The woman who had entered the strange cave-like room screeched and leaped at Faye. She had no weapon, but her hand was stretched out in a claw-like shape and her nails emitted a mana-like glow in Faye’s senses.

“Wait!” Faye shouted, but the woman ignored her.

Stepping away from the supplies and foods, Faye ducked under her attacker’s flailing arms.

It seemed the woman did not care that she had missed, because she immediately knelt on top of the sleeping roll and pulled open the sack of food.

“Don’t!” Faye called, “It’s poisoned!”

The woman looked back over her shoulder, glaring at Faye. “I know that,” she said. “Have you been the one thieving this?”

Faye was sure her face reflected her thoughts, but she did not want her to mistake her confusion.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m an Adventurer. I am investigating an attack and the poisoning of supplies for Einnua Steading. That sack of food has the same mana signature as the poisoned stores. You said thieving, does that mean that sack belongs to you?”

Faye ended her sentence with laying a hand on the handle of her sword.

Truthfully, she was not interested in drawing steel on this woman so soon after they had killed the hunter, but she did not need to know that.

The woman’s face had paled, and she twisted and stood with the sack held carefully in her hands.

“Oh, goodness! That’s awful!”

Faye frowned. Was she faking it?

“So, you don’t own the sack?”

The woman looked down, then back up, taking in Faye’s stance. She grimaced. “I know how it looks. Yes. This is my sack, my laboratory, but no I did not poison a Steading’s food supply… actually, I’m not sure I have heard of Einnua Steading before.”

Faye shook her head incredulously. “The Steading lies about a mile west of here, just outside of the woods.”

It was the woman’s turn to shake her head incredulously. “This laboratory is not in some woods; it’s located under my residence.”

A cold, clammy sensation ran up Faye’s back and she felt her insides crawl.

“Oh, God, please tell me I can get back…” she said, then turned and strode towards the stone platform in the centre of the room.

“Wait!”

But Faye did not want to wait. It was not worth capturing the owner of the poison mana if she could not get back to Gavan and the Steading. She leapt the last few feet onto the platform and felt the familiar sensation of being transported to another place.

In a blink, Faye’s eyes were blasted with light, and she squeezed them shut.

She tried to look around for details. The only thing she could tell was that she was somewhere very dark. The light had been from the transportation spell.

“Faye!”

She turned toward the sound of her name. Gavan was approaching, and he called out again.

“Faye, by the gods! Where did you come from?”

“This stone, it’s a teleporting device,” she said, stepping off the stone embedded in the centre of the depression between the three sloping paths. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see the boulders properly, and that Gerrec had followed Gavan onto the sloping path.

“We both noticed something odd in this direction a few minutes ago, a flash of mana we did not recognise,” Gerrec supplied, “we came rushing over, only to have you pop out of nowhere the moment we stepped onto this path.”

Faye shook her head; she blew out her cheeks.

“I have no idea what happened… wait, no, that’s not right,” she corrected herself, “I know what happened, but I have no idea how.”

She told them about the room, the so-called laboratory, and the woman who had tried to scare her off.

Gerrec scowled. “That does not sound possible. Magical transportation is too expensive for this kind of regular use. Most artefacts that allow it crumble after one or two uses.”

Faye nodded; she knew what he was talking about after all.

“And neither of you saw someone enter the boulders before you?” she asked.

Gavan shook his head. “No, there was no one in the vicinity.”

“Agreed,” Gerrec said. “No one with significant mana.”

“Can someone hide from our [Mana Sense]?” Faye asked.

“Yes,” Gavan said, immediately, “but if they can there’s usually a class involved, or such a power difference that you might as well already be dead if they’re your enemy.”

“A random woman who could not attack you from a few feet away is not likely to be someone that could hide from our senses.”

Faye hummed. There were too many unknowns. If this was the source of the mana, then perhaps it was not the cultists, after all? But then, how had Gerrec and Von seen the poisoned mana further to the north?

“Okay, so whether that was the culprit or not, it seems that it gives us more questions than answers,” she said. “How about we seal off this teleportation stone before we do anything else?”

Gavan murmured something, looking thoughtfully at the stone in the centre of the trio of paths. After a moment or two, he nodded. Then he turned and led the way out of the sloped area. At the top of the ramp, he spun and cast a spell on the teleportation stone behind them.

A large dome of sparkling mana was inlaid across an invisible surface, inches above the stone. It twinkled in a way that Faye had never seen before, until she realised that it was due to already being half-formed into magical ice.

In a display of control that Faye was frankly incredibly envious of, Gavan moulded raw mana into the shape, size, and material that he wanted it to be and commanded it to exist. And so, it did.

Next, he pointed at Gerrec and told him to contribute.

The earth mage nodded and did something similar, though he was not forced to use raw mana to create a protective barrier. Instead, he was able to bring rock from beneath the surface to breach like a jumping whale and seemingly swallow the entire teleportation platform whole.

He did not drag it beneath the surface, he told them, but basically moulded the rock like wet clay into a barrier that would prevent the ice from melting and anything from getting at the device or its inner layer of protection for millennia.

In the darkness, it was basically impossible to tell that anything was wrong with the area. To check, though, Faye summoned the fiery mana that she coated her sword in and held it up like a torch, allowing the flickering flames to light up the area.

Sure enough, Gerrec had done a stellar job of covering the platform. Faye dispersed her mana and nodded.

“Okay, so, poison mage is either trapped, or blocked from travelling here through that device,” she said. “What else can we do?”

She thought about it as the others picked through the problem at their own pace.

They had doubled back to try and find something that indicated where the poisoner was hiding. They had found what could have been the source of the insidious mana, but not necessarily the culprit. Sealing off the entrance was the best course of action if they wanted a quick solution.

What they really needed to ensure that the problem would not return is to know exactly who did it.

At this point, Faye was not convinced there was a fast solution to this problem. They had already spent a whole day on it. In the back of her mind, she was worried about the real reason they had left Lóthaven. In part, the poisoning of the Steader’s stores were part of the whole town’s problem, which meant that other people might be better placed to solve the problem than they were.

But, before they could pool their ideas together and start talking through the problem again, Faye heard someone coming through the trees towards them. They were not trying to be stealthy at all.

Sharing a glance with the other two, they melded back into the space between the boulders and awaited whoever was approaching.

The path that they had been standing at the top of was the top of the trio of paths, and they retreated until they were hidden out of sight in the other two. Faye was nearest the stone platform, with Gavan behind her and Gerrec stationed in the other leg of the pathways.

The person coming toward them was hurrying, their footsteps rapid and incautious.

Faye held her sword in a back right stance, the blade by her trailing right leg. She did not want to gather her mana together, so she was suppressing her newly created instincts to pull on it and use it.

When the footsteps entered the pathway down to the stone platform, she shifted her grip ever so slightly and started counting breaths.

One.

A few more steps.

Two.

Muttering, streaming under the breath of their uninvited guest.

Three.

The scuff of a boot on dirt.

Faye exploded out from behind the shallow angle of the wall that would have provided no shelter in the light of day. A few steps away, standing stock still in surprise, was the shadowed figure of their unknown guest.

She did not say anything as she charged them. Instead, she led with her pommel, lifting it up to slam into the face of who she hoped was the poisoner.

Whoever it was, their attributes were high enough that they were not quite as taken by surprise as she thought they might be. They swayed backward, as if they were a martial arts master, and avoided her surprise blow easily.

They lashed out with their boot, catching Faye in the stomach hard enough to elicit a grunt of pain.

Behind her, she heard the footsteps of the two mages.

Gerrec manipulated the stone of the pathway’s entrance and forced it almost closed — leaving only a tiny gap that a small animal might squeeze through.

A rush of energy infused Faye, and she grinned, Gavan had chosen to send a healing spell into her rather than attack. She darted forward and aimed a cut at the person’s arm. She landed a solid blow, which made them cry out in pain.

It was a male voice.

She pressed her advantage. This time, she got close enough that with a savage blow to the face, her opponent dropped back on his arse. She levelled the point of her sword in his face.

“Stay down!” she commanded.

She was not sure if he listened to what she said or if he was in too much pain to get back up. He was holding his face in his hands. But a second later, a flash of green light erupted from between his hands, revealing his face for a split second.

It was Adan!

The incredulity running through Faye’s mind was enough to let him finish his spell. The green mana that he had placed around his mouth came up in a spray. Faye flinched back from it, instinctively closing her eyes, but inhaling accidentally.

Her chest suddenly felt like it was on fire as she breathed in. She gritted her teeth and jabbed with her sword, impaling his shoulder. He roared in pain.

Another bloom of energy hit her that reduced the burning sensation but could not relieve it completely.

“C-cast anything else,” Faye spoke in a hoarse, guttural croak, “and I’ll make sure it goes through your throat, Adan.”

The man stilled. “The adventurer?” he said through gritted teeth, Faye’s sword was still embedded in his shoulder.

She tried to speak again, but her vocal cords were fried. She just stared down at him.

“But you left…”

“And wanted to stop the poisoner… you, apparently,” Gavan said, from behind Faye. “Adventurer Faye and I are not the only ones who were hunting you, either.”

“You got my partner killed,” Gerrec growled.

Faye felt herself flush with… shame? Guilt? She was not sure which, but some emotion filled her as Gerrec bent the truth. It was only after Adan cried out that she realised she was moving the sword.

“Heal him,” she grated out, and then withdrew her sword. A moment later, the gentle light of Gavan’s spell lit Adan’s face again.

Faye brought her mana together and laced it down her sword, igniting it with a thought. The flames licked along the metal in a mesmerising wave, flickering along it as if alive. The pathway grew easy to see in from the light.

Adan looked up at them with horror writ large across his face.

“Why?” Faye growled, then coughed. Gavan’s healing energies seeped into her back once again, and she felt some more relief, but her throat was still raw. “What, c-could you gain from this?”

“It’s not what I gain,” Adan said, his own voice raw but with emotion rather than poison. “It’s proving what we lose by staying out here, alone, isolated for the rest of our lives! She doesn’t get it. We are so vulnerable. Even the Guild doesn’t want to help us. You abandoned us after half a day.”

Faye’s eyes hardened. This was not the kind of thing she had expected. But to starve your fellows, hurt and even kill them, simply to… prove a point?

She considered stabbing him again.

Either Gavan was thinking the same thing, or he was suddenly able to read minds, because he put a hand on Faye’s shoulder and whispered to her.

“He isn’t worth it. Let’s take him to the Steader.”

Adan’s face was contorted in half a dozen different emotions. He looked like a man tormented.

Maybe I should not be the one to mete out justice, she thought.

“Fine. To the Steader.”