The next morning Eris watched on while Astera wrapped Rook in fresh bandages like a Daromese mummy. He was conscious for the whole procedure. She pretended to be asleep and pretended not to listen to their hushed conversation.

“I hope the price proves worth it,” Astera said.

“It already has,” Rook replied.

She fastened a sheet of linen around the scorched skin on his bicep. “Forgive me if I sometimes wonder of late if we sought her down truly as a means to banish Lord Arqa, or if you had other motives.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Men always have other motives when women are involved.”

“You may have all the fun with her you like, so long as you haven’t forgot her purpose.”

“Of course not.”

“Perhaps she has. Her side of the deal has been fulfilled. Are you certain she won’t betray you now?”

“Stop it. She’ll keep her word. We’re close, Astera. Stow your cynicism and smile for a change. Like this, see? If I can do it now, anyone can.”

Astera tightened another bandage. Rook’s smile sublimated into a scowl and a gasp of pain. “When she attempts to convince you not to return to Arqa, only know I told you she would.”

“She won’t.”

The elf stood. Eris closed her eyes. They were nearing time to depart, but Eris didn’t leap from bed. She thought about what Astera said.

How did she know?

All night she’d been planning on how to persuade Rook to abandon this quest to Darom. They could go anywhere together, be free, earn a fortune. Their partnership would prove immensely profitable. And if it soured, they could always part ways again. Instead he wanted the both of them to march into certain death in a far-away land where the sun was as likely to kill as the monsters.

She would have ambushed him in private to say just that, if she hadn’t overheard his conversation with Astera. Now she hesitated. As they packed up their things in the cavern and prepared to discus their next course she realized it was hopeless. He would never agree.

That meant it was her choice. Quit the party and set off alone, or stay true to her word and honor the deal she made.

Honor meant nothing to Eris. Neither did betraying her purported allies. She didn’t care about Darom or Arqa. But she did care about results, and what she knew was that in all her time in the adventurer’s life, she hadn’t met anyone so good at it as Rook. She had no desire to leave his company again after the last year.

So she said nothing. And perhaps Darom wouldn’t be so bad—perhaps this would be just the chance she needed to test her powers.

“What do we do with the Wyrm?” Robur said.

“I will keep its Essence in the soulcharm,” Eris said. “As for its bones—we may leave them here.”

“No,” Rook said. “We’re too close to Kaimas. The body should be moved where it won’t be found.”

“You do recall we were chased from Kaimas by an angry mob?” Eris said. “Surely you are not concerned with their safety?”

“Eris is right. This time,” Astera said. “We owe Kaimas no favor. But I do not trust her to carry the Wyrm’s Essence.”

“There is this word again, ‘trust.’ What is it that makes you all rave on ‘trust?’”

“Use any word you like. I do not believe any mortal should have such power. Give me the soulcharm.”

“I will not,” Eris said.

“You have failed to control the Wyrm once. Why should we allow you another attempt?”

“You have failed to confront Lord Arqa once, yet we still drag your carcass behind us across Esenia. Shall we play this game?”

“Please, calm down,” an exacerbated Rook intervened, clutching his side. “Can we destroy the soulcharm?”

“No,” Eris said. “We cannot.”

“Yes,” Astera said. “We can. And we should.”

“That would free the Wyrm,” Robur said from his point of invisibility nearby, before vanishing once again.

“Not if we first destroy its body,” Astera said.

“That seems the safest option—” Rook began, but this time Eris cut him off.

“No! Enough! We have bumbled around enough listening to your plans. Now you will listen to me.” She withdrew the soulcharm on its chain from its place against her chest. She had no intention of giving this thing up—and now she had an idea of how to persuade them to be sensible. “You have come to me in hope that I will aid you in banishing a demon? So I will. Yet to send such a creature back to the aether will require tremendous energy.”

She ran her hand down the soulcharm’s edge, pulling a trace amount of mana from the Wyrm’s Essence within. That single action made the vial within glow blue. She felt a stinging as her body rejected the mana—her spellsickness hadn’t entirely faded—but it lasted only a moment. Her party was left with a demonstration of the charm’s power dangling from a chain at eye level.

“This is precisely what we required. One demon with which to slay the other. I do not care how much you distrust me; that is the truth. If you wish to see your quest successful, then I must keep this thing.”

Astera glared. “Then give it to Robur.”

Eris scoffed. “You are a funny one,” she said. She hid the soulcharm back beneath her shirt.

“I would be happy to carry it—” Robur started.

“No, I think I shall keep it, thank you. Now let us waste no more time. Summer in Darom approaches, does it not?”

Rook’s eyes were bloodshot when they met Eris’. He took a step toward her. “Can you control it?”

“There may be no choice,” she said.

He nodded cautiously. There was something in his look like regret. Could it be he felt the fool for being deceived by the Wyrm? Could it be he felt stupid for ignoring her before? She could only hope.

“She defeated the Manawyrm,” he said. “I trust her with the soulcharm.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

“But we are going to dispose of the body. Consider it part of your revenge.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are very eager about the prospect of pushing heavy things for a one-armed man.” She sighed. “Very well. I suppose in that light ‘tis not so terrible a waste of time. ”

It was Robur’s idea. Rather than conjure forth fire so hot it might melt manacrystal, he suggested they take the three sarcophagi to the Rytus River which bisected the principality. There they pushed the levitating things out over the water until they found the river’s deepest point, at which point he used Arcane Abrogation to dispel the enchantments. The sealed leaden cubes sunk like boulders to the depths.

“They will be found eventually,” Astera said. “Time will change the course of even the mightiest rivers.”

“Won’t whoever cracks them open be in for a surprise then?” Rook said.

“Forgive me for not being overconcerned with the fate of those ten thousand years yet unborn,” Eris said.

With that they set off for Vandens. A fast course to Darom. It occurred to Eris they might prefer to wait until Rook had healed, which might be some weeks yet, but they had no funds to support a prolonged stay at any town.

“We aren’t going to Darom,” Rook said while they walked. He was still in immense pain.

Eris couldn’t believe it. “Finally! Common sense returns! Where else, then? Veshod, perhaps? Telmos? The woods of Voreios? I must admit I grow tired of the forest, yet all the same I will take an eternity of mosquitos before one day of Daromese sun—”

“We aren’t going straight to Darom,” he corrected. “We left someone behind at Katharos. That’s our first destination.”

She sank. “Ah. Out of the way, is it not?”

“We’ll need him.”

“That is contestable,” Astera said. “Yet we may be able to find others willing to assist us in defeating Lord Arqa there, or at Vandens. News will have travelled by now.”

“If it has, let’s hope our names haven’t,” Rook said.

In spring overland shipping between Kem-Karwene and Rytus thawed and began anew. All those merchants too sensible to cross the Great Divide brought their goods to Vandens to be loaded up on the docks and sent in galleys across Esenia. That meant it was easy enough to find a ship destined for Katharos, and so it was that the party found itself sailing around the Daromese peninsula and up toward the Hepaz river before they hardly realized what had happened.

Such a journey was the definition of the ‘long way around.’

Eris hated boats. She didn’t especially like water either, except for the purpose of bathing, but she harbored particular enmity toward boats. They were cramped and pestilent and that one thing she craved above all else, solitude, was never to be found within them. On a boat even the company of Astera was welcome when compared to the elbow-jabbing and mouth-breathing of two dozen smelly sailors.

She had one distraction: the orc’s spellbook. And what a spellbook it was. As she flipped the mana-ink etched pages, as she read over the enchantments all their descriptions, she realized at once that she had found a tome on shapeshifting.

It wasn’t old. She had met the Magister whose name was etched on the back of the cover as its author, an old man named Diogenes, who was still alive when she left Pyrthos four years ago. Eris suspected the orc had killed him or whoever else had come into the book’s possession, for all but one of the spells was blank—they had been learned recently.

One of the first true spells Eris learned was Arcane Semblance. That was an illusion to temporarily change an appearance with mana. Shapeshifting was different. Shapeshifting allowed actual transmogrification of the physical form, both of the caster and of another. It was a dangerous school of magic to trifle with, one that demanded mastery and dedication.

Unfortunately, techniques for transformation of the self were absent from the pages. She had to settle instead for learning Polymorph. That was still enough to consume her every waking hour.

Polymorph was the spell by which a magician could transform another into an animal. It was mana-intensive, required great focus, and was prone to miscasting, but with its mastery even dragons might be rendered as nothing more than harmless chicklets. When she drew the spell from the pages and felt confident enough to attempt a casting, she caught a rat in the lower decks with Pyraz’s help and tossed it into a chamber pot. There she concentrated, thinking back to the indentations the spellbook had left on her Essence, and she willed this rat into the form of a mouse.

Black fur whitened. The creature shrunk. Pyraz barked.

The Koiladian Bilge Rats that swarmed ships like this one were noted for their ferocity and fangs. They were also famously inedible. Yet now she reached forward to grab the mouse-rat and it did nothing but squeak in her hands.

It didn’t look like a mouse. It was a mouse.

The spell lasted an hour. She could have sustained it longer, but there was no reason to drain herself on experimentation of this sort. Such was a minor transmogrification, however: rats and mice were nearly the same. Rat to dog, or rat to human, or rat to elephant…she would need time to practice.

Eris realized then that she knew her next obsession. Polymorph was a taste of what the power of shapeshifting magic could do. And from her vantage point, stuck for weeks on that miserable galley, whenever she looked out at the waves beyond and saw birds she realized that true freedom meant liberation from the constraints of her human form. Sooner before later she would learn how to transform herself.