The Master wasn’t happy.

  “You lit a beacon for him.” She glared at the golden Elf sitting across from her.

  “You told me to watch him.” Stilas folded his arms. “He needed help and you didn’t want me to interfere. So I alerted his companions that he was in trouble.” Stilas folded his arms in front of him. “What are you so upset about?”

  “You also blew up a wall and let those demon things loose.” The Master glared at the lone dog that was laying its head in the Elf’s lap. She’d lived for over a thousand years and never seen anything like that anywhere in the world. It was something else other-worldly that the Elf had brought with him while he hid here.

  “Braize is a good boy.” Stilas scratched the demon dog’s ears. “And so is Missy.”

  The second dog walked around the side of the chair, appearing as if it’d only been hiding. His other demon dog laid down at his feet with her head on her paws.

  “This is what I’m talking about.” The Master getured at the otherworldly animals. “I’ve scried over the entire world and there is nothing like that here. You’re going to get us both caught if you make it obvious that something else is here!”

  The Elf was useful because of his projecting ability. She was trying to learn it every time he took her somewhere and it wouldn’t take her long to learn how to replicate it even though he seemed to realize that she was interested. His answers about the spell were very vague and she wasn’t certain that he was being entirely truthful either. But it was a mystery and that was something that they had a kinship with. Their need to know what lay behind every rock and how things worked was a hunger that she hadn’t found in another person in a very long time.

  “What are you going to do about the city?” Stilas’ question broke her out of her thoughts.

  The Elf seemed completely unconcerned about the prospect of getting caught. All she knew about him was that he was hiding from a powerful group of people who thought that he was dead. From what little she knew about the Elders, they were a cruel collection of beings that experimented on people to find ways to make themselves stronger. The experiments that the young Elf had been running seemed tame compared to what the Elders had done here, but the way that Stilas talked about them, they weren’t the same group that she’d known so many centuries ago.

  “Action and reaction.” The Master touched the crystal ball in front of her and looked over the Zombie city. “I moved pieces south to preserve the cure.” She zoomed out so she could see the continent. “The Corrupted sent Hunters inland to look for the nest that they came from.” She pointed at Port Reggo. “Now they aren’t looking south, which means the Fallen can build a nest here without me being able to stop them and the Corrupted never knowing there is an army so close.”

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  “You knew that was going to happen?” Stilas shook his head. “You know that this is coming here?” He pointed at the city that had just fallen. “And my hellhound guardians might be effective against Zombies, but I don’t have enough magic to fight off that many Touch… I mean Chosen?”

  “Fallen.” Most people wouldn’t differentiate between her group and the ones who treated the Zombies like they were dolls. To her the Zombies were nothing more than tools that were the failed remnants of creating Chosen. They were useful for doing menial, repetitive tasks, but ultimately, they were something that would need to be destroyed for the sake of Humanity.

  The Fallen believed that Zombies were the perfect subjects to rule and were shortsighted enough to want entire cities full of them. If the Corrupted weren’t addicted to the stones growing inside the Zombies, then the two groups might have destroyed each other centuries ago. But the Fallen weren’t able to keep themselves from turning Humans and the Corrupted weren’t able to keep themselves from harvesting Zombies. The two groups had recognized the need for each other, so neither had ever been completely destroyed even when one side had the upper hand, like the Corrupted did now.

  It was an endless cycle of war and death, which she hoped to be able to end one day. But that wasn’t going to happen until she figured out how to create Chosen that could reproduce and solve the problem of becoming Zombies once they died. She had been stumped for centuries, but her Elf partner had opened up more possibilities for them to explore. She just had to make sure they both stayed hidden.

  “If it comes to that, we’ll abandon the lab and set up somewhere else.” The Master sighed. “But the Corrupted are very capable of defending this little castle.”

  “If you say so…” Stilas gestured at the island. “What about your favorite Chosen?”

  “He can handle it.” She moved the area they were looking at across the ocean to the east. “I need you to go to the Paxus Kingdom and check on something for me.” The entire area that they were looking at was obscured by something.

  “Someone has set up a security barrier.” His face scrunched. “Against projection too…” He tapped his golden fingers on the arm of the chair. “I didn’t think your people could do that.”

  The Master almost corrected him, but she could see the interest on his face and didn’t want to distract him. “I won’t be able to watch you while you’re in there.”

  “I’ll figure it out.” He pulled a knitted cap out of his pocket and pulled it over his black hair and pointed ears. “I’ll be back soon.”

  She watched him vanish and tried to take in how his magic moved. She was sure that she was close to figuring it out, but there were other things that she needed to focus on now. She looked at her scrying crystal one last time before she got up and headed to her lab.

  Things were about to start happening and she needed to be ready.

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