“That was weird,” Allana observed.

  “Hmm?” Cadence was sprawled out on the stones behind her, eyes closed while she tried to regain her breath. The girl had been forced to use her Soul Surge to boost her coordination on top of borrowing Trick Step to stay ahead of the barrage of flames and darkness that their enemies had released, and the resultant focus and stamina costs had laid her out, barely conscious.

  “It was like he wasn’t even all there by the end, you know?”

  “Mmm.”

  “He didn’t even try to fight back.”

  Cadence lazily shrugged, fighting back a yawn. “If he was sane, he wouldn’t have been a necromancer.”

  Allana pursed her lips. “I guess.” She gave the necromancer’s corpse a final kick.

  “Was that him?” Tenebres called.

  Allana looked up, trying not to express too much of the relief she felt to see the white-haired boy walk into the town’s square.

  “It was,” she said. “Cadence finished him off a few minutes ago, after we took care of his wight.”

  Tenebres nodded, looking at the scorched ruins to all sides. “And how did that go?”

  Allana shrugged. “Fine. You?”

  “Easy,” Tennbres said, lying just as flagrantly. Behind him, Oli limped into view, and Allana had to work much less hard to keep her face straight as she acknowledged his survival.

  The swordsman gave her a small nod, a gesture of acknowledgement, with maybe just a hint of respect, before he sat next to Cadence on the ground.

  “Any sign of the hag on your end?” Tenebres asked.

  Allana shook her head.

  The boy pursed his lips, looking up at the starless sky overhead. “I think it’s safe to say she’s not here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t know about you guys, but if she had joined in during our fight, we wouldn’t have had a chance.”

  Allana frowned. “It’s possible she could’ve made things pretty bad for us too.”

  “That’s not the only thing I don’t get,” Cadence observed from the ground. Her eyes didn’t move as she spoke, and her words had the dull tonelessness of the exhausted. “Where are the rest of the undead?”

  “We killed them on the edge of town,” Oli reminded her, as if she’d forgotten.

  The celestial didn’t have the energy to roll her eyes. “We killed a dozen undead, maybe a few more. Plus three wights. But this town should’ve had a lot more corpses in it, right?”

  Allana looked at Tenebres, and he nodded. “When I left, there were still over a hundred people in town.”

  “But no more zombies,” Allana said, following Cadence’s line of thought. “And not even any bodies in all these houses.”

  Tenebres frowned, and none of the three needed to ask if he was troubled. This had been his town, once, even if he had only been a child. In defeating Xythen and his wights, the group had gone quite a ways in avenging the people of Culles–but without any bodies to put to rest, the victory felt hollow.

  Tenebres’s shoulders slowly slumped, and he turned resigned, bitter eyes on the giant, intact manor Xythen had come out of, the former residence of Culles’s chief hunter, its door still hanging open. “There’s only one place that’ll have any answers,” he finally said, his voice tight.

  On the ground, Cadence and Oli turned their heads to look at each other–and they nodded. Without conversation, both of the adventurers staggered to their feet, forcing their way through stamina-drained bodies and focus-less minds to stand by their new ally.

  To stand with their new friend.

  #

  Some things are not worth cataloging in detail. Suffice it to say that what the four young adventurers found in the sole standing home in Culles is among them. Neither the workshops that had been made of the dining room and kitchen, nor the abattoir that had been made of the cellar, nor even the true horrors left behind in the bedrooms, were worthy of memories.

  The four did the only thing any of them could think of. They left the mansion, scattering the lamp oil Cadence found stored in one corner of the cellar as they did, and then they set it aflame, giving the residents of Culles the only rest they could provide. Oli and Cadence, ignoring their exhaustion, even took the time to gather the remains of the three elemental wights and add their bodies to the flames, Tenebres explaining how he and Allana had met the wardens only a week before.

  By the time the sun rose, the four had put enough miles between them and the ruins that were once Culles to be comfortable jointly passing out. It was nearly noon by the time they awoke, and though they refused to discuss what they had seen in the necromancer’s stolen home, they put together what each of them knew, secrets falling away in the face of what they had gone through together, and they soon managed to assemble something passing for an explanation–as much as any of this could make sense.

  The corpse hag, the true architect of all of this suffering, must’ve set up shop in Emeston at some point in the past, likely around the same time Telik had met his binding hag ally, as the crimelord had made reference to her. For some reason, potentially due to conflict between the two hags in the trade city, the necromantic outsider had fled Emeston, leaving behind Algus and Sloan, but taking Xythen with her into the deadlands.

  Finding a weakened, dying Culles, the two villains had likely slaughtered the remaining population, giving themselves a secure and secluded base to work out of. When other villages nearby, like Geltis, had come to investigate Culles’ silence, Xythen had gotten the gifted corpses he needed to make ghouls, which were then sent to terrorize those same villages–likely to bring him further ingredients.

  The hag herself, who Telik had called Hellesa, had then begun to make allies out of outlaws, bandits, and exiles. It was one such group, who had been given specters by the powerful outsider and sent to haunt the Flax Road, that Oli had been sent to find, leading to him meeting Cadence and ending up on the journey that had taken them both deeper and deeper into the deadlands.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Tenebres had unknowingly encountered another of these groups while traveling in a caravan through the deadlands. However, those bandits came up against Barnaby, Siroh, and Sartoh, the wardens of Emeston who had proceeded to begin searching out the benefactor of the outlaws. While there was little love lost between Allana and the wardens, they had given their lives in an attempt to kill the two necromancers, and though they failed, they took the majority of the undead in Culles with them.

  Rather than bolster his numbers in the wake of the loss, Xythen had spent time turning the three dead wardens in his wights, his champions, while Hellesa fled for parts unknown. Or so Cadence and Oli assumed, until Tenebres told them of another place she might be hiding. A location not far away, even more secure and better hidden than the small village she had ruined, and one filled with corpses, including those of several battle-gifted.

  #

  “A cult,” Olivia asked incredulously. A few hours rest had been enough for the girl (who had revealed her gender and preferred to name Allana, as she was the only one still out of the loop) to recover from the stamina cost of the many special attacks it had taken to kill the well wight, and Tenebres and Allana already both missed when she had been too nervous or tired to speak. “You were part of a literal cult.”

  “And it doesn’t sound like he enjoyed it very much, so cut the judginess, Oli.” Cadence gave the eclipsed girl a pointed look, and the warrior sat back with a huff.

  The celestial had, even while drained to the limit, managed to find them a decent place to rest, a little glade that Tenebres claimed he and his father had camped at a few times, and now the four youths were sitting in a small circle in its center. Cadence sat on the plush grass, leaning back against her hands, while the others had taken seats on a few flat-topped rocks, including a boulder Allana perched on top of restlessly.

  Tenebres gave the celestial a little smile and a nod of thanks. “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t have gone. But my parents were desperate, and Kellen promised safety, food, and beds. By the time I realized how bad the whole thing was, we didn’t have a chance of getting out.”

  Olivia sighed. Idly, she plucked a few blades of grass to toy with, braiding them with nervous energy as she spoke. “Okay, can I ask the obvious question then?”

  “How did I get out?”

  “How did you get out?”

  “They tried to sacrifice me,” Tenebres said with a shrug. “It didn’t work. And that’s how I got my gift.”

  Cadence watched the boy intently. In the midst of the fight with Xythen, she hadn’t had much time to think about it, but now she couldn’t help but be curious about his gift of the void–a gift as seemingly obscure and unique as the echo.

  “And the corpses?”

  “You saw what Seo’s fiends can do,” Allana replied sharply. “Those are the ones he can control.”

  Olivia’s eyes narrowed–then she blinked, understanding. “So… you…?”

  “I don’t like talking about it,” Tenebres said simply, his crimson eyes remote.

  “I’d imagine,” Olivia said dryly.

  Cadence put a hand on the eclipsed girl’s leg, then gave Tenebres a reassuring look. “So you think the hag might’ve known about this cult?”

  “I think it’s worth checking,” he confirmed. “It seems like Hellesa had her fingers in every outlaw band in the region–I’d be more surprised if she didn’t know about Kellen and his people.”

  “How far is it?”

  “A couple days, at the most. Let’s say three, so we don’t end up there at night again.”

  “Not that it’ll matter in an underground cult compound,” Oli said, exasperated.

  “You’re still welcome to leave,” Allana offered brightly, her tone at odds with the daggers she glared at the girl.

  Olivia started a hot reply, but Cadence stood, putting herself between the two. “Stop it, both of you! None of us are going anywhere–after last night, I think that’s obvious.”

  Oli and Allana both refused to drop their glares–but both expressions softened by a miniscule increment, each remembering Xythen’s workshop of horrors.

  “We’re in this together now, for better or worse. So Oli, I’d appreciate it if you could stop taking everything either of them says in the worst possible way.”

  “I’m not the one who said he was in a cult, Cadence!”

  “One his family dragged him into, and one that tried to kill him. I’d think you might have just a little sympathy for someone whose family dragged him into a bad situation with no regard for his well-being.”

  Oli opened her mouth–then she faltered. Shame finally cracked the glare in her eyes, and she looked away as color rose to her cheeks.

  “Great,” Cadence said, turning to Allana. “Now, I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but it seems pretty obvious we have at least one more big fight to do together. So while I know Oli might not always be the easiest person to be around-”

  “Hey!”

  “-I’d appreciate it if you stopped taking every chance you get to argue with her.”

  Allana’s glare switched targets, but Cadence had been raised by a Master level glarer, and she kept her eyes squarely on Allana’s hypnotic purple irises.

  “Allana,” Tenebres asked gently, “what happened to controlling your temper?”

  Allana suddenly looked like she had bitten the tip of her tongue, a combination of pain and guilt washing over her face.

  Cadence and Tenebres shared a long-suffering look, but some of the tension finally eased out of the camp.

  “I’m sorry,” Olivia said softly, some of her well-drilled etiquette finally forcing its way to the fore.

  “I guess I am too,” Allana admitted, her own tone much more begrudging.

  “Thank the Adventurer for that,” Cadence said, dropping back down to the ground. Only once she sat did she see the way both Allana and Tenebres looked at her when she said that.

  “Did you just say ‘the Adventurer?’” Allana asked.

  Cadence rolled her eyes, expecting some more teasing from the older girl. “Yes, I did. He gave me one of my gifts, the wanderer.”

  “Huh.”

  Olivia arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  “I didn’t know there was an Adventurer archetype is all,” Allana said.

  “I did,” Tenebres said mildly.

  “Then why do you look so surprised?” Olivia asked.

  Cadence didn’t bother, assuming the answer already. Novices weren’t supposed to have Adventurer gifts. Not even Storyteller was sure why she did.

  Tenebres surprised her. “It’s just…”

  “We’re kind of adventurers too,” Allana said.

  A bolt of shock coursed through Cadence, and she sat up a little straighter, looking around the little circle.

  “I think,” she mused aloud, “we should all share a little more about ourselves.”