A week passed in relative calm until the mages burst out their little lair and began working around the base of the Needle, where the staircase to the Hidden Garden began. The younger mages, the apprentices, began to clear a space from the snow and ice, while the three senior mages lively discussed something they had written down in a book, placed upon a little table in the middle of the frozen plateau.

They had not discussed any of this with Veneir or me prior to this. As far as we were concerned, they should have been still in the process of getting their things sorted and their workshops set up, so we found ourselves, hastily clad in mantles and cloaks against the morning cold, trotting over to them while the rest of Ravenport was just waking up.

We were intercepted by Thimotheus, his usual sly smile on his lips, who greeted us as an old friend.

“Don‘t shout, the both of you. If Torvan is in his mood, there is no stopping him. You will like it, anyway.“

“What is the meaning of this?“ Veneir interjected before I could open my mouth. I was stunned. Thimotheus had two legs!

“The man is inspired.“ Thimotheus continued. “Apparently there is a lot of ambient life energy around the Chasm, power he can use to fuel his spells. We have worked on a big one for a week now. Releasing such a spell is always very exciting.“

“You have two legs.“ I said dryly, my mind still a little bit too close to sleep to focus on everything at once.

Thimotheus blinked. “Yeah, well. Good eyes, Lord Protector. I hope I am still part of the Wounded Pride? I am missing a couple of fingers still, does that count?“ he laughed, Veneir blinked. I stared. “It is just an artificial leg, better than a peg-leg but far from flesh and blood.“ He sighed, lifting his robes.

Instead of a peg leg, there was a wooden leg that was tightly woven out of branches, grown in such a way that one could mistake the leg for a real one at the first glance.

I shook my head. “Sorry, I am awake now. I am glad for you. Your friends seem to be good at what they do.“

“And I am not? No, you wouldn‘t think so, I was missing my spellbook all this time. Just you wait, I will impress you as well. Mages of the White Tower are the best of the best. And those two are masters. If you let them, they will transform this place in no time. Well, Torvan will, Skadi is a man that loves to puzzle with small items. Torvan though...“ He looked over his shoulder. “Well, wait and see... I promise you will not regret letting them work today.“

“Don‘t you think things like this should be discussed?“ Veneir asked.

“They want to impress the town, make an entrance. Let them. I can handle them. They are arrogant, that is true, but they deserve it. More than anything, they are friends. Friends who left their lives behind for me.“ Thimotheus pleaded. “Give them some space.“

It was now my turn to furrow my brows. “Don‘t make me regret this, Thimotheus. I trust you, but I know nothing about magic or your friends.“

“Just wait and see.“ He grinned again and turned his back to us, rejoining his comrades at the table.

So we waited, watching the mages draw a circle onto the freed stone, preparing all kinds of curious materials in polished bowls and placing them on marked points on the circle. They began writing runes I could not begin to understand all around and sat the apprentices evenly spaced around the circle, mumbling, reaching out with their hands to their neighbors until the three full mages of the tower stood in the middle of the apprentices and the circle.

Magister Torvan handed out several pages to his comrades, while he himself lifted the heavy book. One look was shared between, them, but I could see no hint of nervousness. Just determination and excitement.

Then, he spoke words of power with the calmness of someone discussing the weather, and immediately I could feel a weight in the air, pressing down upon us, rotating around us. The sitting apprentices even got pushed back by unseen forces, but never stopped mumbling.

Suddenly, the circle lit up in a cold, green light, illuminating the mages from below. They roared their spell into the energies dancing around them and as their incantation reached the finale, the scrolls they held crumbled to dust and burned up in a flash fire, almost disappearing between two blinks.

In front of them, hidden from sight by them until now, a small tree was growing in front of our very eyes. Slim and tiny in contrast to the Needle behind it, the small plant stretched and stretched ever higher, cracking the stone around it as it grew.

Then, a young tree in front of an old mountain in the middle of a stony plateau, the growth stopped. What did not stop was the cracking. The whole mountain was shaking, cracking, and vibrating with subtle force, somewhere deep beneath our feet.

As the ritual concluded, the mages all ran to the edge of the Chasm, excitedly talking among themselves, glancing over the edge.

As we reached them, they were already laughing and slapping their backs in relieved elation. I carefully leaned over to look down the Chasm. All along the staircase, as far as our eyes could see, roots broke out of the wall, cracking stone and breaking loose rocks all across the walls of Needle. The roots were small at first, but ever more of them broke free of the stone, reaching out into the open air, thickening and widening as they went.

“It will take some time.“ Magister Torvan turned to me with a smug look. “These are plants after all, and growth can only be sped up so much. But In a few hours, a day at most, you will have your stairwell down to that Garden you have told me so much about.“

“Just like that?“ I asked.

“Just like that? Just like that? No, not just like that. It is a week's worth of work by 3 masters of the White Tower, and a dozen apprentices, wrestling the forces of life itself to bend reality to their will with words and power alone! Just like that, he says! Thimotheus you tell him, I can’t deal with that right now.“ And he stomped away, almost steaming.

Thimotheus just laughed. “He IS good. And we did help. And I am not a master.“

His friend, Magister Skadellorn, turned to us now. “You could have been.“ He smiled sadly. “Now it does not matter anymore.“

Thimotheus fell into an awkward silence.

“Why is that?“ I asked.

“None of us is part of the White Tower anymore. We...burned some bridges, on Thimotheus‘ request.“

“What did you do?“ I asked, studying the reddening face of Thimotheus.

“Stole books, materials, apprentices and broke some oaths of service. Two Magisters are not easily replaced in time of war and under siege, not even for the White Tower.“

We all fell silent for a moment or two. “Why did you come then?“ Veneir asked finally.

“Torvan came because he is what he is. He never accepted the rule of the tower He makes his own. And the call of the Wyld, a land filled with the forces of life, his specialty, was too strong to resist. The Dragon of Life is buried here! No life mage could resist that temptation.“

“And you?“

He smiled his sad smile I now had seen a couple of times on him. “I came for the Dragonamber and a friend.“

Thimotheus laid his hand on the shoulder of his friend, nodding in unspoken gratitude.

“The roots will reach all the way to the bottom, at the latest tomorrow evening. I reckon there is work to be done still, fortifying the way and such, but after that, we should have a way down there.“ He said to me, changin the topic.

“I will prepare my men, then. If we want to reach the body of the dragon in any reasonable timeframe, we will have to bring everything we have to fight the shadow-ink wyrms. You are coming with us, right?“

Both of them nodded in unison.

I turned to go back but stopped halfways. “One more thing. Never do something like that without asking Veneir or me again, understood?“

How both of them, esteemed mages in their own right, seemed to look like schoolboys caught in the act mid-prank, was incredible.

---------------------------------------------------------

The warmth that greeted my second arrival in the Hidden Garden, several days later, was tainted with a murky stench. Something rotten hung in the air, something foul, that even seeped into my clothes and my nose. Sulfur maybe, or something truly rotting?

As soon as I left the zone with the mists of the waterfall, I gagged as it hit me full force. Something was very off. I hasted through the plants and the salt towards the only thing I knew was down here.

The stench had just started yesterday. The mages had been busy looking at their new plants, giddy and excited about every new discovery, while the knights had been slowly but surely engaging with the pile of the wyrms, thinning the herd and training in the process. Among them were now some truly formidable warriors, who could easily challenge one of the wyrms wrought out of shadow itself.

Because they could fight several in a row and had no reason to wait, as they would have for the next Nightmare in the days before, they all gained significant experience in the time they trained and fought down in the Hidden Garden. But then the stench had driven them all away.

The closer I got, the fouler the smell became until my nostrils began to burn as I closed in on the rotting dragon. The knights had retreated to a position behind me. Something was off, something affecting mortals more than it id me. To me, it was just a smell, even if it was a bad one. To them, it was, as one of them described, like jumping into a pool of acid.

I climbed atop one larger formation of rocks, sure to be able to see the body from up there, and practically flew up the wall, using any trick I could. The smell was that bad.

They were gone. A giant carcass, one I had remembered to glitter and glisten with the inner light of the Dragonamber it was made out of, now had been turned into a disgusting, rotten corpse. It practically had fallen in on itself in some kind of sludge, centuries of time catching up to the preserved dragon in a couple of days. The whole area was polluted by filth and fluids.

Not a single wyrm could be seen. They were gone.

I summoned a [Bearer of Bad News]. “Find Ser Gideon. Message: “Sweep the area. The Wyrms are loose. Retreat on the first sign of danger.“ After I watched the artificial bird shoot toward the waterfalls, I took a good long look around, just to be sure.

There was a chance for me to reach the corpse now. The body of the Dragon of Life. But the area seemed to be highly toxic and there were hundreds, nay, thousands of shadow-ink wyrms on the loose. What if my attempt to use the elemental keys on the dragon now would...take too much time? Or had other unforeseeable consequences? Something....was happening. Something loomed on the horizon and I needed to be there for it.

I sighed and returned, to catch up to the knights.

—————-

We found a couple of them. Stragglers, mindlessly marching towards the river. We ambushed the few we found, and even then, with the handful we killed taken care of, others just threw themselves into the stream, their shadows disappearing in the gurgling river, getting carried away under the mountain, where, as I knew, the Endless Flame slept somewhere.

That just told me one thing. If there was a chamber big enough for the egg of the phoenix, there might be others. There might be a cave system. There might be access to the Labyrinth and ultimately the Abyss. We did not know enough. We only knew that the wyrms had been lured, or summoned, away.

Which was a terrifying thought.

I stationed 2 of the knights with the mages, who did not appreciate the fact that I thought them to need supervision, but I just wanted eyes I could trust in the Hidden Garden for whatever was to come, while I ran back top.

The roots that grew out of the cliffside formed nearly perfect stairs, sturdy and rough in texture. In the end, those still were just plants, so workers were busy reinforcing the sections with handrails, steps, and platforms, but the work proceeded swiftly. With Magister Torvan down by his new plants and uninterested to help further, it fell to his apprentices to help the workers. They shaped small sections of the roots to the specifications o the seasoned Ravenporters, expediting the process immeasurably.

I passed by them in a hurry, even lept across some of them barring my way. There was no time to lose. I had messages to send and people to prepare, even if I was not sure to what end. I just knew, deep down inside, that something was happening. That it was coming.

“Raven!“ They shouted as I reached the training yard in front of the Wreckage. “The north! There are sails to the north!“ I ran past them, Ravenport in chaos. People were running every which way, carrying stuff, shouting orders or obscenities.

In the end, I made for the frigate, surely Captain Locksley would have the best knowledge of the bay and sails on the horizon, and the cool mind to give appropriate responses as well.

I did not bother with the gangplank, I reached a space where no more people were around me and [Tornado Catapulted] straight over the ship, tumbling through the air as I got shot upwards. The wind rushed past me and the air got pushed out of my lungs, but I used [Airwalk] to stabilize my ascend and jump lightly off to a line on the ship I then slid down on, reaching the aftcastle with a soft landing. Well, my hands burned because the rope had almost taken the gloves I was wearing apart, but never mind that.

“Appearances, Lord Protector, are important. Don‘t distract my crew with your acrobatics.“ Locksley said cooly as he exited his cabin.

“What his happening, Locksley?“ I panted. “Report, please.“

“The lookout has cried out the appearance of some sails on the horizon, Lord Protector, and none of them are longboats. We do not know enough just yet.“

“But we...“ I started, but Locksley held up his hands.

“My Lord, I assure you that my lookout is good, has all the appropriate Skills, and knows his sails and flags. Whatever you or I could do will not hold up to his expertise. On sea, things happen at another kind of speed. Those ships, assuming they aim for Ravenport, will not be here for hours still. We have time. But if it eases your mind all our ballistae are loaded and aimed at the entrance of the harbor. Nothing will get past us.“

“I need to give word to the others.“ I mused. “They need to know.“

“They do. Just wait for a minute or two, until we know their whole strength. Maybe you would enjoy some tea in the meantime?“ He raised his eyebrow at me questioningly and led me into his cabin, sending his Steward for hot water.

I was thoroughly confused and unbalanced, even as I stumbled upon my words telling the captain of the missing wyrms in the Hidden Garden.

“I hate tea.“ Locksley said, as we finally took a sip. “But I needed you off the deck for a while. Confidence, my Lord, is the one thing you never can let your men see you without. Their faith in you must be unshakeable, always greater than any danger awaiting them. They have to trust you, that you will find a way, where they might see none. No matter if you know what you are doing or not. So please, for the Fallen Empire that has birthed us, cursed be the gods, pull yourself together, man.“

I frowned at the man, then. But he did have a point.

“Things are moving fast, Captain!” I said. “I am not sure we have the luxury to wait.”

“That may be so, but we can not expedite the process of learning about the foreign sails on the horizon. Unless things have changed drastically while I was away?”

I shook my head. I had no options either. We could send ravens, but really, they would not beat waiting half an hour and just looking north.

“Damn.” I snarled. “The wyrms are gone, ships are coming and I am blind and deaf.”

“Not quite.” Locksley said. “Raven arrived in the Wreckage today, familiars of the Unbound Rangers. The north is no longer safe, it seems. They are screening the enemy, at least. Beasts of shadow and Wyldlings moving as one.”

I swore, hammering my fist on the wooden table.

“War, is it?” I said. “We are not ready.”

“No one ever is.” Locksley answered, half in thought. “What are you going to do?”

“The sea is yours. I need you to find Samson, the boy with the whale. The Shattered Lands are for the Bear Clan to hold. Their chief will return in time if they can reach him - I am all but sure they can. But they need to be warned first. Send your fastest man. I will send you the mages as well, I reckon they can help enchant your ballista bolts and fortify the Needle.”

“And the knights and you?” he asked, nodding as he registered my orders.

“The knights will split up to cover the fronts. I need to watch out for the big one, the problem to dwarf all problems.”

“And what would that be?”

“An angry dragon.”