If a hawk were to look down upon this particular section of wood in the Virvalan Darein, the Summerlands as we call them, it would be excused for missing the tiny speck of ember marking the camp of the Q’vara Commune in the twilight. Were it then to notice the auburn braid and the bald head immersed in conversation around this faint flame, we ought to be impressed. Let us leave the hawk to its flight, however, and join the two around the campfire, surrounded as they were by tents and dreams…

“Explain it to me again, would you? I’m afraid that I could not follow.” The elder of the commune plowed a hand thoughtfully through his stiff beard.

“Right…” Before talking, Leth’laria took a second to organize the details in a more orderly fashion. “I was in one of the Valisian trading hubs – Usil, I think – while still working for Lord Hikros, the Költonian emissary. It was there that I came upon an orphanage, like any other. I would have passed it, if it wasn’t for the…” Her voice trailed off.

“… the crying?”

“Yes. The crying. Again, normally I would have just ignored it. It wasn’t my issue. Except, the crying wasn’t normal. It felt like… I don’t know how to say this in Virvalokk… it stabbed me? In the brain. I guess. No… It was like every memory of every injury that I have ever taken rushed to the forefront of my waking dreams immediately. It had to stop.” Leth’s hand instinctively moved to the grip of her longbow even though it wasn’t stringed. Old scars ached. “I jumped the fence, noticed the crying child, it wasn’t much more than an infant, and somehow got it to quiet down. The anguish died with the cries.”

“Well done.”

“Thanks. What’s much more impressive is me not getting accused of any kind of assault or kidnapping when the staff found me cradling the kid in the garden. It seemed that they understood what had happened at once.”

The elder furrowed his brow. “What still strikes me as strange, Amastacia, is what you did thereafter. Why would you adopt the child after such an experience?”

Leth pushed a stray strand of auburn behind her ear. “I don’t rightly know, if I’m being honest. At the time, it felt like the right thing to do. It was natural. Now, I wouldn’t be able to explain the sense of it to you, even if my life depended on it.”

“Do you think it was the child’s doing?”

“The scholars that I went to certainly did not think so. They assured me that the child wasn’t attuned, wielded no magic whatsoever, and besides, and I quote, ‘it is too young to express any natural attunement anyway’.” Leth’s face contorted into a mockery of a scholars condescending look. “I think they thought me somewhat hysterical.”

The elder’s attention shifted as his eyes locked on something behind her, his shoulders suddenly tense. He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice entirely unlike the kind compassion of before: “We have a visitor.”

As Leth’laria turned around, she might have expected to see another of the Virvaliista or maybe a wood-beast, something normal within the Dales of Dreams. Instead, she saw a figure standing in the twilight, clad in black and purple armor and armed with a shield and a heavy mace. The figure was wearing a helmet, and the armor gave no indication of identity. It did not need to. With a surge in their stomachs, both natives immediately understood the meaning of the new arrival.

It was the elder that spoke first, his words overcoming the wave of dread emanating from the warrior like mist from a waterfall. “The Q’vara welcomes you, Sister of Sacrifice. Please, share in our fire and rest in preparation for your quest, whatever it might be.” His mastery of the common Tarensian tongue, so different from Virvalokk, was impressive for one who had never left Virvalan Darein, although it could not mask the uneasiness that he felt.

Leth slowly released the involuntary grip that her hand had held on the hilt of her dagger.

The Sister seemingly looked in the direction of the elder, though it would have been difficult to tell what her eyes did underneath her helmet, before moving towards the fire and taking a place opposite Leth.

Only when the Sister sat down, did Leth’laria’s wit return in full, the fear having retracted somewhat. It was still there, though, hanging in the air like words unspoken, a knot in the pit of the stomach forcefully jammed in place. It made the Sister seem larger than life – inhuman almost. Leth found that her words were not quite as cutting as she intended: “Here to slay some ‘great evil’ then?” The Sister did not respond. Leth’s voice made itself smaller, like a cowering animal. “Isn’t that what Knights of Damnation do?”

The elder gave Leth a worried glance. To his mind, the Sister’s mace was altogether too close for comfort, and he himself was no warrior. He was wise to fear: One should not taunt the Sisters of Sacrifice. Luckily, this particular knight did not retaliate. Instead, she simply sat there in silence, allowing the hours to drag on, until twilight became starry darkness and an eerie silence fell over the camp. For their part, both Leth and the elder retired rather quickly after the Sister’s arrival, for they had an exhausting day ahead of them…

The trek from the Q’vara camp to Mid-Eye Lake took the elder, Leth’laria and – uninvited, yet unquestioned – the Sister through the lush, green woodland of the Dales of Dreams. Surrounded by cedars, pines and wood-beasts – the flora of the region that superficially resemble animals –, the three wandered from the sun’s rising in the east till its zenith in the south, until finally they reached the crystal blue waters of Mid-Eye. I am sure that many outside of Virvalan Darein know of this gargantuan body of water from faery tales of beautiful women equipped with the tails of fish instead of legs living beneath the water and trading pretty trinkets from the surface in exchange for advice in, predictably enough, love. Please allow me, with the precision and grace afforded to me by my office as a priest of Moonshadow, to burst this romantic bubble.

As they arrived at the water’s edge, the Q’vara elder walked ahead of Leth and the Sister, carrying in his hands a delightful necklace woven from vines and decorated with flowers. With great care, he placed it just beyond the water’s reach, before sitting down on his knees and speaking out loud to Mid-Eye’s inhabitants: “Wise ones of the Crystal Blue, we come to ask for advice in trade for our Commune’s finest craftsmanship.” Spoken in Virvalokk, the request sounded almost akin to a religious incantation, though it was nothing of the sort. This was answered.

The water stirred lightly, before a figure became visible underneath. It was fish-like in body, though it carried a far more human face; squinted eyes, a small mouth and a flat nose, the nostrils more like two lines than anything else. The face followed the line of the spine as to not put unnecessary strain on the neck while swimming, and when it broke the surface, it was not hands that reached for the shore for stability, but instead four tentacles – two of the long and lithe limbs connected to either flank of the T’chisai. Grey and white of color, the creature was as distant from the imagery of maritime ladies as the barbaric lands of Syntenthius are from Költonos. When it spoke, it was in common Tarensian, its voice accent-free and uncannily human.

“We Kristini greet you, sage of Q’vara. In what matters may our knowledge of lore assist?”

The elder gestured for Leth to step forward. The Kristini shifted itself in the water to face her, a movement that a human might be inclined to describe as awkward. She too sat down on her knees, before speaking: “It relates to a strange encounter of mine. An infant child whose screams cut into my mind and bent my will. Human savants refuse to listen, so I come here in search of aid.” Throughout the entire encounter, the Sister simply stood silently in the background, seemingly content to listen.

The Kristini moved one tentacle to the floral necklace in front of it. The elder nodded, before the aquatic T’chisai gently pushed the accessory into the waters, letting it sink to the unseen depths. It then answered: “Child of Amastacia, it is wisdom you ask for, and it is wisdom you shall get. But one gift for another: Bring us the red-veined stone from the depths of the dale of Siradarein, and we shall let all be clear.”

Leth nodded and made to rise. The Kristini stopped her, however: “Be warned: The stone has the attention and affection of a Burrower hive. You understand, do you not, Virvaliista?”

“I do. Thank you, wise one.”

“Good luck.” Before returning to the depths of Mid-Eye, the Kristini shot a glance at the Sister for but a heartbeat. Then, it was gone.

The elder turned to look at Leth, both now standing again. His face betrayed his worry, and he was about to speak, when he was interrupted by the most unexpected source of all. The Sister’s voice, distorted as it was by her helmet, was gentler than expected from a Knight of Damnation, though it spoke in no uncertain terms: “Let us go.”

It was all Leth could do to simply stare at her back as she walked away from the lake. Then, she shook her head, forcing herself out of the surprised stupor, thanked the elder for his help and went after the knight, longbow in hand and a full quiver at her side…

Many associate the Summerlands with exactly that – summer. The gentle sun of northern Tarensia, a clear blue sky and the lush greenery of the endless, living woodlands so easily make the dales a subject of romance. I suppose we have the bards to thank for forgetting the darker, more nightmarish side of Virvalan Darein, and perhaps that is for the better. Unfortunately for Leth’laria and the Knight of Damnation – and therefore us by proxy –, it was exactly that part of the dales that their Kristini-given quest took them. The Siradarein, which can be translated as ‘the Bowel of Nightmares’, would to our friend the hawk look like a thick blanket of a canopy, every tree attempting to reach higher than its neighbor for those elusive rays of sunlight, but to the two women currently treading through the forest floor, it was a dank, unwholesome experience. Leth’laria, being familiar with navigating the Dales of Dreams from her youth, led the way, but even she had to resort to educated guesses, when the pathways that they had been following disappeared from sight. It was dark beneath the trees, though the sun was still high in the sky above; and it did not help Leth’s dwindling spirit that she could constantly feel the Sister a few meters behind her, the pressure of her dread aura constantly lapping at her like waves at shore. She was about to confront her companion about it, when she caught a sound in the stillness of Siradarein. Footfalls. Many of them.

Leth, already holding her bow, fluidly pulled an arrow from her quiver, knocked it and half-drew the string back, her eyes scanning her surroundings for movement. The Sister raised her shield and unhooked her mace. It was a cruel and jagged thing, seemingly designed to terrify, crush and bite in equal measure. Another testimony to the methods of the Knights of Damnation, though their reasoning is still a mystery to the rest of us.

Both women were experienced warriors, and both understood immediately the danger of their situation: While the terrain around them was flat, they were surrounded by trees and shadow – excellent cover for the predators that call Siradarein home. Both expected a fast, coordinated attack from their unseen enemy. Both were wrong.

Five figures emerged from the trees, each carrying themselves with the arrogance and leisure of a predator sure of its kill. To the foreign eye, they would appear as large canines, the heads of each reaching the chest of even the tall Sister, but unlike the wolves and dogs of the world, these creatures were decorated with pointed horns sharp enough to run through any human. And perhaps the most important facet of the majestic nightmares standing in an arrow formation in front of Leth and the Sister; they were not of flesh nor blood, but of wood and bark. They were Neárin, the watchers of the woods. They did not attack, not immediately: Instead, the one in front and largest of the pack locked its dark eyes with the Sister, who in turn stepped in front of Leth’laria. A moment of tense silence followed that one movement. It was not broken, until the leader of the pack tilted back its head and let out a crackling, broken howl, a challenge to those that dared trespass on their domain.

Leth did not waste her chance.

The song of the string and the arrow’s flight was the storm’s first crash of thunder after a long wait. The howl ended as abruptly as it had begun, the Neárin staggering from the force of the shaft now protruding from its throat. Then, it fell heavily unto its side, the life ebbing from it faster than the sap flowing from the wound. Another arrow was already in the air, but it bounced off of the bark of another Neárin harmlessly, perhaps only serving to rouse the creatures from the trance of seeing their leader fall so quickly in front of them. All as one, they lowered their heads and charged at the knight and the archer.

The Sister stood her ground, deflecting one Neárin with her shield before swinging her mace parallel to the ground and aimed at its hind leg. A sickening crunch followed as the mace impacted, its head glowing with a purple radiance at the moment of impact. Then, the Sister stepped closer to the unbalanced creature, raised her weapon to the unseen sky and shouted:

“By the will of the First Saint!”

Were one to examine this particular Neárin’s head after the fact, one would not be able to tell which part goes where. Only three creatures remained.

Leth, lacking shield, proper armor and raw strength, reacted to the charge by scuttling off to the side instead. Here, she quickly released another arrow, but once more it was simply deflected by the sturdiness of the Neárin’s bark. The creature, having now recovered from its momentum, turned towards the markswoman, growled and leapt at her. It was all Leth could do to simply throw herself at the ground, to avoid the pounce.

In the split second that the Sister needed to regain her footing after her massive swing, another of the creatures took its opportunity, throwing itself into her torso with all its weight behind it. No one, not even a Knight of Damnation, stays on their feet after that, and so the Sister landed on the ground only a meter or so from Leth. As the three remaining threats circled in on them, Leth became altogether too aware of how her life was going to end: Not to the blade of some scoundrel, not even as part of a job, no, she was going to die because she was stupid enough to return to the Dales of Dreams. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she kicked herself, thinking it was the last thing that she would ever do.

Only then did she recognize that, for some strange reason, she was still breathing and hadn’t been trampled to death by angry wood-beasts. In fact, the Neárin had stopped moving. They were even keeping a healthy distance from the otherwise exposed targets. Then she felt it.

If the Sister had been a light trickle before, she was now a monsoon. The strange calm induced by stress was replaced by nothing but a bleak, unfiltered terror. Flashes of memories stirred in Leth’s waking dreams; her first life-or-death combat, seeing a friend bleed out, the smell of burnt flesh… It was primal, uncontrolled, and the Neárin felt it too. They were making themselves smaller, their ears now running parallel to their horns, heads lowered. They were retreating, not that Leth had the wherewithal to recognize it. Eventually, after however long, the horror resided. Leth’s senses returned to her control, lying as she did on the forest floor, a metal hand reaching down to help her up. She did not take it, opting instead to get up on her own. Brushing off some of the damp dirt from her leather shirt, she looked at the Sister reluctantly, dread still fresh in her mind.

“Next time, do me a favor and don’t wait with that until we are already on the ground, would you?” If there was one thing that Leth could not stand about the Sister, it would have to be how her tongue seemed to tie knots on itself in her presence, filling her mind with nothing but platitudes.

The Sister simply pointed forward. “Shall we?”

Leth sighed. “Yeah, we shall.”

When traversing Virvalan Darein, there are few things as important to keep a keen eye out for as signs of Burrowers. When first Leth’laria noticed the trails of fine, grey paste dragging lines across the ground, she called for a halt.

“Where there is Burrower excrement, the little buggers can’t be far off.” Standing there in the middle of a relatively wide, well-trodden path surrounded by stone and tree, the inexperienced traveler would continue on in their misguided sense of security, never knowing the writhing death awaiting them at any moment. Leth, however, was not inexperienced. Having asked the Sister to stay in the middle of the path, she herself took a closer look at the rocks immediately adjacent to it, ears and eyes as open as the sky from a hilltop. From a distance, the rocks and boulders had appeared as one would imagine them: Heavy, solid and altogether immobile. When Leth got closer, however, this illusion shattered. One would be better served comparing these to honeycomb than stone. The surface was filled with holes, the object entirely hollowed out, and it was not limited to the stones, either. The ground around and beneath Leth’s feet was similarly recreated into a sprawling, asymmetric pattern of openings ranging in size from a fingernail to a palm. It was a wonder, really, that Leth’laria hadn’t broken the surface yet.

“Are we on the right path?” Leth did not know if she had imagined the few strains of nervousness in the Sister’s words, but the thought of even the big, strong knight being subject to the dreadfulness of Siradarein did reassure her somewhat. She nodded in response.

The first Burrower showed its ugly head not more than a few minutes further down the path. Crawling out of a tree trunk, the thing’s smooth skin was as pale as silver, and while it slithered its way down, it made a faint hissing sound. The worm was larger than most, being the length of Leth’laria’s forearm from its circular maw to its tail end. At first, one could be inclined to thinking it alone, a single pest amongst the trees. This assumption has taken the life of many a careless traveler, I assure you. Soon, others appeared from the ground, the stones, the trees; a swarm of silver worms burrowing through everything that they came near; this writhing tide that became the end of the Dukedom of Ilithan’s attempted invasion long ago.

They did not approach the Sister nor Leth, standing as they did side by side in the middle of the road. Like the wolf before the fire, the Burrowers kept their distance, affected as they were by the aura of the Sister, that psychic oppression that the Knights of Damnation are so infamous for.

“Let’s just… keep walking. Stay near me, okay?” Leth’s voice was once again making itself small, the desolate clinging desperately to a piece of driftwood.

“Got it.”

Back to back they walked, eyes locked on the silver things around them. It wasn’t long until the two women were entirely surrounded, the Burrowers closing their ring around them at a range from the Sister. The swarm kept getting thicker, the worms flowing into its currents from beneath the earth, from the trees, and from the stone. Even standing where they did, in the figurative eye of the storm, Leth felt the slow pressure of panic in her chest, her heartbeat becoming a thunderous drum in her ears. The Sister, she noticed, would not let go of her mace’s hilt, even as it hung suspended by her side. Thus, they kept walking for what felt like an eternity.

The path, as is inevitable for an untouched and wild region such as Siradarein, narrowed and widened in its own tempo, all while bending around the trees and the ditches, until finally finding rest in a small clearing not much more than a few meters wide. Even for the native Leth’laria, this was a strange sight, for in the middle of the oval space sat a stone slab the size of the Sister’s torso with moss growing all over its sides, the plants almost cradling it. All around it, Burrowers writhed and wiggled, their vile omnipresence only underlined by the hollowed out ground and surroundings of the clearing. The only things seemingly untouched was the slab and the stone resting atop it. One would have been excused for thinking this an ordinary object of no more importance than the hundreds of others like it, was it not for the faint pulsing of crimson light webbed across its surface like tendrils of blood. It was tantalizing and altogether unique within the experiences of both Leth and the Sister, not that any of them had any comprehension of its nature nor its value.

The swarm continued to retreat as Leth and the Sister advanced, their bodies tumbling over each other in an indistinct mass. Soon, the intruders stood before the altar-like slab, the object of their quest into Siradarein suddenly within arm’s reach. The Sister reached out and grasped the stone…

It was like a surge moved through the Burrowers that had been so passive but a moment ago, a pulse of energy spurred on by the removal of the object that they seemed to almost worship. A rising tide suddenly came rushing towards Leth and the Sister, neither of which wasted any time in turning on their heels and running, stomping on more than a few worms in the process. The aura that they had been relying so heavily upon to keep them safe now suddenly seemed largely ineffective at keeping the worms at bay. Another primordial instinct had taken priority to fear. Faster and faster they ran, hoping to get free of the swarm before the outermost pests started attacking. A few jumped the Sister, and while she did manage to fling most of them off, one did attach itself to her armored arm. Then, it disappeared, grey paste flying from the sudden hole in the limb, before reappearing on the other side and falling limply to the ground. The Sister barely made a grunt. On her end, Leth was quicker than the Sister and had run ahead, but a group is only as fast as its slowest member. Her arrows were swallowed by the writhing mass as she fired a few. Another worm attacked the Sister, but before it could burrow, it found itself impaled by Leth’s knife as she ran back.

“Give me your mace!” Her shout was drowned by the gnawing and hissing. She barely felt the one grazing her shin.

The Sister obeyed, unhooking and throwing the heavy weapon to Leth, who caught it against her chest. She had a plan, though it was desperate. Mace in arms, she ran to the side of the road towards one of the hollowed trees that decorated the Bowel of Nightmares. Holding the weapon close to her body and using the rotation of both her shoulders and hips, she smashed the mace’s head into the trunk. The old wood creaked and bent inward, but the trunk stood. Leth pushed again, flinging herself at the weapon, wedging it further into the tree. Then, with a scream, she jumped, letting all of her weight fall down upon the hilt. The rotten wood sang its requiem with a resounding tear, and the entire tree started falling, it’s trajectory aimed for the horde of silver worms racing behind the Sister. The slam of the impact was, without a doubt, the most satisfying sound that Leth had ever heard. Having earned themselves a brief moment to breath, the women quickly stomped out the last of the Burrowers immediately attacking them before bolting the way that they had come, not stopping until they had put such a distance between themselves and that clearing that they could no longer hear the sound of hissing behind them.

“So, you have returned carrying the offering for which we asked.” The Kristini that had come to the surface in answer to Leth’laria’s call stood lazily in the water, clearly having all the time in the world.

“We have indeed. Sister, if you would?” The Sister stepped forward and placed the faintly pulsing stone in front of the T’chisai. One tentacle immediately wrapped itself around the object. Leth had seen enough Valisian merchants to compare the covetous action to that a miser clutching a coin purse.

“You have kept your end of the bargain, Amastacia. Now, it is our turn. It is wisdom of your ward that you seek, yes? They are special, know this: One of the first, proof of success. Already, they are watched, hunted, them and others like them. Be ever vigilant, huntress of Amastacia. The fox protecting the lamb will soon enough become prey herself.”

“Who is hunting the child? Mages? The Arcana Corona?”

“Them and all others who cannot tolerate aberrations in their world. Already, it has begun.” It has indeed.

“That isn’t much to go on.” It was, however, a lot to take in.

“It is all that we know. The tide of information is not omniscient. However, a word once given must be respected.”

“Thank you, wise one of the Crystal Blue.” Leth rose and made to walk away.

“The blessings of the First Saint are bountiful and deep, a bulwark and a repository.” Leth stopped as the Kristini kept talking. It wasn’t directed at her, though. “One must wonder then, a bulwark for what? The horrors of this world are many, but balance is kept without Her legions. You are the Blind And Winged Lady’s armor, but who is wearing you? What do you defend against? Often misinterpreted is that prophecy of the Lord of Eyes. Tosh sees as much as his fellow Elementals - the Tree of Life and Death, the Frostflame and the Twisted Soul -, but only he speaks in words that we hear. His words of Vaft’s End gave name to this world, perhaps wrongly so. A question for your order, Knight of Damnation, Sister of Sacrifice: What does the dragons of Gorgen, the Chromatic Saints of Ina, the Frostflame’s Hand, the inhabitants of the Isle of Tosh and you have in common?”

“We are all waiting.” The Sister’s reply was somber.

Leth looked to the Kristini, then to the Sister, then back again. The Sister simply nodded once, before the Kristini slipped back into the water, the stone in tow. The Sister then turned to Leth.

“Thank you for your assistance here, huntress.”

“I… Your welcome…? What was that cryptic speech about?”

“Concerns of my order. I can say no more.”

“Of course not,” Leth said with a fake smile. “Thank you, though. I couldn’t have done this without you.” This, for once, was genuine.

The armored woman nodded, held her right hand to her chest and gave a bow. Leth repeated the gesture, common as it was between fighters after a job well done. As the Sister started walking off, Leth steeled herself for the long journey back through the Virvalan Darein towards Valis.

“Care to accompany me eastward, huntress? It seems we might be heading the same way, and the road is safer together.”

Leth smiled. Not so long after all.

Now you see, sir, that scorning the words of miss Amastacia was perhaps not the wisest of decisions that you could have made, but don’t worry. Even if you allowed the Unravelling Child to slip through your fingers, the Inquisition will not make the same mistake. I trust that if more people come to you with stories of strange happenings, you will exercise a more open mind in the future. Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to. Good day.