The transition from the stifling heat of the Iron Works to the open sky was like waking up from a nap.

Riva shot out of the dungeon's hidden chimney shaft, a plume of grey smoke trailing behind her like a tail. She hit the cool, crisp air of the surface world and let out a shriek of pure, unadulterated joy.

"SCREEEEE!"

The dungeon was home. The dungeon had the Boss (who gave head scratches) and the Pizza Man (who threw circle-meat). But the dungeon was also a cage. It was ceilings and walls and Grika yelling about "OSHA violations."

Here, there were no walls. Only the wind.

Riva snapped her wings wide, catching a thermal current rising from the valley floor. She banked hard, spiraling upward until the dungeon entrance below looked like a mere rabbit hole in the side of the hill.

Air good. Wind good. Feathers happy.

She did a barrel roll just because she could, feeling the G-force press against her hollow bones.

But then, she remembered the order.

"Spy Bird. No fight. Just look."

Riva grumbled, leveling out. The Boss was smart, but he was a ground-walker. He didn't understand that looking usually led to fighting, because things that were worth looking at usually tasted good or had shiny bits.

She narrowed her eyes golden irises contracting like camera lenses and scanned the forest.

Something was wrong.

Usually, the forest was noisy. Deer crashing through brush, squirrels chattering, lesser birds singing their stupid, simple songs.

Today, the forest was dead silent.

To the north, the vibrant green canopy of the Elder Woods was fading. A creeping greyness was spreading like a bruise across the landscape. The leaves weren't falling; they were turning into grey slime on the branches.

And there was the Fog.

It wasn't natural mist. It was thick, heavy, and moved against the wind. It rolled over the hills like a slow tsunami, swallowing everything in its path.

Stinky cloud, Riva thought, wrinkling her beak. Smells like old meat.

She gained more altitude, pushing her wings to climb higher until she was a speck against the clouds. She needed to see what was inside the stink-cloud.

She drifted over the leading edge of the fog bank.

Riva gasped, her breath catching in her throat.

Below her, the fog thinned just enough to reveal the horror underneath.

It wasn't a raiding party. It wasn't a squad.

It was an ocean of bone.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of skeletons were marching in lockstep. The sound of their feet hitting the dead earth was a low, rhythmic drumbeat that vibrated in the air. Thud. Thud. Thud.

But it wasn't the small skeletons that made Riva's feathers stand on end.

Marching in the center of the column were the Siegebreakers.

Riva counted four of them. They were massive constructs, easily twenty feet tall, built from the ribcages of giants and reinforced with rusted iron plates. They walked on their knuckles like gorillas, dragging massive stone pillars behind them as battering rams.

And floating above them, weaving through the trees like black smoke, were the Wights—armored commanders with eyes that burned with cold blue fire.

Too many, Riva thought, panic fluttering in her chest. Boss has a sword. Seraphine has a spear. Grika has a wrench. This… this is too big for wrenches.

She banked hard to the left, intending to turn back immediately. The Boss needed to know. The "Meat Grinder" wasn't going to be enough. They needed to collapse the tunnels. They needed to run.

But as she turned, a glint of light caught her eye.

Shiny.

Riva froze mid-turn, hovering.

About half a mile ahead of the main army, moving through the treetops with unnatural speed, was a shadow.

It was a Shadow Shade, a scout for the Necromancer. A creature made of semi-solid darkness, barely visible to the naked eye.

But Riva didn't have naked eyes. She had Harpy eyes. And she saw what the Shade was holding.

Clutched in its smoky claws was a crystal. A large, faceted, pulsing red ruby.

It glittered. It glowed. It was the most beautiful thing Riva had seen all week.

Shiny red rock, Riva's brain whispered. Want.

No, her other brain cell argued. Boss said no fight. Boss said spy.

But, the first brain cell countered, Rock is shiny. And Shadow Man is spying on us.

The Shade stopped on a high branch. It held the crystal up. The gem pulsed faster, emitting a low hum that Riva could hear even from up here. It was transmitting. Sending pictures. Sending sounds.

It was looking at the dungeon entrance.

Riva felt a surge of territorial aggression. This was her territory. Her shiny boss. Her pizza oven.

Spy Bird is compromised, Riva decided. Protocol: Attack Bird.

She tucked her wings tight against her body. She tipped forward. And she fell.

Gravity took over. Riva became a feathered missile, dropping from the sky in a silent, lethal dive. The wind roared in her ears, but she didn't scream. Hunters didn't scream.

The Shadow Shade never looked up. It was too focused on the crystal.

At the last second, Riva flared her wings to break her speed, extending her talons.

WHOOSH.

She hit the Shade like a cannonball.

Her steel-tipped talons, a gift from Grika, tore through the smoky form of the scout. The Shade let out a wailing hiss, its physical form destabilizing instantly under the impact.

Riva didn't stop to fight. She snatched the red crystal from the Shade's dissolving hand mid-air, clutching it to her chest.

"Mine!" she shrieked triumphantly.

But the wail of the dying Shade had alerted the army.

Below, in the fog, blue eyes snapped upward.

THWIP. THWIP. THWIP.

Arrows, black, rot-wood arrows, whistled past her. A bolt of green necrotic energy sizzled through the air, singing the tips of her tail feathers.

"Rude!" Riva yelled, banking hard to the right and pumping her wings frantically.

She zig-zagged through the air, dodging another volley of arrows. She was fast, but she was heavy with the crystal, and the air here was thick with dark magic that made it hard to fly.

Go home. Go home fast.

She dove toward the tree line, using the dead canopy as cover. She skimmed the tops of the pines, branches whipping against her legs.

She could see the chimney shaft ahead. A pillar of smoke marking safety.

"Open the door!" Riva screeched, though nobody could hear her. "Bird coming in hot!"

She reached the shaft and folded her wings, diving straight down into the darkness.

The Core Chamber

Reed was in the middle of an argument with Maira about the mana budget for laundry detergent when the ventilation grate in the ceiling exploded.

CLANG.

The iron grate flew across the room, bouncing off the stone table.

Riva tumbled out of the hole in a cloud of soot and feathers, crashing onto the floor and rolling until she hit the wall.

"Riva!" Reed shouted, vaulting over the table. "Are you okay?"

Riva lay on her back, panting heavily. Her chest heaved. There were scorch marks on her tail feathers and a cut on her wing.

But she was grinning. A wild, manic, terrifying grin.

"Boss," she wheezed. "I found… a present."

She lifted her hand.

Clutched in her claw was the red crystal. It was the size of a grapefruit, pulsating with a malevolent, bloody light.

Reed stared at it. "You fought."

"It was shiny," Riva defended weakly, sitting up and shaking soot from her hair. "And the Shadow Man was looking at the door. He was taking pictures, Boss. With his magic rock."

Reed took the crystal. It was warm to the touch. Too warm.

"Maira," Reed said sharply. "Analyze."

The Demon Maid stepped forward, adjusting her glasses. She waved a hand over the gem.

"It is a Relay Node," Maira said, her voice dropping an octave. "Necromancers use them to coordinate large-scale movements. It records visual data and transmits orders."

"Can we access it?"

"It is encrypted with death magic," Maira said. "But… I was a librarian in the Abyss. Their encryption is sloppy."

She tapped the crystal hard with a manicured fingernail.

FLASH.

The crystal projected a holographic image into the air above the table.

It was a recording. But not of the dungeon.

It was a view from a different scout, somewhere miles away to the South. It showed a road. And marching down that road was a small, elite column of knights in shining silver armor.

At the front rode a woman with pale blonde hair and a white cloak.

High Inquisitor Kaelen.

Reed felt his stomach drop. "She's close."

Then, a voice spoke from the crystal. A rasping, dry voice that sounded like grinding stones.

"The authority approaches faster than anticipated. They will arrive by dawn."

The view shifted to the massive army of skeletons Riva had seen.

"We cannot allow the Inquisitor to claim the Core. Accelerate the march. Deploy the Siegebreakers. Crush the Dungeon tonight. Leave nothing but rubble for the Paladins to find."

The image flickered and died.

Silence descended on the Core Room.

Seraphine, who had been sharpening her spear in the corner, stood up slowly. Her tail lashed anxiously against the stone floor.

"He knows," Seraphine whispered. "He is not just attacking. He is racing."

"A pincer move," Reed said, staring at the dead crystal. "Malakor wants to break us before Kaelen gets here. He knows if the authority arrives, they'll purge the area, and he loses his prize."

Riva hopped onto the table, picking at a loose thread on her tunic.

"Lots of bones, Boss," she said softly, her chaotic energy dampened by the fear in the room. "Four big monkeys. Stone-smashers. And thousands of little ones. They are running."

Reed looked at his family.

He looked at Grika, covered in grease. At Luma, who had turned a pale, anxious shade of violet. At Elara, hovering invisibly in the corner. And at Riva, who had risked her life to bring them the warning.

If Riva hadn't disobeyed orders, the first Siegebreaker would have hit their door in the middle of the night, while they were sleeping. They would have been slaughtered.

"You did good, Riva," Reed said, reaching out to ruffle her messy, soot-stained feathers. "You did really good."

Riva preened, puffing out her chest. "Spy Bird is best bird."

Reed turned to the map on the wall. He picked up a marker and drew a red circle around the dungeon.

"We have a timeline," Reed said, his voice hardening. "Malakor attacks tonight. Kaelen arrives tomorrow morning."

"We're trapped," Maira noted calmly.

"No," Reed said. "We're the bait."

He looked at the crystal, then at the entrance tunnel.

"Malakor thinks he's racing Kaelen. So let's help him lose the race. We don't need to defeat the army alone. We just need to survive long enough for the Inquisitor to walk through that door and see exactly who the real threat is."

He turned to Grika.

"Get the false walls ready," Reed ordered. "And tell Terra to warm up the grinder. We have twelve hours to turn this dungeon into a trap for a Paladin, while simultaneously holding off an apocalypse."

Riva tilted her head. "Do I get my bomb bag now?"

Reed grinned, a sharp, dangerous expression.

"Yes, Riva. You get the big bag."

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