The northern stables were chaos incarnate. By the time Dain, Anisa, and Yasmin pushed through the flow of bodies toward the stableyard by the north wall, the place was thrumming with shouts, clanking harnesses, and the thick, musky stink of mountain beasts. Huge ones. Torches burned along the giant stone wall in iron brackets, illuminating rows of four-horned mountain rams stamping and snorting in their pens. All the while, dozens of townsguard scrambled to saddle them.

  Orders flew like thrown axes.

  “Northcrest squad, to the inner rampart!”

  “Get those ballista bolts stacked! Tip them with galehorn iron!”

  “Who took my bloody helm?”

  Dain stepped aside as a pair of guards hustled past, carrying a crate of cyclone ibex horns for fletchers to use as arrowheads. The rampart defense teams weren’t his concern. He looked around, and… there. Near the end of the stable row was Ilvaren, Kargun, Sahlir, Rena, and Rashan—as well as the eleven other townsguard who’d be riding out alongside them.

  Nineteen four-horned mountain rams stood in a neat line by a separate, smaller gate, each beast thick-shouldered and sure-footed, thick pelts braided with leather reins. Of the nineteen, eleven were already saddled with the Mountain Marshal’s chosen men. Rashan himself stood by the lead ram, tightening his gauntlet straps when he turned at the sound of Dain’s approach.

  Dain caught the flicker in his eyes.

  Right. The owl mask.

  It was probably a strange thing to wear, leaving only his right eye exposed, but it was probably a stranger thing to see the silverplume owl construct perched on his shoulder.

  Rashan’s expression hit a brief pause—there and gone—but he didn’t comment.

  “Good. You’re all on time,” he said. His gaze swept over the seven of them adventurers, counting. “Any among you who cannot ride a mountain ram?”

  Dain opened his mouth at the same time as everyone else shook their heads.

  Huh?

  What do you mean you all know how to ride?

  He shut his mouth again, then lifted a hand halfway with a small smile. “Define ‘cannot’, Mountain Marshal.”

  Ilvaren laughed as she jumped onto her mountain ram, swift as the wind. “You don’t know how to ride?” she said, incredulous. “You, of all men? You vault around spiders and scorpions with wingcloaks and you can’t sit on a ram?”

  “I grew up in a town that prefers carriages and carts to things with horns,” Dain said dryly. “Closest I ever got to livestock was haggling over sheep intestines.”

  Kargun barked a laugh as well, his mountain ram trembling under his weight as he climbed on. “Hah! Thought ye were a proper wanderer, boss. Turns out yer arse is city-bred.”

  Rena, far kinder, simply stepped to his side and patted his shoulder. “There’s a first time for everything,” she said cheerily. “You’ll be fine. Just hold on tight and try not to fall under the hooves.”

  “Solid advice,” he muttered. “But I think I’d rather take my chances with the Mountain Marshal.”

  “And I’ll be riding with my lady too,” Yasmin interjected. “We’ll only need seventeen rams then.”

  Rashan considered them for a brief breath, then nodded once. “You’ll ride with me,” he said, looking at Dain. “My ram can carry us both. The rest of you hop on.”

  While Rashan swung up onto the lead ram’s saddle with ease, Dain eyed the beast cautiously. The ram eyed him back with unnervingly intelligent yellow eyes and blew hot breath over his face.

  … Oh, this guy knows I’m not from Obric.

  But rams don’t talk, so he got a hand on the saddle, braced his knee against the ram’s side, and hauled himself up. It was less a graceful mount and more an undignified scramble, but he managed to swing his leg over and settle in behind Rashan without immediately dying, which he considered a victory.

  The owl clicked once on his shoulder, as if amused.

  “Open the gates!” Rashan barked towards the ramparts above, lifting a fist. “If we’re not back by dawn, assume the worst and send word to every borough and holdfast in the area!”

  Steel groaned. Chains rattled. The great ironwood gates in front of them split apart with a grinding shudder, and a cold draft swept in, carrying the scent of nightgrass and distant storm.

  Then Rashan whipped the reins of the ram, and they were moving.

  The ram was fast. Far faster than Dain expected. For the first handful of heartbeats he had no choice but to clamp both arms around the ram’s thick, wiry pelt, fingers buried in the coarse wool. The beast's colossal strides felt less like strides and more like being vaulted forward by a series of small explosions beneath its hooves.

  “Gods above—” he hissed under his breath as the ram kicked it up a notch. Behind him, he heard Ilvaren laugh far too loudly, clearly enjoying herself. Of course she did. And of course Sahlir and Kargun and Rena were casually chatting on their rams as they raced across the bridge, the moat, and out onto the plains.

  But after a minute or so, the rhythm of the ram’s strides stopped trying to launch him into the moon and instead settled into something he could somewhat predict. He shifted, found his balance, and finally lifted his head to look properly ahead.

  The night sky was utterly clear. The sharp silver moon hung over the plains, bright enough to illuminate the whole hilly expanse in ghostly blues and pale greys. Every ridge, every dip in the earth, and every rolling swell of grass was visible under its long shadow. It almost felt like riding through a painting—if the painting was sprinting under him like a maddened beast.

  They were still several kilometers from the far northern forestline, but even from this distance…

  He felt the faintest tremor underneath the earth.

  The rumbling of the approaching stampede.

  In twenty minutes, that stampede he couldn’t see would crest over these plains and hit Braskir’s northern walls like a tidal wave of horns and fur. By that time, the ramparts and battlements would be lined with casters and archers ready to meet the chaos head-on.

  And he—thankfully—would not be anywhere near that chaos. They’d ride around the plains, skirt past the stampede, and head further north towards the northern forestline where the beasts were all coming from.

  Which would be easy if the stampede wasn’t the size of a small island.

  As they closed in on the far northern treeline—barely ten minutes into the ride—the first silhouettes burst from between the trees. Dozens. Then hundreds. The vanguard of the stampede were silthide bisons with slate-blue plates clattering against their ribs. Behind them came the galehorn rams, spiraling horns catching silver streaks as they barreled forward with enough force to turn boulders into gravel, and weaving between them—lightning-quick despite their size—were cyclone ibexes, their hooves swirling ripples of air as they bounded across the grass.

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  Dain swallowed hard.

  Their little team of seventeen rams skirted wide, grazing the edge of the open field as Rashan carved a path around the stampede. Their rams’ hooves were quiet in comparison, and none of the stampeding beasts so much as glanced their way. The herd was too frenzied, too consumed by whatever it was that’d driven them downhill in the first place.

  Thank every god in the ledger, he thought. Behind Braskir’s walls with casters and ballista crews and adventurers, he’d feel just fine helping out with the wall defense. He might even enjoy it. Kill some beasts, harvest their materials, and get paid by the townsguard for it—what was there to hate about it?

  But out here? If the stampede noticed them—if even one of them noticed the mountain rams trying to sneak around—all nineteen of them would be trampled into the soil.

  The beasts of the stampede may all be Common-5 or Common-6 individually, but together, they were a force at least Rare grade strong. No relic trick in his satchel would save them. They absolutely couldn’t get detected.

  Ten more minutes of skirting the edge of the stampede later, Rashan raised a fist. The command rippled down the line. Seventeen rams slowed down at once, and then they picked their way into the northern forest slowly.

  The trees here were giants. They had trunks wide enough that five men holding hands couldn’t have circled them, and moonlight struggled to punch through the thick canopy. If not for the Manalight Lanterns hanging off their saddles, they wouldn’t be able to navigate through the forest, but they managed with cautiousness trailing every step.

  Drifting between the trees, riding further north, Rashan eventually pulled the reins and held up a fist to stop the line again.

  Dain peered forward and saw why Rashan had stopped.

  A rogue herd of mostly galehorn rams and silthide bisons—maybe two dozen strong—grazed in the little area ahead. Their ears twitched at every sound, every snapped twig, and beyond them—in the gaps between trees—he caught even more shapes. Another little rogue herd of beasts. Then another, and another. The forest was seeded with them.

  “... They are everywhere,” Anisa breathed from behind Yasmin, voice barely more than air. “Were they left behind by the stampede?”

  “Likely,” Rashan muttered back, “and if one of them spooks, they’ll all spook. We still can’t afford to get detected by them.” He glanced back along the line, brows furrowed. “You adventurers got any relics or tricks for navigating through herds? Sound-dampening relics, scent-masking relics, anything of the sort?”

  Ilvaren’s ears twitched in the gloom. “If you want me to kill them, I can kill them,” she muttered. “But quietly? No. I can only promise they’ll die screaming.”

  Kargun scratched his beard. “Got nothin’. Unless ye want me tae knock the whole forest down.”

  “Me can shout very soft,” Sahlir whispered proudly. “But I think scare beast in heart only.”

  Before Rashan could press further, the silverplume owl on Dain’s shoulder nuzzled his head. He frowned and looked up at it. Its amethyst eyes reflected the thin pillars of moonlight that pierced the canopy, and it stared at him staring at it, cooing as if to say ‘forgot about something?’

  He stared at it a beat longer.

  “... I might have something,” Dain whispered.

  Rashan glanced back at him. “What can you offer us, Sorowyn?”

  “Navigation,” he said. “Just steer the rams and thread us through according to my directions.”

  “You intend to walk us through all of those beasts? How?”

  “Just… trust me for a bit.”

  He closed his right eye for a heartbeat, then opened it again, focusing on his double pupils. He imagined his vision splitting down the center: right pupil for himself, left pupil for the owl.

  Come on, he thought. Mask, owl, vision link… do your thing.

  A cool sensation slid behind his eye. The world on the left side of his vision went dark—as if ink had been poured across it—and then it snapped back into clarity.

  He saw himself.

  In the right half, he still saw from his own perspective, but in the left half of his sight, he was looking down at seventeen mountain rams tucked in the shadows of enormous pines… and his own body.

  Trippy didn’t even begin to cover it.

  He turned his head slightly to the right. In the left half of his vision, he saw his own masked face turn away from the owl.

  “Well,” he murmured. “Go on, then. Take a quiet flight and sweep the forest.”

  He relaxed his shoulder, and the owl launched off. It was a strange sensation, seeing two different views with a single eye, so he did his best to tune out his normal vision and focus only on the owl’s as the forest fell away beneath it. Branches blurred past with barely a sound. It flew up and up until it rose above the lowest canopy layer—until the herds of beasts were little motes of movement beneath—and immediately, his stomach lurched.

  His body was still on the ram, but part of him was thirty meters up and gliding, making him sway very slightly on the saddle.

  “What are you doing?” Anisa asked quietly.

  “Seeing,” he mumbled. “Just… gimme a second.”

  From the owl’s vantage point, it was easier to see the pockets of open ground. Fallen trunks that beasts avoided. Little runs where no hoofprints marred the soil. He traced a path through them in his mind, mapping tree to tree. If they slipped between those two pines, cut around that boulder, and followed that dry creek bed…

  He let the owl circle around the area once more for confirmation.

  “... Rashan. Guide us thirty paces left, then straight between that forked pine ahead. Wait for my next call after that.”

  Rashan didn’t deliberate long. He simply nodded, clicked his tongue, and urged the ram forward. The rest of them followed in a quiet, single-file line.

  And so began the careful dance.

  For the next twenty minutes, Dain linked his vision with his owl. Every tilt of its head, every sweep of its gaze flooded into the left half of Dain’s vision, and it was an endless ribbon of treetops, beasts, and ultra narrow paths threading between safety and danger. There was no room for error—though Dain did pride himself on his eyes.

  “Two paces right,” he whispered once. “There’s a cyclone ibex blind to that side, but its ears are facing left.”

  “Keep low,” he murmured another time. “There’s a silthide at our left. Let’s stop behind that fallen trunk for a second and wait for it to pass, and… Good.”

  He didn’t want to imagine what’d happen if any of the beasts were alerted, but thankfully, he didn’t have to. Owls were known to be the quietest flying beasts of the night, and though his was made of metal, that fact remained unchanged. The beasts never heard it soaring over their heads, and they never heard the nineteen of them weaving through the forest.

  Eventually—after what felt like hours—they left the straggler herds behind and rode into a plainer, emptier stretch of the forest. His owl banked in the air, swung around a branch, then descended in a smooth arc to land on his shoulder. He let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and deactivated the linked vision, the left side of his sight fading back into normality.

  “Good job,” he cooed, rubbing his owl’s head with a grin. His owl cooed back, leaning greedily into his hand. Meanwhile, the silverplume wings on his back rustled and scratched irritably at his shoulder blades, as if jealous another relic was hogging his affection.

  Oh, don’t start with that. You know I like you guys too—

  “What manner of construct is that?”

  He blinked. Then he looked back down to see Rashan and his men all staring at him with matching bewilderment.

  “Constructs shouldn’t behave like that,” Rashan whispered. “They don’t… they shouldn’t…”

  Dain cleared his throat and glanced at his owl. It obeyed immediately—pulling away from his touch and tilting its head into a stiff, mechanical posture as if it’d never once displayed personality in its entire life.

  “It’s just a high-grade construct-type relic, Mountain Marshal.” He gave the townsguard a cordial smile. “I was a relic merchant, so I like to think I have a good eye on interesting relics.”

  Rashan’s expression said he didn’t entirely believe that, but he also didn’t want to press.

  Sensible man.

  As the group settled back into a steady northern trot, one of the townsguard rode ahead with his Mana Compass lifted like a compass, the needle tugging insistently toward the trees ahead. Dain squinted at the compass. It was probably tracking the mana spike that’d led them out here in the first place.

  “You said you had a wind-type and fire-type Elementum relic,” Rashan suddenly said, glancing over his shoulder. “What is it, exactly?”

  Dain angled his cane slightly across his lap, giving it a thoughtful twirl. “This is the relic,” he lied. “It swirls wind and fire both when I transform it into its oreblade form.”

  “I see. Elementum-Class relics are pretty uncommon in these parts, so excuse me for asking.”

  “Mm. So I’ve been told.” Dain tipped his head, though inwardly he was cataloguing every face close enough to overhear. It was best not to advertise anything useful. “Other than this oreblade cane, I don’t have much of anything else. The owl’s a construct, my right arm’s a prosthetic, and the wingcloak is… well. A fashion choice, if you will.”

  Their rams wove between the pines for several more minutes, following the tug of the Mana Compass. Branches scraped against saddles. Cold night air threaded through the clearing breeze. Somewhere far behind them, the thunder of the main stampede had faded to a soft, distant quake—and then the leading Townsguard raised a hand.

  “Marshal!” he called quietly. “It’s here.”

  Rashan spurred forward. The others followed, cresting a low hill masked by tight undergrowth.

  Then the rams stopped in unison at the top of the hill, and Dain had to lead slightly over Rashan’s shoulder to see what lay beyond the ridge.

  It was a town—if it could even still be called one.

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