With their lanterns dimmed to the faintest trickle of glow, the three of them slipped further north into the Elderhush Forest, towards the base of one of the Veil-Twins

  The faint blue mist made every shadow stretch unnaturally and every root look like a trap waiting for a boot, but Dain led the way without faltering. He even had the gall to whisper a lecture as he walked, nudging roots aside with his cane as he did.

  “Step heel first, not toe first,” he whispered. “Put your weight on the ground slowly, and never drag your boots unless you want every beast in the forest to hear you say hello. Oh, and always step on roots or rocks when you can. Leaves are noisy.”

  Anisa looked down carefully, mimicking his movements. Yasmin, of course, moved like a stalking panther, her dress never catching once. Dain had to admit—even if he’d never say it out loud—that she was a better natural sneak than him.

  Well, I’m not that good at sneaking around to begin with.

  I’ve only had to sneak around a few magic beasts back when I was collecting herbs in the forests around Corvalenne.

  Within ten minutes, they drew close to the mountain’s base at last, and they immediately took cover behind the broad trunk of a blueleaf tree.

  Ahead of them, dozens upon dozens of nests clung to the branches above like spiderwebs, woven from the owls’ shed feathers. Each nest reflected the moonlight in dazzling silvers. It was almost beautiful, but in a dangerous, blinding sort of way. The silverplume owls themselves—three-horned and each the size of a small child—drifted from nest to nest, carrying limp prey in their talons to feed their hungry chicks.

  For a second, Dain simply stared up at them. He’d heard stories of how big they were, but reading about them wasn’t the same as seeing them in person.

  Awed by their size as he was, he began to have doubts about his plan.

  … Nah.

  It’ll work.

  They shouldn’t even be half as tough as the bilefrost centipede.

  “They don’t belong down here, do they?” Anisa whispered, eyes glimmering in awe—just as much as his was—as she stared up at a particularly giant owl almost her own size. “I’ve heard big magic beasts like these don’t stray far from the top of mountains unless something even bigger forces them out. Those nests don’t look… stable.”

  “Almost a shame to cull them.” He nodded. “But they’re still dangerous. A single flock’s worth of thrown silverplume feathers can absolutely shred a caravan if they’re riled enough, so it is what it is. Still remember the plan?”

  Yasmin gave a solemn nod. Anisa matched it with a sharp one, reaching behind her to pull out her crossbow.

  “Good. Yasmin, make sure to draw out as many feathers as you can. The less they’ve got, the weaker they’ll fly and the less they’ll have to chuck at your lady,” he said. “Give me five minutes to find a flank position. In exactly five minutes from now, run out there and start putting on a show.”

  Yasmin’s second steady nod was all the answer he needed, so before either of them could question how he was going to bring down the owls once again, he slipped away.

  He crept through the brush, cane in one hand, heart thumping with the silent thrill of it. Every step was measured, every breath held just long enough not to rasp too loud. When he was sure he’d gone far enough that the ladies couldn’t see him, he paused, glanced around, and a smirk tugged at his lips.

  Right.

  Time to cheat.

  He unslung his satchel and unwrapped his prosthetic, stabbing into his shoulder socket. The click of it settling into place was almost comforting.

  Now that he had two arms again, climbing became more than desperate flailing. He jammed his cane between the bark, heaved himself up the nearest tree branch by branch, and kept going until he perched almost all the way up on a thick branch.

  Up here, he could see the entire spectacle: the nests, the owls feeding, and the glittering silverplume feathers drifting like snowflakes whenever one shook its wings a little too hard. If Anisa and Yasmin were facing the ‘front’ of the nest, he was facing the left side.

  A perfect shooting gallery.

  He adjusted his prosthetic, flexed his joints, then found a spot on the thick branch where he’d be comfortable shooting from. With any luck, the owls shouldn’t be able to trace his windspheres back to him. Better yet, it was night. Neither Anisa nor Yasmin should be able to see clearly what sort of projectiles he was firing, so they shouldn’t be able to link him to the person who saved them yesterday morning.

  Once he found his vantage point, all that was left was waiting for Yasmin to do her part.

  But his mind wasn’t quiet in the meanwhile.

  … Anisa had a point.

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  What in the gods’ names is driving the magic beasts down from the mountains?

  He looked up, squinting through the trees at the mist-shrouded mountain.

  First a giant bilefrost centipede. Now two dozen silverplume owls nesting lower than they had any right to. Could the disaster that was Corvalenne’s destruction really have rippled this far into Obric territory, causing a cascading effect that somehow led to beasts being pushed out of their homes?

  He shook his head, focused on silverplume owls, and decided it’d be better to just get his head on straight.

  Five minutes nearly up.

  He counted down each second in his head like a child winding down to hide-and-seek. Three. Two. One—and right on cue, Yasmin burst out of cover below, sprinting straight under the nests with her swordstaff unsheathed.

  … Right on time.

  Let’s do this.

  The silverplume nests immediately went from gentle nursery to shrieking hell in a single breath. Two dozen owls took wing, hooting as their eyes caught the lantern-glow on Yasmin.

  They didn’t hesitate. The oldest and largest owls flicked a storm of silver feathers down, bright as moonblades. Yasmin stabbed her swordstaff into the ground right before they hit. Earth bucked up, and a squared wall of soil leaped over her head with a hard, clean crack.

  Feathers stabbed into the earth wall like thrown nails, but none penetrated. A few owls quickly swerved wide, trying to flank her, but Yasmin pivoted and quickly jabbed her swordstaff twice more—and more walls sprang up in a ring around her, blocking those feathers as well.

  And she’s leaving big and intentional gaps in her walls to bait in more feathers as well.

  She knew what she was doing. She didn’t want the owls to just give up after the first failed volleys. Good instincts, he thought. It was probably the years of shielding a little lady from thrown crockery and worse that gave her her instincts.

  More and more owls took to the canopy, throwing, circling, and throwing even more silverplume feathers. Yasmin hunched behind her bulwark and let them spend themselves. As the ground became slowly littered with glittering feathers, the more unstable the owls’ flight, and the slower their volleys.

  Just a little more…

  Now!

  He leveled his prosthetic, aimed at the closest owl, and drew a huge breath.

  Mana and wind bubbled under his metal plates with a soft, familiar hum before he fired.

  The windsphere punched clean through the nearest owl’s back. It didn’t even get to shriek. It simply crumpled mid-air, wings folding like broken umbrellas as it fell through the lattice of branches and smacked the ground.

  One down!

  Before the flock even noticed one of their own had fallen, he sent another windsphere, then another. Two more owls buckled and dropped. Now the others noticed, and about half of them whirled mid-air, panicked, flinging feathers everywhere like detonated shrapnel.

  He leaned behind his tree trunk for cover for a second, took a deep breath to refresh his draining lungs, then fired a fourth sphere—but a stone bolt suddenly whistled up from a brush and nailed his owl through the breast. It spun twice and crashed through a nest, scattering the chicks into the air as well.

  … Huh.

  He blinked incredulously, trying to track Anisa’s position. Gods knew he tried to look for a bobbing lantern or a curl of hair, but he couldn’t see so much as her imprint in the dark. She’d tucked herself into some bush and vanished. Picturing her neat little hands working the crossbow yet being able to fire a shot that accurately… well, he had to admit she really did know her way around a crossbow.

  Aren’t I the luckiest man in the world to have such reliable teammates?

  If I just let her shoot a few more, I won’t have to be as nauseous after this.

  The owls were in full panic mode now. Feathers continued flying everywhere, most thudding into Yasmin’s earth walls, but he tucked lower on his branch to make himself a smaller target as he continued firing.

  Fifth owl down. Sixth owl down. Seventh owl down. As most of the chicks started to scatter and even the adults began to abandon their nests, their flight patterns grew more erratic. He grimaced and aimed his prosthetic in their general direction, firing three more windspheres across. Two of them clipped a large owl in the wing, dropping it out of the air.

  A second crossbow bolt hit its target as well, taking the owl right through the head.

  That’s nine.

  But nine wasn’t enough. By now, most of the owls had peeled off their nests in small groups, fanning out into the deeper forest. He swore under his breath and immediately stood up straight, sending two more windspheres their way.

  No game. He didn’t dare shoot more for fear of getting too nauseous and losing his balance on the branch.

  “Don’t chase them!” he barked immediately, because below, Yasmin had already stepped out from her ring of walls while Anisa emerged from her bush, bright-eyed and eager. “Hold! They can’t get far tonight with so few feathers! Rush to kill them and you’ll get a face full of the last feathers they have, so we’ll take it slow and pick off the stragglers over the next few hou—”

  A deep, heavy step muffled his voice before he even finished his sentence.

  Then another step.

  Then another step.

  All three of them snapped their heads towards the base of the mountain. Dain narrowed his eyes as the treeline shuddered. Distant trunks cracked and toppled, while others were shoved aside as if something vast were parting them like reeds.

  His guts twisted hard.

  What did Marr say again?

  ‘Heavy steps, too heavy for any owl’?

  He’d ignored her warnings back then, but now, he couldn’t even tell what was coming at them.

  A troll? A giant? There shouldn’t be any magic beast large and heavy enough to make those kinds of footsteps anywhere near this forest, so it couldn’t be a magic beast. But there couldn’t be any trolls or giants on this continent, either. They were all across the eastern sea, over on the Akhermir Continent.

  Then, between the parting trees, a glimmer surfaced: two pairs of glowing red eyes stacked on top of each other.

  … His mouth went dry.

  But he let the smallest, smallest edge of a laugh scrape out between his teeth, because sometimes a man laughed when he was very afraid or very excited, and he wasn’t sure which it was.

  He knew what it was. Every boy in Corvalenne—in the entire world, he supposed—grew up hearing about them.