between himself and the Queen. Toby’s hands roved easily over Queen Lascivo’s wonderful body.

As he had reason to note before, the Queen might have been older by a good decade than the other females he was close with. However, any man would have been hard-pressed to see that—she was in admirable condition. There were only a faint few lines around the corners of her mouth and eyes that hinted at her age. The rest of her was as tight, taut, and tantalizing as an athletic and active thirty-year-old.

Toby could feel the press of Queen Lascivo’s large, firm tits against his chest. He contemplated ducking his head under so that he could slide his face into the inviting cleavage. Instead, he allowed the Queen to play her breasts over his body. She ducked down so that only her nose and eyes were above the water and slid her nipples over his stomach.

It was without any real effort or thought at all that Toby found his member sliding without any kind of resistance in between the Queen’s legs.

The female monarch let loose a quite un-queenly grunt of surprise and satisfaction as Toby’s scrotum came to press up against the bottom of her slot. With the slippery slickness of the water, Toby would have been willing to bet quite a bit of gold on being able to squeeze his nuts into the Queen’s vagina. He wasn’t quite sure those kinds of genitalia-centric acrobatics were what the situation called for, though.

They started to rut gently.

The Queen had her strong legs wrapped around Toby’s body and hooked behind him at the ankles. The buoyancy in the water would have supported her weight on its own. Still, Toby reached under and squeezed her ass cheeks. It was more for his own benefit than for hers. He ran his hands up the small of her back, kneading and massaging.

“Oh, that’s rather wonderful,” the Queen said. She lay her head back in the water so that her raven locks spread out like a pool of shadow or smoke around her elegant face. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the aromatic steams that drifted over them like banks of fog across a river.

Toby’s hands slid from around her back to her waist. They moved up her stomach, his fingers tracing the contours of her ribcage. He roughly grabbed her wonderful, smooth orbs in both hands. He squeezed, slowly allowing the pressure in his grip to get harder and harder. The Queen gasped as he pinched her nipples and gave them a gentle twist.

“Mmmmmmm,” she moaned.

Toby recognized that as less a spoken word and more of an unintentional vocal emission that spoke of a deep-seated ecstasy and longing. He pinched her nipples again and received a similar, more fervent response.

They rutted gently together. The hot water began to churn and bubble around them.

After a while, they changed positions. Through some unspoken agreement, they moved towards the side of the pool. The Queen leaned her elbows on the edge of the enormous hot water pool and allowed her legs to drift up. Toby grabbed her thighs, opening her legs as wide as they could go.

He had the woman in what, in more innocent days, he might have thought of as the wheelbarrow position. He wasn’t sure what the Kama Sutra might have labeled the position as now, but with the height at which the Queen was floating, Toby was afforded the perfect position into which to insert his cock deep into her from behind.

The Queen began to scream and moan. She emitted sharp little cries of delight as Toby fucked her harder and harder.

“Wait, wait,” the Queen suddenly said. “Wait!”

She fended off Toby’s advance and slipped away, hooking her leg around and sliding off of him.

“What is it?” Toby asked. “Do you—?”

Before he could finish the sentence, the Queen ducked under the water and disappeared from sight. Toby felt her hands grabbing his ass. Then, he was on the receiving end of his very first sub-aquatic blowjob, administered by a member of any royal family.

The Queen played on his pork piccolo for as long as her breath held out. To Toby, it simultaneously felt plenty long enough and not long enough at all. Then she came up gasping for air.

Toby, deciding to take the bull by the horns, as it were, grabbed the Queen around her throat.

“Yes,” the Queen said. “Yes, choke me. Just like that. Like I’m a prisoner in the dungeons. Just like that.”

Toby gently squeezed, not hard enough to cause her any harm or asphyxiation, but enough to leave her grunting and gurgling with erotic rapture.

The Queen opened his legs to him in again. Toby thrust himself inside of her. This time there was little to no refinement in his strokes. Toby pounded into the Queen with everything he had. One hand remained around her throat. The Queen’s own fingers had that hand in her clutches. She was squeezing even harder, gasping, breathing hard through her nose.

Toby fucked away, closing his eyes to better enjoy the sensation of the warmth and the water and the woman.

Wanting to prolong the moment of climax for as long as possible, to postpone the inevitable ending of their coupling, Toby pulled out of the Queen, much to her disappointment if her muttered curses were anything to go by.

“What’re you…? Oh!” the Queen said.

Toby lifted her bodily up onto the edge of the pool. He began to eat her out with gusto. Then he ran his fingers down her leg and thrust three digits into her eager pussy.

“Yes!” the Queen said. “Yes, harder! Harder! Treat me like a whore and not like a queen.”

Toby obliged. He finger-fucked her in a frenzy, his hand moving in as a blur.

“Oh yes, yes, oh yes!” the Queen started to pant. “Yes, I’m close! Oh yes, I’m fucking close!”

Suddenly, she grabbed Toby by the wrist and arrested his movements. She slipped into the water. She remained leaning back on her elbows but allowed her lower body to float up to the surface.

Toby took the hint. He looped the Queen’s legs over his shoulders and then, holding her hips steady, he rammed his cock back into her. All the way up to the hilt. In and out, in and out. Water was sent sloshing across the floor and over the edge of the pool.

“Yes, finish in me, finish in me!” the Queen said. It was almost a snarl. It was a command.

Toby tilted his head back and looked up at the frescoed ceiling. The feeling of his member sliding so easily in and out of the Queen, his balls squashing up against her keen vagina… Well, it was no surprise that he emptied himself into her only a short time later.

With a grunting gasp he jerked and stiffened.

“Yes!” the Queen cried, tipping back her own head and staring wide-eyed at the cavorting sailors and mermaids on the ceiling. “Yes!”

They came together, Toby shooting his load deep into the Queen of Eclipsia, while the queen groaned and bucked against him.

When he relinquished his grip on her thighs there were finger marks in her flesh.

“Well, my Queen,” Toby said, sliding himself out of her, and floating back in a half daze in the wonderful warm water. “Well, you were as good as your word. I don’t think I have ever been quite so dirty when exiting a bath.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that” the Queen said in between ragged breaths.

She swam languidly over to one of the many nozzles that jutted up out of the side of the enormous bathtub. She waved a hand in front of the mouth of the mermaid, which the nozzle was sculpted after. Foam started to pour, in a rather disconcerting fashion from the mermaid’s mouth.

“Yes, the effect is somewhat worrying,” the Queen said, seeing the look on Toby’s face, “but it smells rather nice.”

She scooped up a handful of the suds and rubbed it all over her body so that her tits were soon covered in a bubbly lather. “Want to help me wash off?” she purred. “And then if you’re lucky I’ll attend to you.”

Toby grinned. He was spent from the sexual exertion, but already he could feel his body responding to the Queen’s suggestions. He was already semi-hard again.

“That’s the thing about life on the road” he said in a mock serious tone, as he moved slowly over to where the Queen stood waiting for him. “You learn to really appreciate and savor these little luxuries.”

“It’s a hard life, no?” the Queen asked, sticking her bottom lip out in a way that made Toby want to bite it and suck on it.

Toby made a show of peering through the milky water. “Hard? Not quite,” he said. “But it’s getting there.”

4

“I’ll tell you what, Dishy,” Toby said, putting down his knife and fork on his now-empty plate and letting out a sigh. “I’ll tell you something for nothing, for an entity that’s only about five inches tall and whose head looks mostly to be made up of that big horn, you sure do cook up a hell of a homecoming meal.”

The little blue imp, Dishy, darkened to a deeper shade of blue. Toby guessed that was his version of a blush.

“Oh, that’s very nice of you to say, Mr. Toby Adams,” Dishy said.

Toby thought for a second about trying to correct the imp and have him just call him Toby, but it had thus far proved an exercise in futility.

“Yes, you’ve sure got hidden depths, Dishy,” Anna said.

Dishy was a domestic imp that had been gifted to Toby and his friends by King Balourd. He was, on paper, supposedly only good for cleaning dishes and generally tidying up the kitchen and living spaces. However, Toby and his friends had given Dishy a bit more of a free reign than perhaps his kind usually received from their owners. The result had been that the little imp kind-hearted had proved himself to be a dab hand on the stove.

“Yes, thanks very much, Dishy, you great dish, you,” Verity said, beaming at the little blue imp as he hovered around the kitchen table, collecting the plates with his incongruous strength. “It’s a good thing, really, that we’re having to do so much fighting of late. Otherwise, I wouldn’t fit into my clothes.”

“That baked fish in particular was something special,” Anna enthused. “What was it stuffed with in the cavity, Dishy?”

“I took some baby fennel from the garden,” Dishy said, “along with some wild garlic, a few chunks of centaur root, and some jumping beans.”

“Jumping beans?” Toby repeated. “You’re telling me they really exist?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Toby Adams,” Dishy said. “We’ve got a fine crop of them coming up in the yard. Of course, if you accidentally split a pod, they can take some wrangling, but it’s very good cardiovascular exercise.”

Toby saw Frank roll his eyes and mutter something.

“Did I say something wrong, Mr. Frank?” Dishy asked as he picked up the last dirty dish.

“Did you say something wrong? Do you honestly have to ask me that?” Frank said. “What kind of imp of the Beyond Beyond are you?”

“Well, strictly speaking, I’m not from the Beyond Beyond like you, Mr. Frank,” Dishy said. “I was concocted in a wizarding labo—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t bore me with the specifics,” Frank said. “My point is, us imps, us demons, should be sticking together. We should be trying to corrupt these here mortals with a bit of greed, a bit of gluttony, you know.”

“I didn’t skimp on the butter and the mashed potatoes, if that’s what you mean, Mr. Frank,” Dishy said.

Frank tutted to himself. He popped a particularly burnt roast carrot into his mouth and crunched it up noisily.

“Frank, I’ve always been meaning to ask you,” Anna said. “But why do you eat? Surely you don’t need to.”

Frank shrugged his tiny shoulders as he gazed upon Anna with his strange, silvery eyes. “Habit,” he said. “I mean, when you think about it, humans and the other sentient species on this rock probably don’t need to eat half as much as they do. Yet they go on stuffing their faces for most of the time they’re awake, so far as I’ve been able to observe.”

“Speaking of stuffing one’s face,” Verity said, “I do feel very naughty for asking this, Dishy, but there wouldn’t happen to be any…?

“Dessert, Miss Verity None?” Dishy said.

“Oh, you know me too well, Dishy,” Verity said warmly.

“As a matter of fact, I did take the liberty of preparing your favorite,” Dishy said.

“You don’t mean...” Verity began.

“Wyvern mousse with groganberries,” Dishy said.

Verity closed her eyes ecstatically and clapped her hands softly to herself. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “I know we’re going out to the Toby Jug after this, and I’ll probably regret indulging in dessert, but I can’t say ‘no’ to wyvern mousse.”

“Especially not with groganberries,” Anna added.

“Especially not with groganberries,” Verity agreed.

With more effort than was probably normal, Toby pushed his chair back from the table and heaved himself to his feet. He was feeling exceedingly replete. He gazed around fondly at Anna and Verity. He even looked at Frank, who was busy eating one of the beeswax candles, with a more patient eye than he was probably wont to.

Recently, the four of them had passed through some stiff times. The fact that they had come through those times without injury and still together was something he was extremely proud of. Something he was grateful for each morning he woke up.

Toby excused himself and went through the house and stepped out onto the back porch. He paused for a moment to take a deep breath of the herb garden that was springing up around the back door. It was really coming along. There was a great myriad of different herbs, both mundane and more supernatural.

The garden had been a present that he and the girls had given themselves. It had been designed and landscaped by a team of gnome gardeners.

Toby shivered at the thought of the cheerful little fellows. He sometimes still woke up in the night in a cold sweat hearing their overly cheerful songs, which they were prone to sing constantly and loudly as they worked. There were some songs, well-intentioned as they might be, that grated along the edge of the soul in the same manner that biting into aluminum foil did.

He walked out into the garden. It was beginning to flourish. Different kinds of colorful vegetables were popping up here, there, and everywhere above the soil. He strolled slowly along the garden path heading for the tree at the back of the garden.

As he walked, he listened to the comforting, familiar evening sounds of Eclipsia’s capital, Stagbreach, all around him. These nocturnals sounds were punctuated by the occasional slug mine going off with a soft pop.

His home, the house that he shared with Verity and Frank and Dishy, had been awarded to them by Rowan Moonshroud, the same wizard who had attempted to blast Toby with some magic when he had found out that Toby had bonded with Frank. Toby had resented that somewhat. Especially in hindsight.

Clearly, the wizard had no idea as to just how much of a pain in the ass the loudmouth and mighty opinionated imp could be. If he had, he probably wouldn’t have stopped at gifting Toby and his friends a house for taking the imp off his hands. He probably would have furnished them with top of the line horses too.

Gravel crunched under his feet. Toby took a deep breath of the nighttime air. In that part of Stagbreach where their home was located, the beguiling scent of baking bread or freshly cooked cookies was more or less permanently on the breeze. That was because, by extreme good fortune, the house that Rowan Moonshroud had bequeathed to them as his reward was located in the Baker’s District.

After Toby had made use of the facilities, marveling not for the first time at the way that the outdoor privy came complete with an enchanted chamber pot, which magically banished—though to where or when Toby still had no idea—its contents when the user was done, he went back to the house. He found dessert waiting for him.

“Oh, you’re lucky you got back when you did,” Verity said, smiling at him as he walked into the kitchen. “Another couple of minutes and you would have found your dessert gone.”

“I’m not going to lie, missing out on one of Dishy’s desserts probably wouldn’t hurt me,” Toby chuckled. “I feel like my pants have been getting tighter by the day.”

“If you’re angling for a compliment, Toby,” Anna said, “you can keep on angling. There’s no fish biting today.”

“What do you mean?” Toby said, putting up his hands in submission. “I’d never dream of angling for a compliment. Not around you, at least.”

“I mean that I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking trimmer or fitter,” Anna said. “Say what you like about having to battle those disgusting, goopy zombie things, but it’s a hell of a workout.”

Toby set himself down and pulled his pottle of bright blue wyvern mousse toward him. He took up a generous spoonful, but paused with the spoon hovering before his lips. He stared into space.

By ill fortune, it happened to be space occupied by Anna’s rack.

“What is it?” Anna said. “I hope you realize you’ve been staring at my boobs for about thirty seconds straight.”

“Nothing,” Toby said. “I was just thinking that, regardless of the fact that all this crazy shit with Duke Diddle and his happy little accidents is going down, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been happier. If I’ve ever felt more like I had a purpose.”

Anna smiled across the table at him. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s pretty wild to think that we’re warriors fighting for a kingdom, huh?”

“And not just any warriors,” Verity said, pointing her spoon at Anna and Toby in turn. “I’d say that—and I don’t mean to toot my own bugle here—we’re probably near enough the tip of the spear so far as King Balourd is concerned.”

“Not to mention the Queen,” Anna said, shooting Toby a knowing look.

They ate their dessert in silence for a time. Frank floated up near the ceiling. He circled the candle-filled chandelier like a little sable shark cruising around a sinking ship. He was in a reclined position, his legs crossed, and was blowing tiny smoke rings as he puffed on the miniature cigar he was enjoying.

“You know,” Toby said, “something’s going to have to change. Something’s going to have to break.”

Anna looked up from where she was cleaning the last of her wyvern mousse from its little pot. “What are you talking about, Tobes?”

“I mean, something’s got to change in our tactics so far as dealing with Duke Diddle goes,” Toby elaborated.

Verity frowned at him.

“Speaking with the King and Queen today,” Toby said, “it kind of reminded me how we are, like King Balourd said, in an Eclipsian standoff of sorts.”

“You mean if we’re right in supposing that Duke Diddle requires more time to draw more elaborate and more powerful monsters from wherever the fuck he’s drawing them from with that wand?” Anna said.

Toby nodded curtly.

“And on the flip side of that, if we need more time to train up more troops, then one side is going to have to either sacrifice their attacking capabilities for a short while, or sacrifice their defensive capabilities for a short while,” Toby said. “If Duke Diddle wants to gain a long-term upper hand, he’s going to have to stop with these smaller, more regular attacks with these weak shamblers that he’s been sending out.”

“And that will, in turn, give Lord Marshal Vani more time to recruit more soldiers and better train them,” Anna pointed out.

“Yes, and you better believe that Duke Diddle knows that,” Toby said. “Don’t go forgetting that he was once one of King Balourd’s closest advisors. He knows how the old boy operates, I bet, better than most.”

“That might be true,” Verity said, “but he doesn’t necessarily know how the King operates when he’s under Queen Lascivo’s guidance.”

The three of them looked at one another. It was clear that the word ‘guidance’ in this instance was a more diplomatic synonym for ‘influence’ or ‘direct control’. Toby had often thought to himself that although King Balourd was the big, red, beery, cheery face of the kingdom, it was Queen Lascivo who was the calculating and essential brain.

Toby nodded thoughtfully to himself as he scraped up the final mouthful of wyvern mousse. “So it’s essentially what Queen Lascivo said,” he muttered. “We need to come up with a way that we might strike back at Duke Diddle and Vexxx. We need to come up with a way to strike at him and unbalance him.”

Anna nodded her head slowly. “It’d be ideal if we could do it in such a way that would put us ahead of him in a way, if you know what I mean,” she said.

“I know what you mean,” Toby said. “At the moment, if one side of this war takes their foot off the gas, it allows the other side to get an advantage. If Duke Diddle stops with his regular attacks, it means that the King and Queen and Lord Marshal Vani get a chance to bolster the numbers of their armed forces, not to mention boost their training. And on the flip side of that, if the attacks do continue, but the King and Queen decide that getting more numbers into the armed forces is imperative, then it means that the countryside surrounding Stagbreach might well be overrun with the shamblers.”

“Or something worse,” Verity pointed out.

Toby nodded. He pushed back his chair once more, stretched his arms, and sighed again.

Anna got up from the table and came around it. She looped her arms around Toby’s neck and hugged him. “Come on,” she said quietly into his ear. “Let’s take a leaf out of King Balourd’s book and forget about all this for this evening.”

“I’m pretty sure that advice is what the King’s book is completely comprised of,” Toby chuckled.

“I think this whole conundrum is going to be one of those things that’s clearer once it’s been slept on,” Anna insisted.

Toby sighed again. Then he grinned up at his best friend and slapped her playfully on the rump. “You’re probably right,” he admitted.

“Of course I’m right,” Anna said. “And if you had any doubt left over the sense of my words, then just ask her.” She pointed across the table at Verity.

“She’s right,” Verity said simply. “This can wait. We’ll solve nothing fretting about it tonight. Let’s have an evening off.”

“To the Jug?” Anna asked.

“To the Jug,” Verity said.

“To the Jug,” Frank echoed from up near the ceiling, drawing the world out into a surprisingly clear falsetto.

“All right,” Toby said, laughing. “I guess, so far as distractions go, they don’t get much better than a night out at the Toby Jug. Let’s hit the tiles.”

They all got up and left the room.

“Hey,” Frank called after them. “Since when did the Jug get some tiling done?”

5

As far as distractions went, the Toby Jug Tavern was one of Toby’s personal favorites. There was never a dull moment within the four walls of that particular watering hole.

Toby, Anna, and Verity had spent a not-insignificant amount of time sampling the wares from inns, speakeasies, and gin houses around Stagbreach, but they always returned to the Toby Jug. This wasn’t only because Toby’s face was painted on the sign, but because the landlord, Oswald Parton, was one of those sturdy, trustworthy folks who kept an eye out for his patrons and who, in return, was always good to look after. He had eyes and ears everywhere. And as most of Stagbreach’s population spent at least an hour a week inside the Toby Jug, he was a good man to know if gossip was your currency of choice.

Toby, Anna, and Verity were sitting in their habitual corner booth. They had been half-heartedly playing a three-way game of Saucy Miss Medusa, but they had unanimously called it quits after half a dozen rounds of the card game. It required too much concentration, and the trio found that all they felt like doing really was sitting back, enjoying one another’s comfortable company, and watching the world go by.

Toby was slumped in the comfortable embrace of the horsehair-stuffed couch. It was faded and threadbare, that couch, like most everything else inside the Toby Jug. That only made it more homely, though. The Toby Jug really was one of those pubs that deserved the name ‘public house.’ It was Toby, Anna, and Verity’s home away from home.

Frank, as was his habit when inside the Toby Jug, had adopted the outer facade of a large, squashed-nosed, cantankerous-looking tomcat with silvery black fur, a chunk out of one ear, and a missing eye. He was currently perched on the headrest of the couch that Toby was slumped against, gazing out at the busy taproom.

“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again,” Frank began.

“Does that mean you won’t feel inclined to say it yet again, whatever it is?” Toby said.

To no one’s surprise, Frank ignored him. “I’ll say it once, and I’ll say it again,” he repeated. “Coming in here is a real eye-opener so far as humanity goes. I mean, look at this geezer over here.”

“Where?” Anna asked.

“Just over your left shoulder there, sweetcheeks.”

“What have I told you about calling me sweetcheeks?” Anna said, arching one shapely eyebrow.

“That you adore it and now feel inclined to give this hairy pussy a stroke?” Frank asked innocently.

“You know, I’m finding that it is impossible to underestimate you, Frank.”

“Oh, come on, I thought it was a compliment,” Frank said. “Don’t throw a hissy fit. I thought that’s the reason you were doing all that yogurt for.”

“Yoga,” Toby corrected half-heartedly.

“That’s what I said,” Frank said.

Toby and Anna looked in the direction that Frank was indicating with a paw.

There was a frazzled old boy wearing a conical wizard’s hat covered in stars on the back of his balding pate. He was standing with his hands on his hips, casting a baleful stink eye at another old man.

“What the bleedin’ hell do you think you’re looking at?” he asked in a cantankerous voice. “And answer me this. Is that your jacket? It looks exactly the same as mine. I bet you stole it, didn’t you, you thieving bastard?”

It was only then that Toby realized the old man was speaking to a reflection of himself in a mirror.

“Absolutely barking,” Frank said in an admiring tone.

Verity slipped out of the packed throng at that moment. The beautiful blonde never seemed to have any trouble moving through a crowd, no matter how dense it was. It was as if her startling, classical beauty split strangers ahead of her like the better kind of prophet parting a body of water. The princess-like figure was bearing a tray. On that tray were three pewter tankards foaming over with the good stuff.

“What do we have this time?” Toby asked.

“Another surprise round?” Anna asked.

Verity nodded her head. “I told Oswald to give us something we’ve never tried before,” she said.

“Does this mystery substance have a name?” Anna asked.

“It does,” Verity said. “Ravenblood brandy.”

Toby paused in the act of taking his first sip. “Just to be clear,” he said, “this drink doesn’t contain any avian fluids, does it? Back where Anna and I are from, there was a whole big thing about this not too long ago.”

“No, don’t be silly,” Verity said, flapping a hand at Toby.

Toby took a gulp of the ravenblood brandy and prepared himself. To his surprise, there was no burning sensation, as if he had just swallowed a beak full of hydrochloric acid. In fact, the ravenblood brandy went down wonderfully smooth.

“Wow,” he said. “Oswald must be in a kindly mood this evening.”

“He tried to mix me up a pitcher of something with the eclectic name of ‘rusty trumpet’,” Verity said. “I told him we might save that one for later.”

The delay was what made the heat that flooded through Toby’s large intestine with all the abruptness of a volcanic eruption all the more shocking.

“Whoa!” Toby said.

“Whoa!” Anna echoed.

“Woo-hoo!” Veruty gasped.

The heat spread up Toby’s spine and bloomed across his shoulders so that he shivered.

“Whoa!” he said again. “I guess that’s why they call it ravenblood brandy.”

“Feels like you’re sprouting wings, doesn’t it?” Verity said, giving her head a little shake.

“Strangely, it’s not totally unpleasant,” Anna said.

Toby took another gulp of his drink, lowering the contents of his tankard by another couple of inches. This time, the blooming aftereffect of the beverage was slightly less intense. It was invigorating.

“Yeah,” he said, sitting up a little straighter. “That’s not a bad little drop. Fancy a try, Frank?”

“You can’t go feeding alcohol to cats,” Frank said. “That’s… What do you call it?”

“Animal cruelty?” Anna suggested.

“Nah, a fucking waste, is what it is,” Frank said.

Toby grinned.

“What does a cat know about a good drop of liquor?” Frank went on mulishly.

“Frank,” Anna said. “You’re not actually a cat.”

Frank gave his head a little shake. “Shit,” he said. “What did I tell you? When you adopt certain shapes, you take on their mentalities. Cats are extremely opinionated. Arrogant pricks.” He licked a paw in an insouciant type of way. “Now hurry up, mate, and pour me a saucer of that grog, will you?”

“I was just accidentally involved in the most riveting conversation at the bar,” Verity said, as Toby did as directed.

“What was it about, Duke Diddle?” Toby asked.

“No, not quite,” Verity said. “You see those three dwarves over there?”

“No,” Toby said.

“Well, you would if you stood up,” Verity said. “Anyway, they were having a rather heated debate as to whether sausages are vegetables or not.”

Toby and Anna exchanged incredulous looks.

“In what world would a sausage possibly be categorized as a vegetable?” Anna said.

“One of them seemed to think that because they were the same shape as a cucumber, that somehow merited them being lumped into the same family,” Verity explained.

“Ah,” Toby said.

“And what did the other two argue against this point?” Anna asked.

“Well, one, the one that seemed to be sane, or at least the most sober, was putting across a rather valid point that sausages were the products of animals,” Verity said.

“And what did his friend reckon?” Anna asked.

“The other dwarf was on the fence,” Verity said. “The other two were arguing over him—quite literally arguing over him. He was unconscious, face down on the bar.”

“And let me guess,” Toby said. “Dwarves being dwarves, that didn’t stop the other two from presenting their cases to him in the manner of high-priced lawyers in front of a magistrate.”

Verity laughed. “You got it in one, Toby.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Toby said, who had been looking over in the direction that Anna had said the three arguing dwarves had been. “Isn’t that Bellingham?”

Anna glanced over. “It does look like Bellingham, yes,” she said. “Haven’t seen him in a while,” Toby said.

“I suppose he spends most of his time out hunting. He must have come back from a bit of a sojourn,” Verity said. “Probably dropped some meat off for Oswald.”

Toby got to his feet and made to move through the crowd towards the bar.

“Where are you going?” Verity asked.

“I’m going to go and ask if Bellingham’s seen anything out in the wild, anything important that relates to Duke, Diddle, or Vexxx’s movements”, Toby said.

“Do you want us to come too?” Anna asked.

“Nah,” Toby said. “You may as well stay here and relax. It’s busy as shit in here. I’ll just have a quick word with him.”

The two women leaned into one another to engage in the ever-mysterious pastime of girl talk.

Toby made his way through the heaving taproom towards where Bellingham, his long brown hair falling across his face and his hood rucked up around his neck, sat nursing a drink.

Toby hadn’t realized it, but he had been watching Bellingham’s back for the past hour or so. The man had been sitting on his own at the bar. Toby had been watching with semi-interest as Bellingham had been having to put up with the attentions of a burly, loud-mouthed drunk. The burly drunk’s attentions had been getting more and more exuberant and rough with each passing drink he consumed.

As Toby approached, Bellingham—who he now saw had been reading a piece of parchment—looked up as the belligerent drunk clapped him overly hard on the shoulder and caused him to spill his drink. Bellingham said something in a quiet voice that Toby didn’t catch due to the overall din of the taproom. He did, however, catch the drunk’s reply.

“Oh yeah?” the big man said, putting his fist under Bellingham’s nose. “Who the fuck do you think you are sitting there, eh, Bellingham? Bellingham.” He scoffed and nudged a nearby crony. “More like Bellend!” He laughed a great beer-laced laugh at his own wit.

The drunk reminded Toby of a clichéd biker type. He was wearing a hide vest with no arms—the better to show off his enormous tree-trunk-like biceps. His arms were covered in a whirling mass of woad tattoos. His hair and beard blended into one so that it looked like he had just dipped his head into a haystack.

“Yeah, little fucking bellend-no mates, that’s who you are!” The drunk shoved Bellingham in the arm, picked up the other man’s tankard, and downed it in one gulp before dropping the vessel on the ground.

Bellingham moved so swiftly that Toby, in the dim light of the inn, couldn’t be sure of precisely what he did. What he could be sure of, though, was the result.

Suddenly, Bellingham was on his feet. How he’d gone from sitting to standing in the blink of an eye, Toby would have to revisit later in his memory. But the salient fact was that he’d gone from sitting to standing, and he’d gone from not clutching a handful of the drunk’s hair to clutching it.

Bellingham’s next move was to slam the belligerent piss artist’s face about seventeen times into the edge of the bar. After that, the hunter dropped what was left of the would-be hard man onto the ground. Then, quite casually, Bellingham leaned down and rummaged in the groaning man’s waistcoat until he found his coin pouch. He extracted a silver bit and placed it on the bar.

“Another pint of the same, innkeep, please,” he said quite politely to Oswald.

The publican had watched all this unfold with the non-judgmental air of every good landlord, one who reserves judgment until each case that comes before him has been played out. He grunted.

“Right you are, Bellingham,” he said.

The barman nodded his great white-haired head and poured Bellingham another drink from the spigot of a barrel behind him. He placed the drink on the counter, took Bellingham’s money, rummaged in his apron, procured a couple of copper bits, and handed them back to the hunter. Bellingham nodded and murmured his thanks. Then he dropped the change onto the prostrate man at his feet.

Once this bit of business had been conducted, Bellingham looked around and said, “Is anyone friends with this useless sack of shite?”

A couple of lads came meekly forward and towed the unhappy bleeding drunk man away.

“And don’t forget to remind the great lummox that he needs to settle his tab when he’s got his four brain cells working again,” Oswald called after them.

It was as Bellingham was watching his defeated assailant being helped away that he noticed Toby standing there.

“Toby!” Bellingham said. “Come and pull up a stool, my good man.”

“Are you sure?” Toby joked, walking over. “I don’t want to disturb you when you’re drinking and thinking. I’m a bit attached to my teeth for that.”

Bellingham smiled good-naturedly. “Nah, there’ll be none of that between friends. Come on, have a drink on me.”

“I was actually coming over to speak with you,” Toby said as he slipped into the stool next to Bellingham. “And don’t worry about a drink, I’ve just got a fresh one.”

The chatter around the incident resumed as people went back to more pressing business.

“Is that right?” Bellingham said. “And what might I be able to help you with?”

“I wanted to know if you’ve seen anything pertinent to the whole business we have going on with Duke Diddle,” Toby asked.

“Ah,” Bellingham said. He took a thoughtful sip from his tankard and nodded. “Well, in that case, lad, gather closer, and I shall tell you a tale.”

And he slid the piece of parchment under Toby’s nose.

6

“I believe that is what’s known as propaganda,” Toby said.

In front of him was a woodcut. Toby quite liked the aesthetics of woodcuts. They were blocky and bold. The image was cut into the wood using tools such as chisels, gouges, and knives. The raised areas of the image were inked and printed, while the cut away or recessed areas did not receive any ink and appeared blank on the printed paper. There was, at least back on Earth, a rustic, old school charm to them.

Seeing one like this, though, in a more serious setting, it struck him that when it came to looking professional and not slightly fanatical, the woodcut should not be the printing method of choice.

“I don’t know if  there’s anything proper about it,” Bellingham said, tapping the piece of paper, “but there are more than a few people in this town, not to mention the more rural provinces, who are going to believe it. Some people just love to complain.”

“Some people thrive on bad news,” Toby agreed.

The piece of paper in front of him was covered mostly in poor, but recognizable, caricatures of King Balourd and Queen Lascivo. The King was portrayed as a foolishly smiling ranine-looking creature with strings attached to his sausagey arms and legs. The Queen was stationed at the top of the page and was obviously playing the classic role of the puppet master.

Toby read the text underneath this image a second time. There was not a lot of it. It was as straightforward and easy to interpret (so long as someone could read) as the image was.

“Hm, thought so,” Toby said. “When I saw the picture of the monarchs I thought the text would basically allude to the fact that King Balourd was a malleable idiot being controlled by Queen Lascivo—”

“The ‘whore queen with diabolical machinations of her own up her sleeve’,” Bellingham interjected.

“Yep, that’s the one. Colorful imagery,” Toby said. He sighed and pushed the paper back to Bellingham. “And I like how at the bottom here Diddle has cast aspersions on whether it was actually some dastardly ploy of the Queen’s to poison the Jousting Jamboree ale.”

“Yeah, that’s the frustrating thing about horse shit and gossip, isn’t it?” the hunter said, smacking his lips after he’d taken a long pull on his pint. “The thing about horse shit and gossip is that it looks exactly like the truth on a woodcut.”

Toby sighed again. “Yep, people are always drawn to a sexy lie more than they are to a humdrum truth. So, these are all over the place are they?”

Bellingham nodded. “I haven’t seen many in Stagbreach,” he said, “but they’re all through the villages that are further afield. Strikes me that the Duke has started his besmirching of the royal couple outside of town. Won’t be long until the pamphlets make it here, though.”

“Pretty smart move,” Toby said. “Get all the surrounding countryside confused about who is running the show in an already confused time. Hearsay and conjecture can be as much of a pain in the butt at times like this as any real threat.”

Bellingham nodded his agreement.

“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas is a pretty common practice in the realms of religion and politics where I come from,” Toby said, “but the cultivation of comfortable or juicy bullshit is just as popular a move.”

“I don’t know if you know of him,” Bellingham said, “but Lord Marshal Vani—”

“I know him,” Toby said. “The ogre. Loves to pass a little something over the back teeth.”

“That’s him. Well, he’s got a philosophy that revolves around the tenet that it doesn’t matter how dirty someone fights so long as they win because—”

“—because it’s the winners who get to write the history books,” Toby finished.

“I think he actually said it was the winner who got to spin the yarn about what happened to the gullible bastards in the pub afterwards, but the end result is more or less the same,” Bellingham said.

“What’s been the result of this?” Toby asked.

Bellingham gave him a lackadaisical shrug. “More or less what you’d expect,” he said. “A lot of scoffing and grumbling, a lot of people bringing up the well-known fact that the Queen gained her position through her expertise at building and running brothels. A few firebrands—mostly conniving folk with an eye for the profits that can be made when unrest is in the air—inflaming peoples’ worries.”

Toby puffed out his cheeks. “Was this the tale you were wanting to tell me?”

“No, this is just an extra little facet that I thought you might be interested in,” Bellingham said. “The tale I wanted to tell you was a short one, but something that I thought might pique your fancy.”

“Go on,” Toby said, taking a slurp from his own tankard and lowering it by another inch or two.

“Whilst I was out hunting, I saw a lot of movement in the woods and wild places,” Bellingham said, leaning forward and dropping his voice.

With the volume in the taproom growing in decibel level by the minute this was unnecessary, but Toby appreciated it all the same. As he and Bellingham had made mention of, rumor and whispered throwaway comments could all too easily be misconstrued or woven into something else entirely.

“A lot of movement?” Toby asked.

Bellingham waved his hand around. “It’s hard to describe, but what I’m gettin’ at is that there’s a lot of disquiet, I suppose. There was a lot of unease in places where there shouldn’t be nothing but the sounds of the beasts and birds, the waters and the trees.”

Toby nodded. “Something that you can’t put your finger on?”

Bellingham inclined his head. “Just so. That feeling, it isn’t something I’d be able to point out, especially not to someone who was uninitiated in the patterns and rhythms of the wild,” he said. “But I constantly felt as if I was being watched, like there was something in the corner of my eye that I wasn’t fast enough to spot when I turned to look at it.”

“Okay,” Toby murmured, “so what do you think it was?”

“Something that shouldn’t have been there, and something that heralded clandestine actions,” the hunter said ominously.

Toby frowned. “Maybe you should be taking this to the Lord Marshal, as well as the King and Queen, Bellingham.”

“Oh, I will be, don’t you worry about that,” Bellingham said. “I just thought I’d make mention of it to you while I have you here.”

“Did you get to the bottom of it? Did you find out what was throwing off the vibe of the wilds?”

Bellingham took another long draw from his tankard. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I followed my nose to the western edge—that’s the furthest edge from here, so far as you townies are concerned—of the Feywood.”

“I’ve only been in there a little ways,” Toby said, remembering his run-in with Rowan Moonshroud. “There were some buzzy creatures in there.”

“Yep, a lot of shit in there that hums, drones, croaks, sings and otherwise sibilates,” Bellingham said, missing Toby’s meaning. “A lot of strange stuff. I’ve been walking those shifting paths for decades and I still ain’t more than scratched the surface of the Feywood.”

Anyway, what did you find?” Toby asked, leaning forward in his turn.

Bellingham massaged the back of his neck. “Well that’s just it. I found diddly-squat.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why—?”

“I didn’t find anything, but I found the signs of a lot of things.”

Toby frowned. “No offense, Bellingham, but you know how even Oswald’s shandies pack a punch. You might have to lay things out a little clearer for me, otherwise I might miss what you’re driving at.”

Bellingham chuckled, but there was little humor to the sound. “What I’m driving at, Toby, is that I found the signs of a great deal of… something massing in the dark, tangled woodlands in the west of the Feywood. Now, I don’t know what they were, these things. I haven’t ever seen the likes of their tracks before. All I can tell you for certain was that there were a lot of them. The way they had moved from one spot to another, from one clearing to the next, it looked as if they were scoping the area out.”

“Scoping it out for what? A staging area, a base?” Toby said.

The hunter shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “And there weren’t any clues left behind to suggest anything.”

Toby chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek as he mulled that over. Around him, drink-fueled conversation and japery swirled. Men and women of all kinds of different species laughed, cursed, joked, flirted, and insulted one another. The atmosphere was generally convivial, but there was a very subtle undercurrent of skittishness too. You had to be sober(ish) and looking for it to feel it, but Toby could.

“I’m just going to throw what I think out,” Toby said after a moment of slow cogitation. “Take it with a grain of salt.”

“Will do,” Bellingham said.

“Sounds like there were some unknown creatures—a lot of unknown creatures—gathering in some far flung parts of a wood that is notoriously weird at the best of times. Right?”

“Indeed,” the hunter agreed.

“They were gathering in these places for an unspecified reason—but a reason nonetheless.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, you’re an experienced hunter and traveler in these parts,” Toby went on, “and yet you haven’t been able to identify these tracks.”

“No.”

“Which means these creatures, or whatever the fuck they were, are new.”

Bellingham made a noise of assent as he drank.

“Which, in turn, leads me to think that they are some of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents,” Toby said.

“That was my first thought,” Bellingham agreed.

“And they got to wherever it was they were going and then… What? Disappeared?” Toby asked.

“Like they vanished into thin air,” Bellingham said. “Tracks led into the final glade. No tracks led out.”

“Sounds to me almost like some kind of scouting party, albeit a big one,” Toby said. “Sounds to me like Duke Diddle or Vexx, if either of them are behind it, have sent out some mysterious monsters to have a  poke around. Then, when they saw what they needed to see—”

“Or found what they needed to find,” Bellingham added.

“—Diddle vanished them with that wand of his,” Toby finished. “But why?”

“That’s the question that the fate of a kingdom might hinge upon,” Bellingham said.

The two men stared into their drinks. The pub’s atmosphere flowed around them, as if they were two rocks in a river of turbulent emotion.

“All I can think is that the Feywood would be a pretty decent place to stage an attack from, wouldn’t it?” Toby said. “I mean, it all but abuts Stagbreach.”

“And you could hide a fair force in those trackless depths,” Bellingham said. “A lot of smugglers have hiding places in the Feywood. The types of hiding places that get passed down from smuggling father to smuggling son, they’re that bloody good and valuable.”

“So, all the signs point to Duke Diddle scouting out and lining up the Feywood for… some reason,” Toby muttered.

“Some unknown reason, right,” Bellingham said.

Toby saw that there was a rueful grin playing around the hunter’s lips. He sighed and shook his head. He drained his tankard and pushed it across the bar.

“So, we might have Duke Diddle lining up a move,” he summarized. “But we don’t know what kinds of bizarre happy little accidents he might be using as part of this move, or why he’s doing it. Or when he might make it.”

“Don’t forget that we ain’t got any kind of evidence whatsoever, except for my hunter’s intuition,” Bellingham pointed out.

Toby slapped the other man on the shoulder. “Well, at least we’re aware that there is something, maybe, to keep an eye out for… in the future… at some unspecified point in time…”

“The kind of good, solid information that can easily be planned for and acted on,” Bellingham said sarcastically. “Good job we’ve got such an expert tactician in old Balourd.”

Toby tapped the piece of folded parchment on the bar top. “I think this might be more the province of the ‘puppet master’,” he said.

Oswald Parson came bustling over at that moment. “Another of the same, lads?” he asked.

“I think we had better,” Toby said.

“Ah,” Oswald said knowingly, as he snatched up the two empty tankards and got to refilling them, “I was thinking you had the look about you.”

“What look is that, Parson?” Bellingham asked.

“The look of two men setting the world to rights,” the publican replied.

“Speaking of putting the world to rights,” Bellingham said, “how about we talk seriously about the price you want to give me for those seven braces of turuls I’ve got hanging in your stables?”

“I told you, I’ll give you four coppers a bird, Bellingham,” the landlord replied. “Those damn rainbirds make one customer in twenty so morose I have to have them carted home in a barrow.”

“Nonsense, your cook’s just not preparing them right.”

“I’ll let you explain that to Old Cook, then,” Oswald chuckled.

“Now, listen here, you know they’re worth half a dozen coppers a bird and that’s mates rates…”

The negotiation between the two men faded into the general hum of background noise as Toby’s mind drifted. He looked around the tavern. He liked the Toby Jug. He liked it a lot. Was there any other place where a more vibrant palette of sentient species behavior could be observed than an inn?

Back on Earth, watering holes of the Jug’s caliber were few and far between. It was rare that you found a bar that was at once a social space, a shelter and, with the rise of the work from home trend and ubiquitous WiFi connections, an informal office.

The Jug, minus the WiFi, was a pub of the highest order; a courtroom, a headshrinker’s office, a place to let boots and cloaks dry out by the fire after an arduous day spent smuggling or hunting or farming.

Toby allowed his gaze to wander. He observed the relationships burgeoning and, in the case of a woman holding another woman in a headlock, ending within the confines of its wood-paneled walls.

He smiled as his eyes alighted on the resident pub dog, Bozo. The mutt had become a celebrity when, a few years previously when Oswald had gotten a folk band in to play, he had managed to drink the guitarist’s entire jug of ogre-strength ale, thrown up, eaten his own chunder, and then gotten into a fight with a doormat before promptly passing out inside a the bass drum.

Toby reckoned that if he entertained the popular myth that there was a certain language that had thirty words for snow, then the inhabitants of Stagbreach could match that with their own terms related to getting on the grog at their local drinking establishment.

A place like this, alone, is worth doing my best to save, he thought.

He walked back to his table a few minutes later with his drink in hand, along with another mystery round for his female companions.

“How did it go?” Verity asked.

“Yes, pray tell,” Anna said in her best posh voice.

Toby sat opposite his two friends. The pair of women had their arms around one another in a very familiar fashion.

Toby rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“In a nutshell,” he said, “I have a feeling that life is about to get just that little bit harder.”

Oh, don’t worry, Tobes,” Anna said. She leaned across the table and patted Toby clumsily on the hand. “It’ll be alright. Life is full of hard shit.”

“I think there is hard shit and then there is hard shit,” Toby said.

“My point is, there are hidden pitfalls and stuff that’ll trip us up at every turn in this life,” Anna said. “Unexpected stuff. Like… wrapping gifts, for instance. That shit is hard. Every time I do it it looks like a very angry, very drunk person has attempted it.”

“True,” Toby conceded. “Closing a pizza box is another one of those. Easy on paper, all but impossible in practice.”

“And honestly, if you watched me trying to parallel park a cart, you’d be convinced I was fucking with you,” Verity said. “Seriously, I was once part of a heist that had to be reneged on because of that inability. I don’t even come close. Not ever. And I always try really hard.”

“Or finding your keys, purse, and phone right before you have to leave your house,” Anna said.

Toby laughed.

“Anna is right, Toby,” Verity said. “At the end of the day, the world is full of challenges. One thing I’ve always found beneficial to remember is that storms are just as much our friends as sunshine. You’ve just got to have the right mindset, darling.”

“Face it with a smile, whatever may come?” Toby said.

“Right,” Anna agreed. She pushed one of the drinks towards Toby. “And speaking of whatever may come, how about we blow this lemonade stand and head home?”

Verity smiled conspiratorially across the table at Toby. “And speaking of blowing…”

7

The noises a man is liable to make whilst in the midst of having his dingus sucked belong to that select group of sounds which a man never, ever wants to listen back to outside of that particular moment.

Toby was aware of this, but even being aware of it as he was, he couldn’t—not even had he had a gun pressed to his head—have stopped himself from eliciting the gasps and moans that the conjoined sexual forces of Anna Coombes and Verity None drew from him.

They had gone home at Anna’s instigation. The three of them had stumbled, bouncing occasionally off the narrow, crooked halls of the former magician’s house, up the stairs to the bathroom. There, they had run a bath.

Toby had had many a good soak in that tub. Strangely though, or strangely now he came to think of it, he had only tubbed solo. Luckily, the bathtub was one of those great claw-footed monsters with high backs. They were the kind that very rich people used to have installed in their houses, the kind that more or less required a non-stop train of lowly serving folk to keep bringing up fresh buckets of hot water.

Happily, the bath at Rowan Moonshroud’s former residence was not hampered by only being able to be filled by hand. In fact, it wasn’t even hampered by the fact that it didn’t have any plumbing.

Toby had had a cursory look around the tub when they had first moved in and he had first used it. There were no pipes leading to it. There weren’t even any pipes leading away. Where the water came from and where it drained to, he had no idea. He imagined it was the same sort of pocket dimension that the magically emptying shitter outside was connected to.

He hadn’t expended too much thought or worry on this. He had simply filed it under the increasingly expanding file in his head labeled ‘Magic.’

The bathroom door was closed behind them, sealing out the insidious Frank. The imp had quickly learned, ever since the potting shed incident, that whenever Toby, Anna, and Verity were in the mood to get into it with one another, that was an unspoken instruction for him to get out of Dodge.

At first, he had occupied himself by rattling door knobs and scraping his long talons down the window panes of the rooms they were using for their ménage à trois. But this soon lost its fun and appeal. Frank realized that it would take nothing short of a team of wild hippogriffs to dissuade Toby and his two companions from getting down and dirty once they decided to do so.

In the tiled, echoing bathroom, the room soon rang with laughter and the rushing roar of flowing water. Toby and the others stripped off. They were well past anything that might have been construed as self-conscious around one another now. They pulled off their boots, kicked off their trousers, and helped one another extricate themselves from clinging shirts.

Toby almost lost his footing and ended up in the half-full bath prematurely when Anna’s trousers, which had been putting up a hell of a fight in coming off, finally gave up and slipped over her ankle with a jerk. Verity’s natural reflexes, which had only been a little dulled by the alcohol they had consumed during their night out, managed to stop Toby from ending up in a bedraggled and undignified heap in the tub.

“I owe you one,” Toby said, tossing Anna’s trousers over his shoulder.

“Yes, you do. One, and more,” Verity said.

She put her arms around Toby’s neck and pulled him into a wet, tongue-hungry kiss. She was already topless, as was Toby. Toby could feel the hard press of her firm breasts and rapidly hardening nipples against his own chest. As they kissed, Toby deftly unbuckled Verity’s belt. With a seductive wiggle of her backside, the blonde woman allowed her trousers to fall down her long, athletic legs.

Toby felt her step free of the clothes. His eyes were closed, but he knew that she was now naked. It was a delightful piece of knowledge to hold in one’s head. To know that, if he wanted to, he could open his eyes and feast his gaze on one of the hottest pieces of ass he had ever had the fortune to be in the same room with.

There was a soft, inviting sound of a body slipping into water.

“Come on, you two,” Anna said. “Hurry up before it gets cold.”

Toby broke the kiss with Verity. “You do know that there’s some kind of charm on that bathtub so that the water never goes cold, right?” he said.

“Oh, stop raining on my suggestive entreaties with your facts,” Anna said. “Get your ass in here.”

“As you say, my lady,” Toby said with a courteous bow.

Toby and Verity obeyed the summons. Toby ended up at one end of the bathtub, Anna was at the other, and Verity, as she always liked to say in these situations, was the meat in the sandwich.

The blonde lay herself against Toby. Toby leaned back against the porcelain of the magical bathtub. Verity’s bright blonde hair floated all around him. Her skin felt wonderful and slippery against his. His hands slid over her shoulders and he trailed his fingers over her chest.

“Mmmm,” Verity said, closing her azure eyes.

Slowly, almost distractedly, Toby occupied himself with that age-old favorite pastime of men through the ages: fondling and playing with boobs. He ran his fingers around the bright pink areolas of her nipples. He pinched gently at first and then harder as his attentions garnered more groans.

While Toby was engaging himself in this manner, Anna had opened up Verity’s legs and slipped between them. Toby could have reached out and tickled Anna’s toes if he had fancied it, but he wasn’t keen to break the mood.

It was hard to see precisely what Anna was doing to Verity under the sudsy water. Whatever it was, though, went down a storm with the blonde-haired beauty. Toby could see Anna’s arm moving back and forth. He had a fair idea what she was up to down there.

Anna’s lips were twisted in a lustful and mischievous grin. Her eyes were half-lidded, and she stared under her long lashes at Toby’s face. It was clear that she was trying to discern whether what she was doing was getting him off.

It is.

“Keep going,” Toby said. He could feel himself responding under the water. Even with the copious amount of mixed, strange alcohol they had imbibed, his johnson seemed hell-bent on seeing the evening out to the end.

That makes two of us, Toby thought.

Having sex in the bath was one of those acts that always looked easier on paper than it was in actuality. There was this undeniable romance to sex in the bath. The hot water, the bubbles, the steam…

The lack of space, Toby thought wryly to himself. The fact that these old tubs are lethally slippery.

That’s enough out of you, common-sense. We’ve talked about this. When Mr. Alcohol comes around, you retire to your study for an early night.

Still, that slipperiness proved advantageous at points. One of these moments occurred when Anna was able to slide her foot right under the moaning Verity’s backside so that she could, with some little difficulty it had to be said, rub it up against Toby’s rapidly swelling member. Toby let out a little hiss of surprise at this maneuver.

“Well played, Miss Coombes,” he said. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

“Those are the best kinds in the bedroom,” Anna said.

“Or the bathroom,” Verity added, her eyes still closed.

Toby continued to play with Verity’s wonderful tits. He kneaded and squeezed them as Anna continued to pleasure the other woman from the other end.

The air was warm and fragrant and steamy. It was the perfect atmosphere for such hijinks.

After a while, Verity rolled around in the water so that her arms were on either side of Toby’s lap. She delivered some kisses across his chest, which were borderline bites. Toby didn’t mind it. He was well aware and used to the sexual proclivities of Verity None by that point.

“You’re going to leave a scar one of these days,” he murmured. His voice came out in a low growl, rough with desire and drink.

“If you’re lucky,” Verity said.

She worked her way down the stretch of torso that was above the waterline. Then she looked up at Toby and winked.

“Speaking of blowies,” she repeated from earlier on.

Toby laughed. “I think it was actually you speaking of blow— Whooooa-my-goodness-what-the-hell…” He tilted his head back. It made a dull, damp sound on the bath.

Verity had ducked under the water and taken Toby in her mouth.

“Hey, where’d she go?” Anna joked, looking up from where she had been concentrating on groping Verity’s wonderful bubble butt.

Toby tried to answer, but his lexicon of words seemed to have shrunk down to monosyllabic grunts of pleasure.

Verity was down there for at least forty-five seconds before she was obliged to come up for air. Her face was dripping, and her hair was sopping wet. She blew water from her lips, pushed her blonde locks from her face, and giggled at the look on Toby’s face.

“I don’t suppose you’d mind carrying on pretending that my thingummy is a snorkel, or whatever the hell you were doing down there, do you?” Toby said, a little breathlessly.

“As you wish, Master,” Verity said, bobbing her head in an almost servile manner.

That sparked something in Toby’s libido. It wasn’t often that Verity, by inclination or personality, allowed herself to be dominated. Toby wound his fingers through her wet hair and slowly but inexorably pushed her head back under the water.

While Verity sucked him off, Anna was busy finger-fucking the blonde woman.

After a while, Anna stood up, her body glistening and streaming water.

“I want a go,” she declared.

With a little difficulty thanks to the booze she’d consumed, Anna managed to awkwardly make her way up the tub, one foot pressed to either side of it as she squeezed past Verity and Toby’s, until she was standing over Toby.

The bathwater dripped off the curves of Anna’s body and onto Toby’s face and chest. He squinted up at her. It was quite a sight, and that was putting it mildly.

“Can I help you, madam?” he asked in a theatrically polite voice.

“That remains to be seen,” Anna said.

She lowered herself down until her box was an inch away from Toby’s face. Toby took a moment to soak in that ludicrously erotic sight as he soaked in the bathwater. He was eye to eye with Anna’s sex, which was tight and dripping wet, and he couldn’t have been more turned on had he tried. He could see her clitoris standing proud of her vulva.

“Wow,” he groaned, as Verity did something tricky under the water with his coin purse.

“You’re welcome,” Anna said archly.

Toby, using his one free hand that wasn’t resting on Verity’s head, grabbed Anna’s ass and squeezed it. She was obliged to lean over and take hold of the top of the bath. Then Toby went to work eating his oldest friend out.

She tasted so good. The sensuality of the act was doubled by the moans that Toby was able to wring out of her. He licked up and down Anna’s wonderful, wet slit. He closed his eyes as he applied himself to the task.

Careful to remember that there were three of them in the tub, Toby released Verity’s hair. Verity emerged out of the bathwater again. She was breathing hard, although whether this was because she had stayed under there for as long as she was able to or because she was busy frigging herself while she was doing it, Toby wasn’t sure.

The beautiful blonde more or less came up cheek to cheek with Anna’s ass. Toby felt something tickling his chin. He opened his eyes a fraction and saw that Verity had reached up and was actually fingering Anna while Toby ate her out.

Toby and Verity worked on Anna as a team until Toby could see that his brunette friend’s knees were actually shaking.

Then, once more, Toby was caught off guard. Verity’s body moved. In the next moment, Toby’s pecker had been enfolded into the wonderful velvety confines of Verity’s sex. Thanks to the water, and the fragrant bath oils that the girls had poured liberally into the tub, Toby slipped into the blonde with minimal resistance.

“Fuck me,” Toby groaned, as Verity’s pelvis came to rest against his own.

“That’s the plan,” Verity said.

While Verity fucked him, she leaned forward and actually opened Anna’s ass cheeks and stuck her tongue into the hole that Toby wasn’t busy pleasuring.

“Holy fuck!” Anna screamed. “Holy… Oh my god, there’s a first! Don’t stop, Verity. And don’t you stop either, Toby.”

“Team work makes the dream work,” Toby replied in a voice that was muffled by lust and vagina.

“There’s no ‘I’ in ‘fuck,’” Anna babbled.

Toby laughed into Anna’s vagina as he continued licking and lapping at her.

Time distorted and lost all meaning. The foreplay, as foreplay often did, led into sex and more sex. Bathwater splashed over the side of the tub as things became more frantic.

Toby was more or less relegated to sitting on his ass for most of the time. He didn’t mind. Things became stretched and contorted and confused, as they often did in such situations when he, Verity, and Anna got together in that manner.

They lost themselves in the moment. They forgot about the looming threats. They put aside the cares that each of them carried. They fucked one another with abandon, as if it was the last night for any of them.

Toby finished by spraying his seed all over Anna’s back while Verity fondled his balls and played with Anna’s tits, as Toby fucked the brunette in a doggy-style position.

Somehow, and he wasn’t quite sure of the logistics that led to it, but they all ended up back in Toby’s bed.

They were all nude, damp, hot, and exhausted. They were all happy. Replete and complete. Toby, floating in that comfortable, pink, fuzzy place between wakefulness and sleep, felt like he was living in a dream.

Which was why, when he slipped into unconsciousness, it was somewhat vexing that his consciousness should reform only a short time later in a confusing, untethered place that might easily have been placed in the nightmare category.

8

Toby opened his eyes. He was not in his bed. He was not in the house he shared with Anna, Frank, Verity, and Dishy.

He didn’t know where he was.

That was the thing about post-coital exhaustion, perhaps. It could take a man many places. It could take him deep into his memories. It could take him to imaginary worlds. It could take him back through time.

Wherever he was, he didn’t have a body. All he seemed to be was a pair of floating eyeballs. That didn’t bother him. Toby was aware that this was a dream.

At least, that’s what it felt like. Admittedly, his memories of precisely what he had been doing prior to this were growing hazier by the second. Eclipsia was never shy about throwing a curveball either.

He was fairly certain he could have woken himself up. However, he had always been possessed of an inquisitive nature. He decided to let the dream play out.

The world swirled and took on color. There was a rush of sound as if the background noises from a very busy street were being played and fast-forwarded through the ear canals that he didn’t have.

Toby’s vision flashed and faded and then came into focus.

He was standing in a room. At least, it was the ghost of a room. The furniture and even the walls were possessed of a peculiar transparency. They too, like all of this, were being made up by his brain.

But then he thought, if the furniture was the ghost of furniture, did that mean it was being based on a memory? His memory? He’d heard somewhere that the seemingly random faces of people that you saw in dreams were actually amalgamations of faces you’d seen in waking life. Was it the same with house fittings?

It was an intriguing thought. Was he remembering this? Was it some branch of his previously untapped subconscious?

One thing was certain, the room was not a mundane one. It clearly belonged to someone living in the world of Eclipsia. There were too many items that hinted at a world in which magic and the supernatural was sewn into the very fabric of existence. Strange braziers emitting pale purple smoke were dotted about, blown glass flasks containing light rather than liquid, heavy books with covers made from bark…

Toby’s perspective on the room changed. He whirled around it, taking it in from every angle. Then his point of view shifted. He rose to the ceiling, and his gaze tilted down. He noticed, from his new vantage point, that, by coincidence of design, the furniture and detritus of the room was laid out in the shape of a pentagram.

A door that had not been there a moment before opened and two people walked into the room. They were small people. Not dwarves, but children.

Toby watched as they were obliged to wend their way carefully through the higgledy-piggledy mess of ordered chaos. It reminded Toby a little bit of Rowan Moonshroud’s parlor, the way that there had just been shit everywhere. However, although all the items in this room seemed to have been placed with deliberation, even if it was a little messy, it was clean in the room too. A major difference from Rowan Moonshroud’s lodgings.

Toby concentrated on the two children. One looked to be a small boy. The other was a girl, but she didn’t look human. Toby knew this at once. No human he had ever met, even in Eclipsia, had deep aqua-colored skin.

Apart from the pale bluish-green skin, the little girl looked just like the little boy in terms of features. Apart from… Toby, his floating perspective changing angle somewhat, saw that the little girl had pointy ears. They reminded Toby of how humans believed elves to look like. The little blue girl’s hair was bright white, almost silver, and pulled back in an intricate braid.

Such was the exoticness of the girl’s appearance that Toby only spared a glance for the little boy after he had regarded the young blue-skinned girl for a good thirty seconds or so.

When his gaze alighted on the boy, his heart stopped. Or at least it would have done had his dream self had a heart.

He was looking at himself.

He was gazing down at the younger version of himself.

And in that instant of recognition, Toby’s floating, formless perspective altered. He was sucked downwards and through the eyes of the little boy—through his own eyes.

And suddenly, blinking, he was the little boy. He was himself. He stared around. Wherever he wanted his head to move, the little boy moved his head.

Some part of Toby, a part that was detached from what was going on, wondered whether he was choosing to move his younger self’s head or the actions of his younger self correlated with Toby’s dream thoughts.

That was by the by.

He looked over at the little girl next to him. She was looking down at the floor. Her hands were clasped in front of her. She looked nervous. She looked afraid. Toby wondered whether he should have been afraid too.

The door opened, and through it stepped a tall woman. Toby’s eyes had been on the floor, but they rose now. He took in the woman’s boots, a long flowing purple gown embroidered with golden thread. His gaze rose further, seeing the clever long-fingered hands clasped in front of her. There was a sliver of gleaming silver-pale wood held delicately between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. Further up, the high neckline of the gown rose to the bottom of her dark brown hair.

Just before Toby laid eyes on the face of the woman, the whole world broke apart.

The vision faded. The woman’s face became an indistinct smear. Was she smiling?

The colors swam and reformed. Like a drop of ink breaking up and trailing through water, but reversed, the details came together, and this time Toby was in another place he did not recognize.

He was following along, floating, behind the little boy—himself. They were walking through the stone corridors of a castle. There was something about that castle that resonated with Toby. He felt like he should recognize it, but he couldn’t quite place it.

The memory—or the dream—fragmented. The fragments swirled in the dark and they transformed into snow. The snow came down straight into Toby’s face. Toby’s gaze adjusted. It came down to take in the little blue-skinned girl once more. Wrapped in the bright gold furs of some alien creature, she was running ahead of him across a field of unbroken snow. She was laughing.

The thrill that that sound sent through Toby’s reminded him of how Anna’s laugh made him feel. He got an inkling that he knew this little girl very well—or had known her. She was running through the snow and Toby was chasing behind her.

Suddenly, there was a deafening explosion. Toby spun around, almost falling in the snow. Behind them was a tower. Toby watched in mute, fascinated horror as the tower collapsed down into itself in a great plume of smoke and green fire.

His vision swirled and reformed again and again.

More memories, more strange made-up visions concocted by his exhausted mind perhaps, swam up from the silty bottom of his gray matter. There were flashes of spell fire. There were things that Toby could only interpret as hints of magic. There were brief glimpses caught of roaring log fires, of sitting around a cozy lounge room, of being sung to by a faceless woman wrapped in shadows. Someone was droning away in a language he couldn’t understand, yet he got the impression they were telling stories.

Toby tried vainly to piece together what he was seeing, but it was like trying to make sense out of the half-glimpsed views of a passing train carriage that was rocketing through a station at midnight. He caught flashes, moments in time, but without any context it was hard to know what to make of anything.

The blue-skinned girl featured a number of times. She changed with each memory that was revealed to Toby. Sometimes she was older, sometimes she was younger. And then abruptly, she was not there at all. No one was.

Toby saw his mother, clear as day, his mother walking out the door of their apartment in New York. An overwhelming wash of reminiscent sadness swept through him.

He was dimly aware that back in reality his body was heaving and jerking. He might have sobbed, he wasn’t sure. The memory of his mother’s face was clear and sharp as if it had been etched into stained glass. She was smiling. Was there something behind that smile?

Toby felt his consciousness struggling to break through into the waking world, like a bubble working its way up through a giant glass of champagne. He could feel himself rising. He could feel his mind breaking free of the soft, strong hold of the dream state.

Part of him wanted that release. Part of him wanted to delve further down that rabbit hole.

Was any of it real? If it wasn’t real, then what did it mean?

“Toby! Toby!” Anna and Verity’s voice.

Oh no, no it wasn’t them. It was…

“Toby! Toby!”

The voices were different now. It was his mother’s voice, and another voice he didn’t recognize, though it was female too.

“Toby, you have to wake up. Toby, we have to go. He’s coming! You have to wake up…”

“Toby, wake up!”

Toby’s eyes snapped open at the same moment the slap connected with his left cheek.

“Ow,” he said.

He was staring up at the darkened ceiling of his bedroom. A flickering light told him that someone had struck a match and lit a candle.

“Tobes, Tobes, are you alright? Are you okay?” Anna asked.

Toby went to acknowledge her but found that he was breathing like he’d just run a marathon.

“Toby, are you okay?” Verity asked more slowly.

Toby nodded. “I’m fine,” he gasped. “I’m fine. I just… I’m fine.”

“What the fuck was that all about?” Anna said. She was leaning over him. She was still stark naked. It went to show the agitated state of Toby’s mind that he barely even noted that her breasts were hanging a few inches from his face.

“What?” Toby said. The visions were slow to fade from his eyes. He could still see the outline of some female form, of the fallen tower. The shapes bled from his retinas and from his memory like a sun spot disappearing. 

“Tobes, what the fuck was all that about?” Anna repeated.

“That,” Toby said, propping himself up slowly on his elbows, “is a very good question.”

9

“You know, there’s no point in trying to deny that last night was the first time that you had those nightmares,” Anna said sternly.

“Are you trying to be sternly disapproving with me?” Toby asked.

“Yes. Is it working?”

Toby narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Not really, no. Although, I think that’s only because I know personally what a hot mess you can be at times. And how you’re prone to trying to take care of anything and everything yourself without letting other people know how you’re getting on.”

“I am not a… Tobes, I have never been a hot mess, and I always talk my shit through with other people.”

“What about that time we were in seventh grade study hall and that kid in front of you kept eating your sandwich?”

Anna frowned. “I don’t remem—”

“You know,” Toby said. “You always used to bring a couple of small sandwiches to school so you could have one at lunch and one in study hall since Mrs. Grayson would let us eat in that class.”

Verity looked from Anna to Toby.

Anna set her chin defiantly. “I never—”

“And there was that one day when you were about to eat that tasty sandwich, and you got up to use the bathroom. And when you walked back into the classroom, you told me later that you saw that asshole kid, Brendan, in front of you eating your sandwich.”

“Fucking Brendan,” Anna said, balling her hands into fists.

“You were pretty annoyed after school,” Toby went on, “but nothing serious at that point, as far as I remember. You said you confronted Brendan politely, but he denied it completely.”

Anna let out a slow breath. “And I left my sandwich on my desk the next day just to make sure it was him. And what do you know, it was the little son of a bitch.”

“Right,” Toby said.

“So, on the third day, I hatched my plan,” Anna said, sounding more and more like an evil genius breaking into a monologue of the self-incriminating kind. “I put that delicious habanero cheese on my sandwich, and then doused it all in ghost pepper sauce that my dad had been given as a joke from my mom.”

Toby nodded.

“That shit was everywhere, but it luckily didn’t smell spicy,” Anna said, her eyes gleaming with delight as she played the memory back. “I got to study hall, and my plan worked fucking flawlessly.”

“You left that trap sandwich on Brendan’s desk and got up to use the restroom,” Toby said. “I was watching the whole thing because you called me up the night before and told me the following day’s study hall was going to be one for the ages, which struck me as unlikely seeing as study hall was boring as fu—”

“This time I took as long as I could,” Anna went on. “I actually ended up wandering the halls of the school. Can you remember why, Tobes?”

“Because Mrs. Grayson was anal about the hall pass, and only one person was allowed to leave the class at a time, even for water,” Toby said.

“After about ten minutes I strolled back into the class to be greeted by the sweet sound of a sandwich thief crying hysterically,” Anna said, closing her eyes in a beatific delight. “Fucking Brendan had a bright red face, blown up lips, and snot streaming out of his nose, and he was waiting for the hall pass.” Anna sighed. “That little bastard was in the bathroom for the rest of the day.”

Toby cleared his throat. Anna opened her eyes, her expression slowly clearing.

“What?” she said.

“That’s why I can’t buy the sternly disapproving act from you,” Toby said.

“Yeah,” Anna said. “Fair call, I guess.

“It’s weird. They weren’t really nightmares,” Toby said.

“You know what I mean, Tobes,” Anna pressed.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Toby said.

They were sitting around the breakfast table. Toby was toying fitfully with a little bit of marmalade on toast. Dishy had offered to whip the three humans up a full-on, no holds barred breakfast, but Toby hadn’t found himself in the mood. Anna and Verity had stuck with cups of good strong coffee.

“It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of those sorts of things,” Toby admitted as he tossed a crust down on his plate. “But that’s the first time they’ve been so clear, so vivid.”

“What did you see again?” Anna pressed.

Toby let out a little exasperated sound. “What I saw hasn’t changed since I told you what I saw after it happened,” Toby said.

“I’m sure they’ve got to mean something,” Verity said.

“Are you?” Toby asked. “Why?”

“The blonde’s got a point, Toby Adams,” Frank said languidly. He was leaning nonchalantly on the open butter dish in the middle of the table.

“I was wondering what those little marks were, those little indentations in the butter,” Anna said. “It’s from your elbow, isn’t it?”

Frank looked up and then looked down at the block of butter he was currently relaxing against. “Ah, I was wondering why my leaning elbow was getting so greasy,” he said. “And why I kept slipping off things when I was relaxing.”

“Concentrate,” Verity said. “What were you saying about the blonde being right?”

“I just mean, they’re vivid hallucinations, dreams of a mysterious nature. I mean, that sort of stuff doesn’t take place without good reason,” Frank said. “Not in my experience anyhow.”

“And what experience is that exactly?” Toby asked.

Frank walked across the kitchen table. He leaned down and wiped his buttery elbow off on one of the linen napkins. Being a djinn of the Beyond Beyond, his hot body left a small burn mark, like a charcoal blemish, across the linen.

“Dishy will have your ass in a sling for doing that,” Toby said.

Frank scoffed. “I could take that domestic house djinn any day of the week.”

“I don’t know,” Anna said skeptically. “I get the impression that Dishy’s one of those guys who you can only push so far before he totally flips out and shows you the beast within.”

“Cor, you reckon?” Frank said enthusiastically, perking up. “That’d be something to see, wouldn’t it? I’m sure he could do a bit of damage if he was properly pissed off with that horn of his. If you could direct him…” He caught the humans looking at him. He raised his hands and grinned sheepishly. “Just a little something to consider.”

“If we could go back to what you were saying about visions and dreams…?” Toby said.

“Oh yeah, right. What I was saying was that… It’s… Well, it’s portentous, ain’t it?” Frank said. “Classically portentous, you might say. Nothing like a good, vivid dream to steer the turn of events of the dreamseer.”

“So you’re saying it’s some kind of cosmic move by fate?” Toby asked skeptically.

“Shit, I don’t know about fate, mate,” Frank said. “Don’t know about cosmic. Big word, cosmic. That’s well above my pay grade. An afrit might be able to tell you something about that, but I’m just an imp. The future and all that it entails is a slippery bugger. I’ve known some men and womenfolk—cleverer, more intelligent, and sharp-witted than you by a long chalk, no offense…”

“No offense taken,” Toby said woodenly.

“And they’ve been so influenced by the visions or nightmares that they’ve received, through whatever medium that might be, that they’ve gone out of their way to make sure that the future, as they’ve seen it, doesn’t take place. And in so doing, they willingly bring about the very future they were so shit-scared of bringing to pass.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s all just a bunch of guesswork, and we should just keep our heads down and get on with it?” Toby said.

Frank considered that. “Yeah, that about sums it up,” he said. “Not very romantic, though, is it?”

“When was the first time you had one of these little glimpses, Toby?” Verity asked.

Toby puffed out his cheeks as he handed Dishy, who had just floated in from the kitchen, his plate. The little blue imp had a pot of coffee clutched in his tail and did a round of refills for the table as he bobbed by.

“Thanks, Dishy,” Verity said. “You’re a dear.”

“I think it might have happened whilst we were having a lesson with Marshal Vani and a squad of his soldiers,” Toby said. “I was knackered. You know how Marshal Vani is. The more tired you are, the more pleasure he takes in seeing if he can have you finish up as dead on your feet. Anyway, it was at the end of one of those sessions. I was sitting there with my head in my hands, just staring at the sand in the practice yard. I got a flash of… something.”

“That’s not very specific,” Verity said.

“I know, and it’s hard to explain,” Toby said. “It was just a very sharp, vivid tableau that formed itself in front of my eyes. It didn’t last longer than a blink, but it was this scene that didn’t have anything to do with what was going on. A tall woman, proud of bearing, though I couldn’t see her face. And another man—he was pale, and there was something odd, something sinister about him. Anyway, it was gone as soon as I saw it, so to speak.”

“This has happened a few times?” Anna asked.

Toby shrugged. “Yeah, just a few,” he said. “It’s usually when I’m bone weary. Once when I was pretty hammered, taking a leak in an alley on the way home from the Toby Jug. I think, maybe, I had one after sex before, but that blended into a dream, so I didn’t pay it any attention. Not until what happened last night happened.”

“Right,” Verity said.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Anna asked.

Toby let out a short laugh. It faded on his lips, however, when he saw the earnestness in his best friend’s expression. “I just didn’t even think about it, Anna,” he said. “Honestly, it didn’t seem important. I mean, I’m a long way from a neurosurgeon or a psychiatrist. I just thought I was tired. You know how it is. We’ve all seen shit before. It just seemed random.”

“There’s no such thing as random,” Frank said in an ethereal, solemn voice.

“Shut the hell up, Frank,” Toby said. “Don’t try that one on me.”

Frank looked a bit put out. “Geez, it didn’t take you long to catch on to some of my tricks, did it?

“Let’s just say that I’ve learned to treat anything you say with caution ever since you had me blow my own eyebrows off in the laboratory.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, a reminiscent smile dividing his demonic features. “Yeah, that was a good time.”

“Speaking of the laboratory,” Verity said, “I think I might spend the morning down there.”

“Oh yeah?” Toby said. “You working on anything in particular?”

Verity shrugged. “I’ve just been leafing through a few of the books that came with the extension package,” she said.

“Anything of interest?” Toby asked.

“Of course,” Verity said. “Everything in there is of interest. It’s just figuring out what we need. Potion making and elixir concocting is a time-consuming business. Nothing worth doing happens fast.”

“Right,” Toby said, “not unless you fancy decorating the walls with your facial hair.”

Frank cackled.

“I’ve been having a look at some of the more basic potions,” Verity said. “I’m not a natural potioneer. I think if you’re a cook, then you find it a bit easier, but I’ve never really been a whizz in the kitchen. Never had much need for a domestic touch. I’ve got a cauldron of health potion on the go as we speak, so we’ll see how that turns out.”

“Pretty hard to cock up a health potion,” Frank said.

“How would you know?” Verity asked.

“Well, I’ve sabotaged a fair few of them in my time,” Frank said, flicking an imaginary speck of dust off his sable arm. “It’s pretty incredible how easy they can be to whip up, especially when you consider how efficacious some of the better ones can be in healing wounds and combating poisons and the like.”

Toby pictured the hordes of shamblers that they had had to face only the day before. “Health potions sound pretty helpful,” he said to Verity. “I think that’s a good idea.”

“And if there were any left over,” Anna said, “we could always have a go at flicking them on.”

“Selling them?” Toby said.

Anna nodded. “Why not? I mean, I know the king and queen have been looking after us and have been mighty generous, but it’d be nice to have a little income stream of our own coming in.”

Toby grinned. “You can take the girl out of the New York hustle, but you can’t take the New York hustle out of the girl.”

A little while later, after having bade Dishy and Verity farewell, Toby and Anna found themselves walking through the guarded gates of the martial practice yards. Above them, a large black raven with a silver tinge to its feathers glided through the air and made disparaging remarks to the dozing gargoyles on the crenellations.

Things had changed since the pair of them had had their first lesson in the art of the sword and bow with the ogre, Lord Marshal Vani. Although the towering hulk of the Lord Marshal was a gruff and intimidating figure at first glance, he had been good enough to all but extend to Anna and Toby the run of the practice grounds.

The Lord Marshal might have been a fairly pessimistic individual, but he wasn’t a rigid, unbending, stuck-up, high-ranking member of the military. He was not what Toby might have expected of such a person. He was, first and foremost—and the Lord Marshal declared this proudly—a survivor.

Toby had learned a little of the Lord Marshall’s background from some of the veteran soldiers. He had started in the Eclipsian armed forces as a lowly grunt. Through a combination of daring, cunning, ruthlessness, and—according to the ogre himself—knowing when to employ a swift kick to the turkey neck and dumplings of an enemy and make a timely withdrawal, he had slowly worked his way up until he was at the pinnacle of the military mountain.

Toby and Anna didn’t see as much of the Lord Marshal as they might have liked those days. That was because the ogre was busier than he had been in over two decades, trying to expand the army that was based in Stagbreach. Not only that, but he had taken it upon himself, as all good leaders did, Toby supposed, to make sure that that slowly expanding force of men, trolls, and whoever else wanted to join up was as well trained and well equipped as they could be.

“It saves me a job in the long run,” the ogre had grunted to Toby when Toby had asked him how it was going.

“What do you mean?” Toby asked.

“Well, I can either do my best to train them up as soon as they come in,” the ogre replied, matter-of-factly, “or I can half-ass it, and they’ll all get killed, and I’ll have to do it all again anyway. No point half-assing that which you may as well whole-ass and save yourself some strife down the road. That’s always been my philosophy.”

“I thought your philosophy was ‘don’t do sober what you can do half-cut,’“ Toby said.

“Who told you that?” the Lord Marshal asked sharply.

“You did, Lord Marshall,” Toby replied, cleverly.

“Hmm,” Lord Marshal said. “Well, don’t go spreading that around. Although to be fair, if that’s what I believe, there must be some use in it. You don’t get to be Lord Marshal by accident. Although, to be candid, there have been those who have made it to Lord Marshal through the expedient method of being born into the right snooty family or through the application of enough silver to the right person.”

Toby and Anna saw the Lord Marshal as they walked through the gates. The towering ogre was busy drilling a squad of new recruits. Toby could tell that they were novices. The colorful language that was more or less streaming out of Lord Marshal Vani’s mouth was a sure indication of that.

“Great gorgon goolies! I’ve pissed things with more promise off the sides of my chamber pot this morning!” Toby heard Lord Marshal Vani lament to the group at large. “I know I often get a bit of stick for starting off my sword training with saying ‘jab the enemy with the pointy end,’ but you can see by the digit of this half-elf lying in the sand why I do it. Go and take yourself to the apothecary, boy. Sign up for the scriveners or the dispatch riders. Get to the apothecary quick enough, and they might be able to reattach that finger.”

There was a soft caw from above, a scuffling sound, and then some cursing.

“Never mind about the finger,” Lord Marshal Vani said reflectively. “Ravens need to eat too. Now get going, boy!”

Toby nodded to the Lord Marshal when he caught his eye. Lord Marshal Vani nodded back. He was an imposing figure. The perfect kind of specimen that a kingdom would want leading their armed forces, really. There was a common saying back on Earth when someone was particularly strong and formidable-looking. Someone might be inclined to say that someone else was ‘built like a brick shithouse.’ This description had never been truer than when leveled at Lord Marshal Vani. He wasn’t built quite like a brick shithouse. He was built more like a communal latrine and bathing complex carved out of granite.

“Is there anyone you’d recommend us training with today, Lord Marshall?” Anna said sweetly.

Anna was, whether she admitted it or not, one of Lord Marshal Vani’s favorites. He had had a soft spot for the brunette ever since she had exceeded his expectations on the archery range and continued to show genuine passion for the skill.

“Adams… Coombes,” the ogre rumbled. “Matter of fact, I’ve got a promising crop of initiates sparring over at the fire practice yard. You might want to jump in with them.”

Toby nodded his thanks. “Good luck, Lord Marshal,” he said, with a meaningful glance at the new recruits.

“Bah,” Lord Marshal Vani said, waving a three-fingered hand. “We’re going to need more than luck, man. I’m going to need the patience of a glacier to deal with this load of hopeless cases.”

Toby and Anna moved on.

“Miss Coombes!” the ogre yelled after her.

“Yes, Lord Marshal?”

“Out on the range, they’re practicing with a couple of those new hand-cranked crossbows.”

“The ones that were found in that goblin raid a few weeks ago?” Anna asked.

“That’s right,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“Can I go and have a turn?” Anna asked.

“That’s why I mentioned it,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“You don’t think I should continue my studies with the longbow, Lord Marshal?” Anna asked in a voice that was so unnaturally demure that Toby rolled his eyes.

Toby was well aware that Anna knew that Lord Marshal Vani loved her coming to him for advice on just about anything.

“You’re coming along right well with the longbow, lass,” the ogre said. “And though you’ve no experience with the crossbow, you’re a natural with ranged weapons from what I’ve seen. It’ll behoove you, as my dear mother might’ve said, to get at least a little familiar with it. You never know what you might find yourself coming to grips with in the middle of a war.”

In the middle of a war, Toby thought to himself as he and Anna made their way through the yards. Lord Marshal Vani is actively speaking aloud of war. It’s definitely no longer a hypothetical thing standing out on the edge of the future. It’s here.

They spent the rest of the day at the practice yards. Toby and Anna zoned in on the singular goal of becoming more proficient with sword, bow, spear, and any other weapon that happened to be flying around the place. One of the things that Lord Marshal Vani tried to impress upon his students was the importance of versatility.

“You can be a master swordsman, and that’s all very good so far as bragging to your mates goes,” he had said to Toby and Anna, along with the group of trainee soldiers that they were practicing with. “But you’re going to be shit out of luck if you’re on a battlefield and the nearest weapon to hand is a war hammer or a flail.”

Toby trained with both enchanted straw dummy targets and other soldiers. It was funny, but the soldiers coming through the practice yards, somehow, were instantly aware of who Toby, Anna, and Verity were. Perhaps it was the way that they carried themselves.

Toby didn’t feel as if he were employed or was in any way bound to King Balourd, to the Queen of Eclipsia, or the Eclipsian army. He was there of his own volition. He was there because he wanted to make Eclipsia a safe place. He was there because he wanted to help do his part in bringing about the downfall of Duke Diddle and his hordes of previously unseen and unguessed at monsters.

Throughout the day, Toby would surreptitiously attempt to tap into the spell magic he was sure he had access to. He could feel it bubbling inside of himself, simmering away under his skin. For the time being, though, his ability to harness it and make use of it was using a methodology he hadn’t quite worked out yet.

He had been able to hold Vexxx and trap him in a sphere of occult energy when he had feared that Duke Diddle’s right-hand man was going to kill Verity and Anna. In desperation and need, leaving his skin slick with sweat and his mind almost burned out, he had been able to tap into that magic and make good use of it.

Out on the practice yard, though, he couldn’t quite get a handle on it. Even when the ruby in the pommel of the sword glowed with warmth, and he felt a connection not only to the weapon in his hands but also to the weaponized magic inside of himself, he was unable to make use of it.

It frustrated him, but it also filled him with a sense of anticipation. He knew, somehow, deep down, that he would master it. Sooner or later, he would be able to sling spells with the best of them. He didn’t doubt himself.

Let’s hope it’s sooner, though, his brain told him while he sparred, worked out, and fired arrow after arrow at the targets down range.

Toby dwelled on his dreams of the previous evening. He flipped through the images as he might have leafed through a book of photographs. He studied them, faded as they were compared to how vivid they’d been when he’d first seen them. In the same way that he knew beyond doubt that he would get a handle on magic, he knew that those seemingly arbitrary images were of import.

They meant something.

They meant something to him.

But what? he thought. What do they mean? What do they signify?

He was no closer to answering these questions when, at the end of the day, dirt-smeared and sweat-streaked, he bumped into Wolfgang Tootenstein, the eccentric mage who lived at the top of the highest tower in the castle of Eclipsia. Anna had stayed behind to chat about her experience firing the crossbows with Lord Marshal Vani.

“Ah, Toby Adams, it has been too long,” Tootenstein said.

“Actually, Tootenstein, I saw you the other day walking down the road.”

“Is that right? Is that right?” the wizard said. “Well, I must have been sleepwalking again. It’s not really ideal, but these new soporifics I’ve been experimenting with and putting myself under the influence of surely do have some interesting side effects.”

“You were asleep?” Toby asked.

“Aye, yes, I was asleep,” the wizard said blandly.

“But you were doing your shopping.”

“Yes, it’s amazing what the human body is capable of, isn’t it? Especially when the mind’s somewhere else and not able to encumber it with unnecessary cogitation,” Tootenstein said.

Toby didn’t know what to say to this.

“You look engaged, Adams,” Tootenstein said. “If you’ll forgive me for saying so.”

“Engaged?” Toby asked.

“Distracted. Distrait. Discomposed. Another of those helpful adjectives that begin with ‘d,’” Tootenstein said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well…” Toby said, and then, on a whim, he told the magic user what was occupying him.

“Ah, visions, dreams, portents, and mysterious communications from the supernatural and subconscious,” Tootenstein said. “Yes, yes, I know all about that.”

“You do?”

“Well, no,” Tootenstein admitted. “But if you seek answers, there is a place I would recommend going.”

“There is?” Toby asked.

“Indeed,” Tootenstein said. He pulled a small brass box out of his pocket. The object was fastened by an intricate padlock. Tootenstein tapped the padlock with the tip of his pinky finger and muttered a word. The padlock sprang open. Inside was a small amount of shiny yellow powder. The wizard took a pinch and inhaled it sharply. He gasped for a moment as his eyelids fluttered.

“Ah, that’s the stuff,” he said. “Back to the old equilibrium. Now, where was I?”

“You were telling me about there being a specific place that might have the answers to any questions I had regarding visions, dreams, and the mind.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Tootenstein said. “Well, I was alluding to Their Majesties’ Library.”

“There’s a library in their castle?” Toby asked.

“Of course,” Tootenstein said expansively. “What castle would be without a grand library, touting the tomes and knowledge of eons past? It’d be like having one without a dungeon or…”

“A gibbet cage,” Toby suggested.

“That’s right. Now you’ve got it,” Tootenstein said. “Speaking of which, I was talking to Reg this morning—”

Toby waved his hands. He didn’t much care what Reg, the chief gibbet cage occupier, had been up to.

Probably just hanging around.

Toby was glad, even though he was talking to Tootenstein, that he hadn’t given voice to that gag.

“So, the library might help me decipher these dreams?” Toby prompted.

“The dreams… Oh, I don’t know if they’ll be able to help you with the nature of the dreams, so to speak,” Tootenstein said. He took another liberal pinch of whatever powder was in the box and snorted it up the other nostril. “No, I don’t know if they’ll be able to help you with the dreams, per se,” he said again. “But from the people you mentioned that were in the dreams, they might be able to help you with that.”

“What do you mean?” Toby said.

“I mean that blue-skinned folk are not common, even in Eclipsia,” Tootenstein said. “I have a feeling I know what race such a person might belong to, but if you search through the histories in the library, which are comprehensive, then I think you might be pleasantly surprised to find out at least that what you have seen in your slumber are not just the results of an overactive imagination.”

Without so much as a goodbye, Tootenstein glided off and out through the open portal that led down into the township of Stagbreach.

Toby watched the wizard go. Then he looked up at the clouds. There was a grim grayness to the southern horizon. A cold wind brushed its fingers across his cheeks. The clouds looked to be getting closer.

“Excellent,” Toby muttered to himself. “Looks to me like tomorrow is going to be perfect reading weather.”

10

The following day, the streets were heavy with the threat of a coming storm. The air was chillier than it had been. A lazy wind—lazy in the way that it blew through you and not around you—chased leaves and litter through the streets.

Toby woke early, before either Anna or Verity were up. Even Frank, who Toby had the suspicion had made it his life’s goal to hang around him like a fart in a suit of armor, was nowhere to be seen.

Toby was inclined to believe that Frank got a little bit bored during the nocturnal hours. As a djinn, he wasn’t obliged to sleep like he, Anna, and Verity were. Toby had a feeling that the little sable imp went out into the slumbering streets of Stagbreach at night and occupied himself in ways that Toby didn’t ask too much about.

Toby left a message with Dishy so that Anna and Verity would know where he’d gone. Then, wrapping himself up in a cloak, as well as his comfortable tweed morning coat, he stepped out into the street. He pulled up his hood against the spit of rain. It wasn’t raining in earnest yet, but the clouds were putting their feelers out and were probably waiting until there were more people abroad before they started with the deluge.

Toby made his way alone through the cobbled streets of Stagbreach as the chief habitation of Eclipsia slowly woke. Toby nodded to a few of the vendors and shop owners that he recognized. A baker, opening up his awning and staring pensively at the lowering sky, tossed Toby a cinnamon scroll as he passed by.

“Much obliged,” Toby said, nodding.

“My pleasure, Mr. Adams, my pleasure,” the plump man said. “That black and silver-haired cat of yours has been keeping the rats at bay in this part of town, and that’s payment enough for me.”

Toby nodded vaguely and waved to the baker as the man bustled off back into his shop.

I wonder what the hell that little imp has been up to, collecting rats, he thought. Probably better if I don’t know. No doubt it’d just make me an accessory to something.

Toby walked up through town. He was so early that the fairy-powered street lights were still aglow. When he was halfway up to the front gates of the castle, the shutters on the front of the lamps began to open. The fairies were calling it a day. As Toby watched, he saw the little beautiful glowing humanoids flit off back to their nests where they slumbered through the daytime hours.

Just one of the many things we got wrong as humans, he thought to himself. Thinking that fairies were all about flying amongst flowers and riding hummingbirds and stuff. We never stopped to think that they might be possessed of an internal bioluminescence, only come out at night, and were pretty savvy when it came to negotiating wages for public service jobs.

As Toby approached the Castle of Eclipsia, he came to realize something. The muttering of approaching thunder was not the only grumbling taking place on the streets. Toby heard more than one conversation revolving around the growing threat of Duke Diddle and his shambolic shamblers.

“I’m telling you, Winston,” a wolf standing on its hindlegs, which might have been indicative of a werewolf, was saying to a pale form that Toby had an inkling might have been a vampire he’d seen in the Jug a couple of times.

“You’re telling me what?” the vampire asked in a soft voice.

“I’m telling you, that’s the word on the street,” the werewolf said.

Winston stroked his chin, clicked his pronounced canines together, and regarded the werewolf dubiously.

“That doesn’t sound right to me. Why would Queen Lascivo go to all the trouble of backstabbing old Balourd now? She’s had a good few years to do it—not to mention the fact that Balourd would be just about the easiest person to trick in all of Stagbreach. Hell, he’d probably sign over the kingdom to her without any fuss, so long as he got a stipend for the rest of his days.”

The werewolf let out a growl of acknowledgement at this point. “True, true,” it said, its great yellow fangs gleaming. “Still, it’s queer that we haven’t sent any of our forces out to counter the Duke. It feels like we’ve been on the back foot the whole time, no? He seems to know exactly where we’re going to be, while we don’t know where his next move is going to strike.”

The vampire-looking creature shrugged.

Toby was in a pensive frame of mind as he stepped through the arch of the palace’s front gate. The watch hadn’t changed yet. Two gargoyles were guarding the front gate, as was the habit of the guard schedule at the Eclipsian castle.

Toby was aware that there had been a few thieves and chancers that had made the mistake of thinking that just because gargoyles could sit still for twelve hours at a time, they were somehow inefficient sentries. They failed to see that this skill was precisely what made the stony monsters such excellent watchmen. They never ever got bored. They were also in possession of stony talons that could punch through a breastplate with surprising ease and were impervious to most run-of-the-mill weapons.

Toby nodded to the pair of gargoyles on watch. He was unsurprised when they didn’t acknowledge his presence whatsoever. Nobody could outdo a gargoyle when it came to blank, stony stares.

Toby walked past the tinkling fountain and up the beautiful, wide stairs that led to the double doors of the castle. A pair of guards stood in the doorway with their halberds crossed. They recognized Toby when he pulled back his hood and let him inside. Once inside, Toby unfastened his cloak and draped it over his arm.

“May I take that for you, sir?”

Toby started slightly as a liveried footman appeared out of the shadows. “Geez, that was sneaky,” he said. “Well played.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” the footman said. “Discretion is a byword for the staff.”

“I should say,” Toby said. “Not to mention it probably makes harvesting the odd bit of gossip for the Queen here and there all the easier.”

The footman’s face was so carefully blank he could have doubled as one of the gargoyles on gate duty.

“Your cloak, sir?” he asked once again.

“Yeah, thanks very much.” Toby handed his cloak over to the footman.

Just as the man was about to dematerialize again, Toby cleared his throat.

“Yes, sir?” the footman asked.

“I was wondering, can you point me in the direction of the library?”

“Of course, follow me.” The footman hurried away. His highly polished shoes beat out a crisp, rat-tat-tat-tat metronomic beat as they made their way along the empty corridors with their floors of polished sandstone. After only a few minutes, the footman pulled up outside another set of ornate double doors.

“Here we are, sir, the Magisterial Library,” the footman declared.

“Thanks very much,” Toby said. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be. How should I go about getting my cloak back? Smells like rain out there. I think I’m going to need it.”

“I will keep an eye out for you, sir,” the footman told him with an unbendable certainty.

“Thanks very much,” Toby said.

He turned and twisted the large bronze knocker. The door swung open.

“Hold on,” Toby said, turning back to the footman. “I might be here a while, so who should I see about—”

The footman was gone.

“—getting something to eat or drink,” Toby finished.

He looked up and down the corridor, but there was no one in sight.

“Damn, he is good,” Toby muttered to himself.

He stepped through the doorway and into the library.

Before he had even turned to look at the vast space that the room was comprised of, Toby felt an undeniable air of relaxation and quiet settle over him. The very air, the very atmosphere that surrounded him, was thick with the scent of old parchment and ink. There was a hint, a faint aroma of herbs too, both magical and mundane. It was a comforting scent. It went well with the other smells of furniture polish, old wood, tobacco, and the indefinable scent of time.

Toby was already grinning to himself in anticipation of what he was going to see when he turned around. When he did turn around, he let out a soft exhalation of delight.

“Oh shit, yeah,” he said aloud. “Now that’s a library.”

The library within the Castle of Eclipsia was a library to end all libraries. It was precisely the sort of library that Toby would have wanted to find if someone had told him that he was going to spend the day in a castle library.

In short, he was not disappointed by what he saw. It was a sanctuary, a veritable bastion of knowledge and wonder.

Toby, his mouth agape, looked around. The towering bookshelves were carved from ancient dark wood. They stretched up towards the vaulted ceiling.

The ceiling itself appeared to be miles above him. It dwarfed him. Made him feel his inconsequential size. It was filled and spanned with crystal chandeliers that appeared to be hung at different heights.

It was only after squinting up until his neck ached that Toby realized the chandeliers were not hanging. They were floating. Then he realized that they weren’t so much chandeliers as constellations of candles hanging like stars in the dark wooden night sky.

Whether by some magic or some other art, these candles cast a strong, warm, golden glow that danced across the polished marble floors. The candlelight was sucked in by, and brought out the deep hues of, the rich tapestries that adorned some of the walls.

These tapestries, like the stained glass windows in the banquet hall, depicted scenes from Eclipsia’s storied past. They looked to have been woven with tableaus of battles won, alliances forged, and the crownings of various kings and queens. Uniquely enough, or at least uniquely enough in Toby’s limited experience, there were also depictions of lost battles, a devastating fire that happened during the end of the last war with Duke Diddle, and some other moments which other cultures or countries might have chosen to deliberately brush under the rug rather than embroider on one and then hang it on the wall.

Toby walked, as if in a daze, into the heart of the great room. There he found a grand staircase spiraling upwards. He saw that its balustrade was wrapped in vines of strange papery ivy that bloomed with soft, luminescent flowers. This great staircase led up to a secondary floor, to balconies that were lined with more shelves.

Toby wondered if the older and more obscure texts were housed up on that second level. He squinted, and it certainly looked like the spines of the volumes were slightly more brittle with age.

The library was completely silent, except for the soft, ubiquitous sound of pages rustling. Toby could not see another living person in the place, so he was unsure where this sound was coming from.

Toby caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He turned, finally shutting his mouth as he did so. A number of books were floating serenely through the air. Toby saw that they were all popping up out of a large basket marked with a sign that read ‘Returns’. Toby let out a little disbelieving laugh. The returned books were obviously floating their own ways back to their allotted shelf space.

Toby moved on through the room. While books floated around him like autumn leaves caught in a breeze, he saw that there were plush armchairs and mahogany desks set and placed in the corners of the room. These were obviously reading nooks and tables where scholars could sit and ponder. Small globes of light hovered above these tables, providing perfect illumination for any prospective reader.

The library of Eclipsia was clearly much more than just a repository for books. That library was a living, breathing testament to Eclipsia’s past. It was a vault for all the learning and wisdom that had been passed down through the generations—and then mostly ignored by subsequent generations, as wisdom often was.

It was a place, like all libraries, where the past and present converged. Where a man, if he had a patient enough temperament, might deduce some road signs as to where the future was headed.

Toby looked around. “Yeah,” he said. “This is all very impressive and all, but where are the computers at? How do I search for what I’m looking for?”

As if in answer to his words, a soft wind blew through the room. It pulled Toby’s eye back towards where the door to the library was located. To his astonishment, he saw an enormous leather-bound tome, at least as big as a paving slab, hovering towards him.

Toby stood rooted to the spot as the giant book came cruising towards him and stopped a foot in front of his nose. With an almost epic sense of a slow reveal, the front cover opened. Toby saw the title of the book, The Magisterial Library Catalog, printed on the first page.

“Okay,” Toby said. “Where to start?” He licked his thumb and forefinger in preparation for flipping through the book.

As soon as his tongue touched his digits, the book moved backwards.

Toby frowned. “If you don’t want me to touch you,” he said, “how am I supposed to look anything up?”

There was a soft scribbling sound as the book moved sedately towards him once more. Toby peered down on the page which was previously blank. There were words laid out in a wonderful curly script that evoked mental images of someone rocking a ruff and a shirt with voluminous sleeves.

Please speak your request and I shall endeavor to help you as I may.

Toby beamed to himself. “Alright, let’s begin.”

11

“I’m bored,” Frank said.

Toby ignored the djinn. He had made the same declaration about eighteen times in the space of the past two hours.

“B-O-R-E-D,” Frank said, not quite under his breath. “Bored.”

It had been two days since Toby had first set foot in the library. Over the past couple of days, he had spent most of his time within the four walls of that marvelous book and scroll-filled room.

Thanks to the ease with which the sentient catalog was able to point Toby in the direction of any query he fancied making, he had made speedy progress in divining what his visions might mean or point to.

Another explosive sigh from Frank almost ruffled the pages of the book that Toby was poring over.

“Hey, Frank,” Toby said, without looking up from the volume he was perusing.

“Yes, mate?”

“You don’t have any bones, do you?”

“Not in the same way that humans and other vertebrates do,” Frank said. “More like shards of shadow that give shape to this corporeal form of mine. Why is that?”

“Oh, I was just wondering whether, because you don’t have bones, I would be able to bend your annoying self around on yourself and shove your head up your own butt if you don’t stop sighing and saying, ‘I’m bored.’“

There was a thoughtful silence at Frank’s end.

“I know you meant that to be rhetorical,” the imp said, “but I honestly can’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work.”

“Worth bearing in mind,” Toby said mildly.

Frank let out a soft raspberry. “I just don’t understand why you’re so enamored with this place,” he said.

“It’s because it’s a—”

“I know, I know. You said before—a repository of knowledge,” Frank said, his face twisted up with distaste. “What good is knowledge, really?”

“You’re full of knowledge,” Toby countered. “You never shut up talking about how things were back the last time you were summoned. How you know better than us puny mortals, how you have so much worldly experience, and so on and so forth, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Yeah, but that’s interesting,” Frank retorted. “All the stuff I get up to, you know, it’s interesting. There’s all sorts of betrayals, heartbreaks, murders, and all sorts of good stuff I’ve been privy to over the years. That’s mostly why the likes of ethereal entities such as myself are summoned. People are up to no good, and they need a trusty sidekick that can slip through walls and transform into innocuous animals from time to time. Hence they bust out their book of summoning, chalk a few pentagrams on the ground, and Bob’s your uncle—good old Frank is in their house.”

“Frank?” Toby said.

“You’re going to ask me to shut up again, aren’t you?” Frank said resignedly.

“Oh, I didn’t know you possessed foresight as well,” Toby said sarcastically.

They lapsed into silence. Toby’s finger moved across a line of cramped text. He had, over the past two days, while the heavy rain thrashed and beat futilely at the castle, whittled down his area of exploration until he found a book that sounded promising. It was that book he was now trying to read.

“There be a race of yore, oft’ dreaded, yet ne’er fully ken’d, whose lore doth stir the minds of all within the far-stretch’d and diverse land of Eclipsia…” he muttered. He squinted, trying to make out the next line of crabby, faded writing. Written in the unfamiliar style that it was, Toby found reading it heavy going. “These folk, shrouded in mystery, hath long been accus’d of channeling ye dark and unknowable forces, seeking thereby to divine what is yet to come, that they might gain mercantile and newfangled advantage in—”

“Just never understood it,” Frank blurted.

Toby sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, willing himself to retain the few shreds of patience left to him.

“Never understood what?” he asked.

“Just never understood all this,” Frank said. He gestured around at the wonderful ornate library with its hundreds of thousands of books with his pointed tail. “Just never understood the appeal of books.”

“You’ve never understood the appeal of books?”

“No.”

“You’ve never understood the appeal of being able to open something and within a few seconds lose yourself in the mind of someone else?”

“Nope.”

“Never seen the allure of losing yourself in a world that has been cooked up in the imagination of a writer purely for the enjoyment of others? You’ve never understood why people sometimes need escapism as surely as they need food, water, and air?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I mean, no. Never understood it. Never made a blind bit of sense to me.” He kicked disdainfully at a heavy book nearby. “I mean, all it is, at the end of the day, is a tree sliced up really thin, isn’t it?”

“As uncomfortable as I am acknowledging that anything that comes out of those demonic little lips makes a bit of sense,” Toby said, “I’ll admit that, technically speaking, yes, a book is a tree that has been sliced up into very thin bits, as you so poetically put it.”

“Right, so what’s so good about it?” Frank said.

“It’s not the thing itself. It’s not the book, but what the book contains,” Toby explained. “It’s the words. It’s the knowledge, the ideas, the emotions that are there on the page. It’s the matter within the covers. Even an imp like you, with your limited imagination, should be able to appreciate the everyday magic that a bunch of simple everyday words, laid down in a certain order, can evoke pure joy or sadness or anger or frustration. Don’t you think that’s incredible? Sometimes you open a book and you get so swept away that you can almost smell the sea or the desert being described. You can practically feel the crisp mountain air in your lungs, as if you’re breathing it yourself.”

“You’re saying that reading books can be like a breath of fresh air?” Frank said incredulously.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Toby said.

“You know what else is like a breath of fresh air?” Frank said.

“What?”

The imp cocked his leg and tore off a honker that sounded like a king-sized bed sheet being ripped in half.

From the other side of the library, someone exclaimed, “Good grief! Have some decency, for pity’s sake!”

“Goddamn it, Frank,” Toby cursed. “There’s a time and a place for that sort of shit.”

“Yeah,” Frank said gleefully. “It’s called here and now.”

“Don’t you think that, after what happened at the Jousting Jamboree, people might be on edge when it comes to that sort of shit?”

Toby shook his head. He hadn’t realized that there had been someone else in the library.

“Think of it as a starter’s gun,” Frank said. He summoned a tiny cigar out of nowhere.

“Hey, don’t even think about it. Not in here,” Toby said sternly.

Frank rolled his eyes. The cigar vanished with a pop.

“Starter’s gun for what?” Toby asked.

“For getting the bloody hell out of here,” Frank said. “I thought you’d gathered all the information you needed.”

“I’ve got most of what I need,” Toby said, stabbing at the book in front of him with a finger, “but I’m still lacking a fundamental direction.”

The sound of shuffling footsteps suddenly came clearly to Toby’s ears from a shadowy recess.

Frank winked and, with a soft, unpleasant squelching sound, transformed himself into a little black mouse. He scampered out of sight behind a pyramid formation of dusty scrolls.

A moment later, an old man, looking quite put out, tottered out into the light. He was bent and wizened as an old tree. A few strands of white hair adorned his liver-spotted pate. He was wearing a long robe that was cinched at the waist with a piece of golden rope. Around his neck was a chain with a key on the end of it.

“Was that you?” he demanded in a querulous voice.

“Was what me?” Toby asked.

“Don’t play a clever dick with me, young man. You know very well what I mean.”

Toby clicked. “Oh, you mean the, uh, gaseous expulsion?”

“Yes,” the old man said.

“Would you believe me if I said it wasn’t me?” Toby said.

“No, I certainly would not. You and I are the only two in here, and I’m certain it was not myself. By all that’s good and gracious in this world, I would have ruptured myself divesting my body of such a heinous discharge.”

Toby blinked.

“Now, I heard you muttering to yourself, and you mentioned something about lacking direction,” the old man said, waspishly.

“That’s right.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help you gain some of this missing direction, by all means, fire away,” the old man said.

“That’s very good of you,” Toby said slowly.

“Being good of me has got nothing to do with it,” the old man replied tartly. “I just don’t want to pass my final hours in this world in danger of being gassed to death by your potent backside.”

“I honestly did not—”

The old man waved a stick-thin arm at him. “Enough. Do you have a problem I might assist you with?”

Shrugging internally, Toby decided to throw his predicament out to the old man.

“Actually,” he said, “I’ve been trying to gather a bit of information.”

“Obviously,” the old man said scathingly. “Otherwise, why else would you be in a library unless you take genuine perverse pleasure in polluting the air of this esteemed room?”

“No,” Toby said. “I… Look, can we just stop referencing the unfortunate farting incident?”

“If we must. If it will expedite this communication,” the old man said.

“Okay,” Toby said. “The thing is, I’ve been trying to interpret a dream I had.”

“A dream?”

“That’s right,” Toby said.

“No doubt drug-induced,” the old man said, narrowing his eyes at Toby.

“Why would you say that?” Toby asked, surprised.

“All youngsters these days are on drugs,” the old man said.

“Were you on drugs when you were a youngster?” Toby asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Toby shook his head. “Look, I... Basically, I was just wanting to find out as much information as I could about whether there was ever a blue-skinned race on Eclipsia.”

The old man’s bloodless lips puckered into a shape that reminded Toby sharply of a cat’s backside.

“The books I’ve gone through have been helpful up to a point.” Toby gestured at a growing tower of books on the table next to him. “But there seems to be scant historical knowledge of any blue-skinned race.”

The old man walked a few more tottering steps and flopped down in the chair opposite Toby.

“This is a genuine inquiry?” he said.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Trust me, I have other things to do besides hang out in the library. As nice a room as it is, there are things concerning Duke Diddle that I feel I could be helping with.”

“Duke who?” the old man demanded.

“Duke Diddle. You don’t get out much, do you?” Toby asked.

“As the head librarian, I make it a matter of pride to say that I do not,” the old man said.

“Okay, well, there’s a little bit of unrest outside the walls of Castle Eclipsia,” Toby said. “But I’m trying to find out whether these visions I’ve been having, these dreams, might be trying to point me in a specific direction so that I might be able to combat them in my way.”

The old man looked as if he would have liked to ask Toby a host of questions. Toby curtailed his inquiries with a raised hand.

“So yeah, I’m looking to see if there were ever any blue-skinned races on Eclipsia, whether it be Stagbreach or further afield,” Toby said.

The old man sat back in his chair. He steepled his fingers in front of him and stared up at the incredible candle-filled ceiling. Toby had only just realized that there was a large lamp amidst all the candles. He had a suspicion that it represented the moon.

“There was once a blue-skinned race in Eclipsia,” the old man said.

Toby managed to catch himself from asking how the old man knew.

Best not get sidetracked, he thought to himself. Let’s hear what the old fellow has to say first.

“There was a blue-skinned race, but they were content to stick to themselves on the whole,” the old man said. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “They were the nymphs, the elemental people, the folk of wood and water and wind and weathered top,” he said in a quieter tone.

“And they had blue skin?” Toby asked.

“That they did,” the old man said.

Toby glanced at the book he had been reading before Frank had interrupted him. “And they were misunderstood, you say? Because they were ahead of their time, perhaps?”

The old man gave him a sharp look from out of his rheumy eyes. “I thought you knew nothing of them?”

Toby tapped the book. “I was in the midst of reading a passage that sounded promising.”

“Hm. I see.”

“What happened to them?” Toby said. “How come I haven’t been able to find any information on them in the library up until just now?”

“As I said before,” the old man groused. “Precious little is known of them. They were a shy and modest people. They lived mostly in an alpine enclave in the Humdrum Mountains. They were tinkerers of the most exceptional kind, or so it was said.”

“What happened to them?” Toby asked.

The old man spread his hands. “Who can say? Communications between the people of Eclipsia and the nymphs were never what you might call common or regular. The nymphs showed absolutely no interest in partaking in any hostilities towards the realm of Eclipsia, and so most of Eclipsia’s rulers, being reasonable or lazy monarchs, left them to their own devices. Occasionally, one would come to stay here for a time at the castle, to trade news or sell ideas or inventions, but mostly they remained an almost mythical people. Some of the greatest inventions that we now see as commonplace were devised, as I said before, by the nymphs. They were skilled engineers and begetters. The trebuchets on the southern wall of this very castle, for instance, were built on designs the nymph architects and devisers drew up and sold to the nineteenth monarch, King Farciminis.”

“I didn’t know there were trebuchets on the southern wall,” Toby said.

“No, I doubt there are too many people who do these days,” the old man said wistfully. “I believe that King Balourd’s grandfather, King Ro-Chraiceann, was the last king to have them fired—and that was only because he was a keen clay bird shooter.”

Toby frowned. “Trebuchets are a bit big to use as clay bird shooting devices, aren’t they?” he said.

“You’d think so, yes, but King Balourd’s grandfather was a man of bizarre ingenuity,” the old librarian said. “He paid stone trolls handsomely to allow themselves to be fired up into the air while he attempted to hit them with his scorpion spear-slingers.”

“That’s a bit barbaric, isn’t it?” Toby said.

“Oh, it was a different, more liberal time. Besides, a spear from a scorpion might only knock a chip or two out of a mature stone troll,” the old librarian said. “And due to the fact that old King Ro-Chraiceann was more or less sozzled up to the eyebrows most of his waking hours, the chances of him actually hitting anything were relatively small.”

“What about the stone trolls?” Toby said. “Surely they broke apart on impact, didn’t they?”

“No,” the old man said curtly. “And the King was good enough to send out excavation teams to dig them up from where they landed out in the fields.”

Toby would have liked to ask more questions about this, but out of the corner of his ear, he heard the unmistakable sound of a mouse sighing and saying, “I’m so bloody bored.”

“So,” Toby said, trying to cover the noise, “the Humdrum Mountains, that’s where these blue-skinned nymphs were usually found?”

“That’s right, that’s right,” the old man said. “They had an enclave there, as I say, or that’s what was reported anyway. It must have been an age since anyone headed those ways. The passes have become dangerous and difficult, and they were never easy to begin with. If I were you, young man—and I most heartily add that I’m glad I’m not, as I wouldn’t want to live with that volatile digestive tract of yours—I would head up into the Humdrums.”

“Oh, I’ll take that on board,” Toby said politely. “But just heading up into a range of mountains and having a nosey about seems like a pretty good way to die, if you ask me. It would probably be a bit more of an enticing offer if I had somewhere concrete to aim for.”

The old librarian sat back in his chair. The wood creaked. He let out a long sigh through his thin nose as he glared at Toby in a disapproving fashion.

“Youngsters these days,” he said. “Need everything spelled out for you, don’t you? Every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’ crossed.”

“Well, I’d like to think of it as being circumspect, being careful,” Toby said politely. “If you dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’, the chances of the ‘s’and the ‘h’ turning up are mitigated, don’t you think?”

The cranky bibliophile puzzled at this analogy. Then, seeming to shrug it off as a bit of useless, youthful nonsensicalness, he got ponderously to his feet.

“Wait one minute,” he said. “I might have a scroll or two, which might assist you in your search.”

12

“You know, heading out those ways, the way that these scrolls and maps that that old librarian fellow gave you, it’s going to mean that we bypass—”

“I know what it means,” Toby said, cutting Frank off.

“Well, have you thought of paying him a visit?”

“You want us to swing by Rowan Moonshroud’s house and do what?” Toby asked.

“Search me,” Frank said. “You know, I don’t pay too much attention to the ever changing world that is humanoid etiquette. I just thought that embarking on a quest the likes of this, dropping by a convenient magic wielder might be a smart move.”

“That might be so, normally,” Toby admitted. “However, I’m not sure that that rather broad rule of thumb was invented with our specific case in mind. You did turn the wizard in question into a turnip after all.”

“True, true,” Frank conceded, “but any wizard worth his flame resistant robe isn’t going to let a little disagreement like that get in the way of a bit of potential gain. He might be willing to offer us some advice or insight into dealing with these nymph characters. And in return, we might only need to get him a little bit of loot.”

Toby shook his head. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “The weather looks like it’s going to stay mucky for the next few days. Why don’t you head out to the Feywood and go and see if Rowan Moonshroud has been returned to his usual shape. If he is, if he has been turned back into a man, then I’ll think about paying him a visit. And if not—”

“And if not,” Frank said, “I might alleviate a bit of stress and some resentful feelings by giving that mushroom house of his a good old fashioned ransacking.”

Toby sighed. “Do whatever you like. But at least however it pans out, you will have a slight idea of the lay of the land.”

“That sounds like a lovely idea,” Verity said from where she was sitting and attending to her fingernails on a bench at the side of the practice yards. “Now do be a dear, Frank and be off with you on your errand. Toby needs to practice.”

“All right, all right. I’m going, I’m going,” Frank said.

With a soft, organic sound, he transformed from his habitual demonic shape into a sable-feathered falcon.

“That’s actually quite a cool look for you, Frank,” Anna said from where she was perched next to Verity.

“Oh, thanks very much,” the imp replied amiably. “I’ll be back in a day. Two tops,” he said.

“All right, good luck,” Toby said.

Frank spread his wings and soared up into the air. Within a matter of moments, he was out of sight.

Once the imp was gone, Toby turned to his two companions. He clapped his hands. “All right,” he said, “back to it. Back to it.”

“There’s a good boy,” Verity said.

Anna smirked.

They were once more in the practice yards in the walled outer area of the castle of Eclipsia. After the revelation about the nymphs of the Humdrum Mountains being the only blue-skinned race ever to have been seen in Eclipsia, Toby had wanted nothing more than to jump onto the back of a horse and get going. The weather had other ideas. It was simply too volatile, too windy, and rainy to make adventuring abroad fun or safe.

This irked Toby. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had a feeling that time was of the essence. There was an indefinable gut instinct inside of him that told him that the sooner he got to the bottom of these dreams and visions, the sooner he might be able to help thwart Duke Diddle.

It was annoying yet undeniable that, thus far in the burgeoning war between Duke Diddle and Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Eclipsia, Diddle had been playing the part of the piper. He had been dictating events. He had been acting while King Balourd and Queen Lascivo, along with Toby and the rest of their armed forces, had been reacting.

The fact that they hadn’t been able to head out on this quest had not meant that Toby and the others had been idle though.

Verity had been delighted to find out that her first attempt at a health potion draft had proven successful. This meant that the small company of three could head out into the wilds knowing that, should anything untoward befall them, they would be able to almost instantaneously mend most cuts, abrasions, and broken bones.

Anna had prevailed upon Lord Marshal Vani to allow her to take one of the archery butts down to their house in the Baker’s Quarter. This meant that she could now practice her bow skills at home.

She and Toby had also spent an entire afternoon and evening the day before up in the artificer’s tower, which had been added onto the Baker Quarter’s house. Up in the well-lit room, they had endeavored to make some refinements to their bows. After a bit of trial and error and much referring to the scrolls and books that had been supplied along with the tower room, Anna and Toby had managed to infuse their two standard bows with unbreakable strings.

It hadn’t sounded like much of an improvement to Toby at first, but then he realized that, in actuality, a string that would never break was one less thing to think about. And one less thing to think about in an item of equipment that could prove to be so useful as to save your life was probably not something you wanted to look down your nose at.

Toby could see that Anna was actually poring over one of the books that Edgewise Extensions had included with the Artificer’s Tower. He knew that she was poring over the methodology, as well as the ingredients and resources required, to craft an infinite quiver.

“It’s quite the step up from the unbreakable string,” Anna had told Toby as they’d walked through Stagbreach’s cobbled streets on their way to the practice yards, “but can you imagine not having to worry about running out of arrows?”

“Formidable,” Toby agreed. “Not to mention economical.”

“Come on, Tobes” Anna said.

Toby was jerked from his reveries. “Sorry.”

“Come on,” Anna repeated. “You’re supposed to be focusing. You’re supposed to be practicing.”

“It would be highly beneficial if we had a magic user amongst our noble trio when we set out,” Verity said in a kindly voice.

“So no pressure then,” Toby said with a half grin.

“No pressure at all,” Verity said. “I’m just pointing out that it would be another feather in our collective cap, as it were.”

Toby nodded. He turned around and looked at the chipped stone plinth on which pumpkins and other assorted vegetables that were too far gone for the table were set and used as target practice by archers. On this plinth, a bottle of wine sat. It was corked.

Toby’s current mission was to uncork that bottle of red wine without using his hands. The goal was to use the magic that resided inside of him.

Toby concentrated on the deep green glass of the bottle. His left hand rested on the ruby pommel of his enchantable sword.

“Magic isn’t all about blowing things up, melting your enemies in their boots, or tearing holes in the fabric of reality,” he whispered to himself, repeating the words that Wolfgang Tootenstein had said to him only the day before. “Magic is as much about subtlety as it is about brute force. Kicking down a door is all very well and good and efficacious most of the time, but why risk twisting your ankle when you have a lock-pick in your fingertip?”

Toby glared, unblinking, at the cork that remained resolutely wedged into the neck of the bottle.

When it all comes down to it, he reminded himself, there is no such thing as force in magic.

From the little that Wolfgang Tootenstein had divulged to Toby, it sounded like once you got the hang of it, performing spells wasn’t actually very hard. The learning was the hardest part. The progression after that was relatively straightforward.

Like snowboarding, Toby found himself thinking. You spend the first however long falling on your ass and cursing yourself for an idiot for ever coming up the mountain, and then one day it clicks, and suddenly a whole new world is opened up to you.

He stared at the stubborn bottle of wine. He tried all manner of tricks. He whispered compelling words to it. He willed the cork to jump free of the neck. He urged it and entreated it with his thoughts. He strained so that the vein in his temple bulged alarmingly.

Still, there was no luck. The bottle remained steadfastly corked.

“I think I saw a bit of movement there,” Anna said encouragingly after Toby had been at it for a good twenty minutes.

Toby let out an explosive sigh. He straightened up and kicked at the dirt. He hadn’t realized he had been leaning forward with his hands on his knees, but by the ache in his back, he must have been doing it for a good while.

Tensed up like a fucking harp string, he thought to himself. You need to relax, man.

“It’s just so annoying,” Toby said. “I know I can do it. I’ve done it.”

“Yes, but it was under different circumstances,” Verity pointed out. “Don’t beat yourself up. It’ll happen. I believe in you.”

“I believe in myself,” Toby said. “I’m just—”

“You’re just impatient,” Anna finished.

Toby grinned. He glanced away from his friend.

On the other side of the square from where he was endeavoring to uncork the damned bottle, a group of young soldiers was being drilled under the watchful eye of one of Lord Marshal Vani’s sergeants.

Toby found himself yearning to practice with the sword that hung at his hip. He liked sword-work. He was good at sword-work. He was making progress with the sword. There was a deep satisfaction in getting better at something.

He watched the soldiers moving in unison. Their footwork was precise as they practiced a technique that involved gripping the blades of their wooden swords halfway up their length with their gloved hands to deliver short, powerful thrusts that Toby knew from his own experiences were aimed at breaching an opponent’s armor. The sergeant barked corrections, reminding a couple of the soldiers to keep their wrists straight and their grips firm.

“Come on, Tobes. Keep your eye on the prize and your head in the game,” Anna said as she flipped a page of her book.

“Just give me a second,” Toby said. “I need to clear my head. Just give me a moment.”

His breathing and mind calmed as he watched as one of the soldiers across the yard stepped forward to demonstrate a move known as the wrathful strike. This was a blow where the sword was raised high and brought down in a diagonal cut. It was meant to overpower an enemy’s guard. Wooden blades cracked together. The sound was sharp, and loud enough to bring Toby back to himself.

“You’ve got this, Tobes. You’ve got this,” he muttered to himself. “You can do this. Only a little while ago, you wouldn’t have believed that you could make a half-decent swordsman, and now look at you. Magic’s no different. It’s just another skill to learn. Another thing to master in this world.”

He spared himself one last look at the group of swordsmen as the sergeant talked them through another technique where a swordsman deflected a thrust while simultaneously countering with a thrust of his own. The sergeant demonstrated with one of his charges. His movements were wonderfully fluid. He danced forward, stepped into and then out of range, the tip of the wooden stave darting like a serpent’s tongue.

Toby turned back to the bottle. He took a step towards it.

“All right, you bastard,” he said. “I swear, ten more minutes, and I’m going to be drinking your bodily fluids, and that’s a fact.”

“You tell that inanimate object, Mr. Adams!” Verity said.

Toby grasped the hilt of his sword. He squeezed the grip until he felt his knuckles pop. He stared daggers, if not machetes, at the bottle of wine sitting smugly on the plinth.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on,” he hissed under his breath. “I know I can do this. I know I can do this.”

He heard his teeth squeak as he ground them together.

Just come on!

He bellowed the command internally.

He felt something give inside of himself. It was almost like pulling a muscle, only in reverse. Whereas there had only been a faint connection with that inner reservoir of supernatural ability before, suddenly Toby had laid a direct pipeline into it.

The rush of energy that passed through his body and out through the hand that he had raised instinctively made him take a step back a pace. It felt like he had been momentarily buffeted by a strong head-on wind.

The cork remained firmly affixed in the neck of the bottle.

The hay cart did not.

Behind the plinth, a hay cart had stood, minding its own business and waiting to be pulled to the stables by whichever new recruits had been issued with the job.

The hay cart was lifted up into the air. Some fifteen feet above the ground, it turned a slow half somersault. Toby, Anna and Verity looked on with their mouths open. The hay cart continued to rise. It rose like—

Like a fucking cork from a bottle, Toby found himself thinking ruefully. How goddamn ironic.

It then crashed down and exploded into a pile of splintered wood and loose hay. The hay billowed and swirled around the practice yard. The sounds of the drilling swordsmen on the other side of the square faltered and ceased.

Toby stared silently at the wrecked cart. Then, slowly, he turned and looked at his friends where they were spectating from the bench.

Well, it might not have been subtle,” Verity said, a smile breaking out across her face. “But it sure was something.”

“Yeah,” Toby said, a grin spreading across his own countenance. “It was something. It was fucking magic!”

13

It was four more days before the weather finally relented. The gales and squalls eventually cleared. Clouds that had lingered above Stagbreach like party guests that refused to go home finally headed off to the west. The sun shone through, the puddles began to evaporate, and the churned mud of the alleyways began to harden once more.

As Toby, Anna, and Verity rode along through the outer edge of the Feywood, Toby replayed the words King Balourd had spoken to him on their parting.

“I bid you and your friends very good luck on this little expedition you’re heading out on, Toby, old boy,” King Balourd had said.

“Thanks very much, Your Majesty,” Toby replied. “You’re one of a kind, and a true gent, to say that. It’s not often in my, admittedly limited, experience that men of your station really give a shit about the little people.”

King Balourd’s great florid face had creased up like a rumpled ham-colored duvet cover. “Is that right? Is that right? I can’t see why a monarch wouldn’t care about the little people,” he mused good-naturedly to himself. “After all, it’s only by the grace of the little people that a monarch is able to sit in the big chair and wear his shiny hat.”

Toby smiled. “If only that was a commonly held belief, Your Majesty,” he said.

The king nodded absentmindedly to himself. Then his usually clouded eyes sharpened. He fixed them on Toby. Then, with more than a little difficulty, he leaned forward in his chair and motioned for Toby to come close to him.

Toby glanced at Queen Lascivo. The austere queen was watching the interaction between the two men impassively. She was quite unreadable, but Toby thought there was a hint of a smile around the corners of her eyes.

“Now,” the king said, placing a pudgy hand on Toby’s shoulder, the better to draw him even closer. Toby could smell the wine on the king’s breath. “Now,” the king said, “I’m not going to pretend to have the faintest notion as to why precisely you’re heading up into the Humdrum Mountains. Can’t imagine why you’d want to go there. Beastly chilly from what I’ve heard. And more than a few strange creatures call it home.”

“Call it following a hunch, Your Majesty.”

“Anyway,” the heavy hand on Toby’s shoulder clenched a little, “what I wanted to say was this, young Adams.”

“Fire away, Your Majesty,” Toby said seriously.

“I wanted to say, I wanted to warn you, that the thing about Duke Diddle is there’s no real knowing what that fellow knows or what he might be up to.”

“He’s unpredictable,” Toby said.

“Yes, indeed, unpredictable. And then some,” King Balourd said. “That unpredictability and outside-the-box thinking were precisely what made him such a damned effective advisor, you see.”

Toby nodded.

“But the other thing about Duke Diddle,” the king went on, “and this is something I’ve chatted about with my better half over here…”

Toby gave Queen Lascivo another glance. The queen gave him the briefest of winks.

“The other thing about Duke Diddle,” King Balourd went on, “is that he is a certifiable psychopath.”

Toby nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can imagine,” he said.

“No. No, you can’t,” King Balourd said. “That’s just the problem. He truly is one of a kind. And the thing is, the damn tricky thing about him is, that like so many of these psychopathic types, the Duke is very engaging.”

Toby blinked. He had been expecting a number of adjectives there, but ‘engaging’?

“He has, or he did have, a wonderful sense of humor. He and I used to spend much of our time laughing and joking and drinking.” The king’s gaze went from distant to shrewd in less time than it might have taken Toby to say it. “That playfulness, young Mr. Adams, can draw you in. But you have to remember, should you come across the Duke, that under that veneer of affability, he is wound up exceedingly tight.”

“Your Majesty, if we do come across Duke Diddle, I promise you we’ll all be very, very careful,” Toby said. “It’s not just my skin on the line. My friends are sticking their necks out too.”

“Good, good,” the king replied. He leaned backward. His usually jovial face was marred by deep worry. Toby glanced over at Queen Lascivo. They shared a meaningful look.

“The king is right to be disconcerted, Mr. Adams,” the Queen said. “I am disconcerted. You should be disconcerted. For do you know what Duke Diddle is aiming to install himself as?”

Toby thought for a moment. “Well, he won’t be a properly elected king or politician,” he said slowly. “So, as far as I can see it, he’d be a tyrant.”

The Queen smiled, but there was little humor or warmth to it. “Quite so,” she said. “And the thing about tyrants is that they adore, thrive on, and require pageantry.”

Toby frowned. “Pageantry?” he asked. “You mean spectacle?”

“Quite so,” the Queen said again. “And the problem with the pageantry of a tyrant is that it usually revolves almost solely around public displays of extreme violence.”

Toby licked his suddenly dry lips.

“Do you know the really sad and singularly dangerous thing about Duke Diddle?” Queen Lascivo said, casting her gaze around from Toby to Anna to Verity.

Anna shook her head.

“It’s that under all his fine words, under all his malicious machinations and cunning schemes, he really probably doesn’t have a truly better way to rule Eclipsia up his sleeve. I don’t think that he has a better kingdom in mind. It’s just that because he has the means to put himself in power, he wants to make use of that means.”

“You mean the wand,” Toby said.

Queen Lascivo inclined her head. “The wand,” she said. “He has the means, and so he believes that he deserves the end.” Queen Lascivo let out a little laugh. “For all his wiles and for all his intelligence and for all his wisdom, Duke Diddle still thinks that his ending is something that can be planned, like the culmination of a play or a book,” she said. “He has forgotten, or else he has never learned, that not one of us mortals can plan for an ending as neatly as a playwright can. Endings, real endings, have to be earned by all those who go before them.”

The ancient librarian had supplied Toby and his friends with a few scrolls that dated from different periods in Eclipsia’s history. They provided descriptions of the route that a few travelers, who made the journey to visit the nymphs in the Humdrum Mountains, had taken.

There was also a rough map that had been drawn by a merchant who had made the journey into the Humdrum Mountains in the hope that he might be able to trade with the nymphs. There was a footnote at the bottom of this piece of amateur cartography that noted in a rather peevish hand that the nymphs had not wanted any of the goods or supplies that the merchant had arrived at their stronghold with. The merchant had noted with some little acerbity, or so it seemed to Toby, that the nymphs had deemed his wares as quaint and a little behind the times by the sounds of it.

The journey through the southern skirt of the Feywood proved to be surprisingly uneventful. There was no sign or sound of any of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents. Toby probably thought that it was due to them being still relatively close to Stagbreach. Although Duke Diddle had been making his forays and attacks, he had been doing so in a manner that required the King and Queen to stretch their fairly limited forces.

Toby and his companions had set out at dawn. The sun had been a distant promise of warmth as it cast early long golden fingers over the low peaks of the mountains they were heading towards. The air was crisp and invigorating as they moved through the Feywood and into the more alpine environments that skirted the knees of the mountains. The scents of pine and distant snow mingled with something older and more mysterious that seemed to linger just beyond Toby’s senses.

They followed a path that twisted through dense forests of ancient firs. Toby had mostly only walked through the Feywood’s broad-leaved deciduous areas. He was surprised how abruptly the layout and arboreal composition of the woods could change depending on what direction a traveler set out in.

The towering trunks of these great pines were draped in thick blankets of fluffy moss. This moss glowed with its own inner light in the murk of the woodlands. Toby took a moment to gaze around at it when they first came across it. He saw dozy flies flying around the moss. Occasionally, one would land on the invitingly glowing lichen and would be trapped.

It seemed to Toby that the trees were alive with a soft whispering sound that couldn’t wholly be placed at the door of the wind. It sounded to Toby almost as if the ancient arboreal residents of that part of the forest were sharing secrets from long ago.

“I could almost believe that these trees are sentient, that they’re alive,” Anna whispered to Toby.

Toby looked over his shoulder and saw that his friend was walking along with her bow in her hand. She was staring about her with unblinking eyes at the towering trees that loomed around them.

“Stay calm,” Toby said.

“I am calm,” Anna replied archly.

Toby turned back to the path ahead of them and grinned to himself.

The underbrush teemed with life. Small, elusive creatures darted through the ferns and tangled brambles. Insects buzzed and hummed. Birds of all sorts of sizes and colors whooped and hollered at one another in a ceaseless cacophony. The occasional herd of small, deer-like animals with long necks and only a single large ear on the tops of their heads, which looked like some bizarre biological satellite dish, grazed unconcernedly on the young shoots of plants.

The eyes of the little denizens that scampered all about the company of four gleamed with a knowing and vaguely interested intelligence. Now and then, a curious furred creature would pause, half-hidden amongst the low leaves or in the middle of a great drift of fallen fir needles, and gaze out at them, its nose twitching. The creatures, which looked a little like a cross between a fox and a badger, regarded the three travelers with an expression that seemed almost human.

The higher the trio climbed, the more the landscape transformed around them. The great sentinel pine trees thinned out, giving way to unexpected meadows of rolling wildflowers—blues as deep as a twilight sky, reds that burned like smoldering embers, and yellows as bright and pure as fresh churned butter. Verity and Anna let out exclamations of delight every twenty meters or so.

Toby was just as amazed at this biodiversity as the others, but he refused to let his guard down. The last thing he wanted was to be shot by one of Duke Diddle’s minions while he was gazing rapturously at some lovely flower. Such a lackluster death would be embarrassing if nothing else.

There were alien-looking luminescent fungi that clung to the shaded sides of boulders as they went further up into the mountains. These fungi released a sickly miasma, almost a diseased green gas, across the path at times. Toby made a point of circling around these miniature fog banks when they came across them.

Here and there, clusters of stalky, thick-leaved flora swayed rhythmically, as if keeping time to a song only they could hear. Their woody stems clonked together like windchimes.

“Look at these plants,” Verity said, kneeling down and prodding one with the tip of her belt knife. “Look at their glowing petals and pulsating stems. I haven’t seen their like before, not even on my fairly broad travels.”

Toby nodded. “I wouldn’t touch them with your bare fingers if I were you.”

“Why not?” Verity asked.

Toby shrugged. “Just a feeling. We’re not here as botanists. And do you really feel like curtailing this adventure through a poisoning that could have been avoided?”

“We have the health potions I brewed up in our packs.”

“Still, why waste them on something we could have avoided?” Toby said.

Finally, they emerged from the tree line. Free of the pines, the mountains reared up in front of them in all their majesty. The Humdrum Mountains were possessed of some truly jagged and intimidating peaks. They might not have been the tallest mountains ever to be squeezed from a land’s crust, but they certainly looked lethal and unforgiving. They rose into the pale blue sky, their snow-capped summits glistening like the teeth of some enormous predator in the broad light of day.

The air had grown thinner and cooler as they tramped upwards. Toby took a deep breath as they paused to enjoy some sandwiches that Dishy had made for their journey. As he breathed out, he felt a clarity of mind and spirit steal over him. It was as if the very essence of the mountains filled not only his lungs but also his head and his heart. He closed his eyes.

“If I may be so bold as to offer some expertise,” Verity said to Toby and Anna while they took their break.

“Of course,” Anna said.

“Even in this kind of wonderful, pristine wilderness, there are things no doubt right now watching us,” Verity said.

Toby looked around. He couldn’t see any sign of anything keeping an eye on them.

Yes, but that’s not to say that Verity is wrong, he chided himself. Just because you can’t see a thing does not mean it isn’t there.

“Keep your eyes open and your heads on a swivel,” Verity said. “It is out in the more desolate parts of the world where it is harder for all things to eke out an existence. This means that any predators, any apex hunters out here, won’t get as much prey skipping on by as they might in other places. And that will mean that those hungry things will be more inclined to take a run at us if it means there’s a chance of them getting dinner.”

“Wise words,” Anna said. “Uncomfortable words, but wise.”

“Thanks, Darling,” Verity said, smiling at Anna. She flexed her wrists, and the twin blades that she had hidden up her sleeves sprang out.

Toby raised his eyebrows.

“Just checking,” Verity said.

As they trekked higher, they were obliged to refer to the map and the instructions on the old scrolls that the cantankerous librarian had provided them with more often. It took them a good couple of hours, even with Frank scouting from the air, to find a hidden pass, which was marked on the map with a simple triangle and mentioned in both the other scrolls that they were using as their guides.

“We’d never have found this without the information that old chap in the library gave you,” Verity said.

“No,” Toby agreed. “It’s pretty well hidden, isn’t it? Makes me think that it’s unlikely anyone else would have been up here.”

“Careful,” Anna said, cocking one of those crooked grins at Toby.

“About what?” Toby asked.

“Making presumptions,” Anna said.

“Oh, yes, the Coombes woman is right,” Frank said. He had alighted, in the form of a raven, on a rock nearby. “Presumptions can be dangerous. Lethal even.”

“Haven’t heard your dulcet tones in a while, Frank,” Toby said. “Everything looking normal from the air?”

“Define normal.”

Toby gave him a look.

“Nothing to report, chief, nothing to report,” Frank said.

Toby took a swig from one of their water skins. “Wouldn’t that be something,” he said. “If we managed to reach our destination without having to face any problems.”

“There’s an interesting school of thought down in the Beyond Beyond,” Frank said. “A lot of my folks, higher level afrits mostly, believe that problems up here don’t actually exist.”

“How—?” Anna started to ask.

“It’s supposed that the things that your lot see as ‘problems’ are actually just the hallucinogenic daymares of a species prone to being freaked out when the events of life don’t correlate to the way they think life is supposed to go.”

Verity shrugged with her mouth. “Something to think about while we continued our walk,” she said.

“Speaking of which,” Toby said, “let’s push on. We’re losing the light.”

The pass was hidden behind a curtain of ivy that fell like a vegetative waterfall from the top of a cliff. On stepping through that living curtain, Toby, Anna, and Verity found the rock faces within were covered with intricate carvings. There were patterns and symbols that hinted, most assuredly, at the presence of a civilization. Anna and Toby couldn’t hope to read the glyphs, and even the well-traveled Verity couldn’t guess at their meaning.

They moved down the narrow ravine. Above them, the fading sky was like a scar against the towering granite walls. Small streams of crystal-clear water trickled down from hidden springs, creating a music of sorts.

“Look, there are tiny little frogs in the streams,” Toby said as they made their way along.

“Aww, they’re so cute,” Anna said, peering at one of the little amphibians splayed out on the rock wall.

“Nice and brightly colored, too,” Toby said dryly. “Make sure you don’t accidentally brush against one of them. Chances are they’re ridiculously poisonous.”

As the skinny canyon wound on into the heart of the mountains, the daylight above them began to fade more and more. When dusk was well and truly in the ascendancy, a movement above them caused Toby to look up. Delicate winged creatures were flitting through the air above them.

“They move like swallows,” Verity murmured.

As the night drew down, the little flying creatures began to spark with light.

“Wow,” Anna breathed.

They watched for a few minutes, standing still as the flying creatures left trails of shimmering dust in their wake. They moved in swarms, their tiny, almost imperceptible voices rising in a chorus of soft, tinkling squeaks.

“What are they?” Toby asked Frank. “Some kind of bat?”

“Haven’t got the foggiest,” Frank said, “but I could fly up there and take a closer look.”

“No,” Toby said sharply. “Leave them be. Let’s not disturb them. They’re benign now, but the law of the jungle dictates that there’s always something bigger or meaner than you out there. I don’t fancy risking death by a thousand bites.”

A small, black, leather-covered notebook appeared in one of Frank’s clawed raven feet with a soft pop. The imp plucked out one of his own feathers with his beak and then, floating in midair, began to scribble a note.

“What’re you doing?” Toby asked.

“Just jotting that down for later,” Frank said. “Death… by… a… thousand… bites.”

By the time they reached the end of their meandering road, the sun had all but sunk. The ravine in which they were still moving was cast in deep shadows. The path narrowed, hugging the side of a steep cliff that dropped away into a dizzying chasm.

“Easy, easy,” Toby said in a slow voice as they made their way along.

Happily, Frank could see perfectly well in the dark. He acted as their guide, lighting a little flickering blue flame at the end of his tail to guide them onwards.

They rounded the end of the potentially terminal cliff path and went on a few more strides. Then Toby stopped dead.

“What is it?” Anna asked, trying to peer over Toby’s shoulder.

“Nothing,” Toby said. “It’s just I think we’re here.”

They shuffled forward a little more in the gloom. There, in front of them, a dark yawning opening was set into the mountainside. On either side of the sucking black entrance were a pair of towering statues. Their features had been worn smooth long ago. They might have been forgotten gods or kings or queens. It was impossible to know. The air was thick with the scent of earth and wet stone.

“Yep, that looks like a front door right enough,” Frank said.

“And we’re going to willingly walk inside into that tunnel?” Anna asked.

Sure,” Toby said.

“We don’t know what’s inside,” Anna pointed out.

“When has being unhindered by any knowledge of the facts ever stopped us doing anything?” Toby said.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing,” Anna said, her voice hushed and her eyes on the yawning black hole in the mountainside.

Squaring his shoulders, he led the way into the inky blackness.

14

It was funny how that was a thing that never seemed to get any easier, that never seemed to be robbed of its mystery or its threat, no matter how many times in their life someone was obliged to do it.

Walking through a doorway that opened into the dark. On paper, not a big deal.  All you had to do was walk, one step in front of the other, through it. Yet, still it felt to Toby as if it took a concerted effort.

“It’s because dark and death are so closely linked, ain’t it?” Frank whispered. “That’s the root cause of your trepidation.”

“If you’re trying to nettle my pride by alluding to my slight nervousness, then I have to tell you that it’s not going to work, my fork-tailed friend,” Toby replied in a hushed voice. “You can’t have courage without just a little bit of apprehension.”

“I wasn’t trying to nettle you, mate,” Frank said. “I was just pointing out a home truth. Death and dark go together like ham and cheese, like sulfur and brimstone, like pasted peanuts, fresh butter and dill pickles.”

Toby’s mouth opened in astonishment. In the gloom, only Frank would have been able to see him. It was so dark in the tunnel that Toby was holding Anna’s hand. She, in turn, was holding Verity’s.

“You like peanut butter and dill pickles?” he asked. “That’s one of Anna’s horrific favorites.”

“I thought I was the only one,” Anna said.

“Not peanut butter,” Frank said. “Don’t be mental. How the hell do you go milking a peanut? No, it’s dill pickles mixed into a combination of pasted up peanuts and butter and… Look, never mind. My point is, like a little kid will fear the unknown in the dark, so do adults fear the ever looming limbo of death.”

Whatever Toby might have been about to reply to this was cut off when they rounded a sharp corner in the sloping tunnel. Light, dim but constant, could be seen ahead.

“Hello,” Toby whispered, “what do we have here?”

“Light,” Frank said.

“That was rhetorical, Frank,” Toby said, his voice little more than an exhalation of breath.

They edged forward hand in hand. Frank bobbed ahead of them. The only clue that the imp was even there was the occasional silver flash as he turned his bright eyes back to make sure that Toby and company were still behind him.

Not like we could go back, Toby thought. Not without running the risk of knocking ourselves out against a wall or hanging rock.

Ahead of them, picked out in the extremely low light, was a jagged opening, which Toby supposed marked the end of the tunnel.

“Frank,” Toby whispered, “go ahead and reconnoiter, will you, please?”

“Seeing as you asked so nicely, mate,” the imp said.

The little demon drifted silently out of the opening. He materialized again a moment later at Toby’s shoulder.

“Jeez, Frank you almost scared the shit out of me!” Anna hissed.

“Maybe next time,” the imp replied distractedly. “Listen, there’s no threat I can see ahead, but you just wait until you clap eyes on this gaff. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before—and that’s damn well saying something.”

Toby had to squeeze through a narrow, jagged opening, and as he emerged on the other side, his breath caught in his throat.

Before him stretched a vast, cavernous space. It was more like an underground city than a mere hideaway. It was certainly not at all the abandoned mine, the picture of which had been growing in his head.

“Oh my…” he heard Verity say in an awed voice from behind him.

There were towering pillars of stone and metal supporting the weight of the mountain above. The air was thick with the scent of cold stone and, oddly, old machinery. He hadn’t smelled that smell—grease and oil and metal—since they had stepped through the portal in that New York laundry.

“Can you hear that?” Frank said.

Toby cocked his head slightly. There was the faint hum of dormant energy vibrating in the walls.

“Come on,” Toby said.

They walked down a long, wide ramp of stone and into what might have been construed as the main floor space of the chamber. Toby could just make out other alcoves and bays, openings in the wall, and curtained off alcoves that looked bizarrely like the kinds of pits where mechanics might work under cars.

“This is trippy,” Anna breathed.

Toby knew what she meant. There were so many throwbacks to life back on Earth. Things that wouldn’t have excited comment back on Earth, but here, in Eclipsia, looked plain weird.

Rows of intricate machinery, the purposes of which were unguessable, lined the cavern. They hung from chains and ropes. Each piece was a masterpiece of design, blending the elegance of art with the precision of engineering.

Brass and copper gears, as large as wagon wheels, were interlocked in elaborate configurations, their surfaces dulled by time yet still hinting at the brilliance of the minds that had crafted them. Some were rusted, some were covered in verdigris, some were half-embedded in the solid rock of the walls.

Pipes ran along the walls and ceiling, in and out, sticking out in places like exhausts. Some were twisted into impossible spirals, others flowing straight as arrows, all leading to a vast network of subterranean aqueducts that still carried water through the ancient structure.

“That’s beautiful,” Verity said. “Not a clue what it does, but it sure is beautiful.”

Cleverly designed lighting arrays hung from the ceiling. They looked to be a marvel of both magic and mechanics brought together. These arrays, made of gleaming metal and crystal, flickered to life as Toby and his friends passed under them or approached, casting a warm, golden light that chased away the shadows.

It was only then, having gotten over his initial shock of what he was seeing, that Toby realized that they could see anything at all.

He craned his neck up to better view the light arrays, shielding his eyes as he did so. Each light seemed to pulse with a faint, otherworldly energy, illuminating the enclave with an almost reverent glow.

Magic? Or something else? Some other arcane working?

The light danced across the intricate carvings that adorned some of the walls of the vast interior space. These were wonderfully realistic etchings and depicted scenes of an industrious people hard at work. Toby’s eyes roved across the wall nearest him. The figures’ hands were shaping metal and stone into wonders beyond Toby’s comprehension.

“Nymphs, do you think?” Verity asked in a soft voice, nodding at the wall Toby was studying.

“I suppose so,” Toby said.

So far as Toby interpreted it, the carved pictures told a story of a race of beings whose brilliance lay in their ability to merge the mystical with the mechanical. There were images of towering constructs brought to life by the turn of a key, of water flowing through impossible channels, powering devices that seemed to defy the laws of nature.

The more he looked at those carvings, the greater the impression Toby got that the detail of them spoke of a people that had harnessed the elements themselves, bending them to their will with a grace and skill that was awe-inspiring.

The little company wandered deeper into the enclave. As they moved silently through the ranks of machines, stepping across bridges of iron-hard wood, and walking down the odd short flight of steps, Toby felt his sense of wonder begin to mix with unease.

The place was abandoned, yet it was not entirely lifeless.

“There are signs, subtle but unmistakable, that someone has been here recently,” Verity said.

Frank nodded his horned head and pointed down. “Check that out.”

A set of footprints could be made out in the dust that covered the floor not far from them. The prints were smaller and lighter certainly than Toby’s own. They led away from one of the machines.

Toby stepped forward. A discarded tool, polished and gleaming as if it had just been used, lay on a workbench. The workbench itself was free of dust or grime.

“And can you smell that?” Anna said. She sniffed again. “Smells like… flowers.”

Toby sucked in a slow breath through his nose and then let it out just as slowly through his mouth. It was a technique that Bellingham had described to him.

There was the faint smell of something floral. A delicate perfume that seemed out of place in the cold, mineral-rich air of the cavern.

They followed one of the walls. In the corner of the enclave, a small pool of water glistened under the light of a single, enchanted lantern. The flame of the brass lamp burned with a soft, blue light. The water rippled gently, as though disturbed by an unseen hand only recently.

Toby’s eyes were drawn to the edge of the pool, where a small, simple, wonderfully worked clay cup had been left on a rock. Toby picked it up and examined it under the light of the lamp.

“I can just make out lip marks on the rim,” he whispered.

Toby’s heart quickened as he realized that this place, though ancient and forgotten by most, was still very much being used by someone. He suddenly got the feeling that he was being watched over. His friends clearly felt the same. They were looking around suspiciously.

“Can you see anything, Frank?” Toby asked quietly.

“Haven’t seen a thing,” the imp replied. “Not a single bit of movement. If there’s someone in here with us, he or she is a furtive one.”

Slowly, the company walked back into the middle of the vast chamber. They went slowly. Toby’s hand never left the hilt of his sword.

Suspense and wonder grew in Toby as he and his friends came to a halt and stood in the heart of the enclave.

“This place is bloody extraordinary,” Frank hissed. “These nymph buggers were bloody miles ahead of the rest of the folk on this world, weren’t they?”

Toby was inclined to agree. “From what that old librarian told me, the nymphs were considered a vanished people.”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t reckon they’re just a part of Eclipsia’s distant past,” she said. “I reckon some of them are still here.”

Toby nodded. As he gazed around, taking in the beauty and mystery of the place, he was visited by a surety that this journey was only just the beginning. Though the beginning of what he couldn’t—

“Are you here to hurt me?”

The voice was a clear, bright, calm one. In spite of the words it uttered, there was no fear in it that Toby could make out. There was only the question.

Toby and the others whirled on the spot.

A figure unlike any humanoid Toby had ever laid eyes upon was standing in front of them. How she had come to be there was anyone’s best guess. Frank was goggling. Toby knew that sneaking up on the imp, being a creature of darkness as he was, was no mean feat.

For a moment no one spoke. The party of four regarded the party of one.

The nymph, for surely that was what she was, was a stunning creature. Stunning was quite literally the word. Toby felt like he had been hit with something heavy. He felt like his thought process was suddenly happening in slow-motion. Like his brain had become as smooth as a marble, without a wrinkle to be seen.

He just stood and stared at the woman in front of him.

The first thing that struck him—struck him dumb—was her physical appearance.

The nymph’s skin was a deep, lustrous blue, the shade of twilight skies just before nightfall. Her face was angular, with a slightly pointed chin tipping a slender jaw and sharp cheekbones which were as smooth and unblemished as polished stone. Toby saw pointed ears peeking out from the cascade of her hair. As Toby took this slightly alien feature in, they twitched ever so slightly.

A sign of a heightened awareness, maybe? Always listening for the faintest of sounds in the depths of this place.

The deep, calming hue of her skin contrasted beautifully with her hair, which cascaded down her back in a wave of bright white. It was so pure a white that it was almost silver. It caught the glow of the enchanted lanterns and reflected it so that her hair appeared to be made up of spun strands of the most wonderfully delicate metal.

If her complexion was what caught the eyes, then it was her gaze that held it. Her eyes were a piercing amber. Sharp and intelligent beyond measure. Toby thought they were like windows looking onto a mind always at work, analyzing and creating.

“So?” the nymph said. “Are you?”

“Are we what?” Toby asked. His voice came out as a croak. He cleared his throat.

“Are you here to hurt me?”

“No,” Toby said, still with a faintness to his tone.

“No, we’re not here to hurt you. We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Verity assured.

“Can I just say,” Anna said abruptly, “that I love what you’re wearing.”

The nymph looked surprised at this. She glanced down at her attire.

She wore a long, flowing robe made of a fabric that seemed to shimmer and shift like liquid metal, depending on the light she was standing under. Its color changed from deep copper to burnished gold with her movements. The robe was cinched at the waist with a wide leather belt adorned with intricate gears and tiny, functional tools, each one polished to a gleam and ready for use.

Over the robe, she wore a sleeveless, high-collared vest made of a material resembling the leathery hide of some exotic, scaled creature.

Probably something that lived down here with her, Toby thought.

The vest’s surface was adorned with brass studs and rivets, which gave it, in Toby’s pop-culture laden opinion, a rugged, almost steampunk aesthetic.

Toby’s gaze moved down. The nymph’s arms were wrapped in layers of cloth, resembling the attire of desert wanderers, but woven through with thin, metallic threads that glinted in the light. These arm wrappings were like nothing worn by anyone in Stagbreach, and extended down to her fingers. There, they ended in delicate, fingerless gloves that probably allowed her dexterity while protecting her skin from the rigors of her work.

Around her graceful neck, the nymph wore a choker made of interlocking gears, from which hung a single, crystal amulet carved into the shape of a hammer and an anvil.

On her feet, she wore sturdy boots that climbed halfway up her calves and had thick soles. Their surface was adorned with more metal accents and buckles. They were practical yet stylish in a Doc Martin, don’t mess with me unless you fancy a good kicking kind of way. Toby noted that they were suited for both the rugged terrain of the mountains and also the protection that an inventor or craftsperson might need.

In fact, now that Toby came to view it with a more practical eye, he could see that every part of the nymph’s ensemble was extremely functional. In looks, her get-up was a blend of the ancient and the modern, the mystical and the mechanical. She was a living embodiment of her people’s legacy: a nymph who had adapted to the world around her while preserving the secrets of her ancestors.

“You do?” she said.

“I do,” Anna said.

“But… why? They are just clothes. They serve a purpose. Multiple purposes.”

Anna shrugged. “I just like what you’ve got going on. I like the way you’re rocking it.”

Toby almost laughed at the confused expression on the nymph’s face.

The studious amber eyes turned from Anna to gaze with open interest at Toby. A slight frown creased the smooth blue skin in between the white eyebrows.

“Excuse me for saying so,” the nymph said, “but I believe that I knew you once upon a time.”

Toby could feel the contradictory cocktail of confusion and certainty spreading across his own face.

“You know,” he said slowly, “I was about to say the exact same thing.”

15

The pair of them stood looking at one another for a few moments.

“Excuse me for being the one who asked the obvious question, and I appreciate that, really, it’s none of my business,” Verity said, “but how is it that the pair of you know each other?”

“I was about to ask the same thing,” Anna said. “I mean, I’ve known Toby all his life. He’s never mentioned to me about having a blue-skinned friend. Not that there’s anything wrong with that or anything, but I’m sure he would have. Back where we’re from, that kind of thing would usually excite comment.”

“My dream,” Toby said.

Anna frowned and then her face cleared. “Holy shit,” she said. “The little girl in your dream! I totally forgot. You mean that…?”

Toby nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “I think so, yes.”

“Wow,” Anna breathed.

“What’s your name?” Toby asked the nymph.

“Lunaria,” Lunaria said. “Lunaria Caelestis.” She was staring at Toby as if he was a puzzle she was desperately trying to figure out. “And your name is Thomas,” she said.

Toby shook his head.

“No, wait. Tenevaal?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” Toby said.

“Then, perhaps—”

“It’s Toby,” he said after giving the nymph a couple of seconds.

The nymph nodded. “Yes. Toby,” she said. “That was it.”

“Oh, come on then,” Verity said eagerly. “How is it that the pair of you know one another and yet can’t seem to recall how or when you met?”

“It was a long time ago,” Lunaria said.

Toby nodded. “When we were both small, but it was here in this world.”

Lunaria gave him a strange look. “Of course it was in this world,” she said. “Where else would it be?”

Toby knew that this throwaway question was going to require a full hour-long explanation, or none at all. “That,” he said, “is complicated.”

“You can’t tell me that neither one of you has any idea as to how you know each other,” Frank said. “Even for one such as me, that seems extremely, extremely unlikely.”

“Unlikely or…” Toby mused, his eyes still on the nymph’s beautiful yet slightly alien countenance.

“Unlikely or suspicious,” Lunaria finished.

Toby’s mouth tweaked up in the corner in a half-smile. “Precisely,” he said.

“Come with me,” Lunaria said abruptly.

Toby saw Anna give him a look.

“Don’t fear for your lives. You can trust me. If I had wanted you dead there are a number of counter-personnel devices in this room that would have ended you before you were aware of them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw Verity gazing up at the ceiling, as if she thought she might spot a giant hammer or a hanging grand piano poised over them.

“Excuse me, Lunaria,” Toby said, the strange name coming to his tongue with difficulty. “But we are here for a reason.”

“I think I might know what that reason is,” Lunaria said.

“You do?” Toby asked, taken aback.

“Perhaps,” the nymph said. “Now, follow me.”

Toby looked at Anna, Verity, and Frank and shrugged. Then he led the way, following after the rapidly disappearing Lunaria.

Lunaria led them through a twisting maze of sometimes rough-hewn, sometimes geometrically perfect passages and corridors. They went down steps, the middle of which had been worn out to resemble the concave bowls of spoons through the passing of innumerable feet over innumerable years.

“What is this place?” Toby asked.

“This is my home,” Lunaria said simply.

When she didn’t go on, Toby said, “I appreciate that, but is it just you here?”

Lunaria nodded. “It has been only me since I was a nymphet,” she said. “That’s about sixteen summers.”

“Why have you stayed here all this time on your own?” Anna asked kindly.

“Because this is where I belong,” Lunaria said. “At least, this is where I felt I belonged as of late. That feeling has been changing. Evolving. I have felt the pull of the outside world recently in a way that I have never experienced before.”

“It must be lonely living here all by yourself,” Anna said.

Lunaria shrugged. “I’m comfortable in my own company,” she said. “I tinker and have my inventions. My ideas are like my children. Nymphs are unlike humans on many levels. It might strike you as bizarre, indeed almost as worrying, that an individual can spend such a long count of years as I have on their own, with no one else for company or to talk to.”

“It would ring a few alarm bells ordinarily,” Anna said, with a small and tactful smile. “Coming from where Toby and I do, if you walked into someone’s apartment—living quarters, that is—and they casually mentioned they hadn’t seen anyone for a decade, you might find yourself making a note of the exits.

“Nymphs are not like humans. We are naturally solitary beings. Even when there were many of us living here, it would not be uncommon for any individual nymph to go days without speaking to one another,” Lunaria said.

“Is that right?” Verity asked.

“Yes. Silence, and the thought that is allowed to mature and expand in such silences, was respected. Indeed, it was almost revered.”

That sounds almost religious, Toby found himself thinking.

He did not speak the words aloud. So far as he had been able to gather, there was no such thing as religion in the world of Eclipsia.

And it very well might be a better place for it, Toby mused. One less thing to fight about, at any rate.

They passed through a low-ceilinged chamber. The walls were hung with all sorts of manacled pieces of equipment. There was a definite steampunk vibe to the apparatus and the machines that Toby had glimpsed so far, though with a unique magical component too.

There was a track running along one side of the room. On this track sat what was essentially a large metal bucket on wheels. Lunaria motioned for Toby, Anna, and Verity to climb in.

“Where does it lead?” Anna asked.

The nymph gave her a bland smile. “Does it matter?”

“Well, I guess when you put it like that, probably not,” Anna admitted. “Still, it makes me feel better to ask.”

“You do not have anything to fear,” Lunaria said. “I wish you no ill.” She paused, then added, “I apologize if my manners or my demeanor are a little standoffish or not what you’re used to. As I said, it’s been a long, long time since I had visitors.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Anna said. “You’ll get used to it. This is my first time meeting a nymph. You should have heard the icebreaker I came up with when I met my first faun. I know what it’s like not to be able to think of the right words to say.”

“That was a zinger,” Toby muttered.

Anna elbowed him.

They climbed aboard the mine cart. Lunaria pulled a lever hanging from the ceiling nearby. Then she hopped lightly and easily over the edge of the mine cart to take up position at the front.

“I am going to take us down into the very bowels of the mines,” she said. “My people, the nymphs, called this place home for many, many years. Before they inhabited it, however, it was home to an industrious species of hobgoblins.”

“Goblins?” Toby repeated.

“Hobgoblins,” Lunaria said. “They were a quiet and kindly folk. Too kindly as it transpired. They were, so far as we managed to gather when we found these tunnels abandoned hundreds and hundreds of years ago, unfortunately slaughtered to a hobgoblin by some kind of invasive parasite.”

“That does not sound like an ideal or enjoyable way to go,” Toby said.

“Is there any way to go that might be deemed as ideal or enjoyable?” Lunaria said.

“On your back with your feet pointed at the heavens and your eyes rolling back in your head?” Verity suggested.

The nymph gave her a quizzical look.

“Never mind,” Verity said.

There was a jerk, and the cart took off. Toby could hear a distant clanking and chuffing sound as if some sort of arcane steam engine had been thrown into motion. The cart trundled off into the mouth of a quite claustrophobic tunnel.

Toby saw Lunaria press a switch on the front of the cart. Pale pink lights bloomed down the length of the tunnel. They soon found themselves zooming along. Before long they were going so fast that the individual lights blurred into a single streak of luminance. Toby could hear Anna trying to suppress little squeals as they went round sharp corners.

“Are you all right back there?” Toby asked.

“Fine,” Anna replied curtly. “You know I’ve never really been one for roller coasters.”

Toby reached behind them and managed to pat her on the thigh.

“How long is the trip?” Toby asked Lunaria.

“Not long,” the nymph said. “Especially not when I open this thing up.”

Toby decided not to pass the information that they weren’t traveling at top speed on to Anna.

They sped along the rails. Within about ten minutes, they began to slow. The rock walls that had pressed down tightly around them opened up. As the cart began to trundle more sedately along, Toby saw that they were making their winding way through a series of medium-sized chambers.

The chambers became smaller and smaller. The way they had been hewn out of the rock also became progressively less tidy, more rustic and less refined. Before long, it looked to Toby as if the stony walls had been chipped and carved away using the most primitive of tools. Maybe even claws.

“We’re here,” Lunaria said.

As they disembarked from the cart, Toby said to Lunaria, “So, you really have no idea how we know each other?”

“It’s odd,” Lunaria said, “but I can’t place you precisely. That sounds unlikely, does it not?”

“It does, or at least it would,” Toby said, “if I didn’t feel exactly the same way about you.”

“I’ve been having dreams,” the nymph interjected.

Toby tilted his head back a little. “That’s right,” he said. “Me too. I wasn’t sure if they were visions or dreams or memories or I don’t know what else.”

“I am inclined to believe that they are memories,” Lunaria said.

Toby let out a little laugh as the nymph led them toward the back of the low-ceilinged chamber. “How can you be sure?”

“How else would we recognize one another on some instinctive level if it were not so?” Lunaria replied.

There were young stalactites forming, so Toby was obliged to watch his head. Frank wove in and out of them. The drip, drip, drip of patient water could be heard echoing.

“Something is awry,” Lunaria said.

“You can bloody well say that again,” Frank muttered. “You don’t know the half of it, miss, living all the way up here on your own. There’s all sorts of bizarre shit—”

“That’s enough, Frank,” Toby said.

“I’m just saying,” the imp pointed out, “that she’s shooting close to the mark, saying that there are things going awry.”

“There has always been, and will always be, unrest in Eclipsia,” Lunaria said. “That is the way things have always been and the way things will always be. It is healthy for there to be a certain amount of contention in the world. It counters stagnation.”

“This is to do with Duke Diddle, though,” Toby said.

Lunaria frowned. She looked around at Anna, Verity, Toby, and Frank. “Duke Diddle…” she said. “I do not know the name. Not really. There were some whispers of it, some mutterings that I heard whilst you and I were staying in the castle together.”

Toby blinked. “We were staying in the castle together? Eclipsia Castle?”

The nymph furrowed her brow in thought. “I believe so,” she said.

“But neither of us stayed, obviously.”

“No, I left shortly before things turned particularly ill by the sounds of it,” Lunaria said. “I think you were still there.”

“You must have been, Tobes, if you hadn’t helped in getting rid of the Duke at that point,” Anna said.

Toby nodded.

“But this Duke Diddle—am I correct in supposing that he was armed with a certain magical item?” Lunaria asked.

“That’s right,” Verity said, nodding her blonde head. “He has a wand.”

“And this wand, what does it do?” Lunaria asked.

“It enables him to sketch any monster his mind can devise and draw that apparition out of the ether,” Toby said. “That’s right, isn’t it, Frank?

“Spot on, mate,” Frank said.

Toby made a little surprised sound. “Hold on,” he said, looking at Lunaria, “how did you—?”

“Let me show you,” Lunaria said. She put her hand on Toby’s shoulder and guided him all the way to the back of the small cavern in which they were standing.

“Oh, I see,” Toby said.

He did, too.

There was a cave painting adorning one of the walls.

“Did your people, did the nymphs, do this?” Verity asked.

“No,” Lunaria said. “No, this was done long before my people came to dwell here.”

“You mean this was the work of the hobgoblins?” Toby asked.

“I believe so,” Lunaria said. “But there’s no reason to think that if the hobgoblins weren’t the original inhabitants of this place, maybe these paintings, simplistic as they are, were done even before their time.”

Toby’s eyes flickered over the rustic images that had been daubed on the wall. They were in incredibly good condition.

That is hardly surprising, though, he thought to himself. When you consider that those paintings that were uncovered recently in that cave in Indonesia went back something like fifty-thousand years, a cave is a brilliant place to preserve art.

Away from sunlight, away from wind and rain, the only way such work could be destroyed, really, was if there was a cave-in or someone purposefully got rid of it.

“Tell me what we’re looking at,” Anna said.

“Well,” Lunaria said. “If you’ll look here…” she pointed down to one of the lower corners of the mural. “If you’ll look down here, there are these anthropomorphic figures, and, most pertinently of all so far as you’re concerned, I think, this figure here.”

Toby looked where Lunaria was indicating. He could indeed see a stick figure larger than the rest. The figure had flaming red hair, which had been illustrated through the use of some ground-up mineral or root.

“I’m not entirely sure what I should be making out here,” Toby said.

Lunaria pointed to the little stick figure’s hand.

“Is that a wand?” Anna asked.

“I believe so, yes,” Lunaria said.

The nymph then proceeded, over the next ten or fifteen minutes, to walk Toby and his friends through the mural.

“I believe that this picture was illustrated by some sort of sage of the hobgoblins, or whoever it was that lived here,” she said. “I have an affinity for this sort of thing, seeing as I was raised from the time I could walk to fulfill the position of sage within my own people, here.”

“You’re a sage?” Toby asked.

“I was meant to be,” Lunaria said. “But let us not digress. There can be no other explanation that I can think of for painting, hiding and protecting this picture. This sage or fortune teller or whatever they were drew this mural on the wall for some purpose. They did it down here where there would be less chance of it being found and destroyed by other sentient races.”

“You think it’s a warning,” Toby said.

“Perhaps a warning and instruction both,” Lunaria said.

She pointed up into the far top corner of the picture. “Look up here,” she said.

Toby squinted. Then he felt his jaw drop.

“Holy shit,” he said, turning to Anna. “What does that look like to you?”

“That looks like… Earth,” Anna said. “I mean, it looks like Earth drawn by a six-year-old, but still…”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “But Earth nonetheless.”

“This Earth, this is the place where you hail from?” Lunaria said.

Toby nodded.

“You came from there when we met all those years ago?” the nymph went on.

“Yes, I think so,” Toby said. “That’s right. Although how the hell I made it here in the first place I have no idea.”

“Interesting,” Lunaria said.

“What’s so interesting?” Verity asked.

“Nothing,” the nymph said.

“Oh, come on,” Toby said. “You can trust us. Don’t give me ‘nothing.’ Explain it as best as you’re able to without taking all day.”

Lunaria smiled. “I’ve studied this picture for many years,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out what it might mean.”

She pointed beneath the illustration of Earth. There was another stick figure, and next to that figure was yet another stick figure done in blue.

“That’s you?” Toby asked.

“So I believe,” the nymph replied. “I think from what study I’ve made of this piece of ancient art that depicts your coming back to this world, Toby, heralds some monumental change.”

“A good change?” Anna asked.

“That remains to be seen,” the nymph replied. “One thing is for certain, though.”

“What’s that?” Toby asked.

“That I will be coming with you.”

“Coming with us where?” Toby asked.

“That is for you to decide,” Lunaria replied. “But I think that your coming here is the final sign I was waiting for. Together, myself and the rest of you will help bring down this Duke Diddle and bring peace back to Eclipsia.”

“That’s why these memories or dreams or whatever they were have come to me?” Toby said, almost under his breath. “To bring me here to you?”

“That,” Lunaria said, “is something we can find out together.”

16

“This is all very mysterious, I grant you,” Anna said.

Toby laughed and put his arm around his best friend. “How do you mean, Anna?”

“I mean, I’ve never been involved in anything like it,” Anna said.

“I know what you mean, “Toby said patiently.

“I mean, it’s just quite unbelievable,” Anna said.

“Unbelievable is underplaying it, I think,” Toby said, giving Anna a squeeze.

She smiled. “Dreams and visions that point you towards a little blue girl. And lo and behold, that little blue-skinned girl turns out to be an old buddy of yours—although neither of you can remember how or why you met, or how it was that you ended up getting along so well.”

“I know, when you rattle it out like that, it does sound fairly unlikely,” Toby said.

“No, Tobes. Fairly unlikely is picking up a hitchhiker and then a few years later the same guy picks you up when you’re walking after you ran out of gas,” Anna replied. “What this is…”

“I feel you. Did that hitchhiking thing really happen to you?”

“Nah, my sister-in-law.”

“Wow. What are the odds?”

Anna shook her head. “I feel like my definition for unlikely has changed a lot in recent times,” she said.

“Yeah, I definitely think the goalposts have been moved in that regard,” Toby agreed. “It makes you wonder where this invisible road is going to lead us next.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to that question myself, Anna,” Verity chimed in at that point.

They had left the former nymph enclave behind them. Before they had gone, Lunaria had closed up the main entrance of the mine.

“What about all the great stuff, all those inventions and mechanisms still inside?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure you could repurpose a lot of that stuff and set yourself up a nice little amateur torture dungeon,” Frank said.

Anna reached up and pinched the imp’s little sable lips closed.

Lunaria tapped the side of her nose. “Don’t you worry about that,” she said to Toby. “There’s more than one way into this place. I’m just sealing up the most obvious entrance. If I ever need to get back inside, there are a number of routes that I can take. Now, if you’d be so kind as to just wait down there for me, this mechanism has never been used before, and I’m unsure of its efficiency after so long.”

Toby and Verity retreated a little along the narrow, cliff-hugging path that had led them to the previously quite ominous front entrance to the nymph mine.

“What do you suppose she’s going to do?” Frank quipped. “Close the door and post the key through the letterbox?”

There was a deep rumbling reverberation which Toby felt through the soles of his boots. Instinctively, his hand went to his sword. There was a crack. Clouds of dust rose from the front of the cliff face into which the door had been cut. A mammoth slab of stone was suddenly revealed in the front facade of that cliff face. It dropped as if running on smoothly oiled casters, with an earth-shaking thud. The giant slab of stone slammed down and sealed the front entrance to the nymph enclave just about as succinctly as could be achieved.

“I hope no one left their phone or their wallet inside,” Anna said.

Toby made a theatrical show of patting himself down. “Nope,” he said, “all present and correct.”

“Excellent,” Lunaria said, hurrying along the path.

“Frank, you go ahead,” Toby said. He looked up at the sky. The clouds, which had been massing had been encroaching when they first went inside, had dispersed. The sky above was a star-strewn void. “Go ahead and light that tail of yours, if you’d be so kind, Frank. It would be a bit of a shame if one of us slipped and fell to our doom now.”

Frank took the lead, igniting his forked tail as he did so. Before long, they had made their way through the skinny, crooked ravine and had emerged into the alpine forest beyond.

“There’s something that I need to show you after we’ve made camp,” Lunaria said to Toby.

They had been walking along for about an hour. No one had spoken much. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that they would head into the dark recesses of the woodlands and find some relatively sheltered spot to make camp for what was left of the night.

“What is it?” Toby asked. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, everything’s alright. It’s just…well, it’s better if I show you,” Lunaria said.

They called a halt not much later.

Verity and Toby gathered fallen branches, handfuls of pine needles, and some kindling. They piled it within a ring of stones arranged by Anna. Frank prodded his flaming blue tail to the campfire makings. With a soft whoosh, the flames caught, and the wood crackled and popped happily.

“I’m afraid we’re not going to be enjoying any of Dishy’s home cooking tonight,” Anna said, rummaging in her pack. “But that helpful little djinn did pack us some provisions so that we won’t starve to death.”

“Good old Dishy,” Toby said.

Next to him, Frank stuck out his tongue and made a gagging sound.

“Don’t give me that shit, Frank,” Toby said. “I know you’ve actually got a soft spot for Dishy.”

“I do not,” Frank said. “I haven’t got a soft spot. Us imps of the Beyond Beyond are all hard.”

“Are you, just?” Verity said, raising an eyebrow.

“I didn’t mean like that,” the imp replied. “I just meant that if you’re conjured up out of the ether for a living and spend millennia at a time inside the Beyond Beyond, you’re going to have all the softness and weakness crushed out of you.”

“Here, this might make you feel a little bit better, Frank,” Anna said. She tossed a strip of dried meat to Frank.

“Jerky,” Frank said, his narrowed silvery eyes clearing. “I love jerky. How did you—?”

“I told you it had nothing to do with me,” Anna said. “It was all Dishy. You remember to thank him when we get back.”

Frank mumbled something and then tore a mouthful of jerky off the strip in his little clawed hands.

“Oh, bugger me. Say what you want about the little bastard,” Frank said. “Whatever the marinade is he uses on this is to die for.”

While Anna set about preparing their campfire dinner, Verity went off in search of some fresh water.

“What was it you wanted to show me?” Toby asked Lunaria.

Lunaria extracted a piece of parchment from the inside of her strange robed costume. Toby got the impression that the interior of those robes was mostly filled with pockets. Lunaria unfolded the piece of paper and spread it out on the ground. Toby saw immediately what it was. It was a wax rubbing. He almost laughed aloud when he saw it.

The last time he had done or seen a wax rubbing must have been back when he was in primary school. He recalled how his teacher had taken the class on a miniature field trip. They had gone to a nearby graveyard. It hadn’t really struck Toby how macabre that field trip had been until he had thought about it right at that moment.

At the time, he and his class had been stoked to be out of school. It had been a lovely day in summer. The class had each been given a large A3 piece of paper and a wax crayon. They had been tasked with finding the most interesting-looking gravestone they could and doing a rubbing of the front of it.

This involved simply pressing the piece of paper up against the gravestone and rubbing the crayon over it. The crayon essentially created a box cut in reverse. Anything chipped out or engraved into the stone remained blank on the page, while any stone not in relief was colored in.

This was what Lunaria had laid out in front of him.

“Where did this come from?” Toby asked.

He suspected he knew the answer already.

“It was chiseled under the mural I showed you,” Lunaria said.

Toby nodded. That had been his supposition. He ran his eyes over the words. He couldn’t make them out. This was unsurprising, as they had been carved in a tongue that was most assuredly not English. Nor were they the same glyphs that had been carved into the walls of the ravine hidden behind the curtain of ivy.

“These weren’t made in your language either, were they?” he said softly.

“No, they weren’t,” Lunaria said, looking pleased that Toby had drawn the conclusion that the words were not in Nymphish—or whatever the hell the language of the nymphs was called.

“These are older, more primitive.”

“But you can read them?”

“Yes,” Lunaria said. “I can read them.”

“So what do the words say?”

“They say…

When two worlds meet ‘neath mountain’s heart,

Two men shall rise, each claiming art.

One shall forge with light’s embrace,

The other dark, the world to face.

A wand of power, both seek to claim,

To heal the earth or cast to flame.

In fateful hands, the choice shall rest,

For one to save, and one to test.”

“Holy shit,” Toby said, looking up into Lunaria’s wonderfully exotic blue face. “Holy shitballs. That’s a bit more explicit, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I thought you’d be excited,” Lunaria said.

“Why didn’t you tell us back at the painting?”

“I wanted to be sure of who you were,” Lunaria said. “I believed you, of course, up to a point, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure. I had waited too long. It would have been foolish just to take you at your word. But the way you acted—”

“The way that we didn’t kill you after seeing the painting, you mean?” Toby said with a wry smile.

Lunaria nodded. “Yes, that’s what I mean,” she said. “Well, after that, I knew you were who you said you were. I felt it was safe to tell you, to show you this last part of the puzzle.”

“What are you holy shitting about over there?” Anna asked. She had a large piece of bark laid out in front of her and was using it as a cutting board to slice up the onion that Dishy had packed in her bag.

Toby recited the verse that Lunaria had translated for him.

“Holy shit,” Anna said.

“That’s what I said,” Toby said with a grin.

“It certainly hardens the target of it, doesn’t it?” Frank commented from where he was lounging in midair, toasting his rump in the flickering flames of the growing fire.

“So, now we know we’re on the right path,” Toby said, staring into the flames and trying to ignore how Frank was rubbing his tiny butt cheeks with every sign of great delight. “Now we know we’re on the right path. Now we know that we were correct in coming out here and looking for you, Lunaria.”

“Please,” the nymph said almost shyly, “call me Luna.”

Toby smiled. “Fuck,” he said softly, shaking his head.

“What?”

“It’s just… that’s jogged my memory again. That’s what I used to call you. Luna.”

Lunaria’s smile matched his own. “What is this magic that hinders our memories so, I wonder?” she said.

Toby shrugged. “Anna and I have only been here for a comparatively short amount of time,” he said. “But one thing I have learned is that wherever magic is concerned, all bets are off.”

“So I guess that’s the cherry on the cake,” Anna said.

“Dishy packed cake?” Frank asked.

“No, it’s an expression, Frank, calm down,” Toby said.

“Oh,” Frank said.

Toby turned to Anna. “I guess so. I guess it is, in a way,” he said. “It’s vindication for everything we’ve done and everything we’ve gone through so far.”

“We are here to take on Duke Diddle,” Anna said, “just as you suspected when we first arrived.”

“It’s nice to have that set out and clear in front of us,” Toby said slowly.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Yeah, a bit of pressure though, now that you know that that’s the reason you are here. To collect an assorted band of slightly misfitted characters and go toe-to-toe with one of, if not the, greatest scourge that Eclipsia has ever faced. I mean, you have to admit, Adams, there’s a lot riding on you now.”

“There was a lot riding on him before, but he did not know it,” Lunaria said evenly. “Just because he is now aware, just as we are all aware, does not alter what must be done. What must be done was what always had to be done.”

“You’re one of those who believe that fate is inexorable, aren’t you?” Frank said, wiggling his fingers.

“No,” Lunaria replied calmly. “I’m just one of those folk who don’t put too much store in other people’s opinions or their expectations.”

They turned in not long after they had enjoyed their extremely late supper. Toby had no idea what time it was. He knew, though, that it must be late. They had arrived at the nymph enclave just after dark. They had lost track of time down there, but he was sure they must be in that broad section of the evening known loosely as the middle of the night.

Toby found it hard to go to sleep. He must have dozed off for a while, though. It only felt like he’d closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, the campfire had burned down. Anna and Verity were huddled together nearby. Frank was lying with his hands behind his head, his silver eyes closed, and his legs crossed at the ankles in the white-hot coals of the campfire.

Toby rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He looked around and frowned. There was no sight of Lunaria. Toby sat up, his nerves thrilling with a sudden attack of anxiety. He looked around. He listened hard. Nothing.

Toby got up.

In the embers, Frank stirred.

“Have you seen Lunaria anywhere, Frank?” Toby asked.

Frank frowned. “She’s gone?”

Toby nodded.

“Nah, I didn’t even hear her leave,” Frank said. “She’s soft-footed if nothing else. Not a lot gets past these ears.” And he tugged at one of his bat-like ears.

“Can you help me try and find which way she’s gone?”

“She might have just gone to—”

“Yeah, I know,” Toby said, “but I don’t know… If she has, I’ll apologize, but I just need to know that she’s safe. All this prophecy daubed on a cave wall business adds an extra weight to things, like you said.”

“Okay,” Frank said.

Together, he and Toby walked a slow circuit of their campsite. Toby didn’t wake up the others. He didn’t want to freak them out unduly.

“I think I’ve got something here,” Frank said in a soft voice.

Toby walked over. Frank pointed out some very faint scuff marks in the dirt.

“You think that she did this?” Toby asked.

“Could have done,” Frank said. “Let’s go and take a look.”

They followed the trail a short way. At the end of it, they stepped out into a little moonlit clearing. The nymph was standing in the middle of this clearing, staring up at the sky. The moon was a waning crescent, but it cast enough light for Toby to see that Lunaria was gazing up at the stars. There was a faint smile on her face.

“Sorry to bother you,” Toby said. “I just didn’t know where you got to. I can leave if you—”

“I was worried that I haven’t seen enough of the stars of late,” Lunaria said, cutting across him. “I’ve been so engrossed in my work, in keeping busy, I forgot about the unbridled and pure pleasure that one can derive from simply stepping out in the night and looking up at the heavens.”

Frank muttered something about humans, women, and going to get a bit of a kip. Rolling his silver eyes, he drifted off.

When the imp had gone, Lunaria turned away from the celestial tableau above. Her face was radiant; the blue of her skin shone like polished stone. She looked almost more hale and healthy than she had done in the light of the lanterns under the ground.

And that’s saying something, Toby thought to himself, because she looked hot as hell back there.

Lunaria stepped towards him. “Thank you, Toby,” she said.

“For what?” Toby asked.

“For trusting in your dreams, in your visions, in yourself,” Lunaria said.

“Luna, I didn’t really have a choice. I’ve learned not to deny or gainsay my instincts here.”

“That’s good,” Luna said. “There’s something to be learned in that.”

She stepped forward and kissed Toby lightly on the mouth.

It was so delicate, so fleeting, so careful that had Toby blinked for a prolonged amount of time just at that moment, he might not have even noticed.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“For luck,” Lunaria said.

“You can never have enough of that,” Toby replied.

Together, they walked back to the camp.

17

There was no discussion as to what was to be done with Luna in terms of lodging. There was no question that the nymph would stay with them. The following day, just before the third bell rang through Stagbreach, Toby and his friends returned to their home in the Baker’s Quarter.

“Come with me, Luna,” Anna said as they stepped through the front door and into the hall. “You can bunk in with me for the time being.”

Toby nodded appreciatively at Anna as the beautiful brunette led the nymph up the stairs. Verity followed. Toby grabbed Frank by the tail to stop the imp from tagging along.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Frank asked.

“Trust me, this is a female thing,” Toby said.

“What about now?” The imp’s body contorted and flowed. In the next breath he had procured himself a generous bosom.

Toby closed his eyes. “Return yourself to normal and please promise me you’ll never grow a tiny pair of tits again.”

“Fine.”

“We’re a little short of rooms,” Toby heard Anna say, his eyes still closed. “But, well, we kind of have a bit of an unorthodox sleeping arrangement here. Let me tell you all about it… “

Their voices faded away.

Toby was glad that Anna was taking the initiative in terms of explaining the rotating bed and sleeping partner system that was part of their household arrangement. He wondered if the nymph would find it odd that he, Anna, and Verity slept with one another. And not just in a platonic way either.

Toby sat at the kitchen table for a few moments and savored the peace and quiet. He realized he was delighted to be home—and that he really thought of the house as his home.

Dishy was whistling tunelessly to himself. Toby had noticed that the imp, unlike any human Toby had ever met, liked to whistle through his nose. The little djinn was occupying himself with brewing Toby a pot of fortifying loose prickle tea.

Toby felt himself in need of it. He felt his mind needed sharpening. Most of the way back to Stagbreach, Toby’s brain had been occupied with a single thought, a single conundrum.

What was the next move?

They had themselves a self-proclaimed sage of a nymph. Surely there was a reason behind that. It was extremely doubtful, or so Toby believed, that he and his friends would have gone on such a long trek into such wild country just for the sake of it. Surely the visions, dreams or memories that had guided him to Lunaria hadn’t just done it for shits and giggles. Surely he had not been nudged by the universe, or some other force, into finding Luna just to have her play some role of moral support.

“No,” Toby said, “this world, Eclipsia, does not work like that. There are coincidences, and then there are coincidences. This doesn’t strike me as a coincidental coincidence.”

The sound of feet coming down the stairs brought him back to reality.

“Oh, lovely! Tea,” Luna said, sliding into the chair next to Toby. “Do you mind if I partake of a cup?”

“Partake away,” Toby said. “Dishy, are there any of those tasty biscuits going? You know the ones I mean. They have that bit of spice in them.”

“Certainly, Mr. Toby Adams,” the little domestic imp said. “You mean my ginger wrigglers?”

“Those are the ones,” Toby said. “Can you bring us a plate?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks, Dishy.”

The imp disappeared and started rummaging through the pantry.

For a pleasant while, Toby and Luna got to know one another.

Technically, I suppose we’re getting reacquainted.

Anna and Verity were upstairs doing whatever mysterious things women did when they had returned home after a couple of days being away. Toby suspected it had a lot to do with hair.

They compared notes on how much they remembered from when they had apparently known one another before, but there was very little to go on. In the end, they just chatted about this and that.

To Toby’s surprise, the nymph was quite funny in a deadpan and slightly cynical way. Toby wondered if that was because she had spent so much time alone. She also had some quite interesting perspectives on life.

When Toby asked her once again how she had managed to stay sane living all those years underground, Luna replied, “I’d rather live in a nice safe cave with a view of the forest than live in the forest with a view of the cave.”

There was a weird kind of logic to that.

“Now, Toby, as frustrating as it is that we are yet to find out precisely how or why we know one another,” Luna said, “I think that we should concentrate on the fact that we are together now.”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Toby said. “We’re both here. Well, in fact, all four of us are together. And each of us brings different qualities and skills to the table.”

“Yes, indeed,” Luna said. “I like Anna and Verity very much, by the way. Verity intrigues me, as a natural problem solver. I find her past specifically to be a cryptic thing that I would like to unravel the mystery of.”

Toby laughed. “Join the queue,” he said. “She isn’t just a pretty face, that’s for sure. The woman knows her way around a blade.”

“I doubt it not,” Luna said.

Dishy floated in, picked up the empty biscuit plate, and then bobbed off again.

“So here we are, the four of us—”

“Five of us,” Frank corrected the nymph.

“My apologies, the five of us.”

“Six of us, technically, if we’re counting the dishwasher,” Frank said grudgingly.

Luna bowed her head. “The six of us,” she said. “Are there any more?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Toby said.

“So the six of us are here in this house. And together, along with others—I’m sure you know many capable men and women of many species?” Luna said in that strange, almost disjointed cadence of hers.

“I do,” Toby said, thinking of Oswald Parson, Lord Marshal Vani, and others.

“Excellent. So, it is our responsibility to try and bring down Duke Diddle.”

“That’s right,” Toby said.

Luna leaned forward, her finger running through a little drop of spilled tea. She drew a lemniscate—the infinity sign—absentmindedly on the wooden table and looked up at Toby with those wonderful amber eyes of hers.

Toby looked back, his gaze flickering momentarily to her lips. He recalled how light and tentative they had been when she had kissed him the previous evening.

“Have you any notion as to how we might go about doing that?” Luna asked.

Toby let out a little snort of amusement. “If I’m being honest,” he said, “I was kind of hoping that in finding you, you might have some ideas on that particular score.”

“I do have some ideas on that particular score,” Luna said.

“Well then, I’m all ears,” Toby replied.

“It might be better first if you told me what preparations you’ve made in that direction yourself,” Luna said.

“Fair enough,” Toby replied.

He sat then, and listed off all the things that he had undertaken personally and what his friends and associates had also done in their shared goal to thwart Duke Diddle and his happy little accidents.

Toby told Luna of how he and Anna had gone to visit Rowan Moonshroud, how they had met Frank, and how Toby had been issued his enchanted sword.

At the mention of the magical weapon, Luna’s ears pricked up. They actually physically pricked up, standing slightly taller. Toby guessed that that was a physiological sign of the pointy-eared nymph becoming interested, of her brain kicking up a gear.

He continued and regaled her on how he and Anna had met Verity. He divulged how he suspected that Verity had somewhat of a checkered past.

“It’s not every woman you meet who walks around quite comfortably with blades that shoot out from her wrists,” Toby said.

“No, as limited as my experiences in fashion and socializing,” Luna said, “they don’t seem to me like accessories that young women would habitually go in for.”

“Not like necklaces and bracelets, you mean?” Toby said.

“Exactly,” Luna laughed.

Toby then filled Luna in on the adventure that he and his friends had shared during King Balourd’s Jousting Jamboree.

“That is encouraging,” Luna said.

“What is?” Toby asked.

“That you have already thwarted Duke Diddle.”

“I suppose technically speaking it was Vexxx that we thwarted,” Toby said modestly.

“Do not try to detract from the deeds you have performed,” Luna said seriously. “There are, realistically speaking, few enough true victories we get to experience in our lives. Enjoy those that were well-merited and well-earned. And enjoy those especially that were done selflessly.”

Slowly and over many cups of tea, Toby’s tale wound itself down to where they now sat. Anna and Verity had come to join them as he talked.

As Toby lapsed into silence, Anna finished the last of her tea, set the cup carefully in the saucer, and said, “So what does a nymph make of all this?”

“I think I make of it the same as what almost anyone else would,” Luna said. “Firstly, it’s a rollicking good tale for one!”

“It’s not bad,” Verity admitted. “And he didn’t even include all the naughty bits.” She winked at Toby.

Luna looked from Verity to Toby and then back to Verity. “Perhaps you might be so good as to fill me in on those particulars this evening,” she said. “Perhaps after dinner.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can do that,” Anna said.

Verity tilted her head in Luna’s direction. “I like this one,” she said. “I think there’s some spunk to her that we’re yet to reveal, but we’ll get there.”

Anna giggled.

“Now, speaking of my immediate opinion on what it might behoove us to do next,” Luna said, “I am an artificer. I am a maker of things. As such, I think that you could do a lot worse than building a store of weaponry and gear. Perhaps after having looked at this laboratory and artificer’s tower, I might be able to help you in advancing or improving some of the gear you have already.”

Toby nodded enthusiastically. “That would be extremely beneficial, I reckon,” he said.

“As do I,” Anna said. “Is there any chance that you could make me some kind of badass armor?”

Luna smiled. “I’m sure that’s something we could certainly look into,” she said.

They spent the rest of the evening deep in talk. Verity showed Luna the artificer’s tower. Luna was impressed.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sure there are resources here with which I might be able to improve that sword of yours, Toby, as well as the items you might not have thought could be improved. Your belt knives, for one, I think I can make them slightly more formidable, perhaps imbue them with unique attributes of their own.”

The others were excited at this news.

“Look, we’ve had a long few days,” Toby said. “How about we all head up to bed early and get some shut-eye? Tomorrow you can get stuck up in the artificer’s tower, Luna.”

“And what will the rest of you do?” Luna asked.

“I’m going to head back to the practice yard,” Toby said. “I’m feeling pumped up and ready to turn myself into a weapon. I’m going to see if Lord Marshal Vani has anything in the way of missions he might want to send us on.”

“Speaking of missions,” Luna said, “and going back to a point I was making earlier, there is a way that we could expand our armory inventory here. A way to arm ourselves better against Duke Diddle and his followers and servants. A surefire way, though it comes with inherent risks.”

Toby leaned forward. Verity and Anna did the same. Verity in particular had a knowing sparkle in her eye.

“Speak on,” Verity said.

“A hoard,” Luna said.

The others looked at her.

“Treasure hoards,” Luna explained. “There are many of them scattered around Stagbreach. Many have been plundered in ages past, but there are some lesser hoards that might still be there.”

“These hoards,” Toby said, “presumably they weren’t just made out of your run-of-the-mill silver and gold and jewels?”

“No hoard would be complete,” Verity said, “without at least a couple of interesting wearables or trinkets.”

Something in her tone made Toby look more closely at her. He wagged a finger at her. “Do you have something specific in mind, Verity, you cheeky little thing?” he said.

Verity leaned back in her chair and examined a fingernail. “I might do,” she said. “I might well do, darling.”

18

When two worlds meet ‘neath mountain’s heart,

Two men shall rise, each claiming art.

One shall forge with light’s embrace,

The other dark, the world to face.

A wand of power, both seek to claim,

To heal the earth or cast to flame.

In fateful hands, the choice shall rest,

For one to save, and one to test.

Toby sat with his head bowed. His breath was coming hard and fast, perspiration dripping from his brow as he took a breather in the martial practice yards of Eclipsia Castle. As he recovered from another intense sparring session, the words ran through his head. They ran through his head as they had been running through his head for the past four days.

“A prophecy,” he muttered to himself. He took a swig from his water skin. “An honest-to-goodness prophecy. Fucking c’mon, can this be for real?”

He shook his head and corked the skin.

Could it really be what the words hinted at? A prophecy?

Of all the incredible, outrageous, borderline insane things that he had seen since coming to Eclipsia, the notion that he could be caught up in a prophecy almost struck him as being the most absurd of all. The word ‘prophecy’ was just so loaded. It was a word that was synonymous with destiny, with a preordained future.

It’s a fucking trope, is what it is, Toby thought.

Toby had always been of the opinion that each and every person had the ability to carve their own niche, their own future from the world, depending on if they had the will and determination to chase their goals and dreams. The thought that some ancient race had daubed a prophecy on a cave wall under some mountains and that prophecy had pointed at him, was an enormous thought.

Can it really be true? he thought. Seriously? I’m just a normal guy, a run-of-the-mill average Joe born in New York City. One of eight and a half million, give or take, people. How can I be caught up in something as weighty as a prophecy? I’m just a normal guy.

Yes, his brain interjected. Yes, you are. But every extraordinary person in history was normal—right up until the point that they weren’t. Everyone is ordinary right up until they take on that little bit of extra.

He ran through the lines of the prophecy piece by piece, trying to make sense of them.

The opening line had puzzled him a little at first. The two worlds meeting beneath the mountain’s heart had been fairly self-explanatory, as had the mention of the rise of two men. It was only after Lunaria had explained that the word ‘art’ was an archaic reference to magic, though, that Toby really came to understand that the prophecy was referring to two men—presumably himself and Duke Diddle—each being able to call on magic to help them to some end.

The next part was easy to decipher. One of those two men would use light, and the other man would use dark magic to try and better the world in the way they saw fit. The ‘wand of power’ was obviously the wand that Duke Diddle had made up in the tower of Eclipsia Castle. Judging by the wordage, ‘a wand of power both seek to claim, to heal the earth or cast to flame’ meant that Toby and Duke Diddle would vie for control of the wand to help them in their quest to either enslave Eclipsia—as far as Duke Diddle was concerned—or to save it and keep it as it was.

Toby shook his head again. It all just seemed so unlikely.

“Forget likely,” Toby whispered under his breath. “Forget likely, Adams. None of this is likely. Nothing that you’ve experienced since stepping through that dryer door into a meadow has been at all likely. You have to try and retain some of that childlike acceptance, that belief that all this makes sense somehow.”

Toby got to his feet and headed to the archery range. As he walked through the martial practice yards, he looked around at the milling, drilling soldiers.

Shit is certainly coming along.

Lord Marshal Vani had taken advantage of a brief cessation in Duke Diddle’s attacks to ramp up his efforts at training squads of fresh soldiers. The din of clacking staves, clashing armor, and the constant joking and swearing of the recruits was all around him. There was a sense of purpose in the air.

“How did the sword training go, Tobes?” Anna said as she saw Toby walking over to her.

Toby pointed at his red, sweaty face. “It’s a hell of a workout,” he said.

Anna nodded. She rotated her arm around in a circle.

“Getting a bit of archer’s elbow there?” Toby asked.

“Something like that,” Anna said. “I’ve lost count of how many arrows I’ve fired today.”

“Well, if Verity’s back this evening like she seemed to think she would be,” Toby said, “we’ll be heading off to find this hoard of hers tomorrow morning. Every arrow you shoot is another little step towards archery perfection. Keep at it.”

“Do you mind if I have a swig of your water?” Anna asked. “I’ve just finished mine.”

Toby tossed her his water skin.

“Thanks,” Anna said.

Toby walked over to a rack of bows and selected one. He had left the bow that Lord Marshal Vani had gifted him back at home. He didn’t mind using an unfamiliar weapon. Vani insisted that it wasn’t a wise move just to be familiar with a single weapon. There was no knowing that you’d always have it to hand in a combat situation.

“Do you think Verity will be back tonight from her scouting mission?” Anna asked.

Toby shrugged. “Can’t say for certain,” he said, “but she’s pretty damn capable. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“Can’t believe we’re going out searching for buried treasure tomorrow,” Anna said.

Toby chuckled as he took back his water skin from his best friend. “Yeah, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “Pretty wild. I’m looking forward to it. Training is all very well and good, but I find myself hankering for more adventure.”

“It is a little bit addictive, isn’t it?” Anna said.

Toby nodded. He walked over and faced one of the targets downrange. The target was a straw man with a few vital targeting points picked out with sploshes of red paint on its hessian skin. Toby pulled an arrow from the barrel at his side and fitted it to the string.

“Did you have any luck with your sword?” Anna asked.

Toby knew what she meant. She was referring to his connection with the magic that the ruby in the palm of the sword gave him access to.

“I’m definitely forming a bond with it,” Toby said slowly, looking over his shoulder at her. “I feel like it’s easier to find the connection. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t think it’s going to be long until I’m able to tap into that reservoir.”

Toby had experienced intermittent success with being able to draw on the magic inside of himself and cast spells. He was definitely becoming more attuned to his own abilities. He had continued trying to pull the cork from the bottle of wine—not the same bottle of wine, mind. He had exploded a number of them, not to mention caused one to levitate so high into the air that he had lost sight of it, and it hadn’t come back down anywhere he’d been able to see. He’d heard a rumor of a local beggar, who’d been sitting on the edge of town, praising the powers above for delivering a bottle of wine directly into his lap from out of the blue. He was glad to know that it hadn’t fallen and dropped on some unlucky person’s head.

Toby faced the straw target yet again. He pulled the bowstring to his ear. He was finding the draw weight easier to deal with every passing day. He let loose the shaft. The arrow flickered across the forty or so meters that separated himself and his target. The arrow plunged into the chest of the straw man.

“Not quite a heart shot,” Anna said critically from over his shoulder.

Toby grinned. “I’m sure it would slow whoever it hit down, though,” he countered.

“Still,” Anna said.

Toby didn’t mind the critique. He and Anna had evolved a type of banter that didn’t annoy one another but only pushed them to be better at their swordsmanship and bowcraft.

“Did you see Lunaria when you left the house this morning?” Toby asked.

Anna nodded. She had left the house in the Baker’s Quarter a little after Toby.

“Yes, she said she was going to spend her day in the artificer’s tower again,” Anna told him.

Toby nodded. That didn’t surprise him. The blue-skinned nymph had spent most of her spare time in the tower. What she was working on, she wouldn’t divulge.

“I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,” she had said the previous evening, “but I think I’ll have a few bits and pieces ready for our foray into the wilds when we’re ready to go in a few days’ time.”

The prospect of some sort of enchanted or magically imbued items filled Toby’s stomach with a sense of excited anticipation. It didn’t matter that he was becoming more and more used to everyday magic in Eclipsia. There was no way that the little boy that resided inside of him would ever get sick of having magical items at his beck and call.

Toby let fly another arrow. This one struck the heart of the dummy. He nocked another.

Two men shall rise, each claiming art.

The arrow flashed from the string. It punched into the heart of the target, a mere inch away from his second arrow.

One shall forge with light’s embrace, the other dark, the world to face.

Another arrow struck the target, this time in its straw-filled throat.

“A wand of power both seek to claim, to heal the earth or cast to flame,” he muttered as he fished another arrow from the barrel.

That arrow thumped into the target, this time where the mouth of the dummy would have been.

“Ooh!” Anna said. “That would smart.”

In fateful hands the choice shall rest for one to save and one to test.

Another arrow struck the target right in the forehead. Toby heard Anna clap behind him.

“Not bad, Tobes, not bad.”

“Two men shall rise, each claiming art,” Toby murmured under his breath.

Another arrow thudded into the face of the target.

I will harness this magic, Toby thought as he let fly another arrow. I will. It’s decreed by… something. I will harness magic!

And such was the potency of that belief, of that thought, that Toby found an extra couple of inches of give in his bowstring. When the next arrow hit the target, it buried itself almost to the fletchings in the dummy’s chest.

“I will gain mastery over this damn magic!” Toby hissed vehemently.

As he pulled the bowstring back once more, he felt a thrill of connection pass through him. It was hard to describe, but it felt to Toby as if every cell and sinew in his body was joined to some central core. He felt a flush that had nothing to do with his interior body temperature pass through him.

“I will make this magical connection!”

And fuck anything or anyone who thinks otherwise.

The arrow shot from the string. It trailed a pale blue comet’s tail of light. It moved so fast that one minute it was on the string, the next it had found the target.

The magically imbued arrow punched right into the red, paint-daubed heart. It went straight through the target, out of the inch-thick planking that stood as a safety barrier behind it, and buried itself in the low earthen embankment behind with such ferocity that a cloud of mud and dust exploded out.

Toby’s hand dropped to his side. He turned and looked at Anna. His friend was gazing at him.

“Did you just…?”

Toby blinked. “I…”

“Do it again, do it again!” Anna said hurriedly. “Whatever you did, do it again. But don’t think too much about it. Feel it, Tobes. Whatever you did there, just feel it.”

Toby pulled another arrow from the barrel and knocked it to the string. “I will. I will. I will, I can,” he replied.

“Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, it’s magic arrow time!” Anna crowed.

Toby managed to blank out that little piece of nineties nostalgia and released the arrow. Once more, a brilliant blue trail of effervescent light marked the projectile’s flight. This time, knowing that he could do it, the power that Toby was able to channel into the arrow was exacerbated and amplified.

The straw target exploded. It was cleaved neatly in half, as if Toby had swiped it across the midsection with some sort of giant, occult, invisible blade. The straw billowed everywhere, falling in lazy strands around where the target had been. The top half of the dummy thumped into the dirt.

“Holy shit!” Anna exclaimed.

Toby pulled a third arrow from the barrel. He moved his sight to the left, picked out the target that Anna had been firing at, and let rip.

The occult arrow zipped away. It caught the target on the left side and ripped it free of the post on which it stood. It shot backward and was pinned to the earthen embankment by the arrow. Toby could see, even as far away as he was, that there was a scorch mark in the middle of the target where the arrow had pinned it to the embankment. He turned excitedly to look at Anna.

“Progress,” he said. “Now that’s what you call goddamn progress!”

Anna ran over and hugged Toby tight. She pulled away and then kissed him full on the mouth. “You’re doing it, Tobes,” she said. “You’re freakin’ doing it!”

Toby nodded. He could feel the grin of satisfaction threatening to make the top of his head fall off. “I’m doing it,” he repeated.

Anna let out a great shout of laughter.

“Oh man,” she said, “Duke Diddle and Vexxx aren’t going to know what hit them when we next bump into them!”

19

That evening, Verity None returned home.

“How did the scouting mission go?” Toby asked while they were enjoying dinner in the parlor by the fire.

“It went well so far as I had time to ascertain,” Verity said. “I went out to check the surrounding countryside in case of… “

“In case of what?” Anna asked.

“In case there was anything or anyone out there waiting for us,” Verity finished, a trifle lamely.

“What makes you think that anyone would be waiting for us out there?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, that sounded like a pretty loaded thing to say, Verity,” Anna said.

Verity shrugged. “Trust me when I tell you that bandits are a lot more rife than you might expect, darling,” she said. “Where we’re going, things can be a little rougher, a little more dicey. The road that we’re going to be required to take is patrolled far less often by the soldiers of the King and Queen.”

“Do you think it’s likely that we’ll run into trouble?” Lunaria asked as she daintily forked some delicious pan-fried dragon eel into her mouth.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we did,” Verity said. “After all, I used to be lumped under what might have been considered as ‘trouble’ back in the bad old days.”

“You didn’t come across anything that gave you pause for thought, that gave you any reason for concern?” Lunaria asked.

Verity shrugged her elegant shoulders. “A few spriggans,” she said unconcernedly. “But nothing apart from that, nothing we can’t handle.”

“That’s a shame,” Frank said from where he was floating around up by the ceiling.

“In all honesty, the road we’ll be taking, as ill-frequently used as it is, was surprisingly quiet,” Verity said.

“Are the words ‘a little too quiet’ going to be the next ones to leave your lips?” Frank asked.

“They were, actually,” Verity admitted.

Frank clapped his little clawed hands together. “So we might be in for a bit of trouble yet,” he said, sounding delighted.

“You never know, not out those ways,” Verity said.

“Even the very wise cannot see all ends,” Toby muttered.

“Shit, that was quite insightful, mate,” Frank said.

Toby was too weary from that day’s confidence-boosting training to bother telling the imp where those words came from.

“They’re good words to keep in mind,” Verity agreed. “There’s no real knowing what we might run into on the more lonesome, unused roads away north, which is where we’re going. In my experience, it’s when you think that you’ve got a clear run at something that the universe sticks out a foot to trip you up.”

“My people had a saying, which ran in the common tongue like this, that a historian is a prophet looking backwards,” Lunaria said as she scooped up a forkful of rice.

“What does that mean, Miss Lunaria?” Dishy asked. The little domestic imp was perched on one of the arms of a candelabra in the middle of the table.

“It means that it’s always a good idea,” Lunaria said, “to remember your past experiences so that you might be better prepared for whatever mysteries the future might hold.”

“There’s that word again,” Toby said with a smile.

“What word is that?” Verity asked. She was shoveling her dinner into her face with quite unladylike abandon. Four days away from Dishy’s exceptional cooking had obviously put a keen edge on her appetite.

“Prophet… Prophecy,” Toby said.

“Ah,” Lunaria said, “it sounds to me as if you’ve been dwelling on the words on the cave wall just as much as I have, Toby.”

Toby nodded. He pushed a few remnants of fish and rice around his plate. He speared some spinach—fresh from the garden—and ate it.

“It is hard for you to have total faith in this prophecy. Is that not so?” Lunaria asked gently.

Toby looked at Anna. “I suppose it’s getting over the habit of a lifetime,” he said.

“It’s true,” Anna said. “We come from a world where a lot of ancient dogma attempts to validate itself by using prophecy.”

Toby grunted his agreement. “Pretty nuts to think about that sort of thing here, isn’t it?” he said. “Think of how many people back home rely on these sorts of prophecies—however vague, however unfulfilled—to prop up their beliefs. And yet the level of accuracy in those prophecies is pretty poor, isn’t it?”

Anna nodded.

“Well, I don’t know how such mercurial things as prophecies play out where you are from,” Lunaria said, “but here in Eclipsia, they are not something to be cast aside lightly.” She looked intently at Toby across the table, her bright amber eyes shining like burning pools in the candlelight. “If it makes you feel any better, if it instills you with any more confidence, Toby, let me just say that I have absolute faith in the words that we read.”

Toby smiled. He scooped up the last of his dinner with a piece of crusty bread and stuffed it into his mouth. “It does make me feel better, actually, Luna,” he said.

Luna smiled brightly at him. She looked around the table. “If we’re all done,” she said, “there is something else that I think might put more heart into you before we embark on our journey tomorrow.”

“What’s that?” Anna asked.

“I have some things in the artificer’s tower that I think you might be interested in.”

Verity clapped her hands. She put her knife and fork on her plate. “Ooh,” she said, “I do love presents.”

* * *

“I do love a good knife,” Frank said. “Of all the many wonderful, wondrous, and creative ways that sentient beings of Eclipsia have invented in order to kill one another more efficiently, there’s something classic about a good knife. Something timeless.”

“I thought you’d be more for folk ripping one another’s throats out with claws and teeth,” Anna said dryly.

“Oh, there’s a time and place for that,” Frank admitted. “But a good knife, well, it’s useful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Toby said. “Useful for cutting up steak, for instance.”

“Yeah, but it’s just not in the using of them that they’re useful,” Frank said.

“Right. Sure,” Anna said resignedly. “Of course it’s not in the using of them that they’re useful. That’d be crazy.”

“What I mean is that a good knife, well, it catches the eye, doesn’t it?” Frank clarified. “It gets the imagination working. Folk end up getting so preoccupied by staring at a nice shiny knife that they don’t realize that you’ve got a club in the other hand, or a crossbow, and you’ve already got them with it.”

“You’ve got some shit that you need to work through, Frank,” Anna said.

“Thanks,” Frank said. “My overseers in the Below Below would be happy to hear you say that, Miss Coombes.”

“Thank you for giving me your knives over the past few days,” Lunaria said. “I know it must feel strange walking around Stagbreach without them.”

Funnily enough, now that she said that, Toby realized he had felt slightly out of sorts, not having his knife strapped to his belt. He perceived he had found having something on hand that could both fend off armed assailants and help cut up a sausage roll a comfort, especially after that single run-in with would-be muggers, which he and Frank had fended off a while back.

“So what have you done to them?” Toby asked Luna. “They look the same, and yet there’s something different about them too.”

“Well, after going through the inventory in the tower,” Luna said, “I saw that the people at Edgewise Extensions had issued you with four ingots of dwarven iron.”

“Shit, did we have some dwarven iron?” Verity said. “That’s good stuff.”

“Indeed it is,” Luna agreed. “So I reworked the blades, keeping their original shape. So while they look the same, they are, on a deeper level, of far greater quality than the everyday steel they were made of before.”

Toby picked up his knife from the bench. It certainly looked the same, though there was an extra heft to it, a comforting weight that hadn’t been there before.

“With dwarven iron being alloyed into the blades, it will make them much harder to break,” Luna said.

“Handy,” Verity said, running her finger along the edge of her own knife. She let out a little gasp and sucked her finger. “My goodness, but this edge is keen.” She waved her finger in the air as if to cool it.

“Yes, that is another property that comes hand in hand with the use of dwarven iron,” Luna said. “None of you will ever need to sharpen your knives again. They retain a killing cutting edge, no matter what they go through.” She gave Verity an apologetic little smile. “With that in mind, it will pay to exercise just a modicum more caution when handling them. These new and improved knives will cut you just as willingly as they’ll cut anything else.”

Toby and the others affixed their new and improved knives to their belts.

“Thanks so much for doing that,” Toby said, giving the silver-haired nymph a one-armed squeeze. “Anything that gives us an edge—excuse the pun—against Duke Diddle is something I can get around.”

“You’re very welcome, Toby,” Luna said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have anything more exciting for you, but with the limited time and the fact I had to get acquainted with this fine tower meant that I could only do so much. Even with the tools I was able to bring from the mountains.” She touched her belt where all the intricate little tools of her artificer’s trade were secured, like the bullets of a gunfighter’s bandolier.

“Hey, you’ve done a great job,” Toby said.

“I’ll say!” Verity gushed. “A knife that doesn’t need sharpening. One less thing for these hands of mine to get roughened up over.”

Anna and Verity left the room ahead of Toby, talking excitedly about their knives. Toby went to exit, but a word from Luna called him back.

“Toby?”

“Yes, Luna?”

“I actually did make one more thing for you.”

“You did?”

Luna nodded. She reached under a bench and pulled out a long, slim object wrapped in a blanket. She placed the object on one of the workbenches and unfolded the wrapping.

“It’s a scabbard,” Toby said.

“Yes, indeed,” Luna said. “A scabbard for your sword.”

“But I’ve had my sword the whole time.”

Luna gave a modest shrug. “I was able to take its measure on seeing it a few times,” she said, as if this was no big deal.

“Are you as good at taking the measure of things other than swords at a glance?” Toby asked.

Luna looked at Toby from under long silver lashes. “I have some skill in that area, perhaps.”

Toby ran his eyes over the scabbard. It was covered in deep green leather. On closer inspection, Toby could see that the leather was covered in a scaled pattern.

“It’s basilisk skin,” Luna said.

“The tower came with basilisk skin?” Toby asked.

“Well, no, not as such,” Luna admitted. “I was wandering through the markets, visiting some of the incredible merchants that Stagbreach is home to, and I saw a skein of the stuff and thought that it would be just the thing to wrap that fine sword in.”

Toby touched the warm ruby on the pommel of his sword. “That’s really kind of you,” he said. “It looks fantastic.”

He started to unbuckle his sword belt so that he could swap out his old, battered scabbard. He ceased his fiddling when Luna laid a hand on his hand. Toby looked up into those wonderful, almost golden eyes.

“Toby,” Luna said.

“Yes?”

The nymph looked down for a moment, almost bashfully. She trailed away again. Toby reached out instinctively and raised the beautiful, blue-skinned woman’s face so that she was looking into his.

“Go ahead. Say what’s on your mind,” he said kindly.

“The reason I made this scabbard for you,” Luna said, “was partly to say thank you for following your intuition and your visions and coming to get me.”

“I told you before, Luna,” Toby said. “There was really no choice in it for me.”

Luna nodded. “Be that as it may,” she said. “Still, I wanted to thank you.”

“Okay,” Toby said. “Well, in that case, you’re very welcome.”

“The other reason I made this for you,” Luna went on, “is because I… This might sound a little trite, a little whimsical…”

“Try me,” Toby said.

Luna blinked and smiled demurely. “I… From the moment I met you, I saw that you carried an inner, unquenchable fire inside of you.”

Toby had to make a concerted effort not to look away. He always got a bit awkward when people complimented him or said stuff like that to his face. It made him feel as if he was suffering from a slight case of imposter syndrome.

“With that in mind, I used a great deal of my artificer’s talent to try and channel the fire within that enchanted blade of yours so that it’s mixed with the inner fire I see in you,” Luna went on.

“Okay,” Toby said, doing his best to follow.

Luna took a breath and puffed out her cheeks. “Basically, this scabbard will impregnate the blade of your sword with a very real fire of its own.”

“You mean that when I draw my sword from this scabbard, it’ll set on fire?” Toby asked.

“Yes, in a manner of speaking” Luna said, “but you have to will it to do so. It won’t just spontaneously burst into flames.”

“Okay,” Toby said. “That sounds… Honestly, it sounds slightly unbelievable, but if it’s that easy, it also sounds absolutely freakin’ fantastic.”

Luna smiled again. “The sword won’t set on fire in the way that you perhaps imagine it to,” she said. “There will be no flames rolling down the blade—”

That’s too bad.

“—but it will burn hot and bright. Hot enough to go through solid plate armor or dragon scales with ease if I’ve built the scabbard to the specifications I planned.”

“Has anything you have ever made not worked in the manner you anticipated or planned?”

The nymph made a slight show of considering that question. “No,” she said after a moment or two.

Toby grinned and put a hand on Luna’s shoulder. “That sounds like another headache for Duke Diddle and Vexxx,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, it does,” Luna agreed. “However, your blade will only be able to burn with this inner incandescence for a limited amount of time before it needs to be returned to the scabbard to replenish itself.”

“Can I use it as a normal sword the rest of the time?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Luna said. “The spell woven into the basilisk skin, and the yeti hair that lines the scabbard and helps cool the blade, can only be activated when you will it. For all intents and purposes, the sword is just like any other until you want to do that.”

“Can I try it?” Toby asked.

“Of course. I would advise it.”

Toby unbuckled his sword belt, pulled his old scabbard free, and fastened on the new one. He slid the sword into it.

“It fits like a glove,” he said.

“Good,” Luna said, enthusiastically.

“And how do I activate this spell, this new ability?” Toby asked.

“That ruby set into the pommel was given to you by a wizard, yes?” Luna asked.

Toby nodded.

“In that case, I believe that that gemstone is a conduit, a spillway if you like, that will connect your inner magical ability, which you’ve mentioned a few times before and been trying to more adequately anchor yourself with, and the intrinsic magic of your enchanted sword. Just grip the hilt of your blade and will the sword into its burning state.”

“Just will it?” Toby asked.

“Yes. Picture it in your mind. Be sure that it will work, and it should do,” Luna said.

Toby nodded. He reached across his body and took a firm grip on the handle of his weapon. He pictured the sword inside his mind burning with the brilliant incandescence of a lightsaber. He slowly drew the sword. At first glance, the blade looked like it always had, but Toby noticed it was glowing with an inner fire that had nothing to do with the sunlight coming through the window or the candles burning around the room.

“Careful,” Luna warned him.

Toby raised the sword and gently touched it to the solid wooden workbench to his right. A slight pressure and the blade went through the thick oak like it was a block of lard. Smoke rose from the scorched wood. Toby had to stop himself from staggering forward at the lack of resistance as the blade went clean through the table.

“Holy hell,” he breathed. “That’s incredible.” He looked at the workbench. “Sorry about making a mess of that.”

Luna shook her head. “That’s what artificer’s workbenches are meant to look like,” she said.

Toby grinned. He slid the sword back into its sheath. “Thank you, Luna,” he said. “Thank you. Like Anna said, we need every edge, and this is a hell of an edge.”

“Not a problem. I’m glad that I can play my part,” Luna said.

It was only as they stood there for a few moments, gazing at each other, that Toby appreciated how close they were standing to one another. Toby’s hand was on Luna’s shoulder. It slid down to her elbow.

“I’m excited to be here, Toby,” Luna said quietly.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here too, Luna,” Toby said. He cleared his throat.

“It feels like… I don’t know,” Luna said. “It feels as if I was waiting for something or someone, and now that I’m here, I feel… complete.”

Toby wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

He was saved the trouble of thinking of a reply, though, when Luna, her eyes blazing bright gold for just a moment, stepped forward and kissed him.

20

This wasn’t the light, tentative kiss that she had planted on him in the forest glade under the moonlight. This was stronger, more urgent, more packed with unspoken meaning.

Toby closed his eyes and allowed his senses to savor every aspect of that kiss.

It was an amazing thing, Toby thought, how that room, that workshop, suddenly became, in the blink of an eye, charged with the kind of sexual tension that was so thick it could have been scooped into a jar and marketed as the ultimate in breakfast pick-me-ups to be slathered on toast.

The kiss broke after what might have been a few seconds or a full two minutes. Toby couldn’t be sure—he didn’t much care.

“I apologize if I’m being forward,” the nymph said. She sounded a little breathless. A little husky.

“Not at all,” Toby managed to reply.

“It’s a strange juxtaposition,” Luna went on. “But although my people were—or are—famed for being meticulous inventors, one of the chief tenets of our society was that no one ever got anything done by planning too much.”

Toby smiled a half-smile. They were still only separated by a couple of inches of air; air that tingled with promise.

“I think that’s a pretty good philosophy,” he said in a low voice. “Sometimes you’ve got to take thinking out of the equation and just do.”

They kissed once more. Their hands roamed. Toby’s fingers felt the delightful curves of the nymph’s body under her flowing robes.

“It’s strange,” Luna whispered.

“What’s strange?” Toby asked.

“As I was walking around Stagbreach, I really appreciated just how long I’ve been away,” Luna said. “There were so many things I had forgotten, so many everyday anomalies that struck me as bizarre.”

“Like what?” Toby asked.

“Like the fact that, although pigeons have wings,” Luna said, “they spend so much of their time just walking around.”

Toby actually laughed at that.

“We don’t get pigeons up in the mountains,” Luna explained.

“I see.”

“What I’m trying, rather inexpertly, to explain,” Luna said, “is that there are some things you know, some things you get used to, and other things that are purely instinctive.”

“And this is one of them?”

Luna pressed her lips to Toby’s once again. Toby was gratified and surprised in equal measure to feel the nymph’s hands raking over his body. Though she was polite and almost shy most of the time, it seemed that times like this were when Luna came out of her shell.

Let’s hope she feels like stepping out of her clothes too, Toby’s brain interjected at that point.

“Is this a good idea?” Luna breathed into Toby’s mouth.

“Sometimes speculation is as much use as the number nine on a microwave,” Toby said. The words tumbled out of him like clowns from a too-small car.

“What in the name of Eclipsia is a—?”

“Never mind, never mind,” Toby said. “Ignore me. I’m prone to jabber on while in the company of extremely beautiful women.”

“You think I’m extremely beautiful?” the nymph asked.

Had the girl involved in the unfolding scenario been anyone other than who it was, Toby might have thought that Luna was angling for a compliment. However, that really wasn’t her style.

“Luna,” he said, “you are one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.”

It was like the flash of a red flag to a bull. Luna pounced on Toby.

Toby, taken by surprise, found himself stumbling backward. His arms looped around Luna’s waist as he banged into the workbench behind him. The sun streamed in through the leaded panes of the window at the apex of the artificer’s tower dazzling him for a moment.

With their arms wrapped around one another, Toby and Luna pressed into each other’s bodies. Their kisses were unrefined, urgent, almost feverish in their heightened desire. Toby felt saliva from the nymph’s lips smear across his own. Their teeth tapped clumsily together. Toby’s hand slid around Luna’s back, pressing her more tightly into him. His other hand moved down to squeeze her rump.

“How does one gain access to the inside of these robes?” Toby breathed.

Luna giggled low in her throat. “Like much that is worth waiting for,” she said in a voice that was almost a low purr, “there is a knack to it.”

The nymph shrugged in a very deliberate way. Toby thought he heard some buttons or clasps popping open. Then, suddenly, the robe was falling away, cascading down Luna’s body. In the space of a couple of heartbeats, the strange, otherworldly garment was pooled around her still-booted feet.

Toby’s hands ran up and down the satin smoothness of the nymph’s back. He felt the knobbles of her backbone under his fingertips, the curve of her sharp shoulder blades. Her buttocks yielded to his eager hands.

Luna grunted in satisfaction as Toby kneaded her backside. She pressed herself more tightly against him still. Toby surfaced for air for a moment. He held the nymph at arm’s length for a couple of seconds and drank in the sight of her. Her breasts, he hadn’t realized due to the flowing nature of her robes, were large, perfect orbs. They were tipped with dark blue nipples.

“Wow,” Toby breathed. “Just… wow.”

Luna let out another shy giggle. A flush of darker blue permeated her cheeks. She stepped forward once more and began rubbing at the front of Toby’s breeches.

“Seems like all that fastening and unfastening of my sword belt was a waste of time,” Toby said.

This statement was emphasized by the sound of his sword belt clattering to the floor as Luna unfastened it with dexterous ease.

While she busied herself disrobing him, Toby’s hands moved to the front of the nymph’s body. He cupped her breasts, massaging them, tweaking her nipples to elicit gasps of pleasure from the nymph’s full lips.

“Things might be much nicer and quicker if you were to help me in taking off your attire,” the nymph said with devastating logical exactitude.

With far less elegance and time-efficiency than Luna had shown, Toby managed to pull off his shirt and trousers. He kicked off his boots when they got tangled in his pants, and one went clattering away across the wooden floor. The other landed in a small bin.

Once they were both stark naked, Luna reached between Toby’s legs and began to fondle his rapidly hardening member. A wash of red-hot lust coursed through Toby’s body. Almost roughly, he grabbed the nymph under her thighs and lifted her bodily from the floor. He set her down on the workbench. There was the sound of something rolling and then the sound of shattering glass.

“Don’t worry about it,” Toby said. “It came with the room.”

Luna tilted her head back and moaned as Toby pushed her legs apart, squatted down, and started nibbling and licking and tonguing the inside of her thighs. It was the natural next step, lured by the musk of her sex, for Toby to engulf Luna’s vagina with his mouth.

He had never been the kind of man who’d spend more time looking for a golf ball than he would the G-spot of a sexual partner. Toby didn’t even like golf. He took great pleasure in pleasuring the women he shared his bed with.

“I’m not sure if it matters,” the nymph groaned, “but I’ve never done anything like this before.”

A virgin, Toby thought. Holy shit, she’s a virgin.

Eagerly, he applied himself to Luna’s wonderful wet slot. His chin, lips, and the lower part of his face were soon bedewed with her arousal. Toby slurped and tongued at the nymph’s nether regions while her legs and feet twitched with pleasure as she raised them higher. She grasped Toby’s head and pushed him hard against her.

Toby slid a finger inside of her and started to fuck her. His penis was throbbing with the need to be plunged into the nymph’s sex like a red-hot blade waiting for the quench.

“Yes! Yes, please!” Luna was soon begging. “Please, more… I want more.”

The fact that she didn’t sound like she really knew what she wanted only heightened Toby’s desire. It put the ball firmly in his court. He realized that, for the first time he could remember, he was going to set the benchmark for a woman when it came to sexual activities.

With the nymph still sitting on the workbench, Toby straightened up. To his great satisfaction, Luna grabbed him by the face and pulled him down so that she could kiss him. Toby felt her tongue exploring his mouth. He could feel her licking up her own juices from his lips. She moaned.

“Mmm, yes!”

While they engaged in this extremely erotic act of kissing, the tip of Toby’s member pressed up, as if it had a mind of its own, against Luna’s sopping wet slot. With very little thought, with very little effort, he slid into the nymph’s box. Luna let out a great gasp.

“Oh my!” she cried. “Oh my!”

Toby matched her exhalations of bliss with one of his own. She was so tight, so eager, so wet. Their rampant, urgent breath mingled into a chorus of lust, harsh and needful. Toby started off slowly, but soon the rhythm took on a natural momentum of its own. Luna grabbed Toby by his ass cheeks.

“Faster, faster,” she said. “Please, harder.”

Toby took her by the thighs. He got himself balanced and began to pound into the nymph.

The nymph started to elicit low moans of pleasure that almost sounded as if they were laced with pain.

“Are you all right?” Toby gasped.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Luna said. “It’s just… “ She started to laugh. “I’m getting a cramp.”

“Oh shit,” Toby said.

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s the most fantastic cramp I’ve ever felt,” Luna said. “Hold on, let me just straighten my legs out.”

Toby pulled out of the nymph, stood regarding her as she stretched her legs out. Then, on her own cognizance, the nymph turned around and presented her wonderful backside to Toby. She reached around behind her and pulled her ass cheeks wide. Toby took the hint. He pressed himself into her from behind, holding her steady by her hips.

He began pounding away at her once again. Rutting her with caveman abandon.

Luna started off leaning against the counter, so Toby was able to reach forward and squeeze her wonderful breasts as he went to town on her. Soon, though, the momentum and his pressure caused Luna to collapse forward onto the countertop.

“Yes… yes… yes…” she said jerkily.

Toby couldn’t have stopped had a team of wild hippogriffs been attached to his back and tasked with pulling him away.

As Toby neared his limit, as he approached the precipice that dropped away into that warm, pink, wonderful chasm that was an orgasm, he felt Luna starting to shake. She started to moan and writhe. Her knuckles stood out white in her blue flesh where she gripped the countertop. The noises she made could only be described as animal.

As Toby’s own orgasm flashed through him and he pulled out so that he could spray his seed over the wonderful blue rump, a wash of female ejaculate coated his thighs.

The pair of them collapsed forward onto the bench-top. Toby’s knees felt weak. His lungs were burning. His mouth was dry. Luna’s legs were still shaking. She was slumped heavily against the countertop, breathing hard. Toby stepped back.

“I feel… extremely relaxed,” Luna managed to say after a moment.

Toby smiled to himself as he looked up at the timber rafters of the artificer’s tower.

“It’ll be interesting to see how long that feeling lasts come tomorrow,” he said.

21

Guided by Verity None, they traveled north for three days.

If they had been out for a leisurely ramble, Toby would have quite enjoyed himself. The countryside was beautiful and unspoiled. It was the epitome of pristine woodland. The landscape unfolded around and in front of them, almost in the manner that Toby would have expected, had someone been telling him the tale of the journey in the Toby Jug while they sat listening by the fire.

The rolling hills to the north of Stagbreach were bathed in a golden light of a clear dawn on the morning they set out. They left the pungent smells of the township behind them. Soon they were wading through verdant meadows, resplendent with swathes of wildflowers—saffron, crimson, violet, periwinkle blue. The colors were dashed all around them like a spillage from nature’s paint box. The grass and the blooms swayed in a breeze that was redolent with a mixed floral perfume.

For the first day, they followed a ribbon of crystal-clear water that wound its way out of the hills.

“Shit, this is about as far removed from the Bronx as it’s possible to be, huh?” Anna said to Toby as they strolled along. She was gazing around in wide-eyed wonder at the lines of willow trees that fringed the banks of the river. The drooping branches of the willows trailed in the water like the tendrils or fingers of buried arboreal giants.

“Yeah,” Toby said with a wry grin, nudging his friend with an elbow. “But doesn’t the lack of good burger joints disappoint you just a little bit?”

Anna snorted. The place really was idyllic, especially when compared to a metropolis like New York. Rather than a cacophony of horns, sirens, and a multitude of humanity, the air was filled instead with the gentle hum of nature at work—that is to say, myriad different creatures eating and singing out to see if any of their fellows fancied jumping on the good foot to do the bad thing.

Unseen birds chattered and chirped in the underbrush. The murmur of the river as it flowed over the smooth, ancient stones was like an aural balm.

Soon the route that Verity was taking them on turned away from the nameless river. The trees drew more closely around them. They were obviously walking through extremely old woodland. The trees were gnarled with age. Oaks, beeches, elms, and a whole host of other trees that Toby couldn’t identify roofed them over in a vibrant mix of emerald and gold leaves. Sunlight came filtered through the thick branches, casting an ever-changing mosaic on the forest floor.

“What’s that smell?” Anna asked, sucking in a deep breath as they walked along.

“Honeysuckle,” Verity said at once, indicating the plants with their yellow and white flowers.

“It reminds me of England,” Anna said to Toby.

“When were you in England?” Toby asked.

“You remember when I went for that month-long vacation to Europe?” Anna said.

“That’s right,” Toby said. “I forgot about that.”

“Honestly, as much shit as we give the Brits,” Anna said, “their countryside is some of the best I’ve ever seen. In certain places, it really is all winding lanes, tumble-down dry stone walls, and pubs on every corner.”

“You’ll find no inns or taverns out these ways,” Verity said.

“Shame,” Anna said. “I could have gone for a mojito.”

They made good time. Occasionally, they stopped so that Luna could harvest some herb or other flora and tuck it away into her pack.

Amidst this almost quintessentially European countryside, there were hints of the supernatural that set their woodland apart, even to Toby’s amateur arboreal eyes. A few of the trees they passed, great hulking brutes with trunks that could have comfortably been cut through to emit two carts driven side-by-side, had strange iridescent silver leaves. These leaves glimmered like moonlight, even in the brightness of day.

Around the boles of these forest giants, Toby noticed other strange plants. These had vine-like creepers that coiled and uncoiled with a sentience of their own. Toby watched them, fascinated. As he saw one snatch a dragonfly in mid-flight, the tendril retracted into the base of the plant, and there was a soft crunching sound.

“Yeah,” Verity said when she saw Toby looking. “I wouldn’t go sticking your fingers into one of those.”

There were other carnivorous plants too. One, which captivated Luna for almost ten minutes, had flowers that looked like pale blue butterflies. While they waited for Luna to have her fill of this plant, Toby watched a small flying lizard swoop down and attempt to eat one of these faux butterflies. As the little flying lizard’s claws latched onto the butterfly, there was a dull electric flash, and the lizard dropped from the air, stone dead, smoking slightly. The flower that it had tried to eat bent down and enfolded the dead winged reptile in its petals.

“Like a Venus flytrap,” Toby murmured to Anna, “only with a bit more of a kick.”

Toby caught glimpses of interesting fauna that, most assuredly, he would never have been able to see on Earth. A pair of foxes, their fur a rich velvety red the color of very expensive merlot, watched the four companions from a distance. Their eyes gleamed with an intelligence that seemed almost akin to humans. When Toby mentioned this, Frank, who was in his usual impish form, scoffed.

“That’s the thing about you lot who go on two legs,” he said. “You always make the mistake of thinking that just because a creature can’t talk in a way that you understand, it means that they’re dumber than you are.”

Towards the end of that first day abroad, they came across a large pond. Verity, who was in the lead, held out a hand, ducked down, and hushed the others.

“What is it?” Toby said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “Is there something out of the ordinary?” He had his hand on his sword.

“No,” Verity said. “Look through here.”

She pushed some thick foliage aside, and Toby’s breath caught in his throat.

“Is that a fucking unicorn?” Anna gasped.

It surely was. The great horse was larger than any horse that Toby had ever clapped eyes on. It was a wonderful glistening alabaster color. Its horn protruded a full two feet from the center of its head.

At the sound of Anna’s hushed voice, the creature raised its head and locked eyes with the travelers. For a moment, its gaze seemed to fill Toby’s whole heart. He felt a shiver run down his spine. Then the unicorn turned its head and dashed silently away into the trees.

The second day of their journey passed without remark. The only thing that attracted Toby’s attention was when they came across a small grove where the trees stood in a perfect circle. The trunks of these trees were twisted into intricate patterns that somehow defied the laws of nature.

“What is this place?” Toby asked Verity. “The air seems thicker somehow.”

Verity nodded. “It’s an old druid circle,” she said.

Luna stepped forward and ran her blue fingers over the smooth bark of the strange trees. “The druids,” she whispered. “Some say that it was from them that the art of the modern-day wizards evolved.”

“Were druids the guys who used to cover themselves in paint, dance around in the nude, and get a little bit frisky when anyone mentioned human sacrifice?” Anna asked.

“Don’t forget how their chief hobby was to haul great lumps of rock from miles away to confuse other people,” Frank said. “Very odd sense of humor, your average druid.”

“Are there any druids left in the world?” Anna asked.

“Not that I know of,” Luna replied, “but then my people managed to blend myth with reality for a long time. The druids might simply be even more private and secretive than we were.”

The nymph’s eyes strayed around the grove. They suddenly lighted on something at ankle level. She hurried forward. Toby noticed that it was a cluster of mushrooms at the base of one of the trees that had snared her attention. They were a vibrant shade of blue.

“What are they?” he asked, coming to stand over Luna as she knelt to examine the fungi.

“Mage caps,” Luna said. “Sometimes colloquially referred by apothecaries as blue hitsumishis—after the great philosopher, Dingbor Hitsumishi. They are very rare. They have many helpful properties. I’m going to take a liberty and extract some.”

Toby knelt down next to her as the nymph plucked some of the mushrooms from the peaty soil.

“Allow me to help,” he said, pulling out his new magically-enhanced belt knife.

“No,” Luna said, taking his hand. “Don’t cut them. Twist them from the base. Otherwise, they won’t grow back.”

“What do you think you can make of them?” Toby asked, carefully extracting a mushroom with a twist of his fingers. It lifted easily from where it clung to the soil.

“I’ll have to do some experimenting when we get home,” Luna said. “But I think that they might prove extremely helpful for us down the road.”

By the third day, the woodland began to take on a denser, more overgrown quality. ‘Eldritch’ would have been the word Toby would have used to describe it, had he been pushed to do so. The path underfoot became little more than a deer track. Their booted feet were cushioned by a thick layer of fallen leaves that rustled with each step.

“Careful now,” Verity said. Her eyes were darting this way and that. “We’re deep in the northern forest now. This isn’t the Feywood, but it’s just as dangerous.”

“How do you know?” Anna asked.

“Because it was these woods that I used to take cover in when I was part of, what the King and Queen probably would have called, a ‘band of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells’,” Verity said with a wry smile. “Don’t worry, darling,” she added, seeing Anna’s expression. “Bandits used to come out here regularly to hide their plunder, but it looks to me as if this track has been long abandoned.”

They camped that evening in a glade that had been formed by what looked like a small fire caused by a lightning strike. The fallen trunks of blackened trees formed a convenient circle around the glade.

“We’ll rest here tonight,” Verity said. “We’re not far away now. The forest is prone to change, but I think we’re close to where we want to be. The woodland likes to move, but I recognize the types of trees here. If we push a little further north tomorrow, we should come to a stretch of the northern woods where the trees all have blood-red trunks.”

“That sounds a little ominous,” Anna said.

Verity laughed lightly. “Yes, it was why bandits used to frequent these woods so much. They cooked up tales of why the trunks of the trees were red, watered with blood, etcetera, etcetera.”

Frank lit the firewood that Toby gathered with a prod of his forked tail. They settled down to an evening meal. It was simple, but made slightly more appetizing by the fact that Anna had been able to make use of her archery skills to bring down a brace of hares with curly green fur.

“They’d make a snazzy pair of slippers,” Frank commented, as he watched Verity skin the animals.

After their meal, with the light fading early in the depths of that mysterious forest, they settled down to sleep. With Frank swearing that he would stay awake and watch all night, Toby was looking forward to a good snooze. His legs were aching from the walk. He bunkered down by the fireside after throwing on a few more logs. Sparks rose in a flurry towards the canopy above. He closed his eyes and let out a weary sigh.

When he awoke, the world was still dark, and his senses were twanging uncomfortably.

22

“Frank, are you awake?” Toby mumbled drowsily.

He heard a soft little snore from the beds of the dying fire.

“Goddamn it, Frank,” Toby hissed. “Why say you’re going to keep watch if you’re just going to catch forty winks like the rest of us?”

“I’m an imp, a creature of the Below Below,” Frank said as if explaining to a child why it was a bad idea to try and fend off a box of falling steak knives with an umbrella.

“Man, I wish I could just cast your ass out of here sometimes,” Toby groused, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“You should be careful there, buddy,” Frank said. “You never know that when you cast out your demons you might be chucking out the best of yourself.”

“I find that highly doubtful,” Toby said. “Especially when the demon in question is you.”

He looked around. The others were still sleeping. At least that’s what he thought at first. He saw now that Luna’s bright amber eyes were open. Her blue face was flushed with a healthy luminosity where she lay by the fire that was ticking along and slowly breaking down into ashes.

Toby was struck by how beautiful the nymph really was as she lay there watching him silently with the glowing coals reflected in those strange tawny eyes. She looked, more than she ever had, like some ancient creature of a hidden world.

Toby experienced a strange sensation staring into the nymph’s eyes. He almost got the impression that they were like mirrors.

It’s not what’s passing in her thoughts that I’m seeing, he thought. It’s what’s passing in mine reflected back at me.

Toby’s face jerked away from the nymph’s as he heard the sound of a branch breaking.

“Relax, kid,” Frank said casually. “A twig snapping is really not such a rare thing as fireside stories would have you believe. Nor is the rustle of leaves. Things move around in the night.”

“Yeah,” Toby said, unconvinced.

“You sound unconvinced,” Frank pointed out.

“Yeah,” Toby repeated.

There was something out there. He was sure of it. Something that had disturbed the nocturnal rhythm of the forest. Toby’s eyes moved slowly in the direction from where he’d heard the sound. He made a point of not turning his head. His night vision had, unfortunately, been ruined by staring across the fire at Luna. As his eyes moved, he saw Luna’s face change.

“What was that?” she mouthed silently.

Toby’s eyes flicked to where Verity and Anna were snoozing. Verity was lying propped against her backpack, breathing deeply. Toby’s eyes watched her without seeing her. His ears were strained to such an intensity that it almost blanked out his other senses. There was a new sound; a cessation of sound. A gap left where the sounds of the night time creatures, moving stealthily but without malice, had been.

Frank drifted down like a shadow onto Toby’s shoulder. “You see that?” he breathed in Toby’s ear.

Toby gave an almost imperceptible nod. The shape of something moved between two trees. Then he noticed a second and a third indistinct shape lurking just beyond the reach of the fire’s feeble light behind Anna.

“I don’t think it’s anything,” Toby said, loud enough to be heard by whoever was out in the night. “Just animals. Just nighttime noises.”

How many are there? he wondered.

Internally, Toby was quickly weighing his options. Externally, he stretched his arms above his head and let out a loud yawn.

Who the hell are they?

What the hell do they want?

I wonder if they have bowmen.

I fucking well hope not.

These thoughts chased themselves around his head.

Easy, Adams, easy. Don’t go worrying about that which you can’t know about.

There weren’t many choices open to him. Making whoever or whatever was out there think that they were moving around completely unnoticed was about the only thing he could think of that would buy them a little more time.

A little more time to do what, though? his brain asked him. Come up with a plan? There’s only one thing that’s going to happen here. You already know it.

Toby’s hand slid casually to the knife in his belt. His sword was lying beside his bedroll on the ground. His bow and quiver lay next to it. Toby would have preferred to be armed, but retrospect could be a bitch like that.

Toby reached nonchalantly for the small woodpile by the fire. He seized a double handful of kindling and chucked it into the dying embers. For a moment nothing happened. Then, with a soft rush of sound, the dry sticks caught and the fire blazed up. A bubble of orange radiance expanded outward and afforded Toby a view of the surreptitious interlopers.

There were eight men. They had a uniformly grizzled, ragged appearance. Probably what you’d expect eight men living in a far-flung woodland to look like. Their clothes were threadbare. They had supplemented them with animal skins. Their hair was long and lank. Their eyes burned with a feverish intensity. Their drawn blades were edged with white light thanks to the burgeoning fire.

“Ambush!” Toby roared. “Ambush! Get up! Get up, everyone!”

His cry woke the others in a splintered second.

Toby had a feeling that Verity and Anna had already been half-conscious, but being the switched-on females that they were, they had obviously sensed that something was amiss and had not wanted to draw attention to the fact that they were already awake.

Anna rolled from her blankets, snatching up her bow as she did so.

Verity did the same. She arrived at her feet in a fighting crouch. With a soft, lethal sound, the blades that she always wore concealed under the sleeves of her coat extended outward. They sparkled menacingly as she turned to look at the men coming towards them.

“Terrence!” she said, scorn dripping from the word. “I should have known our fire would draw you here like flies to a fresh cow turd. I’ve been looking out for a sign of you and the rest of the boys for a couple of days now. I have to hand it to you, though you look like something that died a few months ago and just got dragged out of a bog, you still have a bit of your old woodcraft  and skill.”

A big brute of a man, the aforementioned Terrence, lumbered forward. He grinned, showing off the kind of teeth that you usually saw in the mouth of a horse. They were the color of old ivory and stuck out at such obscure angles that the man could very well have eaten a cob of corn through a picket fence. Bearded and bald, he looked like he’d been cut out of a block of clay.

And not very well either, Toby thought.

“Well, well, well. If it ain’t Verity none,” the man said in a voice that sounded as if he gargled with gravel in the morning. “How glad I am to finally have you under my knife!” To emphasize his point, he held up a vicious looking blade.

“More of a cleaver than a knife, darling,” Verity said. “And it’s a bit rusty.”

“Blade might be rusty, but the will and skill to use it ain’t,” Terrence replied.

As Verity and Terrence exchanged pleasantries, Toby slowly sidled towards where his weapons lay. As he moved at a glacial speed, he muttered something to Frank out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m going to make a grab for my sword. Materialize next to my bow and bring it to me, will you?”

“Absolutely, mate,” Frank said.

Toby was aware that now that Terrence and his gang had been rumbled in their attempts to sneak up on them, Toby and his small crew had an advantage. Lord Marshal Vani had instilled many things in Toby and Anna’s psyche of late. One of them was that they should always remember that every advantage was only temporary.

“This is the gang of bandits you used to run around with?” Anna asked.

Verity nodded, never taking her sapphire eyes off Terrence for a moment. Seven other men had formed a loose crescent shape behind their leader.

“Wow, you really raised the group aesthetic by at least eight-thousand percent, Verity,” Anna said.

“Thanks, darling.”

Despite the daggers protruding from the sleeves of her coat, Verity looked composed and calm. Her face betrayed not an ounce of trepidation. She and Terrence might have bumped into each other at a tavern for how little it seemed to bother her.

“Yes, that’s right, Anna, darling,” Verity went on, in her usual dulcet tone of voice, “Terrence and I used to run in the same circle. This one, in fact.”

“But… But then you helped us make a score and then stole the loot for yourself!” Terrence sputtered and spat. Toby winced as he saw some spit fleck Verity’s face.

Verity didn’t move. She took a step toward Terrence, but a small playful smile was still on her face. “That’s right, Terrence,” she said. “I planned out the job, orchestrated it, and then played the most dangerous part myself. I left you enough, didn’t I? I left you a portion that befitted your contributions. Is it my fault if you’ve already whored and gambled it away?”

“You owe us,” Terrence snarled. Behind him, his men murmured their agreement.

“I don’t owe you anything, I’m afraid, darling,” Verity said.

“You owe us the rest of that hoard,” Terrence insisted. “And I mean to get it back.”

“And if I don’t want to share the location with you?” Verity asked. “You’ll…?”

“Then I’ll vent my spleen by cutting yours out,” Terrence said.

“That was quite an imaginative retort for you, Terrence,” Verity said. She looked over the big man’s shoulder at the seven cutthroats. “Has he been practicing that one for a while?”

“Actually, he has been—” one of the men started to say.

Terrence turned and shut him up with a glare.

“No, no, that’s probably straight out of the bag,” the man said quickly.

Verity sneered at Terrence. “Sometimes you get, Terrence,” she said, “and sometimes you get got. That’s just the way of things. You don’t need to take it personally, darling.”

“Oh, I’ll remember that. And I want you to as well, when I’m gutting you like a fish,” Terrence said. “By all the bastards and foul bitches that have crossed my path, I wish I’d killed you when I got the chance.”

“Ah, you see, that’s the difference between you and me, darling,” Verity said. “You’re a wisher, and I’m a trier. And a trier will always have the upper hand.”

Verity whirled forward, her blade slashing in the night. Before she could reach Terrence, though, the big man let out a soft whooping sound.

Toby’s arrow, complete with a trailing blue comet’s tail, had gone straight through the big man’s chest. It had punched in the front and out the back as easily as a hot wire through a fresh cheese, then skewered the man behind, catapulting him backward and pinning him to the bole of a tree.

“Crikey, that was good,” Frank said. As sable as midnight as he was, the imp’s voice seemed to come out of the very air.

Another man charged forward with a cry. He swung a rusted blade at Verity. Verity ducked, snatched up the firewood hatchet, spun around, and crunched the weapon side-on through the man’s nose and eyeballs as he turned to face her. His eyes were reduced to pulped ruins. He went down screaming, not dead, but as good as.

“Oh my goodness, that was brilliant!” Frank yelled gleefully.

Toby ignored him. He had already dropped his bow and snatched up his sword.

He jumped over the fire as one of the six remaining men loomed over the still-prostrate form of Luna. Without thinking, Toby activated the new white-hot property of his blade. He drew his sword from the scabbard that Luna had made for him. It seemed to his eyes to steam gently in the brisk night air.

Toby’s sword caught the bandit’s descending axe blade and sheared clean through the haft. The man let out a growl deep in his chest. This turned into a squeal of disbelief as Toby reversed his sword and swept it easily through the man’s chest. Blood sprayed black in the paling night as the man fell.

Another man was making a beeline for Anna. He had an evil hand-and-a-half bastard sword raised over his head. Toby lashed out with his blade and caught the man across the backs of his heels. His sword passed easily through leather and flesh, sending the man crashing face-first into the fire.

Another pair of Verity’s old friends were prodding and poking in her direction with their swords. Verity fended them off with her hidden blades. Toby turned and made sure that Luna was up on her feet.

The nymph was. She was staring around with wide eyes. Clearly, she was no natural when it came to hand-to-hand combat. Toby cursed. He had simply assumed that, being as competent as she was in every other aspect of her life that he had seen, she would have some martial prowess.

This looked to have been an erroneous supposition.

Verity parried a half-hearted thrust by one of her attackers. She stepped forward and ran her retractable blade up the line of her enemy’s sword and took the man’s thumb off at the base. His weapon fell from his useless hand. She struck out again. Her blade carved a line of white from the night as it slashed through her foe’s neck. He fell, scrabbling at his ripped-out throat with his mutilated hand.

Something hissed over Toby’s shoulder as he moved toward Luna to make sure that she was safe. It was an arrow. Toby looked and saw Anna grinning in his direction. He looked over his shoulder and saw one of the remaining bandits toppling over with the shaft protruding from right between his eyes.

One of the final men came charging towards Toby. Behind him, Toby saw Verity duck under a wild swing from the penultimate foe and ram both her blades up under his armpits. The man shrieked and writhed and then slid off the blades in a twitching heap.

Toby parried a heavy sword blow with his own sword. He half expected the man’s blade to be sheared in half by his. When they clanged together, sparks erupting, Toby realized that the spell that imbued his sword with that intense inner heat had apparently faded.

No matter, Toby told himself. No matter. This is why you spend so many hours in the practice yards with Lord Marshal Vani.

With a fighting snarl, Toby cut left and spun away from the block. The man managed to throw up his guard just in time. With a vicious backhand slash, he opened the man’s chest. Flecks of blood shone like quicksilver in the light of the fire as the man let out a roar of pain.

Toby crouched, waiting for the inevitable attack in response. Before the final foe could engage with him, though, Frank popped into existence right in front of his face. The man’s mouth opened wide in surprise. Frank shoved his forked tail into the man’s mouth. A strained expression crossed the imp’s face.

The back of the man’s skull exploded outwards as if Frank had blown it out with a double-barreled shotgun. The man collapsed in a grisly heap.

Toby looked around. There were no bandits left alive.

“Well,” Verity said, kneeling down to wipe her blades off on the tunic of one of the men she had downed, “I guess that answers one question.”

“What’s that?” Frank asked.

“Whether or not that hoard I left out here in the sticks is still here,” Verity said.

Toby blinked. “That’s right,” he said. “If these boys who you stole the hoard with in the first place are still looking for it, surely that means they haven’t found it.”

Verity nodded. “Exactly,” she said. “And myself and them were the only ones cognizant of its existence.”

Toby let out a long breath. As if on cue, some of the birds in the bushes began to tweet and tattle.

“Dawn’s here,” he said.

Verity nodded. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s find this damn hoard and take it home.”

Toby nodded his agreement. He thought of Vexxx and the still faceless Duke Diddle.

“Yeah,” he said. “Come on. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

23

When they came across the strange copse of red-barked trees, the first thing that Toby thought of was blood. The trees were bizarre, disquieting, ominous in the way they seemed to lean over the thin track that Verity had picked up. When Toby reached out to touch one of them, he half expected his hand to come away wet, his fingers tipped with crimson. But the bark felt just as any other tree bark might: rough, dry, pitted with age.

Verity was leading the way once more. Toby strode a few paces behind her. Verity was following the track with her head bowed low, almost reminding Toby of a gun-dog on the trail of an elusive quarry.

“It’s not far, it’s not far,” he could hear her muttering to herself.

“Hey,” Toby said when Verity paused in her tracking and was looking around her with a slight frown on her face.

“Yes?” she said.

“Hey, I was just wondering, are you alright with what happened back there?”

“You mean, am I alright with slaying Terrence and his band of Eclipsia’s greatest thieves and thinkers?” Verity replied in a sardonic tone.

“Yeah,” Toby said.

“I’m fine with it, Toby darling,” Verity assured him. “That confrontation was a long time coming. In all honesty, I thought it was going to be more troublesome. To say that Terrence and the rest of them had it coming would be selling it short. The things that they did before I joined them, that they boasted to one another of doing… Trust me, this world is better off without their ilk.”

“Okay. Good.”

Verity scrutinized Toby with her bright azure eyes. “You know, as I’ve had reason to mention before, you have grown. The same with Anna. You are formidable. More formidable than even you were when we first met, and you’d slain that band of spriggans parked outside the tower.”

“It probably helps that Terrence and his crew looked like they’d been passing the time licking any kind of mushroom or frog they could find, and subsisting off the forest,” Toby said.

Verity shrugged. “What is it you’re always telling me that Lord Marshal Vani tells you? ‘A victory is a victory, and the details can be filled in at the pub later’?”

Toby chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “It’ll make a great epitaph. I just wanted to make sure that it hadn’t affected you in an adverse way.”

“No,” Verity said sternly. “No, Terrence died the way he lived—by the sword, and by his own rules. There’s something in there I can grudgingly respect, even though he did try and take us all with him before he went.”

“Yeah, there is something undeniably romantic about the outlaw way of life,” Toby said. A sudden, vivid flash of memory came back to him as he recalled the way that final bandit’s head had burst apart like an overripe cantaloupe. “At least there was a certain element of romanticism to it, until I saw the repercussions firsthand.”

“I know what you mean,” Anna said, coming to stand beside Toby and Verity. “I always thought of an outlaw as having a certain exciting or glamorous edge to them. You know, like Billy the Kid or Jesse James back home.”

“Well, I’m not sure why this kid Billy was allowed to run around outlawing without his parents’ permission,” Verity said. “And I’ve never allowed myself to trust anyone with an alliterative name, but the realities of outlaws aren’t anything like the ragamuffins and vagabonds told of in the tales. Real outlaws don’t steal from the rich and give to the poor. What a load of bull crap that is.”

“Good bit of public relations material, though,” Frank said.

“True,” Verity admitted. “No, real outlaws steal from the poor, because nine times out of ten the destitute beggars can’t fight back. And then, in turn, the rich usually take from the outlaws, because they have the power to wipe them out in an instant if they so choose.”

“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again,” Anna said. “Being here sure is an education.”

“It sounds like where you’re from, there is much that is different,” Luna said.

“There is,” Toby and Anna said in unison.

“Just out of interest, is there anything specifically that you miss or that strikes you as being fundamentally different?” Luna asked.

Toby and Anna looked at one another.

“There’s something I can think of,” Toby said.

Next to him, Verity was looking around the trees, as if searching for an arrow that only she could see, which would point them in the direction of the hoard she had hidden.

“There is one fundamental, as you call it, almost systemic thing that I think is different to where we come from, especially,” Toby said.

“What’s that?” Anna asked him.

“Just the… freedom of this place,” Toby said.

“What, were you slaves in your old life or something?” Frank asked.

“Of a kind,” Toby said.

“Ah, I see,” Anna said. “You’re meaning that it’s nice living in a place where hardly any emphasis is put on how much money you have in the bank, right?”

“Right,” Toby said.

“It’s a good point,” Anna said. “I don’t miss stressing out about bills and stuff.”

“I would nearly guarantee you that once anyone from our old life smelled this kind of freedom, escaped from the good old rat race, and realized that they didn’t need all the money they had or need all the possessions that they had, and actually, they could live a much simpler, happier life… Well, I don’t think anyone would go back to what they were doing,” Toby said.

Anna nodded. “That reminds me of this thing that really bugs me about what we left behind, Tobes.”

“What’s that?” Luna interjected. Interest was shining all over her face.

“It’s the way that, where we’re from, almost everyone values money so much more than they value time.”

“Yes, the one thing none of us can buy is more time,” the nymph agreed.

“For instance, when I was working in the job I was doing, I might be charging thirty dollars—thirty pieces of silver, I mean—for an hour.”

“Not half bad,” Verity said.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Anna said, “but for all the time I’m at work, I’m away from my family, I’m away from my home comforts, I’m away from the stuff I enjoy—even though I did enjoy doing what I was doing, I guess. Still, I’m trading that for thirty pieces of silver for an hour.”

Luna nodded thoughtfully.

“Or, like, some people might charge fifty pieces of silver for an hour, or even, if you’re like my lawyer, you might charge nearly two-hundred silvers an hour.”

“People can’t charge two-hundred silvers for an hour of anything!” Verity scoffed. “That’d be insane!”

Toby grinned.

“I wish someone had told that bastard Jim Kessler of Kessler and Stevens that,” Anna muttered. “I mean, yeah, it’s great, of course, it’s good money, but imagine if we all had a clock and it was kind of winding down and I could look at the clock and see, I don’t know, my clock might only have two hours left on it. Would I still only charge thirty silvers for those hours?”

Luna’s forehead was furrowed as she considered this. “This is insightful thinking, Anna,” she said. “Philosophical.”

“Or if your clock’s got a year left, how much do you start charging for your time then?” Anna said. She shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, I guess. We haven’t got that clock.”

“So, you think that the people back where you’re from, they need to re-evaluate their lives and think, perhaps, what they can cut out of it possession-wise to replace it with time with the people they love?” Luna asked.

Anna looked at Toby and nodded. “Because that’s surely…  That’s the most important thing in life, isn’t it?”

Toby nodded slowly.

“And none of us know,” Anna said quietly. “None of us have that clock. And I just find it really bizarre, looking back now, just how fiercely we value money over time.”

They all stood and considered those words while Verity continued to hunt around the surrounding trees.

“I like how connected you are to everything here,” Toby suddenly said, as he looked around at the red trees.

“Ah yes, that is undeniably true!” Luna said enthusiastically. “The folk of Eclipsia really are one with the land that is their home.”

Toby saw Frank roll his eyes.

“I’ve got this theory, you know, that it is the water that really connects someone to the land,” Luna said.

“How can water connect you to land?” the imp asked. “The stuff barely sits still.”

“Well, take me for example,” Luna said. “I lived under the mountains where we all met for the first eight years of my life and all I had ever drunk was the spring water from those surrounding hills. Even when I journeyed to Stagbreach I took a supply of my own water from the mountains because it was all I had ever drunk, and most reports of the township were of a place that sounded little better than an open sewer.”

“Those were the days, eh?” Frank said.

“Anyway, I obviously had to drink the town’s well water after my supply ran out,” Luna said. “And, I came to the conclusion that, in mostly drinking the water that came out from under the hills, from heating our subterranean home from firewood taken from the forests that carpeted the slopes, in eating goats and sheep and deer and pheasants that have all fed from the surrounding hills their whole lives…  It is my belief that surely the minuscule building blocks of your body—as old parts of you die and reproduce or what-have-you—are made up of everything that goes into you.”

“Right,” Frank said slowly.

“Well, considering that, surely, on some level, it is not so surprising that I become part of the mountains over time?” Luna said. “Surely, it is not so strange that the people of Eclipsia, living similarly to how the nymphs lived under our mountains, get so closely connected to place that they don’t want to go anywhere else, don’t feel settled anywhere else, and they just kind of become part of their environments?”

“Hmm,” Frank said. “I suppose if that were true then you’d want to be careful not to go stark raving mad. You wouldn’t want to start overthinking all that sort of stuff, would you?”

Luna smiled indulgently and patiently. “I’m picking up on your skepticism, but all I’m saying is that living so close to a place, getting everything out of that place around you, and making sure that you are caring for it carefully and becoming part of it is a process that affects both parties.”

“If we did that back home people might accidentally become pagans again,” Anna quipped.

“I don’t know,” Toby mused. “I think a little of that could do our old home good.”

“You think?” Anna said “You reckon your average New Yorker would go for that?”

“I don’t know if they’d go for it or not,” Toby admitted. “But seeing stuff that normally you wouldn’t see, feeling energies, and all that sort of stuff… I’m sure the intuition you might get as a human living that life isn’t so different to the birds or butterflies that go all the way from one country to another to the same nesting place. They haven’t got a sat-nav or anything like that, but they manage to do it. Thousands of years ago, surely we must have had loads of these different intuitions and this different kind of knowledge bank that we haven’t got today.”

“You think we’ve just forgotten how to live like that?” Anna said.

“And I think,” Toby said carefully, “living a more primitive, earthy kind of lifestyle, drinking your own spring water, eating off the land, and all that sort of stuff would kind of take you back there. I feel like I’ve already formed more of a connection in this place through doing that.”

“And you don’t get that back in the township you hailed from?” Luna asked.

“Not from the Big Apple, no,” Anna said with a laugh.

“Yeah, New York has a lot of good things going for it, but it does lack certain other things that are plentiful here,” Toby said. “Searching for hidden treasure hordes being one of them.”

“Speaking of which,” Verity said, “I’ve managed to get a pretty clear idea of where we are and where we’re heading. Follow me.”

* * *

“We’re here?” Frank asked.

“We’re here,” Verity confirmed.

“Oh, thank all the imps, djinn and demons of the Below-Below,” Frank said, puffing out his cheeks. He collapsed backwards in mid-air, floating almost upside down. “I couldn’t be assed to go another step forward.”

“You haven’t taken a single step anyway,” Anna said. You float along like a helium balloon that won’t stop squeaking. You don’t even use your muscles.”

“Yes, but it’s the mental strain of journeying, isn’t it?” Frank replied.

“Come on, it hasn’t been all bad,” Verity said. “You got to blow up someone’s head.”

“Yeah, true, there is that,” Frank conceded.

“So, we’re here?” Toby prompted Verity.

“We are.”

They were standing in front of two steep rock faces. There was a distinguishable, yet very skinny, gap in between the two faces.

“It’s the hoard through there?” Anna asked.

“There is some treasure through there, yes,” Verity said. “But I only put that there so that should anyone have found it, like Terrence and his big-brained buddies, they’d feel as if they’d gotten something and go away again. The real hoard is down here.”

Verity knelt down. She brushed away an accumulation of leaves. Then she pulled out her knife and dug the blade into the earth. She stabbed it around a few times until, abruptly, Toby heard a dull thunk. Verity looked up, grinning.

“Cunning, huh?” she said.

“As a fox,” Toby agreed.

Verity used her knife to dig away the dirt. Toby helped. After a short amount of time, a hidden hatch was revealed.

“If you could do the gentlemanly thing and perform the heavy labor,” Verity said to Toby.

Toby grasped the rough metal ring. With some effort, he pulled, and the trapdoor came free of the forest floor.

“After you,” Toby said.

“Frank, can I make use of your illumination skills?” Verity said politely.

“Oh, go on then,” Frank said.

Frank and Verity descended into the ground, using Frank’s lit tail as a torch. Toby, Anna, and Luna followed after them. Toby found himself stepping down into a small cave that looked to have been naturally formed by the running of water.

“Well,” Verity said, “here you have it.”

“Our very first treasure hoard,” Anna said.

By the light of the flickering fire at the end of Frank’s tail, Toby could see Anna’s eyes gleaming with interest. It wasn’t, by any means, a vast, Smaug-sized hall of treasure, but it was substantial enough to make Toby suck in a breath. Among the piles of gold coins and sacks of gemstones, Toby saw a few old iron-bound crates and chests. The crates and chests were covered with arcane-looking sigils.

“Is it safe to open these?” Toby asked.

“Yeah, they look like they’re covered in the kind of spiky glyphs that wizards favor,” Frank said, with a touch of distaste in his voice.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Verity said. “I just scrawled a load of mumbo-jumbo on there before I sealed the cave up, just as another anti-stealing precaution. There’s nothing like the threat of being cursed to make a potential sneak-thief reevaluate their life choices.”

Now that his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, Toby began to walk around the small chamber. One chest, in particular, drew his eye. Its wood was darkened with age. Judging by the broken lock, which Verity, or one of her compatriots, must have snapped open when they were initially stealing the treasure, it had been well guarded.

“Ah,” Verity said. “Funny your eyes should linger on that one, Mr. Adams.”

“Why’s that?” Toby asked.

“Because that’s the very box I was going to gift to you,” Verity said.

“It was?”

Verity nodded. “Open it up.”

Toby did so. The lid creaked as he heaved it open.

Inside, he found, neatly folded, a stack of clothing. It looked to be crafted from supple leathers of dark green and gray cloth. It might have been his imagination, or the flickering quality of the light being emitted from Frank’s tail, but it almost seemed to Toby as if, when he first laid his eyes on it, the material shimmered and shone. He blinked, and the effect was gone.

Toby reached out and picked up the coat that lay on top of the pile. The moment he touched it, he felt a surge of strange, unprecedented energy course through his fingers. His palms prickled and tickled.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

“Can I take a look at that?” Luna asked.

Mutely, Toby handed over the leather coat. As he did so, he was sure he could feel subtle armor plates woven into the fabric, but he couldn’t see any sign of metal.

“Hmm,” the nymph said. “This attire feels as if it is impregnated with protective spells.”

“What kind of spells?” Anna asked. “Ones that will turn a blade?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Luna said. “The plates I can feel woven into the fabric will help do that. No, the spells are more likely to aid in deflecting hostile magic.”

“That’s exactly what the cracked old mage who used to roam around with us said,” Verity chipped in. “Before Terrence got sick of the poor old fellow slowing us down and chopped his head off, that is. Additionally, old Kanto thought that that ranger garb would enhance the wearer’s own latent magical abilities. That’s why I thought of you, Toby.”

Toby stared across the small chamber at the blonde. “You thought of me because this gear might provide some stability and help me better control my magic that I’ve been struggling to get a hold of?” he said.

Verity nodded.

Toby grinned. “You’re a hell of a woman, Verity None,” he said.

“Just you keep remembering that, Toby Adams,” Verity replied.

Toby crouched back over the chest. The attire inside included a long hooded cloak that was at once surprisingly light and yet sturdy. There was a well-woven tunic, a pair of bracers engraved with runes the likes of which he had never seen before, and a pair of breeches that felt as if they were made from extremely durable canvas.

The first thought that floated into his mind was the hope that, when he donned all the stuff when he got home, he would look like Aragorn’s from the Lord of the Rings, twin brother. The second, probably more pertinent, thought was that if those threads were going to enable him to get more of a hold on his magic, as well as protect him from hostile spells, then they would be invaluable in the fight against Vexxx and Duke Diddle.

Why wait until you get home? he thought to himself. It’s not like you’ve had any qualms about stripping off in front of these three before.

That was true enough. Toby began to undress.

“You’re getting changed now?” Anna said with a hint of a smile on her face.

“No time like the present,” Toby said. “Besides, what kind of adventurer would I be if I decided to save putting on this fancy new gear for later?”

“It would be pretty embarrassing if we got waylaid again on the way home and it turned out that there was no later, or that there would have been a later for you if you’d only got changed here and now,” Verity said.

“Exactly,” Toby agreed.

“Yes, it’s good to be prepared,” Luna said. “A very commendable outlook.” She watched as Toby took off his old breeches and pulled on his new ones. “They fit like a glove.”

That was either very fortuitous, Toby thought, or there’s something else at play there.

“You have a good view on life, Toby,” Verity said. “It’s something that a lot of people in Eclipsia could learn from. You go through life with eyes wide open like an adventurer constantly seeking a treasure that he is unsure of the identity of.”

“Better to be like that,” Toby said, “than act like some victim that the world owes.”

“Precisely,” Verity said. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

Once Toby was dressed in his new Ranger-esque garb, he did a slow turn for his three female companions. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“Your ass looks a bit big in it,” Frank said.

The three women laughed.

“I think it suits you,” Anna said.

“I was a real fan of the tweed morning coat, I have to admit,” Toby said.

“You can keep it. Just chuck it in that magical wardrobe we have at home and bust it out when you’re not busy trying to save the world,” Anna said.

“Good advice,” Toby agreed with a grin. “Tweed’s all good for social occasions, but not so much when you’re on the cusp of being thrown into a battle for a world.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Anna said.

They exited the hoard cavern after that. First, though, they gathered as much of the gold and jewels as they could fit into their backpacks.

“Take the gemstones over the gold,” Verity said. “It fetches more, and they’re not as heavy to carry.”

“Who says a criminal mind can’t be a good thing,” Anna said. “The last thing you want when transporting a large quantity of questionably attained gold and gemstones is a slipped disc.”

“Yeah,” Toby quipped. “I’m not sure if insurance policies cover that as standard.”

“What’s insurance?” Luna asked, interestedly.

“Insurance is basically a branch of business that sells fear,” Toby said after a moment’s thought.

“Is that so?” Luna said. “That sounds like just the kind of business that Duke Diddle would like to get into.”

“Shit, it sounds like something my overseers in the Beyond-Beyond would be interested in getting into,” Frank said. “That might just very well secure me my next promotion. Can you tell me a little more about it?”

“Sure, Frank,” Toby said, hefting his now much heavier backpack over his shoulder. “Let’s just wait until tonight. That way, the others can use it as a lullaby to lull them to sleep within five minutes.”

“Shit yes, insurance information is so dull,” Anna said.

“Hey,” Toby said. “I meant to ask, but did any of you other guys find anything cool in the hoard? I feel bad taking the only enchanted item if it turns out to be enchanted.” He plucked at his new coat.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Verity said. “I was going to wait until we made camp tonight, but I may as well show you now.” She dipped into the pocket of her own coat. She pulled out five golden chains. At the end of each of these chains, there was a pendant. Toby took one that Verity proffered to him. He saw that the pendant was a simple gold medallion made out as a—

“It’s a crow,” Verity explained.

“Well, it’s very nice,” Anna replied politely. “But what does it do?”

“It will enable all of us to communicate with one another, even if we aren’t able to see or hear one another,” Verity explained. “Once you put it around your neck, you’re able to talk into the crow, and anyone else wearing any one of the other crow necklaces will be able to hear your spoken message as if you’re speaking it directly into their ear.”

Like a walkie-talkie, Toby thought to himself.

“Shit, this could be extremely handy, Verity,” Toby said.

“Yes,” Verity said. “I was thinking that if we were on a battlefield and we got divided or were obliged to split up for some reason…”

Toby nodded. “This is great,” he said. “This is just the sort of thing that I was hoping we’d find when we set out.” He looked around at his companions. “I’m almost looking forward to meeting Vexxx again, not to mention making an acquaintance that’s long been coming with that son-of-a-bitch Duke Diddle.”

“Yeah, well,” Anna said, “I have a feeling that that’s a wish that’s likely to be granted soon enough.”

Luna nodded. “As to why,” she said. “Before we left, walking through Stagbreach, I couldn’t help but become aware that those feelings of unrest and instability are growing.”

Toby nodded. “Then I think it’s about time we got back,” he said grimly, “and took the fight to the duke.”

24

“Oh boy, oh boy,” Frank said, rubbing his little hands together so that his talons made a faint squeaking sound, “I can almost taste Dishy’s slug surprise stew.”

Toby turned to look at the floating imp. Frank was massaging his stomach now with almost indecent anticipation. He had materialized a small deckchair from somewhere and was kicking back in it and enjoying one of his foul-smelling miniature cigars.

“What the fuck is slug surprise stew?” he asked. “Is that some kind of slang term that I’m unfamiliar with for one of Dishy’s usual dishes?”

“Nah,” Frank said, “it’s just a stew with slugs in. What do you think we were doing with all the slimy little buggers that those anti-slug mines—that the gnomes put down when they were doing the landscaping—blew up in the stalky eyes of?”

“I thought those anti-slug mines were meant to be humane,” Toby said. “Isn’t that why Anna chose them?”

“Personally, I think she elected for that more ‘humane’ option,” Frank said, dropping quotes around humane, as if he didn’t believe there was such a thing, “because she was chronically hungover.”

“Well, that might have been true enough,” Toby admitted, “but I still failed to see why those anti-slug mines didn’t work. They were meant to befuddle the slugs and send them off somewhere else.”

“Oh, they sent them off somewhere else right enough,” Frank said, cracking a wide, sharp-toothed grin. “I worked with a little bit of magic in a mean way, as you might say, and they all ended up wandering into dishes and stew pots.”

“You’ve got issues, Frank,” Toby said mildly.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” Frank said. “I’ve been honing them for millennia.”

“What’s the surprise, then?” Toby asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, slug stew surprise. Where does the ‘surprise’ enter into it?”

“Well,” Frank said, “the slugs were pretty fucking surprised. I’ll tell you that much. I re-rigged those mines up good. Poor little sods thought they were sliming their way into a patch of snigger spinach, only it turned out to be Dishy’s stew pot.”

Toby snorted and gazed ahead. He was fairly sure he could see the soots and smokes of Stagbreach in the distance.

“I’m not sure about the whole slugs stew business,” he said, gazing out at the distant township. “But I don’t mind admitting that I am looking forward to some of Dishy’s home-cooked meals.”

“I second that,” Luna said enthusiastically from where she was walking behind Toby. “That domestic imp is what I would refer to as a gourmand.”

“Is that the same as a moron?” Frank asked.

Before Luna could explain what a gourmand was, Toby thrust out an arm. The rest of his small company came to a halt behind it.

“What is it?” Anna asked.

“Up ahead,” Verity said, speaking the words that were going to be next to Toby’s own tongue.

Instead, Toby said one succinct word, “Weapons.”

Anna’s bow and arrow were in her hands faster than Toby would have believed possible. With soft, silky shing sounds, Verity slipped out matching sleeve knives. As for Luna, she took a stance between Verity and Anna. She looked as uncomfortable as she had done facing violence when they had been attacked by the bandits—but steadfast.

Toby drew his sword.

“Don’t look at me,” Frank said, gazing around at the humans and the nymph. “I’d like to throw a fireball for you, if you’re lucky, but let’s just wait and see, huh?”

“That’s not like you,” Toby said, talking out the side of his mouth, “counseling prudence.”

“Oh, you know me,” Frank said. “Variety’s the spice of life, mate.”

“I thought you said turmeric was the spice of life.”

“Turmeric’s all very well and good and helps fight inflammation,” Frank said, “but you can’t beat variety.”

Toby raised his sword a fraction more as some bushes in front of him swayed this way and that. “Whoever you are, whatever you are,” Toby called, “come on out.”

The bushes swayed this way and that, and then a small blond-haired figure emerged. Actually, Toby corrected inside his own head, ‘small’ wasn’t quite the correct word. Diminutive would have been closer to the mark. The person was almost, but not quite, of dwarvish stature.

“Well, look who it is,” Anna said to Toby. There was a subtle creak as she released a little of the tension on her bowstring. The tip of her arrow drooped slightly. “It’s that faun.”

“Yes, it is,” Toby said.

“I do have a name, you know,” the faun said, trotting over on her little goat-like legs.

“I don’t doubt it,” Toby said pleasantly. “And it’s about high time that we should learn it. My name’s Toby. This is Anna. This is Verity. And the last member of our company is Luna.”

“My name’s Val,” Val said.

“A pleasure to meet you and finally make your proper acquaintance, Val,” Toby said.

Val didn’t look like she was listening. “Holy ham hocks!” she said. “Is that a nymph with you?”

“I am, as you say, a nymph,” Luna replied politely, bowing her head.

“I… Wow! I mean, I’m sorry if that came across as rude,” Val said.

“I took it as enthusiasm,” Luna replied.

“Jeez, it’s just that I’ve been a lover of the old tales my whole life,” Val gushed. “My great-granddaddy used to regale me with all sorts of stories about the nymphs. He used to be fascinated by the machines that were said to be designed and built by your people.”

“I’m glad to hear that the old tales are still alive and doing the rounds,” Luna replied.

“What’s going on with you, Val?” Toby asked.

“Firstly, can I just say how glad I am that I no longer have to refer to you as the faun I offended by calling a dwarf and then mentioning that she had goat legs?” Anna said hurriedly. “I really am sorry about that. I felt like such an a-hole.”

“What’s an a-hole?” the faun asked.

“You know, a jerk, a dick, a…”

“Oh, I get you,” Val said. She laughed; a trilling sound almost like a bird call. “That’s okay. All water under the bridge.” She turned back to Toby. “I’ve actually been walking up and down the road north of Stagbreach for a couple of days,” she said, “looking for you.”

“Looking for me?” Toby asked. “Why?”

“You’re wanted by King Balourd and Queen Lascivo,” the faun said.

“Wanted for what?” Verity asked sharply. “You don’t mean wanted as in wanted dead or alive?”

“What? No,” Val said. “No. You’re wanted urgently. There have been some developments. Some of Duke Diddle’s ‘happy little accidents,’ as he calls them, have actually been seen encroaching on Stagbreach.”

“They’ve made a foray into the town?” Toby asked, shocked.

“Not quite,” Val said, her face a picture of concern. “Not yet. But if you believe all the talk in the taverns, then it’s not going to be long.”

“Shit,” Toby said. “I think you’ve got to be careful basing too much of your information on the chat around some of the taverns in town.”

“Normally, I’d heartily agree with you,” Val said. “But I’m one of the folk who saw the ‘happy little accidents’ in person. That’s why I was sent out.”

“You saw some of them?” Toby asked.

Val nodded vigorously. “I was out foraging. It’s been fine, dry weather after the rain and the toadstools have been coming up something wonderful. Anyway, I was foraging, and I heard this great commotion not far away from where we presently stand.”

“In the woods?” Verity asked.

Val nodded once more. “In the woods,” she agreed. “I followed the noise, not knowing what it was and knowing that Duke Diddle and that weird right-hand man of his might well be planning an incursion or something.”

“An incursion, you say,” Toby said. “You sound pretty well-versed in military parlance.”

“My grandfather and my father were both part of the household guard of Eclipsia Castle,” Val said, waving a hand. “Both now retired, of course, but I guess their speech rubbed off on me.”

“Anyway, you went to investigate…” Anna said.

“That’s right, I went to investigate,” Val agreed. “I walked through the woods, soon found a trail. It would have been harder to miss it, to be honest. All the vegetation was smashed and crushed like a fairly decent host had passed through.”

“And you followed this trail?” Toby said.

“I did,” Val said.

“Ballsy,” Toby said.

“And what did you find at the end of it?” Verity prompted.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Toby asked.

“Well, not nothing. I saw a few creatures, the likes of which I had never seen before,” Val said. “They were almost like great muscular men, only with a bovine cast to them. They had these sweeping horns coming out of their heads. Instead of feet, they had giant hooves. They were all fairly large, and I’m not just saying that as one that’s relatively small.”

“Of course,” Toby said.

“Not that horns are small, mind,” Val added hurriedly. “We’re normal size. It’s just that most other folk are freakishly big.”

“Right,” Toby said diplomatically. “Of course. And what were these big bull-men doing?”

“Nothing much. I hid in a bush and watched them for a while before they moved down the site. Looked to me like they were scouting.”

“And yet you don’t think the ones you saw made the trail that you followed?” Luna asked. “That is curious.”

“‘Curious’ is one word for it,” Val agreed. “Fucking bizarre and nonsensical is how I thought of it. Running around with this lack of bushcraft if you’re a scout is either intentional or a sign of a bunch of newbie scouts with massive egos and small amounts of commonsense. The kinds of bastards that are so far behind that they actually think they’re coming first in the great brain race.”

“And so you went back to Stagbreach and reported this to the King and Queen?” Toby said.

Val nodded. “I did.”

“And then they sent you out to look for Toby?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Val said, turning her attention to Anna, who had asked the question. “And also to look for you, if you are Miss Coombes.”

“I am,” Anna said, “but call me Anna for goodness’ sake.”

“If this trail is not far from here,” Toby said, “would you mind leading us to it?”

“That’s why I’ve been tasked with traipsing up and down this damn road for the past couple of days,” Val said. “The King and Queen knew where you’d gone, and they hoped that as the one to spot the big bull-men out here, I might come across you on your way back from wherever you’ve been.”

“Okay,” Toby said. “In that case, lead on.”

The faun traveled down the road, leading the small company. They walked for maybe another couple of hours, heading in the general direction of Stagbreach. Soon, though, the faun turned off the main northern road and headed down a leafy lane. They didn’t stay on that lane long.

“This way,” Val said, and she slipped away into the brush.

Toby followed. He pulled out his sword as they went. The way was tight, and he summoned forth the curious magical heat within the blade. Using his now-upgraded sword, almost like a lightsaber, he easily cut a wider passage through the bush so that his friends could follow without making so much noise. Before long, he could sheath his sword. The way opened out and emerged onto a far larger trail.

“This is it. These are the tracks,” Val said.

Toby looked around. “I can see what you mean,” he said. “A blind man could follow this trail. I don’t have exactly what you’d call a lot of woodcraft, but look at the mess they’ve made coming through here.” He looked at the snapped branches and uprooted saplings.

“Yes,” Val agreed. “They weren’t careful in disguising their passing.”

“Almost sounds as if they wanted to be found,” Verity commented.

“Yes, yes it does,” Toby said, slightly uneasily.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. But why would they want to be found out if they were scouting?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know,” Toby said, “but one reason I can think of is because they wanted to lay a trap.”

Anna nodded slowly. “Shit,” she said. “So we’re either dealing with really clumsy and inept scouts or we’ve stumbled across a plan of Duke Diddle’s to lay some kind of ambush.”

Toby nodded. “That would be my guess,” he said.

They followed the crushed and trampled vegetation through the woods. Every now and again a trail would emerge out into some glade. It never stayed there, though. It pressed on.

“It’s almost as if they were looking for something,” Verity said.

“Yes,” Luna agreed. “But what?”

“Have you been to the end of this trail, Val?” the nymph asked.

The faun shook her head. “No,” she said, toying with the long blonde braid that her hair was pragmatically tied into. “No, I admit I didn’t dare risk going to the end. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d accidentally stumbled across them. They were very big brutes, savage-looking, you know, with gleaming red eyes.”

Toby looked at Anna. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.

“They sound a lot like that monster that helped bust Vexxx out from the King and Queen’s custody?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Toby said.

Anna puffed out her cheeks. “That fucker was strong.”

“All right, Val,” Toby said, turning back to the blonde braid. “You’ve done a hell of a job here. I need you to do me a favor.”

“And what favor is that?” the faun asked.

“I need you to head back to Stagbreach and tell the King and Queen that you made contact with us,” Toby said. “I want you to tell them that we’re investigating the trail and we’re going to follow it to the end. If we don’t come to report by tomorrow morning at the latest, tell them to send out a company of horsemen if they have one to spare.”

Val bowed her head. She didn’t ask any questions. She didn’t put up a fight at being told to go back to Stagbreach.

That’s probably a sign of wisdom on her part, Toby thought, smiling.

“Okay, I’ll do as you ask, Toby,” Val said. “Hopefully I’ll see you all soon. I remind you again that they were big brutes, even compared to you humans and nymphs. They would be another shoulder and head above you and maybe half as broad as you are, Toby.”

Toby nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “It’s not all about size and height.”

“Helps, though, doesn’t it?” Frank interjected.

“Shut up, Frank,” Toby said.

“Shutting up, sir,” Frank said.

The faun spared a look at Frank, who had, at her approach, transformed into one of his preferred shapes—a raven.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. Good luck.”

After that, Val hurried off back down the lane. Toby and the others went on. They followed the trail. They moved cautiously, pausing every now and again to listen. They heard no sounds of crashing and smashing ahead of them. The forest all around was almost suspiciously quiet, or at least as quiet as wild woodland ever got.

Soon they came to a wide open glade. It was far larger than any opening they had come to previously. They searched around the trampled grass up to the edges of the trees on all sides.

“That’s weird,” Toby said. “Did anyone find the track out?”

“No,” Luna said.

“Me neither,” Anna called.

“Neither did I,” Verity told him.

Toby frowned. “Then where the hell did those bull-men go?” he asked.

“You know how Duke Diddle draws his happy little monsters out of the ether?” Anna said.

“Yes,” Toby said.

“Well, does that mean he can erase them? Can he draw them back in when he’s finished using them?”

Toby shrugged. “I haven’t got a clue,” he said.

“No,” Luna said matter-of-factly. “No, he can’t do that. The wand does not have the power to erase. It can only create. It’s why the wand is such a powerful tool. It requires sufficient forethought to understand, to know, that whatever you’re pulling out of the ether might very well stay in Eclipsia forever. That carries a lot of responsibility with it, that kind of power.”

Toby stood with his head bowed for a few moments and his hands thrust into the pocket of his newly acquired ranger-style coat. “Something about this doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Something about this is portentous. It feels, in the words of perhaps the greatest wizard ever to walk the Earth, like the deep breath before the plunge.”

“That was a goddamn Wheel of Time reference, wasn’t it?” Anna said.

Toby winced. “That was pretty close for you,” he said.

Toby cast around. “I wonder…” he said after a moment.

“You wonder what?” Anna asked.

Toby looked about once more, then he hurried over to a tree and began to climb.

“Toby, what are you doing?” Anna asked.

“Getting a better vantage point,” Toby said.

Within a matter of moments, he had scaled the tree and was peering out over the top of the canopy.

“Oh shit,” he called down. “It’s just like I thought.”

“Why?” Verity asked.

“We’re little more than a stone’s throw from the edge of Stagbreach here,” Toby said. “I can see the castle. I can practically see our house.”

“So?” Verity asked. “What’s the matter with—?”

“I reckon those bull-men were scouts like Val guessed,” Toby said. “I reckon they were scoping out a staging point.”

“A staging point for what?” Luna asked.

“For an attack,” Toby said slowly. “An attack on Stagbreach.”

25

It was good and late by the time they walked through the always-open main gates of the sprawling, meandering outer wall that surrounded the ever-expanding township of Stagbreach.

The gates, as they always were, and as they always had been since Toby had called Stagbreach home, were wide open and inviting. However, Toby and his friends saw at once that they were being guarded by a group of four men armed with large kite shields and halberds.

That was not customary.

“Hello, hello, hello,” Frank said. “What do we have here? These boys all have the slightly stiff and puckered look of a bunch of humans with rods up their asses. In my experience, that means that they’re scared of something and trying to put a brave face on.”

For once, and against his better judgment, Toby found himself agreeing with the little floating imp. The guards did look nervous, twitchy, ill at ease.

“Everything all right, fellas?” Toby asked as they approached.

Thankfully, word of Toby and Anna, not to mention the beautiful, enigmatic, and deadly-skilled Verity None, had gotten around the rest of Eclipsia’s armed forces. Whether it was those who were trained and who were in training, they knew who the trio were.

As for Luna, I’m sure word is going to get around ASAP, Toby thought.

“Mr. Adams,” one of the guards said respectfully, stepping forward. He was a grizzled old man with a missing ear and only half a nose. Toby wondered how he had come to collect such injuries. In most armed forces, the money would have been that he’d received his wounds in the line of duty. In Eclipsia, however, it was just as viable an option that he’d acquired the impressive scars during some particularly exciting and enthusiastic pub brawl.

“Why the grim faces?” Toby asked.

“Yeah,” Anna said, stepping forward to Toby’s side. “In fact, why are there any guards on the gates at all? That’s not usual, is it?”

The man shook his head. “No, it ain’t, ma’am,” he said, “but it’s the King’s orders.”

“Would that be the King’s orders that have come from the Queen?” Toby asked.

The old man grinned, but there was no humor in it. “Aye, they’d be them orders, sir, certainly.”

“And why has she given you these orders?” Verity asked.

The old soldier’s shrewd eyes flicked over to the blonde woman. “There’s trouble a-brewin’, miss,” he said.

“Ah,” Toby said. “That old chestnut, is it? Any specific trouble a-brewin’?”

“Just trouble, sir,” the gate guard said. The three men behind him shifted nervously, their armor clinking. “You’ll see for yourself what that means, sir. When you walk through town, you’ll notice the disquiet, if you follow me.”

Toby nodded.

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir,” the guard said, “what is it that keeps you abroad so late?”

“It’s probably the same shit that’s keeping you out of bed, too,” Toby said. He nodded to the guards and walked through the gate, clapping the older man on the shoulder as he went. “We’ve just come from the forest,” he said, low and quiet in the man’s ear. “If you think the streets are running with disquiet, then you should see what it’s like out in the wild places. Keep your eyes peeled. Don’t go nodding off with your eyes open. I know what you sentries can be like.” He clapped the man on the shoulder again and gave him a knowing smile.

“I will stay alert, sir, don’t you worry,” the old guard said.

The streets of Stagbreach were empty and quiet in a way that Toby was unaccustomed to seeing. The lanterns that bordered the main cobbled thoroughfares were lit by the fairy lights. The lights were dim—the fairies were intelligent creatures, and their wages were evidence enough of that. It was their custom to bank their energy when they weren’t needed so much. As Toby and his friends passed under them, they glowed briefly brighter before reducing their luminance down once the company had passed them by.

“Where the hell is everyone?” Anna wondered aloud.

“Trouble is like rain,” Luna said. “People can smell it coming. And like rain, like the coming of a storm, they’re probably all inside hoping to wait it out and emerge when the sun shines.”

It only took a couple of minutes of walking through the quiet streets and witnessing the furtive, worried way that the few people abroad at that late hour were moving for Toby to make a decision.

“We’re not going home,” he announced.

“No?” Anna said.

“No,” Verity echoed.

“Ah, man,” Frank said. “I was really looking forward to—”

“Well, you can go on looking forward to that fucking slug surprise,” Toby said sharply.

“Where are we going to go?” Verity asked.

“The Toby Jug,” Toby told his friends.

Curtains twitched, and shadows moved behind the shutters of many of the houses that Toby and his company passed by. The absent sounds of late-night revelers heading home or to the next inn made the streets of Eclipsia’s capital all the more ominous.

The company of five hurried across the square. Toby barely glanced at the statue of his younger self that stood in the center of the square. He recalled dimly how nuts that statue had appeared when he and Anna had first entered Stagbreach. It wasn’t any less crazy now, of course, but like many things in life, Toby had learned to get used to it.

He tapped out a slightly nervous rhythm on the pommel of his sword with his fingers as he strode purposely towards the Toby Jug. Under his fingertips, which were calloused with hours and hours of sword practice, the ruby set into the pommel of his enchanted sword glowed with that comforting inner warmth.

Toby nodded to a couple of women with their hoods up who looked to be hurrying home. They didn’t return the gesture. Frowning, Toby opened the door of the Jug. The familiar hubbub of murmured voices flowed out like treacle to meet him. Gratefully, Toby led the way into the warmth. Luna, with her hood pulled up over her distinguishable blue countenance, closed the door behind them.

The Jug was one of those pubs that never seemed to close and never seemed to empty out entirely. It was, as Toby had had cause to make a mention of before, the very epitome of the word ‘public house’. It was, he knew, the home away from home of many, many people, not only in the surrounding neighborhoods, but in Stagbreach in general. As it was, there was always someone manning the bar.

The hushed, murmuring voices paused as the door opened and closed. When they saw who it was, a few of the owners of the voices nodded their greetings to Toby and Anna. More than a few pairs of eyes lingered on the wonderful form of Verity None. Verity smiled blandly around, as if she were the guest of honor at some high society party.

“Hello boys and girls,” she said brightly. “I know it’s a bit late, but is there any chance for a drink?”

There was a sound of a door opening and closing, and Oswald Parson came stumping out from a back room and into the tap room.

“Toby! Anna!” he said, his bushy white eyebrows going up in surprise. “Well, I didn’t expect to see you here so late. That’s not usually your habit. You’re either in here early and leave late, or—”

“It’s good to see you, Oswald,” Toby said. He walked over to the bar and lowered his heavy, treasure-filled pack carefully to the ground. He made sure not to let the metal and precious stones inside make any noise. There were men and women of a less-than-savory type who could hear the chink of a coin a mile off in that part of town.

“Likewise,” the landlord replied.

“We thought we’d drop in. We just got back into town and found ourselves in need of a little pick-me-up.”

“Is that right?” the publican said.

Toby nodded. “And I was hoping you might be able to tell us why there’s a quartet of nervous-looking watchmen on the gate, and why the streets are so bare.”

The landlord began busying himself with barrels and tankards and the other accessories of his craft. “I’ll just cut to the chase and tell you that the King and Queen have had scouts out looking for…”

“What?” Toby asked.

“For enemies, of course,” Oswald Parson said.

“You mean Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents?” Anna said.

Parson nodded. “That’s right, Anna,” he said. “That’s right.”

“And?” Verity pressed. “Did these scouts learn anything? Did they see anything?”

Oswald spread his hands. “I ain’t sure on that score,” he said. “I’ve heard whispers and rumors, but I’ve been a pub owner long enough to know that it’s a risky business placing all your eggs in baskets woven from gossip and rumor.”

Toby slipped some coins across the bar to pay for the drinks that Oswald had finished making for them. He took a long, gratifying gulp of the strong, dark beer, which Oswald knew was his favorite. He let out a contented sigh.

“Man, I didn’t realize how much I needed that until it touched my lips,” he said.

“Aye,” the heavy-set landlord said in an understanding voice. “Aye, it’s amazing what a comfort a good drop of beer can be. Many say it’s the cause and solution of most of life’s problems, and I’m inclined to agree.”

Anna, who was leaning casually on the bar and sipping from her own goblet, suddenly stood up a little bit straighter. She waved across the room.

“Is that Bellingham I spy over there?” she said.

“Aye, that it is,” Oswald Parson said. “In fact, if news was what you were after, you could do worse than going to plonk yourself on the bench next to him. How about you head over there for a chin-wag, and I’ll try and rustle you up a bit of supper? There’s not going to be much rustic fare, but it’ll fill your bellies.”

Toby produced another couple of coins and slid them over to the barman. “Oswald, you’re a gentleman and a scholar,” he said gratefully.

The pub owner snorted. His hand moved. The coins disappeared.

Toby, Verity, and Luna followed Anna over to where Bellingham was sitting in a shadowy corner. At that time of night, the Jug, with its lanterns turned down low and its usually roaring fireplaces only just banked and ticking along, was more or less made up of shadowy corners.

“Mr. Adams,” Bellingham said. “Miss Coombes. And Miss None, is it, I believe?”

“It is,” Verity said. “And you must be Bellingham.”

“Someone’s got to be,” Bellingham said with a small smile. He pushed back the hood that he habitually wore over his long brown hair, whether he was inside or out. He looked at the hooded figure of Luna.

“I don’t think I know your name, miss. I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.”

Luna, after a glance in Toby’s direction, pushed back her hood. Toby watched Bellingham’s face. The only sign of surprise that the hunter showed was a slight quirking up of his right eyebrow as his eyes alighted on the blue-skinned beauty.

“Well met indeed, miss,” the hunter said. “How do you do? My name is Bellingham.”

“My name is Lunaria,” the nymph replied. “But you may call me Luna.”

“Then Luna I shall call you. Much obliged,” Bellingham said politely. He smiled at the nymph and then turned back to Toby.

“I was aware that you had headed out of town for a few days,” he said in his usual sanguine voice. “But I didn’t realize that you’d gone hunting for the mythical nymph folk of the mountains.”

“Oh, you know how we like to keep people guessing, Bellingham,” Anna said brightly.

“It wasn’t quite like that,” Toby said.

“No?” Bellingham said. “And what was it like?”

Toby waved a hand to curtail any story that Anna might be about to come up with. “We were looking for something,” he said.

“Ah,” Bellingham replied. “And did you find it?”

“Yes,” Toby said.

“Well, that’s gratifying,” the hunter said, taking a sip from his pewter tankard. “Always good to find something when you go looking for it.”

“We ran into Val, the faun. Do you know her?” Toby said, cutting to the chase.

“I know her,” Bellingham said.

“Through her, we were put on the tracks of a group of unknown creatures,” Toby said.

“Is that right?” Bellingham replied, still giving no sign as to what was passing in his head.

“We followed those tracks until we came eventually to a glade,” Toby said.

“And there those tracks disappeared,” Bellingham finished.

Toby narrowed his eyes. “How did you know that?” Verity asked.

“Because I, like Val, was tasked with tracking unknown potential assailants into the wooded country that surrounds Stagbreach,” Bellingham said. “Val was sent north while I was sent to the west. I happened to come across Val not long before I headed in here for a drop of the good stuff.”

“You saw Val?” Toby said. “Was she heading for the castle?”

“That she was,” Bellingham said.

Toby let out a short sigh of relief. “Good,” he said. “So the King and Queen would have been warned.”

“They’d be doubly warned if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about,” Bellingham said. “I too saw what she saw. Like her, like all of you, it made me uneasy.”

“Right?” Anna said. “It was like whatever we were following wasn’t even trying to disguise its tracks.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” Bellingham said. “I mean, I would have been worried enough to track something to a clearing and then have it essentially disappear. But for that thing to make no effort in hiding itself, yes, there’s something of a red herring about it, if you ask me.”

“I agree,” Toby said. “There’s a stink of fish all around this. Luna here believes that if these creatures were some of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents, then he shouldn’t be able to just magic them away.”

“Which begs the question,” Luna said, “how, once they got to where they were going, did they all basically up and disappear?”

“Yeah, it’s a head scratcher,” Toby said.

“And a head scratcher is the last thing you want when you’re dealing with someone like Duke Diddle,” Bellingham said gravely.

They sat around and drank their drinks in a thoughtful silence. Frank whistled a few bars of something that sounded uncannily like a famous eighties rock ballad between his fangs before Anna shushed him.

The silence was interrupted a few moments later by the blaring shriek of brazen trumpets. It was a fanfare the likes of which Toby had never heard during his time in Eclipsia.

“What the hell is that racket?” Anna asked. “I’d say it was worse than the recorder fanfare, but that would be a bit OTT.”

“Nothing’s worse than that,” Toby agreed.

Oswald Parson had hurried over, wiping his hands on a rag. “Everyone out,” he said briskly.

“Why, what’s the matter?” Toby asked. “What was that noise?”

“That, Mr Adams, was the Eclipsian call to arms,” the landlord said. “A sound I ain’t ever heard for the past twenty years.”

“But what does it mean?” Toby asked, grabbing the obviously shaken landlord’s shoulder and turning him so that they faced one another.

There was perspiration bedewing the great pink cliff of Oswald Parson’ face. He was clutching the parcel of food that he had obviously prepared for Toby and the others as if it was a lifeline.

“It means,” he said slowly, after gulping a couple of times, “that there’s a direct attack taking place on Stagbreach.”

26

An attack.

An incursion.

An attack on Stagbreach.

It was an unbelievable declaration. It was an unbelievable thought.

The town was everything that Toby had ever believed a fantastical town should look like. The notion that someone would be so callous and uncaring as to bring war into such a town and risk fucking it up or destroying it in anyway was crazy to him.

Toby, along with his friends and Oswald Parson, rushed outside. Bellingham brought up the rear. Oswald might have dropped the packet of vittles that he had prepared for a late-night supper, but Frank was there to swoop down and grab the cloth bundle before it hit the ground.

“What?” he said when he saw Toby looking at him. “I’ve gotten into the habit of eating, all right? I can see why so many of you aren’t going for it in such a big way. Honestly, I’m convinced that I could wreak some real havoc through food if only I could figure out the means to do it.”

Toby thought about how creative people back on Earth had gotten with putting sugar into everything.

“I’m sure I’ll be able to help you with that,” he said. “If you’d just shut up and get your ass outside, I want to see what’s going on.”

They found at once that the street was transforming before their eyes. It was like boiling water had been tipped into a slumbering, dormant ant nest. And the ants were now pouring forth.

And these particular ants, Toby thought, are half asleep, scared shitless, and confused as to what’s going on.

Yes, they were scared, alright. In the same way that dust hung perpetually, but mostly invisible in the air and was only able to be seen when it passed through a beam of sunlight, so too was the fear evident that permeated the streets. It was there, it was always there, as the trumpet blared, but it only made itself manifest when groups of people came together.

Toby looked around. There was a lot of action but not a lot of direction.

“Ain’t no proclaimer that I can see. Ain’t no spokesman,” Oswald Parson said. He was a heavily built man, but he was tall with it. He could see over the heads of the crowds, which were growing thicker by the moment as more people came out from their homes and the storefronts over which they lived to see what the bloody hell was going on.

“No one?” Anna asked.

“There ain’t no one telling anyone else what’s going on,” Oswald Parson continued to gripe, shaking his head.

“Does that just mean it’s a general alarm then?” Toby asked.

Oswald shot him a look from his pale blue eyes. “I think you could be right on that score, Mr. Adams.”

“That’s the problem with general alarms, isn’t it?” Toby said. “They’re pretty goddamn general. An alarm isn’t much good if you don’t know what it’s alarming you about or what direction it is trying to point you in or away from.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Anna said. She was grinning, but it was more of a grimace than a smile. “Yeah, you’re being warned, you’re being alarmed, but it’s not much good if you end up running into the thing that they’re trying to alarm you about rather than running away from it.”

“Maybe we should head to—” Toby started to say.

“Look over there,” Luna said, grabbing Toby by the sleeve.

Toby looked where the nymph was pointing. His eyes came to rest on the unmistakable and somehow comforting bulk of Lord Marshal Vani at the same time as his ears picked up the rhythmic, metallic stomping sound of many men walking in unison—many armed men walking somewhere with a single purpose in mind.

The ogre led the way. Of all the things that Toby liked about the Lord Marshal, the fact that the ogre was one of those people who, despite his elevated station, led from the front was probably the thing he respected most.

Lord Marshal Vani’s expression was set into a sterner face than Toby had ever seen before. The ogre’s countenance looked about as imposing, merciless, and easy to bargain with as your average cliff. His mouth was a straight, stern line that looked more like a wound delivered by a spade to a boulder than anything else. His small eyes gleamed with menace. Toby picked up on the excited, resolute set of his shoulders, however.

At least someone is having a good time, he thought wryly.

Toby knew—had known since the very first moment he had met the Lord Marshal—that the ogreish head of Eclipsia’s army had been bored for the better part of two decades while he waited for something to happen.

Now something is happening, all right, Toby thought.

He pushed his way through the crowd, making sure that his companions were following him. Frank bobbed above them. He had taken on the guise of an owl. It was a disguise suited to the night, Toby supposed, but the supernatural abilities of Frank were somewhat given away by the fact that he refused to relinquish the parcel of food.

“Lord Marshal! Lord Marshal!” Toby called out.

The ogre did not hear him. He just continued to march down the middle of the main thoroughfare with such indomitable and imperious lack of concern for everyone else around him that Toby wouldn’t have been surprised if some of the slower pedestrians had been squashed under his enormous feet.

“Lord Marshal Vani!” Anna cried in her high, clear voice.

“Shit, he would notice your voice, wouldn’t he?” Toby said to Anna, as the ogre slowed and looked around.

“Oh, don’t be jealous, Tobes. It’s unbecoming,” Anna said.

Lord Marshal Vani called a halt to his column of spear-wielding men by raising one enormous three-fingered hand. The column came to a stop. Toby could tell that the soldiers were some of the Lord Marshal’s best men. They carried their light, round fighting shields and long spears with ease. Plus, when the Lord Marshal called a halt, none of them fell over or banged into the men in front, Toby noticed.

“Lord Marshal,” Toby said.

“Ah, Coombes. Adams. How goes it?” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“It goes confusingly, Lord Marshal,” Toby said. “We don’t really know what the hell’s going on. We just got back. Oswald, the landlord of the Toby Jug—”

“I know who he is,” the Lord Marshal cut in.

“Yeah, well, he seems to think that there’s an attack on Stagbreach.”

“I always said that Oswald Parson was too sharp for his own good,” the Lord Marshal said, casting a knowing eye in the landlord’s direction.

“In my defense, Lord Marshal,” Oswald Parson said, coming up to stand at Toby’s shoulder, “it’s always been a tenet of Stagbreach life that you’ll hear a lot from the man in the pub.”

“That might be so,” the Lord Marshal said, grinning wide so that he showed off his tombstone teeth. “But most of what you hear is utter shite.”

“Ah, but not all of it,” Parson replied.

Lord Marshal let out a booming laugh and held out his hand. He and Parson shook. The ogre turned his attention back to Toby.

“Well, Mr. Parson is right. There’s an attack coming, lad,” he said. His expression settled into one of grave acceptance. “There’s one coming. We’ve had word sent that a few companies of unknown monsters—which more or less fits their description of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents—are heading towards the front gates.”

“They’re heading towards the front gates?” Toby said. “That seems a bit rash, a bit unthinking.”

“That’s the one thing about war, Mr. Adams, that you will learn if you’re lucky and given the time,” the Lord Marshal said. “And that thing is that everyone knows what the best thing to do in any given battle is, but they only seem to want to share it when they’re talking about it afterwards. As it’s happening, though, there’s a lot of guesswork and a lot of, what the more poetic types might call, fuckin’ about.”

Toby snorted.

“A lot takes place which doesn’t make the least bit of sense until after it’s done and the dust has settled and the widows have been patted on the back and the mourning songs sung,” Lord Marshal Vani went on.

Some of the men in the front ranks behind the Lord Marshal stirred uneasily.

“That’s not to say that all of you won’t survive this coming affray,” the Lord Marshal boomed over the heads of his waiting soldiers. “So long as you recall the simple articles of faith I’ve tried to drill into your heads, you should be fine.”

As one, the men in the foremost ranks raised their voices and said, “If at all possible, stab the other bastard in the back and don’t be shy about kicking him when he’s down!”

“That’s right, my lads,” the Lord Marshal said, sounding pleased. “That’s right. And what was that other final piece of age-old wisdom your old Lord Marshal tried to impart to you?”

“Battle’s a place where you can do the dirtiest shit you can imagine,” the men chorused, “because it’s the winners who get to wipe it up in the manner they best see fit.”

“That’s right, lads,” the Lord Marshal boomed.

“So you’ll be heading down to the front gates then, Lord Marshal?” Bellingham asked.

The Lord Marshal fixed his gaze on the hooded hunter. In the dim dark of the street, Bellingham’s face was little more than a shadow.

“And who the bloody hell is asking?” the ogre said in return.

“This is Bellingham,” Toby said. “He’s a trusted man. He knows these parts around Stagbreach almost better than anyone as he hunts them.”

“Aye, that’s right,” Bellingham said modestly. “I was sent by good King Balourd to go and have a snoop around the Westwoods. We were discussing some inconsistencies about that bit of scouting when those really poorly tuned trumpets started popping off.”

“Yeah, they don’t get much practice with the trumpets, the Royal Herald,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “They spend most of their time with those blasted recorders.”

The gathered company shared a shudder.

“Anyway,” Lord Marshal Vani said, “you were out looking at inconsistencies and comparing those. Very good. But if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen and ladies, duty calls. Finally,” the ogre added under his breath so that only Toby and Anna were likely to have heard. “I’ve got to get down there. No matter if there are inconsistencies or not.”

At that moment, a horse came charging up the street. It was lathered. The man riding it slipped down neatly out of the saddle.

“Lord Marshal?” he said, hurrying up to the Lord Marshal and leading his horse by the reins.

“That’d be me,” the ogre said unnecessarily.

“I have a report from the front gate, sir.”

“Excellent,” Lord Marshal Vani said. He turned to Toby and his friends. “Will you come down with us, Adams? How about you, Coombes? I know I could use that dead eye of yours.”

“We’ll be there presently, Lord Marshal,” Toby said. “There’s just something about this that doesn’t strike me as altogether trustworthy.”

Lord Marshal Vani didn’t wait to hang around and ask questions. He placed an enormous hand on Toby’s shoulder. It was so big that it felt to Toby as if someone had just draped a sack of cement over his arm.

“You do what you feel is best, Mr. Adams,” he said. “The King trusts you, and I stand by my king. Just—”

“Just try your damnedest not to get killed,” Anna finished.

“That’s right,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “See, I knew I was making progress with you as soldiers.”

With a roar and a raise of his great hand, Lord Marshal Vani and the companies of soldiers behind him set off at a brisk jog down the street. The pedestrians gathering in the cobbled way moved aside as the columns of fighting men made their way down towards the front gate of Stagbreach.

Bellingham clapped Toby on the shoulder. He bowed low to the three women.

“Oh, what a gentleman,” Anna said.

“I’m going to follow the Lord Marshal,” Bellingham said.

“You are?” Toby asked.

Bellingham nodded. “As he said, a good archer will be worth his weight in gold down there. I may as well do what I can. Besides, picking off a few of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents will help put my mind at ease. I can’t seem to stop cogitating over the mystery of those empty clearings.”

“Me neither,” Toby admitted. “It’s doing my head in.”

“Well, if you need a little bit of cathartic violence, you’ll know where I am,” Bellingham said. He pulled his bow from behind his back. “I’ll see you when I see you,” the hunter said.

“I’ll see you when I see you,” Toby echoed.

The friends watched Bellingham disappear into the ever-swelling crowd of people thronging the street.

“So, what are we doing, Tobes?” Anna asked.

Toby stood for a moment with his hands on his hips. A not-insubstantial part of him wanted to follow Bellingham down so that he could embroil himself in the coming action.

“Nah,” he said quietly to himself.

“What was that?” Verity asked.

“Nah,” Toby said. “I want to go down there and draw swords with Lord Marshal Vani, Bellingham, and the rest of them.”

“Stand side by side with your battle brothers and all the rest of it, eh?” Frank said.

“Yeah, you don’t have to sound so cynical about it, but yes,” Toby said. “I want to go down there, but there’s something just not right about all of this.”

“So?” Anna said.

“So, we’re going up to the castle, yes?” Luna said.

Toby nodded. “To the castle,” he said.

And he led the way through the crowd up to the looming expanse of the towers, turrets, and walls that marked the most powerful point in Eclipsia.

27

When they reached the portcullis at the castle’s main wall, Toby pulled up. He stared around. There didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Obviously, the stationed guards, as well as those tasked with patrolling the tops and bottoms of the walls, looked to be on high alert. They seemed a lot more highly strung than Toby was used to, even at the castle.

Things had obviously been so relaxed for so long that even the thought of an enemy having the gonads to attack Stagbreach had been laughable

Right up until a few hours ago, at least, Toby thought.

They walked through the yard slowly.

“What exactly are we doing here, Toby?” Anna said.

Toby hesitated. It was a good question.

“I think we need to secure the King and Queen,” he said slowly.

“You think they’re in danger?” Verity asked.

Toby nodded. “I think that Duke Diddle knows that if he takes out or abducts Queen Lascivo, he’s essentially depriving all of Eclipsia of its most savvy decision-maker. Also, if he gets rid of the King, if he takes out old Balourd, he’s cutting off the figurehead.”

“A lot of people might not entirely respect the King,” Anna said, “but he is a jolly old guy. I like him. They might not respect him, but I think they do love him. He’s relatable. He might not be the kind of monarch that you’d trust to open an assembly on world diplomacy, but he is the kind of monarch that you’d trust to have a good time opening a bottle of prosecco with.”

“That’s right,” Verity agreed.

“Ridding Eclipsia of either one will be bad enough. But knowing Duke Diddle, he won’t be content with only getting rid of one of them,” Toby said, half speaking to himself.

“Yes, I agree with you,” Luna said. “I ran an amateur psychological profiling of this Duke.”

Verity looked startled at this declaration. “I don’t know what that means, but it sounds very official,” she said.

Luna continued, “I ran an amateur psychological profiling on this Duke based on what I’ve heard from people around town about him. From what you’ve told me, and from what I have heard, I believe that he is one of those tyrannical individuals who will not stop until he has finished doing what he deems to be a proper job.”

Toby nodded. “Yeah, he and Vexxx strike me as a clean-sweep kind of duo.”

They stood in the courtyard of the castle of Eclipsia. The ornate fountain played musically as Toby thought.

“All right,” he said after a few minutes. “I think the best thing we can do here is to split up.”

“Why?” Verity asked.

“Because if we sweep the castle from opposite sides,” Toby said, “we’ll have a better chance of quickly locating their majesties.”

“Who’s going with whom?” Frank asked.

“I’ll lead one party. Anna, you should lead the other,” Toby said. “The King and Queen both know us and are comfortable with us, whereas they’ve never met Luna, and they haven’t had too much to do with Verity.”

“That might have been my fault for being a trifle standoffish,” Verity said, “but a girl can be guilty of a little reticence when it comes to fraternizing with those who, under different circumstances, might have at one time or another looked to have her arrested and executed in a bit of a public manner.”

“Right, so that is maybe,” Toby said. “Anna, Verity, and Frank, you start on the west side. I’ll take Luna and head through the east entry.”

Anna and Verity nodded.

“All right,” Anna said. “We’ll get on it. We’ll meet you guys in the middle.”

“And Frank,” Toby said.

“Yes, mate?”

“Frank, try not to be a total pain in the ass,” Toby said.

“I shall endeavor to adhere to your instructions of not being a thorn in anyone’s posterior, Mr. Adams,” Frank said. A small top hat popped into existence on the imp’s head. Frank doffed it.

“I’m serious,” Toby said. “If anything untoward happens because of something ridiculous you did that gave Anna and Verity away, you and I will be having words. And they’ll be the kind of words that, by the end of them, will have you shitting kittens.”

“You mean you’ll be putting the fear of—”

“No, no, that wasn’t a euphemism,” Toby said, “I mean I’ll literally have you shitting kittens, even if that means I have to go around town, find the kittens, and shove them up your—”

“All right, all right, boys,” Anna said. “That’s enough. I think Frank gets the point.”

Frank snapped off a salute. “I do indeed.”

“All right,” Toby said. He took a deep breath. “Everyone armed?” His friends nodded. “Then—”

“Hold on a moment,” Verity said. She fished in her pocket and extracted the crow medallions. She handed them out.

“How do we work these doohickeys?” Anna asked.

“Did you just use the word ‘doohickey’?” Toby said.

Anna gave him a look.

“Right. Yeah. Not important at this moment in time,” Toby said.

“So far as I’m aware,” Verity said, “you just clasp the crow in your fist and talk. Those on the other end will hear your words as if you are standing right next to them.”

“Testing, testing. A, B, C,” Luna said, her hand clenched around the little golden crow pendant.

“Whoa, cool!” Anna said.

“Okay, we’re all set. Good luck to you all, and we’ll see each other, hopefully, in the middle,” Toby said.

The others headed left out of the main courtyard. Toby and Luna went right. They hugged the inside of the curtain wall as they went. Lord Marshal Vani had impressed upon Toby how it was always beneficial to have something solid, like a wall, on one side of you.

“That way, if you do get yourself into the kind of fix where people are looking to kill you, at least you don’t have to worry about them killing you from a certain side,” the ogre had said.

It was irrefutable logic, and Toby stuck with it.

They skirted the castle. It was, unsurprisingly, an enormous edifice. It took them the better part of ten minutes, moving quickly but not hurriedly or in an obvious rush, to get around to the western entrance. Here, there was a door that was only slightly less grand than the front entrance of the palace. Luna made her way towards it.

“No,” Toby said. “No, we’re taking the servants’ entrance.”

They carried on further. Like all castles, estates, and other grand governmental or monarchist buildings, it was the front and the sides that got the most love. As soon as Toby and Luna crossed the invisible threshold, marked by some mermaid-shaped bushes, and came around the back of Eclipsia Castle, things got a lot more austere and a lot more functional.

There were a number of chimneys poking out of the walls, which hadn’t been visible from the front façade. Also, it appeared that the back of the castle was a retirement village of sorts for ancient, broken, or exceptionally hideous gargoyles.

None of this made much of an impression on Toby. What did strike him, first and foremost, was…

“Where are the guards?” he said to Luna.

Luna’s amber eyes darted around. “There don’t seem to be any,” she said. “Is that normal?”

“I’ve never been around the rear of the building,” Toby admitted. “It does strike me as a bit weird, seeing as we’re in a heightened state of security, what with Stagbreach being marched on by Duke Diddle’s minions.”

“Yes, now that you say that, it does seem to be a little irregular,” Luna said.

Toby noted the hint of trepidation, the nervous little querulous note, in her voice. He reached out and pressed her hand. “Relax,” he said. “This is the heart of Stagbreach. Although I have a feeling that something is off, it might prove to be unfounded.”

He led the way towards the nondescript servants’ entrance. It was still a double door, but far less elaborate in its design. It was also, Toby noted, ajar.

Toby’s hand went straight to the hilt of his sword. Then he paused, reached to his other side, and slid out his knife. He pressed his finger to his lips. Luna nodded.

Toby led the way inside. The door creaked as he pushed it slowly open. It was dim in the passage. Toby waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. There was nothing to be gained by walking into a potentially hostile environment half-blind. Once his eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom of the stone torch-lit passage, Toby motioned for Luna to follow him in.

“Oops…” Toby said. “Be careful. There’s something here.”His foot had almost slid out from under him.

“What is it?” Luna asked.

Toby knelt down and touched the cold stone flags. He raised his fingers to the torch-light. Rubbed them together. Slowly, he lowered his hand so that it came to rest on his sword hilt.

“Blood,” he said. “It’s blood.”

28

“Are you sure it’s blood?” Luna asked.

“Red, sticky, smells like copper,” Toby said. “It’s blood.”

“This might sound as if I’m stating the obvious,” Luna said in a shaky and, somehow, quite fragile-sounding, “but it’s my belief that blood is more commonly found within the body.”

“I’m not an apothecary, but I believe that’s correct,” Toby said.

His eyes were set dead ahead. His mouth was a hard line. There were no doors or passages leading off the entranceway in which they were now standing. Toby moved forward. Now that his eyes were accustomed to the dimness and he was looking for it, he saw that there were blood spatters up the wall. A neat arcing spray went up one wall and almost intersected with the ceiling.

Looks like a severed artery. A major one.

A slick ran down the center of the corridor.

“A body’s been dragged away here,” he said a little pointlessly.

“Yes.” Luna agreed. “By something strong, I think.”

They followed the blood trail down the corridor. Toby’s ears were pricked for any sound, any out of the ordinary noise, which might hint at what had happened. There was no noise, however. No sounds of any kind. The corridor and whatever rooms lay beyond it were silent.

As the grave, Toby’s brain added.

Thanks for that, Toby thought.

They moved down the hallway and emerged out into the enormous kitchens. The kitchens truly were massive, unsurprisingly so. Toby thought that feeding a whole castle, even if that castle didn’t happen to have been home to King Balourd, probably took a deal of cooking for.

When things were popping off, and a feast day was on, the place must have been a regular hive of activity. Toby could imagine the clattering din of pots and the fragrant aroma of roasting meats filling the cavernous space.

There were high, vaulted ceilings of dark stone arching overhead. A large grate set into the ceiling looked to be some kind of arcane version of an extractor fan that banished any smokes and steams that didn’t go up the massive chimney and sucked them away in a swirling cloud before it. Copper cauldrons hung over wide fireplaces. Long wooden tables were piled high with fresh produce, cheeses, and fragrant herbs—some of which glowed faintly, or vibrated in their bunches, or had leaves that sparkled with a hint of enchantment.

Great slabs of stone formed the flooring. These flagstones had been well-worn by centuries of busy feet. There were also channels carved around the edges of the room where an enchanted water constantly flowed, washing away debris and keeping the space scrupulously clean.

Above the hearths, rows of gleaming knives and spoons hovered in the air, waiting to be summoned, no doubt, by a cook’s gesture, each tool enchanted to respond to a simple flick of the wrist.

The ovens along the far wall were massive. Toby noted, in a distant way, how the iron doors were etched with runes that flickered faintly. He wondered if they had something to do with regulating the temperature within so precisely that even the most delicate pastries emerged golden and perfect every single time.

All in all, as someone who didn’t mind dabbling with cooking when he had the time and chance, Toby would have been quite interested to have a poke around the place.

However, this interest was curbed somewhat by the bodies that were littered around the enormous kitchen.

The way that they were just haphazardly strewn about the place was untidy, but that was as nothing compared to how the bodies themselves looked. They were rent and torn, as if someone armed with a gardening fork and an axe—and who’d been in a real rush, taking no pride in their work—had gone through the place like a tornado.

“Oh my… “ Luna said, voicing what was perhaps the understatement of the day. “What a mess!”

Although he didn’t much want to, Toby made a closer inspection of the bodies. He saw that a number of them were members of the King’s Guard. No doubt one of them had been responsible for leaving the slick of blood down the corridor.

Probably the man guarding the door, Toby thought.

The others were obviously maids, servants, and kitchen staff. Toby thought that a rather rotund corpse had probably been the head cook, but it was hard to tell, what with the woman not having her head still attached.

One poor bastard, who looked by his livery to have been a footman or a dining servant in happier days, had his flesh brutally sloughed away, almost as if he’d been run over one of those specialist deli bench saws, which trim pastrami and other cured meats to such delicately thin slices. Blood, gore, and viscera coated many surfaces.

“Yes…” Toby whispered. “Yeah, a mess is what it is, alright.”

He looked at Luna. She was staring around at the ghastly, mangled sight of the bodies.

“Are you all right?” Toby asked gently. He was keeping his eyes firmly on the far door in the kitchen.

“I’m fine,” Luna said. “You know I’m an expert on bipedal biology. I’ve seen a lot of the human body.”

“Have you seen quite so much of it spread about quite so liberally all at once?” Toby asked as tactfully as he could.

Luna swallowed. “No,” she said. “No, I haven’t.”

“Me neither.”

“Are we going on?” Luna asked after a few moments.

“Yeah,” Toby said.

“What are we waiting for?” Luna asked.

“Honestly,” Toby replied, “I was waiting to see if you were going to throw up.”

Luna gave him a sheepish grin. Toby saw, though, that it was tempered with an inner steely resilience.

“I think I’m fine,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Toby asked. “Because, I mean, there’s no shame in it, and if you’re going to do it, there’s a large sink over there.”

“No, no,” Luna assured him. “I’m fine. Let’s go on.”

They worked their way through the servant-friendly bowels of the castle. They came to a corner. Toby, with his knife still drawn, eased himself around, nice and slow. The passage beyond was empty. Toby was just about to draw back when he stiffened. The passage in front of them had been empty.

It was empty no longer.

It was being filled in, even as he watched. Something was forming in the air. Something was quite literally coalescing out of nothing, right there, right in front of him.

What the…

It was, in a way, the most blatant and overly magical example of magic that Toby had yet seen in Eclipsia. A shape was forming. No, not just one shape. Two shapes. Three, four, five shapes. They formed out of the air as if they were being sketched by some invisible hand. Crooked stick-thin limbs appeared. They thickened out. They took on basic musculature. A central column of each figure beefed out, broadened. Fingers and feet sprouted, were filled in. The shapes became hairy all at once, like the blossoming of needles on a cactus.

Before Toby knew it, there were five strange, sinewy, rat-like creatures standing in the passage. Instantly, his pop-culture-filled brain labeled the creatures as kobolds. There was something extremely rodent-like to them, although something that was also reptilian. They turned their angular heads this way, baring black teeth. They were armed with crude blades, squared off at the end with right-angled points. They almost looked like very crude scimitars.

They looked like just the kinds of weapons that could be used to butcher a bunch of innocent kitchen workers.

The pack of five kobolds slunk off down the corridor. They turned a corner and vanished out of sight. Toby pondered for a moment on what he should do.

Then he heard the screams, and the decision was made for him. He turned to Luna and motioned with his head for her to follow him.

“We’re going towards the screams?” she said.

“Yes, we are,” Toby replied. “You’ve got your knife?”

Luna drew her belt knife.

“It’s forged anew, like the rest of ours?” Toby asked.

Luna nodded.

“All right, then,” Toby said. “Let’s go.”

They jogged around the corner. Toby drew his sword. The screams were growing in intensity in front of them. Toby picked up the pace.

They emerged out into a small dining chamber. The table, chairs, and sideboards were solidly built but not ornate. This hinted to Toby that it was part of the staff quarters. The kobolds, if that’s what they were, had spread out and herded another group of domestic staff into the corner of the room. They were advancing on them with their scimitars raised above their heads.

Toby didn’t do anything as clichéd as let loose a battle cry. He hadn’t needed Lord Marshal Vani’s advice on that score. There was nothing to be gained by letting your opponent know you were coming. Not if you’d made up your mind to kill the bastards.

He willed his blade into incandescent heat. It seemed to steam in the dim light of the hall. He ran forward and swept the head off the first kobold.

The other four kobolds, intent on their prey as they were, barely registered that he and Luna were there until Toby’s second blow cleaved through the sternum of a second happy little accident and dropped it. The entrails he spilled were black and rank.

The castle staff huddled deeper into the corner as the three remaining kobolds wheeled around. They were spitting and snarling. Their faces were rudimentary shapes. They really did look like the concept drawings of some diseased mind made flesh. Their eyes—little round, mean globes of polished obsidian—burned with cruel inner flames.

One of them swung an unrefined backhand blow at Toby. Toby blocked it. The strange, ethereally-drawn blade was sheared in half. It burst apart like a column of smoke trapped under a glass, dissipating. The kobold shrieked, and Toby split its head in half with his blade.

The two remaining kobolds split their attention. One made a move toward the fearful domestic staff. The other launched itself at Toby. Toby cut the kobold down, pulled his knife out, and hurried to get around the other side of the dining table to stop the kobold from hacking down one of the innocent serving staff. He realized too late that he wasn’t going to get there in time. As slightly misshapen and strange-looking as the creature was, it moved quickly.

Toby flipped his knife around in his hand. He felt that pulse of energy that had shot his magical arrow back at the archery range. He threw the knife overhand. It spun through the air, making a sound like a circular saw let off the chain so that it could really fulfill its potential. It was enshrouded in a nimbus of yellow light. The knife struck the kobold, buried itself in its back, and then ripped it apart in a burst of greasy smoke.

Toby stood panting. He looked down at the stricken castle staff.

They looked up at him wide-eyed.

“Get out of here,” Toby said. “Get out of here. Go home. You’ve earned it.”

They didn’t ask for a second invitation. They got up and hurried out. Toby and Luna shared a meaningful look.

“Onwards and upwards,” Toby said.

“Onwards and upwards,” Luna repeated.

29

Toby glanced over his shoulder at the nymph. She was hurrying along right behind him, her knife still in her hand.

“I can’t believe how those creatures formed out of the air like that,” Luna said.

“Yeah,” Toby said, distractedly. “That was something alright.”

“I’ve definitely never seen anything like this before.”

“Neither have I.” Luna sounded almost excited. “To see the raw potential of the wand, which the prophecy referred to materialize as easily as that…”

The sound of her footsteps halted behind Toby. Toby turned around. The nymph had a slight frown on her face. She was gazing absently into nothing.

“Luna?” Toby said as he loosened his sword in its new sheath. “Luna, we should probably get going. Are you alright?”

Luna blinked. “Something’s just occurred to me,” she said.

“Okay,” Toby said. “Are you able to tell me about it while we keep walking or…?”

“The way those creatures just appeared like that…” Luna said. “They weren’t there, and then the next moment they were.”

“Yep, that’s right. That’s usually what ‘materialize’ refers to,” Toby said, trying to keep his impatience in check.

“Yes, it’s just, from everything I know about this wand—and I admit that most of it is mere speculation achieved after years spent hypothesizing over what the prophecy might be alluding to—I think it points to one thing.”

“Points to what?” Toby asked, sheathing his knife and pulling out his sword. It wasn’t the ideal weapon for corridors or close-quarter fighting, but the heft of it in his hand—not to mention the way he was able to turn it into what essentially amounted to a lightsaber—was a comfort.

“I think that what it means is…  Well, the other soldiery, or whatever it is that Lord Marshal Vani is marching to face, they’re already here, yes? They were created somewhere else and then marched here?”

“Yes, that would explain the delays in between the attacks by the shamblers,” Toby said. “I’m still not sure I’m following, though.”

“Right, so if they were already here…”

While she was talking in a low voice, Luna was staring at the stone flags as if she could read something there that Toby couldn’t.

“What are you getting at, Luna?” Toby asked.

“I think that Duke Diddle’s forces can be divided into two categories,” she said.

“Okay.”

“So, Duke Diddle is able to draw any kind of creature he likes out of the ether, yes?” Luna said.

Toby nodded.

“So, he’s able to draw—”

“Depending on whether or not he has stored power within himself or the wand,” Toby broke in.

“Yes, depending on that,” Luna agreed. “So, he can conjure whatever monstrous apparitions he fancies, bring them to life, and then store them or marshal them for when he’s ready to launch a particular attack.”

“That’s right,” Toby agreed.

“Exactly,” Luna said, glancing up and down the corridor they were standing in. “And he does that because usually, when he launches these attacks, whether they be raids by shamblers on nearby villages or what have you, he’s not usually within close proximity.”

“Right,” Toby agreed again. “But what does that have to do with—?”

“Wait a minute. Did you say those creatures back there were kobolds?”

“I think so,” Toby said.

“Okay, so, we saw those kobolds being manifestly brought into being right in front of our eyes…” Luna said. She was staring intently at Toby now, willing him to come to a conclusion.

“Oh, fuck,” Toby said.

Luna nodded slowly.

“You think that because those kobolds appeared out of the blue inside the castle, Duke Diddle must be somewhere nearby.”

“Yes,” Luna said.

Toby closed his eyes for just a second, considering what that meant. “Duke Diddle could be here, inside the castle of Eclipsia.”

“Yes,” Luna said, her voice quiet but emphatic.

Toby recalled all that he had been told about Duke Diddle. He replayed those pieces of information in his mind, particularly those that alluded to how Duke Diddle had not only been a trusted confidant and advisor to King Balourd, but also a good friend. That meant the pair had likely shared many a drink together. If there were any secrets Duke Diddle wanted to extract from the King, Toby thought, he would have done it all too easily.

Toby looked at Luna. “I’m guessing there’s not a single secret passageway, hidden entrance, or clandestine meeting spot within this castle that Duke Diddle isn’t aware of.”

Luna nodded slowly.

“So he could already be here,” Toby said softly. “Holy shit. The force attacking Stagbreach—that’s just a diversion.”

Luna nodded again.

“We really need to find their Majesties,” Toby said.

They took off once again through the castle. The King and Queen’s residence was a veritable labyrinth of passageways, corridors, and stately halls. While a lot of it was grand and used by the monarchs and their guests, much of the castle was categorized as ‘back of house.’ These were far more ordinary passages and halls, which Toby doubted King Balourd and Queen Lascivo had ever set foot in.

After all, this castle is probably home to more lackeys and servants than actual dignitaries of the realm.

And that meant that once Duke Diddle was inside, and if he knew his way around, he could likely direct a clandestine force of his creatures through the place without impunity.

They began to hear more frequent and obvious calls for help. The clash of fighting also reached their ears from distant points within the castle. It was clear that if Duke Diddle had entered stealthily, he and his minions were making less and less effort to maintain that stealth.

As the time went by, they came across a few more packs of the recently materialized kobolds, as well as some shamblers. The shamblers were easily dealt with. The fighting with the kobolds in comparison was tight and intense in the corridors and the small chambers that adjoined them. Toby’s muscles burned as he cut down his opponents in showers of strange foul smelling dark blood.

Toby had not really realized just how much reliance he placed upon the ubiquitous serving staff that were dotted throughout the castle on the occasions where he was obliged to come and pay a visit on the King or Queen. A well-placed and attentive footman or a maid was always there to point his lost ass in the right direction so that he could navigate his way through the seemingly endless halls, corridors, chambers and anti-chambers.

Now with the domestic staff fleeing for their lives and the few guardsmen within the castle itself fighting for theirs, Toby had some difficulty figuring out how to get to the King and Queen’s apartments.

Or finding out where the fuck they are at all.

Eventually, after a little trial and error and more than a little luck, the pair of them emerged out into a hallway, which Toby finally recognized thanks to the half a dozen suits of horse armor that had been arrayed down the corridor.

Toby hurried on ahead, buoyed by this turn of events.

“I think if we cut through this suite of guest apartments,” he said, “we should end up fairly near where King Balourd and Queen Lascivo like to hang out. I’m pretty sure that Frank left a scorch mark on a silk cushion and dropped a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich on this ridiculously feathery rug. The little shit just folded it into the feathers like a heathen.”

Toby ripped open the second door on the right.

“Yes, this is it!” he said.

He hurried through the room beyond. Luna followed.

Toby was halfway across a sumptuously deep rug made from the thick feathers of some enormous, and probably now quite bald bird, when he heard a strangled cry from behind him.

When he turned, he saw that Luna had been caught hold of by a looming demonic figure.

The creature, the happy little accident, was about two heads taller than Toby. It was broad at the shoulder and skinny at the waist, with a pair of long legs. Its hide was a mottled brown and green color, and it wore only a loincloth, which Toby was pretty grateful for. The entity was heavily muscled, glaring at Toby out of a single great bright pink eye that sat squarely in the middle of its broad forehead. On either side of the eye were two stubby horns.

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” Toby said in way of a greeting.

The monster had one massive hand around Luna’s throat. Toby could see that it was lifting her with no apparent effort, forcing her to stand on her tiptoes or otherwise choke.

Toby made to ease towards the monster, hoping to get within sword-striking range. The monster kicked the door closed behind it and let out a warning growl. Toby stopped moving. The growl subsided.

“So, what now?” Toby asked.

The monster’s huge pink eye blinked slowly, as if it was thinking about that one. Then it said, “You put sword down. Down on ground.”

Toby tilted his head slightly to the side. “Why would I do that?”

“You don’t do it, then me snap human neck.”

A slight pressure increased on Luna’s throat, causing her to gasp.

“Technically speaking,” she croaked, “I am a nymph, sir.”

The only answer she got was another rumbling growl.

“You put sword down,” the monster repeated. “You put sword down. Duke Diddle want to see you. He want to see you, human male called Toby.”

Toby blinked. He wasn’t sure why Duke Diddle wanted to see him specifically, but he wasn’t really surprised that the Duke knew who he was. Vexxx, Toby was sure, would have handed over every nugget of information he deemed the Duke would be interested in. Vexxx, as well as being a highly capable wielder of magic, struck Toby as being nothing if not a stickler for details.

“And he wants me to disarm myself first?”

“He does not mind about your arms. He just does not want human man to have sword,” the monster replied.

“Right,” Toby said.

He scanned his options. They were few enough. He didn’t want any harm to come to Luna. Unfortunately, he was dealing with a monster that was of extremely limited intelligence. It was obviously drawn from the wand in the hand of Duke Diddle, but it had also been instructed by him—straight from the whoreson’s mouth, as Frank would have said. Toby doubted the thing in front of him was capable of much in the way of out-of-the-box thinking. It probably didn’t even realize that it was in a box, or what shape a box was.

Such block-headed creatures were surprisingly tricky to get around. They had their job, their mission that they had been entrusted with, and very little would convince them to stray from that mission’s parameters. Toby had had to deal with enough burly New York bouncers in his time to recognize someone who was going to be impossible to talk his way around. There would be no bargaining with that brute.

“Put sword down now,” the monster bellowed abruptly. Toby saw Luna flinch as spittle flecked the side of her blue face.

“All right,” Toby said. “All right. I’ll do it.”

Deliberately, he held out his sword from his body. “I’m putting it down,” he enunciated clearly.

“You put it down,” the monster said, its pink eye fixed on Toby. Its tone communicated that it wouldn’t believe it until it saw it happen, and it was prepared to wait around all day to see it happen.

Toby gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. He felt the warmth emanating from the ruby flooding through the handle into his palm.

I can do this, he thought to himself. I can use magic. I’ve done it before.

Then another thought surfaced. A more pressing one.

If you don’t do this, Luna might die.

That was enough for him. He dropped the sword. The sword spun slowly from his grip towards the thick rug on which he stood.

The pink eye of the monster followed the blade.

Toby’s other hand came up and around, and he contorted it into a claw as he aimed it at the ornate, beautifully filigreed dressing table that stood behind the monster.

The dressing table was a beautiful thing. Most likely, it had taken a master craftsman hundreds of hours to complete. It was polished almost to a mirror sheen. The pale wood was inlaid with gold and something that Toby thought might have been mother-of-pearl—though he’d never bothered to find out why pearls were the only mollusk-related byproduct to have recognized family members.

With a tearing, shrieking, splitting sound of tortured wood, the dressing table rose up. The drawers on either side of it ripped apart and fountained up like a wave of vengeful carpentry. The mirror that backed it cracked.

The monster turned at the sound of the rending, breaking dressing table. It let out a low, resigned rumble, which Toby’s mind translated to “Ah, fucknuts…”

The hand that had been holding Luna whipped around. Toby made a lassoing motion. Luna was jerked off her feet and soared through the air towards him. Toby gathered her in with one arm, and the pair of them fell backward onto the luxurious rug.

Toby’s other hand came slapping down.

The dressing table, which had reared up like some carpenter’s worst nightmare come back for revenge on those who had chopped it up and made it into the household piece of furniture that it was, crashed down onto the strange single-eyed happy little accident. It folded down onto it like a murderous giant wooden accordion collapsing.

The monster was large, but the dressing table must have weighed the best part of three-hundred kilograms. As Toby’s subconscious had already noted: that shit wasn’t made of MDF and flat-packed. It couldn’t have been more solid had it been carved straight out of the tree trunk in one piece. And that was before the weight of gold and other luxurious appointings had been taken into account.

What was more, it was driven by Toby’s undiluted and furious need for the cyclops monster’s destruction. The creature was smashed, crushed, and pulverized into the ground. The falling, broken dressing table smeared it into little more than meat paste, crushing its head, and sending black blood spraying across the floor and up the walls in ropey gouts.

Toby and Luna lay back on the rug as the sound of splintered wood faded.

“I guess you have a grip on your magic now,” Luna said quietly into Toby’s chest.

Toby kissed the top of the nymph’s head. He felt the silver-white hair tickle his cheek. He looked down the length of their bodies at the obliterated monster. It looked like a load of dog food that had been put through a wood chipper.

Fucking magic. It’ll get ya.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Got to grips with it. Yeah. If that’s what you want to call it.”

There was a soft organic splatting sound as part of the ruined monster, which had been flung against the wall in the violence of the impact, fell to the carpeted ground.

“I could probably do with refining it, though,” Toby said.

30

It was like a curtain had been drawn aside. A curtain within Toby’s own mind. A door that had been locked and barred by simple everyday ignorance and lack of instruction had been suddenly crow-barred open and kicked in thanks to sheer bloody-minded willpower and necessity.

There were probably a shitload more metaphors that could have been used to describe how Toby could suddenly touch and use the magic within him. What it boiled down to, though, was that he now found himself able to draw on that magic, and he was able to use it.

Use it as a weapon.

He and Luna sprinted through the stone-flagged corridors of Eclipsia Castle. Their boots pounded against the hard flags that weren’t covered with luxurious rugs and carpeting. Regardless of the fact that a castle’s ground state of being is usually one of chilliness and draftiness, Toby could feel sweat beading on his forehead. His pulse was hammering in his ears.

“Hey, guys?”

Toby couldn’t fight the impulse to look around at the sound of Verity None’s voice. It took him a full two seconds to recall how it was he was hearing her apparently disembodied vocalizations.

The crow pendant.

“Yes, Verity?” Luna replied. “Is everything all right?”

The nymph’s voice, coming from right behind Toby and also through whatever thaumaturgical connection linked the crow pendants, resonated weirdly in his ears.

“Everything is fine,” Verity said. “Anna just wanted to make sure that these necklaces from the hoard worked.”

“They’re amazing!” Anna’s voice joined Verity’s. “You there, Tobes?”

“Roger,” Toby replied.

“Who’s Roger?” Verity asked.

“No—I—Never mind,” Toby said. “I’m here. Good to know they work, though. Well done for checking in.”

“Yep. Okay, then,” Anna said. “Happy hunting.”

“Thanks, Anna,” Luna replied.

“Let us know how you go,” Anna said.

“Copy that,” Toby replied.

“What do you need copied?” Verity asked.

Toby shook his head. “Never mind. Good luck to you too,” he said.

The sounds of battle and confusion were seemingly all around them now. He could hear cries and shouts and swearing and entreaties echoing through the stone halls and bouncing around them. It made pinpointing the source of the cries all but impossible.

Toby rounded a corner. His enchanted sword was already drawn, but he had it pointed slightly toward the ground. He wanted to be ready to face whatever might loom around the next bend, but he also didn’t want to be responsible for terminally perforating a panicking maidservant or footman.

The now familiar weight of the blade felt good and steady in his hand. He could feel the warmth of the ruby emanating through his fingers and up his arm. Now that he had unlocked his magical ability, he was able to use it, even if it was in a slightly rough-and-ready fashion. He had become aware that there was a tendril of power running from the sword through himself to some inner core.

He grinned to himself at the almost absurdity of that thought as the ancient tapestries that lined the walls blurred past while he and Luna ran through the hallways, looking frantically for any sign of the King and Queen. Those tapestries, Toby noted, depicted faded scenes of long-forgotten battles.

Toby had a feeling that none of those fights and skirmishes were going to be a patch on the chaos Duke Diddle had in mind to unleash.

Toby slowed as, from up ahead, he heard a low growl echoing through the vaulted ceiling of what sounded like a large hall. Toby skidded to a complete stop just as a hulking four-legged beast materialized from out of the shadows of the ceiling above. Toby thrust out a hand and stopped Luna.

The monster’s body was covered in thick, leathery hide that shimmered like molten metal. Its jaws were filled with serrated teeth that clicked together with anticipation at violence to come. Drool hung in thick yellow ropes from the maw of the beast. Bright red eyes regarded him.

Toby felt, in that moment, very much like an unfortunate prey item in the jungle. Still, unconsciously, he felt his swordsmanship training taking over. He adjusted his feet, raised his weapon, and looked at where his foe was standing, where its eyes were fixed.

“Toby…” Luna said. She was standing just behind him, with her knife raised.

“I’ve got this,” Toby said over his shoulder without turning.

In one move, and as gently as he could, he shoved the nymph aside so that she fell with a soft cry into an alcove, which had been taken up, until rather recently, by a fallen suit of armor. Simultaneously, he sidestepped the hulking creature’s first lunge. He pivoted his weight around and brought his sword across in a tight arc, aimed at the beast’s neck.

The enchanted blade clanged against the monster’s hide. Toby cursed as his sword bounced off the happy little accident’s skin, and sparks flew. Toby tried to channel some of that lightsaber-like heat into the blade but realized that he hadn’t given the sword time to recharge between his last battle. He cursed again, quickly retreating a step as the beast snapped its great sharp teeth at him.

His longsword wasn’t ideally meant to hack through naturally occurring armor like this, and Toby was well aware of it. His mind raced.

I’m gonna have to use finesse, he thought. Not brute force.

The great metal-skinned monster turned and came at Toby again. This time, Toby dropped into a low guard, angling his sword blade upwards. As the happy little accident leapt up, Toby thrust the point of the blade into its gaping maw as it came down to try and rip him to pieces. The lethally sharp point, guided by Toby’s unruffled and composed eye, slipped into the soft roof of the great monster’s mouth.

Toby made a point of making sure that his arm wasn’t in such a position that, when his sword struck home, it was accidentally impaled by one of the serpent’s venomous fangs. He was a product of the nineties. He’d learned a thing or two from reading the Chamber of Secrets.

Blood, black and thick and stinking, gushed from the wound. With a swift pull and a grunt of exertion, Toby yanked the sword free. As the happy little accident reared back its head in reeling agony, Toby took a step forward and struck out at the exposed throat.

The metal-skinned monster collapsed in a spray of blood. It twitched, emitted a gurgling whine, and then burst apart.

Weirdly the way it unraveled in the air reminded Toby of when he had once ordered a cocktail in a ridiculously swanky bar in Manhattan. The damn thing had cost about thirty-five bucks and had come out under a glass dome filled with smoke. When the waiter—or mixologist, as the bastard probably would have rather been referred to—pulled away the glass dome, the smoke held its position for a second or so and then dissipated. Such was the unraveling of the form of the metal-skinned beast that Toby had just cut down.

“Toby!” Luna said.

Toby turned. He hadn’t really had time to so much as catch his breath.

The air at the other end of the hall shimmered. Toby narrowed his eyes.

Three new foes blinked into existence, sketched out of the air just as the kobolds had been. First there was nothing, then there was a trio of nightmarish amalgamations of shadow and bone.

These creatures stood on two legs. They towered over Toby. They must have been eight feet tall apiece. Their faces were hidden behind skeletal masks. Each of the figures was robed in shadow and clutched a jagged, barbed spear.

“Toby!” Luna said again.

The three figures glided toward Toby and Luna. Toby stood his ground, his sword raised.

“Toby!” Luna said again, the tone of her voice rising an octave.

With a deep breath, Toby closed his eyes momentarily. He extended his free hand and felt the hum, which was gradually becoming more familiar, of magic surging up from inside of him and running through his veins like a dull fire.

A kinetic blast exploded from his palm. The lead creature was sent hurtling backward into the solid stone wall of the hall. The impact shattered the ancient masonry. Dust billowed out into the air in a satisfying cloud.

Toby, grinning menacingly, advanced on the other two spectral figures.

The one that was now closest to him swung the heavy barbed spear toward him. Toby raised his sword into a high guard, intercepting the strike with a hanging parry of such perfect timing that he knew for a fact even Lord Marshall Vani’s usual cynicism may well have been put aside so that the ogre could applaud.

The force of the two weapons coming together sang through Toby’s forearms. He shifted his grip, stepped to the side, and let the spear skid harmlessly past his left shoulder. He countered with a swift, sure cut to the skull-faced entity’s wrist. Its hand spun away, sheared clean off.

The creature staggered back and tipped back its head as black ichor spilled from the wound. Toby got the impression that had it been able to do so, it would have been howling with rage and pain.

He didn’t stop to mentally pat himself on the back. The third monster lunged toward him, spear prodding, the claws of its spare hand outstretched and reaching.

Toby stepped in close, too close for the creature to effectively use its weapons. He brought his sword up once more. The cross-guard caught the beast in the throat.

“The blade of a sword isn’t the only part that can kill.”

Lord Marshall Vani’s words echoed through Toby’s head like a mantra.

He pivoted sharply and delivered a rising cut straight into the skeletal foe’s gut. As the monster folded, Toby drove the ruby pommel into its brittle skull, caving it in with a sickening crunch.

The sound of cracking stone made Toby’s head snap around. The creature that he’d blasted into the wall of the hall was stirring. Its bones, which Toby’s magic had fractured, looked to be re-knitting. The air around them coalesced with a vague gray energy.

Duke Diddle must have sketched in some sort of regenerative spell into these suckers, Toby thought. No time to waste then.

He drew on his magic again. He felt the weight of it inside him, like a coiled spring deep under his collarbone. He unleashed the magic in a powerful burst.

The reanimating creature was sent sprawling across the hall like an exceedingly ugly rag-doll. The impact of the spell, as it crashed into another wall, actually sent dust raining down from the vaulted ceiling.

Toby started forward to finish the fallen monstrosity off, but before he could do so, Luna darted in and rammed her impossibly sharp knife through the top of the thing’s skull. It twitched and burst apart into greasy strands of smoke.

That only left the third, handless monster. Toby saw that its hand was indeed knitting itself back together. That little trick became null and void as Toby’s blade came sweeping around and sheared away its head from its shoulders.

Toby stood panting in the middle of the now-empty hall. All of Duke Diddle’s creatures had been dealt with and had evaporated back into the ether.

“Are you okay?” Toby asked.

Luna nodded. She was looking at him strangely.

“What’s up?” Toby asked.

“It’s just… Well, you’re smiling,” the nymph said.

Toby realized that he was.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Luna asked.

“I… yeah, I guess. A little bit,” Toby admitted. “Is that wrong?”

“I don’t have the time to psychoanalyze you now,” Luna admitted, “but I admit it does present an intriguing case.”

Toby grinned. “Well, let’s hope we survive this so that you can delve into my psyche,” he said. “Come on.”

Hand in hand, Luna and Toby hurried through the hall. They were obliged to step over the grisly, torn-apart bodies of some of the King’s Guard. Blood was festooned across the walls. Bits of unidentifiable body parts and organs were littered about the place. Toby was barely sure that there was a kidney dangling by a piece of viscera from one of the torch brackets.

They moved through that hall and emerged suddenly out into sunlight.

“Where are we?” Luna asked.

Toby took a second to get his bearings. They were standing at one end of a long bridge that spanned the gap between one turret and the main keep. The bridge was actually more like a walkway. It was closed in but had wide windows set at regular intervals, which were open to the elements.

Toby took a few steps into that ornate walkway. Then he stuck his head out of one of the huge windows on impulse. He craned his neck around and looked up to the top of the main keep.

He thought he could hear the distant sound of cries from up there. The clash of metal on metal. Then there was a dull shriek, and a gray-feathered monster fell past the window. Toby only caught a brief glimpse of it. It looked like a haggard and pinched-faced woman with wings instead of arms and a great curved beak. Toby would have labeled it as a harpy.

Before the harpy could be dashed on the courtyard below, it burst apart into a greasy cloud of gray-silver smoke and drifted away.

“What in Eclipsia was that?” Luna asked.

“I reckon,” Toby said, “that that was today’s version of a breadcrumb.”

He set off across the walkway.

“What are you thinking, Toby?” Luna called from behind him as she hurried along to keep up.

“I’m thinking that King Balourd is a kind and good-hearted, unimaginative and simple man,” Toby said.

“Right,” Luna said.

Toby sheathed his sword to give it time to regenerate its incandescent heat ability. “As such, I believe that, if he’s alone or if he’s had his guardsmen cut down, he’ll instinctively head for higher ground.”

31

The main keep of Eclipsia Castle was a wondrous, towering structure in the very heart of the citadel.

The castle itself, as Toby had had reason to note to himself before, almost looked like an amalgamation of about half a dozen different castles that had been picked and chosen by the architect and stuck together over the course of many centuries.

The main keep, though, looked to have been built during a time when dragon raids might very well have been something that any savvy architect planned for. It was imposing and solid. Its massive iron doors rose about fifteen feet high. They were topped by some of the more ancient and grotesque sentient gargoyles, which kept a constant lookout.

However, Toby was not taking the front door now. He was making an entrance into the keep about two-thirds up its height. It was a path he had never taken before, but thankfully it proved to be a quick one to the pinnacle of the keep.

The stairwell that he and Luna ascended was lined with murder holes and arrow slits. Their footsteps echoed in the narrow, confined space. Toby’s breath started to come sharp and hard in his chest.

“I should really focus a little bit more on straight cardio,” he muttered to himself as he wiped sweat from his eyes.

In contrast to how he felt, Luna appeared to be totally unfazed by the exertion. While her face was free of perspiration and she looked just as put together as she always did, Toby could see that her countenance was rung with apprehension.

“Are you feeling okay?” Toby gasped as he leaned against the wall and took a quick, and what he hoped to be, surreptitious breather.

“Yes,” the nymph said. “I just was thinking about that happy little accident I killed back there.”

Toby waved his hand. He could see where this was going. “You’ve never had to cut down an enemy before,” he said.

The nymph shook her head.

“Don’t worry about it,” Toby said. “I know that sounds blasé, but really, don’t worry about it. The happy little accidents, they’re not flesh-and-blood enemies, are they?”

“I suppose not,” Luna said.

“I had to kill my first enemy when Anna and I first met Verity,” Toby said. He dashed more sweat from his face.

“And how did you find it?” Luna asked.

Toby looked out of the narrow arrow slit they were standing next to, down into the courtyard below. Members of the King’s Guard were battling what looked like giant spiders down there, keeping them at bay with their halberds while other soldiers hacked at the insectile monsters with great axes. Toby looked away with difficulty.

There’s nothing you can do right now.

“Yeah, I was obliged to kill a bunch of spriggans,” he said briskly. “And despite the fact that they were trying to kill Anna and me first, I still felt bad about it. You, though, you shouldn’t worry, Luna. These are something else, from some other realm. They’re not alive, not as we know it.”

Luna nodded. She looked like she was about to reply when a loud, sibilant hissing sound echoed down the winding staircase they were ascending.

Toby and Luna looked at one another.

“That didn’t sound good,” Toby said.

Luna shook her head.

Toby made a motion with his head. They continued to climb. They reached the top of the tower and emerged out onto the ramparts.

Toby froze.

“Whoa…”

The tableau that greeted him was something he couldn’t have cooked up had he been given an hour, a blank sheet of paper, and some sort of imagination-boosting drug.

The wide-open space at the top of the main keep had been expertly turned into a rooftop garden by some of the King and Queen’s highly skilled arborists and landscapers. There were a couple of magically powered fountains, some statues depicting mermaids in various stages of undress and different exotic poses, ornate little benches, and lots of what Toby would have grouped under the umbrella of ‘topiary’.

And there was a quartet of the king’s personal bodyguards at the top of the tower on the side of the rooftop garden closest to Toby and Luna, where they had emerged from a doorway. They were being kept extremely busy by a monstrous supernatural serpent.

“Fuck-a-doodle-do, would you look at that thing!” Toby breathed.

The reptilian monstrosity was easily the length of half a dozen horses. Its scales shimmered and shone like hammered obsidian plates. Its eyes, with their horizontal pupils, glowed like a couple of huge emeralds lit from within with a burning, awful fire. It coiled and lashed out at the four guards with lightning speed.

Even as Toby watched, one of the hapless soldiers was caught in the midriff by a tail that was little more than a blur through the air. With a dull crash of flesh on metal, he was sent spinning up into the air and over the side of the tower. He fell out of sight with a fading scream.

There were a few more bodies of other King’s Guards strewn around the place, where they had been killed by the enormous serpent. One looked to have been bitten in half. Only his armored legs were visible.

Toby was just about to make his way into that particular fray to try and save the three remaining men when Luna clutched at his sleeve.

“What is it?” Toby asked.

“Over there,” the nymph said, frantically pointing.

Toby saw a flash of black amidst all the green shrubbery.

“What was it?” he asked.

Luna didn’t say anything. Instead, the robed nymph made her way stealthily along a gravel path. Toby, not wanting anything to be before Luna, followed with his sword drawn. He had deactivated the inner burning power, but he could tell he would be able to if the need arose.

Toby and Luna made their way into the other half of the tower’s garden. This area was slightly more private. Toby imagined that it was where the King and Queen came to kick back and relax and, for a little while at least, dispense with their duties as monarchs.

Soon, Toby heard raised voices.

“That’s the King,” he whispered to Luna.

Luna nodded her agreement.

Toby paused for a minute to see if he could catch what King Balourd was saying and to whom. He couldn’t make out the words. To the old boy’s credit, though, he didn’t sound scared. He was speaking in his usual loud, jovial tones, as if he were speaking to an old acquaintance, rather than being caught up on a rooftop by an enemy.

As he and Luna drew closer, Toby checked and rechecked that he still held a connection with the recently tapped-into magic inside of him. It was like a reassuring gesture, the way that he might have checked and rechecked his pockets back in New York to make sure that he was carrying his wallet or his phone or something. He didn’t want to be caught out.

He could tell that they were reaching the culmination of something. Something big, something important, was about to happen.

As they drew closer, Toby could hear the King more clearly. He certainly wasn’t pleading. It sounded like he was rationalizing with someone, or at least trying to.

Thanks to all of the pop culture he had ingested over the years, Toby—had he had time to think about how that whole scenario might unfold—might have been inclined to think that there would have been some pithy back and forth. However, it sounded more like a conversation than anything else.

The old king might have presented an amiably idiotic demeanor to most people, but judging by the calmness in his voice, Toby suddenly was visited by the notion that King Balourd had balls of brass.

Still, Toby couldn’t hear precisely what the king was saying, but judging by the tone of his voice, he was trying to placate or calm someone.

To help someone.

He sounded like someone trying to talk someone else out of doing something foolish. This was crossed with the timbre of someone trying to cajole a flighty animal back into a cage or away from danger.

Toby peered around the side of an exquisitely trimmed box hedge and went rigid in astonishment.

King Balourd was sitting on the ground. There was a fallen chair nearby, next to a table on which was set a couple of glasses and a crystal jug filled with what looked like wine. The portly king didn’t look to have been injured. Toby would have wagered that he’d simply been taken by surprise and fallen out of his chair. He was, after all, a man with his love for wine, and the fact that King Balourd was about as athletic and dexterous as a 1950s refrigerator was no real surprise.

Standing over King Balourd, looking down at the monarch of Eclipsia, was none other than Vexxx.

Toby couldn’t have mistaken the man from a mile away. The pale skin, the bald head, the strange, almost peripherally fashionable punk rocker robes of fusty black, and the glittering golden wire-rimmed spectacles gave him a thoroughly unique look. He had his hand raised. A nimbus of crackling blue energy played across his fingers as he stood over the king. He looked a hair’s breadth away from blasting King Balourd into the past tense.

And yet, Toby noted, he hadn’t done it.

Was the king managing to postpone his death moment by moment? Or was…

Realization swept through Toby.

Vexxx is hesitating.

He had, thanks to all of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents that were roaming the castle, not to mention the enormous serpent still fighting with the King’s bodyguard on the other side of the tower, the king at his mercy. He could destroy the monarch in the blink of an eye. And yet he hadn’t done it.

I knew the bizarre son of a bitch wasn’t totally sold on the whole diabolical evil genius routine that Duke Diddle was peddling, Toby thought.

Still, that being as it may, there was no knowing whether or not the king might say something that might tip Vexxx over the edge.

“Stay here,” Toby whispered to Luna before she could argue.

Toby stepped out from behind the bush and charged across the open gravel space that divided himself and the other two men.

Vexxx’s head snapped around. In the fleeting instant before his features contorted into surprise at seeing Toby coming towards him, Toby saw that Vexxx’s hand had drooped. If Toby had had to put money on it—had to stake his life on it even—he would have been willing to bet that Vexxx wouldn’t have harmed the monarch.

Toby half considered yelling at King Balourd to get up and run, but then he thought better of it. It would be a waste of breath. The monarch of Eclipsia only moved in a fashion that could be considered quick when he was heading to his banquet table. The rest of the time, you could practically tie the man’s boot laces while he was walking, he was so slow.

Toby raised his hand, an instinctive burst of magical energy emanating from the hand that wasn’t holding a sword.

Vexxx made a swiping, negating motion in the air. The magic that Toby had thrown at him was deflected and cracked the stone rampart he was standing beside. Vexxx flicked his hands in return at Toby.

Toby, up to that point, had not used his magic in any defensive capacity. This time, though, he didn’t have time to stop and think about it. He raised his hands as if he were holding a physical barrier. He pictured Vexxx’s spell deflecting around that invisible shield.

To his amazement, the burst of golden magic that Vexxx flung at him parted around his upraised hand. The hedges behind Toby were stripped of their leaves as the concussive blast shredded through them. Toby heard a soft cry from behind the bushes. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Luna had been thrown across the gravel path. She looked to be fine, if a little windswept.

Toby launched himself forward and fired more magic from his hands. He pictured a vortex of energy spiraling towards Vexxx. This too was deflected.

With each spell he flung, Toby pictured something different. Darts forming, a giant hand whacking the other man sideways, a cannonball of magic firing straight at the man’s skinny chest.

Suddenly, before he knew it, he was embroiled in a magical duel with Vexxx. The two of them fought across the top of the tower. Blocks of masonry went flying, statues exploded. Ornamental shrubbery was ripped up from the roots and sent spinning into the air. Fragments of stone, bits of bark, and sharp twigs scythed around Toby in a miniature whirlwind. He felt blood running down the side of his face where a jagged piece of gravel had sliced him like a stray piece of shrapnel.

With one last, almost respectful, look at Toby, Vexxx stepped up onto the rampart and threw himself off the tower and into the void.

Toby hurried towards the tower wall and looked over. Vexxx was gliding toward the courtyard below like a giant bat.

“Oh, fuck that!” Toby said aloud. He turned away from the edge of the tower. “I’m not going to let him just fuck off again. He has to answer for what he’s done, for his role in all this shit!”

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Toby turned with the sword in his hand, only to find King Balourd, rosy-cheeked and sparkling-eyed, standing behind him.

“I wouldn’t worry on Vexxx’s account, old boy,” the king said.

“You wouldn’t?” Toby asked.

“No. I think that he will come around to our way of thinking before long. I feel as if Duke Diddle may very well have just lost his chief acolyte.”

There was a surety in the king’s voice and a steadiness in his eye that Toby had rarely seen before.

“Alright, Your Majesty,” Toby said, “but I’m still going down there.”

There was a sudden loud hissing sound, like a boiler on a sinking steamer making contact with the frigid ocean. A small sapling flipped end over end overhead and off the edge of the tower.

“But first, I’ve got to take care of a snake,” Toby said.

32

Toby set aside this interesting revelation for the time being. That was hard for him. The thought of Vexxx, Duke Diddle’s right-hand man, being afflicted by a sudden case of conscience, was an intriguing one. It opened up some very interesting lines of thought. No doubt, Vexxx, if he did come over to their side, could be a veritable fount of insider information.

Toby ran past Luna. She had some blood staining the elbows and knees of her robes, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

“Did you get a couple of vials of health potion from Verity before we split up?” Toby asked.

“Yes, but I’m fine,” Luna assured him.

“Go and protect the king, then. He’s over there,” Toby said.

Luna nodded. “What about you?”

“I’m going to do a little bit of pest control,” Toby said grimly.

The enormous serpent had finished with two of the other King’s Guard. The last man was injured. He had one arm held protectively to his chest, blood staining his tabard.

“Go and protect the king,” Toby yelled at the man in a voice that brooked no argument. “He’s on the far side of the tower. Go and do your duty. I’ll deal with this fucker.”

The injured soldier, who Toby saw now was of the elvish persuasion, nodded and backed away. He was hollow-eyed, and Toby wondered for a few moments whether he would make it. It looked like he’d lost a lot of blood.

As Toby approached the massive eldritch serpent, he heard the voice of Anna in his ear. She was using the crow pendant to check in with him and Luna. Toby did not answer. His focus was entirely on the mammoth reptile. Vaguely, he heard Luna reply that they were fine. That they had found King Balourd. Anna replied that she, Frank and Verity were also still in one piece.

Good, Toby thought. That’s good.

Any concern about anything else apart from the foe in front of him was soon driven out of his mind, however. The great, shimmering obsidian reptile turned its attention on him. It coiled in on itself and then lashed out at Toby with lightning speed. Toby barely had time to dodge aside. He rolled across the ground, narrowly avoiding the serpent’s next strike, too.

Fangs dripping with putrid yellow venom gouged into the stone of the tower, leaving two deep, bubbling grooves in the stonework. Toby shifted automatically into a defensive swordsman stance. He activated the incandescent heat of his enchanted blade as he waited for his opening.

When the great serpent struck forward again, Toby sidestepped and swung his blade around in an arc of quicksilver. It cut deep into the supernatural beast’s flank. Obsidian scales went pinging away across the rooftop. They burst into little puffs of ethereal gray smoke and disappeared.

The creature hissed with fury and sent a spraying shower of yellow globules from its mouth. Toby raised his hand. An umbrella of defensive magic formed above him. The drops of poison sizzled and smoked as they came into contact with the shivering, transparent barrier.

The serpent reared up again, its massive head the size of a family dining table towering above him. Set against the paling sky, in which the growing dawn was evident, it looked like a great black wedge of doom ready to strike.

Toby reached once more for his magic. This time, he didn’t hold back. He wasn’t really one who had ever been prone to animal cruelty, but he thought in this instance, it was acceptable.

As the serpent raised itself to its full striking height and prepared to launch itself down with its great fangs extended, Toby sent a focused blast of concussive energy directly into the serpent’s muscular chest. The force of the spell knocked the creature off balance. It tottered, swayed sideways, and crashed into the battlements of the tower behind with enough force to shatter the stonework.

Before it could recover, Toby sprinted towards his foe. Struck by sudden inspiration, he pictured steps forming in the air. He ran up into the air, sprinting up a staircase of transparent shimmering magic, which materialized conveniently in front of him. He leapt from the top of the staircase, his sword raised above his head and clutched in both hands.

The active innate magic, which had turned the sword into a medieval lightsaber, flared as Toby brought his weapon down. It sheared through scales, skin, muscle, and bone. The blade went through the great neck with almost offensive ease.

Toby landed hard on the ground, stumbled, fell, and rolled. It was a good thing he did, really. The huge serpentine head thumped onto the stonework a moment later, right where he would have been, the fangs snapping as they contacted the stone, and yellow toxin leaking out.

The serpent’s body thrashed violently for a moment and then went abruptly still. Just as the other enemies he had faced had done, the great creature’s form unraveled and unknitted. Within a few moments, it was no more than smoke on the wind, and then nothing.

Toby got to his feet. He looked down at his sword; the black blood was smoking on the blade. As he had seen badass samurai do, Toby gave his sword a flick, hoping to rid it of the blood that covered it. Rather than spray onto the ground, all he managed to do was cover his trouser leg in black, smelly blood.

“Ah, fuck,” he said under his breath.

Toby was breathing hard from exertion and the adrenaline that seemed to have taken the place of every drop of blood in his body. He felt more alive than he could ever remember feeling. He had just faced down and beheaded a giant snake.

“Don’t do that every day,” Toby said to himself. He could practically feel how dilated his pupils were. His hand was shaking. He balled it into a tight fist.

“It’s not over yet,” he whispered. That realization washed over him, dousing the fire a little inside of him. He ran towards the tower door.

“Toby, where are you going?” Luna called.

“I’m going down to help finish this,” Toby said.

“What about me? What shall I do?” Luna asked.

“Look after the king. King Balourd, are you alright?”

“Never better, dear boy, never better,” the king said. He glanced over at the table he had been sitting at, presumably before Vexxx had come and disturbed him. “And look at that, there’s still wine in the jug,” he said. “Not all doom and gloom, what!”

He motioned to the injured guard and to Luna.

“The pair of you, let’s have a drink. I’ve only got two glasses, I’m afraid. The Queen was meant to meet me here, but… “

The king suddenly trailed off. His face became ashen.

“If Vexxx came for me,” he said softly, “and the Queen’s not here, then…”

Toby came to the same conclusion. “You think Duke Diddle’s gone looking for the Queen?”

The king didn’t reply, but his face was answer enough.

“Luna, stay here and see if you can do anything for that injured soldier,” Toby said, indicating the elf. “Your Majesty, I’ll go and find the Queen, I promise.”

“But, lad,” King Balourd said, “if Duke Diddle himself has gone looking for Queen Lascivo… He knows how cunning, ruthless, and intelligent she is. There is only one way he will be looking to deal with my dear wife.”

“If he’s with her, I’ll deal with him,” Toby said firmly, and he hurried for the door.

* * *

Toby burst out into the large, formerly quite nice-looking courtyard that sat between four of Eclipsia Castle’s main towers. His lungs were burning. His sword was in his hand. He looked around in dismay.

The once grand expanse of cobblestones around him had become a wasteland of destruction. The bodies of Eclipsian soldiers, both veterans and freshly trained recruits, were scattered around like discarded toys. The cobblestones were slick with blood and gore. A column of smoke rose from behind a stretch of wall that looked like it had been broken in by some larger version of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents. The cries of the wounded, the panicking, and the dying mixed with the sporadic smashing clash of steel on steel and the bellow of shrieking monsters.

And there, in the center of it all, stood a figure that could only be that of Duke Diddle.

For some reason, Toby hadn’t expected to first clap eyes on the villain in such an abrupt and ordinary way. He had felt, when he had occasionally pondered about it, like there would be some kind of build-up towards his first sighting of the man. His reputation preceded him like a shadow, and so Toby had expected to catch glimpses of him, whispers.

And yet, there he was—and he looked to be just a man.

And a rather eccentric and surprisingly old prune, at that.

He was clothed in black robes, just as Vexxx had been. These, though, were more the sorts of robes that Toby might have expected an arch-villain type to be attired in. There was a swirling quality to them, and he had a high collar in the traditional manner of the likes of Dracula.

“Jackass,” Toby muttered derisively. “At least Vexxx has a little of his own flair.”

Toby couldn’t make out the face of the Duke from where he had emerged from the tower, but he saw that the man had bright, bright orange hair, which wreathed his head like flaming highlighter-orange dandelion fur.

It’s a unique look, Toby thought to himself, but can hardly help with trying to keep a low profile. The motherfucker looks like a lit match. Or an exploding glow-stick.

Duke Diddle was tall. He would have been taller, but he had a severe stoop to his aged shoulders. Somehow, though, this only seemed to enhance his imperious demeanor. He was flanked by a trio of grotesque, hulking creatures with long, sapient arms that dragged along behind them and were tipped with a single long claw.

Some kind of troll? Toby thought, looking beyond Duke Diddle. He saw that there was a ragged formation of soldiers desperately trying to protect Queen Lascivo, who stood in their midst. Toby felt a thrill of pride go through him. The Queen was not cowering. The sexy older woman was holding a gleaming sword in her hand.

As he watched, Toby saw Queen Lascivo raise her hands and flip Duke Diddle the bird. She yelled something, but her words were lost in the din of battle all around.

Toby saw Duke Diddle raise his hand in answer. His fingers were curled into claws. The air around his hand crackled with barely suppressed magic. A bolt of green energy arced towards the soldiers. They raised their shields, and the magic bounced and ricocheted off them. One man was too late. He was blown off his feet, a ragged, smoking hole in his chest.

“Diddle!” Toby’s voice rang out, cutting through the nearby chaos. Even as he shouted the name, his brain couldn’t help but note that it was pretty goddamn ridiculous.

Duke Diddle paused in a follow-up attack. He turned. Toby saw that the man wasn’t a monster, as he had expected. He was just…  Just a man.

His eyes were pale and glittered with malice and an acute intelligence. He wore a smile on his face, like he was out enjoying a bit of sport rather than engrossed in a furious battle with a host of soldiers. That smile widened cruelly as his eyes fastened on Toby. The energy spell that ran around and across his fingers and hand dissipated. He chuckled with cold amusement, and somehow the sound reached Toby despite all the madness taking place around them.

“Ah!” Duke Diddle drawled, his voice oily with condescension. “Ah, if it isn’t my nephew! Oh, look at you. You’re just like Vexxx described.” He wagged his long finger reproachfully at Toby. “I knew you’d come.”

With a disdainful flick of his wrist, Diddle urged the three hulking creatures that surrounded him toward Toby.

Toby, filled with a fire of righteous anger, stepped out to meet the trolls head-on. His sword moved and flashed in precise arcs. One beast swiped at him, but Toby ducked and rolled under its attack. He rose, thrust out his burning blade, and caught the creature in the belly. As it crumpled, he twisted the sword and spilled its steaming, rank, midnight-black innards.

Another swung its single-clawed arm around at Toby like a club. Toby’s sword came up and sheared the limb off at the elbow. He raised his hand, and a refined tendril of magic spiked out from his palm, punching clean through the beast’s chest. The troll’s jaw dropped in dim-witted confusion.

It did not stop there, though, the magic. Toby was fast realizing that magic was limited only by the wielder’s imagination. As such, he kept a hold of that tendril that had just skewered Duke Diddle’s minion and had it twist around in an arc, punching through the back of the neck of the third monster. With a gurgle, the two dead happy little accidents fell to the ground.

Toby rolled his shoulders. The Duke was watching him. His head was slightly tilted to the side, his bright orange hair waving about his head like flame. He appraised Toby as he might upon finding a rare insect in his salad.

“You do fight well, I’ll give you that,” Duke Diddle said, his voice holding an almost admiring note. “Better than I expected, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, not with the report that Vexxx gave me on you. Where is Vexxx, by the way?”

Toby said nothing.

“I sent him to deal with that great oaf, King Balourd,” Duke Diddle went on.

Still, Toby said nothing, but the Duke must have caught something in his gaze.

“Ah, so you thwarted him, did you?” the Duke said. He raised a pale eyebrow. “I must say, I didn’t see that coming. I have never known Vexxx to fail twice in a row. How did you manage it?”

“Does it matter?” Toby retorted.

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Duke Diddle said. He pursed his lips. “A pity. He has such potential that young man, but it seems his star is on the wane. You really are rather remarkable yourself, young man. Still, like I say, I shouldn’t find it totally astonishing. We do share blood, after all.”

Toby’s knuckles popped as his grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. “I’m nothing like you, Diddle,” he said.

“Oh, that might be the case,” Duke Diddle said, waving his hand, “but that doesn’t change the fact that we do share blood, young fellow.”

Toby took a step toward the older man. “Shall we just get on with this?” he said. “I’m nothing like you, and I’m going to prove it.”

Diddle smiled wider and wider. He tipped back his head and let out a wheezing laugh. When he looked back at Toby, his eyes were gleaming with cold amusement.

“You don’t think so, nephew?” he said. “Let’s find out.”

Without warning, Diddle flicked a casual finger. A shard of what looked like glass formed out of nothing in the air. It shot toward Toby. He barely managed to deflect the enormous occult shard with his sword, shattering it into a thousand pieces. By the time he had refocused on Diddle, Diddle was moving toward him with unnatural speed for a man who looked like he had been getting on when the printing press had been the height of innovation.

Duke Diddle drew a blade of his own out of nowhere. It was a slender, black-edged weapon that seemed to vibrate with potent magic. Toby met the Duke’s opening blow. Their swords clashed together. Purple sparks erupted. The sound of the two weapons meeting was sharp and metallic and seemed to split the air even amidst all the chaos in the courtyard.

Toby parried a vicious downward strike. The force of the blow almost sent him to his knees. He pivoted, countering with a quick thrust. Diddle sidestepped easily. His movements were incredibly fluid, captivatingly graceful. He looked like the dodge should have popped his kneecaps clean off, but the man was still smiling.

Again, their blades met, and again, purple sparks flew. This time Toby pressed forward. He struck once, twice, thrice with a precision and speed that Lord Marshal Vani would have been proud of. However, every attack he made, Diddle blocked with almost contemptuous ease.

“Ah, nephew, but your style of combat reminds me of your dear mother,” Duke Diddle said, as he casually swatted away another of Toby’s strikes and forced Toby back a step. “She’s just as stubborn as you are, just as keen to throw herself without forethought into whatever adventure or scenario presents itself to her.”

He chuckled to himself as he deflected another of Toby’s ripostes. He slashed at Toby lazily. His sword blade scored the ground and left a molten streak, as if it were made of plasma rather than steel.

Maybe it is, Toby thought.

“Always running off, exploring places she shouldn’t have been, your mother,” Diddle went on. “You know, it was really only a matter of time before she stepped through into another reality altogether.”

Duke Diddle’s dark blade snaked out quick as a viper’s tongue. Toby actually had to conjure a magical shield to deflect the blow and stop the Duke from taking off his sword arm at the shoulder. He staggered back. Duke Diddle watched him out of his cool, glittering eyes. There was a wetness to those eyes, and Toby saw an insatiable hunger in them. Though what that hunger was based around, he wasn’t sure.

“It was a crime, really,” Duke Diddle said, “a witch as talented as her, wasting her life with a man from another, weaker, more mundane world. A man of no talent.”

Toby gritted his teeth. He let loose with a flurry of blows, twisting and turning and spinning, hacking high and hacking low as he sought to turn Duke Diddle into dog food.

“You’re speaking of my father, you bastard,” he said.

“Yes, I know. Was that not clear?” Duke Diddle replied.

Toby’s anger flared again. He lashed out with a whipcord of magic. Duke Diddle absorbed it and flung it back at him so that Toby felt a line of fire cut across his thighs. He gasped, but held his ground. He stabbed with his sword towards the center of the Duke’s thin, concave chest. Diddle deflected the blow again, his blade a blur. With a twist of his wrist, Duke Diddle disarmed Toby; his sword went skittering across the cobblestones.

Toby readied himself, feeling the magic well inside of him. Instead of pressing his advantage, though, Duke Diddle stepped back. He chuckled again and ran his free hand through his flyaway orange hair.

“Oh, dear me,” he said. “Is that really all you’ve got?” A mocking edge had come into the smile on his face. “I expected a little more than that, if I’m honest, nephew.”

Toby snarled wordlessly. “I’m not beaten yet, you old fuck,” he said.

He reached inside of himself, felt the latent hum of the magic. He made a show of raising his hand as if he was calling down some higher power from the heavens. Duke Diddle raised an eyebrow.

Toby’s other hand came up from his side in a small pistol gesture, like he was firing from the hip. A wave of kinetic energy blasted from his outthrust finger. It hit the Duke square in the chest, even as the other man was gazing at Toby’s upraised arm.

The Duke was sent skidding backward across the courtyard. He didn’t fall over, but his boot heels sent up trails of smoke as the friction left marks across the stone. Cobblestones burst under his feet like bubbles.

To Toby’s consternation, Duke Diddle was laughing when he came to a halt. “Ah, yes, that’s more like it, nephew! That’s more like it! I see you’re learning to control your power far faster than I might have expected.” He paused, then added, “But then again, your mother was really quite talented, as I said before.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby could see that, now that Duke Diddle’s attention was focused entirely on him, Queen Lascivo’s household guard was managing to cut their way back towards the main keep through Duke Diddle’s amalgamation of different happy little accidents. Toby knew that the very least he could do was keep the Duke’s attention on him so that the Queen could make it to safety. What happened after that? Well, they would all see.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Toby said, mustering a nonchalance that he didn’t really feel. “I understand that all this mentioning of you and me being related and magic being somewhat the family business all of a sudden, is quite distracting. But if all this bullshit was true, why wouldn’t my mother just have told me herself? If she was a witch like you say she is?”

Diddle raised an eyebrow. “An astute question, Toby Adams,” he said. “You may have some of our family’s prodigious brains after all, even if your talent is a little bit lacking.”

Toby didn’t rise to the bait.

“I suppose, Toby, that anything I say will be inconsequential and not quite up to the mark,” Duke Diddle said. “So, why don’t you ask your mother yourself?”

Toby’s heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean?” he said. “I can’t ask her myself, dipshit. She’s not here.”

Duke Diddle’s gaze lingered on Toby for a long, long moment. Then, with a slow, deliberate theatrical movement, he turned in place and looked around at his minions. They were being slaughtered in droves now. Queen Lascivo was almost back to the keep.

“What do I mean?” Diddle said. “What do you think I mean, Toby?”

Toby didn’t answer. He had been slowly moving sideways until he’d reached his sword. Quickly, he snatched it up and held it out. Duke Diddle cocked his head to one side and tutted.

“I think we’re done here,” he said, gazing around. “A shame I couldn’t make the most of my surprise—of the troops I gathered in the woods and unleashed on various points of the city. A shame I couldn’t kill that whore, Lascivo. Still,” he said, regaining his chummy demeanor, “it’s not all bad. I’m sure I’ve caused enough mess to be dealt with for a while.”

Toby started toward the Duke, even as he did so, even as he was intent and picturing what he was going to do to the old bent man when he got to him. The Duke began to fade from view. It was almost as if he was fraying at the edges.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Toby yelled.

“Oh, I must retire now, I’m afraid,” Duke Diddle said. “I’ve got a lot to get ready. It takes a deal of planning.”

“What does? A war?” Toby asked.

“Yes, war,” Duke Diddle said. He smiled evilly again and then bowed a mocking bow. “But what I’m more concerned with making sure I have planned to perfection is our family reunion, Toby.”

Toby found that he was jogging toward Diddle. “What do you mean? What do you—”

The Duke laughed. It was one of those high-pitched numbers; a sound that ran its finger nails along the insides of the ear canals and sent shivers through the molars.

Maniacal is how Toby probably would have described it given the circumstances.

“But first, to see about an old friend dropping in…”

Toby’s blood went cold as creek water.

“What…?”

But, annoyingly and unstoppably, Duke Diddle had vanished.

The last thing to fade from sight was the man’s wide, cruel, cold, taunting smile.

Despite its ephemeral look, Toby tried a swing at it all the same, without success.

A queer, heavy silence had fallen over the inner courtyard. Where, only a few minutes before, the clash of weapons, the crash of armor, the shriek of men and monsters, and the hiss of arrows had been all there was to hear, now there was nothing but—

Queen Lascivo let out a cry of shock from where she still stood in the midst of her guards. Toby looked over, his sword coming up. He saw at once that the Queen’s attention was turned upwards. The guards around her were gasping, yelling, calling out.

Toby followed all of their gazes, craning his head upwards.

The unmistakable form of the King was plummeting from the top of the main keep. His plump arms and legs were extended out so that he looked like some bizarrely regal starfish. His ermine robes whipped around his body as he fell.

Toby was moving before he even had time to question whether or not he might be able to help.

“Move it!” he bellowed as he charged towards a group of stricken soldiers.

The men and women didn’t appear to hear him. They just continued to stare dumbly at the freefalling monarch. With a grunt of frustrated desperation, Toby made a sweeping gesture, and the four soldiers were bowled over sideways by an unrefined burst of kinetic magic. Toby barely heard their shocked cries of outrage as he sprinted through where they’d just been standing.

Toby sprinted across the courtyard. Then, heedless of his own body, he slid on his knees across the cobblestones. Luckily, his armored greaves of his recently acquired ranger-style garb took the brunt of the damage. Leaning back, he held his arms up above his head. To an onlooker he would have looked like either the most loyal, nuts, or massively egotistical man in the world: thinking that he was capable of somehow catching King Balourd with his bare hands.

But I have more than my bare hands.

Toby, frowning with confrontation and exertion, formed a concave half-bubble of semi-solid air under the falling monarch, who was heading directly for Toby.

If this doesn’t work at least my biographers will be able to say I was the first man to ever be killed by a falling king…

And he would be killed if the magic failed. There was no doubt about it. Three-hundred pounds was three-hundred pounds. Whether or not it took the form of a cast iron bath tub, a motor bike, or a member of a royal family, having that kind of weight land on him after it had taken a nosedive off the top of a tower would be terminal to Toby. Hitting the ground at terminal velocity and decelerating over about 0.1 seconds, King Balourd would exert a force of around 72,121 Newtons or, roughly, 16,220 pounds of force at the moment of impact.

Toby felt the strain of the magic he had conjured pressing on him as King Balourd fell. Just at the point of no-return, where Toby became aware that it was too late for him to move even if had wanted to, the King’s fall suddenly slowed.

With sweat streaming down his face, and relief flooding him, Toby managed to guide the King of Eclipsia safely to the ground next to him.

Breathing hard, Toby looked down into the King’s face and started to ask if the big man was okay.

His words died on his tongue. He sat staring mutely for a long, long moment as the Queen and her guards rushed towards them.

As the crowd swept in, Toby heard Anna’s voice sound in his ear thanks to the magic of the crow pendant around his neck.

“Toby? Luna? Can you hear me?”

Toby didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer.

“Toby? Luna?” Anna said again.

“I’m… I’m here…” Luna replied. Her voice sounded cracked and groggy. “I… I don’t know what happened. I was with the King and then… The guard is dead… Where’s His Majesty?”

“We have Vexxx! I repeat we have Vexxx! We have him under guard!” Verity chimed in suddenly.

“Toby? Toby, are you there? Did you hear? We have Vexxx! Are you okay, Tobes?”

Somehow, Toby found his voice.

“I’m okay,” he said. “But the King is dead.”

Epilogue

“I can’t believe you got a promotion.”

“I’m not sure if I’d call it a promotion,” Toby said.

“What would you call it then?”

“I don’t know,” Toby said, “but a promotion sounds a little formal, a little corporate, don’t you think?”

“Well, I mean, you’ve definitely gone up in the world, Tobes.”

Toby turned away from the view over Stagbreach. He, Anna, Verity and Luna were standing atop one of Eclipsia Castle’s curtain walls. The view of the town that their vantage point afforded them was magnificent. However, Toby was not focusing on the sun-drenched, tiled rooftops that were spread out before him. His eye was drawn to the scars in the town, places where Duke Diddled’s minions had made an egress into Eclipsia’s capital and burned buildings, or else knocked them down.

“I guess,” Toby said in a subdued, non-committed voice.

“Oh, come on, Tobes. Don’t be all modest and shit,” Anna said, nudging Toby with her elbow. “That’s not the New Yorker way.”

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Coombes.”

“What? We’re from New York, Tobes.”

“You don’t get that reference?”

“What reference?”

Toby shook his head. “It’s a classic.”

“What is a classic?” Anna asked.

“You know, for someone so smart you really can be woefully untutored in the important things, Anna.”

“Takes one to know one,” Anna replied.

Toby chuckled.

“What did the poor old king want to name you again, smart ass?” Anna said after a few moments.

“His royal champion,” Toby said, making sure to avoid Anna’s eye. “Queen Lascivo wanted to honor the old boy’s final decrees, and so she’s named me as such in his honor.”

“Ooh la la,” Anna said. “Fancy. That’ll look good on your office door.”

“I don’t have an office.”

“Well, maybe their Majesty’s royal champion can get one as a perk of the job?”

“I’m not sure what I’d do in an office,” Toby said.

“I can think of one thing we could use the desk for,” Anna said, taking a step and resting our head on Toby’s shoulder.

Toby laughed and put his arm around his best friend. “That mind of yours,” he said. “Dirtier than a day-three festival toilet seat.”

“And proud of it,” Anna said, looping her arm around Toby’s waist.

They stood there for a few moments, just looking out at Stagbreach. The sky was clear and blue.

It was somewhat of a contrast, that wonderful weather, what with the general mood that had permeated the township in the days after Duke Diddle’s blatant attack. Things were settling down a bit now. The mood had turned, as collective moods often did. Now people were feeling the pride at what they had done, rather than the sting of the hurt at the things they’d lost in the fight. They were counting the confrontation as a victory for the fallen King, the newly solo Queen, and their loyal, brave subjects.

The fallen King…

It was still hard for Toby to believe.

“Hey,” Anna said gently.

Toby stirred. “Hm?”

“It wasn’t your fault. The King. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know.”

“That goddamn Diddlehead went up to the top of the keep, knocked the stuffing out of Luna, killed that injured guard with a blast of magic, and then knifed the King before chucking him off the edge for a laugh. There was nothing you could do.”

“I know, but still…”

Anna squeezed his arm.

Toby decided to change the subject. They had hashed it out enough as it was.

“Hey, I wasn’t the only one who was rewarded and got some recognition out of this whole thing,” Toby said. “You were the one, along with Verity and, dare I say it, Frank, who brought in Vexxx.”

“Yeah,” Anna said, “but I’d hardly call it bringing him in. It was hardly the stuff of a good episode of Cops. We just found him in the street, wandering around and muttering kind of crazily to himself.”

“How’s he doing?” Toby asked. “Have you gone to see him in the dungeons?”

“I have,” Verity said.

“And?” Toby asked.

“I couldn’t get much out of him. He’s held in a highly secure, anti-thaumaturgical cell,” Verity said.

“Meaning that he can’t use magic in it and he can’t be busted out of it with magic either. Is that right?” Toby asked.

“That’s right,” Verity said.

“Pretty amazing that old King Balourd managed to talk the wily bastard around, huh?” Anna said.

“Yeah… and nah,” Toby said.

“I had a New Zealander friend at work who used to say, ‘Yeah, nah,’“ Anna said. “Never figured out exactly how it translated to American English.”

“I don’t know how Kiwis use it,” Toby said, “but I just mean that although Balourd might have come across as being a bit of a dumbass, I think he was a lot shrewder than a lot of people gave him credit for. And he was also one of the most genuine people I think I ever met. That’s quite unnerving and unbalancing, especially for a monarch or government official.”

Anna snorted. “I can’t even imagine that,” she said.

“I think Vexxx, when he was standing over him, about to kill him at Duke Diddle’s orders, really came to understand that what he was doing was pretty fucked up,” Toby said. “King Balourd might not have been the best at running Eclipsia, but he didn’t take the position for granted. He did his best, even if sometimes his best was pretty short of the mark, because he loved this place. He genuinely loved it and the people who call it home.”

“That’s true. That’s something I have noted with the people here,” Luna said. “It’s very strange. I forgot how large groups of sentient beings can be so unpredictable and contrary in their views and beliefs. They openly mocked the King and talked of him with derision, but they would also defend him to the death against the likes of Duke Diddle’s minions.”

“Yeah, people are just pretty fucking nuts, aren’t they?” Toby said, stretching as he leaned against the parapet.

“You’re telling me,” Frank said. The little imp came to drift down onto Toby’s shoulder. “Honestly, however many centuries I’ve been at this game and still, none of you make any sense to me.”

“I thought you were always banging on about how damn predictable we are,” Toby said.

“Yeah, you’re predictable in your unpredictability,” Frank said. “It’s bloody annoying.”

“Verity tells me that you acquitted yourself pretty well, Frank. You looked after her and Anna,” Toby said.

Frank’s face was fairly impassive. He looked at Toby out of his little demonic silver eyes. “Hey, what can I say?” he said with faux nonchalance. “I like these two. I’ve got some pretty high hopes that their spirits, whilst fairly pure at the moment, have some promise as to being corruptible. Especially the blonde.”

Verity snorted. “If you’re looking to corrupt me, you’re about five years too late, my little pointy-tailed friend,” she said in that incongruously feminine and well-to-do tone of hers.

“Yeah, you’re full of hot air, Frank,” Toby said with a grin.

“Of course I’m full of hot air. Sulfur and methane mostly—”

“I’d believe the methane thing,” Toby heard Verity murmur to herself.

“—I’m a djinn, one of the foul-folk from the Below-Below, a being of—.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Toby said. “You know what I mean.” He prodded the imp in the chest. “You better watch out, Frank. I think there might be a heart of gold nestling in that withered bosom.”

“I don’t have a bosom,” Frank said. “That’s what women—”

“I was speaking poetically, lyrically,” Toby said.

“Oh, right,” Frank said. “I could never stand poets. Never got why all the females swoon for ‘em like they do. Just because they grow their hair out and wear those oversized shirts that they can’t seem to figure how to button up. Still, heart of gold, my ass.”

At that moment, the bell towers throughout Stagbreach started to chime.

“That’s the tolling of the second bell,” Anna said. “We should go down to the portcullis. The Queen said that she’ll be addressing the armed forces and the citizenry from the front of the castle before the funeral procession gets underway.”

“You’re right,” Toby said.

He and his friends made their way along the wall and down into the courtyard behind it. They joined a train of soldiers, serving folk, and higher-ranking officials of the king and queen’s household. They wound their way out into the battle-scarred courtyard and then on to the main gate at the front of the castle.

Making their way through with difficulty, Toby saw that beyond the portcullis, what looked to be most of the town of Stagbreach was gathered. Toby picked out their old friend, Oswald Parson, standing near the front of the crowd. He nudged Anna and nodded in Oswald’s direction. Anna’s face lit up. Along with Luna, Verity, and Frank, they made their way through the throng until they stood by the silver-haired publican.

“How’s it going, Oswald?” Toby said.

“Ah, Mr. Adams. Miss Coombes,” Oswald said.

Behind him, Bellingham nodded in greeting.

“You’re still alive, then?” Oswald said.

“We are,” Toby said. “As are you.”

“Aye, that I am,” Oswald said. “Got myself a shiner during the fight, though.” He proudly pointed to a decent black eye.

“I did see that,” Toby said. “I thought it might be something you picked up in the pub.”

“Nah, everyone who comes into the Toby Jug knows that I don’t put up with anything like that,” Oswald said.

“The Toby Jug’s still standing, then?” Anna asked.

“Aye, it is. For better or worse,” Oswald said.

“Do any of you have any idea what this announcement is about?” Bellingham asked.

Toby shook his head. “We’re in the dark as much as you are,” he said.

“Even though you’re the royal champion now, I hear,” Bellingham said with a wry smile.

“Yeah, apparently that means I don’t get an office and I don’t get let in on what the King—or just the Queen now, I suppose—are up to before everyone else,” Toby said.

“I told him it was a pretty poor promotion,” Anna said to Bellingham.

“It’s not a promotion,” Toby said.

“Is it true that they’ve got Vexxx locked up in that dungeon up at the palace?” Oswald asked.

“It is,” Verity said, tucking a stray lock of bright blonde hair behind their ear. “Anna and I brought him in.”

“So he’s turned?” Oswald asked.

“That remains to be seen for definite,” Anna said diplomatically.

“Well, I hope once they get whatever he knows out of the bastard, they take him straight to the headsman’s block,” Parson said vehemently.

Toby didn’t comment on this. He didn’t want to rile anyone up by suggesting that Duke Diddle’s right-hand man was not as bad as he seemed and maybe deserved a second chance. There was something about the odd, cue ball-headed, golden-spectacle-wearing bastard that made Toby think that he was, under all that bureaucratic coldness, a broken man.

Maybe a little bit of time in the Queen’s dungeons will help him piece himself back together in the right order.

Their conversation was broken into at that point by the ear-splitting blare of the infamous recorder-bearing heralds.

“None of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents managed to put pay to any of them, then,” Oswald muttered as he waggled a finger into his ear.

Queen Lascivo, clad all in deep, rich sable silk, made her way through the huge double doors that fronted Eclipsia Castle and walked down the wide steps. She came to a halt in front of the gathered crowd.

For once, the Queen did not look entirely put together. She looked upset, which was understandable. Although it was well known that her becoming the Queen had been more a business arrangement than anything else, Toby had come to see quite quickly that she and the King had been fond of one another. Her austere face was slightly pinched. There was an air of a brooding thundercloud behind the heavily shadowed eyes.

“Gentlemen, ladies, and all the rest of you fine folk who, through birth or ingenuity cannot be strictly classed as either,” she said loudly, “I won’t keep you long.”

Toby was surprised to hear how steady her voice was.

I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s easily one of the toughest women I’ve ever come across.

There was a ragged cheer at this. If the folk of Stagbreach were one thing, it was that they were pragmatic people and always thought that they had better things to be doing than the things they were currently doing.

“The battle in our streets involving Duke Diddle and his self-styled happy little accidents was the cherry on a thoroughly unappetizing cake that we have been served up piece by piece of late,” Queen Lascivo said in a loud, carrying voice. “The King and I, before his assassination, were agreed on the fact that we had had quite enough.”

The Queen emphasized the last word by punching her ring-encrusted hand into the palm of her other hand with a dull thwack. Toby saw that her gaze was so steely it could have been hammered out and used as a breastplate.

“Duke Diddle has had us on the back foot for weeks now,” the Queen went on. “He believes that he is in the ascendancy. He managed to break his way into our township—into my bloody castle, if you please!”

A chorus of grumbling went up. Dark looks were exchanged.

“What a knobhead!” someone yelled.

“Indeed!” Queen Lascivo exclaimed. “What a knobhead indeed!”

The Queen waited for the disgruntlement to die a natural death.

“Still, now it is our turn for retribution. It is our turn to avenge those who were taken from us in this heinous attack!” the Queen went on.

There was some more cheering. Toby thought he saw a few people weeping bitter, angry tears.

No doubt those are some of the people who lost friends and family in the fighting, he thought to himself sadly.

“Lord Marshal Vani,” Queen Lascivo said in her austere voice, “would you mind informing those loyal subjects gathered here today of what the next steps will be? I want us all to be transparent with one another. Only by being transparent can we see clearly after all.”

The ogre lumbered in from where he had been standing off to the side. He nodded respectfully to Queen Lascivo, whom he towered over by a good couple of feet. He came to stand in front of the gathered crowd, by the Queen’s side and slightly in front of her.

The message was obvious. Lord Marshal Vani stood with Eclipsia’s remaining monarch.

“We’re all of us—all of you who are gathered here as well as me—we’re all lucky enough to consider ourselves free people!” the Lord Marshal bellowed, his tusks glinting in the bright sunlight. “We’re lucky enough to hold freedom in our hands. But the thing about freedom is it’s not really a thing. Not a tangible thing, you might say. It’s what we do with what is done to us. That’s real freedom. The freedom to choose how we react.”

The assembly watched on in dead silence. Toby didn’t doubt that they all knew that they were liable to get an earful from Lord Marshal Vani if they interrupted him—and it was likely to be an earful of his great sandaled foot.

“As such, true freedom goes hand in hand with true responsibility,” the head of Eclipsia’s armed forces continued. “And that—responsibility—scares the pants off most people. True responsibility, true freedom is being accountable for everything we do. It is up to us, the people of Stagbreach, to give what we do next meaning.”

A cheer went up. Toby was surprised to hear these words come out of the usually taciturn Lord Marshal. They were insightful and yet seemed to fuel a desire inside of him. A desire for revenge and justice.

“We’re ready to march out of here and take the fight to Duke Diddle,” the ogre boomed. “At our head will be the newly crowned royal champion, Toby Adams.”

To Toby’s surprise, gratification and, if he was being totally honest, slight embarrassment, the crowd around them roared their approval. He hadn’t realized it, but word of his and his friend’s deeds had gone through Stagbreach like dragon fire.

Lord Marshal Vani held up his hands to quiet the tumult. “We have our companies arrayed and armed. They are ready to march,” he said. “If there are any amongst you who wish to join up, we will be heading out to face Duke Diddle on his turf within the week. Sign up with my sergeants if you wish to wield a sword in defense of Stagbreach and Eclipsia. I won’t lie, we can use every able-bodied man and woman who knows the right end of a sword from the wrong end.”

A few jokes were cracked in response to that comment at the expense of some of those gathered.

“Duke Diddle has an army of his own. We know that,” Lord Marshal Vani boomed. “But they’re an army of slaves. Such an army cannot compete with the hearts and minds of free folk defending a home that is by rights their own.”

To his own consternation and surprise, Toby found himself slipping out of the front rank of the crowd and walking up the steps to join Lord Marshal Vani. He hadn’t planned on doing this. Had someone suggested he make a speech, he would have laughed in their face. But being part of that crowd, being a cell in a larger, greater, singularly focused organism, he felt compelled to add his voice.

Lord Marshal Vani did not seem surprised to see Toby ascending the stairs.

“Adams,” he rumbled in greeting. “Are you here to sing us a rousing marching tune?”

Toby nodded to the Lord Marshal. “Something like that,” he replied. He turned to face the crowd.

“I won’t sugarcoat it,” he said loudly, “I’m a little bit nervous about heading out into the unknown to face Duke Diddle. He’s a powerful enemy.”

The crowd’s attention seemed to sharpen.

“But the thing is…” Toby looked at his friends in the front row. “The thing is that it’s the person who stands and stares their fears in the face that are truly courageous. It’s those people, those of us who overcome our fears, who are truly free.”

The crowd cheered, but Toby raised his hand for silence. “I know that I haven’t really been amongst you for all that long, but I’ve honestly never felt more at home than I have here in Stagbreach.”

Another slightly muted cheer of agreement.

“Lord Marshal Vani is right,” Toby cried. “None of us is anything else but what we make of ourselves. All we want, all you want, is to be left alone. I know that. I understand.”

Another cheer went up.

“But wanting to be left alone is completely different from having to be or having to stand alone,” Toby bellowed. “That’s the position Duke Diddle is in, even if he doesn’t see it. Yes, if you want to go quickly it’s smart to go alone, but if you want to go far…? Then you go together!”

“And we’re going to go all the way!” Anna shouted at the top of her voice.

A longer, louder cheer rolled and roiled across the gathering, so that the wave of sound echoed down the main thoroughfare of Stagbreach.

“Together, standing together, we can take down Duke Diddle. We can rid Eclipsia once and for all of the threat of that damned wand of his!” Toby shouted.

“Together!” Luna yelled.

“Together!” Verity echoed.

“Together!” the crowd cried with one voice.

Toby unsheathed his sword. He thrust it into the air. The enchanted blade shone and flashed white and silver. Pure and strong and good.

“Not every battle is a call to arms,” Toby said. “We all know that. We face myriad little battles every day. That’s what life teaches us.”

He waited for the crowd to calm down a little. He looked around at the faces in the throng. Every one of them was turned towards him. “No, not every battle is a call to arms,” Toby repeated. “But you can bet your ass that this one is! In memory of King Balourd!”

The roar that greeted his words sent the pigeons and little drakes flapping up into the bright blue sky. Toby smiled with grim satisfaction at his fellow Eclipsians.

“King Balourd!”

“Good King Balourd!”

“Balourd the Great!”

“Balourd the Fat!”

“Balourd, the Peoples’ King!”

Duke Diddle thought that they were all sheep and he was a ravening wolf. But the thing was wolves didn’t attack on their own. Wolves attacked in packs to dominate and bring down larger prey.

Toby grinned down fiercely at Luna, Verity and Anna. His friends smiled back with a fierce pride. They raised their swords and knives into the air to join him.

Yes, Duke Diddle was going to find out the error of ways in regard to that thinking. He was going to find out the error in a very terminal way.

The muster of Stagbreach was completed.

The battle for Eclipsia was about to begin.

End of Book 2

Book 3

1

From his hidden vantage point, Toby Adams watched the cavalcade of a dozen mounted dark elves and the single armored carriage rumble along the rutted road. The convoy moved with as much speed as the whip in the hand of the carriage driver could coax from his charges.

The carriage was being pulled by a quartet of hippogriffs. They were big brutes harnessed in reinforced leather and steel traces. It didn't look to Toby that the hippogriffs, with their scaled and talon tipped forefeet and their muscular equine hind legs, had been pushed too hard by the driver. The great mean-looking things appeared, to his eye, to be in fine fettle. Their lead gray beaks winked and sparkled menacingly in the sporadic sunshine. Their eyes blazed a bright yellow.

“Those look like the genuine article,” Anna said from where she was crouched down next to Toby. She was watching the procession with him. Behind Toby and Anna, Verity None, the beautiful blonde former bandit, was idly busying herself by cleaning one of her knives.

"Yep," Toby said. "Those are real hippogriffs all right. The same with the dark elves. They are, as you say, the genuine articles.”

“Why wouldn't Duke Diddle use some of his happy little accidents to move this precious cargo?" Anna asked in a low voice.

Toby gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I guess he wanted to have some real flesh-and-blood minions on the case transporting this stuff," he replied. He tightened one of the bracers on his forearm. "It's like Luna has been hypothesizing. Maybe, even with the almost limitless potential of the wand, old Diddlehead can still stretch himself a little thin.”

“Ha,” Frank the imp said. “Diddlehead! Good one.”

Toby adjusted the strap of his other bracer, making sure it was secure. “Maybe, with the more important bits of business he's conducting,” he went on, “he likes to have mercenaries like the dark elves taking care of it."

"Those hippogriffs look like they've run this road before," Frank said.

Toby glanced down at where the little sable imp was reclining on his stomach in the grass. The shapeshifting djinn had an unlit cigar between his pointy teeth.

"That would correlate with what Lord Marshal Vani's source reckoned, that this road was a regular thoroughfare that Duke Diddle was using to move his troops and goods around," Toby replied.

Frank grunted.

Toby looked up at the sky. The sun was running in and out above the dolorous clouds. It was dipping towards the westward horizon, but they still had plenty of daylight left to burn.

Plenty of time to see whether this little trap of ours is going to pay dividends.

He returned his eye to the spyglass. It was one of the few new things that Luna had built, at the behest of Toby and Anna. Toby had thought that, seeing as they were at war with Duke Diddle and his happy little accidents, they could use every bit of help they could contrive. With this in mind, Toby had racked his brains for any Earthly inventions he thought the artificers of Eclipsia might be able to whip up.

As luck would have it, his friend, Lunaria, was just about the most skillful engineer and craftswoman that Stagbreach was home to. Not only that, but she was uncannily adept when it came to deciphering what Toby was trying to depict in his rudimentary sketches of inventions.

“Ah, yes,” she had said knowingly, when Toby had shown her how he believed a spyglass worked. “Yes, I imagine that if you were to grind two thin lenses of concave glass to within certain parameters and affix them inside of a cylindrical edifice a specific distance from one another, one might be able to achieve an enhanced level of vision like you say. It is elegant and wonderful in its simplicity.”

Anna had been very impressed with how quickly the nymph had picked up and rolled with the design of the spyglass, along with some other items she and Toby had thought might be helpful.

“It’s all the more amazing when you consider that you’re no artist, Tobes,” she said one evening when they were all sitting around the campfire.

“True,” Toby agreed, stripping some meat off the manticore rib he was eating.

“Yeah. I mean, that sketch of the spyglass looked like it had been drawn by a chimpanzee,” Anna went on, picking some gristle from between her teeth.

Toby frowned. “I didn’t think it was that terri—“

“With its foot,” Anna finished.

Toby shifted, grunting a little as the bow and quiver he had slung over his shoulder dug into his back. As well as the bow and arrows, he was armed with his sword and his knife.

“Time to go?” Verity asked.

“Almost,” Toby said.

He had memorized the meandering route the road took. He knew that they would have a good couple of minutes before they needed to boogie.

Toby watched from their clandestine spying spot and looked at the armed procession as it entered the floor of a winding valley.

“That’s it,” Toby murmured to himself. “No turning back now.”

It was, geographically speaking, a place that lent itself wonderfully to ambush.

Which is exactly why Lord Marshal Vani picked it, Toby thought.

The dark elven riders, six trotting along in front of the carriage and six coming along behind, quickened their pace to a gallop. The driver of the carriage cracked his whip and the hippogriffs too picked up the pace.

It seemed that Toby, Anna, and Verity were not the only ones who thought the gully was a pretty likely place for an ambush. Their quarry seemed to share that idea.

Toby narrowed his eyes and peered at the faces of the dark elf riders. They were set, fierce, and focused. He could see their heads turning this way and that, their eyes roving across the steep sides of the valley, flitting from boulder to boulder.

Clearly, these mercenaries were not like the dark elves that Toby and his friends had last dealt with. Those had been simple creatures, inept and inexperienced, mostly. They’d been selected by Duke Diddle because they were utterly expendable.

These were dark elves of a different sort. Their bright strawberry-red hair was tied back in matching warrior braids. A plethora of different weapons hung from their belts or sat in their hands. They looked to be hardened and experienced.

"Come on," Toby said, crawling backward away from the lip they had been peering over. "Let's get down there and take up our positions. It’s time to ride."

As Toby stowed the spyglass and they moved away from the ledge towards their waiting mounts, Anna took Toby’s hand. Swiftly, his best friend planted a kiss on his cheek and whispered into his ear, “That was one of those things you’ve always wanted to say, wasn’t it?”

Toby looked into Anna’s mischievous eyes. He grinned. “You bet your perfectly formed caboose it was!”

2

It had been a full month since Duke Diddle had shown his face, for the first time in over two decades. He had appeared in the courtyard of Eclipsia Castle, and there, he had successfully murdered King Balourd and had come within an ant’s cock of assassinating Queen Lascivo.

Toby and his friends had thwarted the Duke's plans on that occasion, but it hadn’t stopped the Duke’s forces being able to make a bit of a mess of the township of Stagbreach. Properties and livelihoods had gone up in smoke and dozens of good townspeople had been killed whilst defending their homes.

Although his schemes hadn't borne fruit, it hadn’t been the end to Duke Diddle’s machinations. Toby saw now, four or so weeks down the track, that that incursion into the palace grounds—the breaching of the royal heart of Eclipsia—had only been the starting move in a game that Duke Diddle had been preparing to play for quite some time.

Ever since that day, ever since that opening gambit by the Duke, Toby, the Queen, and their friends and allies had been trading blows with Eclipsia’s nemesis. Victories had been scored on either side. Losses had been borne. Tactics had been employed, tweaked, and redeployed in the ever-changing ultimate battle of wits that Toby was finding out war was.

That day's mission involved disrupting one of the current supply lines that ran between two of Duke Diddle's armed forces. If all went to plan, it would also come with the bonus of depriving the dear old Duke of something he apparently coveted.

Toby didn’t know for certain what that was, but Luna, the blue-skinned nymph Toby had met under the roots of the distant mountains, had hypothesized that the Duke had been relying on carny crystals of late to help him build and design his inventions of war.

“If we can get our hands on some of those crystals,” Luna had told Toby and Lord Marshal Vani, “then I'll be able to use their power to build engines of war the likes of which my people of old used to design and sell to the monarchs of Eclipsia in days gone by.”

This information had been run up the chain of command. It hadn’t taken long, seeing as Luna had put forward the idea of stealing the carny crystals in order to aid the Queen's war effort to Lord Marshal Vani, the ogre who was the cynical head of the Eclipsian armed forces. The notion only had to make the relatively short leap directly to the Queen from him.

King Balourd, Eclipsia's late rotund and amiable monarch, had always left most of the heavy decision making to his highly capable queen. She had deemed the idea a sound one, and so Queen Lascivo had agreed to the ambushing of Duke Diddle's caravan.

Thus Toby Adams, recently named Royal Champion of Eclipsia, Anna, and Verity found themselves lying in wait to spring their trap. Luna had remained back at the Eclipsian forces' base camp. She had wanted to pore over and refine some of the designs that she thought capturing the carny crystals could help her and her growing team of engineers to build.

Like something that was dying, the tense and alert caravan took the path of least resistance through the winding gully. The wheels of the heavy armored carriage shattered the still puddles along the potholed road.

"Steady now, boys, steady," the coach driver called loudly to his team of four hippogriffs. "Steady on now, I say!"

The combined thunder of the footfalls of the dozen horses and the four hippogriffs reverberated like a storm off the stony sides of the gully. This din was echoed by the distant thunder that rolled out from the underside of the dirty, moody sky above. The fingers and hands of the dark elves lay lightly on their sword hilts, as well as on the handles of the evil-looking little flatbows that some of the guards had resting on their saddle pommels.

The first few arrows looped out of the gray sky like demonic rain. They thudded harmlessly into the roof of the carriage. Another arrow, hissing and twittering like some mad game bird breaking cover from the bushes, passed by the last of the rearguard riders at the tail of the procession and hit the dark elf in front of him under the armpit.

The dark elf let out a wheezing cry. Reflexively, he squeezed the flanks of his horse, even as his hold on the reins loosened. The horse plunged forward with a shrill neigh. The injured rider tilted back and was ejected off the back of his mount. He landed hard on his ass in the muddy road. He had no time to curse or pray as he was ridden down by the dark elf coming behind him, who had no time to avoid his colleague.

Up to this point, Toby had been concealed in a skinny ravine that ran perpendicularly to the gully that the road passed through. He emerged now, astride on his kirin mount.

The kirin was a scaled equine monster that was—and yet was also not—like a horse in a number of ways. These strange creatures, which Toby had never seen before Lord Marshal Vani had insisted he learn to ride one a few weeks prior, were rapid and elegant.

The four-legged animals were revered, apparently, by the tribespeople who bred them out on the plains. They were as swift as the wind and could run along at a loping trot for a full day should need require them to do so. They were extortionately expensive to procure, but Her Majesty, Queen Lassivo, had purportedly bottomless coffers. She had bankrolled the purchase of three dozen kirins to aid in Eclipsia's war effort. They had been used by scouts, messengers, and to great effect during the kinds of raids that Toby was spearheading right then.

The scales of the kirin that Toby rode were a bright teal. Its tail threshed backwards and forwards like a whip as it ran. Although it was a beast that had started out untamed, the kirins of the grasslands had long since become domesticated. They might not have been born in the wilds, but they had well and truly been bred for war.

Toby urged his kirin on. Its strange feet, which were not hooves like horses’ but three-toed, leathery, and tipped with vicious talons, ran straight over the luckless dark elf that had been shot from his saddle. The addition of some of Lord Marshal Vani's best marksmen had been a nice touch.

"Go on, boy, go on!" Toby said, spurring the kirin on. He held his reins with one hand and guided the beast with his legs as he had been taught.

The rich scent of churned mud and torn grass filled his senses. Without making any conscious decision to do so, he let out a whooping laugh. The thrill of the chase had caught him up. The thrill of battle, which he had come to savor, had him in its grip.

Toby could hear the dull tattoo of the hooves of Anna and Verity's kirins racing along behind him. He knew that the bowmen he'd stationed along the gully would follow on behind as soon as they had expended their shots.

One of the dark elf guards turned in his saddle to face Toby as he closed on him on the back of his kirin. He had one of the compact crossbows in his hand. Toby had limited experience with those weapons. They were a little bit hit-or-miss for his liking. They could be good from a hundred paces or bad from fifteen. It was impossible to know where the bolt was going to go, especially when it was being fired from the back of a running horse.

Toby grinned into the face of the dark elf. Over the past month or so of guerrilla fighting and small pitched battles, he had learned that it wasn't so much heroic good fortune that delivered a soldier out of one fate and into another. A lot of the time it was just straight chance. With the point of the crossbow weaving this way and that, Toby might have been more concerned had the dark elf been aiming for Anna, who was riding along behind him.

The dark elf pulled the firing lever. The quarrel thrummed from the bowstring. Toby raised the hand that wasn't clutching his reins and spread his fingers. A small concussive shockwave rippled out in front of him. The crossbow bolt was stopped in midair by the discharging magic and tumbled harmlessly into the road.

The dark elf's face ahead of Toby was a picture of disappointment and sudden fear.

"Fucking magic!" Toby roared over the rush of the wind. "It'll get you every time, won't it?"

The dark elf didn't have a chance to retort in any way. Toby focused on the nape of the man's neck and then jerked his hand sideways. It was like some invisible giant had plucked the man up by the scruff of his collar and chucked him sideways off his horse. With a short cry, he tumbled and rolled away into a ditch.

Toby couldn’t help but grin at the successful application of the spell. He felt a slight sap in his energy levels, but this was mitigated by the fact that he had just used magic to rid them of another enemy.

There was a loud report from behind Toby. Something hissed past his ear. Another of the dark elf rear guards jerked in his saddle.

"Got him!" Verity cried. “I goddamn got him!”

Toby glanced over his shoulder. He saw that Verity was holding a spent flintlock pistol.

The flintlock pistol had been a recent addition to the armories of Eclipsia. Toby had described the invention as well as he was able to Luna. He had explained how gunpowder was made—though he had been unsure on the various quantities of charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur. The nymph had, in the space of three weeks, figured out how to make gunpowder, made a prototype pistol, and then constructed a cast that enabled her to produce a handful of the weapons at a time.

It was a fairly lengthy process, but the results spoke for themselves. Gunpowder had come to Eclipsia.

The dark elf that Verity had just shot in the small of the back fell from his saddle.

"You almost got me!" Toby called over his shoulder.

"’Almost’ being the operative word," Verity replied.

The armored wagon swayed and bounced through the puddles and ruts of the road as the driver urged the quartet of powerful hippogriffs on with words of encouragement and the odd threat.

The gully was narrow enough to mean that Toby and his two friends didn't have to worry about the six dark elves riding ahead of the carriage turning around and charging at them. There simply wasn't enough space.

Toby narrowed his eyes against the wind and saw the wagon turn a bend, following the line of the beautiful hills that were currently trapping it.

There was another rumble of thunder from overhead. A few tentative spots of rain dropped down from on high to spot Toby's face. A rising wind, a herald of the coming storm, hissed maliciously through the fragrant sage and thyme that lined the craggy gully.

All of those involved in the pursuit knew that there were only two options available to Duke Diddle's caravan. They either had to pull to a halt and stand and fight or ride on and hope that they were able to come to a place where they could make use of their superior numbers.

A crossbow quarrel flitted over Toby's head and sank into the rump of one of the dark elves' horses. The beast screamed, its eyes rolled, and it leapt and bucked.

"Shit," Toby heard Anna curse behind him.

He knew what that was about. Anna had been practicing with the crossbow in her spare time, as it was clearly one of Duke Diddle's minions' favorite weapons. He also knew that she had been aiming for the rider and that she would feel guilty later for accidentally sticking the horse.

The lame horse and its rider fell back through the ranks of its fellows. Slowly, inexorably, Toby reeled it in on his kirin. Toby pressed his right thigh into his kirin's flank. The strange, reptilian equine monster veered to the right.

In one swift, practiced move, Toby drew forth the sword that hung at his hip. He could feel the comforting warmth of the enchanted ruby flowing from where it was set on the pommel into the grip, and from there into his fingers. With a thought, he activated the weapon’s intrinsic magic, which turned it from a very sharp, but fairly run-of-the-mill blade into what was essentially an eldritch lightsaber.

As he drew abreast of the man on the lame horse, the dark elf swung a mace at Toby's face. Toby's enchanted sword sheared easily through the metal head of the weapon and cleaved into the dark elf's spine. Without a sound, the dark elf tumbled sideways off the limping horse.

Toby looked forward and then ducked reflexively. He hunkered down alongside the rough flank of his kirin and watched the world churn by beneath the strange three-toed feet as two crossbow quarrels whispered overhead. For a moment, his eyes were full of brown, green, and gray as the world whipped by, then he pulled himself back onto his mount.

Crimson misted the air as one of the two remaining rearguard riders was hit squarely in the neck by another crossbow bolt fired from Anna. That was both of her single-shot weapons that she habitually carried used up now, Toby noted.

And the pistol is done too.

Toby turned his attention to the last remaining man, who had been part of the six dark elf rearguards. Toby's kirin easily caught the dark elf on his horse.

The dark elf's face was contorted with hatred as he glanced a couple of times over his shoulder to see Toby closing on him. He swung an ax at Toby, but Toby's kirin veered out of the way. Before the man could bring the ax back around, the monster that Toby rode darted back in, and Toby plunged his burning sword into the vitals of the dark elf.

The dark elf roared like a beast himself, spraying spittle. Toby pulled his burning sword back out of the dark elf, and the rider slumped against the horse's neck before sliding out of the saddle and dashing his head on a rock on the side of the road.

The armored carriage, still being towed at a good clip by the four hippogriffs, rounded a long bend. It entered the fringes of a damp belt of fir trees, which Toby knew was only a mile or so wide. The road cut through there, following the lower ridge of moss-covered rock.

"Time to end this," Toby growled to himself.

He raised his hand again and focused on one of the rear wheels of the carriage. He closed his fist.

The wheel popped clean off the axle in a spray of splintered wood. The iron that rimmed the wheel unwound and got caught in the spokes of the wheel in front. Stone and mud fountained up into the air as the axle dragged and ground along the road.

The magically crippled carriage slewed sideways and came to an abrupt halt, the hippogriffs almost tumbling over at the unforeseen change in direction.

With the little extra space they were afforded now that the road had left the gully, the half-dozen dark elven riders at the front of the caravan wheeled about. One fell almost immediately from his saddle with an arrow between his shoulder blades. He crashed and rolled through the bracken on the side of the road while his horse ran past Toby, Anna, and Verity.

Toby ducked as one of the dark elves slashed at him with his sword. He didn't manage to relieve Toby's neck of his head, which, so far as Toby was concerned, was all to the good. The elf hurtled past with a snarl.

The snarl of rage turned to a gurgle as Verity slid one of her hidden blades through the side of his neck.

With a soft crack, Frank materialized, clutching onto the face of one of the horses of another of the riders. The horse, unsurprisingly, wasn't expecting and certainly wasn't thrilled, to find an imp attached to its head. It started bucking and rearing madly, tossing off the mercenary trying ineffectually to calm it.

Shouting with glee, Frank held on with his little claws as the horse he had scared half to death plunged off the road and into the bushes at the side of it.

Toby used another burst of magic to rip one of the other dark elves from his saddle. The man fell on his head and lay senseless.

There was another blooming of arterial spray as Toby turned his kirin around. Anna had used her sword to almost sever the head of one of the remaining dark elf guards.

Another arrow, fired from the pair of archers that Lord Marshal Vani had stationed at the end of their ambush’s route, hissed down and took one of the remaining dark elves through the chest. He fell lifeless from his horse.

In no time at all, the trap had been closed. None of the dark elves had been taken alive, except for the driver who had taken off on foot across country.

"What shall we do with him, sir?" one of the archers asked, coming out from where he'd been hiding in the bush and nodding at the man running down the road. He had an arrow nocked to his string.

Toby watched the dark elf fleeing. "Let him go," he said. "If he's got any sense, he won't return to Duke Diddle."

“And if he does?” the archer asked.

“Then he’ll spread the story of what happened here around the Duke’s camp,” Toby said. “It’ll be better for our public relations with the enemy than any propaganda we could come up with.”

Toby slid from the back of his kirin. He walked towards the locked door of the armored carriage. With a gesture, he burst the padlock that bound the door closed with a length of chain.

He was just about to open it when the door crashed open. A final dark elf guard, who had clearly been tasked with sitting on the valuable payload within the carriage like a hen on an egg, came roaring forth. He had a vicious morning star clutched in his fists. His bright red warrior's tail swung around like the tail of a scorpion.

Toby parried the morning star. The spell that had imbued his sword with an intensity that usually allowed it to cut through mundane sword blades had dissipated for the time being. Their weapons met. Metal blade met metal-headed club.

The dark elf attempted to smash Toby squarely in the face with his morning star. Toby met this attack with a similar cut. He pushed the morning star to the right while he himself stepped to the left. He then pivoted his blade around to try and strike at his opponent's head.

The dark elf, unsurprisingly, didn't like that. He raised his morning star up to defend it.

In a teardrop movement, ducking and pivoting, Toby moved to the right and struck at the dark elf's chest. His sword cut straight through his enemy's breastbone. Crimson blood sprayed out. The dark elf mercenary fell lifeless to the roadway.

"Man," Anna said, looking around at the carnage. "Man, I know it's war and everything, but I still can't help but feel like it's such a waste."

Toby nodded.

Verity had gone over to the front of the carriage and was attempting to calm the extremely agitated hippogriffs.

"Lord Marshal Vani will be happy if we're able to take these back to camp," she said. "Hippogriffs are rare, not to mention very strong and fierce."

As if to emphasize her point, one of the hippogriffs snapped at her outreaching hand.

"Don't go losing a finger," Toby cautioned.

“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Anna agreed.

“That’s because you both know just what I’m capable of with using only a single finger,” Verity replied coyly, winking at Toby.

Toby chuckled and opened the door of the carriage, which was hanging ajar. He stuck his head inside the armored transport. He let out a low whistle.

"Well," Anna asked, "Are we going to have a happy nymph when we get back to base?"

Toby reached in. When he pulled his hand out, he was clutching a large cobalt blue crystal.

"Oh," Anna said, her eyes lighting up like those of a particularly avaricious magpie at the sight of the jewel, "that's going to go fabulously with Luna's complexion!"

Toby looked over as one of the horses came crashing out of the underbrush to the side of the road.

“Frank,” Toby called, "knock it off and stop terrorizing that horse."

Frank vanished from where he was clinging on to the whinnying horse’s ears and then rematerialized in front of Toby. "Fine," he said. "I can see why your lot go in for horse riding. It's a good laugh, isn’t it?"

"I wouldn't say what you were doing was riding that horse," Verity pointed out.

"Yeah, well, it was still fun," the little imp said.

He summoned one of his tiny cigars out of the ether and lit it with a prod of his tail. He blew a smoke ring, which, as was his wont, separated into two smaller smoke rings to form a pair of smoky little boobs in the air.

“So,” Frank said conversationally, "did we get what we came for?"

"Yeah," Toby said, "We got what we came for.”

“What now, then?”

“Now,” Toby said, “we head back to base and figure out how to."

3

Sweatier than an orgy in a canvas tent on a sultry summer night sounded like some sort of elaborate euphemism. However, Toby was learning that particular evening that, in his experience at least, there really were few things sweatier than an orgy in a canvas tent on a sultry summer evening.

Technically speaking, it was probably early fall, but the weather beyond the northern forests on the edge of the grasslands was undeniably balmy.

Besides, that probably wasn’t the salient point of the comparison. Most of the attention of anyone making such a comparison would have been on the ‘orgy’ part of things. Toby’s attention certainly was.

Groans and moans, gasps and whispered pleading. The soft, silky, sibilant sound of smooth skin sliding over smooth skin was all the noise that might have permeated the canvas walls of the large tent Toby shared with Luna, Anna, and Verity.

Technically speaking, it was also Frank’s abode, but the imp was well-versed enough by now to know that when the tent poles were rocking, he better have fucked off somewhere.

Toby bit down on the deep turquoise nipple belonging to Luna’s left breast. He sucked and slurped on it, feeling it stiffen in his mouth. Luna moaned. Toby’s hands moved between her legs, feeling the downy softness of her shortly cropped pubic hair brush against his fingertips. He pressed his middle finger in, feeling her lips yield to the slight pressure. His fingers slipped inside her; she was slick with arousal.

Luna moaned all the more deeply and urgently. She might have uttered some words of rapture in a foreign tongue—a tongue that was probably nymphish, but it was hard to tell. Her face was covered due to Verity squatting over her head where she lay on the feather mattress. Verity’s pure blonde hair glowed like polished gold in the light of the cast-iron brazier, adding an extra element of heat to the already sauna-like interior of the tent.

Toby felt the light caress of hands running up his back to massage his shoulders. A cascade of brunette hair fell past Toby’s own face.

Anna Coombes, you she-devil…

Kisses followed, gentle at first, then morphing, evolving into little sharp nips of ardent need. A hand slipped back down his back, under his ass cheeks and through his legs. Toby groaned and felt himself stiffen even more, if that were possible, as Anna squeezed his balls.

Sex, almost without exception, was a fun-filled and satisfying activity. Sex after a battle the likes of which they had participated in that afternoon was even better. Toby imagined it was probably akin to the kind of intercourse that professional athletes enjoyed after winning a final or championship.

Only more so, Toby’s lust-fogged brain interjected. No athletes since the time of the gladiatorial colosseum ever cheated death during one of their finals or championship bouts.

Toby did his best to shut his chatterbox brain up. That was another thing he had learned after battle—he was prone to introspection. Maybe it was because you had survived another run-in with the enemy; you had quite literally lived to fight another day. He decided to just lay back and enjoy himself.

He rolled away from Luna, his fingers still inside her, probing with a soft, satisfying squelching sound. He saw how her pelvis rose rhythmically to mimic his actions.

Anna pressed herself against him. She had never been chunky, or anything close to it, but the past month of adventuring on the road, only periodically going back to Stagbreach, had tightened and toned her already athletic form even further. Toby could see the line of abdominal muscles before her body pressed against his. Her breasts were warm and yielding against his chest, which he also noted with some satisfaction was thickening with muscle, due to all the sword fighting and martial drilling.

They kissed while Toby continued to finger Luna. Anna actually reached up and placed her hand over his, rubbing at the nub of the nymph’s blue clitoris. This only exacerbated her almost tortured moans of ecstasy.

Once Anna’s hand was slick and wet with Luna’s arousal, she moved it down between Toby’s legs and used their blue-skinned friend’s lubrication to slowly and seductively jack him off. Toby groaned into Anna’s mouth as her clever hands went to work. His free hand ran down her flank. He squeezed her arse cheek, running his fingers down the cleft of her buttocks. He could just manage, without dislocating his shoulder, to rub at her slot, which was just as wet as Luna’s, with a grunt of animal need.

Anna pulled away from the kiss they were sharing and moved down Toby's body. She took him in her mouth. Toby let out a great gasp and tilted his head back, staring at the canvas ceiling above him as the tip of his member jammed into the back of Anna's throat.

Anna began to give Toby one of those wonderfully rough, sloppy blowjobs, the likes of which porn websites the world over had made men erroneously think was par for the course during any sexual encounter.

Toby twined his fingers through her brown locks and pushed her head as far into his crotch as he thought she could manage. She gagged and choked. Toby stared blindly up at the roof of the tent. What a day it had been, and what an evening it was proving to be.

They had returned to camp, delivered a brief and preliminary report to a busy Lord Marshal Vani. The report amounted to the fact that they had succeeded in what they had set out to do. They destroyed the caravan and its outriders and took possession of the carny crystals. That had been enough for the Lord Marshal. Toby and his friends had then reconvened with Luna to tell her the happy news. After that, they had shared a meal and a jug or two—or three—of some strong, clear liquor, and that had inevitably led, the high spirits mingling with the good spirits, to where they were currently.

"Oh my goodness,” Verity breathed. "Oh my goodness, Luna, you weren't lying when you said you studied the human body. The way you know your way around my cunny is uncanny."

Toby blinked, not realizing he had closed his eyes. He saw that Verity had performed a one-eighty. She was still squatting with either thigh akimbo of Luna's face. Luna was now, or so it appeared to Toby, busy eating out Verity's ass. Verity's face was a veritable picture of lustful joy.

The blonde former bandit was a truly captivating, dichotomous personality. She had all the looks of a fairy tale princess, and yet Toby knew, in the bedroom, she had the appetite of the most avaricious porn star.

Verity leaned forward and started to motorboat Luna's breasts while the nymph continued her experiments in cunnilingus. Toby’s eyes remained fixed on that extremely erotic sight.

None too gently, with just the perfect amount of roughness that she knew would elicit even more ardent desire in his friend, Toby hauled Anna up by her hair.

"Yes, my royal champion," she said, half-mockingly.

Toby positioned Anna so that she straddled his hips. Slowly, ever so slowly—so slowly that the action bypassed teasing and became almost torturous—Anna lowered herself onto Toby's waiting rod. The pair of them met pelvis to pelvis with simultaneous groans of delight.

"Yes," Anna said. "Oh fuck, yes."

"I believe that you're the one in the driver's seat," Toby pointed out through teeth gritted with pleasure.

"You're doing that thing where you ruin the mood with your joking, Toby Adams," Anna said, slapping him softly on the chest.

"I do that, don't I?" Toby said.

"It's really lucky that you're so good in the sack," Anna said. "Your clever cock has saved you from your clever mouth on multiple occasions."

"It's not often that a man's cock and balls will be credited with getting him out of a jam," Toby quipped. "Usually it's very much the other way around."

"Just shut up and fuck me," Anna said, half laughing, half moaning as she ground herself down onto Toby.

"Yes, ma'am," Toby said obligingly.

"It's good to see that your new title hasn't gone to your head," Anna said softly, leaning down to nibble at his earlobe. "Not the one perched on top of your neck, anyway."

Toby laughed as he kneaded and squeezed Anna's wonderful ass cheeks between his hands. Next to him, Luna and Verity shared a giggle as the former bandit's hand moved down Luna's blue torso to spread the nymph's lips wide.

That was the great thing about all of what happened between them, Toby thought.

But I mean, it isn't the only great thing, he corrected himself. I mean, this, what's happening right now, this is pretty fucking amazing.

What he meant to himself was that it was brilliant they were able to share some laughs while they indulged in these hedonistic sexual acts. There was no hint of pride, not a modicum of discomfort or worry about being judged by any of the others. They were all completely comfortable in their skin.

Which is handy, Toby thought, because that’s all any of us are wearing.

Toby closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the sensations that were sweeping over and through his body. He tried not to focus on the past or what the future might hold. He tried to anchor himself in the present.

It wasn't so very hard. Even whilst he let his mind drift, the feelings of Anna's flesh under his hands, the soft sighing breath of her exhalations in his ear, and the smell of their combined arousal was enough to overwhelm any fears, trepidations, or cares he might have about the immediate future.

Why worry about any of that when he was enjoying, right there and then in that tent, what amounted to many men and women's fantasies?

Toby held onto Anna's hips as she bucked and ground down into him. Her movements were slow and steady to start. She held a good pace, a good rhythm. The soft, wet sound of their pelvises coming together was like an aural metronome in Toby's ears.

The pace soon picked up, however. Toby's hands roved all over Anna's naked body. It was like they were doing a very localized impression over Anna’s body of what he and his military fellows had been doing in the surrounding countryside. Adventuring. Going boldly into new and exciting territory.

Occasionally, as the mood took him, Toby would reach out and grasp at a blue thigh or a tanned arm as it strayed into his field of vision. Kissing and biting, squeezing and rubbing, massaging and licking.

At one point Verity got up and straddled Toby's face. Toby found himself all but buried up to his nose and chin in the soft folds of Verity's soaking wet box.

The whole experience was wonderful in the way that whenever one of his companions freed up a body part, one of the other members of the group would pounce on it. So, as soon as Anna, quivering and breathless, announced that she needed a little break from riding Toby's cock, otherwise she was going to come in a big way and would be out of the proceedings, the warm moist mouth of Luna wrapped itself around Toby's shaft to take the place of Anna's tight vagina.

Toby groaned into Verity's sex as he felt the nymph slurping and sucking on his rod. He could just picture the eager way that Luna was licking off Anna's juices from his pole. She was certainly making enthusiastic noises. Although Luna had led a relatively solitary adult life, this only seemed to have heightened her desire to experiment in the bedroom and push her sexual boundaries.

The pressure on Toby's face was suddenly released as Anna good-naturedly tackled Verity off from where she had been squatting over Toby's head. The two of them rolled across the bed, play-wrestling and tickling one another.

Verity wound up on top. She had Anna's arms pinned down.

"Do you submit?" she growled.

"Never!" Anna replied.

Verity lowered her face so that it was only an inch or so from Anna's. "I was hoping you'd say that," she said.

The pair of them kissed hungrily. Toby could hear the dirty, squelching, moist sounds of their lips and tongues coming together. They were lying near his head, with their feet towards his face, so that Toby had an uncovered view right up their skirts—had they been wearing skirts, of course.

As he watched this highly erotic scene unfold, he saw Anna's hand creep around Verity's butt cheek. To Toby's amazement, he saw Anna slide her digit momentarily into Verity's vagina. A second later, she pulled it out and slid it into her ass.

Verity let out a cry that turned into a long, low moan. "You sly devil!" she said. "An enemy at the back gate. There's nothing quite like being taken from behind."

As if an answer to that, Anna slid out from under Verity. She pushed Verity's face down so that it was deep in the mattress, but with her rear end pointing up in the air. Anna knelt behind the former bandit. With one finger still in Verity's wonderfully rounded ass, she slid two digits into her pink slot. She then started to finger fuck Verity roughly and with lascivious abandon.

Toby reached down and took Luna by the hair and began to thrust his pecker deeper and deeper into her throat. He found himself unconsciously mimicking the rhythm set by Anna and her questing fingers.

Whilst Luna pleasured Toby, she also was rubbing frantically at her own privates. After what might have been one minute or ten, she pulled Toby's slick rod from her mouth. She shimmied up his body.

"I want you," the nymph said. “I need you. Right now, please.” There was a long rope of drool hanging from her chin and connecting to Toby's chest. She wiped it away, her eyes gleaming with need and desire.

Without waiting for an answer, she grabbed Toby by the base of his penis. Then, lining herself up just so, she thrust herself hard down onto his waiting member.

Toby let out a cry. His insertion into the tight confines of the nymph's vagina had almost been painful. She was, by a close margin, but still, the tightest of his three female companions, being somewhat less experienced.

The blue-skinned beauty bucked up and down on Toby. The sound of their flesh coming together was a soft but resounding slap, slap, slap. Luna grunted with every descent. Toby was sure that he'd almost feel the tip of his rod hitting some deep spot inside of the nymph. Each time he did, a shiver passed through Luna, and he felt her thighs tense up under his fingers.

To his surprise and gratification, Toby soon saw that Luna was beginning to shake. He looked up and saw that her eyes were half closed. Only the whites were visible. Abruptly, the nymph let out a guttural groan. There might have been words in that sound, but Toby couldn't be sure. They might have been nymphish. Whatever language the words were spoken in, the meaning was unmistakable, however.

Toby's member popped out of the confines of Luna's box as she began to spasm as she orgasmed. Such was the frantic nature of her climax that Anna and Verity actually looked up from where they were enjoying themselves.

“Holy—!” Luna gasped.

A spray of female ejaculate suddenly covered Toby's stomach and chest as Luna twitched and spasmed in a half crouch above him."Oh, oh, oh," she kept moaning and repeating over and over again. "Yes! Oh, oh, oh!"

Verity and Anna, acting as one dirty-minded entity, came over to Toby and began licking Luna's juices off his chest and from around his navel. They were ravenous in their attentions. Anna leaned forward and sucked Toby's prick free of the nymph's natural lubrication.

"Oh, you taste so good, Luna," Anna crooned.

"Save me some," Verity said with a pout and a giggle.

Toby lined Verity and Anna up side by side on the bed—after they were done trying to clean him up by making him dirtier—so that they could both clutch the simple wooden headboard. Their asses were stuck invitingly out towards him.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…” Toby muttered, slapping a different asscheek as he recited the old rhyme. “Catch a hottie by her toe…”

Toby started with Verity. He thrust himself into her and pounded away at her for a while. Then, without warning, he pulled out and slid his rod into Anna's waiting box. From then on, they played a game of, what Toby’s ever helpful brain labeled as, ‘Pass the Penis.’

Not that Toby called it that out loud, of course. That would have been a complete mood-killer.

He grinned at that thought as he fucked the two women. He really was living the dream. It was such a hedonistic piece of insanity that he was pretty sure it was the kind of dream that, maybe, some people hadn't even cooked up in their own heads before. Toby was certainly ticking off a whole host of thirst that he never would have believed he'd get to experience before winding up in Eclipsia.

After a time, he found he was plunging straight from one tight vagina to the other. Verity pulled her cheeks apart and offered her asshole to him. Toby thought it would be rude to pass up the opportunity. As he slid into her, Luna leaned forward and began to tongue the underside of Toby's sack.

And so the evening wore on.

Outside their tent, the sound of growing revelry could be heard through the encampment. Even though they might have been at war, Lord Marshall Vani always made a point of letting his men celebrate victories. There was, as he often pointed out to Toby and the others, never any guarantee that your latest victory wouldn't be your last one.

The coals in the brazier burned down. The lamps flickered. Some of them went out. Toby was claimed by the red, time-dissolving fog of good sex. Before he realized it, he was on the verge of blowing his load.

“Don't hold back, don't hold back, give it to us!” Verity said, sensing a slight hesitation in Toby's strokes, as he held tightly to her ass cheeks while he fucked her from behind.

And so, ceding to the will of the females around him, who got down on their knees to accept what he had to offer, Toby relinquished all self-control and released himself all over their eager, waiting faces.

The world reformed around him, either a short time or a long time later—he couldn't be sure—he surfaced from the depths of the wonderful, warm, erotic pink haze he and the others had been wallowing in for who knew how long.

They were lying in a tangled mound of sweaty limbs. Luna's head was resting in the crook of Toby's right arm. A bright blonde spray of hair covered his stomach, which was rising and falling with the signs of some heavy sexual exertion. The way Toby's head jiggled from side to side every now and again told him he had somehow ended up with Anna's wonderful ass as a pillow.

There were certainly better ways to find one's head pillowed, but Toby couldn't think of any just then. He felt truly, absolutely, and wonderfully replete and at peace with the world. He was exhausted in body and mind; his consciousness drifted and bobbed on a tide of exhaustion.

"Is there anything better?" Toby said, panting slightly, as he looked up at the tent ceiling through heavily lidded eyes. "Than a good fucking…?"

The three women shared a chuckle.

"I think there’s only one thing that comes close to eclipsing some truly extraordinary group sex," Luna said with her almost scholastic, clinical wording.

"What's that, Luna darling?" Verity asked.

"It’s indulging in the figurative act of fucking after metaphorically fucking someone over like Duke Diddle," Luna replied.

The others laughed.

"Yeah, I doubt old Diddle is going to be very happy when he finds out the stunt we pulled on him today," Anna said happily.

"I think you're right," Toby said.

"Now that," Verity said, "is what I call a soothing bedtime story."

4

“Mr. Adams? Mr. Adams? Your royal championess sir?”

“Good grief,” Toby said in response to the tentative and extremely polite voice outside the tent flap. “Fuck me, call me Toby please.”

“Yes your royal championess sir—I mean yes Toby. If you're awake, sir…?”

“Yeah, I'm awake,” Toby said, trying to scrub the sleep from his eyes. “I'm awake, although…” he said looking around at the three wonderful naked forms surrounding him in the nest of blankets that they shed, “I'm far from decent, so I'd stay outside the tent to deliver your message if I were you.”

"Very good, sir," the messenger replied. "It's just that Lord Marshal Vani would like to see you, sir."

"What time is it?" Toby said, squinting around.

"Just after daybreak, sir."

"Okay, I'll be there soon. Let the Lord Marshal know," Toby said.

"Very good, sir."

Toby waited until he heard the tramp of the messenger's boots fade away. He got up, stretched in the nude, and then quickly got dressed. He made his way through the camp and was outside the Lord Marshal's enormous command tent a short while later.

Two guardsmen, with their halberds crossed in front of the door, were standing guard. Toby waited while his presence was announced. The halberds were uncrossed, and Toby was ushered in.

He found the large figure of the Lord Marshal sitting behind a correspondingly enormous desk, nursing a tankard that might as well have doubled as a bucket for a normal, more mortal man.

"Adams, you made it," he said.

"Lord Marshal," Toby said, stifling a yawn.

"Drink?" Lord Marshal Vani asked.

"It's a bit early, isn't it, Lord Marshal?"

"Ha! Assuming I've been to bed. That's a good one, Adams, that's a bloody good one. Optimistic is what that is. It's early for you, but it's just a bit of a late night for me."

He poured himself a generous measure of eye-stinging rotgut from an enormous demijohn that had apparently been sitting behind the desk. Toby's eyes watered at the smell of the liquor.

"It's called Gnomish Guillotine," the Lord Marshal said, in reply to Toby's unanswered question, which must have shown on his face.

"Guillotine, sir?" Toby asked.

"One drop of it, and you're dead."

"Ah, very good."

"Now, I didn’t interrupt you at an indelicate time, did I, Adams?" the ogre commander said, sitting back in his chair. The chair creaked alarmingly.

Toby thought back to the three beautiful women who were probably currently curled around one another back in his tent. "Not as such, sir," he said diplomatically.

"I suppose you're wondering what’s made me want to drag your ass out of bed before the sparrow has barely had a chance to fart," the ogre asked.

"No, sir, I’ve got a fair idea," Toby said. "I feel like my brain’s up to speed now."

"Is that right?" Lord Marshal Vani said. "Well, at least that makes one of us. Why do you think you're here, then?"

"You want a report, sir. A detailed report."

"Got it in one. Not a bad start to the morning, Mr. Adams," Lord Marshal Vani said. "That's right, I do want a report of what happened yesterday. A, as you say, more detailed one. Give me a blow-by-blow account, if you'd be so good. I want you to transport me there. Call it my sadistic and bloodthirsty ogreish nature shining through."

"Okay, sir," Toby said with a grin. "Well, it started like this…"

By the time Toby had finished his account of the preceding day's adventures, he was sitting in the chair opposite Lord Marshal Vani. While he hadn't accepted a slug of the Gnomish Guillotine, he had taken Lord Marshal up on a cup of strong black coffee. It was good stuff, the kind of coffee that tasted like it had been stewed in an old boot. It blew away any of the remaining post-coital cobwebs that had been swathing Toby’s brain.

"And after what, if I might be allowed to call, a fairly sexy bit of swordplay, Lord Marshal, I cut down that final dark elf and opened up the carriage."

"And that is, as I believe the young ogres are saying these days, when you met Bob, your uncle," Lord Marshal Vani said.

Toby frowned slightly. "Yes," he said slowly. "That would be, as you put it, when I met Bob, my uncle."

"Hell of a haul, Adams, hell of a haul," Lord Marshal said. "I know that striking and well-endowed-in-the-brain-department nymph acquaintance of yours, Miss Lunaria, was extremely pleased with that boodle of carny crystals."

"Yes, I gathered as much," Toby said.

"She’ll be joining us soon," the Lord Marshal said. "I wanted to hear some of the ideas she has for what she might be able to use those blue crystals for."

Toby frowned. "Hold on, surely you, a man with Eclipsia's full breadth of military surveillance, is able to know that I share the same tent with Luna?"

"Yeah, of course I do," Lord Marshal Vani said.

"Well then, why didn't you just summon the pair of us at the same time?" Toby asked.

"I might be an ogre, but I'm also a gentleman," Lord Marshal Vani said. "I don't spend more than a couple of shits thinking about how uncomfortable you might be compared to how a lady might feel."

"Yeah, that's fair enough, I suppose," Toby said.

They sat there trading inconsequential attitudes for a moment or two when suddenly there was another rap at the tent flap, and Luna was shown into Lord Marshal Vani's office.

"Luna," Toby said, "how the hell do you look so much fresher than I feel?"

"It's a female thing," Luna said without the faintest trace of irony.

"Master Adams, here just filled me in on how it was that you came about becoming the possessors of the carny crystals," Lord Marshal Vani said.

"I see," Luna replied.

"And I have no reason to doubt his validity," Lord Marshal Vani said. "But I was just wondering, off the top of my head, what particular inventions you thought you'd be able to tap into now that we have these carny crystals."

Luna puffed her cheeks and looked at Lord Marshal Vani. "There are more than a few, Lord Marshal," she said.

"Give me the ones that you thought would be most likely for us to take advantage of," Lord Vani said.

"Well, I was thinking that the thirty-three-barreled organ gun was one thing I would very much like to delve into more," Luna said.

"And what the ruddy hell is the thirty-three-barreled organ gun?" Lord Marshal Vani asked.

"Well, ever since Toby here got Eclipsia onto the rather groundbreaking invention of gunpowder, there have been many inventions stemming from that I've been looking to pursue. The thirty-three-barreled organ gun was one of them. I was thinking that there would be three rows of eleven barrels of the simple pistols we had already designed, which could be fired in carefully coordinated unison to produce an almost multi-cannon effect," Luna said.

"All right," Lord Marshal Vani said. "Was there anything else?”

"Yes, there was in fact," Luna said brightly. "There was the turtle tank, which was essentially a moving fort covered in iron plating. Then I thought we might use the chariots that we already have but redesign them into scything machines of death."

"What do you mean? In terms of crops?" Lord Marshal Vani asked in a hesitant voice, taking a little sip from his enormous barrel-sized mug.

"No, these were the kind of size I thought might help dispatch opponents," Luna said. "I was thinking that, to put it bluntly—and not bluntly; we need them sharp—we would put blades on the wheels of our chariots so that when we ride through a battlefield, we might be able to slice soldiers down at the thigh."

"That sounds fucking brutal," Toby said.

"Yes," Luna said brightly, "but I wasn’t sure that fighting was meant to be a totally honorable pursuit."

"That it isn’t, that it isn’t," Lord Marshal Vani said. "In fact, I think you might have just encapsulated it neatly in a single sentence: Fighting—it shouldn’t be honorable. That’d look good painted onto the back of a supply cart. Yes, very good."

"All right, well, now that we've had a nice summation of how we’re going," Toby said, "would I be able to get back to—"

"Get back to your debauched ways, young Adams?" Lord Marshal Vani cut in.

Toby considered this. He looked at Luna; she gave him a little shrug. "Yeah, that might sum it up a little bit," he admitted.

"No, you can’t. I wanted to have a quick rundown on how we’re looking," Lord Marshal Vani said.

"Well, you’d be the man—the ogre, I should say—to let us know how we’re looking," Toby said.

"Come and step outside with me and look upon the brave new world," Lord Marshal Vani said, scooping up his enormous tankard in one massive three-fingered hand.

Toby followed the ogre out through the tent, and they walked a little way to the edge of the encampment. The Lord Marshal's tent had been erected on the precipice of an escarpment that looked out over a truly stunning grassland. Toby hadn’t had much to do outside of the forests and townships of Eclipsia. Having marched north with Lord Marshal Vani and the gathered host, he had finally seen a new vista in Eclipsia. The grasslands swayed in the soft breeze like a trillion dancers at a particularly mellow party. There were trees and waterholes dotted through the savanna, but mostly it was all dry grass swaying this way and that.

"Well?" Toby asked bluntly.

"In a nutshell," Lord Marshal Vani said, "this war, Mr. Adams, is up for grabs."

"I gathered as much," Toby admitted.

"There are many things we have done that have proved beneficial for Eclipsia and for the late King Balourd and Queen Lascivo," Lord Marshal Vani said. "However, there are just as many things that have gone completely tits up for us. So, saying that, I would say we are, generally speaking, on a term-to-term basis, on an even keel with dear Duke Diddle."

"Wow," Toby said.

"What?" Lord Marshal Vani asked.

"Well, it's not often that you actually get told the truth by a leading commander of an army," Toby said.

"Have you had much experience in that matter?" Luna asked quite cleverly and without malice.

"Well, no," Toby said honestly. "But from everything I’ve learned, probably on a fifth-hand basis, it seems that no one actually gets told the truth by anyone high up."

"Well, I'll tell you this," Lord Marshal Vani said, taking another gigantic slurp from his tankard and mopping his chin with the back of his hand. "I'll tell you this, young Adams: we are on level pegging with Duke Diddle. We win, he loses. He wins, and we lose. There are a myriad of different battles taking place at any one time, and we might win as many as we lose, and that’s the truth of it."

"So," Toby said, "all we can hope to do is win more than we lose?"

"Yes, of course," Lord Marshal Vani said, "but saying that, I’d still much rather be on the winning side, wouldn’t you?"

Toby considered that. "Yes, I would, Lord Marshal," he said. "So, what can I do to help?"

The Lord Marshal led the way back inside his tent. Toby and Luna followed, ducking through the flaps that the two door guards held open for them. The ogre sat himself back behind his desk and motioned for Toby and Luna to make themselves comfortable.

Lord Marshal Vani proffered his enormous tankard to Toby.

"You can neck a bit of that first to take the edge off," he said, "and after that, you can listen to what I have in store for you next."

Toby reached across the Lord Marshal’s desk and took the tankard. It was heavy. Toby, somewhat hesitantly, lifted the enormous vessel towards his lips. He had to use two hands. He paused for a moment as the fumes from the Gnomish Guillotine lay siege to his sinuses and, apparently, destroyed them in a few seconds. It felt like his eyelids were shriveling.

“Sorry, Lord Marshal, I can’t drink that,” Toby gasped. He passed the tankard back to the senior officer of the Eclipsian armed forces.

“Course you can’t!” the ogre boomed happily. “I wasn’t trying to be funny when I said it was one-drop-and-you’re-dead stuff!”

Luna looked at Lord Marshal Vani reproachfully.

The ogre let out a rumbling chuckle. “Ah, don’t worry, miss, I wouldn’t have let him imbibe. Just a little bit of a laugh between compatriots! And full points for you for trying, Mr. Adams. Dear me, but I do like a trier.”

Toby dabbed at his streaming eyes as Lord Marshal Vani took his tankard back.

“I have to say, Lord Marshal,” Toby said, “you’re really in much better spirits than when we first met.”

“I can’t think what you mean, Adams,” the Lord Marshal replied. “I’ve always been a creature of sunny disposition. I’ve often had it remarked that I am a thing of such buoyant sweetness and light that it’s a miracle I rose to such an elevated position in the profession of warfare, where so often things can be unyieldingly and incomparably bleak and unforgiving.”

Toby nodded. “When we first met, sir, you told me that due to the past decade of inactivity you had come to the conclusion that we were all just waiting around while the tedium that was life trickled by and we died in a profound state of boredom. Or something along those lines.”

The ogre paused in the act of taking a swig from his giant copper drinking vessel. He looked at Toby from out of those shrewd little red eyes of his. “No, that doesn’t sound like something I’d say, Mr. Adams,” he said. “Hardly the words of a Panglossian like myself.”

“I thought you were an ogre, sir?”

Lord Marshal Vani chuckled and forestalled Luna’s unnecessary explanation to Toby.

“So, Lord Marshal, tell me what happens next,” Toby said. “What happens in the grand scheme as you see things?”

The Lord Marshal settled back in his chair.

That piece of creaking furniture might have had one of the hardest jobs in the army, Toby reckoned.

“As for grand schemes,” Lord Marshal Vani said, “it is one of my personally held beliefs that this great, mixed up, fucked up world of ours had no choice but to spawn intelligent life upon its otherwise quite perfect surface just so that there would be someone about that could simply look around and laugh at how unbelievably, ridiculously and senselessly foolish and cocky the notion of such things as ‘grand schemes’ is, and how utterly insignificant those of us are that use words like ‘grand scheme’.”

Luna looked at Toby.

“Yeah, that’s a little more like the Lord Marshal Vani of old,” Toby said in a stage whisper.

The ogre snorted. “Don’t listen to him, Miss Caelestis,” he said. “I’ve always been endowed with the charm of a Monday morning. Many have said that I put the ‘fun’ in funeral—usually my enemy’s.”

“Many people say that?” Luna asked.

“I do. I say that,” Lord Marshal Vani said. He belched and grinned at the human and the nymph sitting opposite him.

“So—” Toby started to say.

“Let me tell you a little story, Mr. Adams and Miss Caelestis,” Lord Marshal Vani interrupted. “It’s a story about something that we in the trade call a war of attrition. And the pair of you, along with Miss Coombes and Miss None, will each have their part to play in the next chapter. This is how I see the narrative playing out…”

5

“You know something,” Anna said in a low and quiet voice as she and Toby peered through the close tangled branches of the bush they were using as cover. “You know, I appreciate that war is a reprehensible and dreadful thing and all that, but I'm surprised at how enjoyable it's been too.”

Toby looked sideways at his oldest friend.

“I'm not talking about the killing aspect so much,” Anna said quickly. I'm talking more about the tactical side of things.”

“No, yeah, I can see that,” Toby said after a moment's consideration. “Now that you mentioned it, it is pretty cool when you manage to plan sufficiently to manipulate your enemy into doing your bidding. Getting them into exactly the right spot at the right time so that you can take them down.”

“Exactly,” Anna said.

Toby, Anna, and Verity had been sent with a small fighting force of Eclipsian men and women to waylay yet another roving band of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents. Once more, Luna was back at base. She and her team of engineers were busy tinkering with a platoon of mechanized knights, which the nymph believed she might be able to power with some of the carny crystals.

The mechanized knights, as far as Toby understood, were basically suits of armor with complex systems of pulleys and gears inside them that allowed them to mimic human movements. These extremely simplistic robotic soldiers could, or so Luna believed, be used to perform basic military tasks.

“Even if it’s just to act as arrow fodder or a distraction, it’ll mean we won’t waste Eclipsian lives in certain situations,” Luna had said to Lord Marshal Vani.

Although the Lord Marshal was a gruff cove most of the time, Toby had seen how the idea of sparing Eclipsian lives had touched him. And so, he had agreed to let Luna and her team conduct their experiments while Toby, Anna, and Verity went out to take the fight to Duke Diddle in the field.

Toby and Luna had sat with the Lord Marshal for a good hour, listening to him wax on about tactics, weapons, troop numbers, and how they all stacked up compared to Duke Diddle’s forces. Toby had listened intently.

When he and Luna had been dismissed, they had gone back to the tent to talk with Verity and Anna. Toby translated what Lord Marshal Vani had said into slightly less militaristic terms.

“Basically,” Toby said, “Duke Diddle is employing some pretty basic tactics to wear down Lord Marshal Vani and our troops. Like he said to Luna and me, it’s a war of attrition.”

“That’s a very good way of putting it,” Anna said.

“The main problem, as he sees it,” Toby continued, “is that although most of the time the Duke’s forces are weaker than ours, they are, more often than not, more numerous.”

Anna nodded, as did Verity.

“For every hundred of whatever kind of monsters he summons to the field and our forces destroy,” Verity said, “we inevitably end up losing some of our own men. And we can’t afford to lose one true soldier, where it doesn’t put him too much if we wipe out a whole platoon of goblins or whatever that he has pulled from the void.”

“Exactly,” Toby agreed. “He’ll conjure up a bunch of his happy little accidents, have them raid some place, burn a village, and then, in true tyrannical style, he’ll allow those minions to be wiped out by our forces. In the process, like Verity said, we end up losing some of our own people.”

“So,” Anna said, “what it really boils down to is that Duke Diddle more or less has an infinite number of troops to send against us.”

Luna nodded. “He just needs the time and space to bring his creations to life,” she said.

“So what did Lord Marshal Vani propose we do?” Anna asked.

Toby shrugged, trying to keep his tone hopeful. “He said we can only carry on doing what we have been doing. We need to keep trying to keep Duke Diddle guessing, just as he’s keeping us guessing. And in the meantime, Lord Marshal Vani is going to organize a strike force.”

“That sounds serious. Two very strong words there,” Anna said.

Toby snorted. “It’s comments like that that make me think I know why Lord Marshal Vani didn’t ask you to join Luna and me.”

Anna laughed. “So the Lord Marshal is trying to get a select group together to do what?”

“Well,” Toby said, “we need to cut off the head of the serpent. Once you cut off the head—”

“The body will follow and fold,” Verity finished.

“Precisely,” Toby agreed.

And so, with that in mind, while Lord Marshal Vani put together some ideas for what this strike force of his might accomplish, Toby and the others were sent back out into the field to harry, annoy, and disrupt Duke Diddle’s forces.

That was how Toby and Anna found themselves lying belly-down in the mud, peering through the branches of a bush they were using as cover to spy out an encampment of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents.

It hadn’t been hard to find this band of berserkers that Duke Diddle had obviously sent out to ravage the countryside. Toby, Verity, and their contingent of about one-hundred and twenty Eclipsian soldiers had ridden north at Lord Marshal Vani’s request.

“My scouts report that there are a few bands of happy little accidents ravaging the countryside to the east and north,” Lord Marshal Vani had said. “I myself will lead some outriders towards the eastern enemy. I want the three of you to look into those north of us.”

The land had risen gradually toward the north. On the morning of the third day, Toby had seen smudges of smoke on the horizon. The smoke was emanating from fires of destruction that the happy little accidents had been setting as they moved through the country, terrorizing the villagers that lived and worked there.

“There can’t be more than, what, two hundred, two hundred and fifty of the little shits,” Verity said, crawling up to lie next to Toby.

“Yeah, I'd say that you were almost spot on there, human,” Frank said from where he was reclining against Toby's elbow. “I counted two-hundred and twenty.”

“Two-hundred and twenty of what?” Toby said.

“Some of them are those shambling bastards,” Frank said lazily. “But there are some other things that remind me of the hobgoblins of old down there too.”

“So,” Toby said, “we’ve got us some hobgoblins and shamblers. Looks like Duke Diddle has this lot getting together livestock, captives, and any other plunder they can find to bring back to one of his main bases.”

“Yes, it does,” Anna said.

It had soon become apparent that while Duke Diddle primarily used his happy little accidents, which were drawn forth from the ether to do his bidding, to cause havoc across the land, he was also required to have quite a few companies of mortals in his army. Presumably, these dark elves, goblins, wicked men, and other motley assortments of various douchebags were to be used as lieutenants, corporals, and sergeants. After some watching it became clear that they were needed to organize and guide the often quite witless happy little accidents when out in the field.

Mortals, unlike the happy little accidents, required feeding and pay. That was why some of Duke Diddle's raiding parties were sent out to destroy, burn, or capture villages and take any possessions, domesticated animals, and the scant treasures the villagers were unable to hide.

“Looks like there was a little hamlet over there by the road,” Anna said in a voice thick with anger.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “That looks to be where they're gathering up the plunder, doesn’t it?”

The way the shamblers and hobgoblins, with their mortal overseers, were moving around and calling to one another in unintelligible languages, told Toby they were pretty unconcerned about being caught in their raid.

Bastards, Toby thought. We’ll give them a reason to fear us.

“Are we going to attack them?” Anna asked.

“Not just yet,” Toby said. “I don't want to go charging in blindly. It doesn't look like one, but it could be a trap.”

Toby sent out scouts to the west and east of them. But when the scouts came back a couple of hours later, they reported that there were no other members of Duke Diddle's forces anywhere in the surrounding area.

Just because there weren't any enemies in the immediate area, though, didn’t mean enemies couldn’t be drawn out of nothing—if Duke Diddle was forming some kind of very careful and cunning trap.

Still, Toby thought to himself, there are one hundred fifty of us and two hundred twenty of them, according to Frank. If this is a trap, then the enemy is going to find us a tricky collective to bring to bay and kill once that trap is closed.

“Do you think that little copse of trees down there could conceal our patrol?” Toby asked Frank.

Frank narrowed his eyes and peered down at a thick cluster of woodland just to the northeast of where their hiding spot was.

“Shit yeah, mate,” Frank said. “I reckon you could hide triple our number in there.”

“You’re not pulling my leg, are you, Frank?” Toby said seriously. “If you are, I'd like to remind you that we could get killed if things go wrong.”

“I’m not pulling anything,” the imp replied. “Do you think I want you lot to get slaughtered? Yes, I’ll have the house to myself, but Dishy will be there too. I don’t know if I’d be able to take the little clean freak without you guys to break up the monotony.”

“Wow, that’s so touching, Frank,” Anna said sarcastically.

“Okay,” Toby said after a couple of minutes of furious thought. “I’ve got a plan.”

Toby nodded to Anna before pointing down at the copse. “I’m thinking that you, me, and half of our company wait down there in those trees.”

“What about me?” Verity asked.

"You, Frank and the other half of our company, mounted on kirins and horses, attack Diddle’s minions."

"That's a pretty nice simple little ambush," Verity said approvingly.

"Thanks," Toby said. "I'm hoping that the less moving parts, the less chance there is that something will go completely wrong."

Slowly and carefully, while the enemy continued to round up their plunder and strip the last of the little hamlet's hovels, Toby, Anna, and half of their men moved into the copse of trees. Once inside the trees, Toby divided the force of some sixty or so men between himself and Anna and Frank and Verity. Frank and Verity moved to the eastern end of the copse, while Toby stayed in the western area of the little belt of woodland, closest to the burned-out hamlet.

To his slight chagrin, when Toby moved carefully to the very edge of the copse so that he could peer out and see what was going on in the destroyed village, his arrival sent a couple of fat basans—a type of fire-breathing chicken that lived secluded lives deep in the woods—clattering up into the air, emitting a couple of gouts of bright purple fire.

Thankfully, with the shamblers having only slightly more brains than the basans themselves, none of Duke Diddle's happy little accidents paid the noise any mind. They were too focused on the job at hand. The mortal sergeants who had been tasked with overseeing the raid had their attention elsewhere too.

Namely, trying to siphon off some of the best stuff for themselves, Toby thought. That could work to our advantage.

Toby could see what looked like a couple of dark elves supervising a bunch of hobgoblins. They were busy, some three or four-hundred paces away, rounding up a small herd of rabbits, which were the size of deer and had antlers protruding from their foreheads, as well as a pair of stubby wings folded along their backs.

"They’re taking the wolpertingers," Anna said in a voice barely more than a whisper. "There goes this village’s livelihood."

Toby nodded and cracked his knuckles. "Anna," he said.

"Yeah, Tobes?"

"You don’t think this is a trap, do you?"

Anna looked at the scene, then shook her head. "Nah. I think this is a good plan, Tobes. Look at these guys—they’re not worried about being attacked. They’ve allowed themselves to fall into a false sense of security. My guess is that they haven’t faced any kind of resistance to their raids so far."

"Up until now," Toby said.

"Up until now," Anna agreed, reaching out to squeeze his arm.

Toby and Anna went back to where half of their company waited for them. Toby, mounted on his kirin, rode along the ranks of soldiers who were on horseback. He had to be careful to keep his head bowed in case he got smacked in the face by one of the low, overhanging fir branches.

"Now, I'll keep this short and sweet," he said to his assembled riders. "Out beyond the edge of this copse, there’s death waiting for us, boys and girls. That might sound ominous, but none of us here are strangers to death now. We’ve all stood, faced it, and laughed at it—or pulled numerous different hand gestures. Some of which I still don’t know the meaning of"

There was some muttered tough talk, the likes of which might have been mockable in any other situation, except for the one that Toby and those arrayed in front of him were still on the verge of now. A few of the soldiers laughed.

"We've lost enough to know that if we ride now, and if we ride together, we’re not riding for glory or for gold or any of that shit. We’re riding because this place"—Toby pointed down at the leaf mold that his kinin stood pawing at restlessly at—"this land is ours. There’s no creature, no foul thing dreamt up by Duke Diddle and brought to life by that twisted wand that’ll take it from us."

Murmurs of assent met these words.

"So," Toby said, "we do what you’ve been trained to do, and what I know all of you have done before. We ride hard, we ride fast, and when we meet those shamblers, those hobgoblins, and whatever the hell else is waiting for us out there, let’s make sure they know—even if it’s just for a few fleeting moments—who they’re up against and the depth of our resolve. Make them realize that even though there’s death waiting out in the ruins of that hamlet, it’s not our deaths."

Toby’s eyes slid from one face to the next, each one stern. He shared a solemn nod with a few of them. "Let’s ride for Eclipsia," he said.

And that was when Verity, Frank and their contingent of men charged the enemies stripping the hamlet from the other side of the wood.

6

By the time they reached the edge of the trees and were preparing their own charge, Toby could see through the trees that Verity and her crew of riders were moving fast. For a moment, it looked like they had taken their stunned enemy completely by surprise.

Toby gave his kirin the heels. Clods of claw-thrown earth flecked the air behind him as he led the way towards the burning hamlet.

“Makes me wish you could fit a turbo-charger to one of these things,” he growled.

“What’s a turbo-charger?” Anna asked.

“It’s this thing in a car that injects air and fuel harder into a piston so that when it explodes the engine gets more power and—“

“Sorry, you lost me at ‘car’,” Anna yelled over the sound of her running kirin.

“You know when we went to that fancy restaurant in Manhattan and we had foi gras?” Toby tried again.

“Yeah. That was the tastiest guilt-trip ever,” Anna said.

“Well, they make foie gras by, essentially, turbo-charging a goose.”

“I think,” Anna said, “that this should wait until after this fight.”

“Good idea,” Toby said.

Toby pulled out his sword. The light of the flames that were engulfing some of the cottages was reflected in the mirror-bright sheen of the steel.

As they drew closer, Toby watched the hobgoblins and shamblers milling around, for the moment unsure of what to do. Their mortal overseers were running toward any building that wasn’t yet thoroughly ablaze to try and take cover.

And then Verity and her crew of mounted soldiers were among them.

Toby joined the action a short while later, riding down the hobgoblins and shamblers. He hacked down and took the back of a shambler’s skull off. He reversed his sword across his body and stabbed down, skewering a hobgoblin wielding a blacksmith’s hammer through the throat and dropping it.

Around him, blades were rising and falling. Blood sprayed. Hobgoblins, shamblers, and, occasionally, men fell. There was blood galore, panic, the smell of spilled guts, animals crying in fear and confusion, the thunder of hooves.

As the fight went on, Toby saw that the mortals, which looked to be mostly comprised of dark elven mercenaries, were gathering at a large building that had probably been some kind of central town hall before the villagers had been driven out by Duke Diddle’s horde. The dark elves had snatched up long rectangular shields from where they’d been leaning against the wall of the hall.

Toby was just thinking that he was going to make his way across there and wreak some bloody havoc of his own when a gate crashed open, and a stream of livestock surged down the muddy street. It was made up of more wolpertingers and some run-of-the-mill cows.

Toby heard the hiss of an arrow passing nearby his head, though whether it was the shaft of a friend or foe, he couldn’t be certain. He wasn’t dead, though, and that was all that mattered at that moment.

Toby slid his sword into the mouth of his yeti-hair-lined scabbard with a soft hissing sound. He pulled his bow, already strung, from the quiver at his back. He nocked an arrow. He sighted, drew forth from the magical reservoir inside himself, and released the arrow.

Trailed by that strange nimbus of pale blue light, the arrow shot across the street and sheared through a support beam of a roof on which a trio of hobgoblin archers had just crouched to fire down into the street at Verity’s half of their mounted men. The beam collapsed, and the roof fell inwards. The hobgoblin shrieked and then disappeared into the raging inferno below.

Magic. It’ll get you every fucking time, Toby thought savagely.

It was chaos and carnage in that burning hamlet. Hobgoblins, dark elves, and shamblers roamed through the smoke-choked streets and lanes. The hobgoblins, even though they’d been drawn from Duke Diddle’s imagination, were armed with curved swords, jagged knives, and brutal clubs. The shamblers were unarmed—if being able to pull a man from his horse and tear him limb from limb with their bare hands could be considered being unarmed.

To Toby’s astonishment, a few of the dark elven mercenary overseers had managed to get a group of perhaps three or four dozen hobgoblins together to form a very crude shield wall. The shields that comprised the wall were a mix of simple, round, bucklers with woven wooden faces and stouter square shields of lime wood.

It might have worked in disrupting the trap that Toby had arranged for Duke Diddle’s company, but luckily Verity and her group of horsemen came swinging around the side street at that moment and savaged the shield wall from the side.

Toby busied himself as best he was able to. His sword burned like a brand in his hand as he sliced heads from hobgoblin's shoulders and cleaved the backbones of shamblers.

The kirin he was mounted on performed admirably. The strange reptilian equine lashed out with its four feet whenever an enemy got too close and Toby was otherwise engaged or distracted. The strange single claws scythed throats open and ripped faces clean off skulls.

When it became apparent that Toby and his forces were going to win the day despite their inferior numbers, he started yelling out "Keep one alive, keep one of the dark elves alive!"

Lord Marshal Vani had impressed upon them that with every raid they went on, their first goal should be to keep as many of their own forces alive as possible whilst completing the objective set to them. The next most important task after that was gathering information.

Toby had seconded this. Ignorance, so far as Duke Diddle's movements were concerned, was like a darkness that the good Queen Lascivo's forces were constantly trying to find a path through.

Dogs were howling somewhere. Shamblers were jabbering incoherently. Toby cut at a hobgoblin who had managed to set itself on fire as it legged it past him, but he missed. The hobgoblin crashed into a barrow filled with soiled hay that looked like it had been taken from a stable. It went up like a torch.

Toby looked around in a blessed moment of inaction during the fight. He saw Verity spinning around in the middle of a small clutch of the few remaining shamblers. She had dismounted. She was grinning widely. Her blades moved this way and that—in and out, left and right—leaving blood trails in the air. Around her, her enemies fell before bursting into greasy black smoke and returning to the ether from whence they had been drawn by Duke Diddle.

Some of the injured, wounded, or crippled hobgoblins were crawling along the rutted, muddy paths of the hamlet. Some of Toby's men, who found themselves not in immediate danger or had killed their enemies, were busy dispatching these wounded happy little accidents.

"Remember, try and keep one of the dark elves alive!" Toby yelled.

A handful of men, at Toby's instigation, blocked off one end of the main street with half-smoldering timbers, a broken cart, and, in a grisly show of outside the box thinking, the corpses of a couple of the wolpertingers.

With this makeshift barrier in place, Toby and some of his other men were able to round up the fairly moronic shamblers and the dwindling number of hobgoblins and put them to the sword. Toby utilized his magic to economically bring a burning building down on top of about fifteen or twenty shamblers that were milling around looking for an escape route.

He was gaining more and more control over his magic each time he used it. As such, it was becoming a more satisfactory weapon in his arsenal. He was making noticeable gains and improvements to himself each time he went out on one of those expeditions and adventures.

By the time the fighting was done, Toby had been informed that two dark elven sergeants—if that’s what they were—had been captured alive. Three had been taken, but one had cut his own throat before he could be divested of his weapons.

The two prisoners were being guarded by fifteen of Toby's mounted warriors when they reconvened back at the copse from where they had charged.

The two dark elves had been put on their knees. Their ankles were bound, as were their hands behind their backs. One was a man, the other a woman. Both had their bright red hair pulled back in pragmatic warriors’ braids. The woman had the sides of her head shaved; swirling tattoos decorated the sides of her head and ran down the back of her neck. The man had a heavy red beard shaped like a shovel. He was bleeding freely from a scalp wound.

Toby patted his kirin on its scaly neck and then walked over to the two prisoners after he dismounted.

"All right," he said, kneeling down in front of them. "I'm not going to wax on about what might happen to you if I don't get answers to the simple questions I'm going to ask you. These men standing around you have suffered far more at the hands of Duke Diddle than I have. They've had family members burned out of their houses. They've had acquaintances killed by the various different kinds of happy little accidents he sent roving through this part of Eclipsia. Trust me when I tell you that they would be happy to ensure that you accidentally fell down some stairs and accidentally very badly and grievously injured yourselves, even if they had to build the stairs in order for you to accidentally fall and grievously injure yourselves."

Toby took a breath. He looked from the male dark elf to the female. Both stared defiantly back at him.

"I want to know where Duke Diddle's base of operations is," Toby said.

The male dark elf raised his chin. He made a show of opening his mouth. Then he spat at Toby. Toby had been expecting this tried-and-tested show of disdain and nimbly stepped aside. The dark elf looked pissed off that his little maneuver hadn’t paid off. Then he opened his mouth again, swirled his tongue around in a very deliberate fashion, and bit down on something.

Toby heard an audible crunch.

"Oh shit," he said, even as Anna looked perplexedly at the dark elf and said, "What the hell was that?"

The dark elf started frothing at the mouth. What was more, the froth wasn’t white, the color froth should be if it was going to show itself. It was a very sickly and unfriendly-looking green color.

“Poison capsule,” Toby said.

“Yeah, looks like it, doesn’t it?” Anna said dryly.

Toby gestured to one of the guards. “Search her for the same sort of thing, will you? But be careful.”

The guard did as instructed. “Nothing there, nothing in the back of her mouth, sir, or under her tongue,” he said.

Toby looked at the red-headed dark elf. “Not quite as zealous a follower of Duke Diddle as your friend was?” he said. He nudged the corpse of the buggered dark elf, who was now very, very dead indeed, with his foot.

The female dark elf shrugged. “You could say that,” she said. Her voice was as tough and hard as Toby might have expected. Up close, Toby could see her eyes were larger and more almond-shaped than human eyes, and she had the pointed ears of her kind.

Toby looked at her closely. “That’s a promising start,” he said.

“Is it?” the dark elf replied, with a twist to her mouth that might have been a smile under different circumstances. “What is?”

“Are you going to tell me where Duke Diddle can be found, putting his feet up by the fire at the end of a hard day terrorizing the country?” Toby asked.

The dark elf gave a little shrug. She looked Toby dead in the eyes. He noticed her strange eyes—blue, but shading almost to purple.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Toby looked around as some of the guards shifted from foot to foot, grumbling amongst themselves.

“You don’t know,” he said.

“I don’t know. None of us do. That bozo certainly didn't.” She nodded at the body of her fallen compatriot.

“Then what’s with the poison?”

The female dark elf shrugged. “Duke Diddle issued them to all of his corporals and sergeants,” she said. “He says it’s because if we’re captured, even if we don’t know anything, the chances of anyone believing us are very slim. Or so he said.”

“Well,” Toby said, “he does have a point there. Torture is handicapped somewhat by the fact that the person being tortured will often just make up what they think the torturer wants to hear in order to stop the pain.”

“Plus,” the dark elf added, “the person getting tortured normally gets killed at the end of it anyway. The poison capsule really just cuts out the middleman, along with a lot of anguish and unpleasantness.”

“Good point,” Toby admitted. He continued to gaze at the dark elf for a few moments longer.

“You really don’t know, do you?” he said.

The female dark elf shook her head.

Toby glanced at Anna. Anna raised an eyebrow.

“All right,” Toby said to his group of soldiers. “Make sure she’s bound and trussed nice and tight and load her up. We’re taking her back so that she can have a conversation with Lord Marshal Vani.”

As his group of riders got ready to leave, Anna approached Toby.

“I think that pissed off-looking chick was telling the truth,” she said.

“So do I,” Toby said thoughtfully. “She didn’t really have any reason to lie to us. She made a good point about the whole torture business.”

“And I’ve been thinking, Tobes.”

“Yeah, thinking about what?” Toby asked.

“Thinking about how we’re trying to find out where Duke Diddle is holed up.”

Toby nodded. “I thought you might have been,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about the same problem, and I have come to the same conclusion I bet Lord Marshal Vani has.”

“You have?” Anna asked.

“Vexxx,” Toby said resignedly. “We’re going to have to try and get information out of Vexxx. He’s the only one Duke Diddle would have entrusted with his location.”

Anna nodded and sighed. “I thought that might end up being the case,” she said.

“So did I,” Toby said. “So did I.”

7

Riding out after a skirmish was never a speedy procedure. There were things that needed doing. There were helping hands that needed to be applied to various aspects of the situation that the raid on the hamlet, and the subsequent counter-ambush, had resulted in.

Once the immediate danger had been taken care of and the very last stragglers, Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents, had been put to the sword and reduced to wisps of greedy vapor, the inhabitants of the now mostly destroyed hamlet started trickling out from various hiding places around their homesteads.

Seeing as they had to tend to a number of their wounded soldiers, Toby, as the Royal Champion and leader of the expedition, made the executive decision to help the now suddenly destitute villagers. He tasked groups of men with helping to clear the roadways. Others patched up houses as best they could, and put out the fires so that the remaining structures wouldn’t be torched by the spreading flames. More of his warriors helped the soot-stained and grief-stricken villagers bury their dead.

Happily—and Toby was informed about this by a woman he helped shift a burned beam out of a doorway—most of the hamlet had managed to escape into pre-arranged hidey-holes when they had seen Duke Diddle’s minions swarming toward their village.

“But not all of us, sir,” she said sadly. “Not all of us.”

It took most of what was left of the afternoon for Toby’s wounded to be patched up as best as their field apothecaries were able to. By that time, there was no way that they would be able to make it back to the Eclipsian base camp before dark.

“We may as well make camp for the night in the copse,” Toby said, indicating the small belt of trees from where they had sprung their attack. “We’ll head out in the morning.”

He turned to a couple of his more experienced riders. One of the women had a bandage wrapped around her head.

“You alright?” Toby asked.

“Yes, thank you, sir,” the woman replied. “Just a scratch. You know how scalp wounds bleed, sir?”

“Yes, I do,” Toby said. “Here, you may as well have this and get rid of the bandage. Not that you don’t cut a dashing figure.” He fished around in his coat pocket and pulled out a small vial. “Take half, I’d say,” Toby said, handing it to the woman.

“It’s a health potion, sir?”

“Yes, it is,” Toby said. “Give the other half to anyone who might need it. Then, once you’ve done that, make sure that our dark elven guest is securely bound to a tree or something else equally immovable.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman replied. She turned to leave with the other soldier at her heels. Toby called her back.

“Make sure the dark elf is kept comfortable,” he said. “There’s no reason that we can’t be civil, even if Duke Diddle refuses to be.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman replied.

Toby watched as she walked away, tipping the health potion into her mouth until half of the vial had been emptied. She corked the remainder and then unwound the bandage from around her head.

A touch on his arm made Toby turn. It was Verity. She was holding a carved bowl that was filled with steaming game stew.

“Thought you might need something to eat,” Verity said.

Toby’s stomach gave a rumble of agreement as he took the bowl. “Thanks very much,” he said.

“Not a problem, darling,” Verity said.

“Are you not joining me?” Toby asked.

“I’ve already eaten,” Verity said. She ran her fingers through her lustrous blonde hair and shook it out. Even there, in the midst of post-battle carnage, the blonde woman looked like something freshly stepped from a fairy tale.

“How’s everyone doing?” Toby asked.

“Good,” Verity said. She flexed her wrist a couple of times. Toby had expected her hidden blade to slide out, but nothing happened.

“Damn thing’s got clogged with blood,” Verity said, with annoyance. “I’ll have to give it a clean this evening around the fire. I do heartily detest channeling my inner domestic goddess.”

“You’re missing dear old Dishy, huh?” Toby said with a wry smile.

“He is awfully handy and does an awfully good job when it comes to mindlessly polishing things for extended periods of time,” Verity said. “I am fond of the blue little ass.”

They stood together for a few moments, watching the hundred or so men and women all around them setting up camp for the evening. There was a therapeutic familiarity to the proceedings. Toby watched as campfires were built up and lit. Game, which had been caught by hunters and scouts, who had been sent out straight after the battle, hung sizzling and dripping fat from skewers of green wood over the flames of some of the campfires. Weapons were being stacked within easy reach of where soldiers would be bedding down that evening.

Toby glanced out to the edge of the copse and saw hidden sentinels amongst the trees gazing out at the grasslands that surrounded the zig-zagging belt.

Toby sucked in a deep breath and looked up at the forest canopy above. He noticed, seemingly for the first time, though subconsciously he knew he’d cast his eyes on it numerous times, a large flowering magnolia tree standing above them. Its bright pink flowers, forming great cups that stared up at the sky, were poignantly beautiful when he considered what he and the others had just had to go through.

“There is,” he reminded himself, “beauty everywhere. You just have to remind yourself from time to time to see it.”

“What are you thinking about?” Verity asked.

Toby realized he’d been staring into space. He spooned up a mouthful of stew and put it into his mouth to delay answering.

“Your mother?” Verity asked gently.

Toby swallowed. "I have a lot of things running through my mind," he said. “And she’s certainly up there.”

Verity made a sound of agreement and understanding in her throat.

“If only Vexxx would spill the beans on—“

“On anything?” Toby said.

“Yeah. On anything.”

Vexxx had been quizzed by Toby and his friends, as well as the Queen and some of her clerks. The slight, pale bureaucrat had remained polite but unforthcoming. He had not uttered a single word beyond simple pleasantries.

He certainly hadn’t verified whether what Duke Diddle had said about Toby’s mother when they’d last met had been anything other than bullshit, or…

Or whether it might not be true.

“Yeah, there’s a lot going on up here,” Toby said, tapping the side of his head.

"I'm not surprised," Verity said, giving him a gentle dig with her elbow. "You are the Royal Champion, after all."

Toby snorted. "It's a hell of a title, isn't it?" he said. "I feel like there's a lot to live up to in that."

"There is," Verity said. She laughed. "What particularly is on your mind, apart from your mother? Maybe I can help bear some of the burden?"

"Oh, it's just a jumble of things," Toby said.

"The dark elf?" Verity asked.

Toby nodded. "Her, amongst other things," he said.

"You think she was telling the truth?"

"Yeah, I do," Toby said. "I honestly do."

"I think she was, too," Verity replied after a moment. "There was no lie in her eyes. She seemed… defeated, almost."

"But we had just captured her," Toby said.

"Yes, I know," Verity said. "But I don't mean defeated in that way. It was almost like—I can't really put my finger on it. It was like we'd stopped her doing something that she desperately wanted to do, something she wanted to complete." Verity shook her beautiful blonde head. "It was just a feeling."

Toby nodded.

"Are you going to speak with her this evening?" Verity asked.

Toby considered that. "I'll give her a little more time to cool off," he said. "Wait until the guards have fed her. Then maybe she'll be a bit more receptive with a full belly."

"And in the meantime?" Verity asked.

Toby gave her a questioning look.

"You look like a man with a plan, Toby Adams," Verity said.

"There was something about the happy little accidents today that jogged something in my memory," Toby said. “Something that could prove to be helpful.”

"And what was that?"

"The way they fought."

"The way they fought?" Verity repeated. "I didn't really realize they fought in any particular way. Just that they did fight, and that it was fucking annoying," she added.

It was always jarring to hear the woman curse like a sailor because she did so in the same sweet, melodic, well-spoken voice that she normally used. It was like hearing Princess Elsa throw out an F-bomb.

"You saw how they lined up one against the other," Toby said.

"Yes, I did," Verity said, "under the direction of that fool of a dark elf who ate the poison capsule."

"Oh, was it him that was directing them?" Toby asked.

Verity nodded. "Yes. I know because I hit him over the head as I rode past, and that's what broke the line."

"Ah," Toby said. "That was nicely done."

Verity swept a low bow. "Thank you very much, your Royal Championess."

Toby snorted. "Well, anyway, when they formed up that line, it reminded me of a tactic, an ancient one from back where Anna and I are from."

"Oh, yes?" Verity said.

"Yeah, I was thinking that I might run through it with the group of soldiers we have here. And when we get back to base, I'm going to tell Lord Marshal Vani about it. I think he'll be into it."

"What's it called?" Verity asked.

Toby looked at her and gave her a half-grin. "It's called a shield wall," he said. "And it can be utterly devastating."

* * *

"I appreciate you all gathering here, especially since the majority of you have probably already enjoyed an evening meal," Toby said loudly to the throng of gathered soldiers in front of him. "I know we had a hard fight today. We lost a few good people, and that's always galling. So, believe me when I say I really do appreciate that you're willing to hear me out."

"It depends what we are hearing out, sir," someone called from the back of the room.

“And it depends on how much truth there is in the rumor that there’s an extra ration of goblin rum up for grabs,” someone else called.

There was some laughter at that.

Toby grinned. It was funny, but even though he'd never held a managerial position in his life before, he was finding that being in command of a large body of soldiers was not as daunting or as tricky as he had anticipated it would be.

"Well, I'm hoping that having your dinner interrupted will have its blow softened by telling you during today's skirmish, I was reminded of something that might help us further reduce our losses."

The sharpening of attention around the group was an almost palpable thing.

"It's called a shield wall," Toby said. "You might have noticed some of our enemies trying to employ the tactic in a very half-assed fashion."

Anna shouted, "They were definitely half-diddling it!"

There were some murmurs of agreement at this.

"Where did you learn about this shield wall technique, sir?" someone else called.

"That's a good point, Tobes," Anna said out of the corner of her mouth. "Where did you learn about the shield wall?"

"Honestly?" Toby said. "From a Viking show I saw on TV one time. Anyway, what I need you all to do is to divide up into groups of twenty. From there, I want you to divide into three groups on either side of me. Line up one beside the other. Go."

Once his men and women had grabbed round shields and formed up into six separate lines of roughly twenty warriors of peace, Toby instructed them on how they should stand and the weapons that they should have in their other hands to best get at any foe that decided to charge them.

“Broadswords and other two-handed weapons are all very well and good when we’re out clobbering enemies in open battle,” Toby said. “But when you’re part of a shield wall, you’re essentially fighting one-handed—defense in one hand, attack in the other. With that in mind, it’s advisable to carry a short, stabbing sword. Something like this.”

He held up a rudimentary but very serviceable Eclipsian gladius.

“This is just what you want,” he said, “something that you can thrust out quick and sharp and then retract again before it gets snagged in some mail or guts or something. Right, so round shield in one hand, stabbing sword in the other,” Toby said. “The shield always goes in the left hand. The reason for this is that when we’re standing tight together, we want to make sure that the left rim of our shield is overlapping the right rim of our neighbor’s.”

With much clattering of wood, the six lines of soldiers, three facing three, got into position.

“That’s right. That’s perfect,” Toby said. “Now, as for stance, we want our left legs forward, our right legs back. Our weight—the solid foundation of our position—is going to be built on that back leg. When the moment is right, we’ll then start taking half steps forward to force our enemy back, like so.”

Toby caught Anna giving him an admiring glance out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t surprised that she was astonished at his forthright tone and teaching acumen, he had rather taken himself aback at how he had launched into his explanation.

Toby demonstrated the slow, half-shuffle forward with his own sword and shield. After his gathered soldiers had had a go, moving quite easily and quickly in half-step unison, Toby raised his hands for them to stop.

“Good,” he said. “Good. Now, that might be jumping ahead of ourselves a little. You see, that half-step shuffle is what you’ll be doing if we get the opportunity to advance. However, when the enemy is charging us, the main point of a shield wall is to bear the brunt of that assault. You stop the enemy in their tracks, take away that momentum. We want to thwart a charge and have them running into the backs of one another, get them bogged down.”

“Fuck with their morale,” someone called.

“Exactly,” Toby said in agreement. “It’s to fuck with their morale. One minute, they’re heading toward you screaming like maniacs. The next minute, they’re standing there while their mates pile up behind them, and your swords are stabbing them from the front.”

Toby looked around and saw that there were some admiring glances and approving nods being exchanged amongst his soldiers.

“Now,” Toby said, “from what, admittedly, little I know about shield wall tactics, the real kicker in these situations, once the enemy has engaged with you, is little tricks you can pull on them. For instance, if Lord Marshal Vani agrees to this training, then I want to introduce men standing behind those in the shield wall who are armed with large axes. These axes aren’t necessarily for chopping into the enemy, but for swinging forward and hooking their weapons and shields out of their hands or downwards.”

“Which will make it all the easier,” Verity said with relish, “for the men and women in the front to stab the enemy in the face.”

A low, bloodthirsty cheer went up.

“Once the enemy’s weapons and shields are down, this means that other men and women carrying spears can launch their spears and halberds forward and stab from a distance,” Toby said.

Another cheer went up.

“I’m glad you like the sound of that,” Toby said. “I think it could be a real game changer. Another weapon Duke Diddle won’t necessarily know how to counteract straight away. It might just give us yet another edge.”

“Now, I know it’s getting late and the light’s drawing down, but who wants to run a little mock sequence? Shield walls against shield walls. We’ll grab some sticks from the woods to act as swords so no one loses an eye.”

There was great hollering and stamping at this suggestion. Men and women traded good-natured insults at the other warriors in the miniature shield walls standing opposite them.

“Good,” Toby cried with a smile on his face. “In that case, ladies and gentlemen, prepare to charge on my signal…”

8

The following morning, Toby was up with the larks. He watched the sunrise bleed into the fading night sky.

He’d never really been much of an early riser. Not back in his previous life anyway. It was a lot different now—waking up to see the sun peek over the eastern rim of this world was a real pleasure. A gift. A reward, almost. It filled him with anticipation rather than dread or resignation. It made a difference knowing—or more often than not not knowing—what his day was going to bring. All he knew—all Toby and his friends knew—was that it was likely to involve a great dollop of adventure and more than a soupçon of the unexpected.

"Hell of a change from waking up to another goddamn alarm and knowing that you were going to have to spend the next eight to ten hours sitting behind a desk, huh?" he said quietly to himself.

He watched as a phalanx of fat geese coasted through the sky, which was turning the wonderful pale pink color of Anna’s thigh after he’d bitten it the previous evening.

“Hell of a life,” he murmured to himself as he got to his feet and brushed off the seat of his pants. “Hell of a life.”

By the time he got his breakfast ready—cold meat, hard cheese, and yesterday’s bread—the rest of the camp was up and stirring. Like setting up camp, packing down was not a particularly speedy process, although Toby’s mounted riders were getting better every time they ventured out.

“How’s it going, you two?” Toby asked when he found Verity and Anna. The two women were chatting animatedly to one another while they shared their breakfast.

“Fine,” Verity said. “Beautiful morning.”

“Yes, it is,” Toby agreed.

“I’m just nursing the wound you gave me last night,” Anna said in a mock-serious tone. “Honestly, that nip you gave me on the inside of my thigh… It’s going to bruise up a treat.”

“Nothing wrong with a battle scar,” Toby said playfully.

“I’ll remember that this evening,” Anna said.

“Promises, promises,” Toby said.

The sun was only a couple of finger's breadth over the horizon when Toby deemed they were ready to head out.

"Where's the prisoner?" he asked Anna.

Anna and Verity had turned out to be extraordinarily capable lieutenants. Not that Toby saw them in that light, but it was a position they’d sort of naturally adopted. He told them what he wanted to do in terms of where their company was to go and, without really thinking about it too much, they issued those orders in a firm yet personable tone to the men and women of the company.

The troop of riders seemed to appreciate this female touch. Toby knew from firsthand experience that Anna and Verity were basically impossible to gainsay or say ‘no’ to. He supposed that was one of the many benefits of being extremely hot chicks.

"There's a group of half a dozen guards moving her to a horse that I've ordered tied to our little baggage train," Anna said.

"Great thinking," Toby said. "How is she?"

"She looks like someone who spent the night trying to sleep sitting upright against a tree," Anna said carefully. "So, I wouldn't say she's in a great mood, but she didn’t try to spit at me or anything when I went and took her breakfast."

"A promising sign, do you think?" Toby said.

"Yeah," Anna said. “Unless…”

"Unless what?" Toby said.

"Unless she's sort of storing up her pent-up aggression, frustration, and resentment and is waiting for the right time to unleash it," Anna said.

Toby paused in the act of walking towards the company’s little baggage train. "You think she would do that?" he asked.

"Do what?" Anna said.

"Do the whole saving up all of her resentment and bile and all that just to unleash it on some unsuspecting victim thing."

Anna chewed on her lip for a moment. She gave Toby a little shrug. It might have been meant to be comforting, but it turned out to be the opposite.

"I mean, when you strip everything away—the pointy ears and the red hair and the badass tattoos—she is just a woman," Anna said. "And I'm a woman."

"Yes, you are," Toby said.

"And you know, being my best friend and all, how I can sometimes be a little—“

“Erratic?" Toby suggested. “Unpredictable? Borderline deranged?”

"Complicated," Anna said, her eyes narrowing a touch.

"Right, right, yeah, complicated," Toby said, holding up his hands. “That’s what I meant.”

"Look, it was like we talked about last night," Anna said. "She doesn't strike me as particularly vindictive and eager evil. She doesn't strike me as stupid either."

"No," Toby said slowly.

“It’s like Lord Vani told us on our first day of weapons practice,” Anna said. “Wars are fucking stupid because the majority of the grunts doing all the bloody work would, more than likely, get on if they found themselves in a tavern together during peacetime. She strikes me as just someone who—“

“Found herself on the other side to us?”

Anna nodded. “That’s right. I think you've got nothing to lose just talking to her, Tobes."

"And potentially something to gain," Toby replied.

"Exactly."

"Where is she again?"

Anna pointed.

"Okay, I'll catch up with you soon," Toby said.

Toby soon saw the cluster of half a dozen guards marching the dark elf prisoner along. Even from a distance, Toby could pick out the surly set of the dark elf's shoulders. He wasn't surprised about that. He was sure that if he'd spent all night tied to a tree, and more than likely being mocked by passing soldiers, he'd be, at the very least, a little surly himself.

He picked up his pace. They were on the edge of the camp where the pack horses had been picketed. The animals were now basically all loaded. He was just catching up to the group when he saw one of the soldiers, a burly man with a head as bald as an egg, say something to the captive. The dark elf responded, shooting the man a venomous look from under half-lidded eyes.

“Oh no…” Toby sighed.

Clearly, the Eclipsen soldier didn't appreciate the woman's retort, for he gave her a sharp rap in the kidneys with the butt of his spear. The dark elf's knees buckled, but she did not fall. That was a mistake on her part. The guardsman raised his spear to crack her in the back of the knee with the end of his weapon.

Toby sighed inwardly. He hated that sort of shit. He'd given fairly explicit instructions that his troops shouldn't go in for any of it, no matter the provocation. There was such a thing as karma, perhaps, and there was no point tempting it.

Toby was just about to call out when karma, if that's what it was, struck.

The butt of the spear caught the dark elf right in the back of her knee. She was sent sprawling. The soldier that had hit her starting laughing and jeering, and then—

And then, a bursting, expanding, concentric ring of mud exploded outward from where the prisoner lay prone.

The half-dozen soldiers tasked with guarding her were thrown from their feet. The guard that had struck the dark elf was thrown head over biscuit fifteen feet into the air and crashed through the branches of a nearby tree to lie senseless in the dirt. His dropped spear thudded, point down, into the turf about a foot from his unconscious head.

Toby was already halfway towards the stricken warriors by the time the dark elf's second burst of magic shattered the iron manacles that bound her hands behind her back.

She's a mage. A magic user.

The words flickered through Toby's mind.

A fucking magic user… But, why has she waited until now to show herself?

His hands strayed towards the hilt of his enchanted blade even as he ran. Then he paused.

The dark elf was a mage—if that is what she was classified as. She certainly appeared to be. She had just dealt with six soldiers carrying spears. It was doubtful that his sword, even if it was enchanted, was going to have much more of an effect in stopping her.

Besides, Toby didn’t want to kill her.

No, Toby thought, this is going to be a magic job.

The dark elf saw him coming. Toby thought he might have cried out. Was it a warning?  A threat? He wasn’t sure. He just made an instinctive noise.

The dark elf raised her hand.

Without conscious thought Toby threw up his forearm in front of his face. He felt the rush of thaumaturgical energy blast by him on either side. His feet slid backward a couple of feet or so, the soft woodland earth giving way under his boot heels. The magical shield he had erected instinctively deflected the dark elf’s spell around him. Mud sprayed one of the pack horses. The horse, frightened, broke the rope that had hobbled it and galloped off.

“No,” Toby said. “Don’t hurt her! Stay back!”

Three soldiers were drawing near, each of them bearing a crossbow in their hands. They didn’t heed, or else they heeded Toby’s warning too late.

The crossbow quarrels flew at the dark elf. She whirled, ducked one, and sent the other two spinning harmlessly away. Then, in response, she made a motion as if she was punching the air.

The three soldiers were sent flying backward. It was like they were connected to invisible bungee cords and had reached the ends of their tethers, only to be yanked forcibly backward. They landed hard on their backs and tumbled away like a trio of discarded marionettes.

Toby was only about ten paces away from the dark elf now. He lashed out, throwing an open palm low, almost as if he was bowling underhand.

The dark elf grunted as he knocked her feet out from under her. She was tossed up into the air, falling slowly backward in a somersault. As she was falling to earth, she threw out her hands and seemed to steady herself. It was a bizarre and otherworldly movement. It looked like she was being propelled by a series of small jet packs or thrusters that couldn’t be seen. Waves of black energy shimmered around her as she dropped to the ground.

I want to learn how to do that, Toby found himself thinking.

He felt the breath get knocked out of him as the dark elf pushed her hands out in front of her chest and sent a shimmering torrent of energy right at him. Toby managed to get his hand up in a block just in time, but he still found the ground moving away from him at a rapid pace as he was thrown into the air himself.

His reunion with the ground wasn’t quite as elegant as his opponent’s. However, when he landed, he was in proximity to the dark elf. His hand went to his belt. He pulled free his knife and slashed at his skilled foe. She skipped backward, the spell she had been about to unleash fading in her palm.

Toby took that moment of hesitation and rolled with it. He lunged forward with his knife, turning aside at the last second, then tackled the woman around the waist. He felt an expanding bubble of magic bloom under him. He was thrown away. The dark elf tumbled backward as well, apparently an unwitting recipient on the other end of her own spell.

Toby came up to his hands and knees, panting. He gave his head a shake. He tasted coppery salt in his mouth. He spat, blood coloring the grass at his feet. Grinning a crimson smile, he got to his feet.

He saw at once that the dark elf was in a similar state to him. Her chest was heaving up and down. In any other scenario, it would have been quite a distracting sight. Dressed in her form-fitting combat leathers as she was, and tensed up and ready to kill, Toby felt as if he could see every muscle in the dark elf’s body clearly delineated under her clothing.

More soldiers were hurrying up now. Toby threw out his hands.

“No!” he cried in a loud voice. “No! Don’t kill her! Leave her to me! I want her alive!”

The dark elf bared her teeth, panting. Her lips were stained pink with blood.

“You don’t have to do it like this!” Toby said.

“What do you know about it, human?” the dark elf replied. “Just let me go. I’ve got places to be and people to kill.”

“Well that doesn't sound like an entirely healthy hobby but I suppose we've all got our shit going o—“ Toby started to say.

He was forced to cut his pithy retort short when another blast of magic sent great clods and gouts of dirt and shredded grass ripping upwards and toppled a horse over. The poor animal whinnied with fright. Toby threw himself aside, narrowly avoiding the magical discharge.

They traded magical blows for a few more moments while more and more troops gathered around in a circle. Some of the soldiers held swords at the ready, but many stood with their hands on their hips, looking on in amazement as Toby and the dark elf did magical battle with one another.

Toby was buffeted to the left by a gout of blossoming purple-black energy that bloomed in the air like lilac petals of fire. He enshrouded himself in a globular shield that deflected most of the energy.

His retort was a scintillating barrage of crystalline needles formed out of the air. The solidified air icicles shot towards the dark elf. She deflected some, shattered others, and threw herself backward, out of the way of the rest, which embedded themselves in the ground before fading into nothing.

Toby charged across the space that divided them. He lashed out with a boot and connected with the dark elf’s thigh. She grunted with pain and then swept his legs out from under him with a graceful roundhouse sweep of her own. Toby rolled backward and narrowly avoided the heel that would have done some serious damage to the back of his head had he still been lying where he’d fallen.

He caught the next two punches on his forearm, shrugged so that the right overhand blow aimed at his chin glanced off his shoulder, and then pulled the dark elf into a headlock. He wrapped his leg around her and brought her to the ground.

The dark elf was smaller and slighter than Toby, of course, but she was wiry and strong. She cracked him in the ribs with a couple of juicy elbow strikes. Toby hissed with pain but kept his grip. Slowly, he felt the viciousness fading from the dark elf’s blows. He squeezed his chokehold a little tighter.

The dark elf was struggling to draw breath now. Toby released his hold around her throat and cracked her in the side, right where Lord Marshal Vani had taught him. The dark elf went limp. Toby shoved her off of him.

He only realized at that moment that he wasn’t just ringed by soldiers but by the din they were creating too. Men and women were cheering and clapping. Toby realized they’d been egging him on, goading him to finish the dark elf.

“Come on, sir, give her the coup de grâce!” someone called in a savage tone.

“Finish her!” someone else yelled. “Think of what she and those other sons of bitches did to us yesterday!”

Toby spat blood again. He stood for a moment with his hands on his hips, breathing hard. He wiped a trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand.

The dark elf thrust out her hand. Toby had been waiting for, and expecting, a last-ditch effort of that kind. He waved his hand. The ball of violet energy that had erupted from the dark elf’s palm ricocheted away, hit a tree, and crisped the bark in large asterisks of smoldering black. Tendrils of light purple fire ran up the trunk and faded.

A great shout of “Whoooah!” went up from the gathered crowd.

Toby brought his own hand around in a pistol formation. A light green nimbus enshrouded the dark elf. She was plucked from the ground and thrown backward. She crashed into the side of one of the few remaining tents that hadn’t been packed away. The canvas and wood collapsed down on top of her non-moving form.

“Truss her up,” Toby said, staring around at the soldiers. “Truss her up. Lord Marshal Vani is going to want to speak to that one. I guarantee it.”

9

"What’s your name?" Toby asked.

The dark elf sat on the narrow cot of her cell and said nothing.

"Oh, come on," Toby said wearily. "What harm is there in you telling me your name?"

Still, there was no answer forthcoming. The dark elf only looked at Toby blankly out of those strange, almost lilac eyes of hers.

"What do you think I’m going to do with your name? Work some kind of voodoo on you?" Toby asked.

The lilac eyes narrowed. "You’re a necromancer?" the dark elf spat.

"What? No," Toby said. "No, I was just making a joke."

"You think necrotic magic is a joke?"

"No… Look, I was just trying to make a point, poorly as it turns out, that there’s nothing I can do with your name except call you by it," Toby said. "My name is Toby, Toby Adams."

To the dark elf’s obvious surprise and slight consternation, Toby stepped forward and proffered his hand to her. The red-haired woman was secured to the wall of the cell via long chains that were manacled around each of her wrists. She looked at Toby’s hand.

"But you are my enemy," she said.

Toby gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Yeah, maybe, on paper," he said. "We’re standing on two different sides of a wall. Somehow, though, you don’t seem like an enemy. Not in the classic sense."

“I killed some of your warriors.”

“Yeah, well in that sense you are an enemy,” Toby conceded. “But you just don’t strike me as a Grade-A certifiable nutcase like Duke Diddle is, that’s what I was getting at.”

The dark elf’s eyes flicked from Toby’s face to his hand and back to his face. Then, slowly, as if she feared she might be the recipient of some electric shock, she took his hand. Her grip was smooth, dry, and strong. She and Toby shook.

"Well?" Toby said, after they had kept their grip for maybe a second longer than was normal.

"Well, what?" the dark elf asked.

"What’s your name?"

She licked her full lips. Then, she said grudgingly, “My name is Zareth. Zareth Holloway."

"A pleasure to meet you, and, as they say in Eclipsia, well met, Zareth Holloway," Toby said.

He took a step back so as not to impose himself in the prisoner’s space. He leaned casually against one wall.

"You’re the commander of the army?" Zareth said. It was not a question.

"I’m in charge of the bunch of riders that took you and your monstrous buddies by surprise," Toby said. "But, between you and me, I’m not quite sure how that happened. What I know about commanding armed men, I could probably write on the back of a postage stamp."

"What’s a postage stamp?" the dark elf asked.

"It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that I know next to nothing about leading military units," Toby said.

"And yet I saw you heading the charge against my raiding party," Zareth said.

"Yeah," Toby agreed.

"Do you mind if I ask why or how it is that one, who admits he has no military experience, finds himself heading one-hundred or so warriors?"

"With all the respect that’s due to you as a prisoner of war," Toby said carefully, "I don’t really think I have to answer any of your questions."

The dark elf leaned back to study Toby from under her heavy lids. There was something undeniably attractive about the woman. She was sharp and angular and severe. But Toby guessed that, had circumstances been different, had her life’s path led her to some other end, there was a beauty there and laughter under the austere surface just waiting to gush forth.

"You have my name," she said.

"Yeah, I do.”

“And I told you that I don’t know where Duke Diddle’s base of operations is."

"Yes, you did.”

“And you said that you believed me."

"Yes, I did."

"And what else would you know of me, Toby Adams?"

"You know, I was pondering over that same thing almost all evening," Toby said. "And I came to the conclusion that I just wanted to know more about… you. I wanted to know who it was you were talking about when you said you had people to kill. It seemed like you had someone specific in mind."

"Maybe I should just wait to tell these things to Lord Marshal Vani."

"Maybe," Toby said, "but the Lord Marshal hasn’t returned from his foray yet. And between you and me, there’s no knowing what kind of mood he’ll be in when he gets back."

Toby and Verity and their band of riders had returned to the Eclipsian Army base camp to find that Lord Marshal Vani had, indeed, not yet made it back. There had been no word from the ogre. Knowing that the Lord Marshal had had to wait the best part of a decade to see action again, Toby was aware that he was liable to do the military equivalent of staying out late past his curfew and not letting his parents know when he was coming home.

Toby had taken the initiative and seen that Zareth Holloway had been securely fastened inside one of the specially spell-proofed cells that had been erected in the encampment. Ever since the breaking out of Vexxx from Stagbreach, holding cells that were proof against magic users had been par for the course.

"Yeah…" Toby said, staring up at the rough stone ceiling, which was only a couple of inches above his head, and lit by a single fairy-filled lantern.

The fairy itself, its rear aglow, was sitting, reading a tiny newspaper inside the glass housing. Toby knew that they were on eight-hour shifts.

"Yeah, there's no knowing what kind of mood he'll be in when he gets back," Toby repeated. "If things have gone well, then he might be inclined to have you over to his tent for dinner so that you can, over one or two—or more likely ten—strong drinks, divulge everything you know about Duke Diddle's plans and troop movements etcetera, etcetera. But, if things haven't gone quite so smoothly on his mission, well, the Lord Marshal has been known to be somewhat sharp in his acerbity when in a foul temper."

The dark elf lifted her chin defiantly. "You mean he might have me tortured?" she said.

Toby's eyebrows rose in surprise. "What? No, nothing like that. We don't really go in for torture in this army. I'm not sure what load of crap Duke Diddle or Vexxx has been feeding you underlings, but yeah, that's not really our bag."

Zareth’s steely expression softened at Toby’s obviously sincere words. “It is said amongst the mortals in the Duke’s employ that Lord Marshal Vani is the kind of warrior that you have to come at ten-handed.”

Toby frowned.

“As in, you'd need to turn up with at least ten warriors—mean killers who hurt people for a living—to have any hope of bringing him down,” the dark elf explained.

“Oh,” Toby said. “Yeah. Yeah, you might be able to bring the Lord Marshal down with ten. You’d need to make sure they were big, though. And harder than a troll’s—nevermind. As I was explaining, no, he won’t torture you. But he might subject you to hours upon hours of his rather pessimistic philosophies on life.”

“What?” Zareth blinked in visible confusion.

“You don’t strike me as the super bubbly, rose-colored spectacles wearing, of good cheer types,” Toby went on, “but even you might find yourself getting worn down by his hard-boiled view on life. If you're really unlucky, you might be within breathing distance of him after he's chugged some of his bloody Gnomish Guillotine, Pixie Punchdrunk, or whatever he might be favoring at the moment. His grog of choice will literally peel the skin from your face within five paces."

He was watching Zareth out of the corner of his eye, and Toby was gratified to see that something that might almost have been a smile in a fair light flitted with hummingbird speed across her face.

Toby crossed his arms and looked pointedly at Zareth Holloway. "You didn't seem very upset when your fellow dark elf chomped down on that poison crystal or whatever the hell it was."

"Well, between you and me," Zareth said, "that guy was a bit of a prick."

Toby nodded understandingly. "Yeah, the world's full of 'em," he said.

"Ain't that the truth?" Zareth said with feeling.

Toby let the silence stretch. He had a feeling that if he could show the willpower not to talk, the dark elf might fill that silence with—

"I never wanted to join Duke Diddle's side," Zareth said quietly.

Bingo, Toby thought.

"Like I said, I was sensing there was no love lost between you and the other members of that raiding party," Toby said. "My friends Verity, Anna, and Frank thought the same."

The dark elf nodded. "Yes, I didn't want to be there," she said shortly.

"And yet you were," Toby said.

"Yes, and yet I was."

There was unmistakable bitterness in Zareth Holloway's voice. She reached up and absentmindedly toyed with the end of her bright red warrior's braid. As she did so, Toby studied the intricate swirling, almost Celtic design tattoos that adorned her neck and the sides of her scalp. He wondered how much of the dark elf's body was inked.

Focus, Adams, focus, he reprimanded himself.

"Why was it that you attacked my men back at our makeshift camp?" Toby asked.

"One of them struck me," Zareth replied.

"I know," Toby said. "I saw it. To be fair, he had what you did to him coming. But when you sent all six of them flying and incapacitated them, I knew then that you'd planned on making a break for it, no matter what."

Zareth looked up sharply at Toby. "That's very perceptive of you, Toby Adams," she said.

Toby shrugged. "I was trying to put myself in your shoes all last night," he said. "I think I would have done the same if I had felt that I was being impeded in something more important. I thought, up until we just started speaking, that you were filled with some weird burning need to get back to Diddle."

Zareth scoffed. "I hate Duke Diddle," she said. Venom dripped from every syllable. "I hate him. He took everything from me."

"Then why were you trying to escape?" Toby pressed gently.

"Because," and suddenly the dark elf laughed. "Because, ironically, I did want to get back to Duke Diddle—but not for the same reason you probably believed. I wanted to find my way back to him so that I could kill him with my own hands."

"Well, look at that," Toby said, "we've got something in common." He gave the dark elf a weak grin. He was glad, if not a little bit surprised, when she returned it.

Toby's smile faded. His expression softened to one of sincere interest. "What happened?" he asked. "What happened to you?"

Zareth plucked at the front of her figure-hugging, leather combat suit. "I wasn't always like this," she said. "I come from a simple family—and I mean that in the best way possible."

Toby watched as the dark elf’s stern face turned away from his. The hooded eyes appeared to look inwards.

Searching memories. Going back in time.

“The little fishing village I was from, Deeprill, was quiet. Out of the way,” Zareth said.

Her tone was as deep and intense and, somehow, intoxicating. Toby found himself getting caught up in her words. Glancing up, he saw that the fairy in the lantern above had set down its paper and was leaning forward, the better to hear.

“A merchant passing through once said to my father that they got the impression that our whole village was there waiting for something to happen,” Zareth went on.

A faint smile tugged at her lips. The change in her features that smile made, however fleeting, was astounding. It was like someone had lit a light behind her face and eyes.

“I always remembered that,” the dark elf went on. “I always liked the idea of that because Deeprill was a good place to wait. It was a very good place to wait for something to happen.”

Toby stood and listened and watched the dark elf as she spoke.

“In a way,” she said, “I suppose I was waiting, but I also wasn’t waiting. When I fished with my father and brother, I never felt like I was waiting, which is strange, no? I always felt like we were building something much bigger, if that makes sense.”

She paused.

Toby said, “Are you that eager to get your hands on Duke Diddle?”

The captivating lilac eyes flicked to Toby and away. The stare morphed from intense to pensive once more. “I wonder, as a human, whether you feel time flowing in the same way that dark elves do, Toby Adams.”

Toby made a noncommittal noise in this throat.

“I'm not in a hurry now. Not as I was when I was younger. When I was younger I felt I had a lot more time, so why would I worry about hurrying and rushing?”

“That's the impatience of the youth, though, isn’t it?” Toby pointed out. He was unsure where they were heading with this conversation, but he got the feeling that if he let Zareth talk then eventually they might end up where Toby needed to.

“True,” Zareth said.

“Speaking for myself,” Toby said, “now that I’m older, and I don't have so much time as I did when I was a dumb kid, I’m a lot more relaxed because there's not as much time. Doesn't make sense, but it does make sense.”

“I suppose you have to be older to understand that,” Zareth said, nodding her head. She let out another little sigh and smiled wistfully. “Ever since I left my home behind… I don't know, I feel as if I hear the message from Duke Diddle and his other coerced or brainwashed lieutenants that we should always be busy all of the time. Busy making battle plans, busy training, busy polishing weapons and army. Just be busy, busy, busy. It was never the way of my people to always be busy. To never stop so that we are unable to look around us. To not be able to take the time to just be.”

Toby thought back to his life in New York. “It's not easy to step out of that,” he said. “Coming to Eclipsia was, I think, just the change that I needed. It has been a slowdown in many ways, and it’s been a good thing for me.”

“I want to go back home and stay there,” Zareth said. “I want to stay and live a more quiet life. That life gives me space. It gives me room to move, think and dream, and just be. Even before what happened, I remember knowing how nice it was just to be. To be me, in that time and place.”

Toby found that he was caught up in the wistful reminiscences of the dark elf. In no time at all, in the space of a few days, she had changed from an out-and-out enemy, to a prisoner of war, to just another person Toby had crossed on the road of life.

“Living that simple life, the life I was brought up in Deeprill, you really are able to become yourself if you choose to.”

Toby nodded. “I can understand that. It took a little while, but I feel like, since coming here, I’ve been becoming more myself. In a way I wish I’d gotten here earlier, but also not because the journey was worth it.”

Zareth nodded understandingly. She subjected Toby to another one of her x-ray stares. “You need to find a way of realizing who you are, and then listening to that in a way,” she said. “I’ve noticed that it is difficult for males of most species and races to do that, to speak about their emotions, to admit, even to themselves, what they feel.”

Toby snorted. “We males can be worried about being perceived as weak.”

“It's all about perceptions, eh?” the dark elf said. “We are seen in certain ways. Real, true people—whether they be a dark elf, human, dwarf, ogre, or anything else—are actually quite hollow things. There's not much to us. Duke Diddle is fond of telling his more weak-minded or malleable mortal subjects to just be strong. What's strong, hm?”

“Strength is important in wartime,” Toby said.

“Yes, but there's so much more to us all than that.”

“It's sad in a way.” Toby was starting to see that there was much more to Zareth Holloway than just the fearsome mage warrior.

“It's sad that we subscribe to that line of thought,” the dark elf said earnestly. “It might not be easy, but you don't have to subscribe to that. It’s one part of the reason why I detest Duke Diddle so. We don't have to act the way he wants us to. Not if we only banded together.”

“I think,” Toby said carefully, “that there are limits as to how far everyday folk can go without Duke Diddle being wiped clean out of the picture.”

“We should live within the limits we set for ourselves, that's true,” Zareth said. “In a just world we would set our own borders and we would live within that framework and then it's our limits that we’ve set. No one else set them for us. That's our world.”

“But, at the moment, Duke Diddle is setting the borders,” Toby said.

“Yes,” Zareth said, and there was unmistakable anger in her voice. “But if we can change our limits then our world will change.”

Toby watched the woman intently. Her eyes blazed as she punched the wall of her cell softly a couple of times.

“The species that share Eclipsia are prone to forget that our experience of emotions makes us very similar,” she went on, the words tumbling out of her now. “We share so much: our fears, our dreams, our ideals. It's a very collective thing if we would just stop and think about it. When we are happy we want to tell somebody we are. When we're not, we also want to communicate that. It's not a singular thing. Not for one. It's for the group. It’s all about finding people that share the same values, the same interests. Folk that know what you're about. That understand you. Duke Diddle is not such a one.”

“It’s about finding your tribe,” Toby muttered.

“That's right!” the dark elf said, turning back towards him. “Finding your tribe. Your kin. Your clan. Duke Diddle has no clan, no kin, no tribe. He is a singularity that thinks he answers to no one.”

“He’ll answer to me,” Toby said grimly.

The dark elf eyed Toby shrewdly. Some of the fire died in her eyes. “My purpose when I was younger, when I helped fish the river with my family, was to be. To be there to listen, to observe, to live through the seasons, live through the vegetables we planted, live through the fish we pulled from the river, following those trails of interconnectedness. We all flow in and we flow out. Duke Diddle does not know that, or he chooses to forget it.”

“You really miss your home, don’t you?” Toby said.

Anger flared all across Zareth’s face. Toby was reminded of lightning lighting up a whole thundercloud. “I love it there. In the high river country you're the queen or king of your own world You really are. It's so beautiful. So beautiful. There was a time in the afternoon when everything was calm; the leaves just about moving, the river flowing, the occasional fish breaking the surface. Beautiful. Grounded, in realness. I felt free in a sense I haven’t come close to since I was forced to leave.”

Forced to leave…

“All the other stuff. Any troubles and cares. It was far away at that special time of afternoon. I was always reminded that, if you want, you can find beauty anywhere. You just need to lose whatever distracts you. Make it go away. Find a place where you won't be disturbed. A place where you’re alone for a second, and then enjoy that second.” Zareth closed her eyes. A single tear tracked down her cheek. “Everything is beautiful. You just need to notice it. You just need to stop and just stare. Watch the world until it goes dark. Just stop.”

Silence stretched between them.

"That sounds like a good home," Toby said in a quiet and sincere voice. “It sounds like a good life.”

"It is the kind of life that the dark elves, mostly, would like to return to," Zareth said. She puffed out her cheeks and dashed the tear angrily from her face. She frowned, looking as hard and badass as she ever had done. “Instead, we find ourselves in thrall to that bastard Duke Diddle.” She tipped her head back, resting on the stone wall behind her. Her manacles clinked softly as she looked down at her hand.

“In thrall?” Toby asked. “You mean—?”

"A lot of my dark elven kin were roped into a sort of indentured service one way or another—whether it be by threats or by gold—by Duke Diddle, to form the majority of his mortal host." Zareth intoned the words in the dreary, almost sing-song voice, as if she was reciting something dull and yet pivotal in her life.

“And you specifically, how did you end up on his side?” Toby asked.

"How he managed it, I don't know, but Duke Diddle found out about my proclivity for magic,” Zareth said. Anger flashed behind her eyes, piercing and pure as the sun’s fire. “Regardless of the fact that he wields that cursed wand of his, he has few mages or wizards of his own. So, when he found out about me, he threatened my family. And then, when the threats did not yield the desired result, he had Vexxx pay my clan a visit with gold. When that failed, when they unanimously refused to release me or sell me out, Duke Diddle sent a company of hobgoblins to my village, burned it to the ground, and slaughtered all but one of my kin."

Toby's face had set into a mask of thunderous impassivity. He didn’t trust himself to speak. It was just yet another mark on Duke Diddle’s card.

"He had me abducted and my one remaining relative spirited away. My brother," Zareth went on. "He said that if I didn't use my magical abilities in pursuit of his cause, he would have my brother killed in a most gruesome fashion."

“Prick,” Toby said with real feeling. “And so…?”

Zareth looked up from where she was examining her hands. "And so that's how you find me here and why I was so keen on escaping your custody.” She sighed through her nose and closed her eyes for a moment. “The men and women that I stunned, they weren't badly hurt, were they?"

Toby shook his head. "Just incapacitated for a little while, as I said. A couple of abrasions. Nothing to write home about."

"Good," Zareth said. "Even that thug who hit me was just a run-of-the-mill moron. He didn't deserve to die."

The dark elf leaned forward. She looked imploringly at Toby. So beseeching was her gaze that he found himself shuffling awkwardly on the spot.

"Toby Adams," she said.

"Yes?"

"I beg you to release me. I don't know where Duke Diddle's hideout is. I would tell you in an instant if I did, if it meant that you would march the Eclipsian army to face him and destroy him. But the fact is, he never divulged that information to anyone but his closest confidant."

"You mean Vexxx," Toby said.

Zareth inclined her head. "We haven't had word from Vexxx since the siege of Stagbreach," she said. "If anyone knows where the Duke sits like a spider in the center of his web, spinning a thread here and pulling a line there, then it's Vexxx."

Toby nodded. "We'd come to that conclusion ourselves," he murmured.

"Then please, I beg you, release me," Zareth Holloway said. She clasped her chained hands together. "Please, I have limited time in which to act. As soon as word of this defeat reaches Duke Diddle, there'll be no reason for him to keep my brother alive. He'll kill him. I must reach him before he hears that the patrol he sent out was utterly wiped out."

“I know it’s not much of a comfort, but I think old Diddlestick has more on his mind than just your fate, Miss Holloway,” Toby said.

“Still. My brother is the only piece of my past that remains to me. I have to save him. Family is… There’s nothing more important in this world.”

Toby considered this request. He thought of his mother. Thought of her potential fate. That was still a mystery that needed unraveling.

Toby had learned to trust his gut. His gut was telling him that what this dark elf was saying was the unvarnished truth. He wanted to oblige her, but he knew that if he did, and Lord Marshal Vani learned of it and it turned out that he'd misread the situation…

"I need you to swear to me that what you say is true and that you will help us defeat Duke Diddle," Toby said in a voice of iron and granite. "I need you to convince me that you will use your magical prowess for the good of our side if I agree to help you in your quest."

"I swear it," the dark elf said at once.

"Zareth," Toby said, "I need something more tangible and ironclad than just your word. I'm sorry. That's the way it is."

Zareth bowed her head for a moment. Then, suddenly, it snapped upwards.

"There is an ancient way that my people, in exceptional circumstances, would bind themselves to others or to an oath," she said. "Once this simple ritual is performed, the bond that is created is unbreakable."

"How do we go about sealing this pact?" Toby asked.

"It is a coming together of flesh, a bonding of body to body, the most primal and ancient of promising rites."

Toby frowned. The dark elf was staring intently at him.

"Do you mean that we seal this pact with a kiss?" he said.

Zareth Holloway shook her head. Slowly, she stood. She reached up to the throat of her leather combat attire and started to unbutton it.

"No," she said. "It involves a little more than a kiss…"

Above them, the fairy dimmed its bioluminescence and tactfully went back to its paper.

10

In a kind of daze, Toby found himself stepping forward and unfastening the manacles that bound the dark elf. The chains fell away and clattered against the stone wall of the cell.

Regardless of the fact his interview with Zareth Holloway had taken a most unexpected turn, Toby felt himself stiffening up under his practical canvas trousers.

“Frank, out,” Toby hissed.

“But—“

“Out, Frank!”

“Fine.”

The imp, in beetle form, buzzed off.

Toby had said it once—actually he hadn’t said it at all, but he had thought it a couple of times—but his new ranger pants might have been good for stopping thorns, claws and the occasional dagger cut, but they sure made an impromptu boner a pain in the—

Zareth leaned forward and kissed him again. She stuck her tongue as far into his mouth as it would go. Toby groaned.

“You have never coupled with a dark elf?” Zareth asked.

Toby shook his head. His nose was full of the earthy musk of the red-haired warrior; leather, sweat, mud, and blood.

"It can get a little rough."

“I’m a big boy.”

Zareth’s eyebrow rose just a fraction. “Are you just?”

Toby’s fingers ran down the dark elf’s hip and across her tight backside. Downward and inward his daring hand glided. Over the smooth leather his digits slid, squeezing her tight, round butt cheeks as hard as they dared.

The dark elf sucked in a little breath through her nose as Toby slipped his fingers under her crotch. Her lilac eyes were fastened on Toby’s.

Toby could feel, even through her fighting leathers, the warmth emanating from the dark elf's groin. The awareness that she was already so eager and ready for whatever was to come next in this pledging of their flesh had the same effect on Toby’s carnality as a defibrillator to a stuttering heart. His member strained and raged against the constraints of his own trousers.

The dark elf reached up and cupped Toby’s cheeks in her hands. Zareth’s expression was intent as she studied his face. Then she gave him a crooked smile.

"You know, this will be my first time sleeping with a human," she said.

“I’m honored.”

“You should be.”

Toby chuckled.

“I suppose,” Zareth said, looking around the fairly bare cell, “that we should try and make it memorable, no?”

“In a good way, you mean, right?” Toby quipped.

Zareth chuckled. "Shut the fuck up, please."

Toby, seeing something glimmering in the depths of the dark elf’s mischievous eyes, raised his hand and delivered a sharp slap to her ass.

Zareth made an amorous noise in her throat. It was something between a mewl of desire and a soft groan of delight.

"Ah," she said in a low voice, biting her lip, "so you’re taking up the role of the gaoler who is keen to take liberties with his prisoner, I see."

Are we fucking role-playing? Toby thought. Standing in a cell with a bona fide dark elf already feels like role-playing enough.

Toby sat down on the edge of the cot that Zareth had so recently gotten up from. He reached up, grabbed the dark elf around the waist, and pulled her roughly to him. With suddenly frantic and fumbling fingers, he pulled open the fastenings of her fighting leathers.

"I like your brio, Mr. Gaoler," Zareth purred, smiling down at him.

Toby reached up, hooked one hand around the back of her neck and pulled the red-haired woman down to him. He ran a smattering of kisses along her throat as he forced the dark elf to bend down to him. He grabbed her warrior’s braid in the other hand so that she grunted as he jerked her head lower. He kissed her again.

Toby was fast coming to the conclusion that Zareth had laid down an unspoken challenge of sorts. A challenge in dominating her, of subduing her to his will, of showing her he was someone worth following and believing in.

"Ah, ah, ah," Zareth chided, pulling away from him.

“Aaaaah,” Toby grunted, in more than a little pain.

The reason for his discomfort was because, as Zareth reversed away from him, she had a hold of his top lip gently between her bright white teeth.

Toby groaned, as she bit down just a fraction harder, enjoying the painful pleasure of it.

With a soft, fleshy snapping sound, the dark elf released her toothsome hold on him and returned to her standing position between his legs.

“I see what you mean about things getting a little rough,” he said. “That smarts.”

Toby licked at his smarting lip and grinned at her.

"I thought you said you were a big boy," Zareth said.

"Ouch. Right in the ego."

In response to this comment, Zareth took hold of Toby’s hand and slipped it into her now open warrior’s garb. Deciding to take the bull by the horns, Toby slid his hand across her hard, toned stomach before cramming it into the warm confines of her leather pants.

"Now you are getting it, Toby Adams," Zareth hissed into his ear.

Toby’s hand was nicely wedged down the front of the woman’s tight fighting pants. The warrior’s garb she wore might have been tailored to ensure that an enemy found it hard to get a grip on her in combat, but it also made maneuvering around inside of it a great difficulty.

Toby cursed under his breath as he ran a finger across the dark elf’s moist, slick, velvety folds. Zareth moaned as he circled her clit with his questing digit as well as he was able to before pulling it out and sucking on it so that he could taste her.

The dark elf tasted unlike any of the other women who shared Toby’s bed. Unique. Wonderful. She tasted like raw, feral desire.

"Just a little sample for the time being, hm," Zareth said, breathing heavily through her mouth. She looked like she was only just managing to keep a check on her yearning to get down to the nitty-gritty.

That would bother me not at all.

"Now though, Mr. Gaoler, I want you to disrobe. I want to see what I’m working with here."

“I’m not sure if that’s how the whole gaoler-prisoner thing works.”

Zareth lifted her top lip in something that was more a snarl than a smile.

"Yes, ma’am," Toby said.

Toby might have been keen on going along with the whole role-playing thing, but he was, first and foremost a guy. What was more, he was a guy whose blood was well and truly up. He was out of his clothes in a surprisingly short amount of time. The fact that he almost got himself tangled in his pants as he pulled them over his ankles in his haste barely detracted from the erotically charged atmosphere.

He sat himself back down on the cot. He could feel now, being bare-assed, just how uncomfortable the damn thing was.

“Speedy,” Zareth said.

“Don’t worry," Toby said. "It’s not a sign of things to come."

Zareth grinned.

Toby took his cock in hand and leaned back.

"I hope my disrobing has convinced you that clothes are extremely overrated when it comes to getting to know one another?" he said.

Zareth looked down at his swollen member. Her tongue ran slowly along her lips.

“No flesh pact was ever made clothed,” she said.

“No, otherwise I guess it’d be called a—“

"Quiet your noise now, Toby Adams,” the dark elf said in a low voice. “Sit back and let me show you how I will ratify my promise to you."

Zareth wriggled her shoulders, unfastened a couple more hidden clasps, and, in a far more sensuous fashion than Toby had managed, slipped out of her combat suit. Toby saw now that the woman’s boots were actually built into the warrior garb itself.

She dropped to her knees and ran her hands up the inside of Toby’s thighs so that a wave of shivers passed through him. She crouched between his legs, which she forced wider with her elbows. Then she looked up at him expectantly.

“Get to it then, prisoner,” Toby growled.

Zareth flipped her warrior’s braid behind her back as Toby leaned back against the rough stone wall of the cell. Then, with Toby watching her hungrily, she leaned forward and began to lick and kiss around his nutsack and thighs.

Toby breathed heavily through his nose as he tried to will the dark elf to take his length in her mouth. Obviously, he wasn’t as skilled at telepathy as he was fast becoming at magic and swordplay because, for the longest time, she didn’t so much as touch his prick, though stray strands of her hair tickled his shaft and sent little rivers of pleasure flowing up his stomach.

“Whoooa-okay,” Toby said through gritted teeth as, without so much as touching his shaft with her mouth or fingers, Zareth ratcheted up his libido to breaking point within a handful of seconds. “Okay, that is… That is some skill you have there. You’re not using some kind of magic, are you?”

“Just that magic that all us females have to some degree?” Zareth purred.

Toby somehow resisted grabbing the dark elf by the hair and forcing her cunning mouth onto his twitching prick—although it was fucking hard. Rather, he allowed her to work her slow magic, kissing all around his groin. She was giving Toby’s shaft and chestnuts the kind of thorough, slow working over they hadn’t experienced in quite some time.

Zareth licked and sucked on his balls like they were a couple of Reese’s Pieces she was looking to melt. Toby moaned as she bit softly at the smoother skin on the inside of his thighs, then ran a staccato of kisses from the base of his cock to his navel.

Then, finally and without a word of advance notice, Zareth dropped her head forward. Toby’s stomach muscles clenched up as she took his dick in her warm, firm hand and slid the whole length of it slowly into her waiting, slippery mouth.

Toby grabbed onto Zareth’s braid then and, following every base instinct in his body and heart, thrust his dick as deep as he could into her mouth.

Zareth sucked him off with the kind of skill and enthusiasm that might ordinarily be attributed to a drunken vacuum cleaner with an addiction to certain websites that had been running with a bad crowd. With every lunging swallow, the naked dark elf made little moaning sounds and gagged softly whenever the top of Toby’s appendage rammed into the back of her gullet.

When his shaft was good and slick with copious amounts of her saliva, Toby pulled it out of Zareth’s mouth. Caught up in the intense heat of what they were doing, he slapped it a few times on her cheeks, smearing them with spit, then pushed her away so she fell back on her backside on the cell floor.

The dark elf’s chin and lips were covered with spittle, but she didn’t wipe it away.

“Ah, yes,” she said as she got to her feet, so that Toby could see every inch of her wonderful, athletic, soldier’s physique. “I see it now. I see the fire that commands your troops. It is the kind that is kindled your belly, no? And ends up shining in your eyes. I see it now. It’s flaming up real nice.”

Toby looked at the dark elf as she stood in front of him once more. She had a number of battle scars on her arms and shoulders. One particularly badass one looped under her ribs.

“Each one has a story,” Zareth said, “but those stories will have to wait until our business here is done.”

Zareth reached down and rubbed her vagina with her hand. She moaned and groaned as she pleasured herself. Then, quick as a striking viper, she reached out and wiped her juice across Toby’s cheek and mouth. She laughed as Toby blinked.

She was a sight for sore eyes. She was curvy, but with long legs that looked even longer in the flesh than they did when she wore her jeans. Her breasts were on the petite side, but they suited her body perfectly. The curve of her hips promised a hell of an ass, though he couldn’t see it just yet, and her crotch was as smooth as silk.

Zareth in front of Toby. Toby reached around her and grabbed her ass. He pulled her toward him so that she stood between his thighs. Holding her gaze the whole time, Toby raised her left leg so it was straddling him, and the dark elf was forced to balance on the bed with her foot. With one hand, Toby spread the lips of her box and began eating her out with all the decorum of a pig at a trough.

The taste of her was as unique and heady as some sweet liquor. Toby licked at Zareth’s slot with a hunger brought on by sheer, visceral horniness at wanting to see how she tasted. While he slurped and sucked at her slit, Zareth reached down and pushed his face deeper into her hot groin.

She moaned and wailed and breathed like some rabid thing, and that only urged Toby on to greater lengths of tongue-based exploration.

She was so slippery and wet that her juices dribbled over his chin and lips. Her desire ran down his neck. Her need and arousal coated his nose. It slicked his forehead like some kind of sexual benediction.

Zareth moaned with an unabashed animal longing and a deep-seeded rapture. She twined her tattooed fingers through his hair and attempted to pull him further into her, opening her legs as wide as she could so he could stick his tongue deeper and deeper and deeper inside of her.

After a while, the dark elf began grinding and writhing and pushing her box against Toby’s face with such ardent force that he struggled to stop himself from smacking his head on the rough wall of the cell.

Eventually, unable to resist the call of the starving wolf howling for satisfaction inside of him any longer, Toby straightened, and pulled away from Zareth’s outthrust groin.

“Hey, you don’t believe you’re done, do you?” the dark elf demanded.

Toby ignored her. He was looking at the chains hanging from the wall. The chains where, up until only a short time before, Zareth had been tethered.

Zareth followed his gaze. She smiled and nodded like she could read the thoughts as they were churned fresh out of her mind. “Do you wish me shackled while you pleasure me, Mr. Gaoler?”

“You bet your fucking ass I do,” Toby said.

“Good. Then get to it. Dark elves are many things, but patient is not one of them. I hate waiting around for what I want!”

With fumbling fingers, Toby hastened to obey. Once he was sure he had Zareth’s wrists secured above her head with the shackles, he started messing around with the ankle restraints.

“Forget them,” the dark elf snapped. “Please. I need you.”

Toby ran his fingers up and down her solid calves, up her muscular quads, and occasionally cupped her sex in his hand. He fingered her while she squirmed with building lust.

Zerath struggled against the bonds Toby had locked her back into like a damsel in distress in one of the early Bond movies. Toby watched with his cock in his hand. The more the dark elf struggled, the more her breasts jiggled around, and the more revved up Toby's passions and appetite for the bound woman became.

Her hands were bound above her head. Her legs were splayed out in front of her like the hands of a clock pointing to eight and four.

Toby stepped over to the hanging dark elf. He took his prick in his hand. It felt as hot as a burning brand, as hard as a steel bar, and ready to be used as a blunt instrument of pleasure.

“Please, please, please, fill me up,” Zareth hissed as Toby stood there and admired her dark-skinned form. “Please, Mr. Gaoler! Fill me up already! Take your pleasure from me so that we might seal our pact!”

With as much slowness as he could muster, Toby pressed the tip of his throbbing member against the opening of Zareth’s sex and held it there. It was almost torture, trying to control himself. With a great effort of will he managed to force himself not to spear into her as deeply as he was able.

Zareth bucked in her chains. She was trying to wriggle herself onto his outthrust dick. However, due to her bonds, she couldn’t get more than the first half inch of his cock past her lips.

Without so much as a word of warning, almost to repay the favor in kind, Toby grabbed Zareth’s ankles. He gave her tight ass a quick couple of slaps to get her riled up, then slid his meat staff into the tight confines of her dripping sex. She cried out as he began pushing into her with hard, slow thrusts.

Toby made sure to lock eyes with the dark elf while he fucked her. He was careful to keep a little smile on his face as he slammed into her, drew slowly out, and then speared into her again. With each withdrawal, he made sure his cock completely cleared her pussy before ramming in until his balls smacked her ass. He didn’t keep a rhythm. He made sure he was unpredictable. That only seemed to drive the sex-crazed dark elf the wilder.

It was raw. It was guttural. There was nothing of the first date about it. The only sounds were the harsh, raw, caveman grunts and rasps of their breathing, the soft slap-slap-slap of his scrotum rapping a wet beat against Zareth’s ass, which was covered in the girl juices dripping from her sex, and the jingle of the chains.

As they fucked, Toby reached out and took a firm hold of the dark orbs of her tits, squeezing and kneading them hard.

“Mmmmm,” Zareth moaned brokenly every time he exerted pressure on her breast. “Mmmmm! That's it! Mmmmm!”

Toby switched breasts. He twisted her other nipple this time, harder and slower than before. Zareth leaned her head back so it knocked against the rough stone block behind her. She seemed not to notice.

After he had satisfied himself with pinching and pulling at her deep chocolate brown nipples, Toby was gratified to see that they were standing rock-hard and erect in the glare of the fairy light hanging above them.

“Where are you going to finish, eh? Where, Mr. Gaoler?” Zareth asked in a hissing, jerky tone. Her words went up and down depending on whether Toby was inside her or pulling out. “Where? My stomach? My cunnie? My jugs? My face? Hm? Where?”

Toby pumped away at her. His pace quickened, and she let out little, unconscious hisses of “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” as he plowed into her.

Toby picked up the pace even more. He felt the heat and tension building in his loins, ratcheting between the two of them. He could feel Zareth’s tight opening clenching and unclenching around his shaft. Squeezing him. Almost milking him of his seed. He knew he was close to the point of no return, and she wasn’t far from climax either.

Distantly, through the thundering of the blood in his brain, he heard the dark elf cry, “Almost… there… yes!”

Toby’s climax smashed through him and over him and around him like a boiling, churning wave of ecstasy. His knees almost went out from under him. He felt the vibrating, quaking surge of release spark in his nuts.

Zareth began shuddering and thrashing in her chains, so that Toby’s cock was ejected from her slit. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she cried out, “Oh… Oh, fuck!”

Toby was already well over the line, his inner needle on his libido’s rev-counter pushed so far into the red that it was in danger of being ejected out of his body.

“Fucking… Holy… Yes!” Toby barked.

Jizz spurted from the tip of his prick as he blew his load all over Zareth’s sweat-covered, heaving stomach. A few thick ropes reached up to land on quivering tits.

Zareth mumbled and moaned, she shook and juddered in her chains. Her pulse was visible in her tattooed neck.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!” she whimpered. “Oh, fuuuuck me, that was… That was something.”

As Toby’s orgasm ebbed, he staggered backward, his head as light as if he’d just taken a hit to the dome with the flat of a sword. He sat on the bed as the dark elf let the chains take her weight and she dangled like some cum-covered effigy. Toby’s body was rocked with exertion and fulfillment. He was panting like a damn dog.

Toby looked up at the limp form of Zareth, hanging heavily in the chains. She opened an eye and grinned at him. A strand of drool hung from her lip.

Toby gave her a wink.

“How about you help me down out of here?” the dark elf said.

Toby nodded. “I can do that.” He hauled himself to his feet.

As he helped Zareth unbuckle the manacles and unwind the chains, he ran his hand up her flank and gave her fine, full breast a soft squeeze. The dark elf groaned and then gasped and chuckled when Toby kissed her on the shoulder.

“You’re not satisfied, Toby Adams?”

“Not for long,” Toby said. “The pact of flesh, it’s—“

“Oh, it is sealed, and some,” Zareth said, still a trifle breathlessly.

Toby nodded. “To be honest,” he said, “having talked to you at some length, I would have taken your word. It’s just that…”

“It’s just that you need to cover your ass in case your superiors are unconvinced,” Zareth finished.

“Yeah. No offense.”

“None taken. It is what it is. That’s the military chain of command for you.”

Toby snorted. “That’s right,” he said. “Covering asses is what a lot of being in an armed force seems to involve.”

“Well, once you say that the dark elf prisoner has sealed her pledge with the pact of flesh, any well-educated member amongst your upper echelons will know that such an agreement cannot be broken.”

Toby started to laugh.

“What is it?” Zareth asked, as she absentmindedly doodled in the cum that covered her taut stomach muscles.

“Nothing,” Toby said. “I just can’t wait to explain to Lord Marshal Vani how exactly I won your cooperation. I hope he doesn’t want a blow-by-blow account.”

Above them, the fairy in the lantern checked a tiny pocket watch and then snuffed out its light as it flew off for its shift change, plunging the two lovers into semi-darkness.

Zareth grinned impishly. Toby could just make out the flash of her teeth in the gloom of the cell. “Speaking of blow-by-blow…” she said.

And Toby gasped as the seemingly insatiable dark elf lowered her head to his lap.

11

“Ah, Mr. Adams, I was wondering when it would be you paying me a call.”

“You make it sound like I'm stopping off for a cup of tea and ginger biscuit,” Toby said. “I assure you that this isn't quite as social a call as that.”

“I was under no illusion as to the nature of the visit, or that said visit would include delicious baked treats,” Vexxx said in his usual sanguine, unruffled voice. “Although, I won't deny that I am partial to a pot of Viscount Silver's Peculiar Red Bush Loose Leaf of a morning.”

Toby actually paused for a moment while he translated that one.

“Ah,” he said when he realized that Vexxx was referring to some Eclipsian brand of tea and not some kind of diabolical sexual fetish. “Right, yeah. I'm more of a coffee drinker myself.”

He came and sat down on the simple, rough bench in front of the prisoner. Vexxx was sitting on a matching bench. His ankles were manacled and affixed to an iron ring set into the floor. His wrists were similarly bound, and the chain stretched from the two restraints to the same enormous iron ring in the ground. Most noticeably, however, he and Toby were divided by a shimmering wall of enchantment. It looked a little like a localized heat haze. It was only discernible if Toby looked at it from a certain angle.

Vexxx, the right-hand man of Duke Diddle, was dressed in the same strange, part gothic, part punk-looking black robes that he had been wearing the last time Toby had clapped eyes on him. They were complete with the esoteric zips, clasps and poppers. His gold, wire-framed spectacles were still perched upon his nose, though Toby noticed one of the lenses had been cracked.

“How are they treating you in here?” Toby asked.

Vexxx didn't have any eyebrows, but his brow moved in a way that told Toby he would have raised one of them if he had.

“Do you really care?” he asked mildly. “Or is that an example of—what do they call it?—conversational filler?”

“I wouldn't like to hear that you're getting any trouble,” Toby said honestly. “I know you're an enemy of Eclipsia, but as I've told the men I've been roaming around the countryside and mopping up happy little accidents with, just because we're fighting a right bunch of bastards doesn't mean we have to forget our manners while we do it.”

Vexxx smiled thinly. Toby detected the slightly wistful air about the pale, bald magician.

“I have been treated in the way that you might think befits an enemy of the state,” he said. “Most of the guards believe I am a traitor.”

“Well, you are a traitor,” Toby pointed out without rancor.

“Hm. There might be something in that.”

“The Queen certainly thinks you're a traitor. I know because I talk to her about it often. She's been describing to me what the Eclipsian nobles do to traitors. Do you know what they do to traitors?”

“I believe the mode of dispatch currently in vogue is for the condemned to be flipped upside down, hung by a rope attached to each ankle, and then sawed in half,” Vexxx said.

He was so calm that he might have been filling Toby in on the best way to propagate cabbages.

“It sounds painful,” Vexxx added.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “It does sound painful. Having a lumber saw start to cut you in half at the gooch doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.”

“No,” Vexxx agreed.

They sat in silence for a few moments longer.

“You haven't tried to escape,” Toby said.

“No.”

“Why is that?” Toby asked.

Vexxx gave a little shrug.

“Do you know what I find myself missing?” he said.

“What's that?”

“The sound of trees,” Vexxx said. “More specifically, the sound of the wind moving sedately through the branches.”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “I doubt that there's much in the way of aural stimulation down here, is there?”

That was selling it short. Vexxx was being held in the lowest dungeon in the castle of Eclipsia. It was one of the only remaining dungeons in the castle that still retained its anti-thaumaturgical properties from back when the monarchs had a use for the mages and wizards. Back when Duke Diddle was last abroad and causing havoc.

“The Queen has sent out a call for any wizards to come forth and pitch their skills against Duke Diddle,” Toby said.

“That makes sense,” Vexxx replied placidly. “Although I doubt many will.”

Toby blinked. None, thus far, had come forward.

“Why do you think that?” Toby asked.

“Because it has been over twenty years since they would have been obliged to use their arcane knowledge and skills for anything more complex than a good cocktail recipe,” Vexxx said.

Toby let out a soft sigh. “Yeah, you may be onto something with these wizards.”

“Also,” Vexxx continued, “wizards are notoriously canny and surprisingly unscrupulous when it comes to prolonging and protecting their own existences. Over the last twenty or so years, they have become more accustomed to and more comfortable with preserving various fruits in alcohol than they have in preserving the lives of Eclipsia's constituents.”

“You don't think they're interested? You don't think they have the balls to step forward and risk a falling out with your Duke? Is that it?” Toby asked.

“I think that the wizards of this world have dwindled,” Vexxx said. “They used to be powerhouses. Now they stay cooped up in their hidden hovels and cottages, brewing their potent drinks and liquors. The majority of them are shadows, both in ability and morality, of their former selves. Those very few who have retained their magical prowess and are scattered through this wide land are probably clever enough to realize that the thing about falling out with the Duke is that those who do usually fall a lot further than he does, and usually from very high windows or tower tops.”

The image—the memory of King Balourd hurtling down from the top of the main keep of Eclipsia with Duke Diddle's knife already in his chest—rose before Toby like a ghost. He blinked to clear the vision.

“You didn't kill him,” Toby said quietly.

“No, I did not,” Vexxx said. He didn't ask who Toby was referring to. It was almost as if the pale, thin, sickly-looking bureaucrat on the other side of the magical divide had seen a phantasm of the falling king just as clearly as Toby had.

“You didn't kill him even when you had the chance,” Toby said.

Vexxx licked his thin, pale lips. For a moment, the air of almost bored bureaucratic severity cracked. He looked down at his large hands.

“No,” he said again. “No, I couldn't.”

“Couldn't or wouldn't?” Toby asked. “There's a profound difference, Vexxx.”

"Yes, indeed there is. An astute observation, Toby Adams," Vexxx said.

"You may as well tell me," Toby said, “before Queen Lascivo decides that she wants to saw you in half balls-first.”

"Which do you think it was?" Vexxx said.

"Which do I think it was?"

"Do you think it was because I couldn't kill the king or because I wouldn't?" Vexxx asked.

Toby pursed his lips thoughtfully. He tapped each of the fingers of his right hand against the tip of his thumb. "I think it was likely a combination of the two," he said finally.

Vexxx tilted his head questioningly to one side

Toby fished around in his mind for a way that he could best articulate his thoughts to the obviously highly intelligent man across from him. He knew that to a man like Vexxx, who had a mind for details, divulgation, and clarity of purpose, how a person communicated their thoughts was almost as important as what those thoughts were.

“There are a lot of distinctive things in life,” Toby said slowly. “Things that are distinctive in a way that sometimes you can't put your finger on.”

“How do you mean?” Vexxx asked interestedly.

“I mean, for instance, a fat man has a very distinctive snore,” Toby said. “Even though, on the surface, you might hear someone sleeping in the next room in a tavern, the snoring of a fat man is very idiosyncratic. You know that the person sleeping in the room next door to you, without ever having laid eyes on them, is a fat man.”

Vexxx tried to steeple his fingers in front of him, but his manacles made the gesture awkward.

“In the same indefinable way, there is a distinctive aura that hangs around a person of fundamentally solid moral integrity,” Toby said. “You meet many people who try and push across the impression that they are bad, or capable of mean things, or cruel, or cold. People do this for a lot of different reasons, yet still, without quite knowing how, most folk are able to pick out the fundamental goodness that resides in most other people.”

Toby gazed across the magical divide at Vexxx. Vexxx looked back at him, but then his gaze faltered. He looked away.

“I don't think you're a bad man, Vexxx,” Toby said simply. “That's all it is. You work for a complete anal cavity of a human being, but you yourself are not wholly bad. You are a man with unbending principles in some areas—namely, in this instance, with your taking up of a contract with someone. You see that as being important beyond almost anything else, and I can respect that in a way. A man doesn't really have anything if his word can't be trusted by someone else."

Vexxx swallowed and adjusted his spectacles.

“Someone recently told me that people—all sapient species, whether they be humans or elves or goblins or dwarves or whatever—are fairly hollow things. I think she might have been right about that. We start off hollow, and we fill up as we age. But one thing all of us start off with is integrity—a base level of integrity. When that's gone—when we give it away, or lose it, or it's taken from us—that's when what we truly do rings hollow. That’s when we can truly consider someone bad.”

“And you don't think I ring hollow?” Vexxx asked.

Toby saw that Vexxx had tried to hitch a vaguely sardonic smile onto his face, but he couldn't quite manage it.

“Yeah, you've done some bad things in the service of a man who showed faith in you when you were nothing. In the name of the contract you signed with Duke Diddle, you've done some reprehensible things,” Toby said. “But when it came to killing the king…”

Vexxx fidgeted slightly.

“When it came to killing King Balourd, you couldn't do it because you knew deep down that that man was guileless and good. He may have been about as much use as a tissue-paper condom when it came to ruling a kingdom, but he was a good man.”

“He was. An imbecile who cared more for mermaids than he did almost anything else, but a kind-hearted one.”

“He wanted to help you,” Toby said. “He wanted to help you without any thought to what he might gain from doing so. And I think when you saw that, even the threat of Duke Diddle—even considering what you thought you owed him—just wasn’t enough. You couldn't do it.”

Vexxx licked his thin lips again and stared down at the blank stone floor of the cell.

“Cor,” Frank whispered in Toby's ear. “That was an absolute blinder of a speech, mate. Really got him in the soft, juicy bits there, I think.”

“Shut the fuck up, Frank,” Toby said quietly out of the corner of his mouth.

Frank had taken the form of a dung beetle and hidden under the collar of Toby's jacket. It was, as Anna had remarked before Toby and Frank had left her and Verity back at the house in the Baker's Quarter after they had arrived from their sojourn with the army, a form that probably best represented the imp.

“Why are you here, Mr. Adams?” Vexxx asked.

Toby looked levelly at the other man. He was weighing his chances of whether or not Duke Diddle's right-hand man would even entertain the notion of what he was about to ask him.

There's only one way to find out, Toby thought to himself. And plus, there’s the threat of him being sawn in two in front of a cheering audience hovering over him just a little bit.

“I want you to help us, Vexxx,” Toby said.

“You want me to help you?”

“I want you to help Eclipsia,” Toby said, nodding. “That's right. You're picking up what I'm putting down. I like to see this.”

“I—“ Vexxx started to say.

“You're smelling what I'm selling,” Toby cut in. “Exactly.”

Vexxx blinked. “What is it you want my help with?”

“I want you to help us find Duke Diddle's base of operations. The heart of his military endeavors. His home,” Toby said.

Vexxx didn’t react in any massive way. He simply looked at Toby in obvious surprise.

“Well?” Toby asked after a few moments.

“I’m curious,” Vexxx said, “why you would think I would do that. Why would I help you?”

“Well, I mean, you've been captured. You failed the Duke,” Toby pointed out. “You're in our custody. He's probably wondering to himself right now what secrets you're divulging to us.”

“I don't think the Duke has, or has had, any reason to doubt my loyalty,” Vexxx said.

“That might be so, but do you think Duke Diddle really got to where he was, really adopted the mindset he's in, by trusting anyone?” Toby asked.

Vexxx hesitated.

“He's probably thinking right now how best to off you,” Toby said bluntly.

“I highly doubt that,” Vexxx said.

Toby was watching the other man’s face carefully. It was a carefully blank mask, but he thought he detected a hint of incertitude in the other man's tone.

Toby shrugged. "Hey, look, I'm not trying to do something so obvious as sowing the seeds of disquiet or disloyalty in you, Vexxx," he said. "I know you're too smart for that. I know you wouldn’t have been wasting your time in here. That big old brainbox of yours would have been going over everything, humming along like a bee on the verge of a heart attack, flicking through the hypotheticals of what is going on beyond these four walls.”

Vexxx did not deign to reply, but Toby knew he was right.

“What I'm saying is that your only chance to get out of here and redeem yourself in the eyes of the Queen in any way is to help us with this. You are the only person who has any idea as to where Duke Diddle’s inner sanctum is. He's told no one else. We've quizzed a number of his lieutenants, and none of them know a thing.”

Vexxx thought for a long moment. He pulled off his glasses and polished them with the utmost care, regardless that the lens was broken.

Come on, I know you’re looking for retribution for what happened on that tower…

Vexxx replaced his spectacles on his nose with some difficulty thanks to his restraints, and then he said, "Fine, fine. I don't suppose it'll do any good in the long run, but fine."

Toby clapped his hands softly. “Vexxx, you’ve made me so happy I wish I could step in there and ruffle your hair.”

Vexxx made that facial expression again. The one that Toby deciphered to mean that he was raising a non-existent eyebrow at him.

“Figuratively speaking,” Toby said.

12

They journeyed for a full eight days out to where Vexxx believed Duke Diddle's abode was. Despite the pact that they had sealed with one another with their flesh, Zareth was left behind in Eclipsia. She was not under guard as such, but there had been guards stationed casually around the house in the Baker’s Quarter, where Toby had insisted she say.

It was a shame. Not only because her absence deprived the company of her martial and magical prowess, but also because Toby had enjoyed learning of the dark elf’s view on life.

“I want her where I can reach her, should I need to have a little chinwag with her,” Lord Marshal Vani had said.

"As I've had a reason to mention to you before, I feel as if this entire enterprise is in vain," Vexxx said.

"Yes, well, if that proves to be the case, darling," Verity said, with a slightly menacing glint in her eye. "Then take comfort in the fact that we can always send you back to good old Queen Lascivo, and she can chop you down the middle like she's been wanting to."

Vexxx studiously ignored this comment. Toby reckoned that he probably would have as well. The journey from Stagbreach to wherever the hell they were now—somewhere to the south, Toby knew, and that was about it—had been surprisingly uneventful.

The first few days, Toby, Luna, Verity, and even Frank had spent their time in a heightened sense of alertness. It seemed that, whenever Toby took his own eyes off Vexxx as he led them through the countryside, over little rivers, through the woods, and across rolling pasture land, it was to find that all of his companions had their eyes fixed on the pale-robed magic user.

Vexxx, it seemed, to all intents and purposes, was decidedly unbothered by the very idea of escape. He never so much as looked as if he was going to take flight. Toby never gleaned any feeling that Vexxx was about to throw down with a bit of magic.

Anna rode along with her bow and arrow constantly in hand or resting on the pommel of her saddle. Ostensibly, it was because she was always on the lookout for game, but Toby knew that it was because she wanted to be ready to let fly at Vexxx if he decided to dig his heels into his mount or do anything that they didn't like or that threatened them.

"I'm not seeing any looming, ominous peaks, Vexxx," Toby said as they traveled along. They were plodding along on horseback. Toby had wanted to ride on the back of the kirins, but Vexxx had shaken his head.

"There are river crossings that we all need to ford, which only mundane beasts can cross," he said.

"I'm fairly sure that a kirin can cross wherever a horse can," Toby said, but Vexxx had shaken his head.

"No," the mage bureaucrat said. "It is not a mere question of physiology. There are certain wards that need to be disbanded, and a beast like a kirin will not be able to pass through them."

And so Toby had procured some horses from the royal stables and that had been that.

They walked along. They moved slowly so as to make sure none of their mounts put a foot down a rabbit hole hidden by the long grass and broke a leg.

"It’s not much further," Vexxx called over his shoulder. For all the care it seemed he gave this little adventure, he might as well have been taking them for a jaunt down to the mall to pick up a few trinkets.

"When do you think he's going to try and scarper then?" Frank whispered in Toby's ear.

The imp had taken the form of a blackbird and was perched on Toby's shoulder. Toby had given Frank one warning and one warning only: that if he took off his jacket and found bird shit down the back of it, then the imp was going to have a seriously bad day.

"I don't think he's going to make a break for it, Frank," Toby said.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Oh, that's a pity," Frank said. "I was rather looking forward to seeing the pretty brunette human shoot him in the back. She's getting pretty good with that bow and arrow."

"She's got a name too," Toby said. "It's Anna."

"Oh, I know," Frank said.

They carried on riding. Overhead a pair of kites swooped and darted around one another in a mating dance.

"From that last conversation we had with the Queen, I don't think she'd be too displeased if the bald bloke was to end up with a shaft in his back," Frank said.

"No, I don't expect she would," Toby agreed, swaying in his saddle.

Toby replayed the conversation that Queen Lascivo had had after Toby had left Vexxx in his dungeon cell, once Vexxx had agreed to help Toby find Duke Diddle’s base of operations. The conversation had been short and, if not sweet, then at least very much to the point.

"I don't trust the vile, wily little tapeworm," Queen Lascivo had said. "But if you think there's a chance he might assist us in locating the Duke—King Balourd's murderer—then I think we should take it."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Toby said.

"For what?" Queen Lascivo asked.

"For trusting me on this."

Queen Lascivo gave Toby a tight smile. "So long as your head and your heart are in agreement on this one, Mr. Adams."

"They are, Your Majesty," Toby replied.

"Good," Queen Lascivo said, "because, as in all highly important decisions on which more than just the fate of the individual is concerned, the head and the heart must be in agreement."

"My head told me it was the right thing to do," Toby said, "but it was my heart that backed it up."

"Well, how could I not trust the head of a man who gives such wonderful head?" the Queen said, with one of her textbook flirtation winks. "And how could I not trust the heart of a man whose soul seems to be becoming more and more deeply entwined in this country with every passing day?"

Toby had bowed his head. Then, taking what most of Eclipsia would have seen as a suicidal liberty, he got up off his knee, walked over to the Queen, and kissed her full on the lips.

"You can trust me on this, I swear it."

"I know," the Queen replied. She gazed up at Toby with those bright, green, highly intelligent eyes of hers. "And, Mr. Adams?" she said in a whisper that was little more than an exhalation of vanilla-scented breath.

"Yes, Your Majesty?”

“If Vexxx does anything that arouses even a hint of suspicion that he is so much as thinking of reneging on your bargain… Kill him. And make sure he is dead by cutting off that perfectly spherical head of his and bringing it back to me. I have a mind to use it for my throwing knife practice."

Toby straightened. He held the Queen's eye. "You have my word on that too, Your Majesty," he had said and left the room.

"We're here," Vexxx said, shaking Toby out of his reverie and some quiet, nice daydreams of Queen Lascivo undressing for him next time he saw her.

"This is it?" Anna said.

"This is what it was," Vexxx said.

Toby reined in and looked. In front of them was a wide stretch of beautiful wildflower meadow. In the midst of it stood what appeared to be a tumbled-down crofter’s cottage. The cottage was surrounded by a drystone wall. Within the confines of the wall was a garden where flowers bloomed in even more variety and profusion than the meadow in which the smallholding stood. Along the wall closest to them, a large lavender bush swayed this way and that in the gentle breeze. A dozen fat bumble bees flew drunkenly amongst the purple flowers.

Toby turned his head slowly to look at Vexxx. His hand rested meaningfully on his sword hilt. "This is Duke Diddle's lair, is it?" he said.

Vexxx, unperturbed by Toby's hand on his sword or the slight tremor in his voice, said, "This is where the Duke's lair was, yes. As I have pointed out to you on many occasions as we have journeyed together, I did not think that the Duke would stay here."

Toby rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand. Verity pinched the bridge of her nose. Anna ran her fingers through her hair and then scrunched them up. Luna gazed thoughtfully up at the sky, her chin in her hand.

Everyone, it seemed, was doing some serious facial fondling.

"Okay," Toby said. “So, rather than having a lair set at the top of a volcano, or in a defile in some spider-infested range of dark mountains, Duke Diddle’s former base looks like it should be the home to one of the shortbread peoples’ most amiable grandmothers?”

Vexxx returned Toby’s gaze quite placidly. “I would say that any real estate purchased at the top of an active volcano would prove to be an exceedingly poor investment—not to mention all but impossible to insure. As for spider-infested mountains, the Duke has never been a great fan or insects in general and arachnids in particular.”

"Okay, okay, okay. All right, there's nothing we can do here,” Toby said. “The Duke, clearly, is not here."

"Curse the son of a bitch," Verity added with asperity.

"Right—curse the son of a bitch," Toby said. "He's not here, so what do we do?"

"I would recommend that we run," Luna said.

Toby looked over at the nymph, just as a dragon exploded out of the trees that lined the edge of the wildflower meadow. It was about the size of two school buses, and made a similar noise to them too. Unlike two school buses, the dragon wasn’t full of kids, though.

Unless it’s just eaten a village and the kids are on the inside, Toby thought.

It was scaly, angry and covered in spines, but most of all, it was exceedingly dragony.

"Is this a trap?" Toby said, whirling to face Vexxx.

"If it is, it is not one of my devising," Vexxx said in his habitual conversational tone. There was the unmistakable ring of truth to his words, as emotionless as they were. “Certainly, it looks to be a creature of the Duke’s devising, though.”

“Not a natural dragon?” Verity asked.

“Miss None, you and I have known one another for years. When was the last time you heard the rumor of a dragon in the wild from anything that even came close to a credible or sober source?”

Toby’s mind raced as the dragon, all gleaming black greasy scales and bright, evil eyes, shrugged its way free of the final clinging branches of the saplings it had just burst through. It roared a wash of jet black flame that was rimed with silver. Even from the distance he and the others were sitting atop their horses from it, he could feel the heat. The grass around it shriveled.

"I would second the nymph's suggestion," Vexxx said.

"What suggestion was that?" Anna asked in a weak voice as she gazed upon the dragon in dazed dread.

"Run!”Vexxx cried.

Toby wheeled his horse and gave the sable animal his heels, even as the dragon was lashing its tail and knocking down a couple more trees that made up the thicket it had just emerged from. It opened its great maw. Silver teeth as long pike tips shone in the sunlight. From deep within the gun barrel blackness of its throat a mote of incandescent light bloomed.

“Fuck!” Toby said.

The tumbledown crofter’s cabin exploded outwards in a burgeoning anemone of flame. Chunks of stone flipped down out of the air, thudding into the rich, black earth, sending up starbursts of dirt.

As Toby galloped alongside his small crew, he let loose the reins and gave his horse his trust so that he could look back over his shoulder and see what was going on.

The dragon was bounding along behind them like a feral hound chasing a car. Its eyes were wide, mad and fierce. It’s strange spines writhed in the air like kelp in an ocean swell. It looked to be possessed of a singular purpose: to kill them all.

Another burst of fire wafted out of its open mouth like flour dust before the breeze. Unnatural flames, silver bright, and hot as the hinges of hell rippled out. They spread out, racing and roaring through the damp grass, igniting it in a way that shouldn’t have been possible.

Not just a magical dragon, but a magical dragon breathing unnatural fire. Fucking great.

The flames rose. Man-high, and then double, and then five times the height of a man. Sparks exploded up into the air, ash floating up in the wake of the rampant inferno. Dead branches hissed and crackled as fingers of thick gray smoke clawed heavenward, leaning in towards Toby and his companions, as if the very fumes were pursuing them.

“Ride, ride! Ride as fast as you can!” Toby yelled at Anna, Verity, Luna, and Vexxx. “Magecraft! Ride!”

Toby’s horse churned mud as he raced away from the dragon and the magical fire, while the mage-fire ate up the meadow grass and the wildflowers behind them. He urged the horse on, more with his mind than with his body.

“Save yourself, save yourself! Any death is better than burning. Run!” Toby muttered, his head almost next to the animal’s neck.

It wasn’t long before their fleet horses had outrun the dragon itself. Toby was just allowing himself to feel a touch of relief on this score when Vexxx shouted, “The dragon was just the spark. It’s the fire that is our real enemy. It’s the fire that the Duke has rigged to try and kill any who came here looking for him!”

Great.

Toby turned and saw, almost in answer to Vexxx’s comment, the dragon burst apart into wisps and coils of pinguid silvery black vapor. Even as the great beast dissipated, the fire redoubled in strength.

Toby could hear the wildfire roaring behind them. He could tell that, even if it was being guided by Duke Diddle’s triggered magic, it was being fueled by nature.

He could hear it.

He could hear the chorus of the flames as they consumed grasses, bushes, trees, and any wildlife unfortunate enough to be in their path.

Toby recalled reading in a nature magazine, one particularly boring lunchtime at work, all about the Black Saturday bushfires that had left much of the Victoria region in Australia as a charred mess. ‘Pray you never hear a wildfire’s voice,’ a fireman who had been interviewed had said to the reporter. ‘You hear a wildfire, mate, it’s already too late. If you can hear it, nine times out of ten, you’re already dead.’

Boy, I’m glad that memory just surfaced. Thanks a bunch, brain.

Toby’s horse was side-by-side with Anna’s and Verity’s. Luna was just behind with Vexxx. Toby thought he could hear the heart-wrenching sound of the blue-skinned nymph whimpering to herself in her native tongue as she rode. Perhaps trying to steady her nerve, perhaps trying to urge her horse on.

Toby didn’t bother urging his own horse on. It was running for its life already. For a horse, unlike a human, there was nothing more precious than that.

“Ahead!” Anna yelled.

“A river! To the river!” Toby cried, his horse surging under him.

“Yes, even mage-fire cannot best the waters that come all the way from the mountains,” Vexxx shouted.

Toby turned. He could see Vexxx’s pale face not far behind. It was streaked with sweat. He looked afraid, of course, but there was something else in the man’s expression.

A realization, Toby perceived. A realization that Duke Diddle would quite happily kill him. Tidy him up nice and neat, like any other loose end.

He turned back, hunkered down on his mount, and concentrated on willing it to the safety of the river. Behind him, the very air sounded as if it was cracking and blistering in the catastrophic heat of the chasing fire.

So close, so close, so cl—

There was a high scream from behind them. A scream that permeated the afternoon air even over the thunder of the hoofbeats of their horses and the ululation of the inferno.

Lunaria Caelestis.

Toby turned in his saddle. On his tail, Vexxx rode his frothing horse. Behind him there was simply a wall of roaring, hungry fire. And, in front of that wall, was the fallen figure of Luna. Her horse had come down for some reason. Panic most likely. It was milling about her in a distressed fashion.

It was an arresting sight: horse and rider cutting a black silhouette from the tapestry of billowing, roaring, furious hellfire eating up the small trees, bush and grass behind them. Ash fell like snow. Embers big as cart hubcaps flew and drifted through the air like some giant devil’s dandruff. Propelled miles ahead of the main blaze by the gusting, eyeball-searing winds, they landed and birthed little spot fires of their own.

“No!” Toby growled.

The fire was going to take her.

Vexxx wheeled his horse all the same.

“Keep going!” Toby bellowed at Anna and Verity, even as he followed suit.

There was no arm-waving and screaming on Luna’s part. No last minute flapping as she attempted to escape her fate. The nymph stood and watched as the fire swept towards her like a wind made solid.

And then Vexxx was next to her. The unassuming bald man grabbed the reins of her horse and shouted something. Luna managed to scramble back up into her saddle.

As she did so, Vexxx threw up his hands and the wall of oncoming fire seemed to check. It reared up for a few moments, like a wave that unexpectedly met a breakwater. Toby saw Vexxx get buffeted in his saddle. He rocked and almost fell, but somehow managed to keep his seat.

But it was too little too late. Toby could see that. He could see that, even as Vexxx fought to hold off the ravenous 

They’re both going to die. He’s not going to be able to hold. Not on his own.

Toby dug his heels into the sides of his mount.

He was glad to see that Anna and Verity had continued to spur their horses on, while in their wake the dry pastures were reduced to soft ash. Ancient trees standing alone in the meadows cracked and shattered, small pools hissed into steam, and any animal that called that scrubby swathe of grassland home was roasted to a crisp.

The acrid tang of smoke thick in Toby’s nostrils, raw in his throat, as he pulled alongside the other two and turned.

“Go!” he screamed.

Vexxx slumped at that moment.

Toby chucked up his hands and threw every mote of power and will and desperation and love for his friends into the magic inside of him. He channeled it forth and roared out a challenge to Duke Diddle and his fucking arcane fire.

The fire stopped like it had run up against a wall. It beat and flowed and buffeted at the large, shimmering, fishbowl-shaped protection that Toby had somehow managed to erect. To no avail, though.

I… can… do… this…

I must…

Toby turned and squeezed the flanks of his horse with his thighs.

“Go!” he managed to say again, his eyes boring into Luna’s amber ones.

Luna slapped her horse’s rump. Vexxx’ horse took off after Luna’s, the mage lolling half insensible in his saddle. Toby brought up the rear. He still had his hands raised, but the spell was still intact.

Toby groaned. It felt like he was trying to hold up a falling water tower, as well as hold back the water the tower contained. His muscles burned. His vision winked in and out of focus with the sheer strain of holding the spell.

His horse ran. It was a smart beast, having been trained in the royal stables. Even if it hadn't had two brain cells to rub together, though, it would have moved quicker than quick.

The fire was so close behind that Toby could feel it searing the back of his neck, burning his hair, backing his spine through his protective ranger’s garb.

Panic gave their mounts wings, goaded them on over divot-filled grasslands that it would have been absolute idiocy to gallop through had death not been hot on their heels.

Toby looked up to a low ridge on their left and saw a waterfall of fire, running up the side of a sheer cliff face. It was the sort of sight that caught the eye and held it, took his breath, and was equal parts captivating and horrifying.

The final thirty seconds ride to the safety of the river felt like it took a hundred years. The sheer mental anguish and demand of keeping his spell steady felt as if it aged Toby. Still, he managed to hold the arcane blaze back, though, until, with a tangible release of pressure, they rode the potency of Diddle’s spell out.

Toby’s horse splashed into the river. It was glacial-cold, the water. It foamed up almost over the tops of Toby’s boots. It was the singular most wonderful feeling he could remember experiencing, the water splashing across his face and chest. When he reached the other side, it was to find all his friends waiting for him.

When they were safely across, Toby, feeling as weak and shaky as a newborn lamb, reined in and turned to watch the conflagration as it ate up a bit more of the meadowlands in a moody fashion. There were flurries of sparks as the mage-fire toppled a few more old oaks. The smoke haze like a storm in the air.

“Duke Diddle doesn’t fuck about, does he?” Toby said, coughing.

“Fucking about has never been one of the qualities for which he is known, no,” Vexxx said.

Toby’s face, like the faces of the others, was soot-streaked. They sat atop their fidgeting, exhausted, watching the rampaging wildfire as it slowly roared itself out.

“Hey, Tobes?” Anna said.

“Yeah?” Toby croaked.

“This bullshit wouldn’t happen in New York.”

“No,” Toby agreed.

“You ever think of giving all this good stuff up and going home?” Anna asked.

“Are you mad?” Frank interjected. “That’s the most fun I’ve had since we bonded as man and pigeon!”

Toby gave a short laugh. “Here we are, racing a fucking dragon-based magical wildfire to a river, with the fate of Eclipsia resting on our shoulders, and you’re asking me whether I’m really considering giving this life up?” Toby shook his head. “There’s a first time for everything, Anna—Frank might be right, you are mad.”

Anna laughed. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Vexxx let out a long sigh. Toby looked over at him. The other lens of his spectacles had cracked so that now the pair of them were broken. He looked more than a little punch-drunk. He looked, really, how Toby felt.

“You’re going to need to get them fixed when we get back to Stagbreach,” Toby said.

“You saved my life,” Vexxx said, ignoring the comment.

Toby returned the gaze of the former right hand of Duke Diddle. For a few moments, both of them strived to weigh the other.

“I did,” Toby said. “But you saved Luna.”

The two of them regarded one another for a few moments more. In turn, the three women watched them.

“Still, in the same moment that my former master’s magic would have destroyed me, one of the chief enemies of that same former master saves me from a fiery doom,” Vexxx said. “Such a thing, I think, cannot be overlooked. It carries weight.”

“There’s a lot that is black and white,” Toby said wearily. “But there’s a lot that is gray too.”

Vexxx nodded. “It is decided, then,” he said.

“What is?” Anna asked.

Vexxx pointed at Toby with one weaving hand. “Seeing as I have been unable to help you locate the Duke’s lair, and you have proved yourself true by saving my life, I will redeem myself by taking you to where I know he still harbors his sister.”

Toby blinked. The words seemed to be sinking slowly into his brain, like coins falling into a pot of molasses. “Wait. You mean you’ll lead us to—“

“Yes, Toby Adams,” Vexxx said, getting a serious weave on in his saddle now. “I will take you to your mother.”

Then, he promptly fell sideways off his horse.

Toby gazed down at the unconscious form of Vexxx.

“Tobes?” Anna said gently.

“Are you all right, Toby?” Verity asked.

Toby blinked again. His head was throbbing. His back felt as if it was one big blister. He was drenched in sweat.

And now I might be on the verge of seeing my mother out here, in Eclipsia…

“Tobes?” Anna said again.

“I’m fine,” Toby croaked. “But, I think I’ll follow his lead for just a second.”

And he toppled backwards into the grass.

13

“It is a sobering realization,” Vexxx said abruptly.

Toby looked at the other man. “What is?” he asked. “The notion that we’re about to walk down into a hidden valley, in the middle of which is a heavily fortified and well-guarded tower belonging to our, now joint, enemy.”

Vexxx finished hobbling his horse and straightened up. He looked surprised. “Well, yes, there is that, of course,” he said. “Although I have to admit that wasn’t actually what I was talking about in this instance.”

“What were you talking about?” Anna asked.

“I was talking about how a man, whose employee you’ve been for years and years, can brazenly renege on a legally binding employment contract,” Vexxx said in a kind of mournful astonishment.

Toby and Verity exchanged a look. Then Toby said to Vexxx, “You can’t, can you?”

“I can’t what?” Vexxx asked.

“You genuinely can’t believe that Duke Diddle, our arch nemesis, and the arch nemesis of the entire kingdom of Eclipsia—”

“Would it still be a kingdom?” Anna interjected at this point. “Seeing as the King’s, you know, snuffed it and Queen Lascivo seems to be calling the shots? Wouldn’t it be a queendom?”

“Let’s not get bogged down in that,” Toby said quickly. “That sounds like the type of annoying, over-analytical conversation that would take up so much of the time of the bored and pedantic back home.”

Anna grinned. “True,” she said. “It does carry a real whiff of 2024 about it, doesn’t it?”

Toby turned back to Vexxx. “You really can’t actually believe that a man like Duke Diddle could fail to honor an employment contract?”

“That’s right. It’s like it meant nothing to him!” Vexxx said.

“Yeah, but—”

Vexxx shook his head sadly. “I know you’re of the opinion that the most precious thing a man possesses is his word, and that’s an extremely admirable sentiment, Mr. Adams,” the pale bureaucrat said in a prim voice. “But a man’s word doesn’t count for half as much as a legally binding contract, which states, amongst many other carefully thought out stipulations that I made sure to include, that he is permitted fourteen days of paid vacation time per annum, paternity leave should the need arise, and the right not to be killed by any booby trap he had a hand in helping set up.”

“Hold on, now just hold on a minute,” Anna said. “We’ve been traveling on horseback for the past four days, and this is the first time you’ve mentioned that you had a hand in setting that wildfire-making dragon on us. Are you telling us you knew that it would appear?”

“Yes, I knew that the Duke had taken measures to ensure that his lair, as you so colorfully put it, was protected,” Vexxx said. “But I incorrectly assumed that, as I was with you, the security spell would not be activated. The Duke assured me that he and I were the only ones for which the spell would not be automatically triggered.”

“And you’re shocked that Duke Diddle lied to you?” Toby said dryly.

“Shocked and appalled, sir. Shocked and appalled,” Vexxx said, nodding his bald head. “Obviously, when I left the lair and left Duke Diddle behind, to oversee some troop movements and the positioning of certain capital assets, the Duke made a fundamental tweak to the operation of the spell.”

“Just a minor little tweak,” Anna said. “Just a minuscule one. Just an eeny, weeny, teeny, tiny dragon-sized one.”

“I believe you’re being sarcastic,” Vexxx said.

“Oh, well spotted,” Anna replied.

“And, in all fairness, dragon was always meant to be part of the spell, it was the fact that he changed the incantation so that it would happily broil me alive as it might do anyone else,” Vexxx pointed out with his characteristic accuracy.

“Mr. Vexxx,” Luna said in her carefully polite voice, “as equally dumbfounded as Anna as I am as to why you didn’t mention any of this before we encountered the dragon, and blithely assumed that the spell simply wouldn’t be activated, I think it would be prudent of me to ask whether we can expect to encounter any other spells or magic of a similar nature when we go down and try to break into this tower where you believe Toby’s mother is located?”

Vexxx shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I can assure you that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no anti-intrusion conjurations, stranger-danger hexes, or thaumaturgical wards around the tower. We are out in the wilds here. There is too much wildlife that might inadvertently set off such proximity-centered sorceries.”

“To the best of your knowledge,” Toby said.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Vexxx repeated.

“Well, that is at once both reassuring and completely not reassuring,” Toby said.

“Yes,” Vexxx agreed.

“What can you tell us of the tower’s defenses?” Verity asked. She was idly flexing her wrists and snapping her hidden blades in and out of view.

“Ah, now that I can relate with some considerable accuracy,” Vexxx said. “It was I who spearheaded the hiring process.”

Toby noticed how the slight man’s skinny chest swelled as well as it was able to with pride at the mention of this minor bureaucratic task. Not for the first time he thought how odd it was that one as obviously skilled in the arcane arts, as Vexxx had proved himself on many occasions to be, should derive more pleasure from such administrative duties than spell-slinging.

“What do you mean?” Verity asked.

“I thoroughly vetted the gangs and individuals myself,” Vexxx explained.

“And I’m sure you did a great job of it,” Toby said quickly. “But can you give it to us in a nutshell? I want to get down there and get this over with.”

“Yeah, and make sure it’s a small nut, not like a donkey’s nut or anything,” Frank chimed in. “All this human resource shit bores me to tears. It’s one of the reasons they’re so mad keen on it in the Below-Below—using it as a minor torture just to ease you in, so to speak.”

“Uh, I think you might have confused what kind of nut that saying is referring to, Frank,” Luna said.

The imp shook his little triangular head. “Nah, donkeys definitely have a whopping great—“

“In a nutshell, Frank,” Verity sighed.

“Ain’t that slang for the wrinkly bags of skin that animals carry their bollocks around in?” the imp asked innocently.

Toby gave the little djinn a pointed look.

Frank threw up his hands. “Fine, fine.” He looked back at Vexxx, who was looking ever so slightly befuddled at this exchange. “Make it more like a pine nut, then, mate.”

“A pine nut isn’t actually a nut,” Luna said. “It’s a seed.”

“Then why the hell is it called a nut?” Frank asked. “Why not call it a seed? Why try and trick people like that? That’s linguistics for you, huh? That’s bipedal bloody beings for you. Throwing out things like this just to trip the unsuspecting layman up so he looks like an idiot.”

“All right, all right,” Toby said. “Let’s get back to the tower. Now, you say my mother really is in there?”

“I believe so, yes,” Vexxx said.

“Have you seen her?”

“No,” Vexxx admitted. “The Duke was extremely cagey on that front. In all honesty, I had never heard him refer to her as anything other than ‘the prisoner’ up until about a year ago.”

“You didn’t think to ask who the prisoner was?” Toby asked. His mother had disappeared a little over a year before. His father had been equable about it. Toby was only now seeing how his father had remained so unflustered when his mother went walkabout.

Perhaps he too knew more than he let on to us kids? he thought.

“No,” Vexxx said simply. “As a diligent and faithful hireling I did not deign to ask my master about anything he did not see fit to divulge to me.”

Toby shook his head. “Now, I don’t doubt that you’re shooting straight with us, Vexxx, about changing your allegiance to Eclipsia—I don’t think you have the political guile and penchant for deception that Duke Diddle has.”

“Thank you,” Vexxx said.

“But, fuck a duck, there is something so creepy about how dedicated you were to someone who was, essentially, just in an elevated managerial position to you.”

Anna made a sound of agreement. “Yeah, that level of unquestioning subservience sends shivers down my spine too.”

“You were talking about my mother?” Toby went on.

Vexxx’s usually blank and unreadable expression became fogged with worry.

“It was about then, a year or so ago, just before the opening maneuvers of our campaign, that he first referred to the woman in question as his sister. Looking back, I believe it was a sign that he was becoming perhaps slightly more…what’s the word?”

“Unhinged?” Toby suggested.

“Yes, unhinged,” Vexxx said. “He began letting more and more details of his plans slip to me. I was honored at first. I thought it showed that he was becoming more and more trusting of me. But now I’m not so sure.”

“That tower certainly looks more the sort of thing you’d expect a loony like Diddle to knock up,” Frank said. “Architecturally speaking, I mean.”

Toby nodded. The imp had a point. The tower also had a point. It had about eight of them. It was octagonal in shape, and each point of the octagon narrowed to a needle-sharp tip at the apex. It looked to be made of pure, brilliant white marble, veined with silver and gold. It wasn’t so much imposing as it was grossly grandiose.

It was a testament, Toby reckoned, to a man who had an extremely high opinion of himself. The kind of man who was so convinced of his superiority over others that he believed himself capable of negotiating with such immutable forces like gravity.

“Yeah,” Frank said approvingly. “A nice little twist on the stereotypical maniacal, egotistical villain, if you ask me. Initially, it looks nice, but when you know a little about the man, its aesthetic qualities take on a slightly more sinister overtone.”

“I think the Duke would be gratified to hear that,” Vexxx said conversationally. “I believe that’s what he was going for when he designed and built it.”

“Well then,” the imp said. “Full marks, that man.”

Toby rolled his eyes. “Look, can we stop focusing on the artistic merits of what is essentially a fancy-looking jail and concentrate on figuring out how to bypass the security?”

“We still don’t know what the security is yet,” Anna pointed out and gave Vexxx a meaningful look. “All we know is that Vexxx here sounds like, if you let him, he’d dislocate his arm patting himself on the back with the hiring process.”

“Well,” Vexxx started to say, “all I’m saying is that I was very assiduous in my—”

“All right,” Toby said firmly. “Look, we’re here. We’ve traveled hard to get here. Let’s just focus on getting down there and rescuing my mom.”

He stumbled over the last two words. It still seemed incredible to him that his mother really could be down there. The fact that she was in Eclipsia, that she was the sister of the diabolical Duke Diddle, still didn’t quite seem real.

It would have been enough of a stretch for him to accept that his mother knew of Eclipsia—knew of it his whole life—that when he had tried to speak about his previous adventure with her, she had kindly listened to him in the way that mothers were meant to listen to the prattling of their children, giving them a hug, and telling them what a wonderful imagination he had.

And yet, now he was being informed that not only was his mom well aware that the world of Eclipsia existed, but she was the sister of its chief antagonist.

But is she even more than that? he found himself wondering. Is there some other reason why Mom is locked up? Is there something to do with me? Is there something to do with that damn prophecy?

He gave his head a little shake. It was all just so unlikely. And the most unlikely part of it all was that it was happening to him.

Coming back to Eclipsia had been enough of a trip. But Toby had managed to take stepping into what was essentially a fantasy world in his stride. It was only now that he finally started to feel a little bit overwhelmed. He guessed that his mother being thrown into the mix had somehow made it all that little bit more real.

Closer to home, and then some.

“I’m guessing that there’s something a little more severe than guard dogs down there,” Anna said.

Vexxx didn’t spot the irony. At least if he did, he surfed over it like a seagull riding the beginning of a tsunami wave.

“There are wargs,” he said.

This declaration jogged Toby away from his mother-related musings.

“Wargs?” he repeated, “as in giant, vicious, bloodthirsty wolves?”

“Yes, those are the ones,” Vexxx said. “Quite sanguine.”

“And they what? Just have them roaming around down there?” Verity asked. “That seems like fairly lackadaisical security.”

“No, they are most assuredly muzzled and leashed,” Vexxx said. “Wargs cannot be trusted not to turn on their masters when they get hungry enough.”

“So, Duke Diddle has some happy little accidents in there too?” Toby asked.

Vexxx shook his head. “No,” he said. “The Duke would not entrust the captivity of his sister to anything he created with his wand. Such creatures are too easy to circumnavigate. Such servants lack the ability to solve all but the simplest of problems. The happy little accidents are fine for directing towards a single specific goal, but they are not the kinds of menials that can be trusted to guard something and think on the fly should a problem arise. No, he has mortals in there. Specifically, he has a team of two dozen werewolves inside.”

“Oh, that’s better,” Toby said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Wargs and werewolves… Fucking brilliant.”

“Yes, I was particularly proud of the hiring on of the werewolves,” Vexxx said. “Such mortals do not entirely get rid of the problem of the wargs savaging their handlers, but they greatly mitigate it. Wargs will attack indiscriminately when blood-crazed, but they are more tolerant of werewolves than other mortals. The Duke was impressed by that rather, admittedly, straightforward leap of logic.”

“So, there are two dozen werewolves down there,” Toby said, “and a bunch of wargs?”

“Yes, that’s right. The werewolves are made up of two twelve-man teams that rotate ten hours on, ten hours off,” Vexxx said. “Each team is split into six werewolves and two wargs. One warg per six werewolf squad. Each squad is on a roving patrol. This means—”

“Meaning that they don’t have a set route,” Toby finished.

“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Adams,” Vexxx said, sounding pleased. “It reduces the chances of anyone being able to predict where they will be at any given moment.”

“Excuse me,” Verity said, “but the werewolves in question. I’m assuming that they’re in man-shape if they’re in control of wargs?”

“That is correct,” Vexxx said, “but of course, should the need arise, they are able to morph into their more savage, uncontrollable states. In all honesty, though, I don’t think they ever had to—not since they were given this assignment. No one, so far as I know, even knows of this tower’s location, let alone be suicidally optimistic enough to try and raid it.”

“You hear that? Suicidally optimistic?” Anna said, looking at Toby. “You know, he might be a whizz when it comes to the administrative aspects of being a henchman to a dastardly supervillain, but I think he needs to work on his people management skills.”

Toby laughed shortly.

“I’m sorry,” Vexxx said, “if my candor comes out as hopeless, but it really is a tall order assaulting the tower, not to mention making off with the Duke’s sister.”

“My mother,” Toby said.

“Yes, quite so,” Vexxx said.

“These werewolves,” Verity said, “do we need to do anything special to kill them? Our swords and knives might be alloyed with dwarven iron, but they’re still just steel.”

“Enchanted steel,” Toby pointed out.

“Right, but still steel,” Verity said. “Do we need silver weapons, or do we just stab them through the heart to kill them?”

“Stabbing most living things through the heart usually kills them,” Vexxx pointed out.

“A fair call,” Verity conceded. “But what I’m getting at is—”

“No, they die in the usual mundane ways,” Vexxx said. “It’s just quite a lot harder to kill them in a run-of-the-mill way. A werewolf can be stuck full of arrows and yet continue to fight once the war-rage is on it. A shot through the heart or through the brain will bring it down. If it’s anything shy of that, they can keep fighting more or less until they drop from blood loss.”

“So, we know what we’re facing,” Toby said, peering down from the elevated vantage point to the base of the valley where the tower stood. “Sort of.”

The valley was shaped basically like a huge bowl. The tower stood at its deepest point. And although the structure was tall, the valley and the trees that surrounded it meant that the eight-pointed towers did not rise over the top. There were cliffs on the opposite side. The exposed rock was pale.

Chalk, Toby thought to himself. It’s a good way to disguise the tower if anyone was inclined to try and look for it from a bird’s-eye point of view.

Toby looked around at his friends. “Well,” he said, “I don’t suppose there’s anything much more to gain from standing up here. Let’s get down there and let’s get my mother out.”

“If she’s still there,” Vexxx said. He caught the look that Anna gave him. “Which I’m sure she will be,” he added hurriedly. “Unshakable optimism is the byword of the day for us, I’m sure.”

Toby snorted and tightened his sword belt. “You’ll get there, Vexxx,” he said. “You’ll get there.”

Vexxx, seemingly with an effort, gave Toby the least convincing thumbs up he had ever been on the receiving end of.

Anna snorted. “Yeah, you’ll get there. One day.” 

14

"Are wargs' noses really as sensitive as all that?" Toby breathed into Vexxx's ear.

Vexxx nodded. "Yes," he whispered back, "which is why I had us all roll around in the lavender bushes on our approach. The wargs will be used to lavender. They will smell us and not think anything untoward."

"And what about having our pockets stuffed with rosemary?" Anna asked.

"That's a precaution in case the werewolves do think the proximity of the lavender is odd," Vexxx admitted.

"And is that why you also wanted us to put thyme in our socks?" Toby asked.

"Yes, that… Admittedly, the thyme might have been going slightly overboard," Vexxx said.

"I'll say," Toby replied. "I felt like something that was being stuffed and readied for the oven."

"Let's hope we're not about to be cooked," Anna quipped. She looked nervous.

"Oh, wargs don't need their food cooked," Vexxx said unnecessarily. "In fact, even werewolves don't."

"I think she was making a joke, Vexxx," Toby interjected.

"Ah, yes, trying to relieve the tension. I see," Vexxx said. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

"Frank, how about you make yourself useful and transform into a fly or something and scout ahead?" Toby suggested.

"Aye, aye, captain," the imp stammered. With that rather unpleasant organic sound, the imp transmogrified into a big, fat, hairy bluebottle. He buzzed off.

"Okay," Toby said. "Let's go."

They sprinted out from the cover of the tree line. There was no point in half-assing it. Toby knew that it didn't matter whether they walked or ran—they were liable to attract just as much attention if they were seen. Nothing would be gained for going in for one of those crouching ninja-style runs. Better to leg it as quickly as possible. As Vexxx had pointed out, there wasn't supposed to be anyone here except the werewolves and wargs stationed at the tower.

And my mom, Toby thought.

He had his sword drawn, but he hadn't activated the enchantment that turned the blade into what amounted to a lightsaber—only without the cinematic glowing blade and the whuuuum, whuuuum sounds.

They made it to the door unmolested. They had seen one group, one roving patrol, pass them by, but there was no knowing when it would reappear or whether they might bump into the other one straight away.

Vexxx had voiced the opinion that there would likely be one patrol inside and one cruising around the exterior of the tower. That made sense to Toby, but he didn’t miss how Vexxx was careful to say that he believed it would be the tactic employed. There was no such thing as a certainty.

They reached the front door of the tower.

"First check," Anna said. "How are we meant to get inside this thing? I bet it's one of those fucking doors with a riddle or some bullshit like—"

Vexxx's hand disappeared into his customized robes. He unzipped a pouch and procured an intricate brass key. It was incongruously small when set against the enormous bronze portal they were standing huddled around.

"Ah, that's a relief," Anna said.

Vexxx slid the key into the keyhole and turned it. There was a soft click. The door swung open. Toby and the others followed Vexxx inside. Vexxx closed the door softly behind them.

They found themselves in what amounted to a lobby. It was vast and made even larger by the fact that there was no ornamentation or furniture. The entire interior of the entranceway was crafted from the same white, silver-veined marble as the exterior of the tower. There were no obvious joins in the block work. This, more than anything else, hinted to Toby that magic had been the sole method of building. It gave the space a clinical, intimidating, and somehow sinister look. It reminded Toby of a hospital or mental asylum.

It was lit by some means that Toby couldn’t identify. There were no lamps or torches burning in brackets, and no chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The light seemed to seep out of the very walls.

"Makes me feel a little queasy," Verity said.

"I was just thinking the same thing," Luna agreed.

"Which way, Vexxx?" Toby asked.

"I have absolutely no idea," Vexxx said promptly.

"What?" Anna exclaimed. "But I thought—"

"I knew of the location of the tower," Vexxx interrupted. "And, as I vouched to this company before, I was aware of the security measures to some extent. But I have never been here personally. I have never set foot inside this structure. My previous position meant I was constantly at Duke Diddle's side, but each time he came to visit this place, he had me do something else. I never gave it much thought, but I can see now that he was endeavoring to keep the contents of this tower a closely guarded secret."

"Right. So we don't actually know where my mother—if she's here—would be located?" Toby asked. "That's not a great start."

"Oh, I don't know," Frank said in a high-pitched, fly-like voice from beside him. "I thought actually getting to the base of the tower without being spotted and mauled to death was a pretty good start."

"Yeah, I'll grant you that," Toby said.

"And we got inside the door because old mate here had a key," Frank pointed out.

"True," Verity said.

"Of course, this could be the point where it all goes tits-up, as they say," Frank added cheerfully. "But you never know—you might get three strokes of luck."

It was at that moment that a door on the far side of the hall banged open, and the second roving patrol came through.

"Or not," Frank said.

The patrol that Toby and the others had already seen had been made up of hulking men with distinctly feral looks around their eyes and mouths. They also had great, bushy manes of hair that disappeared into the collars of their black uniforms, and likely went down their spines too.

These men were of the same ilk: big, brawny, and lacking even the slightest semblance of a sense of humor. They were scarred and grubby, and Toby noted that their fingernails were far longer than decent hygiene practices might usually dictate.

Say what you liked about their appearance—the reaction times of the werewolf gang could not be doubted. The one at the front was leading a truly enormous, rabid-looking wolf like an old woman might walk a poodle.

The warg was about as far removed from a poodle as possible while still being in the same canine family. Its teeth were enormous, yellow, and jutted out every which way from its blocky muzzle. Its fur reminded Toby more of the bristling spines of a boar than conventional dog hair. Its claws, which were iron-black, curved, and enormous, clicked on the stone floor.

The base rumble it emitted when it locked its glaring orange eyes on Toby and his party bypassed Toby’s ears and hit him right in the primal, gooey spot deep inside his brain—the one that had been there since his ancestors first climbed down from the trees and discovered fire. The one that warned the prey that a predator was in the house.

Toby actually felt his knees bend, as if his body was preparing to flee. With no small effort, he mastered the impulse.

"Oh crap," Anna said softly. “Good doggy…”

The werewolf holding the chain dropped it and snarled something out. Toby thought there was probably a word of command in there somewhere, but he wasn’t sure what it was or what language it was being spoken in.

The warg leapt forward.

The werewolves charged along behind, but such was the savage majesty of the warg that Toby had very little attention left over for the werewolves. If they somehow survived the warg, then he would worry about the others.

Toby raised his hand and fired an arbitrary burst of kinetic magic at the warg. The jolt of energy slammed into the giant wolf’s thickly muscled chest. It snorted and shook its head, but whether through sheer force of will, straight strength, or some imbued natural magical resilience, the spell seemed to have little effect.

The warg rushed on.

Toby activated the enchantment that turned the potency of his sword up to eleven. He felt the warm rush of magic as the blade burned incandescently hot. He raised the weapon and set his feet.

A bowstring thrummed. Anna had loosed a shaft. The arrow thumped into the foreleg of the warg. It had about as much effect on the animal as a mosquito might have.

Toby, being at the forefront of the group, was the natural first target for the giant ravening wolf.

Someone’s got to be first.

The warg launched itself at him. Toby lashed out with his blade, throwing himself aside at the same time. He felt the sword bite as the warg sailed through the air that he had recently vacated.

The warg landed on the stone floor, roaring in pain and defiance. Rolling upright, Toby saw that he had landed a good slice down its side. But if anything, the beast looked more energized than ever.

Where it had landed brought it within proximity of Luna. It howled at her and snapped its jaws at her, but Luna, as athletic as she looked, vaulted backward in a somersault. The warg's jaw cracked harmlessly together in the air.

Toby could hear Verity and Vexxx engaging with the werewolves as they arrived on the scene. For the time being, he trusted that their skills would see them through.

Anna had drawn her sword. She was not as adept with the weapon as she was with the bow. Still, she was staring gamely at the warg and looked ready to hack it to pieces if she could.

Toby threw his sword. He tried not to think of the look on Lord Marshal Vani's face if the ogre had been able to see him tossing away—or seeming to toss away—his only weapon. Toby used his magic to lasso the sword in midair. Through the tendril of supernatural energy that connected him to his weapon, he guided the sword and plunged it down between the shoulder blades of the warg.

The warg stopped its advance on Luna. It let out an ear-splitting, shrieking, snarling howl. Desperately, it moved its huge head this way and that, trying to see the cause of its agony. With some difficulty, Toby maintained his occult hold on his sword. Using nothing but willpower, he summoned the blade back, wrenching it out from where it had pierced muscle and cracked bone. Blood, deep and dark as merlot, gushed from the wound. But still, the warg stood.

The beast turned and tried to bite at Anna. Anna took a wary step backward and slashed it across the nose. The warg snapped out and caught Anna's sword between its teeth. It jerked its head sideways. Anna let out a cry as her weapon was ripped inexorably from her hand. The blade went skittering across the stone floor. Anna scrabbled for the knife at her belt.

Toby's sword was back in his hand now. He used his magic to buff Anna out of the way. He was a little overzealous, perhaps, and she was sent skidding across the shiny stone floor. The brunette bowled into the legs of one of the werewolves and knocked him off his feet. This enabled Verity to stab swiftly down and skewer the werewolf through the eye with one of her retractable blades.

Toby noted with satisfaction the way the werewolf stiffened and then went limp. Dead as a dodo. That was one down at least.

He refocused his attention on the warg. The beast was clearly weakened, but it was still damnably strong. Not to mention it was acting like someone had shat in its dog biscuits that morning, it was so furious.

It roared as it swiped at Luna. The nymph dodged nimbly again. She had a knife drawn and held in an overhand grip. The warg pounced at the nymph, but once more she sidestepped. She landed a blow with her knife, but the warg's thick coat looked to turn the worst of the strike.

Toby launched himself forward. Instinctively, without really pondering if what he was doing was going to work, he used his magic to propel himself forward in the same way he had used it to form a bridge between him and his sword. He was launched forward in a rather ungainly way, arms wheeling and feet pedaling. He flew at the warg.

Shiiiiit!

He slammed into the monster, just managing to get his sword out in front of him in time. The still white-hot blade sank into the warg's throat. Using his momentum to aid him, Toby ripped down savagely on the blade as he tumbled onto the ground. The warg's throat was severed. It shook its head violently and smashed it into Toby, sending him flying. At the same time, the metal plates in his ranger-like garb stopped him from receiving a potentially terminal slash from a paw, which instead gave his trajectory a spinning quality.

As Toby skidded along his back, with the air well and truly knocked out of him, the warg collapsed in a growing pool of sticky, deep red blood.

Toby felt drained, but he still had the werewolves to contend with. They had remained in their human shapes but had drawn wicked-looking blades and clubs from their belts. Two more, along with the one that Toby had seen Verity kill, had fallen. Vexxx had just snapped the neck of a fourth when Toby charged in and skewered another one up through the armpit with his sword. He twisted the blade and pulled it out. The werewolf dropped.

The final werewolf looked desperately around. Then, with a bestial roar, he morphed.

It was a very strange thing to witness. Obviously, Toby and all the others, except Vexxx, had never seen such a thing take place before. It was strange and uncomfortable—a sight that Toby knew would stick with him for a long time. A sight that made his skin crawl and his stomach roil a little. It was like seeing a human being shuffled like a deck of cards. It was not just a metamorphosis, but also a rearranging of body parts.

The end result was not really like anything Toby had expected. He had a preconceived notion of what a werewolf should look like. The reality was somewhat different. The most disappointing thing, to Toby's mind, was that the werewolf did not burst out of its clothes like the Incredible Hulk. Whatever the uniform was made of, it actually stretched and flowed with the creature's transformation.

The shoulders of the werewolf broadened. Toby could see the muscles shunting along and lengthening under the tight black uniform. Its legs became skinnier, its feet stretching out until they resembled the paws of an enormous wolf rather than the feet of a man. It took on a slight hunch, which Toby assumed was so that it could more easily make use of its lengthened arms as an extra set of legs. Its face lengthened and broadened, and its teeth grew so that the canines protruded below the lower lip. The hair, which had already been fairly impressive, thickened and grew around the werewolf's face in a mane.

There might have been some more changes, but Toby didn’t have the opportunity to witness them. In the next moment, Vexxx strode forward with his arms raised and his fingers contorted into claws. The werewolf stood stock still, as if it had been glued in place. Then, with a slight whistling sound through its suddenly flatter nose, its eyes rolled up into its head. Blood fountained from its nostrils, and it collapsed in a heap.

"What the hell did you do there?" Toby asked the bald magic user. Vexxx’s pate was gleaming with perspiration.

"I temporarily caused the werewolf's blood to thicken in his head," he said. "It's rather a nasty, but quite efficacious, way to kill someone. Rather taxes the strength, though, doing something as intricate as that. Still, during the change is when a werewolf is weakest."

“Because it’s neither one thing or the other?” Toby said.

“Exactly.” Vexxx was usually pale, but Toby noticed he looked even more transparent than usual.

"Can you go on?" Toby asked.

Vexxx inclined his head. "Yes, because I must," he said. “The longer we’re here, the greater the chance that we will be discovered.

"Who's for making use of the door those a-holes came through?" Anna asked.

Toby raised his hand. "I'd second that motion," he said.

“Cool.” Anna nodded. "Everyone okay?" she asked.

Toby looked around. No one was bleeding, and everyone had their limbs intact. He’d count that as a victory.

He glanced around at the dead bodies. "Well," he said, "at least that's one patrol we don't have to worry about."

"No," Vexxx said. "But when one of the other wargs smells the blood of these werewolves, we'll have another one to contend with—plus the group that currently isn't in rotation will doubtless be alerted."

"Well," Toby said, "it's always nice to have something to look forward to."

15

Toby and his friends continued onward. They passed through the door through which their werewolf assailants had entered the lobby. Beyond, they found a smaller antechamber. There was a single staircase. Bizarrely, it led downward.

Toby looked at Vexxx. "Why build the tower upward if you can only go down?" he asked.

Vexxx, who was still obviously winded from the exertion of clotting the werewolf's blood in his veins, shook his head. "Inverted magic!" he explained, a trifle breathlessly. "Another simple anti-thief countermeasure that the Duke employed. It was more to bamboozle and befuddle those of weaker minds. Confuse those of simpler goals—thieves and bandits that might stumble upon this place and think great treasures of the everyday, shiny variety were hidden inside. Though it looks like the steps head down into the earth, in actual fact, through rather clever and intricate—not to mention time-consuming—spell work, the levels of the tower are inverted. So, while it appears we will be going down, we will, in fact, be going up."

There was a lot in this—the flagrant ignoring of the laws of physics, for one thing—that Toby felt he could bring up. But here and now was neither the time nor the place.

"Al right," he said, "then let’s go onward and downward."

"Except it will be onward and upward," Vexxx pointed out.

"Yes, I just… It was just more a figure of speech than a statement of literal intent, but never mind," Toby said. "Let’s go."

The stairs were cut from the same seamless marble as everything else. They wound down, first in a wide looping, circling spiral, then in tight cutbacks.

Although there was not a single window in evidence, they were surrounded by that strange, slightly sickly supernatural luminance. As the light was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, it made Toby’s female companions appear almost ill with the pallor of their complexions.

Toby guessed that this was yet another subtle and cunning psychological trick that the ever-devious Duke Diddle had woven into the tower. Toby couldn’t help but feel as if just being present in the edifice was somehow sucking the very life out of him.

"No," he muttered, "it’s just more of Diddle’s mind games. Ignore it."

The feeling of discombobulation was not improved by the way that, although they were descending the staircase, if Toby looked ahead of him, the steps appeared to be leading upward. Combined with the knowledge that he was, to all intents and purposes, actually ascending the tower, Toby found that if he thought too much about it or looked too far ahead, he was liable to make his own head spin.

Instead, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He ignored as much as he was able to the evidence of his eyes. Rather, he quested out with his other senses. He listened intently. He walked along with his fingers brushing the flawless stone of the wall on his right. He even made a concerted effort to breathe in slowly through his nose and out through his mouth, the better to sift the air for any smells that might hint at an approaching enemy.

To his astonishment and satisfaction, it was the coppery, rank tang of old blood that alerted him to the fact that danger was approaching. This was seconded when Frank, who was now slinking ahead in the guise of a war-torn tomcat with silvery black fur, suddenly stood still. His tail was erect, his matted coat standing on end.

"What is it, Frank?" Anna said.

Frank padded slowly around the corner without answering. The others followed and found themselves once more in a wide antechamber.

This large opening was unique in the way that its walls were covered with an assortment of weaponry, which, in any other setting, would have been categorized as an armory. However, as was unique when a large assortment of deadly weapons was hung on the walls of buildings of a certain size or age, these assorted swords, axes, spears, shields, maces, and a host of other lethal objects would probably have been labeled as ‘ornamentation’ by any good realtor.

It was not the number or the variety of deadly cutting edges that captured Toby’s attention, however. It was the enormous warg standing at the far end of the chamber. If anything, this warg was an even bigger and meaner example of the species than the one that Toby had already killed. Its great, heavy-looking head was scarred and had tufts of fur missing in patches.

"I don’t suppose you have a fireball that you’re willing to pull out of your ass to set that thing alight, do you, Frank?" Toby asked.

"I don’t think there are any fireballs I’d be able to extract from my rectum—or any of my other orifices—that would do much good against that big bastard," Frank said. "Amongst a lot of other things, I know for a fact that a warg’s coat is uncommonly efficient at repelling fire. If my memory serves, there was an incident back in the day involving a wizard who torched a whole load of them while he was stuck, hammered drunk, at the top of a tree. Ever since then, they have evolved to counteract such nuisances."

"Shit," Toby said.

"There’s one thing worrying me more than that enormous, hungry, angry-looking son of a bitch down there," Anna said out of the corner of her mouth.

"Oh yeah?" Toby said. "And what's that?"

"It's where its werewolf minders are," Anna said.

Toby swallowed. His mouth was suddenly doing a good impression of the Nevada Badlands. His eyes darted around the room. There were, now that he came to look, quite a few other doors leading off this chamber.

"I believe that we are about to walk into a very hastily laid trap," Vexxx said. "But even acting under this supposition, I would heartily counsel dealing with the danger in front of us before worrying about any theoretical dangers."

"That seems like sound logic," Anna said.

“Even coming from the sort of mental individual that believed professional bureaucracy was a decent life calling?” Frank muttered.

In a swift, fluid movement, she raised her bow, drew an arrow from her quiver, and fitted said arrow to the bowstring.

Toby gave her an admiring look. "That was smooth," he said.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," Anna said with a wink. Then her eyes flicked to her target.

At the drawing of her bow, the constant rumbling of the warg, which was not so very far removed from the dirtier kind of V8 engine, rose an octave. It had an extra little harmonic to it now. Previously, the growl had hinted at the fact that the warg was intrigued by the sudden appearance of these bipedal interlopers. Now…

Now that there is an arrow pointed at it, it sounds like it is willing to concede that perhaps it is also hungry too, Toby’s brain told him. Or just a keen amateur decorator that thinks a bit of offal purple and blood red might really brighten the place up.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw Anna stick her tongue between her teeth. More slowly, he pulled his own bow from the quiver at his back and fastened an arrow to the string.

"I've got you covered," Toby said.

"That thing is going to come charging straight at you, Miss Coombs," Vexxx said.

"I'm counting on it," Toby said. "Let it fly, Anna."

Anna closed one eye and let out a long breath. The arrow hissed away. It shot across the chamber and buried itself in the massive shoulder of the warg. The warg didn't so much as flinch.

"Oh, shit. He's got a pair of nuts on him, this guy," Frank the cat said.

Toby was inclined to agree with the imp's categorization of the monster. Had the warg been a human, he would have been one of those strong, silent types that you occasionally came across in the more disreputable bars in neighborhoods like Red Hook or Nolita. The kind of individual who allowed someone else to start the bar brawl and shatter a bottle over his own head, purely out of interest—or because he was after a new hairstyle—and then haul off and break the whole bar apart.

There was something about that unimpressed stoicism on the part of the warg that told Toby, somehow, that monster though it might be, it was all part of the show.

“It's enjoying itself,” Frank said in a worried voice.

“Yeah, Well, let's see if it enjoys act two,” Toby said.

Toby, with as much derision as he could muster, whistled at the warg and then said loudly and in the tone of voice he might have employed to hail a beloved, fat golden retriever "Here, boy!"

Its pride stung, the warg charged. It let out a howling roar as it came on.

Toby ignited the arrow on the bowstring with a thought. Using his willpower alone, he charged the arrow with as much magic as he was able to draw from within the inner reserves he had inside of himself. The arrow glowed a bright, bioluminescent blue.

Toby released the string. The arrow shot like a laser beam across the space, trailing blue light. It hit the warg right in the center of its chest. Powered with a combination of fear, desperation, hope, anger, and arcane power, the arrow went through the length of the warg and ripped out of its hefty left buttock muscle.

Without so much as a flickering change of facial expression, the great, hard-ass warg dropped to the ground as its four legs buckled. Its pace meant that it skidded along on its chin for a good five or six meters before coming to rest with a final exhalation of breath, not two feet from the toes of Anna's boots.

Anna looked down at the dead warg and then up at Toby.

“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she said, “but it was a little anticlimactic.”

As if on cue, three of the doors of the chamber burst open.

The half-dozen team of werewolves, who had all morphed into their more monstrous and formidable forms, came charging, loping, and roaring out like a frothing tide of teeth and claws.

A slight wave of dizziness assailed Toby as he watched his enemies approach. He perceived that he had drawn heavily on his magical reservoir.

Just get on with it, or you’ll be a long time dead.

Running on automatic, not letting himself be rushed or intimidated, and focusing solely on retrieving his arrow, fitting it to the string, and drawing that string to his ear, Toby sighted and fired at one of the running werewolves. His arrow took it just under its breastbone. Despite having a good three inches of wood embedded in it, the arrow did little to slow the ravening monster.

"Remember," Vexxx said from behind Toby, "they are more physically able and formidable in werewolf form, but they lose cognitive abilities. You won't be able to outmatch them physically, but you can outthink them."

Toby's gaze roved the chamber, then he grinned nastily.

He waved his hands. A number of glittering pikes were ripped from their moorings on the wall. They showered down and skewered the lead werewolf he had just plugged with the arrow.

The werewolf, muscular and raging as it might have been, was pinned in mid-stride to the stone ground. Its twitching corpse resembled nothing so much as one of those awful pieces of decorative finger food from the 1980s—a lump of ham stuck through with toothpicks with little lumps of pineapple on the end. Although, in this case, the toothpicks were seven-foot-long spears and the pineapple was replaced by garish flags of ancient nations.

With five werewolves left, Toby and his companions were hard-put to it. This was made doubly true because Vexxx was still not quite recovered from his earlier magical exertions. The former right-hand man of Duke Diddle stayed at the rear of the company, but he still managed to offer some quite helpful magical assistance.

The action was fast, furious, and frantic. Toby's sword burned hot in his hand. He had dropped his bow after he had loosed that first shot at the werewolf.

The others were fighting for their lives.

Frank had taken on a slightly more intimidating form. He was a black bear, although to Toby, it appeared that this particular black bear was capable of breathing silvery black clouds of burning gas.

One of the werewolves was ignited thanks to Frank's ministrations and was then promptly hacked down by a clumsy knife thrust up through the jaw by Luna. After he'd toasted the werewolf, Frank seemed to have run out of puff so far as supernatural flames went. Still, if you took the fire-breathing ability away from a bear, you were still left with a bear. Frank laid about with his great paws and jaws.

Vexxx was able to slow or incapacitate a couple more of the werewolves using some magic that made them move as if they were wading through jelly. Toby was able to dispatch these two by beheading them.

Verity, as she always did, fought like a dervish. She spun this way and that. Her natural speed and practiced skill was a match even for the werewolves. She sliced them all over their bodies, whirling away before they could land a crushing blow on her.

Within the space of ten minutes, the second troop of werewolves and their accompanying warg had been dispatched. Toby knelt down and used the form-fitting uniform of one of his fallen foes to wipe his blade free of blood.

"I've got a live one over here," Vexxx declared.

Toby walked over. Vexxx was standing over one of the werewolves. It was bleeding profusely from a wound in its chest. On closer examination, Toby saw that it wasn't just one wound but a myriad of them. They looked like the kind that had ‘Verity’ written all over them.

Death by a thousand cuts indeed.

Vexxx was standing with his arms spread.

"I'm holding this fellow down and also holding the blood in his body," he explained. "This one has almost expired. I just thought he might be able to tell us something of interest before he moved on."

"Where's the prisoner?" Toby demanded, kneeling down next to the stricken werewolf. "Tell us when the Duke collected the prisoner from the top of the tower?"

"The Duke ain't collected no one, you fool. The Duke ain't been here in months," the werewolf grunted. “That bitch is still secure behind lock and key.” It laughed and choked on blood and spittle.

"Thanks very much for your help," Toby said.

The werewolf looked perplexed. Then the light faded from its eyes as Vexxx stopped the blood from hemorrhaging from its torn and broken body.

"It told us something?" Anna said.

"Sure," Toby said. "It told us that my mother's still here and that she's at the top of the tower."

16

They made it all the way to the top of the tower without further incident. If the other two werewolf patrols were out hunting for them, they did not come across them, and they reached the top of the winding, wicked, wonky staircase without being torn into strips of raw jerky.

They found the way blocked by a doorway that was not quite a doorway. Where the door should have been, there was nothing but an arch filled in with plain brickwork.

Toby was just about to ask Vexxx sarcastically whether he had a key for this particular door when the former right-hand man of Duke Diddle stepped forward. He pressed his large, long-fingered, white hands to the brickwork and muttered something under his breath.

To Toby's amazement—and judging by the soft exclamation she gave, Anna's too—the brickwork began to swirl and morph. Soon, it did not resemble solid stone. Instead, it looked to Toby more like a vertical pool of liquid orange sand.

“Now, that’s magic,” Anna breathed.

"After you," Vexxx said, indicating the strange swirling portal.

"After I what?" Toby said.

"I think he wants you to step through, Tobes," Anna said.

Toby subjected Vexxx to a long, searching look.

"Mr. Adams, please," Vexxx said in a voice bereft of anything that might have been injury or disgruntlement at being suspected of dishonesty. "I assure you, Mr. Adams, that had it been my goal to kill you or any of your associates, I could have done so a hundred, maybe even one-hundred and thirty-one, times before now—and I could have done so without expending so much time or energy."

“You were counting, weren’t you?” Toby asked in a deadpan voice.

“I… Maybe,” Vexxx said.

Toby looked at the other man a moment longer. He had to admit, Vexxx had a point. It did seem a little strange that Vexxx would have knocked him off at that precise moment.

“All right,” Toby said.

With his hand still holding his enchanted sword, Toby stepped through the doorway. He closed his eyes, worried that his vision would be filled with particles of grit. He needn't have concerned himself, though. As he stepped through the portal, it felt as if he were striding through a full-body hand dryer.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing in the middle of a brightly lit chamber. It was fashioned, for the most part, from the same silver and gold-veined marble as everything else had been. Where it differed from the rest of the tower, though, was in the way that there were actual items of furniture scattered throughout the room. These items were simple but comfortable-looking. Spartan, but serviceable.

Toby noticed that only peripherally. Behind him, he was aware of his friends stepping through the portal, but Toby's vision and concentration were focused solely on the woman standing in the middle of the room.

Gwen Adams stood there. She was looking in stunned disbelief at Toby.

For his part, Toby reckoned he was probably returning that look with interest. He couldn't believe it. Even though he'd been told multiple times by Duke Diddle and Vexxx, it had never really struck him as being at all possible that his mother should be part of this incredible world. Secretly, he’d been expecting some mistake, some form of crossed wires, some elaborate double-cross or trap.

"Toby," she said, and her voice was her voice. "My son, you're here."

"I'm here," Toby said simply. He puffed out his cheeks and let out a disbelieving little laugh. "Mom, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"Mind your language."

"Sorry, but what in the name of Bilbo Baggins’ baggy ballbag are you doing here?”

Gwen Adams looked as if Toby trading ‘fuck’ for ‘Bilbo Baggins’ baggy ballbag’ was not her idea of a linguistic compromise. Still, she swallowed her motherly disapproval, walked across the chamber, around a desk piled with books, and grabbed Toby. She hugged him fiercely.

At that moment, Toby became five years-old once again. He was pretty sure that all men—no matter how self-proclaimed hard, bad, mean, or ice cool they were—every single one pulled into a hug like that with their mothers was instantly transported back in time.

Toby closed his eyes and held his mother tight to him. It seemed somehow that she was smaller and more fragile than she had been when he'd last seen her back in New York.

Maybe that's because I've grown, Toby thought. Not just physically, thanks to all my sword training, but also as a man, as a warrior, as an adventurer.

It was only when Toby heard Verity say to Anna, "Oh my goodness, that's so sweet," and Luna whispered, "Is it just me, or is there something undeniably attractive about a young man who obviously cares and respects his mother that much?" that Toby pulled away. He was grinning a little embarrassingly.

His mother smirked, as if she could read his mind.

"You're never too old for a hug, Toby Adams," she said reprovingly.

"I know, Mom," Toby said.

"You've grown," Gwen Adams said.

Toby patted his belly. "We've got a domestic djinn at home," he said.

"Do you just?" his mother said with a light laugh. "And a home to boot?"

Toby gave his head a little shake. He had been momentarily displaced by the appearance of his mother. "Yeah, Mom, we've got a house, and we've got a domestic djinn and all sorts of wild shit—stuff, I mean," he said quickly.

“Better.”

"I just… I mean, what are you doing here, Mom? I mean, what are you doing here? This doesn't make any sense. I mean, I thought when I first arrived back here—back here, mark you, and that in itself is another story—but when I arrived back here, I thought nothing made sense. But of all the things that don't make any sense, this makes the least sense.”

Toby sucked in a breath. He’d almost talked until he was quite literally blue in the face.

Toby's mother raised her hands and placed them on Toby's arms. Then her hands moved up to his shoulders. She gave him a squeeze, and her hands moved northward again and cupped his face. It was a gesture that transcended time for Toby. It was something she had always done to calm him down.

"Toby," she said. "Toby, I understand you have an abundance of questions that you probably want to put to me. Maybe you feel angry or betrayed that I never said anything to you about any of this, but all that is going to have to wait until we get out of here. Time is very much of the essence."

"I'm afraid that that is truer than you know," Luna said, unexpectedly speaking up.

Toby noted something in the nymph's voice. He turned and saw that Luna's complexion had taken on a wan quality.

"Luna," he said. "What's wrong?"

Luna had been standing with her hands on her hips. Now, Toby saw that she was favoring one leg over the other. She moved her hand away from her hip, and Toby saw, with a thrill of trepidation, that there was a sodden patch of robes around Luna's waist.

"You're hurt," Toby said.

Verity stepped forward. "What happened?" she asked. "It looks like a flesh wound, but there was no knife, sword or spear that I could see that came close to you.”

“There was no weapon," Luna said. Her face was set, but Toby caught the harmonics of barely repressed panic in her voice.

"One of the werewolves… One of the werewolves…" Luna faltered.

"Oh shit," Anna said. "You got bitten, didn't you?"

Luna nodded.

"Shit," Toby said.

"Shit balls on toast," Frank said. The imp was always keen to up the ante during times of strife.

Toby's mother pushed past him and made a beeline for Luna. Not knowing what else to do, feeling as if he should say something to alleviate the apparent severity of the situation, Toby said, "Luna, Verity, Hannah, Vexxx… this is my mom, Gwen."

“Hey, Mrs. Adams,” Anna said.

“Hello, Anna dear,” Gwen Adams replied. “Why am I not surprised to see you here? He didn’t rope you into all of this did he?” She jerked her head at Toby.

“No, I came of my own volition,” Anna replied.

“Good girl.”

Anna beamed. “You know he’d only go and get himself into trouble without a firm female hand to guide him.”

“I’m right here,” Toby said.

"A pleasure to meet all the rest of you, I'm sure," Gwen said politely. She refocused on Luna. Without hesitating for a second, Toby's mother pulled up the nymph's robes so that she could peer through the rent in the fabric.

"It's superficial," she said. "But still grave. If we don't get her somewhere a bit more civilized, where I might be able to concoct the counter-toxin, she will be turned."

"Turned?" Anna asked.

"Yes, into a werewolf," Gwen Adams said.

What little color there had been in Luna's face drained away. "No," she said weakly.

Verity gave Luna a reassuring rub on the back.

"It's okay, dear," Gwen said soothingly. "That won't happen. As soon as we get out of this accursed tower, my powers—which my dear brother, as I'm sure you're aware by now, Toby, robbed me of—will start to regenerate."

"Not immediately?" Vexxx asked.

"No, not immediately," Gwen Adams said. She eyed Vexxx with something very close to dislike.

That's not really surprising, Toby thought. He was probably responsible for caging Mom up in the first place.

They hurried back out through the door of Toby's mother's prison. They made their way back down—or up, Toby forgot which—through the tower.

They encountered one of the other patrols of werewolves and wargs, but now that they had Gwen Adams in their custody, Toby's rage and determination burned with a renewed fire. Together with his friends, they obliterated their way through the guardians of Duke Diddle's tower.

Within what seemed like a matter of minutes, they had kicked open the front door and locked it behind them using the key that Vexxx had in his possession.

They fled across the open land that led to the tree line from where they had issued upon making their insertion. Toby was supporting Luna. He had one of the nymph's arms over his shoulders and was half-carrying her. He was amazed at the grit, bravery, and resolve she showed, but every now and again, she let out a whimper of pain or trepidation as to what might befall her if they weren’t able to cure her bite.

"Hanging in there?" Toby asked her. "We're going to get you sorted out, don’t you worry."

At one point, as they made their way towards the horses, Toby attempted to broach the subject of his mother being there. However, Gwen Adams shot her son a look that quelled any further questions, the same way she had quelled his messing about at the dinner table when he was a little boy and she had caught him flicking peas at his brothers.

"I know there's a lot you'd ask me, Toby," she said kindly but firmly, "and there's a lot I need to tell you. But it's going to have to wait. You'll have to wait until we're somewhere safe."

"Your mother makes a very valid point," Vexxx said.

"Vexxx, now is not the time to put in your ten cents," Anna said severely.

"My apologies, Miss Coombe," Vexxx said, bowing his bald head.

"So, Mom, you can use magic?" Toby asked as they rested briefly to let Luna catch her breath. They were making their way up through the trees towards where they had hobbled the horses.

"Yes, I can use magic, Toby," his mother said in the kind of patient voice mothers had used for eons to deal with the stupid questions of their young. "I can use magic, but I can't use it right now. My brother—his powers are formidable. He's robbed me of my ability to work arcana and witchcraft. I don't know how long it's going to take before I recover my full powers, but it might be some time."

"But what about Luna?" Verity asked.

"He might have robbed me of my powers, but he wasn't able to take my knowledge," Gwen Adams said, tapping the side of her head. "I know how to brew the werewolf bane potion that should help Luna fight the effects of the bite. Does this house of yours have an apothecary room or potion-making station?"

"Yes," Verity said at once.

"Well, then they should be able to help her if we get her back there in time."

"We'll stop off at the Eclipsian Army's base camp," Toby said firmly. "It's on the way back to Stagbreach."

"Very well," Gwen Adams said. "Let's ride—and ride hard." She leaned in and put a comforting arm around the ashen-faced Luna. "Don't worry, my dear," she said. "We'll have you sorted out in no time. You might have to put up with a bit of rough riding for the time being, though. But every jolt, every piece of pain, every cry you have to swallow—just remember it's because we're getting you to safety."

Luna nodded her head in a resigned and resolved manner.

“I can make it,” she said.

“I never doubted it for a second,” Toby told her.

He turned and looked at the others. “Now, let’s make like Tom and get the fuck out of here.”

17

The ride back to the current base camp of the Eclipsian army was a hard one, as Toby's mother had predicted. As Toby had known, though, Luna was possessed of an extraordinary drive and resilience. This was belied somewhat by her elegant features, her obvious intelligence, and her usually quiet demeanor.

By the time they rode into Lord Marshal Vani's camp some two days later, the nymph was only half-conscious in her saddle.

After the combined ministrations of Vexxx and Gwen Adams, the nymph had been plied with as much health potion as was safe to give her.

"It won’t stave off the chemicals, the virus that entered her body when bitten by the werewolf," Toby’s mother told him one evening as they sat around the campfire. She was bathing Luna's brow with a damp cloth and some cold river water that Verity had collected from a nearby stream.

“But they’ll help?” Verity asked.

"The health potions won’t fight that particular virulent infection," Toby’s mother had gone on, "but they will help knit the physical wound back together."

Toby just nodded mutely, his eyes fastened on Luna's sleeping face.

"They are special, these girls," his mother said to him. It wasn’t a question.

Toby looked up at his mother. "Yeah, they're special," he said, a little awkwardly.

"How special?" Gwen Adams asked. Then Toby saw there was a ghost of a smile playing around her lips.

"Geez, they’re special enough, all right, Mom, honestly. This is the sort of thing I don’t want to go into with you."

Gwen Adams laughed and put her arm around Toby's shoulders. "I've missed you, son," she said.

"I've missed you too, Mom."

Now it was mid-morning, and they had ridden into Lord Marshal Vani’s camp. The place was as busy as it ever was whilst the brass was trying to decide where to strike next. That is to say, there were a lot of soldiers standing around, cooking up as hearty a feed as they could manage with their soldiers’ rations, washing their clothes in large wooden tubs, gambling, dicing, brawling, drinking, and cleaning or polishing weapons and armor.

A couple of female grooms came up to take the reins of their lathered mounts.

"Where’s Lord Marshal Vani?" Toby demanded without delay. He wasn’t usually so curt with the common soldiers, but he needed an answer to his question, and he needed it ASAP.

One of the women recognized Toby and dashed off to find the Lord Marshal.

While Toby and the others dismounted and stretched their weary, aching limbs, there was a dull thudding sound. Lord Marshal Vani came stomping from around the corner of a collection of large canvas tents.

"Ah, Adams," the ogre rumbled. "I should have known it was you. You never could turn up in a nice, normal fashion, could you? Always got people running about like a bunch of headless chooks."

"Lord Marshal Vani," Toby said. Normally, he would have shared a joke with the head of the Eclipsian army, but he hadn’t the time nor, if he was being honest, the inclination.

"And who’s this?" Lord Marshal Vani asked, his gimlet eyes alighting on Gwen Adams.

"Lord Marshal Vani, this is Gwen Adams, my mother," Toby said quickly.

To Toby’s surprise, the Lord Marshal sketched a stiff bow. "Excuse my astonishment, madam," the ogre said in a ponderous voice, "but it was rumored that your son wasn’t so much birthed as squeezed out of a bartender’s rag, if half the rumors that abound the Toby Jug are to be believed."

Toby’s mom gave Toby a knowing look. "He’s been making a name for himself in the taverns, has he?"

"Yes, he has, madam," the ogre said.

"Now, wait a minute," Toby began to say. “Anna and I worked in the Toby Jug when we first—“

The ogre let out a rumble of mirth. "I’m just kidding, Adams. I’m just yanking your whatsit. What kind of commanding officer would I be if I didn’t try to embarrass one of my men in front of their mothers?"

Gwen Adams let out a trilling laugh. "Lord Marshal Vani, it’s a pleasure to meet you," she said. "I have heard all about your exploits, although you might be surprised to know it. I’ve been working in the shadows, as they say."

"Spying on Duke Diddle?" Lord Marshal Vani said bluntly.

"Maybe," Gwen Adams said noncommittally.

Lord Marshal Vani’s eyes flicked over Toby’s shoulder. His face became stern. "You’ve got an injured member of your party," he said.

Toby nodded. "I need fresh horses for myself, my mother, and Luna," he said.

"Done," the Lord Marshal replied crisply. "Anything else?"

"Provisions for the two days it’s going to take for us to ride as fast as we can back to Stagbreach?"

"Done."

“Thank you,” Toby said, feeling the knot inside of him unclench a little.

"And as for the horses," Lord Marshal Vani said, "on second thought, I’ve got a trio of kirins that you can use. They’ll get you back to Stagbreach quicker. Save you at least half a day."

“Thanks very much, Lord Marshal," Toby said.

Lord Marshal waved a large three-fingered hand at Toby, as if to say it was nothing.

"Gurnard!" he roared over his shoulder.

As if by magic, Captain Gurnard, the head of what had formerly been the Kingsguard—what was now, Toby supposed, the Queensguard—appeared. He had a sallow face and a pinched mouth that reminded Toby of a cat’s butthole. All in all, Toby knew that the man didn’t much like him. That was fine with Toby. He didn’t much like Captain Gurnard either.

"Yes, Lord Marshal?" Captain Gurnard said stiffly.

"You were about to run a message back to Stagbreach, were you not?"

"I was all but in the saddle, sir," Captain Gurnard replied. “Going to take it personally.”

"Well then, as part of your errand, I want you to inform Her Majesty the Queen that her Royal Champion will be calling on her within the next couple of days. I assume that whatever you’ve been doing, Adams," Lord Marshal Vani said, turning his attention back to Toby, "was of the top-secret variety and to help the war effort?"

"Yes, it was, sir, in a manner of speaking," Toby said.

"Spiffing."

Toby gave him a puzzled look.

The ogre rolled his yellow eyes. “I’ve been told I need to start throwing out a few more officer-like terms,” he growled. “You know, pointlessly flowery and optimistic exclamations. That’s all I could think of in the moment.”

“Very good,” Toby said diplomatically.

"Well then, Captain Gurnard," Lord Marshal Vani said, turning his attention back to the waiting soldier. "Get your ass back into that saddle and alert the Queen that Toby Adams will be bringing his mother to tea."

Toby gave the Lord Marshal a look.

"Fine, don’t put it quite like that," the ogre said. "But tell her that she should expect a thorough report from one of her top-level espionage officers. Does that sound more official?"

"Yes, it does, Lord Marshal," Gwen Adams said with a small smile. "However, it might be worth conveying to the Queen that I may be delayed in calling on her. As you notice, we have an injured member of our party. We’ll have to take her home and minister to her first."

"What’s wrong with her?" the ogre asked.

"Werewolf bite," Toby said. He saw the look of dismay flash fleetingly over Lord Marshal Vani’s face.

"Right," the Lord Marshal said. "Right. Well, yes, make sure you stop by one of the field apothecaries and gather everything you might need for the journey."

"I think we have everything back at our house in the Baker’s Quarter," Toby said. "My mother will be lodging with us, of course."

"Excellent. Very good. Captain Gurnard, if you can let the Queen know of Madame Adams’s living situation, perhaps she will see fit to pay a visit herself, or at least send some instructions there."

Captain Gurnard ripped off a crisp salute. "As you say, sir," he said. He clicked his heels together and stomped off. Before he vanished around the corner of a cluster of tents, Toby saw the captain shoot him a venomous look.

I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to have to deal with that animosity and nip it in the bud, Toby thought without relish. He’s got a real bug up his ass about something, and I think that something is me.

Within a matter of minutes, he, his mother, and Luna were saddled on the backs of three fleet-footed kirins. Not long after, they bid farewell to Anna and Verity, as well as Frank, whom Toby had instructed to stay with his two friends. They said their goodbyes, promising to see each other when they returned to Stagbreach.

“Good luck, guys,” Anna said.

Swapping the kirins for horses did—as Lord Marshal Vani had said—save Toby, his mother, and Luna half a day’s travel. What’s more, the kirins provided a smoother, more balanced ride, which spared Luna some pain. Most of Toby’s concentration was taken up with making sure the kirins picked out the most level and pothole-free path to cause Luna the least discomfort.

The countryside that surrounded Stagbreach was, as it always had been in Toby’s experience, beautiful. Fall was very much in full swing now. Time had flown while the Eclipsian forces engaged in their guerrilla war against Duke Diddle’s band. There was a bite in the air that hinted at the winter soon to follow. It wasn’t cold, just fresh at that moment, but Toby didn’t doubt that if the war dragged on much longer, they’d be fighting, chasing, and slaying their enemies in ice, slush, and snow.

He didn’t much relish that thought.

He loved Stagbreach and imagined that spending the winter there would be cozy as anything. When he had the time and energy to think about the frigid season, he pictured himself sitting around one of the tavern fires, telling stories, drinking good, strong, dark beer, and eating roasted meats and vegetables. He might spend a day in the workroom at his house in the Baker’s Quarter. Or maybe he’d just hang around the kitchen doing not much at all with Verity, Anna, Luna, or now, perhaps, his mother.

We’ve a lot to catch up on.

There were many aspects of life in Eclipsia that Toby wanted to experience. Admittedly, at the bottom of that list was the conversation he knew he’d have to have with his mother—the one where he explained why he was sleeping with a different one of his housemates each night. Would his mom condone that sort of behavior?

Hell, she might be pretty chill about it. Who knows what she was used to? Life in New York might be weirder than life here.

He realized, as the three kirins rode under the arch of Stagbreach’s front gate, that he didn’t really know much about the real woman who was his mother. She had always just been his mother. It was coming as a bit of a revelation that she was even more complex and layered than most people.

There was one thing that had indubitably changed within Stagbreach since Toby had come to call the place home: the atmosphere. Ever since Duke Diddle had launched his offensive and shown the size of his balls by invading the capital and breaching the castle, people had been more wary on the streets.

Although most of Toby’s concern was focused on Luna, who was lolling from side to side in her saddle, clearly nearing the end of her strength, he couldn’t help but notice the sharp, curious, sometimes distrustful looks that he, his mother, and the nymph garnered from the passersby.

Even the buildings themselves seemed more suspicious, less welcoming. Toby supposed this was due in part to the number of houses and shops that had heavy wooden shutters closed over their windows and their doors barred. People were not doing brisk trade. It seemed business was bad.

Unless you are an apothecary or a blacksmith, Toby thought to himself. War is good if you’re in the weapons or wounded trade.

People were battening down the hatches, as well as their purse strings. Toby knew from gossip he’d picked up in a number of taverns over the preceding weeks that some of the citizens of Stagbreach had taken to heading out to country homes or family farms to gather with their loved ones. It was, apparently, better to be together to weather whatever storm Duke Diddle might unleash.

Toby thought that was, basically, a gamble. Yes, Stagbreach was, as the hub of Eclipsia, the natural point where the heaviest hammer blow would fall when it did. That was the gamble many people leaving the township were making. They were assuming Duke Diddle would make another move on Stagbreach soon. But there was no real reason why the Duke wouldn’t continue to harry and burn homesteads and farms in the surrounding countryside. Not only would the collective morale of Eclipsians be affected, but it would also slowly diminish the amount of produce making its way into the township itself.

All of these thoughts were swirling uncomfortably around Toby’s head as they wound their way through a partly full market and out into the always fragrant Baker’s Quarter.

"You have a house here?" his mother asked him.

Toby blinked and looked up from where he’d been staring without seeing at the back of his kirin’s neck.

"What was that?" he asked.

"You have a house in the Baker’s Quarter?" Toby’s mother repeated.

"Oh, yeah, we do," Toby said.

"And how did you manage that, if I might ask?" Gwen Adams said.

"It’s a pretty long story," Toby said.

"Give me the condensed version, then. I remember when you were a kid and you could sum up your entire day at school in a single word: ‘fine’ or ‘good.’"

"Are you trying to keep my mind off of Luna and what might happen to her?" Toby asked quietly.

"And what if I am? I’m your mother, after all. It’s my job to look after you."

Toby smiled tightly.

"Well, basically, you know Frank?”

“The little charcoal-colored imp?"

"Yeah.”

“The little imp with the big mouth," Toby’s mother said.

"That’s the one. Well, we met through a mutual acquaintance, shall we say. A wizard. A wizard who goes by the name of Rowan Moonshroud."

"I’ve heard of him," Gwen said. "Obliquely speaking. He was a devious dastard, by all accounts, capable of mischief in a mean way."

"Well, yeah," Toby said. "One thing led to another, and we ended up going in search of a carrier pigeon for him. Or what he told us was a carrier pigeon. It turned out to be Frank."

"Wizards and djinn go together like gin and tonic," Gwen Adams said.

"Yeah, well, unintentionally, Frank and I became bonded," Toby said. "Old Moonshroud didn’t like that. He tried to blast me with a spell, but Frank intervened and turned him into a swede."

Toby’s mother looked surprised. “Blonde, blue-eyed and—?“

“No, sorry, I meant he turned him into a turnip. Not a swede.”

“You have to keep an eye on djinn. That is known.”

"Hey, before you go pointing the finger, Mom, I didn’t ask him to do it," Toby said.

“I didn’t say you did!”

“You were giving me that look.”

His mother raised her hands. “Go on, dear.”

"Anyway, before all that happened, Moonshroud gave us a house. He was that keen to get his hands on Frank,” Toby said. “I’ve said it before, but clearly Rowan Moonshroud had never met Frank, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so eager to make a trade like that."

Toby’s mother laughed. "And so he gave you a house in return for the imp?"

"Yeah, he did. We were able to access it even after he was turned into probably the most unexciting root vegetable out there."

Toby’s mother smiled. Then she glanced back at Luna, who was following along behind. Toby had a hold of the reins of her kirin.

"How much farther?" she asked in a low voice.

"Just at the far end of the street, around the next corner," Toby said.

"Okay," Gwen Adams said. "I just spotted an apothecary. There are a few things I want to grab, just in case you don’t have a fully stocked cupboard. There’s no point in running in and out. Better to have too much than not enough."

They pulled up, and Gwen Adams ducked inside the shop. She wasn’t gone long. She reappeared a few moments later, clutching a bundle. She remounted, and they carried on up the street and around the corner.

They were approaching the house. Toby was hoping Dishy was in and had a kettle on the boil and some food waiting for them.

"It’s that place. Third house from the end," he said to his mother.

"It looks wonderful and well cared for," his mother said approvingly. "I’m glad to know I didn’t raise a total heathen."

"Wait until you see inside," Toby said with a wry smile.

His mother gave a theatrical shiver. "I know who I raised," she said. "Please tell me there are a couple of toilets."

"Oh, don’t worry about that," Toby said. "Anna was delighted when we found out what facilities we were working with. I’ll give you a rundown when we get inside."

They slowed their pace and began to cross the street.

And then the front of the house exploded.

The kirins reared up. Toby was barely able to keep his saddle and hold on to the reins of Luna’s beast. Gouts of purple fire erupted from the windows of the house. Glass and splintered wood rained down into the street. People were screaming, running. Wooden roof tiles fell like rain.

Toby’s mother had been thrown from her mount, but she was fine. With some quite outrageous acrobatics, she rolled backwards as the serpentine creature bucked and plunged and landed on her feet.

"What happened?" she shouted.

Toby slid down from his saddle, helped Luna down from hers, and pulled both his mother and the nymph hurriedly into an alleyway. He looked around the corner and saw the house in ruins. Strange pink and lilac fire licked at the windows.

"Looks like your impromptu stop for those extra ingredients helped us narrowly avoid getting killed," Toby said to his mother.

"But how? Why…? I don’t understand. No one knew we were heading back," Gwen Adams said.

"No one but Lord Marshal Vani and Captain Gurnard," Toby said grimly.

Luna looked muzzily up at Toby from under drooping eyelids. Her amber eyes were sunken in their sockets.

“You know… what this… means, don’t you, Toby?” she asked with an obvious effort.

“Yeah, I do,” Toby said, his brown eyes reflecting the flames issuing from the downstairs windows of the house. “Lord Marshal Vani has had his goddamn army infiltrated by Diddle. We’ve got ourselves our very own Brigadier General Francis X. Hummel.”

“What?” Gwen Adams and Luna said in unison.

“A traitor,” Toby said. “There’s a traitor in our midst.”

18

The apothecary’s shop into which Toby and his mother helped Luna was a cramped, dimly lit space that smelled of herbs, musty wood, and something more pungent—wet earth, and something organic. It might have been mushrooms.

Toby glanced over and spotted a huge vat of leeches in one corner. He realized then that he’d seen this shop before. He’d once passed it while chatting with Frank, shortly before they’d been on the receiving end of a would-be mugging. He knew now that the apothecary was the old woman who moonlighted in fulfilling the strange, leech-centric fetishes of some of Stagbreach’s locals.

Toby, not one to judge, said nothing about this to his mother.

The old apothecary was busy pulling down ingredients under Gwen Adams's direction. Unable to help with the immediate situation, Toby contented himself by smoothing silver-white hair away from Luna’s brow and surveying the room.

Shelves lined the uneven stone walls of the cottage-cum-shop, each crowded with jars, vials, and different-sized clay pots. Every vessel was labeled in an indecipherable, spidery script. Dried bundles of herbs hung from the low ceiling beams—sage, thyme, lavender. Other plants defied his identification, unfamiliar shapes and colors. Some still twitched and writhed slightly, as if the plants they had been taken from still exerted a sentient hold over their leaves and little branches. Others glowed faintly in the dim light cast by sputtering oil lanterns tucked into nooks along the walls.

In one corner of the shop stood a large wooden cabinet with tiny drawers, each marked with a faded alchemical symbol.

"Those drawers are filled with powdered roots, ground minerals, and dried insect parts, for the most part, young man," the wizened old crone said, noticing Toby peering about. "They’re all my ingredients, for potions and tinctures. Ain’t nothing of any value in there."

"I wasn’t thinking of stealing anything," Toby said defensively.

"I should think not," Gwen Adams said. "Not in front of your mother."

"Ah, you’re with your ma," the old apothecary said, grinning a mostly toothless grin. "In that case, that puts my mind at ease. It’s a well-known fact that even bad men love their mamas. Only the dumbest ones aren’t afeared of ’em." She leaned closer to Luna. "Now, what’s wrong with this pretty blue-skinned nymph here? It’s plain as a pike staff she’s suffering."

"It’s a werewolf bite," Gwen Adams said.

The apothecary sucked her gums and tutted. "Ain’t seen one of those since I was a girl," she said.

"Do you know how to treat it?" Gwen Adams asked.

"I—" the apothecary started, but Gwen cut her off.

"I know how to combat it, but we must act fast. She received the bite three days ago."

The old woman hustled forward as Gwen began reeling off a list of ingredients she needed. As she did, she pulled out the few things she’d bought from the other apothecary down the road. The wizened crone grabbed up some of the packets, inspected them, and poured two of them into a mortar and pestle. The mortar was stained with dark residue and sat beside an array of knives and cutting tools, their well-worn blades glinting ominously.

The air inside the shop felt thick, stifling. Toby walked to the doorway and peered out into the street. Unsurprisingly, the road was lit by the flames of the explosion that had destroyed his safe house. The magical nature of the explosion was clear—the flames were dying out on their own, leaving the woods and rafters of the building charred and splintered, though many remained untouched by the strange lilac fire.

"That ain’t no mundane explosion," the apothecary said from behind him.

Toby nodded. "I know," he said, turning back to face the room. In the corner, where the vat of leeches lay, the glossy black creatures undulated lazily in the water.

“Yes, I leech not only for health but for pleasure too, just in case you're interested,” the old woman said.

Toby shook his head.

The creatures floated idly, waiting for their next willing victim maybe. Alongside the leeches there was a thick ledger that lay open on a counter. No doubt it was the names and the strange requests of the apothecary's customers. It was a hefty volume. Clearly, more people than Toby would have guessed had a thing for parasitic invertebrates in their downtime.

“Is there anything I can do, Mom?” Toby asked.

Gwen Adams shook her head. “No,” she said gently. “There’s nothing you can do right now, Toby.”

Some people might have taken that as a rebuke of sorts or felt as if it impugned their skill. Toby was not one of those people. He was a realist. He was well aware that he was not perfect, nor infallible, nor all-knowing. He had his strengths and he had his weaknesses, like everyone else. The best thing he could do was let his mother and the apothecary work and not get in their way.

“I wonder if I should run up to the castle and—“ he began to say.

“No, stay here,” his mother said. “There’s no knowing if whoever planted that thaumaturgical device saw us come in here. They might try and rush us. If that happens we will need your sword.

“Okay,” Toby said, loosening his sword in its yeti-hair lined scabbard.

Luna was lying on a table, which the apothecary had cleared of an assortment of jars that had looked to contain a collection of blood. She and his mother were murmuring in low voices together.

Luna’s face was bedewed with sweat, her amber eyes closed. It looked to Toby as if she was asleep.

“She’s alright,” his mother assured Toby, without looking up from her work.

The apothecary was busy mixing the powder she had ground up into a beaker along with some rather foul-smelling yellow liquid.

“She is, as they’d say in a hospital back on Earth, stable, but she’s not out of the woods yet,” Gwen Adams said.

“Can you talk to me while you work?” Toby asked.

“I can,” his mother replied shortly. “I’m guessing that now would be the time to cover some of the ground that lies between us.”

“I’ll say it fucking well is, Mom. Excuse my French,” Toby said.

His mother glanced at him disapprovingly and gave him one of those tight smiles. “Okay,” she said. “Ask away, son.”

“You really are Duke Diddle’s sister?” Toby asked.

“I am.”

Toby nodded. He let that sink in for a moment. “All right, I’ll accept that, as completely nuts as it is,” he said.

“Good, that will save us some time and words,” his mother replied.

“So you’re Duke Diddle’s sister,” Toby repeated. “How did you end up trapped in that tower where we found you? We didn’t really get to talk about it on the journey to Lord Marshall Vani’s base camp.”

“I didn’t want to talk about it then,” his mother said. “Such a subject required the right time and place.”

“And this is the right time and place, is it?” Toby said dryly.

“It seems like it is,” his mother replied seriously. “I ended up in that tower, trapped without my magic, because my brother—your uncle—feared my strength.”

Toby glanced at the apothecary.

“Don’t mind me,” the old woman said. “I’ve mighty selective hearing, especially if the price is right. Besides, these are interesting and unstable times, ain’t they? I’m a good Eclipsian gal, born and raised here in Stagbreach. You can trust me.”

“So, you—my mother—are a powerful witch?” Toby asked.

“That’s right. And that would explain why you yourself find you’re able to use magic,” his mother said. “It is also why you find yourself mixed up in all this. It is why, Toby, you were able to enter the world of Eclipsia as a boy, and why you subsequently helped bring down Duke Diddle the first time, even though you can’t remember it.”

Toby frowned and ran his fingers through his hair. “I still don’t understand how—”

“Of course, you don’t understand,” his mother said. “There are few who do, so I will give you the simplified version.”

“Excuse me for butting in,” the apothecary said at that moment. She passed the beaker of foul-smelling yellow liquid, into which she had just mixed the powders, to Toby’s mother.

Toby’s mother took it with a word of thanks and gently poured it into Luna’s slack mouth. The nymph writhed and coughed, but Toby’s mother was able to get most of the potion between her lips. The apothecary dabbed a trickle away with a clean rag.

“You, me, Duke Diddle—we’re all of the same bloodline, Toby,” Gwen Adams said. “Your brothers, for whatever reason—call it fate if you want, or luck, or chance—do not have the magical blood in the way that you do. They took after your father, I guess. I don’t know why, but here is the salient fact of the matter: you do. You share the same blood as myself and Duke Diddle.”

Toby’s mother continued, “Now, Duke Diddle’s wand is powered by ancient, corrupt magic. This magic, which enables him to draw forth his ‘happy little accidents’ from the ether, can only be conquered and destroyed through a specific ritual that involves the bloodlines that bond us.”

“And that’s why he locked you up?” Toby asked.

“Yes and no,” his mother said evasively. “As I said, he locked me up because he feared my potency as a magic user. He feared the simple butting of heads, knowing that I supported King Balourd when he lived, and now Queen Lascivo.”

Toby looked down at Luna. “When we found Luna, at the instigation of some old fart in the library,” he said, “she showed me some cave paintings. She said they were ancient. She told me they had probably been daubed on that cave wall by hobgoblins—although it might have been a race that lived there even before they did. She showed me these pictures and told me they depicted what is happening now, essentially. And later, she told me of a prophecy.”

Toby’s mother looked up from where she was applying a thick salve—which smelled of menthol and camphor—onto the ragged wound in Luna’s side. To Toby’s amazement, even before his eyes, the wound appeared to be knitting slowly back together.

“I’m sure she did, and the legitimacy of that prophecy cannot be questioned,” Gwen Adams said. “What it boils down to is this, Toby. This is perhaps a piece of the puzzle you are unaware of. You are the one who must confront Duke Diddle directly. However, to succeed in bringing him low—in snuffing out his power for good—you will have to sacrifice a part of yourself.”

Toby blanched. “What, like my leg or something?” he said.

His mother snorted. “No, son, not a physical part of yourself. You will have to sacrifice a part of your own inner power—the magic that lay latent but unknown in you for so many years, and that only now, I’m guessing, you’ve really started to gain control over.”

Toby blinked. He found himself leaning against the workbench, staring at the floor. “I have to give up my magic?” he said.

“Yes,” his mother said, gently and firmly.

Toby rubbed wearily at his eyes. Outside, he could hear people shouting in the street. It sounded like a bucket chain had been organized, but now there were a load of disgruntled people standing around because the bucket chain was no longer required. It sounded like the flames had burned themselves out into nothing.

“This is all just so nuts,” Toby said in a low voice. “That the one fated to defeat Duke Diddle should be me?”

He shook his head.

“Why really, when you think about it, is it so mad?” Gwen Adams said. “Son, just think of all the things in life that are considered crazy, outlandish, and unlikely. Hell, even the chances of someone winning the powerball back in New York is far-fetched, statistically speaking. And yet someone has to win. There is no rhyme nor reason to such a thing. It's happenstance; it's a combination of the right time, the right place, the right numbers—the right blood, in this instance. That randomness, that chaos, that’s just life. It can be frustrating, but if viewed under the right light, it can almost be beautiful, too.”

“So,” Toby said after a moment, while the apothecary took a small jar of deep black unguent and began smearing it around the closing wound on Luna's side, “now I have to decide whether I want to give up my magic—my ability to cast spells and make myself a great warrior—to save this world?”

Toby's mother looked up at him. He had her eyes.

“Yes, son,” she said quietly, “you have to make that choice. You alone.”

Toby puffed out his cheeks. He loved being able to do magic. There was no getting around that. And what made the choice that now lay before him all the more galling was that he had begun to make real progress. His spell-casting was coming along in leaps and bounds. He had begun to augment his weapons and his fighting ability with magic. He was slowly feeling that rush of knowing that he was—to put it bluntly—a bit of a badass when it came to fighting. He backed himself in combat, and he had begun to go into combat with no fear. It was a heady, intoxicating sensation; the feeling of being, almost, invulnerable.

Still, he knew that there was only one outcome. The choice that lay before him wasn't really a choice at all. Choice was the ultimate freedom in many respects. Peace was the ultimate reward. There was no guarantee that anyone could have both at once.

There are no options. Not really, he thought.

“I've come to love this place, Mom,” he said. “I've really come to love living here in Eclipsia.”

“I know. I can see it, and I am glad to see it. I can absolutely sympathize with you,” his mother said.

“I don't want to see it fall just because Anna and I are from another world, and I have the opportunity—maybe with your help—to go back there if things go tits up here. Even if I could go back home with magic, there's no way I'd want to leave Eclipsia to burn under the rule of Duke Diddle.”

Toby's mother's smile was as powerful, illuminating, and beautiful as the sun rising over a majestic mountain range. It took his breath away.

“I'm so, so proud to hear you say that, Toby,” she said. “As for being able to go home—of course, you can go back to New York if you want. I, myself, have been jumping backward and forward through the years trying to help out here, even whilst trying to help your father raise you and your brothers.” Her smile faded. “It has been a truly taxing time. You have no idea. I had my responsibilities here—being of the blood of such an awful traitor as Duke Diddle, and being one of the only people who had the innate power to hinder him. That responsibility meant that I couldn't spend as much time as I wanted playing the role of your mother. It’s been the single cruelest aspect of my life.”

“You do love Dad, don’t you?” Toby said suddenly.

“Of course,” Gwen Adams said. “With all my heart and soul. It’s just… Look, your father understands, though he could never speak of it. I had the fate of a kingdom in my hands—the shared fate, really. Your father is one of the best men I ever met. It's why I love him so much. It's why we started a family—because he's good and pure. I even brought him here a couple of times, would you believe it?”

“Dad’s been to Eclipsia?” Toby exclaimed.

“Yes,” his mother laughed. “He likes it, too. He always talked of retiring here, but, as a mechanic, he couldn't bear to leave his cars behind just yet. They’re his passion. And passions are important. They give us focus. They give our lives meaning.”

Toby laughed. “Yeah, that sounds like Dad, all right, doesn’t it?” he said.

Gwen Adams smiled wistfully.

“So, you know how to come and go from here and back to New York?” Toby asked.

“Yes,” his mother said, “and I can show you how. It's really not all that tricky once you know how to do it. It's just a knack. Hell, you've been doing it inadvertently since you were a little kid.”

Toby smiled. “That's a relief,” he said. “I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to see our family again.”

“You don't have to worry about that,” his mother said. “You just have to be sure of your choice.”

“I am,” Toby said, raising his chin. “I am. I want to see Dad and my brothers again, but truthfully, Mom, I don’t think I want to leave Eclipsia. I like it here. I like the way of life. It's… easier, simpler. When we're not at war, obviously.”

His mother smiled at him again and nodded.

“I want to save this place, Mom.”

Gwen Adams came around the table and hugged Toby tight. Once more, she whispered to him, “I'm so proud of you, son, and I'm delighted that you want to stay here and live a simpler, purer life.”

“Once we take care of Uncle Diddle,” Toby said.

“Right, once we take care of my brother,” Gwen Adams said.

“Which brings about, rather neatly, the next question,” Toby said.

His mother stepped back and glanced at the apothecary.

The old, wizened woman gave her a nod. “You're a skilled healer, miss. I think the girl will be okay.”

“Thank you for your help,” Gwen Adams said to the woman.

“My pleasure,” the apothecary replied, bowing her scraggly-haired head.

“Now, what was the question, son?” Gwen Adams asked, turning back to Toby.

“The question is,” Toby said, his features set and ready, “what step do we take next?”

19

As it turned out, that decision was made for them.

About half an hour after Gwen Adams and the wizened old apothecary had patched up Luna, Queen Lascivo's soldiers came knocking.

Toby and his mother had discussed how best to handle the very likely scenario of Captain Gurnard having been bought off by Duke Diddle. They had both agreed that mum was the word. There was no knowing who in the military could be trusted. If Captain Gurnard, who was the head of what had previously been King Balourd's household guard, had been bribed or coerced, there was no telling who else Duke Diddle might have reached.

"The reputation of Queen Lascivo is unimpeachable," Gwen Adams had told Toby. "There’s no way the Duke will be able to buy her off. Firstly, she is one of the richest individuals in the world.”

“Sex does sell,” Toby said.

His mother gave him a look.

“So I hear,” Toby added quickly.

“Quite,” his mother said. “That as maybe, he's killed her husband with his own hand, so it's doubtful he could coerce her into doing his bidding either. So, it’s best to save our suspicions for her ears and her ears alone."

"Suspicions?" Toby said. "Apart from Lord Marshal Vani, Captain Gurnard was the only one who explicitly knew we planned to come back here—that we planned on specifically stopping by the house. He was the only one, apart from Lord Marshal Vani—whom I trust completely, by the way—that knew, more or less, exactly when we were going to be back too."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you," Toby’s mother had said in a low voice. "But my point is, as much as we can almost completely suspect him, and as watertight as those suspicions might be, we can’t prove anything. We’re going to need proof if we want to point the finger at him. However, Queen Lascivo trusts you, and she trusts me, thanks to the services we’ve rendered for her and King Balourd in our time. That means that, at least to her, in her utmost confidence, we can voice what we suspect. She might have something that corroborates these suspicions, or she might have some kind of plan that I can't guess at."

Toby had agreed. The arrival of Queen Lascivo's soldiers, then, was fortuitous.

"The Queen would like to see you, Mr. Adams," the grizzled sergeant, whose face Toby recognized but whose name he didn’t know, said.

"How did the Queen even know we were back?" Toby asked.

"There was a report of a house exploding in the Baker's Quarter," the sergeant replied. The corner of his mouth twitched. "When it turned out it was your residence in question, the Queen demanded that you be brought to her at once. She also asked me to relay the message that next time you want to alert her to your return, perhaps you might just knock on the front door of the castle like a normal person."

Toby’s mother raised an eyebrow.

"I do have a little bit of a habit of turning up at the castle under less-than-usual circumstances and making a bit of a splash when I get there," Toby admitted.

“I can believe that,” his mother sighed.

"My friend here, Lunaria, she's known to the Queen," Toby said. "She's been injured, but we’ve patched her up. However, obviously, with the abode being blown to smithereens, we need somewhere where she can rest up."

The sergeant turned to the five waiting men. "Make up a stretcher," he commanded. "We’re moving this nymph up to the castle."

The men hurried to obey.

"One other thing, sergeant," Toby said.

"What's that, sir?" the sergeant asked.

Toby still wasn’t quite used to the respect his position as the Royal Champion garnered from other soldiers. He rolled with being addressed as ‘sir’, however and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "The apothecary here, she’s been instrumental in helping cure my friend from what might have been a life-altering injury. I’d be much appreciated if she was recompensed. I’m sure the Queen won’t mind."

The sergeant nodded and reached for his coin purse. Toby and his mother kept an eye on the soldiers as they carefully placed Luna's inert body onto the makeshift litter they had quickly constructed.

From behind them, in the murky recesses of the apothecary's hut, Toby heard the withered old crone say, "Sergeant Thessalwick, have you come to settle that young lad's debt?"

"I have," the sergeant replied.

"Tell me, sergeant," the old woman said in a sickly sweet voice, "while you’re here, would you like to make a down payment on your next bout of leech therapy?"

* * *

Luna was installed in one of the numerous chambers directly connected to Queen Lascivo's own suite of rooms. She was accorded this honor at the express and direct instruction of the Queen of Eclipsia herself.

"So, Toby Adams, you’re back with a bang," Queen Lascivo said after Toby had made the introductions, which weren’t really needed between herself and his mother, and filled her in on what they’d been up to.

"You know I don’t like to do things in a half-assed manner, Your Highness," Toby replied.

"Toby," his mother said out of the corner of her mouth, "show Her Majesty a little respect, please."

Toby and Queen Lascivo shared a secret smile. It would have been interesting to know just what his mother thought of the fact that he had, on a couple of occasions, had Queen Lascivo's legs spread so far apart that he’d all but been able to see what she'd had for lunch.

"So," Queen Lascivo said, seating herself comfortably in her throne.

Toby noted how it was only a single throne upon the dais now. He felt a twinge of hot anger clench at his heart.

"So," Queen Lascivo repeated, as if she had noticed the flicker of rage that passed through Toby and approved of it heartily. "Sergeant Thessalwick tells me that you wanted a word with me."

"That's right, Your Majesty," Toby said.

"And what, pray, might you want to talk to me about?"

“It's something quite serious," Toby said.

"I don't doubt it," the Queen said in an equally no-nonsense tone. "Usually you're all quick witticisms and, if I may say so in front of your mother, as embarrassing as you might find it, innuendos."

Toby didn't see his mother shoot him a disapproving look, but he felt it.

"Yes, it's about the security of the information in the army," Toby said.

"What do you mean?" Queen Lascivo asked sharply.

"I think there's a traitor," Toby said, not beating around the bush.

“You think?”

Toby gave her a meaningful look in return, but said nothing.

"A traitor?" Queen Lascivo said. "How positively dramatic and scandalous." She recrossed her legs, but not in the usual saucy manner she was prone to. The Queen, today, was all business.

And thank goodness for that, Toby thought. Duke Diddle is in for it even more than he was.

"And tell me," the Queen said, "do you have someone specific in mind? It is not, as I'm sure you're aware, an offhand claim to make—the assertion that there's a traitor in our midst—especially while we're embroiled in the kind of conflict we are at the moment."

“Tensions are high,” Gwen Adams said.

"I appreciate that," Toby said, "but the blowing up of the house we received as payment from Rowan Moonshroud was just about all the evidence we needed that something was afoot."

"It's true, Your Majesty," Toby's mother said. "There were only two people who were told, due to how short we were for time, about where we were heading and when."

"And who were they?" the Queen asked.

"Lord Marshal Vani," Toby began.

The Queen raised an eyebrow. She raised it just a fraction, but it was incredible how many words and how many feelings she was able to fit into that minuscule facial gesture.

"Yes, those were our thoughts exactly, Your Majesty," Toby said. "There's no doubting Lord Marshal Vani's commitment to Eclipsia or his disdain for Duke Diddle and anyone or anything under his employ."

"Which brings us to the second person," Queen Lascivo said. She examined a large gold ring, set with emeralds and rubies, on her finger. "Do tell, I'm all of a quiver with anticipation."

"The second person was Captain Gurnard," Toby said. He tried to keep the judgment from his voice. It was hard.

"Captain Gurnard," the Queen repeated. Her face, like a true politician or businesswoman, was inscrutable.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Toby said.

"Captain Gurnard, the head of my specially selected Queensguard?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The Queen pursed her lovely full lips. "I assumed that if you had to pick one of the two, you would unequivocally choose the captain?" she asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Toby said.

"Mrs. Adams?" the Queen asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty, the captain would be my choice also."

The Queen nodded. She twisted the probably quite ludicrously expensive ring, first this way and that, on her finger. She examined it, appearing satisfied that it sat just so. She looked up at Toby and his mother with those bright, extremely intelligent green eyes of hers. They were the same color as the stone on her finger.

"I see," she said.

At that moment, Toby knew that the Queen really did see. She was extremely perceptive, endowed with one of the most forceful personalities in all the kingdom. Indeed, she had to be. She was, to all intents and purposes, the personification of the kingdom now.

"I see," she repeated softly to herself. "And the basis for your supposition? For the conclusion that you've drawn?"

"It is made on firm ground," Toby said. "Concrete." Then, when he saw the incomprehension at the word on the Queen's face, he added, "Granite, marble, whatever bedrock you'd most happily build something important on, Your Majesty."

The Queen nodded again. "This is ill tidings," she said, her voice brittle and cold as the icicles adorning the doorway to a hell or underworld. In some way, Toby was reminded of that particular reptilian rattle that came just before the strike.

"Yes," Toby said diplomatically. "I wasn't exactly over the moon myself when it was brought home to me."

"No, I suppose not," the Queen said. She sniffed. "Especially since this traitor tried to explode you, Luna, and your mother."

"Yeah, I did find that a bit vexing," Toby said dryly.

"And Lord Marshal Vani didn't suspect?"

"No," Toby's mother said. "No, I'm quite sure of that. I've learned over the years, dabbling in what many would consider to be espionage on behalf of yourself and the late King Balourd, to be a fine reader of people. Lord Marshal Vani is an excellent tactician and leader of warriors. But as a simple and trusting ogre, he might be easily hoodwinked. Also, ogres have never been known for their subtlety."

Queen Lascivo laughed at that. "Indeed not," she said. "In fact, it was thanks to his complete lack of subtlety with a club that Lord Marshal Vani's potential became known to my late husband and me."

"What would you like us to do, Your Majesty?" Toby asked.

The Queen gazed at Toby levelly. As he so often did when in conversation with the Queen, Toby felt as if he were being weighed and measured.

"I don't want anything terminal to happen to Captain Gurnard," she said slowly, enunciating each word, biting it off before she spoke it. "Yet. I want to know why he did what he did, and what his price was."

"We'll have to move fast, Your Majesty," Toby said. "I'm not sure whether or not he had people watching the house, but if he did, he'll know that the explosion didn't harm anyone—except for Dishy." Toby thought of the domestic djinn and felt another hot flare of anger rise up inside his heart and lick at his insides, like a solar flare bursting from the surface of an angry star.

"Yes, well, how about you go and have a sniff around, Mr. Adams?" the Queen said.

Toby inclined his head.

"Whilst you're doing that," Queen Lascivo said, "I would like to have a debrief with your mother."

"That is what I would like also, Your Majesty," Gwen Adams said. "I’ll give you the details on the tower from where my son and his friends saved me.”

“Excellent,” the Queen said. “And Vexxx, he acquitted himself in a trustworthy fashion?”

“He did, Your Majesty,” Toby said. “I was surprised, but… he did.”

Queen Lascivo nodded curtly.

”I'd also, if you find it acceptable, like to take up lodgings here in the palace so that I might keep an eye on Luna," Gwen Adams said.

"Of course," Queen Lascivo said. "That is understandable and admirable. Do you require anything?"

"If I might be permitted to write a list and give it to one of your attendants," Gwen Adams said, "there are a few ingredients that would aid me in helping Luna."

"Consider it done," the Queen said succinctly. She turned back to Toby. "Mr. Adams, as you know, I hold your opinions and judgment in high regard. Very high regard. Having said that, I want you to go and find out the extent of Captain Gurnard's betrayal. Tell no one of your errand. We don’t know how far the rot might have spread. If we're lucky, we might find that your suspicions are erroneous."

"And if we're not?" Toby asked.

"We will find that Captain Gurnard has turned his coat and switched sides, whether for the promise of power, like Gary the late shortbread man, or for wealth. Find out the truth of the matter."

"And if he has gone over to Duke Diddle?" Toby asked. He kept his face carefully blank.

"In that case, do what you deem right and what the circumstances steer you towards," Queen Lascivo said. "If you're able to capture him, excellent. There's no denying he has years of loyal service behind him, but we need to know the depth and extent of his treachery. If he refuses to come quietly…"

She left the sentence hanging in the air.

Hanging in the air like a trap, Toby thought to himself as he bowed, kissed his mother on the cheek, and then left the room.

Hanging in the air like a goddamn noose.

20

Toby stood on the threshold of what had, before the explosion, been the magical locking door of his house in the Baker's Quarter. The door was hanging off its hinges now.

Knock knock, is anyone home?

Toby stepped into the silent hall. It stank of smoke. There was also a faintly metallic taste in the air. It wasn't metallic like blood; it reminded Toby somehow of that unpleasant sensation, almost like he was biting into a piece of tin foil. It set his teeth on edge.

Raw magic.

The thought popped into his head. Toby wondered if he was right. There was certainly something supernatural about it. He reckoned that if he had the eyes, he'd be able to see the leftover particles, the residual magic hanging in the air.

Quietly, rolling his feet from the outside in, he made his way slowly down the hall and turned into the kitchen. As he had guessed, it appeared that this room had borne the brunt of the thaumaturgical detonation. The place had an undeniably blasted look to it. The dining room table and chairs had been obliterated, turned into matchwood. The rest of the dining room and kitchen looked basically as you might expect. Cabinetry had been ripped from the walls. The room, which had had a bomb go off in it, did not look great. It was in need of a lick of paint, and then some.

Toby gazed around the room. He was no Hercule Poirot. He didn’t really know what he was looking for. It turned out the clues were a lot more arbitrary than popular media had led him to believe. There were no obvious footprints. There was no handy note, left half-charred, on a surface. There was no incriminating medallion or ostentatious gold tassel that might have belonged to Captain Gurney's uniform. There was nothing.

Just a fucking mess, Toby thought to himself. Frank would probably approve.

The Queen, being the good sort she was, had already offered to front the bill for any repairs needed to the house.

"It's only fair," she told Toby, "when you consider that it's the outcome of you working for the crown."

Toby moved through the kitchen and dining area into the parlor. It was in a bad state of repair but nowhere near as bad as the kitchen. He was just about to go and have a poke around down the hall, maybe head upstairs, when a small cough made him crouch, turn, and draw his knife.

"Mr. Toby Adams?"

Toby felt his tensing muscles unclench. He stood slowly. His knife hand dropped to his side, but he didn’t sheath the weapon.

"Dishy?" he said.

The little, blue, glowing imp, with the great unicorn-like horns sticking out of his forehead, fluttered out from under the stairs where he slept.

"Dishy!" Toby said with delight. He knelt down so that he and the little blue domestic djinn were on the same level. "Goddamn, it’s good to see you, buddy. I thought you'd been liquefied in the blast. Are you alright?"

Dishy nodded and looked up at Toby through his big, guileless eyes.

"Fine, thank you, Mr. Toby Adams," he squeaked. "Fine, thank you, but I'm afraid that the house is in some disrepair. It’s going to take me a while to get it shipshape again."

As if to punctuate this gross understatement, a ceiling beam in the parlor gave up its fight for life and crashed down onto the floor.

"Yeah, it might take a little while," Toby agreed. "Don't worry though, Dishy, it's only stuff. It's only a building. It’s not like we built it with our own hands or anything."

Dishy nodded.

"I'm just glad you're okay," Toby said. He felt a rush of genuine affection for the little domestic djinn. It wasn’t just that Dishy was quietly a bit of a Michelin-star cook in the kitchen. He was also completely free from deceit. He said what he thought, and what he thought was genuinely only good stuff. The little fellow had a sunny disposition. It was what wound Frank up the most about him.

"How is it that you escaped, Dishy?" Toby asked.

"I was not actually in residence when the blast went off," Dishy said.

"You weren’t? Where were you?"

"I was out fetching a few things," Dishy said. "Frank and I are able to communicate through a means available only to djinn. It’s a telepathy of sorts. Mr. Frank is always sending me such funny insults. I know he doesn’t mean them."

"Yeah, I’m sure he doesn’t mean them," Toby lied. "So you knew we were on our way back?"

"Yes, Mr. Toby Adams," Dishy said. "So I went out to get some fresh produce from one of the night markets. The garden is doing well, but you can’t grow sausages.”

“That’s one of my biggest qualms about gardening,” Toby quipped.

“Whilst I was away, the house erupted in flames,” the domestic djinn went on. “It was no fault of mine, I assure you, although I did have a rather fine vegetable stock simmering on the stove," he added sadly. "Also, there was a whole head of cauliflower slow-roasting in a casserole dish filled with goat's butter."

"It's a real shame," Toby said, nodding.

"I had used that goat’s butter numerous times doing that cauliflower dish."

"Is that the secret? Reusing the butter?"

"Indeed it is." Dishy said morosely. "And now I will have to start from scratch."

Toby patted the little djinn on the back with one finger.

"I don't suppose you saw anything, Dishy?" he asked.

"I don't know how the house erupted into a ball of flame, but I was here going through the wreckage to see if I might be able to salvage my cauliflower butter when a very helpful and kind soldier arrived on the scene."

Toby frowned. "A very helpful and kind soldier?" he said quietly. "What soldier would that be, Dishy?"

"I'm not sure of his name, sir. I wasn't in the mood for talking, what with the loss of my roasting cauliflower and the delicious goat's butter. I hid myself away, Mr. Toby Adams. It was a bit of a nasty shock, what with all the fire and the furniture blown to pieces and the windows shattered, and the—"

"Yep, yep, it hasn’t been great," Toby said. "So, you didn't manage to see who it was that was poking around the place?"

"All I heard was him say to some of the neighbors that he was a member of the Queensguard and was here to make sure there was no one in the house," Dishy said.

Toby nodded.

"What else did you hear, Dishy?" he asked.

"A little time after this first man arrived, another man came," Dishy said. "I didn't see him either. I was sitting quietly in my cupboard, you know."

"Okay," Toby said.

"The two men were conversing," Dishy went on. "The man who arrived second asked the first man whether he had found what he was looking for."

Toby frowned again.

"You think he was looking for bodies, Dishy?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Dishy said. "The second man called the first man Captain Gurnard, and the one that I assumed was Captain Gurnard said that he couldn't find the recipe for the bloody blasting powder or the designs for the nymph's pistols."

Toby leaned against the wall, staggered.

"Anything else?" he asked in a slightly dazed voice.

"The other man—the man who was not Captain Gurnard," Dishy said, "then asked whether there were any bodies to be taken away. The captain sounded very cross, which I thought was odd, and he said that there didn't appear to be. Then he rolled out a series of expletives, the likes of which I think would make even Mr. Frank happy to hear."

Toby let out a low whistle. It was even worse, more layered than he had thought. Not only had Captain Gurnard attempted to kill Toby, his mother, and Luna, and rid Duke Diddle of three of his key enemies, but Duke Diddle had also apparently tasked Captain Gurnard with stealing Luna's secrets as to how she had designed the flintlock pistols and cooked up the gunpowder.

An assassination for a main course, Toby thought, with a side order of industrial espionage. Captain Gurnard really tried to do a number on us here. He was going for the cleansweep.

Toby was brought back from these incredible contemplations by Dishy.

"Mr. Toby Adams?"

"Sorry, Dishy, I was miles away. What were you saying?"

"I was saying that you could ask Captain Gurnard what he was looking for yourself."

"That would be ideal, Dishy, but I don't know how."

"You could go and meet him," Dishy said brightly.

Toby looked blankly at the little blue domestic djinn.

"Sorry, Dishy, you've lost me," Toby said. "How am I supposed to meet him?"

"He's going to be at the pub."

"The pub?"

"Yes, the pub, sir. The public house. A house that is shared by the public to—"

"I know what a pub is, Dishy," Toby said. "What pub are you talking about? And how do you know that Captain Gurnard is going to be there?"

"I heard him, sir," Dishy said. "He said…" And Dishy screwed up his little face in concentration. "He said to the other man that he…" Dishy licked his little rubbery lips. "’It is a real goddamn son-of-a-bitch fucking thing not have anything to show for that fancy-ass thaumaturgical explosive that the Duke issued me with, but I am still going to have to meet with the messenger at the Red Herring’."

Dishy grinned up at Toby.

"The Red Herring is a public house, sir," he said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay," Toby said.

He rested his chin on his chest and thought deeply for a moment.

“Is your neck okay, Mr. Toby Adams?” Dishy asked.

"Dishy," Toby said, trying to keep the excitement from his voice and ignoring the comment, "you didn’t happen to hear either of these two men give a time that Captain Gurnard was going to be at the Red Herring, did you?"

"A time, sir?" Dishy asked, his ugly little mush wrinkling up in confusion.

"Yes, you know, a time," Toby said. "A specific point in the day when they were scheduled to meet one another?"

Dishy looked at Toby blankly.

"Did you happen to hear them mention any numbers? Any…" Toby rifled through his lexicon of words, trying to explain the concept of time to Dishy. It was surprisingly hard.

"Oh," the little djinn said abruptly. "Oh, now that you mention it, I did hear the expletive-using Captain Gurnard mention something about midnight, sir."

Toby ran to the shattered window and peered out. The night was sporadically cloudy. It had been raining on and off and the night was full of fine drizzle, but the moon was not yet quite at its highest point. He was fairly certain that he could remember the bell that signified the eleventh hour tolling.

But how long ago? Toby thought.

"Dishy, which way is the Red Herring?" he asked, already making his way towards the door.

"It's through the district where they do all the stinky scraping and curing, sir."

Toby knew that the djinn was referring to the Tanners' District.

“You go through there and along the much sweeter smelling street where they do the wicking and dipping, sir,” the djinn went on.

The Chandlers’ District, Toby translated his own head.

“Then you take a right and a left and another left, sir,” Dishy went on, “and the Red Herring is up that street. You can't miss it, sir. The sign is a big—“

“—red fish,” Toby finished.

“That's right, sir,” Dishy replied amiably, nodding his horned head.

Toby hurried out through the shattered door. He was heading for the Red Herring.

Let's hope it proves not to be one, he thought vehemently.

21

The Red Herring was a sailor's bar.

This was not an anomaly in and of itself. There were taverns all through Stagbreach that catered to specific clientele. What was slightly odd about the Red Herring was that Stagbreach could not be accessed in any meaningful way by water. It did not have a mercantile port. The river that wound around it was used by small-time and leisure fishermen and pleasure craft owners, but no commerce flowed up or down it.

As such, those sailors that the Red Herring catered to were either out-of-work men of the sea or larger river, or else were those lunatics who enjoyed dressing up, day to day, as the professional seamen that they weren’t.

It reminded Toby of how he found some people in New York who were dead set on dressing up as cowboys regardless of the fact that they had never ridden a horse, seen a cow, or were in any other way qualified to call themselves cowboys apart from the fact that they owned a Stetson or pair of ostrich skin boots.

The Red Herring’s interior reflected its salty, rough clientele. The dimly lit room was filled with mismatched, weathered wooden tables and chairs. Many of them had been so patched and repaired due to heavy use in bar brawls that they looked like the Frankensteins of the furniture world.

Nautical decorations—rusty anchors, ship wheels, and tangled nets—hung haphazardly on the ale-stained walls or from the smoke-blackened rafters, giving the place a vaguely maritime feel. The air was thick with the smell of stale beer, vomit and, accurately but also worryingly, fish—despite the lack of any nearby fishing pier.

A long bar dominated one side of the room, its surface was pitted, blood-stained, and battered from years of abuse, with empty bottles and tankards cluttering the top. A few lanterns swung from the low ceiling, casting flickering shadows on the patrons, many of whom seemed as battered as the bar itself.

A dog dozed by the fire. At least, Toby thought it was dozing. It was very still. It might have been dead.

Might be waiting to be put on the spit for tomorrow’s supper, judging by the surroundings.

Toby's ranger cloak came complete with a handy-dandy hood. This hood was waxed and weatherproof like his cloak, perfect for keeping the rain off him when he was abroad. It also, as all cloaks did, allowed him to conceal himself when he wished.

He had the hood pulled up now. This might have struck a lot of people as suspicious, but none of those people would not have dared to wet their whistle in a place like the Red Herring.

On stepping through the scarred door, on the inside of which was embedded a rather large and rusty knife—presumably thrown by a patron at some point in the evening—Toby was greeted by the sight of two legless women brawling it out with one another. He didn't mean they were legless in the sense that they were drunk—although they were. They were absolutely shit-faced. But they were also, quite literally, devoid of a single leg between them. They were battling it out in their chairs, throwing punches at one another with real gusto.

Toby made his way around them, holding his breath so as not to touch either one of them or breathe in their stink. He didn’t want to attract their joint ire and set them off in his direction. He wanted to keep a low profile for at least as long as it took him to find Captain Gurnard.

He glanced at them as he passed by, just in time to see one of the foul women hook an eyeball out of the skull of a man who had come over to try and break them up. The man, who was equally as intoxicated as the two female combatants, merely clutched an eye with his hand to his bloody eye socket, and then walked over to an enormous mounted fish with a sword-like bill and looked into the stuffed fish’s huge glass eye to assess the damage.

In doing so, he was obliged to make his way behind a rather brutish-looking cove who was tattooed all over. The inked up fellow did not appear to appreciate being jogged by the now eyeless man, and he grabbed the huge swordfish off the wall and shattered it over the one-eyed man’s head, flooring him in a cloud of plaster dust.

“Oi!” someone yelled indignantly. “Ellis Gunter fleeced me of a silver betting me that fish was fuckin’ real!”

Inevitably, a scuffle started. Toby could hear the sounds of shouts and breaking crocks coming from somewhere in the throng. He continued to look around for a sight of Captain Gurnard, all the while trying not to get sucked into what promised to be a juicy brawl.

He ducked reflexively as a bowl of stew flew overhead, spraying a number of people with greasy gravy, before shattering against a wall. He had his sword concealed under his cloak, but he didn’t want to draw it. It would only attract attention. Besides, there wasn’t room enough to swing a cat in the Red Herring—and seeing as there was a cat nailed above the hearth, someone had obviously tried.

Toby had just stepped over a comatose man and slipped under an almost-hug from a huge, spherical woman who had a variety of skin diseases that would have occupied the most zealous of dermatologists for a week, when he saw a flash of color through the crowd.

It was not the color itself—blue—that snared his attention, but the richness of its shade. The Red Herring was a shabby pub, and the clothing of those who frequented it was similarly faded and had seen better days. The cloak Toby had just spied, though, was a deep and pure midnight blue.

The sort of blue that just cries out for a bit of gold frogging, he thought.

Toby was fast learning that, perhaps, the most important thing a warrior could ever do in their life was to find a way to connect seamlessly with their intuition. He was starting to see that a key ability for someone who constantly found their life hanging in the balance was to be able to connect the dots that his senses, the signs around him, and the synchronizing of these things formed.  

Eyes flicking this way and that, Toby walked around one of the thick beams that supported the staircase that led up to the inn’s rooms. The crowd swirled and parted as someone charged through it so that they could hit someone else over the head with a copper tankard.

And Toby saw Captain Gurnard.

The head of the Queensguard was standing in a shadowy corner with another figure. This unknown person was slight and small and wrapped in a heavy hooded shawl that obscured their features.

Diddle’s contact? Diddle’s spy?

The pair of them were talking urgently. Captain Gurnard was gesticulating. His pinched face was red with anger, but his eyes were fearful.

It’s like Dishy said, he’s reporting how the bomb was a blowout and he didn’t manage to find Luna’s notes.

Toby made his way surreptitiously through the crowd. He had a choice to make. Take the captain or the mysterious figure. He elected to go for the captain. He knew the man to a certain degree. He was sure that if he managed to catch him he could be persuaded to spill his guts as to what his part in all of this had been.

Toby slid through the throng. He was no more than twenty paces away from the two conspirators when the shrouded stranger made a chopping motion with their hand. Captain Gurnard’s mouth was a hard line as he shook his head. The faceless figure wagged a finger contemptuously in the captain’s face. Then, without further ado, the shawled and hooded person melted abruptly into the crowd.

It happened so suddenly and so smoothly that Toby was sure that some kind of magic must have been employed. One minute the mystery person had been standing leaning against the wall. The next, a burly, topless man with so much body hair it looked like he was wearing a brown woolen vest stepped across Toby’s field of vision, and the discreet individual had vanished.

Captain Gurnard shook his head again, looked away in disgust, and—

—stared straight into Toby’s eyes.

Toby froze for a split-second.

Captain Gurnard’s unfriendly eyes went wide.

“Don’t you—“ Toby started to hiss under his breath.

Captain Gurnard bolted.

Toby exploded forward, but had his momentum instantly arrested by a pair of drunk men who’d stepped in front of him with their arms around one another. Toby cursed and ducked around the two men. He was just in time to see Captain Gurnard throw open a side door, which probably led to an alleyway, and disappear.

Toby tore after him, ripped open the door, and stepped out into a noisome street, which clearly doubled as the Red Herring’s latrines. To his right, he saw Gurnard fleeing towards one of Stagbreach's night markets.

With a growl, Toby sprinted after him.

22

Toby’s target—the once trusted and fairly well respected soldier, Captain Gurnard—dashed through the fringes of the night market. The captain might have been getting on in years, but he still dodged and jinked this way and that to avoid the myriad obstacles in his way.

Toby hammered along behind his quarry, his legs and arms pumping, knocking inattentive market goers and customers out of his way like skittles whenever they strayed into his path. A couple of times he almost lost his footing in the mud.

Goddamn, this son of a bitch can run!

It was little wonder that the man had eluded suspicion for as long as he had, the man was still in his prime, seemingly—it was like trying to run down a Belmont Stakes winner.

Still, Toby thought, his breath coming hard through teeth gritted in a determined grim smile, the harder the opponent, the bigger the prize. He’s not going to escape. Not that he’s not giving it his all to do so.

It was true. From his vantage point, of about ten meters behind the fleeing warrior, Toby could truly appreciate just how determined and fit the sandy-haired soldier was. His legs moved like pistons. Even in the unsure footing of the night market, Captain Gurnard’s balance was fantastic. He was a man used to fighting on churned battlefields and muddy practice yards. He was a man who was accustomed to knowing that one slip could result in death.

Gurnard sprinted like a kirin through a gap between two stacks of crates, leapt hare-like over a line of barrels filled with eggplants, and skidded on his knees through a puddle and under a sorting table with the sort of quick-thinking nimbleness that would’ve had one of Stagbreach’s many stray cats applauding.

Toby emulated the man’s every move, following his leave. He dodged the puddle, however, and instead barged his way through a small group of gnomes that were selling gardening implements. The gnomes cried out in dismay and outrage as he flashed through them.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Toby yelled over his shoulder.

He tore after his quarry, close on his heels, more or less mirroring every move that Captain Gurnard made.

To his surprise, Toby realized he was grinning savagely.

“Goddamn, but I love this fucking world,” he growled as he rolled over the back of a stout merchant who’d bent to retrieve a dropped cleaver.

Typically, it was at that moment that Toby slipped on a rotten squash that had rolled from a nearby stall.

“Shit!” Toby exclaimed, as the moldering vegetable caused him to fall back a few more meters in the pursuit. He cursed under his breath, regained his footing and charged on.

He could feel his sword slapping against his thigh in its scabbard, but Toby had no intention of drawing it, even if he got within range of a swipe of his foe. He wanted the captain alive. He needed to wring some answers out of the bastard if he could.

To Toby’s delight, up ahead, he saw that Captain Gurnard seemed to have run himself into a dead-end. A stretch of makeshift wall had been erected across the end of the street they were running down. It looked like it was the side of an impromptu warehouse or storage shed that had been erected by a merchant who was keen to keep their goods out of the rain.

“Got you,” Toby growled.

The wall was flat and blank and abutted the stalls set on either side to give it some extra support. There appeared to be a canvas roof running forward from it, with only the slightest gap between the top of the thin wooden wall and the old sail cloth.

Toby sent up a thanks to whatever enterprising merchant had decided to use the scrap wood to build the makeshift structure.

“Give it up, Gurnard!” Toby yelled. “You’ve got nowhere to go!”

“Shut the fuck up, Adams!” Captain Gurnard shot back at him over his shoulder.

Toby was unsurprised to hear there was a faint hysterical note in the captain’s voice.

“You don’t know what the hell you’re getting mixed up in!” Captain Gurnard shouted. “Better you go home.”

“I might have done, if you hadn’t blown it up!”

As Toby closed on Captain Gurnard, the running warrior slowed a little and then launched himself off a pallet of stacked bags of flour. He caught hold of the edge of a stall awning jutting out from the edge of the nearest kiosk, flung himself up like a gymnast, twisted in mid-air, and slipped through the skinny gap that divided canvas roof from makeshift wall in a sort of horizontal pencil dive.

Oh, come on…

Gurnard’s hands caught the edges of the gap after his head passed through—his ornate leather breastplate just making it through—to arrest his flight on the other side of the wall.

Toby caught a flash of yellow teeth as Captain Gurnard smiled before he disappeared onto the other side of the wall.

Then he was gone.

Fucking parkour! Are you kidding me?    

It was, Toby had to admit, a beautiful thing. The agility. The athleticism. The timing. The fucking grace.

Toby wouldn’t have picked Captain Gurnard for a free-runner.

Still, you’re not going to get away that easily, fucker.

Toby enshrouded his body in a bubble of kinetic magic and smashed through the haphazardly nailed wooden boards like a human wrecking ball.

Spitting rain sizzled as it contacted Toby’s magic before it winked out. Splinters of wood exploded outwards, shards of shattered timber board tumbling and spinning into the night market beyond as he crashed through the partition. A couple of dwarven metal merchants, haggling over the price of some iron ingots, shrieked and dived for cover.

Toby caught a brief glimpse of Captain Gurnard’s fury-contorted face as he whirled about, the bloodless lips drawn in a fetching ‘O’ of surprise, before he crash-tackled him around the middle.

Toby’s momentum carried them both on, into and through a stand on which some brass lamps and trinkets were displayed. The sound of the metal objects falling to the ground was a sound that could have woken the dead, as the two grappling men reduced the stall to matchwood.

To Gurnard’s credit, he made a fair attempt at clawing at Toby’s face as they both lay in the wreckage. Toby wouldn’t usually be averse to a bit of that sort of thing, had the nails belonged to an attractive woman and the wrestling been part of a passionate embrace. As it was, it wasn’t quite the same, having Captain Gurnard’s hot breath and spittle flecking his face.

Toby was more than a little puffed from the chase, but he was keen to get the man under control as soon as he could.

It had been raining steadily that evening, and so the lanes between the stalls of the night market were thick with mud. Toby and Captain Gurnard struggled in the mire. The captain's lovely woolen blue cloak was soon befouled.

Toby’s face was covered in mud where the captain pressed it into the ground as he tried to free his knife from his belt. It was close-quarters fighting, not the sort of brawling where a sword was any good, even if Toby had been able to draw it. Toby still didn’t much want to draw his blade anyway. He didn’t want to kill Captain Gurnard—not if it could be helped.

“Fuck you, Captain Gurnard!” Toby hissed as he sought to find purchase in the slime.

The few stallholders, of assorted races and species, who were still plying their trades watched on in dumbfounded amazement as the two men wrestled, trying to get the upper hand over the other. A pair of witches, who looked to have been sharing a demijohn of brandy between them to keep off the night’s chill, cackled and nudged one another.

“I was just sayin’ how a bit of entertainment was what was needed, didn’t I, Esme?” one said to the other.

Toby punched Captain Gurnard in the stomach and was rewarded by a great whooshing outpour of breath from the other man. As Toby had noted before, the captain might not have been the most heavily built individual, but he had that wiry, sinewy strength of the lifelong soldier. He was a man who had been raised on the hardships of the road and was fit due to countless days spent in the practice yard. He was also, of course, a skilled hand-to-hand fighter.

The captain might have been considered to have held a fairly cushy position within the Queensguard. They spent, by their very nature, most of their time in the palace guarding the royal personages. It was easy to forget that such men had to be excellent warriors to be selected for the posting. There was no point guarding the most important person in the realm if you got cut down in a few seconds by assailants keen on parting the royal head from the royal shoulders.

As they punched and kicked and growled and tumbled around the night market, Toby suddenly considered whether or not Captain Gurnard had had anything to do with the death of King Balourd. It didn’t matter much now. The man clearly had a guilty conscience. He had clearly made his bed.

And now, Toby thought as Captain Gurnard’s headbutt glanced off his shoulder, we’re going to see whether he’s going to take the long sleep in it.

“Give in, Gurnard, give in,” Toby said.

“I can’t,” Captain Gurnard smiled.

He managed to get his feet under Toby and kicked him off. Toby staggered backward into a stall. The vendor let out a cry of dismay as pottery plates and cups fell into the mud.

Gurnard managed to free his belt knife. It whipped around, an arc of silver in the grimy light cast by the half-moon and the few fairy lights that were dotted around the market. Toby flung himself backward as best as he was able to, given the stall behind him. He felt the tip of Captain Gurnard’s knife skim across the hidden armor plates of his Ranger’s garb, scoring a line in the material that concealed the plating.

Captain Gurnard lost his balance, and Toby clocked him with a beauty of a left square in the ear.

It must have throbbed something wonderful. Gurnard bellowed with pain.

Toby pushed himself away from the stall behind him and managed to unsheathe his own knife. The two men came together again. Their blades flashed, steel clashing with steel. They stepped away from one another for an instant, then leapt at each other again. Their knives sparked and clattered as they met once again.

“Just give it up, Gurnard,” Toby said severely. “You’ve been rumbled. The Queen knows of your duplicity.”

If he had been hoping that this would convince Captain Gurnard to throw down his weapon, then he was sorely mistaken. The captain set his face and bared his yellow teeth.

“You stupid, stubborn son of a bitch,” he said. “Do you think that you, having found your mother and returned to the fold, is going to in any way change the course of events? We can’t defeat Duke Diddle, you idiot. We can only sue for his mercy. We can only bargain with him.”

“Is that what you call your betrayal?” Toby mocked. “Bargaining? What was the promised price or reward for blowing me, Luna, and my mother up? What was the price Duke Diddle promised you for destroying our home? What was on offer, Gurnard, for stealing the secrets of Luna’s pistols and gunpowder?”

Captain Gurnard was obviously surprised at how much Toby knew.

“How did you—?”

“I’ve got ears everywhere, Gurnard,” Toby replied enigmatically.

They were circling each other now, as well as they were able to in the night market. The merchants that hadn’t recalled they had other places to be until the fight had finished were watching mutely from behind various forms of cover.

“It’s not going to be long before more guards are here,” Toby said. “You may as well just throw down the knife now. It might help you retain a little bit of pride.”

Gurnard sneered.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure Queen Lascivo will just let me off the hook if I come quietly now, huh?” he said.

"I don't imagine she'll do that," Toby said, "but she might do you the favor of a quick execution. Otherwise, well, we all know she can be a cold-blooded and calculated woman. She probably has something a bit more inventive in store for you if you make this harder than it should be."

"The old hang upside down and saw you from the bollocks to the crown?" Captain Gurnard said. "Oh yeah, that sounds like a nice way to go. I'd rather die on my feet than kneeling if it's all the same to you, you upstart."

"It is all the same to me, actually. And ‘upstart’?" Toby said, bridling a little. "I'm an upstart because I'm loyal? I'm just trying to save Eclipsia."

"Eclipsia can't be saved," Captain Gurnard said. "Duke Diddle's wand is too bloody powerful."

"I might be able to help with that," Toby said.

Captain Gurnard sneered. "Oh yeah, you're a real hot shot, aren't you, Adams?" he said. “A fucking genuine savior of the realm, eh?”

Toby closed in on the captain. Gurnard retreated a couple of steps until his ass nudged the stall behind him. Toby lunged forward. Captain Gurnard's hand flew up. He grabbed a handful of some bright blue powdered spice from the stall behind and threw it into Toby's eyes.

Toby was momentarily blinded. He ducked and rolled, feeling the air part just above his head as Captain Gurnard slashed out with his dagger. Looking like a cut-price Smurf and blinking the strange spice from his eyes, Toby threw himself forward and tackled Captain Gurnard around the waist. The two men tumbled over the stall. A pair of gnomes screeched as they tried to get out of the way of the two brawling men.

Toby rolled off the captain and regained his feet. He saw Captain Gurnard toss his blade around, catch it by the tip, and then throw it in a textbook overhand knife throw.

Toby's free hand came up in front of him. A pulse of magic left his palm. The dagger stopped in midair and fell with a soft squelch to the mud.

Captain Gurnard's eyes went wide.

"Yeah," Toby said. "Yeah, you should have remembered that I've got a few tricks up my sleeve that you don't."

With a roar of frustrated anger, mixed with more than a little suicidal hopelessness, Captain Gurnard charged at Toby. Toby thought about sliding his knife up into the breastbone of the captain. Mercy stayed his hand. He dropped his own knife and bore the brunt of Captain Gurnard's attack. The two men went over. Toby managed to use the captain's own momentum to gain leverage over him.

The captain landed on top of Toby, but Toby was able to stop him from crushing him into the mud by getting his knee up between himself and his opponent. The pair of them had their hands at one another's throats.

"Just… die," Captain Gurnard hissed.

"Not today, Gurnard," Toby replied.

Their faces were only a few inches apart.

"Tell me, who was it you were meeting in the Red Herring?" Toby said through gritted teeth.

"It was just a contact. Just a messenger. It doesn't matter," Captain Gurnard said. "It was a contact of Duke Diddle's, but I wasn't able to provide him with what the Duke was seeking. I'm a dead man walking as soon as that information gets back to the Duke, which won't be long."

"Why did he want to get his hands on how to make our new pistols?" Toby said.

"Why do you think so?" Captain Gurnard retorted. "Such ranged potency is an advantage the likes of which the Duke hadn't even contemplated. He wants it for his war effort. He believes it's the final thing that will gain him supremacy in this war of ours."

Toby tightened his grip on the other man's collar.

“And how did he come to know of it?” Toby snarled.

Gurnard said nothing. He was too intent on throttling Toby.

"And what were you going to get out of it, Gurnard? What were you going to get? The top job? Lord Marshal Vani's position?"

The flicker in Gurnard's mean little eyes was enough of an answer.

"Ambition," Toby hissed. "That was your lever."

"I've been in Eclipsia's army as a man and boy," Gurnard said. He drove an elbow into Toby's face. Toby tasted blood. He blinked away the stars. "I should have been Lord Marshal. And then what happens? Some ogre wins a couple of battles and gets promoted to the top spot."

Toby struck Gurnard in the ribs. The captain grunted.

"An ogre? You must be fucking joking me,” the other man said. “They haven't got two brain cells to rub together—and Lord Marshal Vani is a lousy, stinking drunk."

"I believe," Toby grunted, "he might fall under the category of a functioning alcoholic."

Gurnard tried another jab at Toby, this time in the ribs, but Toby managed to block him with his thigh. With an effort, he managed to get his foot up and then, in a thoroughly amateur MMA-style move, he looped his leg around Captain Gurnard's neck and flipped him off.

The captain tumbled away, but got swiftly to his feet. Toby rolled up into a crouch. His knife lay in the middle of the space that divided him and his enemy.

Captain Gurnard looked at the blade glinting in the mud. He looked at Toby.

“Don’t…” Toby warned.

The pair of them moved at the same time.

Toby was quicker, though. He imbued his muscles with a touch of magic, shot forward with inhuman speed, and managed to get his fingers around the hilt of his knife. He came up and grabbed Captain Gurnard by his shirt front.

The man threw a punch at him. Toby's arm came around reflexively. The point of his knife slid through the meat of Captain Gurnard's forearm.

The man howled. Toby twisted the blade. He felt Captain Gurnard's blood flowing over his fingers as he wrenched it out. Captain Gurnard staggered back a couple of paces, cradling his arm.

"We're all fucked now anyway, Adams," Captain Gurnard panted. "We're all of us doomed. The Duke wanted the secrets of the gunpowder and the flintlock pistols, yes. But just because I wasn't able to give them to him doesn't mean he's going to halt his plans."

"And what are his plans?" Toby asked. "Tell me. It’s your one chance at redemption."

The two men looked into one another’s eyes and seemed to read the same thing there. Redemption was something that had to be fought for in a very personal, down-dirty way. Something that could only be found or earned through a trial of some sort. Some people, in an instance, lost their chance of finding it altogether due to the choices they made; some strayed slowly, step by step, from it; a lucky few managed to do enough to regain it.

"Since you collared his right-hand man and turned him, he's had to alter his plans a little," Captain Gurnard said. "He's building up his forces not two days' march from here. He's raising an army of assorted mortals and happy little accidents behind a glamor in the Westwood. He’s set up a fortress there. Once he's ready, he'll march on Stagbreach. And he’ll fucking crush it."

"When?" Toby barked.

Captain Gurnard smiled slowly.

"I want immunity," he grunted. "I want protection from the Queen. If you can promise me that, then I'll think about telling you. But don't ponder on it too long, Adams. The Duke is going to make his move soon."

“When?” Toby demanded.

“He’s—“

Captain Gurnard jerked and let out a long wheeze. His mouth, which had been contorted into that cocky grin, loosened. He let out a long, low groan.

Toby frowned. "What…?"

The captain rotated ninety degrees on the spot. Toby saw the point of a crossbow quarrel protruding from the traitor's cuirass-covered chest. As he turned, one leg shaking, Toby could just glimpse the feathered shaft protruding out of the base of Captain Gurnard's neck.

In an instant, Toby was able to identify two things. The first was that Captain Gurnard was dead—or as good as made no difference. The second was that, judging by the angle of the arrow and where Captain Gurnard had been standing when he was shot, the projectile had come from—

Toby's eyes flicked up. He raised both hands and discharged a pressure wave of magic up toward the roof of one of the townhouses that overshadowed the market. The rippling stream of occult energy blasted upwards and tore the thatch from the townhouse's roof.

It was a savage and potent expulsion of magic, but Toby hadn't worried about the collateral damage to the building. He was more concerned with saving his own skin and bringing down the assassin that had taken out Captain Gurnard. He guessed that it was probably the mysterious figure the captain had been meeting in the Red Herring.

With all the potency of a localized tornado, the house's thatch and the beams underneath were torn apart in a rending, cracking cacophony of splintering wood and shredding straw. People screamed.

Toby's magic dissipated like rippling heat in the air. When the dust and straw settled, there was no dead body in sight. Toby made a quick scout of the area. Nothing.

The assassin, it looked like, had managed to make a clean break of it.

Toby trudged over to where Captain Gurnard lay, coughing out his ghost. He knelt down next to the dying man.

"Captain? Captain Gurnard?" he said, putting his face down close to the traitor's.

Gurnard's eyes were moving this way and that.

"I can't see," he said weakly. "I'm dying, I think."

"I think you might be right," Toby said, not unkindly. "You were betrayed yourself by the Duke's trigger man."

Gurnard let out a rasping sigh. "Bastard."

"In a word," Toby agreed. "Now tell me, when is the Duke planning to attack? Come on, Gurnard. This is your last chance to make things right."

"The Westwood," Captain Gurnard said. The words came out as little more than a breath. "The Westwood… fortress… Westwood… I’m… sorry…"

He sighed wearily again, and then spoke no more.

Toby sat back on his haunches. He reached out and closed the eyes of his fallen enemy, who was staring off to some distant horizon that only the dead could see.

Thunder muttered overhead. It began to rain again.

23

There was much that could be said about Queen Lascivo. Many qualities that the woman could be said to personify. One of those qualities was surely decisiveness.

After Toby had regaled her with what had happened with Captain Gurnard, and more pertinently perhaps, why it had happened, it took the Queen only a few moments of intense cogitation to make up her mind as to what they were to do next.

"I will send word to Lord Marshal Vani at once," the Queen said.

She was sitting behind a large ornate desk. Toby stood on the other side of the desk. They were in a study. Unlike a study that Toby might have expected to find in a monarch's home, this study didn't look as if its sole purpose was to intimidate or magnify the ego of the person who sat in it. It looked like the kind of study where shit got done.

"Yes," the Queen said. "Yes, I will send word to Lord Marshal Vani at once, telling him to pull the army back to Stagbreach."

She pulled a sheet of parchment towards her and dipped a griffin quill into a pot of bright green ink.

"In the meantime," she said as she began to write, "seeing as Captain Gurnard is no longer amongst the living, I will require you to get the rest of the castle's forces ready to march."

"Me?" Toby said, surprised.

"Yes, you," the Queen said. "You, even if you don't know it or recognize it, command a great deal of respect amongst our warriors. They see you as a man that doesn't just wield a steel well, but also commands magic."

"For now," Toby said quietly.

The Queen looked up, pausing in her writing. "Yes, for now," she said. "Your mother told me how it is your, for lack of a better word, destiny to sacrifice your magical powers in order to defeat Duke Diddle. I was not surprised when she told me that you had agreed to make this sacrifice. Still, up until that moment—up until you've thrown down our enemy—you are still one of the most potent weapons that I have at my disposal. So, you will do as I command. You will muster our forces and have them ready to march in two days' time."

Toby inclined his head. His mother was standing silently at the back of the room. "As you wish, Your Majesty," he said.

"My messenger drakes are swift," the Queen went on. "Lord Marshal Vani will get my orders today. I would say that, judging by his usual alacrity and no-fooling-around attitude, he should be back with us within three days. They will require a quick re-provisioning, and then we will march again to the Westwood."

"You mean to take the fight to Duke Diddle, then?" Toby said, pleased. He had had the notion himself.

"Do you not think that is the right recourse?" the Queen asked him.

"No, Your Majesty, I think that's exactly what we should do," Toby said in a voice of ironclad certitude. "We need to do something that the Duke does not expect. We need to try and catch him on the back foot. If we strike hardest now, hopefully, there will be no need for anyone to strike again."

"Precisely," Gwen Adams said, sounding pleased with Toby's logic. "It is time for a decisive blow."

Toby smacked his fist into his open palm. "Precisely," he said, glancing between the two women that he stood in the middle of. "Precisely. We march with everything we have on this fortress that he's hidden behind his glamor in the Westwood. We hit him with everything we've got. No holds barred, no soldiers spared. From what I gathered from Captain Gurnard before he croaked, it sounds like Duke Diddle is hoping to keep Lord Marshal Vani and parts of our forces busy with minor attacks in the surrounding country. If we strike at this new heart of his operation, then I think we might catch him with his trousers down."

"All the better to cut his balls off," Queen Lascivo said.

"Being castrated should be the least my dear uncle gets in payment for all the suffering he's visited on Eclipsia," Toby said grimly.

"Toby," Gwen Adams said, "that's a little bit graphic, don't you think?"

"Sorry, Mom," Toby said, "but it's not like I said that the very least he should get is having his nuts hacked off, is it?"

His mother tutted.

"Right then," Queen Lascivo said, "that's settled. We'll muster the army, and as soon as Lord Marshal Vani and his troops return to the castle, we'll set out as soon as possible for the Westwood."

She got solemnly to her feet. Toby couldn't help but note how regal she looked, how in command, how formidable.

How smoking hot, his brain added.

There was something about a powerful woman that really got the blood fizzing.

"Very good, Your Majesty," Toby said. "I'll see to the orders and make sure that our warriors are ready. After that, if you don't mind, I'd like to check in on Luna."

"Of course," Queen Lascivo said. She motioned for Toby's mother to step toward the desk. "A moment of your time, please, Madam Adams," she said.

"Of course, Your Majesty," Gwen Adams said respectfully.

Toby left the room.

As he was closing the heavy double doors behind him, the Queen said, "And Toby?"

"Yes, Your Majesty?"

"Make no mistake, this is the battle that will decide the fate of our kingdom."

"So, no pressure then," Toby quipped.

The Queen gave him a lopsided smile, her bright emerald eyes glittering. "Oh, don't worry, there will be pressure—and lots of it," the Queen replied. "But take heart in this. It is under great pressure, or so my apothecaries and wizards tell me, that diamonds are forged."

Toby laughed at that. "That's a hell of a line, Your Majesty," he said approvingly.

“I thought so,” Queen Lascivo conceded.

"And you know what the thing about diamonds is?"

The Queen looked down at her bejeweled fingers. “They’re very fine to look at?”

Toby chuckled. “I wasn’t speaking about that.”

“Then what was it you were alluding to?”

Toby gave the Queen a loaded half smile. “They make a hell of a cutting edge.”

24

Toby gasped as Luna yanked savagely on his hair.

His hair was growing out. It was probably longer than it had ever been. It fell in brown, messy waves almost to his shoulders. Admittedly, this did give him a rugged, roguish appearance, but it also meant that, when in the throes of passion, his female companions had a way to rein him in like an unruly horse.

Not that any unruly nag had likely been as happy to be reigned in or manhandled as Toby found himself being at that precise moment.

The nymph, using her tightened grip on Toby's scalp, pushed his face into her groin. Toby's senses were enveloped by her rich, sexually-charged musk. He licked enthusiastically at her vulva, kissing, tonguing his way around her clitoris before forcing his head up so that he could maul her breasts.

Luna's dark, erect nipples were hard buds under his tongue. He bit down gently first on the left breast and then the right. He felt the nymph's body arch under him. He ran his hands along her flanks. Gently, he felt the already healed lacerations where the werewolf had bitten her.

Luna groaned.

"Does it hurt?" Toby asked, meaning the wound that his mother had helped cure.

"Yes. I mean no. I mean, I don't know. It all feels good," Luna said breathlessly. "Just don't stop what you’re doing. I'm close. I'm very, very close."

Chuckling low in his throat, Toby kissed his way up the nymph's torso. He nuzzled at her neck, kissing her ear lobes before moving around her cheek to her open mouth. He slid his tongue between her lips, even had his questing fingers sort out the lips between her legs.

Luna moaned again as Toby fucked her gently with his fingers. Then, sliding his digits out, he spread her and pushed his rod hard into her.

Luna let voice to a guttural exclamation.

Toby relished and embraced the velvety slick clutches of Luna's sex around his member. Just for the time being, now that troops all through Stagbreach were being mustered by their various companies, bawled out by their sergeants, and coerced into rank and file by their corporals, he allowed himself to not dwell on the looming battle.

He slid himself out of Luna's pussy before pressing himself hard back into her. Again and again, he thrust deep into the folds of her desire.

The nymph twined her legs around his back and crossed her ankles as if she was loath for him to escape her.

Escaping her was the last thing on Toby's mind. He took her by the wrists and held her arms above his head while he continued to fuck her. As he plowed her furrow—a euphemism the men of the soil in the Toby Jugs were particularly fond of using—he lowered his head and tongued her nipples once more.

The nymph moaned and bucked under him. She cried out insatiably for more, always for more, harder and quicker and deeper.

With a grunt, Toby pulled out of the lies blue-skinned woman and flipped her over. She poked her backside up at him, spreading her legs. Toby took her from behind. He knelt behind her lovely ass and took her by the hips and rammed himself forward. Again and again and again he penetrated her. His balls slapped against her clitoris, driving her to higher-pitched cries of ecstasy.

The heavy headboard of the comfortable feather bed that Queen Lascivo had supplied Luna's sick room with beat a steady tattoo against the stone wall. Toby didn't care. He was past, caring whether anyone could hear them. He'd worry about that afterwards. It was no more embarrassing having someone know you had been fucking at the end of the session than in the middle of it after all.

He knew that his mother was probably lurking around the Queen's apartments somewhere. She had barely been away from Queen Lascivo for the past day or so. The pair of them had been closeted more or less constantly, working out plans. Worrying away at Duke Diddle's potential weaknesses like a pair of cats at a ball of yarn.

Luna's exclamations of lust and ardent need came out as simple monosyllables.

"Uh, uh, uh! Yes, yes! More, more, more!"

The urgency and the frequency of her cries ratcheted up a notch. Toby found himself nearing the edge of his limitations. He could feel that hot, golden fire growing like the molten core of a volcano burgeoning up inside of his loins. He redoubled his pace.

The frantic sound of flesh on the flesh became everything. It drowned out even the steady knocking of the headboard against the wall.

Abruptly, the nymph grabbed a hold of the duck-down pillow in front of her and scrunched it up and buried her face in it. She left out a long wail as she climaxed. Toby actually heard the material of the pillow creaking, almost as if it was going to burst and give way, so potent was the orgasm that Luna was experiencing.

In response to the rush of rapture that had obviously overtaken her, her vagina clamped up tight as a clam around Toby's pole. Its grip acted as the green light.

Toby grunted and closed his eyes. He tilted his head back and stared blindly through the red of his eyelids as he slid out of the wet confines of Luna's box. He carried on thrusting on automatic despite not being inside the woman. He used the cleft of her ass as a guide and spurted his load all over her ass cheeks and up her back.

They collapsed onto the bed together.

“Well,” Toby said, after they'd taken a minute to regather themselves. “I'm certainly glad that you shook off that pesky werewolf bite. I might not be a qualified apothecary, but I'd say from your exertions that you're well on the mend.”

He touched at the hollow of Luna's throat. A tiny pool of perspiration had collected there. Toby traced a line down her chest in between her two wonderful blue orbs.

“Yes,” Luna murmured in a voice heavy with repleteness, “you might not be an apothecary, but this medicine,” and she reached between Toby's legs and gave his wilting member a squeeze, “for sure was certainly just what the apothecary ordered.”

“I fucking well hope not,” Toby joked. “Seeing as the apothecary in question, in this instance, happens to be my mother.”

Luna slapped him on the chest and laughed.

Toby propped himself up on one elbow and rested his head in a hand.

“I'm glad that you came to check on me,” Luna said, gazing fondly at Toby out of her half-lidded eyes.

“I wasn't not going to,” Toby said, “even if this hadn't been on the cards. I was worried about you.”

Luna smiled at him. “It's incredible and worrying and humbling and rather complimentary that Duke Diddle wanted to steal the innovations that you and I made in the pursuit of the flintlock pistols and the gunpowder,” she said.

Toby chuckled. “Yeah, complimentary. But there are better ways, in my opinion, to compliment someone than trying to blow them up in their own home.”

“Well, a compliment is a compliment,” Luna said.

Toby grinned. “I'm glad you hid those plans,” he said.

“That knowledge is inflammatory,” Luna said carefully. “We can't just have it floating around for all to know. It could set fire to the realm in a host of ways.”

“I agree.”

“It galls me to say that I feel like a fraud of my people. Nymphs are supposed to invent things that benefit the masses. But if these flintlock pistols became a common weapon, if the knowledge of how to make them was accessible to all blacksmiths and armorers, can you just imagine how easily people would turn to them to end quarrels? To rob, threaten, and coerce one another?”

“Yeah, Toby said, thinking back to crime in cities like New York. “Yeah, it wouldn't be great. Not in the long term. But if we can use them to defeat Duke Diddle, and clearly he's worried that they might prove to be a defining edge for us as he tried to steal them, then I think we need to use them. Afterwards, we can worry about burying the secret.”

Luna nodded.

“Speaking of which,” Toby said, “you and your engineers, do you think you'll be able to make a fair few more over the next few days?”

Luna nodded. “I took the precaution of having my teams working night and day on almost nothing but the pistols before we left for the tower,” she said. “I thought that they would be called for. As they're only single shot, the more we have, the more damage we'll be able to do.”

Toby nodded. “It's like Queen Lascivo and my mother said,” he told the nymph, “this will be the last throw of the dice. Someone is going to end up throwing snake eyes, and I sure as shit don't mean for it to be us.”

Luna shook her head, her amber eyes blazing. “It won’t be.”

Toby left out a soft groan of contentment. “And now,” he said, stretching his arms over his head, “I'm afraid I'm going to have to love you and leave you.”

Luna made a little mewling sound of disapproval.

“I'm sorry,” Toby said. “We've all of us got a lot to do. I've never been very good at packing, and it turns out that marching to war on an enemy encampment takes a great fucking deal of packing.”

Luna laughed and sat up. Her pert breasts were about as inviting a reason as not to get out of bed as Toby had ever seen. "Are you sure you can't just spend ten more minutes with me, your Royal Champion-ness?" she said.

“Great. I’m glad Anna’s title for me is rubbing off on others,” he said.

Luna giggled and fluttered her silvery eyelashes.

Toby looked at the gorgeous woman. She was staring at him with those bright amber eyes of hers. They were filled with promise.

"Well," he said, "maybe just ten minutes more…”

Luna wriggled in closer to him. Her skin was soft and warm, still flushed from their love-making.

“But after that, I need to get my ass in gear,” Toby said. “And we need to be ready to march as soon as Lord Marshal Vani returns. It's time to take the fight to Duke Diddle, and wipe the smile from his face as we wipe the floor with him."

25

The return of Lord Marshal Vani and the majority of Eclipsia's army was preceded by the arrival of the dark elf, Zareth Holloway.

She rode through the portcullis-protected main wall of the palace of Eclipsia on the back of a kirin a little over a day after Queen Lascivo's messenger drake had been dispatched.

"You made good time," Toby said.

He happened to be walking through the main courtyard of the palace on his way back from the practice yards at the moment that the kirin bearing Zareth trotted towards the castle's main doors.

"I rode all day and all night," Zareth replied nonchalantly. Apart from some slight smudges under her eyes, it would have been hard to tell that she had gone without sleep.

"It's what kirins are made for," she said to Toby, "to be pushed to the limit when needed."

Toby had to concede the truth of this. As far as time went, they were on the clock. There was no knowing if the messenger that had met with Captain Gurnard and subsequently dispatched him had made it back to Duke Diddle to pass on the news that the bombing attempt and theft of Luna's flintlock pistol and gunpowder secrets had been a failure.

"Where's the rest of the army?" Toby asked as Zareth dismounted.

"They're on their way. The front columns will be here within the next twelve to eighteen hours, I'd say," Zareth said.

"And Lord Marshal Vani sent you on ahead?"

Zareth nodded.

There was no need for them to speak of why the Lord Marshal might have sent her of all people. It was clearly a test. Lord Marshal Vani would probably have returned Queen Lascivo's messenger drake, telling her of what he planned to do. If the dark elf had not returned first to the castle ahead of the army, they would know that she had been lying and defected back to Duke Diddle.

Toby, if he had known of this, would not have worried. Although he had told Lord Marshal Vani and the Queen about the pact of the flesh that he and Zareth had sealed, it was he alone who had seen the fervent, guileless look in her eyes when she had sworn herself to him so long as he helped her rescue her brother.

"You'd best come with me to see the Queen," Toby said. "Do you need anything to eat or drink?"

Zareth shook her head. "I had provisions for the road," she said. "I ate in the saddle. Let's go and see the Queen."

Queen Lascivo was waiting to receive them in the throne room. She seemed neither surprised nor unsurprised to have Zareth standing before her. Toby stood a little behind the dark elf.

"So, Miss Holloway, you made it," the Queen said.

What she really meant by that, Toby thought, was, Miss Holloway, you decided to keep your word and prove yourself to Eclipsia and thus redeem yourself.

"I did, Your Majesty," Zareth said.

"Lord Marshal Vani had you ride ahead to herald his coming?" the Queen asked lightly.

Neither Toby nor Zareth, it seemed, was fooled by the Queen's apparent ignorance as to the real reason why the dark elf had been sent ahead of the main Eclipsian force.

"He did send me, Your Majesty," Zareth said. "And the reason for that was because I told him that I might be useful in helping you locate Duke Diddle's main stronghold."

"We know it's in the Westwood," Queen Lascivo said. "In what way would you be able to aid us?"

"The fortress is hidden behind a glamor," the dark elf replied. "As a wielder of the arcane arts, I am ideally placed to locate that glamor. Also, I am less susceptible to being bamboozled by it."

The Queen ran her tongue along her gleaming white teeth. It was at once a lascivious and predatory gesture.

“Such a happy-sounding word, ‘bamboozled’,” she said. “For a thing that is less than admirable to do.”

Toby let out a little snort that no one heard.

"That would indeed be helpful," the Queen said after a few lengthy moments. "You would scout on ahead, locate the outer edge of this glamor, and then…?”

“I would probe the glamor."

"Probe it?" the Queen asked.

"Check it for weakness, Your Majesty," Zareth said.

Toby was impressed by the way the hot-headed dark elf did not lose patience with the Queen's obvious act of not knowing what was to happen next. There was no doubt in Toby's mind that Queen Lascivo had already mapped out just this course of action.

She's just waiting to see if the dark elf's plans deviate from her own in any way, Toby thought. So far, as far as I can see, so good.

"Do you want me to go with her, Your Majesty?" Toby asked.

Queen Lascivo's jade eyes slid from Zareth's face to his own.

"No," she said. "You are needed here to help finish the muster."

"I think that going alone would be more beneficial anyway, my Queen," Zareth said.

"You do, do you?" Queen Lascivo asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty. I think that one alone will garner far less attention than even a pair of scouts will. A single rider might just be a hunter or a forager, but two, that speaks more of military tactics and forethought."

Queen Lascivo nodded her raven-haired head. "Very well," she said. "I would have you set out at once in that case. Are you sufficiently rested from your journey here?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," the dark elf said at once.

"In that case, procure yourself a fresh kirin from my stables. Gather as many provisions as you're likely to need on the road. Then head out immediately."

Zareth Holloway bowed her head respectfully.

"If you find the glamor," Toby said, speaking up, "might I suggest that you don't go ringing any alarm bells? Don't try and probe it too deeply. The last thing we want is to alert Duke Diddle, if he isn't alerted already, to the fact that we plan to march on him. Better, if we have to shatter this glamor, that we do it and then take our full force through it."

"I wouldn't do that," Zareth said crisply. “I’ll be careful in my investigation.”

"A clever girl, this one," Queen Lascivo said approvingly to Toby. "And even though I was not party to your unique pact, there is something about her that is undeniably trustworthy. Perhaps it is the burning vengeance and hunger for murder I see in those pretty lilac eyes."

When Toby saw Zareth raise her head, there was a faint suggestion of appreciation in her expression and in the set of her shoulders.

"I won't fail you, Your Majesty," the dark elf said.

"I know you won't," Queen Lascivo replied. There was just the faintest trace of an edge to her words. "I know you won't. You've made your pact, after all, with my Royal Champion here. I know little of dark elven lore or custom, but what little I do know informs me that such a promise is not lightly cast aside."

Zareth glanced at Toby. A smile flickered across her face before her usual stoic and unreadable countenance returned.

"No, it is not, Your Majesty," she said. "Will that be all?"

Queen Lascivo made a gesture. The dark elf departed.

Once the footman had closed the door behind her, Queen Lascivo looked at Toby.

"Well?" she said.

"I had no idea of her coming," Toby said. "It was just chance that had me walking through the courtyard when she arrived. Obviously, it was no surprise to you."

"Obviously," the Queen said. “Surprises are all well and good where cake is concerned, but not in times of war.”

"And all those questions you posed to her—you already knew the answers, didn't you?" Toby asked.

"Of course," Queen Lascivo said. "But it always pays to double-check and, if possible, triple-check."

"So, it was a test," Toby said, "having Lord Marshal Vani send her back to see if she would come back?"

"Of course."

"Her backstory, her reasons for wanting Diddle dead, are pretty sound," Toby said.

"To avenge the wiping out of her clan and to rescue her brother," the Queen said. "Yes, I'd agree with you there. Sound as a gold piece. Duke Diddle is incalculably clever on many counts, but he obviously does not know how destructive a family vendetta can be."

Toby thought of his mother. He thought of himself and his link with the Duke. “Boy, is he in for one hell of a lesson,” he said.

The Queen nodded at the door. "That dark elf there, she is one who would be happy to let her vengeance steep for as long as it took to see Duke Diddle in his grave or overthrown. If it wasn't for the time constraints imposed by her brother, I'm not entirely certain whether she would have agreed to help us. She looks like she has plenty of moxie to go it alone."

“Agreed,” Toby said.

The Queen spread her hands. "That be as it may, I think she is a good bed fellow." She raised her eyebrow at Toby.

"She is," Toby said, "in more ways than one."

The Queen tipped back her head and laughed. "Be off with you now, Mr. Adams," she said. "I would ask you to stay a while, but each of us has plenty to do before Lord Marshal Vani and his troops arrive."

Toby nodded. "That we do, Your Majesty," he said. "That we do."

* * *

Lord Marshal Vani and the rest of his Eclipsian troops, minus a few small squads he had instructed to rove around Stagbreach’s immediate countryside to ensure that Duke Diddle hadn’t left any of his happy little accidents in wait, arrived just over a day later.

Zareth Holloway had already ridden out after her meeting with Toby and the Queen. In that time, Toby had been extremely busy making sure that the captains and sergeants, and their underlings, had everything they needed to ensure all of their companies, both of riders and infantrymen, were prepared for war.

This responsibility was a good deal more onerous than he might have imagined it to be.

The part of a Marshal, it seemed, revolved a lot around keeping many people happy. These different people, or groups of people, seemed to be dead set on being anything but happy.

The blacksmiths complained that they didn’t have enough charcoal or good iron, so Toby was obliged to chase up the dwarven merchants who supplied it. The fletchers complained that they didn’t have enough wood for arrows or high-quality goose feathers for their fletchings. The apothecaries were all in a dither because they felt understocked with healing herbs and other supplies they might need for the campaign. Bargains had to be struck and disputes settled.

Then there were a whole host of other aspects that Toby hadn’t previously considered too. He spent far too much time for his liking poring over lists with the quartermaster and his lackeys, making sure there were enough barrels, bread, salted pork, tents, and, to his astonishment, enough rope. Toby had been completely caught off guard by how much goddamn rope an army apparently needed.

What’s more, it wasn’t just the soldiers who had to be provided for. It was all those people who followed an army and believed they should be paid or at least supplied to do so. Blacksmiths, armorers, lumberjacks, foragers, and, surprisingly, ladies of the night all wanted to have their involvement subsidized.

It was a mercy that Duke Diddle's fortress was, according to the intelligence they had, only a two-day march away. Had they been on the road for weeks, the whole process would have been far more painful and time-consuming.

Toby was glad to let the crown foot the bill for most of these people who came to petition him. It was well known that Queen Lascivo was minted, and she had an ax to grind.

Farriers needed tools. Camp cooks needed ingredients and pots and pans. Cobblers needed leather to repair boots and gambesons. And those unskilled laborers who had been hired to dig latrine pits needed shovels.

Toby had to draw the line when one of the madams of one of Stagbreach’s chief privately owned brothels asked whether Queen Lascivo would deem it appropriate to supply extra underwear for her workers. There was such a thing as taking the piss, after all.

Eventually, though, once every man and woman of myriad species that made up the Eclipsian army had been provisioned or re-provisioned, and Lord Marshal Vani had bellowed himself hoarse and drank his way through at least two barrels of potent Uncle Kraken’s Full Strength 12-Year-Old Single Reserve Sherry, they were ready to march out.

It had been a hotly debated topic whether or not Queen Lascivo would accompany the army. In the end, Lord Marshal Vani and Toby had put their feet down. In Lord Marshal Vani’s case, he had quite literally put his foot down, stomping through a rather expensive-looking side table in the Queen’s office. The Queen merely gave the Lord Marshal a long-suffering look and motioned for one of her attendants to clear the mess away.

“Fine,” she had said. “I shall say. Although, you had both better be victorious, on pain of pain.”

And so, with the Queen safe and snug in the castle, Toby and Lord Marshal Vani, at the head of the army, rode out from the palace of Eclipsia. Toby rode on his kirin with Frank perched on his shoulder in the guise of a raven.

“Nothing wrong, nothing suspicious about a raven,” Frank said. “Ravens and war go together like hot pincers and nipples.”

“Yeah, I see what you’re saying,” Toby had replied, “but ravens usually turn up after the fighting’s done. They’re like blisters in that respect.” He paused, thinking about how Frank often rubbed him the wrong way. “Maybe a raven is an apt disguise,” he said.

“Yeah, told you, mate,” the imp had said.

“Although, I will say that most ravens don’t smoke tiny cigars.”

Frank looked at him with his bright beady eye. “They’re more pipe smokers, are they?”

Anna and Verity rode next to Toby. Luna was toward the rear, hashing out details with her engineers. Toby’s mother rode with the vanguard too, although she hung back a little and kept her head down under a heavy cloak. They didn’t know whether Duke Diddle was aware that his sister had been busted out of her prison, but Toby didn’t see the point in alerting him or any of his spies to the fact that he was still ignorant of it.

It was as they were setting up camp for the night, one day out of Stagbreach, when Zareth rode back into camp. She looked even more tired than before. Toby doubted whether she had slept at all since heading out from the Eclipsian Palace.

“Well?” Lord Marshal Vani asked brusquely as his attendant filled his pipe. “What news?”

“I found it, Lord Marshal,” the dark elf replied. “I have found the edge of the glamor.”

The Lord Marshal puffed slowly and steadily on his pipe. His craggy face was bathed in thick smoke and a hellish orange glow.

“Excellent,” he said, “I was hoping we could get straight down to the killing.”

26

“Mom?” Toby said.

“Yes, Toby?”

“I've got a couple of questions for you.”

“I thought you might.”

“Why is it that your brother is such a dick?”

Toby's mother looked sternly at him from where she rode her kirin next to him.

“What?” Toby said. “He is. And I'm not sure I've got the required vocabulary to pick out another term.”

Toby's mother sighed through her nose. “You may have a point,” she said. “I suppose that, rather sadly, it all boils down to a simple case of having a point to prove.”

“Who to?” Toby asked.

“To the world. To me,” his mother replied.

“What are you talking about?” Toby asked.

“Not that I ever saw myself in this way, but I think I'd be accurate in saying that I was always considered a preeminent magic user from the family.”

Toby scoffed, not at his mother's claim, but at the idea that Duke Diddle could have done all this—could have spent the better part of thirty years terrorizing a kingdom—all because he was simply jealous of his little sister.

“I think you would be surprised at just what sort of things pride can drive us to do,” Gwen Adams said. “How much ill can grow and flourish from such a small seed as envy.”

“So, just because the people of Eclipsia thought you were better at magic, he decided to go completely off the rails and take the kingdom for himself?” Toby asked.

“It wasn't a sudden decision, I don't think,” Toby's mother said sadly. “I think it ate away at the Duke for many, many long years. Ever since we were children. I think it slowly eroded his morals and his optimistic outlook on what his place in the world might be.”

“Not at the very top of it, you mean?”

Gwen Adams shrugged. “Perhaps.”

Toby shook his head. He ducked as they rode past a low-hanging bough. “It all just seems a bit extreme. A ludicrous lesson as to what happens when sibling rivalry goes horribly wrong.”

“That’s just it. There was no rivalry involved, not on my side at least,” Gwen Adams said. “I never set out to become a more capable magic wielder. My ability to work magic came quite naturally. I think now that, on reflection, it was that which might have rankled him the most. Duke Diddle was a fair user of magic. And now, of course, with the wand in his possession, he is formidable. When we were younger, though, he had to strive.”

“He wasn't prepared to put in the hard yards?” Toby said.

“It wasn’t that,” his mother replied. “He spent an awful lot of time practicing, reading up on the theories of magic, poring over scrolls in the palace library to read about the exploits of thaumaturgical past masters.”

“And you didn’t?” Toby asked.

Gwen Adams gave him another little shrug. “I read as much as my studies required, but no more,” she said carefully.

“Oh, so my own mother was guilty of doing the bare minimum?” Toby joked. “I remember you used to give me such a hard time about that when I was in high school.”

“That’s one of the clichés about being a parent, Toby,” his mother said with a small smile. “You get to wield the old ‘do as I say, not as I do’ rule.”

“I'll remember that,” Toby said.

His mother gave him a sharp look. “Is there something you want to tell me? Are any of those women carrying your child?”

“What? No, I don’t think so. I was just meaning, you know, theoretically, in the future, if one of them was…”

“If one of them was?” his mother said shrewdly.

Toby held up his hand and a pained expression crossed his countenance. “Mom, I thought we already touched on this. Also, isn’t it one of the lesser-known rules of being a parent that you never pry into your progeny’s sex life?”

His mother laughed lightly. The sound made Toby's chest glow. “How do you think you came to be here, Toby Adams?” she said.

“Mom, enough. Seriously. Let’s just stick to your screwed-up brother as a topic, shall we?”

“Very well, very well. But it might be nice not to describe the Duke as ‘screwed-up.’”

“But, Mom, he is screwed-up,” Toby countered. “He’s a screwed-up dick, that’s a fact. So, the Duke’s—for lack of a better word, and because the word I want to use is this word—the Duke’s evil stems from his envy of the inherent ability you had to cast spells?”

“Yes,” his mother said sadly. “Yes, that’s it in a very simplified nutshell.”

“Feel free to tell me more.”

“As the years passed, I began to surpass him in almost all aspects of spell-weaving, witchery, and thaumaturgical lore,” Gwen Adams said. “It just came simply to me. It felt natural. I suppose it’s not unlike how professional athletes—at least some of them—are naturally gifted when it comes to their chosen professions. They’re just natural sportspeople. Footballers who, once they retire, take up golf and excel at that. Etcetera and so on.”

“Nice sporting analogy, Mom,” Toby said with a wry smile.

His mother laughed again. “It’s how I described it to your father,” she said. “I would have used some sort of car reference, of course, but I couldn’t think of one at the time.”

“You could have said—“

“Anyway, I became more powerful and more skilled,” Toby’s mother went on. “And not only that, but I was able to use and manipulate different branches of magic.”

Toby frowned.

“Traditionally, wizards, witches, and other magic users would specialize or naturally lean towards certain types of thaumaturgy,” Gwen went on to explain. “For instance, I have noticed how you show a real knack for manipulating kinetic energy. You create energy out of nothing.”

Toby raised his eyebrows. “Honestly, I hadn't really thought about it,” he said.

“It’s just what came naturally to you,” his mother finished.

“Precisely. I happened to be naturally inclined to all sorts of different parts of the magical field. I can manipulate kinetic energy, as you do, although I'll admit that I certainly didn't have as natural or quick a grasp on it as it sounds like you do. You've had no formal training whatsoever?”

“None,” Toby said. “The only wizards I've come into contact with were Rowan Moonshroud, and I'm not sure what kind of branch of magic he specialized in, as he was off his tits—I mean, off his head on whatever brew he was cooking up in his hovel. Also, the King and Queen's house mage was an interesting guy.”

“Yes, old Wolfgang Tootenstein,” Gwen trailed off. “He is an extremely talented potioneer and adept at thaumaturgical engineering.”

“It was his potioneering skills that almost had all of Stagbreach farting itself to death,” Toby said.

His mother looked at him. She stroked idly at the serpentine neck of her kirin.

“Yes, Queen Lascivo told me all about that,” she said. “Needless to say, I was extremely proud that you and your friends managed to thwart that little scheme of my brother’s.”

“I'm starting to see now,” Toby said, “that I think that might have been more of a diversionary tactic than anything else.”

“Yes, although it would have pleased the cruel part of him if he'd succeeded,” Gwen Adams said. “As you say, though, it was a testing of defenses. A probing for weaknesses.”

They were riding at the head of the column, which was moving slowly through the thick forest on the fringes of the Westwood. Behind them stretched the long train of the Eclipsian army.

Verity and Anna rode directly behind Toby and his mother with Lord Marshal Vani. Anna was chatting away to the Lord Marshal, picking his brains about the different kinds of bows and what arrows were best for different kinds of warfare.

Toby pondered how funny life was in the way that it provided people with new interests and hobbies. It was highly doubtful that Anna, had they stayed in New York, would have ever realized she had a passion and an eye for archery.

Zareth had informed Lord Marshal Vani that the edge of the glamor was a four-hour march. She had commented that, with the relatively slow pace that a large body of armed warriors moved at, and how they'd have to go even slower so as not to attract any unwanted attention and make sure they were scouting adequately for enemy patrols, it might even prove to be five.

After hearing that and asking which direction they should head, Lord Marshal Vani had instructed the dark elf to catch up on some sleep in the back of one of the wagons being hauled by some sturdy mountain ponies.

Luna was still with her engineers. They had cast and crafted many flintlock pistols which had been issued to certain squads of soldiers who had been trained in their use. However, there was also a cart full of various bits and pieces that made up the weapons, and Luna and her engineers were still working on fitting yet more of the guns together, even as they traveled.

“So,” Toby said, “Duke Diddle is doing all this because he's got an axe to grind that you were a more celebrated and gifted magic user?”

His mother nodded. Toby shook his head. He was surprised to feel a pang of sympathy for Duke Diddle.

“But he ended up working closely with King Balourd,” Toby said, trying to quash the feeling of pity for his uncle. “He was his right-hand man for years, one of his most trusted advisors, and then he betrayed him.”

“Yes, yes he did,” Gwen Adams said softly. “In truth, I had been working even more closely with King Balourd and Queen Lascivo, but my work was of a more surreptitious and confidential nature.”

“Getting your Jane Bond on, huh, Mom?”

“Very good, dear. It was I more than the Duke who kept the realm safe from the numerous enemies we had before him,” Gwen said modestly. “It was me, young as I was, just before I met your father, that the king's wizarding coterie answered to. I think it was the day that I learned how to craft portals and figured out just how relatively simplistic it was to do something so seemingly complicated, if not impossible.”

“Stepping from one world through to another is a pretty neat trick, Mom,” Toby said. “Are you telling me you invented how to do that?”

“That’s how I met your father,” Gwen Adams said, and she smiled to herself at the thought of Toby's dad. “I stepped through the portal—a pioneer for Eclipsia, the first person ever to do so—and I found myself in New York City of all places.” She shook her head to herself. “Can you imagine?” she said.

Toby looked around at the quiet woodland. Overhead a bird chirped. A pair of enormous butterflies, at least as wide as Toby’s chest, fluttered lazily by.

“And there I met your father,” Gwen said in a quiet reminiscent voice, “and the rest, as they say, is history. I ended up spending more and more time away from this place.”

“With us.”

“Eventually, when you and your brothers arrived.” His mother’s smile faded. “It was that—the double whammy, you might say—of being the one to discover how to work portal magic and my subsequent absence from this land that I think was the catalyst for my brother to fully turn his coat.”

“It was the final nail in the coffin in terms of his resentment at how you were better at magic than he was,” Toby said.

“That’s right. And he saw his opportunity to claim Eclipsia for himself and prove to everyone that he was not to be taken lightly,” his mother agreed.

“And he crafted the wand around that time?” Toby asked.

His mother nodded.

“Stupid jackass,” Toby sighed.

“His fall was swift and hard,” Gwen Adams said. “He crafted the wand and—”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It’s one of the things I’d like to talk to him about before all this ends.”

Neither of them needed to say it. By ‘before all this ends,’ Gwen Adams meant before her brother forced them to either capture him or, more likely, kill him.

They rode on in silence for a little longer. The only sound was the tramp of marching feet and hooves behind them and the jingle of their kirins’ harnesses.

Another of the enormous butterflies, a deep, rich royal purple color, flapped out of a bush to their right. Quick as a striking snake, Toby's Kirin's head darted around. It snapped at the passing butterfly, chomped it up, and ate it. It licked its snout with evident relish, its long forked tongue darting out to scrape up the last of the dust left by the butterfly’s passing.

“Mom?” Toby said.

“Yes, Toby?”

“When the hell did your brother start calling himself Duke Diddle? I don’t ever remember hearing that your maiden name was Diddle. I would have got hell for that at school, let me tell you.”

“It’s not,” Gwen Adams said. “My last name was Faye. That’s the Duke’s and my family name. His first name is Akhtar.”

“And why in the world did he switch out badass-sounding name like Akhtar Faye for Diddle?” Toby asked.

“Diddle is the ancient hobgoblin translation for ‘nightmare’,” Gwen Adams said.

Toby rolled his eyes. “Diddle by name,” he said, not quite under his breath. “Diddle by nature.”

27

"We're here," Zareth said.

"I don't see anything," Frank croaked in his abrasive raven's voice.

"No. You don't. That's rather a whole point of a glamor," Zareth pointed out.

Toby chuckled.

"I knew that," Frank said. "Don't think I didn't know that. Of course you're not supposed to be able to see a glamor. I just mean—“

Toby held the raven’s beak closed with his fourth finger and thumb.

“Having a talking bird is a nice party trick, Adams,” Lord Marshal Vani rumbled from where he stood, towering over them. “But doesn’t it get a bit tiresome after a while?”

“You have no idea, Lord Marshal Vani,” Toby said, releasing Frank’s beak.

“Oi, I’m standing right here,” Frank said.

“Don’t I know it?” Toby said dryly.

“Hush,” Zareth said.

Toby hushed. Even Lord Marshal Vani turned his sonorous breathing down to a low burble, something akin to an idling Harley Davidson. He pulled the cork out of a large gourd with a soft whop sound. The dark elf glanced at him disapprovingly. Lord Marshal Vani glared back at her, unruffled. He took a long gulp and wiped his lips with his three-fingered hand.

“Right,” he said, in as close to a whisper as he could manage. “What is it we’re supposed to be seeing, or not seeing, as the case might be?”

“We are standing now on the edge of a clearing,” Zareth said.

She held up her hand. Toby saw her fingers curve slightly in the air, as if she were resting them against a concave wall. To his astonishment, the air around her fingers rippled as she whispered something.

Toby’s mother dismounted and did the same. Carefully, as if she were trying to strum an invisible harp, she brushed the air with her fingertips. “Ah, yes,” she said, in a voice almost too quiet to hear.

Toby mimicked his mother and Zareth. He didn’t know what word they had whispered, but, even so, he could feel a definite pressure change in the air not five inches in front of his face.

“What…?”

Ahead of them stretched more forest, though this particular section looked especially dense, unwelcoming, and hard to push through. Enormous, tangled bramble bushes with three-inch thorns lined the way. The thorns were hooked, perfect for snagging skin and piercing through, perhaps, even chainmail.

“Looks like my garden back home,” Lord Marshal Vani rumbled. “I never did have very green fingers.”

Toby looked at the ogre’s mottled, grayish-green skin, which reminded him of lichen-covered stone.

“I mean, figuratively speaking,” Lord Marshal Vani added. He peered ahead at the inhospitable undergrowth. “So, this is a clearing you say, dark elf?”

“It’s a magic that is somewhat akin to a manufactured mirage,” Zareth continued.

“An extremely difficult and power-hungry bit of spell-work,” Gwen Adams said. “My brother has grown in strength. It’s not all thanks to the wand, I don’t think.”

“To the casual observer,” Zareth said, “what you see is what you get—interlaced branches, wicked-looking thorns, poisonous leaves. But all that is just a load of smoke and mirrors.”

“Beneath this illusion is Duke Diddle’s new fortress,” Vexxx said, running his fingers across the surface of the glamor.

“Yes, indeed,” he said crisply. “This is the Duke’s work, right enough. It has his signature feel to it.”

Toby’s mother grudgingly nodded. She still wasn’t entirely convinced.

“If I hadn’t been whispering a counter-charm to the spell—don’t worry, it was a subtle one,” Zareth said, “many of your troops would have been questioning their commanding officers as to why we were heading in this direction. This mirage magic, this glamor, is not only meant to mislead but also to repel. Those of weaker minds, or who are generally more susceptible to indecision, would veer away seemingly of their own accord, or else suddenly recall that they had pressing business elsewhere. For some, lacking in dedication or commitment, they would be filled with a fear that might stop them in their tracks.”

“So,” Lord Marshal Vani said, with his usual taciturnity, “how do we go about popping this great big bubble, then?”

“Follow my lead,” Zareth said. “Toby, Gwen, are you ready to do as we discussed?”

“I am,” Gwen said.

Toby nodded.

“Why don’t we make use of Vexxx’s skills, too?” he asked.

“The dark elf and I have already had this discussion,” Vexxx replied with his usual prim, no-nonsense manner. “The Duke might have woven in a counter-spell now that he’s most likely aware I’ve taken up more gainful and fulfilling employment.”

“Quite right,” Zareth nodded. “It’s too risky using this former Duke’s man.”

“Now, to business.”

The dark elf stepped forward with confidence. Her bright crimson hair caught the pure, brilliant glow of the noonday sun as it filtered through the branches of the genuine forest under which they stood. She raised her hands, her fingers weaving patterns in the air. She traced the ancient sigils, which she had told Toby and his mother about, with a practiced ease that was a joy to behold.

After a few moments, in a low and melodic voice, she began the incantation, speaking words Toby had certainly never heard before. In a very peculiar way, the words seemed to vibrate through the air. It was almost as if Toby could see the spoken syllables of the alien tongue rippling as they touched the surface of the mirage. With each word, the glamor undulated, contorted, and morphed ever so slightly. It was like observing a heat haze.

"It looks to be holding as comfortably as I would expect a spell woven by the Duke," Vexxx said.

"Its roots go deep," Toby's mother murmured. "If only I wasn’t so damnably weakened from my containment in that tower."

Toby glanced at his mother. When she had begun doing her prearranged part in breaking the glamor, it was clear she was visibly struggling. That as might have been, she still looked utterly resolute. The paling of her face spoke of her recent ordeal, but she still stoically stood there, lending her magic to the incomprehensible, at least to Toby, counter-spell that Zareth was using to attack the glamor.

As she added more and more of her curtailed power to Zareth’s, Gwen reached out and put a hand on Toby’s shoulder to steady herself. Toby knew his part was due to begin at any moment, once he got the signal from Zareth. For the time being, he stood and acted as a crook for his mother.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw the air immediately surrounding his mother begin to shimmer. He could feel the temperature rising around the three of them. A trickle of perspiration ran down his scalp and the back of his neck as the spell energy began to manifest.

Thin streams of golden light began to coil around Zareth’s hands. These strands twined together and built in intensity to Toby’s fairly unpracticed magical eye. It looked to him as though, whereas Zareth’s magic had begun unraveling the glamor, his mother’s acted almost like a pry bar. That’s how he understood it on a basic level—his mother’s spells were digging into the weakened points Zareth had made in the glamor, forcing cracks into it.

How do I know that? Toby found himself thinking. How do I feel that?

The glamor trembled. The illusion of trees and tangled underbrush flickered in and out of existence, almost like a poorly tuned television set.

It’s happening, Toby thought to himself. We’re getting through.

The glamor trembled again. Toby got the impression it was being assailed by some storm, but the fortress remained hidden, still masked by the last vestiges of Duke Diddle’s spell.

Toby could feel his heart pounding a drum’n’bass beat in his chest. His hands twitched at his sides. He wanted to help, but he knew he had to wait for Zareth’s signal. He’d rarely felt more aware of the weight of expectation. He and these two women had an entire army at their back relying on them.

Without ceasing her melodic, low, unintelligible chanting, Zareth suddenly made a gesture with her hand. Toby clenched his fists tight and took a step forward.

His mother’s face was running with sweat, and her hand was still on his shoulder. She glanced at him. In that look, Toby felt all her encouragement and faith in him. Her grip on his shoulder tightened briefly.

Toby drew in a deep breath. He raised his hands. He could feel the pulse of his own magic rising to meet and blend with those of his mother and Zareth. He felt, in the pit of his stomach, the magic that was latent within him pressing up against the alien magic of Duke Diddle. His mind raced.

He tried to repress the thought that he might screw this up.

No.

He reached for the energy inside of him, wrestled it into submission, and directed it. The air around him hummed with tension as he muttered the spell Zareth had taught him under his breath.

With effort, he focused his will. The final surge of magic erupted from Toby’s fingertips in the form of a shockwave. It was a raw burst of thaumaturgy that slammed into the remnants of Duke Diddle’s glamor like the blow of a sledgehammer.

“Whoa!” Toby heard Frank say.

The illusion froze and jittered in protest for a moment. The very atmosphere around them seemed to tear apart as Toby’s power ripped into the glamor. Tendrils of golden light—Zareth and Gwen’s combined enchantment—joined with Toby’s raw force and lashed out like a whip, like a collection of tendrils guided by a single mind, with a sudden collapse of pressure that made Toby’s ears pop.

The illusion collapsed. The false trees melted away in an instant, dissolving into nothing, tearing into shreds like smoke on the wind. Abruptly, the once-hidden fortress materialized before them.

"Now that," Frank croaked, "is what I call a bad guy’s lair."

It certainly is, Toby thought. All it’s missing is the volcanic moat.

The fortress was all jagged black spires that rose up to pierce the sky. There was a great curtain wall that ran like a line of shadow across the imposing main keep. The windows and arrow slits were darker holes cut out of black stone.

Toby could feel the air around him crackling with residual magic as the last traces of the glamor vanished into the ether. He realized his chest was heaving, his body humming with the aftershock of the spell he, his mother, and Zareth had just woven.

“Could use a splash of color, couldn’t it?” Anna said.

Toby glanced over his shoulder. Anna’s eyes were fastened on the now-visible fortress. Toby didn’t blame her. It was unveiled in all its dark, ominous glory. Its presence cast long shadows over the land between the edge of the forest and it.

Zareth turned and looked at Lord Marshal Vani with her strange lilac-colored eyes.

"I believe, Lord Marshal," she said, panting slowly, "that this is the part where you sound the attack."

"Ah,” Lord Marshal Vani said in a rumbling voice that was thick with menacing glee in equal measure. "Ah, yes, I fucking love this part. How I've missed it."

He turned around and bellowed in a voice and volume that could only be achieved by a being that was as much part of a mountain as he was a man.

"Captains, form up your companies and prepare to advance. Our enemy is waiting for us, lads and ladies. Duke Diddle wanted trouble. He wanted a fight. Let's not disoblige him!"

28

Regardless of the fact that Lord Marshal Vani may have wanted with every particle of his being to simply shout ‘charge’, after having spent the better part of the last twenty years cooped up in his gloomy office, the reality of the situation was somewhat different.

As the Eclipsian army was the force attacking the fortress it meant that they first had to be deployed in a manner that would most likely lead to the breaching of said fortress.

Lord Marshal Vani directed his troops with a surety and aplomb that spoke volumes as to how he had gained his position. By all accounts, the ogre was a formidable, ruthless, and cunning fighter, but Toby knew that could only carry you so far. He also had the unquestioning trust of all the warriors under his command, and seeing as he had been the lowliest of the low himself once upon a time, they respected him in a way they wouldn’t have respected a commanding officer who had purchased his position or else been granted it as a favor.

Not that Eclipsia strikes me as that kind of place, Toby thought. Plus, it’d have to be a hell of a bribe to tempt Queen Lascivo.

With all this in mind, it perhaps should not have come as a shock how much alacrity and with so little second-guessing of himself the Lord Marshal deployed his troops.

The companies of warriors were gathered at the edge of the newly revealed clearing. Whilst the various battalions and squadrons were organized, Toby readied himself. The air was thick with sharp tension and the anticipation of the battle to come.

Toby and his close companions stood on the top of a small rise not far from the edge of the Westwood. A constant stream of messengers came and went from the hillock as captains made various requests and asked a host of questions of their Lord Marshal.

Toby watched in mute fascination from their slightly elevated vantage point as the army was organized into formations. Every movement was incredibly precise when he considered the number of men that made up each battalion. Every order given carried the gravity of an impending siege.

An impending siege…

It was another one of those mad thoughts.

"I'll tell you what," Lord Marshal Vani said. "That shield wall business you started has really caught on."

Toby stirred. "Glad to hear it, Lord Marshal," he said. "It'll be interesting to see how it goes in a real battle, though. I’m sure it’s a little bit different having a mass of charging, happy little accidents coming towards you than a bunch of your friends wielding sticks."

“I heard that they were quite heavy sticks,” the Lord Marshal said.

“Still.”

"Yes. Well. The proof is in the pudding," Lord Marshal Vani agreed. "Speaking of which, we should eat while we have a chance. Nothing to be gained by going into battle on an empty stomach. If you have your guts spilled, you may as well make sure they’re full of crap so you get to send one last ‘fuck you’ to the enemy that did the spilling."

Toby nodded. He turned and looked at Duke Diddle’s looming fortress, which stood a mile or so in front of them. Its black stone walls were forbidding, to say the least. They were set with narrow arrow slits, and in the middle of the curtain wall was what looked like a very tough iron-bound gate.

"It’ll be heavily reinforced," he muttered to himself.

"Undoubtedly," Gwen Adams agreed.

“So, we’ll be scaling the walls,” Toby said.

“That’s what Lord Marshal Vani is set on.”

"And the master—the former master, I should say," Vexxx added, "will undoubtedly know of our arrival, even if he didn’t have watchers stationed. Once the glamor was broken, he would have been instantly alerted. The defenders inside will undoubtedly be prepared for our onslaught."

"They can be as prepared as they like," Lord Marshal Vani grumbled, "but we Eclipsians know how to breach even the most impregnable defenses—even if we are a little out of practice."

Toby saw his mother gazing pensively at the fortress. Was there a trace of skepticism in her face?

Lord Marshal Vani was just guzzling down the second gourd that appeared to make up his midday meal when a horseman came riding up. He dismounted and hurriedly saluted.

"Never mind with all that frippery," Lord Marshal Vani said, waving a hand impatiently. "Save salutes and all that jazz for the parade ground when the toffs are looking on. Now, what is it, man?"

The rider grinned at his Lord Marshal. Toby saw the appreciation that he had for Lord Marshal Vani’s lack of regard for embellishment. Then he said, "We’re ready, sir. All battalions and companies are in position. We’re just waiting for your order to advance."

With his eyes firmly fixed on Diddle’s fortress, Lord Marshal Vani bared his tusk-like teeth.

"Well, in that case, send word to all the captains that they can consider this the official order to advance."

The rider mounted up, wheeled his horse, and spurred it toward the columns of various kinds of soldiers.

Lord Marshal Vani nodded to himself with evident satisfaction and stuck his pipe between his teeth. He lit it with a sulfurous match that he fired up by the expedient method of scraping it along his scalp. He puffed slowly and thoughtfully for a moment or two, then turned his stoic gaze onto Toby, Verity, Anna, Luna, Zareth, Gwen, Vexxx, and Frank.

"That goes for you too, ladies and gentlemen," he said. "It’s time to mount up. This is the part where the fun starts."

The Eclipsian infantry moved first. The bulk of the army was made up of spearmen and sword wielders. They advanced in a steady, rhythmic march.

Toby was gratified to see that the front line was all bearing round shields and short, stabbing swords. The rest of infantrymen were arranged in disciplined blocks behind this currently loosed shield wall.

Toby now saw that Lord Marshal Vani had equipped the third row of soldiers with large rectangular shields, which were quite heavy and designed to withstand arrows and other projectiles that might be hurled or fired at them. Intermingled with this secondary line of shields were soldiers bearing long spears and pole-arms. This was in preparation for the assault on the fortress's gate, but also as a means of defense against any sally from the enemy within.

As they advanced, engineers and sappers accompanied them. Lord Marshal Vani had not thought they were going to have to use the sappers to tunnel under the walls and, at Luna's instigation, explode barrels of gunpowder under them to bring them down.

“Still, no harm in being prepared for a little cataclysmic bang-bang,” the ogre had said.

More of the infantrymen bore ladders, and two companies of twenty men carried a large battering ram each between them. These rams were tipped with hammered iron over a blunted point that had been hardened in fire.

Behind the infantry, there were archers walking in loosely arrayed groups. These men and women wore light armor for mobility and carried longbows crafted for both distance and precision.

Toby could hear their commanders barking orders and making sure that their archers were ready to send volleys of arrows up to suppress the defenders on the walls when the time came for the Eclipsian troops to make their move and try to scale them. This would not only ensure that Duke Diddle's minions found it harder to shoot arrows of their own down at the advancing Eclipsian army, but it would also thin out the defenders and hopefully create an opening for some of the ladders to stay up long enough for some of the men and women to scale them.

Toby had walked through the archers before they'd set off. Each man and woman had a quiver full of barbed bodkin arrows, which had been designed to penetrate armor. He knew this because Anna, himself, and Zareth had been issued a quiver full of the arrows themselves.

Some select few companies of archers had been issued arrowheads that were bound with cloth soaked in an inflammable potion. These archers would fire over the walls and hope to set alight any wooden fortifications or buildings within the castle and thus cause a little more chaos among their enemy.

"The real trouble is," Gwen Adams said, "is that the happy little accidents cannot be predicted to act as conventional soldiers might act. They are guided and compelled by the power of Diddle's wand—the wand that created them and pulled them from the ether and gave them a semblance of life."

"If he has more of my kind in there," Zareth said, "then I might be able to turn them if I get the chance to converse."

Frank scoffed, "Oh yeah, I can just imagine that the middle of an epic battle is going to be chock full of chances to have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit and a yarn about the pros and cons of fighting for Duke Diddle with your fellow dark elves."

"You never know," Zareth said.

"On the contrary," Frank replied, itching under his wing with his polished black beak. "On the contrary, my dear dark elf, I do know. I've seen goodness knows how many of these things, love. They're always very messy, not the kinds of events in which it's easy or conducive for a chat."

"Actions speak louder than words," Zareth countered.

“Yeah, that’s the problem, love,” Frank said. “The action in a good siege is usually so bloody loud that any words can’t be made out.”

"If some of my folk see me fighting on the side of the Eclipsians, they might stop and consider that it's a good idea to do the same."

"It's good, optimistic thinking," Lord Marshal Vani said as he stumped along next to their kirins. "But we shouldn't count on it. What is it that you told my brave warriors about the shield wall? Protect the man or woman on your left. Is that right, Adams?"

Toby nodded. "It is," he said.

"Best we trust to them as we know are definitely on our side," Lord Marshal Vani said.

Toby nodded. He calmed his kirin, which was pawing at the ground with its clawed feet, with a touch on its scaly, muscled neck.

There were kirins in the mounted companies, but mostly these groups, these battalions, were made up of men and women on horseback. These mounted warriors were waiting behind the infantry for the hopeful signal to charge. The riders of these horses were heavily armored, but there were also a few companies of lightly armed cavalrymen.

These more lightly attired riders had been put on the kirins. The kirins, with their sleek bodies and powerful legs, were far more nimble than a traditional horse and undoubtedly more maneuverable than a heavy ass warhorse.

They were able to move more quickly and safely across uneven terrain too. Toby had even seen them leaping over obstacles with an ease that massively beat horses of all kinds. Their unique anatomy made them ideal for a sweeping charge once the gates were breached.

Lord Marshal Vani had even told them that, thanks to having claws instead of hooves, they could sometimes scramble up a wall if the wall was sufficiently cracked or pitted. Toby would have liked to see that, but he doubted very much whether he'd get the chance that day. Even from a distance, the walls of Duke Diddle's fortress looked impossibly smooth. They reminded him of the seamless build quality of the tower in which his mother had been imprisoned.

To support the main assault, Lord Marshal Vani had also organized a small detachment of kirin riders out in a wide position, which he held in reserve in case the defenders decided to get the party started early and send a detachment of soldiers out of the gate. Should this take place, the kirin riders on the flank would ride around and, using their speed and agility, cut off and hopefully rout these overzealous defenders. The kirins’ tactics mostly revolved around their speed, while their agility would hopefully help them outmaneuver any mounted troopers that Duke Diddle set against them.

But there's no guarantee of that, Toby thought to himself, and that's the rub. There's no guarantee of anything. Duke Diddle could pull any creature out of his ass. We won't know what we're facing until we're eye to eye with them.

“There they are, ladies and gentlemen,” Lord Marshal Vani declared.

Toby looked up. He could see at once what the ogre commander was getting at. Heads were visible above the ramparts. Not only that, but there seemed to be larger forms sporadically placed between the rows of what he assumed were archers.

"Can anyone make out what those are?" Toby asked.

There was a general consensus that no one could, not at the range they were currently at. Toby prodded Frank.

"Get that feathered raven butt of yours up there and have a little spy for us, will you, Frank?" he said.

"All right," Frank said in a put-upon voice as he stretched his wings out. "Someone's got to do the dirty work."

Frank flapped up into the air. He moved with a great deal more speed than a regular raven would probably be able to manage. The army continued to advance while the imp got down to a little aerial surveillance.

Toby squinted up at the ramparts. He could see the glint of armor as the sun caught the rim of a shield or the top of a helm. He still couldn't figure out what the larger forms between the bowmen were. They were like nothing he'd ever seen before. He could just make out waving appendages, almost as if they were the tails of giant cats.

"Vexxx, do you have any idea what those things are?" Toby asked.

Vexxx shook his gleaming white head. "As you have pointed out before, Mr. Adams," he said, "they could conceivably be absolutely anything."

"Care to hazard a guess?" Anna asked.

"No," Vexxx said after a while. "I don't have enough data."

Toby saw Anna shiver. He grinned at her and punched her softly on the arm.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's just… sometimes Vexxx really reminds me of my old boss," she said.

As the first wave of the Eclipsian infantry neared the fortress walls, the defending archers unleashed their opening barrage.

"And we're off," Lord Marshal Vani said with every sign of delight in his voice.

The volley of arrows darkened the sky for a moment.

"Shields!" Toby cried out.

The cry was taken up by many others. As one, the infantry—the whole army—came to a halt. Men hunkered down behind their shields as the arrow storm rained down from the walls onto their position.

Toby heard the sounds he had hoped not to hear, but knew he would; the inevitable screams of pain and anguish from their own ranks. He gritted his teeth and kept his own shield up. He felt it jerk as first one arrow, and then another, smacked into it. None of the projectiles penetrated the limewood shield, thankfully.

The hissing rain of death stopped after what must have only been about three seconds but felt like five minutes.

There was a thump, and Toby almost tottered over as something hit him in the shoulder.

For a moment, he thought he’d already been shot. His first feeling, his gut reaction, was one of annoyance. That wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was the goddamn guy the prophecy was about, wasn’t he?

Then he realized that Frank had alighted back on his shoulder.

"Bugger me, but that was close," Frank said. He ruffled his feathers. "I found out what those things on the walls are," he said.

"What?" Toby asked.

"Manticores," Frank said.

"Bollocks," Lord Marshal Vani exclaimed.

29

“I'm guessing that, judging by everyone's shared expressions of dread,” Anna said in a voice of would-be calm, “that manticores are not great? Not good fun to face?”

“It's been said that your generation and the generation after you lack the linguistic prowess and articulation of their forebears,” Gwen Adams said softly.

Toby chuckled, but without any real humor.

“But yes, dear, manticores are not great,” Gwen Adams said.

“And why is that exactly?” Anna asked.

“Leonine body, a tail covered in spines that are capable of being launched, each of which carry the venom potency of an extremely pissed off scorpion,” Frank reeled off.

“Lethal?” Anna asked.

“You can bet your rear end that a spine from one of them is lethal,” Frank said with relish. “The creepiest thing about the bastards, though, in my opinion—and you have to remember I have quite a lot of experiencing creepy—the creepiest thing about them is the fact that they have humanoid—or I suppose, dwarven or elfin if you want to get technical—faces. On the body of what is essentially a giant poisonous lion, there's something very sinister about that.”

“Okay, and those things are up there, those manticores,” Anna said, “the Duke is going to be using them for their ranged capabilities, right?”

Frank said grimly. He shouldn’t have been able to smile at all, what with having a beak, but somehow he managed it. “They can flick their tails like a bullwhip and send those spines showering down in all directions,” he said.

“The only good thing about a manticore’s ranged attack is that it lacks anything that comes close to accuracy,” Vexxx said.

“Aye, that's right enough,” Lord Marshal Vani rumbled, “but what they lack in accuracy, they more than make up for in numeracy. They can fire up to two dozen of those quills at a time and they regenerate them too damn fast for comfort.”

“So yeah, they're a little bit of a best of both worlds situation in terms of getting yourself killed in a fairly gruesome and spectacular fashion,” Frank said. “You can either be poisoned from afar and have your bones melt inside your body or something similar, or you can get up close to try and kill them and you're still fighting what is, essentially, a giant lion with the intelligence of your average human psychopath. Have you ever fought a lion, any of you?”

“Nope. Never fought a lion, Frank,” Toby said. He was so consumed with the thought of the manticore that he even forgot to tell Frank to go and fuck himself.

“Yeah, from what I gather, it's not a great time,” Frank said as he scratched, in a nonchalant way, at his chest plumage with his beak.

“Is there a particular or efficacious way in dealing with them?” Toby asked.

“No,” his mother told him. She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Just kill them and kill them as fast as you can. Don't try and get tricky. Don't let pride or the fact that fighting a manticore is a hell of a challenge cloud your judgment. If you can kill them from afar with magic or an arrow, then do it.”

“Aye, listen to your mother, Adams,” Lord Marshal Vani said. 

Toby glanced at him, but it appeared that the ogre was not trying to make fun of him.

“The annoying thing about those creatures is they get progressively more and more lethal the closer you get to them, and they don't start off as kittens from afar,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“That is annoying,” Zareth said. Her words were so dry that if they’d been rubbed together they would have gone up in flames.

“Yes,” Lord Marshal Vani agreed.

“On with the plan then,” Toby said, his face a hard mask of determination and fearlessness.

“On with the plan,” Anna parroted.

Lord Marshal Vani let out a subterranean chuckle.

“What is it?” Verity asked, as she tied her blonde hair up to keep it out of her face once the action started.

“I’ll admit that planning is essential,” the ogre said. “But, nine times out of ten, the plans themselves aren’t worth a wet fart.”

“Excellent,” Toby said brightly. “Shall we have the heralds proclaim that sentiment to the entire army or…?”

“Shut up, Adams,” the Lord Marshal said.

“Yes, Lord Marshal.”

It wasn't to say that, just because they had a plan of sorts, Toby didn't feel more than a modicum of trepidation. He thought it would probably be a worrying kind of individual who, heading toward his first siege battle, didn’t feel any fear. Toby wasn't sure he'd trust someone who said they weren't just a little bit afraid in a situation the likes of which they were all in.

And then, quite abruptly—or so it seemed—all the worrying of what was to come, all the talks of hypotheticals, the discussions about what might be, how things might be counted, and how troops could be better expected to prolong their quickly dwindling life expectancies, became null and void.

The walls of the fortress suddenly stood tall before Toby, his friends, and the rest of the Eclipsian army. They rose above them all like a towering wave of impregnable rock.

“Well, best of luck, everyone,” Frank cawed as he stretched his wings and rose up into the sky. “You know what they say: if war was as good a time for everyone else as it was for the ravens and the other carrion eaters, you big-brained, bipedal, backassward species would only end up doing it more than you already do.”

“Fuck you very much, Frank,” Anna called up sweetly.

A little spattering of bird droppings was the only reply. Toby touched the spot of raven shit that had landed on the shoulder of his armor-plated ranger garb.

“Well,” he said, looking around at the others, “it is meant to bring good luck.”

It wasn’t too much later that Toby realized just how big a favor Frank might have done them all, dropping them a little extra luck from on high. It became almost immediately apparent that they were going to need a shitload more of it if they hoped to live out the day.

Toby had thought that he knew what chaos was. He'd thought he'd known what madness meant. He had erroneously supposed that he had a grasp on just what it meant to truly fear for his life—to be so on edge that his state of mind almost neared euphoria.

He had been wrong.

However, this was a euphoria, a state of oneness with his surroundings, that was obtained from the other side, as it were. It wasn't a sense of knowing yourself or forgetting about the past and the future so that you only lived in the present, achieved through good deeds and positive thinking. This was a euphoria of a different kind.

It was a strange battle joy. It was the feeling you got when everything you were and everything you might be was taken away in a sudden rush because all that mattered was what you were in that moment; what you were capable of, what you were willing to do, in short, to survive.

And not only to survive yourself but to try and make sure that those closest to me, that fight beside me, survive too.

Toby soon came to a conclusion on that front. What he was willing to do to keep his friends alive was anything.

What he knew he had to do, though, what he knew was essential to really boosting the chances of everyone he had come to care about in Eclipsia, as well as saving as many people who had pledged themselves to King Balourd when he'd been alive—and now Queen Lascivo—he knew that to save them, he needed to fight and defeat Duke Diddle as quickly as possible.

This wasn't a computer game, some kind of simulation where Toby would gain points or experience the more enemies that he slew on his way to facing Diddle. He was not going to get any better at fighting in the short amount of time that he hoped it would take to find Diddle. If he could get to him straight away, that would be ideal.

It would be, as Lord Marshal Vani had said, cutting off the head so that the body followed. Do that and, presumably, all the happy little accidents that Duke Diddle's wand had helped him draw from the aether would vanish with him.

That was everyone's shared hope, at least.

If they killed Diddle and the happy little accidents remained, then they'd have a job slaughtering more. However, they were all hoping that once freed of Duke Diddle's controlling will, the happy little accidents, which Luna had hypothesized shared a hive mind of sorts, would become all but witless, and their eradication would be swift and sure.

But for now, Toby told himself, survive.

That, he knew, was going to be far easier said than done.

After what felt like years—millennia, almost—of waiting, Toby and every other soldier that made up the Eclipsian army heard the word that every single cell in their bodies had been waiting to hear.

Clapping his hands into a tube and placing them to his mouth, Lord Marshal Vani turned to face his men. He sucked in a gargantuan breath. His great stony chest creaked with the effort—although, Toby thought, that might have been his uniform buttons.

“Charge!” the Lord Marshal bellowed, with all the volume of an irate elephant on bad acid.

And the Eclipsian army did as directed, and charged forward.

30

The mass of shield-toting, sword-bearing, spear-wielding infantry surged forward. Behind them came the archers and the mounted troops.

The romantic, poetic part of Toby’s soul—not to mention the part of him that watched all of those epic, historical, and fantasy movies—would have been stoked had he been able to look behind them and see a host of pennants, flags, and banners rippling and snapping in the breeze.

However, Lord Marshal Vani did not hold with that sort of ‘frippery,’ as he called it. The only things pointed skywards were the tips of spears, winking and flashing in the sun.

“A flag might look pretty, and it might put a little bit of heart into some of the men that are inclined that way. But it’s also just about as good a target for the enemy archers to aim at as makes no difference,” the ogre had told Toby when he had mentioned this. “The only time I’d ever give a soldier a flag to hold would be if I owed the silly sod money.”

Toby couldn’t deny that there was some logic in that—in the flags being arrow-magnets thing, not flags being a great way to stitch up someone who owes you money part. Still, it would have been nice had there been a few fluttering pennants with the Eclipsian sun and moon combination sigil embroidered on them.

Not that the sigil wasn’t in evidence. The sign of King Balourd’s ancestors was emblazoned on many a shield and breastplate. Toby wondered how long it was going to be until those sigils were liberally splashed with gore and the lifeblood of the men and women who had decided to pledge their lives in defense of the kingdom.

As was their wont, as was their plan, Toby and his friends were in the very front line. They were part of the shield wall itself.

“Leading by example,” the Lord Marshal had grunted when Toby had first broached his tactics to him.

“I suppose,” Toby had replied.

“I knew a captain, back in my younger days, who liked to do that,” Lord Marshal Vani said.

“What happened to him?” Anna asked.

“He led by example right into his grave,” the Lord Marshal replied.

“Ah,” Anna said.

Lord Marshal Vani patted Toby’s shoulder. “Don’t mind that. You can always learn from that particular example of his. Just don’t do what he did to end up six feet under.”

“And what was that?” Toby asked. “Some tactical blunder?”

Lord Marshal Vani shrugged. He motioned to his disapproving-looking attendant, who brought him another gourd of red-eye. “Couldn’t tell you,” the ogre commander said. He took a long swallow from the gourd and belched. “That happened during the days when my favored method of fighting the nerves of a coming battle was to get so plastered I couldn’t actually remember the fighting.”

That might, in hindsight, have been a judicious move, Toby found himself thinking as he hefted his shield and clutched his knife. But it’s a little too late to float the back teeth now. More’s the pity.

Toby, with Anna on one side and Verity on the other, found himself bellowing wordlessly as they charged toward the walls.

Toby heard the rattle of bolts and arrows as yet another fusillade from the enemy’s archers landed among their lines. He thought he felt the thump of something hitting his own round shield, but he wasn’t about to stop and take a look to make sure.

They carried on charging forward. The quicker they got to the walls, the quicker the men behind them with the ladders could try and get the siege ladders into place.

Lord Marshal Vani had hung back, the better to direct his warriors through his captains. Before he had sounded the charge, however, he had said to Toby, “This is one of those ticklesome situations where an individual has to stare right into the black, bottomless chasm that is the eye of Death, Adams.”

“Is this supposed to be encouraging?” Toby asked.

“Hold on, I had to burp,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “I was going to say—“

“You said the eye of Death, right?” Toby asked.

“Aye, that I did.”

“Cool. I thought for just a second there that you might have said the thigh of Death.”

“The thigh of Death? Why in the name of all the… No, I wasn’t referring to staring at Death’s thigh. Young ‘uns these days…”

“Sorry. You were saying.”

Lord Marshal Vani grumbled something to himself under his breath and then gathered himself.

“As I was saying, today is one of those days where you’re obliged to stare into Death’s cold, infinite eye and tell him, ‘Not today’.”

“Not today,” Toby repeated.

“Not today,” the Lord Marshal said, nodding his great slab of a head. “You will soon find, Master Adams, that every single particle of you is going to want to head in the opposite direction to that there damned fortress. You will have to master every single particle of yourself and force it onwards. Just remember this if you remember anything: speed is your friend.”

“Speed is my friend,” Toby said.

“The quicker you get there, the safer you are liable to be,” Lord Marshal Vani said. “Tarry in this middle ground and the chances of getting shot down are greatly increased. Trust me on that. It seems contrary, I know. Run towards the enemy, and you should prolong your life, at least for a while. But, once again, hear me when I say, do not tarry.”

“Man, I just want to shoot back,” Toby heard Anna growling.

He didn't think she was even talking to him. Probably more to herself. Or maybe to Gwen, who was on Anna's other side. Toby's mother had insisted on heading in with the shield wall.

Personally, Toby had found that idea abhorrent. There was a lot he didn’t fancy seeing in his lifetime, but witnessing his mother getting cut down in battle was probably up there at the very top of the list.

However, he also had an inkling that his mother was far more powerful than he could probably imagine. He wasn't sure what anyone's fate was going to be that day, but he was pretty sure that Gwen Adams’ didn’t involve being struck by some random shaft from on high.

“No, don’t fire back,” Toby said to his best friend. “Hold the line. Remember, you're only as strong as the person to your left and the person to your right. Don't deviate. If we all start fighting our own little individual battles, the shield wall will break. It only takes a little hole until that hole widens, and then it just collapses. We've seen it time and again in practice.”

Anna nodded. “It’s just so annoying waiting around and getting shot at,” she said.

Toby grinned. He felt the lime wood shield that he was hiding behind shudder as another enemy projectile hit home. There was a cry from behind them.

“Ladders, ladders! Ladders coming through!” Toby bellowed.

The cry was taken up and flowed along the lines.

“On three! One, two, three! Break!”

Toby split away from Verity. Vexxx was on Verity's right. The bureaucrat warrior’s white head gleamed in the light of the sun. Toby almost laughed aloud at how sunburn was likely to be the least of Vexxx’s troubles that day.

Luna was not with all of the rest of them in the front line. She was leading one of the flintlock pistol companies, which had been secreted amongst the battalions that would first climb the ladders. The plan was to use an unsuspecting barrage of gunfire to drive back and freak out the defenders. Hopefully, that would allow the first ladder climbers to gain the ramparts.

The teams bearing the siege ladders hurried forward through the opened ranks of the shield wall. They moved as quickly as they could, encumbered as they were in the heavy armor that was all their protection against the arrows, quarrels, rocks, and other projectiles that were being thrown and tossed in their direction.

Toby watched one of the men in part of the team of the ladder, the rampart closest to him, go down screaming. He twisted and writhed. Toby saw that he was stuck full of spines.

The spines were a deep, rich black-purple color. Even as he watched in horror, the stricken soldier convulsed and started bleeding from his eyes, ears, and nose.

“Frank was right,” Anna said, aghast. “Manticores really aren’t good news.”

The siege ladders slammed into the base of the black stone walls with what must have been bone-jarring force for those holding them. The soldiers needed to make sure they were firmly planted, though. The ladders were heaved upwards. The iron hooks at their pinnacles swung over the ramparts with the momentum of the ladders being raised and bit into them.

Barely audible commands were shouted over the already ear-splitting din. Toby felt the ground shaking under his own feet as the rhythmic pounding of the infantry's boots made the very rock and soil tremble.

Officers were bellowing for their soldiers to advance. Men and women were screaming. There was a soft, almost gentle, thrumming chorus as the Eclipsian archers were given the green light, and their shafts went soaring up to inflict horrible damage on the defenders who were not quick enough to duck out of harm’s way.

Toby suddenly became cognizant of the sheer weight of numbers that was surrounding him. He was just thinking that he might give the order for his line to head up the ladders and lead by example when a warrior nearby let out a cry of alarm.

A small door had opened at the base of the wall, not twenty-five or thirty meters from where Toby was situated. From out of this door poured a horde of creatures that Toby instantly labeled as orcs.

They might have been goblins, hobgoblins, or some other variation of the kind that Toby's fairly extensive pop-culture knowledge wasn't able to identify. However, ‘orcs’ was how he deciphered them on a visual level. Gray-skinned, bat-eared, misshapen mouths with fungus-covered fangs; words could not do their hideous appearances justice, but numbers could. The orcs were a solid minus four out of ten in the looks department.

In truth, Toby didn't have a lot of time to draw his conclusions. The group of about five dozen orcs came charging towards the front rank of the shield wall.

"Steady, steady!" Toby bellowed. "The first test, the first test!”

“Let's make them rue it, people!" Gwen Adams roared. "Let's make them rue the exchange!"

“Brace!” Toby shouted.

The shield wall seemed to tighten up. Wood clacked against wood as soldiers made sure that their shields were overlapping those of the soldier to their left.

The orc horde contacted a moment later. Glancing to his right, Toby saw that similar postern doors, which had been completely invisible in the walls, had also opened at different points all along Duke Diddle's fortress wall. More orcs were pouring out and attacking the lines. Some of them were trying to take care of the ladder crews.

To Toby's relief, he saw that none of those in the shield wall had bowed to their morals and instincts and gone to the base of the wall to help the ladder crews.

The reason for this was a hard but irrefutable one. If even a few members of the shield wall ran out of position to help the ladder crews, then they compromised the shield wall as a whole. Many more Eclipsian warriors might then be put to the sword. It was cold-blooded, but it was one of the fundamental truths of war.

You weighed up the fate of the many with the fate of the few. It never balanced out, but it made sense.

While the ladder crew in front of Toby fought off a smaller contingent of orcs with the hatchets and short stabbing swords they'd been issued as part of their war gear, Toby and his immediate shield wall buddies—Anna, Verity, Vexxx, his mother, and Zareth, along with countless other troopers, the names of which Toby didn't know—bore the brunt of the assault.

The orcs, jabbering and crying in harsh, crazed voices, crashed into the shield wall.

Although they were most likely of Duke Diddle's creation, being more of the happy little creatures he'd pulled from whatever void he had access to, they were not quite as mindless as all that.

Almost immediately, the metal plates that Queen Lascivo had insisted that Toby and his fellows have sewn around the boots that ran up to their knees bore the brunt of a cheeky dagger cut that would have scored an awful wound across Toby's shin.

As it was, Toby probably got away with a bruise, although at that moment he felt absolutely no pain whatsoever. It felt like he'd had the myriad chemicals that made up the human body swapped out so that he was running on pure adrenaline.

Another orc thrust a curved scimitar over the top of Anna's shield. Anna grunted. Toby used his knife to dart a blow out through the gap, and he felt the blade bite home.

An orc shrieked and jabbered.

"Hold!" Toby bellowed. "Hold!" He stabbed out again and felt his knife slide into supernatural flesh. “Steady! Hold!”

The cry went down the lines. Soon it was being chanted, taken up like a kind of mantra by the Eclipsian warriors.

"Hold! Hold! Hold!" roared a thousand throats.

More ladders were doggedly being pushed up onto the wall. All the while arrows and the manticores' poisoned darts rained down from the ramparts above. Axes and swords cracked against wooden shields and iron shield rims.

Above the noise of the arrow-exchanging troopers and the press of fighting Eclipsians and happy little accidents, Toby thought that he could hear the hollow booming crack as one of the battering rams was put to use. Even as Toby made sure that his shield was locked in position and his stance was firm, he pictured the ironclad head of that ram slamming into the gates. It beat out a slow, relentless rhythm in his mind, which juxtaposed noticeably with the jackhammering staccato beat of his heart.

Rusted, jagged sword blades grated on the lime wood of his shield. Toby wondered how much punishment the average shield could withstand in this sort of situation.

"Doesn't matter," Toby growled to himself. "It doesn't matter. You're going to reach the wall in plenty of time. And once you're up there, you won't need a shield. It'll be sword work up there. Sword and magic."

He caught gazes with Anna. She looked scared but resolute.

"Push!" Toby cried.

“Push!” Anna screamed. “Push, goddamn it!”

The shield wall around Toby moved forward a half step.

The orcs, it sounded like, had been joined by another contingent of their fellows, which had bolstered their numbers. Toby thrust his knife through and scored another blow on a faceless orc.

"Spears!" someone shouted.

"Spears!" the cry went down the line.

"Steady now!"

Toby ducked a little. The soldier wielding the hefty ash spear behind him thrust forward. He caught an orc in the throat and ripped its neck wide open. At once, Toby and the other shield bearers went back into their usual position.

There was a mighty bang as the orcs, bearing their own shields in a haphazard attempt at mimicry of the Eclipsian shield wall, crashed into Toby and the others. They strove, one line against the other, for a while. Brute strength versus brute strength. Willpower against the goading power of Duke Diddle.

Anna was gritting her teeth. It looked like she was being inexorably driven back by a great brute of an orc that had a rudimentary square shield in one hand and a long dagger in the other.

Toby could not slash out with his knife at that moment without compromising his place in the shield wall, and then compromising the shield wall in general.

Suddenly, a huge double-bearded axe came looping over Anna's shoulder from behind.

A great bear of a warrior had managed to snag the big orc's shield rim. He yanked the orc forward and off balance. Anna stepped aside so that the orc fell within the Eclipsian line. Then, she and Toby closed ranks again.

The orc, finding itself on the wrong side of the garden fence, was summarily butchered by the infantry behind.

"This shield wall here, Royal Champion!" the great man bellowed enthusiastically at Toby. "It's not bad. It's—"

A rain of projectiles struck Toby and the other surrounding shield bearers. It sounded like hail. One of the arrows—or at least that’s what Toby thought it was at first—hit the great bull of a man with a double-headed ax right in the face.

He started to choke and gurgle almost immediately. Toby almost left his position to try and do something for the man, but he saw at once that anything anyone tried to do would be in vain.

It was not an arrow that had hit him. It was a manticore spine.

Blackish-purple traceries of veins were already spreading out from where the spine had struck home. The needle-sharp projectile was still embedded in the man's face, lodged in his cheekbone just below his left eye and just above his bushy beard.

Toby watched in horrified fascination as the black tendrils of poison reached the man's eye and liquefied it. He started screaming and frothing as his eyeball ran down into his beard, and then he collapsed as if he'd unexpectedly had his knees transplanted onto someone else.

Toby guessed that the poison had reached his brain and done to his brain what it had done, very efficiently, to his eye.

"Keep your head in the fight!" Zareth cried.

Toby didn't know whether she was talking to him, but her words had the same effect as if she had been.

Turning away from the corpse of the big bull of a warrior, Toby set his feet and continued to push the orcs that had assailed them back until each and every one of the hideous creatures had been slaughtered.

Up on the battlements, Toby could see shadowy creatures moving. He didn't know precisely what they were. No doubt they were more of Duke Diddle's happy little accidents—creations drawn from the deepest corners of his diseased imagination. They slithered and skulked along the parapets, wending their way through the archers that still fired down, waiting to get to grips with the Eclipsians.

"I'll get to grips with you, you little bastards," Toby found himself growling vehemently.

The siege ladders were in place now. They were held by the brave men and women at their bases, who were hunkered down under special little shields they had attached to their vambraces.

A great cacophony of noise and smoke went up as Luna gave the signal for her flintlock pistol-bearing engineer warriors to open fire. Chunks of shiny black masonry were blown from the ramparts. Creatures of both mortal and supernatural design squealed and gibbered as the lead balls struck home. Blood sprayed. Monsters fell from the battlements or else were blasted into wisps of greasy nothingness.

Toby could see that along the bottom of the curtain wall in different directions the infantry were heading to the ladders. Some men and women were already scaling them. Toby could hear something that was at once bestial and very human, roaring from the top of the wall.

"Probably one of those motherfucking manticores," he growled under his breath.

He realized that he was done waiting. He wanted to get up there. To get amongst the action. To take the fight to Diddle’s minions.

The infantry were pouring through gaps in the shield wall that had been previously arranged and instructed to open. Toby made sure that he had the attention of Verity, Anna, Vexxx, his mother, and Zareth.

"Our work with the shield wall is done," he bellowed. "It's not serving much of a purpose now that we're starting the assault."

"Agreed," Gwen Adams said. "The enemy had their little sally. Now they’ll wait for us to try the wall and do their best to cut us down as we come. Does this mean that you want to climb up and risk your neck in a very real way, son?"

"Yes, it does," Toby said.

"Then I am with you," Anna cried.

“As am I,” Toby’s mother said.

The others nodded and voiced their agreements. And so Toby charged forward and mingled with a stream of infantry heading for the ladder nearest where he was.

"With me!" Toby called to his friends. "Stay with me. Stay alive."

"Good game plan," Verity said.

Toby grinned. An arrow whistled past his head and struck an Eclipsian soldier clean through the crown of her head. She fell without any sort of preamble.

Toby tossed away his lime wood shield. He saw, now that he was free of it, that it had been hacked all to shit. It was covered in the shafts of the arrows that had been embedded in it and then broken off in the fighting. He shook the leather strap off his arm and the broken shield fell away. With a wordless snarl, he drew his sword. Then, using just a touch of magic to aid his ascent, he ran as fast as he could up the ladder.

A rock tumbled an inch or two past his face and crushed the skull of a dwarven warrior holding up the ladder he was scaling.

Toby contemplated what he was going to do when he reached the top of the wall. It was going to be a pivotal moment in his soldiering career, to say nothing of his life. He wanted to maximize the chances of not getting his head cut off, his brains bashed out, an arrow through the eye, or to become a pincushion for those manticore spines.

And so, with all that in the forefront of his mind, when he reached the pinnacle of the ladder, Toby let loose a bubbling burst of magic which drove back the defenders immediately surrounding the ladder. Within the next moment, he was over the rampart, sword in hand, and he started to get to work.

31

With his enchanted blade, Toby cut a bloody swath of destruction around the top of the ladder to expedite the arrival of his friends.

A jabbering group of weird, long-armed ape-like monsters attacked him. They had heavily muscled torsos, wore feathered helms, and wielded spiked clubs. Toby’s enchanted sword cut through the helms, clubs, and flesh of the monsters as easily as if all of it had been made out of plasticine.

The others had just arrived, and Anna had fired off her first arrow, taking a giant spider through the eye with every sense of relief. Such was her sense of obvious solace and satisfaction that Toby was reminded somewhat of a sex junkie who hadn’t gotten to get their nut off in about two years, finally gaining some relief.

And that’s when the first of the manticores loped out from around the crenelation where it had been shooting its spines down at the soldiery.

“Um, guys…” Anna said.

The monster let loose a screech, which was horrible to hear, and made all the more horrible by the fact it was emitted from what was, basically, a human mouth. It was the kind of sound that would have sent shivers down even the most hardened steel rod of a soldier’s spine.

The manticore came skulking along the parapet. Its leonine body rippled with unnatural strength. Even on four legs, it stood tall. At least six foot at the shoulder. The worst part about it, worse even than the long, segmented scorpion’s tail, which was tipped with the poison spines and arched over the muscular back—worse even than that—was the monster’s face. It was a horrible, distorted caricature of a face. The kind of thing that might have been cooked up by some shitty AI model where the prompt was ‘twisted human-lion face monster hybrid." It was all mouth, a large flat nose, and glowing eyes—but mostly all mouth, and a mouth filled with jagged teeth at that.

As it approached Toby and his friends, it flicked its tail in an almost lackadaisical and contemptuous fashion. The sound of the tail being used as a weapon was akin to that of a bullwhip cracking. Poison-laced barbs raked across the parapet to the creature’s left. Two Eclipsian soldiers were caught in the awful hail. They fell, clawing at the air and at their own flesh, off the ladder and out of sight.

Toby could see that those needles were already growing back in the club-like tip of the tail. They weren’t overly large—large enough to kill, obviously—but were still able to slip through the smallest chinks in armor and steel and embed themselves in flesh.

The screams of pain that the venom ripped from the hapless victims as the poison worked its way through veins, melting and setting nerves on fire, were awful. Soldiers everywhere were clawing at their necks and throats as parts of their bodies that had been hit swelled or, conversely, melted. They collapsed in heaps, choking on their own blood, twitching as they died.

And one of the fucking things responsible for doing that was heading right towards Toby and his friends.

The only silver lining of the situation was that it had just expended the potent poison projectiles in its tail.

Not much of a silver lining, maybe.

Toby glanced over his shoulder. Vexxx, his mother, and Verity were fighting their way along the wall in the opposite direction. Flashes of magic and strange contortions in the air spoke of the magic Vexxx and Gwen were expending.

So, he, Anna, and Zareth stood facing the manticore.

The manticore locked eyes with Toby and began to pad purposely towards him. Its hideous face was contorted into something that looked awfully like a smile.

Out of the corner of his eye, Toby saw Zareth raising her hands. Purple tendrils of energy crackled along her fingers and danced up her arms and over her shoulders.

"Hold on," Toby said.

"Toby," Zareth replied.

"Hold on a second," Toby insisted. His sword was in his right hand. He transferred it to his left. “Save that spell.”

The manticore came on. It was watching Toby with clear amusement and a healthy dose of contempt. It was wondering, Toby reckoned, when this ballsy bit of prey was going to break and run, as all its other prey probably did.

Toby’s hand drifted nonchalantly to his belt.

"Come on," he said to the manticore. "Come on, puss! You’re not so tough. You’re just an overblown house cat, aren’t you?"

The manticore roared its strange half-animal, half-human shriek.

"And you sound like a bag of cats into the bargain," Toby said.

The manticore roared again and then sprang forward. Toby whipped his hand up, pulling the flintlock pistol from his belt as he did so.

"This is how we do it in New York," he said.

He pulled the trigger.

The sound of the flintlock pistol going off lacked the refinement of modern firearms. It was like a miniature detonation taking place just beyond the end of Toby’s hand. Once the smoke had cleared—the smoke being one of the not-quite-ideal side effects of the weapon—Toby saw that the manticore had fallen right on its face. There was a great gaping crater in the back of its skull. Fragments of bone were everywhere. The blood was rich and red and looked extremely vital.

“Holy shit,” Anna said.

“I know,” Toby said enthusiastically. “That was like a real-life fucking Indiana Jo—“

“Those things are real,” Anna said. “I mean, they didn’t explode into mists like Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents normally do. They’re real flesh and blood creatures from this world!”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “They’re real. I guess Diddle managed to get them on his side because—“

“Because manticores are violence personified and lust after war like some people lust after sex or drugs or chocolate,” Gwen Adams said, coming up behind them. “But just because they’re of this world and not something dredged up by my dear brother, don’t let that fool you into thinking that any of his happy little accidents are any less capable of killing you than this manticore was.”

“Good pep talk, Mom,” Toby said dryly.

“A parents’ job isn’t always to make their offspring feel better. It’s to always tell them the truth,” Glenn Adams said.

Anna, firing an arrow followed by another in rapid succession, was the catalyst Toby needed to get his ass back into gear.

“Back at it!” he yelled, hefting his sword in two hands.

His voice, even though he bellowed, was almost swallowed by the ceaseless cacophony of the battlefield. He ran forward into the next bunch of happy little accidents. His enchanted sword glowed with that curious intense inner white heat.

Hoping his friends were following him, but not feeling like he had to check, Toby led the charge into the thronging madness of the battle taking place on the ramparts.

More of the Eclipsian troops had gained the top of the wall now. Things were dissolving into absolute and utter bedlam. It was lunacy of a kind that was wholly new and unique to Toby’s previous experiences.

Toby’s sword crackled and almost seemed to sear the air as he swung it left and right, cutting through the almost offensively useless hordes of Duke Diddle’s happy little accidents. A lot of the time, Toby wasn’t even able to put a name to the creature he was slaying. Many of them appeared to him as once familiar and yet subtly different in myriad different ways.

Clearly, Duke Diddle had been pulling every conceivable creature creation from his imagination that he could. There were monsters with hooks for hands. Monsters that had no eyes, but tongues five feet long and barbed. There were monsters with six arms and six tentacled legs that could run up walls as easily as Toby could run along an athletics track. There were things that looked like lizardmen, things that looked like dogs made of smoke, things that reminded Toby of a cartoon from the nineties about roller-skating sharks.

A troll, standing over nine feet tall, charged Toby. Its tusks were bared in a grotesque snarl. Toby met it head on, never wavering. His enchanted blade slashed upwards as he ducked a slow blow from one of the troll’s massive fists. His sword cut through the creature’s thick, mottled hide as easily as it might have done going through a bologna log. It severed the arm clean off at the shoulder in one stroke. The limb, which had been released from the body, withered and crumbled as if it was parchment consigned to the fire.

The troll’s roar echoed through the fortress courtyard. It was a deep, guttural sound that reverberated through Toby’s chest cavity. The creature stumbled back. Dark smoke gushed from the wound instead of blood.

Then, Toby raised his hand and formed a noose in his mind. The kinetic magic, as his mother had called it, looped around the troll’s neck. Toby closed his fist. The noose tightened. The troll’s eyes went wide, popped, and then its entire head was squeezed off its body.

Like an enormous, extremely ugly, plucked headless chicken, the troll stumbled around mindlessly for a few moments before it crashed over through a supply wagon.

Now that Toby was getting into the swing of things somewhat, he was focusing more of his attention on finding Duke Diddle. He wasn’t going to kid himself. He didn’t think Diddle was the kind of leader who got stuck into the middle of things. He struck him more as the ‘stand-at-the-back-and-use-others-as-your-weapons’ type. This kind of leader was, Lord Marshal Vani had assured Toby on many occasions, the smartest and most ruthless kind.

“But,” the ogre had said, “you don’t get the kind of kudos, respect, and bad-ass reputation that you do when you lead from the front. Having said that, you generally do get to retire without having to die first, which is always a bonus, being a leader from the back.

Toby’s eyes roved through the carnage.

The Eclipsian troops had gained access to parts of the fortress’ courtyard now. The gates were still being held, but banded and studded with iron as they were, they still looked like they were buckling. There was fighting everywhere Toby looked. Arrows, bolts, and bullets whizzed through the air in all directions.

Toby saw one luckless Eclipsian trooper raise his hands to deliver a killing blow with his ax to a hobgoblin he was fighting. In the next moment, a crossbow quarrel had come out of nowhere and hit him right under the arm. It was one of the few places the man looked to not be armored, yet it was the one place where the unnamed crossbow quarrel had struck.

That’s how precariously life and death hangs in the balance, Toby thought.

The Eclipsian warrior looked incredulous at the fact he’d just been shot. He dropped his ax and touched in a disbelieving fashion at the crossbow bolt embedded under his armpit. Then his eyes rolled up, and he tumbled off the wall.

To Toby’s left, Zareth Holloway was a red-headed blur. She weaved through the thick of the fighting. Her dark elf heritage lent her a supernatural grace, and her aggression probably rivaled that of any single entity in the fortress. She moved like a shadow, like a ballerina, like a ninja killer. She dodged attacks and delivered death with precision using the sword she’d been issued by Lord Marshal Vani. Every now and again, she would pause and use her magic to send an enemy tumbling down the staircase or knock over a pile of barrels to thwart the advance of a small squad of enemy hobgoblins.

Toby followed her lead. He didn’t lean too heavily on his magic, knowing that overexertion and overuse of it would sap his physical energy far more quickly. Plus, he knew that when he faced off with his uncle, he was likely to need every weapon in his arsenal.

However, that didn’t mean he didn’t use it when the time was ripe. With a flick of his wrist, Toby unleashed a bolt of power that arced through the air and struck a pack of snarling two-headed cougars. The bolt of energy detonated in the middle of the pack of these monsters and blew them to pieces.

“Nice, Tobes!” Anna yelled.

Then a pair of the two-headed monsters, which he hadn’t seen, ran across the courtyard towards Anna, their claws clicking on the stone. Toby’s next bolt of magic rippled through the air like a streak of semi-transparent lightning. The spell chained between the two advancing happy little accidents, leaping from one beast to the other. Their eyes burst into flames as they convulsed in mid-leap. They collapsed to the ground as blackened husks and then faded into smoke.

Toby and Zareth fought side by side and with a surprisingly satisfying unity.

Even as Toby dispatched the last of the two-headed cougars, more of Duke Diddle’s twisted creations surged forward. There was a nightmare creature, a mutated thing with a long slug-like body, crawling and loping towards Zareth on limbs that bent in all the wrong directions.

Without pausing, the dark elf spun her sword in the air so that it resembled a circle of molten silver. Then she pointed the blade of the sword in the direction of the weird, giant spider-slug thing, and it burst apart in a shower of black ichor.

“Not bad,” Toby said, but his words faded away. Up in one of the fortress windows, there was a balcony, and on that balcony stood a figure.

“Diddle,” Toby said under his breath. “It’s the man, the myth, the a-hole, Duke Diddle himself.”

From up on its perch, overlooking the mayhem, the figure waved down. Although he couldn’t be sure, Toby reckoned his uncle was looking right at him.

“Toby…” Gwen Adams said, running up to Toby’s side.

"Time to settle this," Toby said and sprinted towards the tower.

32

The inside of the fortress, the main courtyard of the main keep, was where the true melee was. It was less a melee, when Toby allowed himself a second or two to soak it in, and more a maelstrom.

A whirling vortex of flashing steel, magic and mayhem, arrows, quarrels and bullets flickering and whizzing this way and that. It was a storm, only in that storm there was no eye. If there had been it would have been put out long before by some sharpened bit of metal or other. It was all a storm.

Toby realized that it was where the true battle really began. The walls had just been an appetizer, a little taster of the carnage of war.

The air was thick with the metallic stink of spilled blood, the raw sewage tang of liberated guts and opened chest cavities. Not to mention the bowels that had been loosened with fear and the throes of soldiers' final agonies. It was heavy with magic too. There was a thick and oppressive quality to the atmosphere.

Toby charged towards the main doors of Duke Diddle's keep. The ranks and groups of happy little accidents twisted and funneled the Eclipsian forces that were now coming over the walls down the steps into the courtyard. There were almost formed corridors of scrapping, hacking men and monsters. Maces, mauls, axes, and hammers clashed in the surprisingly tight confines of the courtyard as Toby, followed by his mother and some of the others, made their way through it.

The inner heat that Toby was able to channel into his blade seemed to be more intense and prolonged now. He had a feeling, though he dwelt on the specifics of it hardly at all, that his own will and need to survive and win that fight was somehow channeled from his own inner reservoir of magic into the red jewel set into the hilt of his blade and from there into the blade itself.

The sword in his hand was radiating such an intense energy that on the odd occasion when Toby missed a monstrous target, or a dark elf, or even the enormous manticores, the sword would leave a blackened mark along the stonework of a wall or set of steps where it touched or scored it.

A monstrous beast charged from out of the pack of milling fighters towards Toby. It was a mass of sinewy muscle and spiked hide. Its face was a half-dissolved grotesque mask of awful squirming features. It snarled and spat at Toby as it lunged towards him.

Toby sidestepped, barely breaking his forward momentum. He swung his blade around in a tight arc. The sword met the creature's neck with a satisfying searing hiss. Not unlike the sound, he thought, you might get to listen to when you went to one of those fancy restaurants and were obliged to pay for the honor of cooking your own steak on a piece of hot stone.

The monstrosity's head tumbled to the floor. Its massive body stayed upright, its claw-tipped limbs flailing this way and there. It was blasted off its feet and lay still, thanks to Toby's mother.

Behind Toby, he could hear Zareth's voice calling out to Anna to cover her as she fought some giant sloth creatures. Toby saw, out of the corner of his eye, the dark elf wielding her sword in perfectly controlled arcs. First one way, then another. She supplemented these melee attacks of hers with simple, direct, and extremely efficacious blasts of magic.

Toby glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being snuck up on. A trio of hobgoblins were heading, clearly with malice aforethought, toward the party, but they were disintegrated in mid-stride by Gwen Adams.

"Keep moving!" his mother yelled in a voice that brooked no debate. "Keep moving. You've chosen your course. Now stick with it. Do not deviate. Head for the tower. Head for the main door!" Her voice was as sharp and no-nonsense as the edge of Toby's sword.

Toby nodded grimly. He continued pushing forward, cutting down yet another nameless monstrosity of Duke Diddle's devising. His blade passed through it like it was made of barely anything more than air.

Maybe it isn't.

Maybe some of those creatures they were fighting truly were the stuff of Duke Diddle's nightmares. They might have appeared real, like all nightmares did at the time of having them, but on closer inspection, when put under any form of duress, they parted like fog under sunlight.

There was another roaring crackle of gunfire off to Toby's right. He spared the sound of it a glance.

Luna, covered in blood and soot, was leading a charge of flintlock pistol-wielding engineer warriors. Toby saw that they were still peppering the walls, this time from the interior of the fortress.

A manticore fell snarling from the ramparts, torn apart nicely by the hail of lead. The sounds of the gunfire reverberated and bounced around the shiny walls of the inner courtyard.

Many of those mortals who had been swayed or coerced into fighting under Duke Diddle's banners turned and gaped at the sound. It was clear that many, if not all of them, had never seen anything that even resembled a flintlock pistol. Toby was gratified to see that the Eclipsian soldiers capitalized on this momentary, lowly collective concentration. Many of the fighters on Duke Diddle's side were cut down.

Toby and his small party of close companions were brought up short before they could reach the main door of the fortress. The warriors from both sides had pulled in front of the fortress. The fighting was furious and thick. There was barely room to swing a cat, let alone a sword.

With an awful, ear-stinging bellow, another of the manticores—though it looked to be one of the few remaining, the Eclipsian troops having made it their priority to kill the awful beasts—leapt down from the top of the ramparts. It crushed two Eclipsian soldiers under its dustbin lid-sized paws.

Toby raised his hand to direct a jet of thaumaturgy towards the beast. Before he could loose his blow, however, Vexxx had stepped forward.

The former right-hand man of Duke Diddle had the voluminous sleeves of his strange patchwork, almost gothic robes rolled up to his elbows. His arms were like sticks. He looked weedy, but it was clear that the strength of Vexxx did not lie in his physical body, but in his mind.

Like many of the great people back home, Toby thought. Like many of the great movers and shakers.

Vexxx was moving and shaking right then all right. He shook his commodious sleeves  back and raised his left hand. He balled his fingers into a fist. Toby actually saw his robes rise a little on his skeletal frame. Then he let forth a blast of concussive energy that was rimed and rimmed with bright pink light

The impact of that spell on the manticore was like a battering ram. The manticore's already pretty hideous face was flattened. Bones crunched as its neck was driven into its body. The great part-lion, part-human, part-scorpion monster was flung backwards and smashed so hard into the wall behind that the black stone cracked.

Toby was about to thank Vexxx, but before he could do so, he was obliged to throw up a hastily erected magical shield. The spines of another manticore's tail were arrested by the shield and dissolved into toxic little clouds of purple smoke.

An Eclipsian warrior was not so lucky. He had been outside Toby's bubble of influence. He was hacking at Duke Diddle's minions from the back of a kirin, but a hail of the spines caught him in the back. He started shrieking in agony and trying to reach around behind himself to rid himself of the lethal projectiles.

He started frothing at the mouth. To Toby's sympathetic disgust, the man's face melted, his skin sloughed away, and he almost poured off the back of his kirin, which, miraculously, had not been hit, thanks to its rider's body getting in the way.

Anna drew her bowstring to her ear, took a steadying breath as her muscles tensed, and let fly a shaft. The arrow hit the offending manticore and caused it to switch its attention to her. Another swift flick of her fingers sent another arrow hissing up onto the wall. This one caught the manticore through the throat as it roared.

Toby saw its head turn in bemusement as if someone had tapped it on the shoulder. He could see the slick point of Anna's arrow protruding from the back of its throat. Then its knees went wobbly, and it fell forward onto its forelegs.

An enterprising Eclipsian soldier, knowing when to strike when the iron was hot, came forward then and planted his axe blade right in the middle of the stricken manticore's forehead.

“Toby, come on!"

Toby turned to see his mother waving frantically at him. Although she was still continuing doggedly, and her mouth was set in a hard line that he recognized as meaning she wasn't about to give up for nothing and no one, he could tell that her imprisonment in Duke Diddle's tower was sapping her strength. Perhaps even more quickly than she might have thought.

As she gestured to him, she raised her other hand almost in a devil's horn gesture. A torrent of blue fire erupted from between her forefinger and pinky finger. It roasted a froggy creature with bat-like wings in mid-air.

Toby felt the heat of the magic on his face. He narrowed his eyes as he hurried towards where his mother and most of the others were waiting for him. Toby noted how Verity, Zareth, and Vexxx had formed a loose circle around Gwen Adams. Clearly, he was not the only one who had identified that she was flagging a little.

"Anna, come on!" Toby cried.

Anna turned after letting fly another arrow at a goblin, who fell shrieking and bumping down a set of stairs that led down from the wall.

"What about Luna?" his best friend asked.

Luna heard her name even in all the din. She turned and gestured for Toby and the others to go on without her.

"I'll clean up here," she said. "Lord Marshal Vani and I will make sure that you come out to a clean house."

There was no time for a conversation about it. Luna sounded resolute. It sounded like she had made up her mind.

At that moment, as if to emphasize her point, the gate in the wall crashed open. Toby saw the battering ram bearers fling down the iron-tipped log that had done the deed.

To his distinct gratification and delight, Toby saw Lord Marshal Vani himself stride through the splintered doorway. His great sandaled foot lashed out and booted in the remnants of the massive iron-bound door. It flew through the air and crushed an enemy dark elf. The ogre was clad in his war gear. Toby had never seen him thus attired. It was a truly fearsome sight.

Lord Marshal Vani emptied a leather gourd into his mouth and then hit an orc with it so hard that the orc was sent twenty feet into the air. The ogre dropped the empty gourd and pulled a massive war hammer from his belt. Another orc found itself turning from five and a half feet tall to an inch-thick patty as the Lord Marshall landed his first blow. He bellowed with grim delight again.

"On with you, Adams! On with you. Take care of that fucking Diddlehead!"

“Hey, the name is catching on!” Anna laughed.

Without another word or gesture, Toby turned to the door that fronted the fortress. Vexxx was already standing beside it, examining it. Toby hurried up.

"Well?" he asked.

"It's open," the bespectacled mage said, turning his ambivalent face towards Toby. "It's open. It seems that the Duke is waiting for us."

Toby looked pensively at the great iron door that fronted the tower. Its iron bindings were twisted into cruel shapes.

"Yeah, I guess he's waiting for us," Toby said, "but I doubt he's alone. Be on your guard."

Toby turned back towards the door after having one final look around his group of friends. Anna, Verity, Zareth, Vexxx, and his mother stood watching him. They were waiting, Toby realized, for his lead.

"Are you sure you're ready for this, kid?" Frank said. His tone was surprisingly grave, surprisingly serious. There was none of his usually accustomed sarcasm or acerbity to it.

"I'm ready," Toby said.

He raised his foot. He pulled magic from inside of himself, and supercharging his raised boot, he kicked out. The iron-bound doors buckled inwards, and with a crash, they came clean off their hinges, skidding six feet into the interior of the hall beyond.

Frank let out a low whistle of approval.

Toby caught Anna's eye.

"Yeah," he said, with a half smile and a wink. "Yeah, you can bet your ass I've always wanted to do that."

33

The crashing crescendo of those huge iron-bound doors hitting the polished stone floor was the aural equivalent of a drunk person falling through a table at a wake. That is to say, there was no way it was going to go unnoticed.

And it didn’t.

Toby led the way inside with his sword drawn. In the gloom, the enchanted blade, which was more or less glowing constantly now with a cold heat, acted as a weak torch of sorts.

Behind him, he could hear his companions moving with caution. It seemed to Toby that they were all very aware that every single step they took now brought them irrevocably closer to their nemesis.

“This is fucking bizarre,” Anna breathed.

“What is?” Toby asked.

“This is the showdown,” Anna said. “This is actually the real fucking showdown. If this was a movie, we’d be in the final twenty minutes.”

“And you’d be complaining that you can’t hold your pee for another second,” Toby said.

“I would not!”

“Yes, you would,” Toby insisted. “Happens every time.”

Anna waved her hand at Toby as if to say he didn’t know what he was on about.

“Yes,” Gwen Adams agreed quietly. Her eyes were moving every which way, searching every corner—not that there were a lot of corners in the huge hall they had walked into. “Yes, we are nearing the twisted heart of my brother's operation. There is no doubt about that.”

“All this,” Verity said, waving her hand around. “All of this accumulated power. All this expenditure of wealth, magic and life. The least he could have done was to get a maid to look after the inside of this place.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Frank said. “I kind of like it.”

“You would,” Verity said.

There certainly was a particular atmosphere to the interior of the fortress. Although Toby could still hear the crash and smash of fighting outside, it was curiously quiet inside the tower. It reminded him of a mausoleum. The stones had a slick quality to them, and there was a strange, stale feeling to the air, which clung clammily to the bare skin of their faces and hands.

Only thing that’s missing is the occasional plink of a drop of water falling.

“There,” Vexxx said.

An ascending stairwell had emerged out of the gloom in front of them.

“I believe that’s what they call the final stretch, is it not?” Vexxx said.

Toby led the way. He placed his foot on the first step of the staircase. As if in answer or response to the gall shown by placing his boot on the staircase, there was a distant chittering and screeching.

Toby felt the atmosphere around them change—warp, twist. It was something like a breeze flowing down the staircase, but it was not air. It was a movement of something else.

Magic, he realized.

“Ready yourselves,” Toby said quietly. He heard the sound of leather creaking as the grips of his friends shifted and tightened on their weapons.

“Whatever is up there waiting for us,” Anna said, “it doesn’t sound like it’s just Duke Diddle.”

“No one likes to party alone,” Toby quipped.

As they ascended the staircase, the screeching became a roar. It was an inhuman cacophony of noise that shook the very walls around them. They reached the top of the long stairs. They had switched back once, heading steeply up to another level. When they emerged, they found themselves in what was either a large hall or an extremely wide and tall corridor.

From out of the shadows of this dimly lit space, they heard a scuttling, scrabbling sound. It was the kind of noise that nightmares and the trailers for horror films were soundtracked with.

Then, the creatures emerged.

“Ew,” Anna said.

Toby activated his dormant spell. His sword flared to life.

They came in a rush. They were humanoid things but also hideously alien.

Insectoid. That was the word that leapt like a spring lamb into Toby's head. Something that was at once part human, part insect, part alien, part robot. They had elongated, chitinous bodies, which glistened in the dim light being cast by a series of pale torches flickering in sconces on the walls. They were bipedal, and they moved with a speed that was at once unnatural, extremely worrying and vaguely nauseating. They had ‘predator’ written all over them.

“Yeah, they’re not going to be winning any beauty contests any time soon,” Frank said.

They stood as tall as Toby and his friends, but their spindly limbs ended in razor-sharp claws that clicked against the stone floor. Their exoskeletons clearly acted as an organic kind of armor. The separate plates clacked and clicked together so that the weird insectoids moved with an almost crackling, discordant sound.

Verity said with real feeling, “I hate bugs.”

“Yeah, I’m not much of a fan of them either,” Frank said. “Those bastards remind me of far larger versions of the ones that we typically eat for breakfast in the Below-Below.”

“And you complain about Dishy’s cooking,” Toby said quietly. “Unbelievable.”

Instead of eyes, Toby could see that the insectoids had clusters of glistening multifaceted lenses. These weird ocular devices caught the faint light of the torches and made the lenses gleam with an inner malice. Between their chitinous plates, strange vaporous glands pulsed, releasing thin wisps of steam and more venomous-looking smoke.

“And… Oh yes, kobolds,” Vexxx reeled off. “The Duke likes kobolds.”

Toby saw then that, although most of his attention had been taken up by the weird insect-robot things, there were also some smaller reptilian creatures scrambling alongside the bugmen.

The kobolds were wiry, hunched creatures, covered in scales that glinted with a surprisingly nice silvery sapphire gleam. What wasn’t quite so nice was the crude weapons they carried in their hands—jagged swords and battered shields that looked like they’d been crafted in a scrapyard. Each of the kobolds’ strange ratty reptilian faces was held in a mask of animalistic fury.

“Never thought I’d miss fighting goblins,” Verity said lightly.

Toby heard the soft sound of her hidden blades sliding out from her sleeves.

With a skittering screech that sent shivers down the spines of Toby and his friends, the horde of bugmen and kobolds descended. The insectoid monsters surged forward with their terrifying speed. Some of them compounded their intimidation factor by scuttling up the walls and moving as easily along them as they had done on the ground.

“We all know what to do,” Toby said.

“Let’s do it!” Zareth cried.

Their enemies crashed into them a moment later. Limbs barbed with razor hooks sliced through the air. Clawed feet lashed out, hoping to tear the flesh off Toby and his party. The sound of the bugmen’s chitin scraping against stone was like nails down a chalkboard. The thick acrid stench of the smoke that expelled from between their armored plates was choking and foul.

Toby reacted instinctively as the first bugman leapt towards him. Its razor-sharp forelimbs flashed out like those of a praying mantis. He brought his sword up just in time to deflect the double blow. The blade sparked as they clashed with the chitinous arms and sheared them away.

The impact rattled him, but he was much better off than his opponent. The bugman fell back, waving its twin stumps. Toby’s enchanted sword came forward and cleaved through the monster’s lower jaw, crunching out the top of its head. He twisted the blade and pulled it out. The insectoid dropped in a spray of greenish ichor.

All around him, using metal and magic, his friends did the same. That was to say, they fought for their lives. They cut down their reptilian and insectoid foes in any way they could. Survival was key. They knew that Duke Diddle must be up ahead of them somewhere. He was sending what probably amounted to his personal bodyguard to try and crush them.

Anna was a marvel. She stood at the back of the group, moving along behind the main body of the fight. Each of her arrows was aimed with a cool, calm precision. They sought out the vulnerable joints between the insectoids’ armor and took the kobolds through the throat, under their arms, or right in the forehead when she could manage it.

Toby saw one arrow flash past Verity’s blonde head and bury itself in the neck of a kobold that had raised its simple hatchet to hack at Vexxx’s back. The kobold convulsed, trying to reach the arrow in its back. Then it collapsed to the ground, shivering and shuddering as it died.

The following shaft embedded itself in the ocular cluster of one of the bugmen. The creature hissed, smoke pouring from the shattered lenses. Then Verity ducked in and severed its head from its stalk-like neck with her hidden blades.

Verity and Zareth darted in and out of the melee. They were like twin female shadows of destruction. The dark elf moved with the flowing grace of quicksilver. Verity’s daggers flashed as she slipped between both the bugmen and the kobolds. The blades were smaller, but she was well-versed in finding the vulnerable gaps in their enemies’ armor.

One of the insectoids lashed out at Zareth with a clawed limb, but she ducked under the strike and pressed her two fingers to the thorax of the creature. Toby’s eyebrows rose as the rear of the creature’s slightly pendulous body exploded outwards like a water balloon filled with mushy peas bursting.

Toby’s face was set in lines of grim exertion. He wanted to hack his way through this lot so that he could get to Diddle and end this.

Frank, who had retaken his usual impish form, was floating around Toby, shooting the occasional fireball or else sticking his forked tail into the lens collections of the bugmen to blind them.

Gwen Adams hung back a little with Anna, Toby could sense her frustration in not being able to take a more forthright hand in the proceedings. But she was level-headed enough to realize that even in her weakened, debilitated state, she could still play a key part. She acted almost as a buffer character. She threw up defenses when she thought that certain members of the party weren’t looking; she protected them and boosted their strength and speed so that they could more quickly and efficiently dispatch their enemies.

After what felt like an awfully long time, Toby started to worry. Well, maybe ‘worry’ was the wrong word, but a fragment of doubt had lodged itself like a splinter in his mind. Even as the dark elf Zareth’s magic felled one more foe, even more kobolds surged forward to fill the space the dead insectoid had left.

Toby and the others had made their way along the hall and into a corridor beyond, fighting all the while. However, the corridor seemed to be closing in around them as the swarm pressed in on them. It felt like they were being overrun by a tide of chitin and scales.

“Fuckers!” Toby cried as he slashed through another insectoid, his sword leaving a hot trail of steam as it cleaved through the creature’s hardened armor. The smell of scorched chitin filled his nostrils as his enemy collapsed in a heap, its limbs twitching like a spider that had just been hit with a blast of insect repellent.

“We’re not going to last if we get bogged down here,” Vexxx shouted. His voice was loud, as it had to be to be heard over the din of the fighting, but it wasn’t panicked. He was speaking as he always did, with a strange factual coolness.

The man, Toby thought, could have been declaring that the world was about to end, and still he wouldn’t have seemed all that bothered. He’d be more concerned with making sure that what he was saying was factually correct and free of syntax errors, Toby thought wryly as he slit another kobold from its neck to its navel.

Vexxx swept his arm around. A collection of kobolds were sent flying backwards. The small reptilian creatures jabbered and shrieked as, haloed in pale red light, they smashed into the walls of the corridor, their bodies crumpling and bones breaking under the force of the impact.

“We need to push on,” Toby called. “We need to push on.”

His muscles were aching with the effort, but there was simply no time to rest. If they rested, if they grew lethargic or tired, they would die. That was all there was to it.

We have to crush this swarm before we’re overrun, Toby thought.

He pulled free the second pistol he had wedged in the back of his sword belt under his thigh-length ranger’s coat. He had spotted a potential way out.

He fired. The detonation of the flintlock weapon was unbelievably loud in the stone confines of the corridor. The kobold Toby had been aiming at was blown clean off its feet, the lead round punching into its breast and killing it instantly.

“Come on, follow me,” Toby cried.

“Let’s finish this,” Anna added. The sound of his best friend’s bowstring snapping was followed a second later by an insectoid enemy crumpling backward to slide down the stone wall of the corridor.

Toby and his friends surged down through the gap towards the end of the corridor. Toby cut down a bugman as he went. Vexxx and Gwen turned. All the remaining bugmen and kobolds were behind them now.

“Together, Gwen Adams said.

“Together,” Vexxx said.

Toby’s mother and the man who had formerly sworn allegiance to Duke Diddle sent a torrent of mingled flame and gas down the tight confines of the corridor. The kobolds and remaining bugmen screeched and hissed as they were blasted apart or scorched beyond recognition.

A final bugman, burning all over with an eldritch green fire, lumbered forward out of the inferno. It was a big bastard as the bugmen went, and it was clearly tough.

Toby didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward to meet this final opponent. The bugman swung its bladed limbs in a flurry of strikes, trailing fire and embers behind each one. Toby was faster, though. Plus, he wasn’t on fire, which he imagined helped in a one-on-one combat situation.

Toby ducked under the first strike, sidestepped the next, and then swept his sword around to hack one of the bugman’s legs clean off. The insectoid flailed around with its burning limbs. Toby flinched backward as one hissed past his face, the burning claw carving a line of fire across his cheek. Then, he leaned in and cleaved the creature right down its flaming torso. There was a sizzling sound as blood and ichor contacted the flaming chitinous plates. The insectoid collapsed.

Panting, Toby turned back to his companions. “Any more of the bastards?” he asked.

“Negative,” Frank said.

Toby nodded. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm. “Well then,” he said breathlessly. “Well then, we’re almost there, I think. One final push.”

He realized then that they were standing at what amounted to a T-junction. The corridor they had just come from, still burning and smoldering and stinking with the residual body parts of their fallen kobold and bugman enemies, acted as the long part of the T. Now they had to choose from a left turn or a right.

“Here, darling,” Verity said.

She handed Toby a vial of health potion. Toby popped the cork and drank. He felt the slice across his cheek knit together.

Before they could gather their thoughts and talk about where they should go, the keep trembled. A sudden surging wash of magic blasted from down the corridor from whence they’d just come.

“Ah,” Vexxx said.

The force hit all of them like a tidal wave, a tidal wave of invisible magical particles that tossed them up like corks in a bathtub and then threw them apart.

Toby barely had time to register what was happening before the magic engulfed him and spun him away down the left-hand corridor, while all of his friends went right.

Spinning color. Rushing wind.

Hard ground.

34

Toby had seen a number of animated or cartoon movies where the protagonists were sucked down a pipe, swirled around, and then spat out the other end. He’d always wondered obliquely how he’d fare in a situation like that.

Now he knew—at least to some regard.

He was flung through the air, tumbling and twisting. He hit the ground so hard that his skull cracked the stone, and he was pretty sure he blacked out for a moment. The wind was knocked out of him certainly. Actually, it might have been more accurate to say it was sucked out of him, as the charging magic ripped through the corridors and separated him from his friends.

The air was suddenly hard, harsh, and brittle in his lungs when he was finally able to draw breath again. It felt how he imagined being caught in a backdraft might. The very atmosphere had a crispy, deep-fried quality to it.

Toby coughed as he rolled onto his front. With great effort, he got to his knees and then to his feet. His sword was lying a few inches from his benumbed head. He managed to pick it up. He looked around, leaning against the stone wall of the hall.

In that lightning-fast, awful second, he saw that his companions were gone.

Then he came to the realization that they weren’t, in actual fact, gone. They were simply separated from him at the T-junction where the two corridors met.

They were separated by a shimmering, oily wall of raw magic.

The magic ran and rippled with a strange, sinister, incandescent illumination. Through this barrier, he could make out the blurry, distorted shapes of his companions.

Toby gave his head a shake. His ears were ringing. Bizarrely, looking through that wall of magic, it appeared to him that he was observing his friends down the wrong end of a spyglass. They looked weirdly far away, and yet Toby got the impression that they were just on the other side of the barrier that, presumably, Duke Diddle had erected.

“Guys? Anna, Mom, can you hear me?” Toby called. His words were muffled in his own ears.

“We can hear you,” his mother called back. Her voice was clear, but it sounded like it was echoing from the end of a very long tunnel.

“What the fuck was that?” Toby called.

“Language,” his mother replied automatically.

Toby rolled his eyes. “What the hell was that?” he repeated.

“I don’t know. It’s my brother’s doing,” his mother said. “Let me run some tests.”

“Let me run some tests,” Anna said.

Toby saw the distorted, rippling outline of his best friend as she pulled an arrow from her quiver.

“Wait!” Toby said. He flung himself on the ground, knowing what his slightly impulsive friend was liable to do.

The arrow left her bow. Toby couldn’t really make out its path, but he saw where it stuck right enough. It came to a halt, trapped like a fly in a pot of blue, in the magic that stood between them. Slowly, Toby saw the wood of the arrow begin to break up, splintering into infinitesimally small pieces as whatever magic stood between him and his friends dissolved it.

Another sound came from behind that barrier of magic. More shapes emerged from the weird, distorted dimness beyond his friends and his mother. Toby saw that more kobolds had emerged from the passage behind them.

He saw Verity turn and call something out. Frank lit up the corridor with a fireball. Vexxx started slinging spells.

“Toby,” his mother shouted.

“What, Mom?”

“Toby, you have to push on. I don’t know what’s going on with this barrier. I don’t know how to break it. I might not be able to break it in the state I’m in. Once we clear these kobolds out, Vexxx, Zareth, and I will tackle it together. But you need to push on.”

“I can’t leave you,” Toby said.

“Yes, you can. You will. You must,” Toby’s mother said. Her voice was hard and insistent. More than that, though, it rang true with a silvery, steely ring of undeniable, irrefutable logic.

Toby took a step toward the barrier. He pressed his hand to it. Up close, the magic was acrid on his tongue, and he retracted his fingers, shaking them. He looked down and saw that his fingertips were red and blistered.

Every instinct, every cell in his body was screaming at him to help his friends, to find a way back to them. He looked around. There was no doorway, no passages leading off the one he was in. There was only onwards.

“You have to push on,” his mother repeated.

Toby pressed the tip of his enchanted sword into the magical barrier. The thaumaturgical wall gave like an impossibly thick skin on a bubble. He got the feeling that, should he spend long enough and press hard enough, he could eventually cut through the membrane.

But how long would that take? Toby thought. Is it easier and quicker to just go on and confront Diddle? Is it the better thing to do for the realm? Fuck…

Lord Marshall Vani’s words came back to him: “Cut off the head and the body will follow.”

“I can’t just leave you behind,” Toby shouted. “You need me. You can’t—“

“Go,” his mother said, her voice harder this time. “You go right now, son. This is your destiny. This is written.”

Zareth’s voice was added to that of Gwen Adams. “Toby Adams, listen to your mother. I swear on the bond that binds our flesh that I will look after her until my last breath. Go on now. Listen to her. She is wise, and she is strong, and she is selfless. You need to do this, not for us, not for yourself—“

“—but for all of Eclipsia,” Verity shouted.

Anna loosed another arrow. Toby saw the wavering shape of a kobold collapse as the shaft hit home. He wondered how many she had left. Would she have enough?

“Tobes,” Anna’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Tobes, your mom’s right. This is your path. You have to finish what we started. Once we kill these scaly bastards, your mom, Vexxx, and Zareth will find a way through the spell.”

“But you have to go on, Mr. Adams,” Vexxx said. “You have a prophecy to fulfill. And if I know the Duke—which I compliment myself in saying that I think I do, perhaps better than anyone else—then this spell is meant to keep you from doing just that.”

Toby’s heart twisted up in his chest. Prophecy. There was that fucking word again. The word that gnawed at him. The weight bearing down on his shoulders. That hung like a pendant carved of expectation around his neck. The idea that his destiny was carved out of the stone of this world. That his fate was predetermined.

It still didn’t sit right with him.

“This is fate, human,” Frank called. And it was only then that Toby realized that the little imp was sundered from him too. “This is fate.”

“And our fates are what we make of them,” Toby shouted back, his voice suddenly steady and defiant.

“Wait a minute,” Anna called. “Wasn’t that from that robot movie?”

Toby winced internally as his friend referred to the classic Terminator 2 as ‘that robot movie.’ Then he grinned. “Yeah, you got me,” he said. “But John Connor wasn’t wrong. Our fates might be what we make them. So I’m going to go and choose mine.”

Toby saw his mother come to stand just as close as she was able to next to the magical barrier. He couldn’t see it for sure, but he liked to imagine that there was pride flickering in her fatigued eyes.

“Then go and choose it, son,” she said. “We’ll follow along as soon as we are able.”

And so, resolutely and not without a hint of regret, Toby turned and walked down the corridor to see whatever destiny had in store for him.

35

The winding corridor stretched before Toby as he walked steadfastly down it.

His heart was hammering in his chest. It was beating far harder, far more erratically than the circumstances called for. He was nervous, certainly, he was on edge, but he had experienced so much since the battle had begun that the idea of running into Duke Diddle was more a relief than a source of anxiety. And yet, still, his heart felt belabored.

It wasn't long before he started to realize that something was up. The air around him felt thick, like he was wading through soup. The walls, which had previously been smooth and unnaturally straight, twisted. The corridor ahead of him looked impossibly long and narrow one moment, cavernously wide the next.

Toby took a moment. He paused and closed his eyes. He took a long, slow breath in. He felt the reassuring weight of his sword in his hand. He touched the knife at his belt. He shrugged his shoulders, felt the quiver and arrows on his back.

It’s all right. This is just another little mind game of your uncle’s. It’s all right. Trust in your feet. Keep walking.

He carried on. Still, the stone seemed to shift and stretch and contract around him, as though he was in the guts of some enormous subterranean monster. The tower itself seemed to be responding to his presence. He was not wanted there. Neither he nor any of his friends were wanted there. And yet, he went on, even as he felt that malice beating upon his forehead like the heat of some malignant sun.

He walked on and on, twisting around on himself, sometimes going up steep slopes, sometimes almost climbing up flights of stairs that were as steep as a ladder. The further he walked, the more the tower around him seemed to shift and change. It almost felt like it was disintegrating and reforming moment by moment. At one point, the steps he was ascending melted into mist, only to solidify again as his boots came down to touch upon them.

The air grew cold, so cold that his breath came out in long puffs of steam. And then, stepping through a doorway, he found himself stiflingly hot. The cold sweat that had been running in rivulets down his spine turned hot and sticky as melted honey.

Time itself felt like a concept that had been left outside in the courtyard. Almost, Toby found himself wishing to be back there, to be fighting in the mud and blood. At least that was simple. He wasn't sure what was going on here.

His heartbeat was thundering in his ears. Toby stumbled. He put out his hand to steady himself. For a moment, his mind, under as tight a rein as he had it, threatened to unravel under the strain of this fucked-up, nightmarish space that Duke Diddle had obviously concocted at the top of the tower that stood in the heart of his realm.

Here, the wand that he had crafted for himself back in the palace of Eclipsia was at its most powerful. The tower itself, Toby could almost have believed, was another ghastly manifestation pulled from the aether by the wand.

He swallowed back some vomit as he looked in front of him. The corridor was twisting in an impossible way. It looked to be weaving this way and that before spiraling upward. He walked towards it, but when he got to the end, he saw that it was plunging down at a dizzying angle.

Toby wiped sweat away from his forehead, dashed it away from his eyes. There was a door ahead of him.

Where did that come from?

He held out his hand to push it open. His hand vanished into the very stonework. His head spun.

Fucking get it together, Adams. Get it together, he reprimanded himself.

But it was hard. He pictured his friends. He pictured Anna, who he'd known for longer than he could remember. He pictured his mother, his father, his brothers. He pictured what it would be like seeing them again, getting them to come out to Eclipsia.

With an effort, he pictured Verity, Luna, Zareth, all in various states of undress, remembering the wonderful nights they'd spent together under the stars and under the covers in the house in the Baker's Quarter of Stagbreach.

His sword pulsed hotly in his hand. It felt like the only constant in this shifting sea of madness. It was the lifeline that connected him to what was real, and he clung to it.

Toby spat bile and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pressed on. He had to.

The walls rippled, turning into waves of liquid stone that washed away to some unseen shore. He staggered again, almost falling. He forced himself upward and onwards.

Shapes began to move in the periphery of his vision. They were dark, indistinct, vaguely humanoid figures. Toby turned his head to get a better look at them. They disappeared, blending into the dark stone. But their whispers, in languages that he had never heard or somehow maybe long forgotten, followed after him. The words flitted in and out of his ears, stabbing at his mind.

The shadows followed, faceless and unknowable. Their voices blended into a maddening, humming chorus that almost drowned out his own thoughts.

But Toby was stronger than that. He kept telling himself that. He kept reassuring himself. He was stronger. Not only was he stronger than this, he was stronger than Duke Diddle. He was stronger than his uncle.

He carried on doggedly. One foot in front of the other. One reluctant, confused step following on from the one before. His teeth were gritted, his brow furrowed, the cords in his neck standing out like steel wire. Every inch gained was hard. Every step felt like a defiance toward the chaos that Duke Diddle was weaving around him.

He focused on a single purpose. He had to stop Duke Diddle. That was all. And to do that, he had to find the man. Whatever came after, he would worry about in due time.

The corridors twisted and turned like a drunken snake. They folded in on themselves before, all of a sudden—or so it seemed—they snapped back into a sharp clarity that made Toby gasp. He actually sank to his knees as the world, as he had known it, came back to him. The mist that had fogged his brain dissipated. The air became more breathable.

Toby was no longer in the warped hallway of the keep. Looking around, he wasn’t entirely sure if he was still in the keep at all. Although where else he might have been, he didn’t know.

The notion that he might have stepped out of the keep somehow was not very unbelievable as things went. A little corporeal transference seemed the least that Duke Diddle might try at that moment.

Standing up, with his hands on his creaking knees, Toby looked around. He was standing in a wide circular chamber. The walls were lined with more black stone. This black stone was not obsidian and shiny. This black stone seemed to absorb, to drink, the light of the torches that were set in even spaces along its walls.

It was cold in that chamber. The chill of the place bit into the exposed skin of Toby’s face and hands. His breath plumed in front of him. He could see it coming ragged, as if he’d just run a marathon. As if he’d just run a race. If he had, he didn’t feel like he’d won.

The chamber was empty. Toby looked around. There was no door in evidence. Behind him, where he had come from, where he had ascended the stairs and followed the corridors, was nothing but blank black stone.

“What the fuck…?” Toby said aloud, and his words fell dead and flat.

“Your mother would not approve of that language.”

Toby turned around again and there, standing not twenty paces away, was Duke Diddle.

Where the older man had come from, Toby had no idea. He was there, though, standing bold as a bald baboon's ballsack, watching Toby with that same condescending, superior air that a sociopathic lepidopterist might watch the final struggles of a butterfly he’s just pinned alive to his board. That familiar, enraging, faint mocking smile was on the man’s lips. His red hair was slicked back on his head. He looked like a man who had every air of someone enjoying themselves immensely about him.

“Nephew,” the Duke said. “How pleased I am for you to join me.”

“You’re going to be a lot less pleased about it when I shove this sword up your ass,” Toby said.

“Ah yes, empty bravado. My sister used to tell me that in the world she left this one for, where she met your pig of a father, your useless humdrum human of a father, there were buildings where you could go and watch stories come to life on large screens of silver.” The Duke grimaced. “She said that you were a big fan of those, you and your siblings. Perhaps, nephew, you have been watching too many stories.”

“Honestly, you’re probably right on that score,” Toby conceded. “But on the upside, it does give me a plethora of witty retorts to fire back at you, depending on what garbage you’re liable to spout.”

“You’ve been busy since last we spoke, nephew,” Duke Diddle said. Toby was gratified to see a flash of annoyance pass over the haughty countenance.

“What can I say? I like to make myself useful,” Toby said lightly. He hoped his blasé tone would rankle his uncle. “I just popped over to that shit-house tower you knocked up and rescued Mom. Vexxx pointed us in the right direction of that one. That was after we set off that dragon charm at your old house. It wasn’t too hard to escape that wildfire. I was a little bit disappointed in you, if I’m honest. I thought you might have pushed us a little, but we escaped fairly easily on the back of our kirins.”

“Had they been horses, you might not have fared so well,” the Duke said.

“Yeah, maybe,” Toby said. “Still, we got away and we rescued Mom.”

“My sister’s here?” the Duke said sharply.

“You didn’t know?” Toby said. “I thought you would have seen it or sensed it or some bullshit.”

The Duke opened his mouth to reply.

Toby snapped his fingers. “Ah, but there I go, forgetting a crucial point,” he said. “Mom was always the better magic user, wasn’t she? That’s the word on the street, anyway. So she probably covered her tracks somehow.”

This time there was no mistaking it. A flash of bitter, resentful rage passed over Duke Diddle’s face like a thundercloud scudding over the face of the noonday sun.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Uncle Diddlestick,” Toby said. “We can’t always be the best at everything we try at.”

Duke Diddle took a step toward Toby. As he drew closer, Toby saw that, while the man could never have been said to have had a lot of spare flesh, he was now positively gaunt. He was sharp-cheeked and hollow-eyed. The eyes, which had been a bright blue, were filled with a fire that was not comforting in the least. Cold. His fingers twitched at his side and, suddenly, he was holding a wand.

The wand, Toby thought. The very source of the power that’s warped Eclipsia and unleashed his nightmares upon the world.

“Mom was pretty impressed that you managed to knock up that magic stick,” Toby said casually, nodding at the Duke’s wand. “Even though she’s the more competent magic user, she was still pretty damn impressed that you managed to whip something like that up. Of course, if you hadn’t kept her locked in that tower of yours and suppressed her magic for so long, she’d be here having this conversation with you. No doubt she’d already be taking that wand off you now and sticking it somewhere uncomfortable. Not up the ass, though, obviously. There’s going to be no room up there. What with my sword being firmly—”

“Enough!" the Duke barked.

With an obvious effort, he got himself under control. When he next spoke, it was in a sickly, honeyed drawl.

“The prodigal nephew returns,” he said.

Slowly, Toby shifted his grip on his sword, making sure that it was ready for him to swing at the Duke’s neck if he came within range. The air between the two men fairly crackled with tension. It was the kind of tension that only led one way. It was that kind of special tension that bloomed between men of fiery temperament at certain times in certain bars. It was the kind of tension that sprang up between family members at Christmas when board games were irresponsibly mixed with alcohol.

It was, in short, the kind of tension that could only be broken by a good scrap.

“Go on then,” Toby said abruptly.

The Duke cocked his head to one side.

“Go on with your insane, egocentric monologue,” Toby said. “Go on. I’ll wait.” He crossed his arms, his sword dangling in his grip. “Seriously, go on,” Toby said. “I don’t want you to be deprived of this moment. No doubt you’ve been cooking up what you’d say to me had I managed to fight my way here. Well, here I am, Uncle. Let it rip.”

“It doesn’t seem that you’re taking this very seriously, nephew.”

“What makes you say that?” Toby said. He made sure to wrap the question in so much sarcasm that even the Duke, wrapped up in his own machinations as he obviously was, wouldn’t have missed it.

The Duke went to open his mouth to say something, but Toby held up a finger.

“Sorry, if I can just say one thing,” he said. “You should really have stuck with Faye.”

“Pardon me?” Duke Diddle said.

“Faye. Akhtar Faye. That’s your name, right? Mom told me. You should have stuck with Faye. Way more badass than Diddle.”

“Diddle means ‘nightmare’ in ancient hobgoblin,” Duke Diddle said. And there was a note of defensiveness to his tone. He looked annoyed that he’d let his peevishness slip.

“Yeah, Mom told me that too,” Toby said. “But the thing is, Uncle, back on my world, ‘diddle’ means something quite different.”

“What does it mean?” his uncle asked before he could stop himself.

Toby extended his pinky finger and held it down by his crotch. He waggled it suggestively.

His uncle’s face became truly murderous.

“Duke Johnson,” Toby said. He tried not to laugh, but he didn’t try very hard. “Duke Ding Dong. Duke Womb Broom. Duke Schlong. Duke—”

“Enough!” Duke Diddle snarled once more. His eyes flashed. A vein on his pale forehead had become very evident. He let out a forced laugh, which sounded as if it pained him, and then smoothed his red hair back. He twirled his wand like a drummer might twirl a drumstick between his fingers.

“You certainly have a high enough opinion of yourself,” he said. “It is a propensity, I think, of members of this family. But I wonder, do you have the strength to face your own destiny?”

Despite trying to keep a cool and unruffled demeanor, Toby felt his heartbeat pick up. He squared his shoulders, meeting Duke Diddle’s gaze with an unflinching and, he hoped, Clint Eastwood-like resolve.

“I’m not here for destiny,” he said. His voice was low but steady. “I’m not here for any prophecy. I’m here to take you down, Uncle.”

36

The two men began to circle one another. It was, on Toby’s part, not a conscious decision. He just began to walk around the chamber, and Duke Diddle began to mimic his movements, moving in the opposite direction.

The air about and above them crackled—quite literally crackled—with tension. It was as if there was a storm building above them, a storm that was fed by their hate for one another.

They circled one another in that vast, torch-lit chamber, their breath coming in measured exhales and forming clouds in front of them. Their eyes were locked on one another. As they walked slowly, unspeaking, in a circle, they shared an understanding—or so it seemed to Toby, at least.

That understanding was a simple one: only one of them would leave that room victorious. Only one of them would leave that room alive.

As they circled one another, Toby was struck by something else profound. As with all the great fights of fiction in his youth, as with Harry Potter and Voldemort or Frodo and Sauron, this ultimate showdown was not just about the brute force of battle. It was not about who had superior numbers or the fiercest fighters.

It was a battle not only of arms and armies, but of ideals. It was a battle between Duke Diddle’s philosophy of power and domination, of taking control of the realm by force and by fear, versus Toby’s, Queen Lascivo’s, and everyone who supported her belief in freedom and the unity of Eclipsia. It was that key difference that had come to the fore. It was what Toby, his close companions, his mother, and all the brave warriors fighting in the mire outside were willing to risk their lives for.

So Toby found himself thinking of one single simple thing.

Let’s get it done.

The room hummed with the latent power of the two men, of the two blood relations. It was, had Toby known it, the kind of energy that could make or unmake entire kingdoms. He might have supposed, had someone told him this, that that’s precisely what was happening.

Toby’s sword gleamed in the flickering light as he raised the blade in front of his face. Across from him, the wand in Diddle’s hand pulsed, a coil of dark silver-shot smoke shot out of the end of it and twisted and turned into a sword in the man’s other hand.

“You really think you can win, don’t you? You really think you can win, nephew, hm?” Diddle was sneering. His voice was filled with that familiar mocking disbelief.

It didn’t anger Toby as it had before. He was surprised at that. He didn’t really feel anything. He just felt the weight of what he had to do settling on him like snow.

“This is my domain,” Diddle went on. “I control the very fabric of this place. You really should have run when you had the chance. I’m surprised my dear sister—if she is here and you’re not just spinning me a yarn—didn’t mention anything about that.”

Toby didn’t bother replying. His face was grim, his eyes focused. He felt the weight of the sword, felt the weight of his responsibility. He touched at the reservoir of magic that sat deep under his breastbone. It filled him up and, somehow, it was greater than he was. He knew that for certain.

He wasn’t just fighting for himself. He was fighting for his friends, who were down there in the tower somewhere, battling it out with the rest of the happy little accidents that were roaming that fucked-up edifice.

Without warning, Diddle slashed the air with his wand. A bolt of deep purple energy shot toward Toby. Its speed spoke of definite lethality. It was no stunner. It was a killing blow.

Toby raised his sword in the nick of time. The bolt of thaumaturgy crashed into the blade in a brilliant flash of molten sparks. The force of the blow sent Toby skidding backward, one hand touching the ground to keep his balance, his boot heel scraping across the stone floor.

He barely had time to recover before his uncle was upon him yet again. The old man moved with a speed that belied his age. He was obviously dosed up to the eyeballs on his own magic to enhance his agility and reactions.

Toby decided to follow suit and dipped into his own reserves.

The pair of swords clashed with a ringing, resounding smash of steel on steel. The impact was terrific. It vibrated through Toby’s entire skeleton—or so it felt.

He spun and parried his uncle’s neck strike. Then he spun away as another spell lashed out from the wand and gouged a molten line on the stone floor.

Toby deflected the next magical hit by whipping up a shield of magic of his own. The flickering orb of blue energy that Diddle sensed shooting toward him exploded in a rainbow burst of jittery energy. The parts of the blue ball flickered away and crashed into the wall, shattering stone like eggshells.

Duke Diddle’s lips curled into a wide smile. “Pathetic!”

“Oh,” Toby said, feigning hurt. “I thought you were gonna say I was doing quite well.”

Duke Diddle shook his head. “Is this what my great sister’s progeny has got for me? Is this it? Like I say, I expected more from someone who was born from the loins of someone so reputably great.”

"Uncle," Toby said in a voice of ice-cold venom. "There are a lot of things I'll put up with, but you yarning about my mom's loins ain't one of them."

With a contemptuous snarl, Duke Diddle waved his hands. He summoned a small, twisted creature from the ether. It was a weird, snake-like thing with wings, claws, and teeth galore. It flapped up into the air and then dive-bombed toward Toby.

Toby dodged aside as the thing snapped at the air. It let out an ear-splitting screech, but Toby was having none of it. Up came his sword, and before the creature knew what was going on, it had been cleaved neatly in half. As it hit the ground, it dissipated like smoke. Toby was happy to see the look of irritation pass across his uncle's face.

"You're a fool, nephew. You're a fool to stand against me."

"There's nothing foolish in standing against tyranny," Toby said. "In fact, if anything, it's the opposite. The worst thing anyone can ever do is not stand up to people like you. Not if they have the chance to do so. Not if they have the will, the courage, or the responsibility to do so."

Another spell erupted from the end of Diddle's potent wand. This incantation manifested itself in the form of a swirling mass of dark energy shot through with veins of bright white lightning. It snaked through the air toward Toby.

Toby dodged, rolling to the side, but the spell followed him, ever relentless. With a grunt, Toby slashed downward with his sword. It cut through the magic like a knife through butter, but this only caused the energy to split in two. With a thunderous howling roar, it came at Toby from both sides.

Toby crouched and erected a sphere of protective magic around himself. His heart pounded as Diddle's spell pummeled him from all sides. He got the distinct impression that the thaumaturgy was seeking a weakness. It wanted to winkle him out of his bubble like a sea creature from a shell. And if it did that…

It’s going to turn me into a Toby Adams chowder.

As delicious as that sounded, to him at least, Toby’s heart pounded. The fingers on the hilt of his sword were slick with sweat. He felt something rise up inside him. It wasn’t magic. It was…

To his surprise, he realized it was anger. It was straight-up fury at his uncle for doing this. His uncle was fucking up a perfectly good fantasy land. Eclipsia was a place that any straight-brained individual would love to live in. There was potential there. There were none of the typical problems that Toby had associated with life back in New York. Things were slower-paced, relaxed. People fucking shopped locally, for God's sake. There was time to go fishing. There was time for self-improvement. Work wasn't the be-all and end-all. People focused on passions. People had passions.

Duke Diddle wanted to take this all away so that he could what? Rule? Queen Lascivo ruled, and she was a good ruler. She knew that ruling involved basically letting people get on with it themselves. A populace left to their own devices was far more pliant and obedient than one that was constantly being harassed and told what to do.

It was a dumbass ruler who interfered too much with those they were tasked with governing. One only had to look at the French to see what happened when rulers got too big for their boots.

Toby stood and spread his hands. He whirled his sword around, and a blast of raw magic erupted from his chest. The bubble that had been protecting him expanded outward in the blink of an eye and drove Diddle's spell back, breaking it apart, destroying it, wrecking it, shredding it.

Toby took a step forward toward his uncle. He raised his sword in his direction, and he saw that the blade was glowing with a bright white light. It was so bright that Toby could almost not bear to look at it.

"This is it," Toby roared. "This is the fucking endgame, Uncle."

Once more, Duke Diddle curled his lip contemptuously at his nephew.

"And it’s my serve," Toby growled.

He thrust out his hand and sent a jagged, rippling bolt of energy at Duke Diddle.

Diddle's face twisted in rage as he flung up his hands to deflect Toby's spell. The hex shot up into the ceiling. Stone was blasted from the roof. It fell down toward Diddle. Diddle frantically dodged to the side as the cascade of masonry smashed down.

Then he moved forward. He raised his magically crafted blade and started hacking at Toby. Toby parried every blow. His own blade was a blur of starlight and heat. Diddle began to swear and curse under his breath. He slashed at Toby again, then tried a sneaky spell at him, underarm this time. Toby met the sword blow with his weapon, and they crashed together. At the same time, he blocked the spell that the Duke had fired at him with a casual wave of his hand.

He was, to his surprise, enjoying himself now. This was living. Not dying, it turned out, was really living.

They fought like that for a while, steel and magic intertwined in a deadly dance. Every sword stroke, every spell that one fired at the other, was met with equal force. The chamber echoed with the sound of the pair's battle. There was the crashing clang of metal on metal and the sizzle and roar of magic that filled the air, filled Toby’s head.

Duke Diddle was fast for an old boy, agile thanks to the magic that enhanced his body. But Toby found that he was naturally faster, and he was also imbued with the magic that he was drawing on more and more

He realized that he didn't need to conserve his energy. For what? If he didn't win this, it was all over. Better to go out in a blaze of glory, as the old saying went. Better to burn brightly, even if it was only for a short time.

Toby darted in. He dodged a tendril of lancing red light that left a smoking crater in the firewall. He feinted and then sliced low. Duke Diddle barely managed to parry Toby's strike with his own sword. Toby saw that the older man's eyes were wide with surprise and something else.

Fear, Toby suddenly realized. Regret even.

Toby pressed his attack. He drove his enemy backward with a flurry of rapid blows. Each strike forced the Duke further and further back toward the wall.

Toby was just beginning to allow himself to think that he was going to win when the Duke let out a sudden roar of frustration. He flung his wand upwards. The air shimmered, and a huge creature—something that resembled a grotesque chimera, only warped as if it had been drawn from Diddle's mind in a hurry—appeared between them. It was all teeth and claws and blind, frothing hunger.

"Ah, you cheeky fucker," Toby said.

The monster charged. It lashed out at Toby with a powerful swing of its great paw. Toby dodged to the side, leaving an echo of himself in the air, a sketch of himself left hanging there by magic.

The monster, dim-witted and hastily conjured as it was, tried to kill this stationary apparition. As it did so, Toby brought his sword around, and the white-hot blade passed into the beast like a burning brand as it cleanly sliced through the magically manifested flesh and bone. The creature disintegrated in a bursting whirl of ashy sparks.

"No," the word was plucked from the lips of Toby's uncle, as if unbidden. It sounded like a cough almost; an involuntary admission of disbelief and defeat.

His uncle took a staggering step backward, and his back came up against the wall.

"It's over, Uncle," Toby said as he stalked toward the other man. "It's over. You’re not going to win this. I won’t let you."

Duke Diddle was desperate now. He raised his wand and sent a final blast of concentrated magic toward Toby.

Toby had been waiting for such a move. He delved deep into himself and brought forth a counterspell of his own. He threw his hand forward and caught Diddle's spell in mid-air between his own palm and his upheld sword blade. The energy pooled in the space between sword and hand. It crackled and pulsed, a mass of dark magic brought to bay.

Toby held it, struggled with it for a moment as he sought to tame it, and then sent it spiraling back toward the Duke.

Diddle let out a wail as the spell hit him. The force of it obliterated his magically manifested sword. It sent him reeling backward, smashing him into the wall, and then flung him along it so that he rolled across the vertical surface.

Drawing on more of his magic, Toby jumped twenty feet into the air. He fell on the Duke like a kite falling on a luckless grasshopper.

Lying prone on his back, the Duke saw Toby descending on him like a thundercloud, like an eagle, like death itself. He whipped his hand up, but it was too late. Toby was already on him.

The stone floor cracked as Toby landed a foot on either side of his uncle's thin chest. Toby had his uncle's thin wrist firmly in his hand. Diddle's eyes were wide now, wide as saucers. He looked like a man who simply couldn’t believe what was happening.

He tried to point the wand at Toby, but Toby's grip was immovable. With a wrench that caused his uncle to gasp in pain and horror, Toby pulled the wand from Duke Diddle's grasp.

"No," Diddle said. "You don't know what you're doing. That wand, its power…"

Toby stared at the wand in his hand. His uncle tried to move, but Toby pinned him with a foot on his throat. His uncle grunted and gulped as Toby pressed his boot into the man's trachea.

As he stood over Eclipsia's fallen nemesis, Toby felt a seductive pulling. It was an odd sensation. He looked at the wand. It appeared to be glowing ever so slightly in his hand.

Toby realized what that seductive tug was. It was the temptation to wield the wand. Wield it not as the Duke had, but to utilize its power to make and manifest things that would help Eclipsia, that would move its people forward, make life easier for them, bridge the gaps that had grown between the various levels of society.

The wand throbbed in his hand. Toby could sense the raw, chaotic power whispering to him, purring in a tongue he couldn't hope to decipher but could translate in his heart nonetheless. He could feel the magical object promising him unimaginable strength, god-like abilities, and, most enticingly of all, the longevity of life to see his visions bear fruit.

Almost, it seemed to him as if the stick of wood in his hand was beckoning him onward, offering him everything he'd ever wanted. Everything he’d ever dared to dream of.

"No," Toby muttered. "No, I'm not like him. I'm not like my uncle."

Toby wasn't a man ruled by greed. He didn't desire power for the sake of having it. In that moment, he made the choice that the prophecy had alluded to. Toby hefted the wand in his palm.

"Nephew… Toby, wait," Duke Diddle said.

Toby tossed the wand up into the air.

"No, wait!" Duke Diddle screamed.

Toby brought his sword around in a two-handed, baseball batter's grip. He swung it with all his might, with a single goal in mind. The incandescent, enchanted blade sheared through the wood of the wand.

The explosion that followed was immediate and impressive. There was a deafening roar followed by an almost more profound cessation of sound.

Toby was sent flying across the room. Duke Diddle, as he was already on his back, was sent skidding across the floor. He crashed into the opposite wall.

Toby hit the stone ground hard. His vision went white for a moment as his ears rang, and he was sent tumbling across the stone like a rag doll caught in a tornado. For the second time in under an hour he was momentarily knocked out.

For a long, drawn-out moment, Toby didn't know what had happened. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, but he couldn't see anything. His vision was all white. There was a thin, tinny ringing in his ears. He blinked, but his vision stayed blank, as if someone was holding a sheet of plain white paper across his eyes.

Holy fuck, he thought. I've only gone and blinded myself. What an ending. Didn’t see that one coming.

Toby's muscles were aching with an inexplicable severity.

Amend that, he thought. It’s not just my muscles. My fucking bones are aching.

He blinked, trying to clear his head. He thought his vision was returning very, very slowly. Making sure that nothing was broken, he managed to stagger to his feet. His sword was gone. He hoped it was lying somewhere nearby. He didn't doubt that his hampered eyesight meant he couldn't see it. He probed around with a foot, but his boot met no metal.

Slowly, his vision came back to him, and when it did, it revealed a sight that was far from comforting.

Duke Diddle had risen to his feet on the other side of the room. The man was bloodied and quite obviously furious. ‘Mad as a bag of cut snakes’ was an expression that one of Toby's former workmates, an Australian woman, had once used, and Toby thought that the Duke encapsulated that phrase perfectly.

He was stumbling toward Toby. His teeth were bared. Spittle flew from his mouth as his breath came in gasps that bordered on sobs. There was a bright knife shining in his hands and a hatred burning behind his contorted face.

Toby's body screamed in protest as he straightened up. He couldn't let the Duke win. Not now. Not after everything he'd gone through.

Toby's sword was on the other side of the room. He tried to bring it toward him using magic, but it seemed that for the moment he was fresh out. The hilt rattled against the ground, but the sword did not come.

Diddle moved closer. He was dragging one foot. He raised the knife when he was five meters from Toby. Toby felt like, in that instance, he and the Duke were of an age. The Duke raised the knife on high and let out a wordless cry of rage that was modulated by insanity.

Toby knew that his uncle's mind, which had probably only been really tenuously clinging to reality, had gone off the deep end.

And then Toby's mother was there.

Gwen Adams appeared out of nowhere. Her voice was a bellow of defiance; the sound a lioness might make when her cub is threatened. She threw herself between Toby and his uncle.

She too looked the worst for wear in Toby's eyes. She had a large matted clump of bloody hair on one side of her head. She was favoring one arm. Together, Gwen Adams and Duke Diddle, brother and sister, struggled over the dagger. The pair of them looked too drained to use their magic. Toby half-thought that he had created, with the destruction of the wand, a sort of vacuum for magic in that chamber.

Toby's heart raced as he watched his mother fighting with Duke Diddle. He was drained, weak, but he had to act.

And then, surprisingly, and without any instigation from him, a surge of power washed over and through him. It bore him up, bore him up quite literally. It lifted him up off the ground so that he was levitating five inches above the stone floor.

What the fuck is going on? he thought in a dazed way.

Toby dipped a mental toe into the pool of power he suddenly felt connected to. It had not been there before—or, if it had, Toby hadn't been aware of it.

And then he came to a sudden, unbelievable, irrefutable conclusion.

Breaking the wand has forged a bond between me and… what? he thought. The magic of the ether? The magic that the wand was a conduit for? The magic of this world itself? It's in me now. Raw, limitless.

He knew this, and he knew that it was the truth instinctively. It was the same way that a man knew whether he was standing up or hanging downward. It was immutable.

With a lazy wave of his hand, Toby plucked Duke Diddle up into the air. The man kicked and struggled and tried to swipe with his knife at Gwen Adams, whose strength had deserted her and had dropped her to her knees.

Toby manipulated the man as if he were on strings, as if he were able to conjure a giant invisible hand in the air. With a thought, he dissolved the dagger in his uncle’s hand so that it faded away like the morning dew. Diddle's eyes were wide with maddened terror.

"What? What have you done?" he shrieked. "What are you doing? What are you?"

Toby stepped toward his uncle. He tipped his head to one side. When he spoke, his voice was cold and steady. "We, all of us, on some level, strive for greatness, uncle. But that doesn't mean we have to sell our souls to achieve it."

The Duke's top lip curled. "So you'll kill me then, will you, nephew? You think you have it in you? You think you have the bones for such cold-blooded action? You think that such a thing will make you a hero?" He spat the last word out contemptuously.

Toby shook his head. "I'm not going to kill you," he said conversationally.

He tightened his grip on the Duke, and the man thrashed. Magic surged around Toby. It made his hair stand on end. It filled him up, invigorated him, as if he were having a hot tub in a great vat of espresso.

No, I'm not going to kill you," Toby said again, looking his uncle dead in the eye. "But, Duke Diddle, I hereby banish you. In the name of Queen Lascivo, in the name of King Balourd, whom you killed, I exile you to a little place I've been told about by a small friend of mine."

"Banishment?" the Duke said. "Exile? Where?"

"It's called," Toby said, "the Below-Below."

Diddle's eyes popped. They bugged out, so true and pure and disbelieving was his horror. "No," he said. "No, you can't.”

“Oh, but I can,” Toby assured him, knowing it to be true. “I can now.”

“No!"

With a concentrated manipulation of magic, Toby opened a rift in the air.

Duke Diddle screamed as he was sucked inexorably into it. His cries of undiluted rage and horror echoed through the chamber as he disappeared into the dark maw that led to the world of the demons, to the world of the djinn, to the world of the Below-Below.

To the place where monsters came and where, it turned out after all, they could be returned.

There was silence.

Toby floated back to the floor and stood in the middle of the chamber, breathing hard. Across from him, a door had materialized in the hard, unyielding black stone. He held his hands up in front of his face. Power was coursing through him. He could almost see it, running through his veins like golden light.

"The prophecy," he said softly. He knelt down by his mother. "Mom, the prophecy. The prophecy—“

“—was wrong," his mother finished.

Toby shook his head. "No, it wasn't wrong," he said, correcting his mother’s words softly. "It was just that I fulfilled it in a way that no one expected.”

“You sacrificed everything only to find that in giving up your power you would become stronger than ever, my son," Gwen Adams said. She reached out and wrapped Toby in the kind of hug that she had given him when he was a small boy.

And Toby, the hero of Eclipsia two times over, the vanquisher of the scourge that had been Duke Diddle, and the most powerful magical user in all the realm, closed his eyes and held his mother tight.

Epilogue

"It's a good little spot, this, mate, I'll give you that."

Toby stirred from where he was leaning against the post of his newly built porch. The porch was part of his newly built home. The home was what he considered the hub of his new life.

"Cheers, Frank," he said.

"Still, the question has to be asked," the imp said, yawning so widely that it looked to Toby like his bottom jaw must surely have been dislocated, "what the bloody hell are you doing up at this hour?"

"I'm soaking in the serenity, Frank, watching the sunrise—or at least I was until you turned up. Serenity shared is serenity halved."

"What do you want to go watching the sunrise for?" Frank said. "Happens every day."

Toby snorted. "Hey, you know, with this new power of mine," he said, "I'm pretty sure I could break the bond that is between us, and you could head off back to the Below-Below."

Frank was in the middle of lighting one of his tiny cigars with the end of his tail. He coughed and choked. Once he cleared his pipes, he managed to say, "What? Why would you want to go and do that?"

"I don't know, I thought you'd like it," Toby said. "Get your freedom back, head back down there to where it's all misery and sulfur and all that shit that you're continuously banging on about."

Frank considered this. Toby thought, not for the first time, that the imp talked a very good game, but he quietly loved being Eclipsia-side.

"If it's all the same to you," the imp said nonchalantly after a few seconds of obviously furious cogitation, "I wouldn't mind staying up here."

"Why's that?" Toby asked, feigning interest and concern. "I thought you'd want to go back home."

"Yeah, nah. I mean, your uncle's down there, isn't he?" Frank said.

Toby nodded. "Yeah," he said, with a small smile. "Yeah, I wonder how he's getting on."

"I wouldn't worry about him," Frank said. "The guy was a total egotistical knob. He's probably fitting in a treat, probably loving it. Be like a vacation for him. Still, I don't fancy going down there. He might recognize me. He might give me a hard time. Tell some lies to my so-called superiors about my actions up here."

"Fair enough, then," Toby said.

He went back to leaning against the porch post. He couldn't get over that the post and the porch were part of his brand-new spanking home. He breathed in a long, slow, grateful breath.

He reveled in the feeling of normalcy. He reveled in the warm cup of coffee that sat in his hand, which Dishy had provided for him when he'd come down from his bedchamber, unable to sleep, his mind whirling with memories and thoughts and hypotheses of what was to come.

He hadn't been able to sleep so well ever since the chaos of Duke Diddle's downfall. It wasn't because he was plagued by nightmares or anything like that. It was more because he was filled with excitement about what the future was going to hold.

He had been, for the past month or so, engrossed in the building of this new small holding. It had been a gift from Queen Lascivo, a thank-you for services rendered to the realm. She had given Toby a small patch of land that nestled on the outskirts of Stagbreach. It was far enough from the bustle of the township to offer peace and seclusion, but close enough for the occasional trip into town on the back of one of the kirins housed in his small stable.

"Yeah, we've done pretty well out of all this, Frank," he said.

"Well, I'd say it was a fair trade," Frank counted, puffing on his minuscule cigar. "You did save the fucking world, mate. Again."

Toby raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, I suppose so," he said. Still, he gestured around at the cabin. "You can't say we weren't adequately rewarded."

The cabin was a massive sprawling structure made of rich, dark-colored logs. It seemed to rise out of the earth of the hill on the top of which it sat, almost as if it had been carved from the ancient bones of Eclipsia.

Luna had designed it. She had talked to Toby about what he'd like in a building and whipped up some blueprints for him. Toby had been amazed with her skill with pencil and paper, but then the nymphs were, or had been, renowned for their skills in engineering.

Luna had most assuredly done her part in the defeat of Duke Diddle. Her flintlock pistols might very well have saved hundreds of lives, gunning down the hordes of Duke Diddle's happy little accidents while Toby was inside the fortress, dueling with the Duke himself.

The home had been built for simplicity and comfort. It had a rustic charm with wide windows that allowed sunlight to flood the rooms. There were plenty of bedrooms. Toby had an enormous master suite, of course, but Anna, Zareth, Verity, and Luna were all extremely well catered for in the bedroom department. Frank even had his own little abode up in the attic, while Dishy had taken up his habitual lodgings under the stairs when the stairs had been built.

The homestead had a whole host of nice little additions, which had been purchased at great expense by Queen Lascivo from shops in Stagbreach, the likes of which could be found on the same exclusive street as Edgewise Extensions was.

The window glass, for instance, was as fine as any of the taverns in town, but it was also imbued with an enchantment that kept the harsh winter winds at bay and kept the building cool in the summer. It was a supernatural equivalent of triple glazing.

The hearth, always warm, could be lit with a word. It seemed to crackle with a life of its own. This was actually the case, as Toby found out two weeks after it had been built. There was a fire sprite homed in it and this elemental entity’s greatest joy and only goal was to keep the fire burning at all times. Sometimes the flames burned with a soft green hue and a pleasant pine fragrance. This peculiar hearth had been a gift from Zareth. The green flames heated the house somehow more effectively than run-of-the-mill flames.

Toby peered through the window to see if anyone else was up yet. It didn't look like it. He could hear Dishy singing softly to himself as he readied breakfast for everyone. The hearth was burning low.

Anna's bow, which she'd retired in honor of the victory at Duke Diddle's fortress, was hung over the mantle. She was in the midst of carving a new one with Lord Marshal Vani. Verity's daggers gleamed on the mantelpiece. To Toby’s surprise, the former rogue had had no cause to wear them since she had returned with Toby and the others from the Duke's fortress.

Toby walked slowly around the wide veranda that wrapped the cabin. It offered fantastic views of the rolling countryside and the nearby woodlands that stretched out towards the mountainous horizon.

Not for the first time, Toby congratulated himself on picking the location for the homestead. The trees of the forest seemed to whisper old secrets when the wind blew the right way. Deer often wandered close to the house, which was great because Anna had taken up hunting with a vengeance. There was nothing like a bit of roast venison, especially when it had been prepared by Dishy.

The little domestic djinn, under the urging of Luna, had started writing his recipes down, or at least dictating them to the nymph. It was Toby's understanding that Luna was going to have his recipes published as a cookbook.

"I believe he'd be the first djinn in history to be a published author," she said.

"Good," Toby had replied. "If anyone deserves it, it's Dishy. Without him, we might not have cottoned on to Captain Gurnard's involvement, and things might have turned out differently."

Luna had nodded and grinned. “I’d be willing to bet it’ll be a bestseller.”

"Hey Frank,” Toby said.

“Yeah, mate?" Frank said. He was floating along behind Toby, as was his habit.

Toby had never said it to Frank, but the imp reminded him of a faithful terrier. Yeah, he could be annoying as shit sometimes, but his presence, more often than not, was a comfort.

“The wards around the house, we’re still protected from potential stealthy incursions, are we?”

"Oh yeah, mate, don’t worry about that," Frank said. "I do check them every night, thank you so very much."

"Do you?" Toby asked, with a shrewd glint in his eye.

"Well, I check them once a week," Frank admitted. "I actually lured a blood-sucking vampire back to the house the other day, and the poor bugger was electrocuted when he came in contact with the protective wards. Tastes good, bat, when broiled with magic. You should give it a go.”

"I think I can confidently say that I will never do that.”

“Suit yourself. Still, the wards are working.”

"Well, that’s good. Not you luring the bat back, but that the protective wards are still in place," Toby said.

"Don’t you worry. I’ll let Zareth know when they need juicing up again," Frank said.

The protective wards around the property probably weren’t necessary. There hadn’t been any real threats—no threats at all, actually—since the day Duke Diddle had been banished. But old habits died hard.

Toby guessed that some of the lessons Lord Marshal Vani had instilled in him were the kind of lessons that stayed with a man until he was in his grave. He could almost hear the ogre’s rumbling voice in his head.

"Better to hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

Toby watched the great orange ball of the sun rise above the eastern horizon. For a moment, the line on the edge of the world was gilded in molten orange.

"Come on," he said to Frank. "Let’s go and get a bit of breakfast. All this talk of broiled bats has made me peckish."

Back inside the cabin, they found Dishy moving around the kitchen. He was accompanied by the soft clatter of dishes as crocks moved magically around behind him, following him like ducklings might follow their mother duck. Every now and again he wiped his hands on the tea-towel that hung from the horn on his head.

"Morning," Luna said. She was usually down before Toby. Her amber eyes crinkled up at the corners as she smiled at him.

"Morning," Toby said. "How’d you sleep?"

"Amazingly, as usual," Luna said. She wandered over to the coffee pot on the stove and poured herself a generous amount of the strong brown brew.

Toby, Frank, and Luna sat together at the kitchen island while Dishy got breakfast together. Every now and again, Luna got up to help, but Dishy was a full kitchen team in his own right. Anna and Verity came down a little while later. They were talking animatedly to one another.

"Morning," Toby said.

"Morning, Tobes," Anna replied.

"Morning, darling," Verity said.

The pair of women looked as gorgeous as they ever did. Even more so, Toby thought. They were free of the cares and worries that had been part and parcel of life while Duke Diddle stalked the lands with his happy little accidents in tow.

"How are your folks settling in?" Anna asked, plonking herself next to Toby at the island bench while she waited for her herbal tea to steep.

"Good," Toby said. "Good. Dad’s a pretty laid-back character, as you know. I think Mom was pretty worried that he was going to freak out, what with there not being any cars in Eclipsia to work on. She was worried he wasn’t going to know what to do with himself."

"I might have had something to do with helping with that,” Luna cut in.

“You did?” Toby said.

“I showed Mr. Adams the artificer’s chamber at the top of the tower at the Baker’s Quarter house," Luna explained. "He was thoroughly interested, and we spent a lot of time up there. I was showing him all the plans and the different tools and the various ingredients, components, and items that we use. I think he’s going to be kept very busy, highly engrossed with projects, and your mother won’t find him getting under her feet, Toby."

Toby grinned. "That’s one of her greatest fears of late," he joked.

Whilst the Queen had financed the building of this new homestead on the outskirts of Stagbreach, she had also been good enough to repair the Baker’s Quarter house, as she said she would.

Toby had given the house to his mother. Not long after that, Gwen Adams had gone back to New York, stepping through a portal she crafted, and had come back with Toby’s father. Toby had been delighted to see his old man, but his old man had been even more stoked to see Toby. From the look on his face and the tears that glinted in the corners of his eyes, Toby knew how much his father had missed him. His mother had filled his dad in on everything they had all gone through since Toby and Anna had gone through the dryer door and fallen into the Eclipsian meadow.

"Where’s Zareth?" Toby asked.

"She’s gone out hunting, I think," Verity said. "She shouldn’t be long. She went out while it was still dark, and she normally comes back when the sun’s over the horizon. The deer go down after dawn’s broken, you know that."

Toby nodded. He sipped his coffee and just enjoyed the ambiance and the company that swirled around him. He felt more at home here, more comfortable, more himself than he ever had back in New York.

Life was good.

Life was fucking great.

That shouldn’t have really come as any surprise, seeing as Toby had wound up as the hero of Eclipsia. Not only that, but he was the most powerful magic user and, therefore, warrior in all the realm. He was, as Anna had pointed out a couple of days after the adventures that saw Duke Diddle thrown down, a certifiable badass.

"Are you alright, Tobes?"

Toby started. Anna had nudged him with her elbow.

"Sorry, what was that?" he said.

"You were miles away," Anna said with an impish grin.

"Yeah, sorry," Toby said.

"Everything all right?"

"Yeah," Toby said. "Yeah, I was just—oh, this sounds sappy, but whatever—I was just thinking how happy I was."

"That is sappy," Anna said. "You better hope that the public don't come to hear of your romantic and mushy attributes."

Toby laughed. "You sure know how to keep a guy in his place, don't you, Anna? Keep him grounded."

"I know how to keep you in your place, that's for damn sure," Anna said. She put her arm around Toby and kissed him hard on the mouth. "Know how to get you on your back, too, huh?" she said.

Toby laughed again. He kissed her back.

"How are you feeling with the whole magical power business?" Anna asked quietly.

Toby thought about that question while the smell of bacon pervaded the room.

"There are moments," he said, "moments when I can really feel the pull, the temptation of the power that I've got inside of me. The power the wand held. I can feel it, Anna, like a second heartbeat."

"You haven't used it hardly since the battle with Duke Diddle, have you?" Anna asked.

"No, not really," Toby said. “Had a little dabble with it to help speed the construction of this place, but nothing major.”

"Well, I think that's the greatest compliment and a really good sign," Anna said slowly.

"What do you mean?" Toby asked.

"If you ask me, the true test of power, a sign that the person who possesses it is the perfect person to possess it, is when that person knows when not to use it."

Toby nodded his head slowly. The temptation to use that great, almost infinite pool of magical resource had been there since the moment he figured out how to tap into it. But Toby had resisted. He knew that there was a fine line when it came to plunging himself into that pool of possibility. He would have to go slowly. His old man had cautioned him that magic, though it was mostly alien to him, was likely to be like all power—something to be wielded with caution, not recklessness.

Toby’s thoughts once more drifted to his mother and father, who were doubtless just getting up for breakfast themselves in the house in the Baker's Quarter. His mother, by her account, hadn't had to do much convincing of his father to retire from his life as a mechanic in New York.

"All that remains," she had said to Toby when he had last seen her in town, catching up for lunch at the Toby Jug, "is for your father and me to figure out the best way to tell your brothers about this world. I'm not sure how they'll react to the idea that there is such a thing as magic and monsters."

Toby had laughed at that. One of his brothers was a professional scholar. It was going to turn his life, in particular, on its head.

"There have been no sightings of any happy little accidents, have there?" Verity's words came loudly as she fired them across the kitchen at Luna, over the pan of sizzling bacon. Luna was best placed to hear rumors and gossip. She spent a lot of her time at the palace library.

"No," she said. "It would seem that the Duke's minions vanished the moment Toby banished him to the Below-Below. Every creature he conjured, every dark bit of magic he had twisted and rooted into the world dissolved like mist, leaving no trace of the destruction and disorder they had once caused."

Toby nodded in satisfaction. The moment Diddle had been thrown through the rift, it had been as though a dark cloud had lifted from Eclipsia. With the wand destroyed, there was also one less temptation for any would-be antagonists to come forward and try their hand at becoming the newest version of Eclipsia’s most wanted.

"You going to come into town today, Tobes?" Anna said. "I was thinking that we're probably due for a little knees-up at the Toby Jug. You know how Oswald and Bellingham like to see us. They want to hear the news."

Toby considered the offer.

"I might duck in later on in the evening," he said.

"Fair enough," Anna said. "Don't want to spend all your time signing autographs and kissing babies, huh?" she teased.

Toby snorted. "Something like that," he said.

He had become a bona fide hero and minor celebrity in Eclipsia ever since the events of the day that had seen the end of Duke Diddle. His name was spoken, had he known it, with reverence and awe. He was the most powerful warrior in the land, a living legend.

Despite this fame, Toby preferred the quiet life he had out in the country. He was surrounded by his closest friends. His magic, although he chose to leave it dormant for the time being, was always there. It hummed beneath the surface of his skin, like a tune constantly playing through his sinews and veins. He hadn't needed it since that final battle, but he knew that if a time ever came when he did, he'd be able to call on it in a trice.

Later, after they had returned from town and a pretty effervescent few hours at the Toby Jug, Toby stood back out on the porch. He was watching the stars; those stars that had, seemingly not too long ago, been completely alien to him.

Anna was standing beside him. She gave him a sidelong glance as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and leaned against him.

"Do you ever miss it?" she asked quietly.

"What, New York?"

"Nah," Anna said. "I know, you probably miss the city less than I do. I was thinking more about the fighting, the danger, the adventure."

"No. I don't miss it," Toby said.

"What was all that bullshit about our fates being what we make of them?" Anna teased.

Toby smiled. "That was a good line, huh? And you know it's from Terminator 2, right? It's not just a robot movie. It's one of the greatest movies of all time."

"Yeah, yeah," Anna said.

Together, they watched the stars blossom like diamond flowers in the velvet sky. Toby, utterly and totally at peace, took a long, deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Well," Anna said.

"Well, what?" Toby asked.

"Are you going to fulfill the mission I set for you earlier?"

"And what mission was that?" Toby asked.

Anna pouted. "The greatest ongoing mission of your damned life, Adams," she said. "Your task is to take my ass to bed."

She walked into the house, shooting Toby an extremely meaningful look over her shoulder.

"You better hurry," she called. "Otherwise, me and the other girls won't wait for you."

Toby knocked back the drink in his hand. He walked back into the huge, welcoming lodge-style house. There was a fire burning in the hearth. There was a fire burning in his heart.

And I’ll always keep that bit of fire burning.

Ahead of him, Anna’s swaying hips drew him on as she vanished around the corner to the stairwell. As she went, she slipped out of the robe she was wearing. Her nakedness stoked up the flames inside of Toby.

Toby grinned.

“It seems,” he muttered to himself under his breath, “that a hero's work is never done.”

End of Book 3

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