The item Ashinaro looted from the mirewalker was a strip of flowing cloth that shimmered unnaturally as though it were made of metal, yet felt like silky water.

  Items that transmuted from monster cores often reflected a trait the monster had, or a physical feature, or, most often, a need the one who killed them had. This item was a combination of the first and the last.

  Empowered items had a pull to them, making what would normally be a great effort—moving essence out from your core—easy.

  So it was with almost no effort whatsoever that he reached out with his essence, connecting it to the sash and linking it to his battleform.

  The item flowed out of his hand and wrapped itself around his forearm, settling into place as if it had always belonged there.

  [Distilled Storm Sash (Cursed)]

  Contains the condensed essence of storms.

  Grants [Alacrity of the Storm].

  [Alacrity of the Storm (Unholy Boon)]

  Your movements are swift.

  He experimentally struck out with his staff and had a moment of disorientation when the strike completed almost faster than he could register it.

  He tested it against the trees, laying into them with his staff and peppering in kicks and tailswipes.

  He stopped when he made himself dizzy from moving so swiftly. Or maybe that was the aftereffect of the paunthum flower.

  The sash increased his speed, but chaotically so. Like the winds in a storm.

  It would take some time to adjust to his new swiftness, though his Staff Mastery boon was already helping. His kicks and tailswipes still felt unnatural, but he no longer nearly lost his balance attacking with his staff.

  His footspeed was also enhanced, though the difference was less dramatic than the explosive quickness of his attacks. The ground slid by just a bit faster beneath his feet.

  Still, it was a welcome boon. It might make up for the delay of having to deal with the mirewalker.

  “Zanas, you awake yet?”

  No answer.

  Zanas felt fine to Ashinaro’s probing, but he wasn't sure what any damage would feel like.

  He hoped the skeleton was only sleeping, having exhausted himself battling the mirewalker, but maybe getting his head knocked off had done more damage than it had appeared to.

  Sighing, he set off down the road once more, heading toward where the arnaphen nested.

  He checked on Zanas every once in a while, growing more and more nervous as the skeleton remained unresponsive.

  Eventually, the road began to descend, opening into a wide, jagged scar in the earth—the Broken Ravine. Its shadowed depths swallowed the light and the air here was far cooler.

  This was the true threshold into the deeper dangers of the Fen. The arnaphen territory lay beyond the relative safety of the established route. According to the fragmented knowledge he possessed, it was a few thousand paces east, near a clearwater lake incongruously situated within the swamp.

  But arnaphen weren’t the only horrors lurking in these rarely-trodden depths.

  Ashinaro searched around the area, looking for the stream that was said to lead to the lake.

  He listened for the telltale sound of running water amidst the gurgles and sighs of the fen as he pushed through thickets of grasping, thorny vines and waded through ankle-deep sections of sucking mud; disturbed tiny monsters chittering at him as they skittered up trees.

  It took him surprisingly little time to find it: a sluggish stream, its water crystal, flowing eastward away from the ravine.

  He followed it into the jungle, growing nervous as he moved farther from the road. It hadn’t prevented the attack by the mirewalker, but now he had no protection whatsoever. The Fen wasn’t known for harboring powerful monsters, but to a Lesser Defender, even a Fiend would be more than he could handle. And unlike with Beasts, he wasn’t confident in his ability to escape from a Fiend.

  But this was the only option he could think of to dispatch Vershik, and Fiends were a rarity.

  A few hundred paces later, the thought felt like a bitter irony.

  He stopped dead, cursing his luck.

  Ahead, partially obscured by the thick boles of rotting trees, a hulking shape moved. It was easily thrice his height, covered in dull, overlapping scales each the size of his palm. Five broad, muscular limbs supported its bulk as it rubbed its flank against a large tree.

  Though the tree was living and looked strong, it still swayed and creaked with each stroke.

  [Fenmauler, Copper Fiend]

  Ashinaro remained very still, and held his breath for good measure.

  The Fiend continued rubbing against the tree, not seeming to have noticed him.

  Slowly, carefully, he took a single step back.

  The Fiend stilled. Its scaled ears twitched, then it turned its three-eyed gaze in his direction.

  Ashinaro froze, staring back at it.

  Panic tried to claw its way up his throat, but he forced it down.

  He really wasn’t eager to test his mettle against a Fiend. Battling a strong Beast was one thing; battling something an entire echelon above you was a different matter. It was possible he’d survive, but he would come out far from unscathed.

  The only thing that might save him was his Renewal trait, but that was an unstable foundation to bet his life upon.

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  The monster turned away, returning to rubbing itself against the tree.

  A moment later there came a tear, and its scales split open like rotting fruit, its skin sloughing off in a very similar manner to Flesh’s Frenzy.

  It let out a single roar, then ambled off. Away from Ashinaro.

  A shaky breath escaped him as the tension drained away. He’d never been more grateful for monsters’ unusual lack of aggression toward him.

  When he was sure the monster wasn’t coming back, he continued following the stream.

  Eventually the trees began to thin, and the air ahead looked brighter.

  A few more paces and he emerged onto the shore of a large, glistening lake surrounded on all sides by muddy banks leading to a mix of living and rotten trees.

  It looked out of place, its clean scent of fresh water warring with the ever-present odor of the Fen.

  As still as the arnaphen were, it took him a few moments to spot them.

  Against the backdrop of the far shore, subtle warpings of the air resolved into outlines of translucent, bell-shaped bodies.

  Three of them in total, two Coppers and one Silver, spread out but all hovering near the water.

  Almost invisible unless you knew what to look for.

  He quickly backtracked, holding his breath, scanning the air for the distinctive red gas they emitted.

  And realized he was standing right in the path of it.

  He backed up some more until he was clear, then hesitantly let out his breath and took a shallow one.

  No delusions assaulted him, the world didn’t begin shifting around him.

  He hadn’t inhaled any.

  The arnaphen made a slow, aimless patrol along the shore, emitting very little of the gas.

  If he drew their attention they would pursue, and that amount would greatly increase and become impossible to avoid.

  But he had no intention of doing that. Not yet.

  “Zanas?” he asked mentally.

  Zanas didn’t respond, and Ashinaro wondered what he was supposed to do now. He could wait for a while, but he didn’t have long before the blood moon and the Ritual of Return.

  If Zanas didn’t wake soon, he’d have to resort to using his flesh golem.

  Which had numerous ways it could go wrong. It was one thing to send it into their gas, but he didn’t know how getting poisoned would affect the golem. It possessed no blood, so it didn’t seem like it should be able to even be poisoned. If it could, would the poison transfer to him when he called his flesh back?

  He’d just have to hope the skeleton woke up before then.

  Hornblade watched the drakken as he observed some floating Beasts that looked less like living creatures and more like gobs of diseased tissue one might cough up after a prolonged illness. They drifted languidly, trailing faint, shimmering tendrils of reddish vapor.

  Hornblade didn't know what the drakken was doing or what his intentions for the monsters were. It looked like he was setting to hunt or ambush them, but Hornblade couldn't be certain.

  He would wait and see what he was going to do before attacking. It would be better to ambush him while he was in the middle of a battle.

  Hornblade chastised himself. Why was he afraid of a Lesser Defender?

  He wasn't, he reassured himself. He was simply being cautious. There were too many unusual things about the drakken and about this whole situation to be rash. Never mind that he had linked yet another cursed item and appeared no worse for it, there was that strange skeleton to consider. It certainly wasn’t stronger than Hornblade—it wouldn’t have taken so long to dispatch a Beast had it been—but it was a complication. If it truly was a living weapon, attacking it could be a bad idea, regardless of its strength.

  If he was to ambush the drakken again, he was going to be certain of victory.

  For the hundredth time, Ashinaro was weighing the merits of sending in his flesh golem, when he heard a yawn from inside him.

  “Zanas?” he asked.

  “Oh, you’re so loud. My skull is killing me.”

  “Finally. What happened?”

  “Needed a nap. I tuckered myself out saving you.” Zanas appeared in front of him in his insubstantial form, rubbing at the eyes of his mask. “What’d I miss?”

  “A lot of waiting for you. We’re running out of time.”

  The skeleton stretched in the air despite lacking any muscles needing stretching. “All right, let’s get this party going.” He started floating off.

  “That’s the wrong way. And you need to manifest physically.”

  “Oh. I know that. I’m just… sowing confusion. Tactical misdirection.”

  “They’re monsters. Not smart ones. And they can’t see you.”

  “Never underestimate your enemy.” He glanced at the arnaphen. “Oh, it’s the big disgusting balls.”

  “You’ve seen them before?”

  “I’ve seen floating balls before. I don’t know if they’re the same. Probably not, since I ate those.”

  “You ate floating balls?”

  “Uh… no?”

  Ashinaro felt a sensation inside him and Zanas fell to the ground as he physically appeared. He held his scepter in one hand, which he snapped out to triple its normal length. “Now, what was the plan again?”

  At first, it looked like everything would go to plan.

  Zanas had isolated one of the Copper arnaphen and was beating it senseless, completely unaffected by the delirium gas it spewed and easily dodging its barbed tentacles.

  Then something cold ran up Ashinaro’s back and he found himself launched forward out of his skin, his Flesh’s Frenzy relic having activated in some kind of instinctual manner.

  When he spun, he saw a figure stabbing his flesh golem, which had turned to face its attacker but otherwise wasn’t fighting back.

  Then Ashinaro recognized him. It was the shade who had killed him—or almost killed him—and who he’d last seen wandering drunkenly toward Arkalis.

  [Shade, Greater Champion]

  What was he doing all the way out here?

  Trying to kill Ashinaro.

  Which he was succeeding at, the blood seeping from Ashinaro rapidly increasing as his golem regenerated from the shade’s attacks.

  Even with the boost from the red core he’d instilled into Flesh’s Frenzy, he didn’t have long before he bled out.

  One of many downsides to battling someone so much stronger than himself.

  The shade suddenly kicked the golem away with a snarl of frustration. A moment later he spotted Ashinaro, giving him a contemptuous look.

  Ashinaro sent the flesh golem at the shade again, but he leapt over it, plummeting toward Ashinaro with daggers held in both hands.

  Ashinaro moved out of the way, struggling to keep his breath held, but the shade altered his trajectory in midair, staying on course.

  Ashinaro spotted a thin, almost invisible filament flowing out from his back, connected to a set of wings high overhead.

  Instead of letting out his breath to call the golem back to himself, he activated Whirling Rush’s secondary effect.

  A mist of blood erupted around him as invisible threads of his own yanked him forward and slammed him back into his flesh.

  It still wasn’t fast enough, the shade easily following and high enough to avoid the blood mist.

  But before the shade could descend upon him, Zanas leapt into the air with a battle cry, swinging his scepter toward him.

  He had ceased his pummeling of the arnaphen to join the battle.

  The shade turned in the air, wide-eyed, as though he hadn’t been aware of the skeleton’s presence.

  “Bad!” Zanas shouted as he brought his scepter down toward the shade.

  Behind Zanas, the arnaphen he had been battling slowly pursued.

  Ashinaro couldn’t chastise Zanas, he was once again saving his life, but the shade was a Champion, there was no way—

  The two collided midair and scepter met dagger.

  The dagger shattered and the shade flew backward, stunned as Zanas fell to the ground, cackling, the arm wielding the scepter broken from the impact.

  The skeleton was strong, but clearly no match for a Champion.

  But it seemed like the shade didn’t like even the hint of a possibility of losing.

  He looked between Ashinaro and Zanas, who was scrambling up to leap at him again.

  Then he fled.

  His flight path took him directly into the path of the drifting cloud of delirium gas spewing from the pursuing arnaphen.

  He choked, sputtered, then burst into high-pitched, unhinged laughter as the gas took hold.

  He dropped from the air, the thread connecting him to his wings vanishing before reappearing an instant later, pulling him upwards once more.

  He cackled and continued forward, aiming to soar over the monster, but misjudged the distance and instead of clearing the arnaphen, slammed into its massive, gelatinous body.

  The impact of the Champion’s immensely sturdy body detonated the weaker monster in a shower of translucent goo and an explosive burst of highly concentrated red gas that sprayed outwards in a rapidly expanding cloud.

  The shade continued on, flying over the trees as he picked up speed.

  The other two arnaphen, alerted to the presence of intruders, were releasing huge swaths of gas now, heading right for Ashinaro and Zanas.

  “Coward!” Zanas shouted at the retreating shade, who was flying away at great speed, laughing maniacally.

  “New plan!” Ashinaro said. “Grab what you can of the corpse and run!”

  Then the cloud of gas hit him, and any plans or semblance of sense left his mind as the world dissolved into swirling specters and nonsensical whispers that clawed at the edges of his sanity.