Wily had hoped to return to the royal palace of Panthasos with his head held high, clutching the enchanted compass in hand. Instead, he and his companions were coming back far worse than when they had started: the compass was gone, Stalag had it, and Moshul was dead.
With every step that Wily took, it seemed as if he were pulling himself through a thick swamp of giant-slug slime.
“Have I told you about the time Moshul and I went to the Raven’s Nest?” Odette asked.
Instead of grieving silently, elves told stories about the loved ones they had lost. For thirty days after their passing, friends and family would share tales of the dead to keep their spirit and memory alive. Odette had been recounting her adventures with Moshul for the last eight hours.
“I don’t think so,” Wily said with a heavy heart.
“I’d like to hear about it,” Roveeka said, trying to brighten the mood.
Ever since Wily had met Roveeka in Carrion Tomb as a toddler, she had been able to see the light in the darkest tunnel. It was one of the many reasons why Wily was so glad to have chosen her to be his surrogate sister.
“The Raven’s Nest is the secret gathering spot of the sneakiest burglemeisters in all of Panthasos,” Odette explained. “What makes the gathering spot so secret is that it’s on the third floor of a building with no stairs leading up to it. The Burglemeister Society believes that a true thief should be able to climb up the outside of the building and sneak through a window. Now, being a skilled acrobat, the task posed no challenge for me. Moshul, on the other hand, has a lot of talents, but climbing isn’t one of them.”
“Had a lot of talents,” Wily corrected her sadly.
“Right,” Odette nodded grimly. “Had. Thank you for the unnecessary reminder, Wily.”
She pushed on with her story. “But Moshul wasn’t going to just let me go into a den of thieves and criminals alone. He wanted to be by my side. So, what’d he do? He built his own staircase. He took the stones from a nearby wall and started stacking them on top of each other. When he came crashing through the window of the Raven’s Nest, the entire place went silent. No one knew what to do. They were too scared to accuse him of cheating his way in, so instead they started buying him drinks. Which is extra funny because he has no mouth.”
“Had no mouth,” Wily corrected her again.
“Right,” Odette added. “Had.” Her shoulders slumped as she became lost in thought.
As the group came around Trumpet Pass, Wily caught sight of the royal palace, with its high marble walls and newly planted orchard. He remembered the first time he had seen the palace or, as it had been known then, the Infernal Fortress. Just a few months ago, the walls that were now as white as an albino eel had been stained black with dripping tar. Spinning blades had moved along hidden tracks in the stone to keep intruders away. The palace that his father, the Infernal King, had ruled over was a desolate place filled with traps and monsters of the most unfriendly variety. Wily had changed all that: the traps had been removed and replaced with libraries and sitting rooms. The only monsters left in the palace were a shy giant slug he had rescued from Carrion Tomb and the Skull of Many Riddles who, not needing to set rooms ablaze anymore, had become the palace’s court jester, telling riddles to amuse and entertain.
As the weary companions approached the palace, Wily could see that the drawbridge was down, stretching across the moat. He had decided shortly after taking residence in the palace that the drawbridge should remain down and the gate open at all times. Pryvyd had warned him that it was unsafe, especially with Stalag still on the loose, but Wily had insisted. He wanted his new home to bear no resemblance to the one he had lived in for the first fourteen years of his life. In Carrion Tomb, everything was built to keep people out and away. Here, he wanted to welcome people in.
On either side of the palace gate, a Knight of the Golden Sun stood guard. They both wore the same bronze armor as Pryvyd, and each held a shield decorated with their order’s symbol: a shining orb with eight golden arms reaching out from it.
“Welcome back,” one of the soldiers called out cheerfully, her silver face paint sparkling in the daylight.
Wily didn’t have the strength or will to say anything. He just wanted to eat, hug his mom, and go to bed. It didn’t even matter that it was many hours before the sun would set.
Wily and the others passed the guards silently on their way into the palace atrium, which was decorated with objects from all over Panthasos. When Wily was officially anointed prince, people from across the land had brought many gifts in celebration. Wily had decided to place them here, in the atrium, so that every visitor to the palace could share in their beauty. There were eagle feathers from the high mountain elves, a blood ruby that pulsed with color as if it had a beating heart inside, and a wreath of petrified flowers grown in the rock gardens of the desert basin. There was even an unbreakable metal crown forged in the legendary eversteel furnace of Drakesmith Island, gifted to Wily by the seafaring Brine Baron.
Continuing through the atrium, the group passed under a large flag that hung from the ceiling. Unlike the flag of his father, which was decorated with a frightening three-horned helmet, Wily’s palace banner signaled a new era when machines would not be built to destroy or control; it depicted a metal gear interlocked with the branches of a tree. Wily had dreamed up the image himself and thought it conveyed the mission he’d set for himself: to ensure that human inventions worked in tandem with nature to make Panthasos more prosperous for all. But right now, Wily couldn’t imagine how he’d ever achieve anything of note. He left the atrium without even glancing up at the flag.
Wily led Roveeka, Odette, Pryvyd, and Righteous down the long hallway to the grand sitting room. Inside, Wily spied his mother, Lumina Arbus, staring down at a large map of Panthasos unfurled on the oak table. Although she no longer wore a rainbow of colored scarves over her face like when she was a noble bandit fighting the tyranny of the Infernal King, she still kept a pendant of rainbow colors around her neck as a reminder of who she used to be. On the table beside the map, Lumina’s two pet ferrets, Gremlin and Impish, wrestled over a quill pen. They poked at each other with their paws while Wily’s mother eyed the map.
“Would you two cut it out?” Lumina said in a huff. “If you each want a quill pen, there are plenty more in the upstairs study.”
That was not a good enough answer for either Gremlin or Impish, who seemed to only want the one they were currently fighting over.
Pryvyd, Roveeka, Odette, and Righteous waited just outside the hall as Wily stepped in. “Hi, Mom,” Wily said with no life in his voice.
Lumina looked up, and her expression immediately transformed from frustration to joy. “Wily!” his mother said. “You’re back safe.”
Lumina moved swiftly toward her son. Impish and Gremlin both dropped the quill pen and excitedly followed. Wily felt his mother’s arms wrap tightly around his body as he slumped into her. He pressed his head against her shoulder and she kissed his temple.
The hug was as warm and comforting as a bowl of chicken soup. No matter how many times he embraced his mother, it still had this incredible power. He wondered if there was some kind of special magic that caused a hug to feel so good. Once he finally learned to read, he would have to check the library’s spell books to find out.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Lumina asked as she pulled back to get a good look at her long-lost son. “A sandwich? Or a bowl of fruit?”
“I really don’t have much of an appetite,” Wily said, feeling a queasiness in the pit of his gut.
“Moshul was just making a mushroom-and-sprout salad,” Lumina added. “I know you always like those.”
Wily looked at his mother as if she had gone crazy. What was she talking about?
Then Wily heard a series of heavy footsteps approaching. He spun around—and saw none other than Moshul standing there, holding a wooden bowl of greens.
“Moshul!” Wily called out in disbelief.
He ran to the moss golem and threw his arms around one of his soft green legs. Roveeka hurried over and embraced his other leg. Odette was so excited that she vaulted off a chair and did a full body hug around his neck. Pryvyd, with Righteous floating by his side, stepped up behind the others.
Moshul seemed just as happy to see them. He put the salad bowl down on the nearby table and squeezed them all together in a long group hug.
“We thought we had lost you,” Odette said, dropping back to the ground.
“How did you survive the fall?” Pryvyd spoke and signed at the same time.
Moshul signed back in response.
“My big brothers, the stone golems, are stronger than I can ever be,” Odette translated for Wily and Roveeka’s benefit. “They are made of rock. But I am made of mud.”
“That much I know,” Pryvyd added, “but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“I think it does,” Roveeka said with a big smile. “He’s like a giant ball of wet clay.” Roveeka was not the most mechanically inclined individual, but she was a brilliant geologist. She knew more about rocks, stones, and dirt than anyone else Wily had ever met.
“Then explain it to the rest of us,” Pryvyd said to Roveeka.
“When a rock falls from a great distance,” Roveeka said, “and strikes the hard ground, it shatters on its fault lines. It will break into a dozen pieces or more. But when clay hits the ground, if it’s wet and moist enough, it doesn’t break. It just changes shape.”
Moshul nodded and then turned around with a look of embarrassment. His right shoulder and back, which were once muscular and impressive, now looked like a flat pancake covered in smashed lettuce. Moshul signed again, this time timidly.
“I know I look very silly,” Odette translated for the moss golem. “Hopefully when the plants grow back on my shoulder, no one will notice.”
“Who cares?” Wily said. “You’re alive!”
“It doesn’t matter what you look like,” Roveeka said. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”
“Which in your case is mud and worms,” Odette said with a smirk.
“Some of the nicest worms around,” Roveeka added.
“We’re just so glad that you’re here,” Pryvyd said, with Righteous bobbing up and down in agreement at his side.
Wily thought that if Moshul had a mouth to smile with, he’d be doing so now. Instead, the golem’s jeweled eyes just twinkled brightly.
Wily looked back to his mother as his stomach started to grumble. “All of a sudden,” Wily said with a smile, “I am feeling very hungry.”