We shepherded a dozen locals of Tradum out through the sewer network—something that wouldn’t have been possible without my portal magicks, as even the sewers were well guarded. Of the lot of us, Lore was the most desperate to head straight back in and save more lives, but we had to be pragmatic about what to do next.

  The Council seemed closer than ever to enacting their grand plan, and eliminating their number and stopping the ritual had to be a top priority. But there was another urgent matter, too: we now knew where the malae were. They were right here, in Tradum, and being used to breed an army of corrupted soldiers with the strength to withstand a number ten times their size. Above all else—even above heading to Auricia and killing Tana herself—we had to destroy the malae. If we destroyed them, and destroyed them totally this time around, we would stop the corrupted army growing any larger. But we’d also, maybe, remove a crucial source of power from the Council’s plans.

  And so we had to leave those thousands of locals behind, cowering in their homes or being ushered towards dark and looming warehouses to be converted. We had to let them be drained of their personhood, we had to let them become these things, these tools to be used to the Council’s ends. We had to. We had to.

  Other than Lore, the other four members of the Slayers were in solemn agreement: killing the malae had to take priority over sneaking out any more citizens of Tradum. And if we were going to do that—if we were going to kill this many—we were going to need a fire sorcerer.

  Arzak’s network of informants knew just where to find one.

  * * *

  The first snow of winter came that night.

  We were riding south, fast. Our borrowed horses were growing weary beneath us, but we couldn’t think of their wellbeing; far more than three creatures would suffer if we didn’t return in time. We pushed them as far as we dared, stopping only when the road grew too cold for us to stand and the visibility became too low for us to steer.

  We hadn’t seen an inn for over an hour by this point, and there was no guarantee that there would be one any time soon. Instead, we ambled off the road and found shelter as best we could among the evergreen trees, where even there the ground was dusted with white. Arzak and Lore cut down a few branches to form the shelter, while Corminar used one of his specialised arrows to start a campfire. Val rested in the relative warmth of the undergrowth—she’d been growing increasingly tired these last few days—and for my part, I opened two pairs of portals above us. The falling snow drifted through these portals and reappeared in the distance, stopping our camp from getting any more cold than it already was.

  When all was said and done, I cosied up to Val, shivering, and wondered just how I was going to get some sleep. But I soon discovered that my eyelids were heavy, my body spent from the days of fast-paced travel and avoiding trouble in Tradum, and I drifted off.

  At day break, his breath forming clouds in the air, Lore woke me by gently shaking my shoulder. We’d not had a full night’s sleep, but we couldn’t afford it; there was work to be done. Val was the last to wake up, and her transition back into the conscious world was slow, slower even than Lore.

  ‘You feeling OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a little tired,’ she replied as I helped her back to her feet.

  ‘You know, if you need to rest… If you need us to handle—’

  ‘I’m not showing, am I?’ Val asked.

  I looked down. ‘Well, no, but—’

  ‘I’m here. I’m good to go. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. You don’t need to worry.’

  I said nothing, though I disagreed with her there. I did need to worry, and I was going to continue to do so; there were dangerous times ahead of us. We mounted our horses once more and continued on the road south.

  In fact, it turned out that the next inn hadn’t been that far ahead. Within the hour we came across the small village of Pleasantview, a settlement on the edge of the Sundorn border. Yet, nobody regretted spending a night under branches and atop pine needles, because the village was empty. There were obvious signs of trouble here and there—a forgotten shoe, a fallen blade, a house’s door left open and swinging and slamming in the bitter winds. But there were no dead left behind, not a single one. Whatever had happened here—whatever foul beast had been drawn out from the wilderness, like was happening so often of late—it was made all the more terrifying by the lack of bodies.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, nudging Val, who spurred the horse back into action. ‘There’s no need to stop. The trouble might still be here.’

  We rode out of town without another word spoken.

  * * *

  When we arrived in town, we were told that the woman we were seeking was staying in the cottage on the outskirts of town. Though this was the first town in which we’d found a bustling tavern, we didn’t stop for a drink, very conscious that every moment we delayed could result in another of Tradum’s residents being corrupted by the malae.

  So instead we found ourselves outside a small, dingy cottage away from the rest of the town—a cottage with no sign of life inside.

  ‘Hello?’ Arzak called out, rapping her knuckles against the door once more. ‘We look for Zoi. Have business.’

  We waited again for an answer, but still none came.

  ‘Perhaps your network of informants provided incorrect information,’ Corminar suggested. ‘We would be fools to believe them infallible. In fact—’

  I opened a portal next to us, its partner inside the small cottage. If nobody was home, nobody would know. And if they were…

  A tiefling woman blinked back at us through the portal, the inside of the cottage illuminated by the low winter sun. ‘...Ah,’ she said.

  Arzak nodded, then stepped through the portal. ‘No need to get door,’ she said, a little irritably. The rest of the team followed her inside. ‘Zoi, yes?’

  The tiefling woman smoothed down the front of her robes, gathering herself, then took a seat on the opposite side of the rickety dining table from where we were standing. She clasped her hands together and almost seemed to look down her nose at us, as though we hadn’t just caught her in the lie of pretending she wasn’t there. ‘You’ve come to hire me?’ she asked, and I could hear a hint of doubt in her tone.

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  ‘We—’ Arzak started.

  I cut in. ‘Who did you think we were?’ I wasn’t going to let this matter drop, not if it might give us an advantage in negotiations.

  ‘I…’ Zoi trailed off, mouth still opening and closing, the tiefling apparently completely unable to find the words.

  ‘I ask, cos we are looking to hire you, yeah. And we were gonna offer you money, but if it’s protection you need… well, we’ve killed a dozen Players between us. So whoever’s after you, I’m pretty sure we can handle them.’

  The tiefling met my gaze, considering me while I pulled out another dining chair for Val to sit on. The witch squeezed my arm in gratitude as she took it.

  ‘Who is it?’ I pressed the point.

  ‘Managlass.’

  Val’s ears pricked up at the name of her old school of magicks. ‘The academy? What did you do? Witchcraft?’

  Zoi shook her head. ‘Nothing so crude. I just… made a bit of money on the side. Academia does not pay well, you know? I assume it is this “money on the side” that brings you to me? Which of you wants me to burn down your house?’

  The other Slayers and I didn’t reply immediately.

  ‘Burn…’ Val mumbled, ‘down our house?’

  ‘Yes. That is why you are here, is it not? To hire me to burn down your house?’

  ‘Repeating the question doesn’t make it any more reasonable,’ Val said.

  I shook my head in confusion. ‘Why would we want—’

  ‘For the insurance payment,’ Zoi replied, furrowing her brow. ‘Because… I’m good at making it look like an accident?’

  Again, silence passed across the room. Finally, Arzak said simply, ‘Hm. OK.’

  ‘I am almost certain that you did not get into the fire sorcery game so that you could be an accessory to insurance fraud,’ Corminar said.

  Zoi put her feet up on the dining table, pressing against it to tilt her chair backwards, balancing on its rear two legs. Now happy that we weren’t from Managlass Academy, we’d seen a change come over her; she was much more comfortable with potential clients than she was with her old professors. ‘Of course not,’ she replied to the elf. ‘I hate fire, in fact. I don’t even like the heat; that’s why I left the Armada. No, I got into it for the chicks.’

  ‘For baby bird?’ Arzak asked. Corminar whispered the real meaning into the orc’s ear, causing her to blush; turns of phrase from south of the Northern Reaches were not her specialty. ‘Oh.’

  Zoi looked us over once more, as though considering us anew. ‘But if you aren’t here for insurance money, then why are you here? Surely my name didn’t come up in the context of doing anything dangerous?’

  ‘Uh…’ Lore started, revealing our hand.

  ‘We need someone who can handle fire,’ I said.

  The tiefling woman raised her eyebrows, drawing in a deep breath. ‘I assumed. Why? What do you need to burn?’

  ‘A thousand or more malae,’ Corminar answered her. ‘In the midst of a city. Without… burning said city to the ground.’

  Zoi’s eyes widened. ‘Malae? Oh, no, I’m not getting involved in that. I—’

  But whatever her reason, we didn’t get to hear it, because Corminar spun his head around.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Trouble,’ he said. ‘Approaching fast.’

  ‘...Managlass,’ Zoi and Val said as one.