It was only a short while later that Ashtoreth and Dazel both hovered in the air below the building-studded ceiling of the enormous cavern, assessing what she was pretty sure was the designated meeting place.

  It looked almost like the steeple of a human church, only inverted and hanging from the ceiling of the cavern. It was also painted a vibrant combination of pink, green, and yellow, with a single circular opening around its midpoint.

  “That’s gotta be it, right?” Ashtoreth said.

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who took the directions.”

  She shrugged. “The dwarf slave I spoke to said it really stood out. I sort of thought he might be saying it was garish, but being polite about it.” She frowned at the building. “Does that look garish to you? It’s definitely eyecatching, but I wouldn’t call it too much.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “I think it looks nice,” she said, a note of reproach entering her voice.

  “It’s like if a Lisa Frank poster was in the middle of squeezing out a particularly geometric turd.”

  She laughed. “Okay, I kind of see it. But I like Lisa Frank.”

  “Yes, Ashtoreth. Yes you do.”

  “I thought it was on the other side of the upside-down bowl ceiling, though,” said Ashtoreth. “You think I got the directions wrong? I don’t want to fly into some random stranger’s Lisa Frank turd.”

  “Your directions definitely say it’s on the other side,” said Dazel. “But this feels like the place. You think you wrote them down wrong?”

  “Doesn’t seem like me to make a mistake,” she said, frowning. “We’ll ask for directions.”

  “Are you sure—”

  “Excuse me!” she said, cupping her hands to her mouth and hailing the nearest person in the air.

  The person cocked their head and floated closer without leaving the beams of purple light that served as flight guidelines. They were an elf, or so it seemed: they had stony grey skin and black cracks radiating outward from their eyes. Their face seemed to show no expression whatsoever.

  “Do you know if this building here is Kakisha’s house?” Ashtoreth asked.

  The grey elf simply stared at her, silent.

  “Right,” Ashtoreth said quietly. “Maybe asking for directions isn’t the best idea. Let’s just stick our heads in and see.”

  “Just don’t get murdered,” Dazel said. “I need you later.”

  Ashtoreth snickered. “Sure thing, boss.”

  She floated in through the circular opening, quickly finding herself in a tall, narrow hallway. It didn’t have much of a floor: below her, the walls eventually sloped inward into a sort of narrow channel that seemed like it might be filled with bird feces.

  “You are Ashtoreth,” a voice said from deeper inside.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Are you Kakisha? I’ve got a meeting with Kakisha, but I don’t know if we’re in the right place.”

  “We are Kakisha,” the voice said. “Come, come.”

  She floated down the hallway, emerging in a large room where trees and ferns rose around them in tiers. She landed in the center of the room, then looked around. There were birds everywhere, but she couldn’t see the source of the voice.

  One of the birds landed on a small wooden perch ahead of her, and more of them began to follow suit, gathering around Ashtoreth. Soon enough they were surrounded by multicolored birds, each with the same large body, long neck, and hooked beak. All of the birds tagged as simple level 1 birds.

  The nearest of these birds, a mixture of electric blue and neon green, spoke. “Quester,” it said. “You have come in search of answers, answers which I will provide in exchange for Guthuk’s… bounties.”

  The last word was said with especial relish.

  “Hey, that’s me!” said Ashtoreth. “You’re Kakisha?”

  “We are.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kakisha. I’m Ashtoreth.”

  “You are.”

  “My companion and I have some questions about ancient history.”

  “You do.”

  “We’re enthusiasts, see, and we were hoping you could give us some detailed answers about what the cosmos was like a couple millenia ago.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Do you know anything about humans?”

  For a time, Kakisha didn’t answer. The blue-and-green bird who had been speaking preened a little, then took flight and landed further up among the flock. A new bird, marbled white and red, flew down to land on the perch, then spoke.

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  “Why do you ask this thing?” said Kakisha.

  Ashtoreth frowned. She really didn’t feel like she should have to explain herself more than she wanted to when she was asking the questions she’d paid to ask. “We’re tracking a particular bloodline of dragon,” she said at last. “The shadowflame dragon. We know that it was present among a species called humans a very, very long time ago—but we know next to nothing about humans themselves.”

  The red and white bird ruffled its wings. “Lies,” it said simply. “You are a [Vampiric Archfiend of Humanity].”

  Another bird squawked nearby. “Curious,” it said. “Most curious.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “But in my defense, I didn’t lie to you, and we really do care about the shadowflame dragon.” She crossed her arms. “Also, no-one even promised you I wouldn’t keep my motives to myself. I turned human with one of my natural race upgrades, but I have no idea what that even means.”

  A highlighter-yellow bird exchanged places with the red and white one. “Perhaps that is true,” it said. “I care not; your question has an answer, but I may not know it. Humanity? I have never met them. But perhaps I recall…”

  The bird lingered on the word for a moment, and suddenly the flock all around them burst out into a cacophony of chirps, shrieks, and squawks.

  “We are not old enough,” said Kakisha. “We are not even six thousand. The humans were before our time.”

  Ashtoreth winced. “That old?” She had no idea how old the cosmos was, and humanity had been the same species for more than a hundred thousand years—but still, it was disheartening news. “But you know at least a little, right? You recognized the name.”

  “They are not oft spoken of,” said Kakisha. “Though this fact could mean many things. Yet you must wait. More might be uncovered. We must—convene to—”

  Again, Ashtoreth was hit by a wall of sound as the birds all began to make an extraordinary amount of noise.

  “Yes, yes!” A green and pink bird said at last as the sound died, exchanging the perch with their highlighter-yellow companion. “Dearly do I desire the bounties of Guthuk. On your behalf, I will beseech Massemeliact.”

  “Uh. Thanks?”

  “Thank us not!” cried an unseen bird in dolorous tones. “You must offer no gratitude in exchange for what we grant you today, for the bounties—and only the bounties of Guthuk shall make payment for that which you gain.”

  “Right,” said Ashtoreth. “Okay. Sorry, I was just trying to be polite.”

  “You were.”

  Honestly, I can’t get a read on these guys, Ashtoreth thought to Dazel.

  This is feeling dicey to me, Dazel said. They know your real species and they’ve called somebody else.

  Come on, she said. You’re the one who’s been insisting how safe we are.

  Sure, yeah. Just remember that any old human could get around to asking these questions, given enough time. While I’d very much prefer to have competent people on the job… we don’t need to risk the Monarch.

  “Massemeliact comes!” another voice cried out from inside the flock.

  She felt the temperature in the room rise suddenly, and the air above her sizzled, filling with thick coils of smoke that bent and wound in unusual patterns. Finally they twisted into the vague form of a demonic dragon.

  The image of Massemeliact looked down at her. “No,” he said in a deep male voice.

  “Uh. What?” Ashtoreth asked.

  The image of the dragon drifted closer, his smokey face regarding her with contempt. “I will tell you nothing, Daughter of the Lightbringer. It is a perversion that you have somehow taken the purity of humanity into yourself. You are undeserving. This will not end well for you.”

  Ashtoreth drew back. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, and fell back to stand in a more combat-ready stance.

  “You are safe here!” cried one of the birds that was Kakisha. “No harm shall come to you on account of this conversation.”

  Massemeliact made a grumbling noise. “I will not hurt you, archfiend. I won’t need to. This will not end well for you.”

  “But the humans!” Ashtoreth said, growing frustrated. “You must know something about them! And the shadowflame dragons—how come their bloodline is among humans, but not in the inner worlds?”

  Massemeliact let out a humorless laugh. “If you think there were once humans in the inner cosmos, child, then where are they today? It is no simple thing, erasing a species. Especially not one so prone to spreading. What mechanism could accomplish such a thing? You know nothing. Cease your search. Destroy yourself and cure the cosmos of one of its many afflictions.”

  Ashtoreth just stared at him. “Yeah, no thanks. Actually—what if I brought you a human who wasn’t also an archfiend? Would you consider telling them instead of just calling them a pervert?”

  The smoke that composed Massemeliact almost froze in the air. “You possess humans?”

  She carefully maintained her composure, betraying nothing. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

  “You should not exist,” said Massemeliact. “Destroy yourself.”

  “I could give you information in exchange,” Ashtoreth said, her voice lowering a little. “I could tell you things that I’m sure you’d greatly—and he’s gone.”

  The smoke above them dispersed into a shapeless cloud.

  “Well that was useless… and strangely intense,” said Dazel.

  Ashtoreth turned back to the bird who had spoken last. “Do you, uh, maybe know any other—”

  “The bounties of Guthuk are lost to us,” a different bird said, its voice harsh. “And though this was not your doing, you must remove yourself from our presence lest our wrath fall upon you, for greatly are we now displeased.”

  She opened her mouth. Closed it. “Bye,” she said at last, moving backward through the air toward the exit. “Thanks for trying, I guess.”

  “Okay,” Dazel said as soon as they got outside. “Was it just me who kept picturing fancy crackers every time they said ‘the bounties of Guthuk?’”

  “No,” Ashtoreth said, frustrated. “It definitely wasn’t just you. More importantly, did we get anything from that? What’s the ‘purity of humanity’ supposed to be? When he asked me what mechanism could accomplish the extinction of a species, was he telling me it was impossible?”

  “Dunno,” said Dazel. “But it actually sounded like he was praising humanity with that purity thing. Kind of strange for a dragon to do that.”

  “Definitely strange,” she said. “What did he know?” She shook her head. “Look. We’ll figure it out eventually. Let’s forget this for a second. We need to get your soul map now and get out of here.”

  They’d found the soulweaver sometime that afternoon. The others were already waiting for them in the lower half of the city.

  “No need to remind me,” Dazel said. “Let’s go.”