The moon hung in the sky as Zeek crept through the brush; the forests outside the byrinth’s vilge had grown treacherous and wild over the years, the beaten path often disappearing under vines and tall grass. Every so often, Verris would poke him about his losses to the Heart of Sorrow and pick at his reasons for his continuous returns.

  “You’ve wasted every coin in your purse on mercenaries, pulled in every favor, called on every friend—”

  “Not EVERY friend.” Zeek snorted.

  “Either way you’ve come up empty. Need I remind you how many of my men you’ve lent to the Labyrinth?” Verris chuckled bitterly. “I’m not compining. You made me quite a fortune, but one does wonder why you would go to such lengths in that pce. Come on, spill it, what’s got you so desperate in there? A secret space? See something nobody else got access to yet? We’re friends now, aren’t we?” He grinned before bursting into an arrogant ugh.

  “Friends don’t make friends pay for help,” he spat. “The Labyrinth is a wealth of information, knowledge and power hum beneath every stone. There are any number of reasons why one would seek to y cim to the items and the mysteries that blot out the map of the Heart or Sorrows.”

  “Outside the one room, I didn’t see any treasure,” Verris said sarcastically.

  The thick trunks of trees and vines dotted the forest floor as the duo continued to navigate, making their way to the nearest town. Rumors had spread that the denizens of the forest had become restless as of te; many travelers had begun to report disappearances amongst their parties, even more so at night. As the two continued to navigate the winding path, as best they could at least, a faint rustling noise began to eat at Zeek’s suspicions.

  “Verris.” He said in a hushed tone.

  “Finally ready to tell me what’s got you so enthralled in that maze?”

  “Run!”

  Before Verris could move, vines whipped past his face; they were alive, grasping at a figure behind him. The silhouette wriggled and squirmed before being pressed into the forest floor, vines growing ever tighter. A dim ray of moonlight cut through the canopy, slowly nding on the struggling figure. Its eyes were wild, fierce, and green, its fur, a solid white against the bckness of the forest canopy. Verris slowly turned his head to meet the creature’s frantic gaze.

  “What in the hells is that?!”

  “Less talking, move!” Zeek barked.

  The two broke into a sprint, a loud pop preceded by a shrill howl of pain from the captive monster behind them. Vines darted at them as they weaved in and out of the tree line, hoping to avoid the grizzly fate of their stalker. Rustling seemed to be all around them, circling them faster than they could escape. Zeek brandished his daggers as they continued to dart between the trees to avoid the frantic vines snapping at their limbs. Verris swung Regalia with reckless abandonment, trying to break a vine gripping his off hand. The assault was relentless; vines flew from every shadow without source; there was no end to them.

  “I’ll kill you before you can crush me like that dog!” Verris roared. He was off bance now, swinging wildly as he tried to pick up speed again, but more and more vines whipped at him, threatening to disarm him entirely. Zeek turned on his heels to cut the wall of vines reaching toward his raging companion.

  “We don’t have time for this! Keep moving!”

  “I don’t need a worthless halfwit like you to tell me that!”

  Verris joined Zeek as he charged forward, Regalia dim in the night with no blood to draw power from. A howl pierced through the night as the two frantically raced toward the edge of the wilderness leading to the moon-kissed vilge of Kemet. Zeek knew enough about the vilge to be dangerous but had never been there himself; it would be their only safe haven if they could make it before the forest feasted on them.

  “Stop swinging and move! You’ll be no use to me dead Verris! We make it to Kemet, we’re safe!”

  Something appeared in the distance, disappearing and reappearing between the trees as Zeek dipped in and out of cover. There was a faint glow every time it came into view, just before disappearing behind another tree. Eyes. Who could move that fast? Was this a trap? Were these the people that left that mark at the inn? Zeek could see the fire from the Kemet’s gates in the distance, a faint shimmer between the gaps in the leaves.

  Suddenly, more vines reached out from in front of them, two glowing orbs stood against the bckness of the forest’s canopy. A twitching hand reached out, passing a sliver of moonlight; the hand was split down the middle, both halves had four fingers and the flesh was oaken. Four more green orbs opened beneath the first two, adding a faint glow to outline the face before them. The jaw was sckened, mouth agape with filed teeth, a long tongue no hanging from the open maw. Zeek knew it as soon as the six eyes had opened: a forest wraith. This one looked different, however. Forest wraiths were known for their fierce defense of their territory but weren’t known to be overly violent to travelers passing through the wilderness. Their appearance was normally more human in nature, the six green eyes running parallel down their face was the normal giveaway, the oaken skin being the other. This one had its torso opened, ribs spyed to the sides as if the entrails were designed as a macabre dispy. Vines continued to grow out of its torso, front and back, pping at the periphery of the duo that stood before it.

  “It’s about damned time,” Verris growled. “Regalia has been sleeping on the job, and I know the perfect way to wake her up.”

  “Torch it and keep moving, no telling what happened to this one. Something’s not right about it.” Zeek pulled a glowing shard from his pack. “I’ll burn the vines; you get the conduit.”

  Forest wraiths are animated via a conduit that stands separate to the main body, allowing them to continue to animate and create new bodies if the current body avatar gets destroyed or captured. This one seemed like it was far different from any wraith Zeek had encountered, so the rules and decorum following the traditional wraith may not even be applicable. He racked his brain for a way to deal with this situation, he was, after all, a survivor first.

  Verris took off toward the main body, his eyes darting from side to side, scouring the surrounding area for the conduit. Zeek crushed the shard in his hand and whispered into his hands before releasing the dust toward the wraith. “Burn.” With one word the dust sparked into a raging burst of fme, roaring forward engulfing everything in its path. The vines streaming forth burned under the heat, wilting and catching fire as Verris rolled out of the warpath. His eyes finally nded on a seed-like totem nestled inside a tree in the distance. The bze died moments ter, the wraith recoiling as the fmes on its body continued to make cinders of its flesh. It let out a terrifying scream that seemed to shake the entire forest. The trees around them began to twist and writhe, branches snapping and lengthening.

  Regalia sliced through the air; Verris was giddy with anticipation as he brought the enchanted mace down on the tree. The trunk snapped with a loud thump, revealing he had missed the conduit, now pulsating in an adjacent tree. He swung again, but not fast enough; the conduit continued moving from tree to tree. Zeek was struggling to keep the fming vines from incinerating him, slicing frantically as the onsught showed no signs of relenting. Verris was starting to recognize the pattern in the madness; the conduit could only jump to trees adjacent to it. He drew two ring shaped bdes and let them fly, felling tree on either side of the conduit. The rings returned to him, and he tied them onto his belt mid-stride, gripping Regalia once again as he let her loose on the conduit.

  Zeek was at his wit’s end fending off the onsught of tendrils whipping and ripping at his leather armor, snapping the dagger out of his grasp. The wraith let out a ferocious roar as it bore down on him, his fate seemed all but sealed. Suddenly, the vines fell limp, the wraith’s body following them to the forest floor. It was dead, finally. He took a second to find his dagger and pce it back in its sheath before catching up to Verris, a smug look of satisfaction creeping over his sweat-drenched face.

  “It took you long enough,” Zeek said, gasping.

  “I saved your life again; how worthless you must have been to my guys.”

  “Says the dog that I saved from the vines. Shut up.”

  They continued toward Kemet, an uneasy alliance forming between the two. Zeek needed a fighter above all else, and Verris…what did he get out of this? The thought gnawed at Zeek as he continued the march toward the city gate. What could he want with such a fool’s errand? He couldn’t help but question the alliances of those intertwined with him and his goals. With so much blood on his hands, so many bodies wandering the byrinth due only to his negligence and cowardice; distrust was a necessity when guilt would otherwise be too overwhelming.

  “Verris, tell me this: what could a blood thirsty mercenary broker want to do with my ‘suicide missions’?”

  “Gold, pin and simple. If I find anything else, so be it. Just seemed a good opportunity to get back into the field since my men weren’t completing the job regardless.” His face was a trickster’s mask. His lie was noted, even reasonable, but a pretty lie was still that: a lie.

  “As you wish,” Zeek muttered. “The night’s already been long enough, why make it any longer?” With that, they passed through the gate on their way to the inn, where troubled sleep would find these unlikely companions.

  “I’ll meet you in front of the inn after sunrise, that is, unless you get this one burned down too.”

  “Very funny. Try not to let that moving slit on your face lead to a slit in your throat.” Verris left toward his room with a wave of his hand, leaving Zeek to his thoughts. Over the years, bit by bit, Zeek had lost pieces of his soul to the byrinth, watching the souls and the corpses of those he trusted most become walking embodiments of his failures. Guilt continued to rack his frame, his bones wary from carrying the weight he’d been saddled with, day after day. The faces of friends, colleagues, comrades, all stitched into abominations awaiting his next attempt at redemption.

  A silence crept over the tavern when Verris arrived, his pauldrons battered from the forest brawl; his leather pants grimy and stained from the vines that entangled him. He rose Regalia to a few nods and inspired grumbles before finding an empty table to plop down at.

  “Aye, bring me your hardest mead!”

  He waited patiently for one of the servers to bring a cup of mead, surveying the tavern and listening to the conversations as they begun to spin back up. There was an art to information gathering, picking apart numerous conversations and making sense of the garbled jabbering going on throughout the building. His choice was always calcuted; so few taverns carried mead, preferring ale as it was easier to come by, giving him more time to absorb the loose lips from around the city. Eventually, the mead arrived after a deep search of the surrounding celrs; Verris accepted it graciously, dropping a number of coins into the server’s hand with a smile. His smile faded before he sipped the mead before him, letting the sweet nectar wash the char from his palette. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, letting a calm wash over him as the conversations around him engulfed him.

  Zeek made his way to the inn, skipping the tavern entirely. If he’d learned anything over the st few years, attachment was a luxury he could ill afford. After seeing so many deaths in his pursuits, it hurt too much to imagine trying to give anyone else a chance beyond a need-to-know; too many secrets, too many fated to die on his watch. Nights like this, a stiff drink or nine would do to turn of the thoughts that weighed heavy on him, like bricks chained to a drowning man. In the corner of his vision, he could always see a specter at night, a pile of corpses still fresh and dripping behind him, following him wherever he went. Only Zeek knew the number of bodies he’d left in his wake, foolishly sacrificing more and more on the altars of his own hubris and futility.

  After a short while, Zeek made it to the inn, managing to feed himself some scraps he was able to haggle from the innkeeper. He ate what he could before ying down, letting his vision stray to the ceiling. He let his gaze fall back to the room where the specter was now in full view, a dark aura shrouded it like clouds suffocating the moon, its eyes were covered in stained bandages still damp open wounds, and its mouth… Zeek shuddered. Its mouth was stretched from ear to ear, only one of which was still attached to its head. Its teeth were bckened and fractured, like a maw filled with broken shards of gss. He let his eyes slowly crawl back up to the ceiling as he snuffed out the candle, knife in hand.

  “

  In front of the inn at dawn,” he whispered.