They went down on foot. Maxwell set the pace—not fast, but deliberate, as if they were walking into a hall instead of a hidden village. Oak and the others were left tied just below the rise, reins looped short, silhouettes kept well away from the sky’s edge. They had left their cloaks; it was much too hot to be carrying more than necessary.

  “Hands visible,” Maxwell said. “No steel unless they show theirs first.”

  The slope into the fold was gentle at first, then steeper near the bottom, the grass giving way to packed earth. The creek’s chatter grew louder. So did the sounds of the village—clatter of pots, quick, light footfalls, a shrill burst of laughter from something small. Someone saw them. A sharp, trilling cry cut across the air—high and strange, almost birdsong, almost a whistle. It doubled in a heartbeat as another voice picked it up, then another.

  Every head turned. For a frozen moment, the scaled little folk stared. Then the village exploded into motion. The trilling cries layered over one another, turning into a chaotic, panicked chorus. The kobolts bolted away from them—darting between huts as they fled south into the open plains. Smoke pits were abandoned, baskets dropped, lines left to snap against the creek’s current.

  “Hold,” Maxwell said quietly. “Do not chase them.”

  Toby checked his hands, making sure his fingers stayed open and away from Falreth’s hilt. Every instinct wanted to run after the fleeing shapes, shout that they weren’t here to burn or steal—that they were not like the elves. But he knew better; chasing a panicked cow never calmed it. Within breaths, the village was almost empty. Only the creek kept moving, silver and unbothered, carrying scraps of reed and a slowly drifting basket someone had let go. All except one.

  “By the stream,” Maxwell murmured.

  Toby followed his gaze. Near the center of the village, in a bare patch of ground beside the creek, one kobolt hadn’t run. He stood alone before something Toby hadn’t registered at first—a great blue shape, egg-like and the size of a man’s torso, half-shadowed by a hooked wooden frame. Even now, Toby’s eyes tried to slide off it. The thing shimmered without moving, its surface a deep, glassy blue that wasn’t quite light and wasn’t quite stone. Looking straight at it made the bridge of his nose ache. His gaze kept wanting to drift to the kobolt instead, to the ground, to anywhere else.

  The kobolt himself looked like it was about to march to war. He was older, or at least more lined around the eyes. His scales were a mottled dark umber, with streaks of dusty red down his arms and the back of his skull. A short mane of bleached feathers hung from a cord around his neck. In his clawed hands he held a staff taller than he was—a rough wood shaft capped with a ring of dull metal hung with feathers, beads, bits of bone, and small, unidentifiable charms that clicked softly when he moved.

  The kobolt planted himself squarely between them and the blue egg-shaped orb. His tail lashed once in the dust.

  Zak muttered under his breath, “I am suddenly less comforted by the lack of armor.”

  Maxwell lifted his chin slightly. “Stay where you are,” he said. “Let me speak first.”

  They halted a few paces from the kobolt. The village felt like it was holding its breath: doors left open, slowly swinging on their hinges in the wind; baskets of small fish overturned in the eagerness to flee; odd wooden toys abandoned by children as their parents snatched them up. The staff-bearer’s eyes were fixed on them—narrow, slit-pupiled, and bright as polished amber. His grip on the staff tightened. Maxwell stepped half a pace ahead of the others, his empty hand raised, palm out.

  “Do you speak the King’s tongue?” Maxwell called, voice level. “We come in peace. We want to trade words, not blood.”

  The kobolt spat neatly into the dust. When he answered, the words were rough and accented, but clear enough.

  “Fat elves,” he said. “Soft elves. Should have struck while we still had our backs turned.”

  His tail lashed again. The trinkets on his staff chimed.

  “We’re not elves—” Toby began.

  The kobolt slammed the butt of his staff into the ground. The air bucked. A sudden, heavy thump that rolled out from the staff like a ring of invisible thunder. Dust jumped. Reed roofs shivered. The hair rose along Toby’s arms. Every part of him screamed that this was not wind. This was something aimed. The Art stirred before his thoughts caught up. Weight thickened against his skin—that familiar, terrifying rush. The world sharpened, edges going crisp, motion stretching thin. The ring of force rushing at them was suddenly visible in the way the dust moved, in the way the creek’s surface dented as if struck by a giant’s unseen hand.

  Toby steadied himself for impact. He didn’t think about how. He just reached for that current and dragged it up around himself like a shield, the way he might bring a sword up against an oncoming blow. The wave hit. For a heartbeat, everything in him rang. The pressure met the Art and tangled—a crashing, grinding clash that wasn’t sound and wasn’t sight, just raw impact. The world juddered around him. His teeth hurt. His knees flexed.

  Then it was gone. It passed over him like a sneeze—that uncomfortable moment where the whole body seizes, then releases. The thickened air collapsed. The weight vanished. The Art slipped out of his grasp so suddenly he staggered, boot skidding half a step backward in the dust. He blinked, breath sawing in his throat.

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  Zak hit the ground hard, like someone had cut his strings. One instant he was standing beside Toby, mouth half-open on a curse; the next he was flat on his back, limbs loose, head lolling to one side.

  Reece dropped to his knees. He made a strangled sound, pitched forward, and vomited into the dirt. His arms trembled once, then gave out. He rolled sideways and lay still, breath coming in shallow, rapid flutters.

  Maxwell groaned, one leg buckling. He caught himself on his good hand, the other still bound in its sling, and hung there for a heartbeat—teeth bared, eyes glassy. His fingers twitched toward his sword-hilt.

  “Toby,” Maxwell rasped. “It’s… on you.”

  Then his gaze slid out of focus. His body tipped. He fell onto his uninjured side and did not move. Silence crashed in. Toby’s heartbeat roared loud enough to drown out the creek. The kobolt with the staff stared at him.

  “That should have killed you,” the little creature hissed. His eyes were wide now, the scales around them flaring pale. “What are you?”

  Toby’s hand went to Falreth’s hilt without thought. The leather felt blessedly solid under his fingers.

  “What did you do?” Toby demanded. His voice sounded too loud in his own ears. “What did you do to them?”

  The kobolt ignored the question. His nostrils flared, the slits along his jaw flexing.

  “Elf souls snap like dry reeds,” he said. “Too proud to bend. Too thin to hold. None have stood after that strike.” His gaze raked Toby up and down. “You stand. You look like a fat elf… but you are not right either.”

  “I said we’re not elves!” Toby snapped. Fear made the words rough. He couldn’t stop glancing at Zak’s still form, at Reece’s unmoving shoulder, at Maxwell’s slack jaw. “Elves burned my village. They slaughtered my family. I’m out here to find them and kill them, every last one.”

  The kobolt’s jaw worked. His tail flicked like a whip.

  “Then why walk the plains?” he spat. “Elves haunt the wet places. They slink in the marsh, not on high ground. Anyone with sense knows that.”

  The marshes. The image of that gray-green smear on the horizon rose behind Toby’s eyes—the marshes squatting like rot at the edge of the land.

  “Tell me where,” Toby said. He took a step forward before he realized it and forced himself to stop. “Tell me where they are. I will end them. They are your enemies too, aren’t they?” His voice roughened. “And tell me what you did to my friends.”

  The kobolt’s grip tightened on the staff. For the first time, his gaze flicked away from Toby—to Zak, to Reece, to Maxwell, then back.

  “Magic,” he said shortly. “A strike against the soul. Enough to tear them apart. Enough to send them where dead elves go.” His eyes narrowed again. “But they do not go. They lie and breathe. That should not be.”

  He took a half-step back, the staff’s trinkets chiming nervously.

  “What are you?” he asked again, quieter this time.

  Toby swallowed. His mouth tasted of iron and old smoke.

  “I’m a man. A knight of Highmarsh. A farmer’s son.” The words felt like stones, simple, solid, all he had.

  The kobolt opened his mouth to answer but a deep noise flew across the land. The sound rolled over them, a deep, dragging roar that seemed to start in the bones and work outward. The ground trembled under Toby’s boots. Dust slid in tiny avalanches from the hut roofs. The blue egg behind the kobolt flickered, its color flaring brighter for a heartbeat.

  Toby’s head snapped up. Beyond the village, from the direction the other kobolts had fled, the sky bloomed. Blue fire and lightning tore up a line of the plains—a great gout of burning color that didn’t look quite like flame and didn’t look quite like storm. It writhed as it climbed, twisting into the air, streaked with white-hot lines that cracked like spears.

  The heat of the sun had been outshone. The screams of the kobolts were high-pitched and ended short—barely heard over the roar of blue flame. It reminded Toby of the storm-elk, but on a completely different level. Was it the wraith of the saints? The roar came again, longer now, a sound that made the kobolt’s earlier spell feel like nothing more than a gust through grass. The staff-bearer flinched.

  “This can’t be!” the kobolt hissed—at Toby, at himself, at the sky, it wasn’t clear. His scales flared along his neck ridge. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. It wakes. It burns. This is your fault!”

  He spat in the dust again and lifted his staff as if he meant to strike the ground a second time—or aim it elsewhere entirely but cowered as the shadow landed next to them. Toby’s eyes widened. It hit the ground beyond the huts with a crack and a thud that made the earth jump. Four clawed feet dug furrows in the packed dirt. Wings as wide as a village street flared once, throwing gusts of hot wind through the little settlement, then folded in close like a cloak.

  It stood three stories tall, at least. Its underside was scaled in white, plates overlapping in clean, hard lines down its chest and belly. Everywhere else was blue—not one shade, but a storm’s worth of them: deep ocean on the shoulders, brighter sky along the flanks, almost-white along the ridges of its spine. Sparks crawled over those scales in fits and starts, little crackles of electric light that raced along its hide and vanished.

  Its horns were wrong and perfect at the same time. Not wild, branching tines like the storm elk’s antlers, but deliberate shapes—each one like a giant letter F laid on its side and mirrored. The effect made the head look crowned in sharp geometry, as if someone had drawn the idea of antlers and then forged them in lightning.

  A dragon. By the saints, it was a fire-breathing monster, Toby thought. He had heard only of them in myths and legends.

  The dragon opened its mouth. Rows of teeth, long and clean and yellow-white, framed a tongue the color of old bruises. It laughed. The sound was low and cold—not much louder than a man’s voice, but it seemed to slide along Toby’s bones all the same. It did not look at him. Its eyes, slitted and bright as burning copper, went past Toby to fix on the kobolt with the staff and the shimmering blue egg. And when it spoke, the words didn’t line up with the way the mouth moved.

  “At last. I finally have you,” the dragon said.