“We have to find my brother,” Raith said when the shock of Zinny’s arrow wore off.

  Tolliver stood and wiped the vomit from his mouth.

  “He’s back at the caravan. Last I saw, he was defending the players and sent us to find you.”

  Raith almost said ‘thank you’ but bit his tongue, instead offering a curt nod.

  “Let’s go.”

  They sprinted back towards the wagons and cleared the grass to find the fighting already nearing an end. The Troublemakers were finishing off a small force that had circled around to the other side. At least a score of bodies were strewn around them, and he was relieved to see they all had fur.

  Pridian had cut a swath through dozens of bugbears with his massive sword. Even as Raith watched, a group fled back into the grass, the fearsome whyver breathing a gout of flame at their retreating backs. Cross stood on top of their wagon with wand in hand, several large piles of ashes littering the ground around her.

  Raith rushed towards the player’s wagon and found his brother wild eyed with mouth and hands covered in blood. Shredded bugbears lay scattered in a semi-circle around the elfling. Terra and Gerard were trying to make him drink a healing potion, while Figbert and Verona knelt sobbing next to the mangled body of one of the actors.

  Nyhm spotted his brother and the madness in his eyes was replaced with relief. He grabbed Raith by the arm.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. Me and Thea took a few scrapes, but we’re alright.”

  Terra interjected.

  “You may not be hurt, but he is. Please make him drink this.”

  Raith looked his brother up and down and saw that some of the blood was his. It flowed from several wicked gashes and he was holding one of his arms strangely.

  “Take the potion, Nyhm.”

  The elfling looked blankly at the offered vial but didn’t take it.

  “They turned me back into an animal.” He gestured towards his bloody mouth and the runic tattoos on his gums. “I haven’t used these since I escaped.”

  “We can talk about that later. Right now I need you well so we can clean this up and get everyone out of here, ok?”

  Nyhm met his brother’s eyes with a pained expression and nodded. He finally took the potion from Terra and drank it down in one gulp. She gently put a hand on his arm.

  “An animal wouldn’t have saved us. Or sent help to his brother.”

  With that, she turned away to aide her troupe's recovery from the attack. The Myth Seekers pitched in where they could, primarily dragging bugbear corpses from the road. The caravan had only lost three people, mostly thanks to Pridian and the Troublemakers. Within an hour, the train was back under way.

  Camp that night was a quiet affair. The attack had been terrifying, even for those who hadn’t lost a friend. Director Sukash kept everything running smoothly in spite of the pall of sadness that hung over everyone.

  The Myth Seekers, except for Tolliver, sat alone next to their wagon eating in silence. Thea finally broke it, turning to Raith after she finished her meal.

  “We need to start being a team again.”

  “Not Tolliver.”

  “Not Tolliver,” she agreed. “But it’s going on two weeks since we left and you’ve barely spoken with anyone. Well over a week before that since we left the monastery and did any real training together. That fight was sloppy, and everyone was all over the place. If we’re going to survive, it can’t keep being like that.”

  Raith stared at the ground, and she leaned over to force him to meet her eyes.

  “You’re our Captain. You need to fix this.”

  He puffed up his cheeks and let out a slow breath. She was right, as usual, but he didn’t want to admit it. More than that, he felt comfortable in the funk he’d fallen in to. The misery held him in a grasp of familiarity, and he was lacking the momentum to break free.

  “You’re right. Sorry, I’ve been letting you down everyone.”

  Thea gave him a sly smile.

  “Say it again.”

  “You’re right or I’m sorry? You know what, it doesn’t matter because either way I’m not doing it. Tomorrow, we will all start training again. In the meantime, Zinny, I need you to tell me about the Feywilds and the Dreaming.”

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  “Why?” Thea asked before the pixie could reply.

  The question sparked a realization in Raith that there was a lot he hadn’t caught his teammates up on. At this point, there wasn’t really a reason to keep it a secret from them. Well, maybe from Zinny. But it was hard to take the diminutive fae seriously as a spy.

  Which, he supposed, made her a good spy.

  But he also needed her help, so he told them about his conversations with Amaris, the lineage of his [Divine Skill] and his library in the dreaming.

  “I’m a bit jealous, if I’m being honest,” Thea said when he was finished. “I’ve wanted to reconnect to the fae for my entire life, and here you’ve been born with one foot in the door.”

  “To the Dreaming, not the Feywilds,” Zinny corrected. “The gossamer paths run through both, but they are different realms.” She then smiled at Raith. “I knew there was a reason you smell so good. We don’t like the gods very much, but Amaris has always been our friend.”

  He leaned forward intently.

  “How do I find these gossamer paths?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Raith hung his head and rubbed his temples.

  “How do you travel on them if you don’t know where to find them?”

  She giggled.

  “I know how to find them, silly.”

  He clenched his jaw and closed his eyes.

  “You literally just said you don’t know how to find them.”

  “I said I don’t know how you find them. When I want to find them I look for a gleaming.”

  This was going to be intolerable. There was no way he had the patience to do this with her for any length of time. But maybe, just maybe, he could get this one answer without losing his mind.

  “Ok, Zinny. What is a gleaming and how do you find them?”

  “A gleaming is a portal to a gossamer path. I find them all sorts of different ways. Sometime they’re rings of mushrooms or flowers. Sometimes behind a waterfall or in the hollow of a tree. Or a cave, but we don’t like those because Phineaus hates caves.”

  The faerie dragon raised its head at the sound of his name and came over. Zinny absentmindedly stroked his face as she continued.

  “Many appear only at certain hours like when day and night are blurring together, or at special times of the year.”

  That was somehow both unexpectedly straightforward yet incredibly unhelpful at the same time. He decided to give the question one more try.

  “If you wanted to find a gleaming, what exactly do you do to find it? Are there maps of locations? A book detailing their whereabouts? Do you just have them all memorized?”

  She giggled again.

  “I can’t remember all those things. Maybe the dragons can carry around so many years in their gigantic heads, but I’m just a little pixie.”

  Raith waited while she finished laughing to see if she would respond to the actual question.

  She did not.

  “I’m bored. I’m going to go find Tolliver and see if he wants to do an aerial patrol. We’re so very, very good at those, and Gerta always tells us we did a good job. She’s a much better Captain than you.”

  As she flitted onto her steed and flew away, Raith muttered at her back.

  “Well then, you should join the Troublemakers. You’d fit right in.”

  He looked over to see Thea frowning at him.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to defend her.”

  She shook her head.

  “Not this time. I will admit the glamor has worn a bit thin on that one. Now, while it’s just the three of us here, is there anything else you’re forgetting to tell us?”

  “Hey…”

  She held up a hand.

  “I’m not accusing you of keeping secrets. We three haven’t talked much lately.”

  “Sorry. I’ve just been feeling so overwhelmed by everything. Something comes up that I need to tell you, but before I have a chance to say anything another thing goes wrong. Then another and another. It’s like I can’t keep my feet underneath me anymore. Do you know what I mean?”

  Thea nodded and smiled sadly.

  “The road we’ve traveled hasn’t been a straight one. But it’s given us levels and loot, even if not in the way we’d imagined. If we stick together and keep going on [Quests] we’ll keep leveling, don’t you worry.”

  “Loot! That reminds me, did either of you see a chalice at the Thieves Guild hideout? The Old Valen Guildmaster questioned me about it.”

  They both shook their heads. Nyhm looked up and squinted in thought, then turned to Thea.

  “Maybe in the pack you took?”

  “We went through the pack pretty thoroughly, but I’ll check again.”

  She pulled out the deceased gnome’s traveling pack and the three of them emptied it and went through the contents. Raith used his [Hawksight] and training to look for any hidden pockets or compartments, but it was the same as before. An excellent quality but otherwise unremarkable traveling pack.

  “What about the pouch of holding?” Nyhm asked.

  Thea shook her head.

  “It was empty, remember?”

  Nyhm’s brow furrowed.

  “And that doesn’t seem weird? A high level [Thief] with an empty pouch?”

  Raith gestured for her to hand it over.

  “Here lemme see it. I haven’t had much chance to use my new [Read Enchantment] [Skill]. Maybe there is something we overlooked.”

  He activated the [Skill] and the shimmering runes began to glow with arcane light. The symbols stitched not just into the leather, but into reality itself. The layers went deep, and his vision strained as he read each descending runic phrase.

  Raith was unpracticed with the [Skill] and had no special talent with rune phrases, so reading the entire thing took time. After getting to the end he noticed there was another layer far beneath the others. The colors were so muted that he would have never seen them without the synergy of [Hawksight]. Even still, it took a long time to parse it all out from the background.

  By the time he was finally done, a dull ache had grown behind his eyes.

  But he’d gotten the phrase.

  “Gibbeldy donder.”

  Thea and Nyhm both looked at him in confusion.

  “Have you lost your fucking mind, then?”

  Raith smiled and reached into the pouch, pulling out a handful of gold.

  “It’s a secret pass phrase. There are two extradimensional spaces in there, and saying the words switches between them.”

  “Weaver’s tits. What’s all in there?”

  “No idea. Certainly a lot of gold. Platinum, too.”

  Raith looked around at the rest of the camp. No one was paying them any attention, but he was pretty sure it was a bad idea to dump the contents of the pouch out onto the ground in front of all these strangers.

  He cautiously reached in and thought of a chalice, flinching as he felt the cold metal in his grasp. Everyone’s eyes widened as he pulled it partway out, a glimpse of polished gold encrusted with red and green gemstones, then quickly shoved it back in.

  “Gibbeldy donder.”

  They sat there staring at the offending pouch for a moment before Raith handed it back over to Thea. He gestured towards the enchanted bag as she put it back on her belt.

  “See. This is exactly the sort of shit I’m talking about.”

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