Nick's knuckles drummed impatiently on the table.

  They were in what had probably once been a Rohm family dining room and was now very much a war room. The long table was covered with maps weighed down with inkpots and small stones. Someone, likely Willow, had set a pot of tea at one end, where no one was touching it.

  Around the table, Tholm’s apprentices waited for their senior to outline their next steps.

  Raphael stood at the head of the table, with Willow sitting to his right, quill in hand, ready to take notes, and Nick on his left. The other three—Lina, Joran, and Mikel—occupied various chairs along the sides, occasionally chiming in when something caught their attention.

  Osmod was slumped in a corner chair, half-turned toward the door, still recovering from his ordeal. It might not have seemed worth tiring himself just to listen to teenagers, but there was a feverish glint in his eyes that said he would rather be dead than be excluded.

  Epistula had tucked herself beside him, her long legs crossed, with a journal balanced on her knees. Every so often, she made a note, her lips pursed in concentration.

  “Right,” Raphael said. “Let’s get back to the actual problem.”

  He tapped one of the maps, a broad depiction of the northern Sunlands. A line of inked hills marked the Burnt Hills, and just above, a lighter wash showed the Low Savannah stretching northward, nearly reaching Long Reach.

  “The dungeon,” he continued, “was first noticed here, along the Burnt Hills. The Tower Master purged the most dangerous external manifestations, and a contraction or at least a plateau was expected.”

  Joran snorted softly. “And the opposite happened.”

  Raphael shot him a brief, flat look. “Yes. As of our last intel, its influence has spread beyond Burnt Hills into the Low Savannah again. That’s about thirty miles of advance in less than a month.”

  Willow’s quill scratched rapidly. “That confirms the reports from the hamlets,” she murmured. “Some of the adventurers who passed through there mentioned weird happenings.”

  “That’s mostly because of the monsters,” Raphael said. He shuffled a stack of notes and pulled out one. “We expected to see mainly goblinoids on the fringes, hobgoblins, bugbears, the occasional ogre, and grumbler. From the south, insect-like monsters have been reported: mantids, burrowing beetles, and some impressive hive colonies.”

  I hate those damn things. I might need to come up with a wide-area spell to kill them all at once.

  “And in the last week,” Raphael went on, “werewolf packs. A couple of small towns on the old border lost their population overnight. What few survivors there are describe… you can guess.”

  Lina grimaced. “All during the full moon?”

  “Not this time.” Raphael’s gaze flicked toward Nick. “Which is why I’m going to defer to our resident expert for an explanation.”

  Nick realized belatedly that the room had gone quiet and everyone was staring at him.

  He blinked.

  His thoughts had been wandering, unhelpfully, toward the army marching their way. Tholm had told him, in that annoyingly calm way, that they ‘weren’t a threat, merely an inconvenience,’ but Nick couldn’t exactly ignore them, given what he knew of their intentions.

  “Nick?” Willow prompted gently.

  “Right, sorry.” He muttered, dragging his attention back. “Werewolves.”

  He leaned forward, elbows resting on the table. “People often see lycanthropy as a simple switch,” he said. “Transforming on the full moon and reverting off it. That’s not quite inaccurate, but it’s just the first stage.”

  Willow frowned. “The lore says—”

  “The lore is written by people who encounter new cases, as few survive after meeting older ones,” Nick cut in. “For freshly bitten werewolves, or those rare few still fighting it, the curse leans hard on lunar cycles. The full moon acts as an external trigger, pulling them under whether they like it or not. The rest of the time, it just simmers beneath the surface, waiting.”

  Epistula tilted her head. “And for the older cases?”

  “Once a person has been under the curse long enough,” Nick said, “and especially once they stop resisting, the boundaries blur. Their connection to the curse no longer depends on the full moon’s peak. They can transform more easily, more often. Sometimes at will. Daylight doesn’t matter so much when the real factor is how aligned their soul is with the feral pattern imprinted upon it.”

  “So the packs hitting those towns are experienced?” Joran asked with a grimace.

  “Either quite a bit older than the dungeon, or deliberately cultivated,” Nick said. “Given what we saw the other night, I’d bet on the latter. Whatever’s spreading this strain is looking to build up its numbers.”

  He didn’t mention that he was pretty sure it was another Feral God. They weren’t supposed to wipe out this dungeon anyway, so it was unlikely they’d face an actual manifestation this time.

  Raphael nodded in thanks and pointed to a spot on the map, a cluster of inked dots south of the Burnt Hills. “Reports place two such packs here and here.” His finger moved. “The dungeon’s influence is spreading out from this region. If we let these werewolves embed themselves, they’ll ride that tide outward, turning the whole outer ring into a hunting ground. We won’t be able to clear them at that point.”

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  Willow’s nose wrinkled. “So you want to hit them before they get there.”

  “Exactly.” Raphael picked up a small wooden marker and placed it on one of the dots. “Our goal is to stop the dungeon’s expansion and then shrink it back to a manageable area. We won’t achieve that by letting mobile, self-replicating threats dig in.”

  Mikel, who’d been quiet so far, raised a hand halfway. “I have a stupid question.”

  “There are no stupid questions,” Willow said automatically.

  “There are incredibly stupid questions,” Raphael corrected. “But go on.”

  Mikel gestured at the map. “If the Tower Master couldn’t stop it from spreading, how are we supposed to? We’re good, but we’re not that good.”

  A murmur of agreement spread around the table. Even Osmod straightened up a bit.

  Raphael stared at Mikel until the younger apprentice shifted uneasily.

  “Do you genuinely think the Tower Master failed?” Raphael asked.

  Mikel opened his mouth, then closed it again and looked away. “I mean… the dungeon’s bigger than when he started.”

  “It’s aggressively expanding to make up for its lost ground, choosing size over quality, which means whatever was inside of it before Bluetear’s passage would have been impossible for us to face,” Raphael said, voice flat. “His goal then was to stop an unstoppable monster tide. He did.”

  Silence fell.

  Willow cleared her throat. “Let’s discuss logistics,” she said, trying to redirect the conversation. “If we’re planning strikes on outlying packs and probing the dungeon, we need to know what support we can count on. The town’s already strained, so I wouldn’t rely on it too much.”

  “That’s on Tholm and the lord to hash out,” Osmod chimed in from the corner. “We’ll just have to deal with what we’re given.”

  “That is the way things most often are,” Epistula murmured, though she didn’t scold him for including himself in the group. He had gotten better, and seeing the respect he had earned from everyone else had mollified the initially tense woman.

  “Once the army’s situation stabilizes, we’ll begin with the nearest hamlets.” Raphael tapped the closest inked village. “Clear them, observe how the dungeon reacts, and make adjustments from there.”

  Willow’s quill hovered over the paper, and she bit her lip. “And if it sends a powerful monster to remove us?”

  “In that case, we have the things Tholm gave us.” Raphael said simply, “But I don’t expect we will need them. We are not the only ones who will be poking around; the dungeon shouldn’t be able to focus on us to the exclusion of everything else.”

  Before Nick could ask what he was referring to, a spike of agitation raced toward the room.

  Monte.

  A moment later, the door slammed open hard enough to rattle its hinges.

  Monte burst in, cheeks flushed, hair slightly mussed for once. “They’re here,” he blurted. “The army. The scouts spotted them from the east watch. Three hundred men, maybe more.”

  The south wall still bore scorched marks where lightning had struck the stone to peel off the climbing werewolves the other night. From the parapet, the land gently sloped down to the blackened area that had once been the refugee camp, now mostly ash, twisted tent pegs, and the occasional stubborn frame.

  Beyond that, the army moved along the road in organized blocks. Their colors, a deep green and gold, fluttered from the lead standard, a stylized badger rearing against a sunburst.

  Nick rested his elbows on the crenellation, letting his senses take in the scene. About three hundred soldiers were before him, most wearing chainmail or light plate armor, armed with swords and pikes. They exuded the confidence of experienced professionals rather than unruly recruits, walking with steady steps, forming orderly lines, and radiating the mana he would have expected from seasoned warriors, placing them in the level forty to fifty range.

  At the front, four knights in full plate rode, their armor polished to a mirror shine. Their mana burned bright and controlled, each signature having a different flavor: one steady and heavy, one sharp and aggressive, one cold and precise, and one like a banked forge.

  Behind them, smaller but still noticeable auras gathered around a few banner-bearers and officers.

  “So that’s their plan,” Nick murmured. An army of that size wouldn’t have been able to besiege and take Long Reach, not if Rohm had used all his resources to keep them out, but with their people already inside the town, it would have been child’s play to break through.

  Down on the trampled ground where the camp had been, Captain Blunderbuss stood waiting.

  He was alone, without an honor guard, despite his men’s objections. His posture was relaxed, but Nick could sense the tension coiled tightly inside, ready to burst if anyone tried anything clever.

  The knights pulled their mounts back to a respectful distance. The soldiers behind them slowed down, their lines rippling as the command to stop was given.

  The lead knight alone nudged his horse forward.

  He was a sturdy man, bald beneath his crested helmet, with a magnificent handlebar mustache that could have rivaled Blunderbuss's in size if not in style. His armor proudly displayed the badger and sunburst, marking him as a noble, and he carried the air of someone well used to commanding obedience.

  That guy is pretty strong. Upper seventies, maybe eighties. He’s at least twenty levels above the other commanders in his army.

  “Captain Blunderbuss of Long Reach?” the knight asked.

  Blunderbuss tilted his head. “That’s me. And you are?”

  “Sir Harvald Grun,” the knight replied. “Commander of the relief force. By order of Viscount Hone, I am here to secure this town and the surrounding area against the dungeon’s influence.”

  Blunderbuss didn’t bow. “You’re late,” he said.

  A ripple went through the soldiers. The knight’s shoulders stiffened.

  “There have been complications,” he said coldly. “The dungeon’s spread has disrupted more than just your little town, Captain.”

  “I noticed,” Blunderbuss said. He gestured vaguely at the charred remains around them. “We’ve been a bit busy.”

  Nick bit back a smile.

  Harvald’s gaze shifted to the ruins, then to the walls. His eyes stayed on the crowded watch posts and the hastily patched areas where claws had gouged the stone.

  His jaw clenched. “Regardless,” he said, “we are here now. You will open your gates and let my men in, and we will take control of the defenses. You and your militia will be reassigned as needed.”

  There you are. Not even trying to be subtle, huh?

  On the wall, one of the younger guards swore under his breath. Nick kept his face composed, but his fingers clenched on the stone.

  Blunderbuss, on the other hand, didn’t flinch. “The town’s under lockdown,” he said. “Lord Rohm’s orders. No one goes in or out until we’re sure the curse hasn’t spread.”

  Harvald’s eyes narrowed. “You will countermand those orders.”

  “I will do no such thing,” Blunderbuss said. “We are cramped enough as it is, and can barely keep people fed. You think we can house and supply three hundred extra mouths? Where, exactly, did you intend to sleep, Sir Grun? On the rooftops?”

  A few snickers escaped the wall.

  Harvald’s aura flared, a pulse of offended arrogance.

  “You forget your place, Captain,” he said. “House Hone is the regional overlord. When its soldiers arrive, you must accommodate them.”

  “And you forget the situation, Sir Grun,” Blunderbuss shot back. “We’ve just survived an attack that turned half a refugee camp into monsters. We’ve got cursed prisoners chained in the dungeons and townsfolk who haven’t slept since. I’m not letting a fully armed foreign force into the streets until I’ve had assurances from my lord and the Tower Master. You want to camp, you can camp outside.”

  Nick felt a flicker of admiration. The captain’s voice didn’t waver once.

  Harvald’s horse shifted, picking up its rider’s agitation. He yanked the reins, then visibly forced himself to stillness.

  “You will regret obstructing the Viscount’s will,” he said, voice low.

  Blunderbuss shrugged. “I’ll survive.”

  Silence stretched.

  Harvald looked past the captain, his gaze sweeping the walls again. Nick kept his senses tightly wrapped, unwilling to risk drawing attention by probing back. Harvald probably wasn’t sensitive enough to notice him at this distance, but there was no reason to test it.

  “You will at least allow a small envoy through,” Harvald said at last. “To speak with your lord. We have business that cannot be handled out here.”

  “That,” Blunderbuss said, “is between you and him. I’ll pass the request along.”

  It was a graceful non-answer. Nick suspected Tholm would be delighted to play these little games and make them waste as much time as possible.

  Harvald clearly didn’t share that enthusiasm. His mouth twisted. “Very well,” he bit out. “Until then.”

  He jerked his head at the officers behind him. Orders rippled through the line, and the army started to peel away from the road, spreading out across the blackened field.

  45+ chapters: