CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Fog of War

  The sound of a thundercp resounded across the forest as the first of the party fell onto the ground while ed in radiant starlight.

  “Fuck!” Bram gasped.

  Nausea overwhelmed him, f the prio his knees. He resisted the urge to vomit and even mao get ba his feet before the rest of his panions arrived.

  Bathed in starlight, Rowan and Ravi appeared at Bram’s side as easily as if they’d just jumped down from a fortable aute ride. Clearly, these two sorcerers were used to traveling vast distances in a matter of moments. The otherworlders weren’t as graceful. Like Bram, Chris and Bridget fell to their knees, each puking the meager rations they’d eaten siurning to Aarde half an ho.

  “I feel like tuna pulled out of the sea…” Bridget puked some more. “…by a hook tched to my gut…”

  “Couldn’t have said it better—”

  Chris puked some more.

  “…Myself,” he sighed while wiping his mouth.

  Hajime, who arrived st, nded as easily as Rowan had, but theumbled on something lying on the ground and tumbled across the forest floor. Hajime would’ve rolled into a thick clump of bushes had his tumble not been thwarted by a sed object lying ft on the earth.

  He groaned. “Nandayo…?”

  It was then that he noticed someone looking back at him.

  “Eh…?”

  Hajime’s eyes wide the sight of the skull whose empty eye sockets were staring back at him. His gaze traveled down its yellowing boo the dirty tattered robe that looked eerily like the one Ravi wore, and then to the vihat had ed themselves around the corpse as if to show off that mother nature had already in cim to it.

  “Ee~~eh?!”

  Hajime was quick to crawl away, though, in his zest to escape the dead, his left hand fell on something that cracked at his touch. A feeling of revulsion passed through him as his fingers fttened against something squishy a. Slowly, he turned his head around, and that’s when he saw the sed dead body. Only, uhe first corpse that seemed to have expired a long while ago, this sed corpse had yet to be cimed by the earth. Hajime’s hand was buried deep is chest, causing blood to gush out of it.

  “Yok—”

  Bram csped a hand around Hajime’s mouth.

  “Quiet,” he whispered into the otherworlder’s ear.

  Bram’s gaze swept through their surroundings, his eyes pausing at every sign of ret disturbance. A burnt patch of grass, arrows driven into tree trunks, and the blood pooling underh the retly departed. He noticed how its state of decay was much less thaher four corpses lying around the st oint; a rusty iron sword embedded in the ground.

  “This one’s a fresh kill by the look of him…” Bram pointed a fi the garish wound that had sliced the man’s throat. “His skin was ripped out by something rougher than a bde…”

  “Mmmh,” Hajime whispered back.

  Bram loosened his hold on his panion’s lips. “What?”

  “C-Cws,” Hajime whispered. “His wounds…they look like our wounds made by—”

  “The weargs,” Bram finished Hajime’s thought.

  Having seen Scarfang’s cws up close, the prince couldn’t help but agree. Such monstrous cws could indeed rip a man’s throat as easily as if it were a sb of cheese. They would have just as easily torn through this man’s fur jacket as well.

  “Chris,” Bram called the Texan over, “do ynize him?”

  Chris took one look at the man’s fad nodded. “Ain’t this the fel we got into a tussle with ba Bellen?”

  It did indeed look like the gray-bearded man Bram had nearly run over with Renfri. The sight of his dead body so far away from the city caused the seventh prince’s brow to furrow.

  “It must be him…” Bram agreed, adding, “But how could one of Baron von Galen’s soldiers be here, Vice Master?”

  “I-I’m not sure…no o my use our oints,” Ravi replied in a strained voice.

  Bram gnced over at Ravi kneeling by the corpse that had stopped Hajime’s tumble. The prince could see the tear sliding down the Shamvan’s cheek. It roof that they’d finally found members of the lost expedition.

  “I’m sorry, I…I need a moment,” Ravi whispered.

  “Did you know him well?” Bridget asked as she y a hand on his shoulder.

  “Her,” he answered. “Irena and I came up together. She was third-ranked in our .”

  Rowan, who’d k beside Ravi, pced a finger against the long craear the top of the skull. Tiny vines crept out of it like the roots of a gree. “No wearg did this… These wounds were made with sorcery.”

  “I don’t doubt it…” Bram’s brow creased. “From Scarfang’s words, it didn’t seem like the weargs were hostile to the Stargazers…”

  His gaze drifted to the garish wounds on the gray-bearded man’s body.

  “But von Galen’s soldiers must have entered the weargs here too…” he deduced.

  “I re their meeting wasn’t as polite,” Chris weighed in.

  Bram nodded. “These wounds…they’re less than an hour old…”

  His gaze examihe tree line surrounding them, but he could sehing beyond the gloom of the forest’s dense opy and the darkhat prevailed over the early m sky.

  “Which begs the question,” he tinued, “how did von Galen’s soldiers arrive at this location before we did…?”

  “And if this fel and his friends fought the weargs, how e there aren’t any leopards among the dead?” Chris followed up.

  ‘Boom!’

  They all heard the thunderous roar that came from nearby.

  “on fire…?” Bram wondered aloud.

  Ravi nodded. “From a spell on… I think I know how these others arrived here before us.”

  The Shamvan looked up just as a sed thunderous roar shook the forest.

  “Holy shit!” Bridget’s eyes followed Ravi’s gaze. “What crazy magical thing is making all that noise?”

  “I think we’re about to find out,” Hajime answered, looking over to Bram, and asking, “We’re going to where that sound’s ing from, aren’t we?”

  Having just helped Hajime up, Bram replied, “We go where the adveakes us.”

  It didn’t take the party long to discover the cause of the disturbance. With ahunderous roar, they cleared the tree line just in time to see an explosion of are fmes ignite upon the ground below.

  “Looks like we’re te to the party,” Chris whispered.

  The party found themselves at the top of a ridge overlooking a wide clearing that was cut right down the middle by the Rhyne River. Right below the ridge was a gathering of thirty soldiers decked in the leathers of von Galen’s household. At the head of this loose formation was the short-haired woman Bram had met ba Bellen. Beside her stood a waifish young man with sandy hair and armor that gleamed in the light of the scattered fires.

  “That’s Aric, the baron’s son,” Bram expined.

  “Is he a friend of yours?” Bridget asked.

  “We went to the capital’s academy together.”

  Though he didn’t bother telling his panions how Aric had been among a group of young nobles who’d made his stay at the academy unbearable, the dark look that fshed on the prince’s face roof enough that they weren’t on good terms.

  ‘Boom!’

  A sed round of explosions struck the far side of the clearing, causing the party’s gazes to drift up at the pale m sky and the object floating high above them.

  “Is that…” Wonder fshed on Hajime’s face. “…an airship?”

  Floating in the sky beh the clouds was a ship roughly eighty feet long, thirty feet broad, and weighing about a hundred and fifty tons by Bram’s reing. It was mostly wood except for the broing and piping along the stern which Bram deduced housed the twe sorcerite engines o fly a skyship of its size. Cloth fins spread out of its port and starboard side with a white tailfin trailing at its stern.

  “Twin engines and a sleek fin design for fast travel…it’s a brigantine,” Bram determined.

  From what he knew of a brigantine—and Bram knew much about skyships because his older sister Camil owned many such vessels—its sorcerite engines had a speed between sixty to eighty knots, making a brigantine fast enough to fly over the Red Forest’s vast woodnd realm in fewer days than the party’s journey across the forest floor. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the oints, Baron von Galen’s men would have achieved their goal ihe Red Forest long before Bram’s party could arrive to thwart them.

  “A brigantine would have ten spell ons?” Ravi guessed.

  “Twelve. Six to each side,” Bram corrected. “And by the looks of it, they’re all in proper order.”

  As soon as these words left the prince’s lips, a new bombardment began on the opposite side of a stretch of river that was a hundred feet wide.

  “You called them spell ons,” Bridget, who, like the others, was lying ft on the ground by the edge of the ridge, spoke up, “I’m guessing that’s why the explosions aren’t normal?”

  The party watched as a projectile struck the earth and caused a tornado-like explosion to wreak havo the ground. Two fmetail leopards were caught in its wrath and were sent flying high into the air.

  “A magical array is grafted onto a spell on which allows it to infuse special ammunition with elemental energy. Thanks to this, every shell unched by a spell on is ented with the corresponding element of its entment,” Ravi expined.

  “A shell ented with the ‘wind element’ does damage like you’ve witnessed,” Bram tihe expnation, “while a shell infused with the ‘water element’ could cause a tidal wave to spread in an area so long as a source of water is nearby.”

  Again, ohese words escaped his lips, an are shell fell into the Rhyne. A moment ter, a torrent of water rose like a great wall that crashed down on the fmetail leopards closest to the river. The force of this wave swept away those weargs too slow to flee its wrath.

  “The weargs are losing,” Hajime whispered.

  Yes, it was clear from their vantage point that the weargs guarding the other side of the river were indeed losing their lives to the bombardment.

  “Is that what we want?” Bridget asked.

  Bram frowned. He wasn’t sure.

  On their side of the clearing, Ari Galen and his forces were leisurely watg the one-sided age as if they were guests in a py at one of the capital’s grand theaters. Meanwhile, oher side of the Rhyhe weargs—some in their human forms—were scrambling out of the way of on fire.

  A third are shell struck the ground, exploding into fmes that would have blossomed into a fireball that would have scorched the nd if a rge wearg that seemed more beast than man hadn’t cut its magi twih his cws.

  “That’s Scarfang,” Bram guessed.

  The leopard man sliced through a fourth shell’s explosion before its magic could blossom. He’d dohis to protect the ruins behind him.

  “The weargs’ ‘Mother’ must be ihe ruin,” Rowan deduced.

  “And where the fate of my resides,” Ravi agreed.

  Scarfa loose a mighty roar, and the sound of it made even the river’s pale green surface tremble. His was a roar that affected von Galen’s soldiers too. A collective shiver passed through them, with their leader falling on his ass out of sudden fear.

  Bram’s eyes narrowed at this ck of discipline.

  “Rowan,” he whispered, “ you hide us with y?”

  “Of course,” she replied, “and you’ll be able to navigate it so long as I allow it.”

  “I also cast ‘Falling Plume’ to help us get off this ridge without having to climb down,” Ravi suggested.

  “Good,” Bram nodded. “Cast it as soon as the fog obscures the clearing.”

  With a wink at Bram, Rowan whispered, “Cuddiwch y byd mewn niwl ysbryd,” and Rowan’s ‘Ghost Fog’ began to appear in the clearing below, its tendrils stretg out from the very edge of the river to creep around unsuspeg feet and legs. Mostly. The weargs weren’t so easily tricked.

  Scarfang s the air, and though he couldn’t see the wearg’s face, Bram didn’t doubt that the leopard man had caught Rowan’s st. Proof of this came seds ter when Scarfang yelled out a warning to his tribe. At hearing the word “Blutm?d!” bellowed across the clearing, the weargs fled into the safety of the ruins.

  Meanwhile, the clueless humans oher side of the Rhyne cheered.

  Idiots, Bram thought. You would run too if you kneere ing…

  The princed at his panions’ faces, his gaze lingering oherworlders.

  From his many versations with them, Bram khat he couldn’t yet ask them to take the lives of other humans. Indeed, Ravi had reported earlier that Chris, Bridget, and Hajime had beeant to attack the weargs ohey learhe truth of their dual nature.

  Am I so different?

  A memory fshed in his mind; the blonde youth’s face right after Bram had stabbed him with his dagger.

  The prince repressed a shudder.

  Inside him, reasoo war with morality. This was the perfect time to weaken von Galen’s forces before their iable csh…but could he sy men who had yet to draw their bdes against him?

  “Vice Master, bring the others to the river…”

  “What about you, Yhness?”

  Dark determination fshed on Bram’s face. “I’ll follow after I’ve thihe herd…”

  The Shamvan caught the prince’s look, and he nodded. He too must have realized the opportunity before them.

  Down below, the fog had begun to cover more of the clearing. Soon, even the skyship above wouldn’t be able to see what was happening on the ground.

  “Cast your spell,” Bram ordered.

  The Shamvan instructed everyoo hold hands. Then he began a t. “Light as bird’s plume to escape one’s doom.”

  As the spell was cast, Bram felt his body go light as if gravity’s hold had loosened around it.

  “Jump,” Ravi whispered.

  With their hands lihe party jumped off the ledge—and they didn’t fall to their deaths. Instead, they floated down at minimal velocity and touched the grouhan a mier without any damage incurred from the fall.

  “I have to learn this spell,” Hajime cluded.

  He couldn’t see them, but both Bridget and Chris were nodding.

  It was a credit to Rowan’s power that Bram’s party sheir way across their half of the clearing with none of von Galen’s soldiers notig their approach.

  “Watch where you’re pointing your spear, dolt!” snapped a gruff-sounding voice.

  “I ain’t poking you with anything, you knave!” replied a sed angry voice. “I ’t see—”

  There came the sound of flesh being pierced, a muffled cry, and thehud of something heavy falling over.

  “Wilhelm?” called the first man. “What’re you—”

  His gruff voice was cut off as a bde was sliced across his throat. Seds ter, Bram let go of the dying man, and he crumpled to the ground like the earlier soldier.

  Twnced down at the hand that gripped his sword. He couldn’t stop it from shaking. How many more will I add to my ledger…?

  He heard a soft giggle in his right ear.

  Rowan…

  Bram knew he could have asked the trickster to deal with von Galen’s soldiers for him. She’d already shown an ination for mass sughter. Only, he couldn’t. He believed that this was his task—his burden to bear—and Bram swore to his heart that he wouldn’t succumb to the madness of guilt.

  ALERT! You have sin a soldier of House von Galen [Jonas Becker]!GRATULATIONS! You’ve pushed yourself to new heights. An unwavering resolve increased your Willpower [+1].Almost ten soldiers would die to Bram’s sword by the time he reunited with his party along the riverbank. Only then did von Galen’s soldiers sound the arm. At that point, not even Rowan’s fog could hide the stench of blood in the air.

  “Will someo rid of this damnable fog already!” barked a reedy voice that was slightly different from the one Bram remembered from his academy days.

  “We ’t, Ser Aric!” replied a female voice Bram alsnized. “This fog’s not sorcery…none of our spells dispel it!”

  Again, Bram was amazed by Rowan’s talents. Surely, Sir Anthony was corre thinking that she would be ed the ‘Inparable’ of this year’s ‘juring Season’ when Bram presented her at the Sn’s court during the ‘Mid-Winter Solstice’ that would occur many moons from now. Indeed, having Rowan on his side at the all-important gathering could t as a point to his work in Lotharin’s revival, and he needed all the positive points he could get with how quickly the deadlio his fate seemed to get closer.

  When she caught sight of the blood smearing Bram’s clothes, Bridget couldn’t help but frown. “Was that necessary?”

  “It was…” The harshness of Bram’s features softened as his gaze fell on her anxious face. “Believe me, I don’t do it lightly…”

  Getting across the Rhyne wasn’t difficult thanks to Ravi’s support. The Shamvan jured a bridge of starlight to help them cross the river. Such fshy sorcery wouldn’t be hidden long even with Rowan’s fog, but the party reached the other side of the Rhyne long before their enemies noticed.

  “There’s light over there!” someone yelled.

  “Well, shoot at it, you imbeciles!” Ari Galen roared.

  Only, by the time they finished casting their spells, Bram’s party had already arrived at the mouth of the ruins.

  “Blessed Pals,” Ravi whispered.

  In front of them was a cliff roughly the same height as the ridge they’d jumped down from oher side of the clearing. Though, uheir ridge, this cliff was no mere craggy wall. Thick green vines g to its surface like a maacled beast. They spread over the wall like dark veins f patterns oohat were unintelligible to those who looked upon them.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” Hajime whispered.

  “I don’t think any of us do, Bud.” Chris patted him on the shoulder. “We’re still going though, right?”

  The Texan gnced sideways at the prince who was iing the two bowed trees arched over a dark hole like a projeg doorway that was left open for those daring enough to cross its threshold.

  “Yes,” Bram nodded. He then turo Rowan and asked, “ you sense anything?”

  “Madness and corruption… You’ll be able to se soon — ‘tis a stench most pu,” the trickster replied.

  She was right.

  Even one who cked talent in sorcery like Bram could sehe evil energy mixed in with the chilly air drifting out of the hole.

  “Are you ready?” Rowan asked.

  “No,” Hajime replied.

  “We’re ready,” Bridget cut him off. Then, in a less fident tone, she asked, “As the scout…should I lead the way?”

  Bram shook his head. “I’ll lead the way.”

  With o look at the early m sky that had been half-obscured by the trickster’s fog, the priook a deep breath, and then he plunged into the darkness of the ruin.

  GD_Cruz