Wily’s heart beat wildly as he scanned the hills for the danger that the Oracle had warned them about. Pryvyd tore the spiked shield off his back, while Righteous pulled out its sword. Roveeka slid her trusty knives, Mum and Pops, from her waistband. Odette plucked a fistful of purple mushrooms off Moshul’s leg and prepared to toss them. Spraved and her soldiers held their spears at the ready. They waited expectantly, poised for battle. Only Valor stood nearby, relaxed and leaning against Stalkeer.
“What are you doing?” Roveeka asked Valor. “Didn’t you hear what the acorn lady said?”
“That danger is coming,” Valor replied. “I heard that. Only she didn’t say when it was coming.”
“I’m guessing pretty quickly,” Odette said. “Why else would she disappear into the ground?”
“Because she’s nuts,” Valor said.
“She’s an oracle.”
“That doesn’t make her any less weird,” Valor said. “It might make her more so, actually. Look at the chipmunk over there.”
Wily spied a small tree rodent sitting on a root, nibbling a nut.
“They can sense danger coming,” Valor said. “And he’s happily munching on his dinner.”
Just then, Spraved pointed to the east. A figure was moving toward them in the darkness.
“Over there,” Spraved whispered to Pryvyd.
As it approached, Wily could see the figure had horns sticking out from its head. It was coming their way.
“How did my father get free of the prisonaut?” Wily asked.
“He didn’t,” Valor said, squinting into the darkness. “That’s an elk looking for a stream to drink from. If that’s the evil force we’re up against, I think we’ll all survive to see another dawn.”
As the figure got closer still, Wily could see Valor was right. It was nothing but a silver elk out for a graze. Everyone put down their weapons.
“Shall we go get this wax?” Valor asked as she mounted Stalkeer. “Or do we need to wait around until the dangerous elk passes?”
As Spraved guided the group north on their overnight journey, Wily kept looking over his shoulder, waiting for his father, the Infernal King, to come charging out of the brush with his spiked sword and electric ax. Once, while they were passing a cluster of berry shrubs, a flock of wild geese took flight and gave Wily a scare that made him almost fall off his horse.
But his father did not appear.
As morning arrived, Wily could see what looked like a small cluster of buildings surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall that was cracked and crumbling. Towering over it in the near distance was the Frenig Volcano, its peak glowing orange with bubbling lava.
“She’s still standing,” Spraved said, looking down at the keep. “Fortune is on your side today.”
The Knight of the Golden Sun gave a nudge to her horse and galloped off for it. By the time Wily and his companions reached the entrance to Halberd Keep, Spraved had already had her knights open the gates for the visitors.
The plain gray outer walls of the outpost looked far different from within. The inner side of the walls held murals depicting various scenes from Panthasos’s history—but the murals were in constant motion! There was a painting of Cloudscrape Peak, in which the wind blew puffy white clouds across the sky. Wily recognized another picture as the Floating City during a midday shifting. The Floating City was composed of hundreds of interconnected rafts that changed positions like a sliding tile puzzle. He stared at the mural as the city blocks moved across the lake in an elaborate dance of raft and pulley. If Wily had not known better, he would have thought he was staring at the city itself through a magical window. Some walls showed locations Wily didn’t recognize, sandy islands with tall skinny trees that swayed in the ocean wind and snowy plains that seemed to stretch into infinity.
“These are to remind the knights what they’re fighting for,” Pryvyd said. “No matter how far they are from home, they can look at these walls and feel a bit closer.”
As the group continued toward the center of the outpost, they passed a building with a painted wall that was stirring with colors but had yet to form a picture.
“What’s this one supposed to show?” Roveeka asked.
“You see what you want to see in that one,” Spraved answered. “Everyone finds something different in it.”
Curious, Wily decided to inspect the mural more closely. He stared into the mix of colors. It was nothing but swirls of paint and dots of darkness. But as he kept staring, forms began to emerge out of the shapelessness. Little by little, a painting of a deep dungeon cave appeared before him. Sitting on a throne of bones was Stalag. He was surrounded by an army of stone golems so tall that they had to bend down to avoid scraping the tops of their heads against the ceiling. Sceely and Agorop were there too, along with a dozen other cavern mages standing in a circle, Girthbellow included.
Stalag had a large map laid out on the table. Wily recognized the structure in the middle of it: the royal palace. He watched as one of cavern mages slid a black onyx figure across the map. He could see the figure was wearing a helmet with three horns.
“Is this showing what is happening now?” Wily asked Spraved.
“Sometimes it shows now. Sometimes it shows later.”
Except for Odette, the others moved on to a large fortified structure at the center of the outpost.
“Why?” Odette asked. “What do you see, Wily?”
“Stalag plotting the fall of the royal palace,” Wily said. “I think he may be working with my father.” Suddenly, he felt all the pressures of the princehood come crashing down on his shoulders all over again. The scene melted in front of his eyes until it was once more only a swirl of spinning colors.
“We can hope that the mural just showed what will never be,” Odette said. “I bet that’s possible too.”
Wily gave her a sad nod, not truly believing it. Then the two hurried to catch up with the others.
Spraved was using a key to open a padlock on a heavy wooden door there. She swung it open and beckoned them to enter.
Inside, Wily quickly discovered this was the armory. The walls were lined with hooks and brackets holding every kind of weapon, shield, and suit of armor imaginable. There were curved swords, double-sided battle axes, and pole arms as long as a giant’s arm. Behind Wily hung shields of all sizes, some spiked and others smooth, each decorated with the golden insignia of the Knights of the Golden Sun.
Spraved led them past the armory and into a room where eight giant candles glowed brightly. As the wax melted from the wicks, instead of dripping down the side of the candles, it floated upward. The entire stone ceiling was coated in a thick layer of white wax that made it appear as if there were a cloud floating a few feet over Moshul’s head.
“This should be enough,” Pryvyd said. “Now we need a very large tarp and some tools to scrape this off.”
Spraved brought in a half dozen spears and a huge tarp normally used to keep the rain from falling into the open horse stables. Everyone grabbed a long stick and began removing chunks of wax and tucking them into the doubled-over tarp. A few times Wily fumbled with a clump of wax and it went drifting back to the ceiling before he could grab it.
It didn’t take long before the group had scraped half the ceiling clean. The tarp was now full of halo wax and hovering in front of them.
“This should be enough,” Pryvyd said, tying the tarp into a large bundle, “to make our bridge to the center of the lava crown.”
The group effortlessly pulled the light-as-air bundle of halo wax outside and attached it to the saddles of Odette’s and Pryvyd’s horses. The Knights of the Golden Sun loaded Moshul’s shoulders with dozens of thick coils of rope.
BOOM! Chunks of stone wall exploded all around them. A rock the size of an ale barrel nearly struck the horses carrying the halo wax. Wily looked to see a trio of stone golems attacking the southern wall of the keep.
Knights of the Golden Sun were grabbing their weapons and sprinting for the falling wall.
“You must leave,” Spraved said. “We’ll keep the golems occupied while you get away.”
She approached Righteous, who was hovering near Pryvyd’s shoulder.
“Keep your body out of trouble,” she said.
Righteous gave her a thumbs-up.
“People change,” Pryvyd said to Spraved. “Sometimes it just takes time. Or meeting the right friends.”
The pounding of stone fists bashing against the walls was nearly deafening.
“Thank you for your help,” Wily told Spraved. “Once we’re gone, go to the royal palace. My mother will need your help. There are more golems than she and the royal guards can stop alone.”
“We’ll do our part,” Spraved said. “You have nothing to worry about.”
Wily could see the stern determination in her eyes, but he knew it would take more than resolve to defeat Stalag’s army. They needed a lair beast. And soon.
“On the north side of the keep, there’s an exit by the stables,” Spraved said as she pulled her sword. “Go now.”
Wily and the others hurried their mounts toward the stable as the sound of battle raged behind them. As they pushed through the exit, Wily turned one last time to see Spraved fighting single-handedly against a giant of stone ten times her size.
Valor was watching too. “Maybe not all wall-dwellers are bad,” she said.
EVEN FROM A mile away, Wily could smell the pungent odor of lava bubbling up from the belly of Frenig Volcano. He’d grown accustomed to lava’s distinctly smoky and rather unpleasant smell back when it had permeated every tunnel of Carrion Tomb. Even when there were other, stronger scents about, the odor lingered. There were very few things about his life in the tomb that he looked back upon fondly, and this smell was certainly not one of them.
As the companions moved closer to the base of Frenig Volcano, Wily could see two giant stone golems pacing back and forth near a large tunnel.
“That’s the entrance we’re not going to be getting through,” Odette said. “The Lava Crown is at the top of Frenig.”
She pointed to the upper ridge of the volcano, where smoke wafted into the sky.
“If we take Death’s Tail,” Pryvyd said, pointing to a trail of black rocks that wound itself off to the west before looping back toward the summit of the volcano, “we should be able to avoid being spotted by the golems.”
“Death’s Tail doesn’t sound like a road anyone should be taking,” Valor said with a roll of her eyes.
As they followed the trail closer to the volcano, Wily’s nostrils began to tickle from all the floating ash. They moved slowly up the winding path toward the edge of the large black crater.
About halfway up the mountain, Roveeka began to squeal with delight. “Oooh! Yum!”
She was pointing toward a cluster of shambling gray beetles. As they squirmed across the cracked earth, they left a path of black smoke in their wake.
“What are those things?” Odette asked Wily.
“Sootslingers,” Wily said. “Beetles that digest magma. They used to be all over the lava pits back in Carrion Tomb. Never had a problem getting rid of them though. The hobgoblets took care of that.”
“They are a delicacy,” Roveeka said, licking her lips. “You don’t even need to cook them.”
“They taste like the burnt bits of bread that fall into the fire,” Wily said. “Never had a taste for them myself.”
“How did you ever think you were a hobgoblet?” Odette asked.
“I admit that in retrospect I should have seen the clues.”
Everyone shared a chuckle except for Valor, who remained stone-faced.
Wily pulled his horse up alongside her. “You don’t have to be angry at me all the time,” he said. “When are you going to give me a chance?”
“Are you kidding? This is me giving you a chance. Trust me when I say that I want to say terrible things. And yell and scream. But I’m not.”
“I didn’t do anything to you.”
“You took my auntie away. She was the closest thing I had to a mother.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“But that’s how it feels. And it hurts. Just give me some space so I don’t say the things that keep bubbling up inside me.”
Valor gave Stalkeer a nudge ahead, leaving Wily to ride along Death’s Tail lost in thought.
As they moved up the side of the volcano, he heard a voice call out. “There’s not much of anything past here.”
Wily looked around and near a pile of dried magma beheld the strangest of sights: a rat the size of Wily was standing on two legs like a person. It was filthy and held a large bucket in one of its claws. As Wily stepped closer, it hid the bucket behind its back.
“It’s a skrover,” Pryvyd whispered to Wily. “They’re scavengers and liars and thieves. And not in a charming way.”
“Nothing apart from lava rocks,” the skrover continued, as his beady red eyes shifted about. “If it’s sootslingers you’re searching for, you’d have better luck trying the next volcano over. I caught all the ones up here weeks ago.”
“What about that one?” Roveeka said, pointing to a large beetle shuffling through the dried lava. A trail of black smoke wafted from its body as if a fire were continuously being extinguished on its back.
“That’s the last one,” the skrover said, quickly scooping it up in his hairy claw. “All the rest are gone.”
He bit down on the beetle, causing a puff of black smoke to drift from his nostrils. Wily pointed to another sootslinger pushing its way out of the dried lava. The skrover grabbed and devoured that one too.
“You can rest easy,” Wily said. “We’re not looking for sootslingers. They’re all yours.”
The skrover didn’t look like he believed Wily.
“Really,” Roveeka chimed in. “We’re not. Despite how delicious they smell.”
The skrover relaxed and allowed his bucket heavy with beetles to move to his side. “In that case, go right ahead,” the skrover asked. “But what other reason do you have for going this way?”
“Just passing through,” Pryvyd said.
“Actually,” Roveeka added, “we’ve come here to enter the Below.”
Pryvyd quickly cut Roveeka off. “The truth is we’re just passing through,” he repeated, staring firmly at the hobgoblet. “To the plains beyond Frenig.”
The skrover grabbed a sootslinger from his bucket and chomped down on its head. “Enjoy your trip to the plains,” he said as he began hobbling down the hill. “Have a simply wonderful day. The best day you’ve ever had.”
The skrover broke into a sprint, nearly tripping on rocks and dead tree roots.
“Well,” Roveeka said. “He seemed very nice. I hope it is the best day ever.”