The distance between the Phoenix and Badger Tribe territories was short. They arrived before lunchtime to find the otherwise picturesque and quaint badger village hauntingly quiet. There was no indication of a fight, no blood, no bodies in the streets, nothing was broken or obviously missing. It just looked abandoned.

“Captain Dulaan, have your men knock on doors and windows. There were people here within the last week. Find them,” Lolo ordered in a whisper.

Lolo and Ulana proceeded through the village cautiously, looking for anything suspicious.

“Captain!” someone shouted. “Captain, you’re going to want to come see this.” The soldier led Captain Dulaan and the girls to a tavern that the soldiers had broken the door to get into. Inside, there were at least fifty bodies, some still seated at their tables as though they had all simply died while going about their daily lives.

Huo Lohse felt like she couldn’t breathe. She bolted out the door to look for the tribe leader’s home with Ulana chasing after her. As she sprinted through the silent streets, Lolo tried to keep her head. “One tavern full of bodies does not mean that everyone is dead.” But the image of the tavern kept invasively forcing itself to the front of her mind.

The Burrow was well marked toward the end of the main road. Lolo found herself pounding on the door with all of her might, but without an answer, she quickly drew her sword to break the locked door down. Inside, Lolo and Ulana threw open doors to find more bodies. Eerily, they all appeared to have died while going about their business. No one seemed to have been frightened or in pain during their final moments, but this was of little comfort to Huo Lohse. They came to a door near the back of the house, and Lolo knew instinctively what they would find inside before she even touched the knob. She faltered.

“Lolo?” Ulana steadied her friend as she swayed.

“Open the door, Ulana.” The girls walked in, and Lolo fell to her knees almost instantly, dizzy and disoriented. Durfein was on the bed as though peacefully asleep. Ulana had the mettle to approach Durfein’s body to check for a pulse, but they both knew that he was gone.

Ulana turned to find Huo Lohse pale and despondent. “Lolo, we need to get back to the others,” she tried to coax a despairing Lolo back out the door. Lolo shook her head frantically. “Yes, Lolo, you need to get out of here.” Ulana wrapped her arms around Lolo’s waist as she started to cry, but as Ulana tried to help lift her to her feet, Lolo fainted, crumpling to the floor.

Captain Dulaan seemed to have had the idea to find the tribe leader’s home as well, because Ulana heard men entering the Burrow and the captain ordering them to find the tribe leader.

“Captain!” Ulana ran out of the room shouting. “Captain Dulaan, come with me. It’s Huo Lohse. She’s collapsed. We need to get her out of here.” The captain followed Ulana to Durfein’s room to collect Lolo off the floor and carry her back outside.

When Huo Lohse regained consciousness, Jadu was on his knees checking her pulse, and both Fortus and Standig had joined Ulana in a sort of circle around her.

“How is she?” Captain Dulaan materialized behind Ulana.

“She’ll be alright with a little rest,” Jadu declared.

“What happened?” Ulana was gnawing on her fingernails.

“She passed out from shock, from the psychological trauma,” Jadu tried to explain.

“What happened here, Jadu?” Fortus sat down on the ground to rest his face in his hands, his pointer fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in a self-soothing gesture.

“I’m not sure yet,” Jadu shook his head. “Captain, tell your men not to eat or drink anything here. Poison seems a likely cause of these deaths.”

“Lolo, you’re awake!” Standig caught a glimpse of her eyes and knelt down near her head.

“Sit up slowly, Lolo,” Jadu found her wrist again to pull her carefully into an upright position. “How are you feeling?”

“Nauseous and dizzy.”

“That’s normal,” Jadu nodded. “Sit for a while. I wish I had water to give you, but the water here might be poisoned.”

“It’s alright, Jadu. Sorry to cause such a fuss,” Lolo said, putting her hand to her forehead. “Captain, what are your men doing?”

“We are preparing mass graves for all the bodies,” Captain Dulaan reported grimly.

Lolo nodded. “Carry on.”

“I need to perform some autopsies,” Jadu said while standing up. “Maybe I can identify what caused this.”

“Jadu,” Lolo suddenly had a thought, “look for small pin pricks on the bodies. Especially around their necks.”

“Poisoned needles?” Jadu asked.

“I just know that the Dragon Tribe military uses them. If there is no indication that they ingested or inhaled poison, I’d check for needles, or at least evidence of being pricked.”

Jadu nodded and left.

“How do you know that the Dragon Tribe military uses poisoned needles?” Ulana asked.

“Heard it somewhere,” Lolo dismissed the question but made eye contact with Fortus. “Have they cleared the Burrow of bodies yet?”

“I believe so,” Standig nodded. “The tribe leader’s home was made top priority.”

Tears started dripping down Lolo’s cheeks. “Did they already bury them?”

Ulana knelt down to hug Lolo. “You want to say goodbye to Durfein?”

Lolo nodded.

“Come with me.” Ulana stood up and pulled Huo Lohse to her feet. Lolo swayed dangerously; both Standig and Fortus rushed unnecessarily to catch her as Ulana wrapped Lolo in a stabilizing hug. “Are you good?”

“I think so.”

Ulana led Lolo to a small meadow near the Burrow that had been lined with bodies draped in repurposed bed-sheets. Lolo waited off to the side as Ulana picked her way through the field, exposing the faces of the deceased one at a time to locate Durfein. “Over here, Lolo,” Ulana called.

Lolo felt like she was sleep-walking as she followed a row of bodies to the very end where Ulana helped her to kneel down.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Ulana asked.

She nodded and Ulana gently pulled back the sheet covering Durfein’s head. As Lolo devolved into hysterics, Ulana hugged her tight, and there the girls sat clinging to each other. Eventually, the tears dried up, and before leaving, Lolo kissed Durfein’s forehead to say goodbye. Ulana covered his face again and helped pull Lolo to her feet once more.

“Can you take me to the Burrow, Ulana?”

“What for?”

“To find Durfein’s artwork.”

Ulana nodded.

They found Durfein’s room straight away, but oddly, there wasn’t any artwork to be found anywhere in his room-- not even a sketchbook. They searched the rest of the house and came up dry.

“I know he has a blacksmith workshop somewhere,” Lolo suggested.

They found his workshop behind the house, and while it appeared that nothing had been touched, they still didn’t find any art. The girls returned to the house, ending where they had started in Durfein’s room. Standig and Fortus were waiting for them.

Fortus pulled Lolo into a hug as soon as he saw her. “We came to help, Lolo. What are you looking for?”

“Durfein’s artwork. It’s missing.”

Standig stood up from the chair he was waiting on and hit his head on the rafters above him. The impact knocked something off a cross beam that hit the ground with a loud “thunk” sound before rolling under the bed. Fortus’s head whipped around to look at the floor.

“What is it?” Lolo asked.

“Did that sound hollow to you?”

“I suppose. Maybe,” Lolo shrugged.

Fortus let go of Lolo to drop to his hands and knees. He started banging on the floor until he found that hollow sound again. “You said his artwork is missing. What if it’s just hidden?”

“'You think it might be under the floor?”

Fortus ignored the question as he began a search of the floor and the walls of the room for some sort of clue or mechanism. The floor near the bedposts was scuffed, so he moved the bed away from the wall, following the scuff marks. Behind the bed was a simple handle. Fortus tugged at it and heard something in the floor shift. Lolo dropped to her hands and knees and found a small crack forming between two planks. As she tested the boards with her weight, the floorboards beneath her hands rotated ninety degrees, creating an opening in the floor with a narrow flight of stairs leading down into a small, dimly lit crawl space below.

“After you,” Fortus gestured to Lolo.

The four friends entered the hidden room (Standig had to bend in half under the short ceiling) to find a large bookcase full of Durfein’s sketchbooks, a small writing desk with a stack of letters on one side, a series of shelves with a handful of other handcrafted items on it, a stack of paintings, and toward the back of the room, six of the most magnificent suits of armor they had ever seen displayed on mannequins lining the wall. While the rest of the group immediately went to inspect the armor, Lolo went to the writing desk and found a small, sealed envelope with, of all things, her name on it.

June 12

Dear Lolo,

If you are reading this, I’m most likely dead, and you’ve probably found this room while looking for my missing artwork. Am I right? I’m writing this just in case. Everything in here, I want to tell you in person, but, in this messed up world we live in, that’s just not a guarantee anymore.

There have been more disappearances this last week-- a lot of them. It seems that anyone who gets too close to the Dragon Tribe territory along the south road mysteriously vanishes. It makes me wonder if the dragons are planning to do something along the south road, attack the smaller tribes that live here, or something. It’s making us all nervous. We got the letter from your dad about a refugee alliance a couple of days ago. Something tells me you were involved in that. (You know that you’re amazing, right?) I just hope that we don’t need it.

Well, surprise! I hope you like it. The armor against the back wall was made for those of you that were part of the Dragon Tribe exchange with me, so you, Ulana, Standig, Fortus, Jadu, and Shanti. (Hopefully Standig’s armor is big enough for him. If not, I made it pretty easy to adjust. The schematics are in one of my sketchbooks on the top shelf. Any armorer can make adjustments using the schematics.) You know that I’m not a fighter, but this was something I could do to contribute to your success and keep you safe in the battles ahead. And the armor was pretty fun to design. I got to draw inspiration from all five main tribes! I don’t mind saying it; I think they turned out really beautifully.

There’s one more thing that I need to tell you. In that sketchbook with Standig’s armor schematics, there is another set of schematics for General Yudha’s armor. I couldn’t risk telling you before, but, because I felt so uncomfortable armoring our greatest enemy, I built a flaw into his armor. It’s not much, but it might be the difference. Some of the chain mail rings just below the chest piece were made from solid gold instead of gold-plated steel. Solid gold is pliable and will break under stress. I made sure that the weak point was reinforced on the sides so the chain mail wouldn’t fall apart easily, but a direct attack, like stabbing him with a sword or a spear there, will slice right through it.

Since I’m already dead, I just want to say one last thing. I love you, Lolo. You are an incredible person and the best friend I've ever had. I hope you live a happy, fulfilling life surrounded by the many people who love you. I just wish that I could be one of them.

Durfein

Lolo felt like someone had cut her heart out and stomped on it. Fortus looked away from the wall of armor to see Lolo on her knees, trembling from a crippling pain as she held Durfein’s letter to her chest. He knelt down next to her in time for her to start sobbing a fresh flood of tears.

“Lolo, what is it?”

She handed him the letter and bent in half, dropping her face to the cold, dirt floor. Fortus sped through the letter and handed it to Ulana so he could peel Lolo off the floor and into a hug. The letter then got passed from Ulana to Standig so Ulana could join Fortus in trying to comfort Lolo. Eventually, everyone was on the floor all together, crying and consoling each other.