Laryn roused Kenna in the middle of the night.

  “We’ve got to get ahead of the goblins,” he said. “Zaremba seems committed to attacking Fort Envin.”

  “What? Why are you bothering me in the middle of the night?” Kenna groaned. “Isn’t it good if she attacks Harrat?”

  “No,” Laryn said. “That’s bad. She’s going to reveal herself and get pincered by Harrat’s forces. She’s underestimating the challenge of taking the pass while Harrat’s men hold it.”

  “Why does she want to take Fort Envin?”

  “She wants to capture cores,” Laryn said.

  “You have a plan?”

  “I do. But we need to go now.”

  Laryn and Kenna slipped out of the goblin camp. They were not stopped by sentries or guards, though there were a few posted. Goblins generally relied on their sense of smell to alert them to danger or intruders, and Laryn and Kenna were known.

  Under a starry sky, they headed south. Laryn drummed his finger on the ring in his pouch. Stolen from a murdered elf, it contained power of the void. He also sensed a flowing swirl of essence within the stone.

  He felt the void stone’s connection to the darkness.

  “If the void’s been destroyed, then what?” Kenna asked.

  “We figure it out when we get there. But first let me ask you about Harrat. Is he tidy? Does he clean up after himself? Or does he expect others to do it for him?”

  “His chambers are always clean,” Kenna said, cautiously, “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen him clean something…”

  “If he’s the man you describe him as, he’ll have contained the void, but not killed it. Going into a cave to root out a void bloom would be a costly endeavor, in time and lives. I bet Harrat doesn’t care about the void, as long as a temporary fix will keep it from bothering him.”

  “So you think he just left it there, allowing it to produce voidlings that’ll harass his men at the pass?”

  “No,” Laryn said. “Harrat seems like my older brother, Yarin. He once spilled wine on one of my mother’s rugs, and simply flipped it over to hide the stain. He pays women to stay quiet about his behavior toward them.”

  “Your point?”

  “He never deals with the root of the problem. Just the symptoms. My guess? Harrat has stationed a mage near the cave entrance with orders to blast anything that comes out of it, to prevent the voidlings from swarming again. Maybe a rotating patrol of archers atop the cliff or something. Or a big fence. I don’t know. But I’ll bet my life that the void is still there.”

  Kenna walked in silence for a moment. “I think you’re right,” she said. “He was once in charge of a watch tower, near the border of Coronathar. Rumor has it that the tower needed serious repairs, but Harrat used the money to buy food and equipment for his personal guard, and then spent the remainder on buying paint. They spent a few days painting the tower, to cover up cracked stone and rotting wood, making it look good as new. He rotated out of that region, handing command over to a new general, a rising star and favorite soldier of his father’s.

  “Within a week, the tower collapsed and killed the general. Nobody in Ondwin ever publicly blamed Harrat, but some were suspicious that he’d coordinated the death. I don’t think he planned to kill that man, though. We were just incredibly unlucky he wasn’t in the tower when it fell.”

  “Then we’ll have to keep a close watch for whoever Harrat has guarding the cave,” Laryn said. “We kill them, then we anger the bloom.”

  He took the void stone ring out of his pocket, and held it in his palm as they walked. The stone caught starlight and glittered delicately.

  “Every time that I hold void heart I feel a connection to the void,” Laryn said. “It talks to me.”

  “That’s creepy,” Kenna said. “You have too many rings.”

  Laryn laughed. “I only have one. I threw that promise ring away.”

  “Only to replace it with a worse one,” she said. “I don’t like it. It gives me a bad feeling.”

  “I can’t help but wonder if it’s some kind of tool. I want to see if I can draw the void out of the cave with it.”

  “What if you can’t? What’s the plan then?”

  “It has essence in it, this ring. Remember how that spore in Grekhol started eating things, and sucking their essence from them to help it grow? I think even the essence in this ring might enhance the growth of the voidbloom enough to cause problems at the pass. We can make a few claimstakes, and start weakening the tiles around the bloom, and let it spread.”

  “I understand what you’re trying to do,” Kenna said. “But you’re making me nervous. You’re playing with a void cultist’s ring and talking about the best ways to help spread the void. Are you sure that you’re thinking straight?”

  “I—” Laryn started to protest, but then considered how what he’d been saying would come across. Was he being manipulated by the void? “No,” he said. “I’m simply using the tools available to us. If I can get the void to block the pass, it Zaremba and Harrat will collide. I’m maneuvering the pieces on the game board.

  “If we can eliminate the threats to Vallor, I promise I’ll go clear the voidbloom in the caves myself. We are going to have to, anyways, because we want to get the gold out of those mines, and it’s going to be incredibly hard with voidlings swarming through them.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I suppose,” Kenna said. “Just please pay attention. Don’t let the scaled tip out of balance.”

  They continued until they reached the Townshold road and turned to the east, walking along it. Their rate of travel improved significantly, even if there was more danger of being detected.

  Once the clifftops came into view over the trees, they stuck to the edge of the path, ready to run for cover at a moment’s notice. But the night was still, and no riders challenged them.

  Laryn caught the occasional glimpse of what looked like flickering torchlight atop the cliffs.

  “Look there,” he said, pointing. Kenna peered into the distance. “Someone is guarding the pass. Light from a camp fire, perhaps. It’s hidden by those boulders but you can see shadows cast there.”

  “You’re right. Harrat’s men guarding the voidbloom, and the pass?”

  “Likely.”

  They continued until they were nearly to the cliffs, before turning off into the woods and working their way to the infested cave. They crossed onto Fort Envin claimed tiles much sooner this time than the last time Laryn had visited the pass.

  “That means they’ve claimed the whole pass by now,” Laryn said. “It’s a horrible idea for Zaremba to try to take it.”

  “You don’t think you could have talked her into your way of seeing things?” Kenna asked.

  “She’s a stubborn goblin.”

  “She seemed reasonable enough to me,” Kenna said.

  “In my experience, women can be quite unreasonable when you decline to share their bed. Regardless of how reasonable they might be in other areas of their lives.”

  Kenna raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Did she ask you again?”

  “It was a little more direct,” Laryn said.

  “Why didn’t you take her up on the offer?” Kenna asked, smirking. “She is very symmetrical. All the other goblins can hardly stop talking about it. You know the stupor they fall into when they catch a glimpse.”

  “Let one of them lie with the queen,” Laryn said. “I’m not interested.”

  “Not even if it means forging an alliance and getting your way?”

  “No,” Laryn said.

  “I wish my father would have thought more like that before he sent me off to marry Harrat.”

  They reached the cave where the voidbloom had been growing. Or rather, they reached the place where the cave would have been.

  Several large boulders appeared to have fallen from the cliff, blocking off the entrance to the cave.

  “You were right,” Kenna said. “Sweeping it under the rug, rather than dealing with the root.”

  “I have to admit that this is more clever than I expected,” Laryn said.

  They spent some time constructing claim stakes. It took a while, using saplings that they cut down in the woods. Once they had six, they stopped.

  “Should be enough to get things going,” Laryn said, and they carried the stakes up to the cliff.

  “Time to claim some more tiles,” Laryn said. “Good thing most people in Vallor are asleep right now, or they’d be annoyed about me reducing influence.”

  He claimed four more rings, enhancing his strength, magic, and constitution. Influence dropped to 1 per tile. Risky, he knew.

  They hiked up to the pile of rubble blocking the cave.

  “Mages?” Kenna asked.

  “With some powerful elemental [Bombs] it wouldn’t be that hard to block a cave like this. Then they wouldn’t have to watch it as closely, and it stops being a problem until the void figures out how to escape.”

  “Are the mines connected? Could it spread through them and come out of other holes?”

  “Maybe.”

  Laryn hiked up the scree and debris, moving closer to the cliff wall. He stepped onto a void claimed tile. His interface informed him that the void had nearly ten influence here. So either it didn’t control many tiles, or it had a significant store of essence available, ready to convert it into voidlings.

  Brushing his fingers against the stones, he felt for weaknesses. Then he paused and held his hand up. In the darkness of the night, it was hard to tell, but they seemed to have come away with an ashy coating.

  “Blight,” he said. “Void is definitely still here. It’ll break through this, eventually.”

  He pulled out the void ring. It buzzed softly in his hand, thrumming with… enthusiasm. To this point, he’d avoided touching the void heart set in the silver. Now he wanted a deeper connection with the void. If he could somehow control the void…

  “Adi,” he called, reaching out to her with his mind. “I’m about to try something that’s either very smart or very stupid. Can you be ready to pull my back from the brink if you see something going poorly?”

  “Laryn! What are you doing with that? I don’t think—”

  “Here goes,” he said, folding his fingers around the stone.

  The world warped around him, and he was filled with an overwhelming sense of ecstasy. A distant heartbeat rumbled. Wind rushed in his ears.

  How could he have waited so long to do this? The feeling was incredible. He was a fool. He never wanted to let go of the voidheart. He needed it.

  Voices spoke around him, but he was too caught up in rapturous delight to understand them. What had he been doing again? Something important.

  The void must spread. It needed to grow. It needed to consume.

  And it was right here. He stood on the void’s tiles, where it sucked essence from the horrible ground. Imprisoned behind a wall of stone, buried beneath a mountain of earth. It wanted to be free. To swell and grow and blossom in the air and the light. To suck water from the soil, and blood from men’s veins.

  Laryn called to it. Urging it to come forth. But the stones were too thick. They weight too heavily upon the ground, choking, suffocating.

  Feeling with his mind, Laryn reached through the landslide, finding every crack and crevice, every slot and nook, every slight gap that might provide a way to escape…

  But there was none. Unbearable rage welled up inside of him.

  Without thinking, he summoned an elemental bomb, casting it into a gap at his feet. The spell detonated, blasting him into the air.

  “Laryn!” Adi called. “What…”

  He snapped back to reality, his body twisting and rolling as he bounced down the hill of rubble.

  “That was insane,” he groaned as he slid to a stop.

  Kenna cried out from nearby, clutching her wrist. The blast had knocked her down as well.

  “It tried to make me kill myself!” Laryn grunted, rising to his feet and brushing dirt from his clothes.

  Then he realized he’d lost the ring in the turmoil. He began frantically searching around for it. It could have gone anywhere, fallen into a thousand gaps in the rocks.

  He wanted it back.

  Atop the pile of stones, on the void claimed tile, the dust started to settle. From a silver ring band, a black tentacle of twisting, curling malice writhed across the ground. A thick stalk, with a heavy bud enveloped what remained of the ring.

  The void grew.