The moon was a thin sliver above the overgrown banks of the Thorn's backwater. The wild boars were already gone, but a thousand other sounds of the night filled the air. Mainly crickets. Just a decade ago, Jaethal would have loved to listen. Now she found she craved silence. Life in this concentration filled her with unwanted nostalgy, which, in turn, felt disrespectful towards her goddess who'd given her the greatest blessing imaginable.

  The party had a little rest while the baroness and her pet were scouting ahead. Some of them just dropped themselves down on the ground, others spread out their cloaks first. Jaethal remained standing, filled with a healthy dose of contempt for weak mortal flesh. She didn't need rest. Another thing she didn't need was Linzi's lame jokes about her scythe. A withering glance was enough to stifle the halfling's mirth into nervous giggling, then squelch it completely. Jaethal silently promised herself that next time she would tell Linzi what a Great Reaping was.

  Movement in the windblown grass, hardly visible in the starlit night, let her know the feline scouts were finally back.

  "Elves," reported the baroness, dropping her shapeshift. "A group of six. Three of them huddled around a campfire at the edge of the forest, brewing something in a cauldron, the rest hidden in the trees, armed with bows. By all appearances, they are harmless travellers... but my instinct says otherwise."

  "Obviously a trap," said Valerie.

  "We must do our best to avoid bloodshed," chimed in Linzi. "Why would they want to hurt us? They should be proud that one of their kind rules this land, shouldn't they?"

  "Let me remind you, mayfly," said Jaethal dryly, "that the dagger that led us here was mine. The trap is meant for me, not for the baroness."

  "Then I have an idea!" enthused the bard. "The five of us simply approach them and strike a conversation to find out what they're up to. And Jaethal, you drink this."

  She fished three vials of blue liquid out of her backpack, and showed them up triumphantly. Potions of Invisibility. So the halfling could actually come up with sensible ideas once in a while. Jaethal was almost impressed.

  "Did you know that Potion of Invisibility is brewed from eyelashes encased in a special kind of resin?" she mused. "With appropriate training of your taste buds, you can parse the resin's flavour within the potion. On an even higher level, you can taste the eyelash itself."

  The looks on the others' faces convinced Jaethal that she was casting pearls before swine.

  "A sound plan," she added quickly, taking the vials off Linzi's hands and equipping them on her belt.

  "Do we have any protection from arrows?" asked Guelder.

  "No," said Hazel. "We prepared for a boar carcass and Valerie's paladin friends, not a squad of marksmen."

  "They are NOT my friends!"

  "Then it will be down to shields and reflexes," said the baroness with a despondent sigh. "If we approached them wearing Barkskin, that would give away our distrust."

  "We should prepare for elemental damage, though," suggested Jaethal. "Some of them might be magic wielders."

  "Agreed," said Guelder. "Pangur will go ahead and watch from the undergrowth. Jaethal, you drink your first potion just out of their sight and stay close to us. If it comes to a fight, Linzi, you try to entrance them with a quaint and intriguing song."

  "Make sure to avoid elven music," warned Jaethal. "You are bound to butcher it, which will lead to bloodthirst instead of fascination. Especially in my case."

  After they finished their preparations and released the leopard into the woods, the party made their way to the campsite, with an invisible Jaethal trailing them.

  At first glance, the campsite seemed quite cosy. Two males and a female were sitting by the fire, their apparent nonchalance laced with apprehension. They seemed to be young, still under a century, albeit quite a bit older than the baroness or the ranger.

  "Greetings, travellers," said Guelder in Elven, stepping into the circle of light. Then she continued in Common for the sake of her companions. "It is good to meet my own kind in this faraway corner of the Stolen Lands. What brings you to this dangerous neighbourhood?"

  The three exchanged a glance and refused to answer until the baroness repeated her question in Elven. Jaethal didn't like this in the least. There were isolated areas in Kyonin where people didn't speak foreign languages, but that was not the norm. These travellers were seeking to control the situation with a sort of weaponised ignorance, cutting the baroness off from part of her companions. And the saddest thing of all was that she allowed them to do so.

  "Greetings," said finally the female, rising to meet her. "We are on an expedition to find a lost aiudara that is rumoured to be located somewhere here in the Stolen Lands. Perhaps you can point us towards it."

  Jaethal was fairly certain that no elven gateway had ever existed in this no man's land. Maybe further to the west, close to Numeria, but here? Who needed an aiudara leading to the middle of nothing? She could only hope the baroness would be smart enough not to take the bait.

  "You are being rude, young lady," intervened one of the males, a tall fellow with silver hair. "You are asking our visitors for a favour without offering them anything. Please join us at the fire. We have food and drink to share."

  "Thank you, friends," said Guelder. "We must be on our way soon, but there is no harm in a little rest and conversation."

  She settled down on a log opposite the three of them, and accepted a mug of steaming tea. Valerie and Hazel followed suit.

  "Your tea smells delicious," said the baroness. "What is in it?"

  "Wild herbs from the riverbank," answered the female with a shy smile.

  "Including hallucinogens like cat's holly? Quite a devious way to scry for that aiudara."

  Jaethal was a little surprised to hear that Guelder was familiar with this herb. But then again, a druid had to know her plants. It was even more of a surprise that Linzi suddenly put down her mug, and whispered a warning to Valerie and Harrim, too. Was she secretly learning Elven?

  "I can see you know your way around party drugs, my lady," said the other male to the baroness, tipping his hat and showing his thick blond hair. "A fellow enjoyer?"

  "Time and again, I use a small quantity to quiet my mind and reattune myself to Nature," explained Guelder. "Moderation is key, though."

  "Indeed," grinned the blond male. His mirth didn't reach his eyes. "If people mix a dash of cat's holly extract into your drink, along with a few additives, they can use your body in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. It happened to me, too."

  A knowing smile spread over Jaethal's face under the shroud of her invisibility. Back in her life, she had sometimes participated in such activities. In fact, the blond guy seemed faintly familiar to her.

  Hazel remained relaxed, but Guelder's body was as tense as a coiled spring. However she practised her self-discipline, she still had trouble hiding her feelings.

  "How despicable," she said softly. "I am sorry you had to go through this."

  "This and much more afterwards, all thanks to my granduncle's eagerness to introduce me into big city life and its pleasures. I curse his name every day and every night. Just imagine. What do you do when you wake up one morning and realise that you have become a pleasure slave to an old relative and his current paramour? You swear to Calistria that you will make them pay for what they have done to you."

  Jaethal found herself frowning. She imagined the same youth with long, flowing hair, a bit like Tristian's but of a darker, richer golden hue. Yes, she definitely had memories of sinking her fingers into that hair and pulling his head close, before... She didn't need her inquisitor instincts to establish that this fellow was telling the truth. But why was he so upset about being a pleasure slave? It was a perfect career for his type.

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  "An interesting story," said Hazel sharply. "Do you tell it to every random passer-by you happen upon during your travels?"

  "No, he tells it only to those who deserve to hear it," said the silver-haired elf. "Just like I do with the story of my little sister, who was a maidservant of the same lord and died in agony while giving birth to his stillborn bastard."

  Guelder flinched, ever so slightly. Although she was usually all too ready to lend an ear to broken people, even she was starting to sense the wrongness of the situation.

  "I remember that night," chimed in the female. "I heard the unfortunate girl's screams and sobs, while I was marinating the flesh of an aasimar baby in the kitchen and mixing honey into the pomegranate sauce to serve it with."

  Now, this was oddly specific. That recipe was a seldom used part of Serve Your Hunger, a high-level dish for high-level initiates. Jaethal's mentor used to have it prepared for his special guests from time to time. The recipe, the golden-haired pleasure slave, the dagger... they all pointed towards one person.

  One person who had been sorely missing from Jaethal's life for decades.

  Awkward, heavy silence fell upon the camp. Only Linzi plucked the strings of her lute absently, the sounds forming the intro of The Kingpin and the Nymph, reacting to the tension that filled the air.

  The baroness squirmed on her seat. Jaethal could almost see the girl's thoughts chasing each other in a circle: her guts screaming danger, her heart pleading that these poor ill-fated elves were in need of her help, and her brain wondering what she had to do with all this.

  "So," she said, "I surmise you killed the villain who ruined your lives, and now you are on the run. You pretend to be adventurers in search of a forgotten portal, but in fact you are just trying to save your lives. Is this the reason why you travelled to this faraway land, where no one would ever look for you?"

  Jaethal felt the urge to scream. Of course the girl had to let her heart have the final say, forge a convenient excuse for these lowlifes and offer it to them on a silver plate. However, the elves were too stupid to accept the generous gift.

  "Alas, no," said the blond male. "By the time we could exact our vengeance, our foe disappeared without trace. We have reason to believe that he found a suitable body to move his consciousness into."

  Jaethal had trouble controlling her face. A surge of childish joy flooded her, the likes of which she hadn't experienced for centuries. So this was why her mentor had stopped answering her messages. Had he found his lost daughter after all? Or... had he obtained another host?

  "That means he changed his looks, his name, his location, his voice, his age, even his gender," said the silver-haired fellow.

  "Then how do you hope to find him?" asked Guelder.

  "We had no hope whatsoever... until his favourite disciple and playmate led us straight to him. You know, birds of a feather flock together."

  His eyes, full of seething hatred, were fixed on the baroness. Jaethal, on the other hand, was watching his two companions.

  "Are we sure?" mouthed the female, her eyebrows raised in uncertainty.

  "Just look at her face," whispered the golden-haired male.

  The other fellow turned on Guelder, who seemed to zone out for a moment. Communing with her leopard, hopefully.

  "You godsdamned scumbag, I slash thee with my heart!"

  On cue, two curve blades hissed out of their scabbards. The female slipped a pair of knives into her hands. Bowstrings creaked among the trees. Something smashed into the ground with a thud and swore in Elven, as Pangur officially started combat.

  Hazel was quick to react. Trusting the power of the protective potion they'd downed, they gave a kick to the cauldron, spilling its contents at the enemies. The hot liquid soaked the elves' clothes and seeped into their boots. While they were busy screaming and jumping about, Guelder had enough time to shapeshift and disappear among the trees to help Pangur take out the archers. Linzi started her ballad in the coverage of the crude shield wall made up from Valerie and Harrim's mismatched shields, protected from the arrows coming from the canopy, and the entire three-person battle formation marched forward to face their foes. Hazel broke contact and retreated, seeking cover, their eyes scanning the treetops for the third bowman.

  Still invisible for a few moments, Jaethal leapt to the fallen archer and decapitated him with a swing of her scythe. The former pleasure slave remained standing, looking in the direction where Guelder had vanished, and listening to Linzi's song with an enraptured face. He could be ignored for a while. Valerie and Harrim took out the silver-haired fellow, and Hazel sent a barrage of arrows into the foliage, followed by another thud.

  The cook was left for Jaethal. She only bothered to look at her victim's face more closely after she'd slashed her belly open. Writhing in agony on the ground, the miserable creature eerily reminded Jaethal of her daughter and, consequently, of herself. Her mentor had clearly been a fan of black hair, black eyes, tall and slender build, and many of his female servants had been of the same type.

  Last of all, Hazel walked up to the fascinated pleasure slave, with their axe in hand, and unceremoniously split his head in half.

  The riverbank grew quiet. Not even a warbler sang. And Jaethal finally realised why Guelder seemed so familiar to her.