The stamens of the huge, sprawling flower were rustling softly in an invisible breeze around Nyrissa, the Guardian of the Bloom, as she sat perched on top of the stigma in a trance. Her expanded consciousness embraced and connected everything that mattered at the moment: both instances of the flower and the harmony between them, every single seed delivered, planted in a host and quietly growing into a lethal weapon, every single beast deployed against the pathetic little sandcastle in the Stolen Lands. She had tolerated the Hound's antics for far too long. It was high time for them (and their perpetrator) to end.

  Not long ago, the feisty young werecreature who'd fooled the Stag and escaped with her life had seemed like a fun toy and a useful stick to put between the spokes. Just a simple adventurer, a copper a dozen, driven by a thirst for vengeance, an urge to help, and the promise of a generous reward. At the time, the Stag had been in dire need of a cruel wake-up call. He could have been so much more, if only he could limit the time and energy he'd devoted to his favourite pastimes: guzzling wine, torturing and raping defenseless captives, and in general, wasting his strength and talents. The Hound had been his test where he'd failed miserably and died a meaningless death, not furthering Nyrissa's agenda by an inch.

  In the following months, the Hound had been unwittingly serving Nyrissa's purposes, doing her part with utmost diligence but little effectiveness in terms of loot. Even though she was a tad too eager to make peace where there was a war brewing, she'd managed to topple the twofold kingdom of the trolls and kobolds, and despite her best intentions, she'd helped Count Shimmerglow utterly destroy the Longtail lizardfolk tribe (thoroughly spanking the insufferable Count in the process, which served him right). Her efforts should have brought progress, three baby steps towards Nyrissa's ultimate goal, but bad luck willed it otherwise. Unpredictability was the salt of life, but Nyrissa sometimes found herself starved for a little regularity in terms of loot from fallen kingdoms.

  Finally, unable to convince Nyrissa of her usefulness, the Hound had obediently walked into the trap set for her at the Verdant Chambers, in order to meet her well-deserved demise. The collapse of Nightvale should have resulted in a nice and wholesome war between the Peacock of Pitax and the Marten of Varnhold, bringing about the fall of at least one of them. Had the Marten come out victorious, the Peacock would have yielded an almost guaranteed kingdom grain, and had Nyrissa had a lucky day for a change, even the Hound would have dropped one into the cup. But Nyrissa had done a sloppy job. Sending out a bunch of hungover redcaps and adolescent monsters against her visitor and failing to check on the result had been a regrettable and shameful mistake. However, mistakes were something to learn from. Nyrissa couldn't afford to slack off, not even if millennia of grinding for kingdom grains had left her exhausted to the core. All her troubles had come from trying to climb up the ranks using shortcuts, and all her punishment was meant to teach her that she had to earn what she was aspiring at.

  So this time she'd deployed all her creativity and all her deep-running links to Nature, and created something unparalleled, even unheard of. Something rustling its stamens around her in an invisible breeze, while she was wiping a sandcastle off the coast with one fell wave of the Bloom, speeding up the seeds' ripening process, popping them all at once, unleashing monsters on Nightvale in explosions of human flesh. Her prank in the Verdant Chambers had failed largely due to bad timing and poor cooperation. She wouldn't commit the same mistake again.

  And finally, the pièce de résistance. Her personal gift for another ruler doomed to bite the dust.

  It had been quite an endeavour to find the owlbear she'd given to the Stag, herd it back to the First World, starve it out, then feed it a mixture of mortal flesh and dinosaur bone powder, achieving a giant growth hitherto unprecedented in the species. Now the masterpiece was ready, tethered to the stamen of the flower with a strand of her green hair. Nyrissa focused her consciousness into the owlbear's brain, and flooded the last pair of seeds with life force, bringing them to fruition.

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  As a reward for all her stubborn will to survive and fight back, the Hound deserved a memorable way to die.

  Now in full control of the giant owlbear making an appearance on the streets of Tuskdale, Nyrissa bristled her fur and feathers, blinking, turning her head around in impossible directions, shaking shreds of flesh and pieces of debris off her enormous body. She took a step, then another, feeling the dirt roads of the manky little town shake under her weight. She slammed a paw into a brick house, just to see what would happen. The resulting destruction was impressive, albeit not painless. Nyrissa didn't mind. The pain was not hers. The owlbear's mind whimpered somewhere at the back of her consciousness, trying in vain to shake her off, like a mouse trying to shake off a hawk's talons.

  A bowman stood in her way at the end of the crumbling little street, releasing one arrow after another and chanting a prayer to his deity. She recognised him. She'd visited his mind in the shape of the stag-headed god, as part of her effort to prepare the environment for planting the Skylark into the Hound's team. She had no use for him anymore. A paw sweep, and he was smashed against the wall of a still standing house, buried in falling debris, out of sight, out of mind.

  She reached the main square of the town that used to be the Stag's fort, and wondered if the owlbear even recognised its old home. Anyway, she greeted the place with an ear-splitting screech.

  Surprisingly, the square wasn't empty. A group of five guards approached in a hesitant jog, with trembling knees. That could only mean one thing. There was someone behind them, driving them forward to try the impossible and face down certain death. A yellow-and-brown shadow was skirting the square to get behind her, followed by a fighter in full plate, carrying a shield the size of a barn door, and a hardly visible, tiny green thing.

  Come. Fight me or die a coward.

  "Your Grace!" screamed one of the guards a moment before getting disemboweled. "Stay away! It's invulnerable!"

  Indeed, spears and blades slipped off her thick hide, without as much as scratching her. Owlbear paws were delightfully efficient, let alone the beak. The yellow-brown shadow that proved to be a leopard was soon out of the game. The guards went down, too, one by one, filling her nostrils with the smell of blood and brain tissue. She had no idea whether the shieldmaiden and the little green speck were actually doing something behind her back. However, a few arrows hit their mark, coming from a rooftop. She channelled the pain of her host into rage and attack power.

  A voice broke through the din of the battle and the whimpers of the dying.

  "Stay back and fire!"

  And there she was, the Hound herself, her clothes dripping with water, clutching the very same spear she'd used to hunt down the Stag, her teeth bared in a snarl, her beastly eyes burning in grim determination: end this once and for all, or die trying. Oh, how many times had Nyrissa seen the same in her reluctant pawns' eyes, before they were swallowed forever by the maw of oblivion.

  A ball of ice hit Nyrissa on the head, shattered, and rained its pieces down her beak. A ray of unbearable heat followed, turning the chunks of ice into sizzling, scalding drops of water. Magic wielders were entering the fight. She thought she saw a dark shape with a bow appear on top of a half-smashed roof and take cover behind a wobbling chimney, and heard a wolf growl nearby. Now the pesky arrows came from two directions at once. No matter. The owlbear was sturdy enough to stand its ground for much, much longer. And Nyrissa happened to know that the Hound had not exactly been lucky in her encounters with owlbears lately. She'd even encountered some while prowling around in the Hound's nightmare-ridden mind. To break her using the only animal she was starting to be afraid of, and an old friend to boot... That was an exquisitely delicious version of fun.

  A sudden intrusion disturbed Nyrissa in her musings.

  The Hound held the monster's gaze with all her willpower, feeling for its mind, some connection to the place where it had come from, or to the mastermind that had forced it to come here. The mental link flared to life immediately. Nyrissa recoiled, pulling back her consciousness and enveloping herself in a haze of blue mist to remain unseen. Then she shook herself, surprised and disappointed at her own instinctive reaction. Being a powerful upstart fey lord, mere inches (more exactly, just a few kingdom grains) away from becoming an Eldest, why was she so scared of a puny, insignificant mortal, another disposable pawn in her games?

  She expanded her consciousness again, returning into the owlbear's brain, only to see the link to the Hound's mind work in full swing. Her secrets were out. The feel of the annoying little seed, sticking to the skin with a hundred tiny hooks, itchy and impossible to shake off, collecting energy from body heat, and ultimately blooming into a hole that sucked you in and spat you out somewhere different, in a whirlwind of blood and guts. The huge, sprawling flower, smelling of blood, forever in blossom and pushing out seeds at the same time, struggling and confused, unable to follow the normal cycle of nature. The entity sitting on top of the stigma in meditation.

  Nyrissa's mind lashed out and severed the link. The Hound staggered back, dazed, her brain processing the wealth of knowledge she'd gained from the mind of her old ally twisted beyond recognition. Now there was only death staring at her from the big, yellow eyes. She stared back. Her gaze carried the shadows of grief and the promise of mercy by means of a quick death. Alas, Nyrissa had different plans.

  "A message for whoever sent you!" cried out her foe. "Bloom your murderous seeds as much as you want, you will never break us! Even if you kill me, your victory will be hollow! Nightvale is more than its ruler! Nightvale stands together, and hope will prevail!"

  Something sharp and heavy scratched the owlbear's side, a sizeable blade penetrated through its fur and skin, and the next arrow hit a particularly sensitive spot.

  A giant paw swiped towards the Hound. She threw herself to the side and rolled out of reach, then rose again, holding her spear in a two-handed grip. As the beak was bearing down on her, she dodged the attack and stabbed at the beast’s eye.

  The pain almost reached Nyrissa. Rearing up, she let out a terrible screech. The Hound pulled her spear back, bracing for the next attack. Blood and viscous goo splashed into her face. She tried to block the strike of the beak with the shaft of her spear. It snapped in two in her hands. Nyrissa smiled inside as she saw her foe suddenly realise how little time she had left to live. Somehow the death of a relatively longevous individual always struck harder.

  The Hound was bracing herself for a final sacrifice.

  She didn't even try to dodge anymore. A moment before the beak reached her, she stabbed upwards underneath it, hoping to pierce the monster's brain. The spear hit true. In normal circumstances, the owlbear's body would have crashed into the ground in a writhing heap and stilled in a few moments. But these were not normal circumstances. Nyrissa's grip on her host's body was strong enough to make one final blow connect. The beak tore into the Hound's neck. With a jerk of her head, she lifted her foe's body into the air, then smashed it against the ground. The last things she sensed were the taste of fresh blood and the sickening sound of bones breaking and ligaments ripping. Then she let go and her mind retreated from the owlbear's carcass, letting it sprawl on the pavement.

  Farewell, Hound. It was my pleasure to know you.

  The flower would soon go dormant. Nyrissa had made it use up every possible energy reserve, and anyway, it was dangerously close to being discovered. At a later date, should the Peacock or the Marten lull himself into a false sense of security, she might awaken it again.

  She realised too late that, just like before, she'd failed to verify the results she'd thought obvious.