The jet-haired man watched in horror as they began eating the leg of the man who, just a few minutes earlier, had been alive. Those beasts had dismembered and gutted him while he was still breathing. They painted themselves with his blood and used his bones as ornaments. One osgor growled and smeared his hair with the blackened blood of the newly deceased, slicking it back, and almost instantly began walking toward the prisoner. His massive mouth, full of blood and lined with jagged, yellowed teeth, twisted into a grimace of both hatred and delight.

  “You’re going to regret this,” said the captive, his long hair falling across his face.

  The osgor raised his spiked bone club, and just as he was about to strike, the tip of an arrow burst from his throat. In that instant, the fight erupted.

  Kalen emerged from the darkness, wielding Eldora and striking one of the anthropomorphic beasts. The osgor tried to hit him with his spiked club, but the knight deflected it with his weapon, pivoted, and slashed open his enemy’s throat with a precise cut.

  Galfrido swung his greatsword, splitting an osgor’s head in half, the blade sinking to the collarbone in a spray of blood. The moment he lost trying to free the blade gave another osgor the chance to attack. Seeing that he wouldn’t free the greatsword in time, he stepped aside, letting the creature charge past.

  “Let’s see how good you are with your head hanging loose, you cannibal bastard!” the warrior roared, grabbing the osgor’s head and twisting it until every bone cracked, snapping its neck.

  Anthos rushed to the captive, but before he could free him, the last osgor appeared with a spear, stabbing and cutting his face just along the right cheekbone. Like a cobra, Anthos drew his sword and struck the osgor in the face, gouging out its eye and making it stagger back. The monster growled but was silenced by a bolt from Begryn, the arrow driving clean through its head at the temple.

  The osgor corpses lay piled around the travelers—one with its skull split in two, brains spilled across the floor, another sprawled with its belly torn open.

  “Didn’t have it so easy, did you?” Galfrido said, pointing at the wound on Anthos’s face.

  “The bastard almost kicked my ass…” Anthos replied, panting.

  “That’s going to leave a mark for life. Makes you look more handsome now…” Galfrido leaned in to examine it closely. “Mmm… mate, this definitely looks worse than it feels.”

  “Thanks for your support, Galfrido,” Anthos said with sarcasm. “You always have a way of lifting the spirit…”

  Begryn approached and applied a healing salve to the wound. At that moment, Kalen stepped toward the captive and, with his dagger, cut him free from his bonds.

  “Thank you, thank you so much. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t arrived…” The man’s voice was deep but harmonious. He was dressed in dark, high-quality clothes, although they were frayed and worn. His face bore bruises from his time as a prisoner. He was a little shorter than Galfrido and much thinner.

  “Who are you and what were you doing in this place?” Kalen asked bluntly.

  Begryn went back to where she had left Drako hidden among the rocks and took him in her arms, making sure to keep him covered.

  “Gentlemen, my name is Ertai. First of all, I thank you again for saving me from such a horrid fate.”

  “Are you a smuggler?” the guide asked bluntly.

  “Of course not. My presence here is due to the treasure of the dwarf king…”

  “Treasure?” Galfrido raised an eyebrow.

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  “It’s true. When the roads to Minas Mangur became unsafe, the dwarf king decided to close all his gates, leaving much of his treasure lost in these caves.”

  “Dwarves abandoning their treasures?” Galfrido looked at Anthos, even more skeptical. “That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.”

  “I’m telling the truth, look!” Ertai pulled a gold coin from his pocket, engraved with dwarven motifs—a crude bearded king in the center, runes around the edge. Kalen took it and examined it, confirming its authenticity. The knight had held dwarven gold before, and this was real.

  “We don’t know why they did it, but there’s a rumor the treasure is somewhere around here…”

  “And conveniently, that’s when the osgors started showing up in these tunnels,” Anthos added.

  “I don’t know when they began appearing. What I do know is that we came with our group, decided to camp in the tunnels because of the storm, and we were ambushed. Mikhael wanted to take another path, but we never saw him again.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be seeing Mikhael either,” Galfrido commented, recalling the man being devoured in the wrong tunnel.

  “You have to believe me. I have no reason to lie to you.” Ertai’s once-arrogant look shifted into a more desperate one. “Please, let me go with you. I can help fight if necessary. I can cook, and I have other skills that most people don’t have. I was a druid’s apprentice for many years… If you leave me here on my own, I’ll die.”

  “I suppose you didn’t think of that when you decided to wander into the bowels of the earth,” Galfrido said with a grin.

  “No one with gold on their mind thinks clearly…”

  Ertai didn’t seem even remotely interested in asking what a baby was doing in such a hellish place. He seemed to be thinking only about getting out alive—which, given what he had just been through, was perfectly reasonable.

  “All right, you can come with us,” Kalen said, taking the initiative.

  The treasure hunter smiled and thanked them. He carried no weapons—at least none in sight. As they started moving again, Galfrido positioned himself in front of him and whispered:

  “I’ll be watching you, druid’s apprentice.”

  It was true that Ertai’s story sounded strange. A druid’s apprentice abandoning the Lords of the Forest to become a treasure hunter? Dwarves abandoning their riches? But it was also true they had found the man about to be eaten by a pack of osgors. Besides, what else would someone be doing in a place like this, if not looking for treasure?

  Anthos dropped back from the lead, letting Kalen take point, and walked alongside Ertai.

  “No problems, mate?” asked the treasure hunter/druid’s apprentice.

  “For now, no. I have to say it’s a relief to have one more arm on our side.”

  “It’s not my intention to be a burden. As soon as we get across, I’ll be on my way east, to Elbarie.”

  “What are you planning to do in the desert lands?”

  “Well, I’m a treasure hunter—or at least I have been for the last three years. They say the desert lands hold entire cities buried beneath the sand, overflowing with unimaginable riches.” He paused for a moment. “I’d be a fool not to go after them. Aren’t you interested? You look like you’ve got an adventurer’s spirit. You took care of those bastards without much trouble.” The supposed druid’s apprentice was quick to draw conclusions.

  “Not for now. Maybe in another life.”

  “As you wish, mate. But remember—treasures won’t be there forever.” He winked.

  “Can we keep moving?” Galfrido said, annoyed by the chatter.

  Something still didn’t sit right in Ertai’s story, but there were no glaring holes or contradictions. Everything he had said matched what they had encountered along the way—and that made it believable.

  It could see the travelers marching like lambs to a pagan altar for sacrifice. It loomed over them like an abyssal shadow, savoring even the sweat they gave off.

  It was a presence as old as evil itself, one that had crossed countless worlds solely to sate its hunger—a hunger that kept pounding at its rotting door. But the most delicious flesh was always the tenderest, and, to its fortune, they carried a child with them.

  A child who radiated an indescribable power. Even in darkness, it could see the beams of golden and reddish light emanating from him, like a beacon in the pitch-black night.

  He smelled like those winged beasts that had caused so much trouble in ages past. Its drooling jaws twisted into a grimace that could just as easily be taken for laughter, rage, or even madness. After so many eons, no one could say for certain.

  It was going to devour the boy, and then it was going to devour them all. Though that elf had traits unique to her. Perhaps it could study her a little before turning her into dinner. Its hunger did not come from this world, and in its teeth were the remnants of the flesh of kings and beggars alike. From fairies to ogres. All food. And now it was the dragon’s turn.