The mist of the Whispers didn't just obscure sight; it carried weight. By mid-morning, every member of the Ember Spark was damp to the bone. They had pushed deep into the "Wet Zones," a region where the trees grew so close together their branches braided into a solid canopy, cutting off the sun.
"Hold," Pip hissed, his mechanical goggles whirring. The tiny Gnome held up a hand, his other fumbling with a brass dial on his belt. "Triangulated mana-tripwire. Thirty yards ahead. High-tension, etched with a paralysis rune. Standard Guild-issue."
"The Lilies?" Ria asked, her spear lowering to a horizontal plane.
"Too sloppy for their main team," Pip muttered, crawling forward through the muck to inspect the shimmering, near-invisible thread. "This is a marking trap. They don't want to stop us; they want to tag us so they can track us through the damp. It's a classic 'scare-and-steer' tactic."
Before Pip could snip the wire, a flare of indigo light erupted from the thicket to their left. A heavy, iron-tipped net whistled through the air, aimed directly at Korg. The half-orc snarled, batting the net aside with his shield, but the distraction was enough.
"Well, well," a voice drifted from the trees. "The 'Ember Spark' really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. A cook and a clockwork-gnome? You're not a Company; you're a traveling circus."
Four figures stepped into the clearing. They weren't Lysa's primary team, but a secondary unit of the Gilded Lilies—the "B-Squad" sent to do the dirty work. Their leader was a tall, lithe man named Jaxen, a rogue with a permanent sneer and twin daggers that hummed with gale-magic.
"Jaxen," Ria spat. "Still playing the Lilies' lapdog? I heard you were supposed to be leading your own team by now."
"Plans change when the Guild puts a bounty on a Forest Stalker," Jaxen replied, twirling a dagger. "Five thousand gold marks for the head of the beast harassing the logging camps. We saw the contract first. But then we saw your heat-signature wandering into our territory."
"Territory?" Kaelen stepped forward. The wood-segmented scales on his arm shifted, making a sound like dry branches rubbing together. "The forest belongs to no one."
"It belongs to whoever clears the bounty," Jaxen countered. He pointed a dagger toward a massive, slime-covered hollow at the base of a redwood. "The Stalker is in there. We were about to smoke it out when you arrived. How about a professional wager, 'Ember Spark'?"
"We don't gamble with snakes," Korg growled.
"It's not a gamble if the rules are Guild-standard," Jaxen sneered. "Both parties enter the hollow. Whoever delivers the killing blow takes the head and the gold. The loser leaves the sector and hands over their registration badges for 're-evaluation.' Simple professional competition."
"They're trying to bait us," Elara whispered, clutching her staff. "If we lose our badges, we lose our legal standing. We'll be common bandits."
Kaelen looked at the hollow. He could feel the "Echo" inside—a jagged, vibrating hunger that mirrored his own. But he also felt the dragon's disdain for the Lilies.
"THEY ARE SCATTERED LIGHT," Ignis rumbled. "YOU ARE THE CORE. SHOW THEM THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SPARK AND A STAR."
"We accept," Kaelen said.
The two parties entered the hollow simultaneously, a tense, silent procession into the dark. The air inside smelled of rot and old blood. Pip moved to the front, his goggles casting a dim green light over the floor.
"Watch your feet," Pip warned. "The Stalker isn't an animal. It's a Quilled Razor-Back. It doesn't bite; it vibrates."
Suddenly, the walls of the hollow seemed to explode. A blur of grey fur and crystalline spines lunged from the shadows. The Stalker was the size of a bear, but its body was covered in thousands of six-inch needles that hummed with a deadly frequency.
Jaxen's team moved with practiced, cold efficiency. His mage cast a Gravity Well to slow the beast, while his warrior moved in for a heavy strike. But the Stalker was smarter. It curled into a ball, its quills vibrating so fast they became a blur of sonic energy. The Gravity Well shattered. The warrior was sent reeling, his armor shredded by a burst of launched spines.
"Our turn!" Kaelen shouted.
He didn't lunge. He planted his heels, imitating the Stillness Korg had taught him. He watched the beast's vibration. He realized he couldn't hit it with heat—the quills would just dissipate the energy. He had to use the Wood Echo.
Kaelen reached out his segmented arm. Instead of a fist, he flared the "Lashing" fibers. Dozens of metallic, vine-like tendrils erupted from his fingertips. They didn't strike the beast; they wove through the air, creating a web that matched the frequency of the quills.
"Pip! The pulse-bomb!" Kaelen commanded.
"On it!" Pip tossed a small, ticking brass sphere into the center of Kaelen's web.
Kaelen tightened the "vines," channeling his internal heat into the mechanical device. The bomb didn't explode with fire; it released a massive, localized Harmonic Shock. The vibration of the bomb collided with the vibration of the Stalker's quills.
The result was a deafening silence. The Stalker's quills shattered, falling to the floor like glass shards. The beast stood naked and stunned.
Jaxen saw his opening. "Now! Take the head!" He lunged forward, his daggers glowing with wind-magic.
But he was too slow. Kaelen had already used the "Wood-grip" to pull himself forward. He pivoted, his iron-heavy elbow catching Jaxen in the chest and sending him tumbling back. In the same motion, Kaelen brought his clawed hand down.
He didn't burn the beast. He used the Iron-Weight to crush its skull in a single, resonant strike.
The Stalker collapsed.
Silence returned to the hollow, broken only by Jaxen's heavy breathing as he picked himself up from the dirt. He looked at the dead beast, then at Kaelen, whose arm was still smoking with a faint, emerald light.
"That... that wasn't a standard move," Jaxen wheezed, clutching his ribs.
"We aren't a standard Company," Kaelen said. He knelt, drawing a knife to claim the bounty trophy. He looked at Jaxen, his eyes flickering with a violet-gold intensity. "Keep the badges. But if I see your 'indigo cloaks' tracking us again, I won't use the blunt end of my arm."
Jaxen didn't argue. He signaled his team to retreat, their "professionalism" replaced by a very real, very human fear.
As the Ember Spark walked out of the hollow, the head of the Stalker in Korg's hand, Pip let out a high-pitched cackle. "Did you see his face? He thought he had us! Oh, the Guild report for this is going to be hilarious."
"We got the gold," Ria said, though her expression remained grim. "But we just humiliated a Lilies' sub-team. Lysa isn't going to send the B-Squad next time. She's going to come herself."
Kaelen looked at his hand. The wood-scales were starting to itch. The "Forest of Whispers" was calling to him, and he knew that the further they went, the less the Guild's rules would matter.
"Let her come," Kaelen said. "We have a forest to get lost in."