Excerpt from Alexan’s Second Journal, Tour of the Glittering Halls.

If there is anything I’ve learned from the Galm and their lesser relatives, the dwarves, it’s how dangerous a master craftsman can be. In a straight up duel, even the best craftsman might only qualify as acceptable.

But If you give them time to prepare before fighting you? Well, you’ve gone and created for yourself a monster.

Master Woodcrafter Perkay

To say that the knock on his door was unwelcome would be a gross understatement.

Even if the last knock was just over one hundred and fifty years ago.

It was the words that arrived with the knocking that made the sound so unwanted.

At the very first knock, he had ceased moving. Now Perkay remained frozen in place, his teacup just touching his lips as he attempted to will that sound into being a figment of his imagination. The effort went unrewarded. Not that it was a surprise. A warmth on his chest had warned of someone casting a fire spell and had let him know there were idiots within the warding boundary.

"Exile Perkay, we demand you speak to us!" The voice repeated. Again his visitor banged on the door.

Perkay gently returned the polished black cup to the saucer of the same colour in his other hand, then placed the fine woodware on his table. With a sigh, he pushed the chair back and stood.

The banging continued. “Exile Perkay! We know you are in there!”

“I’m coming! Hold your goats!” Perkay shouted back. The indignant silence that followed was nice. There was only one surviving individual within the barrier who had actually seen a goat, but it was still an effective insult.

Perkay grabbed the cane hanging from the back of his chair and went to the door at his own dignified pace. If something had the wardens visiting him of all people and had them in a rush while doing so…

Well, far be it from him to help the wardens out.

Perkay walked from his small kitchen and into his workshop. He moved past the shelves full of carved and grown knickknacks, stepped around the tidy workbench with aged but well-maintained tools hanging from the rack above. By the time he was halfway through the room, Perkay could hear them talking. He paused next to the rack he'd filled with all different sorts of wood for his various projects.

Perkay remained still and listened for a moment in the hopes they would say something interesting, and foolish.

The first voice was that of a young Erlkin female. "-looked. There is only enough warmth for one-"

"Be silent, Hadasa!" Interrupted her partner. Perkay frown at the sheer rudeness of the young male. The warden pounded on the door once again.

*”Only enough for one, eh?” Perkay thought to himself. That explained the warmth on his chest. He took a large step forward past the material rack, pulled the latch, and yanked the door open in one smooth motion.

"WHAT!?" Perkay yelled at the startled Erlkin, the male's mouth suddenly flopping like a fish out of water now that he was facing the much-maligned exile.

That made Perkay think of Martyr lake. Now he was in an even worse mood.

The two of them seemed only just old enough to be wardens. Their horns did not exude shadow and their hair only possessed a few streaks of black. The young female, Hadasa, was wearing a mask over her lower face. The male had a matching mask, but he'd pulled it down to his neck to make the shouting easier.

Hadasa tried to recover first. "On Grand Elder Darisen's orders, we hunt for the chosen, fallen to the influence of the shadow. Speak! Have y… you…" her voice trailed off and her eyes filled with worry as Perkay's anger rose.

Her partner was either braver, or dumber.

“Exile Perkay! I demand you- Cawgh!”

Perkay cut the idiot off with a jab to the mask-covered throat using the end of his cane. The impact resulted in a brittle crack as Perkay’s cane shattered the mask. “You’ll demand nothing of me! And don’t give me the Elder Darisen nonsense!”

The warden turned away, hands protecting his throat as he coughed in pain while holding shards of the now broken wooden mask.

Hadasa flinched as Perkay’s eyes snapped back to her. She flinched again as Perkay pointed the end of his mana infused cane at her. “If that rot-born elder of yours had intended someone to interrogate me, there would be twenty of you here, not two puffed up wardens barely out of their training garb! Be! Gone!”

Making what may have been their only good decision today, the two of them did just that. The male seemed to have a second thought about arguing, but he couldn’t voice his complaints through the hacking. Hadasa just took him by the shoulders and steered him away. They left without another word.

Perkay closed the door and turned around.

He’d made his share of the controlled-voice masks and knew exactly how the things worked. Those masks worked much like the wards on Perkay’s house, preventing outside forces from spying by magical means. If someone tried to use an enchantment to hear what the wardens were saying, they were out of luck. But the two idiots must have forgotten Perkay still had ears, he didn’t need mana to hear their loose tongues give them away. They’d given so much away with just a couple flops of the mouth when they only had to give the mask a little aether while whispering and the earpiece would transmit their words.

Perkay smiled. They were hunting for the current chosen. That chosen, whoever they were, had spoken to the sentinel. Now they’d escaped Darisen’s clutches and were on the run.

With more life in his step than he’d had for years, Perkay walked to the big shelf full of decorations and carvings and gently tapped on the head of a life-like shadow hawk.

“Hey, you old fragment, I need you to go find your baby while I get ready. When you find them, come back and get me and we’ll go give Darisen a bad day.”

The bird might appear real to any casual observer, but Perkay had carved it himself, then carefully infused the feathers with tints of dyes and mana. When he had completed the carving to his satisfaction, he’d placed within the bird a special memento from the day he’d lost his son.

The bird shook its wings and blinked its solid black eyes at Perkay. It chirped inquisitively at him.

“Someone made a run for it!” Perkay explained with a smile. “You should recognize them right away. Although you’d know more about tracking the chosen than I would.”

The bird perked up, its feathers slimming while it looked about.

“I’ll open a window in the kitchen, don’t want those stupid wardens to have a second good idea today.”

With a flutter of wings too soft to be wood, the bird jumped to Perkay’s shoulder.

The hawk chirped a question at him.

“Maybe a hundred twenty years since I put you to sleep.”

An annoyed squawk.

“I’m in exile, what do you expect.”

The bird fluffed its feathers and chattered at him.

“Damn right I looked after you. Kept that pit in your belly topped off, too. You’re a hungry thing even when you’re sleeping, I’ll have you know.” Arriving at the far side of the kitchen as he spoke, Perkay unlatched the shutter and pushed it open. He then raised his forearm for the bird to step up.

The wooden hawk stepped onto his arm then turned its head and chirped at Perkay again.

“Don’t thank me yet. We still got work to do.”

With a loud flap of its wings, the bird launched itself through the window.

Perkay turned around and looked to the roof where he’d hidden all his best stuff. “Now then… what should I take with me…”

Unnamed Talkarn

Tal passed Nolsa as he stepped on the solid wood of the bough, happy to be off the wobbly bridge. The wardens chasing them had made the dash terrifying.

“Wait, stop!” Nolsa called, pulling a wand from her pouch. “Tal, lend me aether!”

Tal had already started to turn, but seeing Nolsa waiting was all the signal he needed to know she had a plan.

“Do you… do you need my help?” Easil asked, the fatigue in his voice painful to Tal’s ears.

“No, I’ll be fine,” Nolsa replied as Tal placed his hand on her back and started sharing.

Tal grunted as Nolsa seized on the aether, dragging it through her chest to add it to her own. The air around them fluttered as she summoned up the wind, the sound of it whistling in Tal’s ears. As she pulled harder, Tal closed his eyes and pushed more aether to meet the demand. The wind suddenly felt good as the effort drove his temperature higher. He’d already been sweating from the run, and now he was working hard in a different way.

Tal looked past Nolsa to see where she was building her spell. A barrier of wind, visible only for the fragments of leaves and wood swirling about, surrounded the entire bridge. Tal could feel the wind tugging at him even from where he was standing behind Nolsa.

Realizing something was up, the wardens coming up the bridge started to slow. Tal could see their eyes as they glared at him and Nolsa.

“Okay, that should hold for some time,” Nolsa said as she completed the spell. “Let’s go!”

A flash of light illuminated the area behind them, one of the wardens signalling the presence of their quarry.

Easil mumbled something from his position in the rucksack.

Layessa was sticking close enough to hear the tired Gnome. “More footsteps coming from above, from straight ahead!”

Nolsa turned sideways, leading Tal into a thicker patch of branches and foliage.

“This won't be fun,” Nolsa called out. “I saw a way down to the next branch, but it’s steep.”

“Not that we have much choice,” Tal called back.

Nolsa didn’t slow that much, but she had an easier time bouncing through the thick forest of branches than Tal. Her bouncing gait seemed made for moving around difficult terrain. His run was plodding by comparison and more than a couple of times he smacked his head on an errant branch.

“Are they close?” Tal asked between breaths.

“Easil can’t hear through the noise of us running around,” Layessa called back.

Tal just barely ducked another branch coming his way. The tree was growing thicker here, with the surface of the bough rising and falling and branches laying across the path.

There was no way the wardens wouldn't be able to hear Tal crashing through these woods.

Exiting the heavy patch was a relief, but only a temporary one. Nolsa had stopped, but not because she was waiting for Tal. She had stopped because of just how dangerous the bridge actually was. It was steep, it was narrow and it was long. The branch was narrow enough that Tal could easily wrap his arms around it. Tal stepped forward, putting his hand on Nolsa’s shoulder as he peered down to the next bough. The bridge itself wasn’t a solid branch of wood, but multiple heavy vines all wrapped together and spiralling down.

“Oh dear,” Layessa whispered as she looked over his shoulder.

“It goes to the top of the next bough,” Tal observed. “That makes crawling easier…”

“That’s one small perk among all the problems we have right now,” Nolsa replied. “I didn’t know you were an optimist.”

“I didn’t either,” Tal answered back, “but it’s not like we have much choice.”

Nolsa sighed and stepped forward first, Turning around to start crawling down the bridge on all fours. Tal looked to the side to see if the wardens were in sight, but they were still making their way through the minor maze that had grown on this bough of the Hollow Home. When Nolsa had earned herself enough space, Tal turned to follow her down.

He immediately hated it.

The last bridge had swayed in the air with Nolsa crossing ahead of him and the wardens running behind, but it was still wide enough to give him at least some semblance of confidence. This giant glorified rope didn’t even pretend to feel safe.

A flash of light illuminated the world around Tal and he looked up to see a pair of wardens looking down at them. Tal only stopped for a moment before resuming his miserable climb downwards.

“You think you’re coming down here with us?” Layessa muttered angrily to herself. “I already know you guys have been ordered to catch us, but we aren’t under any such requirement.”

Tal felt the trickle of aether of Layessa crafting herself a spell.

He didn’t have the leeway to ask her what she was doing.

“Chase after us will you, have a little of this for your trouble,” Layessa muttered angrily. A flash of light caught the edge of Tal’s vision as she fired off a spell.

There was a shout of pain, followed by one of the wardens frantically calling out. Tal glanced up to see the first warden to start climbing down frantically slapping at his burning pants.

Tal’s stomach clenched. “Fire, Layessa?! In the tree?”

“We’re desperate! And I know what I’m doing, keep moving!”

Generally only someone gone mad would throw indiscriminate fire around the Hollow Home. A focused sun beam was one thing: a skilled caster could get away with burning a hole if it was both controlled and intense enough not to spill extra heat and sparks.

But just a low-grade ball of fire? Being cooler than a beam did not make it safer!

Tal’s fear lent him strength and speed, helping bolster him as he chased Nolsa downwards.

Tal had made some good distance when he looked up again. While the warden was busy Tal had widened the gap between them, but the fire was out and the warden was moving again. Layessa shot another ball of fire upwards. This time it was caught, intercepted by a shadow flung out by the second warden. He’d remained still to protect his partner from Layessa’s crazy attacks.

That didn’t stop the pursuing warden from freezing in place.

Crazy or not, Layessa’s antics earned them some space. Tal landed on the Tree next to Nolsa.

Having gone down a couple layers, Tal had to squint to see clearly. Doing some quick mental math, he realized it must be getting close to nightfall. Soon he would be forced to depend on darksight, but that could only last for so long.

Nolsa grabbed Tal’s hand and started moving. “This way.”

Tal kept his words to himself. At this rate they’d never get away.

But he wasn’t about to give up yet.

End Chapter